Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, Shane Hollander & Jackie Pike, David Hollander & Shane Hollander & Yuna Hollander, Hayden Pike & Ilya Rozanov, Jackie Pike & Ilya Rozanov, David Hollander & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, David Hollander, Yuna Hollander

Additional Tags:

Soft Hockey Boys, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time Saying "I love you", Love Confessions, Getting Together, Coming Out, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, POV Ilya Rozanov, Vulnerable Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Misses Irina Rozanova, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Hayden Pike Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Protective Ilya Rozanov, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Good Friend Jackie Pike, Good Parent David Hollander, Supportive David Hollander and Yuna Hollander, Father-Son Relationship, Panic Attacks, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Shane Hollander Has Panic Attacks, Because its not actually a fic of mine if a dont give him one, Anxiety, Men Crying, Mutual Pining, 10 years of pining, I would hinestly died, Idiots in Love, English is Hard for Ilya Rozanov, Humor, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, Ilya Rozanov is a Little Shit, Happy Ending, Character Study, Ilya Rozanov Character Study, Emotional Roller Coaster, Author Has No Idea About the Geography of Canada and the USA, I Googled It But I Probably Still Got It Wrong, Boston to Montreal Drive Time Is Approximate at Best, Three and a Half Hours Is Dramatic License, Also I Know You Can't Actually Speed Like This In Real Life, Please Drive Safe!, Also I Don't Know How the Border Crossing Works, English Is Not The Author's First Language, Depressed Ilya Rozanov, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Shane Hollander Character Study, Autistic Shane Hollander, POV Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Has a Praise Kink, Shane Hollander Has an Eating Disorder

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-14 Completed: 2026-03-29 Words: 52,053 Chapters: 2/2

The Distance Between Us

Summary

Ilya Rozanov has spent ten years circling Shane Hollander. Ten years of hotel rooms and secret phone calls. Ten years of pretending he doesn't feel it, doesn't need it, doesn't wake up reaching for someone who's already gone. Ten years convincing himself he's not good enough. That he's not worth it.

Then a plane needs to make an emergency landing near Montreal, and Yuna Hollander is on it.

So when Shane calls him from a bathroom floor, unable to breathe, Ilya stops pretending.

After five hundred miles of frozen highway, three and a half hours of driving like a man possessed, a hospital waiting room full of people who have every reason to hate him, and a boy who looks at him like he's something worth keeping, Ilya may have learned a thing or two about what it means to be loved—and to let himself love freely.

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

Hi my loves,

Look. I need to be honest with you. I am from LATAM. I have been to the United States exactly once in my entire life, and it was to New York. That's it. That's the extent of my firsthand North American geography knowledge. Do I know how long it actually takes to drive from Boston to Montreal in February? No. Do I know how border crossings work? Absolutely not. Do I know which highways exist or what the weather is like or if there's black ice on that route? Your guess is as good as mine.
But here's the thing: I had an idea, and I needed it to work.

I think this is the first thing I've written in a long time without the threat of an exam looming over me lol. I wrote the entire thing in three days. It was the last thing I thought about before falling asleep and the first thing on my mind when I woke up, so I hope you'll enjoy this little piece of my heart.

I love talking to you all. Through these author's notes, through reading your comments, through responding to them—it's genuinely one of my favorite parts of sharing my writing. So please, please leave a comment if you feel like it. Tell me your favorite line. Tell me if you cried. Tell me if you want to fight me about something. I want to hear all of it. I will literally scream with joy and probably respond way too fast because I have absolutely no chill.

Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for existing in this fandom with me. ❤️

Come say hi on Twitter if you want!

For the majority of Ilya Rozanov's life, he has been alone.

He came to America at seventeen, a boy with a suitcase and a dream and a grief so large it lived inside his ribs like a second skeleton. But before that—before the planes and the billet families and the English words that never quite fit right in his mouth—he was still alone. Alone in the apartment in Moscow with the too-quiet rooms. Alone in the aftermath of a mother who chose to leave and a father who chose to pretend she never existed. Alone in the way that follows you, the kind that becomes less a feeling and more a fact, like the color of your eyes or the shape of your hands.

Ilya learned early that alone was survivable. That you could build a life inside it, furnish it with hockey and money and the hollow echo of your own laughter in expensive rooms. That you could fill it with people who wanted pieces of you—your talent, your name, your body—without ever letting anyone close enough to see the parts you kept locked away.

He learned that alone was safe. That alone meant no one could leave.

So he built his cage carefully. Made it beautiful. Made it comfortable. Made it so no one would ever guess that the bars were there at all. He made a museum of expensive, sterile leather and cold glass, and called it a home, one entirely too quiet for a man whose mind was perpetually running at a hundred miles an hour and whose soul was slowly starving to death on a diet of his own hollow laughter.

Ilya was sprawled across his sectional, one leg thrown over the armrest, a half-empty bowl of leftover takeout balanced dangerously on his stomach. He’d been flipping channels for the better part of an hour now, the remote a restless extension of his hand. Sports highlights. A movie he'd already seen. Some reality show about people renovating houses in places that clearly didn't have winter. His phone was face-down on the cushion somewhere near his hip, already proven to be a bad distraction too. Nothing stuck. Nothing held.

It was a Tuesday in mid-February, when the season had settled into that long, grinding stretch between the All-Star break and the trade deadline. The Bruins had played in Ottawa two nights ago, a win, 4-2, where Ilya had put up a goal and an assist, and then flown back to Boston for a few precious days of home ice. Next game was Friday. Against Montreal, actually. The thought had been sitting at the back of his mind all day, a low hum of something complicated that he wasn't ready to examine.

The All-Star break was three weeks behind him, now. Three weeks since he’d stood in a painfully generic hotel room in Tampa and watched Shane Hollander look at him like he was seeing him for the very first time. Three weeks since Shane had smiled at him across that ugly patterned carpet, an expression so soft and impossibly wondering, like they weren't supposed to be rivals anymore. Like that nigth in Florida had actually meant something. Like they'd crossed a line neither of them knew how to uncross.

They hadn't talked about it. Of course they hadn't talked about it. That wasn't what they did. What they did was text at 2 AM and pretend the messages meant nothing. What they did was watch each other’s games on nights off and lie to themselves about the sudden, tight anxiety in their chests when the other took a heavy hit. What they did was exist in the agonizing, suffocating space between rival and something else entirely, something Ilya didn’t have a word for in English, and was too terrified to name in Russian. But the texts had changed, now they were warmer, more frequent, less careful. And every time his phone buzzed, Ilya felt his treacherous heart lurch toward the sound like a compass desperately finding north.

He clicked the remote again.

And stopped.

The image on screen made his thumb freeze over the button.

An airplane. In a field. Surrounded by crushed snow and emergency vehicles and the harsh, violent glare of red and blue rescue lights. The fuselage was dark, broken, tilted at an angle that looked wrong in every conceivable way physics allowed. Rescue workers swarmed around the metal carcass like frantic ants, carrying stretchers, moving with the urgent, grim precision, of people who did this for a living.

Ilya's hand dropped to his lap. The remote slipped from his fingers, landing somewhere on the cushion. He didn't notice.

"-emergency landing near Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, approximately forty kilometers south of Montreal," the reporter was saying, her voice a practiced, terrifyingly measured cadence of professional grief. "The regional flight from New York to Montreal experienced a bird strike during final descent, causing a catastrophic failure in both engines. The pilot was able to execute an emergency landing in a frozen field; a maneuver aviation experts are already calling a miracle."

The camera angle shifted. A wider shot of the scene-the plane, dark and broken against the white expanse of the field, rescue vehicles clustered around it like metal flowers blooming in snow.

"Eighty-seven passengers were on board. Early reports indicate dozens of injuries, ranging from minor to critical. Rescue operations have been underway for a couple of hours, with patients being transported to hospitals across the greater Montreal area, including the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur, the region's Level 1 trauma center."

Montreal.

The word bypassed his brain entirely and landed in Ilya's chest like a puck to the ribs, shattering the fragile, quiet architecture of his evening.

He knew, logically, that this was an irrational spike of adrenaline. That metropolitan cities had plane accidents and emergency landings and terrible, senseless tragedies happening all the time. That Montreal was a massive, sprawling area with millions of people, and the mathematical chances of anyone he knew being on that specific, doomed flight were-

He did the math anyway. He ran the schedules in his head the way he always did, the way he was pathologically incapable of stopping when it came to Shane.

Shane hadn’t been in New York—Ilya knew because he knew the Voyageurs' schedule better than his own, because he always knew where Shane was playing, because he was pathetic like that and hopelessly tethered to the man's orbit. Montreal had played at home on Saturday, and since Tuesday was an off-day, Shane was probably safely locked inside his pristine apartment, doing whatever infuriatingly structured things he did on off-days. Cooking those weird, tasteless healthy meals. Organizing his equipment with terrifying precision. Reading one of his boring, dense books. Being boring. Safe.

Not on a plane. Not falling out of the sky. Not in danger.

Ilya exhaled a harsh, jagged breath. Let his heavy head fall back against the leather couch. Told himself to stop being a ridiculous, paranoid idiot.

But his eyes remained glued to the screen as he rubbed the back of his neck absently, feeling the fine hairs standing at attention, the primal, animalistic part of his brain completely ignoring logic and schedules and the objective fact that Shane was safely on the ground. Somewhere deep in his chest, a small, icy thread of unease had begun to wind itself tightly around his ribs, a physical shiver working its way down his spine, slow and freezing, settling heavily in his gut.

He’d never been a fan of flying. Not really. It wasn’t a phobia, exactly—more a profound, uncomfortable respect for how quickly everything could go wrong, how fast gravity could reclaim you. The cold, unfeeling physics of it. The way you willingly surrendered your life to metal and engineering and a pilot you’d never looked in the eye. He’d done it hundreds of times, would do it thousands more, but he always felt that tiny, involuntary click of pure relief when the rubber wheels finally screamed against the tarmac. Always.

Not that he’d ever confess that to a living soul. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.

But right now, watching the grainy news footage of ambulances converging on some frozen, blood-stained field outside Montreal, that unease magnified tenfold. Eighty-seven people. Eighty-seven families. Eighty-seven versions of the phone call no human being ever wanted to receive.

Stop it. He told himself, closing his eyes against the glare of the television. You're being ridiculous. Shane is fine.

The shiver returned anyway. Deeper this time.

Ilya pulled his phone off the cushion, swiped it open, and stared at the blinding screen. No messages. No missed calls. He opened their chat and typed out a text anyway. Deleted it. Typed it again.

You awake?

His thumb hovered over the send button, trembling almost imperceptibly. What was he even asking? Hey, I know you're fine, but I just watched a plane crash near your city and now my lungs aren't doing what they are designed for, is that weird? Pathetic. Embarrassing. Too transparent.

He deleted the letters, one by one. Tossed the phone back onto the cushion beside him as if it had burned him. He rubbed both hands over his face, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes so hard he saw stars, trying to violently scrub the tension out of his muscles. The news anchor was still talking, her voice a relentless drone of tragedy. Ilya changed the channel to something, anything else.

Twenty-three minutes later, his phone vibrated against the cushion.

The sound cut through the ambient noise of the TV like a blade. Ilya's head snapped toward it, his body moving before his brain had fully registered the name on the screen.

Jane

The icy thread in his chest immediately pulled taut, snapping around his lungs the second he read that stupid nickname. He answered on the first ring. Didn't even look at the button he was pressing, just did it, brought the phone to his ear with a hand that was suddenly not quite steady.

"Hollander?"

Nothing.

Just breathing. Ragged. Shallow. The desperate, high-pitched wheeze of someone trying very, very hard to force their lungs to accept oxygen and failing completely.

"Shane." Ilya tried again, his tone shifting instantly, the gentle mockery vanishing, replaced by something firm and unyielding. He was on his feet now, the TV forgotten, the massive, empty room shrinking around him until the only thing that existed in the entire universe was the small speaker pressed to his ear and the sound of the person he cared the most falling apart on the other end. "Tell me what is happening, zolotse. Talk to me."

A gasp. A wet, shuddering inhale that caught on something incredibly sharp in Shane's throat. Then a voice—Shane’s voice, but entirely wrong, scraped raw and thin and gutted by terror—trying to force a thought through his paralyzed vocal cords and failing.

"I—I can't—I can't—"

"Yes you can." Ilya kept his voice pitched low, kept it as steady as bedrock, even as his own heart was hammering a frantic, sickening rhythm against his ribs. "You can breathe. You have done it before. You will do it now. Just—try. Just one word. One breath. Whatever you can give me."

A sound leaked through the speaker. Half sob, half devastated surrender. "Ilya."

"I am here. I am right here. Just concentrate on breathing."

Another gasp. Another desperate, uncoordinated struggle for air. Ilya closed his eyes, pressing his free hand flat against the cold drywall of his living room, grounding himself in the unmoving walls of the house so he could be the immovable object Shane desperately needed him to be.

"I didn’t—I didn’t know who else to call." Shane’s voice was fractured, splintering at the edges, a fragile glass pane cracking under immense pressure. "I just—I saw your name and I—I needed—"

"You call me." Ilya's voice came out harder than he intended, but not at Shane. Never at Shane. It was the fear, sharp and immediate, lodging itself between his ribs. "You call me always. Tell me what is happening. Where are you?"

Another wet, shuddering exhale. Ilya could see him through the phone—Shane, somewhere, alone, falling apart, his face doing that thing it did when the world got too big and too loud and too much. The Captain’s mask would be gone, shattered into a million useless pieces on the floor. And underneath it, just Shane. Just the terrifyingly vulnerable boy who needed everything to be in order. His Shane.

Except Shane wasn't his. Not really. And he could never truly be, not in the way Ilya wanted.

Because Shane was good—golden boy, captain material, the kind of person who called his mother after every game and meant it. And Ilya was... well. Ilya was the villain. The arrogant Russian who thrived on chaos, who took cheap shots and gave worse interviews, whose own father couldn't look at him with anything but disgust. Shane deserved someone clean. Someone whole. Someone whose hands weren't so rough, whose heart wasn't so careful with itself, who hadn't spent so long learning to want without ever believing he deserved to have.

And even if that weren't true—even if, somehow, Shane wanted him anyway—there was still the rest of the world to contend with. The cameras, the headlines, the inevitable fallout when two rival captains from hockey's most bitter national rivalry turned out to be something other than enemies. Shane's career. Shane's reputation. Shane's perfect, pristine image, shattered because he'd been stupid enough to love Ilya Rozanov.

He deserved to love someone without having to choose between his career and the person he loved. And that person would never be Ilya.

So no. Shane wasn't his. Could never be his.

They were still circling the event horizon of something enormous and gravity-defying, still pretending they could go back to how it was before Miami, before the hotel, and just step back into the safety of their rivalry like it was a comfortable old jacket.

"My mom."

The two words redirected Ilya's chain of thought so fast they landed like a physical blow. His hand tightened on the phone.

"She was—she was on the plane. The one that—it had to do an emergency landing. She was on it, Ilya. She was coming from New York, she was supposed to—she was coming to see me, and now she’s—she’s—"

The words dissolved into a sound that wasn't quite crying and wasn't quite breathing, something raw and animal that made Ilya's chest crack open. The plane. Montreal. The emergency landing.

Yuna. Yuna was on the plane. Fuck.

"Shane." His voice was rough, the carefully maintained calm slipping just a fraction, because the floor had just dropped out from beneath them both and he was blindly scrambling for purchase. He was already moving, his legs carrying him away from the wall, his eyes tracking across the immaculate surfaces of his home. "Where is she? Do you know? Is she—"

"Sacré-Coeur." The name of the hospital came out wet, smeared heavily with tears. "They took her to Sacré-Coeur. She’s in—she’s in surgery, Ilya. My dad called—he called from the car, and he told me—he told me she has a—her leg, it’s broken, really bad, and her spleen—they had to—they’re operating, and I’m just—I’m just sitting here—"

"Where?" Ilya’s brain shifted into an icy, terrifyingly clear state of tactical hyper-focus. He strode into the foyer, his hand snatching the heavy ring of keys off the console table. The metallic clatter was loud, but on the other end of the line, Shane was too deeply submerged in his own panic to register the sound. "Where are you right now, Shane?"

"I'm at—" A pause. A shaky breath. "I'm at Hayden's. We were having dinner. Jackie made pasta, but there was—there was so much noise, Ilya. And my dad called, and I just—I went to the guest bathroom, and I’ve been in here for—I don't know how long, and I just—I can’t breathe, the tiles are so cold but my skin is burning, and I can’t think, I just—"

"Shane." Ilya’s voice was an iron rod cutting straight through the spiral. He kicked off his slides, shoving his bare feet violently into the first pair of sneakers he found by the door. He didn't bother with the laces, just crushed the heels down in his haste to move. "You are doing good. You are telling me the facts. That is good. Now—your dad. He is driving from Ottawa?"

A wet sniffle. "Yeah. He was—he was at home when she didn't—when she didn't call after the flight was supposed to land. He saw the news. He called the airline, the hospital, fucking everyone—and then they told him she was—that she was alive but—" Another sob, sharp and devastating. "He's coming. He said it'll take—he said an hour and a half, maybe more with the roads, and he told me to go, to get to the hospital, that he’d meet me there, but I can’t, Ilya, I can’t move, I can’t—"

"Yes you can." Ilya yanked open the hall closet, his free hand blindly snatching the first heavy winter jacket his fingers brushed against. He awkwardly shoved his arms through the sleeves, pinning the phone tightly between his shoulder and his ear so he wouldn't lose Shane's voice for even a microsecond. "You can move. You are moving. You are going to stand up, you are going to unlock that bathroom door, and you are going to let Hayden know what happened. And then you are going to let him drive you to the hospital, and you are going to sit in that waiting room and breathe until your father gets there. Do you hear me?" He yanked open the small drawer beneath the mirror. His fingers bypassed the watches and the spare cash, closing around the smooth, crimson red cover of his Russian passport. He shoved it deep into the inner pocket of the coat without a second thought.

"But I can't—"

"You can." Ilya shoved the heavy front door open, stepping out into the biting, unforgiving cold of the Boston night. He moved toward the detached garage, his unlaced sneakers silent on the frost-heaved concrete. "You are the strongest person I know, Shane Hollander. You have carried an entire franchise on your back since you were twenty-two years old. You can carry yourself to a hospital waiting room. One step at a time."

"My legs," Shane choked out, the words a fractured, breathless scramble over the line. "Ilya, my legs won't—they're numb. Everything is buzzing."

A violent wave of frustration slammed into Ilya's chest, hot and bitter. He knew exactly what Shane needed right now. Ilya's hands literally ached with the urge to reach through the cellular network, to grab him by the shoulders, to pull him down to the floor and crush him against his chest until the frantic bird trapped in Shane's ribs finally calmed down. But he couldn't. There were five hundred miles of frozen, dark highway between them. Five hundred mile that Ilya was about to try and break with his bare hands.

For now, his voice was the only lifeline he had.

"Then you sit on the tiles until the buzzing stops," Ilya commanded gently, absolutely refusing to let Shane spiral back down into the dark. He kept his pace steady across the driveway, the freezing wind cutting through his open jacket, a sharp physical contrast to the white-hot adrenaline burning in his veins. "But you breathe. With me. Right now. Inhale."

For a moment, nothing. Just the ragged, uneven static of Shane's breathing. Then—a small, shuddering sound, like he was trying and failing and trying anyway.

"Again," Ilya pushed, his voice an unyielding anchor. "You are safe, zolotse. Listen to me. Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Hold there, Shane. Keep it in your lungs."

A strained, trembling pause carried over the line.

"Now exhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Push it all out. Good."

A shuddering breath came through the speaker. Then another, slightly deeper, fighting past the tight knot in his throat. Ilya walked the impossible tightrope of providing absolute, unyielding structure for Shane while his own heart threatened to violently hammer its way out of his ribcage.

"Tell me what you feel," Ilya demanded softly, forcing Shane's brain to engage with the physical world instead of the panic in his head. "Ground yourself. The tiles are cold. What else?"

"The—" Shane's voice hitched, but he was trying. "The grout. It's rough. My hands are flat on the floor."

"Keep them there," Ilya instructed. He had absolutely no idea what grout meant, but if it was something Shane could hold onto then it worked for him. The low, rumbling cadence of his certainty was actively acting as a physical splint for Shane's fractured mind. Slowly, painfully, he listened as the jagged, panicked edges of Shane’s hyperventilation began to smooth, dulling into something resembling exhaustion. "Exhale again," he murmured, reaching the side of the garage. He pressed the button on the wall with numb fingers. "Good. You are doing so good, Solnyshko."

The massive garage door began to rise with a heavy, mechanical groan, a sudden industrial noise that threatened to swallow the silence of the night. Ilya instinctively cupped his large hand tightly over the phone's microphone, terrified the sudden auditory input would assault Shane's raw, overstimulated senses and shatter the fragile progress they had just made. He slipped quickly inside the dark space, yanking open the door of the Porsche—the lowest, fastest, most ridiculously overpowered car he owned—and dropped heavily into the driver's seat.

The heavy thud of the door sealing shut instantly locked him in a pristine, soundproofed vacuum of expensive leather and suffocating tension. He pulled his hand away from the microphone, the sudden silence of the car's cabin almost deafening.

"Shane?" Ilya asked, his voice dropping instinctively to a softer, far more private register now that he was enclosed in the dark. "Are you with me?"

A long, wavering exhale brushed against the speaker.

"Ilya." His name was a small, devastated whisper. Ilya was still not used to Shane calling him by his first name, and he had certainly never, ever heard him say it in this specific tone—hollowed out, miserable, clinging to the two syllables as if they were the only solid things left on earth. "I'm scared."

Ilya didn't think it was biologically possible for his heart to hurt any more than it currently did. He pushed the ignition button. The V8 engine roared to life, a guttural, violent vibration that traveled straight up his spine.

"I know, moya lyubov. I know." He said it without thinking, the Russian endearment slipping past his defenses because it was the absolute truth, because it had always belonged there. "But she is going to be okay. She is strong. Like her son."

A wet, broken sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't been strangled by terror. "You don't know that. You don't know her."

"I know you." Ilya threw the car into reverse, the tires crunching loudly over the ice as he backed out of the garage. "And if she raised you, she must be made of the same stubborn stuff. So she will fight. And you will wait. And your father will arrive soon. And everything is going to be fine."

"Ilya—"

"You can do this, Shane. You do not have any other choice.” Ilya took a deep breath himself, trying to calm his beating heart. “Listen, I want you to get out of that bathroom before Pike punches the door down, and I want you to tell them what happened. That is all you need to do right now. Da? They will take care of the rest. You just have to breathe and get out of the room. Can you do that for me?"

Ilya shifted the car into park. He sat in his driveway, the exhaust pluming in thick white clouds in the rearview mirror, the cold street sprawling out empty before him. He was Ilya Rozanov. He had a game in three days. He was sitting in an idling sports car at midnight, his passport burning a physical hole against his chest, preparing to violate half a dozen protocols in his contract and traffic laws, ready to drive six hours across an international border into a winter storm.

And for what? Because the man who still pretended to hate him on national television had called him from a bathroom floor and couldn't catch his breath? Was he really about to do this? Was he truly this far gone, this hopelessly, irrevocably lost to him?

The answer was a terrifying, undeniable yes. He would drive this car straight into the freezing Atlantic if Shane Hollander asked him to.

A pause over the line. Then, so quiet Ilya almost missed it.

"Yeah. Okay. I'm going."

"Good boy. Everything will be alright, Shane. I promise."

He had absolutely no right to make that promise. He held no power over the universe, no authority to guarantee survival, much less any control over the fragile mechanics of the human body. If he possessed that kind of power, he would be able to walk down the street holding Shane’s hand without the suffocating fear of the cameras. He would be able to look the boy he loved in the eye and tell him the truth without the constant voices in his head whispering that he was too rough, too broken, too much for someone as purely good as Shane. If he had that superpower, his own mother would be here, alive, breathing, instead of just a ghost haunting the corners of his mind.

But he could still try. He would push his will into the universe, demand it to bend, if only just this once, for Shane. Surely, the cold void of the world would be forced to listen to his frantic prayer just this one time, if it was only for Shane’s sake.

And it didn’t feel like a lie to say it. Not when Ilya knew it was the exact anchor Shane needed to hold onto. Not when he needed to be a fortress of absolute certainty so Shane could afford to fall apart in peace. Not when, out of all the people in the entire world, Shane had called Ilya during a panic attack.

"She is going to be fine," he promised again, his voice a low, gravelly vow, desperately praying that whatever god was listening would hear the absolute devotion in his voice and spare the boy he loved from the agony of grief.

Another pause. Then, so soft it was almost a ghost of a sound:

"Okay."

"Okay," Ilya repeated. He listened intently for a long, agonizing second, tracking the fragile cadence of the static over the line. Only when he was absolutely certain that the ragged, desperate edge had finally faded from Shane's breathing, settling into a heavy but steady rhythm, did he allow himself to issue the final push. "Now go. Go back out there. Your mom needs you."

He didn't hang up. He refused to break the connection until he had proof that Shane was actually moving. Through the tiny speaker of the phone, Ilya listened to the faint, telltale rustle of heavy fabric as Shane finally forced himself off the freezing bathroom tiles. He heard the unsteady, dragging scrape of a shoe against the floor, a long exhale that rattled heavily with leftover anxiety, and then, the sharp, distinct metallic click of the deadbolt unlocking.

"I'm opening it," Shane whispered, his voice sounding terribly small and completely hollowed out against the sudden echo of the hallway.

"I know. I am right here," Ilya murmured to the dark cabin of his car, his grip on the leather steering wheel tightening until his knuckles turned bone-white. "Go to them, solnyshko."

The faint squeal of a door swinging open filtered through the line, immediately followed by the muffled, frantic urgency of Hayden Pike’s voice in the background, asking a rapid-fire string of questions. Shane didn't answer his teammate right away. Instead, Ilya heard the rustle of the phone shifting as he pulled it close to his mouth for one last, desperate second.

"Thank you," Shane breathed into the microphone, a fragile, exhausted little thing.

"Always," Ilya vowed to the empty air.

They murmured their reluctant goodbyes, neither man wanting to be the first to sever the invisible thread holding them together across countries. But inevitably, finally, the line went dead, leaving behind a sterile, synthetic dial tone that sounded entirely too loud in the suffocating silence of the Porsche.

Ilya sat perfectly still in his car. The engine was a low, vibrating hum beneath him, the phone still pressed uselessly against his ear even though there was nothing left on the other end but sterile buzz. For one long, stretched-out moment, he simply didn't move.

The house loomed in his peripheral vision—too massive, too empty, too painfully quiet. The kind of place he’d bought simply because his accountant told him it was a good investment, because it was what star athletes were expected to own, because he genuinely didn't know what else to do with the millions they paid him to chase a piece of rubber. It had never felt like a home. It was just a highly secure vault where he slept when he wasn't living out of a suitcase.

He lowered the phone. Stared at the black glass, the silent, undeniable evidence of a three-minute call that had just fundamentally rearranged the axis of his entire universe.

Yuna. Shane’s mother. In a hospital. In surgery.

And Shane—Shane—alone, trembling, a raw nerve exposed to the air, calling Ilya because there was no one else who could understand the way his brain broke down, because he couldn't make his mouth form the words for anyone else, because—

Ilya’s chest physically ached, a deep, bruising pain behind his sternum.

He turned his head. Looked through the windshield at the dark, sprawling expanse of Boston. The city was asleep, blissfully unaware that one of its most famous residents was about to do something incredibly, monumentally reckless.

Montreal to Boston. He’d made the drive before. Knew the rhythm of it intimately. The highway, the border checkpoint, the endless, hypnotic stretch of asphalt through upstate New York, bleeding into Vermont, and finally crossing into Quebec. A six hours drive normally, but in good weather, driving the speed limit, with no stops, it took roughly five.

Five hours of driving. Five hours of agonizing, helpless waiting.

He thought about Shane, sitting in that sterile, brightly lit hospital waiting room. Shane, who couldn't sit still for two minutes on a good day without tapping his foot or analyzing a play. Shane, whose brain ran like a supercomputer, constantly processing, calculating, catastrophizing every possible outcome. Shane, alone, staring at a set of double doors, waiting for a surgeon to come out and deliver the news that would dictate the rest of his life.

He thought about his own mother.

The memory came entirely unbidden, as it always did, a dark tide rising to choke him. Finding her. The apartment. The absolute, suffocating silence. The way the rotation of the earth had simply stopped in that exact moment, freezing his life forever into a permanent Before and After. For a few terrible, innocent minutes, the young boy he had been thought she was just deeply asleep on the rug, or that she had stumbled and hit her head. But when he had dropped to his knees and touched her shoulder, and she was cold—cold in a terrifying, unnatural way that had absolutely nothing to do with the harsh weather of his motherland—every single pillar holding his world up had violently collapsed at the same time.

He thought about how incredibly, devastatingly lonely he had felt in that exact second. How he had curled his small body down next to hers, hidden his face against her unmoving chest, and just wept until his throat bled, clinging to the only anchor he had until his father finally found them hours later. He thought about how, in the hollow days after, he had desperately searched the cabinets for the pills she'd taken, wanting nothing more than to follow her into the dark. But his father had already sterilized the house, clearing out anything sharp or poisonous, leaving Ilya trapped in a world he no longer wanted to exist in. He thought about how deeply lonely he had been after that day. How lonely he still was, most days, walking through a world that felt hollowed out, like all the color had drained out of it along with her.

How incredibly lonely he had been, right up until the exact moment he met Shane Hollander.

Shane, with his stupid, perfectly symmetrical face and his infuriatingly boring habits and his eyes that sparked with absolute fire when he fought for the things he loved. Shane, who looked at Ilya like he was actually a person worth knowing. Shane, who made the unbearable weight of the world feel a little less crushing just by existing on the same ice as him.

He absolutely refused to let that happen to him.

He didn't want Shane to ever know what it felt like to walk this earth with only half a heart beating in his chest. To have a massive, gaping crater in his life where a person who loved him unconditionally was supposed to be standing. And if, God forbid, the absolute worst happened tonight and Yuna didn't make it—then Ilya was not going to let him receive that news alone. He would not let Shane inherit that specific, hollowed-out loneliness. Not like Ilya had been. Not like Ilya still was, underneath the smirks and the multi-million dollar contracts and the carefully constructed walls of arrogance.

He looked at the glowing digital clock on the dash. 11:58 PM.

Five hours. Unless you drove a machine built for the Autobahn like you actually meant it.

Ilya shifted the car into drive.

The highway unfolded in front of him like a dark, endless ribbon, totally empty at this ungodly hour. Ilya pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator and felt the massive engine respond with a violent surge of power, felt the familiar, intoxicating hum of speed vibrating beneath him, watching the world blur past the windows when you stopped caring about trivial things like speed limits or physics.

Five hours was for normal people. Five hours was for people who didn't have Shane Hollander’s terrified voice lodged in their chest like a piece of shrapnel. Ilya drove like a man fleeing from a ghost. He drove like a man desperately chasing a lifeline. He drove like the difference between the two didn't even matter anymore.

The miles dissolved under his tires. The darkness pressed heavily against the tinted windows. His phone sat face-up in the passenger seat, completely silent, waiting. Every few minutes, his eyes darted to it, praying for a text, dreading what words might illuminate the screen.

Nothing came.

He gripped the leather steering wheel tighter and pushed the car faster into the dark.

The border came and went in a surreal, dreamlike blur of harsh fluorescent lights and sleepy, routine questions from a bored guard. Purpose of your visit? Personal. How long do you plan to stay? I don't know. Any goods to declare? Just myself. The agent looked at the dark blue passport, looked at the bruised, exhaustion-lined face of the man behind the wheel, and looked at the clock. He handed the passport back and waved him through into Canada.

Ilya was accelerating back onto the pitch-black highway before the ink on the stamp could even think about drying, his tires biting aggressively into the asphalt. The roads were mercifully clear, a bone-chillingly cold but pristine stretch of dry pavement, the specific kind of dead-of-winter February night that froze the entire world into something sharp and brittle and unnervingly still. He made terrifyingly good time, pushing the German engineering to its absolute, screaming limits as the car handled the sweeping curves beautifully, greedily devouring the miles in a blur of pure velocity, and Ilya simply let the machine consume the earth beneath them, because every single mile conquered was a physical mile closing the bleeding gap between him and Shane.

If he were a man who still harbored even a microscopic fraction of faith in God, he might have convinced himself that a divine hand was actively smoothing the roads ahead of him, ensuring that no animal would run across, no black ice would form under his spinning tires, that absolutely nothing in this frozen wasteland would be allowed to interrupt his desperate journey. He might have comforted himself with the poetic delusion that his mother's ghost was sitting quietly in the passenger seat, watching over him, fiercely refusing to let her son shatter his own life when he was finally rushing toward the man who held his heart. Not when Shane so fundamentally, desperately needed him.

But Ilya hadn't believed in a benevolent universe since he was twelve years old, since the precise, devastating second his small knees had hit the carpet next to a body that was already surrendering its light to the earth. He knew with absolute, freezing certainty that the universe possessed no morality, that it didn't care one way or another whether a hockey player wrapped his silver Porsche around a concrete overpass or made it safely to a hospital waiting room. And if he were being entirely honest with the ghosts in the car, he didn't really care whether he lived or died either. Not for a long time.

But he cared about Shane, cared with a violent, all-consuming intensity that terrified him down to his marrow.

Shane and his stupid, scattered constellation of freckles that Ilya had memorized under poor light from bedside lamps, Shane and his deeply infuriating, painfully boring routines that somehow grounded the chaotic static of Ilya's mind, Shane and his fiercely intelligent eyes and that blindingly beautiful smile that he guarded so closely, Shane and his unbelievably soft, relentlessly tender heart that Ilya felt completely unworthy of holding. Shane, who had seamlessly rewritten Ilya's ruined internal wiring, who made him feel, for the very first time in a decade of walking through a grayscale world, like maybe there was actually something solid on this earth worth sticking around for.

His mind was entirely devoid of anything resembling rational thought, wiped clean of everything except the rhythmic, desperate cadence of a name that had become the only religion he practiced, the only frantic prayer he was willing to offer to the dark roads as he drove.

Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane

Two hours and twenty-three minutes after leaving Boston, he crossed the invisible, freezing threshold into Quebec.

Two hours and forty-seven minutes after leaving Boston, the first glowing green highway signs for Montreal materialized out of the gloom, reflecting off the hood of the speeding car.

Three hours and twelve minutes after leaving Boston, he was ripping the wheel to pull off the desolate highway and plunge into the sleeping grid of the city, his burning eyes frantically tracking the blue hospital signs pointing the way toward Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur.

Three hours and twenty-eight minutes after leaving Boston—two hours and thirty-two minutes faster than Google Maps would have told you was possible— Ilya Rozanov violently slammed the transmission into park in the starkly lit hospital lot, killed the screaming engine, and found himself completely submerged in a sudden, ringing, suffocating silence.

His heavy hands were painfully locked into rigid, cramped claws from strangling the steering wheel, his lower back radiating a dull, throbbing ache that he completely ignored, his dry eyes burning with a cocktail of pure exhaustion, leftover adrenaline, and a profound, terrifying vulnerability he was nowhere near ready to name.

He had fucking made it. He was physically here.

And as he stared through the windshield at the imposing, clinical brick facade of the emergency room entrance, he realized he was about to do the second most monumentally stupid thing he had ever attempted in his entire life. Second only to driving a sports car like a suicidal lunatic through the pitch-black night on potentially icy roads, wild animals and speeding cameras. But as he forced his cramped fingers to release the wheel and reached for the door handle, every ounce of his self-preservation simply evaporated. The press, his team, the consequences—it all faded into meaningless white noise. The only thing in the entire universe that mattered was waiting behind those glass doors.

He only cared about Shane.

The sliding doors of the Hospital parted with a mechanical hiss, and the blast of sterile, artificially heated air hit Ilya like a physical wall. The emergency room at three-thirty in the morning was a bizarre, purgatorial space. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a relentless, clinical glare that stripped the shadows from the corners and made Ilya’s burning eyes water. The air smelled aggressively of industrial bleach, stale coffee, and the quiet, metallic tang of human desperation.

His body was operating entirely on the fumes of an adrenaline high that was rapidly, violently crashing. His hands, shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, were trembling with a uncontrollable tremor, his fingers locked into a permanent, cramped curve from strangling the steering wheel for three and a half hours. Every muscle in his back screamed, but he pushed the physical agony aside, forcing his heavy, uncoordinated legs to carry him toward the main reception desk.

Behind the plexiglass, a tired-looking clerk barely glanced up from her monitor.

"Bonjour," she said, her voice flat.

"I need—" Ilya started, and stopped. His brain, fried from the drive and the panic, stubbornly refused to supply the correct English words, let alone French. His tongue felt thick, his thoughts muddied, the language barrier suddenly towering over him like a brick wall. He swallowed hard, forcing his jaw to unlock. "I am looking for Yuna Hollander. She was in the plane. The crash."

The clerk’s fingers paused on her keyboard. She looked up, her professional detachment hardening into a protective shield. "Are you immediate family, monsieur?"

"No. I am..." Ilya’s voice fractured. What was he? A rival? A ghost Shane kept locked in the dark? "I am a friend. I need to know where she is."

"I am sorry, monsieur," the clerk said, not sounding sorry at all. "Hospital policy. For the passengers of the flight, we are only releasing information to immediate family members. If you are not family, I cannot tell you anything."

"You don't understand," Ilya growled, the frustration spiking hot and fast in his chest. He leaned closer to the glass, his massive frame casting a shadow over the desk. "I need to know-"

"Rozanov?"

The voice came from his left. Ilya whipped his head around. Standing near a bank of vending machines, holding a flimsy cardboard tray carrying what appeared to be three steaming cups of coffee, was Jackie Pike.

She was wearing a pair of faded leggings and a massive, oversized Montreal Voyageurs hoodie that undoubtedly belonged to Hayden, her hair thrown up in a messy, chaotic bun. She looked utterly exhausted, the pale skin under her eyes bruised with heavy purple shadows, but her gaze was sharp, locking onto Ilya with a mixture of profound confusion and absolute disbelief.

She blinked, her eyes dropping from his bruised, exhausted face to his completely unlaced sneakers, taking in the sheer, impossible reality of the Boston Bruins' captain standing in a Montreal trauma center at three in the morning. "What are you doing here?"

For a fraction of a second, the instinct to lie flared in Ilya's chest. It was a survival reflex honed over years of secrets, years of carefully constructed animosity, of hiding the softest part of himself behind a smirking, arrogant mask. He could say he heard the news and came to pay his respects to a colleague. He could preserve the lie. But then he remembered the sound of Shane’s voice on the phone.

I’m scared.

The memory of that broken, terrified whisper shattered the last remaining pillar of Ilya's pride. He let the survival reflex die right there in the fluorescent-lit hallway. Hayden’s inevitable questions and the risk of the entire world finding out meant absolutely nothing compared to the desperate, blinding need to put his hands on Shane and hold him until the world stopped being so terrifyingly vast and scary.

He closed the distance between them, his posture entirely stripped of its usual bravado. He didn't look like an arrogant superstar; he looked exactly like a man desperately begging for a lifeline.

"Jackie," Ilya said, his voice thick, the Russian accent bleeding heavily into his fractured English. "Please. Where is Shane?"

Jackie froze. She looked at him—really looked at him—and Ilya watched the incredibly fast, terrifyingly sharp gears of her mind turn. She processed the desperation in his eyes, the absolute, unshielded panic radiating from his massive frame, and the logistical impossibility of him being in this city unless he had driven like a madman the second the news broke. Ilya saw the exact moment the math clicked perfectly into place. Her eyes widened, just a fraction, a micro-expression of absolute, world-altering realization.

And then, because Jackie Pike was fundamentally one of the best, most relentlessly practical human beings on the planet—and currently skyrocketing into Ilya’s top three favorite people on earth—the shock completely vanished. She didn't gasp. She didn't drop the coffees. She didn't ask a single damn question about what kind of relationship he and Shane actually had that resulted in Ilya driving all the way to this hospital in the middle of the night, just so he could be here for him. The fierce, maternal caregiving instinct that made her such an incredible mother, and the profound love she carried so deep in her heart that practically made her Shane Hollander's unofficial older sister, simply overrode everything else.

Her expression softened into something impossibly warm and profoundly understanding. She smiled at him, a tiny, brilliant spark of wonder lighting up her exhausted eyes.

"Okay," Jackie said quietly, her voice a steady, grounding anchor. She tilted her head toward the elevators. "Come on. Follow me."

Ilya exhaled a breath that felt like it had been trapped painfully in his lungs since Boston, his broad shoulders slumping just a fraction as he fell into step beside her. As they navigated the blindingly white, labyrinthine corridors, Jackie effortlessly filled the heavy silence, her voice a low, soothing hum that demanded no effort from Ilya's fried brain.

"I just came down to grab these," she murmured, shifting the cardboard tray of coffees slightly as they finally reached the elevator bank. She pressed the glowing call button with her knuckle, offering him a small, grounded smile. "The coffee in the surgical waiting room tastes like literal battery acid." He was grateful for how she let the sentence hang there for a moment—he didn't know if it was intentional or not, but it gave his exhausted brain a few quiet seconds to process the mundane information. The low hum of the hospital ventilation filled the space between them.

"Shane’s dad is upstairs," she added softly, her voice dropping to an even gentler register now that she had his focus. "He got here about an hour ago." 

Ilya let out a microscopic breath, his rigid shoulders dropping perhaps a millimeter more. David. Okay. Shane had his father. He was safe.

"He drove like a maniac all the way from Ottawa," Jackie continued. Ilya let out a short, rough puff of air, a dark, exhausted amusement flickering briefly in his chest. He could certainly understand the sentiment.

The elevator arrived with a soft, artificially cheerful chime. Jackie stepped inside and waited patiently until he followed her in. She let the heavy doors slide completely shut before she spoke again.

"And, of course," she said with a sigh, a deeply fond, almost sad smile pulling at her mouth, "the second David walked in, Shane immediately tried to kick Hayden and me out. He told us to go home. Said they were totally fine and we needed to sleep." She shook her head slowly. "He completely put his walls up."

She shot Ilya a wry, knowing look as she pressed the floor button. "Hayden basically told him to shut up and sit down. We weren't leaving him alone."

"Thank you," Ilya rasped, his thick accent bleeding heavily into the quiet space. The two words felt utterly inadequate, but they were pulled from the very bottom of his chest. "For staying."

He didn’t know if it was his place to thank them or not, considering they were Shane's chosen family and he was just a ghost hiding in a closet, but it felt like the absolute right thing to do. It made Ilya's chest ache with a profound, staggering realization: Shane was so deeply, fiercely loved. He had a family that dropped everything to drive through the night, and friends who refused to let him suffer in silence. He let the thought comfort him.

Jackie didn’t take offense at the gratitude; if anything, her smile only grew softer, looking at him with a warm, reassuring light in her tired eyes. "Of course we stayed," she said simply, leaning back against the metal rail. "He’s our family” She watched him attentively for a long couple of seconds, her sharp gaze calculating, as if trying to figure something out, maybe if he was actually worth Shane's heart or not. Whatever raw, unshielded truth she found in Ilya's open eyes seemed to satisfy her, because the heavy scrutiny melted away, and she continued with a spark of genuine mirth in her tone “But I have a feeling it’s not us he needs right now."

It took Ilya an embarrassing long moment to understand that she meant him. She was talking about him. Jackie Pike, who had just met him five minutes ago in a hospital lobby, was looking at him like he was the person Shane needed most in the world. 

He didn't know what to do with that. Didn't know how to hold it. So he just nodded, a small, jerky movement, and hoped she couldn't see how much her words had gotten under his skin.

Ilya really fucking hoped she was right.

After watching the illuminated floor numbers tick upward for what felt like an eternity, she turned her gaze back to him, a sudden, playful lilt entering her voice. "I'm guessing you're the one Shane locked himself in the bathroom to call. Hayden is currently sitting up there entirely convinced that Shane was having a meltdown to his secret Boston girlfriend."

Ilya blinked, the sheer, staggering absurdity of the comment piercing straight through the heavy static in his brain. He let his heavy head fall back against the cool metal wall of the elevator, his voice dropping into a deadpan, exhausted gravel. He was already deep enough in this mess at this point—might as well be completely sincere about this one thing. He just desperately hoped Shane would eventually forgive him for burning their secret to the ground. "We are the same person."

Jackie let out a soft, breathy laugh, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a deeply fond, knowing twinkle. "Yeah, I kind of figured that out about sixty seconds ago," she smiled, the expression wide and genuine. "Honestly? It's a really good thing we are already standing inside a trauma center. Because when my husband sees you walk into that waiting room, he is absolutely going to have an aneurysm."

Completely against his own will, a laugh actually punched its way out of Ilya's chest.

It was a rough, gravelly sound, scraped raw by hours of suffocating panic and pure adrenaline, but it was undeniably real. His broad shoulders shaking slightly as the humor of the situation finally caught up with him. He was Ilya Rozanov, captain of the Boston Raiders, the ultimate villain of Montreal, currently standing in a Canadian hospital at almost four in the morning just to hold their golden boy's hand. He could already visualize the exact, horrifying shade of purple Hayden Pike's face was going to turn, the sheer psychic damage the winger was about to endure the second the elevator doors opened.

"I will gladly pay for his medical bills," Ilya rasped, his thick accent wrapping around the words as a familiar, arrogant smirk finally managed to break through the exhaustion on his face. He was still terrified for Yuna, and his hands were still shaking deep in his jacket pockets, but the crushing weight on his chest felt just a fraction lighter.

Jackie chuckled softly, shaking her head. Then her smile faded into something much gentler, much more serious as she seamlessly guided the conversation to the only thing that truly mattered. "But seriously—Shane is okay. And Yuna is going to be okay. I need you to know that before we walk out there. Nobody has said a single word about her being in mortal danger, alright?"

Ilya felt a massive, suffocating band of iron physically snap around his ribs, a full lungful of air rushing in for the first time in hours. "It's just... it's a very long, very complicated surgery," Jackie explained, keeping her voice slow and remarkably steady. "She's been in the OR for about four and a half hours now. They said the seatbelt absolutely saved her life, but it did a lot of mechanical damage to her body when the plane hit the ground."

Ilya listened as if his ears were packed tightly with cotton, but he forced his sluggish mind to latch onto her calm, patient tone.

"It’s a comminuted fracture in her right femur," she explained gently, her brow furrowing slightly. The complex English medical term slipped right off Ilya's exhausted brain, but Jackie didn't miss a beat, unknowingly offering the exact translation his mind desperately needed. "The bone broke into multiple pieces, so the surgeons are having to put it all back together with titanium plates and screws. That takes hours on its own. But the impact from the belt also ruptured her spleen."

Spleen. Another word he didn't quite know. An organ. Something inside. Ilya didn't need a medical dictionary to grasp the gravity of it.

"They had a general surgeon go in first to stop the internal bleeding and take the spleen out," she reassured him quickly, seeing the sudden, rigid tension locking Ilya's jaw. "They said you can live perfectly fine without one, so there shouldn't be any permanent damage once she heals. But a nurse came out about twenty minutes ago. She had a minor complication—her blood pressure dropped. They stabilized her immediately, but they had to slow down the orthopedic work. It's just going to be a while longer before they finish closing her up."

Ilya closed his eyes and pressed his head harder against the cold metal, hoping the sharp chill would cut through the ache that was starting to bloom behind his temple. He hadn't caught every single word, but the gist of it was completely clear. Four and a half hours. Hours of Shane sitting in a hard plastic chair, trapped entirely inside his own head, waiting for a surgeon to come out and give him his life back.

"She is strong," Ilya whispered to the metal doors, the words sounding terrifyingly fragile, less like a statement of fact and more like a desperate, exhausted prayer. "She will be okay. It is just bones. Bones heal."

"Exactly," Jackie agreed instantly, her voice a fierce, unwavering beacon of optimism in the suffocating space. "She's going to be completely fine, Ilya. And once she's out of recovery, she's going to need intensive physical therapy, but the doctors expect a full recovery."

Ilya was too fried to even begin to analyze what it did to his chest to hear one of Shane's best friends—people who were supposed to hate him on principle—suddenly addressing him by his given name. It felt entirely too intimate, too unguarded, a permanent shifting of the ground beneath their lives. But his drowsy brain simply lacked the capacity to panic right now.

Jackie shifted the coffees again as the elevator began to slow. "Shane just..." She paused, her tone softening. "He needs someone to help him carry the waiting part. Hayden and I are trying, we really are, but he's totally shut down. We can't reach him."

Before he could ask exactly what she meant by "shut down", the elevator dinged—a bright, artificially cheerful sound that grated against Ilya's raw nerves—and the heavy metal doors slid open to reveal the sterile, blindingly lit expanse of the fourth-floor surgical wing.

"He's at the end of the hall," Jackie said softly. She stepped out into the quiet corridor and looked back at Ilya. Her expression held such unwavering support that the ache in his throat sharpened. "Go to him."

The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, a sterile, blindingly white tunnel that ended in a small, agonizingly quiet surgical waiting area. Ilya stopped at the threshold for a second.

He saw him immediately. Shane was sitting rigidly in one of the plastic chairs, his posture stiff and completely unnatural. Beside him, David Hollander was leaning close, his hand gripping Shane’s pale fingers in a silent, desperate attempt at comfort. Crouched directly in front of Shane’s knees, taking up a massive amount of space, was Hayden Pike. The big right winger was speaking in a low, continuous murmur—too quiet for Ilya to catch the actual words, but the desperate, reassuring cadence was obvious—his heavy hand gripping Shane’s tense shoulder with unwavering firmness.

But Shane wasn't registering any of it. His gaze was completely blank, his unblinking eyes fixed with terrifying intensity on the sterile white wall opposite him, utterly lost to the room. It was a hollowed-out stare that made Ilya’s stomach drop.

It was Pike who saw him first. The man's head snapped up as Ilya and Jackie approached, and as he slowly stood up, his features immediately twisted into a mask of profound bewilderment. His eyes darted frantically from the exhaustion on the face of his fiercest rival to his wife, silently demanding an explanation for the impossible absurdity of Ilya Rozanov standing in front of him right now.

He didn't care. The only thing that existed in his narrowed universe was the echo of Shane’s desperate voice on the phone. The only thing that mattered was the crushing, suffocating terror currently drowning the man he loved—a specific, agonizing fear that Ilya knew intimately, a darkness he had navigated blindly since he was a child. He looked at that empty, lost expression on Shane’s face, and his own exhaustion burned away.

"Shane," Ilya breathed.

The word tore out of his throat, completely unrecognizable. It was stripped of all its usual arrogant smoothness, jagged with raw urgency, the heavy cadence of his Russian accent bleeding thickly through the desperation. Slowly, agonizingly, Shane blinked. He dragged his gaze away from the blank wall, his head turning as if fighting a massive physical weight, until his eyes finally found the doorway.

The exact second their eyes connected, a massive shift occurred in Ilya's chest. It was as if his consciousness, which had been floating untethered since he backed out of his driveway in Boston, suddenly slammed back into his physical form. He was finally back in his own body. He finally had control of his limbs.

Shane just stared at him, and for what felt to Ilya like several excruciating millennia, the world stood perfectly still. Then, the fragile mask on Shane’s face finally cracked, his bottom lip began to tremble, a minute quiver, and the glassy emptiness in his eyes was instantly drowned by a sudden, hot rush of unshed tears. He looked utterly shocked for a split second, his brain failing to process the logistics of Ilya standing there, before the shock melted completely into something much more vulnerable.

"Ilya," Shane sighed.

If Ilya had been operating on anything more than pure survival instinct, if his brain hadn't been completely hijacked by the primal need to protect, he might have recognized the relief that saturated every single syllable of his name in Shane's mouth. He might have realized that his presence was the exact anchor Shane had been praying for.

But every single electrical impulse in his brain was entirely focused on moving.

Shane didn't register his father's confusion or Pike's stunned silence. Didn't see any of it. His eyes were locked on Ilya as he pushed himself up from the chair, his legs unsteady beneath him, and moved—shoving past Hayden without even realizing it, without meaning to, just following the only gravitational pull that made sense anymore.

Ilya didn't wait. He crossed the remaining distance in two massive strides, meeting Shane halfway in the middle of the waiting room, and wrapped his arms around him with every ounce of strength he possessed. The impact of their collision knocked the breath out of both of them, but neither loosened their grip.

Shane didn't hesitate. Didn't brace himself. He just... surrendered. Let his knees give out, let his entire exhausted weight collapse against Ilya's chest, let his fingers fist desperately into the fabric of his jacket like he was afraid Ilya might disappear. The dam finally broke with a quiet, ragged gasp—a silent and devastating release of every hour of terror and panic he'd been forcefully holding inside. Shane let himself shatter entirely into the one person who knew exactly how to put him back together.

His face was buried so deeply in the crook of Ilya's neck that hot tears soaked through the collar of his jacket. The only thing Ilya could truly register was the frantic, stuttering rhythm of Shane's heart beating against his own ribs.

"I have you," Ilya rumbled, the words vibrating thick and heavy deep in his chest.

Shane’s fingers only twisted tighter into the fabric at his shoulders—a desperate, white-knuckled grip trying to anchor itself to something solid. Another ragged, silent gasp escaped, quiet crying muffled against the dark sanctuary of his coat.

"You came," Shane choked out, his voice scraped raw and muffled.

Ilya pressed his cheek fiercely against damp hair, his massive arms locking around him in an ironclad vow. "Of course," he whispered, the truth of it simple and absolute. "You called me."

His English felt entirely inadequate after that, too clumsy for the fragile thing trembling in his arms, so he abandoned it completely. The soft, rounded vowels of his native tongue spilled into the narrow space between them. "Ya zdes', solnyshko. Ya derzhu tebya. Ya nikuda ne uydy."

He pressed his lips hard against the sweaty curve of Shane's temple, ignoring the salt of the tears, his hand rubbing slow, heavy, deliberate circles between his shoulder blades—manually forcing the frantic panic out with the sheer, immovable force of his presence.

Behind them, the stunned silence in the waiting room had taken on a thick, suffocating quality.

"Shane?"

The voice was older, scraped rough with exhaustion, fear, and profound confusion. Shane’s father had slowly stood up from his plastic chair, his tired eyes darting frantically from his sobbing son to the massive, bruised Russian foward who was currently holding him together as if his life depended on it.

And Hayden. Hayden looked like he had just taken a blindside hit to the jaw at full speed. His mouth was slightly parted, his eyes wide, staring at the two of them as if gravity had just suddenly reversed itself. He looked helplessly toward Jackie, silently begging his wife for a translation of a reality that mathematically and historically did not compute. Jackie simply walked past her paralyzed husband, placing the cardboard tray of coffees quietly on a small table and putting a gentle, restraining hand flat against Hayden's chest, a silent command to let it be.

Shane flinched at the sudden sound of his father's voice—a violent, involuntary jerk of his spine—but he didn't pull away from the embrace. Instead, his fists tightened their desperate death grip on the fabric of the jacket, burying his face impossibly deeper into the warm, sandalwood-scented sanctuary of Ilya's shoulder, desperately trying to hide from the sudden influx of questions and eyes.

Ilya felt the flinch travel through Shane's bones and his protective instincts flared into a fierce, almost territorial heat—he shifted his weight, subtly angling his broad shoulders to physically block Shane from the rest of the room, creating a dark, enclosed pocket of safety built entirely out of his own body.

"It is okay," he said, not knowing if he was speaking to the boy in his arms, to David, or to the bewildered idiot staring at them, but he kept his eyes entirely focused on the side of Shane's head, his jaw tight. "We sit down now, da? Your legs are done working for today."

He didn't wait for permission or for Shane's sluggish brain to process the command. Keeping one arm locked like a solid iron band around his waist, Ilya practically carried the Captain of the Voyageurs back to the bank of plastic chairs. He sat down first, pulling Shane down firmly with him, maneuvering them with a practiced, effortless strength until he was tucked securely against his side. Shane went completely boneless, surrendering every ounce of his exhausted weight, his head falling heavily onto Ilya's shoulder. His breathing was still a ragged mess of hitched gasps, but the violent shaking had finally begun to subside under the heavy, unapologetic weight of Ilya's arm.

David took a hesitant step back, his brow furrowed so deeply it looked painful. "Rozanov? What... how are you..." He trailed off, the sheer impossibility of the intimacy completely short-circuiting a brain that was already battered by the terror of his wife's ongoing surgery.

Ilya finally looked up.

He met David Hollander’s exhausted, baffled eyes, offering no excuses, no carefully crafted PR deflections, no apologies for the way his hand was still possessively rubbing circles into his son's back. He was entirely too tired to lie, and Shane was entirely too broken to hide. If the universe wanted to rip the secret from their hands tonight, then Ilya would gladly hand it over, so long as he didn't have to let go of the boy leaning against him.

"I drove," Ilya stated simply, his voice a low, immovable absolute in the quiet room. "Shane called me. So I drove."

He offered nothing else—no explanations, no justifications. Not without Shane's permission, not while Shane was in no condition to decide what parts of their story they wanted to share.

Ilya braced himself for the inevitable fallout. He had just detonated a bomb in the middle of a sterile, brightly lit hospital waiting room, shattering the meticulously crafted illusion of their bitter rivalry right in front of the people who knew Shane best. He expected immediate, righteous anger. He expected David to pull his son away, to demand answers, to rail against the hated Boston captain for daring to touch his boy in his most vulnerable moment.

He expected the absolute worst, because Ilya’s only blueprint for a father was his own, a man who swept the broken pieces of his heart away into the dark rather than sitting on the floor to help hold them together. In Ilya's mind, a father was someone who demanded strength and decorum, someone who would view this desperate, public display of shattered composure and forbidden love as an unforgivable failure.

Not to mention the fact that they were both men.

Logically, somewhere beneath the deafening roar of his own panic, Ilya knew David Hollander was nothing like his father. He knew Shane's family didn't operate that way. The man trembling against his chest had grown up enveloped in a warmth and support Ilya could scarcely comprehend. But logic had completely abandoned him on an icy highway somewhere outside of Boston.  Right now, operating purely on instinct, Ilya tightened his grip around Shane's shaking shoulders, jaw locked, ready to ruthlessly defend his right to stand exactly where he was.

But the explosion never came.

Over the top of Shane's trembling head, Ilya's defensive, burning gaze collided directly with David's.

Shane's father was a man fundamentally, almost confusingly different from his intensely driven, constantly calculating son or his high-strung wife; David had always been the quiet, grounding earth to their chaotic electrical storms. There was no shock in his eyes. No disgust. Certainly no anger.

He just looked.

David had spent almost forty years loving a woman whose brain ran at a hundred miles an hour, twenty-seven years raising a son who felt everything so deeply it sometimes broke him. He had learned long ago that the world didn't always make sense, that the people you loved didn't always fit into the neat little boxes other people built for them. He had learned that the only questions that ever really mattered were simple ones: Is my child happy? Is he safe? Is he loved?

Now he looked at the massive Russian hockey player wrapped around his son like a second skin. Those hands—the same ones that had scrapped with Shane on ice for a decade, that had thrown punches and delivered checks—were now rubbing slow, grounding circles into his son's back with a tenderness that couldn't be faked. He saw the way his jaw was set, not in arrogance, but in defense, like he was ready to fight the entire room if anyone tried to take Shane away from him. And beneath all of it, David saw the exhaustion carved into every line of the young man's face—the dark circles, the rumpled clothes from hours of frantic driving.

Then his gaze found Shane. His son. His beautiful, brilliant, sweet, overachieving son—who had been a hollowed-out shell when David walked into this waiting room an hour ago, unreachable, lost somewhere inside his own head with no way back.

But Shane was breathing now. Present now. Curled against this man's chest like it was the only safe harbor in a storm. And for the first time since David had gotten the call about the plane, he was certain his son would survive the night.

David's eyes softened. The tension that had been living in his shoulders since he'd called Yuna's phone over and over and gotten nothing, drained out of him in a long, slow exhale. He didn't ask how. Didn't ask why. Didn't ask for how long. Didn't ask about the decade of rivalry or the public animosity or the carefully constructed lies.

He just settled back into his plastic chair on Shane's other side and, without a word, reached out and took his hand—the one not currently fisted in Ilya's jacket. Forming a quiet triangle of support around the boy they both loved.

Ilya's brain short-circuited.

He stared at David, utterly frozen,waiting for the other shoe to drop—waiting for the anger, the accusations, the something that had to be coming. Because this—this quiet acceptance, this uncomplicated love—didn't exist in Ilya's understanding of the world. But nothing came. 

David just sat there, thumb tracing slow circles into his son's knuckles. No suspicion in his gaze. No judgment. No demands for explanations or promises. He simply was there—a steady, quiet presence asking for nothing except the chance to support his child.

Shane, still tucked against Ilya's shoulder, let out a shaky breath. His fingers tightened briefly around his father's hand—a small, unconscious acknowledgment of the connection—and his weight sagged further into Ilya's side. His breathing was finally, finally beginning to even out into something that resembled rest rather than survival. Ilya looked down at the top of Shane's head, then up at David—who was watching his son with an expression of such profound love it made Ilya's chest ache with something he couldn't name.

Of course, exactly like every other good, fragile thing in Ilya’s entire life, the profound, quiet tenderness of the moment was violently shattered, in this case by the obnoxiously loud voice of Hayden Pike.

"What the—ough!"

Ilya didn't even bother to lift his heavy head or tear his gaze away from the top of Shane’s messy hair to visually confirm that Jackie had just physically elbowed her idiotic husband in the ribs. He simply tightened his arms protectively, completely ignoring the baffled, sputtering man who was currently having his entire understanding of the universe forcefully rewritten.

"We are just going to go for a quick walk downstairs to stretch our legs," Jackie announced, her voice suddenly rang out with a saccharine, terrifyingly sweet cheerfulness that brooked absolutely no argument. "We’ll be right back!"

"But Jackie—"

"Hayden."

“Yes, baby, I’m sorry”

Without waiting for a single word of acknowledgment from the three men huddled in the center of the room, she clamped her hand onto her husban’s wrist with the vice-like grip of a seasoned hockey wife and ruthlessly dragged him backward toward the open elevator doors. Ilya listened to the sound of them stepping inside, to the muffled thump of Hayden's body hitting the elevator wall, to the doors sliding closed with a definitive shush.

And then, silence.

With the chaotic energy of the Pikes gone, the only sounds left were the low, sterile hum of the hospital ventilation, the distant, rhythmic beep of cardiac monitors down the hall, and the soft, steady cadence of Shane's breathing against his chest.

Across from them, David shifted slightly in his plastic chair. Not moving away, just... settling. Getting comfortable in the gravity of the situation. His thumb never once stopped its slow, rhythmic circles over Shane's pale knuckles and Ilya watched the way the rigid fingers relaxed incrementally with every single pass. Watched the way David's gaze never left his son's exhausted face. Such a small thing. A father quietly holding his son's hand in a freezing hospital waiting room, demanding absolutely nothing, just offering a steady presence.

Ilya had never experienced anything remotely like it in his entire life.

He looked down at the top of Shane's head, his throat tight. The messy, sweat-dampened hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck, and Ilya wanted to press his face there, to breathe him in like he'd done a hundred times before when Shane was asleep and couldn't see how desperate Ilya was for the scent of him. But he couldn't—not from this angle, not with Shane curled against his chest like this. So instead he pressed his nose into Shane's hair, right at the crown of his head, and breathed deep.

Shane shifted against him, a small, hesitant movement, and Ilya felt more than heard the shaky exhale that escaped his lips.

"I feel so stupid." Shane whispered, his voice thick, wavering, and deeply embarrassed. "I'm sorry about this. All of it. You shouldn't have to—"

"Stop." Ilya's voice was quiet but firm, his hand coming up to cup the back of Shane's head. "You do not apologize for being human, Shane. Never to me."

Shane tilted his head back just enough to find Ilya's eyes—red-rimmed, puffy, his face blotchy in a way that would probably embarrass him later, when he had the energy to care. Right now he just looked exhausted and open and impossibly young despite everything.

"You're really here." Wonder bled through this words, like he was still trying to make the math work in his head. "I called you, and you just... got in your car and drove. In February. At midnight."

Ilya shrugged, the movement jostling Shane gently against his side. "Was not midnight when I left. Was almost midnight. Close enough."

"That's not the point."

"What is?"

That familiar crease appeared between Shane's brows, cutting through the exhaustion. "The point is, it's the middle of the season. You're supposed to be in Boston. And you drove six hours—"

"Three and a half."

Shane blinked. Something shifted behind his eyes—the exhaustion still there, the red-rimmed weariness, but now a flicker of something else. His jaw tightened. His spine straightened a fraction, and suddenly he looked less like someone who'd been crying and more like someone you did not want to argue with. Ilya thought he looked cute.

"Three and a half?" Disbelief sharpened his voice. He actually pushed back, putting enough space between them to glare properly. "Rozanov, the roads are shit this time of yeart there's black ice everywhere. You could have wrapped your stupid car around a tree, and then where would we be? Huh? Then I'd be sitting here waiting for news about my mother and also waiting for news about my—" He stopped abruptly, the word catching in his throat, but his glare didn't waver. "News that I would have to learn over the internet because no one would have thought it was important to tell me, because nobody fucking knows about us. No, no you don't get to do that. You don't get to drive like a maniac just because I had a bad night."

Ilya blinked at him. The shift was so sudden, so completely Shane—the way his brain could flip from devastated to angry in seconds—that for a moment Ilya just stared. Then something warm bloomed in his chest.

It was ridiculous. He was being yelled at in a hospital waiting room at four in the morning by a man who looked like he'd been put through a washing machine. And all Ilya could think was: This is what it feels like to have someone who would be angry if you died.

"You are scolding me," Ilya said slowly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite his best efforts to suppress it.

"Yes, I'm scolding you! Somebody has to! You clearly don't have a single functioning brain cell when it comes to your own safety!"

"I have many brain cells. They were all focused on getting here."

"Then they're the wrong brain cells!" Shane's voice cracked, but he pushed through, his fingers still twisted in Ilya's jacket like it was the only thing keeping him upright. "You don't—you can't just—do you have any idea what could have—"

"I didn't." Ilya's voice was soft now, amused and tender in equal measure. "I am here. In one piece. Your mother is the one in surgery, not me. Focus on the correct crisis, Hollander."

Shane's jaw worked. Ilya watched the war play out across his face—the need to keep yelling warring with the bone-deep relief that he'd come at all. The gratitude won. It always won with Shane, Ilya was learning. No matter how much he wanted to be practical, to be careful, to be the responsible one—Ilya made him want to throw caution into oncoming traffic. Which was ironic, given the current conversation.

"You're such an idiot." The words came out soft now, all fight drained. Shane slumped heavier against Ilya's chest, his grip loosening into something more comfortable. "A complete, reckless, stupid idiot."

"A very safe idiot." Ilya pressed his smile into Shane's hair where he couldn't see it. "Who made excellent time."

"Don't brag about speeding."

"Is not bragging. Is stating facts. There is difference."

A sound escaped Shane—something almost a laugh, small and tired and cracked at the edges. It vibrated through Ilya's chest, and he felt something finally, finally start to unclench. The knot that had been wound tight since the moment he'd answered the phone in Boston and heard nothing but ragged breathing on the other end.

"You're impossible," Shane whispered against his collar.

"You called me, so really, you did this to yourself."

Shane huffed—no real irritation in it, just exhaustion and relief and that warm, wondering thing that had been growing between them for years. The thing they'd both been too scared to name. Until tonight.

Across from them, David was watching. And there was something in his eyes—a glint of recognition, maybe. The look of a man who'd also broken a few speed limits tonight, for a reason that wasn't so different from Ilya's. The look of a man who also loved someone whose brain ran at a different speed than everyone else and whose body was currently broken on a surgical table.

David Hollander had spent forty years loving Yuna—her intensity, her brightness, her glorious, overwhelming way of filling every room she entered. Forty years of watching her burn bright and trying to keep up. Forty years of knowing, with absolute certainty, that there was no version of his life that made sense without her in it.

And Ilya? Ilya had spent ten years circling Shane. Ten years pretending he didn't feel it, didn't need it, didn't wake up in hotel rooms reaching for someone who was already gone. And tonight, when he'd finally stopped pretending—when he'd admitted to himself, in the dark of his car at a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, that he loved Shane Hollander more than he loved his own life—he looked up from the pretty boy in his arms and saw the same love reflected back at him in David's tired eyes.

The same fear. The same fierce, bone-deep devotion. The same absolute refusal to let the people they loved face the dark alone.

David watched him—watched the way his hands cradled Shane's shoulders like he was something precious, watched the way he pressed his face into Shane's hair like he was breathing him in, watched the way his thumb never stopped its grounding path against Shane's arm—and he understood.

This wasn't just attraction. This wasn't just convenience or secrecy or whatever story these kids had been telling themselves. This was the real thing. The kind of love that made you drive through the night without thinking. The kind of love that made you sit in hard plastic chairs and refuse to sleep because the person in your arms needed you to be awake. The kind of love that David had spent his entire adult life feeling for Yuna. He saw it, clear as day.

Ilya Rozanov loved his son the way David loved his wife. Completely. Desperately. Without question or hesitation.

And from the way Shane was curled into Rozanov's side, from the way his fingers were twisted into his jacket like he'd never let go, from the way his breathing had finally evened out and he'd laughed despite his panic—

Shane loved him back just the same.

David's eyes burned. He blinked rapidly, looking away for a moment, giving himself a second to process the weight of it. When he looked back, Rozanov was watching him.

There was something in his expression—a flicker of uncertainty, maybe, or the barest hint of defensiveness, like he was bracing for David to say something, to pull Shane away, to tell him he didn't belong here. But David didn't do any of those things. He just looked at Rozanov, really looked at him, and let everything he was feeling show on his face. The recognition. The acceptance. The quiet, overwhelming gratitude that someone loved his son this much.

Ilya's ears went hot. He felt the flush creeping up his neck, but he didn't look away. Didn't hide. Just tightened his arm around Shane's shoulders and let himself be seen.

The silence that followed was heavy, but not uncomfortable—the kind of quiet that comes after something important has been said without words. David cleared his throat softly, swiping at his eyes with his free hand. Then, slowly, he pushed himself up from his chair. The plastic creaked under him, the sound loud in the stillness.

"I'm going to find some water," he murmured, already moving. He squeezed Shane's hand once before letting go, a small, deliberate pressure. "Give you two a minute."

Shane's head lifted slightly, a flicker of concern crossing his exhausted face. "Dad, you don't have to—"

"I know." David's voice was gentle, firm. He straightened slowly, his body protesting the hours of sitting. "But I'm going to anyway. Been sitting too long. I need to move."

He looked at Ilya then—a long, steady look that made Ilya's spine straighten instinctively. But there was no judgment in it. No warning. Just that same quiet acknowledgment from before, the look that said; I see you. I see what this is. And you don't have to be scared of me.

David nodded once, just a small movement, and then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor.

The quiet that followed was different—softer, more private, like the room itself was giving them permission to breathe. Shane exhaled slowly, his shoulders dropping as some of the tension finally released its grip. He shifted against Ilya, tilting his head back just enough to meet his eyes. They were still swollen from crying, shadowed with exhaustion, but underneath all of that there was something lighter. Something that looked almost like peace.

Then his forehead creased again. "What were you doing?" He asked, his voice still thick but steadier now. "When I called. What were you doing?"

Ilya blinked down at him. "What?"

"When you answered. You picked up so fast. What were you doing?"

Ilya hesitated. It felt stupid to admit now, in the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital waiting room, that he'd been spiraling over a news report. That he'd watched a plane crash on television and immediately thought about Shane—where he was, when his last game was, whether he could have been on that flight, if he was safe. That he'd typed out a text and deleted it three times because he couldn't figure out how to say that he couldn't properly breathe with just the thought of something bad happening to him, without sounding insane.

But Shane was looking up at him with those eyes—still exhausted, but focused now, present in a way they hadn't been all night—and Ilya found he didn't want to lie. Not about this.

"I was watching the news," he said quietly. "They showed the plane. The emergency landing. And I thought—" He stopped, his jaw tightening.

Shane's fingers curled tighter into his jacket. "You thought what?"

"I thought about you." The words came out rougher than he intended, stripped of all his usual careful control. "I did the schedule in my head. Montreal played at home Saturday, so you should be safe, but I could not—" He exhaled sharply. "I could not make my brain stop. So I sat there trying not to think about you. And then you called."

Shane was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. "You were scared."

"I was... concerned."

"Same thing."

"Is different. Concerned is rational. Scared is—" Ilya cut himself off, frustrated with his own inability to find the right words. "I do not get scared, Hollander. I am Russian. We do not have that word."

"Liar."

"Rude."

Shane's mouth twitched. It was small, barely a movement at all, but Ilya saw it. Felt it, more like, in the way the tension in Shane's shoulders eased just a fraction.

"You're a terrible liar," Shane murmured. "You were scared for me. And then I called, and I was having a full meltdown on your phone, and that definitely helped."

"Immensely," Ilya deadpanned. "Was exactly what I needed. Ten out of ten experience."

Shane let out a real laugh this time—short, surprised, punched out of him before he could stop it. It was watery and exhausted and absolutely the most beautiful sound Ilya had heard in hours.

"I'm sorry," Shane said, but he was smiling now, just a little. "That's terrible."

"It is not terrible." Ilya's voice softened. "You called me. That is the opposite of terrible. I am always happy when you call me." The words came out before he could stop them, more honest than he'd intended. But Shane was looking at him with those impossibly bright eyes that seemed to see right through him, and he did not want to take it back.

The hour was late, the adrenaline had long since burned away, and something in Ilya Rozanov's chest was cracking open whether he liked it or not.

"I fell apart on your phone."

"You trusted me with falling apart." Ilya's voice was quiet, rough at the edges. "That means everything, Shane. That you wanted me. That you chose me."

Shane's breath caught. His eyes went bright again, but the tears didn't fall this time. They just sat there on his lower lashes, catching the harsh light.

"I would never have called anyone else," he admitted quietly. "I just—I needed to hear your voice. I needed you to tell me it was going to be okay, even if you didn't know. Even if you couldn't promise. I just needed you to say it. I never thought—I didn't even have to ask you to come."

Ilya's throat tightened. He thought about the phone in his hand, the way his thumb had hovered over the send button on a text he never sent. The way his heart had lurched when Shane's name appeared on the screen. The way he'd answered without thinking, without strategy, without any of the careful walls he'd spent a decade building.

"You called," Ilya said simply. "I came. That is how it works. You do not have to ask."

Shane shook his head slowly, a tiny movement against Ilya's chest. "That's not how it works for most people."

"I am not most people."

"No." Shane's voice was impossibly soft. "You're really not."

For a moment, they just looked at each other. Ilya was acutely aware of everything—the weight of Shane against his side, the warmth of him, the way his fingers were still twisted into his jacket like he was something worth holding onto.

And Ilya wanted to tell him. Wanted to tell him every single secret he had ever kept, every single thought that had filled his head during all those miles he'd driven. How scared he'd been. How worried. Wanted Shane to know him. All of him. The good parts and the broken ones and all the messy, complicated space in between. Ilya wanted to tell him everything.

"When you told me what happened," Ilya said quietly, his hand stilling where it rested against Shane's shoulder, "I thought about my mama."

Shane went still.

"I remembered how it felt," Ilya continued, the words coming slowly, painfully. "When I found her. How lonely I was, like the floor was gone. And I was not going to let you sit here alone and feel that. I could not."

Shane's eyes went bright again, but he blinked rapidly, forcing the tears back. "I didn't know that," he whispered. "About your mom. I mean, I knew she—but I didn't know you were there. That you found her."

Ilya nodded, not trusting his voice.

"That's—" Shane swallowed hard. "Thank you. For telling me. And for coming. For not letting me be alone."

"You are never alone." The words came out fierce, absolute. "Not anymore. Not while I am breathing. You understand me, Hollander?"

Shane stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I do." And then he reached up, his fingers brushing against the dark circles under Ilya's eyes with a gentleness that made Ilya's chest ache. "You look terrible," he murmured. "When did you last sleep?"

Ilya caught his wrist, turning his head to press a kiss to Shane's palm without thinking. The gesture was so natural, so automatic, that he did not realize what he'd done until he felt Shane's fingers curl against his cheek.

"I do not remember," Ilya admitted against his skin. "Sleep is for people who are not worried about their—" He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "Sleep is for people who are not worried about the people they love."

The words hung in the air between them. Shane's eyes went wide, his breath catching audibly.

Ilya felt the admission settle between them like a stone dropped into still water—and immediately wanted to take it back. What kind of idiot said something like that now? Shane was already carrying too much. Ilya had already messed things up enough just by coming here without a thought for who would find out, without a care for the consequences. And now he was dumping his damaged heart into the pile too?

The worst part was that he was a fucking coward who couldn't even confess properly. Hiding behind words aimed at no one, deflecting them against skin instead of saying them face-to-face. Always hiding. Always protecting himself. Always leaving just enough room to pretend he hadn't really said anything at all. 

Just in case Shane didn't want him.

"The people you— Ilya " Shane's voice cracked and his face crumpled in a completely different way. Not the panic from before—this was softer, more vulnerable, his bottom lip trembling as fresh tears welled up. He tried again.

That's it, Ilya thought, something cold and inevitable settling in his gut. This is it. He's going to let me down easy. He's going to break this thing before it even begins. All because Ilya couldn't keep his stupid mouth shut and his stupid ass on his stupid couch in Boston where it belonged.

Shane must have seen something in his expression—horror, maybe, or shock, or just the blank look of a system that had completely crashed—because he stopped mid-sentence. His eyes went impossibly wider. His face went pale beneath the tear tracks.

And then he tried to pull away.

It was a small movement, barely a shift, but Ilya felt it like a physical blow. Felt Shane's muscles tense, felt him start to retreat, felt the fragile thing they had built tonight start to crack.

Ilya's arm locked around him. Tight. Immovable.

"Stop," Ilya said, his voice rough. "Do not—Shane. Stop moving."

Shane froze, his eyes searching Ilya's face with something that looked terrifyingly like resignation. Like he was bracing for impact. Like he already knew what was coming.

Ilya stared at him. This beautiful, broken, impossible man who had just handed him his entire heart like it was nothing. Like it was something Ilya deserved.

"You love me," Ilya said slowly, testing the words. They felt huge in his mouth. Terrifying. Right.

Shane flinched. "I shouldn't have—I know it's too soon, I know we haven't talked about it, I just—with everything that happened tonight, I couldn't—"

"Shane."

"—keep pretending that I don't feel this, and I understand if you don't feel the same, I don't expect—"

"Shane."

Shane's mouth snapped shut. His eyes were bright and wet and absolutely terrified.

Ilya cupped his face with both hands, ignoring the way his own fingers were trembling. Ignoring everything except the man in front of him who had just shattered every wall Ilya had ever built.

"I love you too," Ilya said. The words came out rough, scraped raw, absolutely certain. "I have loved you for years. I did not know how to say it. I did not think I was allowed to want it. But I love you, Shane. I love you."

Shane stared at him. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Nothing came out.

Then, slowly, incredibly, his face broke into something Ilya had never seen before. It was wrecked and glowing all at once, tear tracks still fresh on his cheeks but his eyes bright with something Ilya couldn't quite name. It was the kind of smile that started somewhere deep and spread outward, warming everything it touched. It was the smile of someone who had just been given permission to stop running.

"Yeah?" Shane whispered.

Ilya let out a sound that was half laugh, half something else entirely. "Yeah."

Shane surged forward, pressing his face into Ilya's neck, his whole body shaking with something that might have been laughter or crying or both. Ilya held him through it, one hand cradling the back of his head, the other pressed flat against his spine, grounding them both.

"You're such an idiot," Shane mumbled against his skin, his voice muffled and wet. "I cannot believe you made me say it first."

"You did not even let me finish my sentence."

"Your sentence was going nowhere."

"It was going somewhere. I was building up to it."

"You were not."

"I absolutely was. I am very romantic person."

Shane pulled back just enough to look at him, one eyebrow raised. His face was a mess and he was absolutely beautiful. "You're literally the least romantic person I have ever met."

"Rude. I drove three and a half hours for you."

"While speeding."

"Romantically speeding."

Shane laughed. It was wet and wobbly and perfect. "That isn't a thing."

"Is a thing in Russia."

"You are not in Russia."

"Thank God for that." Ilya pressed his forehead against Shane's, breathing him in. "I love you," he said again, softer this time, like he was still learning the shape of the words. "I love you, and I am not going anywhere. Okay?"

Shane nodded, a tiny movement that brushed their noses together. "Okay." His hand came up to curl around the back of Ilya's neck, holding him there. "I love you too. Just so we're clear."

"Crystal clear."

"Good."

They stayed like that for a moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other's air, and Ilya could feel Shane's pulse through the point where their skin touched, could feel the way his breath kept catching like he was waiting for something—like he, too, couldn't quite believe in this, couldn't quite believe that Ilya would stay, like he was waiting for him to disappear the way he always had.

Ten years. Ten years of hotel room doors closing behind him, of leaving before the sun came up, of pretending that what they had was just convenience, just release, just something to burn through until the next game. Ten years of walking away because it was easier than staying.

But Ilya was so tired of walking away. So desperate for a place to stay.

So he tilted his head, just slightly, and kissed him.

It was soft at first—barely a press of lips, a question more than a statement—but Shane made a sound against his mouth, small and desperate and relieved, and something in Ilya's chest exploded. So he pulled Shane closer and kissed him like he meant it, like he meant every single word they'd just said and a thousand more he didn't know how to say in English.

This was their first kiss that wasn't in the safety of some hotel room, wasn't in one of their apartments with the curtains drawn tight and the lights off. This was in a hospital waiting room, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, where anyone could walk through that door at any moment—a doctor, a nurse, some stranger whose loved one had been on that plane. The thought flickered through Ilya's mind, instinctive and cold: Shane's image. Shane's career. Shane's perfect reputation. He remembered another kiss, years ago on a balcony after the rookie awards, the way the boy in his arms had practically launched himself away at the sound of footsteps, the terror in his eyes at the thought of being seen. The memory had lived in Ilya's chest like a splinter ever since—a reminder of what Shane needed, what he couldn't give, what Ilya would never ask for.

So he started to pull back. Always protecting him. Always putting his comfort above Ilya's own desperate need to be loved in the light.

But that was then. This was now. And Shane wasn't letting him retreat. His fingers curled tighter, refusing to let Ilya disappear the way he always had.

Ilya let out a shaky breath against his mouth and kissed him deeper, letting himself believe what that grip was telling him: that it didn't matter anymore. The cameras, the headlines, the judgment of the world—none of it mattered. He wanted this. Wanted him. Right here, in front of anyone who might walk through that door.

Shane kissed him back like he was drowning and Ilya was air, like he'd been holding his breath for years and had finally been given permission to breathe, his fingers curling into the hair at the nape of Ilya's neck, holding him there, keeping him close, like he still couldn't quite believe Ilya would stay.

But Ilya wasn't going anywhere. Not now. Not ever. He knew that with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, heavier and more real than anything he'd ever felt.

He could not believe he had gone ten years without this. Without the right to hold him like this, to kiss him like this, to let himself feel the full weight of what the other meant to him. Every hotel room, every stolen night, every goodbye that left him hollow—it all led here. To this moment. To Shane warm and alive and his in a way he had never allowed himself to want.

And Shane had said I love you. Had said it first, had said it like a confession and a gift all at once, had said it while looking at Ilya like he was enough, like he was everything.

Ilya let that thought settle into him, let it seep through all the cracks he'd spent a lifetime building. And Shane didn't lie—Shane couldn't lie, not about something like this, not with his whole heart cracked open and bleeding into the space between them. So if he said he loved Ilya, if he said he'd loved him for years, if he said I'm sorry if you aren't ready like Ilya was the one who needed protecting—then it meant it was true. It meant he wanted Ilya here. Shane wasn't angry that Ilya had come, wasn't wishing he'd stayed in Boston, wasn't already calculating the damage to his precious public image. 

For the first time in his life, following his heart hadn't led Ilya to disaster. For the first time in his life, wanting something—wanting someone—hadn't ended in ashes.

He let himself believe it. Let the truth of it seep into all the cold, empty places he'd been carrying for so long. Shane wanted him here. Shane loved him. The thought unraveled something in Ilya's chest—something tight and terrified that had been holding on for years. He let it go. Let himself relax into Shane's grip, into the kiss, into the impossible, terrifying, beautiful truth of it.

The kiss deepened, turned desperate, turned into something Ilya couldn't control and didn't want to. He poured every mile he'd driven into it, every second of terror, every prayer he'd whispered to a God he didn't believe in—kissing him like he was trying to memorize the shape of him, the taste of him, the way he fit so perfectly against Ilya's mouth. It wasn't just a kiss. It was a homecoming. It was every goodbye reversed, every closed door forced back open.

And then he tasted salt.

Not just Shane's tears—though those were there, mixing between their lips, warm and wet and overwhelming—but there was more, too much salt for it to be only Shane, and Ilya pulled back just enough to breathe, just enough to see, and realized with a jolt that his own face was wet. When had that happened? When had the tears started? He couldn't remember, couldn't remember the last time he had cried, couldn't remember the last time he had let himself feel anything this much.

Shane was looking at him with those impossibly bright eyes, his own face a mess of tear tracks and wonder, and he raised one hand slowly, gently, brushing his thumb across Ilya's cheekbone, catching a tear before it could fall.

"Hey," Shane whispered, his voice wrecked and beautiful. "You're crying."

Ilya shook his head, a tiny, automatic denial. "I do not cry."

"Uh-huh." Shane's thumb traced the same path again, following the trail of another tear. "Tell that to your face."

"Is the hospital. Bad air. Makes eyes water."

Shane laughed—soft and wet and the most stunning man Ilya had ever seen. "You're ridiculous."

"Okay," he admitted, his voice rough. "Maybe a little crying. But only because you are very emotional tonight. Is contagious."

Shane's laugh was brighter this time, louder, filling the small space between them. He pressed his forehead back against Ilya's, breathing him in.

"I love you," Shane said again, like he could not say it enough. Like he needed Ilya to hear it, to believe it, to carry it with him. "I love you so much. I'm so fucking grateful you are here."

Ilya kissed him again—shorter this time, softer, just a brush of lips to remind himself that this was real. Then Shane's hand slid down from his neck, pressing flat against the center of Ilya's chest. Right over his heart, which was currently trying with all its might to violently beat its way out of his ribcage.

"Your heart is going crazy," Shane murmured against his lips.

"You are very annoying."

Shane smiled, close enough that Ilya could feel the curve of it. "You love it."

"Da," Ilya said quietly, the word slipping out before he could stop it, warm and certain and absolutely true. "I do."

For a moment they just breathed each other's air, foreheads pressed together, Shane's hand still flat against the frantic rhythm of Ilya's heart. Ilya could feel each beat like a countdown to something he couldn't name.

Then the elevator dinged.

The sound was soft, polite, entirely out of place in the quiet of the surgical wing. But Ilya felt Shane tense against him, felt the way his breathing began to quicken again. Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Three sets of them. Low voices, hushed but not urgent. Ilya kept his arm locked around Shane's shoulders, kept his thumb moving in that slow, grounding path against his bicep—the one that seemed to calm him earlier. He wasn't going to let go just because company was coming. Not now. Not after everything.

Shane shifted, pulling back just enough to break the press of their foreheads, to be able to see. But he didn't let go—his hand stayed curled in Ilya's jacket, his body still pressed warm against Ilya's side. Just enough space to face whatever was coming, but not enough to lose the connection.

David appeared first, a paper cup of water in his hand. His eyes found them immediately—found the way they were still tangled together, found the tear tracks still fresh on both their faces—and something in his expression softened, like he'd already known what he'd find and was glad to be right.

Behind him, Jackie emerged from the stairwell, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd spent too many hours in hospitals. And behind her, looking significantly less shell-shocked than when he'd left, was Pike.

The man's eyes landed on them and, for a split second, his step faltered. Ilya watched him take it in—the way Shane was curled into Ilya's side, the way Ilya's arm was wrapped around him like a protective shield, the way neither of them had moved apart despite the audience. Hayden's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

Then Jackie's elbow found his ribs, and he made a sound that was half grunt, half surrender.

"Hayden," Jackie said sweetly, "sit down and be quiet."

Hayden sat, dropping into the chair closest to the vending machines. Jackie sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched. She didn't say anything. Just watched them with that warm, knowing look that made Ilya feel like she could see straight through to his bones.

David settled back into his plastic chair, the one he'd occupied for hours, and reached for Shane's hand like he'd done a thousand times before—like it was the most natural thing in the world. Shane didn't even look. He just moved his hand, the one that had been pressed flat against Ilya's heart, sliding it off Ilya's chest and onto his own thigh, close enough for his father to reach. David's fingers found his instantly, wrapping around them with that same quiet, unthinking ease. Like muscle memory. Like love so ingrained it didn't need words.

The gesture was so natural that Ilya felt his heart breaking a little.

For a long moment, no one spoke. The silence wasn't uncomfortable perse, but it was heavy with everything none of them knew how to say. Then Shane shifted against Ilya's side, his fingers tightening briefly on his dad hold before he spoke.

"I should—" Shane started, his voice still rough but steadier now. He cleared his throat, tried again. "I should explain. About us. About... everything."

Surprisingly to Ilya, it was Hayden's idiotic head that snapped up at Shane comment. "Shane, man, you don't have to—"

"I know." Shane cut him off, but there was no sharpness in it. Just exhaustion and something like surrender flickering through his eyes. "I know I don't have to. But I want to. I'm so tired of lying. To the people I love. I can't—not anymore. Not after tonight."

Ilya felt the words land in his chest like stones. He looked down at Shane, at the way his jaw was set with that stubborn determination that Ilya had spent ten years pretending to hate, and something warm and aching bloomed behind his ribs.

"Shane," Ilya murmured, low enough that only he could hear. "You do not have to do this tonight. You are tired. You have been through enough."

Shane tilted his head back to look at him, and his eyes were puffy but absolutely certain. "I know I'm tired. I'm so tired I can barely think straight." A small, tired smile tugged at his lips. "Which means I'm too exhausted to panic about this. And I don't want to keep pretending. Not with them. Not after tonight. Not when the last thing I said to my mom was a lie."

David leaned forward slowly, his brow furrowing with gentle concern. "What do you mean, kid?"

Shane's cheeks flushed—just a little, a faint pink that crept up from his collar. He glanced at Ilya, then back at his father, then at Hayden and Jackie, who were watching with matching expressions of careful attention.

"I asked her for vodka," Shane said quietly.

Ilya blinked. "What?"

Shane's flush deepened. "The vodka you like. The Russian one—the fancy one I can never remember the name of." He wouldn't look at Ilya, his gaze fixed somewhere on the opposite wall. "You mentioned it once. Months ago. I don't even remember when. But I remembered. And I asked my mom to bring some from New York. They don't sell it here, and I wanted—" He stopped, swallowed. "I wanted to have it for you. For when I went to Boston on Friday."

Ilya's brain stopped working. Completely. Entirely. He stared at Shane, utterly frozen, trying to process what he'd just heard.

Shane kept going, his voice getting smaller but somehow more determined. "The game on Friday. I thought maybe I could come over after. Stay the night. We could—I don't know." He finally glanced at Ilya, just for a second, blushing even more, before looking away again. "But when my mom asked why I needed it, I lied. I told her it was for someone on the team. One of the guys who liked it. Which was stupid, because none of them drink that stuff, and also I'm a terrible liar, and she definitely knew I was hiding something, but I just—I couldn't tell her the truth. Not then." His voice cracked, wobbled, broke. "And now she's in surgery, and the last thing I said to her was a lie."

Ilya couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except stare at the man pressed against his side—this impossible, ridiculous, devastating man who had remembered a throwaway comment from months ago, who had asked his mother to smuggle alcohol across the border, who had been planning for Friday, planning for them, while Ilya had been sitting in his empty house trying not to think about how much he missed him.

David was the first to move. He leaned forward, his free hand coming up to rest on Shane's knee. "Shane. Look at me."

Shane did, his eyes holding that familiar shine he hadn't been able to shake all night.

"First," David said quietly, "mom is going to be fine. She's going to wake up, and you're going to have plenty of time to tell her everything you want to tell her. About the vodka. About Ilya. About whatever else you've been keeping from us. You'll get that chance."

Shane's breath hitched.

"Second," David continued, his voice gentle but firm, "you don't owe us any explanations. Not tonight. Not ever, if you don't want to give them. You're allowed to have a private life. You're allowed to love who you love without having to justify it to anyone. That's not lying, son. That's just... living. On your own terms."

Ilya's throat closed.

He stared at David—at the way he looked at Shane, at the way his voice wrapped around every word like it was something precious. There was no judgment there. No disappointment. No edge waiting to cut. Just patience and so much love. Just the quiet, absolute certainty of a man who had spent years looking at his son and seeing someone worth looking at.

Ilya had known, logically, that Shane grew up way differently than him. He'd seen the way Shane's face softened when he talked about his parents, filed away the small details that painted a picture of a childhood nothing like his own. But knowing something and seeing it were two different things.

Seeing it was this: David looking at his twenty-seven-year-old son—captain of an NHL team, grown man, professional athlete—with the same expression Ilya imagined he'd worn when Shane was a little boy and scraped his knee. Like nothing had changed. Like Shane would always be his little boy, and that was a privilege, not a problem.

Seeing it was this: the way David's voice never wavered, never hardened, never lost that undercurrent of warmth even when he was saying something serious. The way his eyes never left Shane's face, tracking every flicker of emotion, like he was cataloguing his son's heartbeat in real time.

Seeing it was this: Shane nodding, quick and eager, not because he was scared of his father's disapproval, but because he wasn't. Like he needed David to know he understood, he agreed, he was listening but he just needed to make his point heard. Like earing this wasn’t something strange or remarkable. Because he knew, with absolute certainty, that David was on his side. Because he'd always known. Because that was just how it worked in the Hollander house.

Ilya's eyes burned.

He blinked rapidly, looking away for a moment, pressing his face into Shane's hair to hide. It didn't help. The tears were there anyway, hot and unwanted, spilling over before he could stop them.

This was what it looked like to be loved by a father who stayed. Who held your hand in hospital waiting rooms. Who looked at you at twenty-seven the same way he looked at you at seven—like you were the most important thing in the world

Ilya had never had that. Would never have that. His father's love came with conditions, with performance, with the constant grinding pressure to be enough—and even then, it wasn't love. Not really. Not like this. But Shane had it. Shane had always had it. And as Ilya held him in that freezing hospital room, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing, the warmth of his body pressed close, he waited for the envy to come.

He knew envy. Knew it the way he knew the back of his own hand, the way he knew the sharp bite of a Moscow winter, the way he knew the hollow echo of an apartment where no one waited for him. Envy was an old friend. An unwelcome one, but familiar. He'd felt it watching other kids with their parents at the rink when he was young. Felt it watching teammates pull out their phones to call their mothers after games. Felt it a thousand times, a million times, in a thousand different ways.

So he waited for it now. Waited for the familiar twist in his gut, the bitter taste on his tongue, the small, ugly voice that whispered why not me, why not mine, why not ever.

But it didn't come.

He searched for it—really searched, dug deep into the dark corners of his chest where all the old wounds lived—and found nothing but space. Nothing but warmth. Nothing but the steady, impossible realization that what filled him wasn't envy at all.

It was gratitude.

Huge, overwhelming, bone-deep gratitude. So big it made his ribs ache, made his breath catch, made fresh tears spill silently into Shane's hair.

Because Shane knew. Shane knew what love was supposed to look like. He'd grown up with it, breathed it in like air, had it woven into the very fabric of who he was. He knew what it felt like to be held without conditions, to be loved without performance. And with all that knowledge, with all that history, with every example of what love should be burned into his bones—

Shane had chosen Ilya.

Shane had looked at Ilya Rozanov—broken, sharp-edged, terrified of his own heart—and seen something worth keeping. Something worth calling at midnight. Something worth coming back to, over and over again. Something worth being brave for. Something worth holding onto in a freezing hospital waiting room while his mother was in surgery. Shane had seen something in Ilya that Ilya himself couldn't find. Had found something worth loving in all the broken, messy, complicated space between Ilya's ribs.

He pressed his face deeper into Shane's hair, hiding the tears, hiding the wrecked expression he could feel pulling at his features. His arm tightened around Shane's shoulders, pulling him closer, and he let the gratitude wash over him like a wave.

Thank you, he thought, though he didn't know if he was thanking Shane or David or whatever cold, indifferent universe had somehow, impossibly, led him here. Thank you for loving him the way he deserves. Thank you for making him someone who could love me back.

Yeah. No envy. Just this. Just gratitude. Just the overwhelming, terrifying, beautiful certainty that somehow, against all odds, he'd been chosen by someone who knew exactly what love was supposed to look like.

Shane moved a little, not pulling away—never pulling away, not anymore—just adjusting, settling deeper into Ilya's side like he belonged there. Like this was normal. Like they'd been doing this for years instead of hours. His free arm—the one not currently being held by his father—slid around Ilya's back, palm pressing flat against the space between his shoulder blades. Warm. Solid. Grounding. And then he just... kept talking.

"—But I want to tell you. I don't want to hide anymore. Not from you. Not from them." He glanced at Hayden and Jackie, then back at his father. "I've been hiding for ten years. I'm so tired of it. And after tonight—after thinking I could lose her without her ever knowing who I really am—I just..." His voice broke again. "I can't. I can't keep—"

Ilya stopped listening.

Not because he didn't care—he cared, god, he cared so fucking much—but because Shane's hand was moving in slow, absent circles against his back. The same motion Ilya had been using on Shane's shoulder all night, mirrored back at him without thought, without intention, like Shane's body had simply decided that this was how they held each other now. Like it was instinct. Like it was habit. Like it was something they'd done a thousand times before.

And maybe, in a way, they had. In the dark. In those stolen hours when the world didn't exist and Shane's skin was the only map Ilya needed. But those moments had always been borrowed, always temporary, always tinged with the knowledge that morning would come and they'd go back to being strangers. This wasn't borrowed. This wasn't temporary. This was Shane, in front of his father, in front of his best friends, holding Ilya like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like he'd been doing it his whole life. Like he never planned to stop.

lya stayed there for a moment longer, still hidden in the soft, dark warmth of Shane's hair, breathing him in. Letting the familiar, comforting smell of him—cedar and salt and something impossibly Shane—calm the last of the static in his chest, ground him in a way nothing else ever had. When he finally lifted his head, David's eyes had softened, and he was squeezing his son's hand gently.

"Then tell us whatever you want to tell us," David said quietly. "We're here. We're listening. And we're not going anywhere."

Shane nodded, a small, grateful movement. He took a breath, clearly gearing up for another round of explanations, when Hayden's voice cut through the quiet.

"You just said ten years." Hayden's voice was quiet now, all the earlier chaos drained out of it. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, looking at Shane like he was trying to reconcile every version of him he'd ever known with this new information. "You're telling me that for a decade—while we were rooming together on road trips, while I was sitting next to you in locker rooms, while I was complaining to you about Ilya Rozanov—you were just..." He trailed off, shook his head. "I don't even know what I'm asking."

Shane's jaw tightened. Just a fraction. His hand, still pressed warm against Ilya's back, didn't stop its slow circles.

"It wasn't like that," Shane said quietly. "It was never like that."

"Then what was it like?"

Shane was quiet for a long moment. Ilya watched him—watched the way his gaze drifted to the blank wall opposite, the way his thumb kept moving against Ilya's spine like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the moment.

"Complicated," Shane finally said. "Messy. Confusing." A small exhale. "We were eighteen when this started. Both of us. Terrified. In way over our heads. And at the beginning we were just fooling around."

Ilya's fingers pressed a little harder against his shoulder—a silent reminder that he was here, that he was not facing this alone. Not anymore.

"We didn't know what we were doing," Shane continued, his voice softer now. "Didn't know what it meant, what it would become. We just knew that when we were together, it felt—" He stopped, searching.

"Like coming up for air," Ilya offered quietly.

Shane glanced at him. Held his gaze for a moment. Then nodded. "Yeah. Like that. Like I was—like we were, finally just ourselves. Not Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, just Shane and Ilya."

Across from them, David was very still. His hand hadn't moved from Shane's. His eyes hadn't left his son's face. Hayden was quiet too, processing. When he spoke again, his voice was different—softer, stripped of its usual bravado.

"God," he said. "You two were just kids."

Shane nodded, his eyes bright.

"Eighteen," Hayden continued, like he was working through it out loud. "You were eighteen. Fresh out of juniors." He shook his head slowly. "I've known you for nine years, Shane, and I thought I knew you pretty good, but—but I have literally never met a version of you that wasn't somehow tangled up with him and I didn’t even suspect it.”

Shane's mouth opened, then closed. There wasn't really anything to say to that. It was true. Every version of himself he could remember, from that terrified rookie to the captain sitting here now, had Ilya somewhere in the margins. Even when they weren't together, even when they were pretending, Ilya was there. A constant. A thread running through everything.

"Ten years."

"Yes Hays, I heard you the first time."

"I don't think you understand how long ten years is, Buddie. That's—that's a decade. That's—" Hayden did some rapid mental math. "That's like, a third of our lives, you need to be a little patience with me here. That's—"

Hayden's mouth opened and closed several times. Jackie patted his knee sympathetically.

"I think what he's trying to say," Jackie offered, "is that the mental image of you two together is going to take some time to process."

"Together," Hayden repeated weakly. "Together together. For ten years. While he was breaking my nose in playoffs."

"That was one time," Ilya said.

"One time? You cross-checked me into the boards so hard I saw stars!"

"You were in front of my net."

"I'm always in front of your net. That's my job!"

"And I always cross-check you. Also my job."

Ilya felt the familiar itch of mischief crawling up his spine. It was strange, after hours of terror and tears, to feel something so normal—but Shane was warm against his side, and Yuna was going to be okay, and Hayden Pike was so easy to rile up. He couldn't help himself.

"That's not—" Hayden sputtered, and for a moment he was fully distracted, caught up in the familiar rhythm of arguing with Ilya Rozanov. It was almost comfortable, this back-and-forth—a dance they'd done a hundred times on ice, just with less blood and more fluorescent lights. Then Hayden caught himself. He blinked, looked back at Shane, and something in his expression shifted. Softened. Like he'd remembered what they were actually here for.

He shook his head, a small, rueful smile tugging at his mouth.

"You," he said to Ilya, "are very annoying."

"I know."

"But you're also—" Hayden paused, glanced at Shane, then back at Ilya. "You're also apparently... this. So I'm going to figure out how to be okay with it."

Ilya raised an eyebrow. "Is that your way of saying you accept me?"

"It's my way of saying I'm gonna try."

"Trying is first step. Is very good. I am proud of you."

Hayden made a sound that might have been a laugh, buried somewhere under all the exhaustion. "You're impossible."

"Da, because you are so easy."

Across from them, David's quiet voice cut through. "He's got you there, Hayden."

Hayden's head snapped toward Shane's father, betrayal written all over his face. "Not you too."

David shrugged, unrepentant. "I'm just making an observation."

"Observe less."

"I don't think that's how observing works."

Shane laughed—soft and surprised, the sound vibrating against Ilya's side. It was small, barely there, but it was real. And Ilya felt something warm spread through his chest at the sound of it. For a moment, the silence was comfortable. Full of breath and warmth and the slow, settling weight of everything that had been said.

Then Hayden's brow furrowed.

"Wait," he said slowly. "So what was all that with Rose, then? You two seemed serious. For a while there, I thought—"

Ilya felt Shane stiffen beside him and forced his face into careful neutrality, but something cold flickered in his chest anyway—Rose Landry, the actress, the beautiful, famous woman who had been all over the tabloids with Shane. The one from the club, with her perfect smile and her hands all over Shane's back. The one he could go out in public with. Didn't need to hide.

Ilya had tried very hard to stop thinking about Rose after Shane told him they weren’t compatible.

Shane made a sound low in his throat. "Hayden—"

"I'm not trying to—" Hayden stopped, ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not trying to be difficult. I just... you seemed serious. You brought her to team events. Jackie and I had dinner with you guys. You held her hand. You introduced her to your mom."

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice came out slower. Wrecked.

"I thought you were happy."

The words hung there, heavy. Ilya watched something shift in Hayden's expression—a crack in the usual bravado, something raw underneath.

He'd been so relieved when Shane started seeing Rose. After years of watching his best friend throw himself into hockey and nothing else, years of watching him deflect every question about his personal life with that careful, practiced blankness, years of wondering if Shane was lonely in ways Hayden couldn't fix—Rose had felt like an answer. Like proof that Shane could have something good. Something normal. Something that would keep him from ending up alone.

And now?

Now he didn't know what to do with any of it. Had Shane been lonely anyway? Had he been suffering right in front of Hayden while Hayden patted himself on the back for being happy his friend finally had someone? Had he missed every sign because he didn't want to see them, because it was easier to believe the surface than to dig for something ugly underneath?

What kind of friend was he, if he'd been so relieved by a lie? If he'd been so ready to celebrate something that was never real, never true, never anything but Shane trying desperately to be someone he wasn't?

Hayden didn't know if Shane was too good at hiding this part of himself, or if he just hadn't wanted to look the truth in the eye.

The silence that followed was heavy. Ilya felt Shane's breathing change—just slightly, just enough to notice.

"I was," Shane said quietly. "Not the way you think, and not the way I wanted to. But I was."

Hayden waited.

Shane took a breath. Let it out. Took another.

"I didn't always know," he began slowly. "What I wanted. Who I was. I mean, I knew I felt things for Ilya, but I also thought—" He stopped, swallowed. "I thought maybe I could be normal. Maybe I could want what everyone else wanted. And with her I tried, I really, really tried. But I just couldn’t."

David's hand tightened on Shane's, just slightly, just a reminder that he was there. But it was Hayden's face that Ilya found himself watching.

Something complicated moved across it. A shadow, quick and dark, crossing his usually open expression when Shane said the word normal. Like the word itself had landed wrong. Like it had hit something tender.

Ilya thought about all the times Hayden had protected Shane on the ice. Dropping his gloves without hesitation, stepping between Shane and anyone who came at him wrong, fighting battles that weren't technically his. He'd always assumed it was just hockey—linemates looking out for each other, the way teammates did. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe Hayden had been protecting Shane from more than just opposing players. Maybe, without even knowing what he was protecting him from, Hayden had been standing guard for years.

He wondered how bad Pike felt. That he couldn't protect Shane from this—from himself, from the years of hiding, from the loneliness of it all. Probably as bad as Ilya himself. Probably worse, in some ways, because Hayden had been right there the whole time and never known.

And wasn't that a thought to have. To feel empathy for Hayden Pike of all people.

"Rose was the first person I ever told. About me. Or more like, she realized and confronted me about it." Shane continued, his voice softer now, his eyes flickering to his father. David was watching him with that same steady, patient love—a look Ilya was beginning to believe was always on his face when he looked at his son. Like there was no version of Shane that could make that love waver. “She was really good about it, really kind. She helped me see that it wasn't—that I wasn't broken. That I could want both, or neither, or whatever, and it didn't make me less of a person." He swallowed hard. "She helped me understand that I'm—that I like men. That it was okay to be gay. That it is okay that I'm gay."

The words hung in the air, heavy and light all at once. Heavy with everything they cost him to say. Light with the relief of finally saying them.

David nodded. Just once. A small, deliberate movement.

"Okay," he said. Not a question. Not a demand for more. Just okay. Like Shane had told him the sky was blue, and David was simply acknowledging it.

Something shifted in Shane's expression—a tiny crack in the careful composure he'd been holding onto, a flicker of something that looked almost like wonder. He didn't speak. Didn't need to, not with his dad.

David squeezed his hand. "I mean it, son. Okay."

And that was it. That was all.

No dramatic embrace. No tears streaming down faces—though David's eyes were wet, and Shane's were bright, and Ilya's own throat was doing something complicated that he refused to examine. Just a father, holding his son's hand, accepting him. Quietly. Completely. Without condition.

Ilya had to look away for a moment. Just a second. Just long enough to press his face into Shane's hair and breathe.

When he looked back, Jackie was watching him. Her expression was soft, knowing—like she understood exactly what that moment had cost Ilya to witness. She didn't say anything. Just gave him a small, warm smile, and turned back to Shane.

"Rose sounds like a good friend," she said quietly.

Shane nodded, his face doing that thing it did when he was trying not to cry. "The best. She still is." A pause. "She's the one who told me to stop being a coward and actually talk to him."

Ilya blinked. "She told you to talk to me?"

"She told me a lot of things." Shane's mouth curved, just slightly. "Mostly that I was being an idiot and that if I didn't do something about it, I'd regret it for the rest of my life."

Ilya didn't know what to say to that. He thought of the months of silence, the ache of it, the way he'd thrown himself into meaningless encounters just to feel something other than the hollow space where Shane used to be. And all that time, Shane had been... Learning? Growing? Becoming someone who could finally say the words out loud?

Rose Landry. A woman Ilya had never met, whose face he'd only seen in tabloid photos and whose name had once made something ugly twist in his chest. But now—now he understood. She wasn't the reason Shane had stayed away from him. She was the reason Shane had come back.

She'd seen Shane when Shane couldn't see himself. Had sat with him in his confusion, his fear, his desperate attempts to be someone he wasn't. Hadn't run when he told her the truth. Hadn't made him feel broken for wanting things that didn't fit into neat little boxes. Had pushed him, gently, toward the one person who could actually make him happy.

And tonight—tonight, when everything could have fallen apart, when Shane could have retreated back into silence and safety—he hadn't. He'd sat in front of his father, his best friends, and laid himself bare. He'd let Ilya hold him in a hospital waiting room where anyone could see. He'd kissed him back like the world outside those doors didn't exist.

That was Rose too, wasn't it? Not directly—but the courage, the willingness to stop running, the refusal to let fear win one more time. That was what she'd helped him find. That was the gift she'd given him. Given them.

Maybe, when everything was alright—when Yuna was home and healing, when he and Shane had slept for about twelve hours straight, when they'd had time to talk about what this meant for them, about what came next—maybe Ilya could ask. Ask if Shane would want to organize a dinner, something small, somewhere quiet, so Ilya could finally meet the woman who had saved them both before they even knew they needed saving.

And maybe—if Shane wanted, if he was ready—Ilya could give him something too. Something he'd never given anyone. Not just his heart, not just his future, but his past. The only part of home he'd carried with him across an ocean and through fifteen years of loneliness.

Svetlana.

The only real friend he'd ever had before Shane walked into his life. The woman who had never asked him to be anyone other than who he was. Who had never demanded more than he was willing to give. 

Ilya hadn't really told her—that he also liked men—because he'd never needed to. She had simply known, the way she always knew when it came to him, and he wasn't naive enough to think he could fool her about his relationship with Shane, not after all these years. So she probably knew. Or at least suspected—if the way she said Jane with a knowing edge of amusement every time she caught him on the phone at odd hours, or the knowing tilt of her eyebrow when he was quieter than usual after a game against Montreal, was anything to go by. But she never pressed. Never asked. Never made him say anything he wasn't ready to say. She just looked at him like she was waiting, patient and steady, like she didn't need to know every detail to be loyal, to stay. She had always respected his limits, and for that, Ilya would always love her.

She had protected him as best she could. From his family, from himself, from the situations he stumbled into and didn't know how to escape. Svetlana had been the only person in his life who looked at him and saw someone worth staying, without asking him to be different first.

For years, he hadn't let himself talk about Shane with her. Not because he was afraid she would think less of him—Svetlana had never made him feel less, not once—but because saying it out loud would make it real. Would give it weight. Would mean admitting that what he felt for Shane was not just something that happened in the dark, but something that mattered.

Now, he wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Wanted her to know everything. Wanted to show up at her door and tell her that Jane had a name, and a face, and a smile that made Ilya's chest hurt in the best way. Wanted to introduce them, to see the two people who had loved him without asking for anything in return finally meet.

He just hoped neither of them killed him when he did.

Svetlana would probably kill him for an entirely different reason. Because for all her quiet, knowing smiles and her pointed "Jane"s, Ilya had never told her the truth. Had never given her the satisfaction of being right. Had let her wonder, let her guess, let her wait for the day he'd finally be ready to say the words out loud. And now he was going to show up and tell her that "Jane" was not only a man, but the man. Ilya Rozanov, captain of the Boston Raiders, in love with Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal Voyageurs. Their rivalry. Their history. The years of secrets.

She was going to kill him. And then she was going to ask why he hadn't gotten her a signed jersey years ago.

If Rose was the person who taught Shane it was okay to love who he loved, then Svetlana was the person who had taught Ilya that he was allowed to be loved at all.

Maybe he could give Shane that part of himself too.

He didn't know how to thank so many people who had made this moment possible. So he just held Shane a little tighter, let the warmth of him seep into all the cold places, and hoped that was enough for now.

Jackie leaned forward slightly. "So when did it—" She gestured vaguely. "When did it become... this?"

"All Stars' Game," Ilya said. "That was where something changed."

Jackie's brow furrowed. "But that was just a few weeks ago."

Shane nodded.

"So you're telling me," she said slowly, "that you two have been dancing around each other for ten years. And you only actually talked about it a few weeks ago?"

Ilya shrugged. "We are not very smart."

Shane huffed a laugh. "Speak for yourself."

"I am speaking for both of us. We are equally stupid. Is part of our charm."

Jackie shook her head, but she was smiling. "That's insane."

"Is love," Ilya corrected. "Insane love. There is difference."

Jackie's smile widened, her head resting against Hayden's shoulder. She looked at Ilya—really looked at him, with something warm and approving in her eyes. "I like him," she said simply, nodding toward Shane. "He's good for you, Shane. You made an excellent choice, just so you know."

The words landed in Ilya's chest like something fragile and unfamiliar. He wasn't sure himself. Wasn't sure Shane had made a good choice at all. There were a thousand reasons why this could fall apart, a thousand ways Ilya could mess it up, a thousand voices in his head that still whispered too rough, too broken, too much.

But Shane had chosen him anyway. This beautiful boy had looked at him in the middle of all this chaos and said I love you like it was the simplest thing in the world. And if Shane let him—if Shane kept choosing him, day after day, year after year—Ilya would spend the rest of his life trying to prove Jackie right. Trying to be the keeper Shane deserved. Trying to make sure Shane never regretted this moment, never looked back and wondered what he'd been thinking.

Shane's flush deepened, but he didn't look away from Jackie. "I know," he said quietly. Not I think so. Not I hope so. Just I know. Like there wasn't a single doubt in his mind. Like Ilya being made for him was as obvious as gravity, as undeniable as the beating of his own heart. Like Ilya was perfect for him the same way Shane was perfect for Ilya.

He didn't turn to look at Ilya. Didn't need to. He just said it—simple and sure—like he'd known it for years. Like it was just a fact, no different from the ice being cold or the sky being blue. And maybe he had known. Maybe, through all those years of hotel rooms and secret phone calls and pretending, Shane had known something Ilya was only now letting himself believe.

I know.

Shane knew. Shane had always known. And Ilya was going to spend the rest of his life making sure that certainty was never misplaced.

"Please stop making bedroom eyes at my best friend in front of me and his father," Hayden complained.

David held up both hands immediately. "No, please don't get me into this." But he was chuckling as he said it, his shoulders shaking slightly.

Ilya felt a grin tugging at his mouth. This—this was what he'd never let himself want. Not just Shane, but this. The easy teasing. The warmth. Being included in the kind of family banter he'd only ever watched from the outside.

"Bedroom eyes?" he repeated, genuinely delighted now. "You think I make bedroom eyes at Shane? This is not bedroom eyes; this is ‘I love you’ eyes."

"I don't know what you make! I'm not an expert on whatever this is!"

"I make many eyes at Shane. Some are bedroom. Some are 'I want to kill you on ice.' Some are both. He is very good at reading them."

Shane groaned against Ilya's shoulder. "Please stop."

"He knows all my looks," Ilya continued, warming to the topic.

He was being himself. Completely, unapologetically himself. And they were laughing with him, not at him. Jackie's head was tipped back against her chair. David had a hand over his mouth. Even Hayden, face buried in his palms, was shaking with something that might have been laughter.

He'd spent so long building walls, making himself small in all the ways that mattered, convincing himself that alone was safe. That if no one got too close, no one could leave. But this—this ease, this warmth, this feeling of taking up space without apologizing for it—was something he'd never let himself want.

And yet here it was. Here he was. And they were still laughing.

"Is very impressive," Ilya continued. "Ten years of practice. From across the ice, I can tell him—" He made a series of exaggerated faces. "This one means 'meet me after.' This one means 'you are in my spot.' This one means 'your hair looks stupid today but I still want to kiss you.'"

"That last one is not a real look," Shane muttered against his shoulder.

"Is absolutely real. You just miss it because you are too busy staring at my ass."

Shane's head snapped up, his face now approximately the color of a tomato. "I do not stare at your ass."

"You do. Is okay. I stare at yours too. Is fair."

"Ilya Rozanov!"

"What? We are being honest now. This is honesty time."

Jackie had given up on subtlety entirely, openly laughing with her head tipped back against the plastic chair. Even David had a hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking.

They're not just tolerating me, Ilya realized, something warm and unfamiliar unfurling in his chest. They're actually enjoying this. They're enjoying me.

And from somewhere behind his hands—currently pressed firmly over his face—Hayden made a muffled groaning sound. He'd curled forward at some point during the conversation, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his palms like a man trying to block out the world. "Okay. So. Ten years. Rookie showcase. Rose was—" He waved a hand vaguely. "—a whole thing. And Tampa was—" Another vague wave. "—recent." He paused. "I have approximately seven hundred more questions, but I'm going to try really hard to be chill about this."

"Try harder," Jackie murmured.

"I am trying!" Hayden pointed at Ilya. "My mortal enemy is apparently in love with my best friend, and has been for the better part of a decade. Give me a break."

"I am not your mortal enemy," Ilya corrected. "I am your captain's lover."

"Same thing." Hayden complained, at the exact same moment Shane muttered under his breath, "Oh my God, why wasn't I on the plane with Mom."

Ilya ignored him completely, too busy soaking in the warmth spreading through his chest—the impossible, terrifying warmth of watching Hayden Pike, of all people, complain and gripe and try, already halfway to accepting him without even realizing it, and for the first time in his life Ilya thought maybe, just maybe, he could stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Is not the same thing," he continued. "Mortal enemy implies we are still fighting. We are not. I am part of the family now. You have to accept me."

"Have to?"

"Is in the rules."

"There are no rules!"

"Family rules. Very important. Jackie already likes me. David likes me. Shane loves me. You are outnumbered."

Hayden lifted his head just enough to glare at Ilya through his fingers. "I hate you."

"No you don't." Ilya pressed a little closer to Shane, letting the warmth of him seep into all the cold places

"I really, really do."

"You bought me a birthday shot last year. At that bar in Boston. After the game."

Hayden froze.

Ilya's smile widened, pressing a little closer to Shane, letting the warmth of him seep into all the cold places. This—this easy back-and-forth, this ridiculous argument—it was exactly what he'd never known he needed. To be seen. To be known. To be teased and to tease back, like he was just another person instead of Ilya Rozanov the villain, the Russian, the outsider.

"I know you remember," Ilya continued, clearly enjoying himself. "We were both there. You bought a round for your linemates. And then you saw me, and you—"

"I was being polite!"

"You bought me a shot. And we clinked glasses. And you said—"

"Don't."

"—'good game, Rozanov.' And I said—"

"Ilya."

"—'good game, Pike. See you next time.' And then we drank." Ilya smiled, slow and infuriating. "That was bonding. You cannot take it back now."

Hayden dropped his face back into his hands with a thump. "I hate everything."

Jackie patted his back sympathetically. "There, there, honey. You'll survive."

"Will I?"

"Probably."

Hayden made a sound that might have been a laugh, buried somewhere under all the suffering. His shoulders shook slightly. "I need a minute," he mumbled.

Shane's voice was quiet, steady. "Take a minute. We're not going anywhere."

Hayden looked at him then—really looked at him. Something in his expression shifted, softened. The jokes fell away, and for a moment he was just Shane's best friend, sitting in a hospital waiting room, trying to find the right words.

"I'm glad you're okay," he said finally. "I mean it. After tonight, after everything—" He stopped, swallowed. "I'm glad you're okay."

Shane nodded, his eyes glistening.

"And I'm sorry," Hayden continued, his voice rougher now. "That I wasn't—that you couldn't tell me. That you had to go through all of that alone. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you the way you needed."

Shane's breath caught. Just a little.

"But I'm glad," Hayden said, "that you came out the other side of it. That you're still here, a better man. That you're—" He gestured vaguely at Shane, at Ilya, at the two of them tangled together. "That you have this. Even if I don't understand it. Even if it's weird." A small, awkward shrug. "I'm glad."

Shane nodded, a small, grateful movement, his expression softening.

"Thanks, Hays."

Hayden waved it off, uncomfortable with the sincerity. "Yeah, well. Don't get used to it. I'm still going to need therapy."

Jackie patted his knee. "We'll get you a good one."

Hayden made a sound that might have been a laugh, buried somewhere under all the suffering. His shoulders shook slightly.

Shane leaned his head against Ilya's shoulder, watching his best friend slowly come apart at the seams with a soft smile plastered in his face. He was still pink, still flustered—but there was something else there too. Something lighter. Something like relief.

"You're enjoying this way too much."

"Am enjoying this exactly the right amount. Is perfect amount."

"You're evil."

"I’m a man in love.” Ilya expressed proudly. And then, just low enough that only Shane could hear. "You good?"

Shane glanced at him. Held his gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Yeah," he whispered back. "I think I am."

Ilya believed him.

The waiting room settled into something almost peaceful—the quiet hum of the lights, the distant beep of monitors, the soft sound of Shane breathing against his chest, solid and real and his. Hayden was still muttering into his palms. Jackie was still wiping her eyes. David was still smiling that small, quiet smile. All of it—the grief and the relief and the ridiculous, wonderful chaos of this new thing they were building together—hung in the air like a held breath.

And then a door opened.

Not the elevator. Not the stairwell. One of the heavy double doors down the hall, the ones that led to the restricted areas where families weren't allowed. A figure in surgical scrubs emerged, clipboard in hand, eyes scanning the waiting area. 

Ilya's heart stopped.

He felt Shane tense beside him, felt the way his hand froze mid-circle against Ilya's back. Felt the collective intake of breath from everyone in the room as the surgeon walked toward them.

"Hollander family?"

David was on his feet before the words finished leaving the doctor's mouth. Shane tried to stand too, but his legs wouldn't cooperate—Ilya felt the way they shook, the way his weight sagged, and he tightened his arm around Shane's shoulders, holding him steady.

"Here," David said, his voice rough. "We're here."

The surgeon smiled—a small, tired, genuine smile that made something in Ilya's chest crack open with relief.

"Mrs. Hollander is out of surgery," she said. "The procedure went well. She's stable, and we're very optimistic about her recovery."

Shane made a sound—small and broken and infinitely relieved—and Ilya felt his own eyes burn.

"The orthopedic team was able to repair the fracture in her femur with plates and screws," the surgeon continued. "The spleenectomy was successful, and she tolerated the procedure well. There were no complications beyond what we'd discussed with the family earlier."

"Can we see her?"  David asked, and his voice held everything—the hours of waiting, the fear, the desperate need to finally lay eyes on his wife.

"Very soon." The surgeon's smile widened. "She's in recovery now. The anesthesia needs to wear off a bit more, and we're moving her to a private room on the fifth floor. Give us about twenty minutes, and then you can go up. Two at a time, for now—she'll be tired, and we want to keep things calm."

Shane nodded, quick and eager, tears streaming down his face. "Okay. Okay. Twenty minutes. We can—we can wait twenty minutes."

The surgeon nodded, made a note on her clipboard, and disappeared back through the double doors.

It was over. The words echoed in Ilya's skull, slowly making their way to every part of him that had been braced for impact. Yuna was okay. The air changed. What had been heavy and tight for hours suddenly felt like it could actually fill their lungs again. Shane turned into Ilya's chest and buried his face there.

His breath came in short, uneven gusts—hitching, stuttering, catching on something sharp in his throat. But he didn't make a sound. Just pressed closer, fingers curling into Ilya's jacket, shoulders shaking with the force of holding it all in. Like even now, even after everything, some part of him was still trying to keep it together.

Ilya held him through it. One hand cradling the back of his head, the other pressed flat against his spine. He didn't say anything. Didn't need to. Just let Shane fall apart against his chest in complete, devastating silence.

"I told you," Ilya whispered into his hair, his voice rough. "I told you she was strong. I told you."

Shane nodded against him—a tiny, jerky movement. His breath hitched again. But he didn't cry. Not really. Just kept breathing in those short, uneven gasps, letting Ilya's arms hold him steady until they evened out.

David was finally crying, quietly, his hand still wrapped around Shane's. Jackie had her face buried in Hayden's shoulder, and Hayden—Hayden was patting her back with one hand while surreptitiously wiping his own eyes with the other.

For a long moment, no one moved. No one spoke. They just breathed together, letting the relief wash over them. Eventually, Shane pulled back just enough to look up at Ilya. His eyes were shining with joy.

"Thank you," he whispered. "For being here. For—for everything."

Ilya shook his head. "You do not thank me for this. This is not—" He stopped, swallowed. "There is nowhere else I would be, Shane. There is nowhere else I want to be. Not ever."

Shane's smile was wobbly and radiant. He leaned up and pressed a kiss to Ilya's mouth—soft and brief and full of everything neither of them could say.

Behind them, Hayden made a gagging noise. "Get a room. There's a hospital full of them and you're choosing to do this here."

Ilya flipped him off without looking away from Shane. 

Jackie laughed. David shook his head, but he was smiling.

Shane's hand found his, fingers lacing together. Ilya looked down at them—his scarred, battered hand wrapped around Shane's—and felt his throat tighten.

"Twenty minutes," Shane murmured. "Then you're meeting my mom."

Ilya's heart stuttered. Not with fear—not anymore—but with the sheer, overwhelming weight of what that meant. Shane wanted him there. In front of his mother. In front of everyone. Not as a secret, not as something to hide, but as his. He'd spent ten years never staying long enough to become a problem, making sure no one got close enough to see the cracks. And now here was Shane Hollander, looking at him like staying was the only option, like leaving wasn't even a thought.

"She will be—she will be on drugs. Very strong drugs. She might not—"

"She'll love you anyway." Shane squeezed his hand. "Trust me."

Ilya still swallowed hard. "I am—I am very nervous."

"Good." Shane grinned. "You should be. She's terrifying." Shane's grin softened into something more genuine. "I'm kidding. Well, mostly." He squeezed Ilya's hand. "I know she's going to love you. She already loves you, actually. She just doesn't know it yet."

Ilya couldn't find the words. Couldn't find anything except frozen in the impossibility of this moment—this boy, this family, this life that somehow, impossibly, was becoming his.

He looked around the room. At David, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, already planning how to rearrange the furniture in Yuna's room to make her more comfortable. At Jackie, whispering something in Hayden's ear that made him snort and shove her away. At Hayden, who was doing a terrible job of looking traumatized, a small smile tugging stubbornly at his mouth. At Shane, warm and solid beside him, holding his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He had come to America at seventeen, full of a grief so large it constantly overflowed of his small body—he had spent his whole life here building cages. Beautiful cages, comfortable cages, cages so well-constructed that no one ever guessed the bars were there. He'd filled them with expensive beautiful things and people who only wanted pieces of him, because that was safer than letting anyone close enough to see how broken he truly was.

But this—this freezing hospital waiting room, surrounded by people who were starting to really know him and wanted to stay anyway, next to the only person Ilya had ever loved—this was something he'd never learned how to build, something no one had ever taught him. Something he'd stopped believing existed.

A home.

He lifted Shane's hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. Shane smiled at him, soft and wondering and full of love.

And for the first time in his life, Ilya let himself believe that he wasn't just passing through in a world that didn't have a place for him. That he wasn't a ghost haunting his own existence. That five hundred miles away from the cage he'd called a house, five thousand miles away from the country where he'd first learned that being alone was safer, and after fifteen years of starving on the cold comfort of his own company—he had finally, impossibly, found somewhere to stay.

Chapter End Notes

Writing this was honestly kind of therapeutic. I gave Ilya the healing I'm still working on for myself lol.

Also I want everyone to know that while writing Ilya and Hayden's relationship, I'm actually picturing Flynn Rider and Maximus from Tangled lmao.

If you'd like to support me, my socials are linked in my profile

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Hi my loves.

So I have heard the people, and what the people wanted was a second chapter. What the people also wanted was Yuna's reaction, and that was supposed to be in this one, believe, it was my full intention. It was actually the whole reason I started writing a second chapter in the first place—I wanted to explore Yuna and Shane's relationship. Buuuut then I also wanted to do a character study on Shane, and that's where I began. And then this got too long.

If I had kept going, this chapter would have been way longer than the first one, or I wouldn't have been able to give everything the love it deserves. So Yuna's reaction will have to wait for chapter three. The good news is that we will have a third chapter!!! (said the author with tears in her beautiful eyes because she gives herself invisible deadlines and gets frustrated when she can't make them, plus she also has tons of papers to do).

Writing this drove me absolutely nuts. I honestly believe I lost the point I was trying to make like five times along the way. But I wanted Shane to sound like Shane and not just my voice or Ilya's voice. And where Ilya thinks in images and metaphors, I made Shane thinks in concrete details and structures. Ilya moves; Shane observes. Ilya acts; Shane waits until he can't wait anymore. Because Shane doesn't feel like Ilya does. Ilya romanticizes, dramatizes, and overflows; Shane systematizes, observes, catalogs, and contains. So I tried to make the poetry in this chapter come not from emotional excess, but from the obsessive precision with which Shane perceives the world. Which was hard, because I like to write dramatically and with all the emotions I have.

And it was fucking difficult to make Shane's POV without making it sound—and I say this with all the love I have for him—boring. So I really, really hope this is somehow good.

AND, I didn't get to watch the Bruins-Minnesota game tonight because I was finishing this. And what a game it was, apparently. So you're welcome. (And by "you're welcome" I mean "I'm going to need you to appreciate this because my priorities are clearly in order.")

Also, can somebody from the native English speaking world tell me if the short for Hayden is Hayd, Hayds, or Hays? Because I actually don't understand how you all shorten things.

As always, thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. I may have lied when I said I respond to every comment—I have over a thousand in my inbox, and while I absolutely love it and it drives me crazy to have them and not respond (if by now you haven't realized how much I love to talk by my long-ass notes, I don't know what to tell you), I actually get overwhelmed and I don't have the physical time to do it. But I do read every single one, and I cherish them all. What I love the most is when you tell me your favorite parts (yes, I'm a little narcissistic, what can we do). You have no idea how happy I get every time I get an email saying someone left a new comment. Hope you enjoy this! ❤️

Come say hi on Twitter if you want!

For the majority of Shane Hollander's life, he has been different.

He learned this early. Not from cruelty but from the way people looked at him. The pause before they spoke. The glance they exchanged when they thought he wasn't watching. The questions they asked that weren't quite questions, the ones that circled around what they really wanted to know: What's wrong with him?

Nothing was wrong with him. He knew this, somewhere, in the part of his brain that was logical and unshakeable. But knowing it and feeling it were two different things, and what he felt was the weight of every pause, every glance, every question he couldn't quite answer the way people expected him to.

He learned to compensate. Learned to watch. Learned to catalog the faces and sounds that people made and the way their bodies moved when they were happy or sad or confused or angry. He learned to mimic them, carefully, in the mirror of his childhood bathroom, standing on the cool tile and making his face into shapes that didn't come naturally.

He was seven years old the first time his mother caught him.

What are you doing? she asked, and he told her the truth: Practicing.

She didn't ask what. She just watched him for a long moment, her head tilted, and then she said: You don't have to practice being yourself, Shane.

But he wasn't practicing being himself. He was practicing being someone else. Someone who laughed at the right time, even when he didn't understand the joke. Someone who knew what to say when a teammate was crying, even when he couldn't feel what they were feeling. Someone who could look people in the eye without counting the seconds, without calculating whether he'd held it too long or not long enough, without his skin prickling with the effort of it.

He was seven years old and he already understood that the face he was born with wasn't the one people wanted to see.

So he built a new one. Carefully. Methodically. A face for every occasion. A smile for the cameras, a frown for when someone got hurt, a neutral expression for when he didn't know what to feel. He catalogued them, filed them away, pulled them out when he needed them. It became automatic after a while. He stopped thinking about it. He stopped remembering that the face he wore wasn't really his.

And then he tried to be enough.

He learned this in the way his mother's face lit up when he scored his first goal, like his success was her oxygen. Learned it in the way his father's hand would find his shoulder after a loss, steady and sure, never disappointed, just there — and how that was almost worse, somehow, because how do you live up to a love that asks for nothing?

He learned that being enough meant being everything.

There was no room for failure. Not because his parents would punish him — they never did, not once, not ever — but because they had given him so much. The early morning drives to practice. The equipment that cost too much. The way his father sat through every game, every shift, every season, never missing a single one even when his job wanted him to travel, even when it would have been easier to stay home.

His parents gave him everything.

So Shane learned to give everything back.

He learned to be perfect. To be the golden boy, the one who never cracked under pressure. He learned to smile for cameras even when his ears were ringing from the hit he'd taken. Learned to answer questions even when his brain was so full of noise he couldn't hear his own voice. Learned to be the son they deserved — the one who didn't cause trouble, didn't ask for too much, didn't need anything they couldn't give.

He learned control before he learned anything else.

Before he learned to skate, before he learned to shoot, before he learned to read the ice like a language only he could speak — he learned to control himself. Every part of himself. The parts that were too loud and the parts that were too quiet. The parts that didn't understand why people laughed at certain jokes, why they expected certain responses, why his face never seemed to make the right shape at the right time.

He controlled his body too. Every calorie, every meal, every bite. He ate the same breakfast every day for fifteen years. The same rotation, the same portions, the same timing. He knew how many grams of protein he needed, how many carbs, how much fat. He knew what his body weighed at the start of the season, at the All-Star break, at the playoffs. He knew what it felt like when he was off by even a pound, even a fraction of a pound.

His teammates called him obsessive. They said it like a joke, like a compliment, like a criticism he wasn't supposed to hear. He didn't care. The control was the point. The control was what kept him safe. If he controlled what went into his body, what his body did, what his face looked like when people looked at him — then nothing could surprise him. Nothing could catch him off guard. Nothing could make him feel like he was seven years old again, standing in front of a mirror, trying to figure out what a human face was supposed to do.

He controlled his schedule down to the minute. Wake at six, stretch, breakfast at six-thirty, gym at seven, skate at nine, video review at eleven, lunch at twelve, nap at one, pre-game meal at four, game at seven, post-game recovery at ten, bed at eleven. Every day the same. Every day predictable. Every day safe.

He built his life like a house of cards. Every card in its place. Every edge aligned. One wrong move and it would all come down.

He knew this about himself. Knew that he needed the structure the way other people needed air. Knew that without it, his brain would fill with noise — too much noise, noise that didn't stop, noise that made it impossible to think, impossible to breathe, impossible to be the person everyone expected him to be. The routines were walls. The rituals were doors. He built them carefully, maintained them obsessively, and inside the fortress he built, he was safe.

On the ice, there were rules. Predictable rules. The puck moved in straight lines unless someone changed its path. Players moved in patterns, systems, structures he could read before they even happened. He knew where the puck was going to be before it got there. Knew where his teammates were going to be. Knew where the defense was going to be. The ice was a grid, and the grid was knowable, and Shane could spend hours inside that knowing without once having to think about what his face was doing, what his body was doing, whether he was saying the right thing or making the right expression or taking up the right amount of space.

On the ice, he was king.

Not because he was loud or aggressive or the kind of player who demanded attention. Because he was right. He was always right. The puck went where he wanted it to go. The game moved at his speed. Players ten years older, twenty pounds heavier, couldn't touch him because he was already three moves ahead, already gone, already somewhere they hadn't thought to look.

On the ice, the thing that made him different — the way his brain worked, the way he saw patterns where other people saw chaos, the way he could process information faster than anyone else — that thing wasn't a liability. It was a weapon. It was why he was the best. It was why he was captain. It was why his mother's face lit up when she watched him play, why his father never missed a game, why the commentators said his name with something that sounded like awe.

On the ice, he wasn't different. He was exceptional.

He poured himself into it. All of himself. The parts that didn't fit anywhere else, the parts that were too much or not enough, the parts that confused people and made them look at him sideways — he poured them all into the ice. The ice took them. The ice held them. The ice gave him back something that looked like what everyone expected him to be.

He was good. He was so good. He was the best. And for a long time — for most of his life — he thought that was enough. That hockey was enough. That being the best was enough. That if he won enough games, scored enough goals, lifted enough trophies, the rest of it wouldn't matter. The loneliness. The confusion. The way he sometimes felt like he was watching his own life from the outside, like he was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings.

He thought hockey would be enough.

And then Ilya Rozanov happened.

Ilya was the opposite of control.

He was chaos in human form. He played like the rules didn't apply to him — like the ice was his and he was just letting everyone else borrow it for a while. He didn't follow systems. Didn't stick to structures. He moved the way water moved, finding the gaps, slipping through spaces that shouldn't exist, doing things that shouldn't be possible.

He was unpredictable in ways that made Shane's brain hurt.

Shane spent his whole life learning to read the ice. Learning to see the patterns, the structures, the invisible lines that connected every player on the rink. He could tell you where the puck was going to be three moves before it got there. He could tell you what the other team was going to do before they knew it themselves. He could see the game the way a chess player sees the board — every piece in its place, every move accounted for.

But Ilya didn't play chess, he played something else entirely. Something Shane didn't have a name for. He'd fake left and go right, but then he'd fake right and go left, but then he'd stay in the middle when no one was expecting it, and Shane's brain would stutter, would freeze, would try to catch up and fail.

It was infuriating. It was terrifying. It was —

It was the first time in his life that Shane looked at something on the ice and didn't know what was going to happen next.

He hated it. He loved it. He couldn't stop thinking about it.

Ilya was the first thing that broke his patterns. The first thing that made him want to step outside the fortress he'd built, just to see what would happen. The first thing that made him understand that control wasn't the same thing as safety — that maybe, maybe, letting go of control could feel like something other than falling.

He was eighteen years old when he first kissed Ilya Rozanov.

He didn't plan it. He never planned anything with Ilya. That was the whole point. Ilya existed outside of planning, outside of structure, outside of every rule Shane had built his life around. Ilya was the one variable he couldn't account for, the one equation that didn't solve, the one thing in his perfectly ordered world that made no sense at all.

But Ilya made sense in ways nothing else did.

It was the way he talked. Direct. Blunt. No hidden meanings, no subtext to decode, no guessing games about what he really meant. When Ilya said something, he meant it. When he was angry, he said he was angry. When he wanted something, he said he wanted it. When he looked at Shane and said come here or stay or again, there was no ambiguity, no second-guessing, no hours of lying awake afterward trying to figure out what he'd missed.

Shane didn't have to perform for Ilya. Didn't have to calculate the right expression, the right tone, the right amount of eye contact. Ilya didn't care about any of that. Ilya said what he meant and expected Shane to do the same, and Shane—who had spent his whole life controlling every part of himself—could finally let go.

Ilya gave him instructions. Explicit ones. Come here. Lie down. Turn around. Look at me. And the relief of it—the relief—was like nothing Shane had ever felt. He didn't have to guess what Ilya wanted. Didn't have to read between the lines, interpret body language, figure out the script he was supposed to follow. Ilya just told him. Direct. Clear. Simple.

And in return, Shane could be direct too. Could say I want this or I don't want that or harder or slower or yes without having to wrap it in layers of politeness, without having to manage someone else's feelings about what he needed. With Ilya, he didn't have to perform. He could just be. 

It terrified him. How easy it was. How natural. How, for the first time in his life, he didn't have to think about what his face was doing because Ilya wasn't looking at his face the way other people looked at his face. Ilya was looking at him like he was something to be understood, not something to be decoded. Like Shane wasn't a puzzle to solve or a problem to fix. Like Shane was just Shane, and that was enough.

And so he stayed. He kept coming back. For ten years, he kept coming back. Because Ilya was the only person who ever made him feel like he didn't have to be anyone other than who he was. The only person who ever looked at him and didn't want him to be smaller, quieter, easier. The only person who ever said I want you and meant all of you, not just the parts that fit.

But he thought about his parents. About their sacrifice. About the expectations. About everything they had given him, and everything they still expected him to become. And so he learned to be small in all the ways that mattered. To take up less space. To want less. To fold the parts of himself that didn't fit into a box labeled normal. To keep this little secret so well hidden deep inside his chest that he could almost make himself forget it existed.

Almost.

But the wanting never went away. It just changed shape. Became quieter. Learned to live in the spaces between heartbeats, in the seconds before sleep, in the way his eyes would catch on something — someone — across the ice and hold there, frozen, before he looked away.

He looked away for years.

He looked away because he was already different. Already the Asian kid in a league that didn't have many of them — the one who got the questions about where are you really from, the one whose face was too soft for hockey but whose body was too hard for anything else. Already the one who couldn't handle the noise of the locker room, who had to sit in the stall with his hands over his ears some nights, pretending to check his gear, pretending the sound of thirty men shouting wasn't breaking something inside him. Already the one who ate the same food every day because trying something new felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, because his body needed the predictability even if his teammates thought he was strange for it. Already the one who was too Asian for North America and too North American for Asia, too pretty to be a real hockey player and too masculine to be anything but, who never quite fit anywhere, who was always performing some version of himself that he thought people wanted to see.

He couldn't be gay too.

That would be one thing too many. One more way he was different. One more way he would disappoint. His parents had given him everything — the least he could do was give them the life they expected. The wife. The kids. The house with the yard and the dog and the Christmas cards with everyone smiling, everyone normal. That was the deal. That was what he owed them.

So he looked away. Every time. For ten years. Even when it ate him alive. Even when he was so fucking lonely and sad. He looked away.

Until he couldn't anymore.

For the majority of Shane Hollander's life, he has been hungry.

Hungry for food he wouldn't let himself eat. Hungry for rest he wouldn't let himself take. Hungry for the boy he wouldn't let himself want. Hungry for a life where he didn't have to perform, didn't have to translate himself into a language other people could understand, didn't have to fold himself smaller and smaller until he fit into spaces that were never built for him.

He had spent his whole life hungry. For control. For perfection. For the love he thought he had to earn. He had starved himself of everything that wasn't necessary, everything that wasn't safe, everything that might make him one thing too many, one difference too far, one failure too much to forgive.

He had been hungry for so long he had forgotten what it felt like to be full.

But after twenty years, he finally decided to take something for himself.

***

The spaghetti had been the first thing gone wrong in his night. The first rupture of his routine.

But Jackie had been so kind. So genuinely happy when he finally said yes after months of saying no. Hayden's making his famous sauce, she'd texted, and Shane had stared at the message for ten minutes, his thumb hovering over the keyboard, running through every possible outcome. The noise of their house. The smell of garlic that would cling to his clothes. The texture of noodles cooked someone else's way. The questions he wouldn't know how to answer.

But he went anyway. Because Hayden and Jackie were the only people in Montreal who didn't treat him like a brand. Didn't treat him like something to be managed or marketed or handled with care. They treated him like Shane. Like the person who showed up at their house on game nights and let their kids climb all over him. Like the person who helped Jackie in the kitchen even though he was terrible at it, who let her teach him recipes he'd never make on his own, who stood there and nodded and tried to remember the steps even though his brain was already full, even though the measuring and the timing and the textures were already too much. He tried. For her. Because she never made him feel strange for eating the same thing every day, for needing things a certain way, for being the way he was.

Because Hayden was the only one who noticed when Shane hadn't eaten. Who slid a protein bar into his bag before a game without saying anything. Who started bringing two of everything on road trips—two water bottles, two energy gels, two bananas—and leaving the second one in Shane's stall like it was an accident, like he'd just grabbed too much, like it wasn't carefully, quietly intentional.

Hayden was the one who sat next to him on the plane, every single flight, no matter who else wanted the seat. Who learned to read the small shifts in Shane's expression—the tightening around his eyes, the way his jaw went rigid—and knew, before Shane knew himself, when the noise was getting too loud. Who pulled out his headphones and handed them over without a word, didn't make Shane ask, didn't make him explain.

He was the one who stood between Shane and the cameras after a bad loss, his broad shoulders blocking the flashes, his voice cutting in with some joke or deflection before the reporters could ask the questions Shane couldn't answer. The one who found him in the tunnel after games when the noise of the arena was still ringing in his ears, when his hands were shaking too much to untie his skates, and crouched down and did it for him. The one who sat with him in the equipment room afterward, in the dark, saying nothing, just being there, until Shane's breathing evened out and the world stopped spinning.

He was the one who told the rookies, quietly, firmly, that they didn't ask the captain personal questions. That they didn't touch his stuff. That they didn't make jokes about what he ate or didn't eat. He made it sound like a rule, like a code, like something any good teammate would know. But Shane knew. Knew that Hayden had made himself a wall between Shane and the parts of the world that pressed too hard.

He didn't know how Hayden knew. Didn't know how Hayden always seemed to be there, always seemed to know what Shane needed before Shane knew it himself. Maybe it was years of watching. Years of paying attention. Years of being the one person in that locker room who looked at Shane and saw someone who needed protecting, not someone who needed fixing.

They were the ones who invited him over on off-days, when the kids were at Jackie's parents and the house was quiet, when Hayden would cook too much food and Jackie would pour wine Shane wouldn't drink and they'd sit on the couch watching games they'd already seen, Hayden providing commentary, Jackie falling asleep against his shoulder, and Shane—Shane would sit there and watch them and feel something he didn't have a name for. Something that wasn't quite loneliness and wasn't quite belonging. Something that was both.

He didn't know why they kept inviting him. Why they kept texting, kept calling, kept showing up at his door with tupperware containers full of food they knew he wouldn't eat, just in case. Why they made him sit on their couch and watch their TV and let their kids call him Uncle Shane even though he wasn't their uncle—he did love those kids like crazy, though—wasn't anything, was just the strange captain who couldn't look people in the eye and sometimes disappeared into bathrooms when the noise got too loud.

But they did. They kept inviting. Kept calling. Kept showing up. And Shane kept saying yes, eventually, after saying no enough times to be polite, after calculating the cost and the risk and the possibility of failure. He kept saying yes because they were the closest thing he had to a family in this city. Because Hayden was the first person who ever sat next to him on the bench and didn't ask why he wasn't talking, just sat there, quiet, enough. Because Jackie was the first person who ever looked at his hands shaking and didn't say anything, just put a cup of warm tea in them and sat down beside him.

He went to their house more than anyone else's. More than any teammate's, more than any friend's, more than anywhere that wasn't his own. Because their house was the only place outside his own where the walls didn't close in. Where the noise was manageable. Where the expectations were simple. He didn't have to perform so much. Didn't have to be the captain, the best player in the league. He could just be Shane, and that was enough for them.

He didn't understand it, but he was grateful nonetheless. Grateful in a way he didn't have words for, in a way he didn't know how to express. He'd tried, once. Said something, awkward and halting, about how Hayden didn't have to do all that, about how he was fine, about how Hayden should worry about his own game, his own life, his own—

Hayden had cut him off with a hand on his shoulder. A squeeze. A look.

You're my captain, he'd said. But you're also my friend.

A friend. Shane had never had one of those before. Not in the way Hayden was.

So he went. Even when the thought of eating someone else's food made his stomach turn. Even when the noise of their kitchen, the clatter of pans and the hum of the dishwasher and the sound of Hayden's laugh, was already starting to press against his skull. He went because they asked. Because they wanted him there. Because he loved them.

But the food was really a problem.

He sat at their kitchen island, watching Hayden stir a pot of sauce that smelled like garlic and tomatoes and something else, something sharp that was making his throat close up. Jackie was telling a story about work, something about a deadline, a client who changed his mind three times, and Shane was nodding, making the right sounds at the right intervals, and he was fine. The sauce was fine. The texture would be fine. He could do this.

His friend put a plate in front of him. The noodles were glossy, coated in sauce that was too red, too thick. The smell was stronger up close.

Shane picked up his fork. Took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed.

The texture was wrong. Too soft. Cooked a minute too long. The sauce was acidic in a way that made his stomach turn. He took another bite anyway. Kept chewing. Kept swallowing. Kept smiling.

It's great, really, thank you.

Hayden was watching him. Not in the way other people watched, waiting for him to be wrong, to be strange, to be different. Just watching. Like he was checking. Like he wanted to make sure.

"You don't have to finish it," Hayden said. "We've got leftovers. Or I can make you something else."

Shane shook his head. "No, it's—it's good. I'm fine."

Jackie reached over and put her hand on his arm. Just for a second. Just a squeeze. "You know we don't care if you don't eat it, right honey? We just wanted you here."

He knew. He knew. But knowing and feeling were two different things, and what he felt was the weight of every meal he'd ever refused, every invitation he'd ever declined, every time he'd said no to someone who was just trying to be kind. He was trying so hard to be different. To be easier. To be the kind of person who could eat spaghetti at his friends' kitchen table without his body treating it like a threat.

He took another bite.

The noodles slid down his throat, too soft, too warm, the wrong shape, the wrong texture. His stomach clenched. But he would finish this plate. He would smile and say thank you and help Jackie clear the dishes and sit on their couch and watch the game and be normal. He could do this. He had done harder things. He had played through a separated shoulder in the playoffs. He had stood at a podium and answered questions about a loss that made him want to disappear. He could eat a plate of spaghetti.

His phone buzzed.

He ignored it. Jackie was mid-sentence. He could check it later. He was being normal.

It buzzed again.

And again.

Something cold settled in his chest.

"Sorry," he heard himself say, already reaching for his phone, already pulling it out of his pocket, already knowing—somehow knowing—that something was wrong.

His father's name was on the screen. Three missed calls. A single text.

Call me

Shane didn't remember standing. Didn't remember excusing himself. Didn't remember Hayden's voice, Jackie's hand on his arm, the way the kitchen light caught on the edge of the counter as he turned. There was just the phone in his hand and his father's voice in his ear and words that didn't make sense, words that slid off his brain like water off ice.

Your mom. Plane. Emergency landing. Montreal. Hospital. Surgery.

The call ended. Or maybe he hung up. He didn't remember. The phone was in his pocket. His legs were moving. The hallway stretched in front of him, familiar and strange all at once. He knew this house. He had walked this hallway a hundred times. He knew where the bathroom was—the guest bathroom, the one Jackie had decorated in soft grays, the one with the towels that smelled like lavender.

He didn't remember opening the door. But suddenly he was inside. The door was closed behind him. The lock clicked. The tile was cold through his socks. He knew this bathroom. It was safe. It was supposed to be safe.

He sat down. Or maybe he fell. His knees folded, his back hit the wall, and the cold spread up his spine, into his fingers, into his lungs.

The bathroom was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that pressed against his eardrums, that made the blood rushing in his ears sound like a waterfall. The light was too bright, the fixtures too white.

He pressed his palms flat against the floor. The texture of the grout between the tiles was rough under his fingers, catching on the ridges of his fingerprints. He catalogued it. The way the cold seeped into his skin. The way the tiles were perfectly aligned, each one exactly the same distance from the next. The way the grout lines formed a grid, a pattern, something he could follow.

His mother was hurt.

His mother.

His mother was on a plane. A plane that fell out of the sky.

The thought didn't fit. It was the wrong shape, the wrong texture, the wrong everything. His mother was supposed to be in his apartment. She was supposed to be waiting for him on his couch, her feet tucked under her, her phone in her hand, scrolling through something she'd send him later with a string of emojis. She was supposed to be there when he walked through the door.

That was the plan. That was what was supposed to happen.

Because Yuna had insisted. Go, go, enjoy your dinner with your friends. I'll let myself in. I want to see your place; I want to put my things away. Go, Shane. Have fun. Be young.

She'd said be young like he was still a boy. Like she still saw the seven-year-old who needed his apples sliced thin, who couldn't bite into a whole one. Like she still saw the boy he used to be, underneath the man he'd built himself into.

Go, Shane. Have fun. Be young.

So he'd gone. He'd said yes to the dinner he always said no to. He'd sat at Hayden's kitchen island and watched sauce bubble in a pot. He'd taken a bite of spaghetti he didn't want to eat. And somewhere in the sky above Montreal, his mother was on a plane that was falling down.

Because she was coming to see him.

His breath caught. His lungs squeezed. The room tilted, or maybe it was him, maybe he was the one tilting, the floor tilting, the walls tilting, the whole world tilting.

His mother, who still texted him after every game. Good game, baby. So proud of you. Even when he lost. Even when he played badly. Even when he didn't deserve it. So proud of you. Always. Every time.

His mother, who learned to skate when she was thirty years old because she wanted to understand what made her quiet son so happy. Who fell more times than she could count, who bruised her knees and her palms and her pride, who got back up every single time because that was what Yuna Hollander did. She got up. She always got up. And when she finally made it around the rink without falling, she'd looked at him with her face bright and said Did you see me, Shane? Did you see? like she was the one who needed his approval, like she was the child and he was the parent, and he'd laughed and said yes, yes, he'd seen, and she was perfect, she was beautiful, she was so good, and she'd hugged him so tight he thought his ribs might crack.

His mom, who sat in the stands for every game. Every shift. Every season. From the tiny rinks in British Columbia where the ice was always too soft and the bleachers smelled like old popcorn, to the big arenas with the luxury boxes and the cameras and the thousands of faces he couldn't pick out of the crowd—but he always knew where she was. He always found her. Section 104, row 12, seat 4. The same seat for every home game, for years, because she'd figured out which one gave her the best view and she'd never let anyone else sit there. That's my seat, she'd tell ushers who didn't know her, who couldn't understand why this tiny Asian woman was so fierce about a piece of plastic in a stadium full of empty chairs. That's my son out there.

His mom, who packed his lunches when he was a kid. Who woke up before the sun to make sure everything was exactly the way he needed it. The sandwich cut diagonally because he said it tasted better that way. The apple sliced thin because he couldn't bite into a whole one, the texture was wrong, the sound was wrong, and she never once told him he was being difficult. She just sliced the apples. Every day. For years. Until he was too old for packed lunches and she had to learn to let go of that too.

His mom, who never once made him feel strange for needing things to be a certain way. For being too quiet, too still, too strange. She never said what's wrong with you the way other people did. She never looked at him like he was a puzzle to solve or a problem to fix. She just looked at him. Like he was hers. Like he was exactly who he was supposed to be.

His mom, who grabbed strangers by the arm and pointed at him on the ice, her face lit up like Christmas morning, that's my boy, do you see him, that's my Shane. Like every goal he scored was air in her lungs. Like she had given him everything, every early morning, every dollar, every hour of her life, and she would do it all again, a thousand times over, because he was hers and she was his and that was the only math that mattered.

He pressed his forehead into his knees. The tile was cold against his skin. The grout lines were rough under his palms. He counted them. One, two, three, four, five, across the width of his hand. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, back to his wrist.

He wanted his mom.

But his mom was hurt. His mom was on a plane that fell out of the sky. A plane she took because she was coming to see him. She was coming to Montreal instead of Ottawa because she missed him, because she hadn't seen him in three weeks, because she was his mother and three weeks was too long to go without wrapping her arms around her son.

His mom was on a table somewhere, with doctors cutting into her body. Her leg, broken. Her spleen, gone. Her blood, spilling out of her until someone else had to pour it back in.

He wanted his mom. He was twenty-seven years old and he wanted his mother to come find him, to sit down on this cold floor next to him, to put her arms around him and hold him the way she used to, when he was small enough to fit against her chest, when her heartbeat was the only sound that could quiet the noise in his head.

But she wasn't coming. She was the one who needed finding now.

His phone was in his hand. He didn't remember picking it up. His thumb was moving, scrolling through contacts he couldn't see through the tears, looking for something, someone, anyone—

Hayden.

Hayden was in the kitchen. Hayden was right there. Hayden would come. Hayden would sit on this floor with him, would put his hand on Shane's back, would say something that might help.

But Hayden didn't understand. Hayden was good, Hayden was kind, Hayden was the best friend Shane had ever had. But Hayden didn't understand that the questions made it worse. That the kindness made it worse. That when Shane's brain broke like this, when the world collapsed and he couldn't find the ground, what he needed was someone who already knew. Someone who didn't need him to explain. Someone who had seen the broken parts, the strange parts, the parts that didn't fit, and had stayed anyway.

Ilya.

His thumb stopped.

Ilya's name was there. Under the nickname that was stupid and private and his. Lily. Because it was theirs. Because no one else would understand.

He'd never called him first. Not once in ten years. He waited. He always waited. He let Ilya call, let Ilya text, let Ilya be the one to reach out, because reaching out meant wanting, and wanting meant needing, and needing meant he was not enough on his own.

But he couldn't wait now. Couldn't be careful now. Couldn't be the captain, the one who never cracked. His mother was hurt. His mother was hurt and he was sitting on a bathroom floor and he couldn't move and couldn't breathe and he needed—

He needed Ilya.

He pressed the call button before he could think about what it meant.

What are you doing, a voice in his head screamed. You can't call him. You can't. What are you going to say? He's going to know. He's going to see right through you. He's going to—

The phone rang just once.

"Hollander?"

Ilya's voice. Already there. Already here. Like he'd been waiting. Like he'd known.

And Shane talked. Or maybe he didn't—maybe the words came out without him, spilled out of his mouth like water from a cracked glass, his mother, the plane, the hospital, his father driving, his legs numb, the tiles cold, the buzzing in his skin. He didn't know what he said. Didn't know if it made sense. But Ilya listened. Ilya always listened.

Ilya told him to breathe. Ilya counted. Inhale, one, two, three, four. Hold. Exhale, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Ilya told him everything would be okay.

She is going to be okay, Ilya said. She is strong. Like her son.

Shane wanted to believe him. Needed to believe him. So he held onto the words. Wrapped himself in them. Let them be the only thing that mattered.

You can move. You are moving. You are going to stand up. You are going to unlock that bathroom door. You are going to let Hayden know what happened. And then you are going to let him drive you to the hospital. One step at a time.

Ilya said everything would be okay. His mother would be okay. Everything would be okay. And the only thing Shane needed to do was move. One foot in front of the other. Tell Hayden what happened. Which hospital. And then—then he could shut down. Then he could go somewhere quiet, somewhere safe, somewhere he could manage his emotions better. Then no one would see him cry.

He said okay. He didn't know if he said it out loud or just in his head. But Ilya heard. Ilya always heard.

He was standing. He didn't remember standing. His legs were unsteady, his hands still shaking, but he was standing. He was moving. He unlocked the door. Pulled it open.

And then the call was over. Or Shane hung up. Or Ilya did. The phone was just—gone. In his pocket. On the floor. Somewhere. It didn't matter.

Hayden was there. Jackie was there. Their faces were blurred, their voices far away, but they were there. Shane opened his mouth. The words came out. He didn't know if they were the right words. His mother. The plane. The hospital. Sacre-Coeur. He needed to go. He needed to—

Jackie was putting a coat on him. His coat. When had she gotten his coat? Her hands were steady, gentle, pulling the fabric over his shoulders, zipping it up. Hayden was saying something, his voice low and urgent, but Shane couldn't—he couldn't—

One, two, three, four, five. Start again. One, two, three—

They were moving. Down the hallway. Through the kitchen. Past the plate of spaghetti still sitting on the island, the sauce congealing, the noodles cold. Out the door. The night air hit his face, cold and sharp, and he welcomed it. The cold was something he understood. The cold was predictable.

Hayden was opening the car door. Shane was sitting down. The seatbelt clicked. The engine started. And then they were moving, the lights of Montreal blurring past the window, and Shane watched them without seeing, his hands flat on his thighs, his breath shallow, his mind—his mind was somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Somewhere his mother was supposed to be waiting for him on his couch, her arms open, her voice bright.

Hello baby

***

The drive was a blur. Time lost its shape. There was parking, walking, sliding doors that opened automatically, a blast of warm air that smelled like antiseptic and coffee and fear. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, too bright, too white, casting shadows that didn't look like shadows.

He was sitting. In a chair. In a waiting room. He didn't remember sitting down.

Jackie was beside him. Hayden was beside her. Their voices were there, somewhere, shapes without meaning, sounds without words. They were saying something. Asking something. He knew he should answer. Knew he should say something, do something, be something. But his mouth wouldn't move. His voice was gone. There was only the white wall in front of him, blank and empty, and the counting in his head. Ilya's voice.

One, two, three, four, five. Start again. One, two, three—

His father arrived at some point—Shane heard his voice, felt his hand on his shoulder, and something in his chest loosened. Just a fraction. Just enough.

His father was here. His father was here, and his mother was in surgery, and Ilya had said everything would be okay, he had said it, so it must be true and Shane just had to wait. Just had to sit here and wait.

So he sat. And he waited, even though he hated waiting. And he didn't move a single muscle for what felt like hours.

He stared at the wall. The white wall. The blank wall. There was nothing on it. No clock, no window, no distraction. Just white paint and the shadows of people walking past.

He counted the seconds. One, two, three, four, five. Start again. One, two, three—

The elevator dinged.

He didn't look. He couldn't look. If he looked, if he saw another doctor come out with bad news, if he saw—

"Shane."

The word cut through everything.

It was the first thing that had pierced the walls of his mind in hours. The first thing that wasn't static, wasn't white noise, wasn't the endless loop of my mom, my mom, my mom, spinning in his skull. It was a voice. A voice he knew. A voice he had heard in his darkest moments, in his deepest dreams, in the hollow hours of the night when the world was too quiet and his brain was too loud and he thought he might disappear into the silence.

But this wasn't a memory. This was real.

The voice wrapped around him, filled him, settled into his bones. His skin prickled with goosebumps, his breath caught in his chest, and for one suspended moment, everything stopped. The static. The counting. The white wall.

Just his name. Just that voice.

He turned.

Ilya was standing in the doorway.

His coat was unzipped, his hair a mess, his shoes untied. His eyes were blue—that impossible blue that Shane had spent ten years trying not to look at, trying not to memorize, trying not to drown in. They were tired. Bruised with exhaustion. Rimmed with red. But they were looking at him. Only at him.

For a moment, Shane's brain couldn't make sense of it. Ilya was in Boston. Ilya was supposed to be in Boston. There was a game in three days, there was practice, there was—it didn't make sense. It couldn't be real. He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. His brain was so broken, so exhausted, so full of terror that it was conjuring things. Conjuring him.

But Jackie was beside him. Jackie was real. Jackie was solid. And if Jackie could see him too—

It must be true.

The thought cracked something open in Shane's chest.

All the strength he'd been holding onto for hours—all the control, all the mask, all the careful, desperate effort of keeping himself together—evaporated. Instantly. Completely. Like it had never been there at all. He didn't have to be strong now that Ilya was here.

He didn't remember speaking. Didn't remember standing. Didn't remember moving. Didn't remember crossing the space between them. His body was not his own, or maybe it was more his own than it had been in hours, moving without thought, without permission, without anything except the gravitational pull of Ilya's presence. Moving to safety.

The next thing he knew; he was wrapped in some arms.

Ilya's arms. Solid. Warm. Unyielding. They wrapped around him like a shelter, like a shield, like something that could hold all the broken pieces of him together. The warmth of Ilya's body seeped into Shane's cold skin, his frozen bones, his hollow chest, and Shane melted. All the tension he'd been carrying, all the fear, all the desperate, frantic effort of holding himself together—it dissolved. It poured out of him. It left him empty and shaking. His face found the curve of Ilya's neck. His hands twisted into Ilya's jacket. His knees gave out, but Ilya held him up, held him together, held him like he was something precious, something worth holding.

Ilya smelled like cold air and coffee and something else—something that was just him. Something that Shane had breathed in a hundred times in hotel rooms, in the dark, in the spaces between one moment and the next. Something that meant home.

Ilya was here. Ilya was here. And now Shane could break peacefully, quietly. He could let go of all the strength he'd been pretending to have; all the control he'd been pretending to feel.

Ilya would keep him safe. Ilya would hold his pieces. Ilya would be strong enough for the both of them.

Like he always did.

The hours that followed were a blur, but Shane remembered pieces.

Hayden's voice, somewhere behind him, saying something that might have been what the fuck or might have been how did you or might have been nothing at all. Jackie's hand on his back, steady, grounding, a small warmth against the shaking of his shoulders. His father's presence somewhere to his left, quiet, watching, not asking, just there.

And Ilya. Ilya's arms around him, Ilya's voice in his ear, Ilya's heartbeat under his cheek. Ilya murmuring things in Russian that Shane didn't understand but felt anyway—the rumble of them in his chest, the way they curled around Shane's name like something precious, something worth protecting.

Ya zdes', solnyshko. Ya derzhu tebya. Ya nikuda ne uydy.

Shane didn't know what the words meant. But he knew what they were. A promise. A vow. Something Ilya was giving him in a language that belonged only to them.

He heard his father's voice again, asking something, something Shane couldn't parse. Heard Ilya answer, his voice steady, unapologetic, like he had every right to be here. Like he would defend that right against anyone who questioned it.

Heard Jackie say something—to Hayden, maybe, or to his father—and then the sound of footsteps receding. Space being made. Room being given.

And then there was only Ilya. Ilya's arms, Ilya's warmth, Ilya's voice counting his breaths, guiding him back from the edge of something he hadn't even realized he was falling off of.

Inhale. One, two, three, four. Hold. Exhale. One, two, three, four, five, six. Good, zolotse. Good.

He remembered sitting down again—or maybe he never stood up, maybe Ilya had lowered them both to the chairs, he couldn't tell—and Ilya's arm stayed around him, a weight that kept him from floating away. He remembered the words that came out of his mouth, or maybe out of Ilya's, or maybe out of both of them. I love you. The words he'd been holding for ten years, the words he'd thought he would never say, the words that came out now like a confession and a gift and a promise all at once.

I love you. I have loved you for so long.

And Ilya had said it back. Had said it like it was the easiest thing in the world, like it wasn't terrifying, like it wasn't the thing that Shane had been running from his entire adult life. I love you too.

He remembered Hayden's face. The way it cycled through confusion and shock and something that looked like hurt before settling on something softer. The slow, dawning realization that the man he'd spent years fighting on the ice was the same man Shane had been hiding like a ghost under his bed. He remembered Hayden opening his mouth, closing it, opening it again—and Jackie elbowing him in the ribs before he could say anything stupid.

He remembered Hayden looking at him. Really looking. And then saying, quietly, I'm happy for you, man. Even if it's weird. Even if I need therapy.

He remembered laughing. Actually laughing. For the first time in hours.

He remembered his father's face when he'd looked at them—at Shane, curled into Ilya's side, at Ilya, his arm around Shane's shoulders like he was never going to let go. He'd braced himself for something. Disappointment. Disapproval. The thing he'd been dreading his whole life.

But David had just looked at Ilya. And then he'd looked at Shane. And then he'd reached out and taken Shane's hand, the one that wasn't twisted in Ilya's jacket, and held it. Like nothing had changed. Like everything had changed, and it was still okay.

You're my son, he'd said, quiet, so only Shane could hear. That's the only thing that matters.

Shane had wanted to believe him. Part of him did believe him. But there was another part—the part that had spent all his life folding himself into smaller shapes, the part that had learned to be enough by being everything, the part that still believed, somewhere deep and scared, that he was disappointing them—that part wasn't so sure.

But he wasn't ashamed of Ilya. He couldn't be. Not of the man who had driven five hundred miles through a February night to hold him, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Not of the man who had looked at his broken pieces and said I want all of them. Not of the man who had risked his life, just because Shane had called.

Ilya, who didn't want him to be alone. Ilya, who saw him—all of him, the strange parts and the broken parts and the parts that didn't fit—and stayed anyway. Ilya, who had been the only person in Shane's life who made him feel like he didn't have to perform. Like he could just be.

The surgeon came out at some point. Hours later, or maybe minutes, time was still slippery, still unreliable. She was smiling. Mrs. Hollander is out of surgery. She's stable. She's going to be okay.

Shane had felt something crack open in his chest. Relief so big it hurt. His father was crying. Jackie was crying. Hayden was patting his wife's back and wiping his own eyes. And Ilya—Ilya's arm tightened around him, and Shane heard him whisper something in Russian, something he didn't understand but felt anyway, something that sounded like a prayer.

She is going to be okay, Ilya had said earlier, and Shane had never doubted him.

***

Later—much later, after the surgeon left, after his father made calls, after the waiting room, the plastic chairs, the fluorescent lights. After he saw his mother, pale against white pillows, her leg elevated, tubes and monitors beeping. She had looked so small. His mom, who had always been so fierce, so bright, so much—had looked small and fragile and so, so human.

He had wanted to wake her. Wanted to hold her hand, to tell her he was there, to tell her he loved her, to tell her everything. But the nurse had said she needed rest. Better to wait. Better to let her sleep.

After coming back to the waiting room, where Ilya was still sitting in the same plastic chair, grounded, unshakeable, like something that had taken root in the center of his world and refused to be moved.

After all that, David stood up from his chair. He looked at Shane, at Ilya, at the way Shane was still tucked against Ilya's side, at the way Ilya's arm was still around his shoulders, at the way neither of them had moved for hours.

"I'm going to go," He had said. His voice was rough, scraped raw from waiting. "There's—I need to get back to Ottawa. Get the house ready. She'll need—" He stopped. Swallowed. "She'll need things on the main floor. For when she comes home."

Shane nodded. He understood. His father needed to do something. Needed to build, to prepare, to make the world ready for his mother's return. That was how David loved—by making things safe, by making things ready, by being the steady ground his family stood on when the floor shifted beneath them.

"I'll come back tomorrow," Shane had said quietly. "I'll be here when she wakes up."

David looked exhausted. More than anything, he looked old.

Then his expression softened, just slightly. "Knowing you'll get a proper night of sleep is enough for my peace of mind, son. That's all I need of you for the next twenty hours."

Something in Shane's chest tightened. Part of him wanted to stay anyway or to go with him. Wanted to do something—anything—to make this easier for his dad, to help him carry it, to take some small piece of the weight off his shoulders. But he knew this was something his dad had to do alone. The thought sat heavy in his stomach, a familiar guilt he had carried his whole life.

His dad gaze shifted to Ilya then, tired but steady.

"Take care of him for me, alright?"

Ilya's hand tightened where it rested against Shane's back. "Of course," he said softly.

David nodded once, a small, tired movement. Like that was enough. Like he didn't need anything else explained. Then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving Shane and Ilya alone in the waiting room.

Shane let out a breath. The room was emptier now, quieter. His father's absence left a space that felt strange, like a tooth that had been pulled—sore and hollow and waiting to heal.

"You should go home too," Shane said. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw from crying. "My mom will be out for a while. You need to sleep."

Ilya looked at him for a second. Then, quietly, he asked, "Where is home?"

Shane blinked. He had meant his apartment. Of course he had. He wasn't going to make Ilya drive all the way back to Boston like this, not after everything, not at this hour. He'd only meant: go sleep at my place.

But exhaustion had a way of loosening things. Of letting the wrong words slip out. Or maybe the right ones.

The question landed in his chest like something heavy and warm. He knew what Ilya was really asking. Not about geography. Not about the apartment in Boston, the city he'd made his own, the life he'd built on the other side of the border.

He meant: Where do I belong?

And Shane was so tired. Tired of measuring every word, tired of building walls, tired of pretending he wasn't hungry. And Ilya was looking at him with those eyes—steady and patient and waiting, like he already knew what Shane meant but wanted to hear him say it anyway—and Shane was too exhausted to be careful anymore.

"With me," he said. "Come home with me."

Ilya's mouth curved, a small, tired thing. "Okay."

The cab ride was quiet. Shane watched Montreal slide past the window, the streets empty at this hour, the buildings dark, the city asleep. Ilya's hand was in his, their fingers tangled together on the seat between them, and Shane traced the shape of Ilya's knuckles with his thumb, uncaring that the driver may recognize them. He only care about the warmth of the skin beside his. The solid weight of his palm. The way their hands fit together like they'd been made for it.

He should be thinking about his mother. He was thinking about his mother. Her face was still there, behind his eyes, the way she'd looked on the phone, before her flight took off. Be young, she'd said. But Ilya was here too, solid and real beside him, and somehow that didn't feel like a betrayal. For the first time in hours, the static in his head was quiet enough that he could hear himself think. He could be careless with Ilya. He could be young.

By the time the cab pulled up in front of his building, Shane barely registered the ride ending. One second they were still moving, city lights blurring past the windows, and the next he was handing over his card and stepping out into the cold, onto the sidewalk in front of his building.

The wind bit through his coat immediately.

His building. His apartment. His space.

He stood there for a second longer than necessary, staring up at it.

He had never brought anyone here. Not like this. Certainly not Ilya. Their history was hotel rooms, the stupid apartment he'd only bought so they would have somewhere to meet, bathrooms at galas when they were feeling particularly adventurous, reckless enough to forget themselves for ten minutes. All neutral ground, spaces that belonged to neither of them.

Never this.

Never his kitchen, or his couch, or the bed he actually slept in. Never the books stacked too neatly on his shelves, or the sweaters folded in exact rows in his drawers, or the life he had built here piece by careful piece.

Inside, the apartment was dark and quiet, exactly as he'd left it that afternoon. His keys landed in the bowl by the door. His coat went onto the hook. His shoes came off and lined up neatly beside the others before he could stop himself.

All habit.

When he turned around, Ilya was still standing just inside the doorway, coat half open, laces untied, taking it all in with an expression Shane couldn't quite name. Something almost reverent.

Like this mattered.

Like he'd been waiting for it.

"Ilya—"

But, apparently having shaken himself from his thoughts, he was already crossing the room.

His hands came up to cup Shane's face, thumbs brushing slowly beneath his eyes, over skin that still felt tight and sore from crying. He didn't say anything at first. Just looked at him for a long moment, his expression soft in a way Shane didn't know what to do with. Then, quietly:

"Nyet" His voice was low and rough from the road, from too little rest, from everything they hadn't said yet. "We sleep now," he murmured. "Tomorrow, we talk."

Shane almost argued.

The words rose automatically—I'm not tired. We should talk now. There are things I need to say—but they never quite made it out. His whole body felt too heavy, his thoughts too slow around the edges. The apartment was warm. Ilya's hands were warm. Everything was quiet.

And he was so, so tired.

So he let himself be guided.

Let Ilya help him out of his sweater, then ease him gently toward the bedroom, where he let him take everything else and put him in a big t-shirt he found under the pillow. Let him pull back the covers on the bed Shane had made that morning, back when the day had still belonged to ordinary things. Before everything split open.

He sank into the mattress like his body had been waiting for permission.

A second later, the other side of the bed dipped.

Then arms wrapped around him from behind—firm, familiar. A chest against his back. Warm breath at the nape of his neck. A hand settling flat over his chest, right above his heart.

Holding him there.

Keeping him safe.

"Sleep," Ilya had whispered.

And how could Shane not listen when he spoke so softly?

***

The next thing he knew, it was late afternoon.

He could tell by the way the light came through the windows—pale and grey, the kind of winter light that never quite decided if it wanted to be day or night. Clouds pressed against the sky outside, thick and low, muffling the world in shades of silver and soft white. He couldn't tell how long he'd been asleep. The clock on his nightstand was facing away from him, and he didn't want to move to check.

He was warm. That was the first thing he registered. The second was the weight around him—the arm under his head, the arm draped over his waist, the hand splayed flat against his chest. Legs tangled with his. A chest pressed against his back, rising and falling with slow, steady breath.

Ilya.

The name settled into him like something he had always known. His body recognized Ilya before his mind did. The weight of him, the warmth of him, the rhythm of his breathing. This was a body Shane had mapped a hundred times over. But never like this. Never in his bed, in his apartment, in the place he had built for himself, in his safe corner of the world.

He let himself lie there for a long moment. Let himself feel it—the warmth, the weight, the way Ilya's arm tightened around his waist when Shane shifted, like even in sleep he was holding on. The way his breath was warm against the back of his neck. The way Ilya’s heartbeat was slow and steady, the way Shane’s own started matching its rhythm, the two of them falling into the same quiet cadence, like their bodies had been waiting for permission to beat together.

He had never woken up with anyone like this, had never let himself. He had built his life around routines, structures, walls that kept people out. But Ilya was here now, in his bed, in his space, and the walls were still standing. The world hadn't ended. The routines would still be there when he was ready to pick them up again.

Outside, the grey light pressed against the windows, soft and muted. But inside, wrapped in Ilya's arms, Shane felt something shift—a crack in the clouds, a sliver of something brighter waiting to break through.

Ilya stirred behind him. His arm tightened around Shane's waist, and he made a sound—something low and sleepy and content, a sound Shane had heard a couple of times in hotel rooms across North America, in the dark, in the spaces between waking and sleeping, when they had been too exhausted to pull away from each other's touch. A sound he had never let himself think about afterward because thinking about it meant wanting it, and wanting it meant needing it, and needing it meant he could never go back to waking up alone again.

"You are thinking too loud," Ilya mumbled against his skin.

Shane smiled. His face was pressed into the pillow, and he could feel the curve of his own mouth, the way his cheeks ached from it, the way he had been smiling without realizing. "Sorry."

"Is too early for thinking."

"It's way past noon."

Ilya made a sound that might have been a groan. "Is too early for past noon."

Shane turned in his arms, carefully, so they were facing each other. Ilya's eyes were still half-closed, his hair a mess, his face soft with sleep. He looked younger like this. Less like the cocky Russian superstar who taunted reporters and scored impossible goals and made the whole league hate him with a smile. More like the boy Shane had kissed in a hotel room almost ten years ago, scared and excited and not knowing what they were doing.

His Ilya.

He looked rested, though. The exhaustion that had been carved into his face at the hospital was gone, smoothed away by a full ten hours of sleep, resting in Shane's bed, wrapped around him like he belonged there. Shane traced the line of his jaw with his thumb. The faint scratch of stubble. The warmth of his skin. The way his breath caught, just slightly, at the touch.

"Hi," Shane said quietly.

Ilya's eyes opened properly, and Shane was suddenly bathed in the most beautiful blue he had ever seen. Ilya looked at him for a long moment, soft and wondering, like he was still trying to believe this was real, like he was still waiting for the dream to end.

"Priviet-ik," he said back, and the word was warm in Shane's mouth, the accent wrapping around it like something precious.

Shane felt his face warm. It was ridiculous. He had known Ilya for ten years. Had done things with him that he had never done with anyone else. This man was practically all of his firsts. They had even said I love you in a hospital waiting room with tears on their faces. And yet here he was, in his own bed, with Ilya's arms around him, feeling like a teenager again. Nervous. Giddy. Like he didn't know what to do with his hands.

Ilya's mouth curved. "You are blushing, Hollander."

"I'm not."

"You are. Is very cute."

"Shut up."

Ilya's smile widened. He leaned forward, pressed a kiss to Shane's forehead. Soft. Gentle. Like Shane was something precious. "How are you feeling?"

Shane considered the question. His mother was still in the hospital. Still healing. Still not out of the woods, even if she was out of immediate danger. The thought of her made his chest tight, made his breath catch. But Ilya was here. Solid and warm and real, looking at him like nothing else existed. And that—that made something else bloom in his chest too. Something that felt almost like hope.

"I'm still worried about my mom," he said slowly. "I don't think that's going to go away until she's home. Until she's okay."

Ilya nodded. His hand found Shane's, fingers lacing together.

"But I'm also—" Shane stopped. Swallowed. "I'm happy. I'm really happy. Is that—is that okay? To be happy, when she's—"

"Shane." Ilya squeezed his hand. "Your mother is alive. She is healing. She would not want you to be sad. She would want you to be happy."

Shane let out a breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"And you are happy because of me, yes?" Ilya's smile turned smug, the familiar arrogance creeping back into his voice. "Because I am very handsome and very charming and I make you feel—"

"You're impossible."

"Is not answer."

Shane laughed. The sound surprised him, bright and unexpected, and he felt something loosen in his chest, something that had been frozen for a very long time. Outside, the light shifted—a break in the clouds, a stream of gold cutting through the grey, falling across the bed in a long, warm stripe.

"Yes," he said. "I'm happy because of you, asshole."

Ilya's smug expression softened, and he lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to Shane's knuckles. "I am happy too," he said quietly. "Very happy."

Shane's heart did something complicated in his chest. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead to Ilya's, and for a moment they just breathed together, the same air, the same space, the same impossible, terrifying, beautiful thing that had been growing between them for a decade

"Ilya?" He would never get tired of saying his name.

"Mmm?"

"Thank you. For coming. For—for staying. For everything."

Ilya's eyes went soft. "You do not thank me for this. There is nowhere else I would be."

"I know. But I'm thanking you anyway."

Ilya didn't say anything directly. Instead, he pulled Shane closer, hands settling on his waist, and kissed him. This was better than any answer he could have given, better than any speech, because this, Shane understood. This was a language he knew better than French, better than Japanese, better than English. This was the way they had communicated with each other for years.

The kiss was nothing like the one they had shared in the hospital, nothing like the desperate, hungry kisses of the waiting room, the ones that tasted of salt and terror and the frantic relief of finding each other.

This one started slow. Ilya's lips barely brushing against his, a question more than a statement, like he was asking permission, like he had all the time in the world to wait for the answer. Shane's breath caught, held, released. His hands came up of their own accord, fingers finding Ilya's jaw, feeling the faint scratch of stubble, the warmth of his skin, the way his pulse beat steady and sure beneath his palm.

The light had shifted while they talked. The grey was receding, the clouds parting, and the afternoon sun was beginning to spill through the windows in earnest. It caught in Ilya's hair, turning it to something almost amber, and painted the walls in shades of gold and soft orange. Dust motes floated in the air between them, slow and lazy, like they too had nowhere else to be. The apartment was quiet except for the sound of their breathing, the soft rasp of fabric as Ilya's hands slid from Shane's waist to his back, pulling him closer, and the distant hum of the city outside, muffled and far away, like it belonged to another world entirely.

Shane let his eyes fall closed.

Ilya kissed him again, and this time it was deeper, slower, the kind of kiss that seemed to unfold in layers, each one revealing something new. The warmth of his mouth, the taste of him—something like tea, something like the faint salt of sleep, something underneath that was just Ilya, the same smell that clung to his skin after games, after showers, after the long nights they had spent together, the smell that Shane had breathed in a hundred times without ever letting himself think about what it meant to him.

He had spent so long cataloging Ilya. The way his hands felt on the ice, heavy and unyielding. The way his voice sounded when he was angry, when he was teasing, when he was saying Shane's name in the dark. The way his eyes looked from across the rink, blue and sharp and impossible to look away from. He had filed each detail away, locked it in the part of his chest he never let anyone see, told himself it was rivalry, obsession, anything but what it actually was.

But he had never had this. This was new. This didn't match any of the information he had collected over ten years of watching. The way Ilya's lips moved against his, slow and deliberate, like they were learning each other for the first time. The way his hands pressed into Shane's back, fingers splayed wide, like he was trying to hold all of him at once. The way his breath came out in a soft exhale against Shane's mouth, warm and steady, and Shane felt it travel down his spine, settle in his bones, make a home there. All of this was going to a new space in Shane's brain, a place reserved for this soft new version of the man he loved.

Ilya's thumb found the curve of Shane's jaw, traced it, gentle, almost reverent, and with it he tilted his head just slightly, just enough to change the angle, and the kiss deepened, and Shane felt something give way in his chest.

It was the slowness of it that undid him. The patience. The lack of urgency. For ten years, their kisses had been stolen things, snatched in hotel rooms and closed curtains, always with one ear listening for footsteps, always with the knowledge that they would have to stop, would have to pull apart, would have to pretend it hadn't happened. They had learned to kiss like thieves, quick and quiet, taking what they could before the world came to take it back.

But this kiss had nowhere to be. No deadline. No escape route. Just the afternoon light and the quiet apartment and the warmth of Ilya's mouth against his, and Shane realized he had never been kissed like this. Had never let himself be kissed like this. Never wanted to be kissed like this by anyone else.

Ilya's hand slid into his hair, fingers threading through the strands, and Shane made a sound—something low and involuntary, something he hadn't meant to let out. He felt Ilya smile against his mouth, a small, private thing, and his fingers tightened in Shane's hair, just slightly, just enough to make Shane's breath hitch.

When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing harder. Ilya's face was flushed, his lips red, his eyes dark and soft and full of something that made Shane's chest ache. The light had deepened while they kissed, the gold ripening into something richer, more amber, the shadows stretching longer across the floor, the sky visible in patches of pale winter blue. In the back of his mind, he wondered where the clouds that had been outside his windows when he first woke up had gone.

Shane's hands were still tangled in Ilya's hair. He could feel the strands slipping through his fingers, fine and soft, and he didn't want to let go. Didn't want to move. Didn't want this moment to end.

But somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice was starting to surface. The voice that had kept him safe for years, the one that calculated risks and counted costs and reminded him, always, of what he was supposed to do. It was quieter now than it used to be, muffled by the warmth of Ilya's skin against his, the taste of him still on Shane's lips. But it was there.

He let his hands fall. Not pulling away, just... settling. Letting them rest flat against Ilya's bare chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath his fingers.

"Ilya," he said. His voice came out softer than he intended, almost reluctant.

Ilya hummed in response, his eyes still half-lidded, his mouth still curved in that small, private smile. His hands were still on Shane's waist, thumbs tracing slow circles through the fabric of his shirt.

"You can’t stay, you have practice today," Shane said.

The words hung in the air between them, an intrusion from another world. Ilya's smile didn't fade, but something in his expression shifted—a flicker of awareness, of the world outside this room, of everything they were supposed to be.

"Will tell them I am sick," he said, and his voice was still deep, still rough, still doing things to Shane's ability to think clearly.

"You're not sick."

"I am very sick." He leaned in, pressed his lips to the corner of Shane's mouth, soft, distracting. "Very serious illness. I cannot leave this bed."

Shane's eyes fluttered closed despite himself. "Ilya—"

"And neither can you." Another kiss, this one to his jaw. "Is highly contagious. Very dangerous."

"You're impossible."

"Mm. Is part of my charm."

Shane laughed, a breathless sound that came out more unsteady than he intended. He was losing the thread of the argument, losing his grip on the responsible part of his brain that was supposed to be reminding him of deadlines and obligations and the fact that Ilya had a team waiting for him in Boston.

"I am dying, Shane," Ilya murmured against his skin. "Is tragic. I need my boyfriend to take care of me. Bring me food. Stay in bed with me. Very serious condition."

Boyfriend.

The word landed in Shane's chest like something warm and bright, spreading through his ribs, his lungs, his heart, filling spaces he hadn't known were empty. He had never been anyone's boyfriend before. Had never let himself want it. Had folded that wanting so small, hidden it so deep, that he had almost forgotten it existed.

Ilya must have felt the shift in him, because he pulled back. His teasing expression faded into something softer. Almost uncertain.

"What?" he asked.

Shane's throat was tight. "You said—" He stopped. Swallowed. "You said boyfriend."

Ilya's brow furrowed. "Yes. You are my boyfriend. We agreed. We had conversation."

Shane shook his head. "We said we love each other. Not that we were—" He stopped. His face was burning. "You never asked."

Ilya stared at him.

"Oh," he said slowly. Then a grin spread across his face, slow and delighted, he suddenly looked like man who had just discovered something wonderful. "Oh. So Shane Hollander wants to be asked. To be someone's boyfriend."

"Fuck you," Shane muttered, his skin on fire. "Don't be ridiculous."

But he kind of wanted that. He kind of really wanted that. Wanted Ilya to ask. Wanted to hear the words. Wanted to have this one thing be real and official and his. Not just implied. Not just assumed. Chosen.

Ilya's grin softened again, into something impossibly endeared. His voice dropped lower, rougher, scraped raw from sleep. "What? You want me to get up? Bring you breakfast in bed? Ask properly?"

Shane's face was definitely red now. He could feel it spreading down his neck, across his chest, burning him from the inside out. "I said don't be ridiculous."

"You did not say that. You said 'fuck you.' Is different."

"I'm pretty sure I said both things."

"Yes, but 'fuck you' means you are angry. 'Ridiculous' means you are embarrassed." Ilya's eyes were bright, too bright, and Shane already knew that Ilya could always tell what he really wanted even when Shane didn't know how to say it. "Which is it, Hollander? Are you angry? Or are you embarrassed that you want me to ask?"

Shane opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"You're impossible," he said finally.

"So you are embarrassed."

Shane groaned and buried his face in the pillow. The fabric was cool against his burning skin, and for a moment he let himself hide there, in the dark, in the smell of his own sheets and the lingering trace of Ilya's skin. His ears were burning. His chest was tight. And Ilya was looking at him like he could see every part Shane had spent his whole life learning to fold small, to hide deep, to pretend didn't exist.

"Ilya—"

But the Russian was already moving. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, standing up, and Shane's brain short-circuited because Ilya was only in his boxers, showing off his body without an ounce of shame. His hair was a mess, sticking up in ten different directions, and his eyes were shining with something bright and soft and teasing.

"Stay," he ordered, pointing at him. "Do not move. You do not leave this bed."

Well. Shane could hardly disobey him on a good day.

"Rozanov—"

"I am being serious, Hollander. You stay right there."

And then he was gone, padding out of the bedroom on bare feet, and Shane was alone. Alone for the first time in hours.

He loved being with Ilya, he loved the way Ilya's arms felt around him, the way his voice sounded in the quiet of the evening, the way his presence filled the empty spaces of the apartment that Shane hadn't even known were empty. And he was immeasurably grateful for his father, for the steady warmth of his hand in the waiting room, for the way he had looked at Ilya and chosen acceptance without hesitation. He was grateful for Hayden and Jackie, for the way they had stayed, for the way they had refused to let him be alone even when he didn't know how to ask them for help.

But oh, how Shane loved his solitude. How much he needed it sometimes. Needed it to finally think.

And boy, did he have things to think about.

The apartment settled around him, the silence of the room different now without Ilya's breathing, without the warmth of his body pressed against Shane's back. The light was deepening outside, the gold ripening into something richer as the sun began its slow and earlier descent toward the horizon. The clouds that had pressed against the sky earlier were gone now, scattered by a wind Shane hadn't noticed, leaving the winter sky clear and pale and impossibly vast.

Shane let his head fall back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling.

Okay, so, his father knew. The thought surfaced with a lot less panic than he had expected, but it still felt like a bruise he kept pressing on, testing if it still hurt. David had sat in that plastic chair, had taken his hand, had said you're my son, that's the only thing that matters, and Shane had wanted to believe him. Did believe him. His dad had never given him a reason not to, after all.

But there was a part of him—the part that maybe hated himself a little for being the way he was, the part that made him feel like he was doing something wrong, that he needed punishment—that was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the phone call where David said we need to talk. Waiting for the silence that meant disappointment. Waiting for the love that asked for nothing to finally ask for something, and for that something to be more than he could give.

And oh, God.

Hayden knew too. Hayden, who was the best fucking friend Shane had ever had, who let his kids call him uncle, Hayden who could be a fucking asshole sometimes, Hayden who only ever wanted the best for Shane. Hayden, who had looked at Ilya across the waiting room with his mouth open and his eyes wide and had said I'm going to figure out how to be okay with it.

Shane was so fucking scared that this would affect their relationship, but since Hayden had said he was happy for him, he made himself hope that it wouldn't. But he still hated that there was nothing he could do now to calm the anxiety coiling in his chest about where they stood. Hated that only time would tell how they'd relearn to navigate this side of himself he had kept under lock and key for their entire friendship.

He really fucking hated when there was nothing he could do—when he had already said everything he needed to say, and Hayden had said what he needed to say, and now all that was left was to wait. To let time pass and see what grew in the space between them, or what didn't. There was no action left to take, no problem he could solve with enough effort, no amount of control that would guarantee the outcome he wanted. He just had to sit with the uncertainty and let the days do their work. But at least Hayden knew now. There was no coming back from that.

The thought made his chest ache, but not in the way he expected. It was the ache of something loosening, something that had been held too tight for too long and was just beginning to stretch. He really owed him and Jackie dinner. He would figure out how to thank them for all that they did. He would find the words. Would sit at their kitchen table and eat their food and let Jackie put her hand on his arm and let Hayden make his stupid jokes, and maybe, now that they knew, it wouldn't feel like a performance anymore.

He thought about his mother.

The thought of her brought a different kind of ache. Deeper. Older. The kind that lived in his bones and would never leave.

She was alive. The words still felt too big to hold, too bright to look at directly. She was alive and she was healing and she was going to be okay. The surgeon had said so. The nurse had said so. Ilya had said so, and Ilya had driven five hundred miles to make sure it was true.

But the fear was still there, coiled beneath his ribs, waiting for him to forget so it could remind him. He had almost lost her. He had almost lost his mother, the woman who had given up her career to manage his, who had learned the language of contracts and endorsements and media obligations so he wouldn't have to, who had sat in every meeting and negotiated every deal and made sure no one took advantage of her boy. The woman who had been there for every draft, every signing, every first day of training camp, her hand on his shoulder, her voice in his ear, you belong here, Shane, you worked for this, you deserve this.

She was the one who taught him to count by lining up his toy cars in perfect rows, who helped him arrange his stuffed animals by size and color and never once told him it was strange. She was the one who learned to read his silences, to know when he needed words and when he needed quiet.

He thought about all the moments she had been there for him. The first time he was cut from a team, the way she had held him while he cried and said they made a mistake, they'll see, you'll show them. The first time someone made a comment about his face, his eyes, the way he looked, and she had knelt down to his level and said you are beautiful, Shane, you are exactly who you are supposed to be, don't let anyone tell you different. The first time he came home from a game with his ears still ringing, his skin still buzzing, his brain too full to speak, and she had sat beside him on the couch and put on the same movie they had watched a hundred times, the one where he already knew every word, every scene, every sound, because she understood that sometimes the only thing that helped was something he already knew.

She was the one who had been there for every moment he was scared. Every nightmare when he was little, every panic attack before a big game, every time he thought he wasn't good enough, wasn't strong enough, wasn't enough. She had been there for all of it.

But she hadn't been there for this.

She hadn't been there when his father called. She hadn't been there when he collapsed on Hayden's bathroom floor, when his lungs forgot how to work, when the world tilted and spun and he couldn't find anything solid to hold onto. She hadn't been there when he called Ilya, when he said the words he had been holding for ten years, when he let himself need someone in a way he had never let himself need anyone. She hadn’t been there when he came out.

She hadn't been there for the worst night of his life.

He needed to tell her. The need was a physical thing, pressing against his lungs, making it hard to breathe. He needed to sit beside her bed and take her hand and tell her everything. About Ilya. About the ten years of secrets and lies and the hunger that never quite went away, no matter how many cups he lifted over his shoulders. About the fear that had kept him silent—the fear that he would disappoint her, that he would be one thing too many, that the son she had given everything to would finally be too much.

But he was so tired of being afraid.

For ten years, his worst nightmares had been about his parents finding out. About the disappointment in his mother's eyes, the silence on the other end of the phone, the Christmas cards that would never be sent. He had built his life for them, around them. He wouldn’t possibly know what to do if this was the thing that made him lose the two people he loved most in the entire fucking world. So he had learned to want less, to need less, to be less. He had learned to live with a hole in his chest, to ignore how starving he always was, how empty, empty, empty.

But now, sitting in his bed, in his apartment, with Ilya in his kitchen making him breakfast—though in a couple of hours it would be time for dinner—the fear was quieter than it had ever been. Not gone. It would never be gone. But quieter. And the hunger was receding.

He thought about Ilya's face in the waiting room, the exhaustion carved into every line. He thought about the drive from Boston, five hundred miles of frozen highway, three and a half hours of driving like a man possessed, because Shane had called. Because Shane had needed him. Because Ilya would cross a border, break every rule, risk everything, for him.

He had never been loved like this.

It half terrified him. The weight of it. The size of it. The way it sat in his chest like something he hadn't asked for but couldn't imagine living without. But he would have done the same. If the situation were reversed, if it was Ilya's mom on that plane, Ilya in that hospital, Ilya calling him from a bathroom floor with his voice cracked and his lungs failing—Shane would have done the same fucking thing. He would have driven through the night. He would have broken every self-imposed rule, crossed an ocean if necessary. He would have sat in those uncomfortable chairs for hours and waited with him.

The thought should have scared him more, maybe. The knowledge that he was that far gone, that he would burn his whole life down for this man. But after ten years of wanting and waiting and pretending, of looking away from Ilya's face across the ice—sitting here, in the quiet of his apartment, with the afternoon light fading and the sound of Ilya moving through his kitchen, it didn't feel like burning. It felt like coming home to a place he hadn't known he was looking for.

He had spent so long being enough for everyone else. He had given everything back, every early morning drive, every dollar, every hour of his parents' lives, and he had told himself that was the deal. That was what he owed them. That was what he owed the world for letting him exist in it.

But Ilya didn't want him to be enough. Ilya wanted him to be Shane. The strange one, the quiet one, the boring one.

The thought made his eyes sting. He blinked rapidly, stared at the ceiling, willed the tears away.

He didn't know how to be this. Didn't know how to be someone who let another person take care of him. Didn't know how to be someone who wanted things out loud, who asked for things, who let Ilya make him breakfast and didn't feel like he was stealing something he didn't deserve.

But he sure as hell would learn. For Ilya. For himself.

He heard footsteps in the hallway. The soft pad of bare feet on wood, the careful clink of glass against ceramic. He sat up a little straighter, scrubbed his palms over his face, pulled air into his lungs like it might steady the trembling somewhere beneath his ribs.

Ilya appeared in the doorway, and the light caught him—his shoulders, his hair, the curve of his mouth—and Shane thought: I could have this. I could have this every day.

He walked toward him slowly, deliberately, like he was carrying something fragile, something that might shatter if he moved too fast. And maybe he was. Maybe this was fragile—this moment, this afternoon, this ordinary, extraordinary thing. If he noticed the tear tracks Shane hadn't quite managed to erase, the redness around his eyes, the way his breathing still caught in uneven intervals, he didn't mention it. He just moved like he had all the time in the world, like there was nowhere else he would rather be.

He set the tray on Shane's lap. A glass of water catching the light. A cup of tea—chamomile, the way Shane liked it, the way he drank when the world felt too loud. A small bowl of plain Greek yogurt with a handful of blueberries on the side. Simple. Clean. Something Shane could eat without thinking. Something that fit into the careful architecture of his diet without him having to explain it.

"I made you your tiny disgusting food," Ilya said, settling onto the edge of the bed. His voice was light, teasing, but his eyes were soft—the same blue as the sky on a summer day.

Before Shane could protest, could explain why it wasn't tiny or disgusting, why the small portion made sense in the long run, Ilya took his hands. Held them. Looked at him. And then he just—stopped. His mouth opened, closed. His jaw worked. For a moment, nothing came out.

Shane had never seen Ilya struggle for words. Not once in ten years. Ilya always had something to say, always had a joke, a deflection, a wall built from clever words and sharper smiles. But now he just sat there, holding Shane's hands, his face open and raw and young in a way Shane had never seen before. The masks, the walls—they were all gone now. What was underneath was terrifying and beautiful and so, so vulnerable.

"I do not have words," Ilya said finally, his voice rough, scraped raw at the edges. "English is very hard now."

Shane's chest tightened. He knew this—knew how sometimes the distance between what Ilya felt and what he could say in a language that wasn't his own was a chasm that left him frustrated, grasping. It had never felt fair. Shane hated that Ilya was the only one who had to cross that distance, that he had to translate himself into a language Shane could understand, that Shane couldn't meet him halfway. He hated the thought that there was a version of Ilya he would never know—a version that was looser, funnier, more him, the one that existed in the language his mother sang lullabies to him in, the one that dreamed in Russian and woke up reaching for words that didn't exist in English. A version that would always be just out of reach, locked behind a door Shane didn't have the key to, simply because he had never learned to listen in the right language.

Here and now, he made a promise to himself: he would learn. He would cross every border, like Ilya had done for him. No matter how long it took, or how difficult it would be, Shane would learn to speak the language that had raised Ilya Rozanov.

"It's okay," he said softly. "You don't have to do this. I know what we are to each other."

But Ilya shook his head, his jaw tight, his hands firm around Shane's. "No. I want to do this. You deserve this. To be asked properly."

Shane bit his lip, thinking. He wanted to make this easier for both of them. "You can tell me in Russian, then."

Ilya's eyes flickered—surprise, maybe, or something softer, something that looked like a child being offered a gift he hadn't dared to ask for. "But you will not understand."

Shane squeezed his hands. "Doesn't matter. I will understand enough."

For a long moment, Ilya just looked at him. The air between them was thick with something Shane couldn't name—ten years, maybe, or the weight of everything they had never said. Ilya's chest rose and fell with a deep, steadying breath, his hands tightening around Shane's. And then he began to speak.

His voice was different like this—lower, rougher, shaped by a language that seemed to fit him the way his own skin did. The words fell into a rhythm Shane had heard before but never understood, a cadence that belonged to late-night phone calls and whispered things in hotel rooms, to the spaces between sleep and waking when Ilya forgot to translate himself.

"Ya lyublyu tebya uzhe desyat' let," he said, and the words seemed to come from somewhere deep, somewhere Shane had always known existed but had never been allowed to see. "Tselykh desyat' let. I, pover' mne, ya pravda pytalsya s etim borot'sya. Pytalsya ne lyubit' tebya. Pytalsya zabyt' tebya. Pytalsya ubedit' sebya, chto eto proydyot, chto odnazhdy ya prosnus'—i tebya bol'she ne budet u menya pod kozhey."

Shane didn't understand the words. But he understood the shape of them. The way Ilya's voice cracked on ne lyubit'. The way his throat worked around zabyt', like the word itself was something he had been trying to swallow for a decade. The way his hands trembled slightly in Shane's grip, like he was giving something away that he had held so close, so carefully, for so long.

"No ty nikuda ne delsya," Ilya continued, and his eyes were very, very blue, very wet, catching the gold light that was spilling through the windows, reflecting it like waterfalls of fire. "Ya vsyo ravno dumal o tebe. Vsyo ravno iskal tebya vzglyadom. Vsyo ravno vozvrashchalsya k tebe snova i snova, dazhe kogda izo vsekh sil pytalsya derzhat'sya podal'she. Kazhduyu noch', kazhdyy match, kazhdyy chyortov den'—ty byl so mnoy. V myslyakh. V serdtse. V kazhdom vdokhe."

Shane's throat was so tight he could barely breathe. He didn't need to know the exact words—he could see them in Ilya's face. In the furrow of his brow, the set of his jaw, the way his lips shaped each syllable like it cost him something to release it. Ten years of silence pouring out of him in a language Shane couldn't follow, and yet he understood everything. He understood because Ilya was looking at him like he was the only thing in the room, the only thing in the world, the only thing that had ever mattered.

"I ya bol'she ne khochu pryatat'sya," Ilya said, his voice dropping, cracking on the last word like something was breaking open inside him. "Ne khochu delat' vid, chto mezhdu nami nichego net. Ne khochu etikh chuzhikh komnat, etikh sekretov, etoy zhizni vpolsily. Ya khochu tebya—po-nastoyashchemu. Ya ne khochu bol'she vozvrashchat'sya v Rossiyu i chuvstvovat', budto ya ostavil samuyu vazhnuyu chast' sebya zdes', s toboy. Ona vsegda budet moey rodinoy, no ty…." He swallowed hard, his voice shaking. "—ty moy dom, Sheyn. I kazhdyy raz, kogda ya uezhal, kazhdyy raz, kogda vozvrashchalsya ottuda, ya vozvrashchalsya razbitym. Budto mne snova i snova prikhodilos' uchit'sya dykhat' bez tebya. I ya bol'she tak ne khochu."

A tear slipped down Ilya's cheek. He didn't wipe it away at first. He just kept looking at Shane, his face utterly unguarded. But then something shifted. His jaw tightened. His breath caught. He looked away—just for a second, just long enough to try to pull himself back together—and one of his hands slipped free from Shane's, coming up to cover his eyes.

"Blyad'," he muttered, his voice thick, frustrated. "Sorry. I am sorry. It's just—" He pressed the heel of his palm against his eyes, like he could push the tears back in, like he could shove all the emotion back where it belonged.

Shane caught his wrist. Gently. Firmly.

"Hey."

Ilya's hand fell away. His eyes were red-rimmed, wet, and a little embarrassed. Shane reached up, his fingers finding Ilya's jaw, his thumb brushing against the damp skin of his cheek. He tilted his face back toward him, slowly, deliberately, until their eyes met.

"Please," Shane said, his voice soft but steady, solid in a way he hadn't felt in hours. "Continue." He was greedy for more, he was hungry, for once in his life, he wanted to take everything this man had to offered.

For a moment, Ilya just looked at him. His chest rose and fell with a shaky breath. His lips parted. Closed. Parted again.

"Ya khochu vernut' kazhdyy god, kotoryy my potratili zrya. Khochu vse eto vremya obratno, yesli by mog." The words found him once again, but his voice was barely a whisper now, rough and broken. "No raz ya ne mogu, ya khochu khotya by vse, chto u nas yeshchyo budet. Vsyo. Ya khochu byt' tvoim. Po-nastoyashchemu. Navsegda." His hand came up and covered Shane's where it still rested against his face.

"Ya nikogda nikogo ne lyubil tak, kak lyublyu tebya. Nikogda. I ya khochu vse to, chego nikogda ni s kem ne khotel. Khochu prosypat'sya ryadom s toboy. Khochu gotovit' tebe zavtrak. Khochu ostavat'sya doma s toboy i smotret' televizor vmesto togo, chtoby kuda-to vykhodit'. Khochu sporit' s toboy po pustyakam, a potom mirit'sya potseluyami. Khochu derzhat' tebya za ruku tam, gde nas vse vidyat. Khochu tselovat' tebya kazhdoe utro i chuvstvovat' vkus tvoyego chaya u tebya na gubakh vsyu ostavshuyusya zhizn'. Khochu vse eto obychnoye, domashneye, tikhoye—vse to, chto s toboy nikogda ne budet skuchnym."  His mouth trembled on the last word.

"Khochu, chtoby ty nauchil menya, kak eto—imet' sem'yu. Nastoyashchuyu. Takuyu, v kotoroy ne nado khodit' na tsypochkakh. V kotoroy net khlopayushchikh dverey. V kotoroy nikto ne ukhodit. V kotoroy my prosto... ostayomsya." He drew in a shaky breath. "Tak chto ya sproshu tebya tak, kak dolzhen byl sprosit' uzhe davno. Po-nastoyashchemu. S zavtrakom v postel' i so vsey etoy romanticheskoy erundoy."

He stopped and drew in a shaky breath, his thumb brushing shakily over Shane's knuckles.

"Sheyn Kholander, ty khochesh' byt' moim parnem?"

The words hung in the air between them. Shane didn't know what they meant—not exactly—but he knew. He knew from the way Ilya was looking at him, like he was dismantling every wall he had ever built, brick by brick, stone by stone, until there was nothing left between them. Like he was handing Shane something he had never given anyone else—something fragile and precious and terrifying. His whole heart, maybe. His whole self. All of it, finally, without reservation.

"Be my boyfriend?" Ilya repeated in English now. For all his mocking of Shane earlier, this was important for him too. It was perhaps the most important question he would ask in his life.

Shane smiled. The tears he had been holding back for what felt like hours, for what felt like years, finally spilled over—one, and another, and then a million more, tracing slow, warm lines down his cheeks. He nodded. Once. Twice. His throat was too tight to speak, his chest too full, his heart too big for the space it had been given. But he didn't need to speak. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Ilya's, feeling the warmth of his skin, the dampness of his tears, the shaky exhale that fanned across Shane's lips.

And he let the word out on a breath, a whisper, an exhale—something that had been waiting to be said for years, something that had always been true, something that was finally, finally his to give.

"Yes."

Ilya's face broke into something radiant. Something young. Something free.

He leaned forward, mindful of the tray between them, and kissed Shane's forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his mouth. Soft kisses, quick kisses, kisses that tasted like salt and sweet and something that might have been joy, something that might have been the first evening of the rest of their lives.

"You are boyfriend now," he said against Shane's lips.

"Yeah," Shane breathed.

"Mine."

"Yes."

He kissed him again. And again, like he couldn't contain himself now that he was free to be affectionate with Shane. When he finally pulled back, his eyes were still bright, still wet, but there was something else there too—something lighter, something that looked like the first crack of light after a storm.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. They just looked at each other, breathing the same air, their foreheads still touching, their hands still tangled together between them. The weight of what had just passed between them settled into the silence, not heavy, not suffocating—just there. A new thing they were both learning to carry together.

Ilya's thumb traced slow circles on Shane's knuckles. His breathing was still uneven, still catching every few seconds, but the frantic edge had faded. Shane watched him come back to himself—watched the walls he had let fall begin to reassemble, but differently this time. Softer. More like windows than barricades.

And then Shane moved.

He didn't think about it. Didn't plan it. His hands came up to frame Ilya's face, his thumbs brushing against the tear tracks still wet on his cheeks. Ilya's breath caught, his eyes searching Shane's, and Shane— who had never been good with words, not in English, not in French, not in any language that required him to translate the chaos in his chest into something orderly and comprehensible—leaned in and kissed him.

He kissed the tears from Ilya's cheeks first. The salt of them was sharp on his lips, and he tasted the shape of Ilya's vulnerability there—all the things he had said in Russian, all the walls he had taken down, all the years he had spent holding himself together finally allowed to come apart. Shane kissed each tear away like it was something sacred, something worth collecting.

Then his mouth found Ilya's eyelids, pressing softly against the delicate skin there, feeling the flutter of Ilya's lashes, the way his breath stuttered. He kissed the space between Ilya's brows, where the tension of carrying an entire nation had carved a permanent furrow. He kissed the bridge of his nose, the corner of his jaw, the hinge of it where Shane had seen him clench his teeth through a hundred interviews, a thousand games, a decade of pretending he didn't feel anything at all.

He kissed Ilya's forehead and felt the tension there begin to ease. He kissed his temples, where Shane had watched him massage away headaches after games, after long flights, after nights spent in hotel rooms that weren't theirs. He kissed the small scar above Ilya's eyebrow—the one from a game three years ago, the one Shane had traced with his fingers reminding himself that Ilya was real, Ilya was here, Ilya had survived.

And finally, when he had kissed every part of Ilya's face, when there was no inch of skin left untouched, when Ilya's breath was coming in soft, uneven waves against his mouth, Shane kissed his lips.

Soft. Slow. Deliberate.

He tried to pour everything he didn't have words for into that kiss—the ten years of wanting, the hunger that had never quite gone away, the way Ilya's voice sounded in Russian, the way his hands had trembled when he said ty—moy dom, the way Shane had felt something crack open in his chest and fill with light. He tried to tell Ilya, without a single word, how much he loved him, how much he meant to him, how he wanted this for the rest of his life.

Ilya made a sound against his mouth—something small and soft, something that might have been a gasp or a sob or the beginning of a laugh. His hands came up to grip Shane's wrists, not pulling them away, just holding on. Like Shane was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

When Shane finally pulled back, Ilya's eyes were open again, watching him. His face was still wet, still flushed, but the vulnerability there had shifted into something else. He was much more centered now, looked more like himself.

"You," he said finally, his voice barely a whisper, "are going to be the death of me, Hollander."

Shane smiled. It was wobbly and probably stupid-looking, but he didn't care. "I really hope not; the league would be very boring if I have no one to compete against."

"Ah yes, because I am the best player that there is."

"Fuck you," Shane said, but it came out more like an I love you than an insult, since he couldn't stop smiling. "Are you okay?"

"I am okay." Ilya's mouth curved into something that was almost a smile, almost a joke, but not quite yet. His thumb brushed over Shane's knuckles one more time before he let go. Then he pulled back, his eyes catching on the tray still sitting between them, and something shifted in his expression—the familiar light coming back, the teasing edge returning, but gentler now, like he was testing it out, seeing if it still fit.

He gestured at the tray. "Now, after my beautiful speech, you eat the food I made for you."

Shane laughed. It came out lighter than he expected, freer, and he felt something settle in his chest, something that had been rattling loose for a very long time. "Yes, sir."

Ilya's eyebrows shot up. Something flickered in his eyes—dark, warm, amused. "Now, Shane, do not start something you cannot follow. Calling me like that, you know we do not have much more time."

Shane's skin was on fire, but he was still smiling. "Asshole."

He ate all the yogurt, all the blueberries, drank his tea. Ilya stole the last blueberry off his plate and popped it into his mouth with a smug look, and Shane should have been annoyed. He wasn't. He watched him chew, watched the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, watched the way the fading afternoon light caught in his hair, the curve of his jaw. He looked happy, comfortable. He looked like all of Shane's dreams come true.

"You are staring," Ilya said, not opening his eyes.

"I'm not," Shane corrected.

Ilya opened his eyes. Caught Shane's gaze. Held it. A small smile tugged at his mouth. "Is okay. You can stare. I do not mind."

Shane's face warmed. He looked away, reached for his tea. "This is going to be the only exception," he said, nodding at the tray. "Eating in bed. We're not making this a habit."

Ilya made a sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a scoff. "We will see."

"I'm serious."

"Of course you are." Ilya took the tray from his lap, seeing that Shane had finished, and stood up. "You are very serious person, Shane Hollander. Very boring. Very responsible. Would not want to get crumbs in your very clean sheets."

Shane grabbed a pillow and threw it at him. Ilya caught it with his free hand, one-handed, without looking, and the easy show of reflex did something to Shane's lower belly that he refused to acknowledge.

When he came back to the bedroom, Shane was still sitting in bed, still in his t-shirt and boxers, still not quite ready to move. Ilya stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, and looked at him. His arms were crossed, his hair was still a mess, and he was wearing Shane's sweatpants, Shane's hoodie—the ones he had pulled on before going to the kitchen. He looked comfy and happy.

"You should get dressed," he said. "You have to go to hospital. Your mother is waiting."

"I know," Shane said. He didn't move.

Ilya raised an eyebrow. "So why are you still in bed, Hollander?"

Shane looked at him. At the way the last of the sunset caught on his shoulders, still bare above the collar of Shane's hoodie. At the way his eyes were soft, warm, looking at Shane like he was the only thing in the room worth seeing.

"I don't want to get up," Shane said.

Ilya's mouth curved. "No?"

"No."

He pushed off the doorframe and came back to the bed slowly, with the kind of confidence that only made Shane more nervous, more aware, more incapable of remembering why he was supposed to be putting on clothes instead of watching Ilya move toward him like there was nowhere else he intended to be.

“That is very irresponsible,” Ilya said as he climbed onto the mattress again, one knee sinking into the bed beside Shane’s thigh "You have responsibilities. This is very un-Shane-like for you. You are a good son. You are—"

He leaned in before he finished, close enough that Shane could feel the warmth of his breath against his mouth, close enough to catch the tiny gold flecks in his eyes and the scar above his eyebrow and the dark, blown-wide pupils that always made Shane feel like something in him had been specifically selected for destruction.

"—very distracted," Shane finished quietly.

Ilya smiled like that was exactly the answer he’d wanted. “Da. Is one of my best qualities.”

“Your best quality is being annoying.”

“No,” Ilya said, his mouth twitching. “My best quality is being beautiful. This is known.”

Shane kissed him before he could say anything more.

It wasn’t gentle, not really. Not because Shane meant for it to be rough, but because the moment his mouth touched Ilya’s, something in him gave way all over again. Ilya made a pleased sound low in his throat and kissed him back immediately, one hand settling at Shane’s waist and the other bracing beside his hip, and Shane had the stupid, disorienting thought that he was never going to get used to this—to being wanted so openly by the person he had wanted most in the world for so long.

The light in the room had gone thick and golden, turning everything softer around the edges, and still Shane felt overexposed under it, like the entire afternoon had narrowed to the shape of Ilya over him and the heat of his mouth and the unbearable knowledge that this was not stolen anymore. This was not a hotel room and a lie and a deadline. This was not a few desperate hours between flights and games and pretending. And suddenly Shane couldn't remember why he was supposed to get dressed, why he needed to exist outside of this moment, away from this man. But he made the effort anyway, because he was supposed to be good, to be responsible.

“Shit,” Shane muttered against Ilya’s mouth, because apparently even in the middle of actively making bad decisions he still had enough self-awareness left to feel guilty about it. “I really do need to go to the hospital.”

“Mhm,” Ilya said, like he was listening, though his mouth had already shifted to Shane’s jaw.

“And you need to go to Boston.” He continued, like he wasn’t the one to initiate all of this.

“Terrible situation,” Ilya murmured against his skin.

“You have practice.”

“Tragic.”

“We have a game in two days.” Ilya pressed a slow kiss just beneath his ear and Shane’s eyes fluttered shut before he could stop them. “Fuck. Stop doing that.”

“You don’t sound convincing,” Ilya said.

His hand slid under the hem of Shane’s shirt then, broad palm flattening against his stomach, and Shane’s entire body reacted at once. His breath caught. His hips twitched upward involuntarily. One of his hands tightened hard in the fabric of the hoodie stretched across Ilya’s shoulders

He lifted his head just enough to look at him properly, and there was something in his expression that made Shane’s pulse jump—something dark and satisfied and patient, like he had just found the exact place to press.

“You want me to go?” he asked.

Shane should say yes. He should be responsible. He should remember that Ilya was supposed to be in Boston, that they were rival captains. Common sense and years of conditioning had taught him exactly how to put everyone else first, how to compartmentalize want until it became manageable, how to survive by starving in controlled portions.

But Ilya was looking at him like he would stay if Shane asked.

Worse, he was looking at him like he wanted Shane to ask.

His hand slid under Shane's shirt, palm flat against his stomach. Warm. Solid. Grounding. It set every nerve on Shane’s body on fired. And fuck it. This man was his boyfriend now. His. And Shane wanted him here. In his bed. In his apartment. By his side, at least for this couple of difficult days.

“No,” Shane heard himself say, his voice rough enough that he almost didn’t recognize it. “No, I don’t want you to go.”

"Good," Ilya's smile was slow, devastatingly dangerous. "Good boy, Shane. Be selfish for once."

That landed somewhere deep, in the oldest and most private part of Shane, in the locked place where all his wanting had lived for years, compressed into something neat and survivable and painfully small. He had spent most of his life trying to be good. Be enough. Be what everyone needed him to be. He had never once taken something for himself without measuring the cost.

And Ilya—infuriating, blunt, impossible Ilya—had never once seemed interested in any of Shane’s rules.

He wanted Shane greedy. He wanted Shane honest. He wanted him with his hands open instead of clenched.

And maybe that was what made this feel so different from every other time they had ever ended up like this, tangled together in a bed with too much history between them and not enough oxygen in the room. It wasn’t only that they were finally together, not just technically, not just in the private grammar they had built for themselves over ten years of bad timing and worse choices. It was that for the first time Shane knew Ilya wasn’t just taking his body because it was there and familiar and easy to want.

He was taking it because he meant to keep everything attached to it.

That thought hit Shane hard enough to make him reckless. He wanted to eat him whole.

He grabbed the front of Ilya’s hoodie with both hands and hauled him down into another kiss. There was no room left in it for hesitation. Shane kissed him like he was trying to answer every year they had wasted. Ilya kissed back like he had been waiting just as long to stop holding himself in check, and the force of it pressed Shane back into the mattress again, breathless and half-dizzy with how quickly everything in him tipped from aching to desperate.

He had kissed Ilya in the dark so many times he could have done it blind. Had memorized the shape of his mouth half-asleep, half-drunk, half-broken open by need. He knew the scrape of stubble at his chin, the way Ilya exhaled through his nose when he was trying not to make noise, the exact point where a kiss turned into something rougher if Shane bit just hard enough.

But daylight changed things.

Or maybe being loved did.

Because this didn’t feel like every other time. It felt bigger than that. It felt exposed. It felt final in a way that made Shane’s whole body hum with adrenaline. Ilya was here in his apartment, in his clothes, in his bed, and Shane didn’t have to pretend this meant less than it did. He didn’t have to act casual afterward. He didn’t have to leave the best parts of himself behind in some anonymous room and then carry on like none of it had touched him.

He could just have this.

He could just have him.

His hand slid up into Ilya’s hair and tightened without thinking, and the sound Ilya made into his mouth—low, involuntary, wrecked enough to go straight through Shane’s ribs—nearly undid him on the spot.

Shane did it again, more deliberately this time, and felt Ilya’s entire body react above him.

“Fuck,” Ilya breathed, and it was not said like a curse so much as an accusation.

Shane should have been embarrassed by how much satisfaction that gave him, but he was too far gone for embarrassment to matter. He was so tired of being careful. So tired of feeling like he had to ration every part of himself, even here, even with Ilya, even in the moments where his body wanted to give up every secret it had ever kept.

God, he wanted skin.

His other hand found the hem of the hoodie and shoved upward impatiently. Ilya pulled back just enough to understand, then stripped it off in one rough motion and tossed it somewhere behind him, and for a second Shane just looked.

He had seen Ilya shirtless a hundred times. More than that. He had traced his shoulders and chest and back in hotel rooms across North America, in dim bathrooms and anonymous beds and all the ugly temporary spaces they had used to pretend this was manageable. He knew the broad lines of him, the scar above his ribs, the tattoo on his chest, the way his body shifted when he laughed, the way his muscles tensed when Shane touched him somewhere he particularly liked.

But there was something almost unbearable about seeing him like this here, in this room, in late-afternoon light, with Shane’s sweatpants hanging low on his hips.

Shane’s sweatpants.

It was such a stupid detail to get stuck on, and yet it made something possessive and hot unfurl inside him all at once.

Ilya caught him staring and smiled with immediate, infuriating self-satisfaction. “You are looking at me like you have plans.”

Shane reached for the waistband of the sweatpants before he could think too hard about what he was doing.

Ilya’s eyebrows lifted.

“Take them off,” Shane said, more roughly than he intended.

That got his full attention. “Very demanding, Hollander”

For one sharp second, Ilya just looked at him, and Shane felt the atmosphere in the room change. Not dramatically, just a slight shift in gravity, a small, dangerous tilt. Then Ilya sat back on his heels and hooked his thumbs into the waistband like he was doing Shane a favor. Slowly. Deliberately.

And Shane nearly lost his mind.

“You could do it faster,” Shane muttered.

Ilya’s mouth twitched. “Could,” he agreed. “Will not.”

“Asshole.”

“You like it.”

The sweatpants hit the floor a second later, and the sight of Ilya there in Shane’s bed, half-undressed and looking unbearably pleased with himself, was enough to make Shane surge upward and kiss him again before his own brain could catch up.

This time Ilya met him with a different kind of force. Not just hunger. Not just heat. Something more possessive than that. Something that felt almost like relief sharpened into urgency.

His hands moved with purpose, not randomness. One curled around the back of Shane’s neck and held him where he wanted him. The other slid down Shane’s side and around his waist, then lower, fingers pressing in hard enough to leave a warning there, as if Ilya needed to make sure Shane stayed exactly where he had put him.

And Shane let him.

That was the thing that felt almost more intimate than the kissing, more than the heat building between them, more than the dizzying physical pull of being wanted by him. Shane let him. Not passively, not because he was frozen or overwhelmed, but because something in him loosened every time Ilya took control with that quiet certainty, every time he made decisions with his hands and expected Shane to trust him enough to follow.

And Shane did trust him. More than anyone. More than was probably reasonable.

Enough to let himself stop performing competence for five fucking minutes. Enough to let himself be held down by the one person who had always seen straight through him anyway.

Ilya’s mouth moved to his throat, and Shane tipped his head back without being asked. He could feel Ilya smile against his skin at that, could feel the pleased little shift of his mouth before his teeth grazed lightly at the spot beneath Shane’s jaw and sent a clean, sharp pulse of heat straight through him.

“Ilya,” Shane said, and it came out thin.

“Again,” Ilya murmured.

Shane swallowed. “Ilya.”

The hand at the back of his neck tightened.

Again.

Shane felt absurdly wrecked by how much that did to him.

Ilya’s hand slid up under his shirt once more, higher this time, fingers spanning his ribs, and Shane’s body gave him the answer before his mouth could. He arched into it immediately, breath stuttering, one knee shifting apart on the bed without conscious permission.

“Off,” Ilya said, tugging lightly at the fabric.

Shane lifted his arms and Ilya stripped the shirt over his head in one smooth motion, then stopped just long enough to look at him.

And looked.

Not in passing. Not distractedly. Not like this was just one more body he’d ever had his hands on. He looked with focus, with possessives, with the kind of direct attention that made Shane feel stripped far beyond the loss of fabric. Shane’s skin went hot under it. He fought the instinct to fold in on himself, to make a joke, to break the intensity of it somehow before it reached too far.

But Ilya's hand came up and caught his jaw before he could turn away.

"No," he said quietly.

Shane's eyes flicked back to his.

"You keep your pretty eyes on me." The words were low and even and impossible to ignore. Not harsh. Not cruel. But unmistakably not a request.

And Shane, whose whole body had been wound tight with too many years of being seen incorrectly or incompletely or not at all, felt something in his chest pull hard enough to hurt. Because Ilya wasn’t looking at him despite his body. He was looking at him like it was a privilege. Like he had been waiting for this. Like there was not a single part of Shane he wanted less once it was fully offered.

“Look at you,” Ilya murmured, his thumb brushing once over Shane’s lower lip. “Look at what I get to have now.”

Shane made a sound before he could stop it, small and humiliating and honest enough that it made Ilya’s expression darken instantly. There was no mockery in it. No meanness. Just want. Just satisfaction. Just that same brutal sincerity Ilya brought to everything he cared about too much to handle gently.

“I’m serious,” he said, when Shane still didn’t answer. “No more hiding with me.”

Something in Shane nearly split open.

He had spent years making himself manageable. Smaller. Quieter. Easier to hold without inconvenience. Even here, even in sex, even with Ilya, there had always been some sliver of him still braced, still waiting for the point where wanting too much would become embarrassing, where his body would become too obvious, where the need in him would stop being something that could be laughed off and start being something ugly and difficult and impossible to disguise.

But Ilya was looking at him like he wanted all of it.

The ugly parts too. Especially those.

“Say it,” Ilya said softly. “Say you are mine.”

Shane's breath came out shaky. "I'm yours."

Ilya’s whole face changed. Then he kissed Shane again, and this time there was no gentleness left anywhere in it.

Shane felt himself go with it instantly.

Ilya kissed like a man who had spent ten years trying not to take too much and had finally decided that was no longer his problem. His hand slid into Shane’s hair and tipped his head exactly where he wanted it. His mouth moved over Shane’s with hungry precision. He shifted them with one decisive movement until Shane was flat on the bed again and Ilya was over him properly, one thigh forcing Shane's knees apart with enough pressure to make Shane's breath hitch embarrassingly hard.

There. That too.

That control. That certainty. That complete lack of apology. Shane loved it so much he almost hated himself for it.

Almost.

Because the truth was that there was relief in it too. Relief in not having to steer. Relief in not having to be the one holding everything together for once. Relief in being known well enough that Ilya could just take over and trust Shane to follow where he was led. And Shane followed.

God, he followed.

He pulled Ilya closer with one hand at his shoulder and dragged his nails lightly down his back with the other, and the response was immediate. Ilya’s whole body tightened. His mouth broke from Shane’s long enough for a low, wrecked sound to escape him, and the noise hit Shane so hard he did it again, harder this time, just to feel the effect of it.

“Fuck,” Ilya said into his throat.

Shane felt a wild, almost dizzying rush of satisfaction. “Yeah?”

Ilya lifted his head. There was something almost feral in his expression now, something hot and focused and just restrained enough to be dangerous.

“Careful,” he said.

Shane should have listened. Instead he smiled—small, shaky, and entirely too pleased with himself—and dragged his nails down Ilya’s back one more time, harder this time, and Ilya arched into him, his whole body curving like a bow drawn tight, and the sound he made—low and guttural, something between a growl and a moan—went straight through Shane like lightning, like fire, like the first time he had ever felt Ilya's hands on him and realized he would never want anyone else.

But that was apparently the wrong choice.

Ilya made another sound somewhere between a groan and a warning, then caught both of Shane’s wrists in one hand and pinned them above his head in a movement so quick and smooth Shane barely processed it before he was there, breath punched out of him, staring up at Ilya with his pulse thundering everywhere at once.

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

Ilya’s mouth brushed his once, not quite a kiss. “You are being very brave today.”

Shane’s entire body lit up.

He could have pulled free if he’d wanted to. Probably. Ilya was stronger, but Shane wasn’t exactly small, and this was not about force in any real sense. It was about permission. It was about being held there because Shane was letting him. Because Shane trusted him. Because Shane liked this enough that the thought alone made heat flood low and fast through his entire body.

And Ilya knew.

Of course he knew.

He always knew.

“Tell me to stop and I stop,” Ilya murmured against his ear, his voice suddenly stripped down to something simpler and more serious beneath the heat.

Shane’s chest tightened.

There was something about that—about being looked at like this and wanted like this and still being asked, still being given the choice, still being trusted with the power to end it at any point—that nearly made him come apart before anything had even happened.

Instead he just looked back and said, because it was the truest thing in his heart, “Don’t.”

Ilya exhaled once through his nose like that answer had cost him something. Then he bent and kissed him again, deep and consuming, while keeping Shane’s wrists held above his head, and Shane made a sound into his mouth that he would have died before making with anyone else.

They stayed like that long enough for Shane to stop thinking in complete sentences. Long enough for his body to dissolve into response. Long enough for the room to shrink down to pressure and heat and breath and the exact places where Ilya touched him.

And that was maybe the strangest part of all—not how intense it was, not even how quickly it built, but how safe it felt inside the intensity. How natural. How terrifyingly easy it was to stop bracing once he understood that Ilya was not going to run away for wanting too much, for needing too openly, for reacting too visibly, for being exactly as gone as he was.

Ilya's mouth found his neck, teeth scraping against the sensitive skin where his jaw met his throat, and Shane's head fell back, his eyes closing, a soft whimper escaping from his lips. Ilya's hand was in his hair, pulling just enough to expose his throat, and his mouth followed, hot and open, trailing down Shane's neck, his collarbone, his chest.

"Ilya," Shane gasped, and his voice was unrecognizable, rough and needy and wanting in a way he had never let himself be. "Ilya, please—"

Ilya's mouth was on his again before he could finish, swallowing the words, and Shane couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything except hold on and feel.

"Tell me what you want," Ilya said against his mouth at one point, his voice wrecked enough that the command barely held together. "Tell me, Shane. I'll give you everything. I'll give you the fucking world."

Shane didn't want the world, didn't need it. The things he wanted were quite more simple, though more difficult to say out loud. Even though Ilya had made the effort to fuck the shame out of him over the years, it was still difficult for him to ask for what he wanted, to be explicit in the same way that Ilya liked to talk when they were like this.

"You," he said, and his voice cracked. "I want—I want you. I want—" He couldn't find more words, couldn't find anything except the heat of Ilya's body against his, the weight of him, the rightness of him.

"Good," Ilya said, and his voice was a growl, low and possessive and hungry. Ilya was usually more demanding, not giving Shane what he wanted until he asked for it properly, but he wasn't going to be mean right now, not when they both were so raw, so vulnerable and with all the love they felt for the other at the surface of their skin. "Good boy. You get what you want now, Shane. You deserve it. Such a good boy for asking. So strong. So pretty."

He trailed kisses all over Shane's chest and collarbone as he spoke, each word punctuated by the warmth of his mouth, the flick of his tongue, the gentle scrape of his teeth. Ilya shifted his weight, settling more fully between Shane's thighs, and Shane's legs fell open around him without thought, without permission, his body moving on instinct to make space for Ilya to press closer. The friction of skin against skin, the heat of Ilya's body against his, the way Ilya's hips rolled forward just enough to make them both gasp—it was almost too much.

Ilya's hands moved down Shane's sides, fingers pressing into his hips, thumbs tracing the sharp jut of bone there, and then lower, hooking into the waistband of his boxers. He pulled them down slowly, deliberately, and Shane lifted his hips without being asked, desperate to feel skin against skin, to feel Ilya against him with nothing left between them. The boxers joined the rest of their clothes somewhere on the floor, and then Ilya was there, pressed against him, nothing but the thin fabric of his own boxers between them.

Shane's hands came up to grip Ilya's shoulders, his nails digging in as Ilya rolled his hips again, the friction sending sparks up his spine. Ilya's mouth found his again, kissing him deep and slow, and Shane let himself drown in it, let himself be consumed by the heat and the weight and the endless, overwhelming presence of Ilya against him, around him, everywhere.

"You are so beautiful," Ilya murmured against his lips, his voice thick with want. "You have no idea what you do to me. What you have always done to me. Every time I saw you across the ice, every time I watched you skate, every time I had to pretend I didn't want to put my hands on you—"

Shane whimpered, his hips bucking up against Ilya's, seeking more friction, more pressure, more of anything Ilya was willing to give him. "Ilya—"

"I know," Ilya said, his hand sliding down Shane's side, his fingers tracing the line of his hip, his thigh, the sensitive skin of his inner leg. "I know, solnyshko. I've got you. You're doing so well for me. Just let go. I've got you."

Ilya's hips pressed forward, his thigh sliding between Shane's legs, and Shane's whole body arched into the contact, a broken sound falling from his lips. Ilya's hand was on his face again, tilting his head back, exposing his throat, and his mouth followed, teeth grazing against the sensitive skin, tongue soothing the sting.

"So responsive," Ilya breathed against his skin. "So perfect. You are so perfect, Shane. Every sound you make—every time you move—fuck—"

Shane's hands fisted in Ilya's hair, pulling him back up, needing his mouth, needing to taste him, to feel him. Ilya went willingly, kissing him hard and deep, and Shane's legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer, pressing them together until there was no space left at all. The heat between them was unbearable, the pressure building in his stomach coiling tighter and tighter with every movement of Ilya's hips, every stroke of his tongue, every word of praise that fell from his lips.

"Look at you," Ilya said, pulling back just enough to watch him. "So open for me. So good. You are taking this so well, Shane. Just let it happen. I have you. You are safe. You are so good for me."

Shane's mind was hazy, the edges of the world blurring into nothing but the heat of Ilya's body, the sound of his voice, the endless string of praise that was pulling him apart and putting him back together at the same time. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but hold on and let Ilya take him apart piece by piece.

"You are so good," Ilya murmured, his hand sliding down Shane's chest, his fingers wrapping around both of them, and Shane sobbed, his hips bucking into the contact. "So good for me. So perfect. You are everything, Shane. Everything."

The praise washed over him, each word sinking into his skin, filling the hollow spaces he had carried for so long. He was good. He was perfect. He was everything. And Ilya was the one saying it, was the one holding him, was the one who had crossed borders and broken rules and driven through the night just to be here, just to tell him that he was worth it just to be by his side.

"That's it," Ilya said, his voice low and steady, his rhythm relentless. "Let go for me. I've got you. I'm not going anywhere. You are mine, Shane. And I am yours. Forever."

Shane came with Ilya's name on his lips, his body arching off the bed, his hands fisted in Ilya's hair, it broke hard enough that Shane’s first coherent thought afterward was that he had probably just embarrassed himself beyond recovery.

His second was that he did not care.

Because Ilya followed him a moment later, his voice breaking on Shane's name, his forehead pressed against Shane's shoulder, and he sounded just as gone, just as wrecked, and the look on his face when he finally lowered himself down fully over Shane—boneless for once, all the impossible tension drained out of him in the aftermath—was so open and satisfied and quietly stunned that Shane felt something in his chest soften almost painfully around it.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. The room was quiet except for the sound of their breathing, the soft rustle of sheets, the distant hum of the city outside. Ilya's weight was warm and solid against him, his heart beating against Shane's chest, and Shane's arms came up to wrap around him, holding him there, not wanting him to move, not ever wanting to let go.

Ilya’s face was turned into the side of Shane’s neck, his breath warm and uneven against Shane’s skin. One of his arms was still around Shane’s waist. The other was tucked under him somewhere. Their legs were tangled. Their bodies were warm and damp and heavy in the way that always felt strangely more intimate than anything that came before it.

The room had gone quieter around them. Shane stared at the ceiling for a second, trying to gather himself back into something recognizable. And then he realized, with a kind of slow shock, that he didn’t feel wrong.

Didn’t feel guilty. Didn’t feel embarrassed. Didn’t feel that familiar, immediate recoil after want had been answered — that strange, old emptiness that usually opened up inside him the second everything was over, as if his body had been briefly convinced it could be filled and then remembered the truth.

In its place there was only warmth.

Weight.

A fullness so unfamiliar it almost made him emotional on the spot.

He swallowed hard, tightening his arms around Ilya on instinct. Ilya must have felt the shift in him, because he lifted his head slightly and looked at him, his expression still hazy around the edges but attentive in the center, as if even half-wrecked he was incapable of not noticing Shane.

“What?” he asked quietly.

Shane shook his head against the pillow.

Ilya narrowed his eyes. “Shane.”

He should have made a joke. He should have said nothing. He should have let the moment pass before he ruined it by saying something too earnest and too naked and too difficult to take back. Instead, because apparently today was the day he was going to let Ilya see all of him whether he survived it or not, he said the truth.

“I don’t feel empty anymore.”

Ilya went still. The expression that crossed his face then was so naked, so devastatingly tender, that Shane almost regretted saying it only because he did not know what to do with being looked at like that. Like he had just handed Ilya something breakable. Like Ilya would kill to keep it safe.

“Oh,” Ilya said. And then, with a gentleness that felt almost obscene after everything else, he lifted one hand and cupped the side of Shane’s face. “Oh, solnyshko.”

Shane didn't know what that meant, but it wasn't important, it was the tone Ilya used that undid him most of all. Because this was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? Not only the heat and the hunger and the relief of finally being touched the way he had always wanted to be touched by this man. But this too. The aftermath. The staying. The softness that didn’t ask him to earn it first.

He felt his face heat almost immediately. “Sorry, that sounded insane.”

“No,” Ilya said. His voice was so soft it made Shane’s throat tighten. “No, it did not.”

Ilya looked at him for another second, his thumb brushing once under Shane’s cheekbone, and then leaned down and kissed his forehead like he was trying not to say something too large out loud.

Shane closed his eyes, let his arms tighten even more around Ilya, pulling him closer until there was no space left between them at all, and Ilya came without resistance, settling against him like he belonged there, like this had always been the shape they had both been moving toward even when they were too stupid to admit it.

For the entirety of his life, Shane had been reaching. Reaching for a version of himself that was easier to love, smaller, quieter, more manageable. Reaching for the perfect son, the perfect captain, the perfect face to show the world. Reaching for the hunger he had learned to live with—the one he was born with. The hunger for food he wouldn't let himself eat, for rest he wouldn't let himself take, for the boy he wouldn't let himself want. He had spent so long convincing himself that wanting was dangerous, that needing was weakness, that the only way to survive was to fold himself smaller and smaller until he fit into spaces that were never built for him.

He had starved himself of everything that wasn't necessary. Everything that wasn't safe. Everything that might make him one thing too many, one difference too far, one failure too much to forgive.

And Ilya—impossible, caring, relentless Ilya—had refused to let him.

Ilya had looked at all the broken, hungry, folded-up parts of him and said I want all of them. Had asked him in Russian, in the language he said his first words, in the language he yelled at his brother, in the language that represents all of his complicated feelings for his home, to be his boyfriend. Had taken him apart with praise and patience and hands that never asked him to be anything other than what he was.

And Shane, who had spent his whole life translating himself into a language other people could understand, creating masks and versions of himself for every person and every occasion, had finally found a place to rest, a safe corner in a world that would eat you alive if you let it.

He lay there with the fading gold light on the bed and Ilya half on top of him, his own pulse finally beginning to slow, and he felt something he had never let himself feel before. Not just the warmth of Ilya's skin against his, not just the weight of him, not just the steady rhythm of his breathing. Something deeper. Something that had been waiting for him all along, buried beneath years of control and perfection and the desperate, constant effort of being enough.

For the first time in what felt like his entire life, he did not feel like he was reaching for something just out of his grasp. For the first time, he did not feel like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the hunger to return and remind him that he was not allowed to be full.

He pressed his face into Ilya's hair and let the tears come, from the overwhelming, terrifying, beautiful weight of being loved just by being completely and unapologetically himself.

Ilya stirred against him, his hand moving to press flat against Shane's chest, right over his heart. "You are crying again," he murmured, his voice thick with tiredness.

Shane smiled into his hair. "I know."

"Is happy crying? Or sad crying?"

Shane thought about the years of hunger, the ten years of hiding—even from himself—the ten years of folding himself smaller and smaller. About all the people who loved him, who would probably still love him even if he showed them all the parts of himself he had kept hidden. He thought about his mother, and how terrified he still was of telling her the truth. But Ilya made him brave. Ilya made him feel worthy, secure even facing the unknown. With Ilya by his side, the world felt a little less scary, a little more accepting.

"Happy," he said. "It's happy crying."

Ilya lifted his head just enough to look at him. His eyes were half-lidded, his hair a mess, his lips red and swollen, his cheeks still flushed. Shane was pretty sure he was the love of his life.

For a long moment, Ilya just looked at him, as if making sure he was telling the truth. Then he smiled—the smile that had always been only for him.

"Good," he murmured, and lowered his head again, pressing his face into the curve of Shane's neck, his breath warm and steady against his skin. "Is good."

Shane held him there, in the quiet of his apartment, in the fading gold light of the late afternoon, not caring about his responsibilities, not caring that he was supposed to call his dad, to text Hayden, to go to the hospital and be with his mom. Not caring about his routines and diets and structures. For just this small second, he let himself grab what he wanted. He let himself hold on to the man he loved. He let himself be full.

Chapter End Notes

I honestly thought that the author's curse was like, a joke, and then I published my first fic and then my dad got cancer and like three people in my family died and my anxiety and depression skyrocketed???? So I guess it's very much real. But well, I do love to write even when it stresses me out (this is supposed to be my hobby btw), and it's a really good distraction too.

This was my first time writing sex, so it is what it is. I'm really sorry if it's not enough or if it feels cringey, but I felt this scene was essential for their characters. As uncomfortable as I may be writing it (only because I've never done it before lol), this is the most important language they have. And the way they have sex here is a reflection of what they're finally letting themselves have, so narratively speaking, it was kinda a necessity.

Also, I have absolutely no idea about Russian. Like, none. I prayed to God that what I wrote made sense and sounded normal. What it was meant to say was something like this:

"I have loved you for ten years. Ten whole years. And believe me, I tried to fight it. I tried not to love you. I tried to forget you. I tried to convince myself that one day it would fade, that I would wake up and you would no longer be under my skin, no longer living in every part of me.

But you never disappeared. I still thought about you. I still searched for you without meaning to, still found myself returning to you again and again, even when I was doing everything I could to stay away. Every night, every game, every goddamn day—you were there. In my mind. In my heart. In every breath I took.

And I don't want to hide anymore. I don't want to keep pretending there's nothing between us. I don't want these borrowed rooms, these secrets, this half-lived version of a life. I want you—truly, fully, openly. I don't want to keep going back to Russia feeling like I've left the most important part of myself behind here with you. It will always be my homeland, but you… you are my home. And every time I left, every time I came back from there, I came back broken—like I had to teach myself how to breathe without you all over again. I don't want that anymore.

I want back every year we wasted. I want all that lost time, if I could have it. But since I can't, then I want everything we still have left. All of it. I want to be yours. Truly. Completely. For as long as I'm allowed to.

I have never loved anyone the way I love you. Never. And I want all the things I never wanted with anyone else. I want to wake up next to you. I want to make you breakfast. I want to stay home with you and watch tv instead of going out. I want to argue with you about stupid things and then make up by kissing you. I want to hold your hand where everyone can see. I want to kiss you every morning and taste your tea on your lips for the rest of my life. I want all of it—the ordinary, quiet, domestic things that would never be ordinary if they were with you.

I want you to teach me what it means to have a family. A real one. The kind where no one has to walk on eggshells. The kind where doors don't slam and people don't leave. The kind where we simply… stay.

So I'm asking you now the way I should have asked a long time ago. Properly. With all of it—the breakfast in bed, the ridiculous romance, the whole thing.

Shane Hollander… will you be my boyfriend?"

If anyone actually speaks Russian and reads this, please correct me. I'm begging.

ANYWAYS, let's hope that it doesn't take me fucking forever to write the last chapter. See you then, and have a nice and beautiful day!!