Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, Theriault (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Episode: s01e05 I'll Believe in Anything (Heated Rivalry), Shane Hollander gets hit by Cliff Marleau, Mix of Game Changers and Heated Rivalry Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Outing, Shane Hollander's Parents Discover His Relationship with Ilya Rozanov, Homophobia, (shane's parents aren't homophobic though), Angst with a Happy Ending

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of the system breaking beneath us

Collections:

Brain Twin Collabs, StormVandal's Heated Rivalry works & reclist

Stats:

Published: 2025-12-28 Words: 9,056 Chapters: 1/1

every invisible barrier between us

Summary

There’s a kind of ringing starting up in Shane’s ears. He’s spent the last four days replaying parts of his conversation with Ilya in the hospital over and over in his head — mostly Ilya’s explanation of the plan, and the pit of dread that opened up inside him when Ilya said he’d outed them — and he’s just considering now what Ilya had actually said to him: I told them that I am in love with you.

Notes

This won't make much sense without the previous one, so if you haven't, read that first! The only conversation that gets fully retread is the last one, so you'll have to get all the substance of the previous ones there. Hopefully this will help the folks who were so angry at Shane in chapter 2, haha.

We actually wrote the Shane coming out to his mom scene before episode 6 dropped, so it was thrilling to see how much we got right.

Title from "Acclimating to Discomfort of the System Breaking Beneath Us" by CAConrad.

Shane wakes up in an ambulance. He’s never done that before — whenever he’s been injured in a game, he’s always walked off under his own power and usually just gets treated in the arena. He must have been hurt in a hockey game, right? The last thing he remembers is playing sewer ball in the corridor before warmups. Everything is far too bright, a siren is wailing, and it feels like he’s been run over by a truck and is now being stabbed in the head. Repeatedly.

“Shane? Can you hear me?” an unfamiliar voice says. He can’t turn his head to look at whoever it is because he’s apparently strapped onto a board, but the person leans over him so he can see their face. Well, he can kind of see their face. It’s really blurry.

“What’s going on?” he tries to say. He’s not sure whether he succeeds.

“You took a pretty hard hit during the game, so we’re taking you to the hospital to get checked out.”

“Oh,” he says. There are tears trickling down his face, he’s pretty sure.

“What’s your name?” the person says, even though they literally just called him Shane. Is that cheating?

“Shane Hollander.”

“What’s your birthday?”

“May tenth, 1991.”

“Do you know who you were playing against in the game?”

“Uh, Boston?” That makes him realize, and he tries to sit up on instinct, although the EMT immediately puts a hand on his shoulder and stops him.

“Whoa, Shane, don’t try to move, okay? What’s wrong?”

“Where’s Ilya?”

“It’s alright. Your teammates are still at the arena. They can visit you later once the doctors have seen you, okay?”

“No,” Shane insists. “I have to tell him I’m fine. He’s going to worry.”

“Your coach will do that, I’m sure. Can you answer some more questions for me? Do you remember who hit you?”

“I don’t remember anything,” Shane says, squeezing his eyes shut as a particularly vicious stab of pain goes through his head. “Please, I just want to go home.”

“I’m sure you’ll be home before you know it. Can you open your eyes for me, please, Shane?”

“No. I can’t. It hurts.”

“Okay, I understand. Can you keep answering my questions?”

Shane tries his best. He doesn’t know all the answers. He can’t remember which answers he’s already given. At one point, the person convinces him to open his eyes so they can shine a light in them, which hurts horribly. They tell him he’s being very brave, which makes him feel like a child, but perhaps he is a child — he can’t stop crying the whole time. He’s not sobbing; it’s more like his eyes are just endlessly leaking. It doesn’t help with the fact that everything is blurry.

Things improve vastly once they get to the hospital. He’s rushed through so fast that he briefly feels bad for everyone in the waiting room that he’s unintentionally butted, and then next thing he knows nothing hurts and the world is very floaty and pleasant. And then for a while he doesn’t know anything.

When he wakes up in the morning, it’s of his own accord, which makes a nice change. He’s not completely positive, but he’s pretty sure the nurses were waking him up a lot all night. Rude. He thinks at one point he might have told them to go away. Does that make him a bad patient? Fuck. He’ll tell his mom to make sure all the nurses get tickets for the next game, or something. If they’d want tickets. Or maybe his mom will have a better idea. She’ll be back later. Which means that she must have been here already.

He thinks back. Yes, his mom and dad were here. They’d been freaking out, obviously. They were so rattled that they didn’t even bring up how weird it was that Ilya was also there with them. That’s kind of funny. He’ll have to tell Ilya about that. He thinks that he didn’t stay very long, though, which makes him pretty sad. At least he won’t be worrying, but Shane wants to see him. They had plans.

Plans he can’t achieve with this sling on. Damn.

He’s pouting about this realization when he hears the door open, and when he looks up, as though summoned, Ilya is stepping through the door. Shane can’t help himself — he beams. Literally just the person he wanted to see.

“You came back,” he says.

“Of course I came back,” says Ilya, and Shane wants to climb inside the sound of his voice and cuddle up in there. Sounds cozy. Ilya doesn’t look very well, though. He looks frightened. Shane knew that no one was going to know to tell him that he’s fine. Damn.

Ilya is still talking. Shane catches, “I fucked up.”

His brief indignation that Ilya has come to the hospital just to complain about some minor punishment or something very quickly gives way to a blinding panic as he listens to him explain what had happened at the arena the day before. It’s all of his worst fears coming true at once — being unable to play with his team in the playoffs, having an injury that could potentially end his career (he is aggressively not thinking about it), and now Ilya has outed them. Over what, a check gone wrong? As though he’s never seen it happen before, or hell, done it before? Yeah, Shane is hurt, but he’s going to be fucking fine, and there’s no reason for Ilya to not have known that. And now he’s going to have to deal with his parents, and his fucking coach might know. He’s facing down multiple scenarios where he might lose his career. Fucking great.

He closes his eyes; he can’t keep looking at Ilya and his heartbroken expression. “What are we going to do?”

At least Ilya came with a plan. It’s not a great plan, but it’s better than nothing. He could probably pick holes in it, if his head were clearer and if he weren’t about to burst into tears. It’s hard to believe how badly he wanted to see Ilya before this conversation started; now, he just wants him to go away.

“I should go,” says Ilya, as though reading Shane’s mind. “Goodbye, Hollander.”

Shane doesn’t watch him leave. He stares hard at the ceiling instead, trying to will away the lump in his throat.

Somehow, at some point, he falls asleep. He wouldn’t have guessed that would be possible with the levels of stress running through him, but apparently a concussion can override that kind of thing. When he wakes up, his eyelids are impossibly heavy and his head fucking hurts, and he chokes out a sob before he can stop himself.

“Honey?” comes his mother’s voice from somewhere beside him. He opens his eyes briefly, long enough to see through his tears that she’s pulled one of the chairs up beside his bed to sit in — but he squeezes them shut again short order, partly because the light sends a stabbing sensation through his eyeballs, but mostly because he can’t look at her. Not knowing what she knows.

“Are you okay?” He’s worrying her. “Should I call the nurse?”

“No,” he manages. “I’m sorry.”

She must call the nurse anyway, because one appears only about thirty seconds later. She gives him more painkillers, and as much as Shane wants to refuse (he’s heard plenty about the addiction issues players get after bad injuries), he feels an overwhelming relief when they kick in.

His mom also closes the blinds, which helps.

“I’m sorry,” he says again a while later, after the headache has subsided to a dull throb.

“For what?” She’s keeping her voice soft, but she still sounds genuinely confused. Maybe she’s just not sure which thing he’s apologizing for.

He swallows hard against the threat of further tears. He’s already sick of fucking crying. “That you wasted so much time getting me all the way to the MLH.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” She takes his hand, but he pulls away from her before he can stop himself. “You’re going to be fine. This is your first major concussion. This won’t be a career-ending injury, you’ll bounce back.”

“No, not that. Me. That I’m… the way I am. I’m sorry you found out like that.”

He hears her sniffle, and he wants to fling himself out of the fucking window. How had he let the world’s worst decision keep happening for eight entire years? He hadn’t even been thinking about how much it would hurt his mom and dad. It was so unbelievably fucking stupid of him to have ever thought that it could actually stay a secret. He’s betrayed his parents, his coach, his team, the entire city of Montreal… all to get laid? By Ilya fucking Rozanov? Seriously, what was he fucking thinking?

“Shane, please look at me.”

She sounds sad. He’s made his mother sad. He opens his eyes reluctantly, but can’t bring himself to look at her face.

She takes his hand again, and this time he lets her. “Darling, you never need to apologize for who you are, okay? Not to me, not to anyone. I’m sorry you felt the need to hide it from us.”

“It’s not your fault,” he says; like hell is he going to let her blame herself for any of this. “I didn’t want it to be true.”

She opens and closes her mouth a few times, like she can’t figure out what to say. “You know this doesn’t make a difference in how much I love you, right?”

“Can we not talk about it anymore?” Shane says instead of responding to what she’s said. Of course she said that; it’s what you have to say when your child comes out. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true, especially with how he’s fucked up all her hard work. And talking about it makes him think of the future, which makes him think of Ilya, and he can’t do any of that now. If he starts crying, he’s not sure how he’ll stop.

“Okay,” she whispers, squeezing his hand. “Your coach wants to come by today. Will you talk to him?”

“Sure,” Shane says, even though he really, really doesn’t want to. Ilya — uh, Rozanov — had said Theriault probably knows, so this probably isn’t just well wishes. “Um. Maybe later?”

She confirms that this afternoon is good and Theriault turns up after practice ends. His mom is downstairs getting dinner from the cafeteria, and he hopes she doesn’t come back until after this conversation is done.

“You look a little better, Hollander,” Theriault says in greeting. Shane thanks him and tries to remember how to smile.

There’s a little more small talk about his head and the team shaping up to get through the series without him before Theriault breaches the subject. The Subject, with capital letters.

“So, I had a conversation with the Raiders’ coach last night.” Theriault pauses like he expects Shane to say something. He doesn’t, so Theriault continues. “Do you know that Ilya Rozanov left the game to come see you in the hospital? Coach LeClaire seems to think that the two of you have been… involved.”

Shane shakes his head, and then hisses at the pain. “I don’t remember much,” he says, which is true. He has a hazy memory of seeing Ilya in the hospital room, but if they spoke to each other last night, he has no idea what was said. All he can remember properly is the visit this morning.

“Okay,” says Theriault, faux-agreeable. “You know, Shane, if anything happened, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. It can’t happen again, of course, but I’m sure you didn’t think Rozanov would be stupid enough to make a scene like that.”

“Make a scene?” Shane tries hard to look puzzled. “Rozanov said what? I’m not sure I’m following.”

“He refused to come back to the game. Good for us, since we won, but I do feel for LeClaire having to deal with the media on this. I’m sure you don’t want to make that sort of trouble for us.”

Shane closes his eyes, drawing his eyebrows together in an expression of concentration that he’s hoping will mask the panic he’s sure must be appearing on his face. “Wait,” he says. “I’m sorry, Coach, can you back up? You’re saying Rozanov left the game to come see me? Why would he do that?” (Seriously, why did he fucking do that.) “He told his coach what?”

“Well, I’m not sure exactly what he said to LeClaire,” says Theriault. “But yeah, Rozanov bailed on the game when you got hurt, and as far as I understand it the upshot was that he admitted to being in a relationship with you.”

Shane actually laughs out loud at that, genuinely. A relationship? With the way that Ilya had reacted when Shane tried to talk to him in Florida? LeClaire is definitely overstating what Ilya said, because Shane knows he didn’t say that. “What?” he says, opening one eye and squinting up at his coach. “Rozanov said that? What the fuck?”

It’s easier than Shane imagined to follow Rozanov’s plan. Deny it, blame Rozanov, pretend he had no idea. It helps a lot that he’s only half-pretending, because if Rozanov had considered them to be in a relationship, that really is brand-new information to Shane.

Theriault looks so relieved that Shane almost laughs some more for an entirely different reason. “Glad to hear it’s not true,” he says. “Do you have any idea where Rozanov got that impression?”

Shane shrugs his uninjured shoulder and absolutely does not think of sitting on Rozanov’s couch eating a tuna melt and drinking perfectly cold ginger ale. Shane had freaked out and left, anyway, and Ilya had been furious at him over it for months and even thrown it back in his face in Florida.

“I’m not sure what to tell you, Coach,” he says. “Before the game yesterday I hadn’t even seen him since our last game in Boston.” Also not a lie, unless you count cam sex. Theriault would probably count the cam sex, so it’s a good thing Shane somehow manages to say it without blushing.

“Right. Okay,” says Theriault, and lets out a low whistle that feels like it’s drilling directly into Shane’s skull. “Wow. Rozanov being a crazy motherfucker is a lot simpler for us to deal with. I’ll handle the media and everything, okay? Just refer them to me if anyone reaches out to you. You focus on resting up. We need you back in good form for next season.”

Shane nods slightly, not wanting to move his head around too much. The coach briefly offers more well-wishes on behalf of the team before excusing himself. Somehow, Shane manages to wait until Theriault is definitely gone before he snatches one of the vomit bags off the bedside table and starts retching. ‘Easier than he’d imagined’ is still pretty fucking hard.

The next time anyone brings up Ilya Rozanov to Shane, it’s four days later and he’s curled up on the couch at his parents’ house. It’s been a pretty shitty week, although he’s well aware that it could definitely be worse. He’s bored out of his mind, because he can’t really read or look at a screen for long before it makes his head hurt, and his collarbone makes it difficult for him to get comfortable no matter how he sits, but he knows he shouldn’t be whining about it. The number of times he’s gone to text Ilya and gone so far as to pull up their text thread before he remembers he can’t is embarrassing. Even more embarrassing is how much it hurts every time he closes the thread without sending a message.

His dad is sitting in his armchair reading the paper and his mom is in the other armchair on her tablet. She keeps humming and tsking at whatever she’s reading. “It doesn’t make sense that Boston’s playing so terribly against Colorado. They’re the higher seed and they don’t have any injuries.”

Shane’s not sure whether she’s actually talking to either of them and expecting a response, or whether she’s just stating her thoughts out loud. He hums noncommittally, which seems like a safe middle-of-the-road option.

“You’d think they’d never killed a penalty before. Were they this bad on the PK in the regular season?”

“Are you asking me?” Shane asks, and his mom nods, peering at him over her glasses. “No. I mean, I don’t think so.” Much weaker than Montreal’s power play, but their power play has been an absolute beast all season, so that isn’t saying much.

“Hmm,” his mom says. “It’s weird. No one seems to be able to come to any kind of clear consensus about what the problem is.”

“Well, it’s still early,” Shane says, hoping to move them off the topic of Boston (and, honestly, the playoffs in general; he’s still smarting over not being there with the Metros). “They could turn it around.”

“Maybe,” his mom says, though she doesn’t sound confident. She pushes her glasses up onto her head and sets the iPad aside, leaning forward and resting her arms on her knees. She’s trying to meet his eyes. “There’s some speculation, you know, that the problem is Ilya Rozanov.”

He’s pretty sure his dad is now actively pretending to be reading the paper, instead of actually reading it. He hasn’t turned the page in a while. Shane meets his mom’s eyes briefly, but quickly drops his gaze.

“Oh? That sucks,” he says, trying to sound casual. She must be worried that there’s fallout incoming, that reporters are finally going to start calling for comment or that one of his sponsorships will quietly drop him. “I mean, that shouldn’t bounce back on me, though, so you don’t have to worry. We made a plan.”

She blinks several times, and his dad fully gives up on his pretense of reading the paper, folding it down so that he’s now also looking at Shane. Great.

“What do you mean, sweetheart?” she says, and Shane is abruptly aware that he shouldn’t have said anything.

“Well, I don’t know, it’s not really a plan,” he hedges. “Just — y’know, Rozanov said he’d take the heat for… for what happened. The other day.”

“You spoke to him? When was that?”

“In the morning, before he flew back to Boston. He came to the hospital.”

“What do you mean ‘take the heat’?” his dad asks.

“He told me that if anyone, like Coach or the media or whatever, asked about why he left the game, I should just say I didn’t know. And that we definitely haven’t been, uh…” He pauses, not entirely sure how to phrase it. “... seeing each other outside of games. I mean, he said he’d deal with his coach and everything, but that this would mean that I shouldn’t, like, face any career repercussions. Seems like it’s working okay so far, because Coach believed me and I haven’t heard from any reporters. So, you know, you shouldn’t worry about it. And I promise I won’t do anything so stupid again.”

Neither of his parents say anything. He’s sure that if he didn’t have the constant companion of his headache that he would be able to read their expressions, but he can’t. They don’t look happy, though.

“Have you heard from Ilya?” his mom asks. Ilya? Since when is he Ilya and not Rozanov?

“No. I told you, I won’t do anything stupid again. That’s done.”

His parents seem to have a silent conversation via facial expressions. He hates it when they do that. “Guys, come on, what?”

“Shane,” his mom says, and she sounds stricken. “Do you really think that we’re more concerned about your career than your happiness? Is that how I make you feel?”

“My career makes me happy,” Shane says, and it’s true. He doesn’t like the pressure from some of the media when he doesn’t perform as well as they think he should, but when he’s on the ice, he just focuses on the game. They’ve built a great team, and winning the cup that first time was easily the best moment of his life.

“Sure, but you’re more than your career,” says his dad. “And of course your mom and I have worked to support your career, because we know how much you love hockey and we want you to be happy. But that never meant that either of us ever wanted you to sacrifice your relationships or deny a part of you.”

“It’s — there’s no relationship,” Shane says, although he can feel heat creeping up his neck at how much that implies about what he and Rozanov had been doing for the last eight years. “And you don’t have to deny things if they never get asked about. That was working out fine before Rozanov messed it up.”

“Honey, that’s not fair,” says his mom reproachfully, and Shane gapes at her.

“You’re taking Rozanov’s side right now? I must have been hit on the head harder than I thought.”

She doesn’t dignify that with a response. “He certainly made it sound like there was a relationship,” she says. “I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone look as afraid as he did when he thought you might be dead.”

Shane scoffs, but his mom presses on.

“Do you remember him being there in the hospital that night? Still in his gear?”

“Vaguely, yeah. I mean, I know he left the game, that’s how this whole mess started —”

“He came up to us right as we got to the Metros locker room and begged us to tell him what hospital you were going to. And obviously we weren’t going to do that. It was so strange that he was even asking, we couldn’t understand what was going on. We didn’t take him seriously until he told us that he loves you. It seemed completely insane, but… Shane, you should have seen the look on his face. And when he realized his coach had overheard, and his coach tried to stop him from leaving with us, he just threw his helmet on the ground and walked out. He never even put shoes on.”

There’s a kind of ringing starting up in Shane’s ears. He’s spent the last four days replaying parts of his conversation with Ilya in the hospital over and over in his head — mostly Ilya’s explanation of the plan, and the pit of dread that opened up inside him when Ilya said he’d outed them — and he’s just considering now what Ilya had actually said to him: I told them that I am in love with you.

Fuck.

He thinks of Ilya clutching him like Shane was the only solid thing in the universe as he cried. He remembers that phone call from Moscow, when he’d offered up a listening ear and Ilya had poured what sounded like years worth of pain down the line in a language they both knew Shane couldn’t understand. He thinks about the fucking tuna melt and the ginger ale and the way that he had run out on Ilya when Ilya had asked him — actually, genuinely asked him — to stay.

“If you don’t love him back, then that’s obviously alright, but if you do…” His mom trails off for a moment, and he doesn’t dare look at her face to see her expression. “I’m just not sure this so-called plan of his is a good idea.”

“There’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one,” his dad mumbles.

“We don’t have a choice,” Shane manages. “He’s the one that said that. We’d kept it a secret for so many years, and it was going fine.”

Except it wasn’t going fine. That’s why he’d pushed aside his anxiety and terror long enough to sit down on Ilya’s bed and ask him, It’s not just me, right? You feel it too? Because he wasn’t sure he could take it anymore — the dull ache of distance and want, the way he missed Ilya’s smile as weeks passed without them getting to see each other, the way he fell asleep and woke up thinking of him. But Ilya had only told him, What does it matter? We can’t be anything, and he’d swallowed the heartbreak of it all because what’s his alternative, at this point? To let it all go? He couldn’t do that. He’ll take whatever he can get, always. Even though it hurts. Even though he thinks it might be killing him slowly.

“And you’d be happy with that continuing for what, your entire careers? Forever? Having to hide such a big part of yourself and your life from everyone, including your own parents?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Shane starts, but his mom cuts him off.

“You don’t have to apologize for not telling us,” she says. “I’m just so sad that you feel like you have to keep it a secret. I can’t imagine not being able to talk about your dad to anyone, or to even interact with him in public. Living with that fear all the time would break me, I think, and I don’t want it to break you.”

It might be too late for that, Shane doesn’t say.

“Look,” his dad says gently. “Your mom and I know now, right? And you can talk to us. So just… whatever it is that you’re thinking and that you haven’t been able to say, you can get it off your chest. Maybe that will help?”

Shane can’t help but smile, remembering making the same offer to Ilya after his father died. He hadn’t understood a word that Ilya was saying to him, but he could hear the exhaustion, the anger, the guilt, the fear, and he remembers feeling so… blessed, that he could have this. That Ilya trusted him like this. That he could do some small thing to help.

He has to swallow a few times before he can speak, and even then his voice is rough, but suddenly he needs to say it more than anything — and he can’t say it to Ilya, not right now.

“I’m so in love with him,” he says, and watches his parents’ faces soften. “It makes me feel ridiculous. Every time someone insults him, I want to insist they’re wrong, but I’m supposed to agree, so I do. He’s nothing like what you see in the media. I mean, he is sometimes, but it’s an act. He’s sweet. He’s so funny. He makes me laugh all the time. He could have anyone — seriously, anyone — and for some reason he wants me, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the fact that it doesn’t matter if we love each other, because even if that’s true we’re still in the fucking situation that we’re in and I can’t see a way out of it.”

His voice breaks, his eyes well up with tears, and next thing he knows they’re spilling down his face. Apparently it’s normal with a concussion to be a bit over-emotional, but that doesn’t make it feel less awful. “And everyone is always reminding me how there are Asian kids out there watching me and seeing that maybe they can make it to the show one day. How could I throw it all away now?”

Now his mom really looks like her heart is breaking. He’s the worst son in the world. She gets up and hurries over to him, sitting herself back down right next to him on the couch. “I’m sorry we put that pressure on you,” she says, and hugs him tightly. His ear is pressed to her chest and her heartbeat is the only thing he can hear for one precious moment.

“No,” Shane manages, “I know it’s a good thing. I want those kids to know it’s possible. Not everyone has a mom like you who just refuses to believe there’s anything stopping me. But I can’t…” Can’t be Asian and gay. Can’t rock the boat too much. Can’t be in love with a Boston Raider.

“I’ll tell you what you can’t do,” his mom says, and her voice is starting to slip into that tone that he knows so well: the ‘alright, what’s the plan’ tone. It’s probably not the time, but he can’t help himself — he pulls away just enough to look up at her and does his best to give her a smile.

“I thought you always said there’s nothing I can’t do?”

Her mouth twitches with amusement, but she quickly rearranges her face into a serious expression. “The two of you are in this situation together, Shane,” she says. “I know you’re scared, and that’s okay, but honey, you can’t take it out on him. And you can’t let him keep taking it out on himself.”

Shane hadn’t even thought about how Ilya would definitely take it out on himself. Is this why he’s apparently playing like shit? Fuck, what if people are treating him like shit and he’s just letting them so that they don’t turn on Shane? Is that what he was getting at back in the hospital room — not just taking the heat from their coaches, but from everyone?

He closes his eyes, takes in a shaky breath, and wipes the tears off of his face with his sleeve. “You’re right,” he says. He needs to figure out what the fuck to do.

One of the only good things about having a concussion is that it makes it difficult to fall into a doom spiral on your phone, but Shane is nothing if not committed, so he manages it anyway. Ilya isn’t getting any compliments for his performance, and way too many people are connecting it to Shane. He watches the footage of his injury, feels his stomach drop out in the moment that you can see what’s about to happen, and cringes away from the screen the moment Marleau collides with him. He’s taken some pretty big hits before and he’s witnessed even bigger ones, but the way this particular check played out definitely makes for some pretty terrifying footage. He only watches that video once, but someone posts a different video that Shane watches over and over again, like some kind of penance: it’s a shaky video from someone right up against the glass, and unlike the television broadcast, it shows Ilya’s face in way too much detail. It’s proof of what his parents had been saying about the way Ilya approached them in the corridor. He looks like he’s seen a ghost and his entire life has been smashed to pieces right in front of him. He looks fucking terrified, and you can’t hear his voice in the video but you can see that he’s begging the medics for information and that clearly no one’s answering him.

For the first time, Shane tries to imagine how he’d feel if Ilya was knocked out in front of him. Ilya had said he thought Shane might be dead, hadn’t he? This was the face of a man who’s afraid he just saw someone die. Someone he cares about. Shane knows, looking at Ilya’s face, that he himself has never been that afraid in his life. Not when Ilya asked him to stay and he panicked, not when Rose sat him down to break up with him, not even when Ilya had confessed to outing them. This is bigger than any of those moments, and he can’t even form the mental image of a hypothetical where they swap places. He can say with certainty, though, that he wouldn’t have reacted any better.

God, he’s such a fucking asshole. He can’t believe himself. Ilya’s heart spilled out onto the ice, and Shane acted like it had been a choice Ilya had made. Towards the end of the video, Hayden tries to stop Ilya going through the Metros area, but Ilya barely seems to see him — he’s like an automaton, empty of anything but the terror written all over his face.

It’s not like Shane will be totally fine, if things really do spread any further than they already have — he’s heard the comments in locker rooms his entire life, he knows he could very well be de facto forced out of the career he loves — but Ilya could get fucking deported and arrested, and Shane had told him that he should have thought of that. As though Ilya had been thinking rationally about anything. As though that’s something that was fair to expect of him.

He wants to call Ilya right that second and… and beg for forgiveness, honestly. God, Ilya must be so pissed off at him. But the last thing he needs is to hear from Shane — there’s still time for Boston to knock out Colorado. He can’t distract Ilya from that.

Watching television is still too much for him with his head, but he lets his mom give him updates on how Boston and Montreal are doing. Boston scrapes out a win eventually but loses in five, and Montreal is still battling it out against Tampa when Shane gets a text from, of all people, Leo Dubek. For a moment Shane doesn’t even know how Dubek has his number until he remembers they exchanged them at the All Star Game, though he can’t remember why.

Leo Dubek (BOS)
LOL dude you’re not gonna believe what happened today [3:34 PM]

Shane
Hello to you too? [3:35 PM]

He really can’t imagine why Dubek would be catching Shane up on his day out of nowhere. Dubek just laugh-reacts his text and goes back to typing, which doesn’t clear anything up.

Leo Dubek (BOS)
Roz has totally lost it [3:35 PM]
Assuming you know about him leaving in MTL? Been playing like shit ever since obviously [3:35 PM]
He’s why locker clean-out was this morning [3:36 PM]

Shane is holding his phone way too tightly. There’s a lot he wants to say and absolutely none of it would be received well. More importantly, none of it would help Ilya. He takes a few deep breaths (going for ‘calming’, though he’s not that successful) before he answers.

Shane
Sorry you’re out of the playoffs, man, but what does this have to do with me? [3:37 PM]

Leo Dubek (BOS)
Sebbin asked him why he was in such a fucking hurry to leave after media and he pretty much copped to being gay for you LOL [3:37 PM]

He feels like he’s just had a bucket of cold water dumped over his head. Oh, this is really, really bad. Instead of texting back, he just uses the question mark reaction, although his hands are suddenly shaking so badly that he has trouble even selecting the right reaction. Dubek, who clearly thinks this is peak comedy, sends another text within basically seconds.

Leo Dubek (BOS)
Sebbin & Kane were ribbing him calling you his boyfriend (just jokes man LOL you get it, they weren’t coming at you or anything dw) and the dude straight up said that he wishes you were gay [3:38 PM]
Called you “Mr. Montreal Perfect Golden Boy” LOL I stg. Can’t make this shit up [3:38 PM]
“He’s straight, it’s a tragedy”. Can you fucking believe that??? [3:38 PM]
Still pissed we’re out of playoffs but hey at least we got a free comedy show out of it [3:39 PM]

What the fuck is Ilya doing? Taking the heat doesn’t mean actively turning on the fucking stove.

Leo Dubek (BOS)
I mean obviously we suspected already. Had to let him know we were onto him. You get it. But we weren’t expecting him to just announce he’s a fag!!! [3:39 PM]
Didn’t even deny it. I got $50 out of it, so next time we’re in town I’ll have to buy you a drink LOL. But only if we beat you. [3:39 PM]
Anyway hope you don’t hold it against Sebbin & Kane that they brought you up. I’m pretty sure they don’t think you’re gay, how many fags are out here dating Rose fucking Landry??? LOL. What a pull. [3:40 PM]
You’ve got game dude [3:40 PM]
Anyway just thought you’d wanna know Rozanov is creeping on you or w/e. Don’t be in any bathrooms with him!! Consider yourself warned. LOL. Hope you’re healing up good [3:42 PM]

Shane doesn’t respond to any of it. Fucking Dubek can sit on read. It briefly occurs to him that maybe that’s suspicious, but then he decides that he doesn’t care. No way is he willing to entertain this. What could he say? He can’t join in, but he can’t get angry, either. It’s not his decision to make, at least not yet.

He needs to talk to Ilya.

The problem is that if he were Ilya, he would never want to talk to Shane again. Yeah, he had been scared and angry and concussed, but that’s no excuse for telling Ilya that he should have thought about Russia before he had a panic attack. Of course Shane would have the worst reaction imaginable to hearing the words he’d been longing to hear for months. That’s the worst part, that it’s all so typical of him.

So he has to talk to Ilya. And he can’t do it on the phone, or over text. He needs to see Ilya’s face, he needs to be able to beg his forgiveness where he can see what Ilya’s thinking. And if Ilya never wants to forgive him, then at least he’ll know. Also, Shane just misses Ilya’s face. It’s been getting worse the last few days. He wants to see him so fucking bad, even if they end up arguing. It’s stupid that he misses Ilya so much when they’ve gone months without seeing each other before, but it feels a little like he’s missing a limb. If he’s honest with himself, he’s been feeling this way more and more often for years now.

And then they’ll talk to his parents, and they’ll work out what happens next, and whatever happens, it will happen to them together.

This is all much easier said than done, of course. Every time he picks up his phone to text Ilya, he chickens out. He has a shower, even though he doesn’t need one. He wants to lie on the floor of the bathroom, feel the cold tiles against his cheek and empty his brain, but that’s impossible with his collarbone. He works out, even though he can do very little right now. He has another shower. He tries to read a book, gets a headache, has a nap, listens to a podcast about Jordie Rowe, and then his mom cooks them dinner. He keeps picking up his phone and then immediately putting it down again.

It’s over twenty-four hours later when he finally manages to convince himself that he just has to fucking do it. If Ilya wants to ignore his text, he can.

Jane
Can I call you? [4:07 PM]

He doesn’t even have time to panic after sending it, because Ilya responds immediately.

Lily
Yes. [4:07 PM]

Almost despite himself, that makes his heart lift a little. That seems like a good sign, maybe?

The phone only rings once before Ilya answers. He sounds uncertain on the other end, and Shane waits for a moment for him to say anything after “hello” before he remembers that he’s the one who called Ilya.

“Can you come to Ottawa?” he blurts out. Probably he should make some small talk, but that’s the actual important question and he wants to see Ilya so badly.

They have to go back and forth about it for a minute, Ilya almost seeming not to understand the question. Finally, though, Shane explains that he wants to talk to Ilya in person, and that seems to get through to him. “Okay,” he says. “Yes, I can come to Ottawa. I will come… now?”

If Ilya comes now, he probably won’t get to Ottawa until well after dinner, at least, and he doesn’t particularly want his parents around for this discussion, so he tells Ilya to come tomorrow. He sounds a little dazed, anyway, and that’s not conducive to safe travel. Ilya agrees, and Shane ends the call — mostly because if he doesn’t, he’s going to start blurting out things that he really wants to say to his face.

The rest of the day goes agonizingly slowly. If there’s one upside to a concussion, though, it’s that it makes staying up all night freaking out near-impossible. He goes to bed early after dinner and can’t keep his eyes open for long after his head hits the pillow.

In the morning over breakfast, he tells his parents that he spoke to Ilya last night. They both light up, which is so bizarre (he has to admit that seeing his mom light up at the mention of Ilya Rozanov still just kind of feels wrong) but still appreciated, and his dad even offers that the two of them will clear out for the day without Shane having to ask first.

He’s kind of expecting that Ilya will text him his flight details or something so that Shane can go pick him up from the airport, but when he does get a text shortly after breakfast, it’s not flight details.

Lily
In Montreal now. Driving. See you soon. [10:09 AM]

Ilya drove? From Boston? Jesus, he must have left at practically the break of dawn. He dares to send a smiley face in his reply, because he’s feeling brave. Then he spends the next two hours roaming around the house, picking up magazines and discarding them mid-article, obsessively fluffing throw pillows as though Ilya’s going to notice or care about the fluffiness of Shane’s parents’ throw pillows, and generally just trying to make time pass until Ilya shows up.

When he answers the door a couple hours later, he has to seriously fight the urge to just grab Ilya’s face and kiss him right on the doorstep. But Ilya looks wan and frightened, not dissimilar to how he’d looked back at the hospital, with even more pronounced dark circles under his eyes. And then Ilya apologizes for being earlier than Shane expected, which deflates all of his courage. He’s only ever seen Ilya apologize once before, and it was for fucking crying. He looks so uncertain, and that makes Shane uncertain, and he babbles a little about drinks and the drive until finally Ilya cuts him off. The use of Hollander instead of Shane makes him flinch, certain that he’s now lost the privilege of hearing Ilya use his first name. Ilya clearly sees it and swaps to his first name, which just makes Shane feel worse.

He’d had a plan for what he was going to say, starting with an apology and making sure to check if Ilya’s doing okay after the playoffs loss, but now he’s feeling a bit lost. Ilya asks after his head before he can get back to what he wanted to say, so Shane rambles about his phone making his head hurt. Fuck. He’s doing terribly. Finally, Shane asks if Ilya’s okay, which he absolutely is not, and Shane isn’t surprised that he pretends it’s only about the playoffs. He can’t stand the cavernous space between them and crosses it so he can brush his thumb over the bags under Ilya’s eyes. Ilya doesn’t stop him from doing it, even though Shane hasn’t apologized yet and has no right to be touching him. He moves to Ilya’s jaw and draws circles there, waiting for Ilya to push him away.

“You’re lying,” he says, calling Ilya’s bluff. “You don’t have to do that.” They’ve spent eight years lying to each other, and Shane feels sick watching him do it now, so reflexively. He’d been so sincere the world had seen it on the ice right in front of them, and Shane had thrown it back in his face. Ilya doesn’t speak, barely even breathing, and Shane forces himself to talk instead.

“Okay, if you don’t want to talk, then just… listen. Alright?” He waits for Ilya to agree before he says anything else. Maybe Ilya will just walk back out the door. But he doesn’t move except to give Shane a small nod, and Shane takes a shaky breath. “Dubek texted me about what happened at your guys’ locker clean-out yesterday. He was telling me like I was going to find it really funny or something, like the idea that you would be interested in me was a big joke that I would laugh at.” His mouth is dry as he says, “I owe you an apology.”

Ilya had kept his eyes on Shane’s the whole time, which hadn’t helped with his nerves. But now his jaw sets and he pushes Shane’s hand away from his face, sending Shane’s heart plummeting into his stomach. This is the moment where Ilya will refuse his apology and drive back to Boston and never speak to him again, as he deserves.

“No. You owe me nothing. You were right. When they were moving you onto stretcher, you know what you said? You were worried people would see us and know something. I ruined everything, even though I knew how important it was to you. You wake up from getting boarded so hard you fucking pass out, and you still worried about it first.” Shane wishes he could remember that. Or, even better, he wishes he could go back in time and change it somehow, because it’s clear Ilya took that to heart. That he blames himself for all of this because of a comment Shane can’t even remember making.

“I don’t remember,” Shane says, unable to find a response except the obvious.

“I know,” Ilya says, and his voice cracking hits Shane like a gunshot. “But I do.”

“Yeah.” Shane does the only thing he can think of doing, and laces their fingers together. Maybe it’s an attempt to stop Ilya from leaving. Maybe it’s just that the video of Ilya’s face is running in his head on a loop, and he needs to touch him somewhere to remind Ilya that he’s alright. “I’ve seen videos since I’ve been home, y’know? Of the collision. It’s pretty fucking scary to see, even though it’s literally a video of me and I’m going to be fine. And there was this one video I saw online where… I could see how fucking scared you were.” He can see in Ilya’s eyes that they’ve both seen it. Ilya looks embarrassed, which isn’t what Shane wanted at all, but which doesn’t surprise him in the slightest.

“So, yeah, I owe you an apology,” he insists, tightening his grip slightly on Ilya’s fingers. “I was messed up and not thinking clearly, and I freaked out and got hung up on completely the wrong part of what you were telling me.”

“What do you mean?” Ilya says, his brow creasing with confusion. Like he can’t imagine how Shane could’ve possibly reacted differently. It breaks Shane’s heart a little.

It hurts that Ilya can’t see it, that Shane hasn’t made it obvious enough — that Shane loves him, that he’s worth loving. He works so hard to put up this front that he’s a joker who cares about nothing but being the best that sometimes Shane thinks he buys into it. Sure, almost every chirp bounces right off him, as do the commentators who say he’s too flashy, too proud, too Russian. But Shane’s held him as he cried, and he’s heard the agony in his voice when he talks about his family. Ilya cares so much, and everything he does is to try to distract everyone so they don’t see that weakness. As if it were a weakness.

Well, Shane sees it. Shane sees Ilya, and there’s no way he’s going to let Ilya think that he doesn’t. Or that he doesn’t love what he sees.

“You said you love me,” Shane says, and he can’t help but grin. Ilya loves him. It really isn’t just Shane; he feels it too. He tilts Ilya’s chin up so that he has to look at him again, because he wants him to be able to see on Shane’s face what he’s about to say —

And then Ilya distracts him with the revelation that he’d said it before, on that phone call from Moscow. He calls himself a coward, which is ridiculous — if that was cowardice, they were both equally guilty of it. When Shane points this out, Ilya just looks confused again, and Shane decides that he officially can’t handle not being as close to him as humanly possible anymore. He’s wanted to kiss him ever since he saw him and he’s fed up with waiting.

Marleau, of course, has put a kink in these plans, so he gets Ilya to assist him in his quest to be in a prime kissing position. He can’t kiss him for half as long as he’d like once they’ve managed to get him onto Ilya’s lap, because since the hit his lung capacity hasn’t been what it usually is. The doctor assured him that it would be fine, and he has the whole off-season to deal with it, so he has decided not to freak out about it until later. At least until he can look at a screen for longer than fifteen minutes.

It’s kind of a blessing in disguise, though, because it’s only once he’s pulled away to breathe that he realizes he still hasn’t fucking said it. And God, he wants to.

“It kind of terrifies me how in love with you I am.” The words tumble out of him, like they’ve been raring to go and now that he’s finally decided to let them out they’re seizing the opportunity. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I freaked out, again, and I’m sorry I let you leave that hospital room without just fucking telling you. I’m sorry I let you think that your plan was a good idea. I’m scared, but that would never be worth losing you. And it’s not worth what you’ve been putting yourself through, either.”

Ilya looks almost starstruck. He closes his eyes as though Shane’s going to disappear from on top of him, and when he opens them again he tightens his hands around Shane’s waist as though to confirm that he’s actually made of solid matter.

“Then what do we do?” he asks. Unfortunately, Shane hasn’t actually made any progress on that front, so he shrugs.

“I don’t know. We figure it out together.”

They kiss for ages. Shane keeps meaning to stop and propose that they work out a new plan (an actual plan, one that’s not just ‘let Ilya throw himself to the wolves’), but the problem is that every time he pulls away to say something, he finds himself once again looking at Ilya’s face, which makes him want to kiss him again, and he’s having a really hard time resisting the impulse. And whenever he does resist the impulse for a moment, Ilya invariably leans in and kisses him instead. So not a lot of talking is happening.

Once he feels that he’s capable of doing something other than kissing Ilya, which does take quite a while, he texts his parents to say they can return. He feels kind of bad for having kicked them out of their own house for several hours, and doesn’t think that he should prolong their exile more than necessary.

Ilya is very clearly nervous about seeing Shane’s parents again, even though the cat’s already out of the bag, so there’s nothing they’ll have to struggle to hide. He supposes that things must have been pretty fraught at the hospital, so maybe Ilya’s not sure he made a very good impression. Shane could explain to him that the fact that he loves Shane had pretty much won them over, but he doesn’t think Ilya will believe it just coming from him. It feels a little too soon to mention that his mom had actually taken Ilya’s side in the conversation where she convinced him that he needed to talk to Ilya because Ilya throwing himself on his sword was a bad idea. So he just has to see for himself what Shane already knows: they love him.

For now, Shane decides that even though he’s no longer sitting on Ilya’s lap, ‘curled up against him on the sofa’ is as far away as he’s willing to go. He keeps his head on Ilya’s shoulder and his good arm slung over his stomach, and when the front door opens, he twitches a little but refuses to move, tightening his grip around Ilya’s waist when he tries to shift away.

His mom beams when she walks in, clearly proud of herself for facilitating this. His dad is also happy to see them happy, of course, but not half as much as she is. They both have big, genuine, smiles on their faces though, and Shane watches Ilya take this in cautiously, like he’s about to try to pet a feral cat or something.

“Hi, Ilya,” his mom says, and Shane sees Ilya blush, looking away and biting his lip as if he’s trying to hide how pleased Shane’s mom calling him by his first name makes him. “We’re glad to see you,” she adds, and Ilya doesn’t manage to hide his smile this time.

Ilya, of course, addresses them as Mr. and Mrs. Hollander, which his mom puts a stop to immediately. Shane didn’t expect watching Ilya call his parents by their first names would give him so many emotions, but he feels like he could burst as his mom and Ilya hug. They will work this out. He’s not sure how, yet, but he just knows that one way or another, everything will be okay. He has everything he needs. Everyone he needs. And the entire off-season to figure it out.