Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau

Additional Tags:

Temporary Amnesia, extremely specific amnesia, movie amnesia where i remove shane hollander from ilya's brain with a scalpel for torment nexus reasons, post tuna meltdown, Svetlana Vetrova Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, cliff casually destroying shane's life with one text and walking away oblivious, i once again am making them not attend 2017 all stars despite that being one of my favorite bits, Why do I keep doing this to myself?, there are no actual magic wishes involved but i think from shane's pov he might wonder if there was, like shane probably spends SOME time wondering if this is a monkeys paw situation, ilya: wow it's so weird i can't remember my greatest rival at all!, meanwhile shane in the background is just trapped in wordless despair, yet somehow i think this fic is mostly lighthearted and a bit soft, probably because it's an ilya pov fic and we only see the iceberg of shane's emotional saw traps through the fog, i mean this goes without saying but, Medical Inaccuracies, this entire thing is handwaved by a doctor in this fic with 'idk man! brains are weird!' so keep that in mind lmao

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-31 Words: 10,339 Chapters: 1/1

the jane box

Summary

When Ilya is concussed during a game, he experiences a weird gap in his memories. He has completely forgotten two people he should apparently know: his longtime rival Shane Hollander, and a regular hookup named Jane.

Notes

I'm like 25k into a fic I've been working on for weeks, and I thought I'd wake up this morning, finish the first draft, and then apply myself to starting the first edit of it. Then I suddenly jolted awake, remembered this vague idea I had for a fic, and wrote the entire thing over the course of the day. Fic possession is so real i guess

Ilya wakes up disoriented, but not for long. He has woken up in the hospital after games before, of course. He is a dirty player sometimes, and a passionate player always, and people take his chirps too personally. This is no different.  

Svetlana is talking to someone at the foot of his bed. Ilya’s eyes are open only a little, and she doesn’t seem to realize he’s awake. She is eager, smiling, laughing, even, so the injury must not be so bad. That's good. It's good that she's here, too. It means they must be in Boston, and he would much rather be in a Boston hospital than anywhere else. 

“Ilyusha will love to know that you were here,” Svetlana says to the man at the foot of the bed. “Maybe not when he realizes he owes you his life. It was a terrible game for both of you before that. Sorry if that's rude to say.”

The man laughs, strangled, and he runs a hand through his hair and turns to look at Ilya for the first time. Oh, Ilya thinks, something catching in his chest. Hello, beautiful. 

The man is beautiful. Silky black hair and cute freckles and perfect, pouty lips. He looks pale and shaken, but still unfairly gorgeous. Ilya imagines kissing him with an amount of detail that feels almost perverted. He's never been the type of person to indulge in specific fantasies, but suddenly he is imagining exactly how this man’s lips would feel against his, exactly how eagerly he would open up beneath Ilya's fingers, exactly how he would breathe out Ilya's name as he was fucked into the mattress. Wow, holy shit. This must be some concussion. 

“Not rude. Just, uh, accurate,” the beautiful man says, laughing a little. Charming. Svetlana, predictably, melts as she escorts him to the door. 

“You will do better next time, Shane Hollander, especially now that Ilyusha is probably out for the season.”

Ilya's good mood comes crashing down after that, and he tries to open his mouth to argue, but the painkillers win that battle, and then he is asleep. 

 

---

 

It takes a few more tries before he is really awake, and then he wishes he wasn't, because his arm is in too many pieces, and his head feels like shit, and Svetlana is a bulldog, refusing to let him look at his phone. 

“I will text anyone you need me to text, but the payment is that I will read all of your messages and make fun of you for them,” she says, a comforting presence cuddled up next to him in bed, because he'd begged her, feeling oddly bereft and lonely, as if he'd lost more than just the game. He still can't remember much of what happened, only that he had been unhappy and angry and sad even before the game started, though he still isn't sure why. The doctors say that isn't unusual, and his memories will probably come back, but it doesn't particularly matter to Ilya, if they do. He was probably just suffering from another fucking phone call from Alexei. He doesn't need to remember that. 

“You can look through my phone, I don't care,” Ilya laughs. “I don't think you'll be surprised by anything in there.”

Svetlana gives him a very arch, amused look. 

“Nice try, but you guard your Jane like a dragon against me.”

Ilya frowns at her. Jane? He's sure he has met many Janes, but he can’t think of any that Svetlana would also know. It's strange, the way the name echoes like an empty room inside him. Sometimes when he goes back home, he almost uses English words automatically for things he doesn't often express in his native tongue, and it will take him a half a second longer than usual to retrieve the word in Russian, and it annoys him. This isn't quite like that, like he knows the correct memory is hiding under something else. This is, instead, like a very specific blank spot. A black box in his mind, voided out. Censored. 

“Huh,” he says aloud. “Jane? I do not remember a Jane.”

Svetlana laughs at him for a second, fond and quiet, already reading through his texts, as threatened. But Ilya doesn't laugh back, and Svetlana knows him enough to know when he's joking and when he's not, most of the time, and so she freezes and then looks at him, calculating. 

“You are serious?”

“Yes? There's nothing. But maybe like there should be something. But she's gone, whoever she was.”

Svetlana seems oddly horrified by this. Ilya really thought it was just a funny sort of thing. Or not funny, maybe. It aches inside him, the Jane Box. Throbs like when he has a bruise and then jams it against something unthinkingly. Like the bruise is trying to remind him that it's there, to not be so careless. Jane does not want to be forgotten, whoever she is, and Ilya is abstractly sorry that he has, in a way, but not really. It feels instead like she is boxed away somewhere safe, and no feelings bleed out. He cannot imagine caring for her in a way that would make Svetlana look at him like he is admitting to a much harsher loss.

Svetlana goes and asks for a doctor, and the doctor seems confused but wearily says, many times, how the brain is complicated, and that Ilya will probably get those memories back naturally. She is interested in how he describes it, in the way doctors are always interested by weird new things. She makes some notes, and she says that they will discuss it again at his follow-up, and Ilya looks at Svetlana and shrugs as if to say ‘well, what else do you want?’ She looks more upset for him than he is upset for himself, really. 

 

---

 

He resents being kept in the hospital longer because of this, because they are concerned about his memories, but they ask him questions about things like his family and Russia and Svetlana and his team and his season, and he is able to answer all of them faultlessly. It is only the game that’s still a blank spot, and he can’t remember much of the day before the game, either, but he doesn’t tell them that, and they fortunately don’t think to ask. They finally release him after Svetlana promises to stay by his side like a dutiful girlfriend, which she is not, but the doctors have made assumptions that aren’t unfair, considering how she has loomed over his every interaction with them. 

The first time he walks into his house, Svetlana leading the way, holding his little bag of prescription medication because she knows without being asked that he doesn’t want to look at it, he feels hesitant, almost like he’s afraid he’s going to see something he doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t, of course. Everything is as he left it. His house is clean, everything in its place. There is nothing wrong. It feels wrong, though.

He doesn’t tell this to Svetlana. He learned his lesson. 

His arm is hurting, so he allows Svetlana to give him a pill, and then she consents to watching a Fast and Furious movie, which means she’s really worried. She only lets them get like a half hour into it before she pauses and asks him if he has remembered anything new about Jane. He shakes his head. 

“Does that not bother you?” she asks. 

“No, not really,” he replies. “Why should I care about one more girl?” 

Svetlana frowns at him and smacks him with a pillow, and then apologizes, horrified, when he groans with exaggerated pain. 

“It was a reflex!” she insists, kissing him on the face and the forehead until he laughs and pushes her away. “Stop trying to make me mad!” 

“Stop hitting an injured man,” he pouts, and she huffs as he lays his head in her lap. He tries to press play again, but she takes the remote from his hand. 

“Ilyusha, this is important. You cared about Jane a lot. I think maybe you loved her. The less you talk about someone with me, the more they mean to you. You know this has always been true.” 

“That’s ridiculous,” Ilya scoffs. Svetlana mocks his scoff, making it more pathetic than it was. “Well, let me see her texts, then. Let me read them.” 

Svetlana hands over his phone, shockingly compliant. She laughs at him when he squints at the brightness, and she helps him turn it down, like he’s an old man. He scrolls through a few texts, frowns at them. There are gaps in conversation that make no sense, like messages have been deleted. Jane mostly seems to tell him to fuck off, and then random three-or-four digit numbers, passed back and forth between them, like some kind of code. 

“Well?” Svetlana asks. 

“This is nothing,” Ilya says. “Looks like we were meeting up to fuck. So what? I meet up to fuck lots of women. Look at this.” 

He scrolls through his messages. Almost all of the unread ones are from girl first names, just like Jane. So many of them have sent messages checking in with him. Hey, saw the news. Are you okay? Or wow, that looked like a bad hit! Hope ur ok baby!

Jane had sent, I'm sorry about yesterday. I hope that hit wasn’t as bad as it looked, and then, two hours later, are you okay? Call me when you can. 

The mention of yesterday makes him pause. Jane sent this the day of the game, after he’d been carted off to the hospital. He still can’t remember the day before the game. If he and Jane had gotten into an argument, or if she’d ghosted him or something, maybe that explains why there’s still a void where most of that day should be. 

“There was something there,” Svetlana says seriously. “You were always hiding your phone. Always smiling at it when you thought I couldn’t see. You care about her a lot.” 

“Well, not anymore,” Ilya says. “Maybe it’s for the best, if I was so ashamed of her I was hiding her even from you. She couldn’t have been that special.” 

Svetlana opens her mouth like she’s going to argue, but thinks better of it, and she presses play, and she lets the movie wash over them. 

 

---

 

Svetlana lets him have unfettered access to his phone two days later, once they’ve gone to a few appointments for a follow-up and the doctor is pleased with his progress. The doctor is still fascinated by how his brain has excised only memories of one specific person, and Ilya would rather not talk to her about it, but he’s sort of curious, too. 

“Her text to me the day of the game…maybe we had a fight?” he suggests. “So maybe I was angry and my brain decided to delete her.” 

The doctor laughs a little, though not unkindly. 

“Maybe,” she agrees. “The brain does a lot of weird shit to protect itself in traumatic moments.” 

“Very professional diagnosis,” Ilya says to Svetlana, who laughs. She still looks troubled, like she always does when they talk about Jane. Sometimes when she looks at Ilya, it feels like she’s looking at a stranger. Has this Jane person made him so different? Has Jane changed him so fundamentally that now her absence is making Ilya into someone even Svetlana doesn’t recognize? He’s glad Jane is gone, if so. 

 

---

 

Cliff comes over to drink some beers, and he makes fun of Ilya for not being able to open anything with his stupid arm broken, and he pretends to be offended on Svetlana’s behalf that she has had to treat him like a baby this whole week. Svetlana joins in good-naturedly, because she and Cliff have always gotten along, and Ilya doesn’t mind feeling ganged-up-on by his two closest friends. It’s nice to be at the center of their attention, actually. He preens under it. 

“You’ll never guess who texted me the other day, asking about you!” Cliff suddenly crows, three beers in, just as they’re looking for something to watch. 

“Marly, I have already told you, I’m not interested in your mother,” Ilya says. Cliff laughs dutifully, and Svetlana calls him a predictable pig. 

“No, man. Shane Hollander! I forgot we even had each other’s numbers. He’s a nice dude, though. Seemed really concerned. I guess I can’t hate him anymore, after the way he stayed with you on the ice.” 

Ilya takes a sip of his beer, considers what to say. He knows it will only make Svetlana worried, and will worry Cliff, too. Maybe he should pretend? But it feels important to be honest about this.

“Who’s Shane Hollander?” he finally asks. Svetlana’s head slowly turns toward him, her eyes wide. Cliff laughs, as if Ilya has told a joke. “I don’t know a Shane Hollander. Do I?” The name does sound familiar, but he doesn’t put it together until Svetlana fumbles for the remote—moving as if this is something of desperate importance—and turns on a game. Metros versus Admirals, and it doesn’t take long before there’s a graphic on the screen, a picture of Scott Hunter with his stats from the last five games listed next to his picture, and then a picture of, apparently, Shane Hollander, and his stats. Ilya’s memory catches up. “He was in my hospital room, yes? He came to see me? You talked to him?” 

Svetlana looks almost angry, now. Like it’s his fucking fault he can’t remember. Cliff is no longer laughing. 

“You’re not joking,” he breathes. He puts down his beer, slow. “You concussed your biggest fucking rival right out of your thick skull? Who does that?” 

Ilya tries to joke around about it, a little, but he’s not really in the mood. He says something hopefully reassuring about how there are a few minor things he can’t remember, and that the doctor says things will come back, but most importantly, he still knows how to play hockey and how to fuck and how to drink, so he’s not missing anything important. Cliff says he won’t tell Hollander that Ilya doesn’t remember him, but Ilya just laughs and says, go ahead, tell him. Why not? It will be funny. 

Svetlana protests for a second, reminds them both how nice Hollander has been, but Cliff texts him anyway, because he’s a good friend. 

“Done!” he crows. “Maybe it’ll throw him off his game the next time we see him.”

When Cliff finally leaves, and Svetlana steps out for a few hours to see to her own life (because she actually has one and isn’t just Ilya’s nursemaid, despite how much he wants to pretend she’s all his sometimes), he does a Youtube search and watches dozens of videos about he and Hollander. People really like them as rivals, apparently. There are montages of their hits, their goals, their post-game interview chirps. Hollander is stiff in every video, and his chirps are lame. His smile is dorky and too pleased with himself for the stupidest things. He plays like a demon, and Ilya is impressed with that, and he’s impressed with Hollander’s beauty just like he was when he saw him in the hospital room. 

He watches the footage from the game when he went down, remembering what Cliff said about Hollander staying with him. It was not a very good game even before Ilya broke his head playing it. He and Hollander both were playing like shit, and the commentators were apparently having fun coming up with new ways to say that same thing over and over again, in their stupid, laughing voices. Ilya and Hollander don’t seem very much like rivals, either. There is nothing of the fun, brutal connection they’d had in those other videos. They’re listless, and they stay away from each other, and then one of Hollander’s teammates takes Ilya out, slams into him low enough that Ilya trips, spikes headfirst into the ice, his arm trapped under him. He imagines he can hear and feel the break, and he winces, sitting on his couch. 

The game devolves into a scrum, the other players fighting around Ilya’s prone form. Apparently, they’re stupider than Ilya already thought, and they don’t notice that he isn’t getting up. They’re punching each other, grappling with each other, throwing each other around, all of them getting too close as the refs try to pull them away and the medics take too long to get out there. Hollander slices through the chaos, and he slides to his knees over Ilya, and he protects Ilya’s head with his own body, yelling at the other players to back off. The commentators go on and on about what a sportsmanlike move it is, and how Hollander is such a good hockey boy, or whatever. Ilya rewinds it at least fifteen times, watches it play out again. Watches the look on Hollander’s pretty face. He looks so upset, and Ilya should be embarrassed by how it makes him feel. 

He picks up his phone to text Hollander. To thank him, maybe, or chirp him, more likely, but he doesn’t have him in his contacts. Disappointing.

 

---

 

When Svetlana comes home, she makes them both some lunch, and then she sits down on the couch next to him and exhales. 

“Can we talk about it?” she asks. 

“Talk about what?” 

“The fact that Jane is obviously Shane Hollander.” 

Ilya looks at her, startled. Then he feels like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. 

“Oh,” he says. He thinks about that video, Hollander falling to his knees and protecting his head. He thinks about his urge to immediately go to Youtube and watch as many videos as possible of this man he doesn’t remember. “Yes, maybe. Would be a coincidence if not.” 

“Jane. Shane. Stupid fucking codename. I know that was your idea.” 

“Probably,” Ilya laughs. He reaches for his phone and scrolls back up through the Jane texts. Yes, it makes sense. If he looks at the dates of the random sent numbers and compares them to his calendar, he’s sure he will find that they line up with when Montreal and Boston were playing games. The numbers must be hotel rooms. From the length of this text thread, he and Shane Hollander were fucking for a while. “Why would I forget only him? Out of anyone in my life?” 

“You still remember nothing?” 

“Nothing,” Ilya agrees. He reads Shane’s last messages again. Sorry about yesterday. “I think maybe we were not fucking anymore.” 

“Hm? Are you sure?” 

“I don’t know.” Looking at those texts feels like the same void, the Jane Box. Like there is nothing where there should be something. Like he would be bereft, devastated, if he opened it. “I think, maybe, I would be very upset if I could remember.” 

“Your doctor did say that your brain might be protecting itself,” Svetlana points out. 

“So maybe it is better that I do not remember.” Ilya tosses his phone onto the couch beside him. He’s worried it will hurt anyway, choosing not to think about it, but he’s glad when it doesn’t. The Jane Box stays locked away, the void stays largely painless, and if anything, he feels a little bit better, now that he knows what it was, and what it  no longer is. 

 

---

 

A week later, at a team gathering, Cliff shows him pictures from a gossip site of Hollander out with Rose Landry. Ilya knows of Rose Landry, of course, because she stars in a lot of very stupid movies, and stupid movies are his favorite. He whistles lowly in envy of both of them. He wonders if Hollander would ever consent to a threesome. 

“Right?” Cliff asks, misinterpreting Ilya’s whistle. He probably hasn’t even noticed how fucking good Hollander looks in the picture. Ilya actually misses his memory for the first time. He searches around in it like a racoon picking through trash, trying to unearth something. What does Hollander look like naked? What does he look like when he comes? How big is his dick? What does he look like when Ilya’s cock is in his mouth? Anything? The void persists, and Ilya is disappointed with himself. 

“Good for Hollander,” he says. “I need to get laid.” 

“I feel that, brother,” Cliff says. “Let’s go out tonight. Girls will all be cooing over you and shit because of your broken baby bird wing.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Ilya laughs, but he agrees anyway, because he thinks Cliff is probably right, and Ilya is in the mood to be pampered. 

 

---

 

He doesn’t think about Shane Hollander, or Jane. Jane’s texts disappear beneath the rest of them, and he doesn’t scroll down to see them. His phone is useless for a while, anyway, with everyone he’s ever met trying to text him and ask him for updates or asking him to hang out, or to offer to kill everyone on Montreal except for Shane Hollander, who saved him. Ilya goes back to his life, as much as he can with his arm still in an unwieldy cast, and even Svetlana eventually seems certain that he’s not going to spiral about this. He cannot exactly say that he’s happy about his missing memories, but he’s certainly, at worst, neutral about it. A little curious, maybe. A little concerned that they haven’t come back, and that he might be missing something important. But there is a sense that if he pushes at all, if he tries to uncover what’s hidden there, he wouldn’t like what he found, and he is being smart about it, and so he doesn’t push. 

He is still injured when the Raiders travel to Montreal, but Ilya goes with the team for morale, because coach thinks it will be funny, and Ilya agrees. He’s just getting into his hotel room with Cliff when his phone pings with a text from Jane. He’s surprised to see it. He’d considered blocking the number, just so he wouldn’t be tempted to text it, but now he’s glad he didn’t. 

It’s an address, and a door code, and any time after the game.  

Ilya stares down at it, frowns. Didn’t Cliff tell Hollander that Ilya doesn’t remember him? 

Should he just go? Would it be weird? Probably. He sort of wants to go. Wants to see Hollander in person. Wants to see if Hollander is as pretty up close as Ilya thinks he is. Maybe Hollander will suck his dick, if he goes. That could be nice. 

He’s surprised to realize that his heart is beating harder, too hard. Like he’s afraid. That’s stupid, of course. Hollander has a girlfriend. Literally everyone knows it. It’s in the fucking news. Hollander probably wants to talk to him, maybe wants to confirm that Cliff wasnt just fucking with him when he said Ilya couldn't remember him. Maybe he wants to make sure that Ilya doesn’t tell anyone about them. It was probably just as big a secret for Hollander as it was for Ilya, and Hollander seems like such a rule follower. Maybe he’s worried that Ilya without his memories will say something to expose them. 

Ilya still doesn’t remember anything, but he has written the story in his own mind, because there’s this awareness that whatever had happened between them was over even before he forgot, because of the way the Jane Box feels in his mind. He has tried, sort of, to explain this to his doctor, how he can feel the shape of emotions around the missing memories even if he can’t completely remember them. She keeps assuring him that “these things are all normal”, but he doesn’t know how accurate that is. It certainly doesn’t feel normal. He’s beginning to think he will never get those memories back again, and he’s glad. He doesn’t want them. 

He texts, sorry, I don’t know who this is, and he waits for a response, but one never comes.

 

---

 

Hollander plays like shit, and Ilya wonders if it’s because of him. He’s up in one of the boxes, so he can’t see too much of Hollander’s expression, except the occasional closeups on the jumbotron, and Hollander always looks neutral, blank, locked-in. He waves at Rose Landry, who’s in another box somewhere around here, but he looks slow and almost sick when he smiles. Ilya feels a little guilty, maybe, though perhaps that’s stupid. Montreal wins anyway.

After the game, he checks his phone, but there are no more texts from Jane. He almost texts something else. Sorry, Hollander, I know it’s you, and I still don’t remember you, but that was mean. No, that would be dumb. Better to leave things as they are.

He goes out with the team. Hollander’s girlfriend is at the same club with some friends, and a few of the Raiders try to flirt with her, buy her drinks. She laughs at them and holds court a little bit, but she keeps saying that she’s loyal to Montreal now. Ilya hangs back, watches the way she talks. There’s a little furrow between her brows as she checks her phone. Is she texting Hollander? Was Hollander supposed to come out with her? 

Ilya dances and has a great night and forces himself to stop thinking about Hollander. He goes home with a pretty girl with dark hair, but he sneaks out as soon as she’s asleep and makes his way back to the hotel. Cliff calls him a dog, and Ilya woofs. He takes a long shower. He looks at his phone again, and still there is nothing. 

“Fuck you,” he tells himself in the mirror. Cliff is already asleep, so it’s easy to sneak out again. He calls a car and takes it to the address Hollander sent him, and he uses the door code. He knocks on Hollander’s apartment door, and then he considers that maybe this was a mistake. What if Rose Landry is here? Won’t she wonder? 

But the door opens, and then Hollander is blinking sleepily at him, wearing a…

Oh, Ilya thinks. He’s wearing a Boston Raiders sweatshirt. He’s wearing my sweatshirt. I must have left it here, but I don’t remember. His face is red. He has been crying. He’s wearing my clothes, and I don’t remember him, and he’s playing like shit, and he’s avoiding going out with his girlfriend, and I don’t remember him at all. He thinks he feels a little bit of power like this, but it’s a sickening kind of power that he doesn’t want. Seeing Hollander so undone by something about which Ilya has no emotions feels awkward, like he has walked in on Hollander enjoying a very specific, niche, gross fetish or something. Like, ugh, Hollander, put that sadness away. I can’t reciprocate it. 

“You’re here,” Hollander breathes out. Ilya realizes that coming here was a massive mistake, but holy shit, Hollander’s eyes are lethal. They’re so big and wet and earnest, looking at Ilya like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. What is Ilya supposed to do, leave? 

“I figured out it was you,” Ilya admits, his voice rough with nerves, or maybe wanting. Hollander’s face is very neutral and blank in that same familiar way for a second, but then it crumbles, and Ilya’s brain goes staticky with panic. 

“You really don’t remember,” Hollander manages to say, somehow without crying, despite looking like he’s going to start sobbing at any second. 

“No,” Ilya admits, apology in his voice. “I’m…there’s nothing. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you.” 

“Okay,” Hollander says. His hand grips the door, white knuckled. “Like literally nothing?” 

“Nothing,” Ilya says. “Just…a black hole. Like someone cut you out.” 

Tears spill over Hollander’s lashes, and he nods, and blinks, and wipes them away on the sleeve of Ilya’s sweatshirt. He looks down and notices, realizes what he’s wearing, and he goes stiff and uncomfortable with it. 

“Sorry,” he says. 

“No, it’s okay,” Ilya says helplessly. 

“Do you want to…?” Hollander steps back a little, opening the door a little wider, just as Ilya says, “I should probably go.” 

Hollander freezes, nods, blinks again. More tears. Jesus fucking Christ. 

“I can come in, if you want,” Ilya offers, feeling a little wretched. 

“No, that’s okay,” Hollander replies, his voice horrid and bland again. “Thank you for coming and telling me in person.” 

“Okay,” Ilya says, and then Hollander closes the door, like it’s nothing, but Ilya knows that it’s not. 

 

---

 

He feels a bit terrible, after that, but also maybe better. Like it was a loose end that has been handled. The Jane Box is still safely closed, and is only leaking out a little bit, sometimes. He still doesn’t remember anything. His brain still thinks, apparently, that he needs protecting from Shane Hollander, even though on the surface it seems more like Shane Hollander needs protection from him.

He feels almost embarrassed for Hollander, though maybe that’s a cruel way to think about it. He thinks about it especially as he’s lying in bed, about to fall asleep. Hollander’s disheveled appearance, the fact that he was wearing Ilya’s sweatshirt like a war widow. His open, incomprehensible hurt. And Ilya feels nothing for him in response. Of course that must feel awful, for him, and it makes Ilya abstractly sorry, because he doesn’t like to be the cause of anyone’s pain. Maybe he should have offered to fuck Hollander anyway. It would have been nice, he thinks. Clearly there was a reason he was doing it for so long. Maybe that would have hurt Hollander more, but maybe not. It would have been polite to offer, anyway. 

 

---

 

He spends most of his time working on PT. His arm is healing nicely, and he’s back in the gym. He’s going to be cleared to play, soon. His doctor isn’t concerned about his memories. He can remember almost everything, after all. There is just one man he can’t remember. He watches tape of his games against Hollander so that he can work around the gap. He fills that gap with new memories of impersonal footage of their tiny figures on the ice during games. He watches the way they chase each other, smile at each other, shake hands. He watches that tape of Hollander protecting his head after the fall, again and again. He sees the desperation of a person who cares deeply, and who doesn’t want the person they care for to be hurt. Sorry, Hollander, he thinks. 

He tells Svetlana, eventually, about going to Hollander’s place, and about Hollander being sad. He doesn’t tell her the details, because those are just for him, and because his embarrassment for Hollander’s sake makes him unwilling to say anything more damning. Svetlana looks sad, anyway. Like she can hear the things he has left out. 

“I knew he was upset when he came to your room. I thought he was just being sweet.” 

“Well, they always say how sportsmanlike he is,” Ilya scoffs. Svetlana shakes her head at him, as if he has disappointed her. 

“He is,” she says. 

“Yes. A polite, boring boy. I can’t imagine why I would have risked my life and career for him.”

He laughs a little, trying to sound disdainful. He thinks of Hollander's sad brown eyes, spilling over with tears. Well, okay, maybe he has some idea, but surely Hollander wasn't crying the first time they met. There must have been something else.

“Because he's beautiful and because he's the only one as good as you,” Svetlana says. “I don't think you needed any other reason.”

Ilya feels a defensive something flaring up in the Jane Box at that. Like if it was a physical object, he would pick it up and shake it in her face and say no, no, Sveta, look. It's not just that, and lay bare all the things that made him choose to risk it all for Shane fucking Hollander. But he cannot do that. He just knows that there was something, because the void of it is stuffed too full. It can't have only been that he is beautiful. 

 

---

 

Hollander is having a terrible season. His girlfriend, the tabloids say, has dumped him, though they are photographed a few times out at brunch, after the breakup, looking friendly. Ilya considers texting Jane to tease him, but it feels too cruel, so he doesn't. He considers texting about how shit he's been playing. Texting to apologize again, maybe, or to ask if the random white shirt he found in his laundry belongs to Hollander, because he's pretty sure it's not one of his. There are too many times a day he finds himself reaching for his phone to text Hollander before he catches up to himself. Did they used to text a lot? Maybe they deleted the messages. Or maybe even before the accident he was always reaching for his phone, wanting to text Hollander more than he was supposed to, before remembering that he shouldn’t. 

Hollander pulls out of the All Star Game, citing an injury. Ilya asks around, trying to be casual, but can't find any information. He opens his texts with Jane three days in a row before he finally sighs and asks what happened? No all stars? He doesn't get an answer. 

Ilya isn't going to All Stars either, because he's not healed yet, but he was going to go anyway, bum around the hotel with Cliff. Now that Hollander isn't going, he can admit that he was hoping to see him again, and he's annoyed with himself. 

The Jane Box is starting to feel more full, like the edges of it are starting to crumble. He wakes up one morning achingly hard, reaching for a body he thinks is in the bed next to him. He remembers Hollander in his arms, in front of him, smiling. But then he opens his eyes, and there's nothing, and his heart cracks open, just a bit. 

He is more convinced than ever that something happened between them, before the game. He watches it again, watches the way they were playing like strangers. Yes, something happened, and the Jane Box exists so he doesn't get fucked up about it, and so he should give up, stop trying, stop thinking about Hollander. He should work on keeping the box closed. Go out and fuck some other men, maybe, if he thinks it would help. 

Conners finally hears from someone who heard from someone on the Metros that Hollander's injury is from training, just a stupid overextension thing. Apparently he's been trying to make up for his abysmal play by training even harder, “locking the fuck in”. Not that it has been working, but hearing about it makes Ilya fond in a frightening way, like he's thinking yes, that makes sense. That sounds like him. 

 

---

 

He lasts another week before he texts Hollander again. 

I remembered something.

He waits, trying to think of something funny to say if Hollander responds. A joke or a chirp. But Hollander doesn't respond, and so he just throws his phone onto the couch and scowls at the ceiling. 

He finds pictures in a locked folder on his phone, but it's just him and Hollander on stage somewhere. A selfie as part of a bit. That's it? Not even a single nude? Is Hollander a fucking puritan? He googles Shane Hollander advertisements and jerks off to a picture of Hollander in a wet T-shirt. It's a new low. Still, at least he's getting something. Touching himself, looking at Hollander's face, he can feel flashes of something. A look in Hollander's eyes. The particular dumbstruck expression on his face when Ilya first touches him. The desperate wanting. Maybe he's just imagining it, coming up with a fantasy, but he doesn't think so. 

 

---

 

The hockey news sites are on Hollander constantly. They won't leave the man alone. There are pictures of him after practice looking exhausted as he talks into his phone, and then pictures of him out with some of his teammates for brunch, sunglasses on, hunched in his seat. The hockey sites have all turned into tabloids, because they attribute Hollander's clear bad mood to the breakup with Rose. Maybe Ilya is just as bad as them, because he attributes it to himself. Maybe he's just a narcissist. He has a Google alert set for Hollander, so maybe he's also obsessed. It's just strange to think that there wasthis huge part of him that now means nothing to him. Just by virtue of not meaning anything to him anymore, it has come to mean something. 

There are pictures of Hollander's mother driving him to PT, and a statement about how he's looking forward to getting back to work, and pictures of him with Rose Landry, and pictures of Rose Landry out with some other guy, which come up in the news alert because of course people are writing about Hollander as if he will be brokenhearted that the girlfriend he went on like three dates with has moved on. There's a puff piece about Hollander's pre-season workout routine, and there's an advertisement that he filmed for some kind of fruit drink. 

Ilya surprises himself with that one, because he clicks into the alert and then thinks Hollander would never drink that, and then he wonders how he knew that. 

He turns it over in his mind, coming back to it for hours. How does he know that? Is it a real memory, or has he just become so obsessed with Hollander that he thinks he can interpret him? 

He dreams that night about Hollander on his couch, in his lap. He dreams about Hollander leaving, lying about having a meeting and walking out, and then he wakes up and he knows how it ended, and he also knows everything else. The memories come trickling in no matter how much he tries to cover his head and go back to sleep. Like the Jane Box has sprung a leak that has turned into a catastrophic failure. 

“Fuck,” he says to his ceiling, when he finally gives up. Okay. So Hollander is back, and now Ilya knows exactly why he left. Does it change anything, really? Does he have to tell him?

He scrolls back through the Google alerts, the pictures, the articles. He scrutinizes Hollander's empty eyes and his bleak smile. He thinks back to that fucking Boston Raiders sweatshirt, to Hollander's red-rimmed eyes and his devastating blankness and the way he still tried to invite Ilya in. With his memories restored, it means more than it did. He'd assumed it was only fucking, before he remembered. He knows better now. 

He flirts with the idea of doing something like booking a flight to Montreal and showing up unannounced, but that would be stupid, and so he doesn't. He still doesn't know what made Hollander leave the way he did, and just because Hollander was sad about those lost memories, that doesn't mean he's ready to make new ones. He waits two more days, during which several news stories about Hollander continuing to look like a kicked dog come to his inbox, and then he finally just texts Hollander memories back, followed by a thumbs up emoji, a thumbs down emoji, the lip bite, the hole, and several explosions. That way, Hollander knows he means it.

He isn't expecting a response soon, if ever, but Hollander texts him immediately. 

All of them? he asks. Ilya frowns at the phone for a second, his still-shaky brain taking a few seconds to catch up. 

Yes, he finally texts back. All of them. Last one first, actually.

Then a thumbs down, just to be clear how he feels about that one. 

Hollander doesn't respond. Which is fine, of course. 

 

---

 

Now that the Jane Box is open, he thinks he doesn't feel as terrible about things as he would have otherwise. Maybe his concussion was good for him. It's like his lack of memories insulated him from the pain until he was ready to face it. He does feel a bit pathetic, to remember how fucking heartbroken he was over Hollander leaving, but oh well. Maybe it's small consolation that he gets to remember how pathetic Hollander looked in his apartment. But maybe he also feels bad about it, in the way he always feels bad when Hollander is upset, because unfortunately he cares about Hollander, and about how Hollander feels, even though he knows he shouldn't, especially not now. 

He thinks about telling Svetlana that his memories of Shane are back, but he knows that she will ask so many questions, and he doesn't feel like he wants to answer them just yet. Maybe in a few days, when he has had more time to sift through them and decide which memories are worth keeping, and which he will try to forget a second time.

 

---

 

His doorbell rings, and there's never a moment when he thinks anything other than the truth. Of course Hollander has decided to go radio fucking silent all day and then just show up at Ilya’s house at 8 pm, as if Ilya has nothing better to do with his life. 

Yes, sure, Ilya has just settled in with some takeout to watch a movie he has seen a thousand times, but he could have had something better to do. 

He takes off his shirt before he answers the door, because he is pathetic. Hollander is standing on the front porch, his hands clenched into angry little fists. 

“What would you have done if I wasn't home?” Ilya asks, genuinely curious. 

“Driven into the ocean, maybe,” Hollander says, in that casually anxious but still deadpan way he says almost everything. “Are you gonna let me in?”

“Are you gonna run away again?” 

Hollander mulls it over like it was a sincere question. 

“I don't think so,” he finally says, and it's so stupid that that makes Ilya feel better, but it does, because Hollander actually thought about it, and Ilya knows how seriously he takes things. 

“Okay,” Ilya sighs, and he moves aside. 

His arm has been out of the cast for weeks, but he can see the way Hollander is looking at it, assessing it. He looks at Ilya's head, too, like there will be some physical signs of his concussion, like Frankenstein stitches or something. He looks away again when he catches Ilya's amused gaze, and his face goes slightly red. 

Ilya doesn't offer him anything to drink, or any food, and maybe that's a bit bitchy, but he doesn't think he can be blamed for that, really. Hollander certainly doesn't seem to mind. He leans back against the kitchen counter and looks at Ilya with his arms crossed. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. “It was fucked up that I ran away.”

Ilya is annoyed, actually, that Hollander is just saying it. Just openly saying it. He'd been expecting them to talk around it for a little while, and then Hollander would probably just randomly drop to his knees and go for Ilya's dick, and then he'd stick around to get fucked, at least, and maybe on his way out the door he’d blurt out an awkward well, that was better than last time, and then Ilya would laugh and pretend to mean it, and then things could go back to normal. But no, apparently it's time for them to act like adults? That's terrible. 

“It was,” Ilya agrees. “I thought it…”

He stops himself, because he can hear how reedy and pathetic his voice already sounds, and he doesn't want to finish the thought. I thought it was nice. I thought we were having a nice time. Fucking pathetic. 

“It was really nice,” Hollander says because apparently he can read Ilya's mind, now. “And I…” his voice breaks a little bit. This is Ilya's nightmare again. Now Hollander is going to cry like he did at his apartment, and unfortunately this time Ilya cares enough about him that he's going to have to be really sad about it. 

“Hey, don't,” Ilya says weakly. Hollander rallies beautifully, like he usually does. 

“I liked it, maybe too much. That's why I left. I know that doesn't make sense, but…I can't. I don't know how to explain it. It fucking sucks.”

“You don't have to explain it,” Ilya offers. Before he can suggest the thing about Hollander sucking his dick, though, Hollander barrels onwards. 

“I do, though. That's like the whole issue. I have to actually explain it and not just run off and hurt you. I felt like shit even before the game, because you wouldn't even look at me, and I knew I deserved it, and I kept thinking, like, fuck. I like him so much, and I hurt him like that, after he was so fucking nice to me. And I couldn’t explain it to you, why I left. I couldn’t explain it to myself. Except that’s a fucking lie, because I knew exactly why I left, but it’s just too stupid to say out loud, so I keep pretending like…fuck. It doesn’t matter. And then you went down, and those fucking idiots were all fighting around you? And I thought you were going to get stepped on or something, I don't know. It felt good to protect you, I guess. Like I was making it up to you, somehow, for being such an asshole. And then you just fucking forgot me.”

Ilya nods, because he does understand. He understands why Hollander left, even, he thinks. It did feel like a lot, that day. It was a glut of Hollander, all at once, the warmth of him and the weight of him and the beautiful presence of him. Ilya had been ready to open his mouth and swallow all of it, keep it as close as possible, but he supposes it makes sense that Hollander wasn't as ready for it. Hollander always looks so afraid of literally everything. He looks afraid now, watching Ilya. 

“The memories are back now, so,” Ilya says awkwardly, and Hollander nods, looking almost disappointed. Maybe he was expecting more of an unburdening. Maybe that's fair. Ilya sighs. “My doctor said, maybe, my brain is trying to protect itself. Maybe it got mixed up. I was…unhappy. About you leaving.” That's a fucking understatement, and he hopes Hollander knows that without Ilya having to expand on it, because he really doesn't want to admit how fucking bad it hurt when Hollander left. How fucking heartbroken Ilya was about it. Hollander couldn't handle a single sleepover. He's not ready for the notion of heartbreak. 

“Okay,” Hollander says. “So, that's why I'm here. To apologize.”

“Okay. Thank you. For apologizing.” Hollander just stares at him, and Ilya is trying not to get annoyed, but of course it isn't very easy. Hollander is being annoying. Showing up like this, out of nowhere, apologizing and doing nothing else. What is Ilya supposed to say to that? “You are okay? Your injury?” 

“What? Yeah. I'm fine. I just…it was just my ankle. I was fucking stupid. Working out too much. I was playing like shit. I was trying to overcompensate, and I overdid it. Whatever. That's not important. I'm not done.”

He's so tightly wound. So nervous. Ilya feels vaguely sorry for him, in the same way that he felt sorry for him at his apartment in Montreal. Like it's nothing to do with him, even though he knows it is. 

“Okay, so say what you want to say,” Ilya says gently. “I will listen.”

Hollander nods, and clenches his hands into fists again, and he heaves a sigh. Closes his eyes, like he's trying to work his way up into speaking. 

“I thought, at first, that it was what I wanted,” he says, through gritted teeth, like he has to fight the words out of himself. “When you couldn't remember. Or, it wasn't what I wanted, but I thought maybe I should be happy. Like, when I left, I was thinking, I never should have let it get this far, and then suddenly it was nothing. And you couldn't remember, so it was like I never hurt you. And so, okay. Maybe that could be fine. But, uh. It wasn't. I wasn't. I just kept thinking, like, I don't know. How much I missed you? How much I wished that you could be fucking pissed at me, I guess. I thought I was just guilty at first, but then it made me feel sick. Like how I had the life I was supposed to have, and so did you. Like this whole complicated thing could just be over? And you didn't have to remember, so you wouldn't care. And I could just care for the both of us, and keep the secret. Protect us both. But, uh. I just kept feeling worse and worse. It wasn't like, I don't know, like a breakup, or whatever. I know we weren't anything. But it was still something to me, and then it was gone, and it was like you fucking died, I guess. I missed you so fucking much. And I felt so selfish for caring, because I'm the one who left, and I kept thinking, like, maybe you were distracted in the game because of me? So maybe it was my fault. And it all just got really….heavy? Like I was carrying everything by myself? and caring too much, and knowing that you didn't care at all. And I couldn't handle it, I guess. I felt like I was going fucking insane, because I kept telling myself I was selfish for being upset that you didn’t remember me. I almost told my mom, like, three times, just so she would stop asking if I was okay. Because I wasn’t okay. I’m sorry. I know it’s fucking crazy that I’m here, after how I left, and it’s fucking crazy that I was so upset, because I know it’s not anything. We’re not anything. I know. You don’t have to look at me like that.” 

“I am looking at you like this because you just said four thousand words and I’m trying to process them, Hollander, holy shit.” 

“Sorry.” A sheepish look down at his feet. Ilya considers whether or not he wants to take a step forward, but of course he does. He has always been so weak to Hollander, especially when Hollander looks like this: confused, upset. He steps into Hollander’s space, watches his face carefully. It’s a relief to remember what his expressions mean. It makes his heart pang unpleasantly when he remembers going to Hollander’s door in Montreal. If he had his memories, he would have been on Hollander in seconds, pulling him into his arms, kissing him. He would have been unable to resist. It feels horrible now to remember that he just stood there, watching. Letting Hollander try to pack himself away, inelegant and untouched and bereft. He touches Hollander now like he would have liked to have done then. Touches his chin, lifts it up so that Hollander at least has to look in the direction of his eyes, if not quite at them. He touches his cheek, runs the back of his knuckles against his freckles. Hollander smiles a little, like he always does. It’s pained this time, but not so pained that it means that he wants Ilya to stop. Yes, Ilya remembers him now. Remembers how to play him like this, like a difficult instrument. How to prod at all the millions of little moving parts that make up Hollander so that he sings beautifully. How could he have ever forgotten? It feels like it should take up so much space in his brain. Who was he, for these last few weeks? Was he even himself at all? 

Hollander breathes out, the tension leaving him, and Ilya feels the same pleased pride he always does when he sees the way Hollander unfurls around him, in a way he hasn’t seen him act around anyone else. Yes, this version of Hollander is only for him, only for behind closed doors, where no one else can intrude. He loves this, always. He can’t believe he ever stopped. 

“I remember now,” he says gently, a promise. “And unless your fucking teammates try to murder me again, I will not forget.” 

“Well, you know I can’t promise that.” 

“Then you will just have to protect me again. Cover my head and neck with your entire body.” 

“Shut up,” Hollander says, perfectly, the way he always does, yearningly, like he wishes he could say something else. I love you, Ilya thinks. It’s not his own thought. It’s what he hears behind Hollander’s words. Maybe it’s his own thoughts, too. Maybe they’re in sync. Hollander is certainly looking at him like a man in love, his eyes sparkling already, wet with unshed tears. He must hate that he’s so easy to read like this, so sensitive, his eyes so huge and so emotional. He’s so good at controlling himself in every other aspect, but his eyes can’t hide anything from Ilya.

“I watched that video of you protecting me so many times,” Ilya says thoughtfully. “Even when I forgot you. I think part of me remembered.” 

“Yeah?” Hollander asks hopefully. 

“Mm, yes. You came to visit me in the hospital. Remember?” 

“Yeah, asshole. I’m not the one who had really specific amnesia.” 

“Okay, yes. But I did not know who you were at all, and still I thought, wow, who is this beautiful man in my room?” 

“Okay,” Hollander laughs, turning his face away, but Ilya leans in and kisses him on the cheek, softly, and Hollander freezes, and squeezes his eyes shut, and allows it with a sound that Ilya will only not call a whimper because he thinks Hollander would brain him with a frying pan if he did, right now. He’s tensing up, nervous. Like he’s afraid that Ilya is going to rip it all away from him. As if Ilya was the one who ripped it away in the first place. 

“And when you were gone, it wasn’t like you were never there. It was like someone had taken you out, cut you out. Like there were wounds, left behind.” 

Hollander makes eye contact at last, brow furrowing. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“Mm. Yes. It was very dark. A hole. I was afraid to look at it. I called it my Jane Box, in my mind. I thought it would be better to keep it closed. I thought it would break my heart, if I opened it.” 

There. Finally. Hollander melts completely at last, giving himself permission to lean in to Ilya’s touch, remembering that Ilya needs comfort, maybe, and allowing himself to be comforted too only because he can pretend that it’s not for him. He’s so easy, sometimes. Ilya smiles at him. 

“I’m sorry,” Hollander says again, quieter, and he bravely lifts his eyes to Ilya’s again, and this time he holds them for a little while, allowing Ilya to look his fill. “I really am. I felt like a fucking idiot as soon as I left. I thought I fucked everything up.” 

But it sounds like a question, like a hope. Ilya shakes his head. 

“You didn’t,” he admits, sighing. “I think, maybe, I am too far gone. I will give you more and more chances to fuck up.” 

Hollander makes a noise of protest at that, but when Ilya kisses him, he doesn’t back away. He wraps his arms around Ilya instead, and he brings his fingers into Ilya’s curls, the way Ilya loves. They’re still standing in the kitchen, and maybe they should move to the bedroom, or maybe at least the slightly more hospitable living room, but Hollander is still holding on to him, still kissing him, one of his angry little fists now curled in Ilya’s hair, and the other gripping his hip, hot on his bare skin, and Ilya doesn’t want to change anything. Wants Hollander exactly like this. 

“I don’t want to keep fucking up,” Hollander whispers. “I don’t want to fucking, I don’t know. Hurt you.” 

“Hollander,” Ilya sighs, defensive at the implication, even though he knows it’s true. 

“I know it’s not nothing,” Hollander blurts. He pulls away a little, but he grabs Ilya’s forearm, like he’s afraid to go too far. He looks at Ilya in the searching way he does sometimes, like Ilya’s face is a map, or written word, something he has to read. 

“Hollander.” 

“It’s not. I know it’s not. It’s something for you too. That’s why you were being so fucking weird, and it’s why I was being so fucking weird, because I know. I know it’s impossible, and it’s stupid to think about. It’s not…it can’t be anything. It can’t. But, Ilya, fuck. It fucking is.” 

Now the eye contact is hostile, aggressive, daring Ilya to back down. Ilya knows he should, probably. He doesn’t, though. He’s still so flooded with all those memories of Hollander, Shane, all those memories of Shane, over the years. His gentleness and his harshness and all his confusing angles, blunted and made softer by the time they’ve spent together. It really doesn’t amount to very much, but it is still somehow everything. He’s one of the most important people in Ilya’s life. When he was gone, he left a hole, and it was almost catastrophic. 

“Okay, okay,” Ilya says, trying for soothing. He’s not sure he pulls it off. “Hollander, okay. I understand.” 

“Do you?” Shane asks, desperate. 

“It’s not nothing,” Ilya promises, and Shane sags with relief, rests his forehead against Ilya’s neck. Ilya feels his tears, then, and he’s relieved.

“Okay,” Shane says, against his neck. “Okay. Fuck. Okay.” 

“Okay?” 

“Shut up. I just. I thought you’d tell me to fuck off.” 

“Yes. Maybe I should. It is very stupid.” 

“I know,” Shane says, but he pushes his face into Ilya’s skin even harder, and Ilya knows that’s his answer, because he knows Shane, really. 

It is terrifying, maybe. Ilya thinks he might be afraid. Afraid that they’re putting words to this thing that always worked better when they didn’t talk about it. He remembers being left on the couch, Shane leaving. He remembers feeling fucking empty, totally destroyed. He remembers the game, feeling half a second behind. It’s stupid to let yourself care about someone like that, but it’s not like it’s something he can control. It’s not a choice he made. He never would have made it, if it was a choice. Maybe it was a series of little choices that led him here. A series of small mistakes instead of a big one. He doesn’t want to think of it as a mistake, though. It doesn’t feel like one. 

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks quietly, finally, after Shane has leaked enough tears into the skin of Ilya’s neck that Ilya is starting to get embarrassed for both of them. Shane sniffles, pulls himself away, holds himself a little awkwardly. 

“Yes, please,” he says, his voice quiet and wrecked, and Ilya can’t help but smile at him tenderly, can’t help but wipe his tears. 

“Okay. I still have so much fucking ginger ale in my fridge, you know?” 

Shane laughs helplessly, all snotty and disgusting with his tears, and it really is unfortunate, how even that sound isn’t enough to put Ilya off. It makes his heart clench with fondness, instead. He is a lost cause. 

 

---

 

Ilya retrieves a can of ginger ale for Shane, and he brings him to his couch. 

He tries to describe what it felt like to forget him. The restless sleep. The formless dreams. The nameless dread that something was missing, and that he would be hurt more if he found it, so he let it stay hidden. Shane listens, fidgeting with the can in his hands, and with his jacket, and with the couch cushions, and finally with Ilya’s hand, when Ilya offers it. He plays with Ilya’s fingers, with his wrist. Ilya watches him, enamored, as always. Amused and pleased with all of these things that Shane does. He’s so hopeless. It doesn’t matter. Shane very seriously listens, his brow furrowed cutely. He nods along. There are these deep bags under his eyes, and he doesn’t need to say that he hasn’t been sleeping, either. 

It almost feels like they could be back on that day. Like Shane never left. Like Ilya never reached for too much, too fast, and scared him off. 

Shane shifts closer on his own. He doesn’t need Ilya to pull him in. He comes willingly, eagerly, looking at Ilya to make sure that it’s okay, and clearly he can see that it is, because Ilya’s devotion is open on his face. It must be, to make Shane look at him the way he does. 

Neither of them put it to words yet. It feels too tenuous for that. Too frightening. Ilya asks when Shane has to leave, and Shane says that he doesn’t have to leave for three days. No one is expecting him in Montreal, because he’s rehabbing his injury. Ilya feels dizzy with it, with the amount of time they will have together.

“And you will stay?” he asks, finally. He doesn’t want to sound too greedy when he asks. He doesn’t want to sound too eager. He thinks he must sound hurt, or maybe like he is deflecting in some way, because Shane looks at him with an apology in his gaze again. 

“I’m not going anywhere this time,” he promises, his eyes very intense on Ilya’s, and it is so stupid to believe him, maybe. To trust him. But Ilya does.