Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov & Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Rose Landry, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Episode: s01e04 Rose (Heated Rivalry), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Grief/Mourning, Mortality, Non-Linear Narrative, Introspection, Character Study, Humor, Complicated Relationships, Accidental Suicide Attempts, Ilya Rozanov-centric, Suicidal Thoughts, in case you couldn't tell. this is a fic about suicide

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-11 Words: 7,286 Chapters: 1/1

plausibly deniable (whoops)

Summary

In which Shane makes the headlines, Ilya has a history of terrible bedside manners, and the line between murder and manslaughter is the razor thin edge of intent. 

Notes

Hey uh mind the tags. Also I played it fast and loose with the medical stuff, did a bit of cursory reading on the post-Soviet Union stuff, and did way too much research into Russian minor hockey leagues in the 2000's. If I got shit wrong, my bad. If this fic reads as really weird and all over the place, that's the point. I wrote this while shooting from the hip.

if u see any grammatical errors. well. whoops.

Of all the days for the Raiders jet to need emergency maintenance, this had to be the worst possible choice.

Ilya is hungover and miserable and horny, kind of, even after he beat off twice in the shower the night before. He's horny because Rose Landry is objectively hot and she recently did a Calvin Klein ad. She has this big, wide eyes that are all sweet and innocent. She looks at the camera over her shoulder, her ass wonderfully plush in her navy blue panties, and Ilya crosses his legs.

If the Raiders jet was fixed, then Ilya could've comfortably had a boner in front of all of his teammates. They would've ribbed the shit out of him for it, sure, and would've gone on to absolutely slaughter him when they realized he was getting a boner over Shane Hollander's movie star girlfriend. Ilya would welcome anything right now. He'd appreciate getting hit by a fucking car.

But there's nothing at airports except for waiting. So Ilya is left to look at Rose Landry's wonderful ass, and wonder how Hollander's handprints would look on her skin. If Hollander would be good at fucking into her hole. If Hollander would look down at her hips the way he looked up at Ilya's cock, wide-eyed and reverent and drooling.

Ilya swipes. Rose Landry's sitting on a windowsill in a boring blue bra. Hollander had briefs the same colour. Not the ones he left at Ilya's place. Maybe the ones he wore last night, when he looked at Ilya like his heart was breaking, and then home to fuck his movie star girlfriend.

Meanwhile Ilya was used for some guy's cuckoldry kink and he didn't even get any pussy out of it.

Ilya exhales through his nose and turns off his phone, trying to ignore the quiet thoughts whispering in the back of his mind. Another flight has been cancelled. A big flight at a nearby gate, the crowd of waiting passengers audibly groaning with upset and dismay at the announcement. Good, Ilya thinks, spiteful and vindictive. Let other people be as miserable as he is, hungover and half-hard and haunted by the open heartbreak in Hollander's eyes.

Did Hollander look at Rose Landry's perfect ass like that? Did he look at her perky tits and wet cunt the way he looked at Ilya's tongue in that blonde girl's mouth? What did Rose Landry think when she turned back to look at him, to whisper something flirty and sweet, to ogle at his glistening abs and dark nipples, only to find that wretched pain on Hollander's face?

Did she cum as hard as Ilya did? Did she call him Shane?

Did Hollander run away?

Ilya tears his eyes open and yanks himself out of his thoughts. He pulls out his phone and doesn't open Rose Landry's Instagram. He's trying to silence the voice, not give that bastard more to talk about. He opens twitter instead. He wants to see a celebrity that he's never heard of being attacked for an innocuous opinion. He wants to see something that doesn't matter so that he can get out of this fucking city already.

Of course, their zone gets announced right as Ilya reads, Rose Landry's Alleged Boyfriend Confirmed Stable After Possible Su–

A cup of coffee taps his shoulder. "Did you get any sleep last night?" Marleau asks, grinning until he sees what's on Ilya's screen. The smile slides off his face into something pinched and uncomfortable. "God. I know, right?"

"No," Ilya says. He takes the coffee. Takes a sip. It's black, because that's the only kind of coffee he trusts in airports. It mixes horribly with the taste of metal in his mouth. "I don't know. I just saw."

Marleau blinks. "Really?" Connors is impatiently hovering nearby. He and Ilya sit together on commercial flights, because Connors has some of the dumbest fucking superstitions in the whole goddamn league and Ilya is implicated in them. Marleau ignores Connors' pointed huffing and tells Ilya, "You were mean-mugging that phone so hard."

"Marly," Ilya says. He's breathing through his teeth.

St. Simone saunters up, taking his bag from the seat next to Ilya. "Thanks for watching this for me," he says first, because he's a fucking Canadian. Then wipes his wet hands on the pants, glances at Ilya's phone and goes, "Oh shit. We talking about Hollander's overdose?"

Overdose. Ilya wants to repeat it. He wants to splutter incredulously. He wants a laugh track to cut in over his reaction, the way it does on the stupid American sitcoms he watched to try and learn English. Friends. Full House. Cheers.

"Alleged overdose, according to TMZ," Connors loudly clarifies. He's talking way too loud. He wants them to be embarrassed by how loud he's being about something so delicate, wants them to be genuinely afraid that he's going to get them all killed by a rabid Voyageurs fan who overhears their conversation. That's why he fucking announces, "I didn't think that ol' capitaine was the type to kill himself."

It works on St. Simone. He starts rushing over, snapping, "Jesus Christ Connie, can you keep it down?"

"Can you fucking clowns get in line already? All the rooks are already on board, but you old fucks are dragging your feet!"

Hardly anyone hears Ilya grind out, "Hollander tried to kill himself?"

"I mean, we don't know," Marleau hums, his forehead all twisted up with concern. "But someone filmed him when they were putting him in the ambulance, and Rose Landry was sobbing as she was getting in the back too, and you can hear her say that she found him in the bathroo–"

It's a good thing that Ilya hadn't managed to eat anything since yesterday's lunch. When he retches all over Marleau's shoes, all that comes up is bile. Whoops.

//

Ilya found Mama. Alexei found Ilya.

He already hated Ilya back then, but it was a regular sort of hate. This hate was because Ilya could play hockey and Alexei couldn't, and Alexei was doomed to follow the footsteps of a man who couldn't care less about him.

It wasn't hatred that stopped Alexei from being a good brother, which he was, at least back then. He was a very good brother. Ilya spent more of his life knowing Alexei as someone good than someone bad. He shoved Ilya into snowbanks and goaded Ilya into stealing shots of their father's vodka and didn't tell anyone when he caught Ilya trying to sneak out of the house. Alexei hated Ilya, yes, but his hatred didn't have a coke habit. His hatred didn't know that Ilya was a faggot.

When Alexei found Ilya sitting in silence at their mother's bedside, he froze, then swore, then stormed over and grabbed Ilya by the wrist to pull him out of the room. Ilya let himself be dragged away, unable to look away from Mama's face. She was pale, and still, and she might've been smiling.

In the hand that Alexei wasn't close to breaking, Ilya clutched Mama's crucifix. He woke up with it under his pillow. That was what told him that something was wrong.

"Father will say it's an accident," Alexei told him.

Ilya said nothing at first. He eventually murmured, "There was an empty bottle of pills."

Painkillers. The prescription was from three years ago. How long had she been hiding them? Was she waiting for a chance, or had she been trying not to give in? Did Mama get what she wanted, or did she lose a desperate fight?

Alexei shook his head. "Then she took them by accident."

He was whispering. He smelt like liquor and what Ilya would later learn was the scent of sex. He hadn't been home in four days. Ilya would never learn where Alexei was in the hours before their mother's death. He never learned how Alexei knew exactly what their father would say.

//

Montréal has put out a statement by the time they land back in Boston. Ilya doesn't read it until he's sitting at Gate A49. It's a whole lot of words to say, we're not saying shit except that he's alive. Anything you think you saw, you didn't. Stay out of it.

Montréal's had a bad habit of revealing too much in the past. Overexplaining absences in ways that implicated the players. Responding to inconsequential rumours with a ferocity that only brought more speculation. Ilya doesn't know if it's a problem with Montréal's franchise or Montréal's fans. The latter are certainly interested in Hollander's situation.

After a loss like last night's, I would kill myself too, one of them has said on twitter. Inexplicably, the first reply is from someone with Rose Landry's profile pic saying, well he didn't have to traumatize his girlfriend in the process.

Ilya scrolls. Someone has replied with photos from the club. Hollander staring into the middle distance as two gorgeous movie stars grind on him, feeling up under his shirt, kissing the back of his neck. Gay panic, maybe? Someone has replied, One hell of a panic.

More photos. Hollander at the bar, face twisted and an empty shot glass pulled away from his mouth. Rose Landry hangs off his arm and laughs. More of her friends are cheering him on, pushing drinks over to Hollander, liquor spilling over and staining his shirt. The suicide is all speculation. Could be alcohol poisoning.

This reply is from someone with an Ariana Grande profile picture. They have twenty-eight replies, and each one of them is a hockey fan saying some variation of, suicide is more likely than Shane Hollander drinking himself to death.

Well, no. There's one reply that says, does no one think that this kind of speculation is super fucked up?

"Roz." Ilya looks up and finds Hammersmith. His mother's cancer got worse, so he's using their four day break between games to fly home. His flight is at Gate A46. In twenty minutes, they'll be boarding to Calgary.

Ilya's is in an hour. Hammersmith is looking at him like Ilya's the one with someone to lose. 

Ilya shakes his head. "Had one before the flight," he explains, instead of saying, I already feel like I'm going to throw up.

Hammersmith frowns. "Ah." His frown deepens, and then he asks, "Do you have anyone coming to pick up your car?"

"Sveta," Ilya explains. Hammersmith nods but his frown remains just as deep. Ilya swallows. He's the captain, so he forces himself to say, "You can ask."

Hammersmith scans Ilya's face for a moment. He's a defenceman. He got traded from Las Vegas two years back, where they kept trying to make him be an enforcer, and he's been very happy to be padding for the third line here in Boston. He's one of those solid, consistent players. Doesn't score much, but he's great for rounding out their penalty kill.

He asks, "How much did your ticket cost?"

Ilya blinks, and then manages to huff out a ghost of a laugh. "Too much."

Hammersmith nods, unsmiling. He's a quiet, serious guy. "The other guys will probably figure it out."

"They won't." Ilya knows this. Ilya threw up on Marleau's feet and all they did was chirp him for his hangover. They're hockey players. They'll sooner believe that Ilya is flying all the way back to Boston to buy a pack of smokes than speculate that he's going back because of Shane Hollander. Hammersmith would probably believe the same thing, if his mother's cancer didn't take a sharp turn for the worse two months ago.

Ilya also believed that Shane Hollander was more likely to get alcohol poisoning than kill himself, even with his mother's cross resting in his clavicle.

An Air Canada flight to Calgary announces its pre-boarding. Hammersmith grimaces. "I hate planes. And hospitals. Back to back torture for me."

Ilya peers at him. "Why did you not book a direct flight from Montréal?"

Hammersmith shrugs. "For some reason, it was cheaper to do a layover here."

Reflexively, Ilya chirps, "You take up too much of our cap to be talking about cheap."

"Maybe you should be more frugal, Roz," Hammersmith fires back. Ilya does not know that word, but Hammersmith quickly provides its definition. "Could've saved a lot of money yourself if you didn't get on that plane."

"Go fuck yourself," Ilya snorts, and Hammersmith tilts his head and lines up to board.

Ilya's phone is hot in his hand. He keeps forgetting to turn auto-sleep back on. Whoops. When he turns it over in his palm, he's lost ten percent of his battery, and he's still looking at that person's plea: does no one think that this kind of speculation is super fucked up?

He swallows, turns his phone off, and shoves it in his pocket.

//

Ilya played three years of major league Russian hockey before being drafted into the MLH. Two in the Russian Superleague, and one in the Kontinental Hockey League.

The first season of KHL hockey was Ilya's last season playing on a Russian team. He didn't particularly enjoy it, even if it was more similar to the MLH's season structure that Ilya would go on to play in. The KHL had four more teams than the RSL, three of them being international, and one of those three being in Ilya's division. That meant that for his last season as a wholly Russian player, Ilya spent two games in Belarus, one game in Latvia, and one in Kazakhstan.

That meant that Ilya was in fucking Minsk when Alexei's heart stopped for six minutes. Ilya didn't even know that anything had happened until he had gotten off the plane and found his step-mother waiting for him at Arrivals.

She did not greet him with anything other than the facts; "Your brother is in the hospital."

Ilya stared at her for a long moment. "Okay?" he said. He was not jet lagged. It took an hour and a half to fly from Minsk to Moscow. "Then let's fucking go."

"Ilya," she said—Polina had never tried to use diminutives on his name. She did not treat him fondly, but at the very least, she was kind. "He wants to see you."

The first thing that Alexei said when Ilya entered his room was, "Damn. She actually got you to come."

His lip was split and his face was black and blue. There was something off about his voice, the set of his eyes, the way his hands were laced in his lap, the way his gown was loose on his body. Ilya couldn't bring himself to try to identify it. 

"Did you use my money?" he blurted. Alexei hummed and tilted his head. "Did you use my fucking money to try to kill yourself?"

Alexei scoffed. "I did not try to kill myself."

Ilya's voice raised. "They found you with fucking fentanyl in your system–!"

"It was a party," Alexei groaned. "I got in a fight, a hot girl offered me drugs so I took them. Not a cent of your money wasted, Ilyu'kha."

The last time Alexei had called him that, they were boys. Alexei would still knock on the wall to warn him when their father was coming. Alexei hadn't caught Ilya with his tongue down Sasha's throat. Alexei hadn't been using Ilya's secret to fund his sex, his liquor, his coke.

This was not his brother, Ilya decided with numb certainty. This was a body exhumed. That was why Alexei's face was pale and his eyes were soft. That was why Ilya wanted to kneel by his bedside and wait for rigor mortis to set in.

He didn't, because he knew that Polina wouldn't come and drag him away.

Alexei took it upon himself to fill the silence. "Did you win your game?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Oh, look at you, Captain," Alexei grinned, slanted and vaguely cruel.

If it was meant to hurt Ilya, it failed. It confused him. It terrified him. He never told Alexei that he was named captain of a pro team at the age of fucking seventeen. He couldn't take any pride in it. He knew that they only gave it to him to try and get him to stay in Russia.

They thought that they could ply their superstar away from the MLH with promises of power. They didn't know that Ilya's mind had been made up the day his brother found him at his mother's bedside.

Ilya thought that Alexei stopped caring about hockey after he got pulled out of hockey school. He didn't know what to do with the cadaver smiling up at him.

"Has Father visited?" Ilya asked.

Alexei's lips didn't twitch. "He will once he knows that you're here, Ilyu'kha."

Ilya turned around and left. He waited for Alexei's laughter to follow. It didn't. The hallways of the hospital were as still and quiet as a grave.

//

Ilya does not go straight to the hospital from the airport. He is measured and reasonable. He books a room at a hotel nearby, goes and washes off the staleness of two flights, and then sits on his bed and wonders how to figure out how he can get to Hollander.

He knows the hospital. The gossip has had some use, at least. There are photos of Rose Landry rushing from the back door of the hospital to a non-descript black car, her hood pulled low, but not low enough to hide her tear-stained face. Most of the comments are worried, but some of it borders on condescending. There's an absurd number of people wondering if Hollander's parents had her kicked out. Someone is insisting that Rose Landry's friends were the ones to supply the drugs—because now the speculation is that Shane fucking Hollander decided to do drugs at a club.

There have been no updates made about Hollander's condition. Just as it was this morning, he's still stable. He hasn't died yet.

Ilya hopes that Hollander is awake. In the time it took for Ilya to fly from Montréal to Boston and then back again, hoarfrost had settled on all the trees in the city. It was almost beautiful enough to quiet the nausea. He hopes that Hollander has a room with a window.

He closes his eyes and tries to picture it. Hollander against white hospital sheets, the light of a snowy day cast over his face. Hollander's long lashes casting shadows over his freckled cheeks. Hollander's lips pink and wet and parted with shock, with joy, with outrage at seeing Ilya in his doorway.

Hollander's brown eyes, open and dull and dead.

It catches in Ilya's throat. He squeezes his eyes tighter. He forces himself to think about the club. To think about Rose Landry's hand under Hollander's shirt. To think about the open heartbreak in Hollander's eyes. Bright, glassy, and alive.

Catching that expression on Hollander's face sickened Ilya as much as it thrilled him. It made him preen as much as it made him want to bury himself alive. Fuck you, Ilya remembers thinking, just as vindictive as he was despairing. Fuck you for looking at me like you love me, you fucking piece of shit.

Even the memory of it wrenches him open and sets his blood on fire. Even the memory of it makes Ilya want to be six feet underground.

He'd give anything for Hollander to look at him that way again.

His phone vibrates in his hand, listing a number and a Montréal area code. Ilya shouldn't answer, but he does. "Yes?"

"Jackie is friends with Dubek's wife," Hayden Pike says, his voice clipped and tight with fury. "She says that Connors' told his girl that you booked a flight back to Montréal before your plane even fucking landed."

Ilya's jaw works. "How did you get my number?" he eventually manages.

"Fuck you, Lily," Pike scoffs, and Ilya's blood turns to ice in his veins. Guess they weren't careful enough. Whoops. "You couldn't even text him and ask if he was okay between your two fucking flights?"

It'd be prudent to remind Pike of all the additional disasters that could unfurl if the wrong person read Hollander's notifications while he was in the ER. The only thing that Ilya can choke out is, "Can you take me to him?"

There's a long pause. Then, Pike curses. "Fuck. Sure. God, shit! Send me your address."

"Thank you," Ilya murmurs, quiet and contrite.

Pike spits, "Fuck you." His voice hasn't shaken once. He doesn't sound scared or overwhelmed. He doesn't sound like he's been crying. He sounds hateful, and tired, and frustrated.

Ilya is not jet lagged. He stopped feeling hungover hours ago. There's nothing he can use as an excuse when he blurts, "Were you to one to find the body?"

Pike inhales. And then, "I wasn't fucking there, Rozanov."

"Not Hollander's," Ilya replies.

The silence stretches forever before the dial tone comes.

//

Even before the dementia, Ilya's father would have someone give him his medication.

Usually Polina, because he needed to have a reason for marrying her. Rarely Alexei, because he was hardly ever around or remembered. Ilya was asked on occasion, but he'd take it upon himself even when he wasn't.

His father didn't take much. ACE inhibitors for his blood pressure. Atorvastatin for his cholesterol. Vitamins that Polina insisted that he take, even though they all knew that she was the one most eager for him to be put into the ground.

A year before the diagnosis, another bottle joined the collection in the cabinet: citalopram. An anti-depressant, according to google. Ilya stared at it, and then laughed, and then called his father's doctor with numb fingers.

He was told that yes, citalopram was an anti-depressant but no, his father wasn't depressed. He was experiencing symptoms of a panic disorder, apparently. Tight chestedness, agitation, shortness of breath. The citalopram was a low dosage. It made things easier.

That also turned out to be dementia, in the end. The dosage went up when he started wandering, and then back down when it didn't help. A new prescription was added. Brexpiprazole. It left his father sleepless, alone with his confusion into the long hours of the night.

It didn't stop him from wandering. Ilya spent last summer catching the ghostly figure of his father hovering around the corners. Staring vacantly into the middle distance.

"Just let him, Ilya, fuck," Alexei groaned when Ilya called to ask what to do. "You try to stop him and he'll start fucking wailing. Keep the doors locked and the stupid old fuck won't be able to get out."

He sounded exhausted and terrified. Ilya wondered how many times Alexei had tried to stop him before giving up. If Alexei relished the feeling of watching the old man stumble, and then knowingly turning away.

"He could get hurt," Ilya argued. "He could fall, he could break something–"

"Then he should've gone and fucking done it already!" Alexei snapped. "It should've been him, not–"

"Lyoshenka," Ilya whimpered, the same way he would when they were boys, when Alexei was saying that he was going to push Ilya into the lake, and Ilya couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

It wasn't what he wanted to say. He wanted to scream out Alexei's name. He wanted to silence him with those three harsh syllables. He wanted his brother to be scared of him, maybe. He might've even wanted to hear him drop dead.

He heard Alexei's mouth click shut over the phone, and then he heard Alexei laugh. "Don't worry, Ilyushka," he sneered. Ilya flinched. "You'll always be Papa's favourite little faggot."

His father wandered again that night. Ilya watched him walk up to the medicine cupboard and open it. Watched his father's trembling, lesioned hands fumble with the caps of the bottles.

Had they been open, and had Ilya not been there, would his father have exercised a new muscle and taken a pill by himself? Would he have known to stop after one? Or would Ilya have woken up the next morning to find his father's body on the bathroom floor?

He couldn't remember if Mama had been tasked with giving his father his pills before she died, or if the habit came after her accident.

He didn't search his memory for too long. Ilya took his father by the wrist, put the bottles back in the cupboard, and led him back to his bedroom. He laid his father down and sat at the chair by his bed.

He wondered when his father started to look so small.

//

Pike drives an ugly gray minivan with two child seats strapped in the back. His knuckles are white around the steering wheel when Ilya clambers inside. He waits for Ilya to buckle his seatbelt before he says, "My best friend back in high school."

Ilya's breath catches. He sits up a little straighter and lets his eyes slide out the window. "My mother," he offers in turn. He thinks he can see Pike wince in his periphery. "What was his name?"

It takes Pike a very long time to respond. He puts the car into reverse, pulls out of the parking lot, and then merges onto the main road before he whispers, "Ian." It leaves his mouth like a broken tooth. "A week after his seventeenth birthday, he put his dad's shotgun in his mouth."

"Fuck, Pike," Ilya curses, turning to look at him, but Pike is shaking his head. His eyes are dry and a muscle is jumping in his jaw. Ilya swallows and turns away again.

There's another long pause. A left turn. Then, "How old was she?"

"Young." Ilya doesn't let himself think about the number. He can't weather that pain now. "I was twelve. She… she overdosed." He almost has to bite his tongue off, but he doesn't say that it was an accident.

"Jesus," Pike breathes. He rubs the bridge of his nose. He looks haggard. "Yeah, fuck, no wonder you flew right back."

Ilya's mouth runs dry. "Did he?"

Pike shrugs. "I'm not sure that it matters if he did." He's silent, and then he adds, "I went back to his apartment for his phone. I thought about letting Boston Lily know that he was okay. Then Jackie said you were flying back to Montréal, for some reason. That's the only reason I put it together."

"Oh." Ilya manages. It's a reassurance, he thinks. He's not entirely sure what to do with it. He asks, "Is Rose Landry okay?"

"Fuck if I know," Pike mutters. "I kind of fucking hate her right now."

The corner of Ilya's mouth twitches. "For once, Pike, I agree."

Pike doesn't smile back. The muscle in his jaw jumps again.

//

Ilya was born the same year that the Soviet Union died, and it was on its cadaver that he learned to play hockey.

The desolate pond where he learned to skate was the rain-filled socket, emptied of its rotting eye. The rink where he learned to handle the puck had a roof that no one could spare the money to repair; they couldn't practice on rainy days because it would bow inwards like the festering skin of a decomposed body. His coaches were old men with lesioned hands and sunken-in eyes, shambling decompositions of a by-gone era, of a long-dead dynasty.

In Ilya, they saw a saviour, and Ilya did everything in his power to run away.

Russia was built from the bones of the USSR, but Russian hockey never died. Bandied and off-kilter as the nation was, it would not stop Russians from playing hockey, and from being very good at it.

But Russian hockey had been wounded, and no one knew how to staunch the bleeding. Russian players had been chasing American money long before the Soviet Union fell, and the Americans were willing to pay it. The same summer that Ilya was born, the Detroit Red Wings bribed Russian doctors to secure a medical discharge for Vladimir Konstantinov.

Six months later, in November, when Ilya was starting to sit up unassisted and protestors were fighting off a coup in the streets of Moscow, Konstantinov and his family escaped the country on a train to Budapest.

One month after that, the USSR was pronounced dead. Konstantinov made it out just in time. Ilya grew up with the maggots and decay.

Ilya did not have to defect from his nation to leave it behind. He did not have to escape its clutches—its skeletal hands were not strong enough to keep him.

Sometimes, Ilya fears that he stayed just long enough to bring it with him, to have been infected by the blight and rot. Sometimes, Ilya thinks he might have been born a maggot himself, someone who belonged in the festering innards of a corpse.

Sometimes, Ilya thinks that he died at his mother's bedside, and Alexei just hadn't noticed his lack of pulse. Sometimes, Ilya thinks that he should have stayed in Russia, embalmed in the tomb of his childhood home.

A dead man has no place in the world of the living. Ilya should've taken responsibility. He should have made his bed and laid in it.

//

Pike brings Ilya in through a back door. They get a few incredulous glances from passing nurses and patients, but they don't linger long enough for any questions that could be asked.

"They're going to talk," Ilya mutters.

"Keep your fucking mouth shut," Pike hisses back.

He wonders, briefly, why Pike is doing this. Helping Ilya and hating him in equal measure. He supposes that he might already have the answer. 

Hollander's room is at the corner of one of the topmost floors. Hardly anyone is there in these halls. Pike hesitates a few steps away from it, and then shoves Hollander's phone into Ilya's hands. "If I see him, I'll throw up," he decides, looking at Ilya with something like wild panic in his eyes. "I'll make myself normal and come ba–"

They both flinch at the sudden burst of shouting. "Can you at least look at me?" A woman's voice, strained to the point of tearing wide open.

His mom, Hayden mouths like they're children hiding from their schoolteacher. Yuna, Ilya thinks he remembers reading at some point.

Yuna pleads, "You can't just close your eyes and–"

Ilya's feet carry him down the hall and through the barely-open door of Hollander's room. There's a window. Outside, the branches are covered in frost.

"Excuse me!?" Yuna is demanding, outraged. Her husband is grabbing her arm. Rose Landry is standing up from the chair at Hollander's bedside. She still looks wretched and broken, even through her confusion. Even as she puts out an arm, almost as if trying to shield Shane from Ilya's view.

It's not enough to obscure the flutter of Hollander's eyelashes as he blinks incredulously at Ilya. He's pale and gaunt. He looks like death warmed over. The first thing that hits Ilya is a familiar thought. Fuck, I want to kiss him.

He swallows it. Turns to Hollander's parents. "Hello. I am Ilya Rozanov." He holds out a hand. Neither of them take it. He drops it, and doesn't offer it to Rose Landry when he informs her, "I am the captain of the Boston Raiders."

"I know," she murmurs faintly. There's recognition in the corners of her eyes and a realization blooming over her irises. Shit, Ilya thinks, because he prepared for Rose Landry to be many things, but he hadn't prepared for her to be intuitive.

He holds Shane's phone aloft like it's a holy relic. "I came here to give this." Not his best lie, but–

"I thought you asked Hayden Pike to bring his phone," Hollander's dad mutters to Yuna. Now, Ilya thinks, fuck.

"I did," Yuna says back, frowning at Ilya. "I thought you were on a plane back to Boston."

"...I was."

In his bed, Hollander starts cracking up.

He has one hand over his face and his whole body is shaking. It could be mistaken for crying if he wasn't laughing so damn loud. It's on the verge of being hysterical, maybe. It sounds like it's ripping his throat apart. It sounds like it's the first sound that Hollander has made in years.

Rose Landry's eyes make the path from Ilya to Hollander and then back again. "Shane," she starts in a poor attempt at a conspiratorial whisper.

"I need to talk to Rozanov," Hollander croaks. Yuna makes a sound like she's been punched in the stomach. "Alone. Please."

He scrubs his hands down his face, his smile falling with it. His eyes are sunken and shadowed and shining, just the slightest bit. Ilya can't tell if it's tears that are turning them bright, or something softer. 

Ilya waits for Hollander's parents and his girlfriend to leave the room before he sits down in the chair. He immediately gets up and drags it closer, close enough for his knees to bump Hollander's bed.

Hollander's heart has started breaking in his eyes again. Ilya drinks him in.

//

Ilya's thought about killing himself at least once a day since he woke up to Mama's cross under his pillow.

In the beginning it was just to follow her. Just grief, just something that was natural. The ache of his mother's suicide never really faded, and Ilya would always miss her, but he did start to worry when he found himself still thinking about it between games almost a decade later.

At least before, it was purposeful. Meaningful. He had a note drafted in his head and a few dozen methods planned. He'd jump from the roof of the training center. He'd walk into the middle of Moscow's busiest freeway. He'd find another bottle of pills and lay in Mama's bed, hoping she'd be there when he woke up.

After a while, it just became a matter of wondering. Fantasizing, almost. He'd picture how his brains would look if they splattered against the tile. He wondered if the railing of his stair could support his weight if he hung himself. He wondered how long it'd take someone to find him if he killed himself while Sveta was out of the country. If his body would be found before it started to bloat.

Sometimes the thoughts were actionable. They went to a gun range as a team, once. It was boring and Ilya spent most of the outing wondering if he'd be able to do it fast enough to get away with it. Cock the pistol, put it to his head, and pull the trigger. A tall enough flight of stairs had him questioning how hard he'd have to throw himself off of them to make sure he didn't get back up.

He never attempted to, because he'd feel pretty fucking stupid if he failed, and probably stupider if he succeeded. Ilya didn't want to be dead. He wanted to win cups. He wanted to play good hockey. He wanted his brother to knock on the wall. He wanted his Mama to be alive and his father to be someone else.

He wanted Hollander to stay. He wanted Hollander to feel awful when the news reported Ilya's tragic passing. He wanted Hollander to follow, maybe. Not actually, but in theory. It'd be nice, being chased, for once.

What Ilya wanted more than anything was an accident. A pile up on the highway. A malfunction in his gas range. A penny thrown from a skyscraper that happened to strike him in the head. A check that sends him into the boards with his neck at the wrong angle.

Something convenient. Something he couldn't be blamed for. Too much fentanyl. Wanderings in the middle of the night. A maggot in his chest eating him alive from the inside out.

A whole bottle of pills. Whoops.

//

Hollander doesn't say anything, even after everyone has left. Ilya waits, and waits, and waits, but all Hollander does is look at him. Heartbroken and humiliated.

Something very quiet and spiteful wants to let Hollander wallow in it for a little longer, but Ilya shushes it quickly. Hollander hasn't had the easiest day.

Ilya tells him, "My mother swallowed a bottle of pills when I was twelve." Hollander's eyes get so big, so fast. "I found her body."

"I didn't try to kill myself," Hollander immediately says. Ilya knows, right away, that this is probably the only thing that Hollander has said since he woke up. It comes out so even and rehearsed despite the sheer panic in Hollander's eyes. "Rozanov. You have to believe me. I wouldn't do that."

"Then what did you do?" Hollander twitches away from the question, face shuttering away. Ilya doesn't gentle his voice when he pushes. "Hollander. You have to tell me."

"I don't want them to put me in an involuntary hold," Hollander groans, utterly miserable.

Ilya stares at him. "Hollander, if what you are telling me is going to make them hold you, then that means you tried to kill yourself."

Hollander fucking pouts. Like a goddamn child. His lower lip quivers and everything. He mutters, petulant and small, "It was an accident," and Ilya's whole world gets knocked off its axis.

He'd probably start screaming if Hollander didn't elaborate. He saw Ilya at the club. It made him miserable, so he started to drink. Rose Landry's friends thought that Hollander getting drunk was the funniest thing in the world, so they started egging him on. Rose Landry thought she couldn't leave her boyfriend to get drunk all by himself, so she committed himself to keeping pace.

Rose Landry was a horny drunk, apparently. Hollander tried turning her down, tried getting her water, but she was so whiny and sweet and Hollander thought that maybe he should just go with it. Maybe if he did it drunk then he'd wind up liking it sober.

But he couldn't do it drunk. He couldn't even get it up.

"Whiskey dick," Ilya says, nodding. "It happens. And so, you tried to kill yourself. Very understandable."

Hollander glares at him. "I didn't try to–" he breaks off into a groan. The colour has returned to his cheeks in the form of a deep flush. "I tried– Rose's friends–"

Ilya blinks. Holy shit. "You actually did drugs!?"

"They gave me a blue chew," Hollander hisses, like it kills him to even think the words. Ilya keeps blinking. Hollander's shame twists into outrage. "God, the one fucking time you don't know a niche English sex thing–"

"Sex thing," Ilya repeats and thinks, what is happening.

Hollander scrubs his hand down his face again. "Viagra. God, Rozanov fucking, a boner pill." The redness stretches down under the collar of his gown. "I guess Rose told them I had trouble performing in bed, or whatever, and they didn't let me leave the club without it–"

"You tried to kill yourself with a boner pill?"

"I'm gonna kill you," Hollander snaps. Ilya barely brings his hand up in time to hide his smile. "I didn't try to kill myself with a boner pill. I took it, it didn't even work because I was already too drunk, and then after Rose fell asleep I went and drank more. You're not supposed to do that. I passed out in the bathroom, Rose found me, called an ambulance–"

Ilya wants to be gentle. He can't. "Hollander." His voice is harsh, almost furious. "I think that counts as a suicide attempt."

Hollander stares at him. "I just described how it was an accident."

There's an English saying that Ilya thinks is quite stupid: when you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It's a correct saying, it's just worded horrendously. It feels so American.

Ilya has never heard of an inverse, but he thinks that this is the case where one must apply. If Shane was only ever seeing nails, then of course he'd try to grab the nearest blunt object to hammer them down. Of course he'd keep reaching for the closest blunt object if it kept fucking working.

Hockey. His weird fucking diet. Ilya. The Calder. Ilya again. The Stanley Cup. Ilya again. The Cup again. Ilya again. Anything other than Ilya. Rose Landry. Alcohol. Blue chew. More alcohol. Whoops.

"Hollander," Ilya starts. He has to stop and think very carefully about what he wants to say. He can't tell him that he should probably break up with Rose Landry. He can't tell Hollander to stop stressing out his mother. He can't tell Hollander that Pike figured them out.

Hollander stares at him patiently. Waiting for orders. Waiting to be told what's his next hammer and where's his next nail.

Ilya wets his lips, watches Hollander watch that movement, and says, "You are going to tell your parents, and Rose Landry, and the doctors, that you got too drunk before you chewed a blue."

"Don't say it like that," Hollander says first, before saying, "Also, fuck you, no the fuck I am not."

"Hollander, the doctors already know," Ilya sighs, suddenly more tired than he's ever been in his whole life. "They literally fucking treated you. They have sworn an oath. They will not tell anyone and if they do, then you sue the shit out of them."

"Suing won't change the fact that–"

Ilya grabs the railing of the hospital bed. "The whole world thinks Rose Landry's boyfriend tried to kill himself," he hisses. "Do you want them thinking that instead of maybe finding out an embarrassing sex story?"

Hollander just stares at him. "Why do you care?" he asks quietly. "Besides your mother– and I'm sorry, by the way, about that it's horrible– but, why do you– about me–"

Ilya wants to strangle him to death, and then kiss his stiff blue lips as they rot off of Hollander's face. "Why do you fucking think, Hollander," he says. Whatever Hollander finds on his face makes his eyes go wide.

"Rozanov–"

Ilya stands. "If you get yourself placed on involuntary hold before All Star game, I will kill you," he informs Hollander breezily. "You have been given the chance to play on my wing. Such an honour should not be wasted."

Somehow, Hollander manages to choke out a laugh. "You're an asshole," he states, and god, Ilya wants to rip off that paper thin gown and fuck him into the hospital bed. "You'll be playing on my wing."

"Ah, we will have to see," Ilya grins. He feels like he's showing way too many teeth. Hollander seems completely and utterly charmed. "Good luck with your movie star girlfriend and your dick that doesn't work."

Ilya steps out into the hallway, into the prying eyes of Hollander's parents and girlfriend. He doesn't close the door in time to muffle the sound of Hollander shouting, "Fuck you too, Rozanov."

Pike is also there, but his eyes aren't prying. His eyes are turned skyward and he's muttering, "Jesus fucking Christ."

Ilya ignores him and nods at the other three people. "Well," he starts. "I have to go. I have flight to catch."

Yuna goes, "I'm sorry?" and her husband goes, "Wait, Rozanov," and Rose Landry goes, "Wow, okay," and over all that, Pike groans, "Jesus fucking Christ, I fucking drove you here!"

When Ilya exits the back door of the hospital, Montréal envelops him with its beautifully cold air. It's not clean, but it's crisp. It stings his lungs. It covers the scent of death that clings to his skin.

He wonders, idly, if the Raiders' jet has finished its maintenance. If he could convince them to give him a ride back to Boston.