Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Hayden Pike, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Parallel Universes, Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, no but seriously, there is a happy ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Time Travel, Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Graphic Description, Suicide, (monty python voice) but they got bettah, Love, Depression, Dissociation, Depressed Shane Hollander, Airplane Crashes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, wow this sounds sad, and everyone told me it was sad, so maybe it is but they're happy at the end I swear

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of anonymous cottage collection

Collections:

Fanfic Anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-01 Completed: 2026-03-13 Words: 54,996 Chapters: 6/6

a year safe in your heart

Summary

“And you’re sure there’s nothing for you?” David says suddenly. “You’re not—you’re feeling okay? You’re not sick? Shane wouldn’t have any reason to think that you’re sick?”

Ilya blinks and turns to him. “I am fine. Totally fine. Better than fine, even, before today.”

“It’s just—Shane’s acting like you’re dying, Ilya.”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” says Ilya. “And I do not think he would learn this before me.”

—

The summer before Ilya joins the Centaurs, Shane wakes up nervous. It doesn't stop from there.

Notes

Hi! Making a slight edit here to say holy shit hello everyone. This kinda got bigger than I ever expected (joked about it escaping containment while it was still a WIP but this is sorta on a different level) and so I wanted to say that of course I'm reading all your comments and I'm sorry if I don't respond to all of them. It is a bit overwhelming how kind everyone is being! If I can definitely spot some goofs I'm sure you can too, but everyone has been so lovely anyway. I know a lot of people think it's weird that I don't view this as an inherently tragic story, but to me it's a love story! I'm maybe just bad at writing those. Which is fair. I'm a huge Irish literature fan and that shit is sad as hell.

I've been trying to quit writing fanfiction so I can do real adult things (don't want to give too many details to preserve the sanctity and coolness of my anonymity, but I've recently started working as an EA lol), but goddamn this community is so welcoming and has really brought my love of writing back in a crazy way. To everyone who's commented, know that it comes to me at a time in my life where it's incredibly meaningful to get any sort of feedback on my writing, let alone positive feedback.

If you want to/need to talk about anything after you finish or during, just say so in the comments and I'll be happy to reach out if you provide social media. I know it's a dark subject matter and I am NOT a mental health professional, but if you do need clarity or just a friendly ear, it's the least I can do for how kind everyone has been. Just felt like I should put that out there!

Again, never expected this weird idea I had when I was deeply sad and a little high to take off, but here we are I guess. So it goes!!

***
ALSO big big thank you to a commenter for being so generous and offering to correct the Russian in this fic! As someone who has spent maybe 10 collective hours on Russian Duolingo, this is deeply appreciated :)

Russian to English:

dorogoy — sweetheart

Pochemu ty plachesh, moya lyubov? — Why are you crying, my love?

milyy — darling

Ya ne ponimayu. Tebe prisnilsya plokhoy son? Ty dumal, chto ya umer ili chto ya tebya brosil? — I don’t understand. Did you have a bad dream? Did you think I had died, or had left you?

Ya tebya lyublyu. — We all know this one :)

solnyshko — sunshine

Chert. Ona pokonchila s soboy na sleduyushchiy den. — Fuck. She killed herself a day later.

Eto ne tak. Ya ne znayu pochemu. — It’s not. I don’t know why.

kotik — kitten

Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu. — I love you too.

Ty ponimaesh, chto ya govoryu? —Do you understand what I’m saying?

Chapter 1: july

The dream slips away from Ilya as he wakes, but he can tell it was a nightmare of some kind. Something about heat, maybe, scorching, unlivable heat, or a cave that was falling in on itself. He thinks that maybe his chest had been compressed, his ribs pressing against his lungs until one of them popped—or maybe he was just panicking inside of the dream. 

His shoulders ache, like he had been holding himself stiffly in sleep, and he feels worse and more sluggish than he usually does after a good night’s sleep. Like the dream has left oily, smeared fingerprints all over his mind.

He yawns and his jaw cracks. Shane’s breath hitches against Ilya’s neck.

Ilya frowns and looks down, but Shane’s already moving. He moves quickly, propping himself against the headboard, and combs loose curls away from Ilya’s forehead. 

“Oh,” Shane exhales, and Ilya’s alarmed to see that his eyes are watering. “Oh, hello. Oh my god, Ilya, baby.”

Ilya blinks. “Hi, sweetheart,” he says, and Shane nods so earnestly. His breath hitches inside of his chest again, but Shane breathes deeply before Ilya can remind him to.

Shane’s fingers are feathery as he outlines Ilya’s cheekbone, his jaw. He laughs, or maybe gasps. Ilya frowns. He feels so slow and sleepy. Shane doesn’t use pet names, he remembers. He never has.

Ilya makes himself sit up, and the way his muscles ache with it is strange. He thinks that maybe he’s come down with a fever, and then decides to worry about that later. Shane is acting strange. Stranger than usual.

As soon as Ilya maneuvers himself into a more upright position, Shane moves his hands down, brushing his fingertips across Ilya’s collarbones, the wings of his shoulder blades, the smattering of moles trailing down the left part of his spine. Gentle touches aren’t exactly new to Shane—but it’s usually after one of them takes a hard hit during a game, or they’re talking about vulnerable things. Ilya blinks and tries to remember the day before. It’s fuzzier than he would have liked, but—

But it was a normal day. They were up at Shane’s cottage, and Ilya’s first season with the Centaurs was beginning soon. They were enjoying the last few days they had together before training camp. Yesterday, Ilya had dragged Shane out to sunbathe at the pier for an hour or two, and then they’d gone inside and Ilya had sucked Shane off, and then Shane returned the favor, and then they wrapped themselves around each other on the couch to watch some boring English film. And Shane had grilled chicken and asparagus out on the back deck while Ilya prepared salad and two glasses full of Spanish wine, and they’d fallen asleep at a reasonable hour after Shane had read to him from some bland autobiography about a Canadian politician and Ilya played with Shane’s fingers.

It wasn’t just a normal day, really. It was a perfect day. Ilya frowns again, and reaches up a sore, aching arm to cup Shane’s cheek.

“What’s wrong, dorogoy?” Ilya asks softly. “Pochemu ty plachesh, moya lyubov?”

Even though Shane hadn’t been able to commit to Russian lessons yet, he answers as if he understood Ilya. “I’m okay, I’m not crying,” he says, and leans into Ilya’s palm, closing his eyes. A tear slips out the corner of his eyes. “I’m okay, I am.”

Ilya uses his thumb to swipe the tear away from Shane’s cheek, and Shane huffs out something that could be a laugh. “No, I—it’s happy. I’m just. I’m so fucking happy, Ilya. I love you, I love you so much, I…”

“Sh. Shh.” Ilya pulls Shane forward into a tight hug. He rubs his back and tries to think. Shane doesn’t seem sick, but they could both be coming down with something. What was the time? Perhaps Shane had been up for a while and had seen or heard something upsetting? Would Shane mind if Ilya went through his phone to check? As much as he disliked Pike, he couldn’t imagine he would do something on purpose to hurt Shane, but maybe it was one of his teammates instead. The fucking Metros. 

If it was Yuna or David, Shane would tell Ilya, but if it was more hurtful, more cruel, Shane would keep it from Ilya. Ilya drops a quick kiss into the hollow of Shane’s neck, keeps rubbing his back. Shane’s breath hitches again, and Ilya pulls back to take another look at him. His eyes are so bright. Ilya starts to put up a hand against Shane’s forehead, but freezes when Shane says, “Marry me.”

Ilya feels like he’s about to start choking on his tongue. He doesn’t move for a few precious seconds, and then remembers to breathe. “What?”

“I’m—I mean—oh, fuck, I do mean it,” Shane says. His arms are still wrapped around Ilya’s waist, and his fingers jump against Ilya’s ribs as he speaks. “You don’t have to, if you’re not ready, but I want to. As soon as you want to, I want to marry you. I want you, I want you so much, I love you so much. I had to tell you, sorry. Sorry.”

He ducks his head down, but Ilya moves it back up by tucking his fingers underneath Shane’s chin. He’s not the best with eye contact, never has been, but his eyes seek out Ilya’s, nervous but full of some kind of emotion that Ilya can’t even begin to parse out. He lets go of Shane’s chin to feel his forehead. A little warm, but it could be from the bed, from the both of them being pressed together as they slept.

“Ilya,” Shane says softly. He reaches up and catches Ilya’s fingers with his hand. “I’m not sick. Talk to me, please. Please.”

Ilya clicks his tongue. He brushes a kiss against Shane’s nose so he knows that Ilya’s not mad, and says, “I think we should go to doctor, just in case.”

Shane swallows hard. “You’re feeling okay? This is just about me, you don’t need—?”

“Shane,” Ilya says, firmly cutting in. “I am okay. You are freaking me out, though.”

Even though he still feels strangely sore, strangely slow, he will not tell Shane that. Not here and not now. Not with Shane’s eyes searching his, like he’s constantly checking for something. Shane was not right, perhaps not well, and it was God knows how early and they were so far away from a hospital. Why were they so far away from a hospital?

“Sorry,” Shane says again, but he’s fighting a smile. “I’m just—I guess I just. I realized, you know. How much you mean to me. How lucky I am to have you. I don’t ever want to go without—I just don’t ever want to be without you. I think we should get married. If you want to. That’s all.”

Ilya bites down on his lip. Shane swoops forward and kisses Ilya. Properly. Sweetly, his mouth soft and careful against Ilya’s, but he opens the kiss up soon enough. He climbs into Ilya’s lap. He’s distracting. He is very distracting.

Ilya pulls away gently, dropping kisses against Shane’s cheeks, his shoulders, to show that he’s still not mad. Because he isn’t. He’s worried out of his fucking mind, but he’s not mad. How could he be?

“Baby,” Ilya says. Shane keeps his eyes closed and rests his forehead against Ilya’s. “Maybe you go shower, I make coffee, mmkay? We can talk about—about marriage after. I love you, you know this. Is not like you to ask like this, out of nowhere. Makes me worried something is wrong, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Yeah, I—I get that, I understand.”

His breath is hot against Ilya’s cheeks. He usually doesn’t like morning kisses before they brush their teeth, Ilya remembers. It feels like there’s a tight knot in his ribcage, and it’s growing larger. Ilya presses another kiss to Shane’s chest.

Shane opens his eyes. From this angle, his face takes up most of Ilya’s vision. His freckles are like sunspots. Ilya is sure if he blinks, the freckles will still be staining his vision, like they’ve been tattooed his eyeballs. Ilya breathes in and Shane breathes out.

“I’ll go shower,” Shane says. “You make coffee. But can we just—I wanna stay here. For a little bit. Please?”

Ilya studies Shane. He cups the back of his neck with his hand, resists trying to take his temperature again. He does look healthy. Ilya deliberately doesn’t acknowledge that that just makes the knot grow worse in his chest, because if it wasn’t physical, then what? What would the doctors really be able to do?

Because something is wrong with Shane. He knows this.

But Shane is also in Ilya’s lap, and he’s so gentle, and so scared for some reason, so Ilya breathes in and out again and says, “Of course, milyy. Of course.”

***

As soon as Ilya hears the showerhead switch on, Ilya starts the coffeemaker and calls Yuna.

He hasn’t had much interaction with her aside from the family dinners that Shane will take him to every other month or so, but she was close by—they were supposed to have dinner with Shane’s parents today, actually. And more importantly, she knows her son better than maybe anyone. Maybe even Ilya.

She answers the phone on the first ring. She sounds nervous, already guessing that something is wrong. “Ilya? Why are you calling me instead of Shane?”

“Hello, Yuna,” Ilya says. He’s braced himself against the countertop, and is watching the coffeemaker gurgle to life in front of him.

 Even though Shane definitely can’t hear Ilya over the showerhead two rooms away,  he still keeps his voice low as he talks. “Shane is fine, physically. He’s in the shower. I am supposed to make coffee, but—I don’t know. Very weird morning. Shane is… unlike himself. He will be mad I am calling, but I don’t know who to talk to about this thing other than you.”

There’s some shuffling on Yuna’s end. He hears her tap her phone a couple of times, and then she sounds a bit farther away as she says, “How has he been unlike himself, Ilya? What do you mean?”

“I am on speaker?” Ilya clarifies.

“Yeah, David’s here with me,” Yuna says tightly. “I need specifics, Ilya. What did Shane do to make you so worried?”

Ilya squeezes his eyes shut. There was no way around this. “He, ah. He proposed.”

There was silence on the other end. Then a stifled sound, like someone had placed their hand over their mouth. Ilya swallows hard and listens to the sounds of the cottage again. Shane’s still in the shower, but Ilya’s sure he’s hurrying through it. He didn’t want to seem to leave Ilya alone for long.

“He… I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” David eventually says. He sounds closer to the phone. There’s more shuffling in the background, and Yuna says something to David that Ilya can’t quite catch. It doesn’t really matter, Ilya figures, whether or not they were happy with this kind of news.

“Listen, I love your son very much,” Ilya rushes out. “You know this, I would love to marry him, it is a dream I have had. But I know him, and he wouldn’t—”

“Propose out of nowhere,” David fills in. “Have you had a fight recently? Were you talking about—I don’t even know, about anything?”

“No,” Ilya says. “We had perfect day yesterday. Very lazy and calm. Then this morning I wake up and he is crying. He tells me he loves me and asks me to marry him. Says he will marry me as soon as I am ready. I don’t believe he even has ring, but he is insistent. Did not want to leave me alone. Still doesn’t.”

As if on cue, Ilya hears the shower turn off. 

“Listen, I cannot stay on phone, Shane is out of shower now and he will be hurrying back to me,” Ilya says quietly. “I do not know what brought this on, I keep going over things, but there has been no sign before this morning. I wanted to tell you before dinner tonight, maybe we can get it out of him together.”

“And you’re not sick?” Yuna asks quickly. She seems to have taken the phone back. “You’re feeling okay, you’re healthy?”

The soreness from this morning has faded to only a memory. Ilya answers honestly. “I am good. Feel totally fine. Just worried about Shane.”

“Okay,” says Yuna. She sounds serious and firm. Ilya believes she’ll figure this out. She has to. “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll figure this out. Thank you for calling, Ilya.”

“Of course,” says Ilya, and hangs up right before Shane enters the kitchen. He’s still pulling on his shirt, and his hair is wet. The coffee was still dripping steadily down into the pot, almost done. Shane buries his face in Ilya’s neck and wraps his arms around Ilya’s waist.

“Missed you,” says Shane, like that’s a perfectly normal thing to say to someone you haven’t seen in a few minutes. “Coffee almost ready?”

“Almost." Ilya kisses the top of Shane’s head. 

Shane hums and burrows further into Ilya. Like he’s trying to climb into Ilya’s body with him.

Ilya tries not to be worried. He also tries not to be hopelessly in love with it, with this kind of Shane. This Shane who came out of nowhere and practically begged for Ilya to marry him, even though he’s supposed to be terrified of even the idea of coming out to his teammates.

Shane sighs against Ilya’s skin. Ilya rucks up Shane’s shirt so he can press his fingers into Shane’s sides. Shane sighs again, and kisses Ilya’s neck.

“Marry me,” he mouths against Ilya’s jugular vein. 

The coffeemaker chirps. Ilya turns to the cupboard, turning their embrace into a gentle handhold instead. He pretends to select their mugs carefully, so by the time he’s turned back to Shane, there are no tears in his eyes at all.

***

David and Yuna text that they’ll be over a bit earlier than expected. They say their plans to grab lunch with friends fell through, so they’re at a loss for things to do. Shane seems to more or less believe this, even though he stares at his phone, confused, for a little bit. But then he goes back to rubbing himself up against Ilya like a cat in heat, so it doesn’t seem to hold Shane’s attention for too long.

Ilya tries to be very normal about it all. Shane seems to remember how his proposal had concerned Ilya, so he doesn’t try and press the matter, even though he does repeat that he means it, and that he’ll stay ready, so it’s really just whenever you feel like you want to. As if the two of them hadn’t been nervous enough about coming out as friends in a few months' time. As if they hadn’t fretted over the press conference venue options that Yuna had sent just a week ago.

Shane is hardly paying attention to the television. ESPN is airing a tennis match, which usually captures Shane’s interest, but he doesn’t seem to care. His thumb is caressing Ilya’s collarbone. His eyes are fixed on the steady rise and fall of Ilya’s chest. 

“Ya ne ponimayu,” Ilya mumbles as he watches one of the players set up their serve. “Tebe prisnilsya plokhoy son? Ty dumal, chto ya umer ili chto ya tebya brosil?”

Shane swallows hard. Ilya watches him carefully, then sits up and turns off the television. Shane follows and clings onto Ilya’s shoulder like a small child.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Ilya says. He rakes his eyes up and down Shane. He looks completely normal, except for his expression. He looks sad. He looks a bit like Ilya’s mother. 

Ilya’s heart leaps. He grabs onto Shane’s hands. “You are scaring me. We are having good time at cottage, yeah? And everything has been good. And today you wake up and you are sweet, the sweetest thing I have ever seen, but you are not yourself. I love you. Ya tebya lyublyu. Of course I will marry you, but Shane, solnyshko, I—the last time anyone was like this, to me… Chert. Ona pokonchila s soboy na sleduyushchiy den. My mother, yes?”

Shane is already shaking his head before Ilya finishes speaking. “Never, I’d never do anything, not with you here, honey,” he says, as if that’s meant to be reassuring. As if the clarification of not with you here doesn’t wrap itself around Ilya’s lungs. 

He squeezes Ilya’s wrists. “I’m sorry to be scaring you, I just. I guess I just—maybe I just realized how much you mean to me. And it’s so much. You’re the best thing in my life, of course you are. Everything else is just noise, I see that now. I just want, I just need you. More than anything.”

Ilya feels pressure build behind his eyes as he tries to manually translate what Shane said. He doesn’t have to think so hard with English, not anymore, but the intensity of what Shane’s saying—it doesn’t feel right. What was just noise? Was he talking about their carefully laid plans? The friendship ruse? The anticipated homophobia from the MLH executives? Was he talking about hockey?

Shane draws Ilya into another kiss. His mouth is desperate against Ilya’s. He slides his hands up Ilya’s chest. His right hand is clawed above Ilya’s heart. Ilya is useless in the face of it. He doesn’t understand. It scares him. Shane is usually so steady, so consistent. He can’t fathom what changed so much, had shaken Shane up so badly, in a single night. A night where Ilya had been there, sleeping right next to him. 

Something drips down from Shane’s face onto Ilya’s. His tear traces down Ilya’s cheek. Ilya’s breath hitches, and Shane mumbles, “It’s okay, it’s all right,” into Ilya’s mouth. 

“Eto ne tak,” Ilya whispers as they separate for air. “Ya ne znayu pochemu.”

Shane pets at Ilya’s hair. He looks like he’s trying to memorize Ilya’s face. He looks like he’s trying to smile.

The doorbell rings out. Yuna and David are here. Ilya brushes his thumbs against Shane’s cheeks, making sure it doesn’t look like he’s been crying.

“Thank you,” Shane says quietly to him. 

“Mm.” Ilya stands to get the door. Shane follows and wraps his hand around Ilya’s. 

“Ah, we’re answering the door like the lovers we are,” Ilya teases, heart in his throat.

“Sure,” says Shane, and tugs Ilya closer. He doesn’t move to the foyer. He’s just staring at Ilya again.

“Weirdo,” Ilya says, because it’s easier than trying to be sincere. He’s the one to lead them to the door, to open it up and find Yuna and David on the front porch. David’s holding a bottle of good Russian vodka. Yuna has a covered casserole dish in her arms.

No one says anything for a moment. Yuna and David see how tightly Shane is holding onto Ilya’s hand. Ilya looks at both of Shane’s parents and tries to say, I still have no idea what’s wrong with your son but do you see what I’m talking about with just his eyes.

David’s the first one to move. He slaps a hand against the vodka bottle and says, “Well! Are you going to let us in, or what?”

***

Shane, thankfully, is a bit less clingy in front of his parents.

Throughout their years together, Ilya’s discovered that Shane loves physical touch, but he’s picky about it. It might be a holdover from how long they kept it secret, but he’s usually far less tactile with an audience. In front of Svetlana or Rose Landry, Shane acts like he's never even heard of sex before. It's usually pretty amusing to watch.

In front of Shane’s parents, it’s usually very low-key. They won’t shy away from casual touches, and Ilya will hold Shane’s thigh under the dinner table, but kissing is limited. Handholding is only sometimes okay. Ilya’s more than fine with it—despite his reputation, he isn’t big on displays of affection. He’s used to being behind closed doors, even when he was still hooking up with women.

The fact that Shane is pressed up against Ilya’s side right now, a direct line of heat emanating from Ilya’s shoulders all the way down to his ankle, is enough to surprise David and Yuna. But he’s not trying to climb into Ilya’s lap. He’s playing with Ilya’s thumb, but he’s not trying to suck on it. He’s already pressed a few kisses into Ilya’s cheek and has stolen some of Ilya’s vodka, but he’s not trying to breathe into Ilya’s mouth.

 Ilya will take what he can get. 

They’d moved out onto the back porch of the cottage while Yuna’s lasagna baked in the oven. They’d talked about the weather, about the tennis matches on ESPN earlier. Yuna had said that there would be some extra paperwork for the Irina Foundation next week, and she could drop the paper copies off for Shane and Ilya to sign whenever it comes through. David mentioned a couple of difficult clues from a crossword he’d done that morning.

Shane, throughout it all, had remained present and responded normally. He said he hadn’t paid much attention to tennis earlier, and that he’d have to catch up on the highlights. He told Yuna that Wednesday would be a good day for the paperwork next week. He made fun of his dad for trying to make conversation about crossword puzzles.

After he finishes talking, he steals Ilya’s glass and drinks a little more vodka. Ilya’s about to make fun of him for not just accepting his own glass when David offered. Shane abruptly begins to cry again.

“Oh, kotik,” Ilya says, and pulls the glass out of Shane’s hands. He sets it down on an end table and cups the back of Shane’s head. “Are you feeling okay? Are sure you’re not sick?”

“Yeah,” Shane whispers, then clears his throat. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sorry, baby.”

Ilya sees David look at Yuna out of his periphery, but it doesn’t matter to him right now. He holds onto Shane’s knee. “What do you need, hm? What can we do for you here?”

“I don’t know,” Shane says softly. He looks like he’s a moment away from climbing into Ilya’s lap again.

Yuna stands from her seat and touches Ilya’s shoulder gently. Ilya turns and nods. He lifts up Shane’s palm and kisses the center of it, then carefully stands up. Yuna takes Ilya’s seat fluidly, as if they had choreographed the move.

Shane’s eyes widen. “Wait, Ilya—”

“I’ll be inside, sweetheart,” Ilya says gently. David’s stood up too, and is moving inside with the bottle of vodka. “I’ll be with your father, yes? You come find me after. Is okay, but maybe this is conversation for you and Yuna.”

Shane glances at his mom, then focuses on Ilya again. “You’ll be inside?”

Ilya nods. “Not going anywhere.”

“Okay,” Shane says.

Ilya nods back at him. “Okay.”

Yuna strokes the back of Shane’s head. She says something to him, low and quiet, and Ilya purposely doesn’t listen as he pulls the sliding glass door open and steps inside.

David’s already in the kitchen. He’s poured himself more vodka and the bottle sits, inviting, on the countertop. Ilya left his glass outside with Shane, he realizes. He grabs another from the cupboard and pours a two fingers’ worth into it. 

“You’re right,” David says. He’s staring out the windows, focused on the lake outside. The water is choppy and grey today. “We thought—I don’t know. I hoped you were overreacting. I thought maybe Shane was just being romantic, and you weren’t expecting it and you freaked out.”

Ilya snorts. He settles himself next to David to watch the water, too. “Historically, it is other way around.”

“Yeah,” David says. He takes a big sip from his glass. “And nothing happened yesterday?”

“No,” Ilya says. “Been thinking all day. There is nothing I can remember that would make him like this.” 

He hesitates. Downs some vodka and wipes at his mouth. “Is there—um. A family history of… like, um, with my mother and father. Is there anything for Shane? Genetic?”

David squints, deep in thought. “Not really. A great aunt of mine tried to take her life, but that was after both of her sons and her husband died. Priest said it was just prolonged grief or something, apparently she’d been talking to him for a while. Nothing on Yuna’s side, honestly. Not even cancer.”

“Okay.” It was both relieving and concerning to hear that there wasn’t anything genetic going on. He didn’t want Shane to just—be snapping like this. All of a sudden, without a cause. Without explanation.

“And you’re sure there’s nothing for you?” David says suddenly. “You’re not—you’re feeling okay? You’re not sick? Shane wouldn’t have any reason to think that you’re sick?”

Ilya blinks and turns to him. “I am fine. Totally fine. Better than fine, even, before today.”

“It’s just—Shane’s acting like you’re dying, Ilya.”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” says Ilya. “And I do not think he would learn this before me.”

“Yeah,” says David. He tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling. 

“Yuna will figure it out,” Ilya says, with perhaps more confidence than he feels.

“Yes,” David agrees in the same tone. “Of course she will.”

***

Yuna and Shane don’t come in from the back porch until the lasagna is cooling on the kitchen counter. 

Yuna leads Shane inside with a hand on his back. He immediately locks eyes with Ilya, setting the kitchen table, and smiles. His eyes are watery and red-rimmed. Yuna looks about the same.

Shane doesn’t quite wrap himself around Ilya again, but it’s a near thing. He presses his leg against Ilya’s as they sit down, and his fingers brush against the back of Ilya’s neck as David cuts into the lasagna and dishes it out.

“Everyone feeling better?” David asks lightly as they begin eating.

Shane nods carefully. “Just got a little overwhelmed,” he says, like he’s rehearsed it. “But I’ve really never been happier. Sorry to freak you out.”

Overwhelmed, Ilya thinks. With what? What was so overwhelming?

Shane’s foot knocks against Ilya’s under the table. Ilya takes another sip of his vodka. His glass is almost empty now.

David turns to Yuna. She nods, but her eyes are tracking Shane as he takes a bit of lasagna. As he drinks his ginger ale. She turns to watch Ilya, too, and Ilya wonders if he is, in fact, dying. If someone forgot to inform him that this was his last day on earth.

They eat quietly. Ilya makes noises about the Ottawa roster, jokes about winning the Stanley Cup this year with the Ottawa Centaurs. Shane shrugs and says, “Crazier things could happen.”

“I can’t imagine what would be crazier than that,” Yuna says. “No offense, Ilya.”

“None taken,” says Ilya. “I did not move to Ottawa for the team, we all know this.”

Shane chews, swallows. Takes a sip of his ginger ale, and then says, “Excuse me for a moment.”

He gets up and heads to the nearest bathroom. Ilya hears the bathroom tap begin to run.

David says, “What did Shane say outside?”

“Not much of anything,” Yuna admits. “He’s—he said he had a bad dream. That it’s made him feel off-kilter today, but it’s helped him figure some things out.”

Ilya shakes his head. “All of this from a dream?”

“I know,” Yuna says. She presses a hand to her temple. “But I can’t think of any other explanation.”

Ilya shakes his head again. “I also had bad dreams last night. Notice how I am not acting strange.”

David frowns. “You also had a bad dream?”

Ilya waves a hand. “Do not remember much, but woke up feeling weird. Then Shane is all over me and will not stop all day. So. Bigger things happening there.”

He winces a bit at the phrasing—he’s saying this in front of Shane’s parents—but David just nods thoughtfully. “Where’s your carbon monoxide alarm?”

“Our—what?”

“It’s not carbon monoxide poisoning, Dad,” says Shane. Ilya bites down a curse. He hadn’t noticed him coming back into the room, but Shane just looks faintly exasperated. It’s the closest he’s come to looking like himself all day. 

“I’m sure it isn’t, but humor me,” David says. Shane rolls his eyes. Then he jerks his head, and David follows him down the hall.

Ilya looks up at Yuna, then back down at the table. He doesn’t want to admit that she makes him nervous. But, well. She makes him nervous.

She drinks from her water glass and wipes her mouth with her napkin. They listen to David and Shane in the hallway—Shane, annoyed, saying see, it’s right there, it hasn’t gone off obviously, and David saying when’s the last time you changed the batteries on this?

Yuna says, “Shane said you wanted to marry him, too. He said you were freaked out, and he understands why. But he was so happy you said you’d marry him.”

Ilya blinks at her. He jerks his head toward the hallway. “Pretty sure they could still hear us if they wanted to listen.”

“Ilya,” Yuna says. “Thank you. For looking after my son.”

Ilya shrugs. His eyes feel hot. He wonders if tears can be contagious.

“I love him so much,” says Ilya. “And I want him to be okay.”

“I know,” says Yuna. She traces her fingers across the wood grain of the table. “I think—I think he’s okay. I hope he’s okay. I’m worried too, but I see him. He’s—it’s just like he’s woken up from something. If I had to guess. I don’t know, exactly. But I think he’s okay.”

Ilya’s mother, before her death, had been so bright-eyed. The day before Ilya found her in the bathroom, she’d taken him to the park. Her eyes had been the same color as the sky. She’d wrapped him in a hug and laughed, and it had been the rawest, most threadbare sound Ilya had ever heard.

“I hope he is okay, too,” Ilya says. “I need him to be.”

***

They are not, apparently, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Ilya will have to ask Shane what carbon monoxide is and how it can poison you, but David seems satisfied that they won’t imminently die, which is good news. They finish eating, and Ilya polishes off another glass of vodka. He normally wouldn’t drink so much in front of Shane and his parents, but Shane is still pressed up against him, still affectionate beyond belief, even as they all quietly decide not to talk about it anymore.

Yuna and David stay to help with the dishes. Ilya scrubs at and dries the casserole dish until it’s sparkling and hands it back to them. He tries to give the half-full vodka bottle back to David, but he shakes his head and says he has more at home, more than he knew what to do with. Yuna and David climb into their car, and Shane rests his cheek against Ilya’s shoulder as they wave goodbye to his parents from the front porch.

Once the car is out of sight, Shane pulls Ilya by the hand until they’re back in the bedroom. He pushes Ilya down on the bed and climbs in after him.

“Sorry,” Ilya says, hand on Shane’s jaw as he settles in between Ilya’s thighs.

“What for?” Shane asks. He tugs at the bottom of Ilya’s shirt, and Ilya raises his arms. Shane shucks the shirt off, and starts unbuttoning his own. 

“For calling your parents this morning,” Ilya says. Shane grasps at the waist of Ilya’s shorts. He nips at the skin below his bellybutton. 

“It’s okay,” Shane says. “You love me.”

“I do.”

“And I love you.”

“That’s true also.”

Shane has stripped off Ilya’s shorts and underwear. He noses at Ilya’s groin, and Ilya shivers. Shane looks up at him. His eyes are two dark pools.

“And we’re going to get married,” Shane says.

“If that is really what you—oh, okay, yeah. Good.” Ilya grips the bedsheets in his hand as Shane takes him into his mouth.

Ilya has the fleeting thought that maybe they should talk more—that maybe Shane shouldn’t be doing this right now—and then his tongue flicks over Ilya, and he’s not thinking of much of anything except the best angle to pull Shane up, so he can kiss him, so he can hold him closer and feel how hard he is, how much he wants this.

“Love you,” Shane says into his mouth. “Love you more than anything.”

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya gasps, and Shane says, “Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.”

It’s not perfect. It’s accented, the pronunciation is off, but it’s—

“You learned Russian,” Ilya says. He breaks away so he can stare at Shane.

He shrugs. His eyes are hazy. He ruts up against Ilya. “I’m learning.”

“When—how? Ty ponimaesh, chto ya govoryu?”

Shane makes a face and wiggles his hand. “If I focus, I can recognize, like, individual words. Enough to get the gist. But I have to think about it. I'm working on it.”

Ilya keeps staring at him. He shakes his head. He buries his face in Shane’s neck, presses his mouth against his pulse point. 

“You learned how to say ‘I love you’,” Ilya says, voice thick. 

“It’s not that hard,” Shane says softly. He runs his hands up and down Ilya’s back.“You always told me. All the time. Easy to repeat.”

There’s something off with the way Shane says that. Some strange grammar thing. Maybe Ilya was just so full of some unnameable emotion, something so deep and dense, that his grasp of English was slipping.

Ilya squeezes his arms around Shane. Here, pressed skin to skin, the air so warm around them—it feels like there’s nothing else. Like the world existed on the head of this pin. 

“Your accent is terrible,” Ilya says, teeth catching on Shane’s skin as he speaks. “So nasal and flat. North Americans have worst accent by far.”

“I’m very sorry you have to listen to it all the time,” Shane says, and nibbles at Ilya’s ear.

He shudders. That’s enough. He needs more. He needs more, now.

“You should be very sorry,” Ilya says. “Now get on your stomach.”

***

The next morning, Ilya wakes up from the same dream as before. He groans as he wakes up, muscles as stiff as they had been yesterday. He pushes a hand up to his temple. The morning light is so bright, too bright. For a moment, he can't remember where he is.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s okay,” he hears Shane say, and the space beside him grows cool as Shane gets up, pulls on his boxers, and starts lowering the blinds. Ilya closes his eyes and listens to his footsteps as he ducks into the bathroom. There’s the sound of running water. The rummaging around in the medicine cabinet. Shane comes back to Ilya with a kiss on the forehead, two Tylenol pills and a glass of water.

“You’re too good to me,” Ilya grumbles, and takes the pills.

“Never,” Shane says. His voice sounds strange. Ilya is afraid to open his eyes. 

He breathes in and out slowly, then says, “You still want to marry me?”

“Of course,” Shane says, and moves, pulling Ilya into his chest. Ilya bites down on his tongue. His chest feels tight. He didn’t know why he’d hoped yesterday had been a one-off.

Maybe it was because—because something had changed in Shane, and he couldn’t see why, or how, and Shane wasn’t telling him. 

Shane brushes his thumb over Ilya’s forehead. Ilya sighs and slumps into him.

“How’s the headache?” Shane asks him quietly. 

“Okay,” Ilya says, sighing. “Might try and go back to sleep for a bit.”

“Sure. We have nowhere else to be.”

Ilya hums and buries his nose into Shane’s sternum. Shane laughs—he always says Ilya’s breath tickles on his bare skin—but he also doesn’t try to move Ilya. He keeps his hand curled around Ilya’s hair. It was the same way Ilya’s mom held him when he was sick. He doesn’t have the words to explain that to Shane. Not in English, and not in the stilted Russian Shane seemed to have recently grasped.

“It’s the same dream,” Ilya says instead. “As yesterday.”

Shane’s hand stills on Ilya’s forehead. “A nightmare?”

“Mm. Not exactly,” Ilya says. “I can’t remember enough from it to be scared. But I am—something bad is happening, I think. It is very hot. Maybe cramped too, I don’t know. And I wake up feeling stiff and weird.”

“You didn’t say anything yesterday,” Shane says. His voice is tight. His fingers start to play with Ilya’s hair again, but it’s more measured now. Like Shane is thinking about it.

“You woke up crying and asking me to marry you,” Ilya says. “I had other things to think of. And it went away very fast. No soreness by the time we finished breakfast.”

Shane leans down and presses his mouth to the crown of Ilya’s head. He doesn’t move for a moment, so Ilya doesn’t, either. 

Shane waits for a long time, actually. Until Ilya’s on the verge of sleep, until it feels like gravity is pulling him into the warm core of Shane’s chest. When he speaks, his voice is shaky and his arms pull heavier around Ilya’s chest.

“I’m glad you don’t remember the dream,” he says. His lips find Ilya’s temple, the corner of his eye, then his cheekbone. He wraps Ilya’s hand up in his own.“You shouldn’t ever—you should never have to remember a thing like that.”

Ilya thinks he should probably parse out what that means—what Shane could possibly be saying. But it’s so warm in their bedroom, and the sunlight is peeking through the blinds and glowing against Ilya’s exposed shoulder, and sleep is tugging on him, and the headache really isn’t so bad anymore.

Ilya mumbles out something, and then gives into sleep, his fingers threaded through Shane’s.

Chapter 2: november

Chapter Notes

I realized that I fucked the timeline for this after starting to read the Long Game, then just decided it actually worked anyway.

Also just want to note that this is in no way associated with AI. I hate AI and the weird looking man from OpenAI can go fuck himself

“The universe,” says Shane, “is like a set of interconnected revolving doors.”

Ilya blinks. “I have no clue what that means, Hollander.”

He sits up and readjusts one of the hotel pillows, then lays down again. Only half of his face is visible in the phone camera, but he can’t be bothered to try and get a better angle for Shane, who is smiling fondly at him over the Facetime call anyway.

“A witch told me that,” Shane says, casually as anything. Like that’s a normal fucking sentence. “She said that if you move at the right moment, you could pass from one set of revolving doors to another set. Everything has to line up in the exact right way, but you could pass through entire worlds like that.”

“Shane,” Ilya says, mouth twitching, “I am very tired after losing to fucking Florida, and I call you over Facetime to see your cute glasses and maybe your cute ass, too, and I tell you to say something interesting and this is what you come up with? Space travel and riddles?”

“Not space travel,” says Shane, smiling back at Ilya. “And you said you were too tired to think about final details for the Foundation announcement, so I had to pick a different topic, Ilya.”

He really is so cute in his glasses. He's letting his hair grow out, and it was feathering across his forehead in a very pretty way. He's in bed too, back home in Montreal. If Ilya closed his eyes, he could picture the silky sheets, the warm cedar scent of Shane’s favorite candle. He could imagine they were laying together, side-by-side.

Ilya sighs and presses his head deeper into a pillow. 

Shane smiles at him, so soft and warm. “And anyway, I’m actually talking about, like. I don’t know. Different dimensions.”

Ilya taps his forehead. “I do not know this word. And I am very tired, sweetheart. When did you talk to a fucking witch?”

“I was little. We were on vacation. Virginia Beach, I think. My dad had a friend who had a house there, we used to go all the time.”

“And a witch talked to you?”

“She had a shop,” Shane says. “I was interested.”

Ilya can’t help but smile. “Of course Baby Hollander was curious. You always have to know everything. Should have known you were always like this.”

Shane gets that look in his eye again. Ilya makes himself breathe normally. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” says Ilya, because that was easier than saying could you please stop telling me you love me like you’re dangling off the edge of a cliff please. 

Shane smiles for a moment longer, and then clears his throat. “I was reading, um, about reality. Wormholes and time dilation and stuff. It’s why I thought about what the witch said.”

“She wasn’t a witch,” Ilya says. He reaches one hand down and pushes it underneath the waistband of his sweats. “She was a shop owner in a tourist area.”

“Maybe,” Shane says. 

Ilya remembers when they talked about ghosts—over the campfire, maybe a few weeks before Shane proposed for the first time. Do you believe in ghosts? Ilya asked. I do, maybe. My house in Russia was very haunted, I think. Cold in every room. Once I saw a headless man when I tried to take a bath.

No, you didn’t, you asshole, said Shane, and Ilya tweaked his nose from where he was laying in Ilya’s lap. Shane had thought about it, and then said, Nah. I mean, I’m not ruling it out. It just seems pretty unlikely to me.

Ilya tilts the camera so his entire face can be in frame. He moves his hand from underneath his waistband to a more appropriate place to rest it. “Why are you thinking of witches and magic, moya lyubov?”

Shane shrugs a shoulder. He picks up a book from his bedside table and holds it up to the camera. Ilya squints to read the title. The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene. It looked like a science textbook.

“I thought you could only read hockey books,” says Ilya. “I cannot believe I have been spreading lies and slander about my fiancé. He can read! Smart things, even! Where are the reporters when I need them?”

Shane’s eyes go all gooey at the word fiancé. Ilya’s used it sparingly—and has warned Shane that he will need to buy Ilya a beautiful ring at Christmastime—but, well. Even with everything going on; even with Ilya promising to himself that he won’t walk down the aisle until he’s certain that Shane’s okay… it’s just nice to think about. To call him that, since boyfriend and partner feel only half as permanent as what Shane is and will always be to Ilya.

Shane says, “Can you take off your shirt? I wanna—I wanna see.”

“Of course, sweetheart,” says Ilya, and moves his hand down lower again. He smiles the way that Shane had once described as how a viper would smile. He can’t find it within himself to mind that description at this very moment.

 “Always. Whatever you want.”

***

Shane does not have nightmares.

No one could describe his dreams as nightmares. There is no fear. There is no tension, no feeling that his stomach was about to drop out of his torso. 

Nothing bad ever happens. He dreams about waking up in the cottage. He dreams that it’s cold and quiet. He is in the bedroom, and then he wanders to the living room, to the kitchen, then onto the back deck. He touches a bench and it crumbles to ash and is swept away in a stiff breeze. He’s always looking for something. He thinks it might be buried deep, underneath the lake. The lake is slowly freezing over.

Breaths are slow and thick. He feels tired. He wanders back through the hollow house. His fingers scrape at the wallpaper and it peels away from the wall like flayed skin. He lays down on the bed, and he’s reaching, stretching out his arm until it’s on the verge of dislocation, but there’s nothing he’s reaching for.

There’s nothing there at all.

He always wakes up with tears on his cheeks, his fist pressed into his mouth to keep himself from sobbing. He can’t let anyone see that. Apparently not even while he’s sleeping.

***

You’re flying today, right?

Ilya frowns at the text message as he steps off his treadmill. He wipes his face with a sweat towel and then slings it over his neck. His biceps ache at the movement, but he ignores it. He'd just woken up a little stiff again this morning. Nothing that a post-workout shower and stretch wouldn't fix.

He checks his watch. The Metros are supposed to have practice this morning. According to the time, they’d be right in the middle of warm-ups. Shane always left his phone in the locker room. So why is he texting Ilya?

His phone buzzes again. Away game in Nashville, right? My parents are gonna drive down to watch it with me!

Ilya presses his thumb in between his eyebrows. He texts back, What is the perfect captain of the Metros doing on his phone? Are you also bored by your boring team? Is that why you text me right now?

Shane starts typing as soon as he reads Ilya’s message. Ilya picks his water bottle up from the cupholder on the treadmill and chugs half of it. He swipes away from his messages and opens his Notes App instead. 

There’s not much there—a running grocery list that’s always half-updated and a little wrong. A couple of Cyrillic sentences that he and Svetlana had typed out to each other while at a loud and obnoxious bar a few weeks ago when Ilya visited Boston. A new list, Centaurs-inspired, of the best movies about Canada so you can educate yourself while trying for your citizenship, Roz. And another list, also written in Cyrillic. 

It’s titled Things I Miss About Russia, just on the off-chance that Shane or Svetlana start snooping through his phone. Even if Shane manages to grasp Cyrillic soon, he wouldn’t want to open that particular note. Sveta wouldn’t open it either. She’d understand what that kind of list would look like.

The running list isn’t about Russia, though. Instead, it reads:

• More nervous than usual. Especially about me and how I’m doing

• Keeps asking me to marry him??

• Pike said he didn’t sleep well at their last away game. Texted me about it to see if we’d had a fight or something and when I said no, Pike said Shane seemed really sad in the morning

• Always wants to Facetime before bed now if we are not in the same place. Gets very needy when it’s time to hang up (sweet but still)

• Very touchy when we see each other now 😎

• Reading weird science books 

• Maybe believes in witches/supernatural things now? 

• Doesn’t defend Metros when I make fun of them anymore (VERY CONCERNING)

• OFFERED to tell J.J. about me and plans to tell him soon

• Keeps asking me about weird dreams I had over the summer + if they’ve come back

Ilya makes a new bullet point as Shane’s next text comes through.

• Texting during practice. Wouldn’t have been caught dead doing that before

He bites down on his cheek as he reads back over the list. It’s just weird behavior for now. Maybe not even a full personality shift. It wasn’t as if Shane wasn’t Shane, it was just like… something happened. Something that Ilya can’t grasp.

He navigates back to his messages. Shane’s newest text says Maybe I just missed you 🙂

Another pops up soon afterward. When’s your flight today?

Ilya sighs. He should really hop in the shower, double-check the duffle bag he’s packed. He should actually get off his phone for once. He needs to be at the airport in ninety minutes or so.

He texts back, Few hours from now.

Send me the flight number? 

You love my dick so much you want to track how many miles it is away from you?

You’ll be seeing me in two weeks anyway, remember? When Ottawa crushes stupid Metros

And then we will make beautiful announcement about the Foundation and fuck like bunnies after

I did not think you so desperate for me 😈

Fuck off. You’re so annoying.

Sorry, didn’t mean that.

I love you! Just wanna make sure your flight gets in safely :)

I can text when we land?

Please.

But can you also send me your flight info? 

My mom wants it.

Sure. If Yuna is asking for it, of course. Can’t believe she did not text me about it first.

Shut up.

Love you.

But shut up.

Ilya presses his lips together. He sends Shane a screenshot of his boarding pass. He swipes at the cooling sweat on his neck and tries not to think about the familiar stab of worry in his stomach. Shane reacts to the boarding pass screenshot with a love heart.

Ilya texts Shane one last time, saying gonna hop in shower now, will text when I’m at the gate, and goes back to his Notes app again. He adds two bullet points:

• Doesn’t like to get angry at me anymore 😢

• Worried about me traveling?

He looks over the list. It’s not—it’s not nothing. Maybe he should call Yuna and David again. It’s not like they’re not aware Shane is acting strangely. It’s just been long enough that Yuna thinks that it’s “Shane stressing himself out over this new season,” and David thinks that it’s “that anxiety disorder he definitely has and doesn’t want to get medicated for.” Ilya doesn’t think he knows them well enough to call bullshit yet, so instead it feels like the slowest Mexican standoff that’s ever happened.

Ilya presses his thumb into his forehead again. He makes himself think about how lucky he is. To have Shane, to have a team that—well, that sucks, but is nice to each other.

He just needs to count his blessings.

He leaves his phone on the kitchen counter so he doesn’t have to listen to it buzzing as he goes to take a shower.

***

Hayden wakes up to silence.

This isn’t too surprising, since Shane will often head to the hotel gym early, or go for a run if the weather’s nice. Hayden checks the time. It’s a little past six in the morning. His alarm hasn’t gone off yet, but it will soon. 

Hayden yawns, turns over in bed with a groan, and sees Shane laying still in bed.

His eyes are so glassy that for a single, adrenaline-fueled moment, Hayden actually thinks Shane is dead. Then he catches the way the covers rise and fall with Shane’s breath, and Hayden’s panic recedes so quickly that the room swims in front of him.

“Shane,” Hayden says, pressing a hand to his own chest as he sits up, “what’s—why are you still here? You’re usually up by now.”

Shane’s eyes travel up to meet Hayden’s. He looks away just as quickly. He doesn’t look like he’s all here. In this hotel room. His chin trembles, and Hayden rushes across the narrow aisle of floor that separates their beds.

“Okay, buddy, it’s okay,” Hayden says, pressing his hand down on Shane’s shoulder. Shane shakes his head, and Hayden says, “No, I promise it’s okay, okay? Oh, shit, did you get a phone call or something? Buddy?”

Shane doesn’t say anything. His breaths are heavy and gasping. He sounds like he’s choking on his own sobs. Hayden grabs up Shane’s phone from where it lay on the bedside drawer and quickly types in his passcode. He doesn’t have any new voicemails or incoming calls. Hayden pulls up Shane’s messages and there’s nothing there, too. Just a few unread texts from the Metros groupchat and Rozanov.

Hayden sighs, but his heart rate isn’t anywhere near normal. Shane isn’t even looking at Hayden—his eyes are instead fixed on the window. There's nothing out there but a few sparse trees and the hotel parking lot. 

“Shane, please,” Hayden says, “you’re really spooking me here.”

Shane shakes his head again. His mouth opens and closes. He shuts his eyes and tears slide down his face, and Hayden wipes at them with his thumbs, caressing Shane’s face like he does with his children. His heart is cramping in his chest.

“Shane,” says Hayden again, “I’m gonna—I need to call someone, who can I call? Do you want your mom? Do you want Ilya? God, I don’t know—has this ever happened before?”

Shane doesn’t seem to be paying attention, but there’s a hitch in his unsteady breaths when Hayden says Ilya. 

That’s enough for Hayden. 

He finds Rozanov’s contact in his phone and listens as it begins to ring. He’d texted Rozanov only a week or so ago, after he’d noticed how quiet Shane was at practice and especially while they were hanging out one-on-one. Then he saw the dark circles underneath Shane’s eyes one morning, and he just had to check in. Rozanov had sworn through their texts that they hadn’t fought, and had seemed just as concerned as Hayden was.

Well, that was pretty generous. Hayden was choosing to interpret he is getting good sex and love from me on the regular, there is something else making him sad I think as a text written by a concerned boyfriend, and not an asshat who doesn’t and will never deserve his best friend.

He still can’t believe that they’re together, honestly. At the start of the season, when Hayden had joked to Shane about Rozanov being Shane’s mystery man, he hadn’t expected a confirmation. Much less for Shane to say, “Yes. I love him. I’m going to marry him,” as if he were commenting on the weather, or a news article about who’s running for mayor.

Shane—hadn’t seemed up for much more discussion after that, though. Every time Hayden had whined about Rozanov since then, Shane had leveled him with a stare that made Hayden’s skin crawl. So he’d tried to back off, tried to see the best in Rozanov since then.

But when Rozanov was inevitably too much of an asshole for Hayden to not punch in the face, he’d at least be able to tell Shane that he’d tried to like the guy. 

Rozanov picks up the call only after two rings. 

“What’s happened,” he says on the other side of the line. His voice sounds tight and breathless.

Hayden blinks. “I— how do you know—?”

“There’s no other reason for you to be calling me so early and I know you’re with Shane,” Rozanov says. He’s speaking quickly. His accent is thicker than it usually is. “Tell me he is okay, please.”

“He’s—I don’t know, he’s breathing,” says Hayden. Even though he’s the one who called, he feels like he’s been caught off guard. He’s still facing Shane, and Shane still looks so far away. He’s started to shiver underneath the blankets, and Hayden pulls the quilt off his bed to drape around him, phone wedged between his ear and shoulder.

“I need you to say more. A lot more,” Rozanov demands.

“He’s—did you have a fight? Or, like, are his parents okay?”

Rozanov is silent for a few beats. Hayden tucks the covers in around Shane’s shoulders and smooths his hair away from his face. He’s crying now, twin streams dripping down his cheeks, but it’s almost unnatural. His face is impassive.

“Stop fucking blaming me and tell me what’s going on,” Rozanov says. “His parents are fucking fine.”

“Rozanov, I…”

“...You what? Pike, what is going on?”

Hayden shakes his head. Shane is staring at him, properly looking at him, now. He says, so soft that it’s a breath more than anything else, “Ilya.”

Hayden passes the phone over to Shane.

Shane grabs it with both hands, like he’s cradling something precious. Through the phone speaker, Hayden can still sort of hear Rozanov’s tinny voice. “Pike, I swear to fuck. If you don’t tell me what is happening right now, Jackie will wish—”

“Ilya,” Shane says, louder. It stops Rozanov in his tracks. Another tear drips down Shane’s cheek. Hayden ducks into the bathroom and grabs the complimentary box of Kleenex off the countertop.

When he comes back out, Shane is still holding the phone in his hands. He’s sitting up now, the hotel quilts pooling in his lap. 

Rozanov’s voice is filling the hotel room. He’s speaking in his special Shane Hollander voice. Hayden calls it that because he’s never heard Rozanov use it with literally anyone else but Shane. He gets quieter, sweeter. His voice lilts upward instead of his usual heavy Slavic vowels. It’s one of the only reasons that Hayden can accept Rozanov’s presence in Shane’s life.

“Of course, sweetheart,” Rozanov is saying. “Of course I’m all right.”

“I just—I dreamed. I thought,” Shane stutters out. “It was real. And I woke up and you weren’t here and I just…”

“Solnyshko,” Rozanov says. Hayden quietly sits down next to Shane, leaning against the headboard. He drops the tissue box in Shane’s lap, and Shane lets Hayden wrap his arm around his shoulders. 

“I know,” says Shane. “I know it’s not anyone’s fault. I just got really scared, I guess.”

Scared, Hayden thinks. If he’d had a dream that Jackie had died, he would be a mess when he woke up. But he wouldn’t be—whatever Shane had been, this morning. This was something different. It had to be.

“I’m sure you did, kotik,” says Rozanov. “But I’m here, yes? I am okay.”

“I know,” Shane says. He shivers underneath Hayden’s arm. “I’m sorry for—”

“No, no,” says Rozanov. “Do not apologize for this. Never.”

“Okay,” says Shane. He shuts his eyes and breathes. “I wish I could see you.”

“Let’s Facetime,” Rozanov suggests. “We can give Pike back his terrible phone that way. Sound is so weird on here. You sound like a chipmunk when you talk.”

Hayden makes a noise of protest, mostly to see Shane laugh. He does, even if it’s just a small thing. “It’s a normal phone,” Shane  tells Rozanov.

“Agree to disagree,” he says. “Give me back to Pike. I must say my thank-you to the fifteenth best player on the Metros.”

Shane rolls his eyes, which sparks a feeling of relief so powerful that Hayden almost feels boneless. Shane passes the phone back to Hayden.

Hayden presses the phone to his ear. He stands up from the bed and moves to the bathroom. It’s not the most subtle maneuver, but Shane was the one who woke up like a grief-stricken zombie. He can deal with Hayden and Rozanov having a semi-private chat.

“I’m here,” Hayden says once he shuts the bathroom door. He turns on the bathroom tap and speaks quietly.

Rozanov blows out a breath. “He’s been like this. On and off since the summer. I don’t know what set it off. I thought it was getting better, maybe.”

Hayden blinks. “So, he’s, like. Having nightmares about you dying?”

“He has not said so in so many words, but yes, I think so. But also… I don’t know, he is very nervous. Wants to know where I am and what I am doing always,” Rozanov says. “He’s never been like that before. He keeps saying he loves me in very specific way. I do not have words to describe.”

Hayden closes the toilet lid so he can sit down on it. “Has he been, like—checked out? Has he gone to a doctor?”

“He says he does not need one,” says Rozanov, with a tinge of frustration. “His parents believe that it is hockey stress or something, but he is always stressing. It can’t be that.”

“Yeah,” Hayden says. He hates that he’s agreeing with Rozanov over Shane’s much lovelier parents, but. There was the panic of this morning that was sticking to Hayden like old sweat. “And you guys—you’re seriously not fighting?”

“No, Pike.”

Hayden hesitates. “And, like. You’re fine? No health scares recently?”

“Contrary to what Shane believes,” says Rozanov, “I am not near death. I will let you know if that changes.”

Asshole, Hayden thinks. Aloud, Hayden says, “That’ll be good to know, just in case Shane goes fucking—catatonic again, I don’t know.”

Rozanov goes quiet. Hayden’s leg bounces up and down. Finally, Rozanov says, “I am very worried. About this.”

Hayden nods, then realizes Rozanov can’t see it. He sucks in a deep breath and says, “Yeah. I don’t know. Me too, I guess.”

Rozanov says, “You’re a good friend to him, Pike.”

And then, because he can’t bear to not have the last word, Rozanov fucking hangs up on Hayden.

“Fucking asshole,” Hayden mutters, and sets his head in his hands.

***

Time, contrary to popular belief, is not linear.

In theoretical physics, particularly Einstein’s theory of relativity, time is considered the fourth dimension. From a four-dimensional perspective, chronological events may not be laid out in a neat order. History may no longer be a continuous flow-chart of events.

Instead, everything, every temporal event, may just exist together. Like people in a crowded room, or like players in a hockey game. Slipping and sliding around, pushing up against each other, wrapping and unwrapping themselves from one another and then coming together again.

From a four-dimensional perspective, time is always happening. Maybe the fourth dimension is like the inside of an hour glass, and the sand is always pouring over you. 

Facts that Shane knows—that he grew up in Ottawa, that he’s the captain of the Montreal Metros hockey team, that he’s deeply, desperately in love with Ilya Rozanov—wouldn’t be concrete in the fourth dimension. Perhaps they would always be happening to him, these facts. Maybe they would constantly be flowing through him, like blood, instead of being mapped out with hard edges and this happened then, and next, and next, and next. Instead, Shane’s life would always be happening to him, and yet to happen, and having already happened. 

Or perhaps in the fourth dimension, Shane would come apart entirely. In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut had proposed that the human life-span looked more like a mountain range than a body. Shane liked that thought. He thought that Ilya would probably be a snow-capped, towering mountain range. The kind with jagged edges and no end, just a slow taper to infinity. He thought that he’d look the same, always reaching for the same heights that Ilya reached so effortlessly.

In reality, a three-dimensional being cannot fully grasp the fourth dimension. It’s beyond the body’s capabilities. Einstein was only able to conceive of the theory of relativity through thought experiment, rather than practical lab work. It’s something so cerebral and impossible that for a regular person, the brain becomes an organ as irrelevant as a stomach. Theoretical physics is filled with people who have impossibly high IQs, who do nothing else but exist in the scientific world.

Shane is not a theoretical physicist. He’s a hockey player who loves his fiancé very much. He’s someone who doesn’t understand the first thing about theoretical physics, or quantum mechanics, or even basic astronomy.

On his laptop, his notes are gathered from the internet and hardcover books and even some spiritual magazines, all organized in a desktop folder labeled For the Future. He’s got over fifty pages of notes, and it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

Aside from the notes, the only thing in the desktop folder is a round-trip plane ticket to Virginia from the Montreal airport. The flight is scheduled for a quick break in between Montreal’s games in early December. He didn’t want to take time off before the announcement of the Irina Foundation at the end of the month, and he still has time. He has lots of time. Forever, hopefully.

The trip to Virginia won’t need to take longer than a day. Hopefully, then, he’ll get the confirmation he needs. And he’ll marry Ilya, and live with him, and everything will feel good again.

He reaches for his neck. He’s used to having a chain hanging around it. The first few days without it, he felt a bit naked.

He smiles to himself when his fingers close around empty air. He shuts his laptop and pulls out his phone to text Ilya again.

***

The announcement of the Irina Foundation goes well, Ilya thinks.

Shane makes the speech about the importance of the charity, of his “newfound friendship” with Ilya. He repeats it in French, which always makes Ilya feel a little aroused. Ilya leans into the mic afterward to speak about his mother, and Shane rests his hand on Ilya’s forearm. It’s good. 

Everything is good. 

He keeps telling himself that as Shane pulls him into the hotel bathroom afterward, kissing his forehead, his cheeks, the corners of his mouth. Shane is saying, “I love you, I really love you,” and Ilya nods. 

It feels like something is spearing his chest in two. It isn’t physical, not like the pounding headache he’d been suffering from since waking up this morning. He’d had the dream again. About the heat, and the tight space, his body folded up in a pretzel. It was nothing, just a headache and a dream, but Ilya did realize that it probably wasn’t helping his mood.

Maybe he's upset because he’d had to remember his mother. Sharing her with an audience of flash photography and press badges. The strange, ragged look on her face, the glint in her eyes like shards of glass. Ilya could remember it all so clearly. He could remember seeing all of her on the floor, too. How limp she had been, how emptied out, like a hollowed-out tree at the end of it all. 

And then turning to see Shane’s face, the same expression, and how for a moment, Ilya felt like he was lost in time entirely.

“Baby,” Shane says, cupping his jaw. “What’s wrong? Why are you sad right now? You weren’t sad before.”

“I, I guess I just thought about her,” says Ilya. “My mother. And…”

“And?” Shane asks. He presses a kiss to Ilya’s palm. Ilya’s head throbs and he winces. He should have doubled up on the ibuprofen dosage this morning.

“Are you in pain?” Shane’s thumb comes up to rest at Ilya’s temple. “You didn’t tell me, what’s going on? Was it the hit you took last night?”

Ilya shakes his head, and ignores the spike of pain that it causes. “No, it’s just a headache, not a stupid Metro hit. Listen.” He grabs both of Shane’s hands and holds them to his heart. “I was thinking about my mother, and. And I know you say nothing is wrong—”

“I’m better than ever,” Shane says softly.

“—I know, I know you say that. But there is something wrong, I know it. I need you… I need you to promise—”

His voice falters. He swallows hard and turns away, but Shane follows, and sees the tears that Ilya had been fighting against. 

“Oh, baby,” Shane breathes, and moves to come closer. Ilya holds out a hand, and Shane stills immediately.

“I’m sorry, I need to say this,” Ilya says. He swipes underneath his eyes and takes a deep breath. Shane bites down on his lip, but nods. His fingers come up to his neck, and then he shoves his hands into his pockets.

“I know you say nothing is the matter. Ty mne lzhesh. And is okay, you do not need to tell me everything. But my mother. She had a look in her eye, in the year before I lost her. Ona byla slovno razbitaya farforovaya statuetka. Ili kak soldat, kotoryi vernulsya s polya boya i teper sam ne svoy. Is same look I see on you, moya lyubov. I cannot handle it. If you are sad, like her, and I do nothing about it—”

“Fuck, Ilya,” Shane says, and surges forward to wrap him in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry, baby, I never meant to make you feel that way.”

“I know,” Ilya says. He presses his nose into Shane’s neck. His suit jacket smells like detergent and Shane's cedar cologne. He gives himself to the count of three, and then pulls back. “Let me finish, okay?”

“Of course, but I’m really not,” says Shane. He caresses Ilya’s face. “I’m not—I’m so happy with you, you know that, right?”

Ilya tries and fails to smile at him. “We both know that is not the same thing as what I am saying. We started a foundation about it, Shane.”

Shane’s breath catches. He nods at Ilya, and then turns and presses his hands down on the bathroom counter. He squeezes his eyes shut, and Ilya takes the time to breathe and grab a paper napkin from a basket next to him. He wipes at his face.

When Shane turns back to Ilya, he has his game face on. It makes Ilya’s chest hurt again, and he can’t tell if it’s from the same feeling as before, or if it’s just because he’s so fond of his boyfriend. 

Shane says, “I can promise you. I can tell you that you’ll never, ever have to worry about me in this life. You will never have to—”

“Find you on the bathroom floor?” Ilya says drily. “Having slashed your wrists open?”

It has, unfortunately, the intended effect.

Shane opens and closes his mouth. He’s turned pale. Ilya takes the time to wrap his hand around Shane’s, to pull him close once more.

“All I ask,” Ilya says, “is that you talk to someone. It does not have to be me. Does not even have to be a professional. But you cannot keep this locked up inside of you. It scares me that you do.”

“I—you’re right,” says Shane. He looks a little distant, but lets Ilya pull him in until they’re chest-to-chest. Ilya places his hands on Shane’s sides, and Shane sighs. “I’m planning on talking to someone. Next week, actually.”

The crash of relief over Ilya almost bowls him over. He says, voice thick, “I am very, very glad to hear that, solnyshko.”

“Yeah,” Shane says. He rests his head on Ilya’s shoulder for a few moments, and then says, “I—asked Hayden to guard the door. We might be taking too long.”

“I booked a hotel room,” Ilya says, at the same time he realizes that his headache is still a throbbing, angry thing living in between his temples.

“Yeah?” Shane asks. His fingers trace random patterns on the back of Ilya’s suit jacket. 

Now would be the time that Ilya would pick Shane up, and lift him onto the bathroom counter. Ravage him a little bit, just to rile up Hayden once they leave for the hotel room. 

But his head is really hurting. He grits his teeth, and says, “Yes, but I am…um, I have a headache. I don’t know if I can do anything interesting with you today.”

He feels pathetic, admitting to it like that.

Shane, however, just coos and kisses Ilya’s cheek. “Well, we still have two hours, my love,” he says. “How about we go to the room, and we turn off all the lights, and we just stay quiet, yeah? Maybe it’ll help.”

Ilya nods. Shane smiles at him, so bright and so sweet as always, and squeezes his hand three times before they separate for the public eye.

***

So Ilya’s mother slashed her wrists, Shane thinks. That is fine. 

Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she did actually swallow a chalky, bitter-tasting bottle of leftover pain pills, and Ilya was just using a figure of speech or something to tell Shane that he was worried. He didn’t need to be. He shouldn’t be. As long as Ilya is here, then Shane is here, and it doesn’t even really matter whether Irina Rozanova slashed her wrists or downed a bunch of pills with old vodka from the garage freezer or some combination therein, just like it doesn’t even really matter what’s happened to Shane, because it isn’t happening anymore.

It isn’t happening anymore, and it will never happen here, because things are different and Shane is smart and careful. He’s flying to Virginia soon. He’s going to talk to the witch, or the not-witch, and he’s going to figure it all out, and Ilya will always be safe. 

In the hotel room, Ilya falls asleep easily. He shouldn’t have a headache, but he does, and that’s fine, too. Shane is taking care of it. He gave Ilya a warm compress, and cuddled up next to him, and kissed the top of his head as he dozed off.

Shane sets an alarm on his phone for an hour. After the hour is up, they’ll have to separate—Ilya, back to Ottawa, and Shane soon hopping on a plane to Chicago. Ilya is driving his SUV back to Ottawa. Shane has his location on his phone, and his parents are heading back to Ottawa soon, too. 

Ilya is going to be fine. Shane is going to figure it out. These small changes, these tiny tweaks to reality, are just to be expected, and the big, major change will happen, too. Shane will make sure that it does. One week until Virginia, he reminds himself. Just a week.

He spends the hour in the hotel room trying to breathe properly. His fingers comb through Ilya’s hair. Even with all the lights off, the room is a soft grey, afternoon light still winking through the curtains. A spot of sunlight fixes itself on Ilya’s crucifix.

Shane bends down, and presses his mouth to it. 

“You’ll be okay,” he whispers. “I know you’re going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

Chapter End Notes

A big thank you to a commenter for being so generous and offering to correct the Russian in this fic!

Russian to English:

Solnyshko — sunshine

Ty mne lzhesh. — You are lying to me.

Ona byla slovno razbitaya farforovaya statuetka. Ili kak soldat, kotoryi vernulsya s polya boya i teper sam ne svoy. — She was like a broken porcelain figurine. Or perhaps, like a soldier who has returned from the battlefield and is now shaken.

moya lyubov — my love

Chapter 3: december / sea foam

Chapter Notes

discussions of suicide in this chapter as a heads up

also if you noticed in an earlier draft me getting troy's last name wrong, no you didn't <3

There had been these awful, gruesome burns all over Ilya’s body. Some of his skin had been flayed off his body entirely.

The morgue had cleaned his wounds as best they could, but staring down at him, Shane knew he should have felt some sense of wrongness. But there was nothing there. He was having trouble feeling much of anything, lately. 

Ilya’s shoulder had been pulverized to gravel. One of his ribs had punctured his lungs. His nose had broken off entirely, like a porcelain mug handle. The wreckage of the plane, the fuselage, and the burning jet fuel had disfigured his boyfriend entirely. 

There was black stitching all over him, a human attempt to hold him closed while Shane stared at him. Shane imagined that if he stood over Ilya long enough, he’d watch Ilya’s body turn into brackish water and slip down the drain in the middle of the mortuary floor. He imagined that if he stood still long enough, his feet would start to melt into a viscous liquid, too, just like his heart.

"We recommend a closed casket, if you do not opt for cremation," the mortician had said before the viewing. "It can be painful, seeing a loved one in this kind of condition."

She had dark eyes, so dark that Shane could not tell the iris from the pupil. When they looked at each other, Shane had the sense that they were not people, just two more bodies. There was nothing inside either of them. There were no living people in this Georgia morgue, Shane had thought. There was just meat and cotton, stainless steel and paper and glass.

The mortician had to physically move him away from Ilya’s body, in the end. There were forms to sign. She had work to do. In every breath, Ilya was further away from Shane.

Shane signed the form for cremation, in the end. Ilya would not want to be buried like this, he knew. 

The mortician slipped in a pamphlet for grief counseling between the copies of the forms that Shane had signed. It slipped out of the manila folder Shane carried and fell into a freezing puddle in the middle of the parking lot. It was black with yellow lettering and claimed help is around the corner.

Awful graphic design, Shane had thought. And then he’d pressed his hands onto the roof of his rental car and had a panic attack that was so horrible and lengthy that the mortuary receptionist noticed, and called an ambulance for him. He’d had to be sedated when the EMTs came.

***

His flight to Virginia Beach had a layover in LaGuardia. They were still renovating it this time. There were loud drills and the sounds of hammering behind the plywood barriers they’d constructed in the walkways between the gates.

It isn’t so bad, Shane thinks. He hated it a few years ago. Had had to cover his ears because he found the noise grating. Kept wearing his AirPods, relying on Hayden to nudge him whenever their flight was ready to board.

Shane has found, recently, that stimulation in general doesn’t bother him so much. In times like these—walking between gates, his backpack slung over his shoulder, sunglasses and baseball cap set firmly on his head because he can never be too careful—he almost feels like a phantom. The walkway was lined with huge, double-paned windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. A sunbeam glances off the back of his hand, he brings it up to his face. He’s almost surprised at how corporeal, how real he looks. He had expected his body to look opaque. An arrangement of stained glass that represents a human being, maybe. His mind feels miles away from his body.

He reaches his next gate and pulls out his phone. He has a couple texts from Ilya, from Hayden, from his parents. He couldn’t really explain his trip to Virginia Beach to any of them, so instead, Shane had claimed he was meeting up with an old friend from childhood hockey camps. His parents barely remembered Brendan—had honestly seemed surprised when Shane had brought him up—but he and Shane had lived out of each others’ pockets for two weeks, the summer after Shane turned twelve. He’d looked up Brendan to find out that he’d moved Stateside, to Indianapolis. 

Shane had told his parents that a buddy of Brendan’s had recently passed away after a seemingly harmless concussion in an amateur game of hockey. Brendan was looking for support, said Shane, and who better to offer it to him than an MLH captain? So Shane was flying down for a day or two, just to check in, maybe meet Brendan’s new baby. He’d be back in time for the next home game.

Then, quite separately, Shane had started pretending that his iPhone was having trouble with its location settings. He toggled it on and off at random hours, waited for people to notice, and then said he wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. He turned it completely off before boarding his first connection in Montreal. "Sorry that my location is so off," Shane had said to his parents and Ilya. "I’ll go to an Apple Store in Indianapolis. See if they can’t figure it out for me."

Shane thinks that he should probably feel worse about these layers of deception, the interweaving lies he’s telling his loved ones. Normally, he thinks he would; he remembers that lying to his parents about Ilya had usually felt like he had swallowed a bunch of wriggling worms. But he’s felt pretty disconnected from his body for the past year or so. It occurs to him, every so often, that this may not be ideal.

But he’s rooted in his body with Ilya. He knows that. So it doesn’t matter what he feels the rest of the time, he figures.

Shane sits down in an empty seat at the gate. He checks Ilya’s texts first.

Miss you, Hollander

I know you are being a good friend

But I could have sucked your dick very well today 🥵

I hope you remember that while meeting your friend’s baby

Shane smiles. He can feel his heart rate slow down as he reads over Ilya’s texts.

Last night, on the phone, Ilya sounded tired. He hadn’t even made a single sexual innuendo fifteen minutes into the call. When Shane asked whether Ilya’s headaches were back, he’d denied it. “Is just a long day. And we lost again, which is typical, but still annoying,” he said, but his words were thicker, heavier than normal. He was hiding how much pain he was in. Typical Ilya. But at least he’s back to teasing Shane today. That has to be a good sign.

He thinks about Ilya, his pretty face, his upturned nose, the slope of his collarbone and the veins in his hands. His irreverent humor, his featherlight kisses, and the way he skated on the ice as if his skates were made out of his own bones. Shane had had a therapist, in the year that never was. The therapist had suggested that maybe Shane had always been depressed, that he had buried it in his love for Ilya. He suggested that once Ilya was gone, there was nowhere left for it to go, so it seeped out of him instead.

Shane knows now that the therapist was wrong. All he needs is Ilya. Ilya calls Shane solnyshko all the time, but he is the sun, to Shane. He warms him up. He makes Shane’s blood flow through his body again.

Shane texts back and says, I will not be thinking of anyone’s dick while holding a baby. That is wildly inappropriate. 

Ilya responds a few minutes later, right before Shane’s boarding announcement. It’s just a devil emoji.

Shane rolls his eyes. His boarding group is called, so he locks his phone and stands up, slinging his backpack over his shoulder once again. 

***

Shane does not remember much from the weeks after Ilya had died.

He must have gotten down to Georgia somehow, because he’d gone to see Ilya’s body after the autopsy was complete. He must have been released from the hospital, because his mom had been there, gripping the wheelchair tight as she wheeled him out to the parking lot, murmuring it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, baby, I swear we’re going to get through this. 

He must have gone to the memorial for the plane crash victims, because he remembers seeing the tall obelisk erected outside of the Centaurs arena. Troy Barrett had been there too, and the goalie, Wyatt Hayes. Barrett had had a leg amputation, and kept staring at the obelisk as if he couldn’t fathom the names etched onto it. Wyatt Hayes had seemed remarkably unharmed, except for a few healing bruises and cuts on his face. He’d walked up to Shane after some sort of ceremony had wrapped up around the obelisk, and said, “I’m so sorry. Now that I know—it’s so obvious. How much love he had for you. You—you and Ilya deserved better. I know Ilya wanted to spend the rest of his life with you. He deserved more time to do that, but thank you for making him so happy for the time he did have.”

Shane had stared at him. There were several long moments where Shane took in the shape of his face, his eye color, the crook of his jaw, and could not remember what language this person was speaking, or if anyone was trying to speak to him at all. 

“Um,” said Shane.

His dad had put a hand on Shane’s shoulder. “Thank you, Wyatt. Ilya is—he was. He was very proud of his team. He always spoke so highly of you.”

Wyatt kept looking at Shane. Shane didn’t know why. He looked down at himself. He was dressed. In a suit, even. He was standing. He remembered the news report about the plane. A fluke accident, exacerbated by birds flying into an already malfunctioning engine. Nothing to be done for it. The MLH was already moving to sue Boeing, and the airline, and possibly themselves for good measure. A fluke accident, Shane thought. A fluke accident and now an obelisk, and Ilya’s ashes scattered across the lake near his cottage.

Wyatt had turned to Shane’s dad. “Is—I mean, is there anything I can do?”

Shane’s dad squeezed his shoulder again. Shane took a deep breath in and out. He was trying to read the names on the obelisk, but he couldn’t. The words kept warping and changing in front of him.

“Shane’s… dealing with a lot,” said his dad. As if Shane wasn’t right there. Fair play, Shane thought. Maybe he wasn’t there at all. “But I know he heard you. I know he appreciates it, Wyatt. Ottawa was always so good to Ilya.”

Wyatt nodded. “Is it okay if I hug him? Shane, can I hug you?”

Shane heard him from the bottom of the lake near his cottage. He shrugged, and Wyatt wrapped his arms around his shoulders gently. 

“The Centaurs will always have your back, buddy,” said Wyatt, and then Shane blanked out again. When he came to, he was wrapped in the quilt from his childhood bed. There was a mug of cold tea sitting on the nightstand. Outside of his bedroom, his mom was speaking quietly to his dad.

“He needs help,” said his mom. “I know we’re only two months out, but David, he’s not—he’s not here. I look at him and he sees right through me, it’s not normal. I don’t even know if he sleeps.”

She sounded like she had been crying. Shane touched his own face. It was tacky and swollen. He had been crying, too. Outside the window, there was snow on the ground. It was still winter, then, or close enough to it. He wondered if the Metros had a game coming up. The Centaurs’ season had been canceled since so many of their players had died, including their captain.

His dad said, “I can call a grief counselor, but Yuna—we can physically get him there, but if he’s not—if he can’t…” 

His dad let out a wounded sound. Shane wanted to apologize. They had lost Ilya too, and here he was, making it all about himself again. 

He pulled his knees up to his chest. He stared at one of the trophies he’d won in grade school. It declared him the most valuable player of his junior league hockey team in middle school.

The next thing he knew, he was in the hospital again. He was hooked up to an IV. His dad was sitting at his bedside, reading a copy of The New Yorker. 

Shane blinked. Then he covered his mouth with both hands and started sobbing.

“Oh, Shane, oh my god,” said his dad. “Oh, my baby, let it out. I know, I know you were trying to keep it inside, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

He sat on the bed and let Shane wrap his arms around him. Shane didn’t ask questions, but a doctor came in to tell him, anyway.

He had an official diagnosis. He apparently had been suffering from catatonic depression, an aggressive subtype of Major Depressive Disorder.

“The loss of your life partner may have been a trigger for the MDD,” said the doctor. They wore a white lab coat. Shane could not remember their face, or even if they had one. “We treated you with benzodiazepines to bring you out of your catatonic episode. Your hockey team has already been notified, Mr. Hollander. You’re placed on injury reserve until we can help you get this under control.”

Shane’s dad squeezed his hand. His mom was apparently out at a meeting with the MLH executives, going over Shane’s medical records and disclosing his relationship to Ilya. Shane became aware that this doctor expected an answer from Shane.

“Sounds good,” said Shane. His dad beamed at him, looking prouder than he had at the MLH draft.

Shane had to turn away from it. He looked outside the window instead. There was a gold chain around his neck, underneath the hospital gown. He rubbed the Russian orthodox crucifix and remembered how to breathe as the faceless doctor told him all about how he was going to feel better soon.

***

Virginia Beach is cold this time of year, but nowhere near the freezing temperatures of Ottawa. 

It’s the sea breeze that was the problem, really. The wind gusts blow through town, upturning sand and abandoned grocery bags and paper coffee cups. It snapped at the windscreen of the cab Shane had taken from the airport, and tries to worm underneath Shane’s skin once he steps out of it. It bites at his shirt and scratches at the back of his neck. Shane pulls his fleece jacket taut around him as he walks down the block.

Several of the downtown shops were seasonal, shut up tight for the wintertime. Virginia Beach is seemingly half-dead, one foot in the grave. It almost makes Shane laugh. It’s just like him, he thought. 

It had occurred to him that the witch shop was closed for the season. Just as soon as he had thought of it, he had decided it didn’t matter, that he needed to take this trip anyway. If the shop is closed, then he will find someone who knows the woman who owned it. He will find her, and he will ask her his insane, half-baked questions. He will make sure Ilya’s headaches—his dreams from over the summer—were only headaches, were only dreams. If she can’t answer him, then she will tell him who can. 

He’ll do this because there was nothing else to do. There is nothing else that mattered. He has half a mind to quit the Metros once the season is over. They haven’t been good to him, and he can see that now. He can see Ilya now. 

He pulls out his phone to text Ilya. He keeps it simple: Just landed! Love you. I’ll call you tomorrow morning?

He waits, but Ilya doesn’t read the message right away. That’s fine, Shane thinks; perhaps he’s with Shane’s parents, having dinner, or perhaps he’s trying to bond with the Ottawa team. The Centaurs have a quick, two-day break between games, too. Ilya should hopefully be relaxing and enjoying himself.

Shane locks his phone and slips it back into his pocket.

At the end of the street—the street where the witch shop should be—he stops in his tracks.

There is no witch shop in front of him.

He can remember the look of it clearly—the wide window-front, the fairy lights draped around the shop name. There were gnomes that stood outside the clapboard front, and a stone birdbath, and a wooden trellis stationed off to the side, near the parking lot. It had been painted pink and blue. It had been called Abigail’s Place. The only reason Shane and his dad had stopped in over the summer is because his dad had thought it was a quirky souvenir store. He’d wanted to pick up a necklace for Shane’s mom.

Now, Shane is standing in front of an old house that had been converted to a shop front. It looks out of place, wedged next to a closed surfboard shop and a sleepy consignment store. It stands on short stilts and has a wraparound porch with cozy rocking chairs and a concrete ramp leading up to a side door of the shop. There are flowerboxes in the sills. The flowerboxes are barren. It’s deep winter now, and nothing good ever grows in the frost. 

There’s a small sign nailed to the side of the converted house, next to the door. The Virginia Beach Teahouse, it says. According to the flipped wooden board right underneath, the teahouse is open.

Shane stares at the shop. At the gray sky that stretched out behind it like a metal sheet. In his time in the US, he had always been struck by how liminal and ubiquitous so many rural towns could be. He could be anywhere, he thinks. It feels like his feet might come unstuck from the ground.

Shane doesn’t know how long he stands in front of the tea shop, but it’s evidently long enough that someone else takes notice. She opens the door and leans against it so it remains propped open. She’s in a loose blouse, and loose slacks, and loafers. She smiles at him as if she knows him. She’s the same as the witch Shane had met in Virginia Beach when he was seven. Her hair curls loose around her ears.

“Well, hello,” says Abigail. “Would you like some tea? It is a teahouse, after all.”

***

In June, the MLH commissioner tries to get Shane to come in for a meeting. 

He’d been staying with his parents, ever since the plane crash. He technically owned two residences in Ottawa, now. He would not be living in either of them ever again.

Shane was trying to do a puzzle with his dad when the email notification pops up on his phone. It was the third puzzle they’d worked on in as many weeks, and Shane had come to the same realization he’d had when he was a teenager: he disliked puzzles, and had no patience for them.

But luckily for his dad, the antipsychotics that Shane was prescribed made him feel very drowsy and slow. It was thankfully the only side effect that Shane had with the Seroquel, and it was a perfect cover. He didn’t have enough energy to be frustrated by his dad’s puzzles. He hardly had the energy to keep his eyes open.

Shane checked his phone screen when it lit up with the email notification. He couldn’t help the sigh that came out. His dad immediately sets down the puzzle piece he had been examining, and said, “What? What’s wrong?”

Shane shook his head. “Crowell’s reaching out again.”

His dad bit down on his tongue. He pulled off his reading glasses and tried to make eye contact with Shane. Shane knew he was gearing up for a Big Talk again.

Shane and his parents had had a lot of Big Talks over the past couple months. About Shane’s eventual LTIR label for the Metros. About his contract ending soon and how he was a free agent come July. About how Shane should really try and get back to it, that his MDD diagnosis and his grief and his everything weren’t excuses not to try and live. He’d heard the phrase Ilya wouldn’t want this for you more times than he could count. Once, his mom screamed at him in a wild and wet voice, saying I lost a son too, you know. I know, I know he’d want you to live! Why don’t you want to live for him?

He didn’t know how to tell them that he had nothing else to give. His tank was empty. He had worked so hard, had planned so much, he had had binders and notes and a timeline for his life. And a single day, maybe even a single bird flying the wrong direction, was enough to pull his life apart like weak taffy. 

He didn’t know how to tell them that he just didn’t see the point. Because he knew what that sounded like. The last time his parents had been worried about him, he ended up on fucking antipsychotics and antidepressants that he was still getting weaned from. So instead, Shane just held his tongue. He said nothing at all, and eventually, his dad had offered him a puzzle, and recaps of tennis matches on the television.

So he wasn’t spending every hour of every day in his old childhood bedroom, now. Shane believed that that had to count as progress.

His dad was still trying to catch Shane’s eye. Shane glanced up, and then his eyes darted away. He grabbed a random puzzle piece and tried to slot it into another one. They didn’t fit, because of course they wouldn’t.

His dad said, “Shane. You have to meet with Crowell.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” said Shane. He sat back from the puzzle and pulled his knees up to his chest. “I’m on LTIR. They know that. There isn’t anything more to say until I’m cleared. Or the MLH drops me.”

“You don’t want to get dropped,” said his dad.

Shane felt something hot and bloody tear through him. “I don’t fucking want anything, Dad.”

His dad sucked in a sharp breath. Shane stood up from the couch and wrapped his arms around himself. He looked toward the stairs, caught a glimpse of Ilya’s curls peeking out of a picture frame, and turned away. He swallowed hard and said, “I’m gonna go and take a nap.”

His dad stood up, too. “Shane. We have to talk about this.”

Shane closed his eyes. He took a deep, slow breath, just like his therapist recommended. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You can’t keep shutting down every time someone tries to talk to you about life,” said his dad. He picked up the remote and shut off the television. The house slipped into a fog of silence, and Shane breathed, and his dad breathed, too. There was something else, a third shadow in the house that was suffocating.

Shane said evenly, “I’m taking the drugs. I am attending the therapy. I’m trying your puzzles. I am eating, and sleeping, and breathing.”

“But you’re not yourself,” his dad said, striking a hand through the air. “For God’s sake, Shane, you don’t think it’s killing me and your mother to see you like this? We loved Ilya like he was our own, you know that. We always will. This grief isn’t yours alone, but you’re holding it like it is, and you won’t let us in, you won’t let any of us in! I mean, Jesus Christ, kid, Hayden Pike called me last week. You want to know what he said to me?”

Shane turned away from his dad, but didn’t leave the room. He knew he would only be followed. It felt like his ribs were sliding away from his chest. He said, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“He asked me if you were alive, Shane!” his dad shouted. His voice was thick, too, now. Shane let it hit at him. He deserved it.

“He asked me if you were still breathing,” his dad continued, a little quieter now. “And he tried to make it sound like a joke, but I could hear it in his voice. He wanted to drive down and see you. He said you told him to stop talking to you. You would never do that, I know that. Hayden knows that. He doesn’t understand—I… I don’t understand. I don’t, you won’t tell me, you won’t tell your mom, you just—you sit in your head, and you go somewhere else, and we can’t follow. Can’t you see how terrifying that is? We love you. Goddammit, Shane, I love you so much, I…”

Shane buried his face in his hands. His dad rounded the coffee table and jerked him into a painful hug. He could feel his dad’s tears soaking into the collar of his sweatshirt. Shane wanted to hug him, but he couldn’t move. He bit down hard on his cheek until a rush of blood filled his mouth.

He had told Hayden to back off. He’d been calling once a week for months now. He was the only Metro to keep reaching out, beyond the initial hope you’re okays. 

Last week, Hayden had left a voicemail saying that next year will be different, Shane. We’ll win you a Cup. Jackie and I—we want you to move in with us in Montreal, okay? So we can help with your meds and everything. It’ll be okay. We have you. We got you. We love you.

So Shane had called back. Hayden had picked up on the first ring,  and Shane knew he had broken his heart in two when he said, “I’m not coming back, Hayd. I think it’s probably better if you leave me alone for now. For both of us.” 

He’d hung up before Hayden could respond. And blocked his number. It was better. It was going to be better for Hayden, Shane had decided.

His dad shook him in his arms and said, “Buddy, you gotta talk, okay?”

Shane breathed in and out. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fucking hopped up on Seroquel and Zoloft. I couldn’t go catatonic if I fucking tried.”

His dad pulled him in tighter. “You know that’s not what I meant,” he said. His voice was a low rumble against Shane’s ears. He’d pulled Shane to his chest, even though Shane was taller than him. He was combing his hand through Shane’s hair. He cupped the back of Shane’s neck and hummed  a song that Shane didn’t recognize, and something about it—something about it.

Shane choked, and pushed away from him.

His dad blinked. “Shane—”

“No,” said Shane, “No, I—no, I can’t—”

“Shane,” his dad said again, and Shane stumbled back. He hit a wall and slid down it. He wasn’t entirely there. The third thing in the house had wormed into Shane’s body and pressed up against his heart, and Shane said, “I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, you have to believe me, Dad, oh my god I am so sorry.”

His breath broke as David hit the floor next to him. “Shane, you need to tell me what you’re talking about,” he said quickly. “I don’t understand. Why are you sorry, baby?”

Shane shook his head. “I killed him, I killed him, I killed him, didn’t I? He’s—he only came to Ottawa for me, and I pushed him away, I made him—and he still, he still thought of me, he still wanted me to keep him safe, and I can’t do that, he’s gone and I’m here and I can’t do it, Dad, not when I killed him. I can’t believe I killed him, I loved him more than anything and he’s dead and I did it, I—”

“You didn’t,” said David. He was openly weeping now. He reached forward, and Shane flinched, but he kept on reaching, his hand crushing Shane’s shoulder like Ilya’s shoulder had been crushed in the crash, and Shane’s breathing picked up another notch as David said, “Oh my baby, you’ve been thinking this entire time—it was a freak accident. It was horrible, and it shouldn’t have happened, and it’ll always hurt at least a little bit, but it wasn’t your fault. Shane, you can’t blame yourself.”

Shane shook his head. He didn’t understand. He knew he wouldn’t, but it was Shane’s fault. He knew it deep down in his bones, and it wasn’t something he could fix, it was insurmountable and abyssal and Shane was in the middle of it, like a star that was always dying, always sucking everything up into its own mess. 

“Shane, please,” said his dad, and Shane felt him press his hand on his collarbone. “Breathe, baby. Just breathe.”

Shane tried to, but it was hard. His eyesight greyed out slightly. He clawed his fingers into his dad’s wrist and tried to look at him, but his gaze slid past. To the picture of Ilya. He was smiling at the photographer, probably Shane’s mom, and his arm was draped around Shane’s shoulders.

Shane kept looking at the photo. Even after his dad picked him up in his arms. Even after his dad moved him upstairs, and tucked him into bed, and moved next door to call Shane’s mom and his therapist. He couldn’t stop looking at the photo. The third thing inside of him curled around his stomach and chewed at his stomach until it snapped in half, and Shane lurched from bed to vomit into the trash can wedged underneath his desk. 

He wiped his mouth. He looked around the room. It was several hours from the last time he remembered.

His phone was charging on his nightstand.

Shane unlocked it and navigated to his email app. He opened a new draft, added his agent Farah to his contact list, and wrote out the short email.

I will not be interested in signing with the Metros for the upcoming year even if they make another offer. I will be retiring from hockey effective immediately. You can speak with my mother about loose ends. Make sure she gives you a good payout and bonus. 

Thank you, Farah.

Shane 

He stared at his own words for a few minutes. There was a knock at his door. It was his dad again.

Shane sent the email and turned over in bed. He shut his eyes and pretended to be asleep when his dad peeked in. He breathed, steady and breathless along with the third thing in his chest, until his bedroom door shut again with a soft click.

***

Abigail has blue eyes, but  her right iris is broken. The pupil spills out, like oil staining the ocean.

She notices Shane noticing it. She smiles, gesturing at her eyes, and says, “A bit freaky, right? But it’s hereditary. My eye’s always looked like this. My dad always said that it just meant I can see a bit more than other people. In practice, I just wear sunglasses more often than other people, but still.”

“It’s cool,” says Shane. He sips at his tea—a vanilla black tea that Abigail said was both energizing and calming. They were the only two people in the teahouse.

They’re sitting across from each other at a small table. The walls are lined with framed paintings of flowers and china vases and ornate wallpaper. Abigail had brought out a full service once she’d sat Shane down at the table—teapot, milk, sugar pot, even a plate of shortbread and cut strawberries. She’s drinking a cup of tea, too. She seems very relaxed. Friendly. 

Just as Shane had remembered her twenty years ago. Just with a few more grey hairs.

Abigail takes another sip from her teacup, and then says, “I assume you’re not just here for the refreshments.”

Shane presses his tongue into his cheek. He wraps his pinky around the embroidered edge of the tablecloth. “No, but—well.”

Abigail raises an eyebrow.

“You’re going to think I sound crazy,” Shane says. “I know that. But I need to ask you something anyway.”

She sets her teacup down in the saucer. She props her chin up with her hands and looks him directly in the eye, and Shane finds himself fixating on the broken iris again as she says, “So ask me what that something is, then. Don’t beat around the bush.”

Shane nods. He presses his thumb down into the meat of his thigh, hard, as he says, “My name is Shane. Do you remember me?”

Abigail’s lips part slightly. She tilts her head to the side. “I’ve met a lot of people over the years. It comes with being a business owner.”

“Yeah,” says Shane, “I—that makes sense, yeah. And it was a long time ago. I was a kid. Um, you told me that the universe is like a set of—”

“Interconnected revolving doors,” Abigail interrupts. She clicks her tongue. She reaches forward with her spoon and dips it into the sugar pot, then stirs it around in her tea. “I see.”

“You remember?” Shane asks, suddenly breathless. He wants to stand up and run a lap around the shop. His thumb digs further into his thigh.

She takes another sip of tea. Shane notices that the teacup is trembling in her hand. “Not exactly. No. But, um.”

Shane waits. Abigail is the one to stand up. He watches as she disappears into the back room of the shop. He pulls out his phone. Still no text from Ilya. He has one from his mom, but he swipes it away without reading the preview. It’s most likely something about an upcoming sponsorship, and he really couldn’t care less about those. After a moment of hesitation, he turns his phone off. This is an important conversation, and he really couldn’t afford to be interrupted right now. Not for anything.

Abigail emerges from the back room a few moments later. She’s holding a church program in one hand, and her cell phone in the other. She sits down at the table again, and breathes out.

“I… assume there’s a specific reason you bring this up,” says Abigail. She brushes her hair behind her ear. The church program, up close, is old. Curled and yellowing at the edges, with a water stain here and there. She must have had it for a while. 

Shane bites his teeth together. He nods again. 

She says, “Do you mind if—? I mean. I do believe you. But would you mind saying what happened?”

Shane presses a hand to his stomach. He plants his feet into the floor. When he skates, he always pushes off with his right foot first. It holds more power, makes him more dynamic on the ice. His right heel is digging into the sole of his shoe at the moment. He imagines skating down the rink. The feeling of being chased, of holding a precious thing between your feet and hoping you can carry it all the way down with you.

Shane says, “Eighteen months ago, the love of my life died. I didn’t handle it well. I had to be hospitalized. I had to—we had this fight, you see. I’m a hockey player in Canada. I’m famous there. So is he. I didn’t want to come out, and it was hurting him. I didn’t handle the fight well. We didn’t make up, not really. I was avoiding him. We weren’t talking. 

“And then, of all things, his fucking plane crashes and he dies. And he manages to tell me he loves me in the middle of all of it. He—God, no one knows him, how good he is. How lovely he is, how he always takes his pain and clarifies it into love and I never knew it, too, until it was too late. That was the worst fucking part of it all, you know? How fucking stupid I was. His plane is crashing, and he says I’m—he says he loves me, that he’ll always be with me, and I don’t feel it. I never feel it, I just feel like he’s not there and that I wasn’t there when he needed him. For God’s sake, I was playing fucking hockey while he was dying in the middle of a Georgia field. So I—so I don’t handle it well. And I can’t… I, um. And then, on the anniversary of his death, I wake up, and he’s in bed beside me. Breathing. It’s summer and it’s four years earlier. I wasn’t convinced it was real. I thought—I don’t know. I think I scared him a lot, those first few days. But I thought maybe I had finally died, or maybe I’d lost my mind, but I’m still here and so is he, and I don’t understand why. I don’t understand what happened at all.”

Abigail watches him as he speaks. Her broken iris seems to pulse, changing different colors in the lighting. Blue, then purple, then gold, then back to blue. She nods once, twice, three times. She smooths out the church program in her hand as he finishes, and then says, “You need to tell me what happened. How you got here.”

Shane shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” she says softly. 

“I don’t see how.”

“Because,” Abigail says, “it affects this. What I have to tell you.”

“I don’t see how,” Shane says again. His jaw moves forward and he breathes in and out through his nose. “You haven’t said anything.”

“I know,” Abigail says. Her eyes fix on him, so bright and unyielding. Shane leans back. His weight shifts off his right foot. “You came to me for a reason. So say it. Say you died, and where, and when, and then I’ll tell you what I know. Because it’s fucking important.”

***

The thought didn’t crystallize until it was already passing through Shane's brain, and the decision had already been made.

It was really a bunch of little things. Shane tried to keep up the Irina Foundation, until he walked through his office door and saw the stress ball Ilya had bought him, lying on the desk next to his monitor. It was shaped like a kitten, had little ears and an angry mouth, and he said it looked silly when it was being squeezed, all puffed up and frustrated like you. Then he walked back out and asked for his mother to appoint an interim director.

He tried to see Hayden and J.J. a few times after July, when his retirement was officially announced. They went out for beers and J.J. stared at Shane like he was holding a gun to his own head. Hayden kept showing Shane photos of his kids and said that Arthur was very sad that Shane hadn’t come to visit. And Shane had realized that Hayden was editing himself for Shane. Arthur was also asking about Ilya. Of course he was, he had to be. But it was like Ilya, in his death, had become this force of gravity. Holding down every interaction, sagging everyone to the floor, but so inescapable it was impossible to comment on. Shane realized that he had become the same way. 

Shane tried to spend time with his parents, but they were increasingly worried, increasingly impatient with him. He knew they weren’t used to him just—floating along. He’d always been a planner, a worrier, someone who needed straight As and athlete awards and a promise of a future. Shane’s mom started to wonder about his medication, his diagnosis, his therapist. His dad just seemed worried. Ever since June, he’d taken to hugging Shane randomly, feeding him cookies and tea, petting his hair when he lay down on the couch. 

It was exhausting. In September, Shane returned to his cottage, with the promise to continue his therapy appointments and to have weekly dinners and phone calls with his parents.

With the benefit of hindsight, Shane could admit that this was when things took a turn for the worse. He’d thought that the distance, that being alone would help him sort out his mind. Instead, the cottage slithered through his veins like bad blood.

Shane barely remembered the scattering of Ilya’s ashes, but he could remember the lapping of the lake like a dog at Shane’s feet. The sound was grating. Shane shut all the window blinds and played acoustic songs through the sound system at all hours. When he slept, he dreamt that the lake water was full of charcoal and rot.

Food started to turn his stomach, so he stopped eating so much. He let the fresh fruit and salad mix spoil in his fridge, and he wondered about the stench of spinach, whether it would perfuse throughout the cottage and stick to his couch cushions. He dumped the contents of his fridge into the kitchen trash can and forgot to replace most of it.  

He promised his therapist and his parents that he was taking his meds, but realized that that maybe wasn’t true. The refill dates didn’t match up with how many pills were in the bottles. He was forgetting them, and then noticed that when he remembered to take them, nothing would change. Reality still felt hard and plasticky on his skin. So what did it matter if he forgot to take the meds? He was the same with or without.

Autumn passed slowly and winter pressed in on him. He remembered his fight with Ilya at Christmas. The strained way they spoke afterward, and how angry he had still been in the days leading up to the crash. How fucking wasted that time had been. How stupid Shane was. 

He spent Christmas with his parents, who could only talk about how thin Shane was getting, how it was clear the cottage was no good for him. “You need to move back in,” said his mom bluntly as she tried to feed him a Christmas cookie. “I’m getting worried. Really worried.”

“I am a grown adult. You really can’t tell me to do anything,” Shane argued back. He took the cookie and let it crumble in his fist, and then went upstairs to his childhood bedroom to sleep off the anger. He slept a lot, even though his dreams were fragmented, horrible, a piecemeal of Ilya’s smile and hockey sticks and flames erupting from a metal body. 

In January, his dad gave him an ultimatum: show improvement in a month, or they would be hospitalizing him again. “It’s for your own good,” he said. “Your mental health is no joke, Shane.”

“I really never thought it was,” said Shane. When he went back to the cottage, he fell into bed and couldn’t get up for three days. 

Intellectually, Shane knew he was falling apart. It was one of those distant whispers of a thought, something that people would maybe describe as premonitions. I knew this would happen, or I had always had an inkling. Something that is undeniably true, even as you keep going down the same path.

Intellectually, Shane knew he was dying. He was pretty sure he had been dying since Ilya had boarded that flight to Tampa.

The day before the anniversary of Ilya’s death, Shane woke up in a daze. He wasn’t even sure he wasn’t dreaming. It was early in the morning. His parents would be calling soon. He didn’t want to speak to them. 

He lifted the blinds, then wandered through the living room out onto the back deck. He was missing Ilya. Perhaps Ilya was in the lake, whole and waiting for him. But the lake was almost frozen over. He couldn’t dive down to find him. And he was maybe not there at all. 

Shane’s hand went to the crucifix. He worried it on the chain. He stepped back inside, not bothering to shut the sliding glass door, and cold slips of air brushed against him as he scraped his fingers against the wall. He went to the garage and opened the freezer. There was the vodka Ilya had left, wedged between two blocks of congealed ice. Shane took it out, the bottle freezing his fingertips, and swigged it while he walked to the bathroom. Looked at the little orange pill bottles lined up next to the tap. He opened one and poured it into the other. He grabbed the water glass resting nearby and filled it up with the vodka. He carried the pill bottle into his room, to their bed.

Ilya had told him he loved him here. They planned their life together here. It was an evil, awful thing to do, what Shane was about to do here. Ilya had told Shane about his mom. The long white arm stretching down from her bed. It was horrible for Shane to repeat it. He couldn’t even have an original death.

But it was the last thing of Ilya he could have. Without Ilya, all he could do was have his grief, and match it, and slot himself perfectly into Ilya’s life like a bookend. He poured the pills into his mouth, chewed them like he was told not to do, and let the bitter taste coat his tongue like sand until he washed it down with vodka. His eyes began to droop. He lay down on his side, facing Ilya’s half, and stretched his fingers across the empty covers.

“I miss you,” Shane said slowly. “I know it’s bad, what I’m doing. I hope you’ll forgive me. I hope there’s still a you to forgive me. I—there was this time. Where everything was ahead of us. And I thought I had you and you had me. And I’m the one that lost it for us. I’m the one that killed you. This is what I have to do. If I—if I ever saw you again—if there’s a universe… I’d just watch you breathe. That’s all I’d do. For the rest of my life. I’m so sorry, Ilya.”

Shane let his eyes drift closed. Breathing was getting harder. He stretched his arm out further, searching for Ilya’s warmth, and was surprised when he couldn’t find it. He was slipping away. The gravity was falling out from beneath him. He let himself feel it, again. The wound that had opened in him, and how gaping, and dark, and dense it was.

Shane’s last words in that life were simple. He mouthed into his pillow as he stopped breathing, “Ya budu skuchat po tebe.”

***

Abigail listens to Shane, her face drawn. When he finishes, she stands up and goes to the back room again. She comes back out with a fleece jacket. 

“Come on,” she says. “We’re going to the beach.”

Shane stares at her. His fist clenches around the embroidered tablecloth. “You owe me an explanation.”

“I’m going to give it to you,” she says, “but that was really fucking heavy, and I want the beach. Come with me. I’ll talk on the way.”

She leaves the tea service on the table. Just turns off the lights, flips the open sign on the porch, and locks up the door. From this street, the beach isn’t far. Just a block or two. Shane breathes in and out through his mouth. He’s known for being patient, in hockey, even though it’s not a trait many players have. He can be patient here. She is going to give him answers. 

Abigail nods to herself, and then faces Shane on the porch. She hands him the same church program she’d grabbed from the back room. Shane frowns at her. She says, “It’s a funeral service program. For a ten-year-old girl. Her name is Christie Price.”

Shane blinks at her. He looks down at the program. It’s from a Methodist church in Richmond, Virginia. May 1976, it says. He flips it open, and there’s a printed picture of Christie Price. She has light hair and a gap in her teeth, and she’s sitting in a meadow, beaming at the camera.

He looks up at Abigail. She gestures for him to start walking, so they descend the porch steps together. 

“I don’t understand,” says Shane.

“Yeah,” says Abigail. She tugs the program back from Shane’s grasp, and replaces it with her unlocked cell phone. She’s navigated to her camera roll, and there’s a selfie of Abigail, her arm wrapped around a woman. The woman is in a wheelchair, and has light grey hair and smile lines around her eyes. They’re obviously very close.

“This,” Abigail says, “is also Christie Price.”

Shane blinks. His heart picks up speed. He passes Abigail’s phone back to her. “I don’t understand.”

She shrugs. She kicks at the sidewalk as they reach an intersection. “Christie is my best friend,” she says. “And in 1976, when we were ten, she got killed by a hit-and-run. It was fucking awful. They never found the person who drove the car, and when the ambulances finally got there—there was nothing they could do. Her spinal cord had been completely ruptured, and her heart was stopping. Her dad arrived just in time to hold her hand as she died.”

Abigail sucks in a deep breath. “I was—devastated. We’d known each other as babies. According to my mom, we were inseparable in daycare. We were supposed to go through life together. I never—I never got over it. I carried around her funeral program everywhere with me. I thought if I did, then I could always carry her with me.”

Shane bites down on his lip. They’re at the beach access point now. The wind is kicking up, harsh and flat against his face, and he hates how much he’s thinking why does it fucking matter?

Abigail cuts a glance toward him. “Then, when I was eighteen,” she says, “I had an aneurysm. Total freak accident. Shouldn’t have happened. Aneurysms are terrifying. It happens so fast, without any warning. I remember pulling out Christie’s program—I had it in my back pocket, and I remember thinking, ‘at least Christie and I are gonna be together.’ It was comforting. To think about Christie, in my final moments like that. I said, ‘Christie. I’m coming to you now.’”

Shane’s mouth suddenly felt dry. Abigail leads them to the part of the beach where the sand was more compact, damp with seawater. The waves are choppy and grey in front of them. The wind whistles around them as she stops to face the ocean. She says, “I woke up, and I was sixteen years old. And I was so fucking confused. I went downstairs and my mom and dad told me I had to go to school. I thought it was a dream, or I had gone crazy.”

Shane swallowed hard against nothing. “Yeah,” he says.

She turns back to him. Her mouth is twisted in a light grimace. For the first time, Shane sees that she is older than him. Old enough to be his mother. Her greying curls brush against her face as she says, “When I got to school, Christie was there. Waiting for me. I decided that whatever had happened—it didn’t matter. I had gotten a second chance with her.”

“It happened to you too,” Shane says quietly.

Abigail laughs, shaking her head. “I looked around for years, you know? There’s a weird amount of writing about it. J.B. Priestley’s time plays. References in The Brothers Karamazov about the fourth dimension. H.G. Wells, Edgar Cayce’s clairvoyance claims, even Edgar Allen Poe’s essay on cosmology. He’s actually the first person to propose that space and time are one. He did it without any mathematics. But there are things about this life that are different. Things that have changed and I don’t know why."

“When I met you,” Shane says slowly, “I—you owned a witch shop. Not a tea shop.”

She nods at him. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Other people have come to you?”

“Yes,” says Abigail. She faces the ocean again.

“I—I only have one theory. Because all of these people who come to me, it’s always the same thing. A widow, or a motherless son, or a fiance with no one to marry anymore. The dearest person in their life is gone, and afterward, no matter how many years have passed—when they’re dying, they think of them. They beg for them. And in those last moments, when they’re slipping away—maybe the other person grabs back. From someplace where they can hold you. And they bring you into their world, because they heard you calling for them.”

She shakes her head. “I mean, for years, I almost thought I’d dreamed those other eight years of my life. But then I found the program. That program. Tucked away into a pair of jeans. No idea how it got there. But it was hers, even as I was heading over to her house to see her. But…”

She trails off. Shane stares at her, and then slowly sinks down into the sand. He sits down and rests his head on his knees. 

She sits down next to him. Puts a friendly hand on his knee. “You’re the first one who committed suicide,” she says, as if she was commenting on the weather.

Shane huffs out a laugh. “Thanks.”

“It’s interesting,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “I didn’t think intentional deaths worked. But I don’t know much about it, so.”

Shane sighs. He looks back up and watches the white foam of the waves coming to shore. “I really hoped you did.”

“I think the other me must know more,” she says. “The witch shop one, I mean. Maybe I’m always interested in the fourth dimension, I don’t know. She sounds much more mysterious than I am. In this world, I’m just glad to have Christie.”

Shane says, “How do they keep finding you? The other people, I mean. Who’ve experienced this.”

“The same way you found me, I think,” Abigail says. “I have this other theory. Which is much less popular for people.”

Shane stares at her. She laughs, and says, “I think there’s a little bit of magic involved.”

“Fuck off.”

“No, I’m serious,” she says, laughing again. She holds up her hands. “I mean, how else can you explain it? Other than we, or the people we love, must have some sort of extraneous energy that means they can pull us into another world. At the right moment, at the last second, just like passing from one revolving door to another. There has to be something extra. Maybe something magical. Maybe it’s the same thing that lets us find each other for these answers. What led me to you, or you to me.”

Shane shakes his head. He stands up again, and begins to brush the sand off of his track pants. “I’m not here for fucking—magic, I’m here to make sure—Ilya, he’s… will he die? Again? I mean, your Christie. She’s alive. Forty three years after she died, and she’s alive. So Ilya, he’s going to be okay, right?”

His heart, he suddenly realizes, is in his throat. He swallows hard again, and wishes he brought his water bottle with him on the walk. He needs it. Or something stronger. Maybe a lot stronger.

“Shane,” says Abigail, and something about her tone makes him begin to shake his head.

“Shut up,” he says.

Abigail splays out her hands, and he says, “No, stop—I don’t want to hear it,” even as she says, “You have to.”

They stare at each other. He knows she’s right. It’s why he came here. It’s why he came.

“A few years after I began to live with Christie again,” says Abigail, “she started getting these headaches. And I mean, they were horrible headaches. They kept getting worse, and worse, and worse, until one day she woke up, and—she couldn’t walk anymore.”

Shane wants to say something. Instead, he feels rooted to the spot.

“She called me,” Abigail says softly. “She said she remembered dying. She remembered me dying, somehow. She said her spine had ruptured. She asked me to drive her to the hospital. When we got there, the doctors didn’t know what happened. She’s never walked again.”

Shane shuts his eyes. Ilya’s nose. His shoulder. The black stitching that made him look like a horrific doll.

And those headaches. Those horrible fucking headaches.

“It’s happened,” she says, “to the others. With some degree of variability. A fatal concussion can become a hematoma, or just a chronic migraine. Cancer will turn into fibromyalgia, or cystic fibrosis. I—Shane, once or twice, they’ve died again. I can’t lie to you. I don’t know what’ll happen, but your Ilya. He will be hurt. I don’t know why. I’m so sorry. I really don’t know why.”

Shane’s mom loved The Little Mermaid. The Hans Christian Andersen version. Where the mermaid turns into sea foam at the end because her love wasn’t enough. Shane thinks that could probably be him, right now. He is melting again.

There’s a sharp pinch to his elbow. Shane opens his eyes and Abigail is still looking at him, his flesh squeezed between her index finger and thumb, and she says, “You with me? You can’t go away. This is what you came for, right?”

“I can’t lose him,” he gasps out. “I—I killed him, and I killed myself, and I’m killing him again. How can I keep doing this? How can I keep hurting him? I don't want to keep hurting him, but I do.”

“Fuck off,” Abigail says this time, and Shane blinks at her. She shakes her head, and then slaps his chest. “I’m serious. Fuck off. Do you know how lucky you are? So many people don’t get a second chance. And here you are, mad that it’s not right?”

“He could die,” Shane says numbly. “He was so hurt, I don’t think—and the headaches, they’re already happening.”

It’s Abigail’s turn to look pale. “Already?”

And then, it really hits Shane. He scrambles. He pulls out his phone and powers it on. Come on, he thinks. Come on, come on, come on, please. Please, please, please. 

The Apple logo appears. His phone boots up. He punches in his passcode. Abigail crowds over his shoulder, neither of them breathing, as his notifications load.

Ten missed calls. One from an unknown Ottawa number. Six from his mom. Three from his dad. And a slew of texts that he can’t read, because his phone is turning into a blur in front of him.

“Fuck,” says Abigail. “Okay. Airport, now.”

Shane blinks. Time goes funny again. In one step, they have left the beach. In another, they’re passing through security at the Dulles airport.

A news channel tunes to ESPN at the airport bar. Ilya Rozanov, Star Hockey Player, says the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen. Rushed to the hospital. Condition unknown.

Abigail grips Shane’s shoulder, but it doesn’t do much. He is already breathing at the bottom of the lake.

He is already turning to sea foam.

Chapter End Notes

Russian to English:

ya budu skuchat po tebe — I will miss you.

Chapter 4: december / a star that is always dying

Chapter Notes

hi genuinely what is happening how did you all get here

no but seriously the fact that THIS inspired my favorite author for this fandom to write the best time loop fic I've ever seen... I do not have words, anon if you're reading this I love u so much please keep writing forever and let me know when you're published

ok thanks for all the kind words I feel like this whole thing has lightly escaped containment but like in the best way possible ok thanks byeeee

Ilya is dreaming of the cottage. 

This isn’t the weird part. Ilya’s had dreams of the cottage ever since he first visited it. Mostly just glimpses of buttery sunlight, and cool lakewater, and Shane’s warm skin, his fingers massaging into Ilya’s thighs, his tongue slipping down Ilya’s neck. In his regular cottage dreams, Ilya wakes up hard and wanting. The dreams are wonderful when Shane is still in bed next to him; otherwise, they’re inconvenient wet dreams he has to scrub away with cold showers and recitations of the KHL player handbook.

But this isn’t a regular cottage dream. Ilya recognizes this as soon as the dream starts, because he knows he’s dreaming. He’s not a lucid dreamer. When he dreams of his mom, he always wakes up calling for her, never remembering that she is dead until he wakes up again.

He comes into awareness gasping for breath, holding onto Shane’s favorite armchair in the living room for balance. There’s some sort of extant feeling inside of him, something that is somehow a footprint within the dream. He is desperate, maybe even frightened; he follows the feeling through an open sliding-glass door, out onto the cottage deck.

Shane is standing there, his back to Ilya. His fingers are curled against the thick wood railing and he looks—strange. Thinner than he should. His head is dipping down to his chest as if the weight of it is too much for his neck. He’s dressed in a rumpled sweatshirt and sweatpants, but no socks. That is no good, Ilya thinks. There’s snow on the deck. His feet are turning blue.

Ilya wonders why it’s so cold. He’s never been here when it was this cold. Last year, over Western Christmas, Shane had taken him home to Yuna and David instead of the cottage. But it’s clearly the dead of winter—the sky is cloudy and grey, and the lake is half-frozen, its wake waves pushing and pulling weakly against the rocky shore.

“Shane,” Ilya says slowly, his heart rising in his throat, “What’s going on? What is this dream? What are we doing here?”

Shane turns around slowly, as if he’s heard Ilya. But it’s clear he didn’t hear him at all. Ilya stops breathing as he looks him over.

His face is sallow and shadowed. He’s thinner than he should be, too thin for an athlete, and he’s grabbing onto the deck railing for balance. He looks older in this dream than Ilya’s Shane does, but Ilya can’t tell if it’s from age, or the dark circles under his eyes, or from the pure lack of expression on his face. Ilya remembers his father’s senility, the shallow look of his eyes in the end, and he can’t help but think that Shane looks the same. Like Ilya’s mother, too. 

Ilya’s always loved Shane’s eyes. How big they can be, how scorching-hot-yet-gentle they always look, always betraying the picture-perfect image of an MLH superstar. It’s why Ilya’s always been drawn to him from the very beginning. Shane could be going through the motions, playing the role of a tough hockey player, but his eyes were so Shane even as the rest of him screamed Hollander.

Now, in the dream, his eyes are two flat circles set into his face. His eyes are so shallow. Shane pushes past Ilya as if he isn’t there.

He swallows down on his tongue as he follows Shane through the house. The distant, crawling fear and acidic desperation of the dream is a mist surrounding Ilya, tugging at his body as Shane opens the side door to the garage, bare feet slapping against the cold concrete floor as he walks to the garage freezer and starts to rifle through it. Don’t, Ilya thinks, and the thought doesn’t quite feel like his own. Please don’t. 

Shane pulls something out of the freezer. A nice, half-full bottle of vodka, the kind that Ilya has to get from a reseller down in Montreal. Shane looks at the vodka for a while, his fingers cutting clear lines across the freezer-frosted glass bottle. Ilya watches him, the breath dropping out of his throat entirely.

Shane shrugs and turns to leave the garage, fingers clenched around the vodka bottle, his nails tapping against the bottle stopper. Ilya lunges after him, the fear of the dream filling his nostrils. He chokes on the air around him and thinks that’s not right, this is a dream, and a deep, hard flash of pain slashes through him, yanking at his shoulder and slicing through his lungs—

***

Ilya wakes up coughing, his nose dripping hot and heavy across his pillow. He chokes on the blood as he snaps on the bedside lamp and rips the cover off of the pillow. He bunches it up and presses it to his nose, leaning forward and breathing slowly through his mouth until the blood starts clotting and he’s able to pull the cover away to wipe at his face instead.

He stands, heading to the bathroom attached to his room. He turns on the bathroom tap and splashes water into his face. He hasn’t bothered to turn on any of the lights, but it’s early enough that grey morning light is beginning to filter in through the nearby window. In the vanity mirror, his face is streaked with dark blood that he scrubs off with his fingertips. His eyes are shadowed, and as he meets his reflection’s eyes, a starburst of pain splits out of his right temple. 

Ilya groans, steadying himself against the vanity for a moment. He has a game today, for God’s sake. A little nosebleed and a headache shouldn’t leave him feeling so poorly.

He grits his teeth and tells himself to pull it together, because while Ottawa is almost certainly doomed to lose, Ilya is the captain and can score at least a couple of points for the team per game. They need him, even if it’s only to make a thorough defeat slightly more respectable.

Ilya plugs the sink basin and sets the pillowcase in the bottom. He fills it with warm water and pumps hand soap into the water, then scrubs again with needy fingers at the pillowcase until the stains are barely visible. He pulls the stopper to let the water drain out, then hangs the pillowcase on one of the towel hooks to dry. 

As he does, he has a flashbulb memory: his hands, much smaller, wringing out washcloths thick and damp with his mama’s blood. He and Alexei had to clean the bathroom after Mama had been wrapped in a body bag by the paramedics. Ilya had been afraid of staining the washcloths, of making Papa even angrier than he had been on the phone. He had scrubbed at the bloodstains with clawed fingers, the soap only doing so much. Alexei had watched him, had gripped Ilya’s shoulder. His hand was a bolt of cramped heat that seemed to radiate through Ilya even now.

Ilya braces himself on the bathroom countertop. He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. He walks himself back to the bedroom, and sits on the edge of the bed. The sun has woken up a bit more and is gently peeking through Ilya’s curtains. He pulls out his phone to check the time—7:37 a.m. He’s usually not up before nine o’clock if he can help it. 

He sees a missed call and voicemail from Shane, dated around forty minutes ago. Ilya quickly navigates to his voicemail inbox and hits play.

“Hey,” said a prerecorded Shane, “I know it’s early, sorry baby. I just got off the phone with my parents—there’s this old hockey friend I have, um. He’s—it’s complicated, but his friend just died of, like, this crazy concussion and I guess Brendan—that’s my friend—I guess it freaked him out, and he was, like, looking for support and thought of me. Which is flattering. And his wife’s just had a baby, they just had a baby, so. I’m rambling, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it down to Ottawa after your game after all, since I’m gonna be flying out super early in the morning tomorrow to Indianapolis. I’m so sorry, Ilya. It’s just this one thing, you know? I gotta do this to be, um, a good friend. But call me after the game! Please. I love you, you’re gonna do great tonight. I love you so much. Ya tebya lyublu.  Good luck today!”

Ilya puts his phone down next to him on the bed. His headache pulses again, an angry whip against his temples, and he wonders if it’s too early to give up on today, if he can’t just try again tomorrow.

He presses his face into his now-bare pillow and sighs.

***

The Centaurs are playing the Admirals, which means that the Centaurs have absolutely no chance at all of winning.

Ilya’s starting to get familiar with the atmosphere of the Centaurs locker room before different games. When they’re facing another bottom-tier team, there’s a cautious, breath-holding sense of hope. Ilya’s left wing, Zane Boodram, would take over the Bluetooth speaker and play early 2000s Europop, “to get people’s blood flowing,” he always said with a wink. 

For mid-tier teams, the energy was more muted. This is when Ilya would take his captaincy seriously. He’d have speaker privileges for those games, would blast Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar at the max volume as he shouted about wanting the team to give it their all, that he didn’t come all the way to Ottawa just to watch his team give up before they even hit the ice. These speeches sometimes seemed to work. The last time they’d played Carolina, the final 4-2 score hadn’t been too dismal. 

Now, walking into the locker room, Ilya’s greeted with the sound of easygoing laughter. As Ilya steps through the threshold, Boodram tosses a glove at Wyatt Hayes’s face that Hayes easily bats away. Some of the other guys linger around the locker room, looking just as relaxed as Hayes and Boodram. Somebody’s taken over the Bluetooth speaker to play gentle classical music.

“See?” Boodram says to Hayes, gesturing to the dropped glove. “Do that with all the pucks that Hunter sends our way and the MLH might still consider us a hockey team.” He clasps his hands together and looks at Hayes as if he’s praying to him. “I’m begging you here! You’re our only hope, Hazy.”

Ilya clicks his tongue as he heads to his stall in the center of the lock room. He pulls off the sunglasses he’d worn all the way indoors and tries not to wince at the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lighting. “I am here also, Bood, don’t forget that.”

Bood turns to face Ilya, his face open and friendly as always, but his mouth drops into a frown as Ilya sets down his gear bag in the stall. “Uh, maybe you shouldn’t be, Roz,” he says, clapping Ilya hard on his shoulder. His bad shoulder. The one that had started to hurt this morning.

Ilya tries not to react to the dull throb of pain that pulses down his shoulder, but it doesn’t seem to work. He misses Marleau. Marleau cared just as much as Bood always seems to, but the big difference is that Marley is as perceptive as a rock, usually. He wouldn’t have even clocked that Ilya isn’t feeling a hundred percent.

“No, seriously,” Bood says, a divot forming between his eyebrows as Ilya waves him off. “You’re pale. Paler than usual, I mean.”

“Thanks, Bood,” Ilya says dryly.

Bood is persistent. “Are you sure you should be here right now? I mean it. You look like death, Roz.”

“You really know how to make a guy feel special.” Ilya bends down to untie his shoes, turning his face away from Bood. Bood clucks like a chicken but doesn’t say anything else, just starts trying to pull Tanner Dillon, Ilya’s right wing, into some kind of convoluted bet that includes scoring goals against the Admirals. Ilya wonders if it’s a Hail Mary tactic to try and get Dillon to play some good fucking hockey for once in his life.

Ilya finishes untying his shoes and tosses them into the bottom of his stall. Before he starts changing into his gameday gear, he pulls out his phone. Yuna and David had mentioned wanting to catch more of his games in-person, which is both very sweet and very awkward. It isn’t as if he could just give them his Ottawa seats—Yuna Hollander is such a fierce manager that most hockey players recognized her easily, and some had even known her as Shane’s manager before they figured out she’s his mom. 

Although now, with the Irina Foundation announcement, Ilya supposes he could maybe start offering them his seats. It’s plausible enough. His co-founder’s parents live in Ottawa—why wouldn’t they catch their hometown team’s games sometimes? And Ilya would just be a generous business partner to help out Shane’s parents. 

He makes a mental note to offer his seats to Yuna and David for the next home game. It would be nice to have someone other than Svetlana in the stands. It would be—well. 

Ilya isn’t stupid, he knows that Yuna and David care for him as Shane’s long-time partner and probably nothing more than that. But maybe the move to Ottawa had been tougher than Shane and Ilya had been anticipating. Even though the Centaurs were nice and welcoming, Ilya just didn’t feel like they were his team. Not the way the Raiders had been his team. And their coach, a crotchety old man close to retirement, couldn’t be bothered to rewatch tapes and come up with new plays or even do basic skills assessments for the team. Without a coach, the Centaurs were lucky to be considered a team and not just a roster full of names. 

So the Centaurs were hopeless, and while Ilya liked his teammates well enough, he’d found himself making it to less and less social events as the season dragged on. Some of his reasons for skipping out were legitimate: Shane would be in town, or he had actual meetings to make regarding Foundation donors, or his new favorite—Shane had said something wildly concerning again and now Ilya wouldn’t be good company for the Centaurs. But recently, it’s started to just feel like a headache to drag himself out of bed for practice. And considering that he’s also started to wake up with a headache every morning, Ilya’s attendance record for Centaur social events is tanking. 

All of which is to say: Maybe he’s feeling a little isolated. And maybe Yuna and David, with their constant dinner invitations and texts of support and offers to drop off leftover casseroles for Ilya because he must be so busy, and it was no trouble really! have started to feel more and more like a life raft for Ilya. He’s tried not to lean on them too heavily—not while Shane is acting out some kind of slow-moving breakdown—but when he checks his messages and sees that Yuna and David are at the game today, and want Ilya over for dinner afterward, well. 

It just makes him smile a little bit, that's all.

He checks the time on his phone. Still plenty of time to change before warm-ups begin. He quickly starts typing out a response, barely acknowledging Dykstra’s quiet greeting as he enters the locker room and passes by Ilya.

Ilya Rozanov 🏒🐴

Yes to dinner tonight 🙂

I am sure you’ve heard that Shane is off being the Metros captain to an old friend or something

so I don’t think he’s coming by this weekend 🙁

Yuna Hollander 💃

Excited for the game & for dinner tonight!

Yes, he called David and I this morning. I figured he’d call you, too

It’s weird, we can’t remember a friend named Brendan from his hockey camp days. 

David Hollander 🧩

Yeah, I’ve been wracking my brain all morning about it

Hope he gets his phone fixed in Indianapolis at least.

Ilya—I have a new jigsaw. 1000 pieces 🙂

Ilya Rozanov 🏒🐴

Excellent

You know how to cheer me up when my boyfriend ditches me!

Yuna Hollander 💃

LOL

David Hollander 🧩

Headed over to the stadium now

Try and win for us today! Excited to see you play 🏒

Ilya chews on his lip as he closes the group chat with Yuna and David. Shane’s texted a few times, too: a string of heart emojis, a good luck text, and finally, Ya tebya lyublu. 

Ilya swallows hard as he reads the text. He thinks of the dream from this morning—a Shane that was so different from anything Ilya’s ever seen before. His blue, bare feet, and his nervous fingers, and the way he’d held his jaw tight. His stony eyes set into his lined, sallow face. Had Ilya conjured him up from his own fears, his own childhood memories? Or was it worse—did Shane actually feel whatever he’d felt in the dream, and Ilya, too afraid of reality, can only face it while he’s dreaming?

There is no answer. It was just a dream. It was just a dream.

But still Ilya bends over for a moment, nausea pushing up toward his lips before he forces it back down. He pretends that he was inspecting the heel of his sock, and when he sits back up, his head pulses again, deep and aching.

Ilya only manages a heart emoji as a response to Shane. He shuts off his phone and shoves it into the shelf above his stall, and tells himself to breathe, to be normal, to put on his pads and his jersey and go out to the rink and play hockey like a normal fucking hockey player.

***

Ilya faces off against Scott Hunter at the top of the second period. 

Hunter had been friendlier with Ilya since Ilya had approached him in Vegas after the Stanley Cup kiss. The times that Ilya had played in New York, he’d even been invited out to the new gay bar that Hunter co-owned with his goalie, Eric Bennett. It’s nice, and while it doesn’t stop Ilya from chirping at Hunter, he likes to think it’s a friendlier version of the barbs they’d traded during earlier MLH seasons.

Ilya thinks now that maybe he’d been too friendly with Hunter, who is currently frowning at him as they skate toward the center line. As  Ilya bends down with his hockey stick to get into position, he can’t quite hide the groan of pain that slips out. His shoulder is fucked from whatever he’d done to it while sleeping, and his pounding headache has only gotten worse during the game. The Admirals are already up 2-0, and Ilya wants nothing more than to end the game and go home and lay on his couch until Shane is back from Indianapolis. 

Hunter bends down too, his hockey stick brushing against Ilya’s for a moment as he slides into position. “Roz,” he says quietly. “Are you sure you should be playing?”

“What does it matter to you,” Ilya bites out. The lights in the rink are so bright. The ice is so white. Ilya grits his teeth and breathes.

“All the guys have noticed,” says Hunter. Ilya flicks his gaze up to Hunter, who looks annoyingly sincere. He always looks annoyingly sincere. “You’re skating like shit, Roz. I know Coach Martin isn’t that great, but if you told him you feel bad then he’d have to pull you from the ice.”

Ilya closes his eyes for a brief moment. He can’t believe another hockey player is saying this to him, here, on MLH ice. Maybe his dad was right, he thinks, a half-smile twitching at his lips. Maybe the MLH were full of pussies, and the KHL is just that much tougher.

Ilya opens his eyes again to look directly at Hunter. “I can still skate,” he says, raising an eyebrow. The referee above them blows the whistle, the screech echoing out across the rink and slamming between Ilya’s eardrums.

He wins the face-off. It’s the last bit of good hockey Ilya plays all night.

In Ilya’s defense, he’s actually played sick before. And with bruised ribs, and with a probable concussion. He knows how to balance his play when he’s feeling poorly, how to conserve energy on his stride and how to strategize so he’s not taking as many hits, so he’s assisting and protecting instead of leading play. All good hockey players know how to work, how to do their jobs correctly even when they’re feeling bad.

But Ilya seems to be getting worse as he keeps playing. His shoulder, which had been cramping this morning, now feels stiff and ugly underneath his jersey. Every movement of his left arm came with a sharp knot of pain, and it has him missing shots he would’ve otherwise made. His headache grows, too, strobing the fluorescents above him and making his hearing distant and fuzzy when he sits down on the bench.

During the third period, Ilya’s nose starts to bleed again. Bood, sitting next to Ilya on the bench, curses and passes over tissues from a nearby medic. 

“Fucking knew you were feeling bad,” Bood says as Ilya plugs up his nose. 

Ilya hesitates, but drops his head into his hands. “Maybe I should not have played.”

Bood stares at him. “Be straight with me, Roz. Should we be getting you to a doctor? I mean, shit, what’s even happening?”

Ilya flaps a hand at him. “I just woke up feeling sick. Probably caught something on the road. If it’s worse tomorrow I will take care of it.”

Bood watches him for a moment longer, then knocks his knee into Ilya’s. “Guess I can’t tempt you for after-game drinks, then.”

Ilya smiles at him. It probably looks very stupid with a wad of tissues stuffed up his nostrils.

The Admirals, of course, sweep Ottawa in the end. It isn’t even close. 4-0 in the Admirals’ favor. After shaking hands on the ice, Ilya takes a quick detour to the nearest bathroom. He splashes water on his face and stares at himself in the mirror. He’s so pale that he can see his veins, green-blue, webbing across his temples and forehead. He groans, and turns the bathroom tap to the warmest setting, until faint steam is rising from the sink basin. He splashes more water onto his face, until his cheeks are pink and rosy from the heat.

Doing post-game press for the Centaurs isn’t as bad or as lengthy as it had been for the Raiders. Ilya figures that when you’re playing for a team that hasn’t made playoffs in over a decade, all of the strategy questions are polite at best. No one is very interested in solving a problem that already has an answer: The Centaurs suck. They categorically suck. End of story.

It’s just late enough into the season that Ilya no longer has to answer the Why Ottawa? questions, so he’s able to get by with his usual arsenal of “oh, we’re working on rebuilding the team at the moment,” and “don’t count the Centaurs out just yet,” and “yes, the Admirals are historically good team. Next time we beat them historically, yes?”

He’s both a little thankful and surprised that no one asks after his health. Even while answering the reporters’ questions, he feels a little nauseous and achy under their portable ring-lights and bright cameras, but he supposes that maybe his nosebleed in the third period hadn’t been a big deal, that how poorly he felt wasn’t reading from outside of the rink. That’s good, Ilya thinks. It’ll give Shane less to worry about.

By the time Ilya’s done with press and back in the locker room, most of the guys are nearly dressed and talking about where they want to grab beers. Hayes is lingering near Ilya’s stall, fully dressed in his street clothes. He looks up from his phone when Ilya sits down on the bench in front of his stall.

“Hey, Bood said you weren’t feeling too hot,” Hayes says. He sticks his hands in his hoodie pocket. It’s the hoodie that he always wears to the rink—a bright green hoodie with the Green Lantern insignia in the center. Ilya had made fun of it when he’d first seen it, and Hayes had laughed it off. 

The thing about the Centaurs is that they’re genuinely nice. The entire team has been so welcoming to Ilya, and they always asked him how he was feeling and seemed to really want to know the answer. It’s not that the Raiders had treated Ilya poorly—he still missed Marley and St Simon, still texted them occasionally—but he’s never had someone go out of their way to check up on him after a game. 

And that’s what Hayes is clearly doing. He’s looking over Ilya with nervous eyes, and Ilya swallows hard as a hot, unnameable feeling pricks at the backs of Ilya’s eyes. It’s embarrassing. Ilya starts taking his gear off, and says to Hayes, “I’m maybe coming down with something, but it’s fine. I’m going to go home and sleep it off I think.”

Hayes nods, then pats Ilya on the back lightly as he steps around him. “Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything too bad. If something happens to you or me, then Ottawa’s completely screwed, so.”

Ilya manages a faint smile. His head is still throbbing, and the hot, prickling  feeling is still stinging at his eyes, and he figures he’s probably just overtired. 

The image of Shane from the dream with his drooping shoulders and heavy head pushes into Ilya’s mind. He scrunches his nose and reaches for his phone to turn it on. 

As his phone boots up, it lights up with messages from Yuna and David, letting him know what time to come by for dinner and expressing condolences for a game well-played. Svetlana’s also texted, saying play better next time, idiot :-)

And Shane. He’s sent another string of heart emojis. Another I love you text, and don’t worry about the game, you’ll get them next time ♥️

As if he really believes that. 

Ilya finishes getting changed and slots his phone into his back pocket without responding to anyone. As he trudges out to the parking lot alone, he wonders if he can put relentless optimism down onto his list of symptoms for Shane, or if that would make him a bad person.

***

“I really do want to be there,” Shane tells Ilya again. “It’s just—I think Brendan needs me right now. It’s just this quick trip, and then I’m all yours again, I swear.”

Ilya bites down on his cheek. He looks up at the evening sky above him. Yuna and David’s covered patio has a good view of the stars. He can see Ursa Major winking at him as he sits back against an outdoor recliner. David had insisted on lighting the firepit when Ilya had tried to step outside the house for the phone call, and the flames pop and crackle in front of him, producing a haze of heat that seems to be scrambling Ilya’s brain. Effective at chasing out the freezing cold of Ottawa, but horrible for Ilya’s persistent headache today.

“Is okay,” says Ilya, once Shane’s stopped rambling. “And I said it was okay when you mentioned it at the beginning of the phone call, dorogoy.”

His voice is scratchy and slow. He winces at the sound. At dinner tonight, Yuna had asked if Ilya was running a fever, and David had not-so-subtly told a story about Shane trying to play a U13 hockey game with strep throat, and how he’d been told by the team doctor that his health is no joke, young man. Ilya had tried to say that he was just tired, that he slept weird, that there’s nothing physically wrong—all of which is fucking true—but he also couldn’t finish even half of his plate of chicken parmesan, which definitely undercut anything he said.

He’d tried to beg off after dinner, saying that he had promised Shane a phone call, but Yuna had frowned at him and said, “Well, we promise not to eavesdrop,” she’d said. “But I insist that you stay over tonight. I don’t feel comfortable letting you drive home when you’re feeling sick.”

He’d still tried to argue after that, at which point David had poked his head in from the kitchen, hands still wet and sudsy with dish soap, and said, “Do you want Shane to kill us? And you still have to help me with that puzzle I mentioned. You’re not getting out of that.”

So now Ilya is sitting out on their patio, talking to Shane while Shane’s mom made up his old childhood bedroom for Ilya. His heart feels like it’s crept over two inches inside of his chest, and the empty gap it left is warm and bloody behind his sternum. 

He presses his hand to that spot now as Shane says, “I know, I know. I just—I really want to see you. I don’t want you to think I’m not coming for no reason. If I could be with you right now, then I would.”

“I know,” Ilya says quietly. “I know that.”

The moment falls like heavy snow between them. Ilya distracts himself by looking up at Ursa Major again. His mother had always loved constellations. She’d grown up in a rural village where there wasn’t much to do except skate on the frozen ponds, and go to church, and go stargazing at night. She’d tried to teach Ilya and Alexei where all of the stars were, but the light pollution in Moscow blocked out the blankets of stars that Irina had grown up with. The first time Ilya had come with her to her hometown village, he’d gasped as night fell. “There are so many stars,” he’d said to Irina.

Irina had been in a strange mood. They were only in town to attend the funeral of her childhood best friend, and Grigory of course hadn’t come with them. She’d watched Ilya look at the stars, leaning on the porch railing of her childhood home, and only said, “Stars can die too, you know. It just takes them a while.”

Shane clears his throat over the phone speaker, but hesitates to say anything else. Ilya tries to stay focused on their conversation, but instead traces out the edges of Ursa Major with his mind and wonders when the stars of the constellation would die. 

He’d tried to read about space and astronomy and everything, since Shane seemed so interested, but the only science books that were available in Canada were either in English or French, and the overly scientific words took too long for Ilya to look up and translate. Still, he remembers reading that the stars in the night sky projected out from galaxies so vast, so far away that it’s impossible to conceptualize the actual distance. And with how many lightyears it takes for the starlight to reach Earth, what appears in the night sky is not the present state of the stars but rather a phantom image of how they appeared centuries ago. All of the stars could have already died, and the night sky could be haunted by ghosts for hundreds and hundreds of years to come.

Shane says, “Ilya, baby. Are you feeling all right?”

Ilya nods, and then remembers that it’s just a phone call. He’d told Shane the light was poor out on the patio, which was true. But he also didn’t want Shane to really look at Ilya and freak out, since he’s been freaking out all season without any reason, anyway.

He leans forward toward the phone, as if it radiated the same gentleness that Shane did. “Yes. I am okay. It was just a hard game, I think.”

Shane waits a beat, and says, “Sorry, I really thought you were about to make a joke about playing against Hunter, there.”

Ilya closes his eyes. He pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to sound like himself as he says, “I would never joke about being hard around Hunter. Is weird to be attracted to a man who is one million years old. I do not know how his Kip does it.”

Shane huffs out a laugh, even as he says, “Don’t be mean.”

“I am not being mean, I’m just very impressed with Kip.”

“Ilya,” Shane says, in that curt, clipped tone that Ilya always loves. Ilya licks his lips without meaning to, even as Shane is saying, “I just—I mean. You are feeling okay, right? I worry. And I love you.”

“I love you too,” Ilya says. In the firepit, a log cracks in half and sends up a white plume of smoke. Ilya watches it dissipate into the cold night air. “I am okay. Just tired.”

“...Okay,” Shane says. “I, um, I won’t keep you then.”

Ilya wants to be able to say, you’re not keeping me. He wants to FaceTime Shane and whine about his headache and his weird shoulder, and have Shane coo at him and order him Icy Hots and Tylenol on courier apps. Before July happened, Ilya could do that. Shane had been steady, and certain, and his. 

It isn’t right for Ilya to be frustrated. Shane said he would be talking to someone this week, and really, all he’s done is love Ilya. Ilya considers, not for the first time, that maybe the problem is just him. Maybe he’s bad at recognizing love because the only person who had loved him as a kid had killed herself. When Ilya had squeezed at her cold wrists on the bathroom floor in a vain hope of resurrecting her, had wrung out washcloths full of her blood afterward—maybe some kind of string had been cut inside of him, and now he’s always doomed to worry over the people he loves, to see their faces as his mother’s.

“I love you very much,” Ilya tells Shane now. He burrows deeper into his jacket, even though he’s sweating from the heat of the firepit. For a strange moment, Ilya considers dunking himself into the fire just to burn away the cold entirely. He dismisses the thought just as quickly, and says, “I’m sorry. I think I just need to sleep. But I love you and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Shane hums over the phone, and says, “Yeah. I love you too, baby. This isn’t—is it your head again?”

There’s a nervy thread in Shane’s voice. Ilya keeps his voice even as he says, “No. Really, Shane. Is just a long day. And we lost again, which is typical, but still annoying.”

“Okay,” Shane says. “I love you, too. So much. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, and I’ll see you soon, and, um. Yeah, I guess I just—I love you.”

“I love you too. Send pictures of your friend Brendan’s baby,” Ilya says. He listens to Shane breathe on the phone for a moment. He hangs up because he always has to, in the end.

When Ilya steps inside the house, David is still downstairs. Even though he’d made threats about the one-thousand piece puzzle, he looks quite comfortable on the couch in the den. He’s wearing thick reading glasses and is holding an e-reader while the muted television advertises a vacuum of some kind.

As Ilya shuts the backdoor, David looks up, pushing his glasses up to his forehead. “Shane’s all right?”

“He is very apologetic about not being here,” says Ilya. “But yes, he’s all right.”

David nods as he gets up from the couch. “That makes sense. You know, Yuna and I really can’t remember him having a friend named Brendan from hockey camp. I think she’s more worried about it than I am. I mostly just want him to get his phone fixed.”

Right, Ilya remembers. The location app had been wonky for Shane the past couple of days, and now his location was switched off entirely. David kept saying that Shane is a high profile figure, and that he needed to have his location fixed for safety reasons. David liked to pretend he was less intense than Yuna, but he just expressed it differently, Ilya thought.

And they were lovely. Shane’s parents were just so lovely. Just like him.

David pats Ilya on his good shoulder as he passes by. “I’m gonna take care of the firepit,” he says. “Yuna’s already made up the bed upstairs. You should go and get some sleep, okay?”

Ilya swallows hard, but nods. “Thank you, David,” he says.

David just smiles at him. “Of course, kid.”

Ilya somehow makes it up the stairs and into Shane’s childhood bedroom. He’s visited it before, but never alone. If he was in a better mood, then he would poke around. Examine the hockey trophies and the school yearbooks in a bit more detail, maybe.

As it is, he can barely strip off his shirt and pants and crawl into the twin-sized bed. When he closes his eyes, he doesn’t fall asleep so much as he’s shoved into it, the descent fast and deep.

***

Ilya is in a dream where he knows he’s dreaming, again. Thankfully, it isn’t the cottage dream with a ghostly Shane. Instead, he’s on a plane.

If he had to guess, he would think this is a Centaurs plane. The sounds of conversation around him, interrupted by Bood’s not-quite-booming voice, certainly seem to point to that. But Troy Barrett from Toronto is also on the fucking plane for some reason, sitting next to a smiley man that Ilya has never seen before. In the dream, he watches Barrett for a little while, and then turns to look out the window.

There’s a strange, horrifying jolt that rocks through the airplane cabin. Ilya sucks in a deep breath and grabs onto the headrest in front of him with both hands. He’s suddenly aware that he is both in and out of control of his own body; he’s the one glancing frantically around, trying to figure out what’s going on, while his hands, careful and shaking, pull out his phone without Ilya’s say-so. 

He watches his fingers navigate to Instagram, and then pull up a DM chat with Shane. He watches his thumbs tremble as he types out romantic messages, the kind he would never really send unless he was dying, and then he realizes that he is dying, in this dream. His breath catches in his throat, even as he keeps on typing out I am safe in your heart, I believe it.

“Stop,” Ilya tries to say, but his mouth is not his own. Over the loudspeaker, the pilot tells them that one of the engines has gone out due to a malfunction, and that the plane would be making an emergency landing. Ilya’s stomach rolls. Someone from behind him yells about seeing fire, and then exclaims, “Holy shit!”

There’s another horrifying jolt through the cabin. Ilya, and whoever is also inside of Ilya’s body, presses himself down, covering his head with his hands. Brace position, for airplane crashes. Because this plane is crashing, he can hear everyone screaming, and he thinks he screamed too, at first, but now, with his hands over his head and ears, he feels oddly singular. As if he’s a prey animal scurrying away from the danger, holed up in a cave of his own design.

The thought twitches in Ilya’s brain. He gasps. Oxygen masks tumble down around the cabin, the plastic tubing slapping the back of Ilya’s head, but he doesn’t reach up to grab one. Doesn’t respond to Barrett calling his name, or to Hayes’s stuttering prayers behind him. He knows what’s happening now, in the same way that babies know their mothers, in the same way the ocean knows the sky.

He is going to die here. The second engine has gone out, and he doesn’t quite know why. The pilot will try and fail to course correct. It will shear off the tops of trees as it falls, and Ilya’s side of the plane will go down first, splashing up dirt and tree roots and the viscera of the earth into the double-sided plane windows, and the metal body will crumple in on itself, will crumple in on Ilya. His shoulder will get trapped first, between the window and the seat in front of him, and the pain will be so strong that Ilya can’t feel it at all. That’s how he’ll figure out he’s dying, that he’s a corpse on this plane. When his rib comes loose and settles into his lung like a dart into a balloon, he’ll be thankful. The fires will have already started, the smell of cooking meat as the last thing Ilya will ever sense.

Ilya swallows against a dry throat. There is something extant in this dream, too. The same size of footprint in his dream about Shane. Someone thinks into Ilya’s mind and says, Ty zashitish yego. Pozhaluysta, zashchiti yego.

There is a loud sound, like tires on gravel. The plane lists toward Ilya’s side, and dirt slaps up against the plane window. Barrett calls out his name again. Ilya doesn’t move, and doesn’t move, and doesn’t move, and then he doesn’t breathe at all.

***

Ilya wakes up coughing, his pillow soaked in blood.

He isn’t sure where it’s coming from—in the dream, his lung had punctured, and now he can’t catch his breath. He can’t tell if it’s from panic, or if his lung is actually deflating in his chest, but his nose is bleeding too, a steady, dark stream that he cups in his hands as he sits up, heart thumping loudly in his ears.

There’s a noise, and then the sound of rushing footsteps, and someone snaps on the hallway light outside of the bedroom door. 

“Ilya?” Yuna asks. Her voice is tight. She raps on the door and says, “Can I come in? I heard—I heard noises.”

Ilya gasps in a breath, and then another. His eyes are blurry with tears, and he can’t quite figure out where he is for a few moments before it solidifies: it’s 2018. He’s in David and Yuna’s house. He’s never been in a plane crash.

He’s pretty sure he’s never been in a plane crash.

“Yes,” Ilya calls out after Yuna knocks on the door again. “I—sorry, I don’t know—”

But Yuna’s already opening the door, and her own gasp is loud. “Oh, my god,” she says, and rushes forward. Ilya slides his legs out of bed and sets them on the floor, his body feeling heavy and clumsy. She kneels in front of him and pulls a tissue box from Shane’s nightstand. She pushes his hands away so she can catch the blood still falling from Ilya’s nose.

Ilya sucks in a deep breath. His ribs still feel taut against his sides, but he’s pretty sure he’s not actively dying. Or this version of him isn’t, at least. He coughs, and the sound is phlegmy. Yuna sighs and stands, rubbing his knee as she passes the tissues to Ilya. He bends forward, and feels the blood slow to a stop.

“Sorry,” Ilya finally says. He uses the tissues to wipe up the rest of the blood around his mouth, and tries to stand to throw them away. His legs wobble, and Yuna shakes her head and pushes him back onto the bed.

“You’re sick,” she says, with the same heavy edge that Shane uses when he’s trying to emphasize a point. “Let me.”

“I couldn’t—”

“You can, and you are,” Yuna interrupts. She takes the tissues from Ilya’s hand and tosses them into the trash can nestled underneath Shane’s old desk. She sets her hands on her hips and takes a deep breath, and then turns back to Ilya. 

“Okay, you have a cough, dry sinuses, and you had a bad headache and stiff muscles during the game yesterday,” Yuna lists off. Ilya stares at her. She comes over and sits next to him on the bed, and presses her hand up to Ilya’s forehead.

“I am not—I don’t have a fever,” he says. He tries not to sound too pathetic, but he doesn’t know if he succeeds. 

Yuna clicks her tongue. “I’m still grabbing the thermometer.”

Ilya doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just sighs as Yuna leaves the bedroom. He looks at the blood-soaked pillowcase, and thinks of the other one still drying on a bathroom hook in his house. Of Shane, but maybe not his Shane, standing barefooted and blank-eyed in the dead of winter. He couldn’t see Ilya in that dream. After that dream, Ilya had woken up bleeding, had woken up in pain.

There is no way, Ilya thinks. It’s a coincidence. Some odd byproduct of getting sick. Maybe Ottawa’s sleepy atmosphere gave people strange dreams, awful feverish nightmares, and no one had bothered to tell Ilya before he moved here.

And now Shane is desperate. He’s been desperate since July, so soft and so sweet and horribly miserable in ways that Ilya couldn’t understand. But he’d know, right? If his Shane wasn’t fully his, then he’d know. He loves him more than anyone, and—

He’s been swearing up and down that something has been wrong since July. 

His head throbs. Yuna comes back into the room with a digital thermometer and has Ilya open up his mouth like a child so she can stick it under his tongue. 

As the thermometer takes his temperature, Yuna pulls the ruined pillow off the bed and replaces it with a new one she must have grabbed out of a linen closet. She fluffs it for him as if he is in fact her own child, and not just someone sleeping in her child’s old room. She also places a large mixing bowl on the nightstand. Ilya raises his eyebrows at it, and she shrugs.

“You were nauseous at dinner,” she says, “and I got these carpets replaced two years ago.”

Ilya scrunches his nose. The thermometer beeps and informs Ilya and Yuna that he is not running a temperature, and in fact may be running a bit cool.

Yuna tuts and says, “You’re still taking it easy today. I don’t like how pale you are, and someone needs to keep an eye on those headaches.”

Ilya says, “I can maybe go home,” and Yuna laughs and says, “No, you’re staying here with us, Rozanov,” matching the same exact tone and cadence as Ilya’s childhood hockey coach. It’s both impressive and a little scary.

Yuna nods at the bed, and Ilya sighs, even as he lays down again. It feels wimpish to admit how much better he feels, so he doesn’t, just lets Yuna fuss at the blankets on the bed. The alarm clock on the nightstand blinks over from 5:59 a.m. to six o’clock. Yuna pats Ilya’s back as she stands up, and tells him to get some more rest, that David will bring in breakfast around nine.

Ilya sighs, but makes agreeable noises until she leaves. Then, he grabs up his phone from where it had been charging next to the alarm clock, and opens up the Safari tab.

Dreams where you die and wake up in pain, he searches, and then, after a moment, adds: is it real?

***

David enters the bedroom at 9:05 a.m. with dry toast, a cup of applesauce, a glass of water and a can of ginger ale all balanced on a tray.

Ilya quickly locks his phone and sets it facedown on the nightstand, and then says, “You really did not have to go to all that trouble.”

“No offense, Ilya,” David says as he arranges the tray on the foot of the bed, “but the way you look, I’d say it’s very necessary. Did you get any more sleep after waking up this morning?”

Ilya shrugs, which is a kinder way of saying no, I actually think I’d get sicker if I slept. David looks unimpressed. He nods toward Ilya’s phone and says, “Blue light isn’t good for you at the best of times. Maybe try reading a book instead?”

“What is blue light and why is it bad for me,” Ilya asks. At David’s pointed glance, he leans down and grabs the breakfast tray, pulling it over his blanketed knees. “David, the sky is blue. How could blue light be bad for me?”

“I’ll send you some studies,” David says with a sigh, and Ilya says, “How am I to read those studies? On my phone that has the blue light?”

David rolls his eyes, but he’s amused. Ilya can tell these things. He leans over and places the back of his hand to Ilya’s head, just like Yuna had, several hours before. 

“Still no fever,” David says, and Ilya nods. He examines Ilya and then sighs. “You still don’t look great.”

“Maybe it’s for the best that my boyfriend isn’t here, then,” Ilya tries, and David says, “Have you texted him?”

Ilya looks down at the breakfast tray instead of answering him. He picks up the glass of water and takes a sip. He wants to ask for coffee, but he knows the Hollanders would refuse him. Even though he’s a grown adult and they notably aren’t his parents. But, well. 

David sighs again. “I’ll go see if I have a good book for you.”

“Thank you, David. You and Yuna have always been very generous to me,” Ilya says quietly, and David waits until Ilya looks up, just to nod at him. He leaves the door slightly ajar as he leaves the bedroom.

Ilya waits to hear his footsteps on the stairs, and then sets the glass of water down. He opens his phone again and stares at the forum post he’s been staring at for two hours already.

Am I going crazy?? Dream injuries are becoming real.

Hi, I’m a woman in my late twenties. No longstanding health issues, normal job, normal life. I usually don’t remember my dreams, but lately, I keep having the same one.

So I’m dreaming that I’m hiking with my boyfriend and a couple of friends. It’s the same trail I hike all the time (I live in Cali) but this time it’s right after heavy rain, which our area usually doesn’t get. The ground is kinda loose, and I start to tell my boyfriend that maybe we should head back, and then I step on the outside edge of the trail (stupid) and the ground falls out from under me.

The trail is on this really steep slope, so when I fall, I kind of just keep falling. This is where the dream SHOULD end, right? But it keeps going. I dream about breaking my ankle as I land in a riverbed, and then I crack my head open. I can literally feel the blood pouring out of me and into the river. It’s really fucked.

The thing is, when I wake up from the dream I’ve started to feel really bad. My ankle really hurts, like I can’t even put any weight on it, and recently I’ve been getting migraines too which I literally have never had before. I tried to bring it up with my boyfriend and he seems really worried but also keeps saying it’s probably nothing?? Which feels counterintuitive I have to say.

What’s going on? Is this a known medical thing? I don’t want to go to a doctor because what would I even say, you know?

It’s one of the only posts that Ilya could find that sounds even slightly similar to him. Everything else seems to be crackpot theories and fictional stories written for fringe websites. He even found a “paper” that claimed that all mental illnesses were really just “psychic epidemics” brought about by the “nonlinear nature of time.” 

All of the responses to the forum post are basically useless—people claiming to be psychiatrists urging the writer to get help, or weirdos trying to get the woman to join their psychic school. There is only one helpful response in the entire thread, posted by a now-deleted account, and it’s what Ilya can’t help but read, over and over and over again:

It’s your boyfriend.

He’s the reason you’re dreaming this.

It sounds crazy, but I know because I’ve been on the other side of this. When I was thirteen, my dad died. He had a heart attack one day and that was it. He was the only reliable adult in my life, and I never got over it. When I turned forty, I died via accidental overdose. I had pretty bad addiction issues that probably stemmed from losing my dad so young.

I swear to god, and I’m not joking here, I woke up the next day and I was thirty-two. I had a totally different life—was living with my dad after losing my job, working a dead-end job at a bar—but like. I was living with my dad. He was fucking alive.

It was really fucking great for like two years. Then he started having these dreams. He went to the doctor because he was really confused, and because I told him to go. He’d get really bad headaches, and chest pains. 

The day before he died this time around, he came to my room after the dream. He said he’d dreamed of his own death, the one where I was thirteen, and he dreamed of me, too. Older, and worse off, and seizing because I had an overdose. He was really sad. He said he knew it was true and I told him it was.

He had a heart attack the next day. He didn’t make it. I don’t know why this happened, but I’m really glad I got that extra time with him.

I think that’s what’s happening with you. I think you died, and your boyfriend died sometime after that, and now you’re here to give him a little extra time. Sorry it’s not happier news, and I’m sorry I can’t explain it more. But yeah, I think that’s what’s happening.

There were no responses to this response post. The original poster didn’t even seem to have seen it, and no one had posted on that forum, or any page on the forum website, for years now. 

Ilya is from fucking Russia. He knows not to trust everything on the Internet, and he knows how to spot fake reports from fake bots, and he knows that the simplest explanation is often the correct one.

But this—the theory from some nameless, faceless person in response to another nameless, faceless person—is maybe the only thing that makes sense. Ilya can’t help it. He believes it. He keeps tracing the words of both posts with his eyes, over and over again, trying to find a fault, trying to find a clue that this is wrong and that Ilya is overreacting.

But he really doesn’t think that he is.

He opens his messages with Shane again, for maybe the tenth time this morning. He doesn’t quite know what to do with the feeling in his chest. He imagines Shane, boarding or just getting off a plane, getting the drafts of texts that Ilya had been writing all morning:

Why didn’t you tell me? 

What’s going on, do you know?

Are you my Shane? Where is my Shane? I love you but do you love me? Or do you only love the person who crashed in the plane? Is that what this is? Is this why you’re so sad? What’s going on? Am I going to die? 

Do you know I’m going to die? I hope not. I think I don’t want to die. It hurts, dying. I think I know that now. When I died, it wasn’t dramatic, and I kind of thought it would be. Even in a plane crash, it was quiet. I love you. Even with this, even if you aren’t my Shane, I love you, I hope you know that.

He hasn’t sent any of them. Obviously.

He’s holed up in Shane’s house, with Shane’s parents, and he is going to die in this twin-sized bed he thinks. The suspicion casts shadows on the walls, makes him feel weak, like he can’t stand up. Maybe he can’t. He’s going to die, and Shane is in Indianapolis, and if what’s going on is truly what’s going on, then he’s going to learn about it again, from a distance. 

It would be cruel, Ilya thinks. He pushes the breakfast tray away from him so he can curl up on his side, looking at his phone. It would be cruel to tell Shane what’s going on. He might not get a plane back in time. He might spiral out and become the phantom that Ilya has been seeing since yesterday morning.

Ilya doesn’t want that. Not for his Shane, not for any version of Shane.

His thumbs tap on the phone keyboard. He says:

Miss you, Hollander

I know you are being a good friend

But I could have sucked your dick very well today 🥵

I hope you remember that while meeting your friend’s baby

He brushes tears away from his eyes as Shane immediately starts typing. 

I will not be thinking of anyone’s dick while holding a baby, Shane writes back. That is wildly inappropriate. 

It’s perfect. So perfectly Shane. Ilya lets out a sob, and then covers his mouth. He doesn’t want David and Yuna to hear. 

In the post, the responder said they’d gotten two years with their dad. Shane deserves that long with Ilya if he wants it. Not just a couple of months. You deserve better, Ilya imagines writing. He imagines saying I love you so much I would die twice for you, and he imagines saying, please, please come here, and he imagines saying, all I want is to see your face, even through a phone screen.

But then Shane would know that Ilya knows. He would know, and he’d be too concerned with the hows, and the whys, and he would try to save Ilya and it would make everything worse. He would refuse to acknowledge that it’s Ilya’s time, and they would somehow find themselves here again, in an endless loop of Shane subjecting himself to a ghost wearing his dead boyfriend’s face and the ghost worrying over Shane’s unnameable grief.

There are worse ways to die, Ilya thinks. At least this time, he’s with Yuna and David. They will care for him. They’ll stay with him. They’ll tell Shane that Ilya died with family beside him, and it will be better than before. 

Ilya sends Shane a devil emoji, and locks his phone. He sets it down on the nightstand again, and wipes the tears from his eyes. He’s Russian. He is not a crier, because he is Russian.

David knocks on the door. He’s holding a paperback book in his hand. “Special delivery,” he says.

Ilya nods. He tests sitting up, and is happy to find that he can do it. He reaches for the book, and David gives it to him. Ilya hesitates, and says, “Um. Do you also have a pen and paper?”

“Sure.” David smiles at Ilya. “Testing out your poetry writing?”

“Something like that,” Ilya says.

***

He gets worse throughout the day, because of course he does. 

There was a poem he read in grade school, before hockey swallowed up all of his time. It was about a puppy who was hit by a car. The puppy’s belly filled with blood until it was swollen, and the family to whom the puppy belonged thought that it just ate too much kibble. It crawled upstairs to the attic, curled up, and fell asleep. Several hours later, the poet found the puppy, stiff and cold, like the icicles that hung from the rooftop.

Russian writers are incurably sad. 

Ilya’s nose bleeds again, and Yuna pulls out another tissue box for him. His stomach cramps, and he uses the mixing bowl to vomit up bile. David clears away the untouched breakfast tray and comes back with a protein shake that Ilya has to drink with two trembling hands. Ilya’s eyelids grow heavy around the early afternoon, and he fights it, and wonders if Yuna and David would mind if he crawled up to the attic.

At some point, when time has become shapeless, Yuna takes Ilya’s temperature and frowns at the result. She brushes his hair behind his ears, and drops a kiss to his forehead. Ilya smiles at Yuna and takes her hand, and she squeezes it three times.

Outside the bedroom door, still standing slightly ajar, Ilya hears Yuna speaking to David.

“I’ve texted Shane,” she says quietly. “I didn’t want him out of the loop. If his fever gets worse, we’ll have to take him to the hospital.”

“It’s just happened so fast,” David says. “He was so much better this morning.”

“I know,” Yuna says. She sounds so worried.

Ilya wants to tell them not to be worried, but he’s so tired too, and he can’t be tired. He stares at the book on the nightstand, half read, and the pen and paper laid across it. He wishes he could finish the book, at least. It was a love story, and Ilya wanted to know what happened at the end. If the farmer got together with the journalist or not.

The light changes in the room. Someone comes in, some friendly hand presses a cold compress to his head and caresses his cheek, and he mumbles out, “Mama,” and the hand holds his face gently.

He groans. There is pain everywhere, and maybe once it had a node point in his body, someplace it was radiating from, but now it’s a delicate cocoon of hurt all around him. He breathes in pain and exhales ache, and burrows deeper into the bed. His eyelids are so heavy. 

When he falls asleep, it’s mostly because he forgets how to be awake anymore.

***

He’s at the cottage again. It’s winter again. The phantom of Shane stands at the bathroom counter with his blue feet and flat eyes, and Ilya stands behind it, and he does not have a reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror because he is dead.

Shane has set the vodka in the sink basin, and is staring at two orange pill bottles lined up behind the temperature handles of the faucet. Ilya feels the world bite down around him and begin to chew him up as Shane pops open one of the bottles and pours it into the other.

“Don’t,” Ilya says. His jaw feels caught on an open hinge as Shane observes the pill bottle, then reaches for an abandoned water glass at the edge of the bathroom counter. Shane sloshes the rest of the vodka into the water glass, and something, clawed and shadowy, tears at Ilya’s chest. “Oh, god. Shane, honey, you didn’t—”

Shane grabs the pill bottle with one hand, and the glass of vodka with the other. He walks out of the bathroom, to the bedroom, to their bed. He sets his things down on the nightstand. His hands are remarkably steady.

“Tell me this isn’t true,” Ilya says softly. His dead heart in his dead chest thuds against his chest, slamming faster and faster as Shane climbs into bed. “Moya lyubov. Solnyshko. This isn’t—you wouldn’t.”

Shane sits down. He  starts to fit the pills into his mouth, washing them down with Ilya’s vodka, and Ilya starts to shake. He turns away, facing the lake through their window, and tries to remember how to see, how to hear. It feels like his bones are filled with something rotten. He says, “You fucking—predatel. Ne mogu poverit, chto ty mog tak so mnoy postupit. Jesus fucking Christ, Shane.”

Ilya punches at the window. Still air meets still air, because he doesn’t have a fist. He doesn’t have anything. He is powerless, and his husband is dying behind him, and he’s already dead, and surely there must be a god after all. No random set of circumstances could hurt Ilya so perfectly, could drive him to the very edge of his mind. 

His chin trembles. He wraps a hand around his crucifix. 

Behind him, Shane speaks.

“I miss you,” he says slowly, carefully. Ilya begins to turn around. 

“I know it’s bad, what I’m doing. I hope you’ll forgive me,” he says. His hand is wrapped around a gold chain around his neck. There’s a Russian orthodox crucifix on it, slightly bent and battered. Another flashbulb memory: his mom’s hand, always worrying the chain, her nails bitten down to the quick.

“I hope there’s still a you to forgive me,” Shane says. “I—there was this time. Where everything was ahead of us. And I thought I had you and you had me. And I’m the one that lost it for us. I’m the one that killed you.”

Ilya shakes his head. He is not breathing because he doesn’t have to breathe anymore. Shane is laying on the bed now. His words are slurring. Ilya fits himself into the space that Shane doesn’t take up, his body faced like a parenthesis to Shane.

“This is what I have to do. If I—if I ever saw you again—if there’s a universe… I’d just watch you breathe. That’s all I’d do. For the rest of my life. I’m so sorry, Ilya,” Shane says. Ilya shakes his head again. A nothing head on a nonexistent body.

“My love,” Ilya whispers, and Shane stretches out his arm, out and out until it lays across Ilya’s chest for a single moment, before falling flat onto the mattress. He closes his eyes and Ilya shivers. 

“I don’t want this,” Ilya says, “this isn’t fair. Don’t do this to me. Pozhaluysta, ne nado. It’s my time. It’s coming again, and you can’t—oh, Shane, o bozhe. My love.”

Shane mouths something into the pillow. Russian. I will miss you. His chest falls with his breath and does not rise again.

Something lights up inside of Ilya. A feeling, like a muscle reflex, tenses everything in Ilya’s body, and he grabs onto Shane’s hand. Scrabbles and misses his fingers with his intangible palms, but he keeps going, and thinks none of this is right. We’re not doing this again.

I’m not doing this again. Never again. 

He grabs at Shane’s hand again. He snatches up his fingers, still warm with flowing blood, and he doesn’t think, he just pulls, and he pulls, and he pulls, and he pulls.

Chapter End Notes

A big thank you to a commenter for being so generous and offering to correct the Russian in this fic!

Russian to English:

Ya tebya lyublu. — I love you.

Ty zashitish yego. Pozhaluysta, zashchiti yego. — You will protect him. Please protect him.

Moya lyubov. Solnyshko. — My love. Sun.

predatel — traitor

Ne mogu poverit, chto ty mog tak so mnoy postupit. — I can’t believe you would do this to me.

Pozhaluysta, ne nado. — Please, don’t. 

O bozhe — oh my god

Chapter 5: december / the birdhouse

Chapter Notes

guys my deepest apologies but there's a 50/50 chance that I add one (1) more chapter onto the final count. IF I DO, rest assured that the next chapter should more or less wrap the main story up, and the epilogue chapter would be for loose ends for myself bc I like those. So either way we're getting close to the end basically I swear

love u thank u hopefully this one is a little less emotionally fraught because it turns out maybe I can't tell. is it weird to say that I didn't think Shane's and Ilya's chapters were all that sad? probably.

When Shane was little, he made a birdhouse.

***

At the hospital, Yuna and David are told that Ilya’s most likely experiencing a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage.

Yuna stares at the doctor. He’s pulled them into a small clinic room to tell them the news. David’s pulled out his phone to take notes. He’s only wearing a t-shirt, and the hospital is chilly. She can see the pale rash of goosebumps on his forearms. Yuna is wearing his overshirt, because Ilya had puked on her sweater around the same time that they’d called 911.

Yuna says, “What do you mean, most likely?”

“We are confirming via non-contrast CT imaging right now,” says the doctor. He looks like a child’s drawing of a doctor. Tall, white lab coat, thick glasses framing an oblong face. There’s even a stethoscope around his neck. “If our suspicions are correct, then he’ll need to go into surgery.”

“He was sick,” David says. “We told the paramedics. He was just a little sick.”

“Fever can sometimes be a nontraditional symptom of aneurysms,” says the doctor. Yuna clutches the seat underneath her.

“He was coughing,” says David.

The doctor hesitates. “We’ll take it into account. But we’re fairly confident that it is a type of ruptured aneurysm. Even if he’s sick, this hemorrhage is an urgent condition that we need to treat. Everything else is secondary. I’m sure you understand.”

“He played a hockey game yesterday,” says David, which is not helpful and irrelevant. Yuna releases her grip on her seat to place a hand over her husband’s.

“What can we anticipate here?” Yuna asks. She watches the doctor hesitate again. “We’re—we were taking care of Ilya. He’s the partner of our son, who is in another country at the moment. I know we have no medical jurisdiction here, but please. Shane—our son, he’ll need to know. He’s on file as Ilya’s emergency contact. I need to be able to tell him what’s going on with Ilya.”

The doctor bites down on his cheek, but then nods. “It’s called clipping. The surgeon will make an incision into his scalp, locate the site of the rupture, and place a metal clip to stem the bloodflow.”

Yuna takes a deep, steadying breath. She forces her shoulders back, blinks, and refocuses on the room, on the doctor in front of her. She squeezes David’s hand and says, “And what are the outcomes that we can expect?”

The doctor presses his lips together in a thin line. Yuna feels like she’s falling into the earth for a moment, but then it passes. David wraps his arm around her as the doctor says, “You need to understand that every case is different. There’s no way to predict what happens to any particular patient, and prognoses are always changing based on the patients' needs and reactions to medicine.”

Yuna’s throat is too tight to speak. The doctor leans forward, elbows on his knees, and says, “Subarachnoid hemorrhages are acute neurovascular emergencies. They’re normally evaluated on what we refer to as the Hunt and Hess scale. Higher scores typically have less favorable outcomes than lower scores.”

“And you can’t tell us Ilya’s score because you haven’t diagnosed him yet,” Yuna says.

The doctor rubs his lower lip with his thumb. “You said that your son is Mr. Rozanov’s emergency contact.”

“Yes,” says David.

“I would recommend trying to get in contact with him if you haven’t already,” says the doctor. 

Yuna stands up and leaves the clinic room.

As she steps into the hallway, she remembers that she didn’t bring shoes. Only one person could ride in the ambulance, and Ilya had been calling out for his mother at that point. Yuna had sat on the bench next to Ilya’s gurney and stroked his cheek and had hummed the fucking melody to goddamn Swan Lake because it was the one bit of Russian anything she could remember in that moment. Yuna had climbed into the ambulance in a vomit-covered sweater, and frizzy hair, and white trouser socks, and she’s still wearing those socks now, in a bright tiled hospital hallway, and the love of her son’s life is probably dying.

She pulls out her cell phone and calls Shane. The call rings out, and she hangs up before she has to listen to his cheerful voicemail instructing all callers to leave a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can! 

She calls again. It rings out. She calls again, and it rings out, and she calls again and it rings out, and she calls again and the doctor leaves the clinic room and is surprised to find her leaning against the wall next to the door, fingers shaking as she jabs the redial button. 

David is right behind the doctor. He approaches as the doctor leaves to do whatever he needs to do. To fix whichever patients are dying the fastest. David says, “Yuna,” and she hangs up the phone to dial Shane again, and David says, “Honey, stop. Stop.”

“He needs to know,” Yuna says. The call is ringing out again. Where is he? Who is Brendan? Why the hell does Indianapolis matter when he’s left his boyfriend to die in Yuna’s house?

No, Yuna thinks, that was mean, and she can’t be mean. Not when his boyfriend is dying. Shane’s voicemail clicks on again, and she hangs up, and David pulls her phone out of her grasp.

“David,” Yuna says, and David says, “I already called him a few times on the way to the hospital, Yun. He’s just away from his phone. As soon as he sees our calls, he’ll come. You know he will. Just yesterday, we were worried about how much he loves Ilya. Remember?”

She does. Curled up in bed next to David, her hand threaded through his, and she’d said, “I love Ilya, you know that. But this entire thing—how dependent Shane’s been. I mean, is it bad that I’m glad they’re apart right now? Whoever Brendan is, I’m just glad that Shane can still be separate from Ilya.”

“It’s not bad,” David had said, and he’d kissed her forehead, and now Yuna can’t help but think I cursed them. We cursed them.

David must see something on her face. He sighs and pulls her in.  Yuna lets him hold her, and closes her eyes, and wishes that her son is on a plane, that he’s on his way here, and that when he gets to the hospital, Ilya will already be awake with his strange Russian pet names and bright eyes all ready for him.

***

When Shane was little, he made a birdhouse. 

Well, his dad made the birdhouse, and Shane had helped, but any seven-year-old who’s had input on a project also thinks that they are the owners of the finished product. So Shane made a birdhouse using his dad’s hands, and they hung it up outside of Shane’s bedroom window. 

***

David has a Sudoku app on his phone. It’s pretty good, as far as mobile apps go. It’s got easy, moderate, and difficult Sudoku puzzles, plus a daily challenge puzzle. He can access all daily challenge puzzles from an archive for a small fee per month. He does pay the fee every month, even though Yuna and Shane make fun of him endlessly for it. 

You’re literally surrounded by numbers all day, Shane always says, you work for the treasury! And Yuna always says, I think you’re the only person to ever pay money for that Sudoku app. They should be sending you money from their bonus pool every year. 

The thing is, a lot of David’s time is spent waiting. He’s at the rink, waiting for Shane’s game to start, or he’s out in a hallway, waiting for Shane to finish press, or he’s in a parking lot, waiting to pick Shane and Yuna up after another photoshoot. So he comes prepared. He’ll bring a book, and his AirPods, and a portable charger so he can do his Sudoku puzzles.

Now, sitting in a cramped plastic chair in a hospital waiting room, he pulls out his phone and loads the Sudoku app. Yuna, tucked into an identical chair beside him, turns to look at him. She’s bleary-eyed and had been distantly watching the light change through the thick blinds of a nearby window. She says, “Really?”

“It’ll be hours,” David says. “It’s been hours. There’s nothing we can do except wait. I might as well do a puzzle, Yun.”

He nudges her with his elbow as he talks. She frowns at him for a fraction of a second, and then sighs. She leans her head against his shoulder, and he taps on the daily challenge. He starts to fill in the top right block, and Yuna makes a noise. 

“What?” David asks.

She shakes her head. “You just filled in a three, but obviously five is supposed to go there.”

“You hate Sudoku,” David says. Yuna sits up to look at him. She’s still wearing his flannel overshirt, and the open collar begins to slip off her shoulder. 

David readjusts it for her as Yuna says, “Sure, but I know how to play it.”

“So do I,” David says, and watches Yuna wrinkle her nose. “Fine. We’ll try it with a five.”

“Good,” says Yuna, and then she says, “are you cold?”

David shrugs. He’d been cold when he first got to the hospital, but now he feels more or less adjusted to the temperature. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d climbed into his car without a coat. In the middle of an Ottawa winter, and David had completely forgotten. The entire day has felt so unreal, so detached from reality that it may as well be a wisp of smoke in the air. 

Yuna clasps a warm hand over one of David’s forearms. “We should see if we can find a sweatshirt or something for you.”

David puts a hand on his jaw. She shakes her head and says, “You said it yourself. We won’t hear about Ilya for hours. We should make sure you don’t die of hypothermia in the meantime.”

“That’s dramatic. They wouldn’t let me die of hypothermia in a hospital,” David says, but doesn’t protest as Yuna stands and tugs him out of his seat. They get directions from a baby-faced receptionist and wind up in a cramped gift shop.

David is always mildly impressed at how standard hospital and airport gift shops are. He wonders if this kind of gift shop can be ordered online—if it arrives in labeled flat packs, with specific instructions on wear to hang the clothing and how to place the kiosk shelving just-so. He heads to the back of the shop, where an array of navy sweatshirts hang on plastic hangers, and picks up a generic sweatshirt in his size. “OTTAWA” is sewn across the chest in white fabric lettering. 

At the checkout counter, Yuna rejoins him. She’d wandered off to a different section of the store, cupping her phone in her hand, and David had let her. She’d backed off of calling Shane, accepting that he was either away from his phone or already on a flight back to Ottawa, and when she’s very stressed she likes to answer emails. It makes David smile, even though he’d never tell his wife that. It’s just that it’s so Yuna to calm down by sending off missives with her professional signature attached.

 Yuna doesn’t look any calmer, though. She sets down a stuffed bear and a pair of slip-on sandals next to the sweatshirt and turns to David, chewing her lip. “We have a bit of a problem.”

“What?” David asks. The cashier picks up the sweatshirt and scans the tag hanging off its sleeve. David looks at the stuffed bear, which has glossy black eyes and fur and is shaped more like a potato than a bear. He picks it up to check the brand name. “And why are we buying a Spudster?”

“It’s for Ilya,” says Yuna. She grabs the bear and hands it over to the cashier to scan. “David, the press knows that Ilya’s been hospitalized.”

David blinks. “What?”

The cashier clears his throat and says, “That’ll be seventy dollars and twenty cents total.”

David wonders if it’s ethical for the hospital gift shop to be robbing him blind. He pulls out his credit card anyway, and watches the cashier stuff the weird bear, the sandals, and his new sweatshirt into a hospital-branded paper bag. Yuna takes the bag and David’s hand, then leads him just outside of the gift shop. She shoves her phone into his hand, and then pulls out the sandals to stick on her feet. They look absolutely ridiculous on top of her dirty socks. David wisely doesn’t say so, and instead looks at the phone in his hand.

It’s opened to a Sportsnet article. The headline reads: Ilya Rozanov Rushed to Ottawa Hospital After Admirals Game. They’ve included a photo of Ilya and Scott Hunter’s face-off from yesterday afternoon. 

“That’s misleading,” says David. “He wasn’t even injured during the Admirals game.”

“Not the point,” Yuna says, snatching her phone back. She readjusts the flannel overshirt, and then says, “How do they know that Ilya’s in the hospital?”

David reaches for the gift shop bag, and Yuna lets him take it. He pulls out the sweatshirt and rips off the tags so he can put it on. “It could have been anything, honey,” he says, once his head is through the collar of the sweatshirt. “We had to call an ambulance. He had to go through triage in the ER. He wasn’t wearing a disguise during all of that, and he’s a recognizable figure, especially in Ottawa. Hell, it could’ve been a paramedic or something.”

Yuna’s eyes flash. “If it was a paramedic—”

“We don’t know,” David says firmly. He reaches again for the phone, and Yuna lets him take it. He scrolls through the webpage, quickly skimming its contents. When he gets to the bottom of the article, he breathes out. “And honey—they don’t even know what he’s in the hospital for. The reporter literally says that once more details emerge, they’ll post an update.”

Yuna presses her lips together. “I just… he deserves—privacy. And I don’t want Shane to find out from fucking ESPN.”

“We can’t control that,” David says carefully. He has his own questions about where Shane is and what he thought he was doing, but he knows it’s the uncertainty that is making him irritable. When his mother passed, he remembers that the worst part of it had been the purgatory hours of the waiting room, the indescribable itch in his bones demanding him to do something when he logically knew there was nothing he could do, except to wait.

Yuna looks away from David. He grabs her elbow and waits until she meets his eyes again.

“We can’t control where Shane is, or what he knows,” David says again. A bit more softly, this time. “And Ilya deserves privacy, you’re right. We can’t give him that, but he deserves it. All we can do is wait, and pray, and make sure that when there’s an update, we’re there to hear it.”

Yuna lets her head drop, and David pulls her into a hug. “You’re right,” Yuna says. Her lips brush against one of the Ts in OTTAWA. “I know you’re right, I just… I don’t know how to do this.”

“I think you’re doing a pretty good job,” David says truthfully. He looks down at the paper bag sitting at their feet. The chubby bear looks back up at him. “I mean, you bought Ilya the strangest looking bear I’ve ever seen, so.”

Yuna huffs. She shifts, and David lets her go. She tucks her hair behind her ears and picks the bag back up. 

“Shane says that Ilya likes bears,” she says. “Or—I don’t know. Shane was complaining once that every time he asks about Russia, Ilya asks if he wants to hear about ‘the many times’ he’s fought a bear. I thought Ilya would like it, or find it funny…”

“He’ll love it,” David says.

“Yeah,” says Yuna, and then she pulls the bear out of the bag to hug it to her chest. David has to admit that the bear is very cute, no matter how potato-shaped it is. 

“We’ll name it Bill,” David decides. “Short for Bilya.”

Yuna stares at him blankly. David smiles and gestures at it. “Bear Ilya! Get it?”

“I hate you,” Yuna says, but she lets David grab her hand and lead her back to the waiting room.

***

When Shane was little, he made a birdhouse. 

Well, his dad made the birdhouse, and Shane had helped, but any seven-year-old who’s had input on a project also thinks that they are the owners of the finished product. So Shane made a birdhouse using his dad’s hands, and they hung it up outside of Shane’s bedroom window. 

Shane was very excited for a bird to come and live in the birdhouse. He and his dad went to a homegoods store and bought a birdfeeder and seed mix. They hooked up the feeder a little ways away from the tree that housed the birdhouse. Any closer, said his dad, and there would be territorial disputes. The birds would never stop fighting.

Shane set up the birdfeeder using his dad’s hands so the birdfeeder could feed many birds without being disruptive to the birdhouse. So one lucky bird could move into the birdhouse, and have a place to live, and friends to meet at the birdfeeder. It was a perfect compromise. 

***

Four hours after Ilya went into surgery, a surgeon comes out to the waiting room with a clipboard. He looks like a carbon copy of the other doctor in the clinic room, except this one has red hair and is wearing surgical scrubs. He says, “Family of Ilya Rozanov?”

Yuna stands up so fast that she sees spots. This is also the same moment where she realizes she hasn’t eaten anything since the mid-morning. David stands up beside her, and she clutches his hand in a firm grip.

“Are either of you Shane Hollander?” says the surgeon. There’s an unreadable look on his face. Yuna’s about to nudge David when he answers and says, “No, he’s our son.”

Idiot, Yuna thinks. She cuts in and says, “He’s our son. I’m Yuna Hollander, and this is David Hollander. Shane has already authorized us on a prior phone call to receive any relevant medical updates on his behalf until he can make it to the hospital.”

The surgeon squints at her. He looks down at his clipboard, and then nods slowly. “...Fine. Please follow me.”

The red-haired surgeon leads them to an identical clinic room as the one they were in hours earlier. Yuna sits down on one of the chairs, and watches the surgeon lower himself carefully into the office chair nearby. Please, she thinks, and doesn’t even know what she’s asking for. Please, please. Just please.

“The surgery went better than expected,” is how the surgeon begins. David, who had been standing beside Yuna, places a heavy hand on the examination table nearby. Yuna’s mouth drops open without her permission. She wipes at her eyes.

The surgeon observes them behind his thick glasses. He taps his clipboard with his thumb, and says, “To be quite frank with you, Mr. and Mrs. Hollander, we expected a much more dire situation. Given Mr. Rozanov’s symptoms in the ambulance, as well as the medical symptoms you reported over the last twenty-four hours, we expected a much more sizable rupture in Mr. Rozanov’s brain than what we found. When entering surgery, we expected Mr. Rozanov to have a Grade Four SAH on the Hunt and Hess scale. However, we believe that that initial scoring may have been wrong after performing the surgery. You’ve been informed what the Hunt and Hess scale is, yes?”

David nods. “It’s been explained to us. And we did some outside research to understand it, too.”

They'd looked it up together in the waiting room. A higher score meant a lower survival rate. Yuna had asked him to switch back to his Sudoku app after they read about grades four and five. 

Yuna presses her tongue to the back of her teeth. “But—the other doctor, he… I mean, he didn’t actually give us a score, he couldn’t, but the way he made it sound… And if you thought it was that severe—?”

“As I said,” the surgeon says, his voice gentle, “we were prepared for a much worse scenario.” He stops, and pulls off his glasses. He sets the clipboard aside.

“I’ll be honest with you both now,” he says. “I’m a huge hockey fan. Of course I know who Ilya Rozanov is. And with his constellation of symptoms when he arrived at the hospital—it was a miracle to find the rupture in his brain. I’ve never been so relieved to be treating an SAH, let me tell you.”

Yuna reaches out her hand, and David finds it with his. “So he’ll be okay? He—he’s still alive.”

“He made it through surgery,” the surgeon confirms. “The clipping, like I said, went much better than expected. He’s being transferred to our neuroscience intensive care unit, the NSICU. We expect to keep him there for ten days, at minimum. He’ll be in an induced coma while we track brain function and watch for potential complications of either the rupture or the surgery.”

“You said—um, his symptoms,” says David. “A lot of them must’ve been unrelated to the hemorrhage, if it was less severe than what everyone thought. So, is there—I mean, that’s something to be concerned about. Right?”

The surgeon nods. He leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees. A muscle in his jaw jumps. “This kind of hemorrhage is a serious medical event,” he says. “Since one of my colleagues briefed you on the Hunt and Hess scale, I’m sure you’re aware of just how scary these things can be.”

“I was in the fucking ambulance,” Yuna mutters, and then flinches. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Hollander,” says the surgeon, and she blushes as she realizes that if he’s a huge hockey fan, then he must know Shane. She’s so slow today. She worries her lip between her teeth as the surgeon continues, “I know it’s been a long, hard day for the both of you. So here’s the takeaway for Mr. Rozanov: he’s made it through surgery, but he is not out of the woods yet. With the complexity of his symptoms, we are being very careful about monitoring his health.”

He pauses, and then nods at David. “I understand he was initially believed to be sick with the flu. The results of his blood tests show no elevated white blood cell counts, nor anything that is compatible with the presence of an infection in his body at this moment. This is a very good thing, even if it makes his symptoms, especially the fever and the nosebleeds, a bit unexplainable. My job here—everyone’s job here—is to protect the health of our patients. We understand that Mr. Rozanov’s case is unique. But please be assured that we are doing everything we can to make sure he makes it through this hospital stay, and returns to playing some great fucking hockey.”

Yuna closes her eyes and breathes out. She feels David do the same beside her.

“Pardon the language,” the surgeon tacks on, and Yuna half-smiles. She opens her eyes again to find the surgeon already watching her. He’s picked up his clipboard again, and is settling the glasses back onto his face. He stands, and so does Yuna.

“The NSICU typically has strict visiting hours, which have already passed for today. But considering the circumstances, we’re permitting you two to go up and visit with Mr. Rozanov for a short time. Fifteen minutes,” the surgeon says. He props open the clinic door for David and Yuna. 

“If you ask the receptionist, she’ll be able to direct you to the NSICU wing and provide Mr. Rozanov’s room number. We are setting up an approved visitors’ list for Mr. Rozanov. You both and your son will be automatically included, but if there’s anyone else, please either give your approval to the receptionist or add their name to the list in advance. You’ll also likely have to wear some protective equipment. Masks, potentially gloves—that’s up to the discretion of his care team.”

“You’re not on his care team?” Yuna asks. The surgeon gestures for them to walk through the door, and David goes first. Yuna follows, but turns around to look at the surgeon, who just shrugs.

“I assisted on the surgery, but I won’t be part of his follow-up care,” he says. He rubs at the back of his head with a hand. “The guys sort of volunteered me to talk to you. Since I’m a Centaurs fan.”

Yuna smiles gently at him. She turns to David, and pecks him on the lips. “Go see Ilya. And text Shane the update, I’m sure he’ll want to see it whenever he gets his phone back. I’m right behind you.”

“Okay,” David says, and walks back out toward the waiting room. Yuna turns back to the surgeon.

“I know you know who we are,” she says bluntly. “Or at least, you know who my son is.”

The surgeon bites down on his lip. “Your son takes after you.”

“Yes,” says Yuna. She looks the surgeon up and down, and he shifts from foot to foot. He plays with the metal handle of his clipboard until Yuna speaks again.

“I won’t have to get you to sign an NDA, right?”

“No, Mrs. Hollander,” says the surgeon. “Not that—I have no interest in the personal lives of hockey players, I just appreciate a good game. But Mrs. Hollander, it would also be a PHIPA violation. And I very much like my job. I’d like to keep it.”

Yuna watches him for a moment longer. Then, she says, “What’s your name?”

“Sam,” says Sam the surgeon. “Sam Trenton.”

Yuna smiles at him. “Enjoy the rink-side tickets for the next Centaurs season, Sam.”

Sam Trenton the surgeon stares at her. “I… will?”

Yuna nods once more at him, and then turns and runs back down the hallway so she can catch up with David. 

***

When Shane was little, he made a birdhouse. 

Well, his dad made the birdhouse, and Shane had helped, but any seven-year-old who’s had input on a project also thinks that they are the owners of the finished product. So Shane made a birdhouse using his dad’s hands, and they hung it up outside of Shane’s bedroom window. 

Shane was very excited for a bird to come and live in the birdhouse. He and his dad went to a homegoods store and bought a birdfeeder and seed mix. They hooked up the feeder a little ways away from the tree that housed the birdhouse. Any closer, said his dad, and there would be territorial disputes. The birds would never stop fighting.

Shane set up the birdfeeder using his dad’s hands so the birdfeeder could feed many birds without being disruptive to the birdhouse. So one lucky bird could move into the birdhouse, and have a place to live, and friends to meet at the birdfeeder. It was a perfect compromise. 

It took a few weeks, but a lucky bird did move into the birdhouse. It was beautiful. Shane didn’t know much about birds, but he liked this one. It was little, had a white belly and cheeks, and a black neck and head. Its eyes were wide and sweet-looking. His dad said it was a chickadee, and the bird seemed to know it. It sang out its own name every morning, and Shane would stand at his bedroom window and wave back. It felt like they were saying hello to each other, and that they understood each other.

Shane said that the chickadee was his best friend whenever his mom asked about playdates and classmates and the kids he played hockey with. His mom would say that the bird wasn’t the same thing as a friend, and Shane would think that his mom didn’t understand. Not the way he and his chickadee understood each other. He almost felt sad for her, that she didn’t have her own chickadee to say hello to in the mornings.

***

David is frowning at his text messages when Yuna arrives at Ilya’s hospital room.

He looks up when Yuna enters. He’s wearing a white medical mask over his mouth and nose, the same as Yuna, and the ends of the mask crinkle up as he tries to smile at her. Yuna matches the smile under her own mask, and turns to face Ilya.

He almost looks like he could be sleeping if it weren’t for the IV and the electrodes hooked up to him. A neat square of his hair near his forehead has been shaved off completely, and Yuna can see the black medical thread stitching the surgery incision closed. They’ve fitted him with nasal cannula and a clip over his right index finger, and all of the machines crowded around his bed beep and hum accordingly with Ilya’s vitals. David has brought Bill the bear and nestled him carefully under Ilya’s left elbow.

The sight of the stupid bear almost makes Yuna cry. Instead, she says, “What are you looking at?” to David.

“Shane sent a text,” David says, and Yuna scrambles to pull her phone out of her back pocket.

There is a new message waiting from Shane to David and Yuna. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that a text from Shane’s phone has been sent to David and Yuna. Underneath David’s update text (he’s made it through surgery for a brain hemorrhage, is being monitored now. Come when you can), the text reads:

Hello, thank you for this update. This is Shane’s friend Abigail. I think he’s overwhelmed right now, so wanted to let you know that we’re waiting for a flight out to Ottawa and will be there ASAP. I’m flying with him to make sure he isn’t alone. Sending my phone contact over too, so we can stay in touch in case Shane’s phone dies. ETA will probably be around midnight.

“I don’t understand,” says David. “He said he was with his friend Brendan, and now it’s an Abigail that he’s with?”

Yuna has frankly had enough. She hits Shane’s contact in the group chat and calls.

“Yuna,” says David. She holds up a finger. The call connects, and a woman’s voice on the other side says, “Hello?”

“Who are you and where is my son,” Yuna bites out.

“Yuna,” says David, and the woman on the other line says, “Okay—yes, that’s fair. One sec.”

There’s a few muffled sounds on the other end of the line. There’s a staticky announcement that Yuna hears in the background, the kind that happens at an airport. So that’s good, at least. She bites down on the knuckle of her thumb and waits. 

“He’s, uh, he’s still freaking out,” says the woman eventually. “Or, I think he’s freaking out…? I’m sort of a new friend. Maybe it’s better if we FaceTime?”

“Please,” Yuna says flatly. She pulls her phone away from her ear to answer the incoming FaceTime call and sits down next to David in the empty plastic chair next to Ilya’s bed.

The call connects and displays an older woman with curly brown-grey hair and a pinched expression. She bites down on her lip as she looks at Yuna and David’s masked faces. 

“You’re with his partner right now,” she says, and David nods. 

“And you’re Abigail. Where’s Shane?” Yuna demands.

“Right next to me,” Abigail says quickly. “But—he’s not. He’s not being very responsive right now. I was with him when we got the news about his boyfriend, and it’s sort of gotten worse. We’re waiting for a flight out, like I said. He’s—I mean he’s fine, I don’t think there’s anything physically wrong with him.”

Yuna can’t breathe. It’s not just her heart in her throat, but her stomach, and her lungs are crawling up into her esophagus too for that matter. She says, “Show me.”

Abigail swivels the camera to face her baby.

He’s not even looking at the FaceTime screen. Even though Abigail holds up the phone to make it easier for him, it’s clear his eyes are focused on something different, something Yuna can’t see. She thinks about Ilya’s first phone call, all the way in July. Shane is fine, physically, he’d said. He’d said, Shane is… unlike himself.

“Shane,” Yuna says. He blinks and doesn’t say anything back. “Oh, my god.”

“Yuna,” David says, more sharply than he’s spoken in the past forty-eight hours. “That’s not helping.”

Abigail turns the phone back to herself. “I called my best friend,” she says bluntly. “She’s worked in the medical field before, and she’s a nine-one-one dispatcher now. Shane’s been in and out for the past couple of hours. He’s responsive sometimes, and sometimes he’s like this. When he’s responsive, he isn’t in any pain and doesn’t seem to have any physical symptoms. Christie and I agree that it’s mental, not physical. I know you both don’t know me, but I want you to know that I’d never put anyone willingly in danger. I’d never put someone in a medical emergency on a flight unless it was completely necessary. I’m coming with him on the flight and to the hospital. He’s insistent that he sees Ilya when he’s… here.”

“And we’re just supposed to trust you,” Yuna snaps. “I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what’s going on. Shane said he was going to a hockey friend in fucking Indianapolis, and then you show up, and my baby is like this. Where are you? Which flight are you taking? I swear to fucking god—”

“Dulles Airport. It’s a United flight. Flight number five-seven-two-three. It departs in an hour and will land in Ottawa just before midnight. I’ll text you our boarding passes now. Please, I know this is a frightening and confusing situation. I know. But I can’t leave him here like this,” Abigail says. She sucks in a deep breath. Her eyes are shiny with tears, and Yuna remembers that they’re sitting at a gate in an airport terminal, in public, and it’s probably best if no one causes a scene right now. 

She clenches her fist into her hand so tightly that she can feel her fingernails draw blood from her palms.

David says, “Why, on god’s green earth, are you at the Dulles airport?”

“Oh,” Abigail says. She rubs at one of her eyebrows. “I guess he didn’t tell you he was coming to Virginia Beach.”

“Virginia Beach? He told us he was going to fucking Indianapolis for an old friend!”  Yuna exclaims. She pushes the phone into David’s hands, and stands up to pace around Ilya’s hospital room.

From the phone speakers, Abigail’s tinny voice says, “I should have expected that. Fuck.”

“What—I don’t—Jesus Christ,” says David, which means that he’s about to go apoplectic. Yuna feels about the same. She grips hard onto the rail of Ilya’s hospital bed and looks at his comatose face.

“What the fuck is going on?” she asks Ilya. He, somewhat predictably, does not respond.

“Look, I—I don’t have a lot of answers, especially not over FaceTime,” Abigail says. “He was coming to see me, and yes, it was a secret I guess, but there’s nothing—like, I’m not fucking your son, you really don’t have to worry about that. We’re friends, I’m making sure he gets on the flight, and I’m sending you all of the boarding pass info now. We’re going to have to get on the plane soon, I think. I’m really sorry I can’t explain more now, it’s—sort of an impossible story.”

“Just…” Yuna bites down on her lip. There’s a dead piece of skin that her teeth latch onto, and she pulls at it until it comes loose and she can taste coppery blood in the space where it once was. 

A lot of Yuna’s life has been planned out via spreadsheet. She makes cost-budget analyses for investments and sponsorship opportunities for Shane. She SWOTs out which diets he should go on, what clothing he should wear to which function, what happens if he and Ilya are outed or break up or get married or are blackmailed. She was the first in her class when she graduated with her MBA. She likes calculations and plans and backup plans. She’s never done well with surprise.

David had been shocked, when the discussion of children came up. He’d assumed that she never wanted them. “Not that you’d be a bad mother,” he said, “I think you’d be the fiercest mother there is. But, darling—we once had a three-hour argument about the right way to put away laundry. Children are different. They’re messy, and you can’t always plan for them. If we do this—if we have kids—are you going to be okay with that? With not being able to control everything that happens?”

Yuna had had to think about it. But eventually, she’d decided: yes, she did want children. She wanted them with David. He was born to be a father, and she loved the idea of a little boy and a little girl running around the house. She loved the thought of lacing up their boots, and packing their lunches, and kissing their cheeks. She, of course, had SWOTed the entire thing out. The only thing she’d written under the Opportunities column was: Everything. 

In the end, they’d only been able to have one child. To have Shane. Her quiet, sweet baby, who cried when the lights were too bright and who loved mashed peas when he was first learning to eat. Her extraordinary baby, who learned how to skate faster than he learned how to walk, who had the same mind as Yuna, the same need to finish anything he ever started. Her son, who loved so fiercely and so deeply that sometimes it nearly bowled Yuna over, seeing his devotion to hockey, to his family, to Ilya.

She takes stock of the current situation as if considering external factors for another spreadsheet: 

She and David are in Ottawa, at the hospital with Ilya. Shane is in Virginia, experiencing some sort of mental break because of Ilya’s hospitalization. This is potentially in line with previous concerns that Yuna, David, and Ilya have harbored over the past few months.

Shane is with a woman named Abigail, who claims to be a friend. She has confirmed their location, and texted over legitimate-looking boarding passes to Yuna and David. The plane, which David has already looked up, is in fact due to land in Ottawa tonight. She has seen Shane over FaceTime, and Abigail has promised to keep in contact as much as possible until she and David can pick them up from the airport.

There are other things to be considered. What the fuck is going on, and what is wrong with Shane, and who Abigail is, and why any of this is happening, and if Ilya is going to be all right, and Yuna places a hand on her neck and tells herself to breathe because panicking won’t help anything at this stage.

She cannot change the current situation. So she tells herself to accept that, in the same way she had to accept when Shane would come home from school with his knees skinned, his face stormy and dark. She rolls her shoulders back, and makes a plan.

“David and I will pick you both up from the airport when the plane lands,” Yuna tells Abigail. Her voice is steady and firm. She turns back to David and nods at him. “Text us either from Shane’s phone or yours when you’re about to take off, and right after you land. If Shane is—able to, please tell him to text us too. Visiting hours in Ilya’s hospital wing will be over for the night, so we’ll go back to our house and evaluate Shane once you’re in Ottawa. No matter what, we’ll be back at the hospital in the morning, so the very least we can all do is try and get some sleep before then.”

David holds out the FaceTime call to Yuna, and she picks up her phone again. On the screen, Abigail is nodding. She looks tired. Her mascara is drying up and leaving dark crumbs across her lower lashline. She says, “That’s a good plan. Thank you, Mrs. Hollander.”

“It’s Yuna,” Yuna says. “I suspect we’re very close in age, so please. Yuna. My husband’s name is David.”

“Yuna and David,” Abigail repeats. There’s a muffled sound on her end, and she glances up, away from the phone. She turns back, and says, “That was for our flight. I think we’re boarding soon.”

Yuna nods. Her knees feel a bit weak, so she sits back down in the plastic chair. “Can you give me Shane again? Just to say goodbye.”

Abigail’s face softens. She tilts the camera again, and David crowds in so he can appear on Yuna’s video feed. Shane appears again, as distant and pale as he had been the first time.

“Baby,” says Yuna, “Ilya will be all right. You’re gonna be all right. Okay? Dad and I love you so much. We’re gonna see you so soon. Just hang on for me, please.”

She realizes that he probably hasn’t seen Ilya throughout the FaceTime call. She shows him now—just a quick flip of the camera, so he can see Ilya laying in bed, the tangle of wires all set up to keep him alive. She flips the camera back to herself when Shane’s expression doesn’t change.

“We love you,” David says beside her. His voice is wobbly. “We’ve gotta say goodbye, but we love you. We’ll see you, baby, just a few more hours.”

Shane blinks again. His mouth opens slightly. His lips press together and then yawn out. Bye, Yuna thinks he mouthed.

“Okay,” Yuna breathes out, and Abigail turns the camera away from her son again.

“He’ll be okay,” she says gently. “I’m really sorry about all of this.”

“See you soon,” Yuna says flatly. And then hangs up the FaceTime call, and flings herself into David’s lap.

“I know,” David whispers. His hands come up to cup the back of her head. He rocks her gently, back and forth in his lap. “I know, I know. I know.”

***

When Shane was little, he made a birdhouse. 

Well, his dad made the birdhouse, and Shane had helped, but any seven-year-old who’s had input on a project also thinks that they are the owners of the finished product. So Shane made a birdhouse using his dad’s hands, and they hung it up outside of Shane’s bedroom window. 

A loud ding, and there’s a lady’s voice echoing somewhere. Shane blinks. There’s a television screen and it’s talking about Ilya’s hospitalization again.

Shane was very excited for a bird to come and live in the birdhouse. He and his dad went to a homegoods store and bought a birdfeeder and seed mix. They hooked up the feeder a little ways away from the tree that housed the birdhouse. Any closer, said his dad, and there would be territorial disputes. The birds would never stop fighting.

Someone snaps their fingers in front of Shane’s face. He flinches. “You need to stay here,” a woman mutters, and a hand pinches his arm hard. He’s standing at a gate at an airport. The woman shoves him into one of the seats and hands him a can of cherry cola. He takes a sip of syrupy soda and says, “God, that’s disgusting.”

“Who the fuck hates cherry coke,” says Abigail, and Shane looks up at the screen behind the gate agent’s desk. DC to Ottawa, it reads. Shane shudders.

Shane set up the birdfeeder using his dad’s hands so the birdfeeder could feed many birds without being disruptive to the birdhouse. So one lucky bird could move into the birdhouse, and have a place to live, and friends to meet at the birdfeeder. It was a perfect compromise. Abigail reaches into Shane’s back pocket, and he yelps. She ignores him and draws out his phone. She grabs his thumb and uses his fingerprint to open the phone. He lets her do it. His bones feel like they’re made of water.

It took a few weeks, but a lucky bird did move into the birdhouse. It was beautiful. Abigail sends out a text to his parents and says brusquely, “If you try and kill yourself before Ilya wakes up, he’s going to be very mad at you. Do you want that?” Shane didn’t know much about birds, but he liked this one. It was little, had a white belly and cheeks, and a black neck and head. His phone, still in Abigail’s hand, rings out with a FaceTime request. It’s from his mother. Its eyes were wide and sweet-looking. His dad said it was a chickadee, and the bird seemed to know it. Abigail points his own phone at him, and his mother is wide-eyed on the other side of the screen. She says something. The phone changes angle, and Shane can no longer see it, and then it’s back again. His mom tells him how much she loves him. She shows him a hospital bed with a body in it. The body is still breathing. It sang out its own name every morning, and Shane would stand at his bedroom window and wave back. It felt like they were saying hello to each other, and that they understood each other.

Shane said that the chickadee was his best friend whenever his mom asked about playdates and classmates and the kids he played hockey with, when she asked about the United flight he was getting on to go and see Ilya. His mom would say that the bird wasn’t the same thing as a friend, and Shane would think that his mom didn’t understand, and then he sat down for the flight and asked Abigail if he could get a ginger ale, and she asked the flight attendant, and they brought him a little cup full of ice and a mini can of Canada Dry and Shane thought, he’s still alive for now. Not the way he and his chickadee understood each other. He’s still alive for now, what are you doing? He almost felt sad for her, that she didn’t have her own chickadee to say hello to in the mornings.

He’s still alive for now, you can’t put yourself away. Not until he’s dead too.

Shane gasps. He stops and puts a hand on the nearest wall. Abigail, from beside him, says, “Fucking convenient timing.”

“Sorry,” Shane says. He pinches his forehead. “Where—? We were at the airport?”

“And we’re at another one now,” says Abigail. “Ottawa. Come on, your parents think I kidnapped you or something.”

“I’m so sorry,” Shane says again. Abigail grabs his shoulders and points him to the exit. 

“Stay with me,” she hisses, and Shane tries. He blinks, and puts one foot in front of the other, and walks out into the airport lobby, where his parents are waiting next to a closed-up currency exchange stand.

“Mom, Dad,” Shane says, and his mom bursts into tears. His dad rushes forward and catches Shane up in a bear hug.

“You have so much explaining to do,” he says into Shane’s ear, and Shane melts into his arms. He’s warm, and smells like hand sanitizer. Shane pulls away slightly to see that underneath his winter coat, he’s wearing a sweatshirt that just says OTTAWA across the front.

His mouth curls up, and he’s on the verge of asking when his mom barrels into his arms. 

“Don’t you ever do that again,” she says. “Do you have any idea—and after Ilya—we were at the hospital for so long, and didn’t even know where you were—”

“I’m sorry,” Shane mumbles into her hair. “I’m really sorry.”

“Where did you go?” She sobs out, and Shane realizes he’s done it again. To a different set of the same parents, even. Shane opens his mouth.

He begins to cry.

“Oh,” His mom says, and gathers him up in her arms. She starts swaying him back and forth, like he’s a small child, and he lets her. He wants to tell her—something, but he can’t think of anything to say. He just keeps crying, the hitch in his chest pulsing and bleeding like an arterial wound.

His dad and Abigail shepherd the both of them out of the airport and to his dad’s SUV. He climbs into the back and his mom does, too, and she forces him to lay his head down in her lap even though she’s usually quite strict about seatbelt safety. He presses his face into her stomach and says, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to,” and she hushes him, running her hands through his hair.

“Just get some sleep, honey,” she says quietly. His dad starts up the car, and it rumbles to life underneath them. “The car always puts you to sleep, remember? Ever since you were a baby. So just sleep. It’s okay. Ilya’s okay for now. We’re gonna see him tomorrow, yeah? He made it through the worst part. It’s okay, it’s all okay.”

It isn’t, Shane wants to say, and he wants to say, it’s all like the birdhouse outside my room, the one that rotted when the bird died, and he wants to say if I told you everything you’d clear out my medicine cabinet, but he recognizes in a distant, flimsy sort of way that none of that is helpful, and that he should probably sleep.

He lets his eyes drift shut, and he makes himself breathe slowly, gently.

Sleep comes easily. It’s nearly the same as the pull he’d felt earlier, to get away from everything, so he lets sleep pull him away too, and feels no small amount of gratitude with how quickly and easily it takes him.

***

David helps Shane out of the car when they get home.

He’s bleary and a little blank-faced, but seems to be more or less himself. He wrinkles his nose when David pushes him up the stairs and mumbles about taking off his own shoes as David sits him on his bed and unlaces his sneakers. 

Yuna and David had returned home after they visited Ilya. Yuna had reheated soup and changed the sheets on Shane’s bed and vacuumed and sprayed Febreze everywhere she could think of, and then she unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen countertops and challenged David to three rounds of gin rummy before it was time to go to the airport. 

David had staunchly refused to think about any of it. He would think about everything much later. Possibly when Ilya was already awake and his son had been put into therapy. 

At the very least, Yuna’s stress cleaning had given Shane a clean place to sleep. He adjusts the covers over Shane, and sits down near Shane’s hip like he’s seven, not twenty-seven. 

“Dad,” Shane says. He’s doing the slow-blinking thing that he does when he’s trying to fight sleep, and horribly failing. “I’m okay.”

David smooths his hair back from his face. “You can’t expect me to believe that after today, bud.”

“I am,” Shane insists. “Ilya’s okay for now. I’m okay.”

David shakes his head. There’s been far too much crying for the day, so he won’t do that either. Not right now. “Get some sleep, buddy. We’ll go to the hospital tomorrow, okay? And we’ll chat.”

Shane blinks slowly again. “...Okay.”

David nods. He stands up and kisses his son’s forehead, then turns off the light. He leaves the bedroom and shuts the door and leans against it for a moment. He stares up at the overhead light until he’s nearly blind from the light exposure. He presses his hands into his face and waits until he’s no longer seeing dark, shapeless forms against the back of his eyelids, and then he goes downstairs to find Abigail and Yuna already halfway through a bottle of wine.

“Rude to start without me,” he says. Yuna slides a glass over to him on the countertop. 

“I was just asking Abigail about why Shane was in Virginia Beach,” says Yuna. Her mouth is ticking downward, and she has dark circles underneath her eyes. She should go to bed. They should all go to bed. 

“Should we wait until Shane’s awake to have this conversation?” David asks mildly. He takes a sip of his wine.

“You saw him in that car,” Yuna says. “And over FaceTime. Whatever’s going on, he is not able to handle it right now, and I’m not going to ask him.”

“So you’re asking me instead,” Abigail says. She doesn’t sound upset about it. She offers up her empty glass, and Yuna pours her a refill. She swirls the wine around in her glass, and then says, “I normally wouldn’t share information like this. Like, I like to think I’m a trustworthy person. I don’t go around telling secrets, and I’m not a gossip.”

David raises his eyebrows. “But?”

“But your son is sick,” Abigail says bluntly. Yuna flinches, and Abigail hurries to say, “Not—not like his boyfriend. That’s not what I meant. But he’s unwell. He needs help.”

“We know,” David says, and Abigail shakes her head. 

“You don’t,” she says. “You really don’t, but god, it’s so complicated. I don’t even—you may not even believe me.”

“Try us,” Yuna says. Her eyes are two hard stones. David wants to tell her to calm down, but he can’t. Abigail sighs and takes a deep drink, then sets down her glass and wipes her mouth.

“Okay, fine,” she says. “But I need you both to be open-minded, okay?”

“Our son is a world-famous hockey player in a secret gay relationship with his rival,” David says. “I think we can be open-minded.”

Abigail hesitates. She places both palms on the counter, and then shifts her jaw back and forth.

Eventually, she says, “Fine. What do you know about, um. About time as the fourth dimension?”

“What?” Yuna scoffs. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Abigail polishes off her wine. This time, she reaches over to grab the bottle and refill her glass. 

“Surprisingly,” Abigail says, after another deep sip of wine,“It has quite a lot to do with everything. Which is maybe the problem. We’re, um. We’re gonna be here for a while. Do you have anything stronger than wine, maybe?”

Chapter 6: the end of december 2018 / the beginning of january 2021

Chapter Notes

Russian to English:

Ya bolshe ne khochu videt sny. Pozhaluysta. — I don’t want to dream anymore. Please.

Vso budet khorosho, moya lyubov. Ya tebya lyublyu. Idi spat. — Everything will be all right, my love. I love you. Go to sleep.

Ya zdes, Ilyusha. — I’m here, Ilyusha (affectionate nickname for Ilya).

moya lyubov — my love

Idi na khuy. Mudak. — Go fuck yourself. Asshole.

Ty troos. — You’re a coward.

Ya tebya lyublu. Ya vsegda budu lyubit tebya. — I love you. I will always love you.

Kotik — kitten

Nichego takogo, chego oni ran'she ne videli — Nothing they haven’t seen before

Ya mogu pozvonit na stoyku registratsii i predupredit ikh. — I can call the front desk and warn them.

Ya lyublyu tebya bolshe vsego na svete. — I love you more than anything in the world.

December 2018

The dream slips away from Ilya as he wakes, but he can tell it was a nightmare of some kind.

Something like thunder trapped between his temples, and blue feet and dark eyes. A thread of panic, like a string tied to the top of his lungs. Waking is sluggish, and he almost wishes that he didn’t have to. It feels as if someone has left oily, smeared fingerprints all over his mind.

He blinks once, then twice. Turns his head into the pillow a little more. Someone squeezes his hand hard. “Ilya,” they say. “Baby, are you awake?”

He opens his eyes and sees colors first, and then shapes, and then the hospital room comes into focus. His brain sorts through it slowly, labeling things helpfully as he looks around: White fluorescent overhead lights. A blue polyester blanket over his knees. A bouquet of bright lilies on a nearby end table, next to a very round stuffed animal. A misshapen recliner was stationed against the far wall. A warm hand wrapped around his. Someone sitting on the sill of a bright window. Something clipped on one of his fingers, and the strange pressure of an IV needle slid into the crook of his elbow.

He blinks again and smacks his lips. The person on the windowsill stands up and comes closer, sits down in a chair opposite the person holding his hand. He turns to the handholder, and they suck in a deep breath. Their hand comes up to brush through Ilya’s hair, and Ilya mumbles, “Shane.”

“Yeah, it’s me, baby,” he says softly. “I’m here with my mom, we’re both here. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Ilya blinks again. Shane leans in. His eyes are red-rimmed. He looks like he’s a spiderweb of fractures. He’s a mirage of himself. He’s getting bad again, Ilya thinks. It takes him several moments to reach for his English, but he finds it. He says, “I can’t believe you would—would do that. To me.”

Shane’s mouth opens. No sound comes out. Yuna gets up from her chair and leaves the room. Everything is thick and slow. Ilya twitches his fingers around Shane’s. A tear snakes down his cheek, and Shane immediately brushes it away with his free hand.

“It hurt,” Ilya says. His throat is sandy and dry. Shane keeps his hand on Ilya’s cheek. 

Ilya coughs, and Shane says, “My mom’s getting the nurse, I think. I—Ilya, I…”

“Worse than the plane,” says Ilya. His voice is just a scratchy whisper, but Shane has to know. He has to know. “It hurt worse to watch you do that, moya lyubov.”

Shane shakes his head. He ducks his head down and kisses Ilya’s knuckles one at a time. “I don’t—you weren’t supposed to—I’m so sorry, but it wasn’t… I never thought…”

“Solnyshko,” Ilya says, but then a nurse opens the door, Yuna trailing behind. She’s holding a small paper cup, and at the nurse’s nod, Yuna gives it over to Shane. She looks like she’s watching a car crash happen in front of her, and Ilya doesn’t know why. She grips onto Shane’s shoulder hard as she moves away from Ilya’s hospital bed.

Shane helps Ilya sit up, and he swallows down a few ice chips that do wonders for his throat. The nurse tells him he had some kind of brain hemorrhage, and Ilya nods and side-eyes Shane, who says, “You had a brain bleed. It was serious.”

“Oh,” says Ilya. “That is… scary.”

“Understatement,” says Yuna. Her hand is bone-white against Shane’s shoulder.

The nurse asks him about his name, his occupation, what year it is and where he is and who the prime minister is and who is in the room with him. Ilya says, “Ilya Rozanov. Hockey player for MLH. Ottawa. It’s 2018. Justin Trudeau, very attractive man. My boyfriend and his mom are in the room.”

The nurse nods. Ilya feels his eyelids start to droop, and he thinks that’s not right, and a spike of fear tenses his hand around Shane’s. Shane says, “It’s okay, baby, you just need rest. They said you’d probably be in and out for a couple days, it’s okay.”

Ilya shakes his head. The overhead lights wobble above him, and Shane squeezes Ilya’s hand tighter. The nurse comes over with a syringe and reaches for the IV bag. Ilya says, “I don’t, I don’t want to go to sleep. Ya bolshe ne khochu videt sny. Pozhaluysta.” 

Shane leans down and presses his lips to Ilya’s wrist. The nurse looks over at Yuna, who shrugs, and then nods. Shane says, “Vso budet khorosho, moya lyubov. Ya tebya lyublyu. Idi spat.”

The nurse inserts the syringe. Ilya sighs and lets his eyes drift shut. Shane kisses his wrist again. He brushes a hand through Ilya’s hair.

Right before Ilya drifts to sleep, he can’t help it. He has to ask, “Are you my Shane? Where is he?”

Shane shivers, then leans up and rests his chin on Ilya’s shoulder. As Ilya falls asleep, Shane says into his ear, “I don’t know. I’m always yours. I don’t know.”

***

January 2021

The night before the flight, Shane and Ilya don’t talk about anything important. 

They both know that there’s not really a point. They’ll just argue, and neither of them will change their minds, and then Ilya will have to go and sleep in his own hotel room and he’ll wake up swelteringly hot, sweating through the sheets because he wrapped all the blankets around himself and Shane wasn’t there to stop him. 

The team gets back to the hotel after practice, and Shane quietly leads Ilya to the elevators by the hand. Troy makes deliberate eye contact with Ilya as they pass him. He knows that Shane and Ilya have been in an argument for weeks—since Western Christmas, really. Ilya hasn’t told Troy what it’s about, but Troy’s been supportive anyway, even letting Ilya sleep over at his house once or twice when it got really bad. 

Troy raises his eyebrows at Ilya, silently checking in. Ilya nods at him, and squeezes Shane’s hand. Troy smirks at Ilya. Shane squeezes Ilya’s hand too, but doesn’t look back at him. 

Shane doesn’t say anything in the elevator, which they share with a family of Southern Americans arguing about some reality television show on Bravo. He doesn’t say anything as they get off on Shane’s hotel floor, and he doesn’t say anything as he fishes his keycard out and opens the door to his room. 

They pass through the threshold and Shane turns around and backs Ilya into a wall. Ilya opens his arms and Shane presses his nose into Ilya’s neck.

“I love you,” Shane says. He presses a kiss to the underside of Ilya’s jaw. Ilya strokes the ends of Shane’s hair with one hand, and pushes up the hem of Shane’s shirt with the other. He spreads his palm against the small of Shane’s back. 

“I love you too,” Ilya says quietly.

Shane draws back and presses his forehead against Ilya’s. “And I understand. I hate it, but I understand.”

“Yes,” says Ilya. They’re choosing the same exact thing, and hating each other for it. They’ve been hypocrites for weeks. He tilts his head forward and kisses Shane gently. His fingers dig into Shane’s warm skin, his soft hair. He loves Shane so much that sometimes he can feel it like a toothache in his jaw.  

Ilya kisses Shane again, and again, and again, and Shane smiles at Ilya so sweetly that he thinks he might die from it. Ilya pinches Shane’s side and says, “Which do you want right now? Sex or cuddles?”

Shane wrinkles his nose at the word cuddles, which is precisely why Ilya used it. He uses his thumb to smooth out the bridge of Shane’s nose as Shane says, “I want you to hold me, but don’t call it that.”

“Too late, you are cuddle monster,” Ilya says mock-seriously. He slides his palms underneath Shane’s thighs and Shane obediently hops into his arms. “See? So eager to be held. Only a snugglebug is like this. Is type of cuddle monster, you know.”

“Where are you getting all of these words from,” Shane says as Ilya deposits him on the bed. Ilya kisses his forehead, then takes off his shirt and shoes and watches Shane as he does the same. Shane curls up on the left side, and Ilya lays down on the right, grabbing Shane’s shoulder and pulling him over his chest.

Shane presses his ear above Ilya’s heart. Ilya goes quiet and lets Shane listen to his heartbeat. 

After a minute or so, Shane says, “No, but seriously, where did you even learn the word snuggle?”

Ilya huffs out a laugh that scatters Shane’s hair across his forehead. “You forget how much we babysit baby Pikes,” he points out. He taps his fingers against the nape of Shane’s neck. “I even know about Paw Patrol now. Is horrible, Rozanov. Just absolutely terrible.”

“I’m sure it is, Hollander,” Shane says softly. He reaches up to catch Ilya’s right hand with his left. He tugs until their palms are flat against each other, their wedding rings tapping together. “The fucking worst, right?”

***

December 2018

Shane watches Ilya sleep. He looks normal. He scrunches up his nose sometimes. His mouth drops open. He drools on his pillow. 

He’s always been an active sleeper. He can never stay still. When he was in the coma, that was the worst. He had been so still and silent. Just the steady sound of breathing and the rhythm of his heart monitor. In the depths of Ilya’s coma Shane had half-convinced himself that Ilya was not in that body at all, that the body with the nasal cannula and the stitched-up incision in his scalp had been completely divorced from the man that he loved. He looked at the thing in the bed and felt nothing. He raised one of its hands to his face and bit down on the knuckle. His teeth made little red indents on the skin.

The doctors decided on the tenth day that there were no complications, that it was safe to begin weaning Ilya from the sedatives, trying to get him to wake up properly.

The first few times Ilya woke were horrible. He was confused, pleading, couldn’t speak in English. He thought he was twelve, or fifteen, or twenty. He asked Shane, his voice small, if they were friends. He asked Shane if he was dying. He asked Shane if he had gone crazy like his father.

Only Shane and Svetlana could speak to him then, and Svetlana was the better choice. She had flown up from Boston as soon as the news broke about Ilya, wearing a Raiders hoodie that she never took off. It had Ilya’s number on the sleeve, and was far too big for her. She was beautiful as ever, and patient, and she could translate what the doctors were saying. Shane could only say comforting words, and pet names, and yes, we’re friends. No, you are not crazy like your father. 

Svetlana would be disappointed that she’d missed Ilya waking up lucid. Shane pulls out his phone to text her, and then realizes that at one point his mom had been in the room with him, and she isn’t now. 

He stands up from Ilya’s bedside and steps out into the hall. His mom is sitting down on the floor, resting her hands on the tops of her bent legs. Shane sighs and sits down beside her. 

“It’s real,” says his mom. She rubs the denim grain of her jeans. “You really—he really.”

Shane tries not to sigh again, which he thinks is pretty admirable of him. 

She’d had ten days to get used to what Abigail had told his parents. Yuna had been the one to ambush him, the morning after the flight. Yuna was the one to serve him coffee and inform him, in no uncertain terms, that he was getting a therapist at the very least, and an indefinite leave of absence from the Metros. She’d approached everything with her usual clinical efficiency. She’d handled the emails and the phone calls and had blow-dried her hair and put on lipstick and a blazer to meet with Shane’s coach. She’d done all of that while Shane was praying over Ilya. While he was smoothing out his hospital gown and his bedsheets and tracking his heartbeat on the monitor as if it were an unpredictable countdown.

In the hallway, Shane makes himself breathe in and out, balls his hands into fists and then relaxes. He is not angry because he does not deserve to be, so he is calm instead.

“You’ve known it was real,” is what he eventually says.

“Some other me had to find your body,” she says. She tucks her thumbs underneath her knees. She does not look at him. “Some other me had to bury you and Ilya.”

“He was actually cremated,” says Shane. “I signed off on it. I spread his ashes over the lake.”

His mom stands up. “I’m so—I’m so upset with you,” she says. She sounds like she is crying, but Shane can’t find it within himself to check and see. “I need to. I need a break. I’ll be in the cafeteria.”

Shane continues not to look at her. He listens to the squeak of her sneakers against the hospital tile as she walks away from him.

Shane goes back inside and watches Ilya. His eyes start to drift shut. He isn’t sure what time it is, but he climbs into the lumpy recliner that the nurses had wheeled in for him and Svetlana. He closes his eyes. He still hasn’t texted Sveta, but he will, soon. 

Only Shane and Svetlana are allowed to stay past visiting hours. Shane, as Ilya’s emergency contact and medical proxy, and Svetlana, because she and Shane had lied together that she’s Ilya’s sister. Shane has been hogging most of the nights with Ilya. He hadn’t been home much, and when he did go home, it was usually because one of his parents decided he should, and they would pick him up and drive him to their house. 

Shane would shower and pack another bag as his mom and dad tried to talk to him about rehab centers, about inpatient stays, about medication regimens. Then it would be back to the hospital, to Ilya. Shane had started to feel as if time had warped into an ouroburos, like he would walk into the hospital and catch a shadow of himself doing the same thing in the past, in the present, in the future—as if it were all one and the same, and he was as much a part of the hospital as the floor tiles.

Shane falls asleep on the recliner. When he wakes up, it’s just him and Ilya in the room. He’d forgotten to text Svetlana. Ilya is already awake and looking at Shane. Shane says, “Hi, baby,” and Ilya says, “I can’t believe you would do that to me.”

Shane’s heart leaps into his throat. He reaches over and calls a nurse using the button on Ilya’s bed. Someone in scrubs comes in and asks Ilya the same grounding questions. He answers correctly. “Ilya Rozanov. Hockey player for MLH. Ottawa. It’s 2018. Justin Trudeau, very pretty guy. My boyfriend is here with me.”

He looks tired again. Shane follows the nurse out and says, “Why—why is he repeating himself? I thought he was supposed to be lucid now.”

The nurse sighs. She leans against the wall and says, “Confusion is normal after an induced coma. It’s likely this will happen several times, Mr. Hollander.”

“But the hemorrhage,” Shane says. “The doctors said that memory issues are common.”

“Yes,” she says. “They are.”

Shane shifts from foot to foot. “So…”

The nurse sighs. Her expression softens slightly. She says, “There’s no way to know what the underlying issue is at the moment. We need him to sleep and heal. We’ll take him in for a CT scan soon, but I wouldn’t worry about it right now, Mr. Hollander.”

“Okay,” Shane says. He runs a hand through his hair. “Okay.”

“Go Metros,” the nurse says, and leaves for her next patient.

Shane returns and finds Ilya asleep. He texts Svetlana about Ilya waking up properly and holds Ilya’s hand. He moves in his sleep, kicks out a leg. He wakes up two hours later, looks at Shane, and says, “I can’t believe you would do that to me.”

Shane calls the nurse again. Ilya Rozanov, Ilya says. Hockey player for MLH. Ottawa. It’s 2018. Justin Trudeau, what a bore. Shane is here with me. 

He falls asleep maybe ten minutes later. Shane turns on the television mounted on the far wall and flicks through the channels. Family Feud is on because it’s always airing in hotels and in hospitals. Shane watches a dad say that he wants his marriage to be open. The question is about what people want their partners to do for them. His family chants good answer! as a big bright X appears on screen, signalling that no one but the dad had thought of that particular answer for that particular question.

Shane turns off the television. He nods off next to Ilya, and then wakes up and notices the light has changed. It is maybe the next day already. Shane has gotten bad about tracking that kind of thing, and anyway, that’s what the nurses and doctors were for. He has an awful crick in his neck that he tries to work out with the pads of his fingers.

Svetlana is now in the room. She’s sitting cross-legged in the recliner, still in Ilya’s Raiders hoodie. She says, “You’re awake.”

“Yup.”

“Can’t have been comfortable to sleep like that,” she says.

“Nope.” 

“Shane,” Svetlana says. “Ilya wouldn’t want you to be doing this. The rate you’re going, you’ll end up in the next room over.”

“He’s hurt,” says Shane. Because of me, he thinks. He digs into his neck muscle with his thumb.

“Astute observation,” Svetlana says dryly. “I thought we were all here for fun and pleasure.”

“Yeah. I’m having a grand time,” says Shane.

Ilya groans as he begins to wake up. Svetlana gets up from the recliner and takes the seat opposite from Shane.

He takes a few moments to blink and focus his eyes. Shane squeezes his hand and he looks over and says “Shane,” and Shane says, “I’m here, baby.”

Ilya smacks his lips. Svetlana grabs a pitcher of ice that a friendly orderly had left behind and pours the chips into a Dixie cup. She’s the one to feed Ilya this time. The cold of the ice makes his lips all red and damp. He smacks them again. “Sveta.”

“Ya zdes, Ilyusha,” Sveta says. She grabs a napkin and dabs at his mouth for him. Shane squeezes Ilya’s hand again.

Ilya turns his head. His foggy blue eyes meet Shane’s, and maybe Shane was naive, to hope that with Svetlana in the room, he wouldn’t say anything. That he would be so happy to see Sveta, he would forget how unhappy Shane had made him.

Ilya says, “I can’t believe you, Shane,” and Shane drops Ilya’s hand and pushes his fingers through his own hair.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says. Svetlana’s posture has stiffened. She bites down on her lower lip. “I’m really sorry, you have no idea, Ilya.”

“Do you mean it? Really?” Ilya asks weakly, and now Svetlana is the one to leave the room. Shane thinks that if he raised his arm at the correct angle, he could catch the hand of another Shane or another Ilya and tug them into the argument too.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” says Shane. He twists his fingers into complicated knots in his lap. “I’m sorry. It’s not going to happen again. You should never have seen that at all. I don’t understand how you did.”

“Because it was always going to hurt me,” Ilya says. He looks more awake than he did the past few times. Shane hopes that Svetlana is grabbing a nurse. “It hurt me then, too. When you first did it.”

“You were fucking dead,” Shane says dully, and Ilya shakes his head. He turns on his side to face Shane better. He can’t quite reach for Shane’s hand, so he offers an open palm instead. Shane slips his hand back into his.

“I felt it,” Ilya says. “The version of me that you lost. He was so afraid. He was so afraid he managed to find me somehow. He was dead and you still broke his heart, Shane.” 

“Well then we’re fucking even,” Shane hisses. He flexes his hand around Ilya’s. “Do you have any idea what losing you was like? I wasn’t alive. I was dead and I had to keep breathing. Everyone kept expecting me to—to get over it, or to move on, and I couldn’t even—I wasn’t even there half the time, I couldn’t even stay on the ground, Ilya. At least when I left, it meant my parents wouldn’t have to keep watching me leave.”

“Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again,” Ilya says. He’s breathing fast. He pulls his hand out of Shane’s grasp. Shane looks over at his heart monitor and watches the numbers jump. “I mean it. You say something like that again and we are done. Idi na khuy. Mudak.” 

Shane stands up. “We’ve had the same conversation three times already,” he says flatly. “Let me know when you get some new material.”

“Ty troos,” Ilya mumbles behind Shane. Shane slams the door on the way out. 

“Mr. Hollander,” someone says. Shane turns to find Ilya’s nurse, with Svetlana only a half-step behind her. 

The nurse is holding a clipboard. She looks concerned. Svetlana just raises both of her eyebrows at Shane as he wipes at his eyes. His hand comes away damp and he wipes it down the front of his shirt.

“Can you stay with him tonight?” he asks Svetlana. She nods and tucks her hands into the pocket of the hoodie. Shane wonders if the hoodie still smells like Ilya. Like his regular pine-scented shampoo and citrusy cologne.

It would be pathetic to ask. Shane just nods at Svetlana and the nurse, and says, “I’m—I’m gonna go home, then.”

“I’ll let Ilya know,” Svetlana says softly. Shane just shakes his head and walks toward the nearest exit sign.

***

January 2021

The plane looks completely normal. 

Shane doesn’t know what he thought it should look like. That’s what his therapist would ask: What did you think the plane would look like, Shane?  Talia is all about digging into the details. It’s part of why Shane likes her so much. She doesn’t let him get away with saying I understand, or it’s a lot, I know. She always has to ask what do you understand? and how is it a lot?  and then she’s patient as Shane reaches for the words to explain.

Shane thinks about it now. He thinks that he expected the plane to be a disaster. Maybe he expected it to be painted black, with spikes on the wings. Maybe he expected to see it already burning, as if its future had superimposed itself on the present, as if it was already haunting itself.

Instead, the plane is fine. Grey leather seats. A thin colorless carpet on the floors. A lackluster overhead compartment and power outlets that only worked about half the time. It is just another plane, on another day, headed to another destination. 

Since team flights are almost always privately chartered, they can pick where to sit. Shane is the one to pull Ilya into the emergency exit row. Ilya follows, his mouth twitching.

“Shut up,” Shane says as soon as he settles in next to the window. Ilya shakes his head. He should have taken a Xanax by now. On any other flight, he would have. He has an official diagnosis for an irrational fear of airplanes. The Xanax is a legitimate prescription.

The doctors thought that the new fear was something to do with Ilya's brain hemorrhage. "The brain is a very delicate organ, Mr. Rozanov," they always said. "Long-term effects can be expressed in strange ways, but there are documented cases of irrational fears developing after a traumatic event involving the brain."

There’s not an easy way for them to explain to doctors that Ilya’s fear is very rational, and that it’s actually probably some form of post-traumatic stress, but Ilya always points out that the end result is the same. “I can get high so I do not panic myself to death on flights,” is what he says. “Very practical. Very modern. Very good. I have no interest in dying on a plane again.”

“That’s an awful solution,” Shane has said more than once, to which Ilya always says: “Ah, yes. Because driving myself to every hockey game and arriving two hours after game has begun is much better.”

So Ilya usually takes the Xanax. But he hasn’t today. Or he has, but it’s not enough. His fingers are shaking. Shane puts a hand on his knee, and uses the other to reach for the safety card stowed in the seat pocket in front of him.

“Tell me what Abigail said again,” Ilya says quietly. 

“She said that no one who’s traveled like us has ever died the same way on the same day,” Shane tells him. He examines the safety card as he says, “Nothing is going to happen today. We’re going to go to Tampa, and we’re going to beat the Bolts. And then we’re going home.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. He passes a hand over his face. Shane checks the maker of the plane again. He could’ve sworn it was a Boeing plane. He remembers reading about the lawsuit. He remembers getting emails about joining a class action, about getting money for Ilya, and he always skimmed the emails over and then marked each and every one of them as spam. He thinks the emails always ranted about Boeing’s negligence.

This plane is an Airbus. He tells Ilya so.

“Okay,” says Ilya.

“It’s different,” Shane says. He presses his thumb into the divot between Ilya’s kneecap and thigh. “It’s already different.”

“Yes,” says Ilya. His leg bounces up and down next to Shane’s, and he closes his eyes and starts muttering under his breath.

Shane shakes his head. He wishes he knew where Ilya kept his bottle of Xanax. But Ilya is in control of the medication. He won’t even tell Shane where his own pill bottles are. Instead, Ilya dispenses his and Shane’s medication in their weekly pill planners, then locks up the rest somewhere in their house. It’s probably in the safe in the garage. Shane tries his best not to go snooping.

Their couples counselor says that it’s a bad show of faith from Ilya. That at worst, it’s unsafe for him to be meting out their medication like this. Shane just lets it go. It’s probably the only thing that Ilya will ever have control issues over. 

Instead of suggesting that Ilya take a pill, Shane reaches up to cup Ilya’s chin. Ilya looks at him, and then his gaze darts away. Shane kisses Ilya’s cheek.

“There’s still time to call in a bomb threat,” Shane says. He’s only half-joking.

“It is fine,” Ilya says. “I know it’s fine. I don’t know why I’m like this. Sorry.”

Shane shakes his head again. “You know exactly why you’re like this. And it’s fair. And I’m sorry.”

Ilya tilts his head down. He looks at Shane, and Shane knows they’re thinking the same thing: how impossible it is, to refuse to take this plane. They’ve both thought about it. There’s no good reason for them to ground the flight that won’t end up getting traced back to them. They cannot stop this.

They’ve fought about it. Maybe they’re still fighting; Shane doesn’t really know. Ilya doesn’t want Shane on this flight, and Shane doesn’t want either of them on this flight, and neither of them can bear to let the plane fly with the rest of their team while they know what might happen. In the worst argument they had about it, Ilya had screamed at Shane and said that he had made them both murderers, and then he’d stormed out of the house. He didn’t come home until morning, and Shane had counted the minutes on the clock, trying to make sure he didn’t lose time until Ilya came back.

So they’re both on the plane that is already different from the plane that crashed. And now Ilya leans in, and Shane lets him kiss him slowly, sweetly, until Bood passes by and wolf-whistles at them. Ilya pulls away just long enough to say, “Fuck off.”

Bood shrugs. “I’m telling Cassie the next time we’re on a plane together that it makes me nervous. Maybe she’ll kiss me like that.”

Shane blushes, even as he glares at Bood. Ilya wraps his arm around Shane and says, “Bood.”

“I know,” says Bood. “It’s a brain thing from the hemorrhage, it’s serious, don’t make fun of Roz, I know. It’s just good to see you guys back to normal, okay?”

“You can say that again,” Troy calls out from a couple aisles back. 

“Shut up, Troy,” Ilya and Shane say at the same time. Bood points a finger gun at them.

“What’d I say?” he says with a cheeky grin. He throws himself into the window seat directly behind them, and Ilya turns around just so he can make eye contact with Bood as he says, “I hate you.”

“You love us,” Bood retorts. “You’ve given us back-to-back Cups.”

“That was for my beautiful amazing husband,” Ilya sniffs.

Shane nudges him. “I think I got those Cups for you.”

“Shut up. No,” Ilya says to Shane.

A flight attendant hops up from her seat at the front of the plane. The intercom chimes and informs the Centaurs that they should listen to the upcoming safety message. The flight attendant presents an identical safety card to the one pinched between Shane’s fingers, plus a deflated life vest and a disconnected oxygen mask. Ilya’s breathing picks up, and Shane casts a warning glance at Bood. Bood pulls out a pair of bulky Bluetooth headphones and nods at Shane.

“My love,” Shane says quietly. “Remember what Abigail said.”

“You don’t even believe in witches,” Ilya grits out. The flight attendant begins to explain their emergency exits. She gestures at Shane, who waves distractedly as he says to Ilya, “Considering the environment of medieval England, it’s fair to suggest that a woman accused of being a witch was just a woman who was considered too educated, intelligent, or independent for her social standing and favor in the community.”

“Abigail the witch told you that,” Ilya says grumpily. Shane can’t help his smile. If Ilya’s joking, then it can’t be too bad.

“She sure did,” says Shane. “We can FaceTime her in the air. Ask her about it.”

“Maybe,” says Ilya. The flight attendant pretends to affix the oxygen mask to her mouth. Ilya rocks his head forward against the headrest in front of him, and then immediately jerks back.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, Shane decides. He kicks off his shoes and lays his feet in Ilya’s lap.

“What—Shane. We’re about to take off,” Ilya says. He looks at him, wide-eyed and alarmed, and without a hint of panic in his face.

“Sure,” says Shane. “I want to be comfortable.”

“Your legs will snap in half if we crash.” Ilya bites down on his lip. He and Svetlana have the same nervous tics; Shane always wants to point it out.

“Good thing we won’t, then,” Shane says confidently. “And I’ll be very comfy. With my feet in your lap.”

“The flight attendants will get very annoyed,” Ilya persists. “You will get in trouble. You are being worse than Andrei and he was once duct taped to seat on a flight.” He sing-songs trouble like a small child.

“Then I’ll deal with the consequences,” Shane says easily. “When we land. Also, I thought your brother’s name here is Alexei. Before, it was Andrei. Remember?”

Ilya scrunches his nose. These kinds of lapses were normal for Ilya after the hemorrhage, but neither of them like it.

Even though Shane can’t remember ever actually telling Ilya that his brother had a different name in the other world. 

Shane pokes Ilya’s nose. “Stop that. It’s fine.”

Ilya sighs. He brings a hand up and massages Shane’s big toe through his sock. “Your feet stink.”

“That’s what feet do. Deal with it.”

“I hate you,” Ilya says, and betrays himself by leaning in for another kiss. Shane meets him halfway, and he closes his eyes. He makes a wish, right before their lips touch, as if he were blowing out birthday candles: Please let Abigail be right. Please, let me keep him again. I won’t waste it. I’ll never waste it.

***

December 2018 

Ilya wakes up to moonlight.

The blinds are drawn, so the rays of light that slide through the window are thin and long, shaped like wishbones across the floor. They stretch toward the bouquet of flowers, but don’t quite reach the vase; they slink toward the recliner in the corner of the room, illuminating Sveta’s nose, her full lips, before disappearing back into the dark, blue-black room.

Ilya groans. Sveta wakes up between one breath and the next. They’ve both always been like that—quick to wake at the slightest movement. She scans the room, and when she notices Ilya, she smiles. Even in the darkness, Ilya can see that she’s wearing his old, faded Raiders hoodie. Her hair is knotted behind her head in a tight hair tie. She says in Russian, “Good morning, Ilyusha.”

Ilya checks the alarm clock near his bed. The digital numbers inform him that it’s just after two in the morning. “By the barest definition of morning, yes. Good morning.”

“I missed you,” she says plainly. She pushes the lever on the side of the recliner so the foot falls into place. She stands and cracks her shoulders in a stretch. “You gave everyone quite a scare.”

“I didn’t mean to,” says Ilya. It feels true, even as he paws through his own memories to see that it is. There’s the hockey game, the bright feeling of nausea on the white ice. His phone call with Shane. The heavy, syrupy dreams that he dreamed. Shane, refracted in a funhouse mirror maybe.

Shane. His Shane. Shane.

“Shane,” Ilya says aloud.

Sveta pushes down the sleeves of her borrowed hoodie. She reaches over and turns on a standing lamp nearby. The room half-washes with a yellowish light. “Do you remember this afternoon?”

“This afternoon?”

“They said you might not,” Sveta acknowledges. “Shane was here.”

“He’s okay?”

“What did he do?” she asks. She drops herself in the plastic chair next to Ilya’s bed and brings her knees up to her chin. She pours him a small paper cup of water, which looks to be half-melted ice. She holds it up to Ilya’s mouth. “You were angry with him the last time you woke.”

“I woke up before?”

“So you don’t remember.”

Ilya drinks the water. It’s nothing more than a little slip of water down his throat. Sveta presses the call button for the nurse next to his bed. “Is Shane okay?”

“Yes,” Sveta says. She sniffs and adjusts the hoodie around herself. “We traded off who would stay with you.”

“He—I need to see him,” Ilya says. The demand is as sudden as it is necessary. He can feel the need pulsing in his throat, like a blister, like a node on his vocal cords. “Please, Sveta. I need to see him.”

She levels him with a hard look. “What did he do?”

“Please,” Ilya says. There’s the susurrus of someone opening a door without trying to disturb anyone. A nurse comes in and notices that Ilya and Sveta are awake. He smiles sheepishly at them.

“I just have to ask some questions,” he says to Ilya. Ilya waves him on, and answers accordingly: Ilya Rozanov. Hockey player for MLH. It’s 2018. Justin Trudeau, and he’s too pretty to be named Justin. Svetlana is in the room with him. No, he didn’t remember waking up before this. The last thing he really remembers is calling his boyfriend on the phone after he lost a hockey game.

The nurse nods along, jotting down the answers for Ilya’s medical chart. “I can help you get back to sleep,” he offers. 

Ilya shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. “I’d like to get to sleep on my own, I think.”

“Your grasp on language is good,” the nurse notes. “We’ll still need a CT scan in the morning, but it’s promising.”

“That’s fine. What happened?” Ilya asks.

“An aneurysm,” Sveta answers darkly before the nurse can. “You never do things by half.”

Ilya looks over at her. She glares back at him. There’s another soft susurrus as the nurse leaves Ilya’s hospital room and shuts the door.

“Please call Shane,” he tells Sveta.

“Why?”

“Because I’m afraid he’s dead,” Ilya answers honestly. “He tried to kill himself. I need to hear him.”

“Fuck, Ilya,” Sveta says. She produces her phone from an abandoned tote bag on the floor, powers it on, and calls Shane.

He picks up on the second ring. He sounds sleepy when he says, “Mm, hello?”

“Sweetheart,” Ilya breathes out. Sveta sets the phone in his lap and puts it on speaker.

“Ilya,” Shane says. There’s the rasp of bedsheets as he sits up. They should have done FaceTime. Ilya wants to see his eyes. He wants to make sure his eyes are his, not two stones set into a withering face. 

“You are all right,” Ilya demands, and Shane says, “Yes, yeah. I’m at my parents’ house. I’m okay.”

“Good,” Ilya says. “You scare me. I wake up and you are not here. I am worried.”

“You, um. It didn’t seem like you wanted me around, when you woke up last time,” Shane says. His voice tapers off at the end of the sentence. 

Ilya shakes his head even though Shane isn’t here to see. It makes his head swim. “I always want you around. Even when I am mad at you.”

“And you’re mad at me,” Shane says quietly.

Ilya throws up a clumsy hand. “Of course I am mad at you. I wake up and you are not here and I worry that you have hurt yourself again, and I think to myself, he could have. I hate that. I hate that I will now always worry about you like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says. His voice is tight. Ilya looks at Sveta. She pours him more water, and he drinks it, and then she leaves the room, shutting the door as quietly as the nurse did. Ilya wonders why everyone’s being so quiet. He is in the ICU. Everyone around him is probably dying.

“I love you,” Ilya says. “I will never not love you. But fuck, Shane.”

Shane is silent on the other side of the line. Ilya plays with the hem of his hospital blanket. Now that he’s awake, he’s aware of the oil buildup on his skin. The gritty feel of the paper hospital gown against his sternum. An aneurysm requires brain surgery, Ilya is pretty sure. He doesn’t really want to look in a mirror and check. 

Shane clears his throat. Ilya says, “Yes?”

“Do you think… I mean, um. The first time you woke,” Shane begins to say. His voice is odd. Ilya wants him in front of him. Ilya wants him in his bed. “You asked me if I was your Shane.”

“Oh,” says Ilya.

“And you know,” he says. His voice wavers. “You—you got hurt. Because of me. Because of whatever happened—”

“Sweetheart,” Ilya cuts in. “I was confused. I just woke up.”

“But you’re wondering,” Shane says quickly, “and I can’t—I didn’t ask for this, you have to believe me. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I’m—why I’m here, I don’t know.”

“I know,” Ilya says. “I think I’m the reason you’re here.”

“What?”

“When I—when I dreamed,” Ilya says. “Of you, like that. In our bed.”

Shane makes a wounded sound. Ilya shakes his head again. His head swims again. “I thought that I would never let it happen again. You reached for me. You couldn’t see me, but you reached for me.”

“Ilya,” Shane says, and Ilya waits, but Shane doesn’t say anything else. He can hear Shane’s quick breaths on the other side of the line.

“I do not have the words, I think. To tell you. But I took your hand and I pulled. And I think you followed. And we are here now.”

Shane says, “So you’re—?”

“No,” Ilya interrupts. “I do not think I am him. The one you lost. I am so sorry. But I felt him there, too. While you were dying.”

“You said that,” Shane says. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Earlier, when we fought. You said that.”

Ilya tilts his head back. A wishbone of moonlight is splayed across the ceiling. The edges are blurred, but then Ilya blinks the tears out of his eyes and they become sharp. He remembers the other Ilya’s fear. His desperation. Ilya was dying like a dog in the Hollanders’ house, because of that other Ilya, and he couldn’t even blame him. 

While he was dying like a dog in the Hollanders’ house. While he was dying. There was a paperback book, he remembers. And a pen. A pen and paper.

Ilya says, “Shane. Are you in your childhood room?”

“Uh, yeah,” Shane says. 

“Can you look at the nightstand?”

There’s the flick of a switch. Another rasp of bedsheets as Shane moves around. He says, “There’s a book that my dad gave you, I think.”

“Anything on top of it? Or inside?”

“Um,” Shane says. Ilya hears him riffle through the book. Then he says, “Oh. There’s, um. There’s a letter.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. “I wrote it. For you. When I was dying.”

“You what?”

“I thought I was dying and you were in Indianapolis,” Ilya says bluntly. “I was not going to leave you without a goodbye again.”

“I was in Virginia Beach,” Shane admits.

“Does it fucking matter?”

“Yes,” says Shane. “I was trying. I was trying to see if you. If—it would happen again. I went to Virginia Beach. To the woman who said—”

“That the universe is a set of doors or whatever,” Ilya interrupts. “The witch. Because you were talking about space and stuff. Oh, this makes so much fucking sense.”

“Her name is Abigail,” Shane says. “And she’s not a witch, she’s actually really nice. The same thing that happened to us—it happened to her, too. She explained some things. She came to Ottawa with me once I learned you were in the hospital. She’s been texting me to get updates on you.”

“I thought you were having dementia early,” Ilya says. He rakes a hand through his hair and flinches when he reaches the bald patch. The stitches feel like a leech attached to his head. “I downloaded a copy of mental illness guide on my laptop.”

“The DSM-5?” Shane sounds flabbergasted.

“Yes, that one. What was I supposed to think? You propose to me. You act like if you left my side I would die.”

“And then I left your side and you almost died,” Shane snaps. “And, um.”

“What.”

“I—while we’re on the topic, um,” says Shane. “I did have a diagnosis. In the other world. For major depressive disorder. With, um, catatonic episodes. But that was—that was when you were gone.”

“You had prescription,” Ilya fills in the blanks. His voice is flat. “And you overdosed on it.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says again. He chokes on his next breath. Ilya presses his head deeper into the pillow. He pinches the bridge of his nose, but doesn’t quite do it. He isn’t sure if it’s because he’s tired, or if it’s because of the brain hemorrhage, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open.

Ilya takes a deep, steadying breath. “The letter. I want you to read it.”

“Of course,” Shane says quickly. “Of course I’ll read it.”

“I want you to read it now,” Ilya clarifies. “On the phone call.”

Shane goes quiet for another beat. “Why?”

“Because I already know what I said,” he says, “And I need to hear you read it. I need to hear you take it serious.”

“Ilya,” Shane says. “I was always going to take it seriously.”

Ilya drapes his uncooperating hand across his face. “Just do it.”

“Okay, okay.” Shane shifts in his bed. Unfolds the stationery. Ilya hears the rustling on the other end of the line. “Your handwriting is really hard to read, you know.”

“Is beautiful,” Ilya says. “Is Russian.”

“You wrote this in English, dipshit,” Shane says, and then clears his throat. Ilya swallows down against nothing as Shane begins to read.

“Shane. Moya lyubov. I am not sure why this is happening, and I am scared.” Shane’s voice gives out on the last word. He clears his throat. Begins again. 

“I am scared. I think you know better than me what is happening. With your science books and the way you look at me. I remember the crash. I wonder how you can die from a plane crash before it happens. You will have to tell me about it when I’m gone. I hope it is quick, and I hope you know I am with your parents. They are good people.” Shane lets out a little sob.

“Shh, sh,” Ilya says. “I am here.”

“I know,” says Shane. “I know, just—Ilya.”

“Keep going. Please.”

So Shane does. 

“I am scared for you. I think maybe we love each other too much. I am worried it will destroy you. I think it maybe already did. I think it’s why I am dying now. Because I could not let you go. Maybe this is something we work on. I want time to love you the right way. I want you to love yourself the right way. I want you to keep going when I am gone. I worry about what happened to you in the other world. I think I will find out soon. I already know, though. And you cannot be that way again. I don’t know if I am him,” Shane’s voice breaks again.

He sucks in a deep breath, and Ilya listens to it. The inhale and the exhale. The phone is still in his lap. Shane isn’t here, he isn’t in the room, but he also is, and he always will be.

“I don’t know if I am him,” Shane repeats. “But I felt his love for you and it was the same as mine. So maybe all worlds where we live are the worlds where we love the same.”

“I like to think there’s a world where the plane landed. Where you were not so hurt, and we had dogs and kids the way we were meant to. That is a beautiful world, but this is a beautiful one too because you’re in it. I am scared to die, but you need to keep living.

“The world will never be so beautiful if you are not in it. And there are lovely people here for you. Your mom and dad, and Sveta, and Rose, and even Hayden Pike but do not tell him I said so.” Shane sucks in a deep breath. He lets out a hysterical giggle.

“Haha,” Ilya says. “I got you to laugh at my goodbye note.”

“I love you. Ya tebya lyublu. Ya vsegda budu lyubit tebya,” Shane says.

“So romantic,” Ilya teases, and Shane says, “I was finishing your letter, asshole.”

“Doesn’t mean you did not mean it,” Ilya says. His eyes have drifted shut and he’s not quite sure when that happened. 

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Shane says softly. “That you’re not fully my Ilya. I’ll always love you. No matter what memories you have. If there’s a version of you, then there’s always a version of me loving you.”

“It doesn’t matter to me either,” Ilya admits. It’s hard to speak with a slack jaw, but Ilya makes do. Sveta tiptoes back into the room and looks unimpressed when she sees that Ilya’s still on the phone.

“Good,” Shane says. Ilya hums.

“I love you,” Shane says. “I’ll let you go for now so you can get some rest. And I’ll, uh. I’ll go to therapy if you do.”

“Rude to do a deal with a brain damaged man,” Ilya mumbles. He couldn’t open his eyes even if he tried. “Sure. Remind me when I wake up, I will probably not remember. Love you.”

“Love you,” Shane says softly. Sveta takes the phone from Ilya’s lap. Ilya turns over. He’s asleep before Sveta can end the call.

***

January 2021

The plane lands safely. It encounters little to no turbulence. The landing is nearly as smooth as the takeoff. The pilot must be very good at his job. Ilya is only jolted in his seat once, when the wheels are deployed and the plane touches the earth again.

When they slow to a gentle stop on the tarmac, Ilya finally lets go of Shane. He can see the crescents of his fingernails etched into the sides of Shane’s hand. Shane shakes it out as Ilya says, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Shane says. He looks up at Ilya. His eyes are two warm pools that Ilya could fall into forever. He leans up and presses a kiss to Ilya’s bottom lip. “Thank fucking god, right?”

“Right,” Ilya says. There’s a strange lightness in his chest. He feels his chin tremble. He covers his mouth. Shane touches the corners of Ilya’s eyes with his thumbs.

“We’re okay,” Shane says softly. “We’re going to be okay.”

“Mmhm.” Ilya leans in and kisses Shane so he doesn’t start to cry. Behind them, Bood lets out a theatrical groan. Ilya ignores him. He’d just survived a flight that had killed him. He deserves this.

He starts to feel steadier after they’ve deboarded. Walking through Tampa International, Ilya can feel the pressure of the day slough off his shoulders like he’s taking off a heavy winter coat. The plane didn’t crash. No one died or was really ever at risk of dying. Ilya is just in another airport in yet another city, and he’s going to play a hockey game tomorrow because he’s a professional hockey player. After the game he’ll go back to Ottawa with his husband, and they will argue over getting another dog and eventually Ilya will win, and they’ll live happily ever after. 

The Centaurs claim their things at a baggage carousel. Coach Wiebe leads them outside, to a chartered bus that will take them to the hotel. Ilya jokes with Hazy about hijacking the bus for a midnight trip to Universal Studios as he stows his and Shane’s bags in the bus’s storage compartment. He turns back to look at Shane, mouth curving up into a smile. Shane’s hand wraps so tightly around Ilya’s palm that he can feel the heat of his blood drain away from his fingers.

Ilya winces, and Shane lets go right away. He shakes his head and threads his fingers through Shane’s gently. “Was just a bit tight. You were maybe cutting off bloodflow, but is okay. I like holding your hand.”

“You guys are gross when you’re not trying to bite each other’s heads off,” Troy says as he climbs into the bus. Harris is right at his heels. Ilya thinks he’s probably throwing stones at glass, or whatever it is that Shane says about hypocrites.

“The duality of man,” Hayes deadpans. Shane flips him off with the hand not wrapped around Ilya’s.

They get into the bus, and Ilya guides them to the back. He gives up Shane’s hand so he can wrap an arm around him instead. “Tell me what’s going on in that brain of yours, kotik.”

“I don’t know,” Shane says. He casts a quick glance around the bus, but no one’s sitting next to them yet. He sighs and burrows into Ilya’s shoulder. “I guess I’m just a bit—like, I knew we would be fine. But there’s a difference between knowing and knowing.”

“Ah,” Ilya says, nodding. “You are crashing a bit. That is fine. Maybe I am too.” 

“Yeah,” Shane says. He presses his nose into Ilya’s neck. Ilya smiles as Shane’s breath tickles his collarbone.

“Maybe I bring out Bill the bear, hm?” The bear had quickly become an inside joke when Ilya was stuck in the ICU. There had been a day where David kept looking over Ilya in awe, as if he really had risen from the dead, and Ilya had had enough. He hadn’t gained back all of his motor skills and basically ended up chucking the bear at David’s head in an effort to give it to him.

“Hold your strange potato bear and try to make that face again,” Ilya had said. “You will know how stupid you look then. So stop doing that. Happy thoughts only today.”

David had obediently held Bill to his chest and then promptly burst out laughing. It was the kind of laugh that’s hysterical and edgy, that happens more because it needed to happen than because anything funny actually occurred. Yuna, Shane and Ilya had all joined in, all laughing over a fat stuffed animal being held by a distraught sixty year old man. 

Bill was now an easy code for all of them: if someone brings Bill into the conversation, then they can’t talk or think about Serious Things. They could all admit that it was a little dumb, but it had also been a foolproof way for Shane and his parents to rebuild after they learned about everything. They couldn’t argue and cry for too long if Bill the bear was in the room with them.

When Shane had finally decided to go to a inpatient center and get re-diagnosed with depression, he’d even brought Bill in a reusable grocery bag over to his parents’ house, Ilya in tow, and had said, “I’m going to rehab to make sure I never try to kill myself again. Don’t say you’re proud of me. Please take care of Ilya’s physical and speech therapy appointments when I’m gone. Here’s Bill.”

And then he’d dumped the bear onto his parents’ coffee table. It had landed belly-up, its stubby little legs reaching for the overhead light, its absent glassy eyes and upside-down stitched smile facing Yuna on the couch. Yuna had covered her mouth so she wouldn’t start sobbing, but it hadn’t quite blocked out her incredulous laugh. Bill is very effective.

Ilya also just genuinely likes the bear. It makes for good neck support when he’s trying to sleep on long bus rides. So Bill is currently stuffed into the bottom of Ilya’s backpack. He definitely could bring him out if that’s what Shane wants.

Shane just laughs and shakes his head. “I’m not pulling out a stuffed animal on a bus full of our teammates, Ilya.”

“Do you seriously think people would care?” Ilya asks. “Other than Wyatt. He would be so mad he doesn’t have his own potato animal.”

Shane shrugs. “I guess that’s true. The Metros would’ve used it as fuel for weeks.”

He says it casually. Like it doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t set Ilya’s blood on fire, learning all the ways the Metros had been so toxic to Shane. Oh, they called me Rice for two years. Short for Rice Man. Didn’t stop until I was Captain, Shane would say casually while cutting up a bell pepper. I actually never worked on my backhand at team practice because if I started taking extra time, Comeau would call me gay for hockey, he’d say while casually folding their laundry. When you were dead, the only people to check up on me were Hayden and J.J. I thought they were my friends. I needed them, he’d whisper into Ilya’s neck on bad nights. 

“At least tell me it was better here,” Ilya asks now, and Shane just shakes his head. 

“When I joined in this world, Dubois—he was the captain, my rookie year—he’d call me the CBC correspondent. Hayden had to tell him to knock it off halfway through the season,” Shane says. Ilya presses his lips together. 

There were small things, like that. That Ilya noticed sometimes. Things that Shane, if he were fully Shane from the other world, would never know happened, but Shane still seemed to recollect in perfect detail. It’s been happening more and more recently. 

Ilya rubs his nose. He says to Shane, “Have you checked in with Hayden yet?” 

Shane snaps his fingers. “No, you’re right. Hold on.” He pulls his phone out to send his daily I’m alive! I’m happy to be alive! text to Hayden. 

Shane had once tried to complain that Hayden had overreacted to Shane getting diagnosed with major depression. “It’s been three years since everything. He can give it a rest,” Shane had said, after another visit from the Pikes that had ended with Hayden hugging Shane to his chest for a solid minute. There were tears involved, and not on Shane’s end. 

Ilya had groaned and said, “Please don’t make me side with Pike. I will do many things for you, but having to defend him may actually murder me. Just keep sending him the stupid daily texts, okay? It makes him happy.”

They’d both known that the truth was too complex and fantastical to share with anyone other than David and Yuna. So instead, they’d told their friends that things with Ilya didn’t look great in the hospital, and it had triggered Shane into a suicidal episode. They never said more than that. No one ever asked for more details. But clearly it had shaken Pike badly. Ilya could still remember the sound of his voice from that phone call, where Shane had gone semi-catatonic. Ilya enjoyed making fun of Pike for many things, but he would never make fun of him for how he loved Shane.

As soon as Ilya was discharged from the hospital after the aneurysm and settled in at home, Shane had done his inpatient stay and pulled out of the rest of the 2018-2019 hockey season. He’d also asked for a trade to Ottawa. The Metros had tried to spin it as Shane going crazy in the press, and that he hadn’t played well in years anyway. In response, Shane had posted receipts of significant donations to the Trevor Project and GLAAD, as per Farah’s suggestion. Shane’s jersey sold out in both Metros and Ottawa colors overnight, and the Irina Foundation had had a massive influx of cash, too. The following June, Ilya had been very glad to kiss his husband while hoisting the Stanley Cup in the air. 

The miracle husbands is what the press had called them. Ilya thinks it’s truer than anyone will ever really know.

Shane starts typing out his proof of life text to Hayden. Ilya pulls out his phone, too. He texts Yuna and David in the family group chat and says that they landed safely and will call them from the hotel later. Shane’s parents didn’t know that this last flight was the flight. He and Shane figured it would be better, either way, if they didn’t know. And anyway, Yuna and David now get incredibly nervous when he and Shane board any plane. Ilya thinks that a nice cruise might be in order for all of them.

Yuna reacts to Ilya’s message with a heart. A second later, David does too, and says Sounds good! Love you boys. 

Love you too, Ilya types out, and then navigates to his chat with Abigail. Or, as he’d labeled her in his phone, The Witch.

Shane did it again

the thing I was talking about where he remembers something from this timeline even though he shouldn’t

because he wasn’t here yet

Abigail starts typing immediately. She’s on her phone too much. Ilya thinks about texting Christie and telling her so. 

Seriously? So weird.

You two are so weird.

Pretty sure you can’t tell two depressed gay men that ♥️

will have to report you for hate crimes, sorry ♥️♥️

You know, when I first met Shane, he talked about you like you were an angel.

Imagine my surprise meeting you for the first time.

What I mean is that I haven’t heard of people remembering things from crossed time streams, but you also got sick way faster than usual, so I think it’s safe to say you guys are just an outlier case.

We are two best hockey players in the world

but you really don’t know?

No. I’m sorry, Ilya.

I don’t think there’s any danger, at least.

Shane told me the flight you crashed on was supposed to happen today.

Yes, and here we are, safe and sound

You are not very good at being a witch, Abigail. You are sure we’re safe?

As sure as I can be?

You know I’m not a witch.

No. That is other, cooler version of you

Probably.

If you want my advice, I say just roll with it. You’re both here. You didn’t crash today. Everything is okay for now.

Let yourself live.

Ilya looks up from his phone. Shane is done texting Hayden. He’s looking out the window, at the cars passing by on the boulevard. Ilya can see the strong, straight slope of his nose. The glimmer of white in the corner of his eye. The spray of dark freckles on his cheek. Ilya gets lost, for a moment. Trying to connect the dots, to find a constellation on Shane’s skin.

Ilya shuts his phone off. The bus makes a long, slow turn into the hotel parking lot and stops at the lobby entrance with a huff.

Ilya’s the one to lead Shane by the hand, this time. He guides him past the hotel bar, where their teammates are already gathering, to the admin aide who’s holding their room keycard. He picks up Shane’s and not his own. He leads them to the bank of elevators. 

Shane smiles at him, shy and private. The elevator that comes is empty, thank god. Ilya presses the button for their floor number and pushes Shane up against the wall and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him until the doors open again. 

Shane is the one to tug them out of the elevator, to pick up their bags and find the correct room and open the door with an impatient swipe of the keycard. For some reason, they’d given a single player a doubles room, and Shane drags Ilya to the nearest bed from the door. He drops their things carelessly in the aisle between the beds.

Ilya crooks an eyebrow. Shane rolls his eyes and shucks off his overcoat and his shirt. Ilya starts mouthing at Shane’s exposed skin. There’s a scar on the back of his left shoulder that Ilya likes to gnaw at. He goes there immediately, teeth pressing against the raised tissue, and Shane laughs, tilting his neck back into a perfect arc.

“Vampire,” Shane says when Ilya comes up for air.

“No, not vampire. I am, um. Word for people who eat people,” Ilya says, then makes a face. He definitely knew the word at some point. Stupid fucking hemorrhage.

“Cannibal,” Shane supplies. He wraps a fist around the bottom of Ilya’s sweatshirt, and Ilya obediently raises his arms so Shane can pull it and his layered t-shirt off. Shane presses a hand to the bottom of Ilya’s belly, his fingers scratching at Ilya’s happy trail. “That’s not as sexy, moya lyubov.”

He’s right. Cannibals aren’t sexy. But Shane calling Ilya Russian pet names is very sexy. Ilya runs a hand down Shane’s back and kisses his jaw. 

“Funny,” Ilya says, “Cannibal. It is the same in Russian, you know. I remember now. We say kannibal.” He makes sure to emphasize his Russian accent against Shane’s throat. Shane shivers.

“Are you going to eat me?” he breathes out, and Ilya presses a featherlight kiss to his jugular. 

“Mm, not today,” Ilya says. “I think I like to fuck you more today.”

“Me too,” Shane says. Ilya looks up to see that his pupils have taken over most of his eyes. He kisses Shane again, tongue flicking into his mouth, and then gets up to find where he’d packed the lube. 

He finds it in his backpack, next to Bill. “Sorry you had to see that, Bill,” he says, and then tosses the backpack onto the floor again and hops back onto the bed. Shane has finished getting undressed and has pulled the covers of the bed down. He draws him into another breathless kiss, and Ilya can feel how hard he is against his thigh.  

“How do you want to do this?” Ilya asks once they break for air. There’s already a wet patch on his sweatpants from Shane. Ilya smirks.

Shane grabs Ilya’s right hand with his left. Their rings whisper against each other. “I want to see you this time.”

“Okay,” Ilya says softly. “Get on your back.”

Shane relaxes down into the bed. Ilya pours the lube into his hand and slowly begins to work Shane open. Shane makes obscene little noises when Ilya does this. He always sounds the same. As if honey had a voice.

“That’s good enough,” Shane mumbles after Ilya inserts his second finger. Ilya flexes his middle finger inside of him, and Shane gasps. 

“Are you sure? I am very big,” Ilya teases. 

“Shut up,” Shane grits out. “Get inside me.”

Ilya smiles at him. He leans up and kisses his nose as he works off his boxers and sweatpants. “So bossy today.”

“You need it,” Shane says. His eyes are smoldering. Ilya gulps. He kisses Shane’s mouth. His chin. His neck, teeth grazing until Shane squirms, and then his nipples, his stomach, his little bellybutton. All for Ilya. Always for him.

He lines himself up with Shane, and wraps a gentle, slick hand around Shane’s dick as he slides in.

Ilya can tell immediately that neither of them are going to last long. It’s been weeks since they’ve done this, too much time eaten up by their argument and their fears and their stupid fucking jobs. Ilya should quit hockey and stay in bed with Shane forever. That’s the only sane decision that Ilya could make here. If he doesn’t, the doctors will maybe suspect him of having another aneurysm.

Ilya makes the most of it. Shane pants and writhes and makes his honeyed sounds, and Ilya keeps a steady pace, ratcheting up and then backing off occasionally just to watch Shane’s face, the way he wraps the sheets around his hands and arches his back and lifts his head up again to look at Ilya with his hot, smoldering eyes. 

Ilya slams harder and harder into Shane and he says, “Close, Ilya. There, again,” and Ilya follows his instructions to the letter, his hand working Shane in time to his thrusts. 

Ilya feels it just before Shane does. He loves the way their muscles tense together, the way the heat seems to rise around them. Shane splashes up onto Ilya’s stomach, then onto himself, and Ilya fills up Shane, making Shane’s mouth drop into a little O as he relaxes back down onto the bed.

Ilya kisses the tendons in Shane’s neck, then the freckles on his cheeks. He feels himself soften enough to pull out, and as he does, Shane groans. He sits up, and both of them ignore the pool that follows his movement, soaking into the bedsheets.

“Pretty sure we broke record of how fast to fuck in hotel room,” Ilya says, flopping down next to Shane. His English always gets worse after orgasming, especially after the hemorrhage. Ilya doesn’t really want to bring it up to his doctors.

“Da,” Shane says. He stays in the sheets for only a moment longer, which is a moment longer than Ilya had expected. He stands and pops his shoulders. “God, we can’t leave this for the hotel staff to clean up.”

“Nichego takogo, chego oni ran'she ne videli,” Ilya says, and then frowns. He’d definitely meant to say that in English. He swishes the words around in his mouth as he says, “And will be dry by time they come clean. We are lucky there two beds. We just sleep in other one tonight.”

“Mom would kill us if she knew,” Shane says. He walks over to their abandoned bags and starts riffling through his. Ilya admires the long muscles in his back and the marks on his stomach that Ilya had left. It soothes something primal in him.

“How about,” Ilya says, as Shane finds his toiletry bag and pulls it out, “You shower. We move to other bed for sleep. Let our mess dry, and in morning, um.” He squints as he thinks. Eventually, he says in Russian, “Ya mogu pozvonit na stoyku registratsii i predupredit ikh.” 

Shane looks over at Ilya, then comes and sits down near Ilya's hip. “You’re tired, huh?”

“Was too good orgasm,” Ilya grumbles. Shane kisses the space in between his eyebrows and says, “Come shower with me.”

Ilya smirks at him. Shane slaps his shoulder gently. “Just a shower. And then we can take a nap. In the clean bed.”

“Okay,” Ilya mumbles. He lets Shane pull him up to a standing position, and then into the ensuite bathroom. He’s gentle as he turns on the shower and sorts through his travel bottles, all labeled neatly. Ilya catches that one of the bottles says Ilya’s shampoo, and feels weirdly teary about it. Shane had packed backups of Ilya’s products just in case Ilya needed them.

The shower is, in fact, just a shower. Shane works the shampoo from his backup bottle into Ilya’s scalp, murmuring when Ilya should turn his head or his face. He cleans the both of them with soft hotel washcloths and wrings them out afterward. He turns off the shower head and tells Ilya to wait, then comes back with a towel and Ilya’s pajamas.

It’s a little reminiscent of those first few months after the hemorrhage. When Ilya didn’t have great control over his hands, and sometimes couldn’t remember English, or even how to speak at all when it got really bad. Even with Shane’s renewed depression diagnosis, even with Shane also adjusting to new medications and regimens, Shane had been so patient and loving to Ilya. Ilya could have spent the rest of his life in the hospital, and he’s confident that Shane would have visited every single day with the same smile on his face, would have volunteered to give Ilya sponge baths and sips of broth and been perfectly content to do it. 

They’d gotten married the summer before Shane’s first season with the Centaurs. Shane had confessed that they’d never gotten to that point before Ilya had died. All Ilya could think is I would have married you, if you asked, so he did.

Shane says, “Do you need help getting dressed?” 

Ilya shakes his head no and says, “Ya lyublyu tebya bolshe vsego na svete.”

He puts the pajamas on. Shane wraps his arm around Ilya’s waist and helps him to bed, even though Ilya doesn’t need it. He takes it anyway.

Ilya curls into Shane. Shane repeats to Ilya, “Ya lyublyu tebya bolshe vsego na svete.”

“Stealing my thunder,” Ilya grumbles in English, and Shane laughs.

“Okay to sleep?” he asks. Ilya nods. Shane squeezes Ilya’s shoulder. He’s not always the big spoon—usually it’s Ilya. But he’s always good at it when he is.

“Sweet dreams,” he says, more softly this time.

Ilya tilts his head back so he can catch Shane’s eye. He puckers his lips and Shane kisses him, readjusting so Ilya’s neck isn’t strained.

“Sweet dreams,” Ilya echoes. His eyes are already drifting closed without him realizing.

Sleep comes to him easily. He feels Shane relax next to him, grow boneless with sleep, and he thinks he’ll never be this happy again, until he is, because it’ll always come again.

Everything always does.

Chapter End Notes

OKAY WE ARE DONE THANK GOD AM I RIGHT.

I hope this is as happy an ending as you all were promised! Now that I'm done I'm gonna hop up on my little soapbox to say: it was always gonna end happy with me. You all are totally right in that this kind of story demands closure, and in a real short story I would in fact kill off Ilya again. But this is fanfiction. Who gives a fuck about what the proper writing convention is? I want these two to be happy so they are.

Sending a lot of gratitude to the anonymous author who wrote Game Day and was also so gracious to read and leave notes on an earlier version of this. Your feedback was so helpful and you really helped me actually end this story, I can't thank you enough!!

The tags do need to be updated here now that I am done, and they will be. Tomorrow. Tonight I'm taking an edible and hopefully reading your comments and, if I'm brave, responding to them.

Love you all and thank you for coming with me on this journey!!

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