Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Background & Cameo Characters, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Temporary Amnesia, Near Death Experiences, missing persumed dead, Grief/Mourning, Angst with a Happy Ending, i swear these tags make this look so much more angsty than it will be, Shane Hollander-centric, Hollywood Amnesia, Hurt Shane Hollander, Hurt Ilya Rozanov, Good Friend Hayden Pike, he tries his very best, Shane Hollander Has Panic Attacks, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Post-Canon, set sometime after the long game, listen i do not concern myself with timelines, Roger Crowell Being an Asshole, Wakes & Funerals, Blood and Injury, it's non-descriptive but still be aware!!, Ilya Rozanov Has Nightmares, Retirement, Hurt/Comfort, Good Friend Troy Barrett, Good Friend Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Mistaken Identity, Codependent Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, Medical Inaccuracies

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of my moon my man

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-10 Updated: 2026-10-16 Words: 15,812 Chapters: 4/?

500 miles

Summary

At some point between getting home and finding the mess in the kitchen, Shane calls the police and his parents in quick succession.

He doesn’t remember those phone calls at all. Blocked them from his memory the second they were over—doesn’t know what he said, what his mother replied—what the operator on the other end of the line asked him.

The only proof he has of ever placing the calls is the record of them in his phone—neatly stacked over-on-another. 911 right below Mom.

Below that, a series of phone calls to Ilya (husband), some barely even twenty seconds long, just short little I love you’s and what juice did you say you wanted from the store’s. Shane actually has to scroll for a while before he finds any other number in his call log. 

If Shane were to add all of that data into an excel sheet he’d have proof that Ilya took up about 90% of his call records and yet it doesn’t feel like enough.

or the Hollywood amnesia + presumed dead fic nobody asked for

Chapter 1: in my head i do everything right

Chapter Notes

fic title from 500 miles by peter, paul and mary. chapter title from supercut by lorde

*clutches my laptop* it doesn't have to be good it just has to get done it doesn't have to be good it just has to get done

obligatory english-isn't-my-first-language disclaimer + i don't own anything plz don't sue me disclaimer + *voice like that one meme about kilometers* what the fuck is a beta reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i blame noah kahan for this. please pay attention to the tags and let me know if i've missed something! :)

On the day the world ends, Shane wakes up happy and well-rested.

Later, that will feel like a red-flag—that that was the universe warning him of everything yet to come. But in the moment, Shane—despite all of his neurotics—had just basked in it: his bed, sleep-warm and comfortable, the weight of his husbands arm around his waist, the feeling of skin on skin. He spent ages just staring at Ilya—had touched his smooth skin, traced faded scars and stretchmarks and moles like he’d tried to memorize his appearance.

On the day the world ends, Shane stays in bed longer than he usually does.

It goes against his routine but he does it anyway. He nuzzles into Ilya’s neck and breathes in his scent and waits until he stirs, eventually, and is then rewarded by getting to watch Ilya’s eyes blink open sleepily—lets himself be the first thing his husband sees.

They make breakfast together in the kitchen. Ilya makes a big show out of squeezing the juice out of the fresh oranges Shane’s parents picked up for them from the little farmers market down the street and Shane indulges in ogling him—hypnotized by the way Ilya’s biceps flex. They kiss—soft and chaste and then not—feed Anya, eat together—ankles locked under the table the whole time like they might die if they don’t touch even for a second.

There’s cleaning up, after—Ilya doing the dishes in the sink and Shane drying them with a towel—and then Shane gets ready for his morning run and Ilya gives him a pouty goodbye kiss and tells him he loves him at the door.

Ilya’s taken up running before bed—something about tiring himself out, because one of the side effects his new medications has been giving him is insomnia and the running could help, according to his psychiatrist—and so Anya is his only company while he slowly circles the neighborhood in a, by now, familiar loop.

The sun is shining and its pleasantly warm, and Shane thinks, nonsensically, that he can’t remember the last time he’s been this happy. He used to think that was just something people said—domestic bliss and make me the happiest man on earth and constant harmony; exaggerations to make your partner happy, little white lies.

And it’s not even that it is constant harmony—god knows he’s squabbling and arguing with Ilya enough that it basically constitutes as flirting at this point. But even that—even the bickering—is fun. None of it is an exaggeration. It’s true, all of it.

Shane has to be the happiest man on earth. Shane lives in constant harmony and domestic bliss and gets giddy when he thinks about his marriage too long.

Maybe its because he never thought he’d get this. Maybe it’s because he spent so long quietly jealous of Hayden and JJ and his parents and his other teammates and everyone else that seemed to have such an easy time loving and being loved back, that now that it’s him he almost feels smug about it. Like look at me, I wasn’t broken after all! Like look at my hot fucking husband who chose me and loves me and argues with me and still falls asleep in my arms every night.

It’s almost pathetic, how happy he feels. Worse, how much he misses Ilya just by being two streets away from him. How—just a couple years ago—he only saw him every other week, every other month, only a few times a year, and how now, being away from him for thirty minutes feels too long. How did he manage it, back then? How could he stand not living with Ilya?

Anya, at least, seems to enjoy the run. She keeps pace, for the most part, because she’s a good girl despite Ilya spoiling her rotten and barely training her beyond the few commands he finds funny. Sometimes she overtakes Shane to sniff at some particularly interesting leaf or stone or speck of dirt, but she always returns to Shane’s heel and runs alongside him.

He forces himself to do his full lap. Runs until his muscles burn and his mind turns pleasantly blank and Anya is panting, paws stretched out in front of her, stomach to the road. He lets her rest a bit—gives her water in her portable, foldable water bowl and drinks the rest out of his own bottle. Stretches, so his muscles don’t cramp up. Sits on a park bench for a bit, to cool down.  

Gets up to track his way back to the house, once Anya drains her bowl and gets up again to chase squirrels around.

And then Shane gets home and the world ends.

Anya runs off first, barking loudly as she goes to find Ilya, while Shane peels his shoes off at the door. The barking doesn’t stop—Ilya doesn’t start his usual cooing, so he’s probably still in the shower wasting all of their warm water—but Shane feels way too fond to do much more than lightly roll his eyes a little in performative, exaggerated exasperation.

He takes his jacket off, throws it loosely over his arm to put into the washing with the rest of his workout clothes, and walks into the house.

Only then the whining starts—and Anya is standing in the doorway to the kitchen and not at the top of the stairs—and Shane watches as she keeps taking a tentative step into the room only to jump back immediately.

“Ilya?” Shane calls and makes his way over.

And then he sees the blood.

The average human has 9 to 12 pints of blood just—in their body, at all times. Shane learnt that in biology once. The actual amount depends on age and sex and size and living conditions, because people in high altitudes tend to have more blood to accommodate for the thinner air.

Ilya is a tall, broad-shouldered, huge, massive guy. 200-pounds-of-pure-muscles-massive. Built. Healthy. He quit smoking and his excessive drinking and yeah he could eat better, maybe, but he doesn’t live off fast-food and ready-made meals anymore either. He was—fine. At his last physical. Sure there was his—his shoulder, twinging every now and then, and his knee acting up a little but nothing to worry about beyond the expected wear-and-tear of a lifetimes worth of hockey. Healthy as a horse, Terry had said.

Ilya surely leans toward the higher-end of the scale. Surely, his body holds 12 pints of blood at any given time. Has to—because—because—

There’s a lot of blood in the kitchen and Shane isn’t sure if it’s a survivable amount of blood.

Because a human can only lose—15% of their total blood volume so, like, a pint, maybe, before the blood loss becomes dangerous. Anything over 40% is considered deadly without immediate medical attention—and even with medical attention it’s a race against time, the kind of emergency that gets you premium access to a trauma room and a lot of nice people that really, really want to meet you as quickly as possible. A Massive Transfusion Protocol kind of emergency. A helicopter-ride, kind of emergency.

He really, really hopes Ilya is at the high-end of the scale.

The thing is, Shane keeps expecting to shut down.

It’s what everyone else expects too—Shane sees it in the way they look at him with unmasked concern on their faces. He feels their eyes on him—the way they hover around him, hands reaching in his direction subtly like they’re bracing to catch him—feels the way they’re waiting for him to crumble, to go catatonic.

Only, Shane is exceptionally fine.

He talks to the police. He hands over their surveillance videos and access to their door bell camera and holds onto Anya’s collar as the crime scene specialist people take pictures of the kitchen and the door and the living room. Doesn’t bristle when the detectives start to question if Ilya—if he might’ve done this to himself. Which is ridiculous and stupid because if this was—if Ilya had been—if it had gotten that bad then Shane would’ve known and also Ilya would still be there, in the kitchen and not—gone.

He doesn’t lose his temper at them though—no he stays downright pleasant. He holds his mothers hand as she swings between sobbing and righteous anger, and pets Anya to comfort her whenever someone gets too close and he lets his dad ruffle his hair and get him water and generally fuss in the quiet ways his father always fusses.

Hayden shows up eventually. Hurried and haggard looking—hair sticking up wildly, shirt misbuttoned, shoes untied.

“Oh Shane!” he says. “I came as soon as I could—is—are you okay?”

If Ilya was here, he’d snort ungracefully. He’d quip something mean, say something like obviously not, Pike, his husband his missing. Ilya isn’t there, though, and so Shane tries his best at a kind smile and shrugs. Hayden’s face just crumples, so he probably didn’t do a good job.

He lets them—the police—take his finger prints and his phone records—the spouse is always the number one suspect his mind whispers, like the gardener or the maid or the cook—and waves off his mothers attempts to pack him a suitcase. He can’t stay in the house—crime scene as it is, even if some of the detectives seem to think that a shit ton of blood oh god isn’t enough to indicate a crime—and his parents want him to stay with them but—

The cottage. Obviously, the cottage. His safe space. More importantly Ilya’s safe space. Maybe—maybe that’s where Ilya is actually. Maybe he got hurt—cut himself and went to the hospital and then drove to the cottage because he was still, like, confused by blood loss or something. And his phone died—no, no he left it, right there on the counter for the police to bag up, because he was confused and now he’s at the cottage and lost and nobody is there to kiss his hurt away and—

“We got something!” one of the crime scene specialists yells from the other side of the house.

Something, being a smashed window in the garage and three pairs of muddy foot prints.

And blood.

He’s getting pretty sick of all the blood.

At some point between getting home and finding the mess in the kitchen, Shane calls the police and his parents in quick succession.

He doesn’t remember those phone calls at all. Blocked them from his memory the second they were over—doesn’t know what he said, what his mother replied—what the operator on the other of the line asked him.

The only proof he has of ever placing the calls is the record of them in his phone—neatly stack over-on-another. 911 right below Mom.

Below that, a series of phone calls to Ilya (husband), some barely even twenty seconds long, just short little I love you’s and what juice did you say you wanted from the store’s. Shane actually has to scroll for a while before he finds any other number in his call log.

And even then it’s just—Hayden. Jackie, on occasion. His parents. Farah. One, singular call from Harris five months ago that Shane can’t, for the life of him, remember either.

If Shane were to add all of that data into an excel sheet he’d have proof that Ilya took up about 90% of his call records and yet it doesn’t feel like enough.

A case is opened. Escalated from Person Missing to Person Abducted.

Shane sits in his living room, watches as the Police comb through their surveillance cameras and tries to put a name to anyone caught on tape. The mailwoman. Their elderly neighbors three doors down, with their small army of grandchildren. A woman Shane sees every day during his morning run that lives somewhere in the neighborhood but that he’s never spoken to.

Three burly men wearing baseball caps and combat boots, dressed in overalls, dragging a large cardboard box out through a front door they never entered through. Three burly men Shane has never seen before in his life. Three burly men dragging his husband out through the front door. Posing as—a moving crew or a delivery service or something.

They aren’t even careful with the box. There aren’t any visible holes in the box. His husband is in that box—bleeding, unconscious maybe—and they just…drag the cardboard over the uneven pavement like they aren’t transporting Shane’s husband. The most precious cargo—and they all but kick him down the driveway.

For the first time in his life, Shane hates how private their house is. Hates the stupid trees planted all around obscuring the view of their house, their quiet little neighborhood filled with retirees and their families—with the houses spaced out far enough Shane wouldn’t know the people living on his street at all if Ilya wasn’t so stupidly social.

Wishes they’d settled down in the middle of downtown Ottawa—right across a police station, with paparazzi camped out outside their front door at all times, with enough rabid hockey fans obsessed with the Hollanders’ that someone would’ve noticed. Someone would’ve heard. Someone would’ve seen people leave their house that never entered, would’ve raised questions—called for help.

Mainly he wishes he hadn’t gone on that stupid fucking run and just stayed home with his husband.

His parents drag him home.

Because his—their—house is a crime scene, will remain a crime scene for the foreseeable future until the forensics guys have finished combing through—well, everything. And then the cleaning crew will have to go in. And then Shane will pay another cleaning crew to clean up again. And contractors to put in new flooring and a new window in the garage and—

Actually—maybe he’ll just set the entire house on fire and move somewhere else. Sell the fucking place, and take Ilya and permanently move into the cottage. Built another cottage, somewhere far, far away and not tell anyone about it—maybe his parents, just, like, in case they need something, but nobody else not even Hayden or, god forbid a documentary team.

They can just—live in the Canadian wilderness somewhere. Just the two of them. Somewhere nobody will ever think to look for them, least of all those three assholes that broke into their home and stole his husband.

Mom herds him out of the car and up the stairs into his childhood bedroom. Anya follows dutifully at his heels and whines and paces once mom pushes him down onto his bed. She’s not allowed on the bed, usually. It’s one of those things he and Ilya used to squabble about, a lot, shortly after they made the move official—one of those things Ilya relented on to make Shane happy. He pats the mattress next to him, and Anya jumps up and curls into Shane.

It’s not the bed that used to stand in this room—the twin-sized mattress of his teenage years changed out for a king, once Ilya and him started staying over together more and more often—but everything else is the same.

His hockey posters are still on the walls, and the bookshelves are still filled with his favourite biographies and his old textbooks and some of the assigned reading he never found the time for. Hamlet stares at him from the same spot Shane put it down when he first got it in tenth grade.

Nothing in this room belongs to Ilya. They don’t stay over often enough for the bedding to smell like him, and, well, mom probably stripped the bed the second they were out the door the last time they were here anyways. Ilya notoriously steals his clothes whenever they do come to visit, flat-out refuses to bring something to keep in one of the empty drawers. There’s—his shampoo, in the bathroom. The expensive conditioners he keeps for his curls. Gel.

But that’s—that’s it. He doesn’t even keep a bottle of his favourite cologne here, because he wants to smell like Shane, like a Hollander.

Shane wishes he could’ve taken—something, with him. He had to pack, under the watchful eye of one of the officers, only the most immediate essentials. Underwear, a couple of changes of clothes, important documents like his birth certificate and their marriage license and passports. The rest was to stay right there, for the police to dissect. Distantly, it hits him that they have a couple of things lying around their bedroom he doesn’t want anyone to see but the thought stays—distant. There’s no fear gripping him, no embarrassment and—anyway, they’re married and openly queer men and there’s nothing illegal about that.

Mom brushes through his hair, carefully.

“How are you feeling, baby?” she asks, voice all quiet and comforting like—like Shane is on his deathbed.

He’s still keeping it together. He’s—fine. Not good, obviously, but he’s okay.

When he opens his mouth to say exactly that, the words turn to ash on his tongue. He shrugs again, the way he had when Hayden had asked him.

“Try to get some rest, okay?” she mutters, presses a soft-kiss to his forehead. “Your dad and I, we’ll deal with whatever comes up okay? All the—the PR and the statements and the league. You just…get some rest.”

Anya huffs. Shuffles even closer until her snout is tugged into the space between his neck and shoulder, half of her body draped over Shane’s like a warm, breathing furry blanket. Truly her father’s daughter.

He starts combing through her fur absentmindedly. He hadn’t even thought—

But of course. They need to let Farah know. Call the team. Put out a statement. Shane should be writing up one of those Missing Person posters and plaster it all over his social media and Ilya’s social media and—fuck it, all over Canada. They’re in between games—the season is almost over—but they’re supposed to get on a plane and fly to Tampa in three days.

He doesn’t even have his phone! It’s still with the police—both to search through and in case the kidnappers call for ransom.

“Come on, Shane.” Mom says, and drags the heavy duvet over him. He’s still in his sweaty workout clothing—barely even kicked his shoes off at the front door—and there’s a million things he should be doing and yet, he can’t find the strength to pull the blanket off him. Trapped, he lays still in his bed, lets his eyes drag up, up, up, until he stares at the ceiling. “Sleep.”

At some point, Bood and Barrett manifest in his bedroom.

Anya isn’t in his arms anymore, but she’s still on the bed—ears pulled back in warning, like she’s suddenly forgotten who the visitors in the room are despite having gotten some intense belly rubs and pets from them just two days ago.

It’s sweet. How protective she seems of him, suddenly. Like anyone—everyone—is a threat. She’s never been like this before, Shane is pretty sure—hasn’t so much as barked at a strangers dog.

Troy speaks in a hushed whisper. Upper body leaned over the bed, elbows digging into the mattress—hands reaching towards him, like he, too, is bracing to catch him, which is—ridiculous, really, because Shane is sitting in the middle of his bed, there’s nowhere he could even fall.

Bood, too, is unusually subdued. His lips look bitten raw and his hands twist in his lap like he’s unsure what to do with them.

All in all, it’s incredibly awkward. Because—listen. Shane likes his new team just fine. They’re good to be around—fun in a chill way the Metros never were. Team hangouts don’t grind on his nerves the way they did back in Montreal because they’re mostly in Bood’s backyard and—on the rare occasion—Monks.

But despite Shane having been on the team for a while now, they are still, firmly, Ilya’s. They’re teammates but not—friends. Shane gets along with them, but he doesn’t really miss them when they aren’t around either. They don’t talk outside of work, because, well, Shane doesn’t have anything to say to them. And, to the team, he’s Shane Hollander, hockey legend, yes, but also…their captains elusive husband they had no idea existed until they were outed.

And like, Shane is glad it’s like that—god knows Ilya needs some outside support after feeling so isolated for so long.

But also, now having two of his teammates in the privacy of his childhood bedroom without Ilya there as a buffer?

“If you need anything,” Bood says. “Anything at all—we’re here for you man.”

“Totally,” Troy says. “Wiebe wanted to come too but we thought—you know, one at a time. He says you shouldn’t worry about the games—nobody expects you to get on the ice until Ilya’s back home.”

Then “Harris wanted me to tell you that there’s been an outpour of love online. Like—all of Ottawa is looking for our boy.”

“All of Canada, really.” Bood adds. “It’s just a matter of time before he’s back. He’ll laugh when he sees how many people worried about him while he was gone.”

Gone. People keep saying that—like Ilya’s just down the street getting groceries. He isn’t gone. He’s been taken.

Bood and Troy look at him, like they’re waiting for him to say something. But what is there to say?

“Thank you for stopping by,” he mutters. His voice sounds—odd, even to himself. Off. “Good luck in Tampa.”

“We’re winning it for you.” Bood says, and moves to pat his shoulder, maybe—only Anya starts growling, teeth bared and only stops again, when Bood drops his hands back to his side.

It’s only when they leave, that Shane realizes they’ve been speaking to him like he’s a widower.

He has a home.

He knows this to be true, even though he can’t remember what it looks like or where it is or how to get there. Has to have one, because he feels it missing like someone took a spoon to his chest and just started carving away.

He dreams about it sometimes, though he never remembers what he saw when he wakes up. Only knows it to be warm and safe and that he has to go back.

He wakes up cold and wet.

He’s in a ditch, somewhere. Trees all around—tall, and dark with thin, needle like leaves that feel familiar and foreign at the same time.

The air smells both fresh and suffocatingly like copper and—wet. Like rain.

His body hurts in a way that also feels familiar. His ears are ringing when he tries to sit up—his vision turns a little blurry—and when he rubs his eyes to try and clear them, his hands come away sticky and a dark red-ish brown. Blood his brain supplies slowly. Dried, tacky blood. When he tries to remember anything else—how the blood got there or even just his name, where he is, how he got there—all his mind offers him is a dry, tired little shrug.

Matter of fact—blood is the only thing his brain supplies. Like that’s especially important. Actually—a voice whispers in the back of his mind somewhere—blood is supposed to be inside his body and not outside so—

Carefully, he pats at his head until he finds—hissing, when his finger brush over it—a thin slash at the back of his head. Leaves and dirt stick to it—which, he’s pretty sure is bad—and when he pulls his hands back, fresh, light red blood sticks to his dirty fingers.

That doesn’t seem good either.

Holding onto one of the trees, he pushes himself upright until he’s standing. His knees shake under his weight, and he feels a little like a newborn fawn or something, but when he wills his legs to move they carry him.

He moves from tree to tree—leans against their trunks whenever stars start popping up before his eyes and the ringing in his ears grows too loud to ignore. Surely there has to be something around here. A—street, or a house or something. Somewhere to seek shelter, someone to ask for help. Someone has to know who to call so he can go back to where he’s supposed to be and so someone can maybe look at his head and make sure he’s not actively bleeding his brains out or something.

But after—a while, and really it could be an hour or ten minutes or half a day and he wouldn’t fucking know—it becomes quite obvious that there’s nothing around. Only trees and more trees and even more trees. Trees as far as he can fucking see. Trees in every direction.

Maybe he should’ve gone about this differently. Maybe he should’ve walked in a different direction—he’s not sure, but it feels like he has the type of luck that would make him walk further into a forest rather than out of one.

Now that he’s committed himself though, giving up feels—well. He might not really remember who he is, but he’s sure as hell not a quitter, that’s for sure. And besides: even if he keeps heading that way, he’ll reach an end anyways.

Chapter End Notes

if you're ever lost in the woods: don't move. build shelter if possible. don't wander off as this will 1) waste energy and 2) make it harder for people to find you.
unfortunately Ilya is a #cityboy and wasn't taught this. ever.

anyways! I've been going #thruIt lately. if you've come here from toska: i will get back to it soon. no clue how soon but i will finish it i promise! :) but between some of the shit that's been going on in my personal life and noah kahan dropping his new album I've not been in the right head space to work on it. TvT
thank you for reading!

Chapter 2: life of the party

Chapter Summary

Still. How the hell is Shane supposed to keep it together? When he’s already feeling half-insane with grief and Ilya’s not even—when there’s no proof he has any right to grieve at all?

Because wouldn’t he feel it, if Ilya was dead? He hadn’t felt it—hadn’t known—back when his plane caught fire, but then—Ilya had been fine, hadn’t he? Terrified, sure, but physically unharmed. And still, the thought alone had been enough to almost kill Shane. He’d felt it then, the part of him that would’ve shrivelled up and died with Ilya.

Ilya Rozanov cannot be dead.  

Chapter Notes

nobody is handling Ilya missing well, least of all Shane.

As much as Shane wants to stay home, holed up safely in his bed, and pretend that Ilya just got held up at the store and is about to come home with an excuse about traffic or something—life unfortunately doesn’t let him.

Six days after the world implodes, Shane gets dragged onto a stage—Farah on his left, his mother on his right—and comes face to face with what looks like every journalist in North America. Some of them look vaguely familiar—people he’s met before, people he knows from post-game interviews and galas and the many, many statements he’s given over the course of his career—but they all blur into one, unanimous blob of microphones and flashing cameras.

Farah does most of the speaking—which is good, because Shane feels like he’ll vomit all over the stage if he opens his mouth. Most of what she’s saying has already been plastered over both his and Ilya’s social media accounts, alongside a missing-persons post asking for information and linking back to the Ottawa Police Department. Shane also knows that a spokesperson from the police department has given a public statement disclosing the state of their investigations—which amounts to nothing Shane’s been told because there’s no ransom note, no leads—not even a fucking inkling of who or why or where—even if he hasn’t actually watched the interview himself.

They wouldn’t even fucking be here if it wasn’t for the League.

Or—well, if it weren’t for Roger fucking Crowell.

Roger Crowell who’s been firmly on Shane’s shit-list since the outing. Roger Crowell who—gleefully, if Farah is to believed—called the second Ilya’s disappearance was announced and then all but demanded this press conference under the guise of answering the publics questions.

It doesn’t feel like answering to the public. It doesn’t feel like giving clarity—because what clarity can they offer when the fucking police have no idea where Shane’s husband is or what happened to him or if he’s still even fucking alive—to distraught fans.

It feels like—revenge.

It feels specifically engineered to hurt Shane—and by extension his parents and Farah and, surely, everyone else that gives a fuck about him and Ilya—by making his grief and pain a spectacle to be consumed by the masses. A nice little segment to play during the Sports part of the evening news: Shane’s pale, unshaven face in between football scores and fucking curling or something.

The journalists, at least, don’t seem to care that there are no updates. From what little Shane actually retains through the hour or so they spent up there, they are more than happy to lap up Farah’s platitudes—No we cannot say what happened at present time beyond what the police department has already made public, No there’s been no contact from the perpetrators, No we do not know what caused them to rip Ilya from his family like this—eagerly nodding along like they’re attending a sermon.

Shane is pretty sure he hates all of them—even though he wouldn’t be able to pick any of their faces out in a crowd.

By the time the conference is over, he’s shaky and exhausted and his left hand is sweaty because Mom held onto it with what had to have been her entire strength. While he appreciates the support, he cannot wait to get off this fucking stage and out of his stuffy suit and—maybe under a cold shower or something—

Obviously, that’s right where everything goes to shit.

Because Farah and his Mom made it clear that he wouldn’t be entertaining questions—that this was, essentially, just a public appearance and nothing more. Because Farah and his Mom had asked for privacy and discretion during such a difficult time.

Maybe that’s why Shane doesn’t expect it.

It feels like tripping in that game against Ottawa all over again—like a punch in the face and his stomach lifting at the same time. Unexpected and painful and embarrassing.

Somewhere in the back someone yells “Has Mister Hollander been questioned by the police about his involvement in all of this? Was there a dispute between him and his husband? Is that why the two of them haven’t been spotted in public together lately?”

Shane turns around—there’s a sudden uptick in camera flashes and a murmuring among the crowd of journalists—but before he can do much more than blink or breathe—the voice speaks again.

“Are you under official investigation?”

And there’s a million things Shane could say to that. A million things he should say and do—mainly get off this stage and let Farah handle it or—well his Mom looks about ready to jump down that particular journalists throat so maybe she’d be the better fit, honestly—but in the moment, none of that registers.

So he doesn’t say, “No I’m not under investigation,” or “Ilya and me haven’t been spotted apart since we were outed what are you talking about?” or “Who decided employing you was a smart idea?”

Instead, what comes out of his mouth is probably going to haunt him forever.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Back at his parents home, Shane locks himself in his bedroom.

His Mom stands outside the door for a while—trying to get him to let her in and pretending like Shane publicly telling a journalist to go fuck himself isn’t that bad, actually—while Shane tries his hardest not to scream and kick his bed.

It’s the kind of visceral rage he hasn’t felt since childhood—something between simple frustration and genuine fury—that makes him want to throw himself onto the ground and cry and hit the nice hardwood floor until his knuckles bleed.

Because its so—

Shane isn’t sure what it is. Isn’t sure what he feels, beyond the anger clouding his thoughts. Stupid, maybe—for his outburst and letting his control slip and giving Crowell even more ammunition. Disappointed—sad. Fucking terrified, probably, because it’s been days and still nobody can fucking tell him where his husband is or what happened to him.

Angry—again—because he’s also scared of the reactions everyone else is going to have to this—angry, because for a second, maybe, he was actually more scared of what those journalists are going to write about him than for Ilya’s life before he remembered that, honestly, he doesn’t really give a crap anymore.

Anya watches him from her place on his bed—waited for him dutifully at home, though trying to leave without her had been difficult to say the least—small and curled up, eyes anxiously following him as he paces the room.

She whines—something high pitched and sad—and it takes everything in Shane not to yell at her.

It’s not her fault. None of this is her fault. If anything, Anya is a big part of the reason why Shane hasn’t ripped all of his hair out yet.

But also—he’s not handling this. He’s beyond handling it. And he doesn’t—it feels like he has no capacity left to care.

It’s almost been a week.

Two days after Ilya was taken, a detective stood in his parents living room and told them all about the statistics surrounding abductions and people reported missing and about how the odds of finding someone alive and unharmed sink drastically the longer a person stays unfound. How the first 24 hours are the most critical, how—after the 72 mark—the odds decrease so drastically experts consider it a turning point. About how forensics confirmed all that blood in the kitchen was likely Ilya’s because Ilya’s blood type is O positive and the blood in the kitchen was also O positive and—

But the officer also said that they don’t currently believe Ilya to be dead—because while there was a lot of blood in the kitchen, apparently it wasn’t enough to be lethal and also—if the goal was to—to kill him, they wouldn’t have risked moving him.

Still. How the hell is Shane supposed to keep it together? When he’s already feeling half-insane with grief and Ilya’s not even—when there’s no proof he has any right to grieve at all?

Because wouldn’t he feel it, if Ilya was dead? He hadn’t felt it—hadn’t known—back when his plane caught fire, but then—Ilya had been fine, hadn’t he? Terrified, sure, but physically unharmed. And still, the thought alone had been enough to almost kill Shane. He’d felt it then, the part of him that would’ve shrivelled up and died with Ilya.

Ilya Rozanov cannot be dead.  

Outside his room, his Mom is still talking to him but he’s barely even listening anymore.

Instead—he shrugs off the suit jacket. Lets the expensive fabric just fall to the floor in a crumbled heap and then kicks it for good measure before ripping off his slacks and dress shirt. Anya raises her little head from its place on her paws, tail twitching the way it does when she’s getting ready to play.

Maybe that should make him pause—make him hang the suit up neatly—but something about the idea of Anya just absolutely shredding it seems—well.

He stumbles into the en-suite—turns on the shower as cold as it will go—and forces himself under the spray.

It’s a welcome shock to his system. It’s like the water washes the anger off him, the same way it washes the sweat away. The longer he stands there, the clearer his thoughts start to get and the less he finds he cares.

About most things actually—pretty much everything but Ilya.

A hazy sort of half-plan starts forming in the back of his mind; obviously he cannot wait for the police to do their job—and yeah, okay, pretty much the entirety of Canada is looking for his husband and his captors—

But Shane can do that too. Shane could probably do it better. Ilya keeps making it a point to remind him how smart he is, how capable—and there’s no one on this earth that knows Ilya better than him. They’ve found their way back to each other so many times—of course, Shane is the one that has to find him. Of course Shane is the only one that ever could.

By the time he crawls out of the shower, his skin has turned an angry red and his fingers are all pruny and gross from the water but he barely feels any of it. He takes the time to shave—slaps on Ilya’s favourite aftershave—pushes his still-wet hair up and out of his face.

He doesn’t look different in the bathroom mirror. Tired, maybe—but he hasn’t even lost weight. Not visibly at least—which is good, because Ilya would worry, if Shane looked emaciated when he finds him. Ilya would be besides himself if he thought Shane didn’t take care of himself because of him—and it’s Shane’s turn to worry.

Walking back into his room, he finds Anya chewing up his suit-jacket on the floor. He pets her absentmindedly and gets dressed—unlocks the door, relieved to find that his Mom has evidently given up on talking to him because she’s not camped outside anymore.

“Wanna go for a drive, girl?” he asks her.

She visibly perks up at the word drive—head tilting to the right, her fluffy ears flopping around. Shane’s never been a dog person—never been a pet person, really—but Anya is Ilya’s baby and therefore she’s Shane’s baby too. And maybe its because he still feels a bit bad about getting frustrated with her before, but she seems extra adorable surrounded by what’s left of Shane’s two-thousand dollar suit.

“Come on!” he coos, and Anya jumps up onto her paws, nails clicking on the hardwood floor, tail wagging so hard her entire body shakes. He carefully strokes over her snout all the way up her head and down her neck and back—before he grabs his car keys from his bedside table and his phone and leads her out of his room and down the stairs.

He half expects to run into his mom—is half prepared to argue with her about leaving the house, alone. She loves him, he knows, in an intense, all-consuming way that gets misread by strangers as restrictive and controlling all the time. And sometimes, maybe, Shane feels like that too—maybe sometimes he wishes they’d have firmer boundaries and maybe getting Farah as his manager was an attempt at setting those boundaries—but ultimately, Shane loves his mom and knows everything she does, she does for him.

He hates arguing with her. Hates worrying her even more.

But thankfully he doesn’t run into her while he walks down the stairs though—a brief glimpse into the living room reveals her out in the garden, pacing while on a call to someone—and so he’s spared the lecture as he grabs Anya’s leash from the little cupboard by the door and sneaks them both out.

Only once they’ve made it to the car, does he text her: just a short going for a drive with Anya, will be back soon only so she doesn’t have a heart attack once she realizes he left. And then he peels out of his parents driveway and out into the streets.

Hayden tries his best to be there for him.

It’s hard—with his schedule, and the distance and the fact that he plays for a team that still loathes Shane like he’s the Anti-Christ.

Shane keeps fantasizing about a world where both Hayden and JJ move to Ottawa too—but they both still have time on their contract and the Cents barely have the cap space for their current roster and—well, Hayden is about two concussions away from having to full-fill his retirement pact with Jackie and JJ has been talking about moving somewhere warmer, somewhere with an active nightlife—

Realistically, he knows he likely won’t ever play on the same line as them ever again. That doesn’t make it easier, though, and selfishly, Shane wishes they were with him.

He trusts them to have his back. They’ve both been trying—with Ilya and their relationship and they’re the only ones to have reached out—after everything went public but—

It’s not enough.

Hayden texts him all the time, even though Shane doesn’t have to headspace to text him back. Funny little anecdotes about the things the kids have done at kindergarden and preschool and school. Sends Jackie over with Amber and Arthur and a casserole dish Shane won’t eat, so he’s not sitting alone in his room with his dog all day.

JJ tries too. He’s a little bit more awkward about it—he’s not known Ilya has Shane’s partner for nearly as long as Hayden has—which is one of those things Shane maybe still feels a bit bad about. He texts maybe once a day, just to check in how Shane is feeling and the text always ends with let me know if I can do anything.

If Shane was still in Montreal, they’d be together. They’d be able to sit with him. Talk to him, talk while he was present even if he wouldn’t respond. If he was still in Montreal—if he and Ilya had been anyone else, if Ilya had truly been a Lily or any other player on any other team or not a hockey player at all or if maybe—just maybe—the world and his club had been better then he’d have his entire team willing and able to help.

He thought he was over that. Thought he’d worked through the pain of losing his support system, thought getting Ilya all the time had been enough to soothe it all away.

Turns out he was wrong.

Predictably his parents aren’t thrilled when he makes it back 6 hours later.

By then it’s already dark out—there’s pictures of him, bleary eyed and miserable, pumping gas at a gas station already all over social media—something he only knows because Rose, of all people, texted him to ask if he was okay.

He’s honestly not sure if he is, is the thing. He feels both better and worse, than he did before he left the house—better, because even just driving around the neighbourhood feels productive and therefore good, and worse because he didn’t fucking find Ilya.

He called Rose, just for a bit while he let Anya out to run through an empty park they came across.

“They online response is very…kind, I’d say?” she had told him. “Nobody thinks bad of you for cussing out that reporter, by the way. Everyone—well, mostly everyone—keeps saying you should’ve done worse. And they all kind of think you look like shit, but—like—tastefully shit, you know? Like…appropriately distressed by…by everything.”

She had trailed off, a little lost. Then—

“I can’t imagine how hard this has to be. I know—I watched the press-conference, but…are…is there really no new information? No leads at all?”

And because talking to Rose had always been so—easy, really. It’s what attracted him to her in the first place, even if he didn’t get that the attraction was only platonic at the time. So he had leaned back against his closed car door, legs stretched out a little in front of him and tucked his chin, eyes still tracking Anya as she sniffed and stretched and did her business.

“Nothing.” He had barley even recognised his own voice. “They—well, it’s all about not losing hope or whatever. But the police—”

“Are useless.” Rose had said, wisely.

“They didn’t even take it seriously at first,” he had confessed. “Thought—they thought Ilya had…well, it doesn’t matter now. But—I can’t help but think if maybe we’d have already found him if—if they’d gone out to search for him the second I called.”

The call had been good. Had taken some of the weight off his chest—left him a little less wound up, a little less stressed.

Hearing that people weren’t calling for his public execution had helped too.

And then he’d gotten home, and come face-to-face with both of his parents—stone-faced, clutching at each others hands, sitting at the dining table waiting for him. He’d felt like a rebellious teenager then, like he was sixteen and had gotten caught sneaking out for some party—not that had been something Shane had ever done or even been interested in doing, but still.

“Where have you been?” his mother asks. “You said—you said you’d be back soon—”

“I had my phone,” Shane says. “You could’ve called.”

“Come on bud,” Dad says. “You have to understand that—given the situation—”

“We were so worried,” Mom interrupts. “One missing son is really enough—”

And maybe it’s the way she says it, or the way they’ve been waiting for him like it’s a fucking intervention or maybe it’s the leftover frustration at the situation in general and the knowledge that people have—again—invaded his privacy by taking pictures of him and putting them online—

But he’s mad. All of a sudden, he’s so angry he feels like he could punch a hole through the wall.

It makes him want to be mean—to hit where it hurts, consequences damned.

“I’m thirty years old, Mom.” Shane says, shortly. “I’m a grown fucking adult and I had my phone. If you were so worried that your adult son was out after sundown you could have called. You—you worry when I stay in my room all day and now that I’ve gone out you worry because I was gone?”

Dad flinches back, a little, and a part of him feels almost satisfised by it—by the shock, the hurt.

“What? You don’t think I hear you two whisper from outside my room? About how I don’t sleep or eat enough? About how worried you are about me?” He asks, mockingly. “Please do me a favour, and leave me the fuck alone if all you’re going to do is criticise how I deal with the fact that my husband was abducted out of our fucking house.”

By the time he’s done with his little tirade, he’s heaving like he’s run a marathon and his mom stares at him, like she’s seeing him for the very first time.

And all of a sudden the smug satisfaction is gone, and all he feels his guilt.

“I’m going to bed.”

He can’t walk forever.

Wants to—tries to—but eventually his knees buckle and he sinks back onto the damp forest floor.

He feels feverish by then—head heavy and pounding dully away, his entire body aching—burning—freezing all at the same time.

It’s bad, he knows distantly. Knows that his vision shouldn’t keep blurring, that nausea shouldn’t be rolling through his stomach and making him gag violently enough to shake his entire body. Knows he definitely shouldn’t fall asleep—

But it’s so hard. Even breathing hurts—something twinging uncomfortably in his lower back with every inhale—and his eyelids keep drooping no matter how hard he tries to pry his eyes back open, to push himself upwards, to keep fucking moving.

He has a home.

He can feel it—right in the middle of his chest, pulsing like a lighthouse, ready to guide him home. He just needs to get there, needs to figure out where home is.

Just has to get up and ask someone for help.

Distantly, he remembers arguing.

It’s there, somewhere in the back of his confused mind, when he comes back to. There’s a crick in his neck, from where his head rested against the tree bark, and the burning is gone so now he’s just miserably cold and back to shivering violently.

It’s not a clear memory—it feels more like something he’s dreamed up, honestly, or a hallucination maybe, caused by the exhaustion and the pain—but it’s also the closest thing he has to a clue as to who he is or where he came from.

There were—voices. Men, he thinks, though he can’t say for sure. They were upset. Angry.

This is your fault, one of them had said. You----s was------guy.

How many fuckin-------do you think there are in Ottawa?, a different voice had yelled back. We get a request for-----I--------!

Yeah well, everyone is lookin’ for this guy and he’s not our guy!

None of it makes sense to him, but he hangs onto the memory like a lifeline. Ottawa he thinks, deliriously. He needs to get to Ottawa. Maybe someone will know him in Ottawa. Or he’ll run into the angry voices there and they’ll remember him and maybe then they’ll help.

Canadians are supposed to be kind. He’s not sure how he knows that, isn’t sure how he knows Ottawa is in Canada, considering he barely knows anything else—but he does.

Surely someone would take pity on him, if they saw him stumbling through their neighbourhood like this. Would call the police or an ambulance or something and then smarter people than him could figure out where he belongs.

That’s good.

That’s a plan.

It doesn’t solve anything else, but at least now he knows where to ask directions for if he happens to stumble across anyone else.

Chapter End Notes

i vanished again! yikes! i also don't really like this chapter but I've been trying to cut back on the perfectionism. picked up yoga. shane hollander is my blood brother #real and #true.

I also think. Hm. #MyShane is allowed to crashout actually.
every day I get closer to writing that 400k Irina Rozanova lives!AU

Chapter 3: headlights

Chapter Summary

Ilya sliding up next to Troy, punching Kent square in the face and laying him flat on his back. Ilya at All-Stars—kissing the side of Shane’s face. Ilya winning the cup with Boston. Ilya with Wyatt and Chuck at the children’s hospital in Ottawa, smiling up at the camera dressed like a superhero for Halloween last year. Behind the scenes footage from the locker room—Ilya dancing along to Dykstras playlist half dressed—Ilya with Chiron—Ilya checking in with Haas, ruffling sweaty hair. Ilya fist bumping the Raiders as they leave the ice. I love you. I love you. I love you. 

Chapter Notes

I added the hover to translate skin by mackerel_cheese which you can find here. and the only reason i did this is bc i fell down a rabbit hole about TICKS. i also REALLY struggled with my english while writing this so uh. all mistakes are my own. sorry!! shout out to google translate for the russian.

cw for one (1) vague reference to the bible and medical inaccuracies 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ also canon typical misogyny? shane is jealous of sveta. it's a whole thing.

Eventually he finds a road.

Even, paved ground without roots and dips for him to trip over. He’s so weirdly grateful for it, he almost cries, even though following it comes with losing access to the trees he’s been using as a crutch.

It’s not all bad—he finds a huge stick he uses like a cane. The wood is wet and wobbles and creaks and bends whenever he leans too much of his weight on it, but it’s stable enough to keep him upright and moving.

He thinks someone told him stories of a man wandering through the desert once. A soft, feminine voice he can’t place telling him of 40 days alone without food or water. He can’t remember the moral of the story, or who told him or why—but there’s something almost uplifting in the thought that he’s not the only person to ever wander.

Maybe the man in the desert also wanted to go home. He wonders if he got to, at the end of his journey. He hopes he did.

It’s hard to walk straight.

In between one blink and the next he stumbles from one side of the road to the other, even though his brain is telling him he’s maintaining his course, which feels a bit scary if he’s totally honest.

He thinks I need to go left and walk on the side of the road or a speeding car will mow me over and it’s like his head overcorrects and he finds himself stumbling through the shrubbery right next to the road instead.

Be careful of ticks. The thought comes up in his head uninvited, but it sends the same warmth through his chest that comes up whenever he thinks of home. You need to check for ticks if you’ve been around thicket.

His sight is too blurred to make out much of what his exposed calves look like beyond the few, small cuts around his shins where thorns have dug into his flesh, that bleed sluggishly—but he tries to check anyways. It feels important. Someone wanted him to be safe and to take care of himself so he won’t catch strange diseases carried by bad bugs.

He’s—he’s gotten vaccinated against клещевой энцефалит, Tick-Borne Encephalitis he thinks. He’s not sure how he knows that, but he does, so he’s probably safe anyways.

Still, he hobbles along and tries to avoid running through more bushes.

The road winds through the forest. He thinks, maybe, if he wasn’t lost in the wilderness and maybe concussed, he might appreciate the view. The trees look imposing, their branches intertwining over his head. It’s quiet, except for the occasional rustle of whatever animal is stalking through the undergrowth. Peaceful.

He’s not a nature person. But it’s—nice.

Worse places to be, probably.

Eventually, he hears a car.

He comes to a halt at the side of the road—holds onto the tree branch with what little strength he has, and turns his head to the left and to the right, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. After a few minutes, little van comes into view. It’s painted a light, washed-out blue and putters down the road.

The driver must spot him, because the van slows to a stop, and one of the windows rolls down.

“Are you okay?” a heavily accented voice asks. It’s a man. His tongue wraps around the consonants in a familiar way—the consonants sounding a little harsher than what he’s used to from English. “Do you need help?”

“Мне нужно поехать в Оттаву.”I need to get to Ottawa. he says. His voice sounds—wrong. It’s the first time he’s said—anything, since he’s woken up. Maybe he should’ve been calling for help, actually. Maybe it’s dumb that he hasn’t been screaming for help at all.

“Ah you are Russian?” the man says. “У меня плохой русский.My Russian is bad.. Ottawa, yes? Did you have accident?”

Is he Russian?

“I don’t know,” he says. Leans further onto his left, gestures with his right hand—almost loses his balance as the branch bends even further under his weight. “I think—my head.”

“We can help you,” the man says. “Alix is first helper.”

“EMT,” grumbles a voice from somewhere behind him.

The man rolls his eyes, and he leaves the engine running as he opens his door. On the other side of the car, woman climbs out—short curly hair tucked into a backwards baseball cap, dressed in shorts and a large hoodie.

“What’s your name?” the woman—Alix?—asks as she walks up to him. The man is walking around the van, to pop open the back. “Did you hit your head?”

He nods—sways in place. She reaches for him—large, callused hands wrapping around his cheeks as she peers into his eyes. Her—friend? Brother?—appears behind her, carrying a red pouch reading first aid kid.

“Your name?” she asks again and wordlessly holds out her hand to her companion. He hands her what looks like a silver pen—that she immediately holds up and fiddles with.

“I don’t—” he flinches because the pen is—a flashlight, actually, that she shines directly into his eyes. Not that he gets far, because she’s still holding onto his face. “I don’t know.”

“Your pupils look fine. Reactive. That is very good. Did you throw up? Pass out?” Alix asks him.

“No throwing up but, I think I passed out. Yes.”

“Hm.” She hands the light back. “Concussion, probably. But not remembering your name—that is not so good. We should get you to a hospital. You can walk?”

He nods again. Now that he’s not moving, he’s starting to feel really nauseous whenever he does.

“Do you remember anything at all?” her friend asks, dutifully holding the red pouch, while Alix digs around. She pulls out gloves and gauze and a spray bottle of something.

He shakes his head. Alix walks around him, appraising him from every angle.

“Where does it hurt?” she asks, though she doesn’t wait for a response—he feels her hands carefully pulling at his curls at the back of his head, the gloves pulling at some of the strands uncomfortably. “Ah, I see.”

“You are very kind,” he says while she does—whatever it is she does. He hears the sound of the spray bottle, feels wetness—but it doesn’t burn, thankfully. “You did not have to help me.”

“Oh no, is just what you do, yes?” the man says cheerfully. “I would call ambulance for you, but I have no idea where we are.”

“You are not from here?” he asks.

He shakes his head and opens his mouth to respond but Alix must wave at him or something, because instead he sighs and walks closer to her, so she can dig around the pouch again.

“We are on vacation.” The man says. “Alix here is dating my sister—we are staying in cabin not long from here and wanted to head into the city for—food and stuff and—”

“And this idiot,” Alix says, and puts pressure on the cut at the back of his head. It sends a jolt of sharp, hot pain through his entire body and he whimpers like a little dog—and then something soft is wrapped around his head. “Cannot read a map to save his life. We’ve been driving in circles, and our girlfriends are at cabin starving to death probably.”

“She gets very uh grumpy when she’s hungry.” The man says. “No starving girlfriends, I promise.”

“Well you better figure out the way to the city,” Alix says. Her hands leave the back of his head. Pats his shoulder. “This one does need a hospital.”

Ten days after Ilya went missing, the league puts out a statement essentially announcing a period of mourning.

In the press release they’re calling Ilya an asset. A profound, undeniable loss.

Shane reads the post over and over again, until he knows all of the words—all 62 of them—by heart. It’s like someone looked up worlds most generic obituary and tweaked the top result just enough to not outwardly confirm the death part while still making it obvious that they don’t expect Ilya Rozanov—because they never did get around to changing his name to Hollander, like he’s wanted to—to return in one piece.

A Celebration of Life, it reads, will be held on Sunday the Fifteenth at the Canadian Tire Centre before the Centaurs home game against the New York Admirals.

Wiebe calls him ten minutes after the statement goes online.

“They want you there,” he tells him over the line. “You don’t have to play but—Crowell made it abundantly clear that the entire team is to attend to honor Ilya’s generational run.”

It’s obvious they both know it’s only to make a spectacle out of him.

“At least it’s New York,” Wiebe says. “At least it’s a home game. I don’t think there’s going to be—too much nastiness. Ilya isn’t—I mean they don’t particularly like him there, but Hunter and the rest of the team are decent and the fans—I think even the worst Admirals fan will think twice before trying shit surrounded by our crowd.”

“Hunter and Vaughn are going to make sure everyone behaves,” Shane tells him. “Hunter, he regularly hangs out with Ilya after games in New York and Vaughn is…”

He breaks off.

“Shane?” Wiebe asks. “You okay?”

I think I’m really starting to hate hockey, Shane thinks. I think I hate that I’m starting to hate hockey. I hate that they’re using hockey to hurt me.

He thinks back to when Ilya asked him if he’d chose him over hockey, given the chance. And he’d hesitated then—and sure, a part of that had been because he’d been caught off guard, because, for one, shameful second he hadn’t been sure—

But it had also been because hockey and Ilya had always been so intertwined to Shane that, for a second, Shane couldn’t remember a time where hockey didn’t also mean Ilya. Because from the second Shane had watched the first, shaky tape of Ilya playing in Russia he’d gotten his hands on, he’d been obsessed—because for a second, it felt like Ilya had asked him if he’d chose breathing or air in his lungs. A dumb, nonsensical question.

So of course they—the league, the news, Roger Fucking Crowell—are using hockey to hurt him. They’re using Ilya after all.

“I’m fine,” Shane tells Wiebe. “I’ll be there.”

“Hang in there, Shane. We’re all there for you and while it might not feel like it, we are going to get through this.”

It’s a variation of the same placating words everyone’s telling him. You’ll get through this. It will all be okay. He’ll be back before you know it.

And he wants to believe it—does believe it. He’s just also—tired of hearing people that don’t get it parroting the same empty promises at him over and over again. It’s easy for Wiebe to offer blank optimism, when all he stands to lose is one of his star centres—or, well, both of his star centres because should the worst happen—should Ilya never come home again—well then that’s that.

There’s no way Shane will ever survive losing Ilya.

“Sure.” Shane answers. “See you Sunday coach.”

Svetlana makes grieving look good.

Her curls have worked themselves out of the bun she put them in, just enough to frame her face in a way that looks intentional. Her eyes are red-rimmed and wet, but she doesn’t look splotchy and there’s no snot dripping from her nose.

She looks like she just stepped off a movie set. Like she’s performing grief, rather than feeling it.

Shane kind of hates her.

Always has, if he’s completely honest. It’s not something he’s ever admitted to Ilya—something he planned on taking to his own grave some day—because he knows it’s irrational and largely caused by jealousy over their shared history, over all the parts of Ilya that belonged to her that will never belong to him.

It’s not even necessarily about the physical intimacy, though Shane is man enough admit that it does bother him, just a little—but more so about the emotional intimacy of their relationship. About the way they were childhood friends. About Svetlana knowing parts of Ilya that Shane will never be able to grasp—there are only a handful of pictures of Ilya’s childhood left and all of them are pictures that belong to Svetlana because Ilya’s piece-of-shit dad got rid of all his baby pictures alongside everything else that belonged to Irina Rozanova. It’s two decades worth of memories—of touches and kisses and walking side-by-side—that Shane will never be able to catch up with.

It’s Svetlana—beautiful, smart, perfect Svetlana with her flawless manicure and sharp eyeliner and grasp of the Russian language—that, in another life, might’ve gotten Ilya forever.   

Still. It’s nice of her to show up.

It’s also nice that she doesn’t tell him it’s going to be okay—that there is physical evidence of what Ilya absence has done to her, even though she looks put together where Shane’s falling apart—because she’s maybe the only person on earth that understands what Shane’s going through. The only one that has a claim on him, that’s equal to Shane’s.

Behind her, Marlow stands around awkwardly—hands sheepishly tugged into the pockets of his suit, hunched into himself like he’s able to make himself smaller that way.

His hairs a mess and his nose is red. “This whole thing is bullshit.” He tells Shane, offering him a tentative handshake. “Roz’s is gonna have a blast with this when he’s back but—man.” He pulls a face. “Feels like a bad omen.”

He’s not the only person to have said something like this. A surprising amount of players have shown up for Ilya’s Celebration of Life despite everyone claiming to hate him—notably Hayden and JJ, even though they’re missing a Montreal game by coming, Marlow and a couple of Ilya’s other old teammates like St. Simons and Conners’. Eric Bennett. Ryan Price. Max Riley and Leah Campbell and most of Leah’s teammates that—as far as Shane knew—only distantly knew Ilya

Everyone—every single one of them that Shane’s spoken to—has claimed the entire affair to be eerie. Hunter—when Shane met him earlier during the day—said the very concept felt repulsive considering Ilya’s death is very much not confirmed.

And while Shane agrees, he also thinks—well. Maybe it’ll be good for him. To see how loved he is, once he’s back. How many people showed up for him—how many lives he’s touched. Because sometimes, Shane thinks Ilya doesn’t let himself realize that people want him for more than what he can offer them. It’s only natural, probably, because that’s all he’s ever been told by his family—that his only value was in what he could provide for them.

But whenever he lets himself be more than what he pretends to be—whenever he lets that part of him shine through that he usually only shows to Shane—people love him. Want to be around him for his sake.

“Is it bad that I’m glad it’s this way?” Svetlana whispers in his ear before untangling herself from the hug she’d pulled Shane into. “I just—I keep thinking if your roles were reversed—I don’t think—” she breaks off. “I don’t think Ilya would’ve survived all this.”

Ironic.

“This whole situation made me really hate his voicemail,” Marlow says, before Shane can untangle all of that—because, what, does she think Ilya loves him more than Shane loves Ilya?—and pats Shane’s shoulder. “Get him to change it, when he’s back, will you? I dunno how many times I can listen to I will never listen to your voicemail again.”

“The police still have his phone.” Shane answers, blankly. “I don’t know—might take a while before we get it back.”

Svetlana scoffs. “They seem very useless.” She says. “How can they have no leads?”

“You think—” Marlow looks around, leans in close and whispers, conspiratorially, “You think this is about Russia?”

Svetlana slaps him up the head. “Don’t be stupid. Ilya’s not that important—not enough for anyone to risk the kind of global incident hurting a famous athlete on political asylum in Canada on Canadian soil would cause.”

“Oh,” Marlow says. He turns his head to the side—it reminds Shane a little of the way Anya sometimes looks whenever she’s trying to figure out a new toy. “Was that uh—xeno—xenophobic, of me?”

Before Svetlana can answer, he turns to Shane. “I’ve been trying to uh—” he glances at her. “Work through some of my uh—internal biases.” He says it like he’s reading off a cue card. “You know. To be a better ally. And stuff.”

And stuff, Shane mouths.

“Uh, Shane?” someone calls from behind—Harris, it turns out. Decked out with a clipboard and an expensive camera strapped around his neck. “We’re about ready to start so they sent me to get you…”

Right. Right.

He almost forgot about—

Right.

The thing is.

The thing is—

He’s not been on the ice since before Ilya went missing. He’s not even watched a game since Ilya went missing. He’s stayed away from social media, stayed away from their teammates, from his friends—

Rose had told him, that fans had been on his side after that incident with the journalist but—

At least half of the home crowd is dressed in or holding Ilya’s jersey. The entire stadium is filled with banners and signs. Hang in there Hollzy one of signs right behind the boards reads. It seems—everywhere he looks, people are cheering for him—for Ilya—sending support.

It’s loud too—louder, probably than a Celebration of Life is meant to be. He’d half expected to walk out onto the ice and be greeted by silence—maybe crying, the sort atmosphere he remembered from his grandfathers funeral when he was 16. But there’s music playing—a montage of Ilya’s best plays on the jumbotron.

“We didn’t want this to feel like a funeral,” Bood whispers to him. “If the league’s forcing us to act like—like we’ve lost hope, then we can at least make it a proper celebration, right?”

Their goal song is booming over the speakers—18 thousand people, including the fans that have come up from New York—all singing along to All I do Is Win while Ilya sends the puck into the back of—ironically enough—New York’s net. Shane even spots Hunter for half a second, before the footage cuts to a different game, a different play—

Ilya sliding up next to Troy, punching Kent square in the face and laying him flat on his back. Ilya at All-Stars—kissing the side of Shane’s face. Ilya winning the cup with Boston. Ilya with Wyatt and Chuck at the children’s hospital in Ottawa, smiling up at the camera dressed like a superhero for Halloween last year. Behind the scenes footage from the locker room—Ilya dancing along to Dykstras playlist half dressed—Ilya with Chiron—Ilya checking in with Haas, ruffling sweaty hair. Ilya fist bumping the Raiders as they leave the ice. I love you. I love you. I love you. 

It’s objectively not a sad montage. Shane spots Harris—next to Svetlana and Marlow—nodding along to the music, watching everything through his camera. Marlow is mouthing along to the music. Svetlana’s doing a little side-step. The rest of the Cents are cheering along with the fans.

And still—

For the first time since—since—Shane feels himself tear up.

All the anger draining out of him, leaving him hollow and exhausted and grateful that the lights have been dimmed, that everyone’s attention is on the screen and not on the way he ducks his face and stares down at his stupid dress shoes.  

Chapter End Notes

on tick borne encephalitis

tick borne encephalitis is running rampant in central and eastern europe and northern asia. seriously. it's an epidemic out here and climate change is only fueling the fire. and while the former ussr did a lot of research on tbe, there's still no "cure" beyond preventative measures like vaccines. funnily enough, tbe is NOT an issue in canada. like at all. the country doesn't even stock the vaccine. ticks there mainly carry lyme disease (which is also common in europe obviously) and the Powassan virus (which I'd never even heard of before i researched this and is apparently very very rare but also causes meningitis/encephalitis). idk but the idea of shane being worried about things like ticks because he doesn't want ilya to get (primarily) lyme disease and ilya trying to reassure him bc he's been vaccinated even though said vaccination does NAWT help him in canada is just kinda funny to me. like that's the kind of harmless cultural (?) misunderstanding that really gets me for some reason.

I couldn't remember if the Cents home stadium is ever named in TLG so i just. yoinked the actual name of the stadium in ottawa.

the concept of accidentally finding out an author u really enjoy is reading ur fic. hello. i am embarrassed. please do not look at me.
anyways, thank u to everyone reading and sticking around! :-)
yell at me on tumblr @cursedbythenarrative

Chapter 4: closed door open window

Chapter Notes

i wrote most of this in between nights and a 10 day stretch so please forgive any and all mistakes. I. am very tired!

There’s no basis for it, but he has a feeling he’s never gotten motion sick before, especially not in a car.

And he thinks, if anyone else were driving this fucking car (and maybe also if he wasn’t concussed), he wouldn’t be quite as nauseous. The man—Filip, Alix tells him—cannot drive to save Filip’s—or his for that matter—life.

The van looks and smells old (and also like curdled cheese and stale beer) and the engine starts making a strange wheezing sound around the 20 miles per hour mark that turns into a loud, uncomfortable clanking whenever Filip tries to accelerate past 30. They sneak through the forest, swerving dangerously all the while, and suddenly he understands why Alix seemed so concerned about their girlfriends starving to death, alone in some, as he imagines, dark dusty cabin. Also there has to be something wrong with the shock absorbers because every little dip in the concrete, every singular piece of gravel shakes the entire van fiercely.

He thinks he might like cars, actually, or at the very least used to know a bit (a lot?) about them. Something bright orange flashes through the back of his head—his first real attempt at a memory, he realizes, but the image vanishes before it can take shape and leaves behind a new, sharp pain right behind his eyelids.

Maybe he used to be a mechanic. Maybe he owns a little shop in Ottawa and whoever he misses—because it’s a who he’s realized, somewhere between getting into the back of the van and the first ten-or so miles, not a where—is sitting in that shop right now, waiting for him to come back. Maybe they had brought in their car—and he found some big problem, like an engine making a sound similarly worrisome to the engine in this stupid van, and over the days he’d need to fix them they’d grown closer and maybe—

“Hey, no sleeping.”

There’s a sharp pinch on the inside of his arm and he jerks upwards, backwards—he hadn’t noticed his eyes slipping shut, but now he’s blinking them open rapidly. Everything is blurry—bright shapes and colours and—Alix’s face, similarly blurry. The corner of his vision darken—

Another sharp pinch.

“Eyes on me.” Alix, both louder and closer. Her face comes back into focus a little, and all of a sudden the light is back. She frowns. He grimaces away. “Filip.”

He answers something Ilya can’t understand but that sounds like a curse. “I know, but what do you want me to do? This land is just road and road and road and forest and forest and forest. I cannot get hospital out of air.”

“I know.” Alix says. Frowns even harder. “Still.”

“You,” she says then, and her nails really dig into his underarm then. “Talk. Just—talk. Anything. Why do you need to go to Ottawa?”

His tongue feels like it’s been glued to the bottom of his mouth. Heavy and too big somehow—clumsy. But maybe it’s because of the way she’s staring down at him—bushy eyebrows drawn together, teeth sunk into her bottom lip, like she can will him to talk—he manages somehow.

He tells her about home.

There’s not much to say, obviously, because he still cannot fucking remember anything, but he mentions the men—the bits of conversation he picked up somewhere. The flash of orange. The engine sounds. His shop that may-or-may-not exist. Home.

Maybe they were the one worried about ticks, he tells her. Maybe they enjoy long hikes through lonely forests and they—the two of them—had gone on them together before and that’s why they worry about bugs. And—god what if they are out there too somewhere? What if they’d been together?

The thought alone is enough to send his heart racing. Pure adrenaline coursing through his veins. Her hand slips from his forearm down to his wrist, her pointer and middle finger laying flat against the skin there, pressing softly.

“What if they are back there, hurt?” he asks her and she shushes him. “What if I—oh god what if I abandoned them?”

He tries to get himself upright, from where he’s slumped in his seat, and she helps, holds his head carefully between both of her hands.

“I need to go back I need—”

“You need a hospital.” She says. Presses her hands against his cheeks and forces him to look at her and for a second he sees long, golden locks of hair and grey eyes and a colourful scarf and rosy cheeks. “They would want you safe in hospital.”

He tries to pull away, but the nausea and exhaustion catch up to him and he crumples into the seat, like a puppet with its strings cut. Alix, his puppeteer, moves with him. Makes sure he lands safely.

“пожалуйста.“ ”Please.”He says. “пожалуйста.“ ”Please.” 

“You’re gonna be okay.” Filip says from the drivers seat. “Look, we’re almost out of this stupid forest.”

It all comes to a breaking point, twelve days after Ilya first went missing.

Shane’s been away.

Out with Anya as much as he feasibly can—driving, walking, hiking. His phone on do not disturb or airplane mode or left in his childhood bedroom.

He’s isolating himself and he knows it.

While his parents try to pretend everything is fine, like their argument never happened. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, and even though they go out of their way to include him in breakfast and polite conversation, Shane thinks he might have managed to permanently fuck up their relationship forever.

The worst part is what Ilya might think about that—Ilya who was so happy about having a family again. Who was so excited about having parents who love each other and that love their kid and him. Ilya who would never speak to Shane’s Mom and Dad again if Shane asked, no question asked. Who would feel so guilty for causing them this pain.

Being away means Shane’s spend a lot of time learning his city for what feels like the first time, all over again. Wandering the streets aimlessly—the only aim is finding Ilya the way it always has been since they were seventeen in a dumpy parking lot in Saskatchewan—means he sees a lot of places he’s never been.

There’s a lot of orthodox churches, funnily enough. He visits one of them, at one point. Doesn’t attend a service—just walks in through the open doors and buys a handful of candles at the entrance to light, the way Ilya sometimes tells him about doing. Tries to find the comfort the ritual brings him.

Ilya’s relationship with religion is complicated: he believes and doesn’t, prays sometimes and occasionally attends service—maybe even at that particular church, though Shane’s never attended with him and therefore doesn’t fucking know—and then stays away for months at a time.

He’s definitely the more spiritual of the two of them. Shane feels kind of stupid, pressing the lit candles into the sand—there’s no sudden spiritual awakening, no comfort he gets from watching the wax melt. He tries closing his eyes, tries begging a God he doesn’t believe in: please give him back. Please, please, please get him home safe. For his sake, not for mine. Tries to conjure up an imagine of Irina—his brain fills in her face with a softer version of Ilya, a face he’s never seen because in the only picture he’s ever seen of her, she’s looking down at a pudgy baby Ilya and most of her features are hidden behind a curtain of her long curls—and begs her instead.

It doesn’t matter, he thinks and does so with intend. Give him to me sick or weak or hurt. Give him to me sad or angry or mean. I’d do anything. I’ll divorce him, never talk to him again if that’s what it takes. I’ll take his place. Just give him back to me.

He’d take him anyway he could, so long as he could have him.

It doesn’t work. There’s no sudden epiphany, no in-coming call on his phone, no breaking news on the radio when he gets in his car.

Instead, he leaves and doesn’t even feel any closer to his husband. He leaves and he feels worse than he felt walking in, actually—a common theme since that memorial service Crowell forced him to attend.

Without the anger fueling him, he’s just…sad. All the time. Whatever hope he was clinging to is rapidly leaving him, making him stay with all his worst fears.

Maybe Ilya is dead. Maybe Shane’s been turned into a widower in his thirties—maybe he really only got to have Ilya, really have him, for a season and some change. Maybe those 13-odd years of secrecy was all they were supposed to have and because they got greedy Ilya had to go. Maybe that was the moral of the story—the gotcha at the end of the fairy tale, the lesson Shane was supposed to learn and didn’t.

Not knowing is the worst part, somehow. Where Ilya is, obviously, what happened, if he was hungry or scared or in pain. If he was cold—because for all the ways Ilya walks around (half) naked at any possible moment, his feet and hands are always cold and he’s scared Shane half to death by tucking his icy toes between his thighs in bed.

And the why. Why someone decided to break into their house and take the best thing out of Shane’s life. Why Ilya, specifically, had to suffer like that, why they couldn’t have taken someone else, why they hadn’t thought to take Shane too.

Why Ilya? Why Ilya when they were just starting their life together? Why Ilya when he was finally, for maybe the first time since his mother died, truly content?

And its on that day, after the visit to the church that only made everything worse that Shane snaps. Cracks right down the middle.

Anya’s at his heels. They’re walking the same lap down to the park; past their house—still a crime scene with yellow barricade tape around the fence—dark and gloomy in the way it’s been basically abandoned—past their elderly neighbours and the female runner he still doesn’t know the name of—down winding streets.

Anya doesn’t sniff at any leaves or stones, doesn’t stray from his side but it’s obvious she’s enjoying the time outside. Her nose keeps twitching, and while Shane is walking rather than running, she seems perfectly at ease.

And then Shane hears something—something loud and motored, and he turns to see a car speeding down the street, swerving left to right. The driver—another one of their neighbours, one Shane only vaguely recognizes from their move in—is staring down at his lap—phone?—and in between the heartbeat it takes Shane’s brain to register that a distracted driver is speeding down his quiet neighbourhood, the car hits the curb and rolls onto the sidewalk.

Where Shane is walking with his fucking dog.

He all but yanks at Anya’s collar, pulls back with so much force they both stumble into the well-maintained rose-bushes Mrs. Tremblay has planted all around her garden.

And he doesn’t feel where the thorns have dug into his skin—doesn’t care about the screeching tires or the way the car starts honking—like SHANE was in the wrong for walking on the designated space where pedestrians are supposed to fucking walk—doesn’t even look to see where the fucking car ended up—if it’s objectively safe to stand up again or if he should duck further into the bushes in case more stupid people are on the road today—before he’s standing back up, petting Anya down.

“Are you okay, girl?” he asks her, frantically. “Did I choke you? Are you okay?”

Anya yips at him—tail wagging—and while she does seem a little dazed, she’s also not mangled underneath a green Honda Accord so he’ll take what he gets.

“Are you guys—” someone calls and Shane’s head whips up to glare at—the driver. Who does a double take when he realizes who’s staring up at him. “Oh god, Mister Hollander, sir I am—”

“Do you have any idea what you almost did just now?” Shane yells—but he’s not angry. Not really. He’s just so fucking tired and sad and now, guilty, too because he’s almost gotten Anya killed too. Anya, who’s maybe the only living thing that can still stomach looking at him—his only companion—the only thing he has left of his husband.

And while he would love to tear into this guy, to yell and scream—maybe throw a punch, end up on the news, get suspended and fined and thrown in jail—all he manages is a pathetic whine.

And then the waterworks start.

His mom picks him up.

Shane’s unsure how she knew where he was or that he needed to be picked up—but in between one heaving sob and the next she’s crouching down in front of him, hovering carefully with both her hands over his shoulders like she doesn’t know if he still wants her touch.

Which is kinda ridiculous because—he might be a grown adult but she’s still his mom.

Shane doesn’t think he’ll ever not want her, though seeing her now only makes him cry harder. And it’s always been like that, even when he was a kid. He’d fall on the ice, or on the playground or he’d have a hard day at school and he’d be fine—until he’d turn and see her, standing rink side or watching from a bench or in the car and then he’d just…crumple. Sometimes he wonders how she does it, or Ilya—or anyone that has to live without their parents, how one is meant to go on when they lose them.

How humans have just—continued. For decades and centauries, through all that grief and pain. Doesn’t know how he’s meant to keep going now, without—

Without.

“Oh Shane,” his mom says and pulls him into an awkward hug because Anya is still perched in his lap, where she’s been sitting since this whole episode started—and Anya doesn’t usually enjoy hugs, starts squirming whenever Ilya wraps his arms around her, but she tolerates it now, which in turn makes Shane sob even harder. “Oh my baby.”

He’s out of it enough, that he doesn’t even care that he’s having a full mental breakdown in public. He doesn’t care that by noon, his face is going to be plastered all over the entertainment news section of the internet—on a good day he cannot leave his home without getting recognized and asked about whatever game he played last, if he can sign something, if he can hold a child like he’s some sort of religious leader. He doesn’t care that seeing him like this, is going to make the speculations even worse: that people will take his snot covered, tear streaked face and take it as confirmation that his husband is dead.

Beyond the searing pain in his chest and the lingering terror, he doesn’t really feel anything at all.

“Mom,” he manages, tongue too big for his mouth. “Mom.”

“Let’s get into the car honey, okay?” Mom says and tries to get Anya to leave his lap. She refuses to budge. Instead, she starts licking at Shane’s cheeks; a sensory nightmare he wouldn’t tolerate either usually. Just above where Anya’s licking, his mom tries to brush away his tears away. It does little to clear is vision. “You need to stop crying like this, you’re going to make yourself sick.”

“Do you need me to call 911?” the guy asks. He’s standing to the side, halfway between his car and where Shane is crumpled on the ground, rocking on the balls of his feet like he’s unsure whether to go or to stay. Shane forgot about him, only vaguely recognizes him through the tears. At least he doesn’t look like he’s filming, doesn’t seme to have his phone out.

“I need you to leave,” Mom snaps, before she focuses back on trying to coax Shane into emotional regulation. “Come on baby, take a deep breath for me. Here—breathe with me.”

She takes a couple of loud, exaggerated breaths but she might as well have done nothing at all for Shane is hopeless to follow—downright hysterical.

Evidentially, his mother must deem trying to calm him down a lost cause, because she ends up picking Anya up when she still refuses to budge and puts her in the car before manhandling Shane upright and into the passenger seat with a downright comical ease, despite the 150 pounds he has on her.

She buckles him in, brushes a kiss over his forehead, closes the door. It takes a bit before she rounds the car to sit behind the wheel—Shane can barely make out her thin—frail—frame gesturing at the guy still gawking his way.

And god—the guilt.

He’s been so awful to her—to Dad—and still she’s here, taking care of him, of his mess—

“I’m getting you home, don’t worry.” She says and puts the car in drive. “It’ll all be okay, I’m not letting anything happen to you I promise, it’s all going to be okay—”

Her voice is drowned out by a high-pitched ringing in his ears, getting louder by the second.

Through his blurry vision—white spots dancing at the corner of his eyes—he sees her reaching for him, her right hand wrapping around his left. She holds on, squeezes in what is surely meant to be comforting. And Shane tries to squeeze back, but he’s also rapidly loosing the feeling in his fingers—hands.

“It’s not far,” he hears her say and then he’s gone.

He comes back to the car lurching up onto the curb, rear first.

“David!” Mom yells—and she’s out the door before the cars fully stopped which—that’s dangerous Shane thinks. In the time it takes him to blink his eyes open, she’s already rounded the car—still screaming for his dad and yanked the door open. “You with me, honey?”

Her hands are ice-y—clammy where they touch his hot, puffy face, pat down his neck and over his shoulders. Her hands are usually so warm—so steady—but now they shake. Badly. She flinches back when he turns his head to look at her, like she thinks he’ll break if she touches him again.

“Oh Shane, I—” her voice breaks into a sob, but stubbornly the tears in her eyes refuse to fall. “God, I was so worried—”

The front door flies open and his dad walks out—frantic, wearing two different shoes and his reading glasses perched on his forehead. “Is he awake?” he yells and then he’s crouched right next to Mom, stares up at him with big, concerned eyes.

“What happened?” Shane asks. Rasps.

“You passed out.” Mom says and brushes a hand over her face. Shane watches as she forcefully pulls herself together again. “I was talking and I—you were still crying so I knew you were with me even if you didn’t respond but you suddenly stopped like two blocks away so I turned and you were just—slumped over, eyes open but so unseeing and I thought god—”

“Mom called me,” Dad says and reaches out gingerly, the same way Mom had. He falters just before he can touch Shane’s face. “I agreed that she should come home rather than drive to the hospital or stop or something, considering how close you two already were because here at least I could help—”

Looking at the two of them, side by side like this, makes it obvious how much the past couple of weeks have affected them too. They look older somehow, weary, and while at least a part of that is Shane’s fault, it’s also because—well.

Ilya likes to joke that he’s their favourite son—and it is a joke and they both know it, know that if, god-forbid, they got divorced or in some terrible fight or something his parents would stand with him before they’d ever stand with Ilya—but that doesn’t mean his parents don’t also love Ilya with their whole heart.

That they aren’t also suffering.

It’s hard, for Shane, to remember he’s not the only person in the world sometimes. Which sounds bad, even in his own head—but it’s true, whether he wants it to be or not.

He’s stuck in his ways—obsessive to an almost pathological degree. He cares about things deeply, only those things are usually the wrong things according to everyone else. He needs to be in control at all times and he’s rigid and kind of bitchy. It’s only due to his good PR and over all good-boy public persona, that people give him a pass—though that’s sort of changed after the outing and the shitstorm that followed it.

Point being that—every so often—something happens that makes Shane painfully aware that he’s been a self-absorbed prick without meaning to be. And while he’s known, distantly, that he’s not the only one affected by Ilya’s disappearance, it’s like now he knows. Really, really knows that he doesn’t have a monopoly on that kind of grief, knows that he doesn’t want to have a monopoly on it either.

“I’m sorry,” he says and he still sounds hoarse and choked up but feels marginally more human than he did before. “I’ve been such a dick to you two and—”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Mom says at the same time as Dad says “You’re fine, bud.”

“You’re going through something very hard right now.” Mom continues. “And we—your Dad and I—we have a tendency to coddle you, I think. You might be an adult but to us you’re always going to be our baby and…come on, honey maybe we should talk about this inside—”

“I think that might be a good idea,” Dad agrees and gets up again—his knees cracking as he goes and he winces, though he valiantly attempts to hide it. Another reminder that his parents aren’t as young as they used to be. “I think we’ve caused enough of a scene for now.”

He holds out his hand and Shane reaches back.

Inside there’s more apologies, though mostly his parents attempt to distract him still visibly worried. Considering he’s just—essentially—went through a semi-public breakdown and cried so hard he passed out in his mothers car, Shane tries his hardest not to grate at that.

“How’d you find me anyways?” he asks his Mom from where he’s perched at the breakfast bar. “And how’d you know I uh—needed picking up?”

She’s scrubbing the counter with a rag that used to be one of Dad’s old T-shirts. “You still share your fitness app thing with me.” She turns, looks at him a little sheepishly. “I’ve uh—I’ve been checking it anyways whenever you’re out but I also got a notification for a very high heart rate all of a sudden and then Mrs. Tremblay called to tell me you were sitting in her bushes and—”

“Mrs. Tremblay saw?”

“I think a lot of people saw, bud.” Dad answers from the couch, voice carefully neutral. “There’s—uhm—there’s a couple pictures circulating already.”

It’s about what he expected—he is Shane fucking Hollander after all, as Ilya loves to remind him. All of Canada knows his name.

Before he can really figure out how he feels about it, beyond the exhaustion he’s grown to associate with the publics perception of him, his phone rings.

“Good evening, this is Detective Martin from the Ottawa Police Department. May I speak to Mister Shane Hollander please?”

He must make some sort of noise, or pull a face or something because his Mom drops the rag and frantically waves to his Dad, who appears next to her just a few seconds later.

“This is him.” He manages to say, voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Mister Hollander,” Detective Martin says calmly. “Earlier today we had an anonymous tip called in regarding the whereabouts of your husband, Mister Ilya Rozanov.”

For a second, all Shane can hear is his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. For a second, Shane isn’t sure he wants to hear this, considers hanging up just to delay what feels inevitable. But, of course, Martin continues and—

“While we were unfortunately unable to find your husband at the location the call mentioned, we have reasonable proof to believe he is alive and well enough to be moving.”

“He’s alive?” Shane’s voice breaks. He shouldn’t have tears left to cry, but his vision still gets blurry—though he refuses to cry, refuses. “Where—?”

“Whoever took your husband either let him go or lost him,” Detective Martin tells him. “While he’s hurt—we’ve found blood matching your husbands blood-type at the location and are currently waiting for a DNA test comparing it to the blood found in your kitchen—he seems to be well enough to be moving. We’ve found footprints leading away from the blood and have got multiple police dogs and entire team looking for him.”

Chapter End Notes

since my last update i started yet another wip, went on vacation (whooop!), cut my hair, picked up crocheting and oil painting and watched the new resident evil movie (ouchie). and I'm attending a concert soon!! yippie!! life is looking up! :)

thank u for reading and for sticking around!! i think i sound like a broken record atp, i really really hate how this chapter turned out but I'm also working on just. letting things be. it doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to get done etc etc etc.