If he’d had any time to think about it, Ilya would have kissed him.

He could have kissed him one last time and passed it off as an attempt at resuscitation, as doing what he could in the heat of the moment to help his fallen rival. Mouth to mouth.

Kiss of life.

Probably it would have made everything even harder, but Ilya would do it, if he could choose again.

But then, if he could choose, if he could change anything, he’d bargain with the god his mother believed in, trade places with Shane and send himself head-first into the boards.

But it happened how it happened, and there was no time to think about it. There were only Shane’s eyes, open and unseeing, and Ilya on his knees on the ice, the shocked hush of the arena around them. Ilya ripped off his glove and pressed his palm to Shane’s cheek, and Shane gasped back to life just in time for the medics to shove Ilya out of the way.

✶

Hi, this is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail.

“Um, it’s. I don’t know what to say.

“Even if we can’t be – together, I still. Ilya, I still –”

✶

Ilya visited him in the hospital. He owed him that much.

Concussion and a fractured collarbone, out for the playoffs. Pale and bruised under his freckles, but alive, alive, alive. Smiling at Ilya, reaching for him sweet and woozy.

He couldn’t get too near the bed, couldn’t risk it. Hovering near the door, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat, he said, “Do you remember, I told you about my mother?”

Shane nodded slowly, frowning. Ilya hoped he was lucid enough to understand, because he wasn’t going to be able to do this again.

“When she died, I found her. It would have been – a few hours, already. She was gone. I knew she was, her lips were blue. But I touched her. I was shaking, trying to wake her up, and she did wake up. She came back.

“And I run for help, they take her in the ambulance, and I see her again in the hospital. And she looks tired but she is happy to see me, and she says, Come here, Ilyusha, give me a kiss.”

He couldn’t look at Shane while he said this. He looked instead at the heart monitor, its steady blips. Alive, alive, alive.

“And I do it, I kiss her, but as soon as I do. She is dead again, cold. And this time she didn’t come back. So that is how I learn I have this… thing. This power, with the dead. One touch, I bring them back. Another touch, gone again, forever.”

He made himself look at Shane again, and Shane looked back at him, those big, clear eyes. Ilya could see him, trying to turn it over in his head, before he finally asked, “How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“Oh,” Shane said, very softly. “That’s – I’m so sorry, Ilya.”

Ilya steeled himself. “Have you seen the hit? Did they tell you?”

“No, I didn’t – I’m not supposed to look at screens. Was it – bad?”

Yeah, it was bad. “You broke your neck, Shane. When you hit the boards like that. And you were gone. And I was there, and I, I had to –”

“What are you saying?” Ilya could hear the edge of panic in his voice, could see it starting to dawn on him. “You mean, we can’t? You can’t – touch me?”

And Ilya said, clearly, so that Shane would understand, “No, we can’t ever.”

He felt it in his ribcage, the way Shane’s face crumpled. "Okay," Shane said, and then, “You should have left me there. Oh, Jesus, you should have –”

Ilya shook his head, tried to smile, to soften it. “I couldn’t do that, Hollander.”

He wasn’t looking at Ilya now, tears starting to spill down his cheeks. Those freckles. Ilya could see them with his eyes closed.

“You shouldn’t – you shouldn’t –” and Shane couldn’t finish, but it was all over, anyway.

✶

Hi, this is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail.

“I keep checking my phone. I know it’s stupid. It’s been months.

“And why would you, if you can’t. Touch me.

“But there’s other, we could do other stuff. I think about it. Lily.

“You’re not going to hear this, are you?”

✶

“Los Angeles, really? Really, Rozanov?

“You’re fucking – running scared. Fucking pussy.

“Twice a year, maybe. Yeah, alright. Fuck you, too.”

✶

“You know, there’s apps. Like, for toys. Plugs, or. Vibrators.

“You can control them, from the app. Remotely, I think you can –

“You wouldn’t have to see me, I know you don’t. Want that.”

✶

“I fucked someone. A guy. It wasn’t –

“If it was someone else, but you were telling me what to do. Like, you were watching, from a chair, or.

“If I called you. You would be in my ear, you could tell me. Please, just. Tell me what to do.”

✶

“Sometimes, when there’s weather in Montreal, I check and see what it’s like where you are. If it’s raining, or snowing.

“It never is, obviously. It’s always warm. And that’s… I’m glad you’re warm.”

✶

“So, this one’s for you, I guess.

“The other times, I thought about you. Like the first one, when I had it in my hands and I lifted it over my head, I was wondering if I was holding it like you held it. If I kissed it in the same place you kissed it. That night in Vegas, what you said. Indescribable, Hollander. Sorry for the accent.

“And then the second time, I only wanted to talk to you about it. I was messaging you from the locker room, for Christ’s sake. I got champagne all over my phone.

“But I know I only have this because of what you did for me. And I never said thank you.

“And I try, I do try to be grateful, but I just, I don’t know if it was worth it.”

✶

Ilya will never play in the All-Star Game again, or attend the MLH awards. He will fake illness or injury twice a year, when Los Angeles is scheduled against Montreal, and he will do this every year until he retires.

He will never message Jane again, and he will never change his phone number.

And he wouldn’t take any of it back, except he would have maybe kissed him on the ice, one last time.

✶

Hi, this is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail.

“I’m sorry about my last message. If you heard it. That was – it’s just hard, sometimes.

“I’ve been trying to look at it from your side. I was never very good at knowing what you were thinking, but. If it was the other way around.

“If you were dead, and there was a way I could bring you back, I would do it. I wouldn’t hesitate. If I could save you, even if it meant losing you for good, I. I would want you in the world, Ilya. To know that you were okay. So I think –

“Because you loved me, right? I think you must have loved me. Like I love you.”

✶