Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Carter Vaughn, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Airplane Crashes, a different plane crash from the usual one tho, Serious Injuries, what's in this fic less: hockey or medical accuracy? you decide!, in which I conspire to write Scott Hunter a female friend, minor/background Scott/Kip, by which I mean Scott thinks about him a lot, mostly show canon/timeline esp for Scott/Kip, Description of Injuries, very minor character deaths of unnamed plane passengers, shane's give a fuck meter also dies along the way, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, RIP to the all stars 2017 helmet kiss but unfortunately the boys are busy freezing somewhere in the canadian wilderness in this, Hurt Shane Hollander, technically ilya is not hurt in this but consider that he is actually MORE hurt than Shane, this was originally intended to be a survival story but you'll be shocked how little that comes into it, please understand I at several points had the opportunity to research and I took none of them, anyone who wants to read hardcore survival WILL kick me in the mouth when they realize what I've done in the last chapter and im not actually sorry, Minor suicidal ideation, I should add:, No Sex, Like sure Shane does get railed in a manner of speaking, But not in the way he prefers

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-31 Words: 34,142 Chapters: 4/4

but what if I need you in my darkest hour?

Summary

The day after attending a charity event in Vancouver, Shane, Ilya, Scott, and a few other players board a plane to take them to Tampa for 2017 All Stars.

The plane goes down somewhere in the wilderness, in the middle of a storm.

Notes

I thought I was retired from fic completely, and then I found myself writing this like 3 weeks ago, and I've been tinkering with it ever since. I almost didn't post it, because I was always really sensitive to negative comments back when I was in fandom, and I don't want to go back to that life, but fuck it! Why not? Here's the whole 4 chapters in one go.

title is from 42 by Mumford and Sons, both because the lyrics fit incredibly well with the vibe and also because it's Shane's number backwards, and I think that's funny

Chapter 1: Shane

“Hey, Hollander. How’s your girl doing? Jesus, man. Sorry!” 

Scott Hunter doesn't look sorry. Scott Hunter looks amused, quizzical. It’s the way he always looks at Shane, and it has made Shane feel so fucking paranoid ever since they were sitting next to each other at All Stars, years ago, and Ilya said his room number to Shane on the way by, like a fucking idiot. 

Shane scrambles to pick up his phone from where he’d spiked it into the seatback tray when Scott started talking. The plane gives a little lurch beneath them, and Scott holds on to the back of Shane’s seat for balance. 

“I'm just waiting for the bathroom,” Scott says, too gently, like he’s talking to a nervous shelter dog. He even gestures ahead of himself, like he thinks it’s possible that Shane forgot he’s sitting in the last row, right before the bathrooms. Why is Shane always making an ass of himself around Scott Hunter? Maybe he’ll just think that Shane is afraid of flying. That’s a normal thing to be afraid of, right? Maybe not for a professional hockey player, but…

Shane is still too spooked to say anything. Glances at his phone quickly and sees that only the last couple of messages with Rose are visible. His earlier whining about wanting to talk to Ilya has been pushed out of view by Rose’s excessive emoji use and her habit of sending like five three word texts instead of just writing a full thought. Not that Shane has been stupid enough to tell Rose Ilya’s name, but even just wanting to talk to a guy. Being nervous about talking to a guy who is also going to be in Florida this week. He eases out a breath when he’s sure that Scott wouldn’t have seen anything incriminating. 

Is it weird that Rose called him my holemate in one of the texts? Maybe Scott didn’t read that part. 

“Oh, uh, okay,” he says finally. “Sorry, I just. Didn't see you.”

“Okay.” A short, awkward silence. Scott looks like he's trying to work out what to say, or maybe telepathically force the people in the bathrooms to piss faster so this conversation can end. Shane catches up on the last few seconds and remembers the initial question. 

“Oh, uh. Rose is good.” He considers leaving it at that, just for plausible deniability or whatever, but finds himself opening his mouth and being honest, because Ilya isn't the only idiot. “She’s not my girl anymore, though. We’re not…we broke up? But we're still, like, friends. We just weren't compatible, as…dating. But she's…uh. She's great.”

“Okay,” Scott says, surprised. “Sorry to hear that, man.”

“Oh, it's okay.” How many times can they say okay in this fucking conversation? Jesus. He's a mess. He grasps for something safe to say. “I'm glad to get back to focusing on hockey for a while.”

“Mm, yeah, you really need help in that department,” Scott says, laughing a little as someone finally vacates one of the bathrooms and puts Shane out of his misery. Scott pats the back of Shane’s seat and then is gone. Shane is left to breathe out shakily, his phone clutched to his chest, talking himself down. 

Was that a friendly comment, or was he making fun of me? 

Probably both, because you acted like a fucking weirdo. Get it together. 

He looks up, which is a mistake, because then he’s looking up the aisle, to the front of the plane, towards where Ilya is sitting. If he leans out just a bit, he can see a little of Ilya’s shoulder, and a little of his hair.

He doesn’t do that, because it would be pathetic, because he’s already done it like five times. He’d found himself doing it before the plane had even taxied down the runway. It's like his eyes are magnetized to Ilya’s body.

Ilya is sitting with Cliff Marleau, and Scott Hunter and Carter Vaughn are sitting behind them. Shane has been able to hear them a few times, loud chirps or raucous laughter rising above the rest of the noise of the plane. Shane prefers the front too, but thought it would be impolite to make a stink when he was booked near the back, and so he’d settled back here, alone, to ride it out.  

Ilya hasn't looked at him once. 

Not that Shane expected him to. He’s given Ilya no reason to look at him. It’s frankly shocking that Ilya ever even looked at him in the first place, and it’s shocking that Ilya kept coming back, and it’s especially shocking that Ilya looked at him the way he had in his house before Shane fucked it up by running. 

It’s just something he’s noticed. Ilya hasn’t looked at him. Ilya’s eyes aren’t drawn to him the same way his eyes are drawn to Ilya. He’s always known that he’s the one feeling the more outsized, awful, uncomfortable things between the two of them, but he hates to get the actual proof of it. 

Maybe Ilya has moved on from whatever it was between them. It wasn’t everything to him, the way it was to Shane. Ilya always had other people he could go to. Other people he could fuck. More adventurous people, probably. People who didn’t freak out about a fucking tuna melt and a daytime couch hookup and an utterance of his first name. It’s probably better for both of them if things stay the way they are now. A clean break. 

But Shane doesn’t want that, and he’s trying to work up the courage to be brave. Ask for more. Admit he wants more.

He knows he has to be the one to do it. Ilya had been reaching out, in Boston. Clumsily, maybe. Not quite in the way that Shane needed him to reach out, but he had been reaching out, and Shane rejected him, and then he went out and got a famous fucking girlfriend, and so he needs to be the one to reach out this time if he wants to fix things.

Which he does! He wants to fix things so badly. He wants things to go back to…he wants Ilya to know that…well, he's working on it. Maybe he's not exactly sure what he even wants. He wants to talk to Ilya. He wants Ilya to kiss him. He wants Ilya's dick in his mouth. He wants Ilya to fuck him. That's a good start, right? He can figure out the rest on the fly. 

Who is he kidding? He's never done anything on the fly. 

He tries to fool himself into thinking that his back is cramping, and so he shifts in his seat just a little, and he looks at the poof of curls and the side of Ilya's shoulder. Ilya is turned away from the aisle, clearly talking to Cliff. There are a lot of big gestures and motions. Are they fighting? Are they laughing? Shane’s so far back, with so many rows of people between them, that he can’t see. And what does it matter, anyway? 

He goes back to staring at his phone, and then he gets paranoid about Scott Hunter leaving the bathroom and seeing something else that he shouldn’t, so he puts it face down on the tray. 

He closes his eyes, and he leans his head back against the seatrest, and he tries to run through his last game. He visualizes every goal, remembers every check into the boards, every stolen puck, every giddy hug from every teammate. He does a play-by-play as close to accurate as he can make it, because it always calms him down. It feels useful. Preparing himself for the next game. It doesn't work this time. He finds himself staring down at his hands crossed over his phone on the tray instead as the plane hits another mild spot of turbulence. 

The All Star game this week is supposed to be an opportunity to let loose and have fun, and he's going to be on Ilya's team this year, and even beyond everything else, even beyond whatever it is that they have or had, it's such a golden opportunity that his chest feels too full every time he thinks about it. Like, even if Ilya is still annoyed about the way Shane acted like a complete loser freak with his first crush, even if Shane works up the courage to talk to him and Ilya lets him know that he's just not worth it anymore, at least they'll be playing some fantastic fucking hockey. That’s not nothing. 

Scott leaves the bathroom and heads back to his seat without even looking at him. That's what Shane was hoping for, obviously, except then it makes him feel like he was too weird the first time and now Scott just wants to get away from him. 

Get a grip. Stop thinking.  

 He still feels wired from the charity event last night. He always hates those things, and he tried to get out of going, especially because it would mean a late flight out to Vancouver before having to head right to Florida a day later, but his mother was insistent, and so Shane had gone. He’d suffered through an immensely awkward evening wearing an uncomfortable suit and shaking the hands of too many irritating old men, and his skin still feels too tight, itchy. 

Ilya was there too, the one potential bright spot, but he never seemed to be where Shane was, despite Shane’s best efforts. Not like he was openly avoiding Shane, but just like he disappeared every time Shane got close, and Shane spent all night hyping himself up, telling himself that he had to grab Ilya and at least try to explain things, and then not doing it, because he's a coward. It was enough to make him spend the entire evening on edge, because he'd been hoping to talk to Ilya before the game. Hoping, ideally, to talk to him before they even got to Florida. They’d been staying in the same hotel, and maybe Shane was just being too stupidly optimistic, but he’d figured…well. 

He’d spent half the night lying in his bed, staring at their old text thread, trying to convince himself to just text the room number. Leave the response in Ilya’s hands. 

But it didn't happen. He’d been too afraid of the silence. Ilya had been like a ghost at that event, and then he was a ghost at the airport, and now they’re on a plane, and it’s too late. There’s nowhere private to talk except the bathroom, and…no. Absolutely not. 

He looks up from his tragic examination of his hands just in time to catch Ilya’s head turning back around to face the front. His heart lurches, physically thumping, loud against the walls of his chest. Had Ilya been looking at him?

He’d probably turned around to say something to Scott. Shane is probably just seeing what he wants to see. 

He itches to text Rose something about what a pathetic loser he is, because the freedom of having someone to talk to about this—even if all she knows is that his “mystery crush” is someone who works in the organization and is going to be in Florida with him—is heady. Freeing in its newness, in how ordinary it is, maybe. He doesn’t have too many friends who aren’t involved in hockey, and there’s only one person who knows for sure that he’s gay, and it’s nice to have her. It’s nice to have anyone, really. Stop. You’re being pathetic again. 

He clenches his fingers into fists instead of reaching for the lifeline of Rose. He doesn’t want to overwhelm her. They’ve only been doing this for a little while, the whole friends thing, and Shane is trying not to be too much. Trying not to be too greedy with her time. He’s starting to believe that she meant it when she said she wants to be best friends, but he can hardly understand why, and until he figures out the rules, he needs to remember to breathe, and keep his shit together, and stop spiraling. 

He tries to pull up a movie on the screen in front of him, but everything he tries to put on is weird, glitchy, keeps fizzling out and then coming back. 

The plane lurches again, jolting his elbow off the armrest. 

He slips his favorite headphones over his head and fumbles with his phone. He’ll put on some meditation thing or something, something that will calm him down. He looks up again as he sees movement from the front of the plane. 

Ilya’s standing up, and he’s starting down the aisle. 

Their eyes meet. 

What the fuck? Is he coming over to talk? And is Shane happy about that or upset? He can't tell. He’s probably both things. His head is a white noise machine. 

The window seat next to him is empty, his stuff spilled into it, his bag gaping open. Should he move it? Let Ilya in? Should he move over and take the window seat and let Ilya take the aisle? Or would that look too eager? Ilya is probably just going to the bathroom and is only looking at Shane because Shane is looking at him. 

Nope, Ilya is smirking now. He’s definitely coming over to say something.

But maybe he was just heading to the bathroom and now he’s smirking because he can see the look on Shane’s face. The want. The hunger. Like, Shane is pretty sure he might be literally drooling, like a Pavlovian response to the fact that he’s sitting down and Ilya’s dick is about to be closer to his mouth than it has been in months. 

Can they fuck in the bathroom? 

There’s no way. Shane’s stupid for even considering it. 

The plane drops. There's no other way to describe it. It's like it stops working, all at once, but only for a second. Shane’s stomach drops with it. It feels like he imagines riding roller coasters probably feels. 

Shane is on planes a lot. He doesn't usually have a problem with them, which is sort of funny, considering how much anxiety he gets about literally everything else. He doesn't love when he can’t control things, so he doesn’t love that he has to trust the pilots and the navigators and all the air traffic controllers who are probably exhausted and don’t get paid as much as they should and are therefore under a lot of stress while holding Shane’s life in their hands. He doesn't love being stuck in small spaces with people, either. He doesn’t love feeling trapped—well, okay, sometimes he likes feeling trapped, but only in super specific circumstances involving literally one specific person.

But the things he does to cope with his regular anxiety all work on planes, and so he’s never been too overwhelmed by it. He's felt turbulence before. He's felt his stomach drop out of his body before, too. He knows that it happens sometimes. 

Something about this feels different.

Ilya hasn’t made it very far down the aisle yet, busy chirping at one of the players sitting behind Scott when the plane drops, and Shane watches the way his feet leave the ground for a second, the way he drifts up. Both people in the aisle seats on either side reach out on instinct and grab his arms to steady him, and it's stupid for Shane to wish that Ilya had reached him before the drop because then he could have been the one to… 

The seatbelt light comes on, and a flight attendant hustles past Shane from the back galley, toward the front. 

Just watch the flight attendants, his dad told him once, one of the first times Shane had flown. If something happens and you're afraid, look at the flight attendants, and you’ll see how calm they look. They fly on planes every day, so if they don’t look worried, then you have nothing to worry about either, okay? 

Uh, so what does it mean that this flight attendant looks so tense? 

She neatly bullies Ilya back into his seat on her way by, saying something with professional calm under her breath, but Shane can see that she looks harried, frustrated, frightened. Ilya looks rattled too, and he resists a little, and then he finally holds up his hands in surrender and sinks back into his seat. Shane would have to be delusional to think that Ilya was resisting because he was hoping to make it back to him, but…

But Ilya turns around and looks back at him. Eyes right to him. Not so delusional after all, are you? Shane thinks, triumphantly. He smiles a little without thinking about how—

This time, the plane drops so far that the flight attendant hits the ceiling. Like gravity has stopped working. There’s screaming, shouts of oh fuck. But the plane levels off, and the flight attendant falls back into the aisle. Someone's bag comes crashing down on Shane's head. Oh, it's his bag. His bag from the seat next to him, and all his shit is now scattered around him and his chair and the floor. His headphones are gone, ripped off his head somehow. His phone. Where’s his phone? He feels something on his face, and he reaches his hand up and feels something wet, and he pulls away his fingers to find the tips red, bloodied. He scratched himself, maybe? Or his bag? He didn’t even feel it. 

The pilot is saying something now, but Shane can't make out his voice. He always has trouble understanding the announcements on planes, but it’s worse now. Everything is too loud. There are three guys sitting a few rows up, laughing and cheering. Not hockey players, but probably around their age. Young and stupid and drunk. For some reason they start cheering “olé, olé olé olé”. Scott Hunter starts to get out of his seat to help the flight attendant up, but she barks at him to keep his belt on, and Scott obeys. She staggers to her feet, and she looks okay. Rattled, but okay. She looks back and locks eyes with Shane for some reason, and then Shane remembers the blood on his face, but he shakes his head and waves her off, and she nods. Ilya turns and looks at him again, leaning out into the aisle to see him. Frowns. 

The flight attendant disappears into the cockpit. The fasten seatbelt sign stays on. The plane is shaking now, rattling his head, fraying his nerves. Is this, like, a real problem? The plane jolts again, but less. It feels like regular turbulence again, like they’re flying through a storm. Someone up ahead whoops with adrenaline. 

“Fucking hell Rozy, why couldn't you have been the one to hit the roof?” yells one of the guys up front. Shane doesn’t recognize his voice. 

“Was she okay?” asks a woman sitting across the aisle from Shane, straining against her belt to stand up enough to see over the top of the seats. “Did she get up?”

“You are scared to face me, Landon?” Ilya calls, his voice only slightly shaky. The olé guys are still going, laughing louder, somehow not realizing that no one else thinks they're funny. Shane's ears are ringing in the way they do when everything gets to be too loud, and he starts looking around for his headphones, but he can't find them. He sees Ilya turn to say something to Scott Hunter, but his gaze meets Shane's again, and his mouth purses unhappily. “Hollander! What happened to your pretty face?”

“Oh shit,” says Martin Dollard as he turns and spots the same thing Ilya did. Dollard is a player from Seattle, and seeing the open concern in his expression, Shane now feels guilty for being surprised he was going to be in the All Star game. “Yo, Hill. Pass me that towel. Here, Hollander.”

Dollard tosses the towel back and misses by a few rows, but people are kind enough to pick it up and pass it back. Shane would normally not be thrilled using a near-stranger’s towel that has just been on an airplane floor, but he’s desperate not to get blood all over himself, so he takes it with a polite thanks, Dollard that makes the bigger man smile wide. 

“Who sat Hollander alone?” Ilya calls back over the noise of the plane shuddering again. “He is dating celebrity, yes? Deserves celebrity treatment. Someone to open his drinks, maybe to make sure he doesn't get head injury before we even play the game? Okay back there?”

“I don't know,” Shane mutters, embarrassed. Embarrassed at Ilya’s concerned-but-pretending-not-to-be tone, embarrassed at the laughs that follow. Embarrassed that he's bleeding, even. This is why they tell you to keep your belongings stowed away: so they don’t fly all over the place and injure you mid-flight. He's usually such a rule-follower, too. 

He wipes at the side of his head with the towel and frowns at the amount of blood on it afterward. He looks for his phone again so he can check in the camera app. 

“Oh my god, you poor thing,” says the woman across the aisle, reaching into her bag and pulling out a little packet that she hands over to him. An individually wrapped moist towelette, just like his mom always carries. 

“Is it a cut?” he asks her, stupidly. She nods, and she digs through her bag again.

“I have a mirror in here somewhere, actually, hold on. Looks like something just sliced you a little bit.” She doesn't look like his mother. She's probably not much more than a decade older than him. It still makes a heat grow behind his eyes, because she reminds him of his mom for just a second. 

“Hollander?” Ilya asks loudly. 

“Fuck off, Rozanov, leave the kid alone,” Scott says back. Ilya rolls his eyes and starts to reach for his seatbelt, saying something under his breath to Scott. He's probably just chirping Scott for his age the way he always does, but what if he's talking about Shane? He won't expose them; Shane's sure of that. But that doesn't mean he can't be saying something even worse. Look at that pathetic loser. Can't even take care of himself. Freaks out about every little thing. 

But there's a bang so loud that Shane ducks on instinct, and then the entire plane is shaking, and then it's dropping again, the way it did before, except this time it's angling forward. He can tell because the woman's bag falls out of her lap, and Shane's shit all goes rolling down the aisle, towards the front, and Shane is too afraid to even scream. He looks towards the empty seat next to him, the window. He’d pulled the shade down earlier because it sometimes rattles him to see how high up they are, but…

He fumbles, reaches across the seat for it.

The plane drops straight down again, for longer this time, and it’s like gravity stops existing, and when the plane stops dropping, his forearm hits the armrest hard and cracks and–

The woman across the aisle screams and–

Wind rushes past him, something hitting his face on its way by. The wind–

The wind? Why is there wind?

There's too much light. Did something break? Is the roof—

He tries to see, but—

He tries to move, but his arm screams in pain, and he screams with it, and the plane tilts wildly to the left, and—

He drags his eyes away from his arm, and he—

Ilya is looking back at him but then the plane jolts, and Ilya's head slams forward as he hits the back of the seat in front of him, and Shane's vision goes black and spotty for a second because his head snaps forward too, and at first he thinks they've landed, crashed, but then it—

Are they leveling out? Is it over?

A groaning, whining, shuddering sound. It sounds like a boat, like a boat turning, or–

He pulls his arm, curls it towards his chest, and—

“Hold on, hold on!” someone yells.

“No no no no no.” Someone else. Someone is loudly screaming for their mother. Hopefully it's not him. He wants to.  

Whoever is sitting in front of Shane is praying in French. Shane is—

An explosion of glass, and a shriek of metal, and the woman across the aisle stops screaming and the French prayers stop and something is– something just– something has slammed into him, through him. Into his side, pinning him to his seat. A metal rod. He tries to breathe. Can't, except for little gasps. He tries to grasp this horrible thing with his hand that still works, but it's blood-slick and the thing is in him and he tries to get up but he can't undo his buckle and he doesn't know where he'd go anyway, he just—

It's so fucking stupid but if only Ilya had made it down here before– before– before, because then Shane would have pulled him into the seat next to him and then they could be holding hands at least at the end or maybe Ilya would hold him and Shane is afraid he's so afraid and he doesn't want to look down at the thing that's in him because he looks to his left and he sees that the woman who isn't his mother has had– her head is– there's something sticking out of—

He looks up, and he can see the back of Ilya's head flopping out into the aisle, and maybe Ilya is dead now too, and then everything falls away, fizzling into white, like the entire front of the plane has been destroyed. 

And then Shane's half of the plane hits the ground, and it begins to roll. 

Chapter 2

In the days and weeks that follow, Scott Hunter will hear the same thing from his fellow survivors, over and over. In person, in interviews, in taped statements given to rescue personnel that are eventually released to the public. 

“I blacked out.”

“When I woke up, it was over.”

“I hit my head or something, and I can't remember anything until after we were on the ground.”

Scott wishes he had the same story, but unfortunately he seems to be the only one who remembers every second of the crash.

Then again, he tells people he doesn’t remember it either, so maybe some of them are lying, too. 

“Hollander?” Rozanov yells in response to whatever’s happening in the back of the plane.

“Fuck off, Rozanov, leave the kid alone,” Scott bites back. He doesn't mean to snap, knowing that rising to Rozanov's bait is always a mistake, but his hands are clutching the armrests in a white-knuckled grip, and he just watched a fucking flight attendant hit the ceiling, and this would already be a terrible flight even if he didn't have to endure Rozanov being a dick on top of everything else. He spent all last night trying to work up the courage to tell Carter about Kip, and he’d failed again, and all he wants to do is wallow in his own misery in Florida about it, because even though Kip hasn’t given him any ultimatums, he clearly running out of patience, and Scott can’t even blame him.

“Look at him back there,” Rozanov scoffs, reaching for his seatbelt. “Like helpless baby kitten. I will check on him if you won't. Am surprised your grandfather instincts aren't taking over.”

“She said to stay–” 

And then the plane shudders as if something has slammed into it, mid-flight, and starts to angle downward. Carter shouts beside Scott, grabbing onto his shoulder, pointing at his window, and Scott looks, and he can see something outside—trees, he realizes. Trees through the haze of the storm they've been flying through for the last few minutes. Green trees, covered in snow, and getting closer.

“Brace your head,” he says, somehow keeping his voice calm and in control, and he brings his arm up over his own head and tucks himself forward, and he pulls Carter to do the same, because Carter is distracted, still staring out the window. The plane drops again, even further this time, and it lands even harder. Rozanov is cursing in Russian in the row ahead, and he keeps turning around to look behind him, and Scott shouts at him that he's going to break his neck, turn back to the front, and Rozanov says now you are my grandfather? as the plane is literally crashing. Fuck you, Rozanov.

He doesn't want to look at the window again, but he does, and now he's sure they're going down, because they're too close, they're losing altitude too quickly, and he can't believe this is real. Planes don’t just crash anymore. Air travel is supposed to be safe. Did something happen to the engine? Did they just fly into a storm that turned out to be a lot more intense than the pilot expected? How the fuck does something like that even happen?

He thinks of Kip, smiling at him. Kip, looking disappointed in him. Kip, gamely trying to look like he isn't disappointed, because he knows Scott is going to be disappointed enough in himself for the both of them, and because even when Scott keeps hurting him, Kip is always so careful not to do the same. 

He thinks of how much time he's wasted, being miserable and lonely and afraid, and how it won't mean anything in the end except that he never got the chance to love Kip openly, in the sunlight, the way Kip deserves. 

I'm sorry, Kip. I wish—

If only I could have given you more.

The plane shudders and slams and jolts again, and Rozanov goes limp in the seat in front of Scott. He kind of half-flops into the aisle and then back. Scott is thinking oh fuck I didn’t mean I wanted the stupid jackass to die, and then there's this horrible ripping, tearing sound, and screaming, and Carter is gripping his hand hard enough to grind his bones together, and Scott is holding him back just as tightly. 

He’s crying, he realizes suddenly. He thinks of the accident that took his parents. He thinks–

His head slams into the screen in front of him. He somehow turns his head just enough that it's his temple and not his nose that takes the brunt of the damage. 

And then there’s only silence. 

The silence only lasts for a few seconds, but it's shocking after the noise. Even just regular plane engine noise is loud, but the screaming and the tearing and that awful metallic groaning…and then nothing.

Scott breathes. He sits up in his seat as best as he can. It feels like he has been pushed forward somehow, like he has less room to move. His seat is folding inward, damaged. 

“Carter?” he whispers, afraid to break the quiet. Carter makes a mild groaning sound at that, but he doesn't open his eyes yet. His hand is still in Scott's; Scott gives it a squeeze, and is grateful when Carter squeezes back and lifts the corner of his mouth up in a half smile. 

“Holy fuck,” groans Cliff Marleau from the seat in front of Carter’s. “Roz? Hey, Roz?”

He's only the first. The others start in eventually. Someone screams, high and panicked, near the back. Someone else is wailing about their leg.

“Holy fuck.”

“What the fuck just happened?”

“Are we fucking dead?”

“Are we in the water?”

“We hit a fucking tree. I saw it, I saw it!”

Mostly it's groaning and screaming and pleas for help, and it's baked into Scott Hunter, at this point, to be a leader in these situations, especially when there are younger players on this plane with him. 

They look up to you, he's been told a thousand times. Make sure you set a good example. 

He fumbles with his belt, and he manages to undo it with shaking fingers. He assesses his limbs, his head, his torso. He feels, actually, kind of okay. Even the hit of his head against the screen wasn't too bad. That doesn't seem possible. He does a second check, just to be sure. 

Everything’s fine. He’s…fine. 

He survived a plane crash, and he’s uninjured. 

Kip, he thinks, nonsensically, is going to lose his shit. 

“Roz!” Cliff says again, panic threading more obviously into his voice, and Scott stands up. 

He manages to not keel over, somehow. His knees don't buckle. He doesn't start hyperventilating. He's not even dizzy. He actually feels more calm than usual, like the storm of his mind is quiet for once because he knows that he has to stay in control of himself, that someone has to stay in control of themselves, and since he's apparently uninjured, he’s the obvious choice. 

He moves up the aisle and helps Marleau get Rozanov fully back into his seat. Marleau is trying to do it on his own, but he’s wincing from what looks like shoulder pain, and he’s too shaky and confused to do anything more effective than tugging at Rozanov’s arm. He looks like he clocked the screen pretty good, judging from his bleeding nose and from the fact that his screen is shattered in the middle. 

Once Rozanov is upright, Scott feels for a pulse and finds it, strong and steady. He reassures a slightly panicky Marleau in his best disdainful Scott-Hunter-Hates-Ilya-Rozanov voice that Rozanov probably just got himself knocked out by continuing to turn around and look behind him, exactly like Scott warned him about. Rozanov, being a gremlin who can’t resist the siren song of someone chirping him, wakes up when he hears his own name and then scowls when he sees that Scott is the one saying it. He mutters something in Russian, his voice a bit unfocused, but strong in its irritation. Not confused. Probably not dying. It’s a relief, admittedly. Sure, Rozanov is a spectre that’s been haunting Scott’s hockey career for the last few years, but that doesn’t mean Scott wants him to be a literal one. 

Marleau reaches over and shakes Rozanov by the shoulder a little, companionable, smiling incredulously, like he can't believe they're both still alive. Scott keeps moving up the aisle, checking on the people in the front three rows, most of whom seem fine. One man is unconscious, bleeding from a bit lip, but he rouses when Scott gently touches his shoulder to wake him.

He nearly collides with a short woman around his age, vaguely familiar, who springs up from her seat with wide eyes. 

“Martin?” she yells.

“Present,” answers Dollard weakly from his row. The woman sighs and presses the back of her hand to her forehead, and then she notices Scott and apologizes profusely as she moves out of the aisle, casually, as if she'd accidentally blocked someone on their way to the bathroom. 

“Your knuckles,” he says, and she looks down to see that she's bleeding. 

“Oh, shit. Yeah. I'll…my bag is up…can you….” Muttering, she waits for him to pass, and then she jumps up to pull open the overhead compartment.

Scott keeps going. There are four guys in suits, already out of their seats and trying to open the door. One of them turns when he hears Scott approaching, and then he looks past Scott, and then he laughs, sinking back against the wall.  

“Guys? I, uh, I don't think we need to bother,” he says, and then he bursts into tears. Scott turns and sees that the back of the airplane is just…gone. There’s a wall of white, wind and snow, and he can’t see anything beyond it. The short woman notices, and she lets out a gasp. Rozanov turns around in his seat to see what they’re looking at, and then he starts fumbling with his seatbelt. 

“Where is…where is the rest?” he asks, his voice shaky with shock. 

“Yo, Roz, give it a second,” Cliff replies, snagging the back of Rozanov’s hoodie to keep him from hurting himself as Rozanov tries to stand up and promptly almost falls on his face. Scott moves past them, towards the end of the plane. There are a lot more injured back here. It looks like something tore through the whole thing, shearing it and leaving carnage in its wake. 

The wind is still howling, rocking the debris. Wherever they've crashed, Scott can't make out any details except for some straight-ish lines that he thinks might be trees. Would be awfully convenient if they were buildings, though. 

“No, no, where's…” Rozanov is muttering, just behind Scott now, and then a string of slurred Russian. He balances himself with a hand on Scott's shoulder, and when Scott looks at him, his face is bone white except a line of blood that trickles from one of his ears. His eyes are unfocused, too. 

“Do we have anyone on this plane who's any sort of medical worker?” asks the short woman from the front of the plane in a suddenly commanding tone that makes Scott jump. 

“Like, other than you?” asks Dollard hesitantly. The short woman rolls her eyes. 

“Yes, other than me. I was hoping I'm not the best we've got. I need to start assessing injuries, and it would be nice to have someone who knows what they’re doing more than I do.”

“I don't have any medical experience, but just tell me what to do, and I'll do it,” Scott says. He's sort of relieved to have a direction, to have something to do. It seems impossible, how quickly the entire world has changed for them. Their plane crashed. Their plane crashed less than five minutes ago, and they're still alive, and the snow is raging outside, and people are hurt. Five minutes ago, he was worrying about how to word his next text to Kip so he didn’t sound as desperate as he feels.  

The woman nods, her shoulders loosening a little bit. 

“And me too, Kamilla! Obviously!” Dollard calls. She gets a few more murmurs of agreement from some of the others. 

“Thank you, Mr. Hunter,” she says, nodding to the ones who are further away. “I'm on the Seattle athletic training team? Kamilla Bhatia. You probably don't remember this, but I actually…”

That triggers a memory for him. No wonder she looks familiar. 

“Three years ago, yeah. Treated my nose. Thanks.”

A faint smile. 

“Yeah. Well. It's the job.” 

Having someone with their shit at least mildly together helps. Scott can feel the fog in his head clearing. He looks at the rows of people starting to come out of their shock. There's a triumphant cry behind him as the businessmen break into the cockpit.

“Help, please!” someone calls out. Scott feels guilty immediately sorting people into “hockey players” and “randoms”, but that's what he does anyway, mostly because he figures the randoms have no reason to listen to him, but the hockey players might. 

The woman who asks for help is a random, waving at Kamilla from near the back of the plane, and Kamilla makes her way down the aisle to her, wriggling between people who have begun clogging it, like they do at the end of every flight. The woman's husband is unconscious, his head bleeding. Kamilla checks his pupils, puts pressure on the wound, talks to the frightened wife in the level cadence of every medic who has ever helped Scott off the ice. It's a cool balm that cuts through the chaos, and even the people around them who have nothing to do with hockey seem to be more calm after she's done. Martin Dollard is grinning at her dopily as he stands up and shuffles into the aisle to help her. Scott sucks in a breath.

“Dollard, sit down!” he barks. Dollard freezes, sees Scott's eyeline, and looks down at his own ankle, which is wet with blood and angled so wrong. Color drains from his face. 

“Okay, okay, that’s fine! Come here, buddy,” Carter says, pushing past Scott, guiding Dollard to sit. Dollard's seatmate, Hill, lets out a horrified moan. Kamilla turns back and sees the mess of Dollard's ankle, but she finishes with the injured man's wife before she scurries over. 

Okay, Scott tells himself. You can do this. You have to do this. Just keep going. 

The next five minutes are hell. There's no other way to describe it. He finds his first dead body, and then another: a man and a woman who were both sitting near the back, apparently killed when the plane split in half. It looks like three whole rows of seats behind them were pulled out of the plane by the force, leaving an empty expanse of floor that’s still bumpy and ragged with torn-out metal, and he can only assume that the people who were in those seats are dead, too. The pilot, co-pilot, and the flight attendants are all dead, apparently, and everyone is warned by the businessmen not to go into the cockpit; two of them are dry-heaving when they finally come out. Scott figures he’ll take their word for it. 

He finds another man dead, crushed under his seat, which apparently came loose in the crash. It looks like something tore through the side of the plane and fucked up the two rows just behind Dollard, pushing the others forward. That's probably what happened to Dollard's leg. Dollard doesn’t remember getting hurt, and claims he doesn't feel anything, but Scott's pretty sure his bone was poking through his pants when he tried to stand up. He's too afraid to look again to confirm. Hill also turns out to have a gash on his leg that has soaked his pants in blood, but Kamilla says it's not as bad as it looks. Landon, this prick from Florida with whom Scott has endured spending too much time because they have some of the same sponsors, is blessedly quiet only because his arm is dislocated and he appears to be in shock. 

Kamilla works efficiently, with minimal fuss. Not like Scott is surprised that a woman who treats injured hockey players for a living is chill under pressure, but he also wouldn't be surprised if she was freaking out. There's a huge difference between treating concussions or broken noses or missing teeth and treating fucking plane crash injuries. Scott and Carter help her hold Dollard down as she sets and then wraps his ankle. He screams, passes out. Kamilla gags a little, and then she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, apparently forgetting about her injured knuckles. Scott grimaces at the smear of blood across her lips. 

“Hunter, a little help!”

Scott looks up at the sound of his name, toward the back of the plane. Marleau has Rozanov by the upper arm and is gesturing Scott over frantically. Scott has this dizzying memory of seeing the two of them across the ice, laughing and chirping at him, but it fades quickly. Sure, they’re assholes, but who cares about that right now? 

He trips his way down the aisle, which is starting to feel even more narrow, claustrophobic, because people want to get out of their seats, and there’s nowhere to go except in everyone’s way. People are trying to push past him to the front, wanting to be away from the end of the plane, because it’s fucking cold there.

“Roz, Roz, Roz, Roz” Marleau is basically just chanting, in different tones. Irritated. Angry. Despairing. Confused. Rozanov is clearly concussed, based on the sluggish way he's fighting to get free of Marleau’s fairly gentle grip. 

“Rozanov, hey, come on. Look at me.”

“Fuck off, Hunter. There were people back there!”

“Roz, we know, but we can’t do shit about it now. It might have…come on, Roz. We don't know anything. It might have broken up mid-air. It could be miles away.”

Rozanov glares at Marleau as if Marleau was the one who tore the plane in half. 

The plane shifts, then, tilting forward, probably because so many people are moving to the front. The businessmen at the front of the plane are telling people to back off, and Carter is trying to help them. 

“We’re on the edge of the lake,” one of the businessmen is saying. “You can see it outside the cockpit if you don’t mind walking into a fucking…” 

Scott doesn’t hear the rest over an explosion of demanding questions. Kamilla’s voice rises above the rest. 

“It’s frozen,” she barks. “It’s the dead of winter. We’re not in any danger of going through anything, but he’s right that we need to keep the plane level. Everyone spread out!” 

“It is unsafe?” Rozanov asks, seizing on this. “So we should look for the back instead.” Marleau basically takes the kid into a headlock to prevent him from going anywhere. 

“Of course it’s unsafe. It’s half of a crashed fucking plane,” Scott sighs. “But we can’t see anything in this weather, and we can’t just go out there blind without…” 

“Hunter!” Rozanov snaps, his eyes fiery. “Hollander was back there!” He sounds furious, like he'd been hoping Scott would remember on his own that the quiet Montreal captain was for some reason seated by the bathrooms and not near the rest of them. Scott looks toward where he remembers Hollander sitting, though he doesn't need to. He knows Rozanov is right. He remembers standing next to Hollander’s seat just a few minutes ago, feeling uncomfortable, Hollander panicking at the thought that Scott had seen his texts with his ex. Hollander and Rozanov are the same age, but Hollander sometimes seems younger off the ice. A little hockey playing robot boy who looks lost when he’s forced to veer from the script his mother wrote for him. He has generally been a nice kid, though. Scott's heart gives an uncomfortable lurch at the thought of him being gone. 

“I know,” he finally says to Rozanov, trying to thread the needle between comforting and blank, because he knows Rozanov of anyone won't react well to being managed, especially given the probably untrue suspicions that Scott has harbored about those two for years now. “But we can't help anyone if we go out there like idiots. We have to wait for the wind to die down. We have to assess the injured. We have to start getting everyone warm. We’ll need to keep ourselves warm out there. I dressed for airport-to-airport travel, and so did you.” The cold is noticeably worse now, and Scott finds himself heading back towards his seat, looking for the jacket he’d abandoned like twenty minutes into the flight. Rozanov is still pacing by the end of the plane, looking like a caged leopard at the zoo, ranting to Marleau or maybe himself, his gait unsteady. 

“Everything okay with Rozy?” Carter asks when Scott approaches. He's strained, blood-streaked. It hits Scott suddenly that he could have lost Carter, and he pulls his friend into a relieved hug, because he wants to. Because Carter is okay. Carter laughs a little and hugs him back just as tightly. “We survived a fucking plane crash,” he says into Scott's ear, quiet enough to keep the celebrating to just the two of them. It sounds giddy and inappropriate with people still screaming in pain around them. 

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Scott says. “We could still freeze to death.”

Carter snorts once, biting back a laugh, and then he and Scott separate and go back to work.

Scott keeps an eye on Rozanov the entire time he helps people pull down the luggage from the overhead compartment, the entire time he helps Kamilla clear space for the wounded, waiting for Rozanov to do something stupid, but Rozanov instead tears through the abandoned suitcases, looking for warmer clothes, barking at people to hurry up.

The shock of their circumstances starts to leave people. Once everyone starts to accept that yes, their plane has really crashed, and yes, they are still alive, and yes, the storm is still going and they have no idea how long it’s going to take for rescue to arrive, they start to come back to themselves and start helping out. Some of the injured are less bad off than they seemed at first, but some are worse, and Scott begins to pick up on the difference just from the set of Kamilla’s shoulders when she works on them. 

Scott and Carter serve as Kamilla’s muscle, helping to move people, helping to shift debris, helping to create space to lay out the people who are too injured to stay sitting in their seats. The businessmen set up outside the cockpit, where they are apparently trying to get anything on the electrical panel working, trying to access the radio. There’s a hush over everyone, and they avoid looking at or talking about the dead. They work around the mangled corpses as if they aren’t there. A few people cover up their faces with articles of clothing that would be too thin to help against the cold anyway. Scott is selfishly glad that it doesn’t seem like any survivors knew any of the dead personally. That would be even worse to deal with.  

There is an awareness that all of this might turn out to be unnecessary. Planes don’t crash and get lost for long, anymore. This isn’t like when that rugby team got lost in the mountains. They might be a little more fucked because of the storm that’s still raging. It might take a little longer than it would have otherwise. But they were flying a perfectly normal route in Canada, and someone will know what happened to them. So they just have to work on keeping the wounded alive for the next few hours, maybe days, maybe, at the most. They have to keep warm. They have to find a way to get water. They have to eat food. Beyond that…

But it would be stupid to not get as much done as they possibly can in this immediate time after the crash, and so they get it done. Scott wonders how long it will be before anyone notices they’re missing. Will they have noticed right away? Will they be able to tell that the plane went down, or will they assume that they just lost contact for a little bit as they flew through the storm? At what point will they realize that’s not true? It feels like any delay could be potentially fatal for the injured, so obviously he’s worried about that, and he’s worried that if they don’t realize the plane has gone down for hours, that will give them a much wider search radius to cover. 

And he starts thinking about things like…when will they release the information on the news? 

When will Kip see it? 

Will they wait until they know for sure that the plane has gone down? Will they wait until they locate it? Or will someone like TMZ get a leak of the air traffic chatter and start posting about it immediately? 

He tries not to think about it, but it’s impossible to stop. He pictures the initial frantic newscasts, probably scattered, threaded with incorrect information. He pictures Kip watching it, knowing that the secret boyfriend who has been disappointing him on and off for years by being too much of a fucking coward to love him openly might be dead, and there’s nothing Kip can do about it because, technically, Kip is still nothing to him.

And then he stops thinking about it, because that feels weirdly voyeuristic and self-defeating, and it feels almost needily petty, as if his subconscious is whining, would he miss me? Would he be sad? Of course he would be sad. He’s Kip. He’d be sad even if he and Scott had broken up completely instead of being in the awkward halfway place they’ve been stuck in for a while. He’d be sad because he’s a good person, and because he cares about Scott. That has never been the issue.

As they work to stabilize the injured, Kamilla keeps saying things like that she can't think about anything past the next few minutes, and Scott almost wishes that he was the same, but he's not. He's thinking that he doesn't know how to make fire. He's wondering about where they're all going to sleep tonight. He's worrying about wolves and bears. He's thinking about infection, about sepsis, about those injuries getting worse without treatment. He's wondering how much food, how many blankets, ended up in this half of the plane. He knows most of the useful stuff would have been in the galley at the back. He knows there were blankets because he remembers the flight attendant passing them out. He's regretting having refused one now. 

Kamilla has limited medical supplies in her bag, but a few of the randoms turn over bits and pieces from various travel first aid kits. It's not much; the most useful stuff is gauze, and a few stabilizing bandages. There's a first aid kit in the cockpit that one of the businessmen hands over, and everyone keeps suggesting that there should be more supplies in the galley, with the back of the plane. Rozanov meets his eyes across the plane when he hears that, and Scott nods. 

The chaos settles gradually. The injured have been seen, and they’ve been treated as best as they can be, and they are, at least for now, stable. People are still in shock, of course, but it feels less heady. People are talking to each other, checking on each other, helping each other. Carter and Hill and some of the randoms start taking empty suitcases and making a wall of them at the back of the plane to try and keep out the wind. It’s weird how quickly everyone has become calm. It seems like they should all just keep freaking out forever. They were in a fucking plane crash, and they’re apparently lost somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. How are they being normal about this at all?

Scott keeps checking his phone, and he keeps being surprised that it has only been a little over a half hour since the plane went down.

There are whimpers, still, from some of the more badly injured, and he can see the way Kamilla looks over at them in a particular way, and he knows what she's thinking, but he's glad when she doesn't say it. She seeks Scott out once she has seen everyone, and she starts to give him a status report, her hands twitching at her sides. 

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks, interrupting. She looks at him like he's an idiot. 

“Because you're the only other person here who isn't falling apart, and I need to talk to someone so I don't fall apart, okay?”

“Okay, sure,” he agrees, even more bemused now, because he had no idea he was so good at hiding the fact that he’s minutes from a screaming panic attack. Kamilla takes a deep breath, and when she speaks next, it's more calm, and less fraught with frantic tension. 

“So, even with the three crush injuries, it's not as bad as it could have been. Ten dead.”

“Jesus.”

“Well, yeah. I didn't say it was good. Ten dead, none from the organization, though I know Hollander was seated at the back, so...Sorry, I probably shouldn't say it like that.”

“It's okay,” Scott says, though he winces.

“Most of the dead were near the back. I got knocked out pretty early on, I guess. I don't remember much, but it looks like when the plane sheared in half, there was a lot of damage. We've got five people who are, uh. Worse off than others. The ones who aren't crush injuries have extensive shrapnel injuries that I can't even begin to address except to keep the wounds wrapped and keep them warm.” A brief tightness in her speech, like she's about to cry. She swallows it down. “But obviously we're still going to try to…I mean, it really depends on how long it takes them to find us, right?”

“Right,” Scott says. He's still thinking ten dead. Ten people dead. Five who might be dying. Holy shit. And fucking Shane Hollander is out there somewhere. I’ve done shots with him. I’ve fought with him. I’ve hung out with him, chirped him, told him good game and meant it. That poor fucking kid. 

“Look, I know the storm hasn’t shown any signs of lessening, and I know it's stupid and dangerous, but…” Kamilla sighs. “Sophie, the one with the concussion and the shoulder injury, she told me she was hurt right before the final crash when one of the luggage compartments from the back of the plane tore loose and landed on her. She said it was right before the crash. She could see the trees through the window.”

“Okay?”

“So I'm thinking that the back of the plane might not have landed too far away. And we're going to need the supplies sooner rather than later, if we're going to help these people, and obviously we need to find the people in the back, see if anyone…see if they’re okay.” She looks at him hopefully, sighs. “I hate asking. And it's not dire yet, so if you think it's not worth the risk, then we don't risk it. And I don't think anyone should wander too far yet, but just…just a little out into the woods, see if it's close enough to walk to. But if you don't think…”

“Yes,” Scott interrupts, feeling oddly guilty that she seems so nervous about asking. She apparently can't tell that he's relieved to hear it. “Yes, it’s a good idea. I’ll do it.” 

Given the Hollander thing, it's no surprise that Rozanov is his first volunteer. Scott half wants to chirp him about it, make a comment about it being sweet he's so worried about his rival. He knows Rozanov would likely do the same to him in his place, but he's never been Rozanov, and besides, he's worried about Hollander too. 

Marleau is quick to volunteer to go with them, and then Carter. Rozanov is buzzing with impatience as they all start preparing to leave. If it was up to him, he probably would have just struck out on his own already. He’s wearing a massive black Seattle-branded coat that clearly belongs to Dollard, and his curls are poofing out, unruly, from under the brim of a hot pink toque that he stole from someone's luggage. He looks especially pale and washed out in this getup, or maybe he's just afraid. It's not like Scott can't relate to that. 

Rozanov bitches in Russian as the others bundle up, taking bits and pieces of luggage offered up by the others. Scott gets a scarf from a middle aged man who makes him promise to give it back because his mother made it for him. He wears his own coat, but Hill insists that Scott take one of his fleeces to wear under it. He gets gloves from Landon, and an extra pair of socks. Two kids apparently on a skiing trip hand over the boots they'd been wearing on the plane so they wouldn't have to check any bags. Scott takes one pair, and Rozanov stops complaining long enough to snag the other. 

Kamilla hands Scott several colorful rolls of athletic trainer tape, which he shoves into the deep pockets of his coat. She says, “mark the trees you pass so you can find your way back. Hopefully there will be some evidence, a path to follow. If not, just try to move back in a straight line. Don't go too far. We’ll try and make this place as warm as we can in the meantime. Okay? Please don't die.”

“We'll give it our best shot,” Scott laughs. He knows, intellectually, that this could actually be really dangerous, but it doesn't quite touch him. Maybe he should be concerned about that. Maybe he's still in shock? He doesn't feel like he is, though. He keeps thinking of Kip, keeps thinking about how he has to get home and see Kip again because he can't leave Kip alone the way his parents left him. And sure, Kip has other people. A lot of people, actually. Everyone loves Kip. It's Scott who's lonely, Scott who only has one person who really knows him, but still. It's not shock so much as it is determination. I'm not dying out here. I wasted too much time being afraid. I need to survive so I can be brave for him. 

“Can we fucking go now?” Rozanov asks. 

“You're feeling better,” Marleau observes cheekily, to an answering storm of irritated Russian. Kamilla's eyes slide over to Rozanov, brow furrowing. The others start heading to the outside of the plane, looking for the easiest way down to the snow without catching themselves on the sharp debris that trails off into nothing. Kamilla snags Scott's arm before he can follow. 

“Be careful,” she says. She hesitates, almost doesn't say what she clearly wants to. Finally whispers, “look, I know it's a schtick. It's just hockey. He's never been anything but respectful when I've dealt with him in the past, but be careful with Rozanov. He's a live wire.”

Something clicks in Scott's brain. Something about the way she was looking at Rozanov just now.

“You speak Russian?” 

“Not…well, okay. I speak a little. I understand more than I can speak, and my accent is shit, apparently. Look, you don't need to hear about how I was pathetic enough to go all-in on learning my ex’s native language only for her to ghost me six months later just when we were about to sign a lease together, but sure, yeah. I know some Russian. Enough to know he's pissed, and not making a lot of sense. I think he's concussed, but he won't let me look at him, and at this point, concussions are like the least of my worries.”

“Okay,” Scott says, looking back at where Rozanov is arguing with Marleau, who looks indulgently irritated, the way he often does when he talks to Rozanov. The way everyone looks when they talk to Rozanov, really. The guy’s a dick, but there’s unfortunately something kind of charming about it. Charming enough to make you never able to fully hate him, no matter how annoying he gets.

Kamilla is probably right about the concussion, but even beyond that, even beyond the fact that they're (unfortunately) the two best players in the league, Scott has always thought…well, he's probably wrong. Probably just seeing what he wants to see because it's nice to think he might not be the only secret gay man in the league. But he's always known that Rozanov is weird about Hollander, and Hollander has been weird about him right back. 

“I think he's worried about Hollander,” he confesses to Kamilla, voice pitched low. She makes a face that he can't quite read. 

“Oh, he's definitely worried about Hollander,” she says mildly. “That's why I'm telling you to be careful. Don't let him do anything stupid.”

“You've been working for the league long enough to know you're asking the impossible,” Scott says, and Kamilla smiles. 

Scott and Rozanov lead the way through the snow. It's made a little easier by the fact that their half of the plane apparently slid through here, shunting the small brittle trees at the edge of the lake aside, so the snowdrifts aren't as high as they could be. It's still a brutal slog, and Marleau and Carter are both wearing fashionable winter boots rather than anything designed for this weather. Carter starts muttering about how there's snow coming in at the ankles only a few minutes in. Scott ignores him. Rozanov ignores him somehow more pointedly.

When Scott turns and looks over his shoulder, he can't even see the crash site anymore. Marleau is dutifully tying the tape around the trees they pass, and the hot pink and lime green stand out even with the wind driving the snow at their faces, but it would be so easy to get turned around for a second, and then they'd be fucked. How far to the nearest town? How far to the nearest road, even? They have no way of knowing. 

Kip is going to be so impressed with you if you survive this, he tries to tell himself, but he's not sure that's true. Kip doesn't need him caveman brave. Kip needs him brave in a way he hasn't yet managed to be.

Maybe, when I get home, I can…

But it's pointless to think about future maybes. He only ever disappoints himself when he does that. 

There’s luggage scattered everywhere around them, suitcases and bags already half-buried in snow, and he shouts over the storm that they’ll bring as much with them as they can on the way back. Rozanov, face buried in Dollard's jacket, nods quickly, eagerly, and gestures for Scott to hurry up. 

Scott knows Kamila was right that the other section of the plane must be close, because the debris trail is getting steadily more intense. They have to shuffle around sizable pieces of metal that look like they were shorn off the side of the plane. There are some seats, too. A body, half out of one, obviously dead. Someone's suitcase shattered open, a green shirt flapping in the wind, caught on a fallen branch.  

Scott watches Rozanov closely as they walk, thinking about Kamilla's warning, thinking about the way Hollander's face went stark and scared the time Scott said you’re starting to sound like him. He knows how even your rivals can be important to you, but he's long suspected more, and he sees the evidence of it in Rozanov now. In his walk, in his refusal to slow down even when the others lag, in his clear impatience but his refusal to speak that impatience aloud. Does he see something more than that? It's hard to say. He tries to imagine how he would be acting if it was Kip lost out there somewhere. Would he bother to hide his affections? It makes his chest hurt that he can't say for sure. He likes to think he’d have fought off anyone who tried to stop him from rushing out into the snow blind, but would he have? Or would he be a tightly coiled ball of resentful restraint the way Rozanov is now? Seething and hating but moving at the same pace as everyone else because he’s still trying to hide his heart? 

He wishes he had said something to Kip about the suspicions that have been brewing in him about Rozanov and Hollander for years. He'd been too afraid to say anything to Kip before, too afraid that Kip would rightly call him a hypocrite for speculating about the sexualities of other players when he’s still so scared of his own being spotted. Now, he thinks Kip might have laughed at him, or might have agreed with him. Maybe it could have been fun, telling him everything he's been thinking. Kip is so funny, and Scott has never really had someone like that in his life before. He would have made jokes that were so kindhearted at their core, and he would have been sweet about Rozanov and Hollander in a way that would have made Scott groan and roll his eyes but feel secretly pleased that his boyfriend has such a good heart. Sometimes he feels like Kip offers himself so freely, and that Scott never has enough to give back to him. Maybe he should have offered him this.

“There!” Carter yells suddenly, and he nearly stumbles into Scott's back in his elation. “Look!”

But Rozanov, Scott realizes, has already spotted the rest of the plane, and he has taken off running as best as he can in the nearly knee-high drifts of snow. 

The back half of the plane is propped up on four spindly trees that have bent but not broken under the force of it. It's sideways, wedged, and it must have been rolling, because when they get around to the front of it, it's at an odd angle, cocked slightly to the left, which will make it an even bigger pain in the ass to navigate. 

“Hollander?” Rozanov yells, putting his hands to his mouth before he does. His shout echoes, but there's no answering sound. This crash site is very different from their own. It's silent, still. There are no screams or moans of the injured. There are no uninjured people swarming out to help. He looks at Rozanov and sees a wounded, little-kid desperation on the younger man's face. He thinks of what he'd feel, if it was Kip in Hollander's place. He puts his hand on Rozanov's shoulder, and he moves himself out in front. 

At least, if nothing else, he can be the first to see. Can stop Rozanov from following if it's too bad. 

“Roz, we take it slow,” he says. Carefully, not coddling, not implying anything. Not pitying, either. “It doesn't look stable, and we don’t want to make anything worse, okay?”

Rozanov looks at him with an incredulously wild look in his eyes, but he nods, and Scott can see the way his jaw muscles clench as he does. 

Scott leads the way into the plane, very carefully. It's a lot more shallow than their own section, only four rows of seats before the bathroom and the galley. As soon as Scott has pulled himself up into the aisle, he knows that these people have had a much rougher ride. The first person Scott locks eyes with is wide-eyed, clearly dead, blood frozen on his neck.

He swallows back bile, and he checks all of their pulses as he makes his way down.

“Guys, stay back there a minute,” he calls out suddenly. 

“Fuck you,” comes Rozanov's voice from somewhere behind him, sounding distant over the wind.

“I'm serious! You don't want to see this,” Scott says. If Rozanov replies to that, Scott doesn't hear it. 

In most cases, it's obvious that the person is dead. It looks like whatever hit the plane to tear it in half cleaved through this whole section. One guy's head is basically half missing. Scott manages not to throw up on him solely through the willpower of feeling like it would be too disrespectful if he did. 

There’s this massive piece of metal sheeting that has come down on the seat just in front of where Hollander would have been sitting. The man who’d been sitting in the seat has been crushed by it, his blood pooling out into the aisle and making the carpet tacky with it. Scott knows he’ll have to crawl through that blood to get under the metal, and he can feel his heartbeat pulsing in the side of his neck at the thought of what he’ll see. He's afraid. If there's anyone in the league who doesn't deserve this, it's probably Shane. He's always so nice. Scott remembers meeting his parents a few times, how kind and supportive they were of Shane. Remembers Shane's mother giving him advice about his game, then laughing at herself, apologizing for overstepping while Shane blushed and stammered in the background. He remembers thinking that his own parents would have loved her. 

He drops to his hands and knees and crawls clumsily under the metal. He needs to see what happened. If he's going to face Yuna Hollander when this is all over, he wants to be able to look her in the eyes and tell her, truthfully, that he did everything he could to help her son. He can hear an argument behind him, whispered, but he tunes it out. He starts to stand on the other side of the divide, then slips, goes down to one knee in blood. A dead woman stares at him, a shard of metal from the roof bisecting her head. 

His second attempt at standing is better, his knees not quite as shaky. The roof is intact here, and the wind is quieter, too, giving it an eerie, tomb-like feeling even before he spots Hollander's body. He remembers standing right here, waiting for the bathroom, and he remembers Hollander's awkward smile.

Hollander is still sitting in his seat. He looks okay. Pale, maybe a little blue, or maybe it's just because it's darker in this part of the plane. Scott releases a tense breath and crouches down beside him, and that's when he sees the piece of metal that has gone through Hollander's side, pinning him to his seat. One of his hands is wrapped around it, as if he tried to pull it out. The other arm is curled to his chest protectively, obviously broken. 

“Oh fuck,” Scott says, tears springing to his eyes for some reason, imagining Hollander surviving the crash and bleeding out like this, pinned and afraid. Scott hates the age-related chirps, but he's never felt older than he does right now, and Hollander has never looked younger. He musters his voice, raises it. “Do not come back here!”

“What? What is it?” Carter, behind the sheet of metal. “Is it Holzy?’ 

Rozanov barks, “let me through. Move!”

Scott doesn't try to stop him. He thinks, distantly, that maybe he should, but would he let himself be stopped if it was Kip? He moves aside, helps Rozanov up, even, to make sure he doesn't slip in the same puddle of blood that Scott did, and he's glad he did it when he can feel the way Rozanov goes disbelievingly limp at the sight of Hollander. Scott is a coward, and is too afraid to look at Rozanov’s expression, so he just keeps Rozanov on his feet, and he keeps his eyes on Hollander instead. He can guess enough, from the ragged sound of Rozanov's breathing, and from the way his hand grips Scott's arm to keep himself standing, and from the way he breathes out “Shane”.

Hollander gasps, suddenly, his eyes fluttering weakly as he begins to cough, and Scott can't help a shout of surprise, but the shock doesn't last long. 

He's not dead he's not dead he's not Kip and he's not dead. 

“Hollander? Hey, Hollander?” he asks, kneeling to be closer. His hands hesitate over the piece of metal in Shane's side, and then he angles his head a little, tries to get a look at the back to see if the metal piece goes completely through him, and bites back a groan; it goes through Shane's entire seat. “Okay, fuck. Can you look at me?”

Shane does, though it looks like it costs him a lot of precious energy to do it. His eyes are wide and confused.

Okay. He's alive. Now what? You don't need to have medical training to know he won't stay that way for much longer out here. 

“Hollander, Shane. Is okay, you are okay.” More babbled Russian as Rozanov finally reacts, kneeling beside Scott, one of his hands briefly lighting on Shane's knee before he snatches it back. His mouth falls open uselessly. Scott feels a thousand years old. They're both children to him, suddenly. Hollander makes it look like an Olympic level feat when he moves his eyes to Rozanov. 

“Okay, okay,” Scott says, soothing both of them at the same time, though he wants to freak out. He knows he can't. “Someone needs to go back and get Kamilla.”

Rozanov's jaw does that clenching thing again, and he looks back at Hollander, assessing. 

“I will go,” he says, too calmly. Hollander makes a wounded little noise at that. Is Scott just supposed to pretend he didn't hear it? Rozanov smiles a little, trying for his usual savage charm but falling miles short of it. “I am fastest on the ice, yes? I will be fastest in snow, too. Will carry Kamilla on my back, if I have to.”

“Take Marleau with you,” Scott says. Rozanov nods once, looks at Hollander one more time, briefly reaches out and squeezes his uninjured arm, and then pulls his eyes away. 

“Stay alive, fucking asshole,” he commands before he goes. 

He disappears back behind the metal sheet, and Carter takes his place. Scott gently pries Shane's hand off the metal piece, then wonders if he should have done that. Shane's hand is sticky with cold blood, and Scott thinks he might be sick, but then Shane is squeezing his hand, and Scott is afraid to let go. 

“Hey, Holzy,” Carter says weakly. “You don't do anything by halves, huh?”

Hollander smiles weakly, blinks sluggishly. 

“Okay, fuck this, I don't know what to do,” Scott admits shakily. “Um, Hollander? Shane, buddy? How are you feeling?”

He mostly just wants to see how aware Shane is, if he's capable of talking. Shane screws up his face with what Scott assumes at first is pain but quickly realizes is helpless laughter. 

“Um, bad?” he manages, his voice high with near hysteria but otherwise strong. Carter laughs uproariously at that, slapping Scott on the back. Scott laughs, too. 

“Okay, sorry. Stupid fucking question, you're right. What happened to your arm?”

“I think it hit the armrest? I don't really remember.”

“Does it hurt?”

“It's cold?” 

Scott refuses to exchange a glance with Carter at that, only because he thinks it will be obvious that he doesn't like it. Cold is bad, right? Sure, it's fucking freezing here, but doesn’t it mean that other things are wrong? Or is that just a thing they do in the movies to indicate that a person is on their way out?

“Why don't you go see if you can find the blankets back there,” he says easily to Carter. 

“Yeah, sure, of course, man,” Carter says. “See you in a bit, Holzy.” He's doing this thing where he's acting like they're all just buddies hanging out, and Scott loves him for it. 

Carter is loud about looking for the blankets, slamming things around. Shane closes his eyes, but when Scott prompts him, he opens them dutifully. Maybe he should lean into it, just keep making Shane focus on little tasks. Stupid questions. Just as long as he stays awake and talking. Hockey robot, he reminds himself. Shane does what he's told. Maybe he should start asking him to recite cup winners or something. 

Kip would know exactly what to say, he thinks. 

“Is anyone else? Um…” Shane starts, trailing off like he can't think of the right words. 

“We got a few dead on our half of the plane. Looks like you're the only one who's making it out of this part,” Scott admits. Shane gives a kind of wry twist of a smile at that, and Scott knows what he’s thinking, but he doesn't argue. 

“What is it?” Shane asks, hand briefly leaving Scott's so that he can touch the metal again, hissing in pain when he does. Scott gently pulls him back away from it. 

“I don't know. It's like a pipe or something? It's not that thick. It must have been from when the roof collapsed, or when the plane was torn in half.”

“I couldn't get it out,” Shane remembers quietly. “I tried…” 

“I know. It's okay.”

“Is…is Il…um. How far is it to the other side of the plane?”

“Not far,” Scott lies. “I think Rozanov is gonna beat the land speed record to get there.” Shane doesn't respond to that, just closes his eyes again. Scott lets him, this time, because it allows him to look for more injuries. Shane's white shirt is soaked with blood around the injury, but it doesn't look like he's lost too much. Maybe it's a blessing that that piece of metal is still in there. His legs look okay, feet look okay. Head and neck seem to be fine other than a cut just at his hairline. One arm is okay, one fucked up. Scott reassures himself of these things. It's just three visible injuries, and the small cut on his head is nothing, in comparison to the other two. “We've got one of the Seattle athletic trainers coming, Kamilla. She must have been at the event last night.”

“I like Kamilla,” Shane says woozily. “Nice smile. Think Dollard has a thing for her. Took her as, uh. Plus one. Last night.”

“Oh?” Scott thinks back. “Yeah, yeah, shit. He definitely does. I like her too. She helped me with a broken nose a few years ago.”

“Yeah, same, hamstring sprain,” Shane offers. “Last season. Dollard okay?”

“Broken ankle. Pretty bad, it looks like. But yeah, he's okay.”

“Oh, that's good.”

Carter finally comes rushing back with enough blankets to warm the whole New York Admirals bench. Scott helps him rip them from their plastic covering and arrange some of them around Shane, trying not to jostle his injured arm, though of course it's impossible to avoid it completely, and Shane lets out these awful little pained sounds when they do. 

There's nothing for them to do but wait, after that. Scott feels sorry about it, but they were sent here for a reason, and so he directs Carter to start emptying the galley in preparation for bringing the stuff back to their side of the plane. Carter hesitates, maybe feeling the same dread Scott feels, the same certainty that if he leaves for a few minutes, Shane will be gone by the time he gets back. Scott almost offers to do it instead, but then Carter goes. 

“You can go if…” Shane starts, but Scott just squeezes his hand harder.

“Not a chance, buddy, sorry,” he says, and Shane nods again, limp and tired. 

“Okay,” he says. “Um, my phone. It's in my…pocket, I think? Or the floor. Can you call my parents?”

“Hollander, bud, no one has any signal right now. We've been trying.”

“Okay,” Shane replies agreeably. 

“You're gonna be fine, though, okay? You know that?” 

“No,” Shane says, laughing a little, and Scott sighs and uses his free hand to wipe away the tears that are suddenly spilling down Shane's face. He has a feeling Shane doesn't want anyone else to see them. “Um, not really.”

“Are you really gonna leave Rozanov all alone at the top of the league?” Scott asks, trying for lighthearted. “He’ll be insufferable.”

Shane sighs. 

“Yeah, he will,” he says, and then his head kind of flops to the side, and his hand goes completely slack in Scott's. 

“Shit, fuck. Carter!” Why's he shouting for Carter? What's Carter going to do? Scott jams his fingers at Shane's throat, waits for a pulse, doesn't start breathing again until he finds it. Oh, thank fuck. He just passed out. He sits back against the seat across the aisle, forgetting about the dead woman still sitting in it, and he holds his head in his hands, safe to finally cry, for just a little. 

“Is he...?” Rozanov’s voice jolts Scott out of his stupor. He might have dozed off. He can't tell. He's fucking freezing, his arms wrapped tight around himself. He looks to his left and sees that Rozanov is peering around the edge of the metal sheet, like he's afraid to come any closer. Scott leans forward and finds Shane's pulse easily again, then leans back. Shakes his head. 

“Alive,” he says, his voice hoarse. “He's alive. He passed out.”

Rozanov nods, jaw ticking, and then he disappears again. When he comes back, it's a few minutes later, Kamilla in tow. Had he run ahead of Marleau and Kamilla, impatient to get back to Shane? Probably. Scott imagines Kip making a cute face at that, saying something like I think you might be on to something, Scott. They’re definitely into each other. That’s so sweet. 

Gross, Scott would have said, and Kip would have laughed and kissed him and–

Kamilla looks frazzled, taken aback by all the death she had to pass on her way here. When she squeezes in next to Scott, she lets out a sharp breath between her teeth. 

“Okay,” she says, in a high voice that pretends like this isn't terrible. “Shane? Shane, can you hear me?”

Hollander murmurs something unintelligible at that, and Kamilla nods and starts taking off her gloves so she can prod at the wound.

“It goes all the way through the back of the chair,” Scott says under his breath.

“It what?” Rozanov asks. 

“Okay, that's fine. I don't…look, we can't…you're supposed to leave it in until you can get help, but I don't know if…I don't want to risk infection, or…” Kamilla is talking to herself, prodding at the edges of the wound again. Shane makes a sound of protest and starts to open his eyes, but they look weird, wrong, and they roll back in his head before closing again.

“Hollander,” Rozanov says, in a surprisingly meek voice, and Shane's eyes open again, blinking in confusion. 

“Keep talking to him,” Kamilla says. “Keep him awake. Chirp him, whatever.”

“What, bully him into not dying?” Rozanov asks, voice slightly thready with panic. 

“You're rivals, aren't you? Say rival shit.”

“You think I care about stupid hockey rivalry right now?”

“No, but he might,” Kamilla says. Rozanov looks almost hurt by the idea, but he sighs and moves closer so that Hollander can see him better. 

“Okay, uh. Hollander, you have to wake up, your team doesn't even have second best player. Just all ties for worst. They will never win a game again if you die. I will make sure of it.”

“Fuck off,” Hollander groans, and Scott laughs, surprised. He turns and sees the bright smile Rozanov immediately tries to put away. 

“I would have no competition, ever again. Very sad. I would have to pretend this dinosaur was any challenge for me.” 

“We literally beat you last game,” Scott sighs. 

“No, not true. I don’t remember that.” 

“He’s right,” Hollander rasps. Rozanov groans loudly. 

“Oh my God, even when…even now, you won’t shut up about hockey. You’re so boring. Both of you are boring. Maybe I will just retire.”

“Same team,” Shane manages, a little strangled, as Kamilla feels at his abdomen, around the wound, frowning. 

“What, for All Stars? You think I will start being nice because of All Stars?”

“No,” Hollander admits. He closes his eyes briefly, visibly rallies strength. Then, “we have to play…same team.”

Rozanov softens a little at that, nods. Holds Shane's eyes for a few seconds before inevitably looking away again. 

“Yes, all right. You need to survive so we can play on the same team. Make everyone else cry in envy. I will still score more goals.”

“Full of shit,” Shane says, and then he's out again. Scott doesn't panic this time, just checks his pulse, and quickly reassures Rozanov with a wave of his hand. Rozanov pretends he wasn't halfway to freaked out, but Scott can see the way his hands shake as he presses them to his face for a few seconds to breathe. 

“Okay,” Kamilla says. “Okay. So, uh. I think we have to leave this in.”

“What? No,” Rozanov argues.

“I can't tell if it hit anything important, but for right now, he's not in danger of bleeding out, okay? I don't think any of his organs were impacted, but I don't know. I can't tell.” She's ramping up to frantic now, and Scott puts a hand on her back to hopefully steady her. “We obviously can't just leave him here. We can try and find something to cut him loose, but it's…I’m afraid we might do more damage.”

“Okay, so we have no good options?” Scott asks. Kamilla sighs. 

“No,” she admits. 

Rozanov swears loudly in Russian. 

“I know. I wish I had a better answer for you. There are risks of making it worse, either way.”

“So we, what, we leave him here to die?” Scott whispers harshly. Kamilla looks at him, eyes brimming with tears, shakes her head, but Rozanov starts speaking first.

“No, we move supplies here. People here. There is enough room for more people.”

“It’s like a quarter of the size of the rest of the plane, and the roof is falling in, Rozanov,” Kamilla says quietly. “We can't survive here.”

“Okay. Fine. But we are not talking about leaving Shane Hollander to die.”

“No, of course we aren’t. I just unfortunately don't know how to keep Shane Hollander alive.”

“How long can he reasonably last like this?” Scott asks. 

“He's in a lot of pain, obviously, but he's freezing cold, too. There's no shelter here. Even if we got a fire going, even if we swaddled him in every blanket in the place, even if we dosed him with every fucking Tylenol I stole from everyone's luggage…”

“Yes, yes, we get it. How long?” Rozanov barks.

“Bro, I'm an athletic trainer! You think I know?” Kamilla snaps back.  Rozanov sighs, sinks into a crouch, pushes his necklace into his mouth with his hands folded in front of his face, considering. Eyes on Hollander. 

Scott doesn't like to think of being at this crash for longer than a few hours, but they really don't know, do they? It could be days. It could be weeks, technically. Are they going to waste every resource they have on keeping one man alive? Kamilla had hesitated earlier, talking about the injured randoms, the ones she doesn't think are going to make it. If she's not offering to do everything in her power to help Hollander, does that mean he can't be helped?

“I will stay with him, at least, so he is not alone,” Rozanov says simply. Like freezing to death to keep a dying rival company is just a normal thing to suggest. Fucking Rozanov. Kamilla sighs. 

“No,” she says. “Give me a second to think.” 

“You think you can make me leave?”

“A second, Rozanov,” Kamilla snaps. “Jesus fucking Christ.” She leans over Hollander, prodding at his arm, and ducks beneath him to look at the exit wound again. She sighs. She gets up, moves past Scott into the galley. 

“Roz, look, none of us want to think about it happening to anyone, especially not him,” Scott starts, but he doesn't know how to finish that thought. Rozanov looks over at him with a blank expression, and again Scott thinks of that whispered room number, and what it might have meant. 

“I am not thinking about it,” Rozanov says simply, and he leans back against the seat behind him again, and he stares at nothing, like he can out-stubborn the existence of death. 

“Okay,” Kamilla says as she comes back over. She's holding a set of what looks like some kind of pliers in one hand. Scott has no idea what they are or where she got them, but he can guess the intent. Rozanov staggers to his feet. 

“You will cut him loose?” 

“Yeah, that's the idea.”

“I thought you said…”

“Literally everything we do about this could be fatal, so fuck it. The only thing that's definitely going to be fatal is letting him freeze to death by leaving him here or bleed to death by taking this out, so we're going to solve that problem and bring him back with us with the rod still in him.” She points the pliers at Rozanov. “This isn't a promise. This is a stay of execution. Okay?”

From the look on Rozanov's face, he either doesn't know what that means or doesn't know why she's addressing it to him specifically. 

He's the first one to jump up to help her, though, when Scott hesitates, afraid of touching Shane anywhere, afraid of making things worse. Rozanov holds Hollander steady at the hips while Scott holds his shoulders, though Hollander doesn't end up waking up until Kamilla has already managed to cut him free from the back of the seat. She has to wedge in carefully behind him, using the pliers to crush the pipe before she can gently pry it apart, and it takes so long that Scott and Rozanov are both sweating by the time she finally sits back, their combined body heat and exertion warming this frozen tomb. 

“Okay,” she says shakily when she's done. “Good news. It's hard, but not impossible to cut through. Hold him there for a second, please?” Ilya and Scott comply, and she goes back with gauze and tape. The only sound for a while is the ripping of the tape and a few breathy sounds from Hollander that might be pained whimpers. 

Kamilla is smiling when she comes back up, and Scott finds himself hoping. She instructs them to pad the aisle with something so that they can lay Shane flat without hurting him. Rozanov takes off his puffy coat and lies it down. Scott imagines Kip rolling his eyes at the obviousness of the gesture, and it makes him smile a little, too. 

Shane groans and opens his eyes when they manage to get him out of the seat and into the aisle, and Kamilla winces. 

“Hi Shane, it's me again! Sorry about all this.”

“Kamilla? Did I get hurt on the ice?” Shane asks. “I thought…I thought I was in Florida?”

“We all wish we were in Florida right now, bud. Our plane went down. Do you remember?”

“Oh no,” Shane moans a little, like he’d been hoping that was a bad dream. 

“Such a whiner,” Rozanov says, his voice too thick for the chirp to be believable. 

“Shut up,” Shane says. “Are you…?” He closes his eyes and trails off, and Scott is sure he's passed out again for a second, except then his eyes open, and he blinks blearily. 

“Hm? Finish the sentence, Hollander.”

“...okay?” Hollander finishes reluctantly. 

“Yes, perfectly fine. Not all of us need to be stabbed with metal pipes to get attention.”

Shane huffs a laugh that bites off into a pained sound as Kamilla gets the pliers closer to the injury. 

“Shane, I'm going to cut through this pipe and then I'm going to pad you out with a crazy amount of gauze, and then I'm going to wrap even more shit around you, okay? I don't want you to freak out, but the pipe is still inside you.”

“Uh, okay. Is that like…when you get stabbed, you should…leave the knife in?” 

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Who have you been stabbing?” Rozanov asks, and Shane laughs weakly, and Kamilla looks at him with concern. 

“Okay, we need to pick up the pace. He's freezing. Rozanov, get behind him and hold him by the shoulders. Warm him up. Pin him down if you can.”

“Oh, I can.”

“Asshole,” Shane laughs, and then he passes out for the third time. 

Rozanov clambers around behind him. This small space is feeling even smaller now with Shane laid out. Scott can hear Marleau and Carter outside working, and he almost wants to go join them, but he feels some responsibility for Shane, wanting to make sure he's okay. He holds Shane's legs, just in case he wakes up again and starts kicking. Rozanov settles behind Hollander, fixing the blankets over him, whispering into his ears in Russian. Scott tries to catch Kamilla's eyes to see if it's anything to worry about, even though he knows it won't be. Kamilla looks up once, eyebrows doing a complicated dance on her face, and then she looks back down and gets back to work. Scott figures that's as good an answer as any. 

Shane doesn't wake up, and Scott's legs are cramping, shoved into the teeny space, and Kamilla finally tells him that he can go. He doesn't need to be told twice. He feels like he can breathe again as soon as he goes back out into the rest of the plane, even with all the blood and death, and even though the wind is still raging out here. Carter and Marleau have made several sleds out of pieces of the airplane, and they look unreasonably proud of themselves for it. Marleau has taken it upon himself to make one big enough to haul a person. 

“How is he?” he asks. 

“Alive?” Scott offers. Marleau nods. If he has picked up on anything between Rozanov and Hollander, it doesn't show on his face. 

Scott helps them pack up everything. Bottles of water already half frozen. Minis of alcohol. Blankets and small pillows. Bags and suitcases from all the dead people. Frozen meals they'll have no way to heat up, but at least it's fucking food. Big totes of snacks. 

“Lot of shit for a plane this size,”  Carter says happily. “Looks like someone warned them there would be some big hockey boys on board.”

Scott sort of badly wants to hug Carter again, just for still being himself, but he manages to not. They put all the blankets and pillows in Marleau's sled, creating a padded area for Shane. 

At one point, there is a ragged yell from the back of the plane, and Scott clambers back in just in time to see Rozanov backing out from behind the sheet of metal, struggling to bend it up so it can stay out of the way. Scott lurches forward to help. 

“He woke up, for a second, when Kamilla, ah. Fixed his arm,” Rozanov says when he sees Scott. He looks and sounds rattled. “We tried to move him too fast. Is okay now.”

“Okay,” Scott says, trying hard not to sound too gentle, knowing Rozanov will hate that. “Do you need any help?”

“Yes,” Kamilla calls back. “We're going to have to hand him down gently to the ground.”

“Marleau made a sled with plane debris and some rope. We've got it padded with blankets?” 

“Oh my god, tell Marleau he's perfect,” Kamilla says. “Okay. Help me, Rozanov.”

The three of them work together, and Carter and Marleau take Shane from their arms when they get to the edge. Rozanov jumps down to help, staggering a little in the snow. Between the three of them, they lay him gently in the sled, and then Rozanov and Marleau work on getting him packed in, layering blankets over him.

“Someone has to ride with him and hold him steady,” Kamilla says to Rozanov as Scott helps her down. 

“Uh, yes? You,” Rozanov says, one eyebrow ticked up, like it's obvious. Maybe it is, but Kamilla looks annoyed and a bit taken aback anyway. She has an impressive eye roll, and she deploys it as she sits on the back of the sled, tucking her legs on either side of Shane, wrapping her forearm across his shoulders from behind to keep him from moving around too much. Marleau and Rozanov grab the ropes that Marleau secured to the debris, and then they're off. Scott follows, helping to push, while Carter manages the other sled on his own. 

It takes a long, long time to get back to the other half of the plane. Longer than it took to get there, it feels like. Scott has forgotten what it's like to feel warm. He wonders about frostbite, what it feels like, how long it takes to settle in. He keeps walking, though. They all do. 

Hollander doesn't fully wake up again, but he moans and thrashes a few times when they hit bumps. Rozanov curses when they do, tells Marleau to walk more carefully, but also yells at him to speed up. Marleau ignores him either way, and just keeps plodding on. At a certain point, that's all they can do. 

While they were gone, the others have been busy. A wall of suitcases blocks off most of the exit, and the luggage has been sorted into piles. People cheer when they see the blankets and the pillows on Carter’s sled, and he pumps his fist in the air like a returning hero, which makes them cheer harder. Kamilla is shaky as she stands there, still covered in blood. No one has asked about the fact that they only brought back one survivor from the back of the plane. Scott hopes they don’t. 

“Okay,” Kamilla says, like every problem is solved. She turns and looks at Scott. “All we can do now is wait.”

Despite that, Scott expects Kamilla to still be scurrying around, doing everything at once, but apparently she meant it. She has all the injured moved to one area so she can keep an eye on them, and then she does her rounds, and otherwise she sits in an open spot of floor against the wall and stares at nothing. Dollard sits next to her for a while, speaking quietly, but then he moves off with Hill to sort some of the stuff they brought back from the back of the plane, and Scott takes his place. She smiles at him when he sits down. Nice smile, he remembers Shane saying. 

“How's he doing?” he asks. Kamilla shrugs weakly. 

“Not dead yet, so. Better than I expected. He woke up a few minutes ago and asked…well. Doesn’t matter. He's out again.”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, kind of cagey. Asked for Rozanov, Scott guesses. 

Rozanov disappeared back into his seat as soon as they got back from their trek, and he now appears to be asleep. Scott was a little surprised he didn't keep sticking to Shane's side, but maybe he thought he'd been too obvious and is now trying to manufacture some distance. Scott hates how that makes him feel, thinking of Kip again, so he forces himself to stop. 

“Good, that's good. He's a good kid.”

“Very polite,” Kamilla agrees. “Keeps apologizing. I can't believe he locked down Rose Landry.”

“Eh, apparently they broke up,” Scott says, before he considers that maybe he shouldn't. Kamilla sighs. 

“Oh man, now I feel even worse.”

“He said they're still friends, for what it's worth.”

“Ugh, everyone says that.”

“Yeah, but I saw him texting her before the crash. Lots of heart emojis.”

“Aw, that's cute. His first breakup.”

“He's not that young,” Scott laughs, and Kamilla giggles a little with him. 

“Feels like it, sometimes. I felt like such hot shit my first year working for Seattle. This year was the first time I was working on a kid and realized he was younger than my youngest brother. Definitely not an easy transition.”

“You're telling me? You should hear the shit some of these guys say to me. You'd think I was one foot in the nursing home.”

“I actually saw a Buzzfeed list or something recently where they listed all the funniest things Rozanov has said to call you old. Looked like it broke containment a little bit. Lots of comments, like, ‘I don’t even watch hockey or know who either of these guys are, but I love this’. It was cute.”

“God, he’s such an asshole.”

Kamilla smiles a little, and she hesitates, and she looks at Shane again. Scott braces himself, thinks she's going to say something, but eventually she just sighs and shakes her head. Scott knows he shouldn't ask. Almost doesn't. 

“He's asking for Rozanov, right?” he asks, voice low. Kamilla flicks a look at him, hesitates. “Look, it's…it's fine. I'm not like…I'm not going to say anything. I've always thought the rivalry shit was played up, and we all saw…I just want to make sure I didn't get it wrong before I go kick his ass and tell him to get up here.”

“No, it's okay, don't do that,” Kamilla says with a quiet laugh. “He's in and out, he's not…I don't think we need to blow up anyone's spot, okay?”

“I wouldn't,” Scott says. He thinks he might be trying to tell her with his eyes more than he's ever told anyone with his words before, and even that scares the shit out of him, but he thinks about Kip again, and he wants to be brave. He's so fucking tired of being afraid. “I just know what it's like to feel like you can't…like you can't be there for the person you care about, because you're afraid of what other people would think. And I don't want to…I would hate to think that that's what's happening.”

Kamilla looks at him for another few seconds in silence, and he's not concerned, exactly, about judgement. He remembers her saying she, earlier, talking about the ex. He knows that he's safe with her. And it's not like he even said anything. It's just that his heart is racing and he's thinking about all those long lonely years before Kip and all the long lonely years that will come after Kip if he doesn't get his shit together enough to deserve him. He's thinking I have to keep it hidden, no one can know, and it doesn't matter if it isn't rational. The fear is still inside him. Muted, maybe, after the events of the day, but it's still there. 

Maybe Kamilla can see it. He hopes she doesn't feel like it's personal, or like he doesn't trust her. He hopes she realizes that she's the first person who's gotten even this much out of him. 

“Okay,” she says gently. She puts her hand on his arm, briefly, and she smiles a little. “Okay, that's really sweet. You're really sweet. Look, if it starts getting pathetic, maybe we can team up with a guilt trip. Not that we know that anything is…”

“No,” Scott agrees quickly. “Not really.”

“Not really,” Kamilla echoes, and Scott thinks she's probably lying just as much as he is. 

Chapter 3: Ilya

Something shatters in Ilya when they are in the back half of the plane, and he doesn't know how to put it back together again. 

He holds it together admirably, he thinks. When he thinks Shane is dead. When he sees that Shane is alive but badly injured. He doesn't do anything stupid like falling to his knees and wailing at the sky like in some dramatic movie. He doesn't immediately declare his unwanted, unreturned love. He survives the whiplash of his worst fear followed by a too-tentative hope. He leaves, goes back to get Kamilla. Marleau gives him shit about how he's pushing them both too hard on the run back, but he doesn't mean it, and Ilya ignores him. 

He keeps thinking about the way Shane had been looking at him, and he keeps hearing that noise he’d made when Ilya said he would be the one to leave. He almost changed his mind when he heard that, but…no one else would have been motivated to get to Kamilla faster, and so he knew it had to be him. Ilya has always been more useful as a tool, anyway. Action. He's not so good at comforting people, and he's especially not good for Shane. That’s something they both know, usually. Shane can be forgiven for forgetting, given everything, but Ilya can’t.

Back in the other half of the plane, now that Shane is okay, asleep, bundled in blankets and resting near the other wounded, Ilya sets himself up as far from Shane as he can, hunched down in the aisle near the cockpit to try and sleep for the night. Marleau's bulk is behind him, and they are sharing a blanket, and some random man is curled up in front of him. A pile of men and women all wedged into every available space. Most people started out in the seats, but it got too cold for that. Sharing the body heat is better. 

Several of the men have made stupid jokes about how they'd never snuggle like this with other men if they weren't going to literally freeze to death, and maybe they should just freeze to death anyway instead, ha ha. Marleau wasn't one of those people, though, and Ilya is glad about it.  

“Should we go warm up Hollander?” Marleau even asks at one point in the night, chest rumbling behind Ilya in a way that isn't completely unpleasant. Ilya snaps his head over his shoulder to look at him, suspicious. He's not sure why. Marleau didn't see any of the worst of Ilya's behavior. He didn't see the shaky hands or hear the way he'd offered to stay and freeze with Shane if he really couldn't be moved. 

But Marleau isn't looking back at Ilya. He's looking over everyone's heads to where Shane is lying with the other wounded. He's got pillows all around him because they're trying to keep him from moving too much, but the only people close to him are the other wounded and Kamilla, who keeps close to check on them, and also Hunter, who appears to think he's helping by hovering around her and occasionally making her laugh. 

“He has more blankets than we do,” Ilya says dismissively, clenching his hands into fists where they're tucked into his front hoodie pocket, because he wants so badly to use this excuse of Marleau's concern to fling the blankets off and storm over and cover Shane with his entire body, but he can't. He can't because he doesn't think Shane would want it, and he can't because he'll show too much if he does it. Kamilla already looked at him oddly, earlier, when he was holding Shane steady and whispering in Russian to him, like she could hear the heat of his words even if she couldn't understand the language. 

You will be okay, and you will go home to your beautiful girlfriend, and you will pretend that she can fuck you as well as I have been, all these years. And I will not die of jealousy or look at you ever again, and I will try not to love you, if only you survive for me. If you die, I'm afraid your ghost will be embarrassed of how pathetic I'll be.

Maybe he’s a coward, hiding back here with Marleau where Kamilla can't look at him and see all the wanting on his face. Maybe he's a coward, not wanting to risk Shane opening his eyes and being lucid enough to remember the last time they saw each other and getting that same panicked look on his face. Fear of the force of Ilya's want. Fear of anyone seeing them. Fear of whatever it was that made Shane flee his house and run straight into the arms of Rose Landry. Ilya was brave enough to risk his life to find Shane—and unfortunately he knows himself enough to know that he’d probably do it again—but he's not brave enough to face that kind of rejection. It was hard enough the first time. 

He has been petty, since that day. He knows it. Reading too much about Hollander's new girlfriend, knowing that Hollander will be so desperately trying to pretend he doesn’t need to be fucked. He looks like such a perfectly polite boyfriend to her in all those stupid tabloid pictures. Beautiful Rose, beautiful Shane, holding hands and smiling bashfully at each other in a way Shane would never have been able to smile at Ilya. He’s sure they have beautifully boring conversations about different flavors of tea and the benefits of probiotics and what to eat to keep themselves looking so perfect. He’s sure they are very happy together, being nice to each other and fucking each other poorly—because the only thing he’s certain about is that the fucking has to be awful. Ilya knows what it's like to love men and women both, and he has always been confident that Shane isn't the same. 

Actually, worse, he's always been confident that Shane only wants him. Only wants to be fucked by him. Maybe he’s as delusional about that as he was when he started thinking Shane was ready for something else. Thinking he wanted something more, something Ilya had been too afraid to give him before that stupid day at his house. Maybe the truth is that he doesn’t really know Shane at all, and he has no idea what Shane wants except to know that he doesn’t want Ilya anymore. Maybe Rose Landry will introduce Shane to pegging and manage to keep them both satisfied enough to keep the lie alive forever. 

Marleau says, “I guess. I feel bad for him. Looks lonely.”

“You should feel bad for me. Everyone in this pile stinks,” Ilya says loudly, prompting some weak laughs from some of the others. The wind is still howling outside, but they are huddled for warmth, and it isn't so bad. 

It does make him wonder, though, if Shane is cold. And would he be in this pile with the rest of them if he wasn't so injured? Or would Ilya's presence have scared him off? He thinks he knows the answer, and that’s why he doesn’t move. 

Ilya wakes up, and his head is turned towards Shane, because of course it is, and he can see that someone is curled up beside him now, still not quite touching him. Ilya is warm in a pile of bodies, and the guilt burns him, so he makes his way carefully out, and then clambers over a few seats to get clear without stepping on anyone. 

It's Scott Hunter curled up next to Shane, Carter Vaughn snuggled close behind him. Kamilla is on the other side of Shane, and then Martin Dollard, his arm around her. Kamilla is holding onto that arm with both hands, tightly. Good for Dollard. Kamilla should have better taste. 

No one is touching Shane, though. They aren’t close enough. Had he asked them to back off? Give him space? Ilya knows that Shane doesn’t always like to be touched, but they shouldn’t have listened to him now. He needs to be warm, doesn’t he? 

Ilya’s hands twitch at his sides, and he starts to lower himself down, just to touch Shane’s face, just to see if he’s as cold as he looks, maybe to see if he can feel Shane’s breath on his fingers to confirm for himself that he’s still alive.

One of the other injured moans weakly, and Kamilla's eyes fly open, and she swallows a scream to see Ilya crouching over her in the dark. He waves his hand apologetically, pretending that he hadn’t been bending down at all. 

“I am trying to sneak out to piss,” he lies, and she laughs a little, and she murmurs something to Dollard, and starts to sit up to start checking on people again. 

He does have to piss, actually. The wind seems less intense, so he moves aside some of the luggage and drops down into the snow. It's still frigidly cold, and still snowing lightly, but the storm seems to have stopped. He checks his phone, but there's still no signal. He does his business, and he lingers outside a little bit, looking up at the stars, annoyed at himself and at everyone. The world. 

Kamilla is sitting up and eating something when he walks in. 

“It's three in the morning,” she says. 

“Okay,” he replies. “Who cares?”

“Mm. Guess that's true. I'm up now, though, is the point. Can you take over with Hollander?”

“Take over?”

“Keeping him warm?”

He bites back several knee-jerk refusals so he has time to think over what to say. If he says any of the first few, he’ll sound like the jilted lover he’s trying to pretend he isn’t. 

“He needs so many people on him?” is what he finally settles on, lamely. 

“I guess not. Maybe I'll just tell Scott to get in there more. Really snuggle. I doubt Scott would be a dick about it. He cares about Hollander, clearly. Enough to help keep him alive, anyway.”

Ilya is suspicious that he’s being baited, but he’s not sure why she would. He glances at Hunter. Hunter is there, his head leaning on Shane's shoulder, the only point of contact, and Shane is turned towards him. Had he woken up in the night and gone looking for warmth? And all he found was decrepit fossil Scott Hunter because Ilya is too much of a coward to reach out again and have his hands slapped away even as Shane is dying? Ilya sighs. Maybe Shane doesn't want him when he's awake, and alive, and all right, but he’d made that little noise, yesterday, when Ilya left, and maybe Ilya can delude himself into deciding that means his presence won’t be unwelcome.

“Okay, whatever,” he says, and Kamilla thanks him as she wipes crumbs off herself and starts making the rounds of the other wounded, all of whom have healthier people around them, keeping them warm, too. 

He sneaks in where Kamilla had been before. Martin Dollard is gone, though Ilya doesn't see where he ended up, and doesn't particularly care. The blankets they left behind are still warm, and Ilya makes sure no one is looking at him as he swaddles them around himself, making sure they're covering Shane, too. He's careful not to jostle Shane too much, but he gets in close, easing up behind him. He’s reminded of a video he saw once of a large dog trying to sneak into its own bed without disturbing the cat that was already lying in it. The guilty way the dog had slunk around, eyes always on the cat, ready to be reprimanded. Does he look so pathetic from the outside? Fuck, he hopes not. He presses his face into the skin of Shane's neck, and he breathes it in for the first time in far too long, and his stomach hurts with wanting. 

Shane smells awful. BO and blood and piss. It doesn’t matter. Ilya is careful not to touch his wound. He settles an arm up further, across Shane's chest, curling himself around this side of Shane's body. Shane is cold to the touch, but not shivering, not moving at all in his sleep. Ilya tries not to think of that moment when he realized that the back of the plane was gone, or again, when he saw Shane in his seat and thought he was dead. He presses his nose harder against Shane's neck, until he can feel the pulse.

It beats steadily. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay.

Everyone is snuggled up close for warmth. Strangers and friends. It doesn't matter. It only makes sense. When they wake up, if Shane is angry, or afraid that Ilya has overstepped, then Ilya will say something cruel to him and leave him to Scott Hunter and go back to pretending not to care. He has to get better at that, anyway. 

Ilya wakes up because some asshole left one of the window shades up, and the sunlight slices right into his eyes, and he wants to groan and hide his face away, but he remembers quickly where he is, and so he doesn't move. 

As long as he’s still sleeping, he's allowed to be here.

He's allowed to have his arm around Shane. He's allowed to feel Shane's sleeping breath on his face. He's allowed to leave Shane's fingers curled around his forearm. 

Only when they're asleep, though, and so he’ll stay asleep. 

They never got to lie together like this, really. The most they got were brief, stolen moments of skin-to-skin in those golden moments immediately after fucking. Ilya would bury his face in Shane’s hair, or Shane would mouth a line of kisses up the side of Ilya’s jaw, and Ilya would hold him tighter, wherever he could touch. Shane’s thigh, Shane’s arm, Shane’s stomach. He would feel the urge to dig his blunt fingernails into the yielding surface of Shane’s flesh, hooking in, cruelly keeping Shane tethered to him, but he never would. He would let Shane leave, or he would leave, and he would force himself to breathe steadily until he was alone again. 

It would be nice to sleep like this with Shane, if it wasn't so terrible. Shane's skin feels warmer, and Ilya can tell himself with some pride that it's because of him, that he's the one who is helping. He can pretend that they're in some hotel room, or in his own place, maybe. Maybe in a world where Shane didn't run…

He remembers Rose, and he remembers Shane leaving his house, and he remembers the shame of it, of trying to fumble his way to being open about what he wanted and having that openness rejected like something disgusting or terrifying. He thinks of those months of silence. He holds Shane tighter, because Shane needs him, and he ignores himself. He has his whole life to regret those things, his whole life to let the cold win, but right now is simple: he will keep Shane warm. 

“Well, he made it through the night,” Kamilla whispers to someone. 

“Good, that's...that's good, obviously.” Scott Hunter, of course. Ilya barely resists the ingrained urge to roll his eyes. His skin feels too tight, and he knows he has to get up and move away from Shane, that he's showing too much, but he can't. He can't do it when they're watching, because knows they will see something in him that he doesn't want to show. He’s felt wrong since before the crash, since at the charity dinner, maybe, ducking away from Shane every time he saw him and then masochistically teasing himself by wondering if when he saw Shane looking around, clearly trying to find someone, he was looking for him. He has been able to ignore the ache of missing Shane these last few months. Or, maybe not ignore, but at least endure. Seeing him again in person was different. 

He almost broke on the plane. Almost said something to Shane on his way to the bathroom, even though he'd told himself again and again that he was not going to be the first one to break the silence. He's not even sure what he would have said, if he'd gotten there. He was waffling between some stupid hockey chirp or something horrifying and rude that would only sound dirty to Shane. He wanted to show Shane that he'd moved on, that he wasn't going to spend All Stars being fucking weird, so Shane could act normal too. But then he was forced back to his seat, and then Shane smiled at him, and suddenly Ilya's heart was shattered all over again, like the breaking was brand new. How did Shane do that? How was it fair that he did that? Ilya had done so well in trying to move on. 

“He's the worst off,” Kamilla says in response to a quiet question from Hunter that Ilya was too busy feeling sorry for himself to hear. “The others…it's pain management, at this point. Keeping them from moving. Getting them to eat something. It's all just buying time.”

“The storm is still going.”

“I know, but I don't control the weather, so….”

“I know, sorry. Sorry. That’s not what I meant. I'm just. Spiraling, I guess.”

“Me too.”

“You don't seem like it.”

“You know you don't either, right? You're doing a good job.”

Ilya again is trying very hard not to roll his eyes at Kamilla praising Scott Hunter for doing the bare minimum of not having a screaming breakdown. If only she could see what Ilya's heart is doing in comparison to his body. She’d be really impressed, then.

“Thanks. I think we'd be fucked if it wasn't for you.”

“Well, maybe.”

Scott's voice lowers, and under the babble from the people further back in the plane, it's difficult to hear him, but Ilya still manages to pick up most of it. 

“...make sure you're not…can talk to him, if you want. You said ‘she’, earlier, when…. I'm just…make sure you’re comfortable.”

There's a smile on Kamilla's voice when she answers. 

“Uh, no. Thank you. It's sweet of you to ask. I'm, uh, so I'm bi, actually? Yeah, my ex was a woman. I mean, most of my exes have been women, to be honest. But Martin is…we're…look, I'm asking you not to say anything. I know it's not a good look. My contract is up with Seattle next season, and I'm going to…’

“No, no, hey, I won't say anything. Believe me. You're not the first person on the staff to date a player, and you definitely won't be the last.”

“Okay.” Kamilla sounds relieved, and Ilya tries not to think of Shane, of his fear of being discovered. He doesn't want to be angry, but he is. It's stupid. What does fucking Martin Dollard know about keeping secrets? What does he know about having to hide? “Thank you,” she says quietly. “It just happened, I don't know. I've been beating myself up over it. I shouldn't have accepted his stupid offer to go to the charity thing as his date. It was a good cover. It made him look like a good guy, bringing the team athletic trainer along. It was a good excuse to spend time together? So I said yes, but it was kind of, I don't know, torture?”

“I get it,” Scott agrees easily. 

“Just…seeing everyone else get to be so open about loving the person they were standing next to.”

“Yeah.”

Yeah, Ilya thinks, and he does not hold Shane any tighter only because he is holding him tightly enough. He closes his eyes more firmly and buries his face even deeper against Shane's skin. 

He tunes them out after that, not wanting to hear other people talk about how hard it is to date people when the man he loves is in his arms but further away than he's ever been. He drifts in a warm and happy spot where he can pretend that everything has been fixed between them. Shane moves a few times, shifts, makes these pained little noises that hurt Ilya low in his stomach, and he wants to kiss Shane’s hair and his temple and his freckles, and he wants to whisper into his skin that everything is all right, but he doesn’t. He holds himself steady. Restrains himself. He breathes steady, too. 

“What did he say, yesterday?” Scott asks, sounding further away, like he's leaving, and like he has turned back to ask a final question.

“Who?” Scott must make a gesture, because Kamilla's voice lowers and she says, “oh. When?”

“You looked concerned for a second, when he was helping hold Shane down.”

“Ah, yeah. That.” A long pause. “I was mostly concerned with my own level of expertise, honestly. Realized I could only understand like three words.” She laughs a little. She's lying. Ilya can't breathe, because he understands exactly what Scott is asking, and exactly what Kamilla heard. “But it was all just encouraging, making fun of him, stuff like what he was saying in English, too. Look, I'm sorry about what I said yesterday. I was nervous, because I didn't think he was making any sense, but looking back on it, he was clearly just scared. We all were. We were in a fucking plane crash.”

“Yeah, okay, that's good. I'm glad to hear that. I'm gonna go…”

“Yeah, of course,” Kamilla says. By the time Scott moves off, and she turns back around, Ilya is sitting up and looking at her, unimpressed. She jumps a little, then frowns at him like a disappointed mother. 

“Good morning,” he says to her in Russian. She rolls her eyes. 

“Good morning. I am sorry, okay?”

“Your accent is not very good.”

“Yes, my old girlfriend said that.”

“Is that why she's your ex?”

“No. She left me. Pathetic?”

“Eh, it happens. I've been dumped by plenty of Russian women. I'm like you.” At her quizzical look, he said, “bisexual. I like women, I like men, I like anyone.”

“Ah, yes, I understand. Thank you. I heard what you said yesterday. I understand better than I speak. I will tell no one. Yes?”

“Thank you. Not that it really matters anymore.” Another quizzical look. “I guess if you're pathetic for being dumped, I'm the same.” 

“Right,” Kamilla says in English with a small smile. Then, in more fumbling Russian. “Sorry. I see you care for him.”

“Not anymore,” Ilya replies, tryign to sound careless, even though the words sting. He starts trying to disentangle himself. 

“He will be cold,” Kamilla says. “Look at him.”

Ilya does look. Shane’s eyelashes are quivering in sleep, and his freckles look so pretty in the light, and his unbroken arm is still clinging to Ilya's wrist. Ilya’s heart gives a stupid, traitorous lurch. 

“He’s asleep, and afraid. Believe me, he would never be this close to me if he was awake. He has always been the one most afraid of anything to do with us. I was good enough for a fuck, for a secret, for years, but he doesn't want me for anything else. He would be disgusted if he woke up and realized I was the one keeping him warm. Disgusted and afraid that everyone would see it on my face, and I guess that's fair, since you can see it.” 

Kamilla is frowning at him, watching his lips move. 

“I'm sorry,” she says in English. “I missed most of that. But. He asked for you, at night. He woke up and was scared you were dead. I said you were on the other side of the plane and he asked me why.”

“Stop, that's enough,” Ilya says, and he shakes Shane's hand off and gets up. Kamilla is frowning at him. “He is sick and afraid and he wants comfort, fine. I’ll give it to him, because I can't help what my heart wants even if I know it's bad for me. But you cannot guilt me into pushing more than I already have. I can't see that look on his face again. He's not for me. He made that clear.”

“Rozanov,” Kamilla says plaintively, but Ilya shoves his way back to Marleau, his ears burning with humiliation. 

He gets over it quickly, because Vaughn decides it would be a good idea to go out and cut down some branches so that if the wind goes down again, they’ll be ready to try and light some kind of signal fire. That's the exact sort of work he needs right now. Hill and Landon are recovered enough to help, but it's mostly Ilya and Marleau and Hunter and Vaughn doing the work. They use their hands and their body weight to break the branches, and they pile them high in the middle of the frozen lake nearby. This is good. This is work. 

“Wind’s still too brutal to get the fire started now,” Scott says as they troop back towards the plane, probably all of them feeling as primal and helpful as Ilya, hockey players finally allowed to use their bulk for something. “But it can't last forever.”

“Don't jinx it, man,” Vaughn moans. 

They go back inside, and they shed some of their layers. The cold is still bitter in the plane, but it's unmistakably better. Warmer. Safer. One of the injured women is conscious, sitting up, in a way she hasn't been since the crash, and her traveling companion, another young woman, is crying happy tears, and the energy has spread to everyone else. Relief. One good thing after so much bad. Ilya finds himself thinking that they should have tried to put the injured up front, near the cockpit, instead of the open area closest to the back. They should be trying to warm these people up as much as they can, shouldn't they? Or has Kamilla put them near the cold for a reason he doesn't understand? If it was anyone but Kamilla, he would worry that she was trying to conserve heat for the people who might survive, but he doesn't think she would do that. 

He has thought before, like probably everyone has, what he would do if he was in a situation like this. What sort of person would he be if he crashlanded somewhere with a bunch of survivors? He always thought he would be practical. Ration the supplies. Don't waste medicine and time trying to save the injured who can't be saved without real help. He likes to pretend to be that sort of person, but he knows he isn't. That's part of why his father and Alexei have always hated him. He has always been more like his mother. Guided by emotions. 

Maybe the reality of looking the injured in the face and saying you don't deserve to be fought for was always going to be different than the idle fantasy, but his pretended practicality never would have survived the fact that it's Shane who's injured and helpless. Ilya thinks he would fight anyone who tried to suggest giving Shane any less than the best. 

“Rozanov, can I talk to you?” Kamilla asks. 

“Depends on what it's about.”

“Are you going to only answer me in Russian now? I told you my Russian isn't that good. 

“I speak in English to everyone all day and my head is tired because I probably have a concussion and I just spent two hours outside cutting wood by hand, so yes. I will be speaking Russian. You can speak English if you want.”

“Okay, I will. Then we can both be pissed off.”

“A fair compromise.”

“Whatever. Come with me.”

She takes him outside again, and this time she leads him under the plane. There is a narrow opening that disappears into darkness. They have to crawl around sharp metal pieces from where the plane split in two, and Ilya looks at all of them with barely contained nausea, trying not to imagine Shane pulling at the metal stuck in him. Bleeding, alone, afraid, because Ilya had been too worried about how it looked to go rushing off into the storm to find him, which is another thing he can’t forgive himself for.

“Where the fuck are we going?”

“Cargo hold, I think. One of those dudes in the suits says the cargo hold should be through here.”

She turns and looks back at him, her face grim. 

“If we don't warm people up, they're going to start dying. Okay? Do you understand?”

“People? Which people?’”

“I'm more worried about the injured, but it's not just them. We need more. I'm hoping there's some kind of, of netting or something holding down the suitcases? I don't know. Maybe I've seen too many movies. There's always like this big cargo area with boxes and tarps? We need something to keep out the wind better. We need the checked luggage, more clothing. Everything.”

“Okay,” Ilya says, having missed a solid amount of that through the ringing in his ears. “Then we go? Why me?”

“Because Martin said it was too dangerous because the plane keeps shifting, and Scott said the same thing. I knew you wouldn't.”

“Because I'm an asshole?” 

“Because you're…” she falters. “In love.”

“I think I’ll go back and tell your boyfriend you're being a shit, actually. Goodbye.”

“Okay, well, I'm going in anyway, so either you can watch my back or you can let me probably die in there. Either one.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says, and Kamilla laughs. 

He understands when they crawl further. The opening into the cargo hold is small, half buried in the snow. Kamilla might genuinely be the only person on the plane who can fit. She ties a length of rope around her waist, and she hands him the other end. He looks at it incredulously. 

“Where did you even find this? And this rope won't hold your weight.”

“It’s a guide rope, Rozanov. I'm not expecting you to lower me in like a fucking cave diver.”

“This is so stupid. You're going to get yourself killed.”

But Kamilla doesn't get herself killed. She disappears into the darkness and comes back out with suitcases, duffel bags, rolling bags. She finds several tarps, and she's giddy with the triumph both of being right and of finding something that will be better protection against the wind. Ilya is glad, too. He's even more glad when Hunter and Dollard are both angry with him, muttering fucking Rozanov when he and Kamilla return with the first round of their haul. It's nice to feel like an asshole again, and not like a pathetic mess who wears his shattered heart too openly. 

“You think you can tell her what to do?” he asks Hunter sadly. “You think women like this? No wonder you never have girlfriends.” Scott only rolls his eyes at him. 

They hang up several tarps and a sheet of some type of burlap that Kamilla found in a crate in the cargo hold, and they tape the edges of the tarps to the wall except on one end, where they can fold the tarp back like a door so they can go out to use the bathroom. Already, it starts to feel more warm now that the wind doesn’t touch them. Ilya tries not to feel too pleased with himself. He avoids looking at Shane, because he knows that he will look insufferably smug and preening, like showing off he makes a better mate. Like they're fucking cavemen. Could Rose Landry provide for you like this? I don't think so. 

“Our next mission,” Kamilla says when they're done, and Ilya groans aloud. Hunter puts his face in his hands. 

“You’re fucking killing me. I’m exhausted. I know I'm the only useful one here, but that doesn't mean you can use me for everything.”

“You want to take over warming your injured, uh…” a moment of struggle, trying to find a word that she clearly can't remember. It's a little vindicating, watching someone else mentally scroll through vocabulary in a language they weren’t born with. She gives up, and finishes with, “kitten?”

“Fuck you,” Ilya laughs.

“Hey,” Hunter argues. 

“It's okay. I’m being an asshole,” Kamilla admits. “Our next mission is moving the dead.”

That sobers up both men. They exchange a wary glance, and they nod. 

They move the dead to the now empty-cargo hold. They try to be as respectful as possible, but it's difficult. It’s difficult to do anything respectfully while wearing so many clumsy layers, with the wind still whipping around everywhere. Everyone wants to help with this task, which is sort of nice. There is a hush on the crowd as they pry the people out of their seats, as they work in silence to untangle their mangled bodies. Ilya catches Shane watching, up on his elbows because he can't sit up, his pretty eyes wide. Those pretty eyes fly to his for a second, and Ilya quickly looks back at his work, and he resists the urge to look again. 

They block off the entrance to the hold with some empty hard-shelled luggage to hopefully make it more difficult for predators to get at them, and even though it was a lot of work, and even though it was sad, it makes Ilya feel better, and he knows it was the right call. With the dead removed, those four Canadian businessmen go about dismantling the seats with some tools Vaughn apparently found in the plane’s galley, prying the stuffed padding off the useless metal frames, starting with the ones that were dislodged in the crash. The padding will make it easier to sleep, and hopefully it will help with the cold if they aren't lying on the metal floor and the too-thin rug. 

It starts to get dark long before it feels like it should, and Ilya is worried that more snow is coming, but then he realizes that they have just somehow spent the entire day here, and still no one has come to save them. Dollard and Hill, who have been put in charge of protecting the food and water, pass out rations, and Ilya eats his awful, tasteless, cold airplane food, looking up occasionally to steal glimpses, making sure that Shane is eating too. Kamilla is sitting with Shane, talking to him, helping to prop him up a little as he eats, and Ilya tries to read her expression. Does she think he's doing okay? Is she worried because he can't eat much? Is she worried that he only takes a few sips of water? Ilya's fists clench on nothing, and he focuses on his own food and his mini bottle of alcohol. He tunes the rest of it out. 

“I don't know, man, I'd be jealous if my girl was looking at Shane fucking Hollander like that,” Hill laughs, prodding Dollard good-naturedly. Marleau laughs too, but he looks at Ilya when he does it, and Ilya pretends not to notice.

“She's not my girl,” Dollard mutters defensively. An obvious lie, even if Ilya didn't know it for a fact. “And anyway, if she manages to steal him away from Rose Landry, she'd be a legend.”

“You’re not wrong,” Hill agrees.

“They broke up, though,” Scott Hunter says, grimacing down at his tray of food like he thinks he can make it more appetizing by microwaving it with his eyes. 

“What? Who?”

“Hollander and Rose Landry. He said something about it to me before the crash. I figured everyone knew already, but Kamilla didn't know either. I don't usually keep up with that stuff. Wait, did seriously none of you know?” Hunter looks annoyingly pleased with himself for having gossip that no one else did. Ilya would be more inclined to be irritated about it, except all his energy is going into hiding his reaction to the news.

He looks at Shane again. Shane is speaking to Kamilla now, quiet. Pale. There are these massive bags under his eyes, and Ilya wants to touch and kiss and soothe them, which is how he knows it's his cue to look away. 

“No way did Hollander fumble Rose Landry,” Marleau says quietly. “Oh, that's fucking tragic. Easily the worst thing that's happened to him this month.” General laughter and agreement. Ilya aches to ask Scott why, aches to ask Scott how did he seem about it? He doesn't ask anything. He tries to ignore the traitorous, hopeful lurch of his heart. 

The breakup is the kind of thing he would tease Shane for, his earnest questions hidden beneath mild cruelty, watching Shane's eyes for the answers Shane wouldn’t want to give aloud. Shane has always been easy to rile, and Ilya has learned his expressions over time. He knows what Shane secretly likes and he knows what Shane doesn't like, and he knows how to spot the difference. It's a skill, like anything else. Like running drills on a person for years, in snatched moments. Shane always surprises Ilya, takes so much more than Ilya ever expects him to take. Was it any wonder Ilya became so obsessed with him? How could he not?

He wants to tease Shane now, wants to lower his voice so it's just the two of them, wants to ask him about Rose Landry and get the answer from his eyes, but he's afraid. Hope is a dangerous, terrible thing. It lies to you. It makes you see things that aren’t there. Shane left his house before Rose, and he hasn't texted since Rose, and just because he's no longer pretending quite so publically to not need a dick in him, that doesn't mean he's ready to stop pretending privately. It means something, doesn't it, that Shane hasn't told him?

Maybe he should chirp him anyway. Let Shane know that he knows. He knows better than anyone how Shane sometimes needs a little push to admit what he wants. 

But what if he does that, and Shane still looks at him in that same horrible way? Is he really going to keep debasing himself for a chance that Shane responds differently? At what point does he have the self respect to give up?

After dinner, he goes outside to piss, and he glances at Shane on his way by and sees Shane looking back at him, still talking to Kamilla. Ilya smiles a little, trying to look normal. Trying to look mildly pleased that Shane is all right. He's not sure he pulls it off. Shane smiles sleepily back at him, though. 

“Don't be a fucking idiot. Don't be an asshole. Just be normal,” he tells himself as he relieves himself, and then he goes back inside and tries not to stomp his way in. People are settling down for the night. They found a few flashlights in some of the bags, but they're trying to conserve them, and there's not much to do when it gets dark. It's so fucking boring, freezing slowly to death in the woods.

“How is he doing?” he asks Kamilla, ignoring the way Shane is looking at him. Does he look hopeful? Does he look wary? Ilya isn't sure he can take examining him and seeing the answer for sure, so he looks at Kamilla instead.

“Fine,” she responds. “You can not see that with your eyes?” 

“Oh, so you are an asshole in two languages,” he says. She laughs. 

“You would know.” Then, to be more of an asshole, she stands up. “Sit with him. Don't be a dick. He keeps looking at you. He wants to talk to you.”

“You’re making up stories in your head because you're enough of a hopeless romantic to think Dollard is worth your time.” She grins at him, not deterred, probably not understanding what he said anyway. He switches to English so she'll pick up on his bitchy tone. “Fine, whatever.”

“The wind has died down, so we're going to try and start the fire,” she says. “We're hoping it'll be easier to see it at night.”

“Yes, it will be. Obviously,” Ilya says. 

“Fuck you. Stay here with your…whatever. Fuck. Can’t think of the word.”

“Now you know how I feel every fucking day,” Ilya says with a smile, but he sits down against the wall next to Shane. It’s a very calculated move. A very calculated distance. Not so far that his presence won’t be warming, but not so close that Shane will feel like he has to pull away, hopefully. He's doing a very good job, he thinks, of acting reluctant. Acting like his hands aren't literally shaking with his desire to touch the man beside him. 

“I didn't know Kamilla spoke Russian,” Shane murmurs. His voice is low, pained. He's still lying on his back because he's not supposed to sit up, and Ilya feels rude, suddenly, looming over him. Shane's voice is paper-thin, hoarse. Ilya remembers the cry of agony when Kamilla had set his arm, and he remembers all those times seeing Shane hurt on the ice before. Checked into the boards and then unwrapped like a present later in one of their hotel rooms, bruises already blooming on his ribs. Ilya hissing in appreciation over them, like they were trophies, even though he was rarely the one who’d put them there. Like all hockey players, Shane is good at hiding his pain, and so Ilya knows he must be hurting a lot now if he's showing so many signs of it. It upsets him that he can't do anything to take it away, but at least he can make it so Shane doesn't have to strain to be heard, if he wants to talk. He sighs and wriggles down so he's on his side, using one of the padded airplane seats as a pillow.

“She speaks very badly, yes, but I like that. Payback, you know? Making someone else suffer for all the years I have to try and make English work for me.”

“You do fine.”

“I make people understand. Usually.”

“Mm.” Shane bites his lip, and Ilya's eyes go unfocused, like a defense mechanism. Do not look at him doing something sexy like biting his lip. You know it will fuck you up, and he's injured, and you shouldn't find him sexy when he's injured. “Are you okay?”

“You asked me this already.”

“I did? I don't remember.”

“That's probably good. You were very…out of it.” Shane tenses. Ilya can see it. He rolls his eyes. “Relax. You said nothing embarrassing. Very concerned for everyone around you, even as we were talking about best ways to mercy kill you.”

“Oh, okay. I kind of feel like you’re full of shit, though.”

There’s a lapse as most of the uninjured survivors troop past them on the way to try and light the fire. Two of those Canadian businessmen remain near the cockpit, working on trying to get the radio working, apparently. The injured are all asleep, or at least they look asleep. It feels awkward to be alone with Shane again, even like this. This was the exact feeling he’d been trying to avoid by dodging him at the charity event the other night.

“Where are they going?” Shane asks. Apparently he hadn't been listening to Kamilla earlier. Had he been too busy looking at Ilya? That's another delusionally hopeful thought. He has to stop that.

“We gathered things to make fire, earlier, but there was too much wind to light it. They will try now, see if anyone can see us.”

“Oh, that's good.” Shane is looking at him oddly, like he's trying to figure out how to say something. Ilya wants to interrupt him, stop him, say something stupid or rude or dismissive to make Shane's brain stop turning over what he thinks he should say, because Ilya doesn't want to hear it. But he waits, breathing steadily instead. It’s so annoying, how often he allows himself to hope. “Um. So. This is awkward, but. I'm really cold?”

“Oh,” Ilya says, trying not to sound disappointed. “Yes, all right.” 

What was he expecting? A fucking love confession? Of course not. So why does his throat feel so tight? How many times can he trick himself into believing in something that’s never coming? 

He sometimes gets so wrapped up in thinking about how he’s not good for Shane, that Shane deserves better, that he forgets all the ways in which Shane isn’t good for him. 

He sits up, scoots his little airplane seat pad closer. He pulls some more blankets over from where they’ve been left in a pile for later. He unzips his coat so that he can make sure some of his body heat reaches Shane, and then he drapes the open half of that coat over Shane as well. He gets close, the way he did during the night, pressing the whole front of his body up against Shane’s side, pretending not to be giddy to be asked. Pretending not to be a little sad to be asked, too. 

“Okay? Tell me if it hurts,” he says, and Shane hums a little. 

“Not really,” he says. “Uh, I mean, it does, but.” 

“Well, yes. You have a giant pipe in you.” 

“Not the first time,” Shane whispers, and Ilya looks at him incredulously, certain he can’t have understood that correctly, then huffs a laugh at the half-mischievous, half ashamed-of-himself face that Shane is making. 

“So you have jokes now? Good for you. Must be feeling better.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees quietly. His head tilts towards Ilya's, his nose against Ilya's cheek. “So, so much better. Can you stay like this? Please? Tonight? I'm sorry.”

His voice breaks at the end. Is he fucking crying? 

“Oh my god, hey, stop. Of course I stay. Nothing to be sorry for. Please don't…” he breaks off into Russian, because it's safer. He brushes Shane's cheeks quickly with his thumbs, hiding away his tears. Sweetheart, it's all right. Don't cry. I'm sorry too. I don't know how to help you. I wish I was the one who’d been hurt instead. This is unfair. You’re too pretty when you’re crying. What am I supposed to say? “I am glad to help you,” he says at last, in English. Offering up the smallest part of his heart, as carefully as he can. 

It's true, too. Ilya is glad that Shane has asked for what he wants. Ilya will do everything in his power to keep Shane safe and warm now, because Shane asked him to. That’s all Ilya has been waiting for, this entire time: permission. 

He wanted too much, last time, at his house. Made the stupid shape of his heart far too obvious for Shane Hollander, who wasn’t ready for it, and maybe never would be. Ilya won't be so stupid as to make that mistake again. He will only take what’s offered. He can still be happy like that, he thinks. He has been okay with far less for so long. 

“Okay,” Shane breathes. “Thank you. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.” 

“You were fucking…” Ilya searches frantically for the word. “Impaled. Anyone would cry. Relax, Hollander.” 

“Fine, okay. Fuck.” Shane laughs a little, tired. He shifts, nose brushing Ilya's skin again, and Ilya risks kissing the top of his head, because the blankets are all around them, and because almost no one is in here with them, and because he doesn't think Shane will notice anyway. He has to work hard to resist the urge to wipe Shane’s tears away again. He desperately wants to brush his thumb along the skin where he knows Shane’s freckles live, even if he can’t see them in the dark. “I…Rose guessed. About me. So we, uh, broke up.”

“Guessed what?” Ilya asks, in the same low whisper that Shane is now using. Shane's uninjured hand has found its way beneath Ilya's coat and is tucking itself into his front hoodie pocket. Ilya bites back a sigh and creeps one of his hands into the other side. Shane's fingers find his own gratefully, and they squeeze. He’s too cute. Might as well be shoving airplane debris through his gut.

“That I'm…that I'm gay.”

That last word, hissed out, breathed out, only audible because they're so close. Ilya bites his bottom lip to keep from laughing. Shane glares at him. He even glares prettily, even in the dark.

“No way,” Ilya finally says. Shane butts his forehead against Ilya's temple a bit as Ilya shakes with suppressed, frantic laughter. World's most adorable headbutt. 

“Stop it. I knew you'd react like this.”

“What else am I supposed to say? You want me to be shocked?” 

“I don’t know. A little less smug, maybe?” 

“Me?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course you’re going to be an asshole about it.” 

“Am I ‘being an asshole’ or is it just not very…” He cuts himself off, laughing a little. “No, never mind. I don’t think I can say that here. Not private enough.” 

“Something disgusting, probably.”

“Yes. I will tell you when we get out.”

Shane gives a twist of a smile. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says. Ilya understands the look in Shane's eyes when he says that, and he frowns, all laughter gone.

“Stop it. You will get out.”

“Of course I will.” 

“I will drag you out of Canadian wilderness on a sled made of luggage.”

“Okay.”

“I will fight bears for you.”

“Oh, definitely, yeah.”

“Stop being…” he can't think of the word in English, so he says in Russian, “indulgent. I am very serious.”

“Yeah, I know you are,” Shane breathes, and there is something so starry and beautiful in his expression. Ilya wishes he could kiss him. He squeezes Shane’s hand tighter instead. He thinks about what he felt when Kamilla said they couldn't move Shane and they couldn't move everyone else to be with Shane. He'd thought they just weren't going to try, and his first thought was that he would stay with Shane, no matter what. If it meant dying, then okay. If it meant waiting for Shane to die and then having to decide for himself if he wanted to trek back alone to the other plane? Okay. He doesn't like it, the dark void in his heart that always seems to creep up when things are hard. He doesn't like the way it makes him think of his mother. He wishes he could risk explaining to Shane all of these things, and how it shattered him to look at Shane and think for even a second that he was dead. Even if they were alone together, he's not sure he could. Not in English, anyway. 

He sucks in a breath. 

“I know you aren't ready. Not that I understand exactly what you feel, but…sometimes you make me want to be stupid and hopeful, and this is one of those times, because of the way you're looking at me. I know that this is impossible. I know that you won't…well, even if you want me as much as I want you, you have always been much better at self-denial. Self-preservation, too. You know I'm no good for you. You just kept coming back anyway. I know it will be hard, to be with you. But I almost lost you, and now I know how little I want to live in a world without you in it, and I am afraid of that. Terrified. I know what love that strong can do to people, and I've always told myself that I wouldn't feel it, but I was wrong, and I hate it. Why did it have to be you? Why couldn't it have been someone who was ready to love me back? Sometimes I wish I never met you, but it's too late for that, and now I just have to deal with it. Whatever. This is so stupid; you can't even understand me. But I am here for you, however you want me. I won't run away even though I want to. Even though I planned to keep running until I forgot the taste of you. I've given up on that, and so that means that you have to live, because I have opened my heart for you and I want to keep doing it forever, because I think I do love you. Unfortunately.”

He thinks that Shane must have fallen asleep during all that. A quiet rant he can't understand. But when he's done, Shane hums thoughtfully. 

“Feel better?” he asks. 

“Yes.”

“Can you try telling me what any of that meant?”

“I said you are stupid if you think Kamilla will let you die.”

“Oh yeah? Lot of words.”

“Russian is very poetic language. You know this.”

“Yeah,” Shane says with a loopy smile. “I guess so. I am sorry, okay?”

“For getting stabbed by a plane? I don't think…”

“No. You know what for.” 

A wet-eyed, serious stare. Ilya has to look away, afraid Shane will see past heartache reflected in his eyes. 

“Oh. Okay. Is not a big deal.”

“Ilya.” 

“I understand. No need to be sorry. I just…I reached for too much.”

“You can’t say everything important in Russian, you fucking dickhead,” Shane hisses, surprising in his vehemence. Ilya laughs loudly, and Shane mutters in rapid-fire French. Ilya laughs harder, and Shane is laughing too, incredulous. Still tired and weak in a way that makes Ilya afraid, but his smile is so bright. “How do you like it, asshole?”

“I love it. Your French is very sexy, even if it is a stupid language.”

“You're such a fucking...Tell me what you said.”

“Not here.”

“There's no one around. We're whispering.”

Ilya bites back the comment he wants to make, about how Shane is the one who is always more concerned with hiding away. It wouldn't be helpful, and he doesn't want to make Shane unhappy right now. He wants to give Shane reasons to want to stay.

“I said that I reached for too much, okay? Happy? Fuck. We don't need to go over and over it. It happened. It…who cares? It’s done.”

“No, but you didn't. I just panicked. I was stupid.”

“No.”

“What? No? Yes. I'm telling you how I felt. You can't just say no. I overreacted. It was dumb. I was scared.”

“I know how you feel. Skittish baby rabbit.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“You are injured. Should not get so worked up. Stop hissing at me.”

“I'm trying to be quiet. I was impaled. You're being a dick to me.”

“Stop laughing, then.”

“I can't. I l-” Shane swallows. “I like you so much. I do. I wanted to tell you. I was trying to talk to you at the charity event. I–”

“Stop.” 

“I wanted to–” 

“Stop, Shane. Stop. No, please don't give me sad kitten eyes. Just…tell me later. When we go home. Not here.”

“Why not here?”

“Because then you have to survive, or I will think you died thinking I am horrible, disgusting man who scared you off by being the best hockey player in the world.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Shane whispers, but he presses his lips against Ilya's neck, just briefly, before he replaces them with his warm forehead, his breath tickling Ilya’s shoulder, and lapses into silence. 

Outside, through the shade he forgot to close, Ilya sees a flare of light, and he hears the distant cheers getting louder as the light grows brighter; they’ve done it. Someone will see them now, before it’s too late. He smiles, and he huddles closer to Shane, prepared to pretend to be asleep when everyone comes back. 

Chapter 4: Shane

Chapter Notes

There's this picture that shows up everywhere after the rescue, in newspapers and magazines and at the top of every online article. It's the main picture for the fucking Wikipedia page for the crash, because that's a thing. 

Shane still looks at it sometimes, years later. Pulls the picture up on his phone and zooms in on it like he’s trying to find something new. He only does this when Ilya isn't around; Ilya has more reasons to hate the reminder of that day, and he tries to hide how tense he gets when he sees it, but Shane knows him too well to fall for it. 

Maybe Shane should hate looking at the picture too, but he doesn't. He's weirdly fascinated by it. A whole day lost to him forever except for snatches of memory and whatever the others have told him in scattered half-stories. It's not like he wants to remember, based on what they’ve told him. It's just crazy that he doesn't. It makes his stomach squirm uncomfortably with guilt, knowing how much trouble he put them through. 

They all worked so hard to save him. 

He's only alive now because of them. 

And he doesn't remember any of it. 

Ilya still has faded burn scars on one of his arms, and on the side of his neck, and the side of his head still has a small patch where his hair burned off and grew back stark white. Shane loves to play with those curls, wrap them around his finger, tug on them. He loves to trail his fingers down the whorls of the burns. He could probably draw them by heart. Ilya always smiles at him indulgently when he does it. Sometimes makes snide, shitty comments about how Shane is so greedy to want physical proof of his love even after all these years. Shane always laughs it off, but he knows it's not completely inaccurate. The scars drive him wild with guilt at first, but it fades into something softer. 

Mine, he thinks, whenever he touches them. These scars belong to me. You loved me enough to get them.

The picture Shane is so obsessed with was apparently taken by one of the first rescue crew members. He's not sure why they were taking pictures before they even realized anyone was alive. He has to assume it was because they knew they'd be able to sell it for a shitload of money or something. They were probably right. 

Shane doesn't remember the moment captured in it. He apparently hadn’t been lucid for hours. It was taken just a half hour before his heart stopped for the first of three times on the flight to the hospital. 

He knows that it was taken in the early hours of the morning after the day he lost. The last definitive thing he remembers is falling asleep next to Ilya. He remembers feeling warm and safe but so fucking angry, and in so much pain. He knew he was going to die, and he had still been too much of a coward to tell Ilya that he loved him. 

Tomorrow, he remembers promising himself before he fell asleep. You have to tell him tomorrow. He deserves to know. He hadn’t understood anything of what Ilya had said to him in Russian, but it had been intense, his words breaking in a way that told Shane he wasn’t as delusional about Shane’s odds of survival as he was pretending to be. He clearly cared. He clearly worried. Couldn’t Shane at least give him something? Some tiny piece of his heart, just so that Ilya wouldn't be left wondering forever if Shane didn't make it? Just so that he’d understand why Shane ran away in Boston? 

But apparently he spent that entire next day having a series of seizures, slurring his words nonsensically the few times he was conscious enough to speak, throwing up blood, and sending everyone into a spiraling panic. The doctors told him, later, that he wouldn't have survived another day. Not even you likely wouldn't have made it. No, they said it starkly. You wouldn't have survived.

He feels like the picture captures it, all of it. The hopelessness of their situation in the moments before they realize they've been rescued. Shane is lying in the middle of the frame, his eyes closed, covered in blankets up to his chest, his coat ripped open, snow packed around him. If you know it's there, you can see that the front of his shirt is stained with vomited blood, which is just great. Good look for him. Scott Hunter is closer to the camera, sitting beside Shane, gazing at the rescuers in shock. He looks exhausted. One of the few things Shane remembers about that day is the way Scott was shaking as he tried to hold him down, begging, “Shane, Shane, you're okay. Look at me! You're okay! Stay down! Stay down!” 

In the picture, Kamilla is crouched by Shane's legs, hunched over, looking at the camera, hollow-eyed, brain clearly not having caught up to her eyes yet. Martin Dollard is behind her, hands on her shoulders as he tries to stand up on his injured leg, a broad smile already halfway across his face. 

Cliff Marleau is the only other one smiling at the rescuers; he's sitting up against the wall behind Shane, hands on Shane's shoulders. Apparently Shane had woken them up with another seizure in the night, and Cliff had fallen asleep still holding him down, too tired to move. Shane thinks he remembers that too, sometimes. Seeing Marleau above him, feeling the weight on his shoulders. Remembers the searing line of blisters up the side of Marleau's face. Remembers thinking he was hallucinating. 

“So then we set the fucking forest on fire!” he remembers Marleau snarling to someone Shane couldn’t see. “Who fucking cares? He's fucking dying!”

In the picture, Ilya is using one of Marleau’s outstretched legs as a pillow. He's curved behind Shane protectively, his arm over him, pulling him close. His eyes are just barely open, wet with unshed tears, red with exhaustion. It makes Shane's stomach hurt when he looks at Ilya's face for too long, but he does it anyway. A private pain, just for him.

Shane falls asleep with Ilya holding him tight. He remembers feeling warm, cared-for, even though he’s in so much pain he can hardly think. 

Apparently the fever started in the night, because after that it's only agonizing flashes of memory and sensation. Pain, pressure, heat, cold. Kamilla yelling, Ilya crying, Scott panicking. Marleau picking him up and moving him as he screams in pain. He remembers flaring fire and he remembers bright white light and he remembers the too-loud chop of helicopter rotors. He remembers someone saying something into his ear, quick and broken. 

And then he's awake, and he's in his hospital room, and his dad is sitting next to his bed, reading a magazine. 

That picture from the rescue is on the cover. Shane doesn't know what he's looking at, at first.

“Dad?” he finally manages to ask, voice rasping, and then he’s swept up in the tide of it. His dad is loud with joy, and his mom wakes up from where she was lying down on a cot on the other side of the room, and then they are both on him, talking at once. He would normally hate this, or at least be overwhelmed by this, but he’s so happy. He missed them. He thought he was going to die out there without ever seeing them again. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Yuna cries, and she kisses the top of his head, and Shane hears helicopter rotors and rough words, voice hoarse from tears. 

I love you, my sweetheart. You will be okay. 

Was that real?

There’s no time to think about it. People start coming in and out, summoned by his parents. Nurses, doctors, more nurses, more doctors. They shine lights in his eyes and tell him welcome back in chirpy voices that sound too bright. They ask him about his pain level, and he says he feels fine, but they give him more medication anyway, and he doesn't complain. The phantom pain is still there, in him. A memory he can't shake. He has to clench his hands into fists to keep himself from touching the spot where he knows they would have removed the debris. He keeps being afraid that it’s still there. That they decided they had to leave it in forever. People keep telling him numbers and information about his medicine and the infection that almost killed him and stats that mean nothing to him, but they're smiling when they say them, so he figures that's good. His mom takes over like she does best, taking notes, asking them to repeat themselves, to explain, and Shane feels safe to give up on listening. She'll figure it out. His dad keeps saying things like wow! Or gee, Shane, that's a lot better than yesterday!

He tries to remember being rescued, but he can't. He remembers the helicopter. He thinks he remembers Ilya and someone else—Vaughn?—helping to carry the stretcher through the snow. Remembers someone falling, and remembers the world tilting, and pain. Remembers screaming. Remembers flashlights in his eyes and repeated questions of what his name is and what the year is and other things that stumped him because he couldn't figure out why they were asking. 

Remembers the voice in his ear. 

I love you, my sweetheart. You will be okay.

Strangled voice tripping over itself in his haste to get the words out. And quiet. So quiet, under all the other sound. Maybe Shane wasn't supposed to hear, or remember, but he does, and his heart is so full. 

“Where’s everyone else?” he asks, when he and his parents are finally alone again, and that's when they tell him about his last day. 

He tries not to react as his mother picks her way carefully through the story, gleaned secondhand from the other survivors. 

His turn for the worse in the night. 

A fever that spiked so high that he started seizing, so the others packed snow around him to try and lower it. 

The infection that had been seeping into him since the crash.

He doesn't remember any of it, but he can imagine it. He remembers how soft Ilya's voice had been when he was lying there, confessing something in Russian that he refused to translate. Remembers the aching desire to know what Ilya was saying, but understanding, on some level, just from the tone. He can imagine how that version of Ilya would have reacted to what happened next. He wishes he couldn’t. 

Apparently the bonfire idea worked, and search and rescue found them “just in time”. His mother says that exact phrase over and over in the retelling, and Shane knows that it scared the shit out of her. Just in time. Apparently his heart stopped three times on the medflight. 

“I was dead?” he asks. 

“No,” Yuna says quickly. “No, no. Not really. You're okay. They brought you back right away every time.”

Was Ilya there? 

Did Ilya have to see?

“You're okay now,” David says encouragingly. “They don't foresee any lasting damage! Did you hear that? It's hard to believe, I know. You were really sick, buddy. It’s going to be a lot of recovery, but we’ll be right with you, every step. You know that, right? You’ll be okay.” 

I love you, my sweetheart. You will be okay. 

“You’ve been in and out. I'm assuming you don't…?” Yuna hesitates.

“Remember? No. I don't remember anything. I don't even remember being sick, just…” Hands fluttering over his injury, finally, fingers landing on the spot over the blankets. It doesn't hurt as badly as he'd feared it would, but he still takes his fingers away quickly. 

I love you, my sweetheart.

His mom is talking, he realizes. He’s been tuning it out. 

“...ended your sedation, and you woke up a few times in the last few days, but you were always really out of it. Didn't seem to know where you were. This is already way more encouraging.” Yuna blinks back tears, but Shane sees them anyway. “You're going to be okay, Shane.”

What did I say when I was out of it?

What do they know?

He's afraid to have the answers to those questions, and he's even more afraid to ask again about everyone else, but he does it anyway. He has to know. 

“And everyone else?” he asks. 

“Everyone who survived the crash made it back okay. You were the worst of the injured, believe it or not, and the others have all made more or less full recoveries. Scott Hunter and Carter Vaughn are already back in New York, and apparently they’re planning on playing the next game. They stuck around for a few days to make sure you were going to be okay, but they…”

“Wait, a few days? How long has it been?” 

Yuna and David exchange the kind of look they always exchange when Shane knows he's not going to like their answer. 

“Um, a week and two days,” Yuna says gently. 

“Oh my god. A week? I missed the All Star game.”

Yuna laughs loudly with relief, and she wipes her tears, and then she leans in and wipes his. 

“Sweetie, they canceled the game. Turns out when some of the best players in the world are presumed dead for three days, there's not a lot of appetite for hockey.”

“Oh.” He'd really been looking forward to playing on the same team as Ilya. Clearly that's like the least of his worries right now, but still. It's disappointing.

“Rozanov and Marleau are still here, recovering,” David says, bringing the attention back exactly where Shane had been desperate but also too wary to put it. “Marleau’s supposed to be going home today, actually, so he'll be glad to get to see you before he goes.”

“Recovering?” Shane asks, forcing the word out around the sudden constriction in his chest. He doesn't remember either of them being hurt. Was Ilya injured that whole time?

“Recovering really nicely, actually! The doctors are impressed. Rozanov’s neck and arm were a little worse off than Marleau’s face and hands, so Rozanov still has some healing to do, but…” 

“I don’t remember them being hurt in the crash,” Shane interrupts. “What happened?” 

David smiles a little, heaves a watery sigh. 

“They both picked up some nasty burns keeping the fire lit for you, buddy, but they’re both recovering well.”

“Burns?”

“I guess you were in really bad shape, that last day.” David says it gently, in a careful way that means he's trying not to cry, and now Shane is trying not to cry too. Something about his dad crying always sets him off. “And the wind was picking up, and it was hard to keep the fire lit, but they knew it was your only chance. So Rozanov and Marleau kept it lit.”

“Heroes,” Yuna says, her eyes glassy. 

“Am I dead?” Shane asks. “Did you just call Ilya Rozanov a hero?”

Yuna laughs again and wipes her eyes. 

“He saved my baby boy. He can chirp you as much as he wants. He can slam you into the boards in every game for the rest of your career. He can even win, let's say, half of your matchups, and I still won't be able to hate him.”

“Oh my god,” Shane says. “I am dead.” But he's smiling, and the constriction in his chest is loosening, and there's this feeling coming over him like everything might, actually, end up okay. “Is he alright? Il- Rozanov?”

“Oh yeah, sweetie, he's doing much better. I don't think they realized the extent of it right away, so he was one of the last to be treated. Him and Marleau both. Stubborn. That's hockey players for you, though. I'm sorry if this is weird, but your father has been going in and sitting with him sometimes, helping him with the doctors and stuff. Marleau has family with him, but Rozanov only had his lovely friend Svetlana, and she had to leave after a few days, so we figured…”

“No, it's not weird. Please.” Shane swallows back a sudden lump in his throat. 

At least he wasn't alone.

Has he seen me?

Does he know I'm okay?

Was he scared?

Is he still scared?

“We figured I'd probably be a better choice. Your mother would just harass him about hockey.”

“I don't know, he'd probably love that.”

“Yes, he would, which I know because I've been sneaking in sometimes when your father is asleep,” Yuna admits, and she laughs at the falsely scandalized gasp from David that means he's known that all along. Shane doesn't think he could smile any wider. 

Even if they can't be open about things, at least now Ilya has met both of Shane's parents. At least his parents like Ilya. Sure, there were probably easier ways to go about achieving that particular goal, but still. Something good came out of all of this. 

“Can, uh. Can you tell him I'm awake?” He scrambles inelegantly for an explanation that won't be suspicious. “He was really good at, like, keeping me from panicking out there. I feel bad I almost went and died on him.”

“He's been very worried about you,” Yuna says, sounding pleased, like of course anyone who knows Shane would be worried about him. She doesn’t notice the way that sentence stabs through his heart. 

“I'll go see if he's up for a visit,” David says happily. “I've been taking him for little walks in the wheelchair. If he's up for it, I can bring him?”

“Maybe we should wait until…” Yuna starts, but Shane stumbles to cut her off.

“No, uh. Please. I want to talk to him.”

He doesn't know how to explain this one, but he probably doesn't have to. His parents are probably just thinking, like, they've been through something crazy together; it's only natural. 

David leaves to head to Ilya’s room, and Shane needs to distract himself so he doesn't spiral too hard or overthink what his face is going to do when he sees Ilya again. He picks up the magazine that David left on his bed, and he skims the article about the crash, but mostly he stares at the picture on the front cover until his eyes water. 

“You guys must have been…I'm really sorry.”

Yuna shakes her head, and she leans in, and she takes his hands in hers.

“You keep apologizing, every time you wake up, and I'll tell you what I have told you every single time: you are my perfect son. My sweet boy. I love you so, so much. You don't have to apologize for anything. You have done nothing wrong, all right?”

He wants to believe her, and so he nods. He looks back down at the paper, at Ilya's arm around him. But Marleau is holding onto him too, and Vaughn is in the corner, asleep but holding on to Scott, and it's normal. It's so normal. It was cold, and they were holding each other, and no one will think it's weird. He breathes out slowly, and he says, “can I keep this?”

“Of course, sweetheart. The article is really nice. Obviously, it was the worst three days of my life, but the outpouring of love for you all was…it was nice to see. I–” 

Yuna is saved from having to power through that sentence despite clearly being about to cry again by a cheery “knock knock!” from David, pushing Ilya around the corner in a wheelchair. 

He's here. He's really here. 

A patch of Ilya’s hair is missing, and his ear is bandaged, and his neck, and his arm. He's wearing a loose black tank top and some sweatpants, so it's not still bad enough after a week that they're keeping him in a hospital gown, but still. He looks awful.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Shane asks. “What did you do, walk into the fire?”

“Excuse me? Asshole? I saved your life,” Ilya replies, but his smile is just as big as Shane’s. It's usually difficult for Shane to tell what Ilya is thinking, but not this time. He can see the relief on Ilya's face. He loves how open he looks, how unguarded. Safe, even with Shane's parents in the room, because no one is going to think it's strange for them to be happy to see each other. Not anymore. “Was not dramatic enough for you to get impaled. Had to start rolling around like a fish and spraying bl…” He seems to recognize that Shane's parents are feeling a little fragile. “Ah, well. I mean, I will save your life anytime, Hollander.”

“Shane,” Shane says. Ilya tilts his head a little.

“Shane,” he agrees. 

Shane doesn't know where he's getting this bravery, but he needs to see Ilya's real face. He needs to hear Ilya's real words. He needs it to just be the two of them. 

“Can I, uh, can I talk to Ilya alone for a second?” he asks. His parents will probably think he has upsetting questions for Ilya, and that he's protecting them by not making them hear the answers. It seems reasonable enough, and he's weirdly not afraid that they won't buy it. He's not afraid of anything. He just wants.

“Of course, son. We'll go grab some coffee,” David says, and he pats Ilya on the shoulder on his way out. Yuna bends down and gives Shane a kiss on the top of the head, and then she hesitates but does the same to Ilya on her way by, and Shane can see the way it sinks into him, like something he's not sure he's allowed to want. 

The second the door is closed behind them, Ilya is lurching out of his wheelchair, hissing in pain but not stopping until he has his hands on Shane's face and is kissing him. His words are all in Russian, but Shane understands the tone of them well enough, and he lets Ilya say what he needs to say. He soaks in it. Ilya kisses him again when he's done, like a man desperate and drowning, and Shane feels surprisingly steady in response. He's just so happy. He didn't know he could be this happy. 

“Okay, okay, don't hurt yourself,” he finally chuckles. 

“Me? I am fine. I don't even need stupid wheelchair. My leg is barely burned. David is, surprise surprise, so much like you. Overprotective.”

“He's a normal amount of protective. Look at you. You're burned to shit.”

“I was being a hero.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yuna and David both said it! Was not my word.”

“Please shut up,” Shane says dopily. He loves the way Ilya is looking at him like he can't believe he's so lucky. He loves the way Ilya moves in closer like he's warmed by the heat of Shane's skin. This is how Shane wants to feel all the time when he looks at him. No more fear. No more worry that Ilya doesn't feel the same. “Listen, I–I need you to know that I love you too. Like, of course I do.”

Ilya pulls back a little bit, eyes wide. Considers. 

“You remember.”

“I remember some things.”

“Vomiting blood on Scott Hunter like a thing in a zombie movie?”

“Uh, no. Great. Thanks for that. But I remember what you said. Don't try to act like you didn't. I'll just get embarrassed, and then I'll tell you to leave, and then maybe I'll see if any other famous actresses want to endure some awful sex with me.”

“Oh, so you think it's funny to torture me after you almost died on me? Very nice. Fine, yes, whatever. I love you. I thought, if you died, I would hate myself for not saying it in English so you could understand me, so.”

“Why are you fucking pouting about it? I literally just told you I love you too. This is supposed to be a nice moment!”

“I thought I would have a chance to do it again, better. You remember nothing else about that day, but you remember this?”

“It was memorable. What can I say?” 

“Well.” Ilya sounds a little mollified at that, and Shane can't help but laugh fondly. 

“I love you so much.”

“Ugh, I love you too. It’s disgusting, how much. Your, ah. Your parents are…nice.”

“Yeah. I'm sorry if they've been…a lot.”

“No. Did I say that? They have been very kind to me.”

“I guess they love you too, now. Overall I’d have probably skipped, you know, this entire thing? But I don't mind that they got to know you without me being weird about it. I probably would have fucked it up if I tried on my own to make them see the real you without, like, exposing everything. I guess maybe we can be friends now? In public, I mean. We went through something together. Maybe it won't be weird if we spend time together.”

Ilya laughs loudly. 

“Okay. Of course this is what you think about right now.”

“What, is it weird?”

“It’s so weird. I don't mind. We can try to be friends. I think the league might like it, actually. They’ve been bragging about how heroic I was, saving my rival’s life. It’s all over Twitter.” 

“I literally refuse to believe that.” 

“I will still destroy you in games.”

“You can fucking try.”

Shane and Ilya, despite both of them complaining about it and trying to push themselves, are pretty definitively told they’re both out for the rest of the season. Ilya’s burns, especially the one on his arm that required some grafts, need more time to heal, and apparently it’s bad for your overall fitness when your bowels get punctured by a metal pipe and then you’re in a medically induced coma for a week. Marleau is better off, and manages to play a few playoff games, but Boston doesn’t make it very far without Ilya anyway. 

Ilya and Marleau make multiple Instagram posts bragging about saving Shane’s life while showing off their recovery pictures. Shane decides it will be funny—and will help them start the whole friends thing—if he likes every picture, but makes sure to comment eyeroll emojis to balance it out. From what his mom keeps telling him, the fans love it. He can see the gears in her head turning every time he interacts on social media with Ilya. A few weeks ago, that scrutiny might have sent him into a panic spiral, but it doesn't, anymore. He knows she's trying to think of ways to capitalize on their “new” “friendship” the way she has always liked to capitalize on the rivalry. Shane lets her. 

Scott Hunter and Carter Vaughn are both somehow fit to go back to playing almost immediately. For the first few weeks after they're released from the hospital—Ilya three days before Shane, which he keeps pointing out, like that means anything—most of their (many) phone calls include at least a little complaining about how the Admirals are going to win the cup only because both of them are out. 

One time, Ilya lets it slip that he and Yuna have been texting about the same  

He always sounds a little wary when he says things like that, at least at first. Worried that Shane will freak out. Worried that he has overstepped, and that even though Shane has told him again and again that he likes him and loves him and cares about him, there will be some unspoken line that he will cross and ruin everything. 

Eventually, he starts to realize that Shane really isn't going to pull a Tuna Meltdown 2.0, and things get easier. Shane’s glad that he doesn’t really have to explain it to him, because he’s not sure he can. It’s not like he’s totally without anxiety about it anymore. It’s not like he always feels completely secure in what they’re doing. It’s just that he looks at Ilya on those facetime calls, and he can see the love in his eyes now, and he doesn’t want to waste any more time.

Ilya’s father dies, and he flies back to Russia, and Shane almost does something stupid like offering to go with him. He hides his panic well, he thinks. He offers support. He tells Ilya please call, or text, any time. Literally any time you want. If I don't answer, call my parents. None of us want you to go through this alone. Ilya thanks him in a quiet voice that means he really appreciates it, and Shane doesn't tell him about how afraid he is, waiting for news that Ilya's plane has landed safely. 

What if it goes down? What if it goes down, and I'm not there to help him the way he helped me?

Somehow, getting on a plane for the first time himself was easier than it is to wait for news from Ilya that he is in Moscow and already annoyed with everyone. Shane closes his eyes and listens to Ilya complain, and he laughs or inserts comments at all the right moments, and he clutches the arm of his chair until he's sure he can breathe steadily again. 

One night, he gets up in the middle of the night to grab a glass of water, and he hears David murmuring into his phone at the kitchen table, and he hears just enough to know that he's talking to Ilya. Shane sneaks back into his room and pulls the pillow over his face because smiling at the ceiling alone in his room feels too embarrassing, somehow. He's just so glad.

He still doesn't sleep right until Ilya is back in Boston, safe. Emotionally wrung out, yes. Raw, yes. A bit bitchy and difficult for a few days, yes. But safe. 

Maybe it's just because he almost died. Well, not “just”. It was a huge deal. But Shane has been the same for years, and he never saw that changing. He's not even entirely different now, but there's a quiet inside him that wasn't there before. He's still afraid of what will happen. He's still nervous. He still has the occasional panic attack. 

But he doesn't worry so much, anymore, about some things. 

He and Ilya arrange to go to a playoff game in New York together, against Seattle. They share a box with Dollard, who elected to retire after his ankle injury. They get an embarrassingly long standing ovation when the jumbotron shows them all sitting together before the start of the game, and Ilya presses a sloppy kiss to the side of Shane's head that makes everyone cheer louder, and Shane doesn't worry. He can feel himself flushing, but he's not afraid. He laughs. Scott and Carter both wave up at them, and the crowd loses their absolute shit, and Shane laughs and claps and just…doesn't mind. He stands up and cheers with the rest when Kamilla comes out to tend to someone on the ice midway through the first period. He has a feeling that the Seattle player went down on purpose, actually. Kamilla looks so embarrassed, hiding her face in her hands, but she waves and smiles too. 

Shane sort of hates, but he also understands, how much people love the story. People have always loved survival stories. They love people beating the odds. They love disasters, tragedies, but they love it even more when there are people who make it out alive. There are memorial services and very public statements about and for the people who died in the crash, but there is an undercurrent of excitement for the people who lived thrumming beneath the whole thing that is probably distasteful. Shane isn't sure he's in a position to be objective about it, though. 

He's read every article. He's watched every video. He's looked at every picture. Of course it changed something in him. He reads the accounts of the other survivors and he sees evidence of love in every action of Ilya's described by the others. The way they casually describe what must have been his desperation as he ran out into the storm to keep the fire going. They have no idea what they've exposed to Shane by saying what they have. Shane loves it. Pores over it. He thinks he would have worried, once, that other people will have seen something in Ilya's face, in his voice, but he doesn't worry now. Of course he loves Ilya, and Ilya loves him back. Ilya is his friend. Ilya saved his life. They were in a fucking plane crash together. What's a hockey rivalry compared to that? No one else has to understand. They couldn’t possibly. 

Hayden helps, because of course he does, because Hayden loves Shane just as much as Shane loves Hayden, and he starts doing small things, little signs that he cosigns the friendship. Following Ilya on Instagram. Liking his tweets. Commenting hearts on pictures that are posted of Shane and Ilya at the Admirals game. Shane is under no delusions that the camaraderie will last; once the next season starts up, he’s sure Ilya will be as big a pain in their asses as he always is, and Shane is prepared to deal with that. He’s looking forward to it! But in the meantime, it’s just…nice. It would be nice if he could eventually share more of himself with his best friend, and he's less terrified of the prospect than he used to be. He imagines he and Ilya going to visit Hayden and Jackie and the kids. He imagines just…getting to live his life. Openly, in a way, even if most people don't need to know the whole of it yet. 

Rose sends him the picture of the rescue, a few weeks after he's out of the hospital and their texting has gone back to normal and isn't just Rose being gratifyingly happy he's still alive. She has cropped out everyone except he and Ilya, and she sends it with a single raised eyebrow emoji, and he sends back a shrug. After that, she's helpful, too. It's nice to have someone to talk about Ilya with, and it's nice that Ilya and Rose have been interacting a little bit on Instagram and Twitter. Validating his “new” “friendship” with Ilya. Making it seem more legit.

Shane invites Ilya to visit him for a few weeks, since he doesn’t want to go back to Russia. 

“It’s not weird, right?” he asks, on the phone. “Just two dudes hanging out in a very private cottage together?” 

“Maybe we are just fishing buddies,” Ilya jokes. He looks nervous, on the call, but when he nods, it’s a firm nod, and his smile is bright and warm. “Yes, okay. I will come.” 

Shane has to tell his parents, because they’ve been helping him with his recovery, and he’s hoping that having a “friend” at the cottage with him will mean they hover a little less. Yuna seems embarrassingly pleased for him in a way that reminds him of her eagerness when he told her about the first time Hayden invited him over for dinner. Like, he’s not that friendless! 

In her excitement, she suggests that they get together and watch game six of the cup final before Shane and Ilya head out to the cottage. She’s positive that it’s Scott Hunter’s year. She won’t say it aloud, but Shane knows that she wants to watch one of the men who saved her son’s life win the cup with another man who saved her son’s life sitting on her couch, and he’s been sort of weak to giving his parents anything they want, since he’s been back. He still feels bad for scaring them. 

So he says he’ll ask Ilya about it, and he tries to decide if it’s something he wants or not. Ilya, warm and soft in his parents’ living room. Won’t it be so obvious? Will Shane be able to look at him without wanting to immediately jump him? Ilya probably won’t want to do it anyway. 

But Ilya agrees, and Shane would have to be a lot more oblivious than he is not to pick up on the hesitantly eager way he says it. 

“Are you sure you’re okay with it?” he asks once, and Shane’s heart cracks just a little, because he knows that Ilya still isn’t completely sure with him. Not sure how much he’s allowed to reach for and want and take. Afraid of being rejected again. Shane knows only time and consistent effort can fix that, but he still feels sorry, and he still wishes he could be better at proving himself. He wishes that Ilya could feel as confident about Shane’s love as Shane feels about Ilya’s. 

He can survive a few hours sitting next to Ilya on the couch without touching him, he thinks. It will make his parents happy, and it will make Ilya happy, and he knows that when he can stop overthinking about it, it will make him happy, too.  

His arm is still in a cast, and his scar is still pretty disgusting, but he’s getting better every day, and he’s almost back up to his pre-crash fitness levels. He just wants to go back to normal. He just wants Ilya. He wants Ilya to fuck him, and be mean to him, and not treat him like porcelain. He wants Ilya to remember that he's still him, and that he's alive, and that he's not going to die on him anytime soon. He figures they might as well do that after watching Scott Hunter unfortunately win the cup, because it'll probably make Ilya angry in the same thrilling way he gets angry when the Metros beat him, and Shane can, occasionally, use his overthinking skills for good. 

Ilya is too careful when they first get to the Hollander house, after Shane picks him up from the airport. Yuna and David both hug him, thank him again for saving Shane's life. Ilya’s speaking gets more stilted as he gets more uncomfortable, like he's tensing up, trying not to show even Shane how much he enjoys their attentions, but Shane understands him better now, and understands how lonely he has been, and so he does what he can to welcome him. Make him feel normal, comfortable. Make fun of him about how the hair that burned off grew back white, even though he's told Ilya privately that it's like the sexiest thing he's ever seen. Ilya mocks him right back until he's more loose, and he flops next to Shane on the couch, and he even leans his shoulder into him, and Shane doesn't tense, or pull away. 

Does he watch his parents for a reaction? Sure, of course. He's not going to change overnight. But he died out there, apparently, in that helicopter. Three times. And he could have died in that plane. And if did die, he would have died without any of the most important people in his life knowing that another important person was there, all along, hiding in the background. It's intolerable to him to think of what would have happened then. Can he really be happy, hiding his love forever? He doesn't think so.

They fight over a bowl of popcorn like idiots until Yuna chides them to relax. She says it’s like they’re teenagers again, like Shane and his friends having sleepovers, and Ilya laughs only an appropriate amount at that comment, though he gifts Shane with a pointed look afterward that makes Shane shove him with his shoulder. David says he's glad they're friends now, because clearly they have a lot in common. Yuna starts spitballing about advertising campaign ideas that will sell them being friends instead of rivals. Shane almost tells her to stop, but Ilya seems intrigued, and so he lets them talk. He watches them fondly as they start getting more into it. David catches his eye and shakes his head with a smile that matches his own. 

And then.

And then the Admirals win the cup, and Scott Hunter kisses a man in the middle of the ice, and Shane's heart thumps loudly in his chest, and the crowd is chanting Hun-ter, Hun-ter, Hun-ter. Their plane crash hero, the man who just won them their cup, is kissing a man on the ice, and they are cheering for him. Sure, maybe there are a few boos. Maybe there are a few horrible people in the crowd. 

But they are drowned out, overwhelmed completely by the love. Shane can’t hear them. 

The announcers are giddy. Good for Scott Hunter! is said with so much eagerness. 

He steals a look at his parents. They’re staring at the TV, mouths open in shock, but they don't look mad, or disgusted. There’s a hint of a smile on his dad’s face. He looks to his other side, to Ilya. Ilya is sitting forward, elbows on his knees, and his jaw is clenched with something hungry, or maybe annoyed.

Oh my god, is he annoyed that Scott did it first?

Ilya glances at him, eyes traveling quickly to Shane's parents to make sure they're still distracted before he feels safe enough to look back at Shane and quirk his lips up in a tiny, private smile. Small, hidden. And Shane is so pent up inside, in his heart, so tired of tucking away his emotions, so tired of feeling so guilty and so hurt and so tired of wanting to apologize for worrying everyone. He wants to be brave. He can't be brave like Scott Hunter, not yet. But this? Can't he be brave about this? It's just his parents. They love him. 

“Hey, so, uh,” he says, hardly able to believe he's doing it. His eyes are still on Ilya's, and Ilya looks concerned, looks disbelieving, but then he nods once, encouraging. He looks even hungrier, the way he sometimes looks before the games they play against each other, like he knows that no matter what happens during it, he'll have Shane at the end of it. Shane knows he's making the right choice. “I think we want to tell you guys something.”

Chapter End Notes

realizing now that I wrote 30k to essentially give Shane some agency over when he comes out to his parents lmao. but I also like to think that this would change a lot going forward, because luckily for both Shane and Ilya his give a fuck meter is permanently broken now