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

Additional Tags:

Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Except everyone is wrong and they're not really suicidal thoughts, But it's referenced so fair warning, POV Shane Hollander, So as always Ilya is having a worse time off page, Bc that's all I write for these two I guess!!!, Getting Back Together, i mean i guess i should also tag, Post-Break Up, Hayden accidentally blowing up Shane's spot again in a fun new way, I should also add: mix of show and book, Yes I am once again including only the sex condo, Post Tampa no Injury AU

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-18 Words: 7,540 Chapters: 1/1

all is (only temporarily) lost

Summary

It's embarrassing enough that Shane wanders off his hiking trail and goes missing for two days, but thanks to Hayden's big mouth, everyone knows he was recently dumped, and they have a lot of wrong opinions about why Shane disappeared.

Notes

I wrote most of this weeks ago, completely forgot about it, and then rediscovered it like unearthing a treasure deep in my gdoc lmao. I've been working hard on a cowboy fic that's probably getting to an unreasonable length, but I figured I would finish this and post it in the meantime!

Later, when Shane tries to explain the sequence of events to everyone in his life, he will do so blandly, like he wasn’t experiencing any emotions at the time. He obviously knows what it looks like, and he wants to reassure everyone that it’s not what it looks like, and that it was a stupid accident, and so he sanitizes it, makes it sound like a silly little gaffe.

It's the timing that's most of the problem. If he’d gotten lost when he was at the cottage, that would have been okay. People know he's out of contact when he's at the cottage sometimes. Two days is nothing. 

But it was before he went to the cottage, and he told his parents and Hayden that he was hiking, a whole day thing where he'd drive into the fucking wilderness and follow a well trod trail and be back by dinner. 

Except he left the well trod trail and, fine, he left the trail by accident because he was crying a bit and feeling sorry for himself. But feeling sorry for himself in the privacy of the woods was why he was on a fucking nature walk in the first place, so obviously he was crying. He'd been dumped by the first and only person he'd ever loved and his team was now out of the playoffs, at least in part because of his fucking abysmal post-dumping performance. And then Ilya had the fucking gall to chirp him about it in a text, something like I didn't mean for you to forget how to play hockey, and so Shane had blocked him without a response, knowing that that would be worse than anything Shane could think of to say in reply, and then he'd gotten sick of pouting around Montreal and was too sad to leave for the cottage early, knowing that it might be difficult to go there this summer especially, when his plan had been to ask Ilya to stay with him for some of it. 

So: the hike. The tears. Then suddenly he was looking around and realizing he was no longer on the real path. He was on a deer run or something, and he tried to find his way back to the trail, but nothing looked familiar, and by the time the sun went down, he figured it would be safer to just curl up in a bush and go to sleep rather than trying to wander around more in the dark.

The next day was a lot of walking in what he thought was the right direction, and then he finally found a stream that he followed to a larger river. He followed it down, figuring it would have to empty out into something, and he found another bush to sleep in that night. He was lucky it was warm at night, lucky he'd brought layers even though he’d been sure he was overpacking. His phone had no signal and he ran out of food to eat by the second night, but that was okay. He actually wasn't even all that worried about it. 

It was just so fucking stupid to get lost in the woods because he was crying about being dumped. It was humiliating. He passed the time on that last day coming up with various explanations for why he left the trail without making him sound like the kind of inexperienced hiker who loses a trail, and then he found a road and started following it, and it was only an hour or so before a ranger drove up with a big smile and announced that the entire world was looking for him. 

 

---

 

And so they’re in the car together, Shane and the ranger. The ranger’s name is Leo, and he’s friendly, which is nice at first, after two days with only his self-loathing for company, but it quickly makes Shane remember why he fucked off into the woods in the first place instead of getting drunk with Hayden and JJ, which probably would have been a healthier breakup choice. But Shane’s feeling like a fucking asshole for getting lost in the woods for two days, and so he’s more patient with Leo than he wants to be. Smiles and nods and says things like “yeah, definitely, man” to all of Leo’s half-baked opinions about what the Metros need to do to win next season. He watches his phone anxiously as it continues to charge in his lap, and then finally gets enough signal for his notifications to start rolling in. 

“Jesus,” he says, jolting at the sounds. Leo laughs, incredulous, and Shane quickly silences it. There are so many fucking texts, so many calls, so many voicemails, and news alerts for his own name, and emails. Guys he's barely ever spoken to in the league texting, like, hey, heard you're missing. Is that true? Guys from his own team saying hey, your mom said she can't get you on the phone, are you okay? Like he'd text some random d-man who's like a slur thesaurus on the ice when he's not answering his mom. 

“Popular guy,” Leo says brightly. “We’re almost to the staging area, don’t worry.” 

“Staging area?” Shane asks, scrolling through his contacts to get to his mother. 

“Yeah, where they’ve got the search party operating out of,” Leo replies. Shane drops his phone into his lap and has to box breathe around the panic that's threatening to explode into a full-fledged attack. Which is stupid, by the way! He just survived two days in the woods with a baseline emotion of inconvenienced, and he's only panicking now?

“Oh my fucking god,” he groans. “I’m never going to live this down.” 

“Hey, man, a lot of people are really worried about you. Once everyone found out you got dumped…” 

Shane almost orders Leo to stop the car so he can fuck off back into the woods, for forever this time. He picks up his phone and googles his own name, hands shaking, breath coming faster and shallower. There’s no fucking way. There’s no fucking way he was missing for two days and somehow everyone found out not only that he’d been getting fucked by Ilya Rozanov but that he apparently hadn’t been good enough to keep around. Shane will seize the wheel and run this car off the road and into a tree to avoid having to face that. 

He finds the information he was looking for quickly enough, and then he can breathe again, because, thank god, it was just Hayden being an idiot, being overheard telling someone (hopefully not Shane’s fucking parents) that he thought Shane had been dumped, and was worried that he hadn’t been in a great headspace when he decided to drive out into the middle of nowhere and go for a long walk by himself. Which, like, no shit, Hayden. But Hayden doesn’t know anything, and mostly the headlines are blaming Rose for breaking up with him and acting like no one in their right mind would ever dump Shane Hollander so brutally that the world would have to spend two days believing he might have gone into the woods on purpose to die. Shane considers unblocking Ilya just to send the headline with “yeah, see, fucking idiot”, but not with any real intention. Ideally, Ilya is already back in Russia, and has been avoiding all Shane Hollander news with the same religious fervor with which Shane has been avoiding Ilya Rozanov news, and by the time the tale reaches him, Shane will have already released a statement with a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this that doesn’t make him sound like a sad Victorian ghost wailing his way into the wilderness. 

 

---

 

It would be more grandly romantic, probably, if the first person Shane saw when they pulled into the parking lot of the staging area was Ilya, standing triumphantly at the trailhead, waiting to really compound the abject humiliation of his most recent dumpee, but it’s not Ilya. It’s fucking Cliff Marleau, his arm around Shane's mother's shoulders as they speak to a local reporter. Yuna and Marleau are looking very chummy, elated, because Shane did eventually get his mom on the phone to tell her that he was fine. They're probably going to want him to join them, show the reunions on the news so everyone can gawk at the loser who got lost and almost literally died of a broken heart and/or exposure. Fucking great. Also why the fuck is Marleau here? Why's he wearing an apron that says Shane Hollander Search Party BBQ on it? Is he fucking grilling for the search party? When people thought Shane was dead out there? For real? Shane thinks he might be seconds from a full fledged break from reality. 

“Uh,” he says. 

“I told you, man,” Leo says. “The whole world was freaking out. You got guys from five different teams here, and I heard a bunch of Admirals were supposed to fly up tomorrow to join in the search! Kind of disappointed I won't get to meet them now, actually.” 

“I bet,” Shane says, distracted, because if Marleau is here... 

People are streaming off the trail, returning to the staging area. They must have been called back and asked to turn around as soon as Shane got back in touch. There are more reporters clustered around the trailhead, looking for quotes. No one has noticed Shane in Leo’s truck yet, thank god. He wants at least another couple of seconds to see if he can spot…

Great. There he is.

Ilya. 

Ilya’s coming off the trail, shrugging out of his backpack, looking unfairly attractive in a black tank top, with sweat glistening on his arms and everything. Fuck you you fucking asshole, Shane wants to say, and wants to mean it. Now everyone’s going to want him to say nice things about Ilya in the press. Like oh, wow, what a nice guy, coming all this way to join the search party, and how nice of him to bring what looks like at least half the Raiders roster, probably so that no one would think it was weird that he was coming all this way to join what looks like a hilariously oversized search party for his rival. 

“Can you drive me back and drop me off in the woods again?” Shane asks. Leo only laughs at him. 

 

---

 

When Shane finally gets out of the truck, it’s his mother who spots him first, but it’s Hayden who reaches him first, sprinting straight off the trail and flinging himself at Shane. Jackie is like three steps behind, and Shane is quickly smothered between them, and he could probably stay there forever, both because it’s just nice and also because staying there forever would mean he doesn’t have to face anyone else. Jackie keeps pushing his hair out of his face gently in a move he’s seen her do to the twins a million times, and Hayden keeps saying “hey bud, you’re all right bud”, which is something he says when one of the kids is mildly hurt and crying about it. Shane would love to feel self-righteous and adult about this, pull back and snap I’m a grown man, but he sinks into it, instead. Maybe drinking with Hayden and JJ would have been the right call. 

Speaking of JJ: he bounds up a few seconds later and launches himself into the hug. Shane allows himself to enjoy it for a full five seconds, but then he has to pull back and greet his mother, who is steadily powerwalking over to him, and who pulls him into the most bone-breaking hug of all when she gets there.

Shane grits his teeth and gets through the next twenty-five minutes on the power of media training alone. He disassociates his way into a successfully aw shucks demeanor, rubbing the back of his neck, blushing, embarrassed but in a funny way about his mishap. Jokes about how they’re going to revoke his citizenship. Jokes about how he’s going to have to be traded to LA, because that's the least Canadian wilderness place he can think of in the moment. Regrets that joke immediately, because he can see the news anchor gearing up start asking about the Rose thing, but Yuna heads that off beautifully by gushing about the response from the hockey community. She gestures to Ilya and what looks like a bunch of Metros and Raiders and Guardians and Centaurs, thanking them for coming out. Shane smiles at them woodenly, acts touched to have them all wanting to help him, and as he addresses them, his eyes skim over Ilya only as much as they are skimming over everyone else. He doesn’t notice that Ilya is trying to maintain eye contact, or at least he pretends not to notice, for his own sake. 

There is an awkward moment where the reporters want shots of the Metros and the Raiders hoisting Shane up on their shoulders between the two teams, as if they were the ones who found him. Shane submits to it, because he might as well let this play out to its full, terrible potential, and Ilya and Hayden lift him up while the others surround him, and everyone pretends to be having a great time, and his arm is around Ilya's shoulders, and Ilya's hand is on his ass, and this is all perfectly fine, because Shane has achieved a state of anxiety so evolved that he doesn't feel anything at all. 

He just wants to go home, but they load him into the back of an ambulance, and the last person he sees before they go is Ilya, standing across the parking lot and watching him, face unsmiling. Shane can only breathe again when the doors are closed. 

 

---

 

They take him to the hospital, because apparently this humiliation ritual must continue. He feels so fucking stupid. 

“Is everyone making fun of me?” he asks his mother miserably, as soon as the nurse steps out of his private room for a second, after hooking him up to some fluids. The doctor is supposed to come in in a few minutes, and will hopefully just look Shane over and agree that he’s fine, just a little tired, a lot embarrassed, and dehydrated. He’s barely even hungry. 

“No, sweetie. Everyone’s really relieved that you’re okay,” Yuna says gently, reaching over and squeezing his knee hard enough that it reminds Shane that she’s one of the people who spent the last two days being scared for him. 

“I’m really sorry,” he says. “I don’t know how it happened. I just got distracted, I know I should have known better.” 

Yuna hesitates, waits, and Shane listens to the ticking of the clock and hates everything, because he knows what she’s going to ask, and he doesn’t want to lie. 

“Hayden said…” 

“I know what Hayden said,” Shane interrupts dully. “But I didn’t do it on purpose, okay? Not even a little. I was…yeah. Hayden’s right. I did get…dumped, I guess. It wasn’t even anything. It was just…I don’t know. Casual. And I thought it was getting less casual, but then I was wrong. And it’s over. Okay? We don’t need to talk about it. I just need you to know that I didn’t do it on purpose. I was probably distracted because I was upset, sure. But I didn’t…” 

“Okay, okay, sweetheart,” Yuna says softly. They sit in silence for a little bit, Yuna tapping away at her phone, occasionally saying things like your father is on his way now, he was miles up on the trail looking for you, and you’ll have your choice of venues to do an interview, when you’re ready. You did a really good job with those cameras back there. Shane nods and disassociates and politely thanks the doctor for finally showing up and clearing him, saying exactly what Shane had expected, because he’s fine! He’s fine. He’s a little dehydrated and a lot humiliated, and he didn’t walk into the woods to die, but now he kind of wants to, because he feels so fucking pathetic. 

His mom gets someone to show them the way to some side exit where they can make their escape without the cameras, and David meets them out there, so Shane has to do the whole hugging and crying thing again, apologizing again for being such a fucking loser, and his parents take him back to his apartment, and they both look at him like he imagines they probably looked at him when they brought him home from the hospital for the first time. Like what the fuck do we do with this giant crying baby? 

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” he grinds out through gritted teeth. David looks startled enough that Shane knows he was right to suspect that was a consideration. “I got lost.” 

“We know, sweetheart,” Yuna says, cutting a look at David. 

“I can see you looking at each other,” Shane points out, laughing at the absurdity of it, suddenly, abruptly tired. “Guys, seriously. I’m fine. I just wanted to go for a walk. I got lost. I know it was stupid, but it was an accident. I promise, okay? I promise. Hayden was being dramatic.” 

“Okay.” Yuna looks a little more ready to believe him now, but he knows she’s still going to take a while to get over it. That’s fine. He can live with that. He knows he doesn't make it easy for people to care about him. He gets prickly and standoffish when they try. Probably that's part of why Ilya thought it wasn't worth the risk anymore, but there's no point in thinking like that. 

 

---

 

The night passes embarrassingly. Shane feels like a kid again, not helped by David insisting that they all get into pajamas and watch a Christmas movie together, complete with hot cocoa, despite it being fucking July. 

Shane lets it happen not because he wants to, but because he can tell that his dad needs it, and, okay, maybe it’s nice to be coddled a little bit. Definitely nicer than sleeping in a bush, anyway. 

In the morning, he endures a sit-down interview with a local news channel where he once again expresses his deep and sincere gratitude for everyone who helped try to find him, apologizing for getting lost, and warning people to pay attention to the trail markers. Afterward, he tells his mother that that’s the last time he’s talking about it, and he watches her tap away at her phone, probably canceling like five other interviews she’d set up. 

Hayden and Jackie and the kids pop in for a visit, and then JJ, and then a few of his other teammates. It’s probably especially awkward because Shane is fine, technically. Slightly dehydrated. Everyone spent two days imagining him as some tragic lovesick fool, or at least as someone with an injury severe enough to keep him from getting out of the woods under his own power, and then the anticlimactic truth was that he got lost! Just lost! Like a child wandering away from his mom at the fucking mall! 

And now they’re still afraid for him, concerned about him, and he’s acting his fucking ass off, trying to convince them all that he’s fine, probably looking like he's manic in the process. But he is fine! He’s brokenhearted, but in a very normal way! Why doesn’t anyone believe him? Why can't people be temporarily sad in the same way he was temporarily lost in the woods? Why does it have to be a big deal?

“You've never had anyone like Lily in your life before. Even Rose never seemed…” Hayden shrugs, looks away. “so when you disappeared, I guess we just worried…” 

“It wasn't that,” Shane insists, trying not to sound desperate. He figures he will eventually reach a point where he has become so embarrassed that he tips over the embarrassment event horizon, and then he will stop. He's not there yet, though. “I was just sad. Normal sad.”

He keeps saying it to everyone. Normal sad. And it's stupid because it doesn't even really feel true. He doesn't feel normal sad. He feels completely heartbroken, and he feels like a fucking liar, trying to convince everyone that he's fine, because he's not. He wants to be able to talk to Hayden about it. He wants to rage about how fucking unfair it was of Ilya to break it off the way he did, talking all calm and steady and dry-eyed, like he was just repeating facts that he thought Shane would understand, even though Shane didn't understand and didn't agree. He wants Hayden to listen and comisserate and say stupid shit like “damn, that's crazy”, and he wants him to not get bogged down in the gay thing or the Rozanov thing, but he knows that he wouldn't get two sentences into it before Hayden was freaking out about one or both of those things. And it's not fair! It's not fucking fair. 

It takes three days for his parents to feel okay enough to leave and head back home, and he spends those three days feeling trapped and hot and wavering between telling them everything and continuing to take it to his grave. Why bother coming out, if there's no one to come out for? Who cares if he's gay? He'd rather be straight and lonely than gay and lonely, because at least the first one will be easier, and if he's going to be lonely anyway, why not choose the softer path? His parents love him. He knows they would support him. They both sent him very nice, excited messages when Scott Hunter kissed his boyfriend on the ice at the Stanley Cup final, and Shane really had appreciated it, even if his cracked heart had been too busy trying to shatter to give them the response they were probably hoping for. If anything, his parents probably worry he might be homophobic himself, after his tepid reaction. Which is great. 

They both hug him tight at the front door and apologize for smothering him. He tells them that he doesn't mind, which is even mostly true. The good news is that he thinks they do believe him now about this whole thing being an accident, which means he's doing a good job of pretending to be Normal Sad.

“Did you ever reach out to Rozanov?” his mother asks, and the tenuous hold he has been keeping over his emotions shatters completely, and he hauls back from her embrace, looks at her incredulously. 

“What? Why would I…? What?” he stammers. His mother looks at him with just as much bafflement. 

“Was he lying to me? That motherfucker,” she says.

“Uh,” Shane replies. 

“He said you were friends! He said you let him stay at your investment property sometimes when he's in town? I think he's still there now. I swear, I didn't let him in. He had the code and everything! He reached out and asked if I'd checked there, because he wasn't sure if I knew about it, and then I figured it was okay to let him stay there when he came up to help.” 

Shane's heart is doing some complicated things in his chest, but he hasn't made it this long in his career in the MLH as a closeted gay athlete by being easy to rattle, at least outwardly. So he breathes through his initial horror, listens to his mother's words, and controls himself. 

“Oh,” he says. “Okay. Yeah, no, he wasn't lying. I just didn't think…uh. I forgot he was there. At the staging area. It's been kind of a shitty few days.”

“Okay,” Yuna says. “You're sure it's okay? Your dad and I can stop by and kick him out, if you want.”

“He’s probably not still there,” Shane says. “But thank you, no. He wasn't lying. We're, uh, friendly. I mean the whole rivalry thing is just a marketing tactic. He's just a guy. And I'm just a guy. We can be friends.” Great, now his mom is looking at him like she's going to try and figure out how to stay longer, because he keeps babbling. “I'll swing by later and see if he's there. It's not a big deal.”

“Okay,” Yuna says gently, in this tone she uses when she thinks he's being difficult but doesn't want to be difficult herself, so she's deciding to let it go. Shane uses the same tone, so it's especially annoying when they use it against each other. 

His parents extract promises from him that he'll keep them posted when he decides to head up to his cottage; they're heading to their own place at the end of the week. He promises he won't be going on any more hikes, and will stick to runs in the local parks. There's this attitude like maybe his parents are already moving on to the ‘laughing about it' phase, which is ideal. Shane might not be there ever. He keeps thinking about how scared Hayden had looked, and the fierceness of Jackie's hug, and the desperate way JJ came running. He shouldn't have retreated so much into himself before the hike. Of course they were worried about him. He was being worrying!

He thinks, too, about the way Ilya had been looking at him in the parking lot. Impossible to read, or maybe it's just that Shane isn't very good at it. He thought they were doing really well until that last game, after all. Thought they were on the same page until Ilya came to his apartment, barely stepped through the front door, dodged Shane's attempted kiss, and said that he didn't want to be with Shane anymore. 

He can't think about that, though. He supposes he should unblock Ilya and thank him for helping, or whatever. It's sort of nice that he showed up and brought half his team. But any potential nice feeling fades when Shane’s mean little inner voice reminds him that Ilya probably just felt guilty. 

Probably assumed, like everyone else, when he heard about Hayden's comment, that Shane had wandered into the woods in a brokenhearted fugue state to die in private like a sick cat. 

And then Shane is angry, because fuck Ilya for thinking that. Fuck Ilya for feeling guilty. Fuck Ilya for not just fucking off to Russia, leaving Shane to his own business. Fuck Ilya for reaching out to his mom and asking about the investment property. Did he really think he'd broken Shane's heart enough that Shane retreated to his fucking sex condo to kill himself? Jesus fucking Christ, the fucking nerve of that. 

He grabs his keys, and he drives to the investment property, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He storms into the condo and then scowls even deeper when it's empty. He checks every room, and he can see some signs that Ilya was here, but of course Ilya couldn't even have left a mess that Shane could be self-righteously angry about. There are some dishes drying in the rack, and the kitchen towel has been placed on top of the washing machine, and the bed has clearly been slept in, but remade. Shane reaches for his phone to unblock Ilya, then stops himself again. Sits on the edge of the bed and then does the most pathetic thing yet and crawls back to the head of it, sinking into the pillows, sniffing tentatively, unable to believe himself even as he does it. There is a lingering scent of Ilya there, on the pillowcase, and Shane can't decide if he wants to strip the case and bring it home with him or if he wants to strip the bed and wash the sheets to save him the trouble of holding on to a thing that's going to fade eventually. Might as well cut the yearning off at the knees. 

He settles on neither, and he leaves the condo and drives back home still filled with anger, with nowhere to put it, and he's storming across the parking garage when he sees the familiar glow of the end of a cigarette, and he takes in Ilya huddled by the door, smoking, wearing a backwards baseball cap to hide his hair and a thoughtful expression as he watches Shane approach. Shane freezes. Would it be too stupid to turn around and sprint away? Yes. So he keeps walking, but he's not happy about it. 

“If we're doing this, we might as well be inside,” he complains, and Ilya detaches from the wall and follows him. 

Safely in Shane's apartment, it feels wretchedly awkward, with Ilya just watching him, waiting for something. It makes Shane angry again, which is actually a relief. He's tired of being sad. At least anger feels like it can help cleanse him of the sadness. like there's a point to it. What's the point of being sad? What does it accomplish except making him feel like a fucking idiot for thinking he could have more? That they both wanted it enough to deal with the risk?

Shane considers offering a drink, because it seems polite, but that just makes him angrier at himself, because he's still trying to be the bigger person here, and he can't do it anymore. Does Ilya really not understand how fucking humiliating it feels? To reach and push and try to make up for his mistakes, and to be accepted, and desired, and then dropped and told it was nothing? It's not like Ilya had been cruel during that conversation, but it was almost worse that he hadn't been. He'd just been a brick wall, instead. Just a void of emotion, all logical and unyielding in the face of Shane's teary-eyed disbelief. 

Shane puts the kitchen island between them, needing to. He grinds the knuckles of his fists into the surface. Cool and hard and comforting. He does his best to divorce himself from his body, from his tone. He just needs to survive this conversation, and then he can be alone, finally, and then he can do whatever he wants. Anything. It's the summer, and he'll be free, and he can survive one awkward, painful conversation for as long as he has to, knowing that there's freedom on the other side. 

“I didn't try to kill myself,” he says. He's almost impressed with himself for how flat it sounds. He doesn't quite meet Ilya's eyes, opting for the middle of his forehead, because he doesn't want to look petulant, and he thinks if he stares down at his hands, he will. Or like he's ashamed, or like he's lying. And he's not either of those things, really. He's embarrassed, but that's not the same thing as ashamed. Ilya doesn't say anything, just watches Shane warily from near the front door, like he can't wait to get out of here. Well, fuck him. Shane has nothing else to say anyway. He turns around and opens the fridge, looks through it at a falsely leisurely pace, finally pulls out a can of ginger ale as if that wasn't what he went into the fridge to get in the first place. Now it's starting to feel a little performative, but oh well. He cracks the can open, finally meets Ilya's eyes and raises one eyebrow as if to say your turn.

“Okay,” Ilya sighs. He drifts a little closer, hands still shoved into his pockets. “I just…”

But he doesn't finish, mouth twisting unhappily, and Shane thinks of how fucking incredible it felt to hold him in Tampa, when Ilya was crying. How beautiful to be given a gift of trust like that. He'd been nearly giddy at the thought that he'd get to do it again and again. This deep well of affection bursting forth from within him. He wanted to open car doors for Ilya and brush his hair back from his forehead and bestow kisses in its place, and he wanted to bring an extra sweatshirt in the backseat of the car for if Ilya got cold, and he wanted Ilya to say wow, you always are so prepared, as Shane pulled out the giant first aid kit he keeps in his car. He still wants those things. Even though he's the one who had his heart broken, he still wants to cover Ilya, and protect him, and help him. He's so pathetic. 

“It was just a hike,” he says, keeping his voice flat and calm, almost conciliatory, as if he did something wrong, which annoys him. “I got distracted, and I got lost, and it's fucking embarrassing, but I'm fine. And it wasn't on purpose. That was a misunderstanding. Thank you for coming up to help. I know my mom appreciated it.” God, he sounds like the hockey robot the media accuses him of being sometimes. He's often had the thought that people would combust if they understood how much raw emotion Shane is hiding at all times beneath his blank facade. He doesn't think they'd be able to handle it. 

Ilya certainly looks like he can't handle it. His frown gets more aggressive, and he raises one foot slightly as if he's about to pivot to leave, but then lowers it again, looking irritated. 

“I have tried to text you,” he says, voice clipped and eyes fiery. “A million times.”

“Okay, well, you're blocked,” Shane says. “I don't think that's unfair of me.”

“Maybe not,” Ilya admits, shoulders going up to his ears just briefly, as if he has gotten a chill. “But I was not fair either, and I was hoping I could talk to you, next season. Get you to unblock me again. And then you went missing, and I thought, I don't know, maybe I missed my chance. Maybe you were gone.”

“No, just walking in the wrong direction like a fucking moron,” Shane says. Makes sure to emphasize: “by accident.”

“Okay, so can we talk?” Ilya presses, looking about as annoyed as Shane feels. 

“Say whatever you need to say,” Shane replies, which feels appropriately bland and pleasant without being overly chippy and without sounding sarcastic. Maybe he should be sarcastic. Maybe he should just let all of his emotions out. Maybe tell Ilya to fuck off. Instead, he waits, and Ilya hesitates, and then inches towards the kitchen island, and he pulls himself into one of the seats there, and then he sucks in a sharp breath between his teeth, looking unnerved. He looks into Shane's eyes, gaze flicking over him, like he's trying to decide if Shane can handle whatever the truth is. Shane hopes he's doing a good job of looking blank and unimpressed, but he knows he probably looks like a mess. His dad used to tell him, growing up, that his eyes always showed his true emotions, that they were so expressive, that he was terrible at controlling them. He'd meant it as a good thing, but Shane knows it's probably a weakness, especially around someone who has known him as long as Ilya has. 

Ilya nods a few times, gearing himself up, and then he finally takes his hands out of his pockets and lays them on the counter, flat. 

“I made a mistake,” he says. Shane bites back a sigh that probably would have been rude or aggressive. “What I said…I was not…I was thinking only of the things that could go wrong. I thought it made sense to end things before we could get too deep, but…” another long, searching look. “I think, maybe, it was always a stupid idea, because we are in too deep already.”

“Yeah, no shit, dickhead,” Shane says, which might not be the most romantic or well thought out response, but he can't help it. He's so fucking mad.

“I thought I was helping both of us.”

“Well? Did it help you?”

“No,” Ilya admits. “I have felt awful. Every day.”

“Okay,” Shane says, because he can't think of how else to respond. Sorry to hear that? Yeah right. He's glad, actually. Since he's been suffering for the last few weeks, at least he wasn't the only one. But Ilya is looking at him with wide-open hurt, and even if those wounds were self-inflicted, it does pain Shane to see it. “It sucked for me too, obviously. Even before I got lost. Are you going somewhere with this? Because if you’re just trying to talk me into feeling better about it ..”

“No,” Ilya says quickly. “The opposite, I think. I want to take it back.”

And it's, look, it's not that Shane isn't annoyed with himself for immediately thinking oh thank god, but he's a simple man, and he has been hurting for weeks. 

“Um. I feel like I should make you work for it a little more,” he says. He laughs a little. “I don't know, it was kind of a dick move.”

“I know it was,” Ilya says. He runs his fingers through his hair with one hand, tugging on a curl a little bit as if to ground himself. “Believe me. I know it was stupid. I am used to, I think, assuming that everything will go bad, all the time. Usually, it does. For me. So I thought I would, uh, make the bad thing happen, I guess, instead of waiting. And then I saw fucking Scott Hunter win his stupid fucking cup, and I thought maybe the bad thing doesn't have to happen. Maybe we can just, I don't know. Try to make it stay a good thing for as long as possible?” He looks at Shane like he's expecting Shane to call him an idiot again. Maybe Shane would, if he wasn't so fucking happy. 

“So, uh, I went on the hike because I was going to ask you to come with me to my cottage for a little bit this summer? And when you told me you didn't want this anymore, I figured it might be, uh, weird? To go there alone. Because I had been thinking about you being there, I guess. Whatever. It really was an accident, though. I was a normal amount of sad.”

Ilya cracks a grin at that, this reluctant slice of it, like he can't help himself. 

“Mm, me too. Very normal amounts of sad.”

“And I wandered off the trail because I was too busy sulking,” Shane offers. Ilya's smile grows a little wider, at that. 

“I drank myself to sleep the night of the cup final because you did not unblock me. I kept trying to call you. I had to hide my phone from Sveta because she kept saying my Jane would never take me back if I was so pathetic.”

“Oh good, so you're a loser too.”

“When it comes to you? Yes. Apparently. You were not lying? About the accident?”

“I wasn't lying,” Shane promises, lowering his voice. “I was supposed to be home by dinner. I was planning to be. I had to sleep in a bush and walk constantly for two straight days because I’m stupid. I hate that people think it was something other than that. It was embarrassing enough without everyone treating me like I need to be wrapped in bubble wrap, okay?” 

“Okay,” Ilya breathes out. He raps his knuckles against the surface of the counter, looking down at it, for a few seconds, before he finally blurts, “when I was younger, my mother…she was very sad, too. I thought it was ‘normal sad’, maybe. Or maybe not, I don’t know. I knew something was wrong, but it is hard to remember, like…if I actually noticed, or if I just look back now and think I should have noticed it wasn't normal sad.”

As much as Shane has spent the last few days giving himself shit for being an idiot, he can at least understand what Ilya hasn't said directly.

“Ilya, I’m really sorry.” 

“She used pills, so, um, obviously it is not quite the same, but I still…when I saw that you were missing, and when I saw that thing about what Hayden said?” 

“Right, yeah. I can see how that would be, uh, upsetting.” 

“Upsetting,” Ilya scoffs, as if that doesn’t even come close. 

“I really do promise, Ilya,” Shane says. “It wasn’t like that, okay?” 

Ilya nods, looks down at his hands again. 

“Okay,” he agrees, sighing. “I am sorry, again. For the whole thing. And for almost telling your mother.” 

“I think you handled that pretty good, actually,” Shane admits. “I was pissed when she mentioned what you told her, but mostly because I was impressed. Sorry, can you be, like, really clear right now? You want to take it back? So we can still…?” 

The answer to that turns out to be yes, which Shane was pretty sure of already, but is more sure when Ilya trips around the kitchen island to kiss him. They kiss going up the stairs, and down the hall to the bedroom, the whole way stumbling over themselves and each other, laughing with giddy relief. And Shane can feel tears pricking behind his eyes as he lands on his soft, warm bed, and as Ilya lands on top of him, a heavy weight pushing him down into the mattress. It’s over. It’s really over. Ilya is careful with him at first, which pisses him off, so Shane flips him, straddles him, sinks down probably a little faster and with a little less preparation than he should have done, but he relishes in the stretch, in the feeling of it, in knowing that Ilya wants him, and is with him, and regrets ever trying to stop this. Shane has always been very good at applying himself, and winning, and doing well when there’s something he cares about on the line, and he channels that energy now into Ilya, Ilya, Ilya. 

After, spent, he slumps forward against Ilya, forehead pressed into Ilya’s cheekbone, and Ilya is murmuring all the praise that Shane never thought he’d hear again. 

“What was the plan?” he asks when he can speak again. Ilya looks at him, his hair disheveled and disordered, and his eyes still a little wild with want. 

“Plan?” 

“Yeah, the plan. If I didn’t get lost in the woods. Wait til the first time we face off next season?” 

Ilya shrugs defensively, which is an answer in itself. Shane laughs. 

“Hey, go fuck yourself,” Ilya says incredulously. “What was I supposed to do? Knock on your door?” 

“I mean, you literally just lurked in my parking garage until I got home.” 

“Okay, yes, because my flight is tomorrow morning, and your parents finally fucking left, so I could sneak over and…! Oh my god, Hollander. Your smug fucking face.” 

Shane can feel his smile go even more smug at that, and Ilya laughs and pushes it away, pushes Shane back into the pillows, rolls on top of him, brackets him in, safe and warm. 

“Good thing I got lost in the woods, then,” Shane suggests. Ilya rolls his eyes, kisses him. 

“No. Never say that again. Some of the worst two days of my life. I thought I killed you.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Shane agrees softly. “Sorry. I keep thinking about how embarrassing it was. I guess it was probably worse for you.” Ilya glowers at him, then looks away, shrugging and sniffling. His biggest tell. Okay. Shane takes Ilya’s face in both hands and kisses him gently to remind him that it’s over. “Would it make you feel better if I posted about how brave and valiant and sportsmanlike you were, coming all the way to Canada to help find me? We can tell everyone we’ve been friends for years, if you want. Maybe that will be nice.” 

“Maybe,” Ilya grumbles, though he does look a little mollified by the offer. “Also, get your phone.” 

“It’s all the way downstairs.”

“I don't care, go get it. Unblock me.”

“I'll unblock you if you let me read your one million messages you tried to send me,” Shane teases, and it really is just a tease, but Ilya blows out a breath like he's seriously considering it. 

“Okay, you can see them. But first, I should probably tell you that I say a lot of things in them that are, uh. Very embarrassing. Also, I should say, if you are really going to read them, that I love you.” At Shane's wide-eyed shock, Ilya shrugs, trying to look casual. He doesn't pull it off. “Because it would be stupid to read it there first.”

“You dick,” Shane says, grin growing on his face. “I love you too, what the fuck? I'm going to grab our phones, like, right now.”

Ilya laughs as Shane gets out of bed and wriggles into Ilya's sweatpants, just in case.

“Try not to get lost out there!” Ilya calls as Shane leaves the room. 

“Fuck off,” Shane fires back, giddy, and joyful, and still, okay, a little embarrassed about the whole thing, but he'll get over it eventually.