Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, speedrunning the fuckbuddy situation at the end of the world, set after the 'we didn't even kiss' unsent text because that seemed like the worst possible time for them to be stuck together lmao, shane hollander you will never know how close you were to getting jaime lannistered in this fic, you know in zombie movies how the people are always the real villains?, it's mostly not true in this, but the real villain is shane's obsession with hockey, or the institution of professional hockey, but i somehow treat it gently anyway because im weak (and also like hockey), misuse of russian petnames, alternating povs, two narrators so unreliable you can't even trust their own thoughts about their own emotions, and you certainly can't trust them with each others, also should be mentioned, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, ilya is passively suicidal due to you know the horrors, and then actively suicidal very briefly because of some other horrors, Toxic codependence, But do I try to fix them? No, i only make one (1) provincetown joke in this whole 95k fic, as a queer masshole I think i deserve a prize for that, very minor amputation kink moment, nothing is actually amputated but that doesnt stop them from kinking about it, i cannot overstate how toxically codependent they become in this, somewhere there is a version of this story where i was brave enough to jaime lannister shane for his own good, but unfortunately i am a coward and it is not this version lmao, shane can keep a little obsession with being the best at hockey as a treat, okay after MANY comments about it I need to clarify:, Angst with a Happy Ending

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-09 Completed: 2026-05-10 Words: 95,670 Chapters: 3/3

oh well, I guess we're gonna find out!

Summary

Shane leaves that Vegas penthouse suite feeling wretched, and like an idiot, and like he never wants to see Ilya Rozanov again.

Except, well. Then there are zombies.

Notes

I really thought this was going to be like, idk, 20k max. This is chapter 1 of 3 and it's 28k, and the next two are longer, so clearly I fucked that up massively. I thought I was going to post it all at once like I did with my plane crash fic, because I get too nervous leaving WIPs as WIPs for some reason, especially since chapter 2 ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but I've been fiddling with this draft for like a month, and I need to just throw this first chapter out into the universe to force myself to speed-edit the next two chapters and hopefully post them by the end of the weekend. The draft is currently 95k, so that hardly seems possible, but I've done stupider shit before. I'm not ready to count myself out just yet. So basically, as always: made this, had a breakdown, bon appetit!

The title is from How Far We've Come by Matchbox Twenty, which really is just Shane's POV in this entire fic lmao.

Chapter 1: Days

Shane feels like a fucking idiot. 

He types out we didn’t even kiss, and then he deletes it, because the lightning bolt of mortification that shoots through him at the thought of Rozanov reading something so desperate makes him want to die. He rests his head against the side of the elevator, and he tells himself that he has to stop this. Has to stop falling for this. Has to stop feeling like this. It was bad enough that he let Rozanov touch him in the first place, but what possible excuse can he make for tonight? All those months of silence, the way Rozanov acted in Sochi, and Shane just fucking folds? What is he doing? What is this? Why does he feel so awful? Why does he hope he sees Rozanov again soon? There has to be something seriously wrong with him. 

He gets back to his room, sheds his suit as he moves to the bed, and he curls up in a ball, wrapped up in the duvet. He feels like he might be on the verge of panic, but he never quite falls into it, almost like he's waiting for a final push. 

He feels hazy, unfocused, sad. He feels like he must have fucked something up, though he’s not sure what. It’s just this deepening feeling of shame and horror: you’re disgusting. You’re pathetic. You’re so obvious. No wonder he wants nothing to do with you. Everyone’s going to find out eventually that you’re broken and wrong and—

He has to get out of bed and put on a hoodie, because he’s freezing cold for some reason. He trips on the sheet that trails out after him, almost falls. He’s unsteady, like he drank way more than he did. Hoodie secured, he buries himself in the too-big, too-empty hotel bed, and he wishes that Rozanov was with him, and he knows that Rozanov never will be, because that’s not what they do. Rozanov made that especially clear tonight when Shane was leaving, as if Shane hadn’t already known, almost like he was making a point of it. This is all we are. Stop wanting more. I will never give it to you, because I don't want to. This is all you’re going to get. You would have to be an idiot to think there could be more.

So what does it say about Shane, that Shane still wants him so badly? He’s sick. There has to be something wrong with him, to make him crave someone who doesn’t even like him.

Months of silence, and he could have just left Shane the fuck alone, but he hadn’t. He’d followed Shane into that bathroom, and he'd invited him up to his penthouse. Fucking demanded it, actually. And he was definitely into what they did in that penthouse. Shane isn't so lost in the fog of his own bewildered hurt that he can't see that. Maybe those months of no contact and that roughness in Sochi and his cold distance tonight was just Rozanov trying to make things clear. Shane knew he was too pleased and dreamy and unfocused after that last time, in Montreal. Rozanov probably thought Shane liked it too much. Saw the pathetic, grasping want at his core. Probably hated seeing it as much as Shane hates knowing that it exists.  

Maybe, tonight, Rozanov could tell that Shane was feeling…

Well, it doesn’t matter what Shane is feeling. Shane doesn’t even know what Shane is feeling. Shane only knows that everything is bad, and so he pulls the blankets up over his head, and he flips his phone face-down on the mattress next to him, and he wonders what would have happened if he’d been stupid enough to send that text. We didn't even kiss. Would Rozanov have come and found him? Would Rozanov have blocked his number? 

It’s a good thing he’s a coward; he’d rather not know. 

He has three weird dreams in a row that all feature some kind of buzzing sound. He’s being chased across the vast expanse of a frozen lake by a horde of bees, and then he’s in his brand new cottage and all of his smoke detectors are going off at once and he can’t figure out which one is causing the problem, and then he’s talking to his mom at a restaurant but her voice is just a low-pitched buzz and she doesn’t seem to hear him when he says he can’t understand her, and then he finally swims back to consciousness and realizes that his phone is vibrating on the bed next to him, and probably has been for a while. He blinks sleep out of his eyes and slaps his hand around on the mattress to find it. Out in the hallway, a door slams loudly, startling him, and he hears people talking in urgent voices as they move past his door, their footsteps surprisingly loud, like they’re running. 

He catches sight of the alarm clock on the bedside table. It’s three in the morning. 

Who the fuck is calling him at three in the morning? 

He flips his phone over, and he’s greeted with a call screen from “Lily”. He goes to answer it, but fumbles his phone a bit in his eagerness, and that’s when he decides that he really shouldn’t. He pulls his hand back, and he watches the phone until the screen goes dark again. 

As soon as it stops buzzing, he regrets not picking up. 

“Stop it,” he mutters to himself. 

The phone lights up again, this time a text. 

Lily

ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE

When the preview of Rozanov’s text comes on the screen, he can see that he has other notifications waiting for him. 

Like…a lot of notifications. 

He still feels oddly removed. He was never going to be at his best after being woken up at three in the morning, but it’s more than that. He still feels that cold and heavy-limbed and dread-filled combination of shit feelings that have been festering in him since he left Rozanov's room. Since he was getting ready to leave Rozanov’s room, honestly. Everything, all of it, had been so weird and so different from last time, and it has left him feeling adrift in himself. So he’s thinking that’s weird, that’s a lot of notifications, but he’s not freaking out yet. 

He picks up his phone slowly. He unlocks it slowly. He has seven voicemails, twenty-five missed calls, and so, so many texts. 

Rozanov was the last person to text, and he’s apparently texted twenty-two times. Under that is fifteen unread messages from his mother, and then six from Hayden, four from his coach, and then fifty-two from J.J.

“Jesus, J.J,” he mutters. 

As he’s about to click on Hayden’s messages as a kind of pathetic rebellion against himself, a way to prove to himself that he’s not completely gone on Rozanov, another message comes in from his mother. 

The preview stops his heart. 

Mom

okay I just got off the phone with Rozanov and…

Oh, fuck. 

Oh no, oh fuck. What did he do? 

Because clearly Shane did something. Clearly he, what, accidentally recorded and then posted everything that happened last night? Like the world’s most lethal butt dial? But it couldn’t have been an accidental butt-record, because he wasn’t even wearing pants for very long! Was his phone hacked? Was it the elevator cameras, maybe? Did someone post a video of him leaving Rozanov’s room? He imagines he probably looked pretty messed up. Like someone who had obviously just been fucked and then sort of rudely shown the door, right?  

Had he accidentally tweeted Rozanov that pathetic fucking “we didn’t even kiss” message instead of trying to text it and then deleting it? He’d been kind of out of it last night, but that out of it? He’s never been that out of it in his life. He’s not a fucking idiot. Everything in his entire life has been so carefully controlled and curated. He wouldn’t ever mistake the Twitter icon for the Messages icon. 

But what’s the alternative? Why else would his mom be on the phone with Rozanov? She was supposed to be here, originally. Both of his parents were, but with all the shit happening overseas, his dad got called in for an emergency meeting at work, and Shane had talked them both into staying home—probably because, despite the months of silence from Rozanov, he'd been pathetically hoping to be too busy after the awards to entertain them. His mom should be asleep, long asleep. How did she find out that something bad happened before he even did?

His phone lights up again: his mom is calling. 

He almost doesn’t answer, because he’s sliding quickly into panic attack territory and is terrified to find out what happened, but he has to. He can’t force himself to read any of the messages, certainly can’t let fucking Rozanov tell him what he’s done to ruin both of their careers. It’s going to be impossible to face his mom, but at least he knows that she’ll have a plan, and at least he’s pretty sure that she’ll still love him no matter how disappointed in him she might be.

“Mom?” he asks, his voice gritty with sleep and fear and whatever leftover self-hatred has been simmering in him since leaving Rozanov’s room last night. 

“Shane! There you are. Where are you?” 

She sounds so afraid that Shane almost wants to hang up. I did this to her. This is my fault. I must have really fucked up. It must be even worse than I thought. Was there a hidden camera in the suite? Did someone film the whole thing? Have I already been fired for being so fucking pathetic?

“I’m in my room?” 

“Room number, sweetie. What’s your room number?” 

Shane, confused, tells her. 

“Why?” he asks.

His mother’s voice fades out for a second, like she has taken the phone away from her ear. 

“Okay. Shane, baby, have you seen the news?” 

“No, I haven’t seen anything,” he whispers. His mouth is dry, and he wishes that he had something to drink, and he wishes that he was still asleep. His head is already pounding. “What did I do?” 

“What? You didn’t do anything, sweetheart. Did you just wake up?” 

“It’s three in the morning? So, uh, yeah.” 

“Okay. Well, this might be difficult to believe, but something very scary is happening.” 

“But it's not…” He’s so fucked up that he almost says it’s nothing to do with me and Rozanov, right? He stops himself in time, and he has to grip his pillow in his fist to resist the urge to punch himself in the head the way he used to when he was frustrated with himself when he was younger. Jesus, don’t fucking tell her without her asking. “It’s nothing to do with me?”

“No, sweetheart. You’re perfect. You haven’t done anything. I need you to get out of bed and start packing while I talk, okay? You don’t have a lot of time. Just please know that I'm telling the truth. This isn't a joke, or a prank. It’s going to sound very stupid, and I know you’re not going to want to believe me, but I need you to trust me.”

“Of course I…mom, what's going on?”

Someone slams on Shane’s door so hard and so suddenly that Shane startles hard enough to almost drop his phone. 

“What the fuck?” he hisses. 

“Hollander! Open the fucking door! We have to go now!” 

“I, mom, sorry, it’s…” 

“I know, it’s okay. I sent him your room number.” 

“What? Why?” 

“Hollander!” 

“Go let him in. Pack your bag. Ask him what’s going on. Sweetheart, I’ll call you right back. The Boston GM is calling me, and I want to confirm something with him. Ilya can explain everything to you, okay? Tell him I said thank you again.” 

“Ilya?” Shane mutters grumpily, but his mother has already hung up, and Shane finally pushes through the fog in his head enough to go get the door. 

Rozanov is wearing the shirt and dress pants he was wearing last night. His hair is all over the place. He looks rumpled, messy, and very good. His top three buttons are unbuttoned, and Shane’s eyes go there first, annoyingly, before he remembers to try and be normal and moves his eyes back up so he can take in how fucking angry Rozanov looks.

“What are you doing?” Shane asks. It occurs to him that maybe he should be angry with Rozanov. For right now, for last night, for ignoring his texts, for all of it. He tries to hold on to that feeling, but it slips through his mind like water. Still, he can at least pretend. “Why are you texting my fucking mom?” 

“Because you would not answer your fucking phone,” Rozanov shoots back in the same tone, seething, in that too-patient, clipped way he speaks when he’s angry and wants to make sure that his point gets across as clearly as possible. He pushes past Shane, into the room. He has his bag slung over his shoulder. 

“I didn’t do anything, right?” Shane asks. He’s not sure why; his mother already told him that whatever is happening has nothing to do with him. But he still feels sunk in dread, and it’s hard to climb out. Even though it makes no sense, even though he knows his mother would never do it, he can’t help but think maybe she was lying to me. Maybe she just didn’t know how to tell me. Maybe she’s so mad at me that she wanted me to find out from Rozanov because she knew it would be worse. 

Rozanov turns and looks at him, incredulous. 

“What?” 

“Did I tweet something? Or? Were there cameras? My mom said it wasn’t me, but…” 

“Are you okay?” Rozanov asks. His angry face has shifted very quickly to one of concern. That might be a little gratifying, except that he also looks confused, and maybe like he thinks Shane is stupid.  

“Yeah,” Shane lies slowly. “I think I’m okay.” 

“Okay. You just wake up?” 

“What? Uh, yeah. Why is everyone so surprised by that? It’s three in the morning.” 

“I know what time it is,” Rozanov says, but it’s more gentle this time. He grabs Shane briefly by the chin, but that’s more gentle than it seems like it’s going to be, too. He tilts Shane’s head back a little, looks into his eyes. Shane tries not to be disappointed that a kiss doesn’t follow. Fails. “You are just tired? You look like shit.” 

“Great, thank you,” Shane sighs. 

Rozanov laughs a little, and he moves away, and now Shane is trying to pretend he’s not disappointed that they're no longer touching. Rozanov throws his bag on the ground, and then he’s suddenly moving around Shane’s room, packing Shane’s bag for him. When he sees Shane still standing by the wall, he practically growls at him with impatience, and Shane remembers with sudden humiliating clarity the way he’d acted earlier, in his room. Like he couldn’t fucking wait for Shane to leave. 

“Pack up whatever you have in the bathroom. We are going.” 

“What are we, on the run?” 

Rozanov’s annoyance briefly shifts into amusement before he reaches for the remote on Shane’s bedside table. He turns on the TV. 

The news is on. 

“Oh,” Shane says, after a few seconds of digesting the terror on the screen. 

It’s probably disgusting that his first feeling is of relief. 

This really has nothing to do with him hooking up with a man. This really has nothing to do with him really fucking liking it when Ilya Rozanov tells him what to do, uses him, holds him down and fucks him. It has nothing to do with the fact that he apparently needs a cuddle and a kiss afterwards or he lies in his bed all night in a depressed, shivering lump. This has nothing to do with him at all. 

“Hollander! Bathroom!” Rozanov barks. This time, Shane listens. 

He’s starting to wake up now for real. He feels a little less like he’s trapped in his own head. He packs up his toiletries bag quickly, his hands shaking only a little. He brushes his teeth. He uses the bathroom. He can hear Rozanov talking to someone on the phone in the other room, in Russian. His tone is harsh, demanding. Shane almost doesn’t want to interrupt, almost doesn’t want to go back out until the call is over, but of course that’s stupid. This is his fucking room, and the world is ending.

When he emerges from the bathroom, Rozanov meets his eyes and gestures at the bed, wrapping up his phone conversation with a few more angry Russian words and then a whole string of even angrier ones once he hangs up and shoves the phone back into his pocket. He set out a pair of sweatpants and a shirt for Shane to wear, sitting neatly beside his already packed bag. Shane doesn’t remember packing sweatpants, only his dress pants and a pair of jeans and the pajama pants he’s still wearing. So the sweatpants must be Rozanov’s, and it’s so fucking weird and so fucking gross that the thought of wearing them gets him half hard, especially after what he just saw. 

He looks at the TV again as if to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating the first time. It’s still on, though Rozanov apparently muted it to make his phone call. The video they’re showing now is different from the one that was on before, but it’s similar. People running in the streets. Cars clogging the highways, trying to get out of what looks like LA. Fires spreading from building to building. Grainy, frantic, unsteady videos of people with bloody faces and weirdly stiff and jerky mannequin movements running, stumbling, mouths open, teeth snapping. Blood on their faces, blood spilling down the fronts of their shirts. There have been reports for a few days of an illness originating somewhere overseas, spreading so quickly that no one knows where it started. Shane had even wondered if they were going to postpone the MLH Awards about it, because it felt a little tasteless to still hold them when there were all these crazy stories and videos showing up, but of course they’d chosen to pretend that nothing was happening instead.

And now it’s here, and it’s clearly real, and Shane is realizing that those jokes he saw online about zombies weren’t jokes at all. 

“Oh my fucking god,” he breathes, and suddenly Rozanov is in front of him, taking his face in both hands. Shane slaps him away. “Stop it. What are you doing?” 

“Are you having another panic attack?” 

“Probably.” 

“You are breathing okay?” 

“Yeah? Kind of. I mean. There are zombies.” 

“Yes,” Rozanov says, still deceptively patient. “That is why we have to fucking go.” 

He taps Shane’s cheek a little bit with one hand. It’s not a slap, not really. It’s weak, and he has this fond look on his face like he’s amused despite himself, and Shane smiles a little, because he can’t help it. He feels a little more like himself, now, but he’s not exactly sure that’s a good thing. He sort of wishes he could be back in that confused, hazy mental place, even though it was cold and terrible there. 

He gets dressed, unselfconscious stripping down in front of Rozanov even though he still feels kind of stung. He half-watches the news as he hastens into his new clothes. The closed captioning is on, and he glances up in time to read that the anchors are talking about the Canadian border being closed. He freezes, one leg in the borrowed sweatpants. Rozanov glances to see what he’s looking at, and he snaps his fingers impatiently in Shane's face to break his focus. 

“Don’t worry about that now. Will not matter if we can’t get out of the fucking city. Let’s go.” 

“Okay, fuck,” Shane says, and he pulls his hoodie over his shirt because he’s still for some reason freezing cold, and then he follows Rozanov to the door.

Rozanov literally runs to the elevator, and for some reason that is how Shane starts to accept that it’s really serious. Rozanov always has this aura of like sexy mysteriousness when he’s not being a chaotic gremlin, and something about him running for an elevator and then slamming the button until the doors ding open is so deeply uncool that it makes Shane’s stomach clench. 

When they’re in the elevator, Rozanov jams at the ground floor button, too, until it finally starts moving. 

“Uh, okay. So. Where are we going?” Shane asks. Rozanov huffs out an impatient breath as he watches the floor number slowly tick down. 

“We have, I don’t know, twenty minutes now? Maybe a little longer. They have moved flights up to get as many people out as they can. There is one going to Boston, and management got me on it. Easy to ask for two seats.” He looks at Shane as if he thinks Shane is going to object. Shane is just staring at him. “Your mother was calling everyone she could. Managers and agents and players. Everyone. Most people are already gone. Lots of planes went out tonight, earlier. She knew I was here too, obviously. Got my agent's number somehow. I tell her I can get you on the plane with me. East Coast is safe for now. More cases out west, out here. It won't stay that way, probably, but…” 

“Okay. Okay, Jesus. Thank you.” 

“Well, I would not just leave you here, even if your mother did not call,” Rozanov says quietly. Shane isn’t sure he believes him, but he would feel like a dick for saying that, so he doesn’t. “But I was also asleep, so she saves us both. Moscow is already…” He trails off, won’t look at Shane, clearly thinks better of finishing his thought. “Overseas, I mean. It went bad very fast. Now that it’s here, there is not much time.” 

“Okay. The border?” 

“Yes. Border will be closed. No fights. I’m sorry. Maybe it will change later, but until then, at least…” He doesn’t finish that sentence either, and Shane really should know better by now than to assume what Rozanov is thinking, because he’s gotten it wrong at every single step. Still, his stupidly hopeful mind fills in the rest of that sentence with his own wishful: at least we will be together. 

He looks down at the ground, bites the inside of his cheek, tells himself to stop it. Stop deluding himself into thinking this is more than it is. It has always been like this between them, and it’s never going to be anything else, and Shane should know that by now. It’s frankly embarrassing that he keeps twisting things in his own mind until they look more like the things he knows better than to want. Why can’t he be satisfied with what he does have? Why can’t he just let it be enough?

“Thank you,” he says again. He’s not sure why it feels so awkward. Rozanov only shrugs. 

The ground floor of the hotel is less chaotic than Shane would have expected. It’s still chaotic—it’s Vegas—but only a normal amount. Maybe it’s not normally this packed at three in the morning, but it’s not like Shane would know. He’s usually well asleep by now. 

There are a few people still gambling, playing poker, sitting in front of the slot machines. Some of them are even in their pajamas, but others are dressed in evening wear. It breaks Shane’s brain a little bit, and he laughs. Rozanov looks at him like he wants to ask if Shane is okay again, but he doesn’t. He shifts his bag up on his shoulder further and starts through the maze of people, and he moves almost like he’s going to grab Shane’s hand, but he doesn’t do that either. Shane is glad he doesn’t, obviously. Obviously. 

They speedwalk away from the elevators, through the labyrinth of the casino floor towards the exit, dodging waitresses who are still working and people who are drunkenly careening their way from table to table. There’s this very sinking-ship forced gaiety to everyone that makes Shane feel guilty. Not everyone has the pull to get seats on a plane taking off in the middle of the night to take them across the country. These people are probably just dealing with their fear in the way that they can. 

Some of them cheer as Shane and Rozanov walk by, yelling their names, recognizing them. Shane feels only a muted terror at that. There are zombies coming. Does it still matter that he likes to be fucked by a man? When the end of the world is approaching, does it really still matter that the man he likes to be fucked by is his fucking hockey rival? It certainly shouldn't matter that they're being seen in public just walking together!

His phone buzzes in his hand: his mother is calling again. He answers, sticking even closer to Rozanov, not wanting to lose him in the crowd. 

“Shane? Are you boys on your way?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Shane answers. “I assume so. We’re in the lobby. Do we have a car?” 

“Yes,” Rozanov answers. 

“Okay, we have a car.” 

“I heard him, okay. Okay, good. Okay. Are you all right?” 

“I’m okay. Everything seems normal here so far.” 

“Will maybe not be normal outside. Airport may be…tricky,” Rozanov says. 

“What? What does that mean? Like there are zombies here?” Shane asks. Rozanov narrows his eyes at him like he’s trying to warn Shane to be quiet, even though there are multiple televisions at the various bars around the lobby all playing the same newsfeed they’d been watching upstairs.

“People are trying to leave. My agent said there will be, um. Military? Stopping people. Looking at ID, tickets. I forget the word.”

“Checkpoint,” Shane says, at the same time his mother offers it, in his ear. 

“Yes, checkpoint,” Rozanov repeats, quietly. “And maybe zombies too. Who knows?”

“Jesus, fuck.” 

“Shane, sweetheart, don’t listen to him. It’s going to be okay. All reports are that the situation is still contained in Vegas. Just a few local outbreaks at the hospital, and a minor one at the airport earlier tonight, but Rozanov is right. The military is there, and they’re still operating, so it can’t be that bad, okay? It’s all just rumors and speculation. Everything is going to be fine. And I just got a confirmation email from Boston’s manager: he’s sending a security detail with the car.” 

A security detail? That seems a little ridiculous. They’re fucking hockey players. It makes Shane feel even more guilty. 

“Okay,” he says weakly. 

“Listen to me, okay? Are you listening?” 

“Yeah, mom.” 

“I don’t know if you saw it, but currently they’ve suspended all international flights, and I think the situation at the border on the ground isn’t much better. I’m seeing reports of huge backups, and I haven’t found any concrete information either way if people are even being allowed in at all.” 

“Okay. So…” 

“So you just worry about getting to the airport. When you get to Boston, you call me, and I’ll have everything set up for you, okay? Your dad and I are on our way to the cottage now. We figure we’ll be safer there. Ottawa hasn’t had any cases yet, but you never know.” 

“Okay. That’s a good idea.” 

“By the time you land, I will have booked a room for you, and I will keep working on getting you back home in the meantime. I have a few more connections I can try.” 

“Okay, but like…” Shane reaches forward, tugs on Rozanov’s sleeve. Rozanov looks back at him, surprised. “Can I stay with you? In Boston? Until I can find a way back across the border?”  

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Rozanov says incredulously, and it’s weird how he can sound so annoyed while still being so gentle. If he just heard the words, Shane might think they were a rejection, but he's seeing the rolled eyes and the hint of a smile on Rozanov's face. Rozanov reaches out quickly, almost like he’s going to slap Shane’s cheek again—and, pathetically, Shane is sort of looking forward to it—but his touch is fleeting, shockingly soft. He brushes his thumb over Shane’s cheek in a way that would have sent Shane into a fear coma at any other time. Now, it warms him to his toes, and he even leans into it for a second. It’s only then that it occurs to him that he should have probably just let his mother book the hotel room and then gone to Rozanov’s place anyway, but in his defense, this has been a very confusing ten minutes. 

“Uh, yeah, so Rozanov says I can stay with him. Don’t worry about booking anything.” 

“Yeah, I can hear him. That’s not exactly what he said,” Yuna says, but he can tell that she’s smiling. 

“It’s what he meant. I unfortunately speak a little Rozanov.” 

Rozanov makes an amused, disbelieving sound at that, and then he keeps walking, and Shane follows, embarrassed about all of it, already second and third and fourth guessing himself. Had his mother somehow been able to feel that cheek-touch through the phone? Had she heard something in Rozanov’s voice? In Shane’s? He’s usually so much more worried about this stuff, and he is worried about it now, but it’s taking a back seat to his worries about the fucking zombie thing. Maybe that’s for good reason, but still. He has to get his shit together before they get to the airport. There will be cameras. There will be people watching them. He can’t fall apart no matter how fucking weird he still feels, like he’s a plant dying of thirst and Rozanov’s touch is the water he needs. 

Jesus. He needs more sleep. He needs to forget last night. He needs to find a fucking girlfriend.

“As long as you’re sure about that, I’ll work on the border thing instead. I’m glad you’re not alone, at least. I guess I’ll have to stop hating Rozanov so much.” 

“I guess so,” Shane agrees reluctantly. 

By the time they get outside, Shane feels more like himself, and he feels even worse about that than usual. There are horns honking constantly out on the Strip, and they make him jump every time. People are yelling and laughing and screaming, and cars are swerving around each other. None of it sounds like fear, yet, but just like the lobby, it feels like it. Like pre-fear. Fear that’s pretending not to be. 

His head is pounding, and getting worse, but he prefers that to the weird lassitude that has been in him this morning. He can feel his fingers, his arms, his legs. He can feel his heart slamming rabbit-fast against the inside wall of his chest. He can feel nervous saliva flooding his mouth. It’s still better than that floating emptiness, even if it feels worse. 

Rozanov takes another angry Russian phone call while they walk. He doesn’t look back to make sure that Shane is still following him, but he doesn’t have to, because Shane makes sure not to stray. He keeps thinking about how the border is closed and how he’s going to be flying to Boston instead of going home, and how there are zombies here just like there were zombies in those videos on the news, and how he could die now, or in twenty minutes, or in two days. He’s thinking about how he might never play hockey again. He’s thinking about how he might never see his parents again, or Hayden and Jackie and the twins. He’ll probably never see Canada again. He’ll never go home again. It’s impossible to imagine, but he’s sure plenty of people out in LA and overseas thought it was impossible to imagine, too, and they’re still fucking dead, and Shane isn’t special. 

He’s afraid. He might be too shocked to be really afraid, but the fear is definitely still there. He keeps chewing on the strings of his sweatshirt, even though he tries not to do that in public, because he knows it’s kind of gross. 

Rozanov finally turns and checks on him, and he gives Shane an assessing once-over like he can see all the panic swirling in Shane’s head, but he doesn’t do anything about it, and Shane tells himself that he doesn’t mind, and that he wouldn't want Rozanov to do anything about it anyway. 

Finally, they find their car in the pickup area. There aren’t that many people getting cars, which is surprising. The people who are getting into cars look about as rattled as Shane feels, but the people walking by on the sidewalk are still laughing and seemingly carefree. Shane wants to grab them by the shoulders and demand that they take this shit seriously, but he doesn’t. There are two men in suits waiting for them at the giant black SUV. One of them gets into the driver’s seat after a nod of acknowledgement, and the other pulls open the back door for them before he gets into the passenger seat. Both men have guns on their hips. Shane looks at Rozanov incredulously, but Rozanov just gestures for him to go first, and Shane slides in with an annoyed huff. Rozanov finally hangs up the phone. 

“I mean, what the fuck is this?” Shane whispers viciously. “We’re fucking hockey players.” 

“Yes, and we play for rich men with too much money and not enough brains,” Rozanov says. To the driver he says, “hello. Are we good?” 

“Ready when you are, sir,” the driver answers, and then they’re off, merging easily into the slow-moving traffic on The Strip. 

“So they sent fucking bodyguards for you?” Shane asks. Rozanov finally leans back against his seat, his arm stretched across the back of it, his fingers trailing very lightly over Shane’s shoulder in a way that you could read as incidental if you were someone other than Shane.

Shane doesn’t twitch his shoulder out of the way of Rozanov’s fingers, even though he knows he probably should. The warmth of them makes the cold fear recede, just a little. 

“They think they will need us,” Rozanov says. At Shane’s confused look, he laughs. “For hockey. They think this will all be okay. So yes, they pay for security team. They pay for emergency flight.” He rolls down his window and pulls out a cigarette, and he looks over at Shane, considering. Shane sighs and looks away and rolls down his own window, which makes Rozanov laugh again. It’s only when he’s lighting the cigarette that Shane notices his hands are shaking. Shane squishes his own hands between his knees to stop himself from reaching out. “They think it’s worth their money to have me home before the planes stop.” 

“I mean, but they’re not…wrong,” Shane says. He knows that Rozanov thinks he’s a naive idiot about some things. He knows that sometimes he sounds too eager, too earnest. He can always tell when he’s doing it, because Rozanov looks at him in this particular way. Like he’s being amusing. Like he’s being cute. Shane doesn’t always hate it, because there’s something seriously wrong with him, but he does hates it when they’re not naked. “I mean, they will need us for hockey, eventually, right?” 

Now he sounds like he’s begging. Rozanov just stares at him, takes a drag, and turns away to blow the smoke out his window. 

The professional bodyguards in their giant SUV can only do so much when the traffic is gridlocked the way it is as they get closer to the airport. The airport is not very far from their hotel, so it feels like they could have walked faster than this, and he can see that plenty of people are doing just that, but he’s afraid to leave the safety of this giant truck with its tinted windows, and so he doesn’t suggest they abandon it. He takes two more calls from his mother and finally gets around to answering his texts. His coach apparently tried to get him a seat on a flight three hours ago, but Shane hadn’t been awake to see the messages, and he feels guilty about that even though he’s the one who’s dealing with the consequences. He relays the information that he’ll be catching a flight to Boston, though he’s not sure how true that is anymore. Didn’t Rozanov say that they only had twenty minutes? It feels like it’s been longer than that already. 

Rozanov is nervous too, though he’s trying not to show it. He keeps chatting with the driver and the other bodyguard, asking them questions about living in Vegas, about the most famous people they've driven anywhere. Neither man seems to have any idea who they're escorting, which is kind of a relief. The driver keeps talking about different videos of the zombies he’s seen, but he seems to think it’s all some big hoax that just has everyone in the city acting crazy, because he hasn’t seen a real zombie yet. He keeps calling it a viral marketing stunt, over and over again, and it’s making Shane feel insane. Rozanov hums, pretends to agree, looks at Shane out of the corner of his eye with one eyebrow slightly cocked and a smile that’s too restrained to be openly cheeky, but only barely. 

Shane answers Hayden’s concerned texts, and he tells him that Rozanov is taking him to Boston, in part because he thinks Hayden will have something funny to say, but Hayden is probably asleep, and doesn’t text him back immediately. 

J.J.’s (many) texts had all been hysterical zombie-related twitter links or exclamations of “what the fuck!”, so Shane doesn’t feel the need to respond to them. He does click on all of the links, and he does watch all of the videos, and he does start to work himself up to a panic attack. He’s not even sure why he keeps clicking on them, except that there’s nothing else to do, and he feels this weird responsibility to be informed about it. 

Rozanov reaches over and puts his hand on Shane’s knee, and he keeps talking to the driver, and his thumb brushes back and forth over the inside of Shane’s leg, and Shane stares down at it. He should move Rozanov’s hand away. He should open his door and roll into traffic. He should tell Rozanov to stop touching him. He doesn’t. 

There’s a military checkpoint at the start of the long road that leads to the airport. People are being turned away, cars easing back out into traffic, people yelling out the windows, flipping off the exhausted-looking soldiers who ignore them, and at first Shane thinks they’re fucked, but he sees a few cars being allowed to pass, and he starts breathing again. Rozanov is clinging to his kneecap now, fingers folded over it, and it feels weird and ticklish in a way Shane would probably hate normally, but he doesn’t hate it now. He shifts his leg closer, instead. 

They pull up to one of the four lanes, and Shane is trying to listen to what the driver is telling the soldier manning it, but he literally can’t understand what anyone is saying. It’s something that happens to him sometimes when he’s really stressed. It’s like the meaning of the words can’t make it past the noise in his head. He’s breathing okay, he thinks, if in a highly regimented way that means he’s seconds from losing his shit. Rozanov’s hand moves a little further up his leg. Shane still doesn’t move it. 

In the lane next to them is another car. It pulls up quickly, then slams on the brakes, and the car jolts to a halt. The passenger door opens, and a man gets out, and he’s shouting something at one of the soldiers who steps forward to check the car. The soldier pulls out a gun so fast that Shane swears and flails back from the window a little bit. Rozanov grabs him by the back of the neck like he’s planning to shove him down, but the soldier doesn’t open fire. The man is yelling something, pointing behind them, and then suddenly he’s running, pushing past the soldier, bursting through the checkpoint. The woman in the driver’s seat tries to do the same, but one of the soldiers grabs her and throws her to the ground. Two more soldiers are running up, guns out, focused on something further down the road. Shane turns around to look out the back window, and that’s when he sees his first zombie. 

She’s wearing a short pink dress, pale pink, pale enough that the blood really stands out, dark down the entire front of her. It looks like it was a very pretty dress, once. Shane can see where she was bitten, right on her left shoulder. 

Bitten. Just like a fucking zombie movie. 

The bite is round, bloody, crusted over with infection. He can see the way purple lines spiral out from it, up to her neck. How long did it take to turn her into a zombie? Is she still a person under there? Is she afraid? Is she in pain? Is she looking for help? There were no zombies when they left The Strip. Where did she come from? 

“Holy shit,” he whispers. Rozanov turns and looks too, and his hand slides even further up Shane’s thigh in a way that would make Shane immediately hard, normally. Is he for fucking real? 

The woman keeps coming closer. She’s only like four cars back, and she’s quickly closing the distance. There are ways in which she doesn’t look like a zombie in a movie. She isn’t doing that shambling, awkward walk that they always do. She isn’t walking with her hands outstretched. She’s a little slow and unsteady, almost like she’s drunk. She isn’t moaning, at least not that Shane can hear, and her mouth and her eyes don’t look all that fucked up, other than the fact that she’s bleeding from them. 

Well, okay, so that is fucked up. 

But they’re not milky white, and her mouth isn’t purple or black, and maybe Shane should accept that she is going to look different, because she isn’t a zombie in a movie. She’s a zombie in real life. There are going to be rules. There are going to be ways to identify them. There are going to be timelines of infection and there are going to be rates of infection and there are going to be, like, ways to fight them. He just doesn’t know what they are, yet, and he really doesn’t want to find out like this. 

The woman staggers and falls, trips on something, and that’s when Shane sees that there are more of them behind her, a little ways back, and that’s when he notices that the ones further away are moving a lot faster than she is. 

“Rozanov,” he breathes. 

“Okay. Okay,” Rozanov says, almost impatiently, like he's warning Shane not to panic, worried it will trigger his own. “Get out. Everyone get out!” The driver and bodyguard both scramble out of the SUV, taking off down the street, away from the checkpoint and the zombies. They don’t look back once. Shane can’t be too upset about it. He’d probably do the same thing in their position. He fumbles with his seatbelt, grabs his bag. The soldiers are still gathering on his side of the SUV, so he slides toward Rozanov, who steadies him with a hand on his shoulder and dips his head a little so that he can ensure that Shane meets his eyes. “We run, yes? Okay? Can you run?” 

“Fuck you! Can you run?” 

“Let’s see who gets there first,” Rozanov says, trying for cheeky but falling immensely short of it, instead sounding intense and challenging. He tugs Shane’s arm, pulling him out his side of the car. 

The soldiers open fire, and Shane is so startled by how fucking loud it is that he almost falls flat on his face, his foot hooking briefly in Rozanov’s seatbelt, but he manages to catch himself on the door, and he staggers to his feet. Rozanov is already running, and he isn’t the only one. Car doors are opening everywhere, people lurching out of them, screaming. Rozanov looks back at him, annoyed. 

Fuck. Okay. 

Shane runs. 

The soldiers yell at them to stop, but they don’t open fire, even though Shane is sure that they will. Maybe they realize it’s a lost cause. Every car door is opening, every person in every car is running. The soldiers probably could shoot all of them, but they apparently won't, and so Shane should be using that hesitation to his advantage and getting the fuck out as fast as he possibly can.

The problem is that there are so many people running, and Shane is trying not to get in anyone’s way, trying not to shove his way through. Not that anyone else is giving him the same courtesy. Some man basically bodychecks him into the side of a car, and it feels like hockey, and Shane wishes he had his skates. Wishes he was enough of an asshole to shove back. Rozanov is still running up ahead, and of course he’s pushing through people. 

Fuck it. Fuck it, okay. He has to catch up. 

He ducks into the next lane of traffic, and he keeps low, and he runs as fast as he can, and he dodges people when he can but he shoves through them when he can’t, and he keeps going. He feels sick, and he feels terrified, and he wishes that he didn’t have to, and he wishes that they’d gotten here a little faster so they could have just driven through the checkpoint like normal people, and…

Behind him, gunshots ring out, but he doesn’t think they’re aiming towards him, and he doesn’t think he could even turn around to check. He just has to keep going. Keep going. Don't look back. There's another sound rising with the shooting. This horrible, inhuman wailing. Are people being attacked and bitten? Or is that just what the zombies sound like? He wants to cover his ears, but he can't. He focuses on his feet. He finds Rozanov's head over the crowd, zeroes in on it. He has to catch up. He has to keep going. Rozanov will never let him hear the end of it if he falls behind. 

A guy in front of Shane trips and goes down hard, rolling onto his hands and knees, and Shane jumps over him, almost goes down too. Doesn't even think about stopping to help. Sure, it's the same guy who slammed him into the car earlier, but that doesn't mean he won't feel guilty about it for probably the rest of his life. 

Which won't be very long, probably, if he doesn’t hurry the fuck up.

He's gaining ground on Rozanov, because he’s faster than most of these people now that he’s not being so precious about it. He could pick Rozanov out of any crowd, he thinks. He can always see him, head bobbing ahead. That confused haziness from earlier is completely gone from him now, and all he can think about is wanting to catch up with Rozanov. Wanting to fucking beat him. 

There's another checkpoint ahead, just outside the doors to the airport. The soldiers are already moving forward, shouting to be heard over the panic. They’re saying things like form an orderly line and have your tickets ready, and Shane thinks they’ve lost their fucking minds. Don’t they realize why everyone’s running?  Shane reaches Rozanov at last, grabs onto the strap of his bag, and Rozanov looks at him, eyes tracking over him like they do sometimes after their more violent games. Like he’s looking for bruises. He doesn’t say anything, but he puts his hand on Shane’s shoulder as if to make sure that everyone knows they’re together. He has his phone out, and he has the ticket information open. One of the soldiers checks it, and then he waves Shane and Rozanov through. Shane feels weird, almost like wait, that’s it? You’re just going to let us in? He wonders how many of the people trying to escape the zombies have tickets on their phones. He wonders how many people are going to be politely let through before there’s a whole horde of people trying to get in. He wonders if it makes him a horrible selfish dickhead to be thinking that he and Rozanov have to move faster now because they have to get on the plane before the plane sees the panicked crowd of people coming and takes off without them.  

They go through a set of doors, and then up some stairs, and then they’re moving across a giant open tiled floor. There’s a splash of blood on the tiles at the top of the stairs, with some caution tape around it, but other than that, the airport seems oddly normal. More security than usual, maybe. There are soldiers here, too. But there are bored-looking TSA agents standing at the check-in points, and there are people waving him and Rozanov forward, and he clings to those things as normal, as signs that things are still working sort of like they’re supposed to, because he has to. It feels like he's trying to outrun a tsunami. He knows the wave is growing behind him, the water swelling. He knows it will catch up soon, but all he can do is keep his eyes in front of him and try like hell to stay ahead of it. 

Now that they’re inside, the panic is starting to loosen its hold on his chest. He feels more like he usually feels during intense games. Games with stakes, games he knows he has to win. If ever there was a game to win, it’s this one, so maybe that makes sense.

Rozanov gets them through TSA by flashing his phone with the tickets, which probably come with some kind of super pre-check or something. They don't even have to put their bags down. One of the agents congratulates Rozanov on his season and his MVP win, and Rozanov laughs and thanks him, sounding vaguely close to hysterical. They walk through the security area, and they keep going. 

After TSA, Rozanov stops suddenly, looking wildly around, muttering to himself, and Shane can see his panic now, in a way he couldn't before. Rozanov is trying to figure out where they’re going, Shane realizes. Their gate. 

“Let me see,” he says, grabbing Rozanov's wrist and pulling his phone closer to his face so he can read the gate number. He knows exactly where to go, because he always memorizes airport layouts just in case he’s running late for a flight, and he turns them in the right direction. Rozanov breathes out a relieved sigh, and nods, and follows. 

The inside of the airport is less crowded than Shane expected, but he knows it won't stay that way for long. He can hear people starting to come through the doors behind them. They're yelling, frantic. A bigger group than he would have expected. Shane likes to think he’s a good person, a polite person. He’s the person his parents raised him to be. But he knows that not everyone is like that, and he knows that if they see an opportunity to take his spot, they will take it. So he breaks into a run, and he can hear Rozanov’s sneakers squeaking on the tile right behind him. 

Rozanov gets on the phone with his agent, huffs out a breath when he's done, and tells Shane that they have to pick up the pace but they haven't missed the flight yet. 

“There are zombies on the fence,” he says, and he speeds up. Shane's not sure he wants to know what that means, so he speeds up too. 

At the gate, a harried and relieved-looking flight attendant waves them through and then follows them. Shane can hear the sounds of people yelling behind them, echoing in the cavernous airport, but he's afraid to turn around and look, so he doesn't. 

The plane is small-ish, packed. Shane feels guilty, and apologizes to the flight attendant in a whisper for keeping them waiting. 

“There are still twelve people missing,” the flight attendant assures him in an equally hushed voice. “We were giving you all a final five minutes. You two made it just in time.” 

Rozanov grabs Shane by the strap of his bag and pulls him down into two first class seats near the front that apparently have been waiting for them. He pushes Shane gently into the window seat, and Shane sinks into it gratefully. When Rozanov smiles at him, it’s surprising. It’s so unlike the way he usually smiles. Smirking and arrogant and amused, sure. Shane has seen that on Rozanov’s face plenty of times. But this is a bright and eager smile. It reminds Shane of that time they couldn’t stop laughing when they were trying to film that commercial. Shane smiles back at him, and he lets the relief of seeing it sink into him, and he resists the urge to do something foolish like lean his head on Rozanov’s shoulder, or something even worse like trying to kiss him. Rozanov reaches over and grabs his knee again, like he did in the car, and Shane lets that be enough. 

No one is paying attention to them, and it’s nice. It’s nice because they’re not boarding this plane as representatives of their teams. They’re not here as hockey players. He doesn’t see anyone he recognizes, and that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that no one recognizes him, but he still feels more safe, removed, than he should. He wonders if it will be different when they get back to Boston. Will there be photographers waiting? Will they have found out that Rozanov and Shane got the last flight out of Vegas? Will they want to ask them about it?

He has never been through a zombie apocalypse before, so it’s hard for him to figure out. He knows that, like, globally, no one really cares about him, technically, but he’s always been surrounded by people who care way too much about hockey, and he knows that in his little corner of the world, he is important to them. He’s someone whose opinion is sought after. He’s someone who they will want to talk to, even if he never has anything technically interesting to say.

What will he say if they ask why he’s in Boston? Will they think he’s being traded? Will they suspect anything about why they were together in Vegas? No, that’s fucking stupid. They were at the same awards show. 

“You are doing the breathing thing again,” Rozanov says quietly, and Shane nods, not quite looking at him. 

“Yeah,” he admits. 

“You are okay?” 

His thumb is pressing against Shane’s knee, through his sweatpants. His sweatpants, Rozanov’s sweatpants, on Shane’s legs, and Shane wants to pull away from Rozanov’s touch, bark at him to not touch him, but he doesn’t. 

“No,” he admits. Rozanov makes a noise at that admittance, but it’s hard to tell what kind of noise it is. Maybe it’s a scoff. Maybe it’s pity. Maybe it’s annoyance because…

He’s catastrophizing again. This is so fucking stupid. There are zombies outside. He saw them. And he’s sitting here worrying that the guy who fucked him a few hours ago is annoyed by him and that people are going to know he wants to be fucked again if he gets off a plane in a few hours with a guy who has every reason to be seen with him. He’s worried that someone is going to look over and see that man’s hand on his knee and is going to immediately be like “wow, they’re those famous hockey players, and they’re definitely fucking” instead of the much more reasonable “aw it’s sweet that they’re comforting each other, because there are fucking zombies outside.” 

The world is ending, and he’s acting like it’s ending because of what happened in Vegas, and it’s fucking not. None of that matters anymore. It might not matter ever again. He should worry more about that.

The voices around them are drowning out his thoughts, and he grits his teeth to keep from reaching for his ears to cover them. He wants to yell at everyone around him to calm down, shut up. He doesn’t. He does something very stupid and puts his hand on top of Rozanov’s, on his knee. He thinks Rozanov will prove his pessimism right and pull his hand away, but of course he can’t even do that. He goes briefly tense, and then he shifts a little closer, so his shoulder presses up against Shane’s. Fuck. Why couldn’t he be an asshole about this? Him being so weird and distant in that penthouse was the second blow after Sochi, and a third one might kill Shane’s pathetic feelings completely, and he needs that. He doesn’t need to be reminded of how soft Rozanov can be. 

An injured man in the very front row is starting to demand that the plane take off, and the flight attendant is trying to talk to him, trying to tell him why they haven’t yet, but Shane can’t hear what she says over all the fury from everyone else. 

“Look out the window!” one woman pleads from the row behind Shane, repeating it when the flight attendant doesn’t hear her the first time. Shane lifts his window shade so that he can see what she’s talking about, and he feels Rozanov leaning over his shoulder to look, too.

He finally understands what Rozanov’s agent meant, on the phone. Pressed up against the fence that lines the runway are people. Probably zombies. They’re coming from The Strip, he thinks. The side of The Strip that he and Rozanov hadn’t been on. He remembers his mom saying something about the hospital. Had they gotten out of the hospital? Had they landed here on another flight, and then they got out, and now they're loose in the city, infecting everyone? He doesn’t know. He feels now like he should have asked. 

Mentally, he knows he has still been treating the zombies as largely hypothetical. There were only a few of them when they were in the car, but there are a lot more than just a few of them on that fence, and he watches them. Tries to count them, even though they’re so far across the runway that he can’t make out their features. He sees the way they scrape their fingers over the chain-link fence, trying to grab hold, trying to break through. Why are they doing that? Why do they want in so badly?

How is this happening? How is this real life? And why don’t they fucking take off? Are they just going to sit here and let the zombies break into this fucking plane like a can of sardines? He can’t be trapped here and waiting for zombies to kill him. He just can’t.

“Is okay,” Rozanov says into his phone, still breathing heavily from their run. “We are here. I have him, yes. He is okay. Of course, Mrs. Hollander. I will tell him.”

He hangs up, and his good boy voice goes away, and he looks at Shane with the same edge of hysterical adrenaline overload that Shane feels. 

“She says to answer your fucking phone,” he says, and Shane laughs and fumbles for it in his pocket. The screen won’t turn on.

“Dead,” he says. Rozanov hums and types into his own phone. “Are you texting my mom?” 

“So she won't freak out again, yes.” 

Shane almost leans his head on Rozanov’s shoulder, then. Some leftover impulse from their hookups. There are always a few soft seconds when they've both just come and it's, like, allowed to get close, snuggle. And maybe it's just because they were running and fighting their way here, and so he's breathing heavy and on the edge of panic, like he always is whenever they're together, and his instinct is to cuddle close. 

Maybe, damningly, it's more than just instinct. Maybe he just wants to be held. He stops himself just in time. 

“Thank you,” he says, and he leans his head in the opposite direction, against the cool window, instead. “Seriously, thank you, I…”

He thinks about waking up on his own time, alone in his hotel room. He thinks about trying to get to the airport on his own, trying to get a flight, finding the entire place overrun. He probably wouldn’t have left his hotel at all, because surely it would have been all over the news by then. He would have been stuck here in Vegas, hiding in his room, terrified to leave, as the city fell around him. Based on the zombies by the fence, it seems like things are moving as quickly here as Rozanov said they moved overseas, and he would have been alone until he died while Rozanov flew back to Boston and his parents tried to save his life from fucking Ottawa. 

“Yes, okay,” Rozanov says, almost gently, but it also feels like a dismissal. It reminds Shane of last night, or this morning, whenever it was. The way he'd been so cold and distant, like he had been trying to remind Shane that all they are is fucking. Like it was a punishment for trying to talk to him in Sochi. Like Shane had seemed too needy and needed to be taught his place again. Fucking humiliating. Bad enough to want Rozanov so badly, but to want him too much in a way that makes Rozanov feel like he has to fucking correct him like a misbehaving dog? Maybe he should have just stayed in his hotel room and died. 

He wants to say something recklessly obvious, like, tell my mom to find me a place to stay in Boston after all, because he can't be stuck with Rozanov during a zombie apocalypse. Not when he feels this wretched every other time Rozanov looks at him, because the searing heat of his want followed by the coldness fucking hurts. Not after Sochi, not after the way he'd looked at Shane like Shane was some pathetic, grasping fan begging to be fucked. Shane should have walked away in that bathroom last night, and he should have stayed gone. Why hadn't he? 

The flight attendant finally says something to someone over the phone at the front of the plane, and then two more join her from the back, and then they're closing the door. People start cheering. Shane watches out the window to make sure that the fence is holding, and it looks like it is. The zombies don’t look like the ones he’d seen earlier. They’re not moving as fast, as determined. They’re listless. He takes note of it. Maybe they only start moving fast when they sense a food source? 

Then the plane is moving, and Shane feels Rozanov leaning against him again, but he knows Rozanov is only looking over his shoulder, out the window, and it makes Shane's stomach clench with misery because he wishes it was more. He stares at the zombies along the fence line. He hears people gasping and screaming as the fence finally breaks in one spot, and suddenly the zombies aren't listless anymore. 

They hear the plane. They’re coming towards the noise, Shane thinks, but then he sees people on the tarmac, closer, people running, trying to reach the plane, and he understands; they're the ones who have worked up the zombies. 

He is sick with guilt and with relief that the plane is taxiing quickly, moving too fast for anyone to catch them. He thinks of the TSA workers who were so polite to him. He thinks of the people who were following them from the cars outside and just weren't fast enough to catch up. He thinks of everyone desperate and scared just like he would have been in his hotel room if his mom and Rozanov hadn't worked together to get him out. 

He watches the zombies running. Running. Great, they’re even faster than they were when they were weaving through traffic. That's fantastic. This couldn't have been a slow zombie apocalypse? He turns his face away from the window, and he bites his lip, and he tells himself that he's not going to panic or cry, but of course that has never worked before and it doesn't work now. He presses his face into his knees and he breathes through the fear. Rozanov makes this little noise in the back of his throat, and he rests his palm for a second on Shane’s lower back, but then he takes it away, and he doesn't do anything else, and of course that's fine. Shane shouldn’t need anything else anyway. 

Shane wakes up huddled against the window, neck uncomfortably squashed into a terrible position. How did he fall asleep like that? Someone put a blanket over him, apparently. That's good, because he feels cold and awful again, like he did when he woke up the first time. He pulls it around his shoulders more tightly, and he risks a look around. 

Everyone around him is either watching the news on the back of their seats or is looking at their phones. People are still crying, but it seems more muted now. It doesn’t give Shane the headache it gave him earlier. A flight attendant is offering someone a mini bottle of alcohol two rows up, smiling like everything is normal. 

“Hello Sleeping Beauty,” Rozanov says dryly from next to him, and Shane sighs. Glances at Rozanov and tries not to look as raw and wounded as he still feels. Rozanov is looking back at him, amused. He has two empty bottles of mini vodka in front of him, and an unopened can of seltzer. He gestures at it, and Shane takes it, annoyed to be so grateful. 

“Where are we?”

“Still have an hour. You can sleep more.”

Shane nods, but he takes a few more sips of the drink instead, and he scrubs his hand over his face. Rozanov watches him, looking hollow and a bit afraid. 

“What's wrong?” Shane finally asks. “Did something happen?”

“No. Well, not anything new. Obviously, no good news.”

“Vegas?” Shane asks. 

“Just like LA,” Rozanov admits. “They showed it up there.” He gestures to the big TV screen near the front of the plane. It’s now showing some kind of nature documentary. “Turned it off when people were, ah. Upset. Not that it matters.” He looks out into the aisle, to all the glowing screens around them. His own seatback entertainment system is off.

“Fuck. Do we know who made it out? The players, I mean?”

“Not yet. We will hear, probably. Eventually.”

But Rozanov is speaking in that patient way he does sometimes when he thinks Shane is being stupid. It's not mean, exactly, but it's also not nice. It's like he's teasing Shane but doesn't think Shane is aware enough to notice. Shane thinks of the way he'd looked in the car on the way to the airport, when he was talking about the Boston manager getting him on the plane because he still thinks there will be hockey to play. 

“You think this is it, don't you?” When Rozanov shrugs, Shane lowers his voice, leans in closer. “Bullshit. Just tell me. I'm asking what you think. I can handle it.”

Rozanov sighs. 

“Yes,” he says, and it sounds almost like an unburdening. “Yes, I think…I think it is too much, too fast. I think Russia and China and half of Europe are already done. I think we are next. Okay? Happy? Fuck.”

He scrubs one hand over his face, and Shane watches him. Sees the way he looks tired and scared. Thinks of those phone calls in Russian. Thinks of Rozanov's family. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. “About Russia.”

“Yes. Me too. Go back to sleep.”

“I don't think I can.”

“Okay.”

It's quiet, a little bit defeated.

“Have you slept?”

“Don't think I can, either,” Rozanov admits. Shane nods. He wants to say something insane like lay your head in my lap, maybe it'll help. He doesn't. 

The injured man in the front row leaps up from his seat when they’re almost in Boston. Shane is getting out of his own seat to use the bathroom, but he stops himself from climbing over Rozanov’s annoyingly sprawled legs because he assumes that the other guy is desperate, from the way he so suddenly lurches to his feet.

But then the wounded man turns around, and Shane sees the look on his face, and Shane remembers the way the woman in the pink dress had looked, and then the man howls. 

A woman in the next row screams, and then everyone is screaming, and one of the flight attendants is yelling something, and a burly man in a leather jacket is storming up from near the back of the section, shouting at everyone to sit down. 

How did no one notice that the injured man was getting sick? 

How did no one notice that he was turning?

Shane’s wondering when the man was even bitten, and he’s wondering when the man got on the plane, and he’s wondering how long they’ve been in the air. He’s thinking about the incubation period. The zombie shuffles into the aisle, his teeth snapping together twice, this horrible bone-clacking sound, confused and shying away from the light, not as coordinated as the ones in Vegas, on the runway. Maybe it takes a while for it to really set in? Shane's not sure why he’s trying to analyze it, but his brain just keeps getting stuck on that stuff. Like if he gathers enough information, he’ll know what to do to fix it. 

People are trying to scramble away. One woman in the aisle seat braces herself against her seatmate, leaning as far back as she can get, but it isn’t far enough, and Shane thinks she’s going to be bitten too, but then she lifts both of her feet off the ground and kicks the zombie in the chest. The zombie careens down the aisle, arms flailing, right towards Rozanov. 

Rozanov, who is still sitting in his seat, his seatbelt on, looking shocked. 

Shane practically trips over Rozanov’s legs in his haste to block him from the hit. The zombie is falling backwards, arms pinwheeling almost comically as it loses its balance, and Shane gets it in a headlock before he even registers what he’s doing. The zombie’s arms are jerkily trying to claw back at him, but the burly man in the leather jacket and another woman across the aisle grab the zombie’s arms and hold them back, and Shane keeps them all from getting bitten by keeping his forearm tight across the zombie’s throat.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Rozanov asks. 

“Something stupid,” Shane admits, panicking, but then he's smiling a little over his shoulder, incredulous at his own bravery. He can’t exactly believe it either, but it took less than three seconds for him to act, and he's kind of fucking proud of himself. The guy in the leather jacket turns out to be a cop, and he snaps the zombie’s arms behind its back with handcuffs, and then he thanks Shane, and he takes the zombie by the scruff of the neck and shoves it up towards the front of the plane, talking to the flight attendant in a low, urgent voice. 

“Is he fucking arresting a zombie?” someone asks, and there’s this hysterical wave of laughter that goes through the rest of them. People are still unsure if they should panic or not. Shane looks down at himself, makes sure that he doesn’t feel anything wrong. The woman across the aisle puts her hand on his arm. 

“You’re okay,” she says. “He didn’t get you. It’s okay.” 

“Okay, so like, was anyone else on this plane bitten?” asks a young woman in the front row of economy, leaning around the curtain that separates the sections, and there’s more hysterical laughter. 

Shane is a little worried he’s going to throw up, and his hands are starting to shake, and so he quickly makes his way to the bathroom at the very back of the plane, ignoring the clapping and cheering that some people offer him. He waits for any exclamations of oh my god that’s Shane Hollander, but he doesn’t hear them, if there are any. He’s relieved about that, at least. He goes into the bathroom, and he's not going to panic. He uses the bathroom and he washes his hands and he's not going to panic. He looks at himself in the mirror. There’s some blood smeared just under his chin, and he’s terrified for a second until he wipes it away with a wet paper towel and realizes that it’s just a smear, probably from the back of the zombie’s head when Shane was trying to choke it out, like that’s just a normal thing to do. 

The panic is setting in, now, but he tries to fight it back. He scrubs at his face, desperate to have the blood off him. Someone knocks on the door, and he tries to even out his breathing again to only medium amounts of success, but he doesn't want to keep them waiting. 

He opens the door, and Rozanov is on the other side. His expression falls into one of concern. 

“You are having panic attack,” he says. 

“I’m actually not.” 

“You are. Is okay. I will help,” Rozanov says, with this weird, exaggerated pity, and then he’s shouldering his way into the bathroom, which is so stupid, because there’s barely any room for the two of them in here. He shuts the door behind himself, grinning wildly, and he turns on the sink, starts washing his hands for some fucking reason.  

“Rozanov, what…” 

“Shh,” Rozanov says, and suddenly his hands are reaching for Shane’s sweatpants, and Shane swallows an outraged gasp. Rozanov waits. “You don’t want to?” 

“We’re in a fucking airplane bathroom, and there’s a zombie out there,” Shane hisses incredulously. 

“Yes. That is not an answer, though.” 

“We shouldn’t.” Rozanov still waits, one eyebrow up. Because, okay, yeah, that’s not an answer, either. “Fuck. Fine. Oh my god. This is such a stupid idea.” 

“Your dick doesn’t seem to agree.” 

“Yeah, well, it has terrible taste. You should know that by now.” 

Rozanov snickers at that, presses a warm kiss to Shane’s mouth, and Shane melts into it. Oh, finally, he thinks desperately. Finally, finally. 

“You can be quiet,” Rozanov says, and he covers Shane’s mouth with one hand while another hand shoves Shane's sweatpants down. He’s crowding Shane back against the sink, and Shane feels a sudden jolt of pleasure as his cock is freed, pressed up against Rozanov’s, both of them held together in Rozanov’s hand. 

“Shit, holy shit,” Shane says, muffled by Rozanov’s palm. “This is so fucking dumb.” 

“Oh, is it?” Rozanov asks savagely, and he removes his hand from Shane’s mouth just so he can kiss him again, smothering the sounds that Shane is making, and Shane is glad both because he doesn’t want anyone to hear them and because he knows that they will be these pathetic little whimpering sounds, because it actually is really fucking hot, mostly because he doesn’t want it to be. 

“What the fuck,” he breathes, and Rozanov covers his mouth again with his palm, and he presses a kiss to his forehead instead of his mouth this time, and it’s so weird and gross and fucking annoying that that’s what pushes Shane over the edge. He’d be more embarrassed about it if Rozanov didn’t follow him almost immediately. 

“Always wanted to do that,” Rozanov finally says, and he shoves Shane out of the way so he can wash his hands again for real this time. Shane snaps out of it, shoulders Rozanov out of the way so he can make himself look presentable. Rozanov grins at him, amused by his roughness, as always. 

“That can’t be the first time you’ve fooled around in an airplane bathroom,” Shane says. Rozanov rolls his eyes. 

“You think I am a much more exciting slut than I am,” he says. He kisses Shane one more time, surprisingly sweet, and then he unlocks the door and exits without looking back. Shane lingers in there for a lot longer than he probably should, and then he peeks out, heart pounding. No one even looks at him, too busy watching the news. He hurries back to his seat, where Rozanov is already lounging, looking not at all wrecked. He winks when Shane gets close, and Shane scowls at him, and the burly cop with the leather jacket comes out from behind the curtain at the front of the plane, and he comes over to shake Shane’s hand, which is mortifying. 

“You saved a lot of people by stopping him when you did,” the cop says. Shane stammers out something awkwardly grateful for the thanks, and his face burns as he sinks back into his seat. A few more people clap for him; Rozanov claps louder than anyone, looking smug as shit as he does. 

“Shut up,” Shane hisses. 

“No, seriously, so heroic,” Rozanov says.

“Heroic. Okay. Whatever. Shut up. I couldn’t let you get eaten by a zombie. I need a place to stay once we get to Boston.”

“Right. I am your sugar daddy.” 

“Please don’t say that ever again.” 

“Is that not the right phrase?” 

“You fucking know it’s the fucking phrase. Shut up, Rozanov!” 

Rozanov cackles, pleased with himself, and he keeps touching Shane for the rest of the flight. Gentle touches on Shane’s knee. Grounding touches on his shoulder, like he can sense when Shane is getting tense. It’s so fucking weird and destabilizing. Shane keeps remembering how he was acting in Vegas, and now there’s this. This is more like what he was expecting after that night in Montreal. Rozanov had been so gentle and kind of cool about it, and he'd kissed Shane afterwards with even more gentleness, and Shane figured things would just, like, progress from there. That it would become fun and light and kind of nice, because despite himself, Shane really does like Rozanov. Rozanov’s an asshole, but he’s funny, and he always takes Shane out of his comfort zone in a way that ends up not being very uncomfortable at all. Vegas was fucking weird, but isn't that the whole saying? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Maybe that weirdness can stay there too. 

When they land, a bunch of people in HAZMAT gear board the plane first and remove the zombie like he’s an unruly passenger and not a frothing-at-the-mouth monster. The cop confirms that no one was bitten in the process of taking the zombie down, and he points out Shane as the “hero” who did it, and Rozanov leads another round of applause and completely ignores Shane's humiliated glare. 

“Holy shit, you're fuckin’ Shane Hollander,” says one of the HAZMAT guys in a thick Boston accent. Shane's brain whites out in confused terror for a second before he realizes this guy is just using the word as flavor, and is not actually accusing Rozanov of fuckin’ him.

“Yeah,” he manages to say. “That's me.”

Rozanov charms the HAZMAT guys immediately by ordering them to freak out about him, too, which of course they do, once they realize he's the one slouched in the seat next to Shane. He charms all the workers they file past when they are finally allowed to deplane. Probably half of them are Raiders fans, but not many are big enough fans of hockey in general to recognize Shane as Rozanov's hesitant shadow. The ones who do recognize him make a big deal about it, but Rozanov plays it off beautifully, pulling a friendly arm across Shane's shoulders and regaling them with a mostly made up tale of his heroics in rescuing Shane from Vegas because he couldn't live in a world without his “only competition”. Shane just follows his lead, feeling helpless. He doesn't know how Rozanov does it. How is he not terrified to even look at Shane in public? Every time Shane thinks about Rozanov when he’s around other people, he feels like he should be closing his eyes and turning to face the corner in puritanical shame, but Rozanov is touching him and jostling him and laughing at him, and he makes it seem so natural. So normal. Shane is the fucking weird one, as always, stiff and uncomfortable and probably looking like he wants to murder Rozanov, like an offended Victorian maiden who can’t stand to have her shoulders touched, even though the real problem is that every time Rozanov touches his shoulder, he wishes Rozanov was touching his dick. 

There are a few photographers and reporters from local news stations waiting beyond the security line to get quotes about the situation in Vegas, but they're just looking to grab some random passengers for statements, and they don't seem to notice Shane or Rozanov keeping their heads down and speeding past, and Shane can breathe a little easier once they’re out of the way of them. 

They have to clear a military checkpoint on the way out, but it's sloppily set up, and everyone basically just gets a temperature screening and a pupil check and they're good to go. Shane lets himself feel a little stupidly hopeful. Like, oh, they've clearly figured out something about the virus if they're checking our pupils, right? Maybe that means they'll find a cure soon. Like he didn't just flee from a major city that fell to zombies in a span of a few hours. 

Rozanov makes some more phone calls once they hit the street. There are news vans parked outside, anchors delivering their reports into cameras, so Shane just stares at the sidewalk and follows Rozanov’s shoes. It doesn't seem like anyone expects them, or is looking to get quotes from them. He feels stupid for being worried about it. It's the end of the world. Who cares if a couple of hockey players are getting off a plane? It’s easy for Shane to forget sometimes that not everyone in the world is as obsessed with hockey as he is.

Rozanov gets them into a car that Shane hadn't even realized he'd ordered. The people on the sidewalk are rude, and they're pushy, but they're not panicked. This is just Boston, and it's normal, and it's such a fucking relief. 

Their driver, naturally, only wants to talk about the zombies, especially since he figures correctly that they're coming from one of the last planes cleared to land at Logan for the foreseeable future. Rozanov indulges him, which is a relief, because it means Shane can tune the whole conversation out. It's hard not to listen to Rozanov when he speaks, though. It would make Shane’s life a lot less complicated if he was better at it. He stares out the window and he listens with a half-smile as Rozanov rants and laughs and tries to play things off like he wasn't afraid at any point. He sounds faintly amused, in a fatalistic way, as he describes the chaos of Vegas. 

Shane’s anxiety makes a valiant effort when they exit the Uber and walk down the sidewalk in front of Rozanov’s building, like he should be more worried that any of these people walking by could recognize them. His anxiety loses the battle to his exhaustion for once, though. He can’t find it in him to give a shit. 

He wants to take a shower. He wants to be inside, behind a locked door. He wants to charge his phone so he can call his parents. He doesn’t really care what hockey podcasts will say about him if someone takes a picture of him and Rozanov walking together now.

He's become so used to the all-consuming panic about this particular secret being discovered, and it's strange to poke around inside his head and discover that it's just…gone. 

Well, probably not gone. Paused momentarily. Temporarily on hiatus to make room for technically larger concerns.

Rozanov’s apartment is all black and gunmetal gray. It’s impersonal. He seems self-conscious about it, a little bit, but only for a second before he remembers to hide it away, and it makes Shane feel oddly soft towards him, which he knows is a mistake. Shane plugs in his phone as soon as he can, and he neatly places his bag on the floor just inside the front door, not knowing where else to put it. He asks if he can take a shower, his tone way too polite, because he's for some reason briefly hung up on the fact that he's a guest. Rozanov looks at him witheringly until Shane just goes and does it. 

When he's done, his phone has enough juice, and he immediately picks it up to call his mom and let her know that he’s safe. Rozanov surprises him by handing his phone over on his way to shower, as Shane is still waiting for his mom to pick up. Shane looks down at it and sees that it’s open to a grocery order. Rozanov points at the phone, indicating that Shane should add stuff, and Shane’s heart does that annoying clenching thing that it does whenever he thinks about Rozanov lately, pain and pleasure all mixed up at once. He nods in thanks and starts adding his usual grocery staples to the things Rozanov has already put in the cart. 

“Shane?” Yuna asks, sounding a little frantic when she finally answers, after enough rings that Shane is starting to worry. 

“Mom, hi.”

“I can't believe I almost missed your call. We're just unpacking the car. Rozanov texted me that you guys landed? Did you get back to his place okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. My phone was dead, and I really needed a shower, so…”

“That's good, okay. You're safe. How's Boston?”

“It seems normal. I don't know. But Vegas was normal too.”

He feels like crying, suddenly. He puts Rozanov's phone back on the kitchen counter and then huddles on the giant black leather couch in the living room, near the armrest, like he's trying to take up as little space as possible. He knows he’s on the edge of panic, but he manages to hold it off for a little while longer, because he doesn’t want his mom to worry.

“I know, sweetheart. I've seen…I'm glad you got out of there in time.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, again swamped with that difficult gratitude because Rozanov is the only reason he did. He imagines his mom is feeling kind of the same, and she doesn't even know the half of it. 

“Okay. So. I don't have news for you on the border front. Everywhere has grounded flights for now, but we don't know how long that's going to last. All the official statements are about trying to stop the spread, so ground crossings remain open for now with heavy checkpoints where they’re checking for symptoms and any injuries like bites, scratches. As long as you don’t have anything like that going on, you should be good. Worst case, you can rent a car and drive up here. It might take a while to get through, but it's better than nothing. The bad news is that every rental place near the airport is out, which I guess makes sense, because Logan was one of the last airports down there taking planes. I’m still trying, though. I’ll find something. Maybe you can ask Rozanov if he has any ideas.” 

“Yeah,” Shane hears himself say. “Yeah, I can do that. I'll ask him. Thanks, mom. I love you.”

“I love you too. I'll call you in a little bit.”

Shane knows that his mom would stay on the phone indefinitely with him if she could. And, sure, there’s a part of him that wants that. He’s scared and kind of alone without her, and he wishes that he was with her, and he wishes that he was at home. But there’s another part of him that’s relieved when she lets him go. He feels itchy and exposed here already, awkward in a place that’s not his, awkward around Rozanov after Vegas. Maybe that should make him even more desperate to leave, but actually, talking to his mom about leaving and driving to Canada just makes him feel heavy. He thinks about the way Rozanov wouldn’t even kiss him last night. He thinks about Rozanov trying to spare him from his real opinions on the plane. He thinks about Rozanov’s hand on his dick in the airplane bathroom. Just. Fucking. All of it. The thought of renting a car and running away now makes him feel like a coward. He really doesn’t want to. He thinks it probably won’t matter by tomorrow, anyway. He thinks he wouldn’t even make it to the border.

He wonders if he's ever going to play hockey again. He wonders if he's ever going to skate again. He wonders if he's going to make it past tonight, or if the zombies will come. Maybe the guy Shane put in a headlock on that plane is going to infect the HAZMAT team, and then the hospital workers, and then the police, and then everyone. Maybe the zombies are going to just run their way across the whole country, and over the border into Canada, and then everything will be over, just like Rozanov said.  

He wonders if he wants to survive the first wave or if he’d rather just die and get it over with, but he only entertains that thought briefly. He shakes it off and shoves it back into the corner where he shoves all of his unwelcome thoughts. Thoughts like what he’d do if he got a career-ending injury, or what he’s going to do when he has to retire and doesn’t have hockey anymore, or whether he’s ever going to find a girl he wants even half as much as he wants Rozanov. 

He pokes around this area of Rozanov’s apartment, trying to give himself something to do, but it's surprisingly boring. It looks exactly like the kind of first apartment a lot of guys in the league purchase to have somewhere to retreat, before they grow up and start wanting a house a little further from the practice rink. Shane’s own apartment is similarly kind of bland, but that’s more because he doesn’t know what to put in it. This feels starker, devoid of personality in a way that’s surprising, because he knows that Rozanov has so much of that. There are no pictures of his family, no pictures of anything. The TV on his wall is enormous, and he has black-out curtains on the giant windows on either side of the TV, and his couch is gigantic and comfortable, but none of it feels like the belongings of a person who spends a lot of time here. Which is fair, Shane supposes, because Rozanov doesn’t spend a lot of time here, but it still makes Shane uncomfortable. 

He gives up on finding anything interesting, and he sits back down on the couch and tackles all the new notifications that came in when his phone was dead. Hayden has finally gotten back to him, and he says that he and Jackie and the kids and Jackie’s parents are all heading out to the Hollander cottage, because his mother has invited them. Shane feels tears burning behind his eyes. He's glad they're all going to be together, safe. He texts something to that effect, and he says that he’s going to try and head up when he can, even though it feels like a lie already. 

He tells his coach that he’s safe in Boston and that he has a place to stay. It’s stupid how nervous he is that the reply is going to be some variation of I know where you’re staying, harlot, especially since when he does get a reply a few seconds later, it’s just a thumbs up emoji.

He laughs at himself and puts his phone down on the coffee table, and he rests his head against the back of the couch. Stop being so fucking weird. Nobody cares about the hockey shit as much as you right now. They’re worried about the rest of the world. You should be more worried about the rest of the world, too.  

Rozanov comes out of the bathroom. No shirt. Sweatpants. When Shane turns around and sees him, he feels himself perking up, too obvious, and he feels dejected—and embarrassed to be so dejected—when Rozanov heads to the kitchen instead of moving right for the couch. Shane is wearing the pajama pants he'd put on in Vegas last night, after getting back to his room feeling cold and uneven. He'd folded Rozanov’s borrowed sweatpants neatly and left them on the bathroom counter. He wonders if Rozanov smiled when he saw them. Shane had been hoping he would. 

Rozanov moves around his space easily, confidently, as if Shane isn't even in it. It makes Shane look back unfavorably on his own insane nerves when Rozanov came to his place in Montreal. Rozanov picks up his phone from the counter and completes the grocery order without even making any jokes about what Shane added, which is another disappointment. Shane watches him carefully, hoping for at least a quirk of an eyebrow or a roll of the eyes, but there’s nothing. 

Shane is never sure what to expect when it comes to Rozanov, and just when he thinks he starts to understand him, every time, Rozanov does something different that fucks with his head. 

Like, Rozanov basically jumped him in that airplane bathroom, and now they’re in his apartment completely alone and with no plans for the rest of forever, and he wants to ignore Shane instead of fucking him? Shane knows he’s bad at picking up on social cues at the best of times, but he’s pretty sure this would be confusing even to someone better at it.

Rozanov gets himself a glass and then pours something amber-colored from a bar cart into it. It's only then that he looks over at Shane, questioning. Shane shakes his head, but then immediately regrets it, and nods instead. Rozanov finally cracks a wry smile, and it loosens the clenching in Shane’s heart, at least a little bit. Rozanov pulls out a second glass, and he pours a little less liquid into this one. He sits next to Shane on the couch, on the next cushion over, not quite close enough, and hands over the glass. Shane takes it, now regretting that he’d changed his mind. He doesn’t want to drink this shit. Rozanov still doesn’t reach for him. He turns on the fucking news. 

“Lie down if you want to get comfortable,” he says suddenly. He takes a sip of his drink and eyes Shane, still pressed against the arm of the couch. “You look like a fucking hostage.”

Shane laughs a little, because yeah, he probably does. He’s tense with confusion and fear and the always-present anxiety that he’s going to mess things up again between them. Send Rozanov reeling away again. He doesn’t lie down, but he does untuck himself a bit, puts his feet on the floor, sits more straight instead of huddling into himself as they watch. Rozanov watches him, calculating, in the way he does sometimes, like he’s weighing his words before he speaks them. Shane always pretends not to notice. He knows it’s not always easy to find the right words in a second language, no matter how fluent you get. 

The news is playing a clip that he saw already, back on the television in Vegas. Briefly, Shane finds it in himself to hope that maybe that means they’re running out of footage. Maybe that means that something is slowing down. 

He looks over and sees that Rozanov is gulping down whatever’s in that glass like it’s water. Shane takes an experimental sniff of his own, and wrinkles his face in disgust at the strength of the fumes, but then he chugs it anyway. It’s bourbon or something. He’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to chug it. It doesn't taste good, technically, but it’s not as bad as he was expecting from the smell, and he sort of likes that it’s gross and painful and burns going down a little bit and makes his eyes water and his nose water and makes his throat feel like it wants to close up. It feels grounding in the same way that sex with Rozanov can feel, like when he’s thinking it’s a terrible, fucked up idea but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to do it. 

“Thank you,” he says. He puts the glass on the coffee table, and he sees Rozanov watching him. “For the drink. I think I needed it.” 

“Mm. Me too. Will you lie down now? Rest? You still look like shit.”

Shane looks over to say something and sees that Rozanov is holding his arm open, gesturing to his lap. Shane has half a second of thinking that maybe Rozanov is trying to ask Shane to blow him—which, like, Shane will, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a weird way to get to it—but then he realizes that Rozanov is apparently trying, by hinting at it twice now, to get Shane to lie down on him. 

And, well. 

Blame it on the zombies, blame it on the drink, blame it on the fact that he got barely any sleep last night and the fact that he’s stuck in another country and that he’s pretty sure the world is ending. This isn’t really them. It’s not what they do. After that time in Montreal, Shane had thought that maybe it could be what they did, but not in any real way. In a hopeful fantasy kind of way. Like, this would be his best case scenario: a world where casual sex could also mean occasionally cuddling and definitely always kissing afterwards. Shane has known all along who Rozanov is, and it’s not like he expects anything different. He likes Rozanov. He likes what they do. 

But that doesn’t mean that the silence after Montreal didn’t hurt, and that doesn’t mean that last night didn’t hurt, too.

Rozanov has always been a bit of a dick, but with Shane there has always been this flirty undercurrent to it that makes his dickishness into something charming, something teasing and light. Shane still doesn’t know what to think about last night. He’s not sure he can explain even to himself what he feels about it. 

But, okay. They’re going to be stuck in this apartment together. Rozanov is cut off from his family in Russia, and Shane is cut off from his family, too. And Shane is afraid, and he doesn’t know what to do, and there are two things in the world that he knows he’s good at: hockey and doing what Ilya Rozanov tells him to do (as long as they’re off the rink). So, sure. Fuck it. Why not? 

He tries not to look like he’s overthinking it as he slowly lies down. He tucks his feet up on the couch, and he lays his head on Rozanov’s thigh, and despite his nervousness, it’s immediately the right choice. Rozanov breathes out slowly when Shane does it, in this restrained kind of way that makes Shane think he’s relieved, and his hand comes down onto Shane’s hair, his fingers brushing through it, and it’s really…nice. It’s so nice. Shane closes his eyes, and he feels a little bit like a pampered housecat. That’s probably a fucked up thing to be pleased about, but he is pleased.

He wakes up to Rozanov slapping his face gently, bending close. 

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” he says again, and Shane huffs out a laugh and sits up, blinking blearily. Rozanov clucks his tongue a little, looking reluctantly fond.

“What?” Shane asks, wiping the back of his hand over his face. Is he drooling? Great. 

“Nothing. You had a good nap, apparently. You look, um. Rested.” 

“I don’t think I feel it.” Reality stumbles back into Shane’s mind, and he curses. “What time is it? What’s happened? Is anything…?” 

“Boston is still okay. New York, too. They are doing, ah. ‘Martial law', starting tomorrow. Boston probably will too, but nothing yet. No cases on east coast at all. Vegas is the last one that went bad, but some parts of Texas aren’t doing hot. Our food got delivered, so I want to get up and grab it. Make sure neighbors don’t steal it. Otherwise, I would let you sleep.” 

Shane jolts to his feet, embarrassed suddenly. 

“Okay,” he says. “I can get it? If you want?”

Rozanov gives him an odd, almost-affectionate look, and then he stands up too. He leans in for a kiss, and Shane obliges automatically, flushing. It’s not any different from Rozanov’s usual kisses. It’s half-filthy, half-possessive, all heat and warmth and everything that makes Rozanov sparkle on and off the ice, for Shane, in ways he can’t bear to look at out of the sheer humiliation of it. 

“I can get it. Get another drink if you want.” 

Shane still feels a little loose-limbed, a little fuzzy, and he’s not sure if it’s because of the single glass of bourbon or if it’s just the very understandable shock of everything else on the planet, but either way he doesn’t think adding another drink to the mix is a good idea. Still, he gets up and pours himself a second glass anyway, because he wants the haziness right now. He doesn’t want to be here. 

Rozanov comes back in carrying a bunch of bags, and Shane realizes that he probably should have at least followed him and helped him, and he feels like an idiot all over again. He at least helps Rozanov unpack and put the food away. He tries not to react too much when one of the things he pulls out is a six pack of ginger ale cans, but he knows he stares at them a little too long, and he sees out of the corner of his eye that Rozanov glances at him, and he sees that Rozanov’s ears go slightly red as he turns around and continues unpacking. 

Shane looks at the sheer fucking volume of food that Rozanov has ordered, and he's thinking about the days that are going to stretch out in front of them. He's thinking about how he has nowhere to be, no routine to keep up. He's thinking about how the world is ending, and about how he's staying in Rozanov’s home, and about how he and Rozanov can fuck as much as they want, and suddenly last night’s certainty that this thing with Rozanov is all a huge mistake that has to stop feels idiotic. 

Maybe last night was weird and different, and maybe Shane’s feelings were really fucking hurt, and maybe they aren't used to seeing each other this much, and maybe they will be sick of each other by tomorrow. 

Maybe. 

But maybe not. 

“Can we, uh,” he starts, not knowing how to finish his thought. Rozanov sighs as he paws through one of the bags to find something specific. 

“Talk about what?” he asks, patient, knowing. Shane swallows. 

“Uh, no. Not what I was going to say, actually,” he replies. “I was gonna say ‘fuck’.” 

Rozanov looks up at him sharply, through his still-drying curls, a doglike enthusiasm on his face that’s both endearing and flattering.  

“Hollander, you are so smart,” he says. “Unpack what needs to be in fridge, and then yes, obviously. I will let you blow me as thank you for saving you, and then I will fuck you as thank you for saving me, and then maybe later I will fuck you again.”

“Will there be a specific reason for that one too? Or is that one just for fun?” 

“To thank me for letting you stay here,” Rozanov answers.  

“Sure, like a rent payment,” Shane laughs, reaching for a block of cheese and tossing it to Rozanov so he can put it in the fridge. Rozanov fumbles with it, drops it, looking startled. 

“Oh my god, Hollander. You are so sexy it hurts sometimes. Yes, rent payment. I think it’s late, too. You might have to work extra hard to pay it.” 

“Mm, I don’t know. That doesn’t track. I would never be late on rent.” 

Rozanov laughs harder, slams the fridge shut, and moves around the kitchen island with a sudden speed that’s gratifying. 

“That is less sexy roleplay, maybe, but I think we can make it work.” 

He kisses Shane then, and as always it’s scorching. He could kiss Rozanov forever, he thinks. Nothing feels like it. He’s so glad they’re kissing now, and that it’s not going to be like Vegas, no matter what comes afterward. 

Rozanov turns him around and presses Shane down so his chest hits the kitchen island.  

“Really? Here? Right with all the food?” Shane asks, unable to help the tremulous want in his voice even as he’s also disgusted. That’s the worst part of all this: he’s not pretending to be disgusted. He really does think it’s gross. The airplane bathroom was fucking disgusting. It’s just never gross enough to cancel out the want, and it’s fucking dizzying. He’s usually so good at following his own rules. Rozanov laughs breathlessly, and he presses his forehead against Shane’s back. 

“Everyone thinks you are not funny,” he says, wonderingly. “They are so wrong.” 

“It’s unsanitary,” Shane argues, but he’s still spreading his legs wider as Rozanov slots his thigh between them, and he’s still gasping and shaking already. Just like in the airplane bathroom, he knows he shouldn't, but that hasn’t stopped him with Rozanov yet, and it certainly isn’t going to stop him now. Rozanov is touching him, hands trailing up Shane’s sides, tucking under his shirt. His fingers are cold, but they’re slowly warming on Shane’s skin. 

“Ah, does that mean you want me to stop?” Rozanov asks, a parody of gentleness, just like he did on the plane. He knows Shane so well. It should be more humiliating than it is. Shane glares over his shoulder, but he doesn’t say anything, and Rozanov’s answering smile is blindingly bright. Shane expects Rozanov to start opening him up, preparing to fuck him here, but instead Rozanov leans in and kisses him as he tugs down Shane’s sweatpants and wraps his fingers around Shane’s cock. 

Shane loses himself in the sensation of it, the way he always does. No matter how anxious he is about everything, his mind screeches to a white hot halt every time Rozanov’s hands are on him. It’s so insane. It doesn’t make any sense. It never feels this good when he has his own hand on his own dick. It’s not just about the pleasure. It’s Rozanov. It’s something about him. Shane whines as he pushes himself into Rozanov’s grip, and he can feel the hard, hot length of Rozanov through the layer of sweatpants separating them, and Rozanov is mouthing up the side of his neck, whispering in Russian, and Shane feels very exposed and very open, and he feels…better. Better than he has since, fuck, maybe Sochi. It’s so stupid. 

He hunches his shoulders forward and grips onto the kitchen counter and he thinks about the way Rozanov had looked at him in Sochi and he thinks about the way Rozanov was with him last night, but it’s hard to think about those things when Rozanov is whispering into his ear as he jerks him off, switching back to English so Shane can understand the filth he’s whispering. 

So hot, so sexy for me, so good for me. Had to rescue my princess from Vegas, didn’t I? Oh, you like that, don’t you? Princess? No one makes sounds like you. No one takes me as well as you. I will have you every day until it all ends. Yes? 

For some reason, that’s what makes Shane come, embarrassingly fast, and he lets his forehead thunk down on the counter. 

“Wow,” Rozanov says. 

“Shut up.” 

“So desperate for me!” 

“Shut up. Oh my god.” 

“That was, hm. One third of rent payment.” 

“Fuck you,” Shane laughs, but he turns around and kisses Rozanov anyway. “Where’s your fucking bedroom?” 

“I thought maybe couch, next.” 

“What, is there a list?” 

“I only have so much furniture, Hollander, and who knows how long we’re going to be here? We have to use all of it. I will fuck you for real on this eventually.” He knocks his fingers against the countertop like he’s testing its structural integrity, and there is something so weirdly charming and boyish about it. It makes Shane smile. 

“Fuck, okay,” he agrees hazily, and Rozanov's own smile goes huge and wild with want. 

They're lying on the couch, both of them completely naked—which is, it turns out, not Shane’s favorite sensation, skin on leather, because even though he’d insisted they put a towel down, there was only so much that towel could really do—and Shane has been grumbling about how they need to clean up and he needs to sleep in a bed before he fucks up his back, and Rozanov has been chirping at him about being such an old man. 

Shane's phone rings. It's his mother, and she's trying to Facetime him. 

“Oh, fuck, no,” Shane groans, scrambling for his clothes, which are all the way across the living room, for some reason, by the front door. “Put your fucking clothes on!”

Rozanov laughs at him again. It's technically good that Shane has forgotten his initial anxiety, the fear that he wouldn't know how to act around Rozanov like this, and wasn’t sure they’d be able to spend this much time together. He’s forgotten everything except Rozanov’s pleasing lightness, the force of his smiles. 

He also, unfortunately, has temporarily forgotten that Rozanov is a dick who finds his suffering hilarious. 

He whips Rozanov's sweatpants at his head, and Rozanov puts them on, still laughing. Shane struggles into his own clothes, heart pounding. He realizes that he's more afraid now than he was when wrestling a zombie on a plane, and he's so annoyed at himself for being so dramatic. He checks his reflection in the little mirror by Rozanov's door, and he looks red-cheeked and breathless and, sure, freshly fucked. Great.

“Maybe I just let her think I got eaten by a zombie,” he says. Rozanov looks at him, unimpressed, and accepts the call. Fuck you, Shane mouths as he rushes over. 

Rozanov puts on this bizarre impersonation of a man who didn't just have his dick in Shane's ass, politely distant, as if he's never learned how to talk to someone's parents before. 

“Hello, Mrs. Hollander. Hi. Hollander and I are just unpacking groceries.”

Shane bumbles into frame, sitting down beside Rozanov on the couch, leaving what he hopes is a normal amount of space. 

“Hi mom,” he says, and he tries desperately not to feel like a disgusting, hedonistic freak, fucking on Rozanov's couch in the middle of the day while his mom was probably trying to work out a way to get him back across the border. God, what is wrong with him?

“Sorry, I just wanted to see for myself that you’re all right,” she says with a watery sigh, like she’s afraid that she’s being overbearing. Shane understands, because he knows that he and his mom have a lot of the same anxiety issues. He wishes he could be more honest when he quickly tells her that he doesn’t mind the call. She hums like she’s not sure she believes him, but says, “groceries were a good idea, Shane.”

“Uh, it was Rozanov, actually,” Shane says, and Rozanov smiles awkwardly at the camera in response. “How are you guys doing?”

“Good, good. I'm sure you heard the Pikes are heading here? They're stopping to pick up some more food, but I don't want you to worry, we're very well stocked here.”

“That's good,” Shane says. He doesn't want to say that he's not particularly worried about them. They're in the middle of nowhere. They're together. They have hunting supplies, fishing supplies, even if they don't really like doing either of those things. He's more worried about him and Rozanov, in a city. Surrounded by people who could be zombies soon. “Um, thank you. For inviting Hayden and Jackie.”

“Of course, sweetheart. We're putting feelers out to everyone, really. Safety in numbers, I guess. We've got a few more people on the way already. I'll let you two get back to it. Everything still okay in Boston?” 

“Yeah,” Shane says, though he has no fucking idea. The city could be burning down around them right now and he wouldn’t have a clue. 

“Okay, that's good. I'll call you when I hear anything about the border, okay?”

“Yeah, great. Thanks, mom. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Yuna says, and then the call is dead, and Rozanov is laughing and putting down Shane’s phone and kissing him again, and Shane is swatting him off, but he's laughing, too. 

“This is so fucking stupid! Oh my god. Why did you answer?”

“Because I knew you would make your angry little kotyonok face at me, and I thought it would be funny.” 

“What does that mean? That word you said.” 

“Kitten,” Rozanov says, shit-eating grin wide on his face, growing wider when Shane scowls. “Yes, like that.” 

Another kiss, this time on the nose, and Shane is taken aback by it. Not in a bad way, really, except that it terrifies him. It's just so soft. Before he has time to think about it, Rozanov is standing up and heading to the kitchen, scrubbing a hand through his hair, to finish unpacking the groceries, complaining about something he is just now realizing he forgot to add. Shane watches him go, lets his heart rate calm down. 

This is only the first day, he reminds himself. You can’t come totally unglued on the first day. At least wait for the second. 

In the mid-afternoon, Rozanov has a few calls with his coach and his teammates, and Shane lingers in the room, listening to the one side that he can hear, which isn’t much. Rozanov listens a lot more than he talks, and he’s sullen and clearly over the whole thing, making yapping motions at Shane with his hand like a child. When the call is over, he groans and throws his phone across the couch. 

“No practice for a week,” he says dryly. “Because of course this is all going to be fixed in a week.” 

“I think Theriault is having practice today,” Shane says, knowing it will make Rozanov laugh. “He seemed pissed I wasn’t going to be there.” 

“Idiots. All of you are idiots.” 

“Hey, don’t include me in this. I don’t make those kinds of decisions.” 

“I’m surprised you don’t walk to Canada now so you don’t miss it.”

“I’m not that delusional,” Shane admits quietly. He smiles a little so Rozanov doesn’t worry that he’s getting too in his own head, though he suspects he might be. Suspects it even stronger when Rozanov just looks at him, considering. Clearly seeing more than Shane wants him to see. “It might be nice to practice, though. Just, I don’t know. Get my head off the whole zombie thing.” 

“Right, of course,” Rozanov says with a grin. “Because you are hockey crazy, and not a normal person.” 

“Shut up. I’m normal.” 

“No,” Rozanov argues softly, but he looks like he wants to kiss Shane again, and Shane tries not to be too disappointed when he doesn’t. “I have an idea, though.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“You will probably argue, say ‘no, Ilyusha, people cannot see us out in public because they will know we are fucking, because there is no other reason for two men in same league to hang out’.” 

“Ilyusha? Is that what I call you now?” 

“Only if you want me to fuck you again, immediately, probably, so wait a minute. This actually is a good idea. We go to practice, here. Raiders practice arena. Not real practice, obviously. Just for fun.”

Shane grins a little, waiting for the punchline, until he realizes that Rozanov is done and waiting for his reaction. Shane knows that he’s hard to read sometimes. His parents have always told him that, and sometimes his friends mention it, usually jokingly, but there’s a sense that it’s not entirely a joke, like there’s something more to it. Rozanov is watching him like he thinks he can pick up the emotions on Shane's face if he looks hard enough. 

“You’re serious.” 

“Yes,” Rozanov says, but he still has that kind of shit-eating smile on his face, like he’s waiting for the lecture that Shane will obviously be giving him. Shane feels self-conscious about it, suddenly. Like, yeah, it is a bad idea for them to be out in public, but Rozanov’s smile feels like a dare, at the same time. Like a challenge. And Shane hates backing down from those. 

“How would that even work?” 

“Practice rink is two streets away. Is public, yes. People will see us, but I promise not to try to fuck you on ice, so they won’t know anything. It might be fun. We can tell everyone how your mother saved us both in Vegas, if you want, or we can just tell them that I saved you. I like that story better anyway. And then we can tell them you fought a zombie on the plane to save my life. Also very good story. And then we beat the shit out of each other in skates. You will say something about how the ‘PR’ is bad, or whatever, but I don’t think so. I think they will like to see us being friends, with everything else so shit. I can even call the Boston PR team, let them come down and take some pictures. Unlikely friends at the end of the world, or something.” 

Or something is something that Rozanov says a lot, and Shane is starting to understand that it’s something he says particularly often when he’s looking away from Shane’s eyes, which probably means that or something is what he says when he’s afraid that he’s showing too much, and wants Shane to believe that he’s not fully serious.

And so, yeah, Shane should blow him off. He should say are you out of your fucking mind, Rozanov? They should stay inside here. They should not go to the fucking Raiders practice rink. No way. 

But, well. 

Rozanov clearly wants to do it, and Rozanov clearly thinks the world is ending, just like Shane technically also does. Shane can only keep deluding himself for so long that the world isn’t going to be over, that things are going to be fixed eventually, before he comes to terms with the fact that he has probably played his last hockey game. 

And Rozanov is offering this chance to him. It won’t be a game, but it will be something. Hockey in a professional capacity. Hockey in a place where people will be watching them. What if it’s the last chance he ever gets to be on skates? 

Doesn’t he want his last skate to be with Rozanov, anyway? It’s only right. 

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Shit. Okay. I think I want to.” 

Rozanov’s smile brightens every dark feeling still lingering in Shane’s chest. 

“Really?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Shane agrees, and this time it’s even easier. 

Rozanov makes a few calls, and as predicted, Naomi from PR is ecstatic at the idea. Shane considers texting someone from his own team, or at least his mother, but ends up sending a very formal email to Katie on the Metros PR team, letting her know that he and Rozanov are going to be seen in public together at the Raiders rink. He keeps the email light, says multiple times I know this isn’t a big deal, what with everything going on, but also pitches it in the same way Rozanov did: it’s a good look for both of them, to be sportsmanlike as the world is falling to pieces. 

Like that fucking matters at this point, but still. Rozanov was right when he pointed out that most of these people still think that there will be hockey to play, and that this stuff will still matter. Maybe some of them are just going through the motions, because there’s this sense like you have to keep moving forward even if you’re sure that everything is over, just in case you’re wrong.

Rozanov is almost giddy as they walk together to the practice rink. He chirps Shane relentlessly, which is no surprise, and is almost a bit endearing, because it makes Shane relax a little. They’ve showered since fucking on the couch, obviously, and Shane is dressed in his jeans and t-shirt and jacket from Vegas, and he knows that he looks normal, and that no one will technically be able to tell how they’ve spent the last day, but still, it’s strange to be out in public like this, and he knows that half of Rozanov’s chirps are probably meant as a distraction. 

Naomi meets them at the practice rink, looking a little incredulous when they show up, like she’d assumed it was a prank. 

“I’m not used to you coming to me with anything,” she points out when she shakes Rozanov’s hand. “More used to you ducking my calls and suddenly forgetting English every time you don’t want to do something.” 

“Yes, well. Today is special,” Rozanov says. “Hollander is trapped in my apartment with me until the borders open. I think he will be too tired to kill me for being a bad host if I kick his ass in hockey first.” 

“Wish you’d waited until we could get that on camera,” Naomi says with a wry sigh, but she smiles as she shakes Shane’s hand. 

“I’m sure that’s not the last antagonistic thing he’ll say,” Shane says, and Naomi laughs. 

“No, it’s definitely not.” 

They draw a crowd, because of course they do. The Raiders practice rink is in the middle of a busy area, and people keep popping in. Word must be spreading somewhere, probably on Twitter. A few of the other Raiders show up, like they needed to confirm it with their own eyes, and are surprised and pleased when it turns out that Shane is actually there. They’re a lot more friendly than Shane was expecting. He tries to imagine his team being as jazzed about Rozanov showing up to their space, and he feels guilty for how unfavorable he knows the comparison would be. 

Rozanov insists loudly that he and Shane can take on every Raider who shows up, and then of course they have to try to prove it while the growing crowd cheers. 

Shane has the time of his fucking life. 

He doesn’t know if it’s because of the whole end of the world thing, or if it’s just because skating with Ilya is so different from skating against him. Shane has always admired the way Ilya skates, has always admired his game, and it’s lighter like this, with no stakes, and Ilya’s smile makes him look so young and carefree and…

Rozanov. Rozanov’s smile. Jesus. 

Rozanov is lethal on the ice, as always, his passes clean, his shots beautiful. He hams it up for the crowd, raising his arms so they cheer louder. Shane laughs at him, and shakes his head, and pretends to be annoyed, but he does a terrible job of that. 

It’s weird. It’s not like Shane has ever not loved hockey. He has always loved hockey, and of course before today he would have said that he loves hockey just as much as he always has. 

But hockey is fun today in a way it hasn’t been fun for a while. And of course that makes sense. Like, he’s not a kid anymore. There are stakes to all of his games. There’s pressure, and there’s press, and there are people who are winning or losing money based on his performance, so of course he takes it fucking seriously. He loves it, he will always love it, but the hockey-adjacent stuff that isn’t hockey of course comes bleeding into it. It’s not a huge deal. It doesn’t make him like hockey less, technically. 

But this? This is just for fun, and it’s so fucking fun. 

They skate for hours, until the sun goes down, and until Naomi tells them they have to wrap it up. She seems to be in an even better mood than she was when they first arrived, and she hugs Shane with an enthusiasm that he returns, and then he and Rozanov say goodbye to the others, and they walk back to Rozanov’s place. Shane asks, a little nervously, if he wants to go get drinks with the other Raiders, and Rozanov looks surprised, like he hadn’t even considered it. 

“No,” he says. “I have dinner plans.” 

“Oh. With me?” 

“Yes, with you, fucking idiot,” Rozanov says fondly, and Shane laughs. 

He scrolls through his phone, later, after getting out of the shower again. He sees the pictures and the videos that were posted by the official Raiders Twitter account, retweeted by the Metros. He smiles at the look on his own face, the joy there. He knows the Metros fans will be happy with the shot of him making a disgusted face at Rozanov trying to offer him a Raiders practice jersey. The Raiders fans will be pleased at the pictures of him signing autographs for the kids outside the practice arena. His mom will be pleased at the pictures of him wearing his Reeboks. Everyone will be pleased, and Shane still got to have the best day in years. Not everything always has to be about keeping himself small for hockey, maybe. Maybe that’s the lesson he should be taking from this. Or maybe it’s just because he got to spend the day with Rozanov, in public, liking him openly, and maybe he should be more worried about that, but he isn’t. 

Rozanov cooks chicken with pasta, which Shane normally wouldn't eat, but fuck it. The world is ending. He's tempted to cling to his diet and his routine as much as possible, but he doesn't notice what Rozanov is making until it's already halfway done, and he would feel awful to refuse it, and so he doesn’t. They sit at the kitchen counter, and Shane looks down at the surface and thinks about Rozanov's hand wrapped around his cock right here, and he thinks about Rozanov’s huge smile on the ice, and he has to blink himself back into awareness when Rozanov clinks his fork against Shane's plate, like he's been trying to get Shane's attention. He looks annoyed. 

“Sorry, what?” Shane asks. Rozanov gets this disbelieving little smile on his face for a second. 

“You have one track mind, Hollander. Are you thinking about your rent payment already?”

“Well, you charge so much. I have to work it off somehow. What were you saying?”

“I asked if you were going to be boring and insist on sleeping on the couch or in guest room, or whatever,” Rozanov says, and Shane can see that despite his attempt at looking unconcerned, he’s tense. Shane thinks of how he felt lying in Rozanov's bed in Vegas, Rozanov not even looking at him. Not even touching him. Not even kissing him. He thinks about Rozanov trying to hint, twice, that Shane should lie down in his lap. He thinks about Rozanov calling him Sleeping Beauty and Princess and kissing him on the nose and saying he had a fucking angry kitten face.

“Oh, uh, no,” he says. He considers his next words carefully. “I guess I don't really see the point in that.”

“Okay, good,” Rozanov says, like it's nothing. Shane really does envy him sometimes. How does Rozanov just exist in the world without everything crushing him at all times? He makes it look so fucking easy.

Sure, there’s no point not sleeping in Rozanov’s bed, and Shane wants to sleep in Rozanov’s bed, but of course he overthinks how weird it's going to be to sleep in a bed with Rozanov. This whole fucking thing is weird. He left Rozanov's hotel room technically this morning convinced that Rozanov didn't even like him, and now Rozanov is carefully watching him to make sure that he eats enough, and he's texting Shane's mom, and he's ordering his food and jerking him off at the kitchen counter and touching him afterward, pulling him closer instead of pushing away, and he’s taking him fucking skating. So, like, maybe it’s not weird that Shane is so confused. 

They sit on the couch again after dinner, and they watch more of the news. Most of the Midwest and all of the East Coast are still holding strong, but there have been some isolated cases in Atlanta, and a bunch in Florida, people who apparently boarded flights after being bitten, before the planes were grounded. Both of those places feel too close in a way that Shane doesn’t like. Rozanov clearly doesn't like it either, because he turns off the TV just as soon as the local anchor confirms no cases so far in Boston and delivers a stiff monologue about all the precautions the governor and the mayor are taking to ensure the safety of their city.  

When the TV is off, Shane realizes how tired he is, but he knows that it will be less nervewracking to sleep in Rozanov's bed if they fuck first and then just fall asleep afterward. It will feel less like a plan, then, and more just…incidental. He accepts another drink from Rozanov’s bar cart—and tries not to react too much to the fact that Rozanov pours some ginger ale into it before he hands it over, which very much does improve the taste, though he thinks that's an opinion that would get him murdered by bourbon-enjoyers—and he drinks it quickly so that he can climb into Rozanov's lap and kiss him. He's not sure why he's expecting Rozanov to object, but of course Rozanov doesn’t. He breathes out a content sound instead, and then he kisses Shane, and pulls him close, and makes these breathy little sounds against Shane's mouth that make Shane smile. This is so the opposite of how things were in Vegas.

“Let's go to bed,” Shane says finally, and Rozanov nods in a way that’s eager enough that it doesn’t allow Shane to doubt for even a second, which he really appreciates. They stumble down the hall to the bedroom, kissing, and then Rozanov falls back onto the bed, and Shane climbs on top of him. He really is feeling tired now, but he's gotta push through it to keep it from being awkward to sleep together. 

Plus, his dick certainly isn't tired, and he knows he won't sleep well unless he gets off. 

Rozanov fucks him for, like, the third time in twenty-four hours, and Shane thinks vaguely about how he sometimes goes months without having sex at all, and sometimes goes weeks in the middle of the season without even feeling the urge to jerk off, but somehow when Rozanov’s around, Shane is always at least a little hard. It really is baffling how he can always want this even though he so often ends up feeling hurt by it afterward. 

Is it worth it? He'll ask himself, every single time, and yet the next time he gets his chance, he’s sinking down to his knees in front of Rozanov again and eagerly mouthing at his dick through his pants. So the answer must be yes, even though the math of it makes no sense. 

It feels worth it now, with the lights off, with Rozanov’s sheets smelling like him. They're cool against Shane's overheated skin, and silky smooth. They probably are silk, knowing Rozanov. They’re nice. 

Rozanov is less chatty than usual. It's just “okay?” “Yes” “okay?” “Yes” breathed between them. He makes Shane come twice with the kind of determination that always makes him so difficult to face on the ice, and Shane lies there afterward, breathing hard, feeling a comfortable haze settle over him. 

“Okay?” Rozanov asks again as he crawls back into bed, after disposing of the condom and cleaning Shane off, the way he always does. Shane nods, and he turns towards Rozanov, and he sees Rozanov's eyes glittering a little in the dark. Shane wonders if he's crying, but is too afraid to ask, or even suggest it. He tilts his head down, pressing his forehead to the skin of Rozanov's neck, and he's so glad when Rozanov puts his arms around him, pulls the blankets up to their shoulders. 

Mission accomplished. They're too fucked out to be awkward. Shane's a genius.  

“Okay,” Shane agrees, and then he drifts off to sleep. 

He wakes up expecting to find that Boston has fallen just like Vegas, especially because he is yet again woken up by the buzzing of his phone on the bed next to him. He sits up, flailing out of the covers. It’s his dad calling this time, which makes him nervous for a second. It’s not like his dad never calls him, but he usually lets Yuna handle the actual call while he just yells supportively in the background, typically only half aware of what Yuna is calling Shane about anyway. 

Rozanov is gone, which is probably for the best, even though it’s not a Facetime call. It would be weird to talk to his father with Rozanov looking probably devastatingly hot in the morning light. There’s a pang of something uncomfortable to think about the fact that Rozanov apparently got out of bed so early, though. Where did he go? 

“Dad?” he says into the phone.

“Hey, bud!” David says, and Shane releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, because his dad sounds as calm and bright as ever. 

“Are you guys okay?” he asks anyway. 

“Yeah! Yeah, Shane, we’re doing okay. We actually got a lot of action going on here! Hayden and Jackie and the girls are here, and Sharon and Leona from down the road are coming to stay, too. We’re expecting Uncle Chris any minute, and he’s got a full truck of supplies to unpack, so I figured I’d call before we got into it. I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay there. Rozanov isn’t being too hard on you, is he?” 

“Uh, no, dad, that’s not exactly how I’d put it,” Shane says miserably, putting his forehead in his hand. 

“Okay, that’s good. I know he can be, well. ‘Kind of a dick’, according to your mother. You should see the way she has to keep correcting herself now that we owe him so much.” 

“Yeah,” Shane says, and now he’s thinking about all those stupid jokes about owing Rozanov for rescuing him from Vegas, and he might cringe out of his skin if he doesn’t change the subject. “So, um. Anything about the border? Or the planes? We’re set here for a while. We got a ton of food, and the building seems pretty secure, so I’m not like super worried about it, but…” 

“Nothing yet. Sorry, bud. It makes sense to lock up the air travel, and obviously people are trying to get home. I’m sure you saw that Toronto has a few cases now, and Vancouver, well.” 

“Right,” Shane says, and again he thinks of that look in Rozanov’s eyes in the car in Vegas and again on the plane. Trying to talk around his pessimism like an adult not wanting to blow up a kid’s dreams of Santa Claus. “Yeah, um. I know things are…” 

“Yeah,” David says, finally, after Shane can’t say anything else. 

He says his goodbyes to his father, who promises/threatens that Yuna will be calling as soon as she’s done seeing the others settled in. Shane doesn’t want to tell them not to call, obviously, because he knows that every call could be their last. Still, it feels stifling, all the way from here, which makes him feel guilty. He always feels guilty when he’s around them and thinking about Rozanov, because he knows he’s keeping this massive secret from them, and he knows that they wouldn’t understand any of it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t wish he could tell them, sometimes. 

He lies back down for a second after he hangs up the phone, but he knows he won’t be going back to sleep. He goes through his texts dutifully. Theriault seems to think that it should be as simple as Shane hopping on a plane and getting back in time for practice, though he does mention that a few of the guys are taking time off “out of an abundance of caution”. Shane politely answers that he’s doing his best to get back home, and privately he hopes that that’s the last he’ll hear of it. 

He checks in with Hayden and Jackie, and he texts a few of his friends from childhood, but there really isn’t anyone else he wants to reach out to. It feels so disingenuous at this point, with the weight of the last day pushing down on him. He remembers the zombies running across the tarmac, busting down the fence. He remembers the soldiers opening fire. He remembers the zombie on the plane. It’s all coming here eventually. It’s probably coming here soon. Outside on the street, people are honking, annoyed to be in traffic, probably on the way to fucking work or something, and Shane is just like, fuck. When is it going to come here, too? Because obviously it’s coming. 

He shuffles out to the living room and finds Rozanov sitting on the couch and playing PlayStation like the world isn’t ending. He’s drinking coffee, and he pauses his game to look over at Shane. 

“I cannot watch the fucking news anymore. You can look on your phone,” he says, his jaw clenched in a way that Shane doesn’t want to argue with. 

“I don’t want to watch it either,” he admits. “No cases in Boston, still?” 

“No cases.” 

“Okay. I’m going to head out for a little bit, do some shopping.” Rozanov looks at him incredulously. “Like, clothes shopping, getting some supplies, or whatever. Not food. Do you have a printer?” 

“A what?” 

“A printer? Like to print things?” 

“I know what a printer is. Why the fuck would I have a printer?” 

“Paperwork?” 

“My agent does all my paperwork. Of course you do paperwork.” 

“Do you have a laptop?” 

“I have a phone!”

“Oh my god, you’re broken as a person. There are phone activities, and there are laptop activities. Everyone knows this. Shut up. Okay, so I’m getting a printer, and a laptop.” 

“What, you need to do your taxes?” 

Shane laughs a little, and he shrugs into his hoodie. 

“No,” he says. “I need to do research.” 

Based on Rozanov’s mood, Shane isn’t surprised to find himself going shopping alone. He’s actually a little relieved. It’s good to get a break. Not like Rozanov has been bothering him at all, but that’s actually part of the problem. 

He normally doesn’t like shopping, but he doesn’t mind it when he has a list, and when he knows exactly what he’s looking for. He takes an Uber to a few stores where he knows they carry clothes he likes. He picks up more than he needs, probably. He can already hear Rozanov bitching about all the space Shane is going to be taking up in his apartment, but he can also hear him shutting the fuck up as soon as Shane offers to suck his dick for the storage fee. It puts kind of a pep in his step. 

He goes to a sporting goods store and finds that the lines are insanely long, which is no surprise. Half the city is pretending that nothing’s wrong, but the other half are like Shane, probably telling whoever’s waiting for them at home that they’re going out to grab some supplies “just in case”. Shane gets in line with a carriage full of supplies and makes awkward conversation with a Raiders fan who does a cartoonish double-take when he sees who's standing behind him. Shane is expecting the guy to be an asshole, because Boston fans typically are, but Blake just starts rattling off Shane’s stats like he has them memorized, and then he asks a few genuinely insightful questions about what Shane thinks Boston can do to improve their defense situation, and Shane is relieved, because this is the exact kind of conversation he loves. 

“What are you doing in Boston?” Blake asks eventually. Shane imagines telling him I’m staying with Rozanov because we’ve been fucking for years. He thinks it might be kind of funny. Maybe he’s already been spending too much time with Rozanov. Instead, he chokes out an awkward recap of how he’d ended up on a flight to Boston because Rozanov was one of the only other assholes still asleep while every other hockey player was getting the fuck out of Vegas. Blake doesn’t seem to suspect anything weird, or maybe he doesn’t care, and just wants to talk about hockey some more. Shane can relate. 

He buys a bunch of shelf stable rations and a few things that he feels silly buying, like baseball bats and machetes, because he figures they’ll make better weapons than guns. He buys water sterilization kits and firestarter kits. He buys sleeping bags, and he buys winter jackets and flannel shirts and gloves and hats and scarves, and he buys rope, and he buys a toolkit and a first aid kit. Rozanov is going to think he’s lost his mind, but picturing his aghast, befuddled expression puts Shane in an even better mood, so he can’t regret it.

He goes to Staples and picks up a laptop, some binders, a three-hole punch, one of those industrial printers, a bunch of extra ink, plastic sheet protectors, and a shitload of paper, and he loads all of it into the Uber. His driver is getting tipped too well to complain about all the shit now basically filling his car, but he seems bemused, and a little bitter, like he wishes he could afford to go out and panic-buy a bunch of supplies instead of spending what could be one of his last days on earth ferrying around minor celebrities. Shane ups his tip five hundred dollars out of guilt, then thinks better of it and adds a zero out of even more guilt, and then he calls Rozanov to help him unload the car when he gets back. 

Rozanov looks at him exactly like Shane expected, and it makes Shane smile. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Rozanov asks, and Shane laughs. 

They carry everything upstairs, and Rozanov shows Shane to a room that looks like it was probably meant to be a second guest bedroom, but he decided to turn it into an office that has nothing in it but a desk and a swivel chair. 

“One of the guys said I should buy a gaming PC, so I bought a desk, but then didn’t see the fucking point, with PlayStation,” Rozanov admits grumpily. “I forget this room exists, mostly.”

“You really don’t have any furniture,” Shane notes. 

“Mm. I will fuck you on the desk, though,” Rozanov replies. 

“Well, yeah, obviously,” Shane says. “But not now. Go play your game or whatever.” 

Rozanov laughs under his breath and wanders out of the room. He lifts his arms above his head, exposing a trail of skin at his back, and it’s really hot that he thinks that’s going to work, but unfortunately for him, Shane is about to be in the zone, and not even the promise of Rozanov’s dick is going to be enough to get him out of it before he’s ready. It would be like Rozanov trying to fuck him during a hockey game. 

He spends the next three hours setting up the laptop and the printer, going online, buying an irresponsible amount of ebooks and doing a shitload of internet searches for easy step-by-step instructions for various things, printing out everything he can. How to hotwire cars. How to siphon gas. Lists of medications and what they can be used to treat. How to start a fire in the wilderness. How to decontaminate water. How to DIY stitches. How to knit. How to mend clothing. How to grow your own vegetables. How to optimize soil fertilization on a larger scale farm. How to take care of chickens, and cows, and horses. How to cook fucking everything. He keeps thinking he’ll run out of questions eventually, but his anxiety can actually be really helpful sometimes, and this is one of those times. He just keeps coming up with more. What would I need to know if the world ended tomorrow? What would I need to know to keep us alive for a year, for five years, for ten? 

“What the fuck,” Rozanov says, coming into the room with a sandwich piled on a plate, along with some potato chips. He’s staring at Shane like he’s never seen him before. Shane’s stomach grumbles before he can say he doesn’t want it, and Rozanov drops it on the desk like it’s incidental, like it’s not a big deal, but it makes Shane’s heart throb a bit with happiness that he made it at all.

“The internet is going to go down at some point,” Shane answers. He shows Rozanov the two binders he’s already started filling: one for each of them. “If you can think of anything else to add…” 

Rozanov briefly looks like he wants to make fun of him, but then he sighs, and he slides closer, and he lifts Shane’s chin up so that Shane’s forced to meet his eyes. He smiles a little. 

“New house rule,” he says. 

“Okay?” 

“Glasses stay on, malysh.” 

Shane flushes, reaching for his glasses. He’d forgotten he was wearing them. Rozanov tuts softly, and he pulls Shane’s hand down to prevent him from taking them off. 

“I just need them for reading,” Shane mumbles. 

“And I cannot believe how sexy they are. Like hot librarian. Perfect fantasy. Show me your little book. It’s doing it for me.” 

“What did you call me?” 

“Hm?” 

“That thing you said, in Russian.” 

Rozanov looks briefly confused, caught out, and Shane thinks he won’t answer, but of course he just shrugs one shoulder, looks unbothered, smirks in a way that probably anyone else on the planet would call “unpleasant”, but which is unfortunately very hot to Shane personally. 

“Oh. It means, um. I guess you would say eager little slut,” he says thoughtfully. 

“Jesus, Rozanov. Great, thank you so much. Really sweet of you to say.” 

“Ah, malysh. If I thought you wanted to hear sweet things, I would say sweet things,” Rozanov teases, kissing him, clearly way too pleased with himself. “Do you want sweet things?” 

“No,” Shane lies defensively. Rozanov hums, laughs a little. 

“I didn’t think so. Krasivyy, solnyshko, dorogoy.”

“Do I even want to know what those ones mean?” 

Rozanov answers happily, “they mean I am a very smart man who can say whatever I want to an eager slut with cute glasses.”

“Stop,” Shane laughs, but he leans back a little in his chair. Rozanov grins savagely, knowing that he has him, and leans his weight back against the desk, his hand trailing idly down the front of Shane’s shirt.

“Did you find everything you needed at the store?” 

“Yeah. I think so. There’s probably something I forgot, but…” 

“I do not think that’s possible. You bought everything. You bought a whole new wardrobe.” 

“I needed some clothes.” 

“You can’t just wear my clothes?” Rozanov asks, sounding so sincerely curious, and then he finally dances his fingers beneath the waistband of Shane's pants and wraps his fingers around Shane’s cock at the same moment he leans in to claim Shane's mouth. Shane gasps into the kiss, needy, hungry. Rozanov keeps pulling back to look at him in his glasses, smiling a little dopily, and Shane is thinking, oh, he might actually be serious about liking them. He’s so fucking weird. Wait, why is it so hot to me that he thinks my glasses are hot? Am I the weird one?

“I didn’t want to assume,” he manages to choke out. 

“Mm. Very polite of you,” Rozanov says. “My polite Canadian malysh.” And then he pushes Shane’s chair back further, and he gets on his knees under the desk, and Shane sighs happily, and leans back, and lets it happen.  

He calms down a little bit after that, consents to taking a break from thinking of every single catastrophe that could ever happen for the rest of his life. He feels like he covered most of it, and he figures if he thinks of anything else, he can jot down a note on his phone so he can remember to look more stuff up later. He can tell that Rozanov is a little concerned about Shane's long period of hyperfocus because he’s doing that thing he sometimes does where he looks Shane over like he’s trying to read his mind, and because he keeps finding reasons to keep him close and out of the office. Kissing him and touching him and teasing him about stupid stuff that has nothing to do with his binder. Shane feels on edge about it in a way he doesn’t really know how to describe even to himself. Like he’s afraid of what Rozanov will see if he looks too closely. 

Which is stupid, because even Shane doesn’t know what he sees when he looks at his own fucking feelings closely. But still. Rozanov always seems to figure out exactly what he needs. 

Rozanov shows him some of the online noise about Shane showing up to the Raiders practice rink yesterday. It’s all sort of funny: the comments, the edge of panic, the vibe that everyone is pretending to give a fuck about two hockey rivals hanging out while people are dying. It makes him feel a little sick, but there’s also this moment when he feels like…he’s not sure. 

It’s just that there’s this one tweet buried among the rest that’s fairly popular, very liked and retweeted or whatever. It’s this girl who apparently thinks they’re fucking, and the fact that she’s right would normally send Shane into a panic, but Rozanov explains quickly that plenty of people think that various players are fucking. They don’t actually know anything. It’s just noise. Shane nods and tries to pretend that he’s capable of being cool about it, even though he knows that Rozanov knows that he isn’t, so he’s not sure why he tries. Rozanov grins and holds on to the inside of Shane’s thigh, and Shane reads the tweet. 

Let the historical record show after the zombie wars that hollanov were secretly in love the whole time. 

And, well. 

‘Secretly in love the whole time’ is doing some heavy lifting, and it makes Shane feel itchy to read those words while sitting next to Rozanov, because he doesn’t want to give anything away—not that there’s anything to give away except Shane being fucking dramatic and weird, obviously—but something catches in his chest when he reads the tweet anyway. 

It’s kind of nice that the probable last pictures of them on the internet will be them being friendly. Smiling at each other fondly. Laughing, skating around each other. Goofing off. It won’t be any of the stupid fucking posed “rivalry” shots the MLH loves to post. It won’t be them glowering at each other during a face-off. It will be them, closer to the truth than anything else ever has been publicly. 

He can’t say any of that to Rozanov, of course. So he laughs, and he keeps scrolling, and he reads aloud some of the funnier tweets, and Rozanov keeps his hands on him the entire time. 

The good mood doesn’t last, of course. As much as Rozanov tries to keep him occupied the entire day, Shane eventually insists that they have to at least turn on the news to check. It's more of the same, but it’s actually maybe a little more optimistic than yesterday. The army made some headway in LA. New York set up a quarantine zone for its infected. Massachusetts has seen some isolated cases in Fall River, but they’re currently all in quarantine and under heavy guard. 

Rozanov isn’t as moved by the seeming good news. 

“This is what it was like in Russia,” he finally says. “Before. Can we stop?”

“Yeah, of course,” Shane says. He reaches for the remote, and he changes it to ESPN, which is showing a replay of an old Admirals game. Rozanov releases a shaky breath and runs his hand down his face. 

“Sorry,” he says, his voice strangely small. 

“I don't like watching it either,” Shane assures him, which isn't necessarily a lie, but it's also not really the truth, either. He's fascinated by it. He'd watch it all day, if he could. The world is falling apart in real time, and Shane is the sort of person who has to watch a thing like that, pick it apart, drive himself insane with it. But of course he doesn't like it. It's terrifying. He can catch up on his phone, though, when Rozanov isn’t sitting next to him. “I'll cook dinner tonight, okay?”

Rozanov looks at him with an odd expression that shifts on his face for a second, like he's running through a collection of chirps to try and decide which one to use, but in the end, he only nods. 

It's kind of nice, hanging out with Rozanov all day. It's weird, especially with the anticipation of the zombies hanging over them, but it would have been weird no matter who he was with. He has a moment of thinking about, like, what if he had made that plane back to Montreal that his coach tried to get him on? He would have been in Ottawa by now, with his parents and Hayden and Jackie, and he would have probably felt a lot more safe, and obviously that would have been the ideal. But it kind of makes his stomach swoop to think that Rozanov would have just been here in this impersonal apartment, alone, if he wasn’t already dead in Vegas because Shane’s mom didn’t wake him up.

They eat dinner together, and Rozanov makes fun of his bland food, but it's muted, and Shane couldn’t take it personally if he tried. They play some PlayStation together, and Rozanov makes fun of him when he has a sudden thought and has to rush back to the laptop to print out a few more instruction manuals for things. Like simple electricity, how to make your own soap and toothpaste and penicillin. 

“You are planning for ten years away,” Rozanov marvels when he leans over Shane's shoulder to look down at the laptop screen. 

“Well, yeah, I guess. I keep thinking about how we have all these resources now, but they're not going to last forever. So we might as well give ourselves an advantage while we still can.”

Rozanov is looking down at him, his expression a little tilted, a half-smile sitting softly on his face. 

“Okay,” he says finally, and he leans down and kisses Shane. It's gentler than usual, and Shane wonders at it, but not in a bad way. 

Shane snaps out of his latest bout of research hyperfocus at almost midnight, because his eyes are burning, and because he can't think of any more apocalypse needs, and because he hears Rozanov speaking in Russian in the other room. His voice is low, urgent, but it doesn't sound upset. Maybe he's on the phone with his family? Maybe they're okay?

Shane considers staying in the office, but he heads out anyway, with this vague thought that Rozanov has been literally texting his mom, so maybe it doesn't have to be weird that they're involved in speaking to each other's families now. Rozanov’s eyes go to him immediately when he walks in, and Shane hesitates, hovers, but Rozanov gestures at him to let him know it's okay, and Shane is relieved. 

The conversation doesn't last very long once Shane arrives. Rozanov looks softer like this, pacing around in front of the muted TV. He looks anxious, too, in a way that Shane largely only recognizes because of his own panic, and not because it looks familiar at all on Rozanov’s face. 

Before Rozanov hangs up, he says the same sentence in Russian a few times, sounding more upset every time, broken up by what seems to be the other person on the phone speaking back to him. When the call ends, he looks down at his phone for a little bit afterward, as if trying to contemplate what to do next. Shane feels very sorry for him, suddenly, and very sorry that he walked in when he did. 

Because they don’t do this. 

They aren’t like this. 

How awkward is this going to be? 

But he sees that Rozanov’s eyes are wet, and he sees that they're starting to get red, and he doesn’t even think. He crosses the room and pulls Rozanov into a hug. Rozanov stiffens against him, and Shane is thinking, great, now you’ve really fucked it up, but then Rozanov just hugs him back with so much force that Shane collapses backward onto the couch. Within a few seconds, he’s laid out flat, with Rozanov heavy on top of him, like this is exactly what Rozanov had planned. Maybe it was. Shane certainly can't really see Rozanov’s face with it pressed into his neck like this. It feels like a move made to hide his tears, and it’s mostly only so recognizable to Shane because Shane would also rather die than show emotions in front of other people, so he gets it. 

He rubs his hand over Rozanov’s back for a little bit, enjoying the weight on him and the soft puffs of air against his skin. He can feel that Rozanov wants to cry, but he understands why he doesn’t let loose. He keeps thinking that’s not us. We don’t do that. He’s sure Rozanov is thinking the same. This apartment is big, but maybe he feels like Shane has seeped into it too much. Maybe he feels like he can’t escape and cry on his own. Shane feels a little guilty about that, actually. 

“I’m sorry,” he says as he continues to rub Rozanov’s back. “Was that your family?” 

Rozanov clears his throat, and when he speaks, his voice is so controlled that Shane knows he’s trying very hard for it to be. 

“It was my friend, Svetlana. She is safe, on vacation with her family on some Italian island. No traffic in or out, no cases. Total quarantine. They have food and farms and people taking care of each other, and the locals are very nice, she says.” 

“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that.” 

“Yes. She is my best friend, since we were little. I need her to be okay. She was able to talk with some people in Moscow. She says that there are still some places that are okay. Groups of survivors. Most of the city is gone to shit, but she says maybe…” He breaks off, sighing. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“It does. It’s okay.” 

“No, I mean…I don’t know. I can’t explain to you.” 

“What do you mean? You can try?” 

Rozanov scoffs a little, but he burrows closer to Shane, so it doesn’t feel entirely like  rejection. 

“Your mother was so worried about you that she called every person she has ever met to find someone to help you. She called me.” Like he can tell that Shane is going to say something stupid like, well, yeah, she’s my mom, he barrels onward. “My brother, last three days, as Moscow is falling apart, he is calling and asking for more money. More money for bribes, more money for safety. More money so they can buy food and weapons. I send money, of course. I always send money. But then the banks are closed because Moscow is fucked, so I cannot send more, and I tell him that, and so then he doesn’t answer my calls. Is he alive? Are the phones down? Is my father still alive? Is my niece?” 

“I’m so sorry,” Shane says, because he can hear the tears in Rozanov’s voice now, and it makes him so angry to think of it, to think that Rozanov can be so alone when he has always seemed to sparklingly huge to Shane. Like he deserves to be surrounded at all times by people who are as charmed by him as Shane is. More than Shane is, maybe. People who can be honest about being charmed by him, at least. 

“They were always asking for more. More, more, more. And I know what he does with that money. I know that he…” He heaves out another scoff, like he’s disgusted with himself. “It doesn’t matter. I am useless to him now, until the banks come back. I hope he bought what he said he would buy, but I don’t know. And I will never see them again, or Sveta, and I…” 

He lapses into silence, and Shane can feel the hot wet splash of tears against the skin of his neck, and he buries his face into Rozanov’s hair and holds him tighter, like he’s trying to keep Rozanov from physically coming apart in his hands. Like that's something he would be remotely capable of doing. He’s so sorry that he’s the only person here, because he's always been so terrible at trying to comfort people. He never knows the right thing to say. But Rozanov is holding him back just as tightly, so maybe this is okay. 

I will never see them again, he hears, and he thinks of all the times that Rozanov has seemed amused by Shane's planning, like he thinks it’s all going to be pointless. Like he thinks they’re just waiting around to die. Shane holds Rozanov tighter, and he thinks to himself that he’s going to prove him wrong. 

The next morning, Shane’s mother requests another Facetime call, but at least this time he and Rozanov are both dressed and in the kitchen, eating food. Sure, Rozanov is wearing only his pajama pants, and sure, the t-shirt Shane is wearing is Rozanov’s, but it’s an improvement over last time. 

Rozanov waves at the camera when Yuna and David say hello, and he seems less awkward. All of it is less awkward. Shane has been worried this whole time that it will feel like he’s overstaying his welcome, or like he won’t like Rozanov anymore when they’re in the same place for too long. Except Rozanov has been really sweet, if condescending, and if a little abrasive, and Shane just likes him even more, now. 

“So the border is officially open for limited crossings. I think I could probably get you in, based on your profile. Any luck on getting a car? You might want to try and make it out today. Things are starting to look pretty grim.” Yuna’s voice is too calm, and Shane can identify the anxiety laced throughout it the way he has always been able to with her. 

“Yeah, okay,” Shane says. He glances up at Rozanov through his eyelashes, not wanting to be caught looking, and he sees the way Rozanov is very carefully chewing his food, and the way he very carefully swallows it before pushing the rest of the omelet around on his plate with his fork, frowning. “Hey. You'll come with me, right?” 

Rozanov looks up with surprise, seeming caught. 

“Um.” 

“You can’t just ride it out in this apartment by yourself,” Shane says, hopefully sounding concerned like a normal friend. Just a cool bro making sure that another cool bro survives the apocalypse. That’s valid, right? He’d maybe be more freaked out about trying to play it cool if there weren't zombies, but there are zombies, and after holding Rozanov on the couch while he cried yesterday, Shane has been feeling unfortunately very tender about him, and the thought of abandoning him is nausea-inducing.

“I…okay,” Rozanov says, not arguing, and Shane is relieved. He’d been prepared for a much tougher negotiation, and his tactics aren’t exactly the kind that can be deployed on a Facetime call with his parents. 

“Are you sure? What about hockey?” Yuna asks, and David sighs a little in the background. Rozanov looks at Yuna and then Shane, and he smiles a little incredulously. 

“Oh, I see,” he says. “You are the same.” 

“We’re not the same,” Shane mutters. 

“Half the team has gone home to be with their families,” Rozanov says diplomatically to the phone. “Coach has given us the week. Very nice of him.” 

If Shane’s parents hear the dry fatalism that clogs every word, they don't let on. 

“Then we would love to have you up here with us,” David says from the background, and Yuna quickly agrees. 

When they hang up, Rozanov is watching him carefully, a little doubtfully. 

“You mean this? You want me to come?” 

“What? Yeah. Of course I do. Don’t be fucking stupid.” 

“You think we can be normal in a house with your parents?” 

“Probably not, but what choice do we have? It’ll be better than staying here by yourself,” Shane says, and Rozanov hums thoughtfully. 

“Okay. We take my car, then. No need for rental.” 

“Okay,” Shane says, happy to have a plan.

Except then they turn on the news. 

And then they see the traffic gridlock. 

And then they see the footage of the zombies bursting from some tunnel somewhere, chasing down panicked motorists. Rozanov goes to the window and twitches aside the curtain; they’ve had the black-out curtains drawn since Shane got here, neither of them wanting to risk anyone spotting him. 

“Ah, okay,” Rozanov says, stepping back to let Shane look. Shane steps up, squeezes in next to him, and Rozanov wraps an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. 

The traffic in front of Rozanov’s apartment building is backed up as far as they can see. People are running, wearing backpacks, fleeing on foot. Abandoning their cars. Shane can’t see any zombies, but he knows it’s only a matter of time. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“Hm,” Rozanov agrees. “Why don’t you tell your parents that we will have to stay here, yes? I will start meal prep so we will have something to eat when the power goes out.” 

Shane looks at him, surprised. Rozanov doesn’t sound terribly shocked; of course he doesn’t. He’s been expecting this the whole time. Technically, so has Shane, but it feels different. It’s a shock anyway. He feels tears in his eyes, and Rozanov makes an unhappy sound and swoops in. He kisses Shane gently, much more gently than he has so far. 

“Shane,” he says, holding Shane’s face. “Call your parents. I will cook our food. You will get to use your stupid binder to help us stay alive.”

“This is it,” Shane says, swallowing back a thousand other words he wants to say. Rozan–Ilya. Fuck it. Like, what’s the fucking point of pretending he doesn’t—? Ilya leans in and pulls him into a hug. 

“Yes,” he agrees. “This is it. And maybe we could get very drunk and figure out best way to kill ourselves while also fucking, but I don’t think you would like that.” 

“No,” Shane agrees, tightening his hold. Ilya hums and kisses him on the forehead. 

“Okay. So we don’t. We keep going. Yes?” 

Shane pulls back to look at him. Like it’s just that simple. Ilya really is impossible to figure out, sometimes. How did they get from Vegas to here? He thought…well. Apparently he was wrong. Unless it just makes more sense to hold Shane close than let him go right now, given that they’re alone in this, but he doesn’t think that’s it. He thinks maybe he was right the first time, in Montreal, when Ilya fucked him and Shane was thinking that Ilya was kind and gentle and maybe liked him just as much as Shane unfortunately liked him back. Maybe Vegas was the fluke. Maybe the rest of it was real. 

“Yes,” he says. “We keep going.” Together, he can’t quite work up the courage to say. But, like, it’s implied. 

Chapter 2: Weeks

Chapter Notes

Ilya wakes up on the first real full day of the apocalypse feeling, actually, pretty good. Shane Hollander is a warm, beautiful prize, laying half on him, his face pressed against Ilya's chest, fully naked despite his pissy insistence last night that we need to be dressed in case the zombies get in, idiot, because he had fallen asleep like ten seconds after that insistence, and Ilya had been more than happy to let him.

Ilya’s wearing sweatpants, at least, because he figured one of them should be ready to get to the door in case of emergency, and also admittedly because there’s something about it that he likes, the fact that he’s at least a little clothed and Shane is bare and vulnerable, trusting enough to sleep with his back pressed against Ilya’s chest. 

Ilya likes keeping his armor up around Shane. Maybe ‘needs to’ is a better way to put it. He likes stripping armor off Shane, too. It probably doesn’t reflect very well on him, if he really thinks about it, and so he doesn’t. He just presses kisses into the back of Shane’s neck until Shane is finally awake. 

“Jesus,” Shane says, looking down at himself. “Why am I naked?” 

“Well, sometimes, when the two best hockey players in the world are very hard for each other…” 

“Oh my god, shut up,” Shane laughs. He flops onto his back, and he meets Ilya’s eyes so easily now, in a way he never has before. It seems impossible that it has only been a few days, because Ilya has never seen Shane this comfortable with himself, except maybe in the stairwell after Ilya had fucked him into soft, sleepy compliance, a high he’d ridden on for the next six weeks. 

Shane is looking up at him, reluctant grin slicing across his mouth. Ilya kisses him, because he can. Because Shane Hollander is trapped with him at the end of the world, and really, what more could Ilya want? Shane is here. Ilya’s father and brother are a world away, and they are not hounding him for money. Svetana is safe and being cared for. Ilya will probably be dead quite soon, but until then, he will get to have Shane whenever he wants, and he no longer has to pretend that he’s not dying for that. It feels like enough of a benefit to cancel out the rest. 

“News is still on,” he says, trying to say it gently. He feels this weird amount of responsibility for Shane. This desire to break everything to him gently. It’s not like he doesn't think Shane can handle himself. After a shaky start in Vegas, he’s been handling all of this better than Ilya has, considering he went out shopping and went about preparing for the end of the world while Ilya has mostly just been playing PlayStation and drinking everything in his bar cart. 

But Ilya wants to be gentle with Shane. He keeps thinking about Vegas, about the way Shane looked at him when they were in that bathroom. The way Shane’s eyes had been so wet with betrayed tears, and Ilya had felt like a monster but not nearly enough of one to stop reaching for what he wanted. And everything after that has been so odd, unreal. So much like a nightmare. Ilya keeps finding himself thinking about the bathroom and wanting to make up for it in some way. Like that was the last real moment. 

“Okay,” Shane says, clearly confused. 

“So not everything has fallen apart,” Ilya elaborates, and Shane nods, grimaces. 

“Oh, right. But, like. It’s going to.” 

“Yes.” 

“And outside?” 

“I haven’t looked outside. Sun isn’t high enough.” 

“Okay, good,” Shane says, heaving out a relieved breath. They’d both come up with a list of rules last night, which felt like a good idea because creating and following rules seems to be one of the two ways Shane keeps from panicking, generally, based on the scant evidence Ilya has been allowed to collect. 

The other, obviously, is being railed to within an inch of his life, which is Ilya's preferred method, but the rules are probably a good idea anyway, if they're actually going to try to survive this.

And as long as Shane wants to stay alive, Ilya is going to do his best to make sure they do survive it, even if it’s going to be exhausting. 

So, the rules: 

1. Keep the television off at night, and only watch it sparingly during the day, and only with the volume down low. 
2. Do not open the curtains at night, ever.
3. Only open the curtains during the day when the sun is fully out, and move the curtains very slowly, so as to not attract any attention. 
4. No loud sounds, no slamming doors, keep phones on vibrate. 

“I have never had a noise complaint in the entire time I’ve lived here,” Ilya had mentioned to Shane, trying to point out that the soundproofing in this building must be pretty good, but Shane only gave him that cute little annoyed face, and so Ilya had agreed to follow the rules, even though he thought they were silly. 

He did draw the line when Shane suggested they should maybe not flush the toilet as often. He’d said something like if you try to stop me from flushing the toilet, we will be doing murder suicide instead, which had made Shane laugh, shocked.

“And what if I tried to suggest no sex?” he’d asked, still grinning. “Because it’s too loud?” 

Ilya, despite what his father has said many times, is not lazy when it comes to things he wants, and of course is very good at making persuasive arguments especially to people he’s fucking, and so it’s no surprise that that rule never made it off the drawing board. He’d proven easily enough that Shane is capable of being quiet, with the right motivation. 

It was fun, too, watching Shane struggle to keep silent. Fun to slap a hand over his mouth whenever he started to look like he was getting close to moaning aloud, especially since Shane seemed to like it, the same way he had in the airplane bathroom. Ilya, as always when he discovers something that Shane clearly likes, even though Shane would probably rather die than admitting to liking it, filed that information firmly away in the vault of his mind so he can remember to use it later. 

“We should get up,” Shane says now, though he doesn’t move except to shift a little closer to Ilya’s warmth. 

“Mm. Maybe.”

“I should at least get dressed.”

“Eh, no. No clothes today.”

“It's weird that I'm the only one naked.”

“Is hot, actually. Sorry. I think you should walk around like this all day. Rent payment, you know.”

“That might be hot, might be, if zombies couldn’t come, fucking, breaking into your apartment at any moment.”

“Sweatpants will not keep a zombie from eating you, kotyonok,” Ilya says, pleased to use the petname again so soon. He has been wanting to call Shane so many pretty things, but this one is easy, because he can disguise it as shit-talking and not the desperately earnest affection it really is. Shane scowls at him, but he doesn’t object. Ilya feels very, very light. Very happy. He doesn’t trust this feeling.

“No, but it would be so fucking embarrassing to die with my dick out. And then I'd be a zombie with my dick out. And then some random Bostonian survivor will come across me in the street in three weeks and be, like, ‘is that zombie Shane Hollander? Why's his dick out?’” But Shane is laughing now, because Ilya is laughing too, muffling his chuckles in the warm skin of Shane's neck. 

“I don't know, could be good strategy. You distract them with your dick, I sneak up on them, and then we both eat.”

“Oh, you’re a zombie too, in this scenario?” Shane asks.

“Yes, of course I am. I would be very sexy, dangerous zombie, of course. We would be unstoppable together.” 

“We are not roleplaying as fucking zombies, Ilya.”

Ilya laughs at Shane's disgust, and he kisses him quiet, and he starts stroking his fingers gently along Shane's stomach, making his way down to his cock, like he usually does on lazy mornings for himself. He’d probably be doing it to himself now if Shane had left for Ottawa a few days ago like he probably should have. It's more fun to do it to Shane, though. He makes such wonderful noises, and he looks so beautifully wrecked at even just the slightest touch. He really is perfect.

Ilya wonders if Shane even noticed that he called him Ilya, and not Rozanov. He decides not to mention it. He tucks it away, anyway. The sound of it. The way he’d said it so easily. 

“You would make a terrible zombie, even with your beautiful dick out.”

“Are you leading up to a diet joke?” Shane asks, pretending not to already be a little breathless. Ilya smiles savagely. 

“Yes,” he admits, and Shane laughs, and it goes slightly high for a second as Ilya twists his wrist. 

“I fucking knew it. You're so predictable.”

Ilya laughs and leans in and kisses him. 

“Maybe,” he admits. “You make it very easy sometimes.”

Shane lifts his hips a bit, impatient, and Ilya smiles and pulls his hand away completely. 

“Ugh, seriously?”

“What, did you think it was going to be over so quick? Come eat breakfast.”

“I'm not eating breakfast naked.”

“Easier to reach over and touch you whenever I want,” Ilya says, laughing, but he gets up, not really expecting Shane to agree. Shane hums and leans up on his elbows, his cock hard and looking almost as irritated as his face. 

“Is it, like, a thing for you? Me being naked and you not?” he asks. His face flushes red immediately, as if he deeply regrets the question. Ilya laughs and sits back down on the end of the bed, looking down at Shane, unwrapped like a present. 

“I guess yes, maybe,” he says. “I don't think about these things.” A total lie. “But you look good. I like to look at you. You're very pretty.”

Shane blushes, looking even prettier.

“I just mean, like, in Vegas,” he says, then stops himself from going any further, like that's the whole question. Maybe it was. 

“Yes,” Ilya says, feeling a little uneasy. “Vegas.” Shane can sense his mood, like he always can, and his cock even seems to be drooping a little bit. Ilya imagines it making sad trombone noises as it wilts. He wraps his fingers around it again, to be polite, and Shane hisses. “I am sorry for Vegas.”

“What? Why? Don't be– shit, Rozanov. Don't be sorry. It was hot.”

“Yes. Hot. But I know I was not very nice to you.”

He says this earnestly, and he's intrigued when he feels Shane surging back to full hardness under his hand. Oh my god, of course even just talking about being nice gets him hard. What is wrong with him?

“It's okay,” Shane says, still breathy with want, and Ilya laughs and kisses him. 

“My polite Canadian tenant,” he says afterward. 

“Tenant,” Shane laughs. 

“I mean it, though. I was being…I was…” I was afraid. I was acting like an asshole because I was afraid that I wanted to do the exact opposite. Because you came up to me at Sochi and because I saw how happy you were to see me, and it made me fucking sick with wanting in the worst possible place, at the worst possible time, and because I think you are the best and worst thing possible in the world for me. “I was not nice,” he says again, unable to say any of that. 

“You're nice,” Shane argues softly, lifting his hips a little bit, insistent.

“You're just trying to make sure I don't stop this time,” Ilya says, but Shane is good at getting what he wants from Ilya, always, and so Ilya trails kisses down his chest, his stomach, and takes Shane fully in his mouth, of course.

Shane looks very pleased with himself afterwards, at the kitchen island, dressed in Ilya's sweatpants and Ilya's t-shirt. Ilya wants to point out that Shane hasn't worn any of the new clothes he decided he had to go out and buy, but he keeps his mouth shut, because he doesn't want Shane to stop wearing his things. He has realized that he likes letting Shane think that he’s getting away with something, because Shane gets this look on his face like he’s done something sneaky, and Ilya can’t get enough of it. 

It was a problem, in Vegas, that Ilya was thinking that he couldn’t get enough of Shane. It’s been a problem since the first time they kissed, but it’s been especially bad since the first time they fucked. Something about the way Shane looked at him afterward, soft and sleepy, sitting on those steps. Holding Ilya's sweatshirt to his chest like he meant to keep it. Ilya has been with his fair share of people, but something about Shane has been burrowing into him deeper and deeper, every time they see each other, and he hates it. Hated it, maybe. He doesn't hate it very much today, but that's only because the world is ending, and having too many feelings about a beautiful boy hardly seems like the disaster it used to. 

Maybe Ilya is feeling pleased with himself, too. It's not often that he allows himself to have the things he really wants. He sort of assumed he would be denying himself until the day he died. 

He watches Shane as they eat. Shane is sated, happy, wearing Ilya's clothes. Ilya is not so delusional that he thinks he can fuck all the anxiety out of Shane, but he seems to be making a pretty good go of it so far, and it's not like there's going to be much else to do. He’ll get even better at it with practice. 

Unfortunately, Shane doesn't agree with his priorities, because Shane thinks they have a chance at surviving long term, and he starts talking about all the things he thinks they have to do to make that happen. Ilya knows they don't have a chance, and that it’s not going to happen, but he’s not enough of a shithead to burst that bubble. He thinks it might destroy Shane if he tried.

So he nods along with a serious expression, pretending to be impressed when Shane comes up with half-insane ideas about conserving their water by filling up everything remotely container-shaped and maybe setting up water-traps on the building’s roof for when it rains. Ilya says “oh yes, that is a very good idea, Shane,” and he likes the weird thrill of saying Shane's first name like that, like it's allowed. He's not sure why it felt like such a barrier before. It certainly isn't one now. Shane hits Ilya with that devastatingly hot annoyed schoolteacher look over the top of his glasses, and Ilya laughs out breathlessly, wanting, and then he fucks Shane properly on the countertop this time, Shane gasping and whining prettily and still wearing his fucking glasses, and afterward they start filling the containers from the tap, which feels like a good compromise. 

Ilya knows he wouldn't be bothering with any of this if Shane wasn't here. He would be drinking himself to death. He might jump off the roof. Hang himself. He hasn't thought about it since they've been back here, because obviously he wouldn't do that to Shane, leaving him alone. It wouldn't be right. 

So he complains and rolls his eyes, but he helps. He sort of has fun, helping. Shane always looks so pleased with himself when he thinks of new things to help them survive, and Ilya is thinking about how tired he is and about how it would be so much easier to not survive the apocalypse, but for Shane, he'll put in the effort. 

The news is still going, and the internet still works. Shane takes diligent notes on everything the news and the internet has to say about the zombies, and Ilya finds himself helping with that too, despite himself. They learn about the incubation period (no recorded cases longer than twelve hours after being bitten), they learn about the percentage rates of immunity (roughly ten percent of people who are bitten do not contract the virus, though no cause for immunity has been identified as of yet), they learn about the way the virus works (brain death followed by a brain resurrection as something wholly different, meaning that the zombies are dead dead, and there will be no turning them back into people). They learn that the zombies are sensitive to bright lights and are therefore more active at night. They learn that zombies are no faster or stronger than the people they once were, but they are impervious to pain, which is what makes them so difficult to stop. They learn that the best way to kill a zombie is by destroying the brain, although of course anyone who’s ever seen a zombie movie could have figured that one out. Still, it’s good to have confirmation. Despite bitching about how stupid it is the entire time, Ilya finds that he actually does feel better to know the facts, but that just makes him annoyed again, because he has to admit that Shane was right.

Around noon, they finally look outside. The cars are still clogging the street, but no one’s in them anymore. Doors are hanging open. Luggage is spilled on the ground. There are no zombies either, from their vantage point, but Ilya's apartment faces a fairly small side street, so that's not much evidence of anything. 

“Fuck,” Shane breathes out. He only looks for a little bit, and then he goes and sits back down on the couch, frowning at nothing. Ilya stays at the window and keeps watching. He sees movement, halfway down the street. Two people, ducking between cars, whispering to each other as they go. It's comforting to see, but Ilya closes the curtain, because he's afraid of watching for too long. Afraid that his conscience will start demanding that they let these strangers in. 

“Yes,” Ilya says. “Fuck.” And he goes down to his knees in front of Shane and reaches for the waist of his sweatpants. 

“Seriously? You're insatiable,” Shane says, laughing weakly, and Ilya hooks one unimpressed eyebrow up at him. “Um, you always want it. You can't get enough.”

“True, yes. Say it again?”

“Insatiable,” Shane says slowly. 

“Okay. I have a bet for you. If I pull these down and you are not already hard, then I don't blow you, and you can call me insatiable all you want. But I think you will be hard, and then you can shut up. Yes?”

“That's not fair,” Shane complains, and Ilya laughs. 

“I knew it,” he says, and he pulls Shane’s sweatpants down and gasps. “No way! Hollander! He's so happy to see me. You really should let him out more often.”

“More often?” Shane asks, all incredulous delight, but he stops himself with a strangled whimper when Ilya takes him in his mouth. Ilya is very pleased with how this day is turning out so far. He imagines most people are worried about tomorrow, including Shane. Ilya isn't. Not really. He's thinking about Shane's big, beautiful cock and how it feels so good in his mouth and how he wants to make Shane come as many times as possible today, because there's a countdown clock now. The last blowjob he’ll get to give Shane is fast approaching, and Ilya is determined to make up for lost time.  

“You can't just blow me every time I get stressed,” Shane complains, later, a bit hypocritically because he has just very enthusiastically returned the favor. Ilya laughs and pulls Shane into his lap on the couch. Shane seems surprised, but obliges, facing Ilya, looking a little shy to be so close, his face going just slightly pink. He's a heavy, firm weight on Ilya's legs, and it's perfect. Ilya still feels abstractly sorry for Vegas, for the tears in Shane's eyes in that bathroom, and for taking what he wanted and trying not to give anything back. He’s used to being able to have more distance between these things. He’s used to having months to try and shore up his defenses again. Of course he never could have predicted this, but he doesn’t like that his first impulse is always to hurt the things he wants because he doesn’t want to admit to himself that he wants them, and it’s an impulse he will especially have to curb now that it’s just the two of them stuck here. There is no way to retreat, nowhere to push Shane away, unless he wants to make them both fucking miserable. 

Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow and want to dig his claws back into Shane’s soft underbelly, but right now, he doesn’t. He feels instead like he wants to take care of him, wants to keep him from realizing that they’re fucked, wants to keep him happy enough that he doesn’t regret not abandoning Ilya and fleeing to Ottawa when he had the chance. 

“You have complaints about this?” Ilya teases. “I am helping. If I do it enough, then you will get hard every time you get stressed.” 

“Oh, cool, then I can be more stressed because I’ll be popping random boners all day.” 

“And?” 

“And that would be fucking mortifying.” 

“Mortifying.” 

“Embarrassing. Whatever.” 

“And then I blow you until you forget to be embarrassed. I do not see the problem. We can bet on this, too.”

“No,” Shane huffs, but he's looking down at Ilya's collarbone, and his freckles are now offset by a lovely flush. Ilya smiles and kisses him, because he wants to, because he can. 

“Because you would lose,” he teases lowly against Shane's lips, and Shane sighs in such a lovely, exasperated way. God, everything is total shit. Everything. The whole world. But Ilya has this, at least. He maybe is more happy to have this than he was to have the entire world. 

“Maybe,” Shane admits. 

“Big of you to say this.”

“Shut up.”

“Like I don't already know how much you want it. All the time. Insatiable.”

“Insatiable,” Shane corrects his pronunciation politely, and Ilya laughs. 

“Maybe I will remember when you have your glasses on.”

“So glasses and me naked? Is there anything else you're into? So I can be a better, uh, tenant?”

Ilya is surprised by that. 

“This is a very dangerous question. Give me time to think.”

“No, I take it back,” Shane says, but he's laughing again, and there’s no resistance in him at all when Ilya kisses him. 

Later, near sunset, they hear footsteps on the stairs. Ilya's apartment has always been good with sound, and so he’s surprised to hear it until he remembers that it’s not usually this quiet in here. He doesn't like the quiet. He always has the television on or something playing in his headphones. He and Shane both freeze where they’re wedged together on the couch, scrolling through their phones. Ilya is the first to react, putting out his hand to urge Shane to stay back. He can tell that Shane doesn’t listen, because he can hear the soft rustle of his clothing. Ilya is not at all surprised. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, even suggesting that Shane not follow him. 

He presses his ear against the door, closing his eyes and listening. He doesn't know if he would be able to tell the difference in how a person walks when they are a zombie, but he can also hear quiet murmurs, like people talking to each other, and so he opens the door enough to peek out. Shane is unsurprisingly aghast about it, grabbing Ilya by the back of the shirt with both hands like he's planning on yanking him back inside at the first sign of danger.

The stairs are at the end of the hall, just one door down from Ilya’s apartment. They’re on the top floor, so the three people rounding the corner of the stairs and continuing up must be headed for the roof. Ilya recognizes the two men from the mailbox downstairs, from the hallway, from the elevator, but has never talked to either of them. The third person is an older lady named Lauren, with whom he has had several awkwardly polite elevator conversations, because she lives on the floor below Ilya’s. The usual extent of their interaction is that she gives him mildly disapproving looks when she sees him coming home looking debauched early in the morning, but never with any real disgust. Amusement, instead, mostly. Ilya likes her.

Ilya thought he’d opened his door silently, but Lauren stops and turns around when she hears it, and when she sees Ilya, she smiles. 

“You're here! That's good. The more the merrier, right? A bunch of us are heading to the roof to do a little surveillance, see what we can see out there. Do you want to come?”

Ilya looks back at Shane, still hidden fully behind the door, hands fisted in the fabric of Ilya’s shirt. Shane hesitates, eyes flickering over Ilya’s face like he’s trying to figure out how he feels about it. He’s breathing hard, working up to a panic. Ilya is unfortunately very familiar with that look. He rolls his eyes. 

“Yes, okay, I will come. One minute,” he says to Lauren, and he closes the door. Shane is looking like he would rather there were zombies outside. Ilya puts his hands on his shoulders, and Shane wilts gratefully into him, holding onto Ilya’s forearms, like he’s trying to keep Ilya from backing away.

Ilya says, gently, “I am going to the roof. You do not have to come. I will not say anything about you, just that I have a friend staying with me. Lauren is nice lady, I think. I don't think she even knows what hockey is.”

“Okay,” Shane says. 

“But if she does, and she says ‘oh my god, what is Shane Hollander doing here?’ We tell her the true story, which is that I am a hero who saved you in Vegas and brought you here because I am such a nice young man, nothing at all like what the press says about me.”

Shane is smiling a little now, his smile where he would prefer to keep freaking out, but is reluctantly being charmed. It is probably one of his top three smiles. 

“Right,” he says. 

“Nobody cares about stupid hockey rivalry anymore. Most people never cared. It's just…the league, and the fans, yes, okay. But they are not everyone. And it is stupid to worry what my neighbors will think of you here.”

“You're right,” Shane agrees. “I am gonna go put on real clothes first, though. I'll meet you up there.”

Ilya pouts unhappily at him, and Shane laughs again, and heads to the bedroom. Ilya makes sure he has his keys and then slips out the door, closing it quietly. Lauren and the two men with her are still standing on the stairs. 

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says politely. “I wanted to let my friend know where I'm going.”

“You have a friend here?” Lauren asks. Ilya smiles at her. 

“Yes. Not in the way you are implying, though, I think. A friend from work. We were at an event together, and he could not get any other flights, so I let him stay with me.”

“Well, that's very nice of you,” Lauren says, and Ilya smiles even wider. 

“Yes, I say so too,” he says. 

Ilya has never been up to the roof before, and is surprised to find there are plants and some tables and chairs and a patio couch up there. There are more people already spread around, most of them looking over the railing to the street below, but a few people are standing around a glass table, drinking beers and poring over a map. Lauren strides up to a group at the edge of the roof, greeting them with a polite smile.

It’s strange how easily and how confidently she carries herself. Ilya is a little bit jealous of it. He meant what he said to Shane about how none of this matters anymore, but he always feels awkward meeting people for the first time, knowing that some of them will probably be weird about it. If they are hockey fans, they will be weird because of that. If they are not, some people will be weird because of his accent, or because his English still isn’t very perfect. Either way, it will make him uncomfortable, and annoyed that he’s uncomfortable. Annoyed that he cares at all.

When he first moved here from Russia, he was warned that Boston is a particularly passionate sports city, but he has found to his relief that even a city of sports fans has a ton of people who couldn’t give less of a fuck about hockey and wouldn't recognize him even if he was literally wearing his uniform and skates.

He can tell the ones who do, though, even when they're trying to play it cool. He can see the way one man’s eyes go slightly wide when he turns around to greet Lauren and spots Ilya standing behind her. He hears one woman gasp. 

The rest of them, though? Total blankness. That's not too bad, in terms of the ratio. 

“Mr. Rozanov and a friend are also present,” Lauren says, like she's taking attendance for a meeting. “So that's thirty people total that we know are still in the building.”

“I haven't been able to get in touch with Sophie or her roommate. Elena? Ella?” says one of the men who'd been with Lauren. 

“Elizabeth,” says Lauren patiently. 

“Her, yes. Elizabeth. They both work at Boston Children’s, so…”

“Mm,” Lauren agrees, shaking her head sadly. “Anyone else?”

“Mrs. Parsons is in Aruba,” says the young woman who had gasped when Ilya showed up on the roof. She's raising her hand like she's in a classroom. “I finally reached her a few hours ago.”

“Good for Mrs. Parsons,” says another man, jealously. Ilya feels a little guilty that he doesn't know any of these people, and that they're talking about other neighbors he doesn't know. He rarely spends any time here, so there is no reason for him to know them, but still. He goes to the railing and looks down at the street. This is the opposite side of the building from his own, and he can see more movement here. Zombies lurching around quietly. They seem so far away, and they don't seem to notice the people on the roof, but it's still dizzying to think that they're right there, right through the walls. He remembers the terror on the plane, seeing that zombie so close, seeing it so close to Shane, and being unable to move. He remembers the zombies chasing them in Vegas. He remembers the zombies breaking through the fence. He supposes he’s been lucky. He hasn’t had to face down too many of them. Maybe he’ll get used to the sight eventually. 

He’ll have to, if he’s not planning on killing himself any time soon.

“No fuckin’ way,” says someone from behind him, in this particular tone that Ilya recognizes well from the last few years of being recognized in public by Bostonians, and he smiles to himself, knowing what he’ll see when he turns around. He glances over his shoulder and sees Shane standing in the doorway, awkward, looking surprised by the amount of people. “No fuckin’ way. Shane Hollander!”

“Hi,” Shane says, transforming right in front of Ilya's eyes from nervous creature Shane into Shane Hollander, Golden Canadian Hockey Boy. He strides forward, holding out his hand to shake. The guy who had spoken almost trips in his enthusiasm to meet him in the middle. “I'm Shane. Nice to meet you.”

“Robert,” breathes the man, shaking enthusiastically. “I can't believe you're here!”

“Rozanov was nice enough to put me up when we had to escape Vegas,” Shane says, like it's nothing. He sounds so grown up and mature and normal. Ilya leans back against the railing and watches him and thinks that he's going to make sure that Shane Hollander, Golden Canadian Hockey Boy, cries on his dick tonight, preferably more than once. 

“Wow,” Robert says, turning to look at Ilya, who gives him a little wave. “Putting the rivalry to bed at the end of the world. So cool, Rozanov.” 

Ilya immediately doesn’t like Robert. What, does he think Ilya cares so deeply about a stupid hockey rivalry that he would leave Shane Hollander to die? Even if Ilya wasn’t fucking Shane, he wouldn’t do that. He’s not a monster. Why are their fans all so fucking braindead?

“I saw the pictures of you two hanging out the other day,” says the woman who had also recognized Ilya. “I didn’t realize you were still in Boston! I would have thought they’d have you on a private plane to Montreal by now!” 

“Mr. Rozanov, are you famous?” Lauren asks with what sounds like real surprise. 

“He's the second best hockey player in the world,” Shane responds easily, which makes everyone laugh, even if half of them probably have no idea what he means.

“I play hockey,” Ilya answers Lauren, shrugging. “So does he. I just won MVP award, in Vegas. And I won the Stanley Cup for you all this year.” He grins at Shane. “Or did you forget? I know it has been a busy few days.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says happily, and he comes to stand next to Ilya, looking down at the street. It really is amazing, how different he is when he’s in public. Ilya has noticed it before, of course. Shane crumbles so easily into wanting when they’re alone, but in public he is so tense and performative. So perfect. He acts like such a polite, confident, steely person, but Ilya knows better than almost anyone what his mask is hiding. And it’s such an imperfect mask that Ilya is shocked that the rest of the world seems to really believe that it's his real face. He wants to reach out and touch Shane's freckles, grab his hand, shatter that mask intentionally around these people, but they're too close to the edge of the roof to risk that; Shane might hate it enough to jump.

“I can't believe I never knew,” Lauren laughs. “I just thought you were…well. Quite popular with the ladies.”

“Oh, this is also true,” Ilya says. “Many friends. Many fans.”

Robert laughs like they're friends now. Ilya wants to sigh, but doesn't. 

Lauren gets them all back to talking about which neighbors they can get in touch with. Shane listens like he gives a fuck, and Ilya lets him. The young woman who'd gasped at Ilya and had gone nearly catatonic at the sight of Shane is apparently called Bridget. The two men with Lauren are Javi and Lawrence, who are apparently roommates who live on the first floor but have been staying with Lauren on the fifth, because no one wants to stay on the first floor right now. The others introduce themselves, and more people come up to the roof in time, and Ilya watches Shane very diligently memorizing all their names as he shakes their hands and politely introduces himself as a “friend of Rozanov”. 

He watches Shane and Lauren talking, very serious expressions on their faces, and then Lauren starts telling everyone things like that they should all be keeping their curtains closed and their lights off at night, and Ilya has to bite his lip to keep from laughing fondly. When they are finally allowed to go back downstairs, when the sun has started to set so much that everyone is nervous about drawing zombie attention, Shane is quiet. When the apartment door is closed behind them, he seems to make a point of locking it. 

He’s different, back inside, and Ilya is relieved, because he's more like himself, or at least the version of himself that he becomes when he and Ilya are alone. 

“Let's have some food,” Ilya says, and Shane murmurs and nods. He goes and takes a shower while Ilya prepares something. When Shane comes back, he looks tired.

“You are okay?” Ilya asks, unable to stop himself in time. Shane looks at him with surprise. “You seem…?”

“Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Just a lot of people to meet at once, I guess.”

“Mm,” Ilya agrees. “You are very good at that. I am not so patient.”

“Yeah. I guess. Just gotta power through it sometimes.”

Ilya thinks about arguing with him, but can't be bothered. It would mostly be a playful argument anyway, but he can see that Shane is tired, and he can see that Shane hates “powering through it”, and he can see that Shane thinks it's necessary anyway. Ilya hates lots of things that he powers through, so he supposes he can't be too annoyed by Shane doing the same. Ilya goes back to Russia every summer. Ilya always answers the phone when his father and brother call. And Shane is polite to strangers so efficiently that it saps all his energy afterward. Okay, so what? They're both stupid. 

Shane's mother calls when they're finishing up, and Ilya lingers in the background like he always does. He thinks he likes Yuna Hollander. She had been so firm about how he needed to get Shane on that flight in Vegas. It might have felt entitled coming from anyone else, but Ilya knows how easy it is to care about Shane, and he had been so relieved to hear the proof of how much Yuna loves her son, even in that first very confusing phonecall. 

He thinks that Yuna might, despite herself, like that he's with Shane, even though of course she doesn’t know exactly what that means. He thinks that, for her, Ilya is probably what he seems to be on the ice. He will fight for survival, he will claw his way through the zombie apocalypse the same way he cuts through the defenses of every team he plays against. He will be ruthless and violent and efficient, and if Shane is with him, then Shane will be safe. It’s not entirely incorrect, in this case, but of course she couldn’t possibly know that the only reason he wants to stay alive so desperately is because of her, because she woke him up with her phone call in time to save Shane and bring him here. She probably thinks that Shane doesn’t have what it takes to survive a thing like this on his own. She probably thinks Shane will be too good-hearted and too afraid to kill, if he has to. Ilya thinks she’s not entirely correct about either of them, but not entirely incorrect, and he’s glad that he’s with Shane, too. Shane may not physically need his protection, in the sense that he can probably handle himself just fine, but there is something soft in Shane that does need Ilya to guard its back, and that’s the part that Ilya wants to save. This gentle Shane, this quiet Shane, this Shane who turns into Ilya’s arms sleepily at night, trusting him, unafraid of him. Ilya can’t bear to watch that part of Shane die. 

None of this is anything that Yuna Hollander has said aloud, of course, but he thinks he can see it sometimes in the way she always seeks him out in the background of the calls. Like she's thinking oh good, he's still there. He'll do anything to save his own skin, so that means Shane will be safe, too. Which, sure, is not the truth, and maybe he's just reading too much into it, but still. He sort of likes it. He likes that his presence might signal good things to her.  

He tunes out most of the phonecall, not because he wants to be rude, but because he feels awkward listening to their tear-clogged voices as Shane explains again that there's no way for them to get a car, that the streets are completely blocked, and that there are zombies everywhere. He doesn't like hearing how sad and scared the Hollanders are for their son when he knows that neither his father nor his brother will be afraid for him, if they are even still alive. He also doesn't necessarily like hearing their very sweet concern when he's been thinking for hours about how he's going to apply himself to making their son sob with pleasure tonight, but that's a different issue.

When Shane hangs up, he's a bit morose again, and Ilya finds himself wanting to snap him out of it, but doesn't really know where to start. There's the usual way, of course, but Shane’s wilted look makes Ilya worry that he might not want the usual way right now. He'd power through it, Ilya thinks, if Ilya made a move, but he doesn't want to be something that Shane powers through. He wants to be something that brings Shane back to himself, every time.

“Are you okay?” he asks, clumsily, because he can't think of what else to say. Shane looks at him with a kind of guarded surprise. 

“Yeah, I'm okay,” he says. 

“Okay. Do you have anything in your little book about plumbing? How to fix plumbing? That seems like something we should know.”

“Oh, good idea,” Shane says, and he heads for the office. Ilya shakes his head at himself as he takes another bite of dinner. Maybe Shane isn't the only one who's soft. 

Luckily, Shane is still wearing his glasses when he comes out of the office, which at this point is starting to feel like a fuck signal, and so Ilya takes him to bed. Shane still seems tired and a little sad, but he's blushing furiously when he catches Ilya's eye, and so Ilya decides that this is a night for soft and tender fucking and maybe not couch and/or desk and/or kitchen counter fucking. The room is dark, because the sun has gone down, but Ilya knows Shane’s body almost as well as he knows his own at this point. Shane seems a little surprised when Ilya kisses him gently, but he leans into it, and he makes this soft, happy humming sound against Ilya's mouth when he does, and Ilya is proud of himself for getting it right. 

He still wants to make perfect Shane Hollander, Golden Canadian Hockey Boy, cry on his dick, but maybe that can wait until tomorrow. 

In the morning, Shane is more like himself, which is to say he turns bright red as he tries to casually suggest it might be fun if Ilya feels like he can fuck him whenever and wherever as long as they're in the apartment today, and then does that sneaky smile like he's getting away with something when Ilya chooses immediately and right here. There is still clearly something bothering him, but Ilya doesn’t push him, because it would be stupid if there wasn’t something bothering him, considering. Shane’s choice for dealing with his emotions today is apparently going to be sitting around and waiting for Ilya to fuck him, so, okay. It’s not like that will be a chore. It’s not like Ilya is so fucking stupid that he’s going to try to talk about his fucking feelings instead. 

Shane does, after fucking (and after a very intense shower blowjob and a much more casual couch handjob while Shane is “trying to watch the news”) say that they should go down to the building’s gym, because Robert told me I could work out down there, and he seems to enjoy it when Ilya rolls his eyes and says oh, well if Robert tells you to do something, I guess you just do it? 

But Ilya is terrible at saying ‘no’ to Shane now, truly trained out of even the impulse of trying. So they do go down to the gym and work out. Even though they’re the only people in there, Shane won’t let him even come close, which is fair enough. It’s probably a good thing, too, because it builds the anticipation for when they’re back in the apartment and he basically grabs Shane straight out of the shower and manhandles him into bed, which has Shane laughing and breathless and half-hard already. At some point, are their dicks just going to stop working? Are they just going to fall off? Ilya is sure he’s never felt like this around anyone before. It’s like the adrenaline of the end of the world and the adrenaline of having Shane in his bed and in his life after literal years of wanting but knowing he wasn’t going to be allowed to have more have coalesced into something that has him thinking up new ways to corner Shane, new jokes to make to Shane, new ways to get Shane to drop to his knees and beg for it the way he does so prettily. Ilya feels like he’s losing his fucking mind. He’s not sure he hates it. 

Is it strange to think of that first week as idyllic? The world has ended. Everything stops. They see no one but each other and the other residents of Ilya’s apartment building when they occasionally make it up to the roof. Near the end of that first week, the news stops broadcasting, and then the cell service goes, and then the WiFi. On the last call with Shane’s parents before it goes down, they learn that Ottawa has a number of cases in quarantine in the hospital, which will likely be the beginning of the end, just like it was in every other place. Shane’s parents are confident that they will be okay at the cottage, and Shane promises that he’ll try and find a way to get up there once things calm down, and his parents pretend to believe him. Ilya assumes that Shane will want to go to bed early that night, but he doesn’t. He asks Ilya to fuck him, and then they work out a little, and then he asks Ilya to fuck him again, and then he asks Ilya if they can sleep cuddled up on the couch, and of course Ilya does all of it. He jokes sometimes about how Shane will do anything he asks, that he’s such a good, obedient boy. He wonders if Shane has noticed yet just how eagerly Ilya responds to all his requests and commands and wants. 

So Ilya keeps it to himself, the fact that happiness is bursting out of his chest every morning he wakes up with Shane soft and naked in his arms. Every day he wakes up without having to go to practice, get on a plane, fly to some city. He loves hockey, and he misses hockey, but the lack of hockey does not feel so much like a loss, like this, with Shane Hollander as his consolation prize. Shane misses hockey, he knows. Shane is working out more and more, and he is jittery with the lack of hockey the same way Ilya is jittery with his lack of cigarettes, but they suffer through those withdrawals together, and they replace those cravings with cravings for each other, and it’s good. It’s so good. Ilya has always wished for more time with Shane, though of course not in any real, intentional way. He has wished for more time with Shane in the same vague, impossible way that he wishes his mother had never died. Like something that would be stupid to want out loud. 

And now he has all this time. All the time in the world, literally. All his time left until the end, and he knows it makes him unforgivably selfish to be glad, but he is glad. He hides it with the same fervor with which he has always hidden the depth of his desire for Shane, afraid to scare him off. Afraid to hurt him. Because of course Shane cannot be fully happy, trapped here with him. Shane has so many other people in his life that he misses, that he would rather be with. Ilya is not so stupid as to ever forget that, and he is grateful for what he has, and he is careful with what he has. 

It’s easier to be careful with Shane than it used to be, because in the past he was always trying to balance his wanting with the reality of what he knows he can’t have, and he was trying not to let Shane see too much, and he was trying to keep himself distant for reasons that now seem fucking stupid, with the end of the world upon them. Now, he’s gentle when he wants to be, and he’s rough when he wants to be, and yes, of course, they argue about stupid shit and they laugh at each other and they are competitive about even stupider shit, but it feels good to be more careful. To treat Shane the way he has always wanted. To hold Shane close rather than always pushing him away. 

They go up to the roof pretty frequently, because there are usually people up there, and because there are people in some of the other buildings who also go up to their roofs, and it’s nice to know that there are still people around, anywhere. Losing the internet was more of a blow than Ilya had expected it to be. There were stories about some places out west starting to wrest back some control, but those were only rumors, and probably wishful thinking, and now there’s no way to find out if they were the truth or not, and it makes their apartment feel so much like an island if they don't occasionally go out and remember that it's not. 

Shane is good at talking to the other people in the building, but that’s not very surprising. Ilya finds it in him to try some days, and he knows that he would be capable of making these people like him, if he tried, like he did with his team. Ilya has always been good at making friends. He has always been able to make people laugh. He has always been fun. It just feels pointless, most of the time, and he thinks he must be picking up some cues from Shane, because he can feel a pleasant, blandly friendly mask settling over his face every time they interact with the others. Around Shane, alone, in their apartment, it’s different. He can be himself. He can be rude and bitchy and funny. He can be whatever he feels like being. Around other people, especially knowing that Shane is watching and that Shane still for some reason cares about appearances, he feels itchy and uncomfortable. Like he used to feel back in Russia, at all those stupid fucking events his father used to drag him to when he was younger. Dressed up and nodding politely and told to shut up whenever he tried to talk. 

Of course it’s not that bad. The thought of soft warm Shane being in any way comparable to his ice storm of a father is laughable, but it’s similar. A similar feeling. Like he’s hiding. 

He wouldn’t ever say any of that to Shane, of course, because Shane would hear the wrong things. He would hear that Ilya is miserable around other people, and that he only feels like himself around Shane, or he would hear you remind me of my father, which isn’t at all what Ilya would be trying to say. But Ilya doesn’t really know what he’s trying to say, which is part of the problem. His thoughts are too much even for his own head. He's too obsessed. Wants too much. Wants more even than this, when he has been given almost everything.

Some of the others in the building go out into the city for supplies, and they run into other survivors, and they get information that way, and then they share that information on the roof. Ilya wonders if he and Shane should take a turn and venture outside, but Shane never suggests it, and so Ilya doesn’t either. It’s safer to stay inside, even though there’s a competitive flare of something when people like Robert talk about going out into the world and smacking zombies with baseball bats while he and Shane, two professional athletes at their peak, stay inside fucking all day. 

It’s just, well. Ilya would much rather stay inside fucking all day, and he would much rather stay safe until they’re forced to leave when they run out of supplies. The biggest surprise is that Shane doesn’t bring it up, because he would have expected Shane to feel guilty by now. Offer up some of their food for the others. He doesn’t. 

He likes getting the rundown on the state of the city from everyone, though. He listens to all of their stories with a perfectly furrowed brow and a gentle, friendly nod, encouraging them to keep going. There are rumors of roving gangs of survivors who are breaking into buildings and looting them. Harming or killing people who try to stop them. This is, of course, pretty typical of every piece of zombie fiction ever made, which is something that Javi feels the need to point out every time they talk about it. 

“The real villains are always the people,” he says once, with this world-weary smile. 

“The secondary villains, maybe,” Shane agrees. “But the zombies are pretty fucking bad, too.” 

This makes everyone laugh, for some reason. Ilya doesn’t bother. He looks over the edge of the roof and watches the zombies bumbling around down there. He wonders what it would be like to try and make their way out of the city. He wonders if they could make it to Ottawa, or wherever Shane's parents’ cottage is hiding. Shane talks sometimes about the cottage he recently had built. Talks about it like it’s this sacred, beautiful place. Could they make it there? And does Ilya even want to? 

If they leave, if they get up north where there are fewer people and more trees and more food sources, they would be safe. Shane would not look so hollowed-out by his fear. Shane would have his family with him, and his friends. And Ilya would probably have a place there, too. Shane is kind. Maybe he would set Ilya up in some abandoned cottage nearby, and Shane could sneak away and come visit him to fuck occasionally. It would still be more than they were fucking before the end, so maybe Ilya could find it in himself to be grateful for it still. Maybe. It would probably be better for both of them, in the long run, to have some distance between them, but it makes Ilya’s chest feel like it’s caving in whenever he thinks about it, and so he doesn’t suggest leaving, and he feels like a monster for not suggesting it. Like if he really cared about Shane, unselfishly, then he would already be packing their bags. 

 There are other rumors, stories of giant hordes of zombies that roam the city together, and once they get a whiff of something alive, they surround the entire building and beat down the doors with their bloody fists until they break in and devour everything inside. Shane listens to all of this with a oh gee, that sounds horrible look on his face, and afterward, back in the apartment, he asks if Ilya wants to leave. Ilya ignores the sinking feeling in his stomach, and he shrugs.  

“No, not really. But I will, if you want. We could try to…” 

“I want to stay,” Shane interrupts, and Ilya shrugs. 

“Okay. Then we stay.” 

“Okay. You always make it sound so…” 

“Smart? Sexy?” 

“Easy.” 

“It is easy,” Ilya says. He doesn’t know how to say that listening to Shane is easy, that trusting Shane is easy, that wanting to be where Shane is is easy. 

He doesn’t say that he would have been dead already, if Shane wasn’t here. He doesn’t say that he would have walked off the roof by now, or hung himself, or drank himself to death. He doesn’t say that Shane is the only reason he’s bothering with any of this, because how the fuck do you say something like that to a person? You are the sole reason I am still alive. Not because you saved me on that plane, but because I would not have bothered with any of this if you were not here with me. He and Shane have always been casual. Or, well. Ostensibly casual, at least. Allegedly casual. Ilya doesn’t think that’s a normal thing to say to someone even if you’re both openly and equally in love, let alone someone who you have only recently fucked again after not speaking to them for months. 

“Right, sure, it’s easy,” Shane says, sarcastic, and Ilya just shrugs. “What if you don’t let me, like, I don’t know. Come? Tomorrow? Like, until later. But keep me hard like all day? Is that anything?” 

“Jesus, Hollander,” Ilya breathes. 

“What? Do you not want to do that?” 

“Do I not want to do a sex thing with you all day tomorrow while the world is ending? Don’t be stupid. But Jesus. A little warning next time. My dick’s going to get so hard so fast that I pass out and hit my head on the counter.” 

Shane looks extra pleased with himself, then. 

“You know you don’t have to do things you don’t want, right?” Ilya asks nervously that night. It has been building in him all day, a kind of off-centered feeling. He knows it’s probably a stupid thing to say, because Shane will probably never admit to not wanting to do something. But that’s sort of why the worry has been growing within him, because Shane is gloriously stubborn and insistent, and sometimes Ilya worries that he’s pushing him too far. That he’s making Shane feel like he has to keep upping the ante or Ilya will get bored with him. 

He was nervous in Vegas, and then he felt guilty in Vegas, and he hasn’t felt like that since, for the most part, because Shane has been very open with him, but…maybe he’s missing something. Maybe there’s something wrong. Maybe Shane keeps covering up every negative conversation with an immediate suggestion of some new sexual dynamic to try out because he’s uncomfortable and because he thinks sex is the only way to get Ilya to stop noticing. It’s not exactly incorrect; Ilya’s constantly so fucking hard for Shane, always willing to do whatever Shane wants, and he has been allowing himself to be distracted, because why wouldn’t he? But it has been bothering him, a little bit. 

“What? I know that,” Shane says. He’s curled up next to Ilya, snuggled close, the way they’ve been sleeping every night. Ilya, who never thought he’d get to have this even once, has been trying to be normal about it, but he has also been getting increasingly greedy, pulling Shane into his space, manhandling him so that he’s lying over Ilya’s chest, or so that Ilya is lying over his. Shane always seems pleased afterward, but is he pleased? 

“I just mean, all those jokes. You know they are just jokes, right?” 

“What jokes? Rozanov, I am way too fucked out for this conversation.” 

“The, uh. Tenant, landlord thing. Is just joke. You can stay no matter what.” 

Shane sits up abruptly, looks down at him. 

“I know that,” he says. “Did you think I didn’t know that?” 

“No. I did think you knew that, but I started to worry. You have seemed…unhappy?” No, not unhappy. “Sad.” 

“I’m fine,” Shane says, in a tone that means he’s not fine. Ilya’s not a fucking idiot. But it’s also a tone that means drop it, Rozanov, and Ilya doesn’t want to scare him off. 

“Okay,” Ilya says. “I only wanted to…make sure. It has been very sexy when you come up with new things you want to do.” That, at least, seems to reassure Shane, and he lies back down, facing Ilya this time. His hands are tucked under his cheek, and he looks very sweet, and Ilya wants to kiss him, but doesn’t. “I am having a very nice end of the world, with you, Hollander.” Hollander feels weird in his mouth sometimes, now, but he feels like it adds an appropriate amount of needed distance right now. 

“Yeah, this has been okay,” Shane says, and Ilya can make out the shape of his small smile in the dark. 

“So I wanted to make sure you know is okay not to do things.” 

“Okay. I do know. Thank you.” 

“Okay,” Ilya says, still feeling a little unmoored. “You still want to do that thing tomorrow where I don’t let you come?” 

“Yeah. I feel like it’ll be good to work on my endurance.” 

“You are so strange,” Ilya marvels adoringly. 

Ilya does think sometimes about how all of his friends and all of his family are gone, somewhere else. His teammates all took off and went home before the zombies came, which was obviously the right move for them. There was a groupchat for a while, updating each other, but that has obviously gone dark, now. Ilya has been happy with his team, and he has become good friends with some of his teammates, but there was always something impermanent about it. It’s hard to build a life around someone when you know they could be traded whenever. Even his father, his brother, it’s not like Ilya misses them, exactly. He feels sorry that he can’t help them, and he worries, but it isn’t as if he was ever particularly glad to hear from either of them. He doesn’t wish for them the way he knows Shane wishes for his own parents.

He thinks about Svetlana a lot, but he’s grateful for the last conversation they had. Sveta had been safe, happy. She was being pampered by her Italian hosts, and she was on an island. When he thinks of her now, he thinks of her safe and happy in the sunshine, drinking wine and eating pasta on that island forever, and if he never finds out any differently, then that's where she will always be. 

He wonders if she harbors the same delusions about him. 

He wonders if Shane’s parents harbor the same delusions about him. 

He imagines they’re picturing Shane and Ilya loading up a car, picking their way carefully up north, avoiding zombies and people, always drawing ever closer to their cottage. At what point will they stop expecting it? At what point will they stop hoping? 

Ilya knows that it’s pointless to torture himself with these thoughts, just like it’s pointless to wish that he had more people to miss. It’s pointless to think about surviving more than the next day, the day after that, the day after that, until the zombies find them and break down their doors. Sometimes he finds himself getting angry with Shane for existing, for being here, for not leaving Ilya alone. Sometimes he’s resentful of Yuna Hollander for loving her son so much that she thought to call his rival, not knowing what else they were to each other, because how could she possibly have known that she was delivering to Ilya’s hands the one thing that would make him want to try to survive this fucking shit? It would have been so much easier if he could have given up at the start. 

After seven days, the power goes out. 

Shane immediately panics, which is not a surprise. Actually, Ilya feels a little shattered by it, too. That part is more surprising. He can tell himself as much as he wants that he’s been expecting the end from the beginning, but when these things happen, it makes him realize that he’s not as cynical as he has been trying to trick himself into being. Of course there was some secret part of him, some deeply held hope, that things would be fixed, that there would be a cure, that something would happen in time to save Boston in the way that they had not been able to save the west coast or Europe or Asia or anywhere else in the world. Like Boston had to survive because Ilya was in it, and Shane with him. 

He pretends at calm because it breaks his heart to see Shane so scared. He holds Shane’s hands in his own, and he urges him to breathe, and Shane wheezes at him to fuck off, asshole, and Ilya pulls him into a hug and kisses his hair and thinks about how lucky he is to be able to do it, because he is trying to focus on the few positive things that are left to him. Shane clutches him tightly, and he starts breathing better, and he thanks Ilya afterward in a shamed little voice that Ilya kisses away. They spend most of the rest of the day outside on the roof with the others, who are in varying stages of fury and denial about everything, pissed off at the poor luck, because seven days is so short a time for the power to go to shit. Shane talks a few people down from panic as if he wasn’t having his own spiral an hour ago, and Ilya thinks about how fucking boring it’s going to be, sitting around in the dark all day. Lying around in the dark at night. He doesn’t let himself get too close to the edge of the roof, because it’s better not to tempt himself, even though he doesn’t think he would actually do it, and he hopes that Shane doesn’t notice. 

They sleep on the couch that night, Shane a heavy weight on top of him, and they leave the curtains open, because there’s no reason not to, and because the moon is full, and it gives them some light. They’ve slept in total darkness every night since the beginning of the end, but it feels different now that there’s not another option. Ilya stays up late into the night, looking at the moonlight on Shane’s face, and he uses gentle fingers to touch every freckle on Shane’s cheeks, and he counts them, and he wishes that he could stay in this moment forever, even though he is technically alone, because Shane feels more like his to love when he’s not awake, when he can’t look at Ilya with confusion in his eyes, unable or maybe unwilling to interpret Ilya’s gentleness. 

Not that he’s balked at the softer touches in a while, but Ilya still worries about it. He’s not sure how much longer they’ll have to be here together like this before he stops fearing Shane’s rejection. He’s not sure he’ll ever stop. No matter how much Shane seems to like him, no matter how much Shane seems to enjoy being with him, Ilya is always convinced, deep down, that he’s not enough. 

On the tenth day, Shane asks in a deceptively calm voice how much food they have left. Ilya answers that they should be good for at least another couple of weeks, maybe more than a month if they ration it, though they’ll be out of fresh food sooner than that. 

Ilya’s neighbors start leaving the building in droves once the power is out. The building is so dark and claustrophobic, and the city presses in on them, buildings looming, casting them in shadow. Ilya doesn’t blame them for wanting to leave. He and Shane have been spending almost all of their waking hours on the roof, and only going back to the apartment to fuck and eat. 

Lauren is one of the people who leaves, fairly early on. She doesn’t say goodbye, which hurts a bit, except he suspects she’s just an awkward woman who avoids emotional entanglements. She leaves a box of food and some supplies outside Ilya’s door with a note that she’s going to try to make it to her daughter’s house in Needham. 

“Need Ham,” Ilya reads, with a pause that makes the one word into two, and Shane laughs. “What is that? Is that a town?” 

“You’re the one who lives here.” 

“I live in Boston. I don’t know any Need Ham.” 

Shane laughs again, and Ilya basks in the sound. 

Another day, Shane starts knocking on apartment doors as soon as the sun is high enough in the sky to allow light through the narrow stairwell windows to dimly illuminate the hallways. There are only five occupied apartments left now. One of Shane's many printed out tutorials was about lockpicking, and the first time he manages to pick the lock on an apartment door, he’s giddy with it, turning over his shoulder to look at Ilya, who has been holding a flashlight steady for him. Ilya thinks about pretending not to be impressed, but what would the point of that be? He smiles back, just as giddy as Shane, and grabs his shoulder to shake him a little bit, enjoying the way Shane lets it happen, head bobbling around on his neck as he ducks his face, made bashful by the earnest encouragement. 

I will tell him he’s perfect every day. I will encourage him every day, if it will make him smile like that. 

Ilya promises himself these things a lot, but he has a terrible track record of actually following through. He is still so careful with Shane, and it annoys him. He wishes that he could be more open with him, because he thinks that that is what Shane deserves, but he has never really learned how to be that for another person, and he thinks it might take longer than a little more than a week, no matter how fucking weird that little-longer-than-a-week has been. 

So Shane picks the locks of the empty apartments, and he and Ilya go into all of them, and they gather the food that was left behind when the occupants never made it back. Of course Shane insists on bringing some of the food to the other people who are still in the building, but he consents to keeping most of it for themselves. Shane takes things he likes from those empty places, and it makes Ilya’s heart clench in an uncomfortable way, because he thinks it means that Shane has realized that things aren’t ever going back to the way they were.

They don’t talk about these things. Ilya is afraid to talk about these things. He’s afraid of dampening Shane’s spirit. He’s afraid he’s going to wake up one day and Shane will simply not want to get out of bed. He doesn’t know how he’ll keep them both going if Shane isn’t the one driving it. 

But Shane must realize that everything is over, because he steals a hand-knitted blanket from one apartment, and he steals batteries, and he steals flashlights and sweaters he likes and shoes he likes and he steals handwarmers and scarves and pillows and toothpaste and condiments and seasoning and skincare products. Ilya lets him, and he doesn’t say anything about any of it, even as his apartment fills with clutter. 

He doesn’t complain about all the blankets on his bed, or about all the pillows. They snuggle up close, and he can feel when Shane’s breath starts getting faster, more panicked, and Ilya reaches under all those blankets and he wraps his fingers firmly around Shane’s cock, and Shane gasps and arches back into him, grinding against him, and Ilya says “okay?” and Shane answers, “yes”. 

If Ilya ever asked, he knows that Shane would be able to tell him exactly how many days they spend in that apartment together. He knows it's more than a month, probably closer to two. The plumbing still works for now. It's not cold out yet, so it doesn't matter that they don't have heat, and it probably won’t ever matter because of Shane’s many, many blankets. 

The days blend together for Ilya. There are a few sparkling ones that stand out. 

They have been keeping their phones charged with a portable solar power generator that Robert left behind on the roof for everyone to use. It’s a piece of shit, but Shane insists, because they want to be able to get messages, if anything ever comes through. And Ilya unfortunately has to admit that he was right, because they get cell service back for a few hours one day, for some fucking reason, and they both jump out of their skins when a Facetime call comes in from Shane’s parents. Shane doesn’t even bother putting a shirt on before he picks it up. Ilya lurks in the background as always. The Hollanders are all crying, and Shane sounds so desperately sad and sorry that he isn’t with them, and it hurts to listen to. Ilya excuses himself to try Svetlana, but a message says that her phone cannot be reached. He does have a few new messages from her, but they look like they were sent almost a week before, and only got through now, in this weird miracle hour when things have decided to work again. He replies to them anyway, just in case. Throws them out into the universe. Maybe, eventually, she will read them. 

There is the day one of those gangs passes through Ilya’s neighborhood, and Shane and Ilya stay silent, sitting on the couch, holding onto each other as the men laugh and whoop outside and shoot at zombies while they break into the building across the street. The gunfire attracts more zombies, and they have to retreat, and for the next three days, he and Shane are on edge, terrified that those men will come back to try and loot the rest of the neighborhood, before they finally allow themselves to relax. 

The first day when things feel normal again after that also stands out as a good day. Shane smiles at him over breakfast, laughs at one of his jokes with his nose wrinkled up cutely, lets Ilya fuck him for the first time in three days. A very good day.

There is the time Shane finally agrees to stay completely bare and at Ilya’s mercy for the entire day. One of the best days, probably, because Shane is so red and embarrassed the entire time, but he doesn’t shy away from Ilya’s hands and he doesn’t shy away from Ilya’s eyes, and he has this defiant little tilt to his chin that makes Ilya say too much. Sweetheart, my love, darling, my heart, all in Russian, which Shane laps up, because of course he still thinks that Ilya is calling him all manner of depraved things, which means it's safe. 

There is also the day Shane asks Ilya to start teaching him Russian. 

“I’m bored,” he complains. “And there’s nothing to do here, and I always liked learning other languages.” 

Ilya agrees, because why not? He likes the way Russian sounds in Shane’s mouth, and he doesn’t have to teach the real meanings of the little petnames he has been recklessly bestowing. Shane is still struggling through remembering the words for things like door, table, kitchen. Any time Ilya calls him something sappy and too revealing, Shane will ask what does that mean? And Ilya just has to tell him that it’s too advanced for him. I will tell you later, when you have learned more, Ilya will say. The context is so important with these things. And Shane will nod very diligently, because he has no idea how good a liar Ilya can be. 

The only petname Shane knows for sure is kitten, and he allows it with an eagerness that makes Ilya want to recklessly tell him the rest, like maybe the rest wouldn’t be as unwelcome as he fears. 

There are good days, and there are sad days, and there are many, many boring days. They can no longer use the gym because it has no windows and has become a dark tomb of pointless equipment, but Shane goes for looping jogs on the roof, and he jogs up and down the stairs, and they do very quiet weight training using the equipment they stole from the gym and moved into their living room. 

“We’re almost out of food,” Shane says one day, and Ilya is sure that they have come to the end of the good days. 

 “Okay,” he says when Shane brings it up. Shane is looking at him very seriously. 

“So we have to go out and get more.” 

“Okay,” Ilya agrees. 

“Which will be dangerous.” 

“Yes.” 

“So I think we have to start accepting that maybe this isn’t our best bet, long-term.” 

“What, surviving?” Ilya asks, surprised to hear Shane say such a thing. Shane looks at him like he’s not making sense. 

“No, the apartment. I think we need to find a new home.” 

He sounds like he thinks Ilya is going to have a problem with leaving this place behind, but in all honesty, Ilya is getting tired of the dark. It’s dark even during the day in here, and he thinks he might be going a bit crazy with it. 

“Where do you want to go?” he asks, because he knows Shane, and he knows that Shane wouldn’t have brought it up if he didn’t already have at least half a plan.

Shane reveals a map he must have taken from one of the other apartments. It’s actually a cutting board, with a map painted on it. It’s Massachusetts, but a cartoony, stylized version of it. Instead of town names, every region has been labeled with some sort of joke about that area. Ilya doesn't understand most of them. They are totally cryptic. One of them just says youse guys. What does that even mean?

“Oh, I see. You want to go here,” he says, pointing to the tip of the curve of Massachusetts, where there is a little rainbow-colored area labeled “P(enis)-Town” in sparkling pink letters. 

“Shut up,” Shane mutters, smacking his hand away. “I’m thinking here.” 

He draws Ilya’s attention further up, just north of Boston, where there is a little island connected to the rest of the state by a thin strip of land. 

“Okay. What is that?” 

“I don’t know, but there's only one way in and one way out. I’m sure there are already people there, because it’s an obvious spot to hold off a zombie horde, but it’s not very far, and I think there’s a chance they’d let us in.” He looks at Ilya pointedly. “There’s got to be at least one Raiders fan there, right?” 

“Okay,” Ilya agrees, easier than he expected to. “Are you sure we cannot go to pink sparkle penis place?” 

“It’s too far,” Shane laughs. “Not that I’m not curious.” 

“I think you are past curious, kotyonok,” Ilya jokes, and Shane laughs again, and kisses him.

So they will be going to a stupid not-island just north of Boston, but Shane hesitates when it comes to setting a date for their departure. He goes through all of their supplies, and he seems content to wait until they’re on the verge of starving to death. It doesn’t feel very much like Shane. Ilya knew Shane well enough even before the end of the world, and he certainly knows Shane now, and he knows that Shane would much rather get ahead of things. So he thinks Shane must be afraid. Not like he can blame him; Ilya is afraid, too. Neither of them have been outside, other than on the roof, since the day Shane went shopping. That feels like a lifetime ago. 

He’s not surprised when Shane insists they work out even more. It’s like being back in training before the season. Ilya finds that he doesn’t actually mind. He likes giving Shane orders, and he likes when Shane follows them, because Shane is so beautiful and so eager and so willing, and it always makes Ilya’s heart clench. But truthfully, he likes doing what Shane tells him to do, too. He likes when Shane says we should work on our cardio more, so we’ll be able to outrun them. He likes when Shane says you should focus more on weights so we make sure we pack a punch if we have to swing at them. It’s good to have a purpose, a direction, and it’s good to see the way Shane smiles at him when he listens.  

He has always pretended not to like the routine and the difficult physical work of training, but he has always secretly enjoyed it. He craves it now, especially. He likes having something to work towards, now that everything is at an end. He likes eating whatever he can get his hands on to help him bulk up, especially now that they know they’re going to be leaving soon and can’t carry much food with them. They’re down to the least appetizing of their rations, but Ilya eats it all mostly without complaint, and even Shane is shoving down stuff he never would have eaten before. 

“This is horrible,” he says, fascinated, as he looks down at the packaging for some of the shelf stable rations he’d bought at that camping goods store. 

“Yes, it tastes like chalk,” Ilya agrees, but he takes another bite, and he grimaces, and Shane smiles at him. Sometimes he feels like he and Shane have been abandoned on a deserted island, like they are the only people left in the world. Sometimes they hear gunshots outside, or screaming, or the moaning of zombies, so he knows that isn’t true, but it’s easy to feel like it especially at night, huddled together in their bed. 

It is the one thing Ilya is definitely going to miss: their bed, with just the two of them. This place where it’s only them, where Shane feels comfortable doing increasingly unhinged sexual experiments with Ilya, because what does it matter if it ends up being bad or stupid or weird? They’re together at the end of the world. No one matters but the two of them.

He thinks about being on the road, not feeling safe, making their way to this island where there will be people who don’t know them. Will they be able to have their own home? Will he be able to kiss Shane there? Will they care? Will Shane care? Will Shane even want to kiss him if they aren’t in this hermetically sealed environment? 

“You’re thinking too much,” Shane says to him, one of the last nights before they’re going to be leaving. Ilya knows that this is probably true, and he entertains a wild moment where he thinks that he might just tell Shane, or ask him. Will you still want me? How do you want to play this? Are you still afraid of anyone seeing us talk to each other? Or does it bother you less now? 

He shrugs. 

“I can be quiet sometimes,” he says. 

“You know that you also don’t have to do stuff you don’t want to do just because I want to do them, right?” Shane asks. Ilya laughs, charmed by the nervousness in his tone. The quiet shame. 

“There is nothing I would not want to do with you,” he says honestly, and he thinks that Shane sort of melts happily at the words, but it is very dark, so maybe Ilya is just seeing what he wants to see.

Shane is the one who prepares everything when it's time to go, of course. They spend a final night in Ilya's apartment. Shane is wild with wanting, and begs for Ilya in a sweet, desperate way he hasn't in a while. Ilya is furious when he's being shaken awake later, told that he has to get up. Like Shane isn't the reason he needs, maybe, fourteen more hours of sleep. 

Still, he gets out of bed, and he doesn't complain. These last months have been a lovely dream, but it's time to wake up.

Shane has pre-packed both bags already, sleeping bags rolled on top and strapped in. The fact that he has already done this with no input from Ilya should probably be annoying. Ilya trusts him, though, and so he isn't annoyed. He knows Shane will have packed the important things. He knows that Shane has his binder with all their information. He will have packed their phones and chargers. He will have packed flashlights and batteries and water bottles and the water purification tablets and the firestarters, in case they need to use them. He will have probably packed their wallets and passports even though those things don’t matter anymore. He will have thought of everything. 

It is nice, Ilya has to admit, to be taken care of sometimes. 

Shane makes them both tape thick magazines he'd stolen from some old lady's apartment around their wrists and ankles, so nothing can bite them in the areas where their skin might be exposed. He's carrying a baseball bat, and he has several knives of varying sizes hanging off his backpack. Ilya will not tell him that it's sexy, but it is. It's also sexy that he spends some time before they leave doing yoga, stretching out. Ilya really wants to fuck him one last time, because he’s pretty sure they’re both going to die today, but he knows Shane would be irritated to be delayed, and so he doesn’t suggest it. 

At the door, they both hesitate. They look at each other. They know they have to leave, but that doesn't make it any easier. Inside is a known quantity. Everything outside these doors will be harder. 

“Okay?” Ilya asks. Shane swallows and nods. 

“Okay,” he agrees. 

Ilya remembers those people he saw on one of the first days, ducking between cars, looking terrified. He wonders if he will look as afraid as they did, as he and Shane stand in the lobby of Ilya's building and scan the street outside for any movement. Ilya has one of his machetes in hand, and Shane is holding his baseball bat. They keep looking at each other, checking in, making sure that neither of them are freaking out. It actually isn’t a surprise to Ilya that Shane seems to be holding up okay. Shane freaks out about stupid things that no one else would freak out about, but when the pressure is really on, or when something is really important to him, he locks in. Ilya has noticed it about him before. Like he channels all his anxiety into minor problems so he is drained of nerves when it comes time to tackle the major ones. 

Shane talks a lot as they wait to feel safe enough to go out there. He’s mentioned to Ilya a few times that he tends to talk a lot when he’s nervous, but Ilya isn’t sure he’s ever seen that side of him. He’s certainly seeing it now. Shane runs through everything that Ilya already knows about the infection rates and the percentages of possible immunity. Ilya lets him talk, but he doesn’t listen to the words. It’s almost like meditative white noise, listening to Shane go on and on. Shane would probably be insulted if Ilya told him that, so he won’t, but he wouldn’t mean it as a negative; he likes it. It makes him feel safer, knowing that Shane cares about these things so much. 

“Anyway, those were early numbers, so who knows if it’s even accurate?” Shane says finally, after delivering a monologue, and Ilya hides his smile in the neckguard that Shane insists he has to wear. “The important part is that any exposed skin should be treated as a liability, because that’s exactly what it is.” 

“Shane, kotyonok, please breathe,” Ilya says, and he pulls Shane into a hug. He kisses him on the lips, and then on the nose, and then on the forehead. “It will be all right.” 

“You’re such a fucking liar. You think we’re gonna die in like two seconds.” 

Ilya laughs, a little abashed. 

“Maybe,” he agrees. “But maybe not. If anyone can keep us alive, I think it is you.” 

Shane breathes through his nose, huffing a little, making his angry kitten face. 

“You’re trying to make me want to be competitive about this.” 

“I do not think I have to try at that.” 

“No,” Shane grumbles, admitting it easily, if reluctantly, clearly embarrassed. Ilya wants to kiss him again, but he thinks they will never leave if he they keep kissing, and he doesn’t want to get undressed again. All these fucking layers. 

It’s hot when they finally get outside, and humid. Uncomfortable especially with all the shit they’re wearing. It feels like wearing pads off the ice. His backpack is heavy, and the stupid magazines on his wrists and ankles are already chafing, but he says none of this. It smells fucking horrible outside. It usually does, even on the roof, but it's far worse down here. He doesn't say this either. Shane is coiled so tightly, and Ilya doesn’t want to push him. 

He feels annoyed, and too slow, and almost like he's swimming through a fog, though he knows that at least part of that is just the fear that's thrumming through him. He's hyperaware of every sound, especially because there are so few of them. Crows cawing and footsteps running, echoing off the buildings around them and sounding probably a lot closer than they really are. There’s even more distant screaming, and the popping sound of gunfire. There are some moans, some rustling sounds, trash blowing in the wind like in an apocalypse movie. Mostly, though, it’s quiet. Shane looks at Ilya, and Ilya looks back at him. 

“Ready?” Shane asks. Ilya doesn’t answer, but he nods. It feels less like a lie if he doesn't speak it. 

They move down Ilya’s narrow street quickly, keeping out of the way of the cars clogged and abandoned in the road, afraid that anything could be hiding between them. They don’t run into any trouble, though, and it’s a relief to come out to a wider road, where the cars aren’t as tightly packed, and where the sidewalks are wider, allowing more of a buffer, and hopefully more warning if there are any zombies nearby.

Shane keeps looking over at him, checking on him, and that's nice, too, even though it makes Ilya nervous. One of Ilya’s only real contributions to this whole endeavor is that he has watched so many zombie movies in the last few years. He loves action movies, anything loud and flashy, and most zombie movies fall neatly into that category. So when they were planning for this excursion, he was thinking of all the things that trip the characters up in zombie movies. He was warning Shane about trusting anyone, and he was telling Shane to look out for dark alleys and the spaces between cars in the street, and he was telling Shane to never let his guard down. Shane smiled and humored him and nodded along earnestly, like Ilya’s contribution to their survival amounts to anything more than watching mostly bad movies and remembering the things in them. 

But it’s the other conventions of zombie movies that are fucking with him now. Shane looks at him and smiles at him in this particular way, and Ilya keeps thinking of how in zombie movies, this is always the part where some fucking zombie comes out of nowhere and rips the throat out of the protaganist’s girlfriend. And maybe Shane is the girlfriend or maybe Ilya is the girlfriend, but either way one of them is going to get fucking obliterated, because that’s what happens in the movies. 

It’s entirely possible that Ilya is freaking out. 

It’s annoying, because he usually doesn’t do that. Shane is the one who does that, and Ilya has gotten very good at talking him down from it, and it would be nice if that could transfer over to himself, but it can’t, and he feels like a hypocrite. How many times has he said to Shane that it’s not stupid, that he doesn’t mind talking Shane down from whatever he’s freaking out about? And now he finds himself hoping that Shane doesn’t notice that he’s close to snapping, because he doesn’t want to bother him. Doesn’t want him to be upset. Doesn’t want to be the reason that they get delayed. 

He’s also a little irritated that Shane can’t tell that he’s freaking out, but that’s a whole other thing. A very unfair thing. He has been hiding his feelings from Shane for almost as long as he’s known him, so he can’t be irritated that Shane can’t magically see through him now, even though he feels like he has gotten so good at interpreting Shane. He can’t feel defensive. He can’t feel like Shane should know what his little fucking petnames mean. He doesn’t want Shane to know, and so it’s stupid to be so hurt by the fact that Shane doesn’t. It’s just that he’s still so confused about what this is going to be, now that they’re not going to be alone anymore. He’d found himself growing more and more irritated over the last few weeks, the difference in the way Shane treated him when they were alone and the way he acted when they were on the roof, with the others. Not like he expected Shane to drop to his knees and start sucking his dick in front of all those people or anything, but the way he was still playing at being Shane Hollander, Perfect Canadian Hockey Genius even two months into the apocalypse was so fucking annoying. He always stood on the other side of the roof from Ilya. He always smiled at him with that blank fucking PR smile. It made Ilya feel like he was chewing glass. 

It was stupid of Ilya to fall for Shane Hollander in the first place. This is exactly the kind of shit he was trying to avoid before Vegas, and in Vegas, and only couldn’t avoid after Vegas because it was literally just them in his apartment for weeks together. Maybe it would have been pointless to try avoiding falling for Shane after all those days together, with Shane so perfect and willing and lovely and always wanting him, always. But it softened him, made him weak. Made him delusional enough to think that what he and Shane have is something that can survive the presence of others. 

And now they’re leaving that safety, and they’re going out into the world, to this fucking island that Shane has picked out, and Ilya just keeps thinking what will he be like, there? Around other people? What will he allow? What will he want? 

And he’s thinking of Ottawa, of Shane’s parents, because of course he knows that Shane will want to try and get to them eventually. If he really thinks they’re still safe up there, in that cottage, then maybe he will want to go find them, and maybe he will want Ilya to go with him, and then maybe Ilya will be expected to stand in the background always, hidden away in some guest room for Shane to sneak in and fuck whenever he feels like he can get away with it. 

And it’s fucking annoying. 

It’s annoying that he wants more and it’s annoying that he doesn’t know how to ask for it, and it’s especially annoying that he’s terrified that he won’t get it. And it’s the most fucking annoying thing of all that he’s thinking he’ll still go to fucking Ottawa to be ignored and hidden away and treated as a casual friend in public, because it would still be better than being without Shane. 

Shane looks over at him, brushes his gloved hand against Ilya’s arm, like he’s grounding himself with Ilya’s presence, and Ilya hates himself, hates resenting Shane, because he knows that none of it is Shane’s fault. It’s his own stupid fucking heart, wanting things that are impossible. 

They take down their first zombie at the end of twenty minutes or so of walking, which is making Ilya feel a little more optimistic. Those videos on the news had always been of these giant swarms, these massive hordes, but it takes them twenty whole minutes to run into one. Maybe most of them have died off by now? Maybe they’re distracted somewhere else? 

This one seems slower and more shambling than the ones they saw in Vegas, and Ilya knows that Shane is mentally going to be taking notes about it. They’d wondered about this, wondered if the zombies would eventually slow down, starve to death, if they hadn’t gotten anything to eat in a while. It certainly looks a little ragged, stumbling onto the sidewalk in front of them. It’s locked in on them, though it doesn’t appear to have eyes anymore. Maybe it doesn’t need them. It sniffs hungrily, and Shane’s footsteps stutter a bit, like he’s surprised. 

The zombie has emerged from a narrow alley between a convenience store and the old apartment building next to it, and Ilya grabs Shane’s arm to keep him from getting any closer until they’re sure there are no other zombies following it. 

“Hollander,” he says warningly, and the zombie moans loudly, eerily. Its voice is rusty with disuse, desperate with hunger. It shuffles forward, moving faster now. Ilya shoves Shane back, and he swings his machete as the zombie reaches out its hand. 

His machete cuts through the thing’s hand like he’s trying to cut through bread. It hardly even seems to notice. Ilya backs up, blinking down at the dead hand on the ground. The zombie's blood is black, the smell fucking awful, putrid. Like even its blood has rotted. 

Shane steps forward and bashes the zombie's head with his baseball bat, knocking it to the ground and then slamming the bat into it three more times like he's chopping wood, until there’s no head left to smash. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, like it was nothing, even though Ilya is sure that isn’t true. Or maybe it is, and Shane has mentally prepared himself for the reality of having to do this shit so well that it actually doesn't bother him. He didn’t freeze up, the way Ilya did. He didn’t risk their lives because he was too fucking startled by the fact that swinging at a zombie’s hand with a machete resulted in that hand fucking coming off. He blinks at Ilya like he’s not sure why Ilya is still standing there, frozen. Ilya is so envious of him, so awed by him, so confused by him. Why can Shane handle this, of all things? Ilya almost wants to laugh. 

“Yes. Okay,” Ilya says, and he wipes the black blood off the machete, using the zombie’s tattered jeans. Shane watches him carefully, brown eyes huge. Ilya can’t bear to look at them. He thinks he might be ashamed. 

He tucks the machete back into the loop of his backpack after making sure to put the protective covering over it, the way Shane showed him. He takes out his baseball bat from the other loop, instead. He doesn’t think he can cut off another hand anytime soon. 

“That’s one for me,” Shane says with a small, nervous smile, like he thinks Ilya is going to tell him he’s disgusting, but like he thinks there’s enough of a chance that it’ll help that he’s willing to say it anyway. Ilya can’t help but smile. 

Fuck. I would do anything for you. 

“Oh, I see,” he says aloud instead. “It's a competition now.” 

“Well, yeah,” Shane says, smiling wider. 

“Okay. Yes, you have one. Don’t expect me to take it easy on you.” 

“Fucking same, obviously,” Shane replies. 

It does get easier to take the zombies out. He knows that he has Shane to thank for that, as he has Shane to thank for so many things. They’d talked about killing the zombies a lot, in the lead-up to leaving, and Ilya understands now why Shane had been so insistent on drilling it into them both. 

Before the internet went down, Shane had read all the papers that were published in those first frantic days, when everyone believed there was still a hope of a cure being found, or at least a hope of the tide being turned enough to save the parts of the world that hadn’t already fallen. Ilya doesn’t think he could have read those papers even if they were in Russian; they were so full of technical terms, and so boring. He’s not sure Shane understood as much of them as he was pretending to, but he’d at least read comments discussing the papers on the forums on which they were posted, and Ilya trusted his summaries. 

The findings were always so fucking bleak. The zombies are dead. They are no longer the people they once were. Total brain death. There is no coming back. Even if people rally enough to find a cure, once the zombie has been “reactivated”, it is dead. Shane had belabored that point, mentioned it over and over again, insisted on calling zombies it, and now Ilya understands. It would be impossible to use his baseball bat to smash in the heads of these people if he thought there was still a person in there. Now, like this, it feels like a mercy. After they do it enough times, hours of walking through the streets that first day, it starts to be almost fun. Almost. 

They find a narrow convenience store that has its door still propped open by a chunk of brick. It’s still a few hours before sunset, but they’d discussed already that they would take their time picking through the city, and they would make sure to find a place to hole up long before dark. This place seems like as good a choice as any. 

Shane looks at Ilya, arching one eyebrow, and Ilya nods. It is sort of nice, sometimes, that they can communicate now without words. There’s an argument to be made that maybe they always communicated best without speaking. But the way they can talk to each other now with arched eyebrows and tilted smiles reminds Ilya a lot of the way he was with Svetlana. Like they have packed years of shared history into a scant few months, just by virtue of being stuck together for every second of every day. It would be thrilling if it wasn’t so fucking depressing. Maybe it’s thrilling anyway. 

Shane picks up a small rock from a piece of broken curb on the sidewalk, and he rolls it into the store while Ilya stands with his baseball bat at the ready, but nothing moves inside. Ilya picks up a bigger piece of curb and does it again, and makes sure that it rolls further, and still there’s nothing. 

Another wordless exchange of opinions, spoken with half-shrugs and rolled eyes: Shane’s all for it, and Ilya’s more cautious, but he agrees it’s probably going to be okay. 

Ilya leads the way, and Shane follows, and they make sure to look through the entire building before they move the chunk of brick and close the door. The hinges squeak a little from disuse, but nothing seems to have been attracted to the sound, and they can breathe again. 

The store is small and cramped, and there’s still a surprising amount on the shelves. Bags of chips and pretzels and all kinds of snack foods, plus first aid supplies and stuff like paper towels and toilet paper and cleaning supplies. There are some empty spots on the shelves, but not as many as he would expect to see considering the door was literally left open. The front window remains unshattered, unlike a lot of the buildings on this street. There must have been looters going through at some point. Maybe this place was just small enough to escape most of their notice. 

They have a good time going through the shelves. Ilya is thrilled to see a bunch of energy drinks in the long-dead refrigerators, and he chugs a Monster while Shane looks on, disgusted. Shane looks happy with some protein bars and some trail mix he finds, and he’s more than happy with his little bottles of ginger ale, and Ilya likes to see him happy, so it’s nice. 

There’s a bathroom behind the stockroom, but the water doesn’t work anymore, which is disappointing. There are lots of water bottles in the store, some in the refrigerators and some in packages on the bottom shelf in one of the aisles, and so they haul some water into the bathroom so they can use it to wash up, and so they can use it to flush the toilet. Shane is pleased with all of it, this happy little expression on his face. He’s smug that they survived one single day out in the world, and Ilya wants to make fun of him for it, but doesn’t. It’s too precious. There’s always tomorrow to die, anyway. 

Next to the stockroom, behind the counter, is a tiny office with a fairly sturdy door and one window way up on the wall. It’s an obvious place to sleep for the night. They crack the window a little bit to let in some air, because the room is sweltering after so long closed up. Ilya watches out the front window of the store to make sure there’s nothing out there while Shane meticulously packs their new food and supplies into their backpacks. More than watching the street, Ilya mostly watches him while he does it, admittedly. Shane’s hard to look away from, especially when he’s focused like this. It reminds Ilya of what he was like on the ice. 

Do you miss it? Shane had asked once, maybe a month and a half in. Hockey? 

Not really, Ilya had replied, even though it was mostly a lie. One thing he always misses about hockey is Shane, though. Playing against Shane. Seeing that spark in his eyes. Seeing that stupid, smug smirk on his face when he finally wins something and is gleeful to hold it over Ilya.

Ilya loves hockey. Hockey was an escape, a purpose, a way to honor his family and to remember his mother, because she was the one who taught him how to skate. It was a way to provide for his father and brother and his niece, and it was a way to make them proud, even though they never were. It was a way to get to America and to surround himself with things that he never would have been allowed to have back home. 

Things like Shane. 

But hockey was not everything for Ilya. He knows that it’s different for Shane. It sort of worries him, sometimes, how different it is. He wonders if Shane feels like his purpose has been taken away from him, and he wonders if this is going to be enough for Shane. If just living, without hockey, without striving to be the best, could ever be enough. 

He supposes it’s like if Shane had sustained a career-ending injury, or something, but he doesn’t know how Shane would have survived that, either, so he doesn’t like to think about it too long. It frightens him, and it makes him want to smother Shane in attention and affection so that Shane knows he’s wanted, or maybe it just makes him want to watch Shane quietly all the time so he can make sure that Shane isn’t slipping away somewhere that Ilya cannot follow. He doesn’t think he would ever be able to say these things to Shane, because Shane would probably look at him like he was crazy if Ilya ever asked, but maybe Ilya just doesn’t want to think of Shane as being capable of the kinds of thoughts Ilya has had since he was a child. Shane seems too innocent for it, somehow. Like he would say but I need to survive for my parents and never consider dying just because the thing he loves most in the world is gone. 

Ilya is probably just being maudlin. He’s probably just afraid and he’s turning that fear into something harsh and ugly, as always. 

 Shane unrolls his sleeping bag in one corner of the room, like he thinks Ilya is going to unroll his sleeping bag on the other side and they can lie next to each other like fucking puritans or something. Ilya rolls his eyes and bends down to unzip it and lay it flat, and then he unzips his own sleeping bag and lays it on top, like a blanket, so that they can share. Shane watches with an expression like he never would have thought of doing the same thing, but Ilya doesn’t look at that expression for too long, because he doesn’t want to overthink it. He thinks maybe he should have asked Shane, first, or maybe just been an adult and slept in his own sleeping bag, but he doesn’t want to do that. If he starts asking Shane what Shane wants, he knows that Shane will give him the answer that he thinks Ilya wants, and Ilya doesn’t want to be in a separate sleeping bag. He wants to be in Shane. 

They both agree wordlessly to turn in before it even properly gets dark, because they’re both tired and stressed out and because it’s not like there’s anything else to do. They strip off most of their clothes and their zombie gear in the stockroom, leaving only their pants and t-shirts, neither of them feeling comfortable enough to strip down completely, or put on pajamas. They give themselves half-assed sponge baths with the water bottles and paper towels and some shower gel from the shelves. They block the door to the office with the desk, and they close the window, and then the room is sweltering again, but it’s nice to feel protected, even though it’s weird being on the ground floor, knowing how close the zombies are. They lie on Shane's sleeping bag, and they cover themselves with Ilya's, and Ilya palms Shane through the front of his pants while Shane hitches his hips against Ilya's front, and they both get off like that, with Shane biting the side of his hand to keep quiet and Ilya breathing into Shane's neck. 

“We don't even have a shower,” Shane laments quietly, and Ilya breaks out the wet wipes he’d grabbed off the shelf, thinking ahead for once in his life. Shane looks at him with starry eyes, like Ilya has offered up some grand romantic gesture, and Ilya laughs into his shoulder and kisses the back of his neck again and again. Shane falls asleep first, and Ilya tries to stay awake, listening to every sound. He feels like he should stay up through the night, keep watch, but Shane is too perfect and comforting in his arms, and so he eventually falls asleep. 

It takes them most of the next day to get out of the city proper, because they are walking so slowly and so carefully and because they have to take so many breaks to bash zombie brains into soup. They get lucky in that they don’t run into too many of them, but there are a few close calls where they have to outrun groups of zombies that have gotten too big to handle. Fortunately, the zombies continue to be slower than they were in Vegas, and less coordinated. Shane is giddy about it, and says that it’s proof that they’re starving to death. Ilya thinks he and Shane are just in better shape than former people who have been wandering around in the elements for several months. Either way, they manage to keep out of the way of any larger groups, and Ilya is five up on the zombie killing tally, so he’s having a good day. 

He does wonder idly, sometimes, if his father and brother and niece are zombies. He wonders if anyone will find them in Moscow and offer them mercy. He wonders if the news was maybe wrong when they said that these zombies aren’t really alive anymore, that they’re not really people. He wonders if they’re trapped inside their bodies, and it just looks like they’re dead. Shane said over and over again that the zombies are dead, that there’s no coming back, but maybe he was just trying to comfort himself as much as he was clearly trying to comfort Ilya when he said that. 

They have to lay low in an alley for a little while, near noon, because they hear engines approaching. They exchange glances, and they both nod, and they scurry off the street and hide, crouched beside a dumpster that reeks horribly of bloated old trash. Shane stuffs his nose down his own shirt, which is cute enough to briefly distract Ilya from his terror. Ilya keeps a hand on the back of Shane’s neck, squeezing it the way he has often done in the last few months when he can tell that Shane is on the edge of panic. 

The engines resolve themselves into louder roars, motorcycles pounding down the sidewalk, music playing loud. Shane’s breathing gets heavier, and Ilya pulls him closer, pulls Shane’s head down to his shoulder, and shushes him very gently. There’s gunfire and this horrible loud laughing, and the engines roar until they are fading away, gone, down the street. They don’t have to talk about it; they both remember the rumors that people brought to the roof, in those early days. Groups of people looting and stealing their way through the city. They could be the nicest people on the planet, but they would still be a liability, Ilya thinks, and he suspects that they’re probably not the nicest people. 

They stay there for a little while longer, curled together. 

“Okay?” Ilya finally asks, when they can no longer hear the engines at all. 

“Yeah,” Shane answers, like it’s crazy that Ilya would even ask. “We gotta be more careful. I don’t think I want to run into those guys.” 

“No,” Ilya agrees, and he feels this wave of protective fury coming over him. No, he doesn’t want to have to face down the kinds of assholes who’d ride motorcycles down the sidewalk in an apocalypse, firing guns at the sky for no reason. He doesn’t want to have to subject Shane to those people, especially. He suddenly feels that they’ve made a mistake in leaving at all. What if they get to this place Shane is taking them to and it’s just more fucking assholes? 

But when Shane says he’s ready to start walking again, Ilya just nods, and kisses him, and then follows. 

Finally away from the looming skyscrapers and the choking claustrophobia of too many buildings clustered in one place, they make their way further north. Before sunset, they find themselves on a wide street along the coast, and there are multifamily houses and apartment blocks spread out around them. The air is cooler, the breeze off the ocean a comfort, and there are no zombies as far as Ilya can see. There are a few dead zombies on the road, and the street is still largely packed with cars, but it’s still sort of nice. Nicer, anyway, than what they’ve spent the last few days walking through. 

Shane eyes the houses critically, and picks one seemingly at random. He is probably weighing safety options, but it’s fun to imagine that he’s just picking out one that looks nice. It would be very Shane to do that. When he finally does decide on one, he makes sure that Ilya is following him, and then he heads towards it. 

Ilya, of course, is following him. 

He likes Shane like this. Confident and sure of himself in a way that he so rarely used to be anywhere but on the rink. It’s probably unfortunate that he likes all sides of Shane. He likes when Shane is anxious and teary-eyed and clearly out of his depth, but Shane’s confidence is sexy too, and definitely healthier. It makes his heart clench happily when Shane is comfortable enough to ask for what he wants, or to just do what he wants. It makes him feel like he must be doing something right, to make Shane feel comfortable enough that he doesn't overthink how Ilya will react to something. 

The house that Shane picks out is nice, old. It looks like something that would be in a movie. Shane says it’s Victorian, and he talks about window details and the front porch and the shape of the shingles, and Ilya rolls his eyes and doesn’t give a fuck about any of it. The house looks intact, the windows all still secure, and that’s really all that matters. He thinks it’s a good choice because it’s close enough to the ocean that the waves are loud enough to drown out the sound of their footsteps, and will probably be loud enough to drown out any other noises they happen to make once they’re inside. As they walk through the front yard, Shane points out that there are no cars in the driveway, and that one of the windows upstairs is open, which makes him think that no one has been back since they went to work the day of the end. Ilya supposes he’s probably right, but he still insists on approaching cautiously. Shane rolls his eyes. 

“I’m not a fucking idiot, Ilya,” he says, though gently, and it makes Ilya laugh despite himself. 

They knock on the windows lightly at first, and then more loudly. The houses are spread a little further apart here, so they’re able to keep an eye on the yards around them to make sure that they aren’t attracting any zombies, and they both breathe easier when nothing responds to their knock, either from inside the house or from the yards around it. The front door faces a side-street that’s surprisingly empty; there aren't any abandoned cars until further down, where it joins with a bigger street. It gives them an even better view of the whole area. It’s the least claustrophobic Ilya has felt since they left his apartment. 

He thinks it would be nice to stay here tonight, with the ocean so close and everything else so far away, but he’s willing to follow Shane’s lead on it, knowing that Shane will probably have more specific considerations for a good place to stay than “view of the ocean” and “nice bed”. He's relieved when Shane apparently agrees with him and picks the lock to let them in. He’s getting even better at it, of course, because he has been practicing, and because Shane will always get better at whatever he puts his mind to, which is annoying but very sexy of him.

They leave their bags by the front door and check every room very carefully, moving together in silence until they’re positive that the house has been abandoned, and then they start securing the exits, making sure all the windows are unbroken and pulling down all the curtains on the ground floor so no zombies can see in.

He does worry, briefly, about those guys on motorcycles they heard earlier. They probably came from this direction, right? They might have been the ones who killed those zombies further up the road. What if they come back through and notice that the curtains are down? Considering they were bombing down the sidewalk whooping and hollering, Ilya figures they probably aren’t the observant type, but it’s still something to consider, and he knows that Shane is worried about it, too, because Shane keeps freezing, cocking his head to one side, like he’s listening. Like he’s afraid he can hear the motorcycles coming back.

By some miracle, this neighborhood still has power, and so once they lock the house back up and block all the doors with heavy furniture, they strip down and shower together with hot water for the first time in more than a month. One of them should probably be on lookout, but neither of them suggest it. The hot water is so wildly refreshing that Ilya almost doesn't bother jerking Shane off about it, except then Shane turns to face him, and Ilya sees that he's hard. Insatiable, he thinks happily. 

After they’re dressed, Shane fills a basin with hot water and some detergent from the laundry room and leaves their old clothes to soak, like they’ve been wearing them for a week and not just a day. He wants to tease Shane for being such a neat freak, but he doesn’t. It’s sort of nice to watch Shane work. He’s so fussy and annoyed and huffy about the smell and about the blood from the zombies they’ve killed, and Ilya likes watching him. He could watch him forever. 

The house is old, and it creaks when they walk in certain places, especially on the stairs. It reminds Ilya of being the big house in Moscow when his father isn't there. Like there should be a family in a space this size, but the family is gone, and has been for a while. 

There are pictures of children and grandchildren and dogs on the walls, and a black and white wedding photo of a young man and woman with giant smiles. Ilya likes to think maybe they drove to be with one of those children, or maybe they are in Aruba with Mrs. Parsons. Anywhere safe. 

They left plenty of food in the fridge, but of course all of it is bad by now. The real win is the approximately ten thousand cans in the pantry, and Shane finds even more in the basement. 

“They were into pickling,” he says happily when he comes upstairs, holding a jar of something very unappetizing swimming in purple liquid in one hand. 

“Are we sure they did it right?” Ilya asks, and Shane laughs. 

They eat a real lunch for the first time in days, and they pack up a bunch of the cans to bring with them. Ilya searches the entire house for a gun, thinking of those men on motorcycles again and thinking that it can’t hurt to be prepared. He looks in all the likely hiding places, and he finds plenty of loose cash and some presumably important documents, but no gun. The medicine cabinet, at least, holds a lot of prescription drugs. Ilya leaves Shane sitting on the bathroom floor, flipping through the section of his little binder that talks about medicine. He’s wearing his glasses, which would usually mean that Ilya wouldn’t leave his side, but Shane is very studiously looking up every medication to see if it's something on his list of useful items, and so Ilya leaves to do another pass through the bedrooms, feeling very boring and mature and hoping that Shane saves him from it soon. 

He finds a cool old leather jacket in one bedroom, brown and beaten-looking, and he happily steals it. It won't be warm forever, and he knows how bitter the Massachusetts winters are. Admiring himself in the mirror in the master bedroom, he realizes that he hasn’t bothered to shave in a few days, and he doesn’t like the growth on his face. He shaves in the bathroom downstairs, and he feels better, at least until he sees the disappointment that Shane doesn’t bother to hide. 

“Oh, I thought it was a good look,” he says when Ilya laughs. 

“Okay, well, you shave every morning.”

“Yeah, because I hate feeling anything on my face,” he replies, like it’s obvious, and Ilya, well, loves him. 

It's a troubling realization. It makes him quiet for the rest of the night. Shane is talking on and on about different options for the long term, what items from the house he wants to try and bring with them, about how they should remember this place and come back if the island is a bust. Ilya thinks he nods and says most of the right things. You are so boring and oh my god who gives a fuck? Things like that. Shane seems happy enough, and he doesn't seem to notice that Ilya is feeling any different, and that might be the most troubling thing, because Ilya is realizing that he really isn’t feeling any different. It’s just that he’s put a mental word to it, now, and he’s not sure how to take it back, or if he even wants to.

He keeps worrying at that realization in his head like when he was a child with a loose tooth, prodding at it with his tongue. 

He can't really love Shane. It's just that they've been stuck together, and that their whole worlds have narrowed to each other. It’s just that he has woken up every morning now for like two months with Shane in his arms, and he has fucked Shane and given him many very enthusiastic blowjobs, and he has been introduced to the fact that Shane Hollander is a bit of a freak when he allows himself to be. Ilya has rarely had that level of comfort with anyone, in his entire life. Of course he’s going to be tricked into thinking that it’s love. 

And if it was love, and if he was going to decide that he was in love with Shane, wouldn't it be during an important moment? And not just because Shane absently remarked that he shaves every day because he doesn't like the feeling of facial hair? Like who the fuck cares? Why would that be it?

And yet there it is. Terrible and final and etched into Ilya's brain against his will, and no matter how much he tries to convince himself that he’s just tired or just confused or just fucking mindbroken by the apocalypse, it sits there, haunting him. 

“Are you okay?” Shane asks, later, as they get undressed and ready for bed. They’ve decided to sleep in the master bedroom, in the big bed there, instead of doing something probably smarter like sleeping on the floor of the living room in their fucking sleeping bags, because of all the easy exits. They pushed the old antique dresser in front of the bedroom door to give them another layer of protection, and everything is dark and perfect except for the streetlights outside that are still, somehow, working, and now Shane is slowly losing layers in front of him, and Ilya is going to fuck this up, somehow. 

Why can't he stop thinking about it? He knows himself. He knows it’s not actual love. It’s just that the apocalypse is weird, and it makes everything feel more serious. It’s not like they’ve even really been themselves in all this time, because Shane Hollander’s normal personality isn’t ‘personal kept sex kitten’, and Ilya’s normal personality isn’t ‘clingy slug who can’t let his hookups out of his sight for more than a minute without developing anxiety’. Things are just weird, and his brain is all fucked up from years of wishing to have more time to take Hollander apart and then miraculously/terribly getting that time, at the expense of literally every other aspect of his entire life. They’re both dealing with things in their own way, and apparently for Ilya that means deluding himself into thinking that he’s in love with Hollander, and that’s fine. He can deal with it. It doesn’t have to change anything. It doesn’t have to make him weird. 

“I’m okay,” Ilya decides. He pulls Shane into a kiss, because he can, because he wants to. He thinks back to Vegas again, because he thinks back to Vegas a lot. It was the last normal day, sure, but it’s more than just that. He still feels guilty for it, even though he hasn’t brought it up again. He knows that Shane wasn’t particularly bothered by it, or at least not bothered enough by it for those feelings to last, but it bothers Ilya now in a way it probably wouldn’t have, except for all this. 

He thinks about Vegas, and he thinks about how if the world was still normal, he probably still wouldn’t have seen Shane again since then. What would have happened? Would he have texted Shane? Would Shane have texted him back? Would they have ever met up again, or would Shane have said, fuck it, I’m done, I don’t want to do this anymore? He’d looked so close to it in that bathroom. So close to leaving Ilya behind completely, except he hadn’t, and Ilya had been too weak to resist him. 

It’s stupid to wonder about what would have happened if the world didn’t end, because the world did end, and everything is different now. So maybe he should stop holding himself to those arbitrary lines. I can’t love him, because it doesn’t make sense. I barely know him. They’ve had only each other for real company for months now. How much better does he have to know a person? 

There are new rules here. Different rules from the old world. He just has to work around them. 

It’s a bit like when he first moved from Moscow and was on his own in a whole new country. Massachusetts wasn’t just America in the way he'd been learning about America, or at least Boston wasn’t. He never spent much time in the towns outside the city, but the city itself became his home so quickly. Learning the new rules and realizing that he was allowed to be himself here in a way he wouldn’t have been allowed in Russia, knowing that his father couldn’t keep tabs on him all the time, knowing that it wouldn’t have mattered even if he did…Ilya remembers one time walking into this weird little bakery solely because one of the cupcakes in the window was decorated with a rainbow flag, for Pride Month. The woman behind the counter was kind, a little older, and cooed over him like he was a lot younger than he was, especially when he briefly forgot the English word for rainbow in his pathetic nervousness. He finally manged to ask for one of the rainbow cupcakes, and he ate it standing outside on the sidewalk, in full view of anyone walking by, and it was such a childish, impulsive moment of rebellion. Fuck you, papa. I can eat this rainbow cupcake and no one will stop me. 

There was still hockey, obviously, and people still cared in hockey, but the world was bigger than hockey. Boston was bigger than hockey. Hockey wasn’t everything. Not to him, anyway. 

He thinks hockey is still everything to Shane, but Shane hasn’t said anything about hockey since the end, and Ilya understands it. It’s like how he talks about Russia less the more he feels the tug to go back home. Shane, he thinks, has developed his entire personality and all his hopes for the future around hockey, around playing hockey, around being the best at hockey, and now hockey has been stripped away from him before he could even win his own Stanley Cup, and he probably doesn’t talk about it because he thinks Ilya will mock him if he does. He’s probably right, but that doesn’t mean that Ilya doesn’t feel a little guilty about it. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Shane asks. He looks like he would rather be talking about anything else. It makes Ilya smile, the fact that he asked anyway. 

“Yes,” he says, more firmly. “I am okay.” 

He kisses Shane, then, and Shane breathes out a relieved sigh, which makes Ilya laugh again. Is he more relieved that Ilya is going to fuck him or that he doesn’t have to try to talk about emotions anymore? Probably it’s a bit of both, and Ilya loves that too, tragically. 

Maybe it’s fine. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s not like Shane can read his mind, and so Ilya can be allowed to love him inside it, as long as he keeps it quiet. After so long living together, it’s not like Shane will be surprised by anything. He knows how badly Ilya wants him, and he knows how Ilya is tender with him, and really, it feels sometimes like he has loved Shane already, and for a lot longer than ever made sense.

So, okay. He loves him. Whatever. It doesn’t have to change anything. It doesn’t change anything. None of it matters, because they will be dead in days, maybe weeks, maybe months, if they’re incredibly lucky. So why not love him?

Shane seems content to be fucked gently tonight, which is good, because Ilya is tired, and because he wants to fuck Shane gently, too. He thinks maybe he could convince Shane to spend another night here, and maybe tomorrow they can get up to some freak shit so they can balance the scales a little bit, but Ilya’s unfortunate realization feels like the kind of thing that’s not going to change anytime soon, so he doubts that will work to calm him down any. Shane will probably say something like maybe you should tie my wrists together and tie me facedown on the bed all day like it’s just a casual fun suggestion for a new hobby, and maybe now it will just make Ilya love him more, instead of making him appropriately horny and also impressed that Shane is admitting to wanting these things when before the zombies it seemed like he thought the idea of admitting he liked dick even to the person whose dick he specifically liked would literally kill him. 

In the morning, Shane comes downstairs wearing his glasses, and he kisses Ilya on the cheek when Ilya presents some breakfast, and he says, “I think we should spend another couple of days here as long as the area is clear. I think we should eat as much of this food as we can. We don’t know when we’re going to get another chance.” 

“Okay,” Ilya says, pretending to be neutral about it, and Shane is clearly pleased. Did he think Ilya was going to be harder to convince? 

Ilya looks at him a little sideways, considers that Shane doesn’t look like he’s been doing any reading. 

Does he think that I only agreed so easily because he’s wearing his fucking glasses? He hides a smile in the crook of his elbow. Why does that do it for him so much? Shane is so pathetic. 

Shane spends the rest of the day going through inventory and flipping through his binder while Ilya does push-ups and reads some smutty paperback from the old woman’s collection and watches the street from all the windows to make sure that no zombies are getting close. Occasionally, Shane will look over at him and hum thoughtfully, and then they’ll fool around, and then they’ll go back to what they were doing before. It’s not like it was at the apartment, which felt safer. It felt like they could fuck whenever and whereever, and it was never scary or fraught with anything. Here, Shane never even takes his shirt off. There are too many windows, and they’ve opened up the curtains a bit to let in some sunlight, which is nice. It’s light in here, airy in a way that his apartment hadn't been. But the downside is that the openness makes Shane more restrained. Makes him hide himself away. In some ways, that’s even hotter, because it means that when Shane looks over at him and hums, it’s only after he has been restraining his desire for a while, and there’s something so fucking good about the fact that he loses that battle every time.

That night, Shane allows Ilya to take him apart thoroughly, allows himself to be naked and curled up happily in the sheets afterward, and Ilya is relieved. He lays Shane out in their bed, and he kisses him and covers every inch of him and he makes sure that Shane knows that he is all Ilya’s, that he will always be Ilya’s, even if he is still too afraid to put that into words. 

They end up staying for three more days. On the third day, they hear a crack of a gunshot early in the morning, far too close, and they huddle by one of the windows, staring out in the direction they think it came from for almost an hour before they decide that no other gunshots are coming. Three zombies wander out of the neighborhood behind them and meander down the road towards the sound almost casually, but no more shots follow, and Ilya can breathe again. 

“I don’t hear any motorcycles,” Shane whispers, as if he thinks his voice will carry. 

“Might be different people,” Ilya agrees. “Most people who lived this long probably have guns.” 

“True,” Shane sighs. “But we should probably avoid them, right?” 

“Yes,” Ilya replies quickly, leaving no doubt. Shane’s tone says that he could be convinced either way, but Ilya can’t be. 

He brought it up to Shane when they were first preparing to leave the apartment, back when he was trying to prove his worth by talking over everything he knew about zombie movies, everything he knew about apocalypses. He’d complained about it, even, because it’s his least favorite part of the genre: humans are always the real monsters. 

That’s always, like, the point, and he hates it, because he knows that humans are bastards. He’s very much aware of that. He just wants the flesh-eating creatures to be the real villains for once. 

But of course it would happen in real life, too, because those portrayals in fiction come from somewhere, and they come from the fact that when society falls and when people aren’t being kept in check by things like laws and police and fucking shame or whatever, there are always going to be people who become the worst versions of themselves. 

Ilya hates the thought of running into people who have no reason to be kind. He hates the thought of being at their mercy, and he hates the thought of Shane being at their mercy even more. He tries to express that in a way that doesn’t sound too much. He says very reasonable things like it’s too risky, Hollander and not everyone is made of Canadian politeness like you. He doesn’t say you are too precious and I don’t want to lose you and I’m terrified that those monsters would take one look at you and realize how easy it is to hurt you. It would make him sound like a possessive freak, and even though Ilya thinks that is likely exactly what he is, he doesn’t want to fucking advertise it. 

Shane still looks torn, and he looks like he feels guilty for not immediately running out and seeing if they can help whoever fired that single bullet, and Ilya spends the entire day tense, wrapped up in his own fear, because he knows himself well enough to know that if Shane suggests looking for those people, Ilya will probably, eventually, cave. 

“We should probably keep moving tomorrow,” Shane says that night, when they’re getting into bed, and Ilya tries to pretend he’s not glad. 

It is a bit sad to leave the house behind. It was nice to have a safe place for a couple of days, and Ilya sort of liked pretending. This is our house, and we are not hockey players, just two men who love each other and are rich enough to afford a house like this just barely north of Boston. Not in any conscious way, but just in how he’d let his heart swell whenever he walked into the living room and found Shane reading on the couch, or in how he’d feel so soft getting into bed with Shane every night, turning back the covers, chatting about whatever they wanted to do tomorrow. 

They eat breakfast together, eating some more of the food that they’re not going to be able to carry with them. Shane tidies up afterwards, which is so cute that they have to fuck about it. Shane takes a much longer shower than Ilya, after, sighing mournfully about losing the hot water. When they head outside, it almost feels like they never entered the house at all. Like time paused for them while they took that break for themselves. 

In the house, in one of the bookcases, the couple who used to live here had some kind of old encyclopedia, and Shane ripped out a few pages that he thought would be useful, most importantly a detailed map of Massachusetts. They now know that the not-island they’re looking for is called Nahant, and Shane points to roughly where he thinks they’re standing.

“It shouldn’t take us more than a few hours to get there,” he says, and then he laughs a little. “It shouldn’t have taken us two full days of walking to get here, but…” 

“But zombies,” Ilya agrees grimly. 

“Yeah. That.” 

They stick mostly to the broad street, maybe it’s a highway? Ilya isn’t sure. It runs along the coast, and it’s nice. The wind is colder than it has been, and it keeps them from getting too immediately sweaty, even with all their stupid layers. Ilya is thinking that they probably should have looked around in that neighborhood for fucking bicycles, at least. That would have been easier than walking. Maybe next time they stop, he’ll mention it. 

They’ve been walking for almost two hours when he hears it. It’s an odd sound, like something has cracked, or shattered, behind him. His first thought is that Shane’s bag has finally ripped from the pressure of all the shit he’s packed into it, and that something has fallen out, hit the pavement. He turns to look where Shane has been following him, a few feet behind him, but Shane is already looking back at him, eyes wide in panic that Ilya doesn’t understand, at first.  

“Go!” Shane yells suddenly, breaking into a run, pushing Ilya forward, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him along, and that’s when Ilya understands. 

It was a gunshot. 

It was a bullet hitting the street near them. 

Which means it wasn’t a mistake, or a shot being fired nearby. It means that someone is fucking shooting at them. 

Another one rings out, as if to underscore Ilya’s horror, bullet thudding into the dirt to the left of them. Ilya finally regains full control of his legs, and he follows as Shane sprints, already scrambling to get off the street and up the slight berm into one of the neighborhoods clustered on the other side.

At least they’re terrible shots, Ilya thinks, and then there is searing pain, and when he puts his foot down to take his next step, his ankle will not hold his weight, because there is a fucking bullet in it, and then he’s tripping, and then he’s slamming, face first, into the pavement. 

“No!” Shane yells, but not in a way that makes him sound upset that his very sexy fuck buddy has just been shot. He sounds like he’s scolding a bad dog. Ilya almost laughs, but can’t around the breathless pain. He pushes himself up onto his hands and knees. His head swims, but he thinks he managed to protect most of the impact with his arms. Wetness trickles from his nose; probably blood.

“Keep going!” he yells, but Shane is already running back towards him. Another gunshot, close enough that chips from the road fly up and sting Ilya’s face. All Ilya can think is go go go Shane what the fuck are you doing Shane is going to be shot right in front of me Shane is going to be killed because of me, just go go go. 

Shane is pulling him up, wrenching Ilya’s arm almost out of his socket as he yanks it over his shoulder. 

“Go! Go!” Shane is yelling at him, and Ilya almost passes out when he tries to put weight on his injured leg, but he doesn’t, because he can’t, because he can’t let Shane get shot too. He hops, leaning on Shane as much as he can stand to, slurring out apologies that probably don’t make very much sense. He’s never felt pain so bad in his life. He’s afraid to look down and see what his ankle looks like. His foot drags along behind him sometimes, slides along the ground when he can’t get the air he needs, and every time it feels white, scorching heat, his ears literally ringing with it. 

It feels like a miracle that no other bullet hits them. Shane leads them up the grassy incline, half-dragging Ilya, who stumbles and trips and almost falls, and then pulls them down several dizzying side streets until they are certainly out of sight of whoever was taking shots at them, hidden in this rabbit warren of houses.  

Shane makes them keep going, grimly silent, longer than Ilya would have. Behind them, around them, Ilya can hear the sounds of interested zombies, roused by the sounds of the gunfire, or maybe by the smell of Ilya’s blood. Ilya suddenly feels very alive and very scared to be alive. Shane is holding him tight, and he turns his head to check behind them once, and when he turns back to the front, he presses his lips desperately to Ilya’s temple, and Ilya’s ears are muffled and ringing with pain, but he can feel the shape of his words keep going please keep going I know I’m sorry I know it hurts please keep going don’t stop please keep going we’re almost there we’re almost there we’re almost there. 

Ilya keeps going, because he can’t deny Shane anything, even at the cost of his own pain, and that has always been true, he thinks, and it's even more true now, now that he knows…

There are voices shouting somewhere, and then more gunshots, and Ilya thinks they sound far away, but it’s impossible to tell with his ears still not working right and his head still swimming like it is. He can tell that there are multiple shooters, this time. Shane shoves Ilya into a narrow space between two close-together houses, but the gunshots aren’t anywhere near them, and there are no signs that they are being shot at, and Ilya lands in a tangled lump on the dead brown grass and gravel that amounts for a yard in this neighborhood, swearing creatively in Russian as he hits the ground. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I'm sorry. Hold on,” Shane babbles, and he’s falling to his knees in front of Ilya and is rolling up his pant leg to see the damage. Ilya looks once and decides not to look again. He’d known, of course, that it wasn’t just a graze, or maybe just a ricochet of a chip of stone, because he felt the way his bones ground together when he tried to walk on it, but that doesn't make it any easier to look at. He thinks it’s very unfair, but he’s still glad that he’s the one who was shot. He has been sort of afraid, all this time, that Shane would be the one to get hurt, or die, and that Ilya would have to pretend for Shane’s sake that he would valiantly soldier on alone, which of course was not something that was ever going to happen. This, technically, is preferable, though it doesn’t feel like it at the moment, especially with Shane looking at him so close, with those big, terrified brown eyes.

Who is going to hold him through the night when Ilya is gone? Who is going to whisper to him that everything is all right? Who is going to help him when he’s afraid and wants to pretend not to be afraid because for some reason he’s convinced that he’s good at hiding his fear? Who is going to make sure he stays alive and eats enough and doesn’t get lost too deeply in his own head? Who’s going to suck his dick and fuck him like he needs? Shane deserves to be treated softly and gently and like a treasure, and no one can do it better than Ilya. 

It seems very unfair that he will be leaving Shane alone. Ilya has never really worried about his own death, in all of this, because death to him has never been a very scary thing. I will either see my mama again, or nothing will happen, and either way I will be fine. He doesn’t see the point in worrying about it. It’s an ending. An escape. It’s fine. He would have felt sorry about leaving Svetlana behind, once. Worried about his father, maybe, about what would happen when Ilya was no longer able to send the money. But now he sees Shane looking at him in terror, and he can feel his heart shattering at the thought that Shane will be all alone here. 

“It’s okay,” Ilya says, panting. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, malysh. It’s okay. It’s fine.”

“Do not call me a slut right now, oh my god,” Shane seethes tearily, and Ilya laughs, lets his head fall back against the gravel. 

“I was lying, fucking idiot. Means, uh. Baby. Babe. Whatever.” 

“What? Fuck you. Stay awake. I have some gauze in here. Why would you lie about that? What did that other shit mean, then? Oh my god you’re such an asshole. Do not close your eyes. It’s your fucking ankle. You’re not going to die of a shot ankle you dickhead.” Shane gives up on trying to neatly pick through his backpack with shaking fingers and drops it on the gravel next to Ilya and flails through it, knocking shit everywhere. Ilya manages to sit back up, at least, and he grabs Shane’s hands before they tear everything up. He worked so hard on that stupid binder, and he’s going to get blood on it if it falls out now. 

“I don’t think gauze is…” 

“No, fuck you. Shut up.”

“Come on. Hollander, look at me.” Shane doesn’t. Gets that mulish look on his face that he does sometimes, usually on the rink, and he keeps going through his bag like Ilya is trying to distract him during a face-off. Ilya touches his cheek, brushes a thumb along his freckles, and Shane startles like a spooked cat and looks at Ilya with already-wet eyes. “You need to go,” Ilya says. He’s trying to be very gentle and very self-sacrificing, because he wants Shane to be okay, because he doesn’t want Shane to watch him die or, worse, die himself trying to protect Ilya from the wave of zombies that’s likely coming, or the wave of apparently ruthless morons. He thinks Shane will probably cry a little, will kiss Ilya on the mouth, and then he’ll go, because he knows that Ilya is right, and then Ilya can whisper I love you to his retreating back, and then the sad music will swell, and he will die off screen. Not a bad ending, all things considered, other than the fact that he will probably be eaten by zombies. 

But of course this is Shane, and Ilya sometimes makes the mistake of thinking that Shane is yielding just because he’s yielding when it comes to his want for Ilya. 

“Go fuck yourself, you fucking asshole,” Shane hisses, slapping Ilya’s hand away from his face. “Fuck, you’re unbelievable. Just go off and leave you to fucking die because your ankle got shot, Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, great fucking plan.” His fingers close around the first aid kit, and he yanks it out of the backpack so hard that Ilya has to lurch up and grab the binder before it falls out too. Shane rips the first aid kit open, and all his carefully packed items are flying everywhere, but he’s unrolling this massive wad of gauze like it’s going to fix anything. He wraps it around Ilya’s ankle so tightly that Ilya almost passes out from the pain of it, and then Shane is wrapping some kind of stabilizing bandage around his ankle, too, and savagely taping it in place. 

Blood, obviously, is welling up immediately, soaking the bandage, because it’s just fucking gauze, but Shane is already shoving things back into his backpack, and then he’s grabbing Ilya by the shoulders and hoisting him up, and he’s snarling, “keep going! You fucking loser!” And Ilya can’t help but smile against his shoulder as they keep limping onward. 

They do, apparently, make it to the road that will take them to Nahant, but Ilya is barely present by that point. He only keeps moving because Shane tells him to keep moving, and because he can tell that Shane is crying, and because he doesn’t want Shane to cry. He is bleeding very badly, he knows. He can feel it. Everything hurts, and he’s bleeding, and he’s starting to feel fuzzy in a way that he assumes means he’s going to bleed to death if they can’t stop it soon. He almost tries to tell Shane to stop again, or to leave him behind somewhere, because they’re moving so slowly. There have been no more gunshots, and they have only had to stop twice so Shane could kill zombies that tried to follow them, but they’re going to run out of luck soon. 

The idea of Nahant being a safe place seems like a pipe dream. Like surely it can’t be that easy. Like surely they will get there and it will be overrun with zombies, or maybe it will be run by the same people who shot him. 

Shane finally lets Ilya drop at one point, jolting him back to awareness as he hits the ground hard. Shane’s holding on to his head to protect it, apologizing desperately, sobbing with exhaustion, and Ilya feels so sorry about all of this that it makes his chest feel like it’s caving in. Shane leans him back against something uncomfortable; a wooden plank guardrail. The ocean is loud behind him. Ilya wonders how far they’ve made it down the road. He thinks about the map, and how long that road had looked.

Shane kisses Ilya, presses their foreheads together. Ilya is so relieved to no longer be walking that he thinks he could probably die happily here. The sun is already starting to go down, and they really should not be outside like this. Shane is usually so diligent and responsible about not being out after dark. 

Shane is saying something that Ilya can’t understand, all his English failing him in his exhaustion and pain. Then Shane is kissing him again, which is nice, and then he’s talking louder, which is annoying, and then he’s up and running, and Ilya is thinking ah, okay, good, he’s doing the smart thing, finally. He looks back in the other direction, and he’s not sure why he’s expecting to see a whole horde of zombies following them, but he’s relieved that there’s nothing. Bleeding to death will probably be nicer than being torn apart by zombies, if the way he feels now is any indication.

Peaceful. A little cold, but peaceful, and the pain isn’t even that bad anymore, and maybe the biggest hurt is that Shane left, though he doesn’t think he can actually be hurt by that. He really is glad that Shane is alive, that Ilya can die in a world where Shane is still okay. Like with Sveta, he can pretend to believe that Shane will survive and be happy forever. It’s better than the alternative, anyway. 

Ilya wakes up again to fire in his ankle. Someone is yanking him, dragging him away from the spot where Shane left him. He cries out in surprise as much as pain.

“No, no, stop, please! He wasn’t bitten! Fucking look at him!” Shane’s voice is thready with panic, but mostly wrath, and Ilya wants to laugh, but can’t. “Fuck you, don’t fucking touch me! Here, look!” 

Ilya opens his eyes, and Shane is pulling someone else’s rough hands off Ilya’s leg, and he’s shoving that person away, and then he’s falling to his knees and rolling up Ilya’s pant leg, and then he’s pulling off the tape and the gauze, and it hurts, but Ilya lets him. He’s still being held by someone, pinned down by his shoulders, and he looks up and sees a person wearing some kind of catcher’s mask and catcher’s gear and these massive, oven-mitt gloves. What the fuck?

“Look!” Shane is saying. There are three people with him, not counting the catcher. Shane is pointing down at Ilya’s disgusting ankle. “We were shot at, a few miles down the road. I think they got attacked by zombies after they shot at us, but…” 

There’s an older woman with short gray hair and that weather-beaten look that a lot of older Bostonian women have, in Ilya’s experience. Like if beef jerky was a person, which is not a complaint. They are his favorite type of person. He has met them as Raiders fans and as grocery store clerks and Dunkin’ workers. He knows she will sound like a cigarette, and he knows she will call people Baby and Honeybunch and Sweethaaaht and she will probably have a wife and four dogs and will use fuckin as a verbal comma. She’s wiry, compact, clearly in shape, and her face is suntanned and freckled. She squats down next to Shane and humors him. Shane’s chest is heaving; he’s openly crying. He looks so pretty like this, and only part of that is because Ilya was sure he’d seen the last of him. 

“Okay, sweetheart,” she says in her gravelly voice, the word pronounced exactly like Ilya had known it would be, and like that’s something people just get to call Shane Hollander. Like Ilya hasn’t been dying to call him that instead of calling him things in Russian hidden behind the lie that they’re about sex. She looks back up at the other two: one a woman in her forties with blonde hair gone brown at the roots, and one a man probably in his sixties with a round, jolly face. “We can stick him in quarantine to be sure, but this looks like a bullet wound to me, and we knew those fuckin’ assholes in Chelsea were gonna try to come up this way. My vote is yes.”

“Yes, obviously,” the blonde woman says. “He's just a kid.”

The guy in catcher's gear finally releases Ilya’s shoulders and flips up his mask, laughing. 

“It’s fucking Ilya Rozanov, guys,” he says. He's younger, maybe in his thirties, with dark skin and laughing dark eyes. 

“I knew he looked familiar!” the jolly man exclaims, in a voice exactly as jolly as the rest of him. 

“Yes, he is, he's Ilya Rozanov,” Shane says quickly, digging through his backpack. “I have his passport and everything. Right here.”

“Who the fuck is Ilya Rozanov?” Beef Jerky asks, making Ilya feel less guilty about thinking of her as Beef Jerky. She takes the passport when Shane offers it, bemused, a look on her face like ‘and what the fuck do you expect me to do with this?’

“Plays for the Raiders,” says the catcher. 

“He is the Raiders,” Shane insists, like these people are going to let Ilya into their island only if they think he's necessary for another cup run. 

“That’s hockey, hun,” the woman in her forties teases. Beef Jerky rolls her eyes and waves her off. 

“If it’s not the Pats, I don’t give a shit,” she says. 

“Man, am I fucking losing it, or are you Shane Hollander?” the catcher asks. Shane looks like he has just remembered that he's also a public figure, and he tries to do his little robot smile, but it's awkward and tremulous on his face with his eyes still so wet with visible tears, and Ilya feels guilty. 

“Yeah, that's me,” he says. “I play hockey too, for Montreal,” he explains in a rush to Beef Jerky. “Rozanov helped me get out of Vegas and we've been in Boston ever since, but we had to get out of the city. We ran out of food.”

“Okay, hun,” Beef Jerky says placatingly, gently, apparently not buying his polite Canadian robot boy act for a minute. She squeezes his shoulder and looks into his big, sad eyes, and Ilya knows that that, more than anything else, is going to be the thing that gets them on this fucking island, because in his professional opinion, Shane Hollander’s stupid fucking cow eyes are irresistible. “All right, let's get hockey boy up to the quarantine hut. Have Merry bring out the stretcher, and have Lindy bring down what she needs for a surgery. Let's move quick; we're running out of daylight.”

Shane looks back at Ilya, and he looks so frightened but so, so fucking beautiful, and Ilya wants to tell him that, but he passes out instead. 

He wakes up in a bed, but not a very comfortable one, and he's alone. He can hear someone talking somewhere, but it's muffled and distant.

“Hello?” he tries, but no one answers. He tries to move, but his wrists are strapped down to something, and he can’t muster the energy to fight it very much. He hears louder voices, someone annoyed. Shane, he thinks. My angry little kitten. My sweetheart. Don't make them angry with you. You have to stay.

The next time Ilya wakes up, it's because his ankle gives this horrible throb of pain as if someone has grabbed it and squeezed. He jolts up into a seated position, gasping. Shane almost falls out of his chair by the bed. He's wearing his cute little glasses and reading a book, which would be lethal enough, but the fucking sweater. He's wearing this soft-looking dark green cable knit sweater, large enough to hang off one shoulder just slightly, and it's possible that Ilya is dead, actually. 

“Moya lyubov,” he breathes in Russian, and Shane glares at him. 

“You scared the shit out of me,” he hisses cutely. Ilya smiles wider. “Stop smiling at me! You almost died! They almost fucking shot you because they thought you were bitten! Do you have any idea how scared I was?”

“Of course, and this is my fault for getting shot, yes,” Ilya says blithely. 

“It's your fault for trying to get me to leave you behind, you colossal fucking asshole,” Shane says. Ilya shrugs one shoulder like, semantics. Shane flops his forehead onto the bed next to Ilya’s leg, which is nice, because Ilya can reach him. Pet his hair. He does so, trailing his fingers down to the softest hair at the back of Shane’s neck, enjoying the way Shane shivers and inches closer, though he still pretends at being angry, of course.

“Tell me what happened. They gave you a very sexy sweater, I see.”

Shane sits up and looks down at his sweater. 

“This? Bonnie's wife made it like thirty years ago for her father. You think this is sexy?” 

“Beef Jerky is a lesbian,” Ilya says knowingly. Shane frowns even deeper. 

“I’m calling the nurse,” he says.

“Don’t, please. I want to look at you a little longer. So we are on this stupid island?”

“Uh, yeah. Just like we hoped. No cases. The causeway is long enough that they can stop zombies before they get close, and there are a ton of fishing boats and stuff, so they have lots of food. There's a bunch of college kids who trekked up from the city and then the retirees who were here when everything went to shit, but there are plenty of open houses, so we basically have our pick. I've looked around a little bit while you were unconscious, but I don't know.”

“It is such an important decision,” Ilya says gravely. Shane rolls his eyes. 

“Shut up,” he says, but it sounds so loving that it makes Ilya want to hide his face away in embarrassment. “They had you in quarantine for two days. This lady Lindy was checking on you sometimes, but they wouldn't let me in. It felt like they kidnapped me. I kept expecting them to, fucking, I don't know, kill you and toss your body into the ocean and try to trick me into thinking you'd died naturally. It was a weird couple of days.”

“Maybe you are just a weird guy. You think of that? Paranoid.”

“You almost died. Shut the fuck up.”

Ilya sighs, seeing that look in Shane's eyes. If Shane ever realizes that Ilya can't stand firm against that look, he's done for. He will never win an argument again for the rest of their lives.

“Yes, I know. I'm sorry. I remember you were angry. I just wanted you to be safe, okay?” 

“No, it's not okay,” Shane says incredulously. 

“Tell me about after that. What happened? I am not locked up anymore? I remember a dark room?”

“Yeah, that was quarantine. This fucking, I don’t know, visitor hut halfway down the causeway? I didn't realize you were awake. They said you were sedated.” His face does that sad thing again. Ilya is furious that he still feels too weak to get up and do something about it. 

“Stop looking sad at me. I am alive. Did they cut off my foot?”

“What? No!”

“Okay, so no big deal.”

“It's a big deal, Ilya. It's going to be a lot of rehab. It's a season-ending injury for sure.”

Ilya laughs at that, helpless, staring up at the ceiling. 

“I'm sure it is,” he says. Shane’s frown gets more aggressive. Ilya can see it out of the corner of his eyes.

“You know what I mean,” Shane says defensively. 

And yes, technically, Ilya does know. These are the terms they're used to, and so of course Shane would use it. But Ilya also knows that Shane believes it, even if he's trying to pretend that he doesn't. 

He still thinks it matters. 

Of course it doesn’t matter. Hockey is over. Their careers are over. Ilya could have lost his foot and it would not have changed that at all. 

Part of him wants to press on that particular bruise. Force Shane to acknowledge that hockey is gone and it’s not coming back. He doesn’t, though. He thinks it would be too cruel, even though he also thinks that it’s probably something that Shane needs to accept. If he was Shane’s fucking psychologist, maybe he would continue to harp on it. Maybe he would try harder to make Shane understand. But he’s not Shane’s psychologist. He doesn’t know what he is to Shane, really, other than the person who fucks him and his biggest competition. He’s the person who won the last MVP award, and the person who last won the cup. He’s the last person who Shane wants to hear from about how hockey doesn’t matter anymore, and he doesn’t know how to have that conversation anyway. So he won’t. 

“Yes,” he lies gently. “I know what you mean. That's all right. I have time here to figure it out, yes?”

“We do,” Shane replies. “They’re letting us stay. There's no rush. They’ve got a lady here who used to be a physical therapist, and we’ve already been talking about your recovery.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. Thinking back on his peace, abandoned against that guardrail, he doesn't love how relieved he was for all of it to be over. He doesn't love how it feels like a burden now, to try to be glad to still be alive, but it has been a weird couple of days, and he knows that he’ll get over it eventually. For Shane, at least. To keep Shane happy. 

Ilya is loaded up on painkillers for the first few days, which is nice. He feels a little guilty making Shane handle everything, but he suspects Shane likes it, and he’s certainly better at it than Ilya would be, so he lets it happen. Whenever someone comes in to talk about his injury or whatever, Shane is listening dutifully, nodding along, making sure that they know he’s listening. Ilya tends to spend most of that time watching Shane. 

He’s primarily being cared for by a woman named Lindy, who apparently was a doctor at Mass General before she retired. There are a few retired nurses as well. The average age of everyone Ilya sees appears to be at least seventy, though there are a few trainees and orderlies who are younger, closer to Ilya and Shane’s age. They’ve turned an elementary school into a hospital, because apparently Nahant didn’t have its own, and so they’d sent a group back out into the surrounding towns a few weeks ago to gather supplies and hospital beds and stretchers. They’re all very proud of this, and Shane is very politely impressed every time they tell the same story. Ilya pretends to sleep through it at least five times. 

The retired physical therapist is named Sophia. She’s younger than Ilya expected, and fit in the same way Beef Jerky/Bonnie is fit, in the way of older people who do a lot of jogging and riding bikes by the ocean or whatever they do here. She introduces herself to Ilya with an amount of enthusiasm for his rehabilitation that Shane clearly finds inappropriate, but Ilya finds funny. He imagines he would have probably been the same, if the world had stayed intact enough for him to get to retirement: bored out of his fucking skull. Sophia is clearly happy to have someone to treat again. 

All of it is a relief, and Ilya floats through those first few days feeling cared-for. Shane is always by his side, looking very cute in his assortment of sweaters and pullovers and fucking North Face fleeces that he has apparently been given. This area of the island still has power, which Shane attempts to explain to him until he realizes that Ilya isn’t actually listening to him, and is just watching the way his mouth forms words while blocking out the actual content. Ilya laughs and apologizes, but Shane sulks and changes the subject, and it’s all right. Ilya wasn’t really that interested anyway. Who gives a shit how there’s still power? He doesn’t need to know what Tony has done to keep the lights on. He doesn’t know who the fuck Tony is. Okay, the lights are still on. Great. He doesn’t know anything about electricity. But of course Shane has attempted to learn about it a little bit, because that’s the kind of person that Shane is, and Ilya loves that, too. All of Shane’s most boring parts. He’s excited that they will be bored here together, on this little island, probably.

It is a very relieving few days, after the stress of the few that preceded them, but still there’s this tension brewing in Ilya. He isn’t sure why, at first. He doesn’t know what’s causing it. There’s no infection from the bullet wound, and he’s able to move his ankle, roll it, put weight on it, even though it all hurts. Sophia is encouraging when she watches him limp around his room—a converted classroom—for the first time. She continues to say probably-inappropriate things like oh, this won’t be so bad at all, and big strong man like you, I expect you’ll bitch a lot about the exercises, but I think you can handle it. 

Shane is with him all the while, looking stressed, and so Ilya starts to think that maybe he’s just absorbing Shane’s mood. Maybe that’s why he feels so on edge, like something is going to happen. Maybe Ilya has just become as paranoid as Shane, or maybe it’s just that he’s so used to things going wrong that it’s hard for him to accept that something hasn’t gone wrong, this time. That maybe things are just going to be okay. 

It breaks, finally, the day Ilya is allowed to leave the clinic. Sophia has given him crutches, and Shane hovers awkwardly half a step behind him but does not touch him, and maybe that’s the first sign, looking back, but Ilya doesn’t think anything of it at first. Bonnie shows them around a few spots, driving them in her car. She says that they’ve been trying not to use their cars, except when they’re hauling heavy items from one area of town to another, but they’ve made an exception for him, and he brags about the princess treatment to Shane as Bonnie takes them slowly down a few little streets to show them a few places of interest. 

She explains that they have a three person council that makes decisions, for now, but they’re working on expanding it, because they’ve been taking in more survivors in the last few weeks. Apparently the people who shot him are probably the same people he and Shane saw on motorcycles in the city, and they’ve been a huge problem for weeks, which is part of why they were so cautious about letting Shane and Ilya onto the island. There’s a security force that mans the causeway, armed with guns stolen from a nearby police station, and they’ve been able to hold off the bandits every time they’ve poked around. 

Everyone in town pulls their own weight, doing various jobs that need doing to keep the community in shape, and Ilya and Shane will both be expected to help out. Shane agrees eagerly, if a little defensively, like he’s afraid that Bonnie will think he’s ungrateful if he doesn’t agree fast enough. Ilya agrees as well, trying to pretend not to be anxious about how long he’s going to be off his foot. He’ll die of boredom if Shane is out working all day and he’s just sitting around and doing fucking PT, and he’ll feel useless, and that won’t be very good for his mood. He's a bit worried about that. He knows he’s a terrible patient. Svetlana has made fun of him for it so many times over the years. What if he’s too beastly to Shane? What if he annoys Shane enough to push him away? He has been surprisingly good, the last few months, at not doing that, and he doesn’t want to stop being good at it.

They pull onto a street with small cottage-like houses on one side and a thicket of trees on the other. Some of the cottages are nice, but most are rather run down. Bonnie pulls out in front of one. Well maintained, one floor, with a blue door and several large picture windows out front. It’s spaced out nicely from the neighbors, he notices, and there are some trees and bushes between the houses, for more privacy. He notes these things happily, idly. It’s not the same as an isolated apartment building, but it could be much worse.  

“This is you, Rozanov,” Bonnie says, parking the car. Ilya opens the door to get out, and Shane mutters with annoyance and jumps out his side, but it’s hardly Ilya’s first time on crutches, and he maneuvers out easily. 

“It is very cute,” he says honestly, and Bonnie grunts. She hands him the keys. 

“If you need anything, I’ll come by later with a radio for you, at least until you’re better at walking on your own. We got the house stocked with food and medical supplies, and Shane tells me he’ll stop by every day to make sure you’re good.” 

Ilya looks back at Shane, who is frozen, smiling his stupid little smile. His polite Canadian Hockey Boy media smile. 

“Ah,” Ilya says, finally understanding exactly where that tension within him has been coming from. He laughs a little. “Okay. Thank you, Hollander. Very polite of you.” 

“I’ll be up there,” Shane says, pointing at some fucking house up the street, not even right next to Ilya’s. He looks much more tense now, but Ilya is feeling looser and looser. 

“Okay,” Ilya says, but he doesn’t look at where Shane is pointing. He thinks he might be a bit heartbroken, which is so stupid. He’s definitely angry, which is easier, so he clings to that. They can’t even share a house? Why does it have to be a problem to share a house? They could be friends. They are fucking friends. Who fucking cares if they’re roommates? Down the street?

“I’ll be over later,” Shane says, his voice doing that tense, frantic thing it does sometimes when he thinks Ilya isn’t understanding him. Like he thinks Ilya is going to interrupt him and say something like why are you pretending you aren’t dying to choke on my cock right now? “I’m just down…” 

“I’ll be okay, Hollander, thank you,” Ilya says, and he takes a very petty satisfaction in the look of confused hurt that flashes across Shane’s face, then. He looks so much like he had in that bathroom in Vegas. Those big, wet eyes, so baffled, so prettily wounded. Good. 

Ilya thanks Bonnie again, politely, so she doesn’t notice anything’s wrong. Wouldn’t want the woman with the wife she’s been with for at least thirty years to think they’re fucking, obviously. Wouldn’t want to out their big secret to this woman who doesn’t give a fuck about hockey and has no idea who either of them are. He tells her that he’s going to be fine. He says that he is feeling better, and that he’s looking forward to meeting up with Sophia tomorrow for physical therapy, and that it’s really no trouble to get around on the crutches, so she shouldn’t worry too much about the radio. 

He uses the key to unlock the door. Shane is still standing in the street, looking at him, nodding along to whatever Bonnie is saying to him but still staring after Ilya like he’s trying to read Ilya’s mind but can’t quite figure out what Ilya is feeling. Ilya gives him a sarcastic salute and then locks himself in that hot, dusty house, and he leans his back against the door and laughs again, because he feels tears pricking his eyes, and it’s fucking mortifying. He feels caught out by it. Confused by his own reaction. It’s not like he expected anything else. 

Well, okay. Of course he expected something else.  

Because what’s the point of it? Why can’t they be friends who live together? No one needs to know they’re fucking. Why can’t they stay together? Does Hollander want to get away from him so badly? He certainly hadn’t seemed like he wanted to get away from him when he was desperately trying to keep Ilya alive, dragging him onto the causeway and trying to fight people to make sure they let him in.

So, what, Shane just wants to go back to sneaking around in fucking secret? Like it still matters?

Ilya is angry. He’s upset. He’s allowed to be both of those things, isn’t he? Even if it’s stupid. 

Some of the houses have generators, he’s been told, but this one doesn’t. That’s okay, because there’s enough light from the big windows, and it’s a small house anyway, and it has a woodburning stove for the winter months, though that feels very far away. The house is hot and stuffy from disuse, and it’s been stripped of anything personal, which makes it feel almost hotel-like. There are spots where there clearly used to be pictures on the walls, but they’ve been removed. He wonders where they went. He wonders if Bonnie knew the people who used to live here. He wonders what happened to them.

He doesn’t open the windows for now, because he sort of likes the stifling dryness, compared to the cool moisture of the ocean air outside. He pulls the curtains closed to make it darker, and he picks his way through the front room, checking out his new home, letting himself be angry and annoyed and melodramatic. It’s not like he was asking Hollander to come out and marry him in the middle of the town square or fucking whatever. He just wants to be with him.

It’s just so fucking pointless. 

It’s a relief, too, though he’s not sure why, at first. It feels like he has put down a burden, like how Hollander probably felt when he dropped Ilya at the end of the causeway and took off on foot to get help. He can’t articulate why, or what that burden is, or why he’s so angry, but it’s a freeing kind of anger. Like, yes, fine, I can go back to normal. I can go back to what everyone expects of me. I should have known that it was too good to last. Like he has been proven right by his own misery, and now he doesn't have to worry about fucking everything up and pushing Hollander away by being too much. He has always been a little worried about that. 

He doesn’t let himself think about it for long. He goes into the bedroom, and he finds the bed neatly made, and he’s relieved to crawl into it and go to sleep. 

If Hollander knocks on the door at any point later that day, he doesn’t wake up to hear it, and he’s pettily pleased about that, too. 

Chapter End Notes

I know this ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but I promise you this is just a temporary very stupid roadblock lmao. I made the decision to post this tonight after pushing through the edit so now I'm VERY confident that I'll have the final chapter posted by tomorrow night!

Chapter 3: Years

Chapter Notes

i have been working on nothing but this fic for WEEKS and now i'm finally free!! if i try to write a longfic ever again, someone simply has to kill me.

Shane feels like a fucking idiot. 

He knocks on Ilya’s door that night, long after everyone else has gone to bed, and he feels like an idiot sneaking around, and he feels like an idiot when Ilya doesn’t open the door, and he’s fucking pissed off at himself when he sneaks back into his own small cottage, alone. He’s too wired to sleep, or maybe just too used to having Ilya next to him to sleep without him, and so he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling and knows that he only has himself to blame. 

It’s not like he doesn’t understand why Ilya didn’t answer the door. He hasn’t always been very good at figuring out what Ilya is thinking just by looking at him. He always feels like he’s getting it wrong. But he would have to be a total fucking moron not to understand that suddenly cold look on Ilya’s face and that amused tilt of his smile and the way he immediately started saying Hollander, like he hasn’t been calling him Shane for weeks. Like it didn’t sound weird and purposeful for him to say Hollander now. Like it wasn’t an obvious, pointed rejection.

Shane gets it. He knows that Ilya is disappointed. Shane is disappointed in himself. He panicked. He doesn’t really have any excuse, or an explanation that will sound anything but pathetic. Like, who fucking cares? There are zombies. The world is over. Why does it matter what anyone knows about them? Why does it matter what anyone thinks?

The guy who had recognized Shane and Ilya when they were on the causeway had been looking through their inventory of empty houses, when Ilya was still unconscious in the quarantine hut, and he’d asked Shane if they’d prefer to stay together in the same house, and then he’d laughed and said something about how the houses are a lot smaller than what he and Ilya are probably used to and “maybe you want separate places after spending two months up each other’s asses, huh?” And Shane had laughed way too awkwardly and said, “oh, yeah, two houses is good”. He’d immediately regretted it, but he hadn’t been sure how to take it back, and so he hadn’t, mostly because there was a part of him that hadn’t regretted it, or at least had seen it as the ‘correct’ choice. 

It’s not like he wants to spend time apart from Ilya. It’s not like he thinks they have to go back to how they used to be just because they’re going to be around other people again regularly for the first time since the start. It’s just…

He panicked. 

He’s still panicking. 

It’s so fucking stupid, and he’s panicking over nothing, and Bonnie is fucking married to a woman, but fucking Brandon or Brendan or whatever the fuck his name is recognized them, and he knows who they are, and Shane never wanted—

He just wants to be—

He just wants to be invisible, alone, in Ilya’s apartment, with only Ilya in all the world. Away from anyone who could see them or judge them, ever. Ever. He doesn’t want people to know who he really is, or what he really wants, or anything about him, really. The only thing he’s ever wanted is to play hockey, and without that to focus on, he wishes he could just be nothing. No one. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard for him to imagine ever being himself out loud, in front of other people. 

But he’s ashamed, maybe. He’s ashamed of wanting anything, especially something that makes him different from other people. He just wants to be normal. He just wants to play hockey. He’s already had to deal, for his entire life, with being different. He’s had to deal with people making racist jokes or holding him to some other standard because of his race, and even if they think they mean it in a good way, it’s still this thing that sets him apart.

And he knows that his brain works differently from everyone else’s, too. He knows this because he and his parents talked about it so fucking much growing up, whether it would help him or hurt him to get a doctor to confirm for him whether he “had something” or not. Whatever the terminology is. Shane doesn’t even remember, because he just told his parents over and over again that he doesn’t want to be different, doesn’t want to know if there’s something about him that’s going to make things harder on him. And it’s not like…it’s the same thing with the gay thing. It’s not like he thinks it’s bad, any of it. It’s not like he wants to erase those parts of himself, necessarily, just because they make things harder for him in various ways. It’s not like he wants to cut out the part of him that craves Ilya so fucking badly. He doesn’t think he would, even if he could. 

Except, well. Maybe he would. Maybe he would change all of it. Maybe he’s just so fucking sick of being different. 

This thing he has with Ilya has always been at least a little wrapped up in his shame, because he can’t help himself, even when it leaves him feeling hungover and terrible like in Vegas. It feels so good in the moment, every time. Like nothing he’s ever felt in his life. He wants it, needs it, while it’s happening. It’s only when it’s over that it feels like something horrible. It’s a secret that could ruin his life, and it’s something that he should be able to resist, but he can’t. His whole life has been so carefully structured around his hockey career, and staying fit for it, and making sure that he doesn’t get too overwhelmed to function, and this thing about him is the one thing that he indulges in without being able to control it, and it’s terrifying. So maybe it’s not shame, necessarily, but it’s nothing good.

But he’s spent the last months living through the end of the world, slowly running out of food, living in the fucking dark, killing zombies. He’s survived all of it, and he’s barely panicked about any of it. How is this still the thing that scares him? It doesn’t make any sense. He watched Ilya go down in the road, shot like a fucking animal, and for a second he’d been sure that Ilya had been shot in the fucking head, and his heart had shattered and stopped and made him feel like he was going to die too. And when he had a chance to run off and leave Ilya there, of course he hadn’t taken it. He’d stayed and risked his own life to see Ilya safe. He’d basically dragged Ilya the last few miles to Nahant, never leaving Ilya for more than a few seconds to fight zombies off. Shouldn’t that have, like, cured his anxiety about less terrifying things forever?

Ilya tried to get him to leave. Literally tried to die to save him. And fucking Brandon says up each other’s asses and suddenly Shane’s like “Oh, Ilya Rozanov? I hate that guy! Get me a house as far away from him as possible!” 

Shane was so angry when Ilya tried to sacrifice himself. So blisteringly, blindly angry, so furious at the idea that Ilya could ever think that Shane would run away and leave him, but isn’t that exactly what he’s done? It’s not facing down zombies, but it’s facing down here, this place, these new people. It's facing down his own self-doubt, or maybe self-hatred is a better word, if he's willing to admit it. Apparently Shane’s mistake was in thinking that he would ever be more afraid of zombies than he is of people, and now he has left Ilya alone, pretending like he wants any amount of distance between them because he’s afraid of what people will see or say when they look at them, and it’s not fucking fair. Of course it’s not.

And he would love to say well it’s not like we’re anything anyway, and maybe that was true at the beginning, in Vegas, but even then…fuck, it wasn’t nothing then, either. It’s never been nothing. It’s so fucking annoying, but it’s never been nothing, and now Shane has fucked everything up by being a fucking coward.

He goes for a run in the morning, when the sun is barely starting to come up, because he wants to immediately try knocking on Ilya’s door again, but he’s afraid, and he wants to get his thoughts in order, and he wants to make sure that he doesn’t make a fool of himself. He meets a few people out doing the same, says hello, avoids getting roped into too many conversations. There are a few younger families, but mostly it’s older people, one or two at a time, out walking. They greet him pleasantly enough. Not one person recognizes him, and that fact mocks him. 

Shane loves his mom. Thinking of his mom makes him sick with worry, and with missing her, and he doesn’t think it will get better until he can get up to the cottage and see her again, but he knows that a lot of the time when he puts this pressure on himself, it’s his mother’s voice that he’s hearing. It’s not like it’s a bad thing. Pressure has always been good for him. It reminds him of his responsibilities, of the person he has to be, of the example that he has to set. It controls him when he wants to curl up in a ball and hide from the world. It’s what motivates him to push past everything that makes him so uncomfortable, all the media and all the eyes on him and all the scrutiny about his personal life. He needs that. He wouldn’t be able to function without it.

But it can be a prison, too. It can be a trap. 

It’s a band around his throat and a panic deep in his chest. It’s the weight of expectations and the weight of the eyes of a bunch of people he doesn’t know and probably wouldn’t even like. It’s this feeling like he’s always being watched, or could be watched, and so he has to behave himself in a certain way. He has to be good. He has to be a role model. He has to be something that the league and his team and his coach will be proud of. He can't be rude, or arrogant. He can't be weak. He can't cry. He can't get emotional, because people won't give him the same chance they will give other players. He has to be strong. He has to be perfect.

He has to be what other people think is perfect.

And he knows that he’s not the only one who lives under those expectations. He reached out to Ilya again and again and was turned away, ignored, told off for looking for attention. He’d been ready to give up, after Sochi, figuring that Ilya had decided that he wasn’t worth the risk of upsetting all the pressure that he was also apparently under. And in Vegas…

But Vegas was months ago, and they have become something else since then, and he’s not so stupid that he can’t see that. He’s not so stupid that he didn’t recognize the expression on Ilya’s face for what it was. 

Maybe it’s always been a lie, the way Ilya’s face goes emotionless and hard. Maybe Shane wouldn’t have noticed, before, the way his emotions are trapped and trembling behind that mask. But Shane now has spent months living with only Ilya for company, so of course he noticed. 

And he realizes that he fears nothing as much as he fears seeing that look on Ilya’s face again and knowing that he’s the reason it’s there. 

He gets lost on his run. Ends up on the little island, combing through the streets, before he remembers that he and Ilya were given houses on the bigger island, a little further down. Another thing to feel stupid for, but he needs the exercise anyway. It grounds him. Makes him feel less panicked. When he finally finds their street, he’s mad at himself all over again, looking at how close and how far away their houses are from each other. Like, what was the plan? Sneak out every night and climb through Ilya’s window like a teenager with strict parents? Sneak out before sunrise and then awkwardly knock on Ilya's front door in the morning and offer to accompany him around town in a no-homo way? Or was the plan to avoid Ilya in the daytime completely, act like Ilya isn’t the only person he cares about seeing? Act like they’re not at least best friends and at most something way more intense and way scarier than that?

“Seriously, what the fuck were you thinking, dude?” he asks himself. He thinks about going to Ilya’s house right away, but he at least wants to shower first. 

When he’s getting dressed, he puts on his glasses, which is a dirty trick, and he knows it, and Ilya is going to know it, too. Hopefully Ilya will think it’s endearingly stupid and not just pathetic. Endearingly pathetic, maybe. He needs every advantage he can get. He brings his stupid binder with him as an excuse for why he’s wearing the glasses, even though he knows Ilya will just give him that condescending little smile, the one that says he knows exactly what Shane is doing and thinks it’s cute that he thinks he can get away with it. He wears the green sweater that Bonnie gave him, because he knows that Ilya likes it, and his white workout shorts, because it’s really too hot out to wear the sweater even with the sea breeze, and also because he's seen the way Ilya stares at him when he's wearing them. He observes himself in the dusty mirror over the dresser in the empty little bedroom of his empty little house. 

“You can’t fuck this up,” he tells his reflection. He can’t even get through that sentence without his voice breaking. 

He takes his glasses off to wipe his eyes, and he tries to imagine what it would feel like to be open about it. To hold Ilya’s hand in the street. To have fucking Brendon or Branden or Brynden gape at them. Would that be the end of the world? 

Would that be the worst thing? 

Would that be unsurvivable? 

Would it be more unsurvivable than returning to polite daytime distance and discreet nighttime fumblings after two whole months of being with Ilya always, all the time? In the daylight and in the nighttime and holding each other and laughing together and having fun together and learning each other? 

What exactly is he going to lose if the Brandons of the world knows he’s…

That he’s…

“Gay,” he says aloud, trying it out. “I mean, gay-ish, at least.” 

Does he really need to confirm? Like, experimentally? Can’t he just be satisfied with knowing that he at least is attracted to men, specifically one man, in a way that he hasn’t ever been attracted to women? Like, maybe there will be an exception. Maybe there are women out there somewhere who do it for him, but he hasn’t met one yet, and he has met a man so fucking perfect for him that he has been risking his career and his fucking sanity to hook up with that man repeatedly since his rookie season.

So, no. A confirmation probably isn’t necessary. He’s gay-ish. At least a little gay. He’s gay. He can think it. He can say it aloud. The world doesn’t end any more than it has already technically ended. It still shrivels his insides a little bit, even alone in this stupid house, and maybe that’s a personal issue. Maybe that’s something he should be working on. 

He loves hockey so much. More than he’s ever really loved anything before. He loves skating. He loves memorizing stats. He loves memorizing plays. He loves implementing plays, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of his teammates and using those strengths on the ice and making up for their weaknesses personally. Dragging his team behind him through victories, even when they aren’t playing their best. He was looking forward to playing hockey for as long as he could. 

But there have always been parts of hockey that he fucking hates, and he didn’t realize just how much those parts had sunk into him without him even realizing it. 

Of course he’s not, like, homophobic or anything. It would be fucking ridiculous if he was, considering. But he still, if he thinks about it, if he really thinks about it, does cringe a little bit to think of those words applying to him. 

He still thinks it’s, what, shameful? 

He tugs on his sweater’s collar and thinks about how Bonnie’s wife made it for Bonnie’s father, and he thinks about how that was like thirty years ago. And thirty years ago, things were a lot less cool for people like Bonnie and the wife Shane still hasn’t met. And yet Bonnie’s wife made Bonnie’s father a sweater, so he must have been okay with it, right? How long does it take to make a sweater? You can’t make a sweater for someone without loving them at least a little, right? 

God, what the fuck is he even thinking about? 

Of course it isn’t shameful. Not for other people. He’s glad that other people have each other. He’s glad that Bonnie has her wife, and that she has been loved for thirty years, and of course he wants that for himself, but. Fuck. 

You have to set a good example. 

But for who? For who, now? Fucking Brenden?

“Stop thinking about Branden,” he tells his reflection. “He doesn’t matter.” 

It’s weird, how saying it out loud makes it crystalize in his mind, or something. Brendon doesn’t matter. He’s just some guy. 

Ilya is not some guy. 

Ilya is his guy. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, so go fix it.” 

He knocks on Ilya’s door, but Ilya doesn’t answer, and so Shane picks his way through an overgrown, tiny side yard and jumps up to see through the bedroom window at the back of the house, and he sees that Ilya isn’t there. Okay, fine, he must have gotten up and gone wandering when Shane was on his run. Maybe Bonnie stopped by with that radio and took him with her when she went. 

“Don’t panic,” he tells himself firmly, but he’s terrible at listening to himself, especially about that. 

Of course, when he finally tracks Ilya down, Ilya is casually leaning on one crutch while he very seriously listens to fucking Brandon talking about something. He still has that wry, untouchable look on his face that he was wearing yesterday when he went inside his house. It has been burning at Shane ever since, and it’s continuing to burn at him now, even seeing it directed at someone else.

They’re standing in the front parking lot of the elementary school that now serves as the clinic, and Brenden is wearing the catcher’s gear he wears when he’s on watch, but he’s apparently not on watch now, because he’s holding the helmet under his arm and taking the time to give Ilya directions or something, based on the way he’s moving his hands. Ilya nods again, asks a question. Brandon laughs and claps him on the shoulder. 

Ilya apparently doesn’t remember what happened on the causeway, because he just winces a little at the force of the clap and smiles back at him. Meanwhile, Shane feels his blood scorching through his veins, remembering the way Brandan grabbed Ilya by the shoulders and started dragging him back down the causeway to get him away from the rest of the council, and the way Ilya’s cry hoarse of pain had almost stopped Shane’s fucking heart. 

No, it’s fine. It’s cool that Ilya is just chatting with this guy like it’s nothing, like this guy didn’t hurt him, like this guy didn’t have a gun out and wasn’t fully ready to put Ilya down like a rabid animal when he thought he’d been bitten. 

Shane feels this deeply overdramatic urge to go over and shove his way between the two of them, but he forces himself to calm down. He thinks about how Ilya will look at him with disgust, or with impatience, or with something worse, and he’s afraid that seeing that look will make him talk himself out of saying what he knows he needs to say. Ilya is really good at twisting Shane’s head around. He’s great at making Shane think that he cares about him and then just as quickly hitting him with that blank indifference and making Shane think that he’s read too much into their every interaction. It’s not like the last two months have been erased in the last day. He knows Ilya better now, and he knows that he hurt Ilya, and he knows that if Ilya looks at him in that way, it will only be because Shane has hurt him first, but still. Shane knows his weaknesses in this area, and he wants to try and avoid them as much as he can.

He’d been so sure, after Vegas, that Ilya didn’t even like him. He remembers having that exact thought as he fell asleep. He doesn’t even fucking like me. He’d keep thinking back to the stairwell in Montreal, the way Ilya had leaned in and kissed him like he couldn’t help himself. It felt so much like like, then, at least. Ilya had been so good to him, that night. He made Shane feel fucking special, or whatever. And then suddenly there was Sochi, and Vegas, and Ilya was all distance and annoyance every time Shane tried to even talk to him, and Shane was left thinking that he’d read something all wrong. 

He tortures himself sometimes by thinking about what would have happened if the zombies didn’t come. Would he have been brave enough to text Ilya again? Would he have been able to overcome that certainty that Ilya thought he was, at best, an annoying but occasionally good fuck? He knows that isn’t true, now. Ilya looks at him with so much fondness sometimes, and he laughs so much when Shane talks, but not in a mean way. Like he thinks Shane is funny, and he’s always so intrigued by Shane’s weirdness, and he’s always asking for an explanation in a voice that’s amused and amazed. Ilya tried to get Shane to leave him to die, because he wanted Shane to live, and that, more than anything else, makes him feel better. 

No matter how apparently terrible his fortitude is when it comes to Ilya, he can cling to that. He knows that for sure. 

He still wants to wait until Ilya is alone, but it doesn’t look like Brendon is planning on wrapping it up any time soon, so Shane forces himself to walk up. He forces himself to put on his public persona mask. Awkward smile, uncomfortable boldness. Brandon spots him first. 

“Whoa! Hey, man!” he says, like they’re friends. Shane thinks about Braeden apologetically grimacing at him but also refusing to let Shane in to see Ilya when he was in quarantine, and he thinks about the fucking joke he made about Shane probably wanting Rozanov out of the way anyway, right? and the last thing he wants to do is be friendly. But he’s Shane Hollander, and so he smiles and shakes the hand that’s offered. 

“Morning,” he says pleasantly to both of them. Ilya is looking at him, eyes traveling from the glasses to the binder to the sweater. He still has that wry look on his face, and it deepens even further when he realizes that Shane is looking at him. “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” he asks Ilya without quite making eye contact. Ilya arches one eyebrow. 

“Okay. About what? I have to go inside, soon. See Sophia.” 

“Oh, right. Physical therapy,” Shane says. “Yeah, I just…” He glances at Brenden, who finally gets the hint and secures his catcher’s mask over his face. 

“Hey, no problem!” he says. “I was just telling Rozanov about the pond we used to go skating on when I was a kid. Might be fun to watch you two put on a show when it freezes over! We can do two on twelve and you’ll still beat the shit out of us.” 

“True,” Ilya says with a smile, and Brandon laughs and heads off with another friendly wave. Shane knows he will eventually feel bad for how much he hates this guy. Ilya sighs when they’re alone again, and he looks at Shane, waiting. The look on his face is very patient and blank, and Shane knows better than to believe it, but he still struggles with pushing past it. This shit has never been easy for him with anyone, but it’s especially not easy for him when it comes to Ilya.

You have hurt him, he thinks. After everything you did to try and keep him safe, you have hurt him, and you have to apologize, and you have to make it better. He doesn’t want Ilya to be hurt. Suddenly, with a clarity that cuts so easily through the knots of his anxiety, it really is that simple. He doesn’t want Ilya to be hurt. The rest is noise.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He doesn’t try to hide it. He doesn’t try to make himself sound casual or cold, the way Ilya is doing. That’s not him. He looks at Ilya and he doesn’t try to hide anything. Ilya blows air out through his nose as if looking at Shane is a physical difficulty. 

“Okay,” he says. 

“No, it’s not okay. I panicked, and it was stupid.” 

“Yes. Very stupid.” 

“I just…” 

“I mean, who fucking cares?” 

“I know. I know, Ilya.” 

“We can be friends who live in a stupid small cottage together! I am injured and need help. It would be so fucking easy!” 

“I know! Ilya, you’re right. I’m telling you that I know. I was stupid. I’m going to tell Bonnie that I changed my mind.” Ilya rolls his eyes. “What, you don’t believe me?” 

“I don’t know, Hollander,” he says, looking away again. 

“Ilya.” At his tone, Ilya reluctantly looks at Shane, eyes narrowing. “I’m sorry.” 

“Okay, whatever. You don’t have to keep saying it.” 

“Clearly I do, because you won’t even look at me.” 

“If you want to go back to normal…” 

“Normal.” 

“How it was before, I mean.” 

“What, like fucking Vegas? I don’t want to go back to Vegas.” 

“No, not Vegas,” Ilya agrees softly. “I mean before that.” 

“What, you telling me to fuck off in Sochi?” 

“Are you just trying to remind me that I have been a dick before too? Very dirty trick.” 

“No, I’m not doing that. I’m saying I don’t want to go back to normal, our normal, whatever the fuck that was, because it wasn’t enough. I missed you. Like, all the time. Even though that was stupid, because we barely even knew each other. But we know each other now, and I…” I don’t want to do this without you? I can’t do this without you? I love you? “I don’t want to freak out and make everything worse because I’m fucking afraid of what people will say.” 

Ilya looks at him, finally. Really looks at him, not just glancing looks. He sighs like Shane has tricked him somehow, and Shane feels guilty for wearing the glasses, and the sweater, and the shorts. He should have done this without resorting to that. It’s like he came to this conversation armored. It’s not like him to cheat. Maybe he’s just that desperate to make Ilya stay.

“What people? What will they say?” Ilya asks patiently. 

“You know what they’ll say. You’ve been in the same locker rooms I have.” 

“Yes, but we are not in a locker room now. We are on some magical Massachusetts island run by old lesbians and gay catchers.” 

“Gay catchers? Wait, Brandon is gay? How do you know that?” 

“He told me.” 

“What, like right now? He just told you?” 

Ilya laughs at him. It’s not an entirely kind laugh, but it’s not an entirely cruel one either, and it’s not the exhausted, final way he was speaking to Shane earlier. Shane will take it. 

“He made stupid joke about pitchers and catchers that I didn't understand, so he had to explain it,” he says with a shrug. Considers his next words, almost like he’s afraid to say them, and then quietly continues, “and not everyone is ashamed of what they want. So yes, he just told me.” 

“I know that. I know. I wish I wasn’t.” 

Ilya seems surprised by Shane’s honesty. 

“It’s okay if you are.” 

“Aren’t you?” 

“No. Keeping it quiet for safety is not the same as being ashamed.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay. I guess I kind of am. I guess I should, I don’t know. Work on that.” 

“Maybe. If you are going to keep fucking men.” 

“Man, to be fair,” Shane points out, because he thinks Ilya will like that despite himself. Ilya rolls his eyes and looks away, which means Shane was right. “You feel this too, right? I’m not, like, making this up? This isn’t just…I’m not just…” 

“Just?” 

“I don’t know. Wishful thinking that you fucking care about me the way I care about you? Please don’t make me say any more. It’s so embarrassing.” 

Ilya looks like he’s debating what to tell him, which gives Shane the answer, though he waits it out, because he wants to hear it directly. 

“No,” Ilya says finally. “You are not just making it up.” 

“Okay. That’s good. So I’ll go ahead and move in, if that’s cool.” 

“You sound like you are scheduling a doctor’s appointment,” Ilya groans. 

“I’m trying to be normal.” 

“We spent two months fucking on every surface of my apartment. You woke up every morning and said ‘here is new sex idea for today'. I know you aren’t normal.” 

“Maybe I'm not,” Shane laughs. He wants to reach out and touch Ilya. Wants to pull him into a kiss. He got so used to it. Maybe they can work up to that? It might be nice. Maybe they can start with getting to the point where it doesn't give Shane a fucking heart attack every time Ilya smiles at him in public. “What do you want me to say? That I felt like a fucking idiot all night because I thought I’d fucked things up forever? That when you went down, I thought you were dead, and I thought I’d lost the only good thing in my life, and then somehow I went and tried to lose you even after you survived?” 

“You didn’t fuck things up,” Ilya says, pretty generously, Shane thinks. “I thought you just wanted to be, uh, dirty little secret. I guess.”

“No,” Shane says. “That’s not it. I liked the apartment. I liked hanging out with you all day. I want to keep doing it.” 

“Okay.” 

“So can I please move in with you? You can stay mad if you want. I don’t care.” 

“Not mad. Disappointed, maybe. Annoyed. I was going to avoid you for, maybe, two days. Probably would have caved before then, though, if you kept looking at me with big, sad eyes and wearing those very slutty shorts.” Self-disgust, but of a teasing kind, and Shane can’t help but smile at him. 

“It would have been a long two days,” he admits quietly. Ilya sighs. 

“I can’t even mess with you properly anymore. This really is a problem.” He glances back at the school. “I do have to go, though. Sophia is waiting.” 

“Do you want me to come?” Shane asks. 

Ilya, Shane thinks, should probably say no. Now that they’re on this island together, surrounded by all these people who seem generally nice and helpful, they don’t need each other for absolutely everything anymore. They have other people they can rely on. Maybe they should be embracing that. 

But Shane is so fucking relieved when Ilya says, “yes, come. Take notes so I don’t have to listen.” 

They go to the appointment with Sophia. She’s eager to help Ilya, eager to suggest certain exercises once Ilya is cleared. Lindy checks on his stitches, and both women are pleased when he limps around the room with only minimal discomfort. Shane finds himself clenching his hands into fists because he hates seeing any pain on Ilya’s face, but he holds himself back. 

Sophia teaches Ilya how to use the crutches better so that he will get less tired. Shane does, in fact, take notes on everything, and Sophia seems to realize that he’s the person to talk to, because she shows Shane all the exercises, all the ways he can help Ilya work on his range of motion. After the appointment, Ilya looks a little less hollow, and they walk slowly along the street that runs parallel to the beach. There are some kids on beach towels, playing near the water. Shane wonders if zombies can swim, and figures they probably can’t, but doesn’t think he’d be risking it, if he was their parents, and it’s hard not to be a little judgmental. 

It’s nice to see a whole family together, though. Parents and three kids. They look so normal. 

“Bonnie says there is a radio,” Ilya says, following his eyeline. “They are talking to a few places that are holding up okay. Bigger settlements. Nowhere near Ottawa, yet. I asked.” 

“Yeah, I did too,” Shane says. He feels soft and pleased that Ilya thought to ask for him even though it must have been earlier this morning, when he still thought Shane was ashamed of him or whatever. “I told her to keep an ear out.” 

They watch the family on the beach for a little longer, and then Ilya says he’s hungry, so they head over to the restaurant where Bonnie told them they could pick up their meals for the day. It seems like something is always being cooked, and people just come in and take what they need, or they can take what they need from the uncooked supplies that are watched over and recorded by inventory managers. Bonnie said something the other day about how they send groups of people out every so often onto the mainland to scavenge. Shane is actually a little excited about eventually joining one of those teams, once Ilya is better. He thinks they’ll be a good value add to any group. He mentions as much to Ilya, who preens when Shane tells him he’ll be able to put his on-ice fighting skills to good use.

Ilya doesn’t complain as they move slowly over to the restaurant, and he doesn’t let any of his probable discomfort show on his face, even though of course he must be feeling it. Shane watches him carefully out of the corner of his eye, making sure that he regulates his speed so that he doesn’t move too fast for Ilya, and he feels this horrible, warm softness in his gut, followed by a pathetic, aching fear, a reminder that he almost lost the right to give a fuck about those things by being such an idiot. 

Shane’s father used to tell him, all the time, growing up, that he was too hard on himself. He would always say it quietly, gently. He would never say it around Yuna, probably because he knew that Yuna would take it personally, because she was hard on herself, too, and sometimes that translated to coming off like she was being a little hard on Shane. Shane knows that it was probably true, when he was a kid. He did tend to blame himself for everything that went wrong with his teams. He held himself to an impossibly high standard, and any time he didn’t meet that standard, it felt like a massive failure. He’d grown out of it as he’d grown up. Or, if not growing out of it, he’d at least learned to regulate it better. Failing his own self-imposed standards doesn't always send him, anymore, into guilty spasms of self-hatred. 

This one is going to be hard to forgive himself for, though, even though he can tell himself that it’s over, and that he didn’t break anything permanently. He keeps thinking of the look on Ilya’s face yesterday, before he went into the house. He’s used to being the one being hurt by Ilya, he thinks. He’s used to being the one who’s reaching for too much and being shoved rudely back. Sochi, Vegas. He’s comfortable with that, even when it hurts. He thinks he would rather be the one being hurt than the one doing the hurting, always. 

At the restaurant, they’re greeted by a few people who Shane has met around over the last few days. Shane doesn’t remember any of their names, because he was barely listening the first time they introduced themselves to him, because he was so fucking scared for Ilya, but he’s no stranger to that kind of thing, and he’s always been good at deflecting it. Ilya is overly cheerful and polite in a way that feels like he’s mocking Shane, but Shane lets it happen, and he stifles his smile only through a serious effort.

Shane makes Ilya sit down at a table to rest while he goes and balances two lunch trays, carrying them back to the table. Ilya is annoying about it, very smug, cooing at him for being such a big, strong provider for his poor, injured friend. Shane ignores him, rolls his eyes. Privately feels something sort of soft and gentle about it, especially when Ilya kicks his foot under the table and then leaves it there, pressed against Shane's. 

One kid, probably thirteen, recognizes Ilya when he’s walking by with his own food, and then afterwards recognizes Shane. His mother is politely embarrassed and apologetic when the kid loses his shit. 

“You’re like the best rivalry ever! Of all time!” the kid cries while his mother tries to shush him. They’re drawing some attention from some of the others, but most of the people who look their way continue to look blank even after taking long looks at Shane and Ilya, and it sends this private little thrill through Shane to realize that most of them really don’t give a fuck. Most of them have no fucking clue who Shane is, who Ilya is. Ilya literally plays for their city, and they don’t know him. It’s such a relief. Shane doesn’t know what to do with it. 

Ilya laughs at the boy’s enthusiasm, infuriatingly unbothered by the other eyes on them, of course. Like he doesn’t even notice that anyone’s looking at them at all. Shane laughs, too, half a heartbeat behind, as always. He’s filled with this sudden sharp spike of self-loathing, resentment. It’s just…why did he ever think that this was worth giving up everything good that he has managed to claw to himself over the last few months? 

Why did he think that the continued admiration of people like this random kid, people who don’t even know him, was more important than the smile on Ilya’s fucking face? He’s spent his entire adult life thinking about the fans, worrying about the fans, living his life in a way that the fans would be proud of. He hears his mother’s voice in his head reminding him to be grateful, and gracious, and everything that a role model should be. He has smiled his way through every awkward interaction, every overstepping request for a selfie, every single interaction out in public. He is good to his fans. He’s known for it. But who fucking cares about that now? Why did he ever think that any fan was as important as the man sitting across the table from him? Ilya nudges their knees together for a second, conspiratorial, looking so pleased with himself. 

“Only on the ice,” he says proudly, leaning in a little bit. “Can I tell you a secret? Huge secret. The league must never find out.” 

“Okay,” the kid whispers, reeled in immediately by Ilya’s energy. 

“We have been best friends since our rookie season.” 

He looks over at Shane and grins. Shane can’t help but smile back, and he nudges his knee up against Ilya’s firmly. 

The kid gapes as Ilya leans back in his seat, eyebrows raised, waiting for the reaction. 

“Really? No way! But you’re constantly talking shit about him in interviews and beating him up on the ice!”

“Language,” the mother warns weakly.  

“I do not beat him up! I beat him, yes, because I am better at hockey than him.” He looks at Shane, waiting. “You are not going to say anything?” 

“I don’t have anything nice to say,” Shane says. “I’ll wait until they’re gone.” 

“Probably smart. He’s pretending not to have a foul mouth because he does not want to get yelled at by your mother. But yes, I beat him on the ice, and I chirp him, because I am a bully, and because Hollander makes for easy target. But trust me! We have been friends forever. We have been in our phones as secret code names for years so no one finds out. Except for you.” 

“Wow,” the kid breathes. “But why can’t you just be friends? Why does it matter if the league finds out?” 

“They think we are too good. We would destroy everyone on the ice if we were allowed to be on the same team, of course. Must be separated so we can make everyone a lot of money. But Hollander and I are too smart for them. We know we play better when we are friends. Right, Shane?” 

“Right,” Shane agrees. He hopes his smile isn’t as fucking sappy as he suspects it is. “We’ve never played against each other as anything else.” 

When the kid and his mom finally move away, they go back to eating in silence. Ilya keeps tapping his foot against Shane’s, pressing their knees together, looking at Shane with that same half-flirty look he can’t seem to help. It’s like last night never even happened, and Shane feels like he can finally breathe again. He’s still mad at himself for all of it, and he still feels like a total idiot, but it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. 

Well, not any more than it already did, at least. 

“So, it actually feels really weird to be living separately,” he tells Bonnie apologetically, when he finally tracks her down. He has to use his Hockey Interview voice to get through this conversation without cringing into oblivion, but he thinks it works. He’s also still wearing her dad’s sweater, and he thinks that’s probably a good move, too, because Bonnie gets a little misty eyed when she sees him wearing it. He's turned this sweater into a weapon of manipulation. He hopes she never asks for it back. “So I’m gonna move my stuff into Rozanov’s cottage and get the keys for mine back to you, if that’s cool.” 

“Of course, sweetheart,” Bonnie says. “I’ll be honest, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable knowing someone’s looking out for the kid. I know the two of you are grown men, and apparently fuckin’ athletes, but that was a hell of an injury, and I don’t like the thought of him trying to get out of bed in the middle of the night and fuckin’ braining himself on the counter trying to limp to the bathroom.” 

“That does sound like something he’d do,” Shane agrees. Bonnie smiles at him, squeezes his hand. 

“This is the kind of time when we need friends around. It’s not good to be alone right now.” 

“Yeah,” Shane agrees. “I’ll feel better about it, too. Thanks.” 

“Of course, honey. Oh, and you might think this is a stupid fuckin’ idea, but Carla reminded me last night that we have this old bike in the garage with a cart attached to it? We used to use it for running to the hardware store when we didn’t feel like taking the car. It’s a pretty sturdy cart. Should hold your friend just fine. Maybe you could help take him around that way so he doesn’t look so fuckin’ sad limping around on those crutches.” 

Shane ducks his head and doesn’t bother to hide his smile this time. 

“I think Rozanov will think that’s hilarious, and he’ll love being pulled around on a bike and bossing me around. Thank you. Seriously. I was really, really worried that we’d come all this way for nothing, but I’m glad we did. I look forward to starting to contribute and paying back for everything you’ve already given us.” 

Bonnie looks at him fondly, and she reaches up and pats him on the shoulder, and Shane thinks to himself that his life would be so much easier if he wasn’t constantly overthinking every little thing to the point of absurdity. 

The little house he’d picked out for Ilya has a lot of natural light, but it also has blackout curtains, and a massive couch, and a large, comfortable bed. It has a small bathtub and an outdoor shower in the backyard that they will probably never use. The plumbing all works, and there are actually three retired plumbers who live on the island who have been able to keep things running, which is nice. They’ve already been told that they can take hot showers in the bed and breakfast closer to the center of town whenever they want, because it’s on the same generator power as the restaurant and the clinic.

Ilya insists on giving Shane a “full tour”. The house is tiny, so that basically means walking from the front door into the master bedroom, pointing vaguely at everything they pass on the way by. Shane slows him down and pretends at giving a shit about the paint colors and the furniture choices, and Ilya rolls his eyes and groans aloud, his crutches clattering as he maneuvers them awkwardly through the doorway to the bedroom. Shane is backing up in front of him, moving closer to the bed, smiling wider and wider. Finally, Ilya pushes Shane down on it and stands over him, this very predatory smile on his face. Shane looks up at him, wanting him more than he’s ever wanted him before. It has been so many days of fear and uncertainty. He misses the people they were allowed to be when they were in Ilya’s apartment. He misses feeling like nothing mattered but them. He thinks about how close he came to losing all of this. Not just because of being stupid yesterday, but because of Ilya getting hurt, and because of Shane almost not being strong enough to make it to the causeway with the two of them, and because they could have been completely overwhelmed by zombies at any point, and it feels like it was blind luck that they weren’t. Those last hours still feel like a fever dream to Shane. Every time he had to let Ilya down so he could fight off the zombies following them, he thought that he wasn’t going to be able to pick him back up again. He thought that the zombies would be too fast for them, or that those people with guns would use Shane’s distraction to come after them. He thought that the sun was going to go down before they reached Nahant, and then he would be out there in the dark, dragging Ilya, alone, and zombies could have been on him in seconds without him knowing. 

Ilya seems to recognize that Shane’s mood is turning, and he shushes him gently and crawls into bed beside him. He winces a little at the pull of his leg, and so Shane urges him gently onto his back and then straddles him, looks down at him. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “Let me make it up to you.” 

“I was going to say it's okay, but I don’t know. Maybe I need to see more,” Ilya replies, looking a little wrecked, just as eager for Shane as Shane is eager for him. Shane breathes out slowly, and he reminds himself that this is all going to be okay. He doesn’t have to give up anything. They made it here. Ilya survived, and he’s going to recover, and he’s going to be okay. Shane didn't fuck up everything. He just needs to keep being normal, and he’s going to be able to keep all of this.

Normal, for him, is maybe not what it used to be. He eagerly strips Ilya's pants off and then takes Ilya’s cock in his mouth with an embarassingly grateful hum of appreciation, and he grinds himself against Ilya's uninjured leg as he does it, because he's noticed how Ilya is always more turned on when he can see that Shane is chasing his pleasure, and that, in turn, always makes Shane feel this desperate clenching in his heart, because it’s so fucking hot to him that Ilya wants him to get off, even though it’s not like that’s any great surprise. Their whole thing, even before the zombies, was Ilya getting Shane off and being very smug about it every time he did. Still, it makes him feel the same way, every time. Ilya is looking down at him, this expression on his face like Shane has punched him, and Shane loves him so fucking much, and it’s terrifying. When did that even start? 

He sleeps much better, of course, with Ilya in his arms. It wasn't just last night; he's been jittery since they got here, eager to hold Ilya while he sleeps, needing to know that Ilya is okay in a much more visceral way than he’s comfortable with. Like, it’s not enough to see that Ilya is unharmed, or that he’s recovering. He needs to feel Ilya’s heartbeat under his ear. He needs to feel Ilya’s disgusting morning breath on his face. Sleeping with Ilya’s head pillowed on his chest, his fingers carding through Ilya's curls, is healing in a way that's probably humiliating.

In the morning, he goes for a run and gets coffees for both of them from the restaurant before Ilya is awake. He takes a freezing cold shower and then puts on what is feeling like his new uniform: one of Bonnie’s father’s sweaters and a pair of shorts. It’s not even an intentional thing this time that he’s wearing his glasses, because he’s flipping through a book about gardening as he sits at the small kitchen island and he sips his coffee. Ilya eventually staggers out of the bedroom and leans against the wall heavily when he sees Shane. 

“Kotyonok,” he breathes. 

“Shut up,” Shane says, embarrassed, even though he knew exactly what Ilya’s reaction was going to be, and even though that’s at least seventy percent of why he’s sitting here like this. 

“No,” Ilya says blissfully, and then he limps up and wraps his arms around Shane tightly, breathing him in. It’s nice. Shane likes being held like this, squeezed like this, like he couldn’t move out of Ilya’s arms if he wanted to. He’s a little surprised by the force of it; he’d been expecting a very different reaction to his outfit and his glasses, based on every other time he’s worn them in Ilya’s presence.

Not that he’s mad about getting this instead.

He closes his eyes, and he leans his head against Ilya's, and he thinks that he could stay here exactly like this forever. It’s so the opposite of what they were allowed to have before the zombies. It’s a soft, gentle touch, and a lingering, devastating want in his chest. It’s like he’s scared to move, scared that this will disappear and he won’t get to have it again, even though that’s not true. He’s starting to actually believe that he’ll be allowed to have this for as long as he wants. 

“Thank you for not being stupid for more than one day,” Ilya murmurs into his ear, and Shane laughs and ducks his head.

“Thank you for forgiving me immediately.”

“Ah, moya lyubov, there is really nothing to forgive. You were afraid.”

“Stupidly,” Shane insists. “What does that mean? That word you said? Don’t think I forgot what you said when you thought you were dying. I know it doesn’t mean, like, dirty whore or whatever.” 

Ilya hesitates, and Shane is sure that he’ll change the subject, or lie, or just leave the room to avoid having to say it, but then he admits, “uh, it's like a pet name? Term of…something.”

“Endearment.”

“Endearment,” Ilya repeats dutifully, like he always does when Shane gives him a word he was looking for. “Is that…okay?”

“Yeah,” Shane admits. Feeling a little guilty about Ilya’s awkward nervousness, he forces himself to continue, “I actually think it’s like…really hot. When you speak Russian to me? And kind of weird that you were lying to me about it, but like…also hot. Is that fucked up?”

Ilya answers with a heated stream of words Shane doesn't understand, reaching around and slipping his hand into Shane's shorts, and Shane laughs and shivers and widens his legs to give Ilya easier access. 

Which is definitely more like what he had been expecting all along.

When they finally get around to leaving the house, they find that Bonnie has parked that bike with the cart attached out by the curb. Ilya, as predicted, is thrilled to force Shane to drive him around. Shane pads the cart with their now-useless sleeping bags and some extra pillows, refusing to let Ilya climb in until he’s sure that it will be comfortable for him. Ilya watches him very fondly the entire time he’s working, and he clambers into the cart with relish once it’s ready.

The cart is a little shorter than would be ideal for Ilya to spread out in, but it’s a sturdy cart meant for hauling a lot of weight, and it works just fine. Ilya rests his injured leg on the railing and bends the other leg up to his chest, and he leans back against the back of it, wedged in, laughing as Shane tries to get the right speed to balance ratio worked out. Once he gets moving, it’s okay, but it takes a while to get up to speed, and Ilya mocks him mercilessly for being weak and too slow, because of course he does. 

They spend the day like that, Shane biking him through town while Ilya yells at him like a spoiled prince. People think they’re hilarious, and they’re right about Ilya. He charms everyone effortlessly, which is not a surprise. It’s a relief. Shane always feels better when he can hide behind other people. He works so much better when he has bigger personalities in front of him, and Ilya provides the perfect cover. 

They happen to be grabbing lunch at the restaurant when Brendan is there. Shane tries to resolve to hate him a little less, because he knows that it’s not the dude’s fault that Shane was too much of an anxious mess to just say that he wanted to stay in a house with Ilya. It’s also not really Brendan’s fault that he thought Ilya had been bitten, and it’s not like he was trying to cause Ilya pain out on the causeway. It’s also kind of nice knowing that he’s gay, and cool enough about being gay that he immediately told a professional hockey player that he’s gay without knowing that said professional hockey player is cool about that stuff. It makes Shane want to befriend him so he can ask something way too obvious like hey how did you know you were gay? Not that it fucking matters, at this point, because even if some random girl walked up to him and turned out to be perfect for him, it’s not like Shane would wander off with her instead. At this point, it’s Ilya for him. Gay or not gay. It’s going to be Ilya.

In terms of people recognizing them, maybe ten people come up throughout the entire day and ask if Ilya is really Ilya Rozanov. Six of them, all elderly, appear to have recognized him specifically from an episode of some local television program he did recently where he went bar hopping in Somerville with the hosts and a few of the veteran Raiders. Ilya is pleased about this, and later tells Shane that he gets recognized for that episode more than he gets recognized for the actual hockey, because apparently that local program has the over sixty crowd on lock. 

Only about five of the people who clock Ilya seem overly excited about it. Only three of them recognize Shane without being prompted, but Ilya makes sure to point him out to everyone who approaches them. When they're leaving, and Shane is getting Ilya set back up into the cart, he feels very fond, and very relieved, and completely unburdened. 

“I thought Boston was supposed to be a huge sports city,” he teases. “No one knows who you are!” 

“Ah, Boston is a huge sports city. They see logo, they cheer. They wear logo in front of me in line at Dunkin’, and I say ‘wow, I also love the Raiders’, because I think they will freak out and be excited, and they just say ‘yeah! Go Boston!’ and they have no idea who I am. It’s great. They line up to watch parades. They drive one million miles to the football stadium, which is not in Boston, by the way. Not even close. They go to Fenway Park.” This last part delivered in what seems to be an attempt at a Boston accent. Shane is endeared by the fact that it’s so fucking terrible. “And yes, sometimes people recognize me. Yes, sometimes they come up and talk to me, especially at clubs. Sometimes they want to fuck me, especially at clubs.” 

“All right,” Shane says, rolling his eyes, but he can’t wipe that fond smile off his face. He knows that Ilya can see it. He doesn’t particularly care, right now. 

“But it isn't everyone. It can be nice, sometimes. I put on a hat, slouch a little. I could be anyone. As long as it’s not a Raiders hat. Red Sox hat works best. Everyone wears those. Everyone.”

“That hasn’t ever been my experience,” Shane admits quietly. 

“Yes, because you are so pretty. Pretty freckles, perfect face. And because your mother has been pimping you out for every billboard in the world.” 

“Pimping me out,” Shane laughs. “Where’d you learn that one?” 

“Internet,” Ilya says with a grin. “Comments about you. I read them a lot.” 

“Whatever.” 

Shane resists the urge to kiss Ilya on the forehead. He realizes that he’s been crouched next to the cart for a while, all during this conversation. But people are walking by them on their way in and out of the building, and no one is looking at them oddly, and that tight knot of anxiety in Shane’s gut that never really goes away gets just a little bit looser. 

It feels almost like an extended vacation, even though this isn’t the type of place Shane would typically prefer. He misses the area around his parents’ cottage, and he regrets that the world ended before he got the chance to spend the summer at the cottage he’s only just had built for himself. His family have never been big seaside people. Shane doesn’t really like swimming in the ocean. Too many scary things live in it. He used to be terrified of jellyfish as a kid, to the point where he would force his dad to check pool filters to make sure no jellyfish were hiding in them before he would get in the water. He grew out of that level of irrationality quickly, but lakes are still more his speed. 

The weather isn’t particularly good, most days. It’s breezy most of the time, and it rains semi-frequently. When the sun is out, the beach is swarmed, and sometimes Shane and Ilya join them, but mostly they don’t. Ilya does his exercises, hobbles around on his crutches, and steadily gets stronger. Everyone is very pleased with how he’s healing up, and Shane can breathe easier when he hears that, though he tries to pretend like he hasn’t been worried. 

They go for walks together, and then jogs, and finally runs. Their first jobs are shifts at the restaurant, serving food, which they like because they can do it together. Then Shane starts delivering food and other items on his bike and cart, and suddenly he’s their “postmaster”, according to Bonnie, which Ilya finds hilarious. He’s always trying to get Shane to request a postal uniform from one of the scavenger groups. 

“You would look so cute in those little shorts, malysh,” he begs. 

“I wear shorts anyway! They’re just not those ugly fucking blue ones,” Shane laughs, which is mainly an excuse for Ilya to leer at him in his shorts again, which of course Ilya does, because he’s so fucking predictable. Shane is starting to put together that this fucking weirdo likes Shane best when he’s at his most dorky. The glasses, the raving demands for a postal uniform. He practically drools the first time he realizes that Shane’s new job means that he’s outside in the sun a lot, which means he has more freckles than ever. 

Shane still really doesn’t know what to do with the fact that Ilya is so attracted to things that have always been points of insecurity at best. Ilya calls him strange and boring and weird, but in this tone that makes those negative words into admiring ones, and Shane believes him. He just can’t figure out why. 

They both talk about the possibility of volunteering to go on scavenging runs, once Ilya is in better shape, and they talk about the possibility of volunteering for the watch with Brendan. Ilya asks Shane not to volunteer by himself, and he is so uncommonly serious that Shane agrees immediately, without argument. He knows that Ilya worries about slowing him down, or making him feel like he has to stick close to home to help him. Shane tries to show him with his actions that he doesn’t feel that way at all; even in this bigger place, even with all these people around, he would still rather be by Ilya’s side, no matter what. If anything, he’s worried about the opposite. 

Their first fight is, ultimately, an unsurprising one. 

“I don’t want to go anywhere without you,” Shane says, confused. “I certainly don’t want to go to fucking karaoke at the pub.” 

“But you could, and it would be okay,” Ilya says stubbornly. 

One of the many various college girls on the island had stopped Shane and Ilya on one of their jogs earlier to invite them out for a karaoke night at the restaurant. One of the scavenging groups had brought back a whole karaoke machine, apparently, and had raided the bar where they got the machine for all of their liquor, out of an understandable desperation to do something fun and social. It sounds like hell to Shane, so he’d gently turned down the invite, thinking nothing of it. Ilya has now three times suggested that maybe Shane should go, and Shane is starting to get upset about it, because he doesn’t understand why.

“Okay. What is this?” he asks finally. “Are you trying to tell me that you want to go out without me? Because that would be fine.” The look Ilya gives him is so confused and disgusted that he’s able to understand that he’s guessed wrong, but it just makes him angry and defensive, because he’s tired of feeling like he’s always on the verge of ruining everything by misstepping. “What, Ilya? Seriously, what? I know it fucking sucks, and that you’re in pain, even if you’re pretending not to be. I know it’s boring here. I know I’m fucking boring, okay? But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you mean. I don’t…I’m not like you.” 

“What does that mean?” Ilya asks, and now he looks offended, too. 

“I don’t always, like, fucking. I don’t know. Understand things. I’m bad at this. Like figuring out what you want, or whatever. I’ve always been bad at it. Social cues. I’m bad at having friends, being friends. I’m pretty fucking awful at anything except hockey.” 

“That’s not true,” Ilya says, looking truly baffled now. “You are good at everything. What the fuck?” 

“Do you want to go out to the pub and pick up girls, or, you know, whoever?” Shane blurts, because he suddenly needs the actual answer to the actual question he has been refusing to ask all through this conversation. 

Well, sort of the actual question. The actual questions are worse, needier, higher-pitched and more desperate. 

Am I enough for you? 

Could I ever be enough for you? 

Are you going to leave me now that there are other people? Funnier people? Kinder people? People who are softer and don’t get so defensive every time you mention doing something fun? 

“No, I don’t want that,” Ilya snaps, and Shane releases a breath that has been lodged behind his ribcage, all throughout this. 

“Okay. I don’t want it either, obviously.” 

“Obviously,” Ilya scoffs, like it’s not. 

“I mean who the fuck else have I ever been with, Ilya? Jesus.” 

“Okay. So this fight is because I’m a slut?” 

“Jesus. No. It’s not a fight.”  

“We are literally yelling,” Ilya points out, though his voice is softer than it was just a second ago. Shane shakes his head and holds on to the edge of the kitchen island. He has positioned himself behind it for this conversation, which feels like a dirty trick, now. Removing himself from Ilya’s physical proximity. He’d been so ready to throw himself on the sword for Ilya. So ready to suggest Ilya go out and get his dick sucked by someone cooler than him, even though it would have probably killed him. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why he keeps trying to find cracks in this thing between them. 

“I don’t want you to feel trapped by me,” he offers bleakly. “Like you’re stuck with me just because I’m stuck with you. I don’t want to assume it’s the same for you.” 

“What do you mean by ‘the same’?” 

Shane chickens out, because he can feel the shape of I love you in every word of this stupid non-argument, and he wants to say it, but he’s afraid. 

“I mean I’m not interested in anyone else. I, like, barely ever have been. I’m not calling you a fucking slut. I know some people are more, like. I don’t know. Open about that stuff. Casual. I’m not, but it’s not the end of the world if you need, like…more than me.” 

Ilya nods, watches Shane carefully. People used to call Shane a hockey robot, but Shane always thinks there’s something vaguely robotic about Ilya when he’s really assessing something. He used to get this look on the ice, too, and Shane always found it thrilling. Watching Ilya size up his opponents, figuring out how to beat them. He’s looking the same way at Shane now. Maybe Shane should be offended, or hurt, but he’s not. He thinks it’s really fucking hot.

“I do not want anyone else. I don’t feel trapped. Shane, my dick will fall off my body if I try to schedule more fucking. You understand this, right? There is no boredom. I’m sorry I was pushing you. I thought maybe you would get tired of being stuck here with me. Maybe that was stupid.” 

“It was stupid,” Shane agrees, so relieved that it comes out breathless, which is maybe humiliating. “I love being stuck here with you. It’s my favorite thing.” 

It’s not like anyone can win an argument so dumb, but Shane privately considers the mortifying little whimper that Ilya lets out at that to be way more embarrassing than his breathless words, so he tallies that one under a victory for him, personally. 

The same “assholes from Chelsea” who shot Ilya make a move about a month after Shane and Ilya arrive on Nahant. They attack one of the groups headed into Lynn to scavenge some supplies, attempting to take them hostage, probably to use as leverage to try and get on the island, but they’re unprepared for the three groups of backup that show up to assist. Shane is glad that he and Ilya stayed back to help guard the causeway and didn’t have to hurt anyone, but he’s also alarmingly, viciously pleased when he hears that all of them are dead, and he waffles for a few days between feeling vague regret that he hadn’t killed any of them personally and then being horrified at himself for thinking like that. It’s not like those guys killed Ilya, but they could have, and maybe he’s still not over that, even now that Ilya is safe. 

According to the groups of scouts who move through the area, that group from Chelsea were the last of the uncooperative bandit gangs that had taken over—the good thing about there being so many of them is that they all sort of took each other out in the first few months—and with the zombies slowing down even more, definitely feeling the effects of fewer people around to eat, or maybe feeling the effects of the colder weather, there’s less to fear about the city than before, and the council starts approving more and more trips out into the surrounding areas for supplies.

They link up, first over the radio and then later with supply caravans, with a group in a town called Sherborn who have taken over some farmland and have been working on growing food and taking care of the animals that have been left behind. Nahant trades fish and lobster and medicine scavenged from the many hospitals and clinics and pharmacies in the city for things like fresh meat and chickens and dogs and cats. Shane discovers that Ilya loves dogs. He turns into a little kid every time he sees one. It’s horrible. It’s so fucking cute. It makes him want to choke Ilya to death under a smothering hug, just so Ilya never has to be unhappy ever again. 

The zombies mill about and occasionally try to get on the causeway, but they never get very far. At night, they are a little more active, and occasionally whole groups of them get kind of close, but the Watch always sounds the alarm early enough to get the causeway gate fully manned, and there are never too many zombies to handle. The first time it happens, Shane almost has a panic attack in his haste to get to the gate, leaving Ilya limping along behind him, and he stares out at the horde of approaching zombies, sure that this is going to be it. It’s only when he sees that the other guards are laughing and slowly handing out weapons and chatting idly to each other that he understands just how well defended this little town really is. 

Shane still misses the apartment, when it was just the two of them, but he likes being out in the world with Ilya, even if it’s just as two very good friends who can’t be separated for more than a few hours without getting antsy. He even likes when people chirp them about it. Bonnie calls them my favorite two-headed hockey player. Brendan always says hi IlyaandShane, like there are no spaces between the words. Shane tries hard not to preen at those things, but he does. Maybe there was a small part of him, in the apartment, that unconsciously understood that they were only spending so much time together because there was literally no other choice, and maybe that part of him has been stunned into glad silence by the realization that Ilya will continue to choose to hang out with him even when there are other choices. He feels so fucking smug about it. He thinks he’s going to be insufferable about it, once he feels comfortable enough in whatever this is to mention it to Ilya directly. You like me. You want me here. I’ve trained your dick to only want my boring ass. Can you believe that?

He likes going to Ilya’s physical therapy appointments with him and helping him do his exercises when they’re alone, even if those usually end about five minutes later when Ilya decides that they should fuck instead. He likes getting to be concerned and gentle with Ilya. He realizes, somewhere in that first month, that Ilya likes being pampered. He likes being treated well. He likes when Shane does things for him, even though he grumbles and pretends he doesn’t. He likes when Shane cooks for him and when he gets an extra blanket out of the closet. He likes when Shane changes the dressings on his ankle and hems and haws and says we should get Lindy to take a look at this, just in case. I want to make sure that’s not infected. He blooms under the attention, if sullenly, like a flower opening very reluctantly, and Shane wants to give him absolutely everything he asks for. 

Ilya also likes being called baby. He turns bright red the first time Shane says it, unthinkingly, absently. Shane has been reading on the couch, and Ilya suggests a walk, and Shane says, “sure, baby, give me a second”, and then they both freeze in place. 

Shane’s thinking oh Jesus Christ did you just call fucking Ilya Rozanov baby? What is wrong with you? He’s going to hate that. And then he turns and looks out of the corner of his eye, expecting Ilya to be laughing already, or maybe looking at him in horrified disgust, and instead Ilya’s eyes are wide, his face is turning red, and neither of them end up going for that walk, because Ilya is on him about half a second later. 

He likes seeing what it does to Ilya’s face, the way he tries and fails to hide what it makes him feel. He tries out different petnames, but baby and sweetheart seem to be his favorites, and Shane might literally explode from the force of his affection every time he sees the way those words soften Ilya. He feels almost guilty for it, for the fact that Ilya melts into a puddle of goopy affection about his petnames, and meanwhile every time Ilya calls him kitten in Russian, Shane gets an immediate boner. Like, how is that fair? 

Ilya teaches him some Russian petnames. Finally provides the real translations so now Shane has to live with the knowledge that Ilya hasn’t been calling him my little slut for months but has in fact been calling him things like sunshine and darling. Another thing that Shane lost at, apparently, because Shane had been so sure, in the apartment, that it was still somehow just fucking and friendship, and now he understands that Ilya has been feeling more for maybe just as long as Shane has. 

Not that Ilya has admitted it. 

Not that Shane has admitted it, either. 

And Shane is too much a coward to bring it up. Or maybe it’s not cowardice. It might just be that Shane is so fucking happy now, all the time. So happy with what they have, and so afraid of pushing too quickly or too hard and messing everything up. 

I love him, Shane tries out, in his head, every so often. Little moments like when they’re sitting together on a bench by the water and bickering about whether Ilya should have worn another layer, or when Shane returns on his bike from a long run out to the tip of the island where a few of the oldest members of the town live, and he sees Ilya smiling at him, standing out in front of the house, glad to have him back. I love him. Am I okay with that? Can I survive that? Is that a problem for me? 

It’s not like they talk about any of it. It’s just something that goes on in Shane’s own head. Soon enough, Ilya no longer has to use the crutches at all. He still occasionally limps, especially when it’s cold, and Shane is always bothering him to keep up with his exercises, because he’s worried and wishes that Ilya had a professional, still-licensed rehabber or physical therapist, the kind that the team would have had. He doesn’t mention that, because he’s sure Ilya would only roll his eyes. He tries not to be overbearing. Tries not to smother him. Tries to act like he thinks a normal person would act, even though that has never been the easiest thing for him.

One day, Shane wakes up and realizes that it’s been six months since the zombies came, six months since Vegas. Six months since he last played hockey. He pretends to be fine, and he tells Ilya that he’ll meet him later. Ilya is clearly concerned about him, but they had been up pretty late the night before, so he looks a little smug as he kisses Shane goodbye, on his way to help Lindy with inventory at the clinic. Maybe he should be humiliated that Ilya clearly thinks he fucked Shane into a coma, but whatever. It’s less embarrassing than the truth. 

Shane stays in bed, and he stares at the ceiling, and he thinks about the last time he spoke to his parents. He thinks about the last time he saw Hayden and Jackie. He thinks about his cottage, and his parents’ cottage, and he thinks about his long-abandoned apartment in Montreal. 

Six months. Six months, and the world is gone, and it’s not coming back. 

Maybe that’s been obvious to everyone else for a lot longer, but Shane has been doing such a good job of never thinking about it that he has tricked even himself into forgetting. He has known, all this time, that he needs to not think about it in order to survive, because if he lets himself think about it, he’ll be tempted to give up completely.

Everyone he has ever loved. Everything he has ever worked for. It’s gone, as far as he knows. His parents might still be out there. Hayden and Jackie and the kids, too. He likes to hope that they’re all surviving just fine. But maybe they’re not, and even if they are…when is he going to get to see them again? 

Some people do travel. He knows that. There are caravans that head out every so often to trade. He's heard stories about big trucks with plows on the front that carve through the zombies in the more overrun areas. Maybe he could find a caravan going north. Ilya would come with him, he’s sure, if he asked. Even with things as fucked up as they are, it wouldn’t take long to walk there, if there was no other option. A week, maybe two. It’s just that it would be insanely fucking dangerous. 

And what if he goes all the way up there just to find that they didn’t make it? What if he finds the cottage overrun? What if he and Ilya leave this safe place and then get themselves killed, and Shane has to die with the knowledge that it’s his fault? 

Nahant isn’t home, and his parents aren’t here, but Ilya is here, and it’s safe, and Shane is so fucking afraid of losing what he does have, of trying to make a trade and choosing wrong. 

When he finally forces himself out of bed, he can feel himself putting on his media mask as he goes around town and makes deliveries. Mostly, he delivers meals to the oldest people, the ones who can’t or don’t want to make the trek up to the restaurant every day. He also meets up with the scavenger teams when they come back, and he delivers the specifically requested items that they’ve tracked down for people. He likes this job; it’s easy, and it’s not very exciting, but it lets him keep in shape, and it means that people see him and recognize him and wave to him but don’t typically try to stop him to talk, and that works just fine for him. 

Even their waves and their smiles get under his skin today, though, because it’s been six months, and these people are acting like everything is fine, and is this just going to be the rest of his life? A fucking parcel delivery boy? He never got to win a Stanley Cup. It’s so fucking stupid to care about that now, but he does. He never got to win a Stanley Cup, never got to lead his team to victory the way Ilya did. He never got to hug his parents on the ice. That was like the one thing he needed to do, and he didn’t get the chance, and now the world is over, and what is the fucking point of him, if he doesn’t have that? 

It’s cold, and he bikes up and down the island a few times before he knows that he’s going to have to go back to the house and grab a better jacket, and he runs into Ilya, who has brought him home a new blanket from Carla, Bonnie’s wife. 

“She made it for us,” Ilya says, his voice warm and gentle, clearly touched by the gesture. Shane is touched, too. He is. But he’s thinking about how long it takes to make a blanket, and he’s wondering when she started it, and he’s thinking about all the days that are going to stretch out ahead of him. 

He makes all the appropriate sounds, acts as impressed as he thinks the gift deserves, but of course he should know better than to think that Ilya will believe him; Ilya is watching him, head slightly tilted, like he’s trying to figure Shane out. 

“I think I’m going to go back to bed,” Shane admits quietly, at last, and Ilya nods. 

“Okay,” he says. “I will come with you.” 

“You don’t have to.” 

But that’s not the same thing as saying I don’t want you there, and Ilya knows it. He nods. 

“I know,” he says gently, and he reaches out and cups Shane’s face in that soft way he does sometimes. “But I want to.” 

Shane apologizes, later that night, when they’re lying there in the dark, Ilya pressed up against his back as they curl on their sides. He thinks at first that Ilya might be asleep, and maybe that’s why he apologizes aloud, but Ilya surprises him by stirring. 

“For what?” he asks sleepily. 

“I was being really weird today. I don’t know.” 

“You have seemed sad. You are all right?” 

“I guess so. Maybe I am sad. I miss my parents.” 

“I know.” 

“I miss hockey.” 

A quiet laugh. 

“I know.” 

“I’m never going to win the Stanley Cup.” 

“Mm. Probably not.” 

“It’s fucking stupid.” 

“No, not really. Winning the Stanley Cup is only for very special people.” 

“Oh my God. Don’t be an asshole.” 

“You would have won, yes?” 

“Yes.” 

“See? Is not even a question. You know you would have won. I know you would have won. It is not your fault the world went to shit before you could. That is how the world is, though. Timing, luck. Not everything works out for everyone.” 

“I know that. And I’m obviously, like, grateful, or whatever. That I’m still alive. And that I get to have you, all the time. Obviously that’s like…better than it was before. Obviously.” 

“Obviously,” Ilya parrots. 

“It just hit me today, I guess. All that work was for nothing. Like why am I even still here?” 

Shane would have already described Ilya as unmoving behind him, but somehow, in the next moments, Ilya goes even more still. Shane opens his mouth to reassure him, or take it back, or something, but Ilya pulls his shoulder, forces Shane flat onto his back, looms over him. His expression is hard to make out in the dark, but his grip is bruising on Shane’s arms. 

“You are here,” he says quietly but firmly. “Because you are here. There does not need to be a reason.” 

“I know that. I know. I was just…” 

“If you feel like that again, you tell me, and I will remind you exactly how good it feels to be here, yes?” 

“I’m not going to, like, throw myself off a fucking pier or anything, Ilya. I was just, I don’t know. Fucking sad. It was just for a second.” 

“Okay. Well. I don’t like hearing about it.” 

“You just told me to tell you when…” 

“Yes, because I need you here. You are here because I need you here. I would rather hear about it then not. I just…”

Shane realizes, a little late, that Ilya sounds choked-up, upset. He squirms his way into a seated position, suddenly desperate to hold him. 

“Hey, hey. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, seriously. I didn’t realize it would…Ilya, seriously, I’m fine.” 

“My mother,” Ilya starts, and Shane hugs him as tight as he can, and he pulls Ilya’s face into his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t mean…” 

“She was sad too,” Ilya says, and Shane nods, and digs his fingertips into the skin of Ilya’s back, and he has so many questions. He has so many things he wants to say, but he just lets Ilya cry, instead. 

In the morning, they don’t talk about it again. Shane considers trying, considers asking, but Ilya’s eyes look so wary, like a nervous animal unsure if it should trust the person reaching out to touch it, and Shane doesn’t want to make it worse. So Shane does a very normal Shane thing and sucks Ilya off at the kitchen island until he’s sure that Ilya isn’t afraid that he’s going to fucking kill himself anymore, and then he urges Ilya to edge him until they’ve both forgotten literally everything except each other. 

Maybe it’s unhealthy that that becomes such a touchstone for him, but it does. 

Every time he misses hockey so much it feels like he’s been punched. 

Every time the passage of time starts to feel more like a threat than a promise. 

He thinks of Ilya saying you are here because I need you here, and he can breathe a little easier. It’s so fucked up, for sure. Like, Shane should not be pinning so much on Ilya. It isn’t fair, and so he doesn’t tell Ilya these things. It’s a little bit like the sex stuff, like how the sex stuff has been from the very beginning. It’s Ilya telling him to do something and Shane doing it. It’s Ilya giving Shane permission to not overthink something. It’s giving Ilya the control in a way that’s not restricting but is like the exact opposite. Unburdening. 

Shane doesn’t have to worry about not being special, or not winning a Stanley Cup, or not being able to be the best hockey player in history. Shane doesn’t have to worry about finding a purpose. He doesn’t have to worry about anything. He’s here because Ilya needs him, and that’s reason enough to stay. 

Sure, if he had a therapist, they’d probably be hitting a big red eject button and telling him how unhealthy it is, but he doesn’t have a therapist, and he doesn’t think he particularly wants one. It’s like whenever he used to do the occasional cheat day during the season. Going out with his parents and breaking his diet on purpose. Yeah, it was unhealthy, and yeah, he knew he shouldn’t do it, but sometimes you want to do the indulgent thing, and that’s what it feels like, to give over all control to Ilya. It feels like an indulgence. 

At some point, thanks to their partnership with that group in Sherborn, they realize that dogs make great early-warning alarms for zombies. The zombies don’t go after dogs in the same way they go after people. They’ll occasionally head in the direction of a dog if a dog is being annoying, but it’s with the same plodding curiosity with which they go after things like car alarms and gunshots. They only get really riled up at the smell and sight of people. 

Dogs, though, fucking hate zombies. They go mad with fury every time a zombie is nearby. Like their feelings for zombies are a direct inversion of how much they love people. So if there are zombies anywhere near the causeway, the dogs of Nahant will collectively lose their shit. 

People love dogs almost as much as dogs love people, and so of course the scavenger groups start bringing back the strays they find on the streets of Boston. They use them on their scavenging runs, and the watch uses them for patrolling on the causeway, where they’re especially useful at night. 

Ilya volunteers to start working at the kennel they set up near the causeway, which is no surprise. He loves spending time with the dogs, training them to respond to commands from the scavengers, feeding them, brushing them, bathing them, playing with them, even cleaning up after them. Shane isn’t sure he’s ever seen Ilya so happy, and he has this weird double-lensed view of it, these two parts of himself that are always at war with each other. 

He’s thinking this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life, isn’t it? And he’s so fucking fond of and in love with Ilya. He’s so achingly pleased that Ilya loves animals, and that he’s so good with them, and that he’s clearly so content here. But at the same time, he’s thinking the world should know who he is. He’s one of the greatest hockey players alive, and he’s cleaning up dog shit, and it’s not fair. 

Of course that second one is stupid, because it’s not like they can just go back to hockey, and it’s not like he’s blaming Ilya for enjoying their life here. Shane enjoys their life here too, most of the time. He knows that if he admitted these feelings to Ilya, Ilya would give him that wry, condescending look that he still gives Shane sometimes, like he thinks Shane is still so naive. He’ll be very kind and gentle about it, but he’ll be thinking what a fool, he thinks hockey still matters. He thinks this won’t be forever. 

It makes Shane panic to think too hard about the future, and so he tries not to. It’s always a surprise when someone tells him the month or the day and he realizes that they’re so much further along in the year than he thought they were. It’s not like he doesn’t understand that the fate of the world is bigger than him, bigger than Ilya, bigger than fucking hockey. But hockey is all he has ever known, and it’s the thing he has focused on probably to the detriment of every other aspect of his personality, and now suddenly it’s gone. Of course he’s upset about it. Of course sometimes he can’t get out of bed about it. 

He hides it, as best as he can, but he keeps his promise to Ilya, and he always tells him when he’s feeling that way. Ilya has his own bad days, and sometimes their bad days line up, and they curl up under the covers together and just stare at each other. Ilya will touch his lips, his freckles, and he’ll sigh, and Shane will close his eyes and cuddle close, and it feels a little bit like they’re marooned in the middle of a vast ocean, holding on to each other as the waves batter their tiny boat. It doesn’t usually last for long. It’s good to have a routine. It’s good that people are relying on them to get out of bed and rejoin the community. And it's always good to have each other, in the meantime.

They’re hit with a cold snap, finally, after an unseasonably warm December, and the pond freezes over, just like Brendan talked about. Ilya surprises Shane one morning with skates for both of them, and sticks, and they take to the ice together. Ilya is a little more rusty than Shane, because even with the physical therapy, his ankle still sometimes gives him trouble, but after a few laps, he settles into a new groove, and then he’s the demon Shane remembers. They chase each other up and down the length of the pond. There aren’t even any goals set up yet; they’re just stealing the puck from each other over and over again, and Shane feels more alive than he has in months. He’s laughing over his shoulder at Ilya, and he knows he’s red-cheeked from the cold and he knows he probably looks like an idiot because he can’t stop smiling, and he knows that Ilya loves him, because of the way Ilya is looking at him, even though neither of them have said the words aloud yet. 

I love you, I love you, I love you, Shane thinks as they skate. Ilya produces a tiny soccer net made for children, and he plops it down on one end of the pond, and he stands back, resting on his stick as Shane takes shot after shot, missing none of them. Shane wants to kiss him so badly that his stomach hurts, but they’ve gathered a cheering crowd now, and so he doesn’t. 

That night, one of the college students, a very nervous girl named Donna, is plainly embarrassed at the restaurant to reveal that she has a laptop with a bunch of Raiders games downloaded onto it, and a suspiciously large collection of Raiders versus Montreal games. She asks if everyone wants to watch one, and is met with resounding cheers and one very Shane-shaped “NO!” Ilya leads the cheering, and he covers Shane’s mouth with his hand.

“Oh, come on, let’s see how good you actually were,” Bonnie teases in her gravel-laced voice, while Carla claps beside her. “Though to be fair, I don’t know shit about hockey. I’ll probably be impressed with whatever.” 

Donna pulls up the last game that Ilya and Shane played against each other. They project it on a hung-up screen at the restaurant that they’ve been using for movie nights for the children. By now, Shane and Ilya have become such a staple of the town that most people have forgotten they were anything other than Shane the bike guy and Ilya the dog guy, and it’s sort of fun to watch them all cheering any time either of them warrants a close-up. They boo when Ilya checks Shane into the boards, and Ilya laughs, unrestrained, and stands up and takes a bow. They cheer even louder when the Raiders win the game, and Shane puts his face in his hands and laughs, pretending to be upset, and he feels Ilya briefly squeezing the back of his neck, and for a second he remembers that he used to be afraid of such easy shows of affection. He’s not afraid anymore. He thinks he might not die if Ilya kissed him in public right now. He’s not sure if he’s glad when Ilya doesn’t. 

He skates every day he can, after that, and he pretends it’s not devastating when the ice melts for the last time of the season, but Ilya can tell. He spends the entire day with Shane after that, sticking to him almost to the point where Shane is annoyed about it, except Ilya takes him apart with such a precise focus. Not just sexually, but personally. He gives Shane everything he can, offers everything that he knows will make Shane happy, and by the end of the day, Shane feels almost weepy with his gratitude for it. He doesn’t have hockey anymore, but he has this. He has Ilya. That can be enough, can’t it? 

Two days later, he goes to the gate when he hears that the scavenging group is returning, and Brendan looks pleased to hand off a heavy gear bag. 

“Where’s this one going?” Shane asks, hauling it into the cart. 

“Your place, dude,” Brendan says, giddy. “Open it! I want to see!” 

Shane, bemused, does open it, and he stares down at the many pairs of roller blades that have been packed into it. 

“What?” he asks. 

“Rozanov’s idea. It was fucking awesome to skate with you guys, and no one wants that to end. There’s this old roller rink up in Saugas. Figured there might be some rollerblades there. Rozanov has some ideas about giving some hockey sticks to Brad the carpenter guy? Because he does a lot of metalwork too, and we figure sticks could make pretty good weapons if they were reinforced with metal sheeting or whatever. So when you guys start going out on scavenging runs, you can take out zombies with bladed hockey sticks while on rollerblades, which is the coolest thing anyone has ever suggested.” 

Shane looks back down at the bag, and then turns around, like he’s going to see Ilya standing behind him. Ilya isn’t behind him, of course. He’s at the kennels, working. It’s just that this is such a romantic gesture, it feels weird that he isn’t here in person to see the effect of it.

“This was Rozanov’s idea?” he asks, Ilya’s last name feeling strange in his mouth, the way it always does, now. 

“Yeah! He wanted to surprise you with it. Said you were missing the ice.” 

“Yeah,” Shane admits quietly. “I was. Shit. This was a really good idea. We should have been killing zombies on rollerblades this entire time.” 

“That’s exactly what I said, dude,” Brendan agrees. “Why do you think we had the team pick up so many fucking pairs?” 

And then it has been a year since Vegas. 

Ilya fucks Shane just as hard as he did that night, pressing his face into the mattress exactly like he did that night, and Shane remembers the way it felt before, but it doesn’t feel like that anymore, ever. He doesn’t know how to quantify the difference. He remembers feeling hollow, empty, unwanted, unloved. Like some thing that was easily discarded when they were done. He remembers standing in that elevator and realizing that Ilya hadn’t even liked him enough to kiss him, not even once. Now, he turns his head, and Ilya knows exactly what he wants, and he leans in and kisses Shane desperately, even as he’s still fucking him, and Shane feels like he could set the entire house on fire if he let go of the tension coiling within him, but he lets go anyway. 

Afterward, they lie next to each other in bed. 

“Happy anniversary,” Shane says dully, and Ilya laughs so hard that Shane can’t be melancholy at all anymore. 

Their first venture back to the mainland feels like it should be a bigger deal than it is, but actually Shane just feels ready for it. It feels like they’ve delayed it too long for no reason. He’s been cautious about it for a reason, not wanting to push Ilya’s recovery, not wanting to risk a setback. He and Ilya have been training on the rollerblades for weeks now, getting used to the new weight of their hockey sticks now that they’ve been reinforced with metal sheeting and metal bands, with sharp blades at the end of them. 

He knows that the motherfuckers who shot Ilya are long dead, and he knows that there have been no sightings of other antagonistic groups in months, but it’s still difficult. He likes knowing where Ilya is at all times, and he likes knowing that Ilya is safe. He would never suggest that Ilya stay behind, and he actually is sort of excited to get back out there, but he has been consumed with anxiety about way stupider things than this, so of course he is consumed with anxiety now.

There are two more members of their group, people who have made scavenging runs before: a woman in her fifties named Katie and a man in his forties named Todd. Todd calls them the hockey boys in a way that’s definitely going to get grating. Probably it already is grating; Shane can see the way Ilya grits his teeth every time Todd says it. Shane tends to have more patience than Ilya generally, about most things, but he doesn't think he's far behind Ilya on this one. 

Every time Todd has talked to them in the past, it has been to tell them that he doesn’t give a fuck about hockey and would have no idea who they are if people didn't tell him. Ilya once said to him, “okay? I don’t give a fuck about you, either,” in that devastatingly precise drawl he gets when he's trying to be more of a dick than usual. Todd had laughed, but tensely, and Shane knows he hasn’t been imagining the bad blood between the three of them since. 

Still, Todd has a gun, and he’s apparently good with the gun, and he’s not such an asshole that he’s not going to be useful. Maybe it's good not to be too attached to their scavenging partners, anyway. Just in case. It's the most dangerous job, statistically. When they've lost people over the last year, it has almost always been scavengers. 

“Are you okay?” Ilya asks quietly as they're gearing up. 

“Yeah. It's time.”

“Okay,” Ilya agrees. He looks Shane over again, assessing, like he's trying to see any cracks in Shane's armor. Apparently satisfied, he nods. 

Here, Shane thinks idly. Is where he would kiss me on the forehead, if I let him, even though we are in public. The thought sours a little bit, because why is he still not ready to let him? Because of fucking Todd? Who cares about Todd! 

But this isn't the time to beat himself up over it; he's still not ready. That's okay. He'll be ready eventually. He just has to talk himself into it. They head down the causeway together, the four of them, Shane and Ilya on rollerblades and Todd and Katie on bikes. They wave goodbye to the various members of the watch who have arrived to see them off, including Brendan, who has also taken to rollerblading everywhere. Now that they play street hockey together so much, Shane has reluctantly released his already mostly irrational hatred of the guy, especially since he makes for such a good left wing. 

Todd consults their map, musing with Katie over the best routes to take, because they've been this way before. They're heading into a town called Swampscott, which made Ilya laugh the first time he heard it.

“Scott Hunter as Shrek,” he explained in response to Shane's rolled eyes, which made Shane roll his eyes even harder. 

As they reach the end of the causeway, Shane looks for the spot where he had been forced to leave Ilya when they first arrived. It's not like he expects there to still be blood or some evidence of what happened there, but maybe that's exactly what he's expecting, because he feels weirdly panicked when he can't remember or tell just from looking where, exactly, he'd leaned Ilya back against the guardrail to rest. Ilya doesn't look at all. Like he doesn't even realize there's anything to see. Shane feels stupid for caring so much, stupid for getting anxious about it. He's not sure what his deal is. He just wants to wrap Ilya in bubblewrap and hide him in their little cottage forever, but that's not fair, and so he swallows down his anxiety, and he doesn't say anything. 

Like with most things Shane catastrophizes about for a week beforehand, the trip to Swampscott goes just fine. They hit up a grocery store that Todd earmarked the last time they headed here, because it still has a bunch of shelf-stable items and cans and first aid supplies on the shelves. They also pick up a shitload of dog food at a pet store in the same plaza, which was the main point of the trip. Ilya also decides to pick up a bunch of toys for the dogs, defensive even before he suggests it, expecting Todd to have an issue with it, but Todd surprises them all by thinking it's a great idea, and helping Ilya make room in the bike cart, and suggesting certain toys based on what his own dog likes. Shane watches in real time as Ilya grows annoyed because he has to like Todd now, and he hides a smile. Katie watches the front door for them, and she announces when a small pack of zombies arrives, drawn probably by their smell, or maybe the sound of the wheels as they'd biked and bladed through the parking lot. Shane and Ilya go out together to clear them. 

It shouldn't be so easy to take lives, even though those lives have been over for a year, but it is easy. They've both been working out more in the last few months to prepare for this, and it shows in how effortlessly they dispatch the zombies. Shane feels alive in a way he hasn't felt in almost a year, skating across the parking lot, building up speed, using the bladed end of his heavy metal stick to cut through them. The first time he tried it out, on a few zombies that wandered up the causeway, he'd barely made it into a bathroom to vomit up his lunch, but he doesn't feel anything like that anymore. It's just a part of life now, and every zombie dead is one more zombie that can't hurt them. It feels good, almost. Meditative. Like cleaning up a mess.

They're up to thirty-five and thirty-seven in their individual competition, though he knows the numbers are going to balloon now that they're going out on scavenging runs together. Shane still has a slight edge, and he intends to keep it. 

Afterward, blood flecked on his face, Ilya grins savagely as he skates in an arcing loop back towards Shane, the way he used to do all the time during warm-ups when they were about to play each other. Like he was peacocking for Shane, trying to catch his attention. Shane smiles back, helpless, wishing he didn't find it so hot. Watching Ilya with a hockey stick, even one now covered in blood and brain matter, is so fucking hot to him. It's sick that it's still so hot. He can hear the roar of the crowd. He can hear the sounds of his skates on the ice. He thinks about what it would feel like to have Ilya skate up to him, kiss him. Maybe not a good idea with the blood on their faces, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want it. 

They head back to Nahant, only running into a few small groups of zombies on their way back. Katie was a researcher, before, and she's one of like five people in town who have been studying the zombies throughout the year, compiling data that wasn't able to be studied in those frantic days before the fall. She's giddy at the efficiency with which the zombies were taken out by the heavy hockey sticks and the rollerblades, pleased at the evidence that they can't track fast-moving objects, which might be why dogs are so uniquely effective against them. 

“You guys were moving so fast, they couldn't even turn around. They're definitely slowing down. Did you see the lack of muscle mass? I don't know what's keeping them mobile at this point except the virus. Maybe that's all it is.”

“And?” Todd prompts, a little less shittily than Shane expected. Kind of gentle, like he knows Katie probably started out with a point and has just forgotten to get to it. 

“And if it’s this easy to kill them now? I mean, shit, Todd. There might be an end stage, here. We might be approaching it.”

Which is a dangerous thing to start thinking, Shane knows, in particular because Shane is clinging to the before a lot harder than he probably should. He knows he's not the only one. Of course everyone wants things to go back to normal. He's not unique in that. But most people are more like Ilya: fatalistic about it, sort of amused. That condescending look, like they're just humoring people who think the world hasn't ended for good. Ilya thinks they're in a death spiral and that they're just living out the last days, and he doesn't seem broken up about it. He seems actually sort of free, and more than once, Shane has thought that he would love to be the same, even though it would make things harder, probably, in some ways. Letting go. 

He catches Ilya looking at him during Katie's enthusiastic observations, like he's trying to read the effect of Katie's words on him. He tries to look disinterested, blank, but he knows that Ilya is good at reading him. He just doesn't want Ilya to think that he's being naive again, or that he's getting his hopes up. He doesn't want Ilya to think that it's going to make things worse. Shane's sad days are already so much about the world they lost, and he knows that Ilya worries. 

It would be easier, Shane thinks, if he could reach out and take Ilya's hand. Make him understand with his touch that he's okay, that he isn't going to be completely swamped by pointless optimism followed by the harsh sting of reality. It's nice, sure, to think that Katie might be right, and he's definitely noticed a difference between the zombies he saw in Vegas and the ones he just killed. He remembers the terrifying strength of that zombie on the plane, the fact that it took three people to subdue it. Now, they barely have to try to kill them.

It doesn't mean that things are going to be fixed right away. But, shit. Maybe eventually. It's only been a year. Maybe three years, maybe five…

Maybe Ilya is right to look at him in that careful way. Maybe Shane is getting ahead of himself. 

They clean off in the ocean at the end of the causeway, the way they always do. The guards check them for bites, and they check their temperature, and they're allowed to take hot showers in the bed and breakfast, washing with the provided antibacterial rinse.

Shane had left Bonnie's dad's sweater at the bed and breakfast for his change of clothes before they left, for his own comfort this time, rather than to inspire anything particularly filthy in Ilya. He hands over his old clothes to Connie for washing, and then he heads outside and finds Ilya already looking at him, his eyes darkening. 

Which wasn't, like, the point of the sweater, but that doesn't mean Shane is going to complain about it, either. 

He lets Ilya take his time that night, every slow and tender second relieving some of the fear he felt today, the adrenaline bleeding out of him. It's so good like this, so good to look up at Ilya and to know that Ilya is with him, and will be with him, and that they are alive and together and safe, at least for now. He falls apart on Ilya's fingers first, and then again when Ilya is inside him, untouched, and Ilya is so pleased with himself, after, pulling Shane close and kissing him from his throat to his hairline as Shane laughs and squirms and tells him to fuck off. Ilya was worried too, he understands, and he's happy to assuage those concerns by getting as close to him as possible. As if he would ever want to be anywhere else. 

Shane does worry, sometimes, about how fucking codependent they've gotten. It takes him a while to realize it, because he’s still generally thinking of things in terms of Before and During, and he still thinks that the person he was Before is his real self, while the person he is now is just a reaction to all the shit that has happened During. So it makes sense that he and Ilya never spend more than a few hours apart, because it's the special circumstances of the apocalypse, and obviously when things go back to Normal, they will be able to go back to being more normal, too. 

Seeing each other infrequently. Texting occasionally, but only about fucking. Maybe texting a little more, since they're friends now, even beyond the fucking. 

Like, obviously, if he stops to think about it for even a second, that's not at all what he wants. He doesn't want to go back to that. He doesn't think he physically can. But it's easy to believe these things when you're as skilled at resolutely not thinking about them as Shane is, and so Shane doesn't think. He and Ilya spend basically every waking second together, and they fuck constantly, and they get antsy if they have to be apart for too long, and all of that is just fine. 

He starts wondering about it a bit just after Ilya has been made the official “kennel master”, which is a title he gets way too into, obviously, because he's Ilya. Shane still delivers stuff on his bike when they're not out on scavenging runs together or practicing their skating together or going for runs with the dogs together, but bike delivery boy isn't exactly a full time gig, so he wanders over and helps Ilya whenever he's free. Lindy spots him coming out of the kennel one day, and she laughs a little. It's a kind enough laugh. It's not like she's making fun of him. 

“I knew I'd find you here,” she says. “The last group found a book that Pat Franco’s been asking for. Do you mind biking it over?”

“Sure,” Shane says, taking it from her. Pat Franco lives in a giant house all the way at the end of the big island, so it'll be a nice ride, and he's looking forward to it. 

“Thanks, kiddo. Not to separate you from your other half.”

“My what?” Shane asks, and Lindy laughs again and squeezes his arm. 

“I'm just kidding, don't look at me like that. I think it's sweet that you two are so codependent.”

She heads off, and Shane goes and delivers his book, and it's not like he can even spend the ride convincing himself that Lindy is wrong and that they aren't codependent. They are codependent. The second she says it, he knows it. If they're apart for more than an hour, Shane starts getting a fucking headache. It's not normal. Of course it isn't.

“Do you think we spend too much time together?” he asks that night, sleepily, curled up in front of Ilya on the bed. Ilya's dick is literally still inside him, and he's weirdly dreading the moment when that stops being true, so it makes him think about Lindy's comment, for obvious reasons. 

“Hmm? No. I think we spend too much time apart.”

“You’re delusional. When?”

“More than half of our showers. Bathroom breaks. When you go on your bike rides and abandon me.”

“It's my job!”

“Yes, and I stand and wait for you forlornly until you come back.”

“Forlornly. That's a really good one.”

“Yes,” Ilya says, pleased with himself. “I've been waiting to use it.”

“It's just something Lindy said to me earlier.”

“Please do not try to move out to prove to Lindy that you don't need my cock.”

“This isn't about your cock,” Shane insists. Ilya nudges his hips forward a little bit, and Shane bites his lower lip. “It’s not just about your cock. And I'm not moving out. That was fucking stupid.”

“Yes it was.”

“I'm just saying that maybe, for us, not for Lindy or for anyone else, we should try to be, I don't know. More independent?”

Ilya is quiet for a very long time. Shane feels like he's going to throw up. Oh, god, what if Ilya thinks it's a good idea?

“Do you want to spend time apart?” Ilya asks. 

“No,” Shane admits, too quickly. Ilya breathes out a relieved breath, and he presses his forehead to the back of Shane's neck. 

“Good. Fuck you. Don't say shit like that. Fuck Lindy. I would live inside your skin if I could.”

“Jesus, dude, see, this is exactly what I'm talking about. This isn't normal.”

“Like you give a fuck,” Ilya points out. And, well. True. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he wants Ilya to live inside his skin, too. Maybe that's a problem, technically, but is it Shane's problem? 

It's not like the world is ever going back completely, right? Even if all the zombies died today, so many people have been killed that society is never going to go back to “normal”. There is no “normal” to go back to with billions dead. It will have to be different. So what does it matter? He tries to tell himself, over and over again, that he doesn't have to care about any of the stuff that he used to care about. About hockey, about being a public figure, about being anything but Shane the delivery guy and also the rollerblading zombie killer and also the newest member of Nahant’s council. He can be weird and codependent with his former rival, and he can be fucking gay, and it doesn't matter. 

But there is still his mother's voice inside him. 

One day, this will be over, and you will have to go back to normal. 

It's hard to remember what normal was like. He remembers staring down at his phone after texting Ilya, waiting for Ilya to respond, feeling sick with nerves. Now, he goes and finds Ilya and sees his smile and knows exactly what Ilya is thinking. 

He remembers looking at the schedule, heart hammering every time he knew he was going to get to face off with Ilya. 

He remembers brand deals. Endorsements. Endless meetings where his mother did all the talking. He remembers rehearsing the right things to say because otherwise he never had a fucking clue. 

He remembers hockey. The fans. He remembers how much they loved him. His teammates surrounding him and screaming with him in victory. He remembers the rush of the ice, the adrenaline. He remembers working out and eating right and keeping everything in his life controlled so he could keep playing at his peak. He remembers laughing off the teammates who tried to get him to hook up with girls. He remembers slurs tossed across the locker room for the stupidest fucking reasons. A guy likes his wife too much? A guy doesn't want to go out and hook up? A guy wants to take a shower too quick after the game because he smells fucking terrible? Better call him gay. Better make sure everyone knows you're such a manly man and would never do such a thing. 

Shane remembers trying to follow the rules, trying not to stand out, because he was fucking terrified that someone would call him that word and he'd flinch instead of laughing it away or flipping off the person who'd said it. 

He remembers sleeping so fucking poorly after seeing Ilya, when he was feeling humiliated for giving in to him again, and feeling strung out because he knew it would be such a long time before they'd see each other. 

He remembers Vegas. 

He remembers the long stretch of silence before Vegas. 

Can he go back to that? Does he want to?

Of course you do, he tells himself. Of course you want things the way they were before.

But does he? Does he really? 

Sometimes, he can't remember why he would, except for hockey. Just the pure joy of playing it, the pure joy of knowing exactly what he can do. Sometimes he realizes that that's the only part he ever really liked about his life before. 

Shane and Ilya have been the group’s most reliable enforcers on scavenging runs for almost six months when it happens. 

It's stupid. It's all Shane's fault. He knows it immediately. He knows it even before it happens; it’s like in a game when you have a couple of seconds to make a choice, and you immediately know when the choice you’ve made is the wrong one. Going left instead of right. Aiming low instead of aiming high. Taking a fraction of a second too long to pass the puck. 

He leaves his back exposed for a second because he’s trying to cover Ilya; Ilya is looping around the small horde that has wandered up to the hospital they’ve just finished raiding, and Shane thinks Ilya doesn’t see the two stragglers coming out from between the two buildings across the street. Maybe he does. Shane never finds out, afterward, if he was right or not, but either way, he lunges, twists, cleaves through them both. His skate catches on something, a rock in the street, or a piece of trash, or some debris. He stumbles, and the zombie’s head, barely attached to its neck by this point, slides down the stick. He flails back, drops it, but it's too late. The zombie's teeth close on the webbing of his right hand, biting firmly enough to break the skin before it dies. 

He keeps fighting. He's not sure how. A cold chill comes over him. He doesn't think. Just like when he would make mistakes in hockey and then would play twice as hard, three times as hard, to prove that he could, that it was just a fluke that he’d fucked up at all. He scoops up his stick, and he shatters the fallen skull of the zombie that has probably killed him, and then he keeps going, because Ilya and the others still need coverage, and he’s not dead yet. 

When it's over, he drops the stick again, and he pulls off his leather glove, and he confirms that there’s a tear in it, and that there's blood under it. The teeth broke skin. He’d figured that; he knew the pain for what it was. He’d just been hoping…

Well, he’d been hoping foolishly, apparently. He’s a dead man after all. 

He finally looks up and meets Ilya's eyes, but he can't do it for very long. It's too painful. The terror and the disbelief and whatever else he can’t quite read in Ilya’s expression. His vision blurs, and he squeezes his eyes shut, and he drops his chin to his chest.

He hears footsteps rapidly approaching him, and he opens his eyes, and he’s only a little surprised to see one of their fellow scavengers, Greg, advancing, pulling out a machete they keep sheathed separately for exactly this purpose. 

They all know the protocol. 

If it's a neck or head injury, there's nothing you can do, but if it's a limb, they've seen some success in removing it quickly, before the infection has a chance to spread. 

“No, wait,” he says, skittering backward, nearly falling over in his skates.

“I'm sorry, man. You know the rules.” Greg really does sound sorry, but he’s still advancing. 

“No, you can't, please don't…” Shane begs. He looks at Ilya for help, but Ilya is still frozen there, staring at him. “Ilyusha, please don't let him…”

A dirty trick. He knows it. Ilya knows it. Ilya sighs, closes his eyes, and steps in front of him. 

“Greg, I will break your fucking arm.”

“Rozanov, you know ..” 

“I might be immune,” Shane insists. He's looking down at the bite. “And it was dead when it got his teeth on me. It was basically just a head. There’s like a, what, a ten percent chance of immunity? And it barely bit me. Maybe it wasn't enough.”

Greg sighs and looks at Ilya. Katie and Merry, the other two members of their group today, are letting this play out, their eyes bouncing from Shane to Ilya to Greg and then back again. Shane is shaking so badly he can hardly stand, and blood is welling up, spilling over his fingers, and he keeps thinking but I can't play hockey without a hand. He can’t say something that stupid out loud, but he thinks Ilya knows that he’s thinking it anyway, because he looks so fucking angry for a second, before he turns his face away again. 

He moves closer to Greg and whispers something, and Shane is absolutely positive that he’s going to take the knife and cut off Shane’s hand himself. He thinks it might be too late already for it to make a difference, but he’s not sure Ilya is thinking rationally right now. 

He tries to listen to what Ilya is saying, but he’s too far away, and he's afraid to get closer. Afraid Ilya will grab him and hold him down and let Greg cut off his hand to save his life. But Ilya doesn’t take the knife, and he doesn’t grab Shane. Greg nods, and he puts the knife away, and he takes out his gun. Ilya says something quietly, urgently, and Greg meets his eyes for a second, hesitating. Ilya stares back defiantly. Greg breathes out. 

“Fuck,” he says. “Okay. Jesus, dude.”

He fiddles with the gun. Taking bullets out, Shane realizes, and he’s relieved. 

They’re going to let him see if he turns. 

If he turns, he’s dead. 

And if he doesn’t turn…

He watches Ilya watch the gun, and he’s suddenly sick. 

If he doesn’t turn, he has chosen his hand over his life. He has chosen hockey over his life. 

He has chosen the possibility of one day being able to play hockey again over the possibility of living on Nahant, safe, short a hand, but with Ilya to take care of him. 

No wonder Ilya can’t meet his eyes. No wonder Ilya looks so fucking mad. 

There are protocols to these things. Shane has seen them written down. As a member of the council, he’s made some of the newer rules himself, suggested things that were previously blank spots, which was why he was chosen for the council expansion in the first place. The protocol is to chop the limb off immediately. It gives the infected person the best chance at survival. If they can make it back to the causeway within ten minutes or so, they usually radio ahead so that the watch can set up a quarantine zone about a quarter of the way down where the infected can be treated for their life-changing injuries and then watched to make sure the infection doesn’t spread once the limb has been removed. 

If the infection does spread, it’s easier to carry out the execution in a quarantine tent after allowing their loved ones to say their goodbyes, so it’s a win-win, really. 

If someone is further away from the causeway, or if it’s too dangerous to attempt to make it back to the causeway—with the approaching sunset, that’s the more pressing concern in this case—then one of their teammates will stay behind with a gun and a single bullet, and they will wait to see if the infected person turns. 

As far as Shane knows, they’ve only gotten lucky once. A woman named Sarah was bitten high up on the thigh after falling while trying to run away. It was deemed too risky to attempt amputation—fucking obviously—and so her sister stayed behind with her and waited for a full day before they realized she was naturally immune. 

She’s still alive. She goes out on even more runs now, secure in the knowledge that she can be bitten and it will turn out fine. It would be nice, Shane figures, if that happened to him. 

But she’s the only one so far. The rest of the people who have been bitten on scavenging runs are either maimed or dead. 

Shane thinks, distantly, that if he was less selfish, he would at least request that Greg be the one to stay. He knows Ilya would never agree to it anyway, and Ilya is already so fucking mad at him, so he doesn't bother trying. He clutches his bleeding hand to his chest, and he looks down at the ground as Katie and Merry leave, both stepping up and squeezing his shoulder gently before they go. Greg stumbles through an awkward half-apology and a bit of a bro hug that Shane hates. Shane’s not sure what he’s actually apologizing for. Trying to cut off Shane’s hand? It was the right move. It’s just that Shane, in the moment, decided that he would rather die than lose it, and now he has to live with the consequences of that. 

Or not, technically. 

It’s too late now, and usually that would make him feel unburdened, but how can he possibly be unburdened when he still has to face Ilya? Ilya is not looking at him. Ilya’s eyes are already red-rimmed, but his face is doing that thing that it does when he’s trying to hold back his disappointment and his anger and his disdain. He’s going to be so fucking sad and so fucking lonely, and Shane did this to him. He can say whatever he wants to make himself feel better. He can point out that he would have been such a burden to Ilya, with one hand. He can say that he wouldn’t have been the same person without a hand. He just wouldn’t have been. He would have been so fucking depressed, and he wouldn’t have been able to go out on scavenging runs anymore, and those are really the only things keeping him going, some days. He doesn’t want to become that fucking weight around Ilya's neck. He really doesn’t. 

But it was, at its core, about hockey, and he knows that, no matter what other justifications there may have been. 

Ilya doesn't say anything to the others, just nods at their quiet words and watches them leave. When the other three have finally turned around a corner, he slips the gun into his pocket and then steps out of his skates and pulls his sneakers out of his backpack, and he puts them on. He gestures for Shane to do the same, and Shane does, fingers shaking. Ilya has to tie his shoes for him, which would maybe be humiliating any other time, but it isn’t now. It breaks Shane’s heart, instead. 

When Ilya is done with the shoes, he straightens up and meets Shane’s eyes for the first time. Shane is not so much a coward that he tries to avoid them, but he can’t meet them for long. His eyes dart to Ilya and then away, down to his collarbone, and then reluctantly back up. Ilya breathes heavily through his nose, and then he leans in and kisses Shane on the forehead, gently. That’s what makes Shane’s tears finally spill over, and he tries to apologize then, but Ilya just shakes his head. 

“Not here,” he says, his voice rough, and then he takes Shane gently by the upper arm, and he leads him back into the hospital. It feels strange to walk after skating all day, and Shane trips over his own feet a few times, feeling uncoordinated and too heavy. 

They cleared the emergency room less than a half hour ago, went through and found some medicine and some surgical supplies that Lindy has been hoping to get, so they know they're alone here. Ilya leads him into one of the rooms with a bed and shuts the door behind them, and then moves to the window and shuts the shades, throwing them into darkness, with only a little bit of light coming in through the sides. 

Ilya should be on the other side of the door. Protocol says that the person who stays has to make sure to keep their distance to avoid accidentally being bitten if the turning happens suddenly. It can happen suddenly, according to everything that came out before the end, and according to the few stories they’ve picked up from the other settlements. People can go from feeling all right to being zombified in like less than five minutes. It usually takes hours, but still. 

He’s not brave enough to suggest that Ilya wait outside. He knows what the answer would be. 

“You should at least handcuff me to something,” he finally says, trying for gentle. He sounds weak, he thinks, instead. Frightened. Ilya sighs through his nose again, highly regimented.

“No,” he says. He walks up to Shane, and he pulls Shane into his arms. Shane finally lets himself cry, still cradling his hand against his chest. 

“I'm sorry. I’m sorry. I fucked up. I was so stupid. I wasn’t paying attention to…”

“You were protecting me,” Ilya interrupts in this flat, dead voice. It's true, but Shane doesn't want the weight of this on Ilya, and so he shakes his head. He presses his forehead into the juncture of Ilya's shoulder, and he breathes in the smell of him. He tries to calm himself down, tries to use the breathing techniques that he’s picked up from his weekly yoga classes with Christine the retired yoga teacher, but it doesn’t work. He finds himself breathing faster, instead, fear setting in. 

He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to leave Ilya alone. It seems so unfair. They’ve built this life together, and now he’s just going to abandon Ilya to live it without him?

Ilya has the dogs. He loves the dogs. Maybe that will make him happy. And he has so many friends. Maybe he’ll be okay. Maybe he can take over Shane's council spot. He hadn’t wanted it in the first place because he thought Shane would be better at it, but really that’s not true. Ilya is so good at talking to people. He’s so good at settling disagreements. And obviously he’s beautiful, and perfect, and there are so many people their age on the island, people who have been hitting on him all this time. He could…

Shane makes himself stop thinking about it. 

“I'm sorry,” he says again. 

“I know,” Ilya replies. His voice is still so distant, his anger barely hidden behind his attempt at distance, and it makes Shane more sorry than anything else. He doesn’t want to die with Ilya angry with him. If he has to die, he wishes it was better, easier on Ilya. He feels so fucking stupid. 

He wants to wrap his arms around Ilya and hold him close as he dies, but he knows that's not safe, and so he pulls away instead, and he moves to the other side of the room, and he sinks down into a corner of the room. Ilya snorts and follows him. 

“Ilyusha, you have to stay over there,” Shane tries. Ilya gives him another very unimpressed look at the use of Ilyusha. Shane tends to only use it when he’s feeling particularly soft, so of course he picks up on it now as a technique. A way to try and assuage Ilya, or maybe just remind him that Shane cares, because Shane is feeling like everything in the last few minutes has implied the opposite. Like he's afraid that Ilya will think he's not enough to keep Shane here, even though that’s not it at all. 

“Why would I do that?” Ilya asks.  

“Ten percent chance isn't very much,” Shane admits. 

“And yet you would rather take a ten percent chance of survival than giving up your zero percent chance of winning the fucking cup,” Ilya points out. Shane looks away. 

“It isn't just about that,” he says, knowing that Ilya won't be convinced if he tries to deny it’s at all about that. “I don't want…I would be useless.”

“No, you wouldn't be.”

“I wouldn't be able to protect myself, or you. I wouldn't be able to do anything.”

“We would get you a fucking hook, like a fucking pirate. You would pick up your hockey stick again in six weeks. You would be fucking fine in three months, like you never had a hand at all.” Ilya sounds bitter, furious, and Shane’s heart hurts even more, because even so angry, Ilya still believes in Shane more than anyone else ever has. He's still standing right in front of Shane, not backing off. He crouches down in front of him, looks Shane in the eyes. “It's hockey.”

“It's not only…”

“Moya lyubov, it's hockey.”

“Stop. It's not. Don't be such a fucking asshole. I'm…”

It would be too mean to finish that sentence, but Ilya knows him well enough. 

“Dying? Maybe, yes. And if you do, I will fucking hate you for it.”

“I know.”

“I should have fucking tackled you and pinned you down and made Greg do it.”

“No,” Shane says hollowly. Ilya shoves an annoyed hand through his hair. 

“Yes, I should have. It was the only correct choice, and I failed. I was too weak to save you. I knew you would never forgive me, and I am too fucking selfish to live like that.” Ilya’s lips tremble, and Shane reaches forward with his uninjured arm and grabs his hand, squeezing it tight. 

“No, stop. Of course I would have. Eventually. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just…”

“I might not forgive you for this,” Ilya warns, and Shane swallows, and he nods. He imagines it. Surviving the night and going back home. Ilya moving out, cutting himself out of Shane’s life, finally realizing that Shane is a weakness, a liability. He thinks he can probably live with that better than he could have lived with knowing that Ilya could never leave him because he would feel too indebted to the man who lost his fucking hand for him.  

“That's all right,” he says weakly, even though it’s not. He knows it's not true, anyway. Ilya is just as enmeshed with him as he is enmeshed with Ilya. Ilya sighs and sits down next to him, his shoulder pressing against Shane’s. He breathes out and sags over, huddling close, resting his head on Shane’s shoulder. Shane wants him here so badly, but he knows it isn't safe. “You shouldn't even be in here. You should be outside.”

“You are very stupid sometimes.”

“I know, but I want you to be okay.”

“Yes, of course. I will be totally okay when you are dead from protecting me because you love hockey more than me.”

“That's not fucking true,” Shane snaps. “I'm…”

“Like you wouldn't learn how to play with one hand. Like you wouldn't have made it look fucking easy.”

“Ilya, please,” Shane says softly. “We can have this fight if I make it.”

Ilya laughs shakily. 

“Fine, okay,” he says. 

“So go outside and wait. If I feel anything, I'll…”

“I am not going outside. I am staying right here.”

“It’s not safe.”

“Listen to yourself. Use your fucking head. You think I give a fuck?”

Ilya lifts his head so that he can look at Shane with the full force of his incredulity, and Shane looks back at him, and Shane understands. Hopes he's wrong. 

“Ilya,” he says.

“Shut up. We aren't…”

“Ilya, that's not fair.”

“Fair! Ha. Okay. We aren't talking about it.”

“But we have to. I can't be…”

“You don't get to decide for me what happens when you are gone,” Ilya says. His voice is doing that thing it does sometimes. Clipped and sharp, like he's biting off the words. His English has gotten so much better over the last year, but his accent is thick now with fury, and Shane is afraid. “Okay? I left you your hand even though it was stupid as fuck. I asked Greg for two bullets instead of one. I will sit here with you and see what happens. You said it before, and maybe you were right. Maybe this is too much. Maybe we are too much for each other. Codependent. But I don't fucking care. I'm not doing this without you. You are the only reason I’m still here, and I’m not fucking doing it unless you’re with me, and you can't fucking make me, because you will be dead. So shut up.”

Shane should keep arguing. Shane should tell Ilya all the reasons why he has to live. Instead, he thinks of how he would feel in Ilya's place. If Ilya chose this instead of the more guaranteed survival. If Ilya expected him to go back to surviving alone. Would he feel like this, too? 

He's not sure he'd ever be able to pull the trigger. Not as long as his parents are still out there. But he certainly wouldn't be alive anymore. He can’t imagine what would happen next except an endless stretch of gray, empty days. Ilya's face now is crumbling, and Shane pulls him into a desperate hug, wishing he could fix it but knowing that he can't. 

“I love you,” Shane says. He sounds like he's begging. It feels stupid that he's been holding back from saying it, all this time. What was the point of hiding it? 

“I love you too,” Ilya says miserably. “And I will not do this alone.”

Shane should argue. Shane should push him away. Shane should be angry. 

Shane says, “all right.”

They are raw, the next morning, when the twelve hours have passed and Shane is still alive, his hand no worse than it was yesterday. Ilya uses some antibiotic ointment on it, and he cleans it and wraps it, and he holds it in his own hand as they make their way out into the sunlight. He heaves a huge sigh when they're in the parking lot, when they have put their skates back on their feet. 

“If that ever happens to me, you cut off my fucking hand,” he says firmly. “I don't care what I say. I don’t care how upset I am. You cut it the fuck off.”

“Okay,” Shane whispers. 

“I don't give a fuck about hockey. Hockey is done. The world is done. I give a fuck about you. I will be a burden to you. You will have to drag my ass home. Okay?”

“Okay,” Shane agrees. 

“I will not leave you here alone.”

“Okay.”

“And if you die, I am following you. So be more fucking careful.”

Shane swallows. He wants to object. He doesn't bother. 

“Okay,” he agrees tearily. He shouldn't feel this, this swelling of love and affection, the feeling growing inside him. He should be horrified. He should want to pull away, want to make this easier for Ilya. Want to make himself less essential. Should start taking steps to be less codependent. More normal. 

He doesn't. 

He’s pretty sure he plans on doing the exact opposite. 

He has to spend the next day in the quarantine hut, just in case, even though no one has ever turned after twelve hours. Considering they’ve made it this far without a single zombie getting all the way to the end of the causeway, he understands why they’re cautious, and he doesn’t begrudge them it. It’s kind of nice to be away from Ilya for the day, even though he’s just sitting in a room by himself with only a couple of boring books about sailing to pick from, which makes him feel insane. He sleeps on the uncomfortable cot that has been shoved in there. He knows that Ilya is waiting outside the entire time, because he occasionally hears his voice as he greets the people on watch, his voice going higher-pitched and gentle when he also greets the dogs. It makes Shane smile, even though he still feels like such shit. He keeps thinking about Ilya asking for two bullets. He keeps thinking about Ilya refusing to leave his side. He’d been terrified, all night, that he was going to turn and kill Ilya, but Ilya hadn’t been afraid at all. He'd been resigned. Determined to follow Shane anywhere. 

He keeps trying to shape his thoughts into something normal. He keeps trying to tell himself that he’ll stop being so close to Ilya, stop being so codependent with him. He can’t, though. It’s like his brain doesn’t work the way it used to. It has been rewritten by Ilya, by the end of the world. He keeps finding it fucking romantic that Ilya doesn’t want to live without him, and he knows that’s fucked up. He knows it’s horrible and selfish and terrible, and that he should try to get Ilya some help so that he wants to live, and instead he’s sitting here in this fucking quarantine hut and preening like a sunflower on a cloudless day because Ilya loves him enough to want to die without him, and apparently Shane is enough of a disgusting freak to like that.

When they’re satisfied that he still hasn’t turned, he’s taken to the clinic. Ilya is waiting for him when they open the door of the quarantine hut, looking like he hasn’t slept in days. Shane wants to take his hand. Wants to hug him. Wants to kiss him. Doesn’t do any of those things, and feels sick about it as they fall into step together, walking a reasonable foot and a half apart. 

At the clinic, Lindy takes a sample of his blood. He knows she did the same thing when Sarah was bitten. Not like they’ve got the facilities or the skills here to even know what they’re looking for, but he gets why she asks for it. Considering the way the virus is spread, it probably is something in his blood that kept him from getting infected. Maybe, one day, there will be enough people working on it that the samples will be useful. 

He's given some of their precious stock of antibiotics, because the cut is a normal amount of infected after basically two days with only base level treatment, because human mouths are disgusting even beyond the whole zombie thing. 

He's added to the very short list of known immune, with an asterisk indicating that they’re not actually 100% sure if it’s immunity or just the good luck that a mostly decapitated zombie head was what bit him. When Lindy says all that, it makes Ilya's jaw tighten, because he's clearly afraid that they will use Shane for more risky endeavors now that they know he can't be turned. Shane shakes his head at him, trying to telepathically communicate I promised to be more fucking careful, and I will be more fucking careful. 

Ilya is silent when they leave the clinic, still angry. Maybe he’s realized how unhealthy this whole thing is and he’s going to be the one to put an end to it like Shane probably should. Back in the real world, before, he was always the one being smarter about this stuff, while Shane was the one being led by his dick on a string to wherever Ilya was. He feels vaguely sick at the idea, but maybe also a little relieved. Like at least one of them can still be normal, maybe. It’s going to break his fucking heart, but maybe it will be better for Ilya in the long run, and maybe Shane is selfless enough to kind of want that, even if he’s not selfless enough to make it happen on his own. 

“We are checking on the dogs,” Ilya says, still not looking at him, and Shane murmurs an agreement, confused but not upset that Ilya apparently wants them to do it together. He feels lightheaded with the relief of his survival, and with the relief of still having his hand, and he feels an aching pit of something in his stomach at how easily Ilya was going to give up his life for him. It makes him kind of jittery, actually, and he knows he’s being weird about it. People keep stopping them to say they’re glad he survived, and Ilya is uncharacteristically quiet, leaving Shane to field all the well-wishes, growing increasingly awkward with every one, especially when people start trying to hug him.

At the kennel, it’s easier, because Ilya’s co-workers are all as obsessed with the dogs as Ilya is, so they talk about that for a solid half hour while Shane disassociates in the background, trying to regulate his breathing while petting his favorite of the dogs: a black and white mutt of some kind with long, silky hair. When Ilya is satisfied that the kennel hasn’t gone to shit in his absence, he gestures for Shane to follow him, and Shane kisses the dog on the forehead to tell her goodbye, and he stands up. Ilya is looking at him with softer eyes than he has in days, and Shane has to look away. He doesn’t exactly feel worthy of that yet. Not like he ever does, but it’s definitely worse today.

They walk back home, and Ilya is quiet the entire time. Shane feels a thrum of something building, an anticipation for something, but he doesn’t know what to expect. Ilya is still angry, obviously. He’s restless, too. He keeps adjusting the straps of his backpack and flipping his baseball hat forwards and then backwards and then forwards again. Shane thinks that he should be angry, too, at himself, or at Ilya for telling him the truth about what he planned to do if Shane turned, but he isn't angry. He’s just sad, and sorry, even though he turned out to be right. He is immune. It’s obviously good that they didn’t cut off his hand. 

But that’s all hindsight, and he knows that Ilya is thinking that too. Trying to figure out how to be angry even though this is the best outcome. Trying to be relieved but also understanding that Shane needed to keep his hand for probably the wrong reasons. That he shouldn’t have risked his life for it. 

For a wild, guilt-ridden second, Shane thinks maybe he should have just let Greg cut it off, because then, at least, he wouldn’t know exactly what Ilya would do for him.

I asked Greg for two bullets, and Shane should be curious about that, should want to ask more questions, should want to set the parameters. Like, does Ilya think about killing himself a lot? What did Ilya mean when he said that Shane was the only reason he was still here? Did he mean practically, because Shane saved him? Or does he mean that he thinks he would have pulled the trigger already, if Shane wasn't with him?

He thinks he is curious, somewhere in him, idly. But he’s also just…he just wants to wrap Ilya up in a blanket and kiss him on the forehead and hold him forever. He just wants to ride Ilya into oblivion. He wants to take Ilya’s dick into his mouth and just kneel there forever, safe. He's annoyed and confused and overtired and mad at himself for having handled this so poorly, especially since he knows he’s going to continue doing it. 

This isn't normal, he keeps thinking. Bonnie and Carla, like, hold hands and go hiking and bird watching. Lindy and her husband Darren play tennis together, and they high-five the same way after every point, which Shane thinks is sort of cute but also sort of annoying, especially when he’s the one playing tennis against them. Shane and Ilya hooked up a few times and then were stuck together at the end of the world, so maybe that's why they're so weird. 

But Shane doesn't want to change it for anything. That's the other thing. He likes this. He fucking needs this. He knows that Ilya is angry, and that this is going to be an uncomfortable conversation, but he knows that Ilya is going to fuck him afterwards, and so he trails along, and he doesn’t want to be anywhere else. When they get back to their cottage, he closes and locks the door behind him, and he leans back against it, and he plans on waiting for Ilya to look at him, but Ilya focuses on unpacking his backpack, which is such transparent bullshit that Shane can’t wait any longer.

“You're still angry,” he says. 

“Yes,” Ilya admits. “Of course I am.” 

“We can fight about it, if you want.”

“There's no point.”

“It's over.”

“Yes.” But Ilya sounds tired, and Shane is sorry, and he crosses the room and pulls him into a hug. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm angry too.”

“Okay.”

“At myself and at you.”

“Yes, all right.”

Shane sighs, but if Ilya doesn't want to talk about it, Shane won't make him. 

“Do you want to go to bed?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, after some thought, and then he averts Shane’s next question by already pulling off his shirt as he heads back to the bedroom.

Shane hopes he’s not too obvious in his relief, but he’s always been so much better at this than he is at talking about his emotions, so of course he’s relieved. 

He lets Ilya direct him in everything. He can tell it's one of those times when Ilya needs control, and Shane still feels so guilty that he’s more than happy to give it. He clearly can’t be trusted to make decisions for himself, right? He almost got them both killed. Ilya can decide what they do from now on. 

Ilya's breathing is very steady and sturdy in a way that could mean that he's not freaking out at all, but Shane knows him too well, and so he’s slow and methodical with all his movements, eyes turning to Ilya after every step, waiting for more instructions, and eventually he can tell that he’s calmed Ilya down.

When Shane is fully naked, Ilya reaches for his injured hand. Shane lets him take it. Ilya starts to unwrap the stabilizing beige bandage that Lindy had wrapped over the gauze that covers his stitches. Overkill, Shane had thought at the time. Apparently, Ilya agrees. 

The gauze beneath the bandage is thin and clean and white. 

“Flex your fingers for me,” Ilya says calmly. Shane can’t figure out why, but he locks eyes with Ilya and curls his fingers into a fist and then unfurls them again. Ilya looks satisfied with that. He meets Shane’s eyes for a long time, like he’s trying to decide what to do next, and then he sighs and covers Shane's hand with his own, squeezing until Shane's fingers curl down into a tight fist.

“Don’t move,” Ilya says, and then he starts to wrap the thick beige bandage around it, over it, down his wrist, trapping Shane's fingers where they are. 

“Oh, come on,” Shane laughs shakily. “This is sick even for you.”

But Ilya isn't laughing. He arches an eyebrow. 

“You want me to stop?” he asks. 

“No,” Shane admits, and now Ilya laughs a little, and he eases in and presses a kiss to Shane's forehead. 

“I just thought, since you were so sure you need it, so attached to it that you would have killed us both…”

“Ilya.”

“...then I say when you get to use it. And tonight you don't.”

Ilya shrugs, like it's simple. Maybe it is. He knows Shane likes it when he does things like this. Decides on a whim that Shane isn't allowed to touch himself for a week (though that one hadn't really gone anywhere because Shane had correctly asked, “you think I'm jerking off? Alone? When would I have the fucking time?”), when Shane is allowed to sleep, when Shane is allowed to come. Shane likes being told what to do, and he even more unfortunately likes being told what not to do. He has always been so good at restraint, and there's something about that restraint being gently dictated to him that he really loves. It feels like a challenge being laid on him by Ilya, and he fucking loves a challenge. 

He tries to wiggle his fingers when the bandage is secured and finds that he can't, really. Just barely. 

“Okay,” he breathes. 

“I knew you'd like that.”

“Shut up. It's still fucked up.”

“And yet look at you.” Ilya's gaze drops down, eyebrows arched. “What a surprise. Hard already.”

“Shut up,” Shane says again, but so much warm fondness comes through in his tone. How humiliating. Ilya kisses him fiercely. 

Ilya is very focused on him in a way he sometimes gets after days when they've spent too much time apart, or when they have done something risky. He has always liked making Shane fall apart, likes making him beg, likes torturing him, and it's easy for him now. They've gotten so good at it. Sometimes he likes to make Shane work for it, but other times he likes to make Shane lie there and let him do all the work, and that's what he's like tonight. 

He chides Shane every time Shane tries to use his right hand, and he keeps Shane's left wrist pinned to the bed, and he opens Shane up slowly with his fingers, and Shane whines and begs and apologizes, and he means it. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I won't do it again. Ilya worships him, kisses up his thighs and mouths gently at his cock, but he takes forever to take it in his mouth. Drags the whole thing out until Shane is practically weeping. 

Shane is so, so fucking relieved to be alive, and to still be here, in their home with Ilya. The more Ilya torments him, the more relieved he feels, like he’s making up for his stupidity and selfishness by letting Ilya do whatever he wants. In the hazy place that he sometimes goes to with Ilya, where everything he's ever been concerned about drops away and he's left surrounded by Ilya and nothing else, he becomes briefly convinced that he has lost his hand, and he thinks it's not the end of the world after all. I can survive this. If he's here to help me, I can lose anything. Just not him. 

When Ilya finally does fuck him, it’s rough with his poorly restrained anger, and Shane finds himself crying out and apologizing loudly, which would have probably been humiliating a few minutes ago, but in this hazy, safe place, it’s not embarrassing at all. It's him. It's them. Ilya shushes him and then looks vaguely sick and kisses his mouth and his nose and his forehead before he kisses all of Shane’s tears away. After, Ilya holds him close, tight enough to hurt, but that’s exactly how Shane wants him.

Ilya unwraps his hand and kisses his fingers, and Shane is so relieved to remember that it’s not real, but when Ilya asks if it upset him, he admits that it didn’t. 

“I like when you take care of me,” he says. “Like that. Like I can't do it myself. Even though I can.”

“I know you can,” Ilya says gently, and he kisses Shane again. “You were protecting me.”

Shane doesn’t bother denying it this time. 

“I would do it again,” he admits. Ilya makes a sound under his breath that is probably supposed to be a hidden distress, but Shane can sense it. It's not hidden from him at all. “I would. I would do it again. I can't do this without you, either, okay? I would just be…existing. Without you. I don't know what I’d do. My heart would die.”

“Okay,” Ilya says gently. “We don't have to talk about it.”

Shane nods, glad, because he doesn't want to. It scares the shit out of him that he can care so deeply about someone, that Ilya has become so fundamental to him. He doesn't think, anymore, that he's worried about doing something insensitive or awkward and fucking it up between them. He’s been worried about that since the beginning, worried that he’ll push Ilya away by being himself too much. If they survived the last couple of days, he thinks they can probably survive anything. But that doesn't mean it's any less scary. 

The next morning, he and Ilya do their morning run, and then they head to the kennel, where they’ll separate for a little bit so Ilya can do his chores and Shane can do his deliveries. Ilya looks him over before they separate, a little pained, like he’s making sure that Shane is really all right after last night, as if he thinks a very mild amputation fetish moment is going to turn Shane off, after all this time. Shane doesn’t even really think about it. He knows how Ilya feels about it; Ilya has mentioned so many times that he doesn’t care who knows about them. And so Shane pulls him in for a kiss, and he finds that he doesn’t care who knows about them, either. He's not even sure if anyone is watching. It just doesn’t matter anymore. 

Maybe he’ll freak out later. Maybe, once the shock of the last few days has worn off completely, he’ll be horrified with himself. But he’s not horrified now. Now, it just feels like kissing Ilya, who he loves. 

“What the fuck,” Ilya breathes when he pulls back, looking at Shane carefully, his eyes traveling over Shane’s face, trying to read him. Shane isn't worried, not even for a second, that he’s misread Ilya, because Ilya is smiling so widely. So beautifully. 

“Who fucking cares anymore,” Shane says. He tries to sound calm and cool when he says it, but he’s never been either of those things, so he can’t tell if he pulls it off. Ilya only laughs at him, and then he kisses him again. 

Word spreads, because Shane and Ilya would both be fairly public figures in town even if they hadn’t been hockey players in the old world. This is also a tiny community that keeps tabs on each other every day, so everyone knows what everyone does. Really, it’s shocking that they haven’t given themselves away so far. Shane keeps expecting people to come up to him and say something like I knew it! But everyone instead has said basically the opposite. 

No one’s cruel about it. No one’s a dick about it. It’s not like Shane was expecting them to be, exactly. Ilya hadn’t been wrong when he said the island is run by Massachusetts lesbians; three of the council expansion members are lesbians, two of them a couple who’d wandered up from Suffolk University at the beginning of the end. Everyone has been cool about them so far, and so maybe it’s not such a surprise that they’re cool about Shane and Ilya, too, except that Shane had catastrophized so much about people finding out that it’s hard to release that tension. 

Maybe he will always, at least a little, think of hockey, and of slurs thrown around like they meant nothing in the locker room. Maybe he will take a lot longer to really absorb the fact that locker rooms and hockey podcasts and the fandom on twitter were never the “real world”. They were never the majority. There might have always been more good people than bad. 

He still has trouble imagining himself as gay. Or, like, part of any sort of community. Maybe that’s also something he should work on. He sees himself as separate, somehow. Like it’s just Ilya for him, and somehow that should be different, even though he knows he’s been attracted to other men before, and has not really been attracted to women. He figures if the world hadn’t ended, maybe there would have been a therapist he could have talked to about that, but probably he would have just stuffed those feelings way down in his chest until he died, because that tends to be the way he deals with most things. 

And now the world has ended, so it doesn’t really matter, does it? Maybe he’ll get there on his own one day. Maybe he won’t think about his coach calling players fairies for taking longer than a few seconds to get up after being slammed against the boards. Maybe he won’t think about his defensemen calling opposing players slurs to their faces. Maybe he won’t cringe away, hide himself behind as many layers of calm as he possibly can, until he’s just an awkward lump of a person. Afraid to move. Afraid to be seen. 

Brendan is ecstatic about it; he corners Shane when Shane is picking up his packages at the causeway with, “this is the best day of my life. No one else thinks this is as cool as I do except for fucking Donna. I think she’s in a coma about it. You know the reason she has all those games downloaded is because she used to make fanvids of you two to fucking Hozier songs, right? God, I wish the internet still existed.” 

“If the internet still existed, you would never have found out, because I never would have been brave enough to do that,” Shane points out. He’s afraid it’s going to come out sounding bitter or mean, because he still sort of resents Brendan for things that aren’t entirely his fault, but it comes out sounding calm instead. Settled. Maybe he’s really not going to freak out about this.

Brendan’s face falls a little, and he nods. 

“Yeah, man. That’s true, sorry. I’m sure it would have fucking sucked to be gay and a hockey player.” 

“Yeah, probably,” Shane admits. “Probably why I was trying so hard not to think about it.” 

“That’s how I got through high school,” Brendan agrees with a grin. “Hey, I’m glad the internet died so you could make your move on Roz.” 

Shane laughs openly before he can talk himself out of doing it. 

“Uh, no, man, it’s been happening since our rookie season,” he says, and it almost feels good to admit it, especially because of the joy on Brendan’s face when he says it. 

Like, okay. Maybe it’s kind of nice to admit it. If he was going to say it to anyone, it might as well be a gay sports fan who knows who they both are and is happy for them. 

Ilya is preening and beaming and sunshiney all day, and Shane thinks that it would have been worth it even if people were total dicks, but it’s especially worth it because they aren’t. 

They debrief, later, wrapped up in each other in their little cottage. Ilya laughs as he tells Shane about how Bonnie told him that Carla was convinced they were fucking the whole time, and that Bonnie, who apparently has famously bad gaydar, refused to believe it. Shane relates Brendan’s comment about the internet, and his delight when Shane revealed that they were fucking before the apocalypse. Ilya does several adorable impressions of the other dog trainers trying to sneakily ask him questions all day about it. Seeing and hearing how light Ilya seems about it, Shane feels like he’s done something good, and brave, even though now that it’s over, it doesn’t feel like it took very much courage at all. It’s the easiest thing in the world, to love Ilya openly. In this new, worse world, maybe some things can be better, or at least easier for them.

“I really do love you, so much,” he says, sitting up so he can look down at Ilya properly. They’ve left the curtains open a little bit, because why not? And the sunlight looks so pretty on his face. 

“And I love you. I’m very glad you’re here.” 

“Thank fucking god you came and got me in Vegas. I don’t know if I would have managed to get out on my own, but even if I did…” It feels horrible to say it aloud, so he lowers his voice, even though they’re alone. “Even if I did, even if I was back home, with my parents and all of them, I don’t think I ever would have stopped missing you. Wondering about you.” 

Ilya smiles a little, and he leans in and kisses Shane softly. 

“I would have been dead,” he says, his voice lowered to match Shane’s. “I would have drank myself to death. I would have walked off the roof. Don’t look at me like that.” 

“Stop saying upsetting shit and I won’t look at you like you’re saying upsetting shit, Ilya.” 

“I don’t mean to be upsetting. Is just the truth. I was not in a good place, and if I was alone…I just…I would not have seen the point in being alive.” 

“You see it now, though, right?” 

“Yes. You. The dogs. Laughing at everyone who thinks we only started kissing today.” 

“I don’t know if it’s healthy for me to be such a big part of that.” 

“Eh, probably not. Like you give a fuck.” 

“I think a normal person would give a fuck.” 

“But you are not a normal person, and I love you. Don’t try to be more normal.” 

“Well, when you put it that way…” 

“I do. You are so fucking weird, Hollander. You folded your clothes after you took them off the first time we hooked up. You realize that was crazy, right? And holy shit, I thought it was so fucking hot. We are both weird, I guess. I’m okay with it. I’m okay if you are the reason I stay alive. You will just have to accept that.” 

“It’s a lot of responsibility to put on one person.” 

“Maybe,” Ilya agrees, shrugging like it doesn’t matter, though Shane can see the threads of anxiety starting to creep in, like he’s nervous that Shane might really be upset. 

Maybe Shane should be, but he isn’t. Whatever. He was never going to win that particular battle. He’s never going to be normal about Ilya Rozanov. That ship has fucking sailed. 

“I can handle it,” he decides. “Honestly, compared to all the pressure I was under before? I was always worried about disappointing everyone. Keeping one person alive is nothing, compared to that.” 

“I won’t make it easy on you,” Ilya says, but he has a pleased smile on his face, like he’s looking forward to it. 

“You never do,” Shane lies. 

When the ice comes back, Shane is so relieved that he almost literally cries about it. He and Ilya have been rollerblading every day, and they’ve been playing frequent games of street hockey with a small group of people, but nothing compares to the ice. Nothing compares to playing real hockey again. The Shane of before the apocalypse feels so far away from him sometimes, but when he puts on his skates, he remembers. 

They have been in Nahant for more than two years when Bonnie approaches Shane when he’s skating up and down the causeway one morning, doing laps while one of the watch dogs runs alongside him, a happy Australian Cattle dog who would run all day if they let her.

Bonnie comes walking down from the gate and waving at him to get his attention on the causeway instead of waiting for him to get to her, which has him worried, but he can see that she’s smiling at him as he gets close. 

“You asked me, a few years ago, to tell you if we ever heard anything about Ottawa,” she says. “Well, those new radio parts you boys picked up in Salem have paid off. We made contact with them today.”

He goes and finds Ilya immediately, as soon as he’s done talking to Bonnie. He feels like his entire world has been upended, though maybe that’s dramatic. It’s not like Bonnie was talking to his fucking parents on the radio, but…

“There’s a pretty big community out in Ottawa proper, but they’re in touch with an enclave at the lake where my parents have their cottage. It’s them. I’m sure of it.” 

Shane’s hands are shaking as he says it. There’s a huge part of him that doesn’t want to leave Nahant. It’s his home now. He has learned how to love things other than hockey here. He has learned to be himself here.

But his parents are probably still out there, and suddenly it feels impossible to stay here any longer. He’s always figured that they would strike out to Canada eventually. They probably would have left a lot sooner if Nahant hadn’t turned out to be such a refuge. He’s shocked to look back on it and to realize that the apocalypse started almost three years ago. Sure, in that first year, it would have been idiotic, with so many zombies still around, but there have been fewer of them in the last few months, and they’re so much slower than they used to be. Katie and all the other people who said they’d start starving turned out to be right. They’re still capable of being fast when they’re worked up by smelling blood or something, and it seems like they don’t actually die of starvation, the virus keeping their body alive long after an uninfected human would have expired, but the starvation that wastes their bodies and turns them thin and skeletal also makes them weak and slow and so much easier to fight. 

It might take a little while to get up to his parents’ cottage, and it will definitely still be a risk, but he thinks it’s a risk worth taking. He doesn’t think he could live with himself if he didn’t try. 

He’s just afraid of what Ilya will say. What Ilya will want. Shane knows Ilya well enough now to understand that Ilya agrees to a lot of shit that he doesn’t actually want to do when it comes to the people he loves. Shane has gotten better at understanding the difference between Ilya’s enthusiastic agreements and his carefully modulated tone when he says he’ll do something but what he means is that he’ll do something because he can tell that it’s something Shane wants. Ilya bends himself into a pretzel for Shane, and for Bonnie, and for the dogs, and Shane lets him do it sometimes, but he has gotten better at pushing back on it. 

If Ilya says they can go north with that careful tone, Shane’s not sure he’ll be strong enough to do it, and he’ll have to choose, and no matter what that choice ends up being, he thinks he will not like what it teaches him about himself. 

He thinks he knows what he’d choose if he had to, and it makes his stomach hurt. He’s such a terrible fucking son. 

Ilya watches him carefully now, cataloguing his emotions in the same way that Shane knows he’s doing right back at him, and it’s not like he’s afraid that Ilya will say nah, I’ll stay here, actually, but he’s afraid that he’ll see some reluctance in Ilya’s face, or a hesitation, and it will make Shane say, you know what? Never mind. We can stay. 

“Okay,” Ilya says, instead. “So we go.” 

“Are you sure? I think that might be crazy.” 

Ilya smiles indulgently. 

“Possibly,” he admits. 

“It’s like…hundreds of miles.” 

“Yes. But you have your little binder, don’t you? It can tell you how to hotwire a car.” 

“The gas is all bad now. I don’t know if cars would even work anymore.”

“Ah, really? We never even got to try. Well, we can walk.” 

“On your bad ankle.” 

“It’s not that bad.” 

“It’s bad enough.” 

“We can skate most of it. Bring a cart for supplies, and a bike. Bonnie would probably let us take yours. They have plenty of others now. And we go slow. Take many breaks. Be cautious. We will bring two of the dogs.” 

“You’d risk bringing the dogs? I know you don’t like exposing them to unnecessary danger.” 

“I know,” Ilya says sheepishly. “But I really like Odette and Percy, and I would miss them if we left them here.”

“Okay,” Shane says, bemused. “You’re really cool with this?” 

“Yes, of course I am. I love you. You need to be with your family, but I only need to be with you.” 

“Yeah,” Shane admits. He looks around their little house. He thinks about their little island. They've been here for so long. They've been happy here for so long. He’s going to miss it. He’s going to miss everyone. 

But it’s his parents. He has to go. 

“We can always come back, one day,” Ilya says, and he sounds like he really believes it. 

“Yeah,” Shane says, though he’s not sure he’s feeling as optimistic as all that. He can barely imagine making it to the cottage. It’s such an insane risk.

Something that Bonnie said does make him more hopeful, though. There are groups setting up supply lines between all the big settlements, working together on getting fresh food into places with less of it, or scavenged supplies to groups that aren’t in big cities and long ago ran out of things that people in more urban areas are still well stocked with. Small networks, growing bigger all the time, and Nahant’s position on the coast and their ability to trade in lobster and crab and fish make them a good enough trading partner that they’ll be linked up to the bigger settlements in no time. According to Bonnie, it sounds like some places are actually, slowly, bouncing back.

Shane explains all this to Ilya, feeling stupid as he says it. Naive. 

“Apparently an enclave in New York has a way to talk to someone in the UK. It might be an urban legend, I don’t know. It sounds so stupid. But what if it’s not? They say that some places in Europe have been working on something that might eradicate the virus. There are these big boats that have been out on the ocean since the outbreak, with like UN doctors on them or whatever. I think they’ve been doing studies, landing groups in overrun areas? Testing people who are immune. According to New York, they’re getting close to a vaccine. Isn’t that fucking crazy?” 

He feels stupid immediately. He thinks that Ilya will get that distant look on his face again, the one that says Shane is being naive. 

Ilya doesn’t, though. He sighs, and he pulls Shane into his arms, and he kisses him. 

“Malysh,” he finally says, his voice thick with something soft and a bit sad. “It is so stupid, the way you make me want to believe in these things.” 

They don’t leave right away. They have to wait for the snow to melt, and for the nights to get less cold. Ilya trains his replacements at the kennel, and they take time to savor their goodbyes. The whole town watches another one of their recorded games, and everyone cheers for them, and Shane and Ilya both stay up way too late drinking. Afterwards, they’re fuzzy with want for each other, and Shane wonders about the state of his parents’ enclave, and how much room they have. Is his cottage being occupied, or has it remained empty all this time? Would it even be livable? He wants to see Ilya in his cottage so badly it makes his heart hurt.

Three years ago, he would have sent himself into a spiraling panic attack just thinking about the possibility of his parents ever finding out about Ilya. Or, not even about Ilya, necessarily. Just about him. About the things he wants, or desires. Not even any specifics! Just the idea that he looks at men and feels anything other than “normal” feelings. He supposes he still feels an echo of those things in the same way he feels echoes of the crowd chanting his name on home ice, or the cool dread of a locker room turned hostile and mean after a brutal loss. He is still the same person he used to be, down deep. Like there’s this awareness that he would still be that person, fully, if the world hadn’t ended. 

But the world has ended, and he is so sickeningly in love with a man, and he thinks it won’t kill him, anymore, to let his parents know that. He’s certainly not going to go back to hiding. Not if his prize for being brave is Ilya with him always, Ilya in his bed, Ilya eating breakfast with him in the morning and sitting inappropriately close to him every time they sit down anywhere. 

But it will still be different there than it is here, and of course he’s going to miss it. He has liked, over the last couple of years, the security of knowing everyone he sees. He knows all their names and he knows their life stories, and he rarely has to learn anyone new. He knows that the people around him are kind and accepting, and he knows that even the ones who are a bit prickly aren’t complete fucking assholes. A lot of his anxiety has always revolved around not knowing things, and maybe that’s why living in a post-apocalyptic town has been so good for him. There have rarely been any surprises. 

It’s more than just the way it makes things easier for him, though. He loves this place, and these people. He loves them for themselves, and not just for him. He’s going to miss going out on scavenging runs with them. He’s going to miss taking all the dogs on runs. He’s going to miss their little cottage. Bonnie says that they’ll leave it empty as long as they possibly can. They’ve done it for other people who have left the island over the last three years, but she actually seems to hope that Shane and Ilya will come back one day.

It’s actually just really nice to think that he will be remembered by these people for something other than hockey. 

Odette is a small, feisty, mixed breed dog who’s shockingly fast for her size, and Percy is a big dumb mutt who slobbers everywhere, but they’re inseparable, and Ilya loves them. Zombies never attack the dogs, but they can be distracted by the sound of them, and that’s usually what they’re used for on scavenging patrols. Ilya and the other kennel workers have trained them to take off running and barking their heads off to draw the zombies away, but they’ve also trained the dogs to always come back, so they’re allowed to roam off leash as Shane and Ilya set off for Canada. They set out on skates, at first, to get through the more difficult areas, but the zombie population is always a little slower at the end of the winter, and this is no exception. Shane’s not sure if they hibernate through the winter months or if the cold just makes their deteriorating bodies even more creaky and useless, but it has always been the safest time to run patrols. 

The day they leave Nahant, they’re carrying a large backpack each, and they’re pulling the cart on ropes, the bike piled into the cart itself for when they want to take a break on their skates. They have enough weapons to fill an arsenal, and Shane isn’t afraid at all. He was expecting to be. He was expecting to worry that he’s leading them into another nightmare. Maybe he’s gotten soft in the last couple of years, or maybe he’s gotten more brave, but all he can see is the light at the end of this particular tunnel, rather than becoming consumed with dread for the tunnel itself. 

They skate. They walk. They ride. They go slowly, and they're extremely careful, especially as they get further north. They're more worried about running into survivalist types in the woods than running into zombies, but they manage to make it through the parts of New Hampshire and Vermont and upstate New York that might have been dicey even before the zombies. 

It takes them more than a week to reach the Canadian border. It’s dead, abandoned, with cars jammed through the closed gate, and badly decomposed bodies rotting everywhere. It’s easy to understand what happened, and it lifts a weight off Shane’s chest that he hadn't even realized was there: if he’d left Boston when his parents suggested it, his body would have probably been rotting here, and Ilya would be dead somewhere in or around his apartment, and it makes him dizzy with gratitude that he made the choice he did. 

They spend the night watching the border, posted up in an empty RV that they were able to break into. The dogs curl up on the bed in back while Shane and Ilya take the front two seats, watching for any signs of zombies or lights through the trees that would indicate that the border is being watched, whether by legitimate government officials or by bandits of some kind. 

Only a few slow zombies wander through all night. In the morning, they’re easily taken out.  

“So sad that you’ve fallen so far behind in the scoring race,” Ilya teases after they’ve made it past the border and are on the highway beyond it, blessedly more free of cars so Ilya can skate again while Shane rides the bike. Ilya weaves around gracefully as Shane secures their bags in the cart and helps the dogs in. It brings him right back to being on the ice, warming up, trying to ignore the way it felt for Ilya to chirp him in public, knowing what they’d be getting up to after the game. 

“I’ve fallen ten behind, dickhead. It’s not that much.” 

Ilya flashes an exaggerated pout, and Shane snags him by the front of the shirt as he skates by to stop him, gratified by the way the pout turns into an inelegant squawk as Ilya almost loses his balance. Shane stands up on his toes to kiss him. 

“I’ll catch up,” he warns, and Ilya laughs into his mouth. 

“You always do,” he admits. 

The further north they go, the sparser everything is. There are fewer houses, and a lot of them are wrecked after several long winters with no upkeep, and they don’t feel safe for sleeping. They sleep a lot in abandoned cars, which isn’t exactly comfortable, and not very conducive to fooling around. When they do occasionally find a good house to spend the night in, they’re frantic with need for each other even after the exhaustion of traveling, which is always a relief. Like even if everything else is up in the air, they can remain the same. 

Even after so long on the road without their regular training, the dogs alert every time they sense a zombie, and so there are no surprises. Shane finds himself relaxing more the further they get. He thinks maybe he should be getting more nervous, afraid of what he’ll find, but he’s not. He knows what’s waiting for him. He knows his parents are still alive, because he knows them, and he especially knows his mother. If he managed to keep himself and Ilya alive for the last few years, he knows that his parents are probably thriving. They’ve probably been growing their own food. They probably have multiple farms. They probably still somehow have electricity. His mother has probably been elected Lifetime Mayor of the Lake.

He has to consult a map they find at a visitor’s center, because everything is so slow when walking, and all the roads are so overgrown and look so different from how he remembers. It makes him feel guilty, like he’s forgotten the way to his favorite place on earth, which unpleasantly enhances the guilt he feels for having waited so long to find his way back here. He’s been playing house with Ilya Rozanov in Boston while his parents have probably spent the last few years assuming he’s dead. Maybe they should have headed up here from the beginning. It just didn’t seem like the safe thing to do at the time, and he knows they probably wouldn’t have made it. Still, he’s sorry. 

“I’m a bad son,” he says to Ilya one night, when they’re lying in bed, both of them naked and sated and looser than they’ve been in a while. Ilya’s ankle has been acting up, with all the walking, and so they’ve been slowing down even more. It’s not the pace that Shane minds, and he hopes Ilya realizes that. He feels guilty for putting Ilya through this pain at all, even though he knows better than to voice that, because it will just annoy him. Ilya seems a little annoyed to hear this, anyway. He just scoffs and kisses Shane. 

“You are not,” he says.  

“I should have been trying to get a message to them or something.” 

“Oh yeah? How? Carrier pigeon?” 

“Fuck you, asshole. You know what I mean.” 

“Yes, maybe we should have walked up to Canada two years ago when the bandit gangs were everywhere. Maybe we should have done it last year when the zombies were still stronger. Maybe we should have done it in the dead of winter so we could freeze to death in a blizzard. We’re going now. It’s okay. They will be so happy to see you, kotyonok, please. Do not worry about these things.” 

“Okay,” Shane agrees. “Okay, you’re right.” 

He still worries. Of course he does. He’s different from how he was before, he thinks. He’s still scared of things. He still overthinks things. He still catastrophizes. But the world really is simpler now. It’s not so much talking around things or trying to avoid talking about things or trying to understand what people really mean when they’re saying what they aren’t actually thinking. The world has become more straightforward, and he knows that there’s a large part of him that thrives in it because of that. He skates. He kills zombies. He gets fucked by his boyfriend. He pets his dogs. It’s easier for him to live in a world with such a wonderful set of rules. 

But Ilya is right. He knows this. His parents love him, and he loves his parents, and he’s excited to see them, and the time apart from each other won’t matter, in the end, once they’re back together.

Ilya is pushing himself too much, Shane knows, but he gets that thundercloud look of offense on his face when Shane suggests they should take another day. 

“We will be at your parents’ house by sundown,” he says mulishly, wrapping a bandage around his ankle as if it’s going to help. The injury is so old, at this point, and it only really flares up with overuse, which of course is exactly why it’s flaring now. They’ve been walking for so long. “And then I will sit down on the couch and I will not get up for four full days. You will have to do everything for me.” 

“Good first impression on the parents,” Shane jokes weakly, but he’s frowning down at Ilya still, hands hovering uselessly. “You’ll tell me if it hurts too bad?” 

Ilya looks at him, eyebrows raised, unimpressed. 

“No,” he admits. Shane groans and crouches down next to him, buries his face in Ilya’s neck. 

“I hate when you suffer because of me. It’s so fucking stupid.” 

“I am not suffering. My ankle hurts. Relax. You think I can’t handle a little pain?” 

“I think you’re probably in a shitload of pain if you’re admitting to a little,” Shane points out, and Ilya flushes a little red, because it’s true, but he’s smiling. He likes whenever there’s evidence that Shane sees past his stupid walls and his pointless bluster. He always looks so prettily pleased when it happens, and it makes Shane even weaker than he already is. 

“Okay, maybe. Fine, yes, I will ask for a break if I feel like my foot will fall off. Happy?” 

“No,” Shane admits. He wants to leave it there, because even after so long, there’s a part of him that resists saying these things aloud, like he thinks Ilya is going to mock him for it. Of course, he knows by now that Ilya won’t. Ilya will probably turn even pinker, and go speechless and wanting, his mouth falling open a little the way it does when Shane says something that shocks him into uncomprehending lust. It’s so fucked up how Shane has that reaction to shit like Ilya calling him a needy little slut, and meanwhile Ilya’s eyes go all wide and horny from Shane saying shit like “I picked up another one of those hats you like on yesterday’s scavenging run” and “I made you a cup of tea because I thought you might like it”. This time, he says, “I do sometimes get a little happy that you love me enough to put yourself through this. Like I know you love me, obviously, but you prove it so much. You throw your whole self into it. It makes it so easy for me to see, and I do love that. I shouldn’t, but I do.” 

As expected, Ilya goes gooey-soft at that, and he kisses Shane desperately, his hands practically shaking with the want of it. He’s so fucking predictable. 

Ilya is limping pretty badly by the time they finally reach the road that goes around the lake on which his parents’ cottage sits. Shane tries to make him get in the cart, but Ilya refuses, knowing that Shane is probably too tired to haul both of them down the bumpy dirt and gravel road, and knowing that the jostling of the cart will probably only make it worse. So Shane pulls Ilya’s arm across his shoulders, and he puts his arm around Ilya’s waist, and they walk together like that, dragging the cart behind them. It reminds Shane way too much of the day they got to Nahant, the frantic run through the streets, holding Ilya as Ilya tried to hop along, whimpering in pain, and he feels a stab of unexpected anxiety. He almost suggests that Ilya sits down and waits while he goes ahead to get his parents, but he had a hard enough time doing that on the causeway in Nahant, and he doesn’t think he could do it now. 

“Here, come on, put more of your weight on me. I can handle it,” he says. Ilya smiles and obliges, pressing a kiss to the side of Shane’s head.

“Thank you, malysh,” he says, and he sounds so genuinely sweet that Shane has to hold him even tighter. 

The dogs run ahead, sniffing and yipping at each other but not barking in the way that means zombies are near. They actually haven’t seen a zombie all day, and Shane’s heart feels even lighter, because he knows he was right, all along. This place is safe.  

There’s a part of the road where it branches off into different directions, and the direction that will lead to his parents’ house is blocked off with orange construction barriers, and a wooden sign, handpainted, is propped up on them.

No cars past this point. 

Area under video surveillance. 

“Do we think that’s real or bullshit?” Ilya asks, looking around the trees for a camera. He waves cheekily, around, just in case.

“I don’t know. But it’s got to be a good sign, right? Come on.” 

They ease around the barriers, and they head together down the dirt road, which is even rougher than the earlier part. Shane has run this road a million times. Went for long, looping jogs almost every day he spent here in those summers growing up. It feels so familiar under his feet now. Everything is more familiar. He sees a couple of places where branches must have fallen in the last few years but were dragged off the road to keep it clear. More signs of life. 

“So many little rocks,” Ilya complains, and Shane laughs.

They don’t even make it to the driveway. 

He hears shouting, doors slamming. Sound carries out here, so close to the water, and he can hear his mother’s voice, and he feels so weak with relief that he has to stop moving for a second, afraid he’s going to send he and Ilya both tumbling to the ground. 

When someone sprints around the corner up ahead, coming from his parents’ driveway, he’s expecting either of his parents, and is surprised when it’s someone he doesn’t recognize, at least for a second, but only because he wasn’t expecting it. 

But, holy shit. 

“Hayden!” he cries. 

Hayden hits them both at the same time, throwing his arms around Shane and Ilya, laughing loudly, victoriously. 

“Oh my god, you’re actually here! You’re actually here. We all thought we were fucking losing it when we saw you on the security cam. Dude, Rozanov, are you okay? What’s with the leg?” 

“Ah, old injury,” Ilya says, after a stunned silence to be addressed. Apparently Shane isn’t the only one who expected some lingering remnants of bad hockey blood to color this reunion, but maybe that was a stupid thing to expect? Hayden just looks so fucking happy to see them. “I have not been bitten.” 

“He was shot, like two years ago,” Shane explains. 

“Whoa, seriously? Damn. Boston was a lot more hardcore than here, then. We haven’t fired a gun at anything but deer. Seriously. Jesus, Shane, I can't believe this.  I’m going to fucking lose it. Come on. I’ll help Rozanov cross the finish line. Go see your parents.” 

Shane looks over at Ilya, who nods urgently, taking his arm from around Shane’s shoulders. Shane still hesitates, because he still isn’t always sure what Ilya actually wants versus what Ilya is pretending to want for his sake. But Hayden is there, eagerly ready to help, already chirping Ilya in a strangely polite, wondering way about how he’s managed to keep his muscle mass despite the apocalypse. And Shane really, really wants to hug his parents. And so he goes. 

He jogs the rest of the way to the driveway, and just as he turns the corner, they’re running up to meet him. He has a few seconds of taking in how different the land around the cottage looks. It looks like they cut down some of the trees around the house, or maybe they fell on their own, but there are two whole new wooden cabins in the place where the trees used to be. The other side of the yard is filled with solar panels, and down by the water, he can see a cluster of RVs, also with solar panels on the roofs, and a large plot of garden, already growing food for the season. He almost laughs out loud. He fucking knew it. This is exactly what he expected from his mom. 

His parents don’t look very different, once he can bring himself to focus on them. It’s funny. It’s almost like he’s afraid, a little bit, of looking at them directly. Like they’ll disappear if he does. But of course they don’t. It’s just that he’s wished for them for so long, and he never expected to actually see them again, and now they’re actually fucking here, and he doesn’t really know what to do. His dad’s hair is a little lighter. Maybe the gray at his mother’s temples is a little larger than it used to be. But they are still his parents. They are exactly who he remembers. 

They’re both dressed in flannel shirts, and they both have massive dirt stains on their legs, like they were probably just gardening. He figures they’re probably always doing something, always trying to improve this place, growing it, making it a safe place for everyone to live. He loves them so much. He can’t wait to slot in here with Ilya. He can’t wait to help them. 

His mom puts on a burst of speed and reaches him first, throwing her arms around him. His father is a little slower, but just as pleased, his eyes filled with tears just like Shane’s. 

“I can’t believe it’s you! Baby, I can’t believe it’s you!” Yuna keeps saying, and Shane is laughing and trying to duck away from the kisses she’s trying to pepper on his cheeks, but not trying too hard, because he doesn’t really want to. 

“Rozanov! Nice to see you again!” Shane’s dad calls, always polite, and Shane turns and sees Ilya hobbling down the driveway with Hayden. He feels like an asshole for leaving them, and he goes back up to help.  

Ilya hesitates for a second before taking Shane’s offered arm, and Shane looks at him, forces Ilya to meet his eyes. There’s something curious there, like Ilya is watching Shane for cues the way Shane often does to him. Like he’s ready to follow Shane’s lead but isn’t exactly sure where that lead will take them. Shane’s heart creaks a little in his chest. Has Ilya been expecting this the whole time? Has he been worried about this ever since they left? Did he really think that Shane would just…

“Baby, don’t be stupid,” he whispers gently. 

“They’re your parents,” Ilya reminds him. Shane knows that maybe Ilya is right to be worried. Three years ago, two years ago, maybe even one year ago, he wouldn’t have been ready for this. But he is back with his parents, and with Hayden, and he is with Ilya, and the world is slowly, slowly coming back. Maybe. Hopefully. 

And even if it doesn’t, they have each other. What more could he want? 

He kisses Ilya gently. It’s the shortest, sweetest kiss he’s ever given him. It feels a little fake, like he’s just proving a point, but he knows that’s because their kisses tend to be more filthy, and he’s just not doing that in front of his parents. This is a new kiss he’s going to have to learn how to do. That’s all. A parent appropriate kind of kiss. When he pulls back, Ilya is looking at him. Wide-eyed, in love. 

“Okay,” Ilya breathes. “So we are doing this.” 

“Yes,” Shane says. “We are.” 

“Honestly, dude, good for you,” Hayden puts in, blessedly unconcerned despite being probably a little closer to this than he’d prefer. “Both of you. What a power couple, right?” 

They all help Ilya down the incline of the rest of the driveway, which feels ridiculous after Shane basically carried him the last few miles on his own. Shane’s dad is immediately enamored with the dogs and with the bike cart, and he sets about taking care of them, but everyone else is huddled around Ilya like they expect him to fall at any moment. He definitely won’t, but it’s so nice that Shane just lets it continue to happen. 

It’s impossible to figure out what they’re thinking, but Shane isn’t afraid of their reaction the way he probably would have been before. Before, his anxiety was mired so much in the hockey of it all. The way the locker rooms were always so hostile, and the way the league would have probably been worse. He’d been worried about disappointing his parents, and worried about them knowing anything about what he wanted or desired, just in a general way. He’d been worried about all the work that would come with it. Yuna would have wanted a plan. She would have been worried about the effect all of it would have on his career, on his brand deals, on his status as a role model.

None of it, he knows, would have been insurmountable, in the end. He has always known that his parents love him, and that they will love him no matter what. He wasn’t so much worried that his parents would hate him. He’d been worried, mostly, that it would change them, and change how Shane interacted with them, and that things would be different. Now, it has been so long. They’ve all been changed. Maybe it’s good that things will be different.

They get inside, and the cottage isn’t exactly how he remembers, but it’s close enough. There’s a fire going in the fireplace, and a massive radio set up on the kitchen counter with a notebook open, scribbled with a million notes in his mother’s neat handwriting. There are weapons propped up next to the front door—rifles and machetes, mostly, though he notes with some satisfaction a hockey stick with a blade attached to it. So there are definitely changes, but it’s still home, and that is such a fucking relief. 

Hayden squeezes Shane tight one more time and says he’s going to run up the road to get Jackie and the kids, because they’ll want to see him, and Shane knows he’ll cry for sure when that happens, and is glad that Hayden says he’s going to give them some time with his parents, because he needs that. Hayden was always such an easy friend to have on the Metros; he was exactly what he seemed to be on the surface. There was no need to guess with him. No need to question whether he was really seeing what he was seeing. It’s such a relief to find him exactly the same, at the end of the world. Still Hayden. Still more than willing to be Shane’s friend, for whatever reason. 

He even squeezes Ilya’s shoulder before he goes, which is so nice. All of it is so fucking nice. 

David makes room at the kitchen table, moving aside a bunch of maps and things so they can all sit down together. Shane feels a nervous pang of recognition that they probably haven’t eaten too many dinners together here. It has been nice, these last few weeks, imagining his parents as being busy and competent and filling their lives with stuff to do, but he’d forgotten to think about why they were probably doing that, and the kitchen table being piled high with stuff in a way David never used to let it get makes his heart clench with guilt again. 

David goes and gets a footstool on which Ilya can rest his ankle, and Ilya seems surprised and a bit taken aback by the gesture. Yuna makes them some tea, and David shows up with some painkillers and a glass of water, and Ilya takes them with only a mild token resistance until Shane looks at him sharply, and Ilya sighs and relents. 

“Thanks, dad,” Shane says. “I don’t think we realized how long it was going to take, and his ankle isn’t the best.” 

“It’s fine, mostly. Maybe not for so much walking,” Ilya argues gently. He’s still a bit stiff and off-balanced, but Shane pushes his chair closer so their shoulders and arms are touching, and he takes Ilya’s hand under the table, because he needs to be, like, perfectly fucking clear. Stake his claim or whatever. Not for his parents’ benefit, but for Ilya’s. It still makes him want to crawl out of his skin a little bit, but that’s only because Ilya, for some reason, is the only person he’s ever been completely comfortable showing his real emotions to, and he knows it’s going to be a struggle to do the same with his parents, even though he’s obviously so glad to get the chance to do it at all. Maybe it doesn’t need to make sense. 

“Rozanov,” his mother says when she puts down a mug of tea in front of him. She surprises them all by leaning down and pulling him into a firm hug. “Thank you for saving my son.” 

“Oh, yes,” Ilya says, like he had forgotten ever speaking to her. “Of course. He has saved me in turn many times. I should thank you, probably.” 

“It seems like we have a lot to talk about,” David says in that wry, embarrassing dad voice that Shane never thought he’d get to be annoyed about again. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Shane admits.

The conversation was always going to be awkward, but David is so good at setting Shane at ease. He always has been. Shane can tell that Yuna wants to ask questions but is trying to be polite, and he can tell that David is patiently waiting for Yuna to ask those questions, and he can tell that Ilya is content to sit here in silence and sip his tea until the world ends (again), so he knows that he’s going to have to be the one to break the silence. 

“So, uh. Obviously, we’re…in love.” He cringes. “Jesus. That was horrible. Can I try that again?” 

“I think you covered it,” Yuna says dryly, but she’s smiling, and her eyes are glittering a little with tears. “Sweetie, I don’t want you to think…we’re not upset? Or unhappy in any way? Honestly, I am so relieved to know that you had each other. And I don’t think we’re very surprised.” 

“What?” Shane asks. He wishes he could just take it as the love that it’s meant to be, but he can’t help himself. “What do you mean you’re not surprised? Did you know?” 

“That you’re…well, I think we suspected you might not be interested in women, sure, but I don’t think we ever really talked about it. We just, you know, we were prepared to be supportive.” 

“I read a lot of books about raising a gay teenager when you were in high school,” David says, very seriously. Ilya chokes on his mouthful of tea, and Shane glares at him. 

“I had a girlfriend in high school,” he protests. David makes a pitying face at him, and Ilya seems to realize it’s going to be safer if he just puts the mug down for a while and covers his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. 

“Yeah, bud,” David says gently, making it worse. “And you used to ask us to chaperone your dates so you wouldn’t have to be alone with her. That’s sort of what got us thinking about it.” 

“Oh my god,” Ilya breathes happily, looking up at the ceiling in gratitude. “Malysh, is this true?” 

“You’re all assholes,” Shane says, but he can’t help laughing. “Okay, whatever, fine. Yes. I’m gay. Obviously. Apparently everyone knew this already.” 

“I certainly…” Ilya starts. 

“Shut up, Ilya, oh my god.” 

“What? It’s true.” To Shane’s parents, he offers. “I am bisexual. I always knew I liked both, but…Shane is the only person I have ever loved.” 

“That’s really sweet,” David says earnestly. Yuna nods. Shane loves them both, but he can’t decide if he wants to die about this conversation or not. Probably not, honestly. He’s feeling so light and frothy even though he thinks he might be embarrassed.

Yuna says, “and I meant it, Shane, really. We’re happy for you. And I’m so glad you boys, well. Found each other. At least something good came of all this, right?” 

Shane frowns at her, not understanding. Ilya laughs once, a sharp bark of sound. 

“Oh, uh. No,” he says, nudging Shane playfully with his shoulder. “No, no. This was, uh. Happening before.” 

“What, you think the zombie apocalypse made me gay?” Shane asks. 

“Kotyonok, you are forgetting your father’s books in high school,” Ilya points out with mocking gentleness. Shane rolls his eyes massively. “But no, we were…well.” 

“I don’t think anyone needs an exact timeline,” Shane interrupts. 

“Do you remember when you called me?” Ilya asks Yuna. “In Vegas?” 

“I remember you were kind of an asshole.” 

“Well, yes. I was in a very bad mood. You said something to me like, I don’t remember exactly, but very sarcastic, like, ‘oh, I’m so sorry for interrupting your celebration, please apologize to whatever puck bunny I’m pulling you away from’.” 

“Ew, mom,” Shane says. Yuna shrugs. 

“I was in a bad mood, too,” she admits. “Well, I was freaking out, because I couldn’t get a hold of you or anyone, and of course he’s the only one who answers the phone.” 

“Yes,” Ilya laughs. “I only answered because I was in such a bad mood. And you made that comment about a puck bunny, and I said, I don’t know, something like ‘you are only interrupting me being a fucking idiot and pushing away the one good person I have in my whole life by being a total fucking asshole’, and you said ‘okay. I don’t care. My name is Yuna Hollander, and I am Shane Hollander’s mother’.” He laughs a little, points at Shane with an exaggerated grin. “He was the puck bunny!” 

“Ew, Ilya!” Shane says. 

“What? I said you were the one good person I had in my whole life. And I was being very weird that night, not very nice to you. I was way too scared to be…well. It doesn’t matter. Seems stupid now, actually. It felt a little like fate, then. Thinking I’d fucked things up with you, worrying I’d fucked them up forever, and then your mom calls me and asks me to find you, take you with me. It felt like the best thing in the world.” 

“Wow,” Yuna says thoughtfully, leaning back in her chair. “I had no idea. All this time.” She shakes her head and takes a measured sip of her tea. “I’m sorry for calling you a puck bunny, Shane.” 

“Okay,” Shane says, standing up from his chair. “Dad, can you, like, show me the solar panels and the RVs and introduce me to literally every person who lives here? I can’t do this anymore.” 

“Sure, bud!” David says, and they leave Ilya and Yuna cackling horrifically behind them. 

It isn’t as difficult to slot into this new group as he would have thought. They spend the first few days in his parents’ cottage, but eventually they get his cottage cleaned up enough to move there. It’s a little weathered after a few years of no upkeep, and his parents have largely been using it to store supplies, because they wanted to have a reason to keep it unoccupied even as their settlement grew, but it’s still just as beautiful as Shane remembers, and Ilya looks just as beautiful in it as Shane had imagined. 

Eventually, they will start mingling with other groups. They will head up to Ottawa. They will get into contact with Bonnie and the rest of the people they left behind in Nahant, and they will strengthen those bonds, and they might even one day head back there for a little bit. 

There have been more and more rumors coming in, over the radio, about that vaccine being developed. When that happens, if that happens, it’ll get a lot safer to go out and kill the zombies that remain, and then maybe there will be a chance for there to be some real rebuilding. Maybe. 

Until then, they will have each other. They will have a home. 

Shane still hopes that the world comes back in some fashion. It would be nice not to have to worry about every little thing. It would be nice to not have to worry about food, or crop yields, or whether every new person who shows up can be trusted. It would be nice to be able to go somewhere without like three weapons on hand at all times.

But it would be even nicer if the world came back a little more kind and a little more accepting than the one that died. He thinks he hopes for that more than he hopes for anything else. 

When winter rolls around again, Shane and Ilya aren’t the only ones who take to the ice, but they’re the ones who never want to come off it. Their cottage sits on a private cove that freezes first and freezes deep, and they take full advantage of it. Hayden and Jackie bring the kids over most mornings, helping them out onto the ice on shaky legs, teaching them how to skate and spin while Shane teaches them how to hold a hockey stick. Ilya likes to have them hold on to his shirt as he tows them probably way too fast before flinging them screaming and spinning away. There’s a reason the kids are so obsessed with him. 

When the lake is fully frozen, Shane and Ilya run patrols on the ice, skating out across the lake to talk to the group on the other side, checking in about zombie sightings and whether they’ve heard anything over their radio. It’s always exhilarating, being on the ice, and it’s even better when Ilya is beside him.

Shane is feeling especially excited this morning, because he’s heard from his mother that in two weeks, they’ve all been invited into the city to witness the reopening of the old Centaurs stadium, which the new city government has been renovating for the last six months. Shane and Ilya and Hayden have been asked to be on the ice and play an exhibition game with a bunch of surviving players, even a couple of former Admirals who are making the trip up from New York, including Scott Hunter and Carter Vaughn, two people Shane is giddy to see again. 

Shane still can’t quite believe it’s actually happening. He knows Ilya is sort of furious that it’s happening. He’d been so sure that hockey was gone for good, and he has made sure to point out multiple times that hockey is not really back. They’re just opening the rink so that people can bring their kids to skate during the season. 

Still. It’s going to be fun to be back on the ice with him, surrounded by people who remember who they used to be, and by people who know who they are now. 

Maybe, one day, hockey will be back for real, but it’s sort of freeing to realize that he doesn’t need it. Not like he used to, anyway. There are so many other things in his life that he loves, now. It’s not only hockey. 

(If it does come back, though, Shane will be fucking ready.)

“Race me back?” Ilya teases, looping around Shane in his flirty little arcs that he does sometimes, just like he used to do during warmups. It still makes Shane’s cheeks pink with wanting, every time.

“You’re on,” Shane says. 

 Ilya hipchecks Shane, then, out of nowhere, sending him tripping to his knees. A dirty move. What a surprise. Ilya doesn't look back, either. Just takes off, laughing delightedly at the sky as he goes. Shane grins at his back, yells after him that he's a fucking asshole, and gets back up to his feet. 

He's not worried; they both know that he'll catch up. 

Chapter End Notes

an important note is that while this fic is happening, scott and carter are living the plot of shaun of the dead in new york, with the kingfisher as the winchester, making the journey across the city to go rescue kip lmao.

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