Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, David Hollander & Yuna Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike & Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Irina Rozanova

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Hayden Pike, Irina Rozanova

Additional Tags:

Angst with a Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Spoilers for Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Established Relationship, Car Accidents, Hospitals, Medical Trauma, cardiac arrest - Freeform, CPR, Intubation, ICU, Grief/Mourning, No Major Character Death, Please Note That Tag, Hurt/Comfort, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, POV Ilya Rozanov, Soft Ilya Rozanov, Good Parents David Hollander/Yuna Hollander, Protective Yuna Hollander, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Hayden Pike Knows About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Irina Rozanova Haunts the Narrative, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Bad Parent Grigori Rozanov, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Arguing, The I already chose you fight but worse, The Author Regrets Nothing, I'm Bad At Tagging, graphic description of medical procedures, Medical Procedures, Ilya is a Hollander, Autistic Shane Hollander, Hurt Shane Hollander, Hurt Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-21 Words: 10,373 Chapters: 1/1

i've been playing dead my whole life

Summary

“We knew when his words came in that he’d–” Yuna’s voice cracked around the idea, that specific word escaping her. “That he won’t have to know what it feels like to lose his soulmate.”

Because Shane was always going to go first. How must it have felt, to look upon her son and see those words, and know with complete certainty he would go first? Maybe it was better, having as vague of a word as Ilya did on his chest. At least he couldn’t think about it, couldn’t imagine scenarios in which it could be said. 

“I assume,” Yuna said, pausing to take a deep breath as though to steel herself, “he said yours last night.”

Ilya nodded, admitting what he didn’t dare say out loud. 

--

AU where the last words you ever hear from your soulmate are tattooed on your chest. Ilya and Shane still argue over the party, Ilya still already chose Shane, and everything goes so much worse after Shane leaves.

Notes

PLEASE CHECK THE TAGS. As you're reading, please keep in mind that I physically am incapable of writing MCD. Shane does not die. He does not.

Also, I am a very American healthcare professional with a deeply American understanding of healthcare. If this is nothing like the way it works in Canada, I am sorry.

Please let me know what you think of this one <3

When Ilya was six years old, he noticed his mother’s soulmark for the first time. 

Birthdays weren’t supposed to be a big deal in the Rozanov household. Ilya’s father said it would make him too spoiled to celebrate it, and that he did not need either of his sons to be weak, spoiled boys. Ilya’s Mama usually listened to him—played the role of dutiful wife well up until the day she died—but Ilya’s birthday had always been a moment of quiet rebellion from her. She would take him to the bakery three blocks down, where the older woman working there would trade them pastries for Mama to cover the bakery’s counter for a weekend so the older woman could spend time with her grandkids. He and Mama would sit at a little table in the corner of the bakery and she would ask him what his one birthday wish was. 

Every year, Ilya would ask to skate with her. June was far too warm to pond skate, and they couldn’t pay for time at a rink without Grigori knowing about it. But he liked skating with Mama, because she didn’t make him do drills that made his leg muscles sore, and she never complained when he tripped up on the ice. She never even made him bring a puck or a stick, simply allowed him to roam the ice and cheer her on as she attempted twirls and spins she used to win awards for. But Ilya’s birthday was not suitable for skating, so Mama would shake her head and ask him to wish for something else. 

This year, Ilya asked to go for a swim.

“Ilyushka,” Mama laughed, tapping his cheek with her hand lovingly. “You don’t know how to swim.”

“I could learn!”

“It’s dangerous, you could get very hurt.”

“You won’t let me get hurt, Mama.”

And that had been enough to melt the expression on Mama’s face as quickly as the first spring warmth melted the ice across the pond near the school. She nodded, telling him to eat his apple pastry and that she would find somewhere they could swim. 

Ilya would never know how Mama managed to find the pool nor the swimsuits for each of them, would never know what she traded away to allow them the afternoon there. All he knew was that his birthday wishes always came true, and that Mama loved her Ilyushka. 

He’d tried to jump in right away, Mama’s hand reaching out with the only bruising grip she’d ever given him the only thing stopping him from leaping into the pool.

“No, Ilya,” she snapped, fear clear in her bright blue eyes as she shook his arm. “Water is dangerous if you don’t know how to swim. Do not get in without me, do you understand?”

Ilya nodded, lower lip wobbling as he watched the spot where her fingers grasped his arm so tightly the skin underneath turned pale white. “I just wanna swim, Mama.”

“I know, I know,” she sighed, dropping his arm and bending down to his height. She ran her hand through his golden curls gently, smiling sadly as he leaned into the touch, any hurt already smoothed over like he was used to it. “I can’t lose you, little bear. I need you safe, so don’t go running into the pool without me.”

The intensity of the moment faded as Ilya nodded then tugged her hand toward the pool. It was time to learn how to swim, and nothing was going to stop Ilya from it. 

It didn’t take long for Ilya to tire himself out in the water. Eventually, he ended up being carried along by Mama, held afloat by her as she moved in gentle laps around the pool. It was in this proximity that Ilya noticed the dark words imprinted on her chest, closer to the left side where her heart would be just underneath it. It looked like they were words written in a neat script, but were tattooed there permanently.

“What is?” Ilya asked, his hand lifting from the water so one of his chubby fingers could trace the words that peeked out above her swimsuit. 

He knew, even at six years old, that his Mama got sad sometimes. Her blue eyes would fade and her lips would tug down into a frown. Usually it was when his father was yelling mean things at her, Alexei, or him. The sad would turn into tears if his father did more than yell, or if it was past his bedtime and she thought she was alone in the living room. Ilya didn’t usually make his Mama sad, so it burned harshly in his own chest as that look appeared. 

“It’s nothing, little bear.”

“But Mama, why the words make you sad?”

“Because, Ilyushka, it’s my soulmark,” Mama explained, because she never liked to hide things from him. She knew from the moment she was pregnant with Alexei that the world would not be kind to the Rozanov boys. She also knew that Ilya was her sensitive boy, the one that could be broken by the world (by his father’s hand) if he were not prepared to withstand it. “They’re from the person I’m supposed to love most in the world, other than my boys, of course. They’re the last thing I heard from him before he went away forever.”

I will love you forever, Milaya. 

Ilya’s father did not call Mama that. He did not call her much of anything except for Irina and wife. 

“But Mama, Father didn’t go away forever.”

Mama’s face crumpled for only a second before she expertly reassembled it. The only sign left of her hurt was the glassiness in her eyes as she pet his soaking wet hair with one hand, still holding him up with the other. “I know, my Ilyushka, I know.”

They didn’t talk about it again. Ilya knew better than to bring it up, not when this was the one part of her that his father had not completely stolen from her and twisted. Still, every year on his birthday he would ask to go swimming again, and every year his eyes would find those words and wonder. 

Wonder if the man who’d said them ever made Mama sad like his father did. 

Wonder if the man would’ve liked him, if they ever met. 

Wonder what could’ve made such a bright, soft woman marry a cruel old man like his father.

Wonder if having him prevented her from finding that man before he went away, and if she ever regretted having him for it.

---

Soulmarks appear when a person turns sixteen years old. 

For the first two weeks leading up to Ilya’s birthday, the skin of his chest itched. He scratched and scratched until it was red and raised, desperate for the words to come in if only so the sensation would stop. 

It was the fourth birthday in a row that Ilya did not get to go swimming. He knew better than to ask his father, knowing he would be admonished for requesting something so trivial. He knew his father resented him for being soft, for being more like Mama than like him. He knew that was part of why his father erased every piece of evidence that she’d ever existed, save for the golden cross that Ilya had managed to take from her body before anyone heard him wailing over her. 

It was hard to tell whether the ache in his chest was from the loss of her or the arrival of his soulmark. 

Ilya woke up early that morning, before the sun had the chance to begin its path across the sky. The junior national team trained nearly every day, even if the season was over, so he would be expected at practice in only an hour. 

Still, Ilya allowed himself a brief moment’s pause at the mirror. 

There wasn’t much time for Ilya to imagine what sort of words would be said to him in his final moments with his soulmate. The cheesy romcom movies that the girls from school liked to watch always made the words be something elaborate and romantic. Some of his favorite authors always made the words tragic as a reminder of what the words were in the first place. The words meant death, either of the person who bore them or the person who was destined to say them. It was the last thing he would hear before this death, the final thing he would have of his soulmate.

I will love you forever, Milaya. 

Ilya had hoped for something at least as affectionate as that. 

Instead, he scowled at his reflection. It was short, just one word. Even worse was the fact that it was in English, a blocky language he was being forced to learn by his coaches for the sole fact that he was being scouted by the hockey league in North America. 

Okay.

That was it. 

The final moment between him and his soulmate, and all he would get was okay. It was useless, meaningless in the worst sense. It would bring him no warmth or comfort in the end, and even worse it was so vague that Ilya wouldn’t even know the end was coming until it was already there. 

Ilya scratched harshly at the word, leaving angry red lines in his wake across his chest. The word didn’t wipe away, nor did any others reveal themselves. This was truly all he would get when it came time for his soulmate to die. 

He tugged on a shirt quickly to cover the word, knowing with complete certainty that the way his skin burned had nothing to do with the physical effects of the mark coming in. This was just one more thing to shove back into the corner of his brain where he stored what had barbs and sharp edges that could cut him. 

The world had not been kind to the Rozanov boys, and Ilya was naive to think that it would have started now.

---

Most people did not know with complete certainty who their soulmate was until they died. It was the cruelest part of the entire system—that the only words that could truly confirm it were always meant to be the last ones. 

Ilya suspected that Shane Hollander was his soulmate that first night in a hotel room in Canada, when Shane went from sloppily sucking his dick to painstakingly folding each article of clothing as he stripped. He knew that Shane Hollander was his soulmate when they laid in bed at the cottage and Shane explained an elaborate plan spanning all the way to their eventual retirement from hockey, all so they could one day be together.

Does it fucking kill you too?

Not anymore.

Except, he knew then that one day Shane would say the word etched over his heart, and suddenly it all made too much sense because that word was so Shane. Of course that would be the way Shane would leave him—in the same way they’d lived for the first decade of their relationship, with barely a trace left to show they were even there. 

It began to haunt Ilya, each and every time Shane said the word. It didn’t even matter if something else was said after it, only that Ilya knew the way the end sounded on Shane’s lips. 

Okay. Okay. Okay. 

Each time killed him a little more, and there was nothing he could do but weep for the day he would understand that brief moment of disastrous grief he’d seen on his Mama’s face that day in the pool. Losing Shane would kill him the same way the world had killed his Mama, and there was no way to explain any of it to Shane because he didn’t have the most normal, vague word in existence tattooed to his heart. 

So Ilya held his breath each time Shane said it, hoping that when the time came his bones would know instinctively that it was goodbye, that he would have time. 

---

“I don’t want to look at you right now. I don’t want to talk to you. Go home.”

“Would you choose me?”

“I already chose you, Hollander. Go home. Please.”

“Okay.”

---

Ilya’s phone was never this annoying. 

It rang endlessly on his nightstand, the screen brightening each time only to dim for a second before relighting with a new call. Ilya never picked it up—he wasn’t sure he had the strength to lift his arm from the bed. 

When Shane left with a resounding click of the front door, Ilya climbed the steps of his house and laid in bed. His limbs were bent and folded under themselves awkwardly from where he’d flopped, and the fingers on his left hand had long-since started tingling painfully, but Ilya couldn’t bring himself to care.

He didn’t care about anything. 

Not when Shane walked out. Not when he was the reason he left. Not when things had gone so horribly wrong in one moment all because Ilya had one moment of weakness.

It was one fucking party. One party, a silly thing that he knew he shouldn’t have pressed the issue on. All he’d wanted was one night, though. His teammates all got to have their wives and girlfriends at their parties. None of them had to pretend like their hearts did not beat for another person. Ilya only wanted one night where someone he cared about knew that he was Shane’s, in every way that mattered.

But he’d pushed. And Shane was too good at pushing back. 

Would you choose me?

As if Ilya had not done that every day since their very first trip to the cottage, when Shane suggested he leave Boston for the worst fucking team in the league. He’d do it again, not only because it brought him closer to Shane but because he loved the guys on the Centaurs in a way he hadn’t quite been able to bond with the Raiders, but that didn’t make it any less of a choice. It was Ilya that gave and gave and gave, first to his family and then to Shane, and it felt a little like he thought drowning might to realize that Shane hadn’t realized just how much Ilya was willing to give him.

The front door opened downstairs. 

The security system did not protest it, meaning this was someone with a key and the code to the system. 

For one brief, desperate, pathetic moment, Ilya thought maybe it was Shane.

Shane, back to apologize. To hold Ilya and promise to choose him again and again, no matter what life could throw their way. To promise to go to the next party, and even if they never held hands or showed they were dating, at least he’d be there. 

“Ilya? Ilya, it’s Yuna and David,” David’s familiar voice called out from downstairs. 

Yuna and David were in his house. Ilya lifted his head, blinking the timeless void from his vision to check his phone. 

2:38 AM

8 missed calls from Worst Pike 🙄

3 missed calls from Jackie <3

5 missed calls from Momager

1 missed call from Boring Dad

It was like someone tied a lead weight to his heart and let it drop. Ilya’s heart sunk deep out of his chest, leaving behind something empty and cold. 

He was out of bed in an instant, dashing down the stairs to find Yuna and David. 

They were still wearing their coats, a few flecks of snow slowly melting in their hair as they stood in the entryway of the house. Both of them had red-rimmed eyes, faces puffy with tears. Yuna noticed him first, expression cracking in the same way his Mama’s had all those years ago as soon as they made eye contact. 

“Ilya.” His name sounded so wrong in her voice because Yuna Hollander’s voice does not crack, it does not break like it did around his name. Yuna was always strong, always held herself together for the good of the family. She didn’t bother trying now, looking at him like, like–

It hit Ilya like a fucking bullet to the chest. 

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Shane said it. He said it, and Ilya hadn’t even realized he’d said it because he was so angry. Shane left after he said it, and really wasn’t that Ilya’s fault too? He’d told him to leave even when they had so much more time together left in their plan. But Ilya had been hurt over a stupid fucking party that didn’t even matter anymore, because Shane said the one word that could shatter Ilya’s heart irreparably, and now the Hollanders were standing in Ilya’s house crying.

“No,” Ilya moaned, throat tight and voice thick with his own tears. 

His knees hit the floor with a sickening crack, but he didn’t feel the impact of it. How could he, when his heart was in ribbons and his hands scrabbled to keep the pieces together in his chest?

Twelve years. 

That was it. Final buzzer. Game over, no overtime. 

The pain, the overwhelming grief and sadness that seemed destined to follow him in life, everything he’d told himself repeatedly would be worth it for a lifetime with his soulmate—it was all for just twelve years with Shane. No amount of time would have ever been enough, but it felt like some kind of cruel prank that the world played on him now. It was like he was still being punished for the sins of his father, because he was the only Rozanov left who could be hurt this way.  

The broken wail that tore from Ilya’s lips hurt his ears. His fingers pulling harshly at his curls sent shockwaves of hurt through his scalp. The tears pouring steadily down his face burned like acid as they formed in his eyes. Still, nothing was near as painful as the spot over his chest, where he knew that one, shitty fucking goodbye rested. 

Okay. 

Gentle, shaking hands were on his own, trying to pull his fingers from his curls without torturing his scalp more. Ilya thought there might be someone talking too, but the words drifted away before they could reach his ears. The words didn’t matter, because he’d already heard the only one that would count for the rest of his life. 

Twenty-nine years of life. Twelve years of loving Shane. 

Over with one broken, tearful look from Yuna Hollander. 

A strong hand clutched his shoulder and Ilya couldn’t help the flinch that came from the unexpected touch. He hadn’t flinched like that in years, not since his father had died and the fear of him went with it. In any other situation, Ilya would be flush with embarrassment over the action. He’d apologize to David, knowing that the gentle, boring Canadian man would rather die than intentionally hurt anyone else, much less someone in his family. Now, Ilya could only hiccup around his sobs, body heaving painfully around each cry. Both of his hands were now held by Yuna’s, and she was knelt in front of him. Her lips were moving, definitely saying something to him that he couldn’t hear beyond the roar of blood in his ears. David was beside him, gripping his shoulder then petting his hair like his Mama used to do when he was scared, and it was only that specific comparison that made him realize that he was there with him.

Shane died tonight. Recently, too, because it had only been a couple of hours since Ilya forced him out of the house. 

Their only son died, and instead of mourning him they were here with Ilya, the man who killed him.

Would they still comfort him if they knew what unforgivable thing he’d done tonight?

“-in a car accident on his way back to Montreal. He’s at the hospital, Hayden’s with him now. He’s going to be okay, Ilya, he’s going to be okay.”

How could it be?

Okay.

How could Ilya possibly tell them that their son was as good as dead, because he’d already said it?

Okay.

There was no coming back from this night, nothing that could save them from the inevitability of Shane’s death.

Okay.

God, if only Ilya could’ve been in that car with him, at least maybe then–

No, Ilya thought harshly. Shane would never forgive him for wishing that. He may not have gotten the chance to tell Shane about his bouts of sadness or his therapist—he may not ever—but he knew Shane was aware on some level of the change in Ilya’s mood recently. He knew Shane was scared of it too, of him being like his Mama. Ilya wouldn’t do that to him, even if Shane wasn’t around to feel the loss of him.

Even if Shane was leaving him to deal with it on his own.

They were supposed to have more than twelve years. They were supposed to follow Shane’s plan. They’d retire in a few years and then no one could take anything from them when they came out. They wouldn’t even have to publicly say anything like Scott Hunter had—they could simply stop hiding, and no one was entitled to any explanation of what they meant to each other. 

They were supposed to have a house together. Secretly, Ilya was hoping that once they retired Shane would move here, with him. Ilya loved his quiet neighborhood, and he loved being so close to Yuna and David, and he loved his teammates. Ottawa was boring, but Ilya wanted boring with Shane. 

He wanted to get a dog. He wanted to raise a kid with Shane. He wanted countless more summer trips to the cottage and peaceful mornings waking up with Shane gathered in his arms. 

He wanted.

But it didn’t fucking matter what he wanted in the end, because Ilya pushed Shane away and now Shane was going to die.

Ilya didn’t remember the Hollanders coaxing him into the car, but when he next re-connected with reality he was sitting in the backseat of their car, head leaned against the window. He was still in the clothes he’d been in when he and Shane fought—sweatpants and a Centaurs hoodie—but the Hollanders had draped his winter coat across his lap, his fingers already dug into the fabric like it might keep him steady. 

David was driving. His knuckles were white with how tightly he gripped the wheel, and Ilya could see through the rearview mirror that he occasionally had to blink away the start of fresh tears. 

Yuna was in the passenger seat, on her phone. She was likely already coordinating Shane’s care, talking with Farah, or whatever else Yuna had to manage in some fucked up situation like this one. The silence in the car was only punctuated by her sniffles, the only sign that she was as broken as the rest of them.

“What happened to him?” Ilya asked, voice rough after the cruel mistreatment his sobs had put his throat through. 

All Ilya could picture was the worst. A car destroyed so badly it was unrecognizable as a vehicle. Shane, laid out in the street, as broken and twisted up as the car. Eyes, glassy and unseeing and entirely–

Ilya shook his head, trying to physically rid himself of the image. 

“From what Hayden said, another driver lost control of his car on some ice. He crossed the center line, and Shane was…Shane was there,” Yuna explained, twisting her body so she could look at Ilya. She reached into the backseat then to grip his hand, squeezing it once. “He’s going to be okay.”

“How bad is it?”

Yuna’s breath was shaky, chilling evidence that he wasn’t going to like her answer. “It’s bad, Ilya. He h–I’m sorry, I can’t. I can’t. I’ll call Hayden, he can explain.”

The world was unrecognizable. Yuna could not hold herself together. David was hauntingly quiet in the driver’s seat. And Ilya was thankful that Shane made Hayden his emergency contact all those years ago. Ilya had once

Ilya once tried to convince him to change it, on one of his quick trips to Montreal. They laid in Shane’s apartment, tangled up together on the couch. Shane was updating his forms for the new season—doing the boring and tedious paperwork that Ilya always turned in late. Shane argued that Hayden was the only one still in Montreal, that if anything happened it would take 2 hours for either Ilya or his parents to get there.

God, Ilya hated when Shane was right.

Two hours hadn’t seemed like much when they were making their trips to see each other, but it felt like an eternity now.

“Hi, Mrs. Hollander,” Hayden’s voice sounded through the phone after only two rings. It was a testament to her unraveling that she didn’t bother to correct him to her first name. Hayden sounded exhausted, his voice low and flat in a way that was entirely unlike Pike. 

“Hi, Hayden,” Yuna returned. “We’re about forty minutes out from Montreal General. We have Ilya with us, could you…I can’t say it all.”

Hayden sighed, but he started explaining anyway. He sounded more faraway, like he was trying to distance himself from the words as he said it.

“They said he lost a lot of blood. They’ve been giving him more, but they said it’s put him in some kind of shock. Hollzy, uh, he coded in the ambulance.”

“Coded,” Ilya said. He knew the word, even through the thick haze of fear that settled over his bones, but he still gasped and stiffened as Hayden explained further.

“It means his heart stopped. They got him back when he got here, but they keep telling me everything is touch-and-go, whatever the hell that means. Shane got out of emergency surgery a little bit ago, they have him here in the ICU now. When you get here, he’s…they had to intubate him.”

Ilya didn’t know that word, but from the shaky noise that Yuna let out, it couldn’t be a good thing. He was almost scared to ask, but he couldn’t let that stop him. Shane was hurt, Shane was dying, and he needed him. Shane needed Ilya to be there, to know what all of these words were, to help his parents when it did happen. 

“Intubate. What is intubate?”

“It’s…I’m not a doctor, man, but it’s a tube. They put it down his–his throat so a machine can help him breathe.”

“He is not breathing?”

Heart stopped. Machine breathing. Was there any part of Shane that still worked?

“Not without the machine. The doctor said it can be reversed, once Shane can prove to them he can breathe good enough without it. But he’s not even awake, so yeah, intubated.”

He thought maybe the conversation went on without him. Ilya could see Yuna’s lips moving again, could see that Hayden was still on the phone. The little contact photo for him was of the last time the Metros won the Cup. Shane and Hayden were sweaty and exhausted but both beaming wildly, arms thrown around each other in celebration. 

Ilya stared at that picture, trying to commit it to memory. At least then, when he thought of Shane for the rest of the car ride he could picture that moment, of Shane smiling and looking like he was on top of the entire world. He wouldn’t try to picture Shane laying unconscious in a hospital bed, those electrical pads stuck all over his chest and a fucking tube shoved down his throat. 

Because picturing that, knowing that would be the last way he would ever see Shane, would break him.

Ilya could not break now. Not until after. The Hollanders needed him, Shane needed him.

So he closed his eyes and he pictured the Metros hoisting up the Cup. 

---

Shane Hollander was larger than life. 

He never tried, was the thing. Shane did not try to be loud or commanding. He did not try to bulk up beyond the useful muscle that powered him on the ice. He did not fight tooth and nail for leadership positions.

No, he simply was. People wanted to follow Shane, to listen to him and let him lead them to victory. He was kind, and quiet, but he noticed small things about people that could easily be overlooked by most. He was funny, but in that unexpected way that always left Ilya stunned. He was always so weighed down by the expectations that people put on him, but he never let that stop him from moving through life and reaching every single goal. 

Shane was larger than life, but he looked so small in that hospital bed. 

His skin was pale and dull, marred by extensive bruising and several cuts and scrapes all over. His dark hair already looked slightly greasy and hung limply around his face. Those brown eyes that always gave away what he was feeling were closed, relaxed despite the clear pain he must be in given all of the injuries he had. 

There were a lot of bandages around his middle from his injuries and the surgery they had to do there. An angry red mark burned on the right side of his chest, where they had to send electricity through his body to restart his heart. His words were on display on the other side of his chest, the You can rest, Shane. Ya tebya lyublyu in Ilya’s own cursive script mocking him as he stared at it. There were countless wires and lines connecting Shane to machines that beeped and medication bags. There was in fact a tube protruding from his lips, connected to tubing and a monitor that occasionally sounded alarms that no one in scrubs seemed particularly concerned about but made Ilya startle each time. 

Shane already looked dead. 

The only thing that proved otherwise was the screen with his heart rate on it. Ilya found himself staring at it instead of his love’s broken body, counting every peak and watching as the number beside it fluctuated up and down. 

The ICU team made an exception to the visitor limit, because the accident just happened and because Shane wasn’t doing well, which meant the room was packed with people. Ilya sat in a stiff plastic chair on one side of the bed, holding onto Shane’s cold hand and rubbing small circles into it. Yuna and David sat on the other side, David holding onto Shane’s other hand while Yuna brushed her hands through Shane’s hair and over his cheek, occasionally whispering things to him that Ilya tried to tune out for her privacy. Hayden and Jackie stayed, too, now sitting on the small couch tucked into the corner of the room. They both had already done so much, being the ones to communicate with the doctors when the Hollanders and Ilya couldn’t bear to, getting coffee from the cafeteria when everyone began to look exhausted, and anything else that any of their group needed. 

“Shane got his tonsils out when he was eight.”

It was only Ilya and Yuna in the room now. Hayden and Jackie had convinced David to walk down to the cafeteria with them for some lunch, and Ilya had no doubt that when they came back they’d try to convince him and Yuna of the same. 

The words startled Ilya, his eyes moving from the ventilator screen to meet Yuna’s exhausted eyes. None of them spoke much in the last several hours, and if they did it was usually to Shane, quiet whispers telling him to be okay, to just wake up. 

Ilya blinked, trying to connect the words to the situation unfolding in front of him. It felt a little like he’d mistranslated something in his head, because tonsils weren’t important, not when Shane was lying so deathly still now.

“He tried to tell me he wasn’t scared, but mothers know when their babies are scared. We know, and I knew he was scared of the hospital,” Yuna said, voice weak from the emotional toll they’d all been through. Her eyes dipped back to watch her son, fingers trailing over the deep bruises that hid Shane’s freckles from them. “He hated the hospital. The lights were too bright, and there were too many noises. He said the hospital blankets were itchy and it was too cold. He begged David and I to take him home early because he couldn’t stand it, because all of it was hurting him more than the surgery did.”

Yuna’s lip wobbled, eyes closing briefly as another tear slipped from them.

Ilya swallowed his hurt, a thick lump that hurt all the way down to his toes. “Shane is not scared right now,” he promised, even if he himself couldn’t quite believe it. “Is not hurt. He would hate all of these noisy machines but he doesn’t now. The doctors are making sure he is calm and painless.”

“We knew when his words came in that he’d–” Yuna’s voice cracked around the idea, the words escaping her. “That he won’t have to know what it feels like to lose his soulmate.”

Because Shane was always going to go first. How must it have felt, to look upon her son and see those words, and know with complete certainty he would go first? Maybe it was better, having as vague of a word as Ilya did on his chest. At least he couldn’t think about it, couldn’t imagine scenarios in which it could be said. 

“I assume,” Yuna said, pausing to take a deep breath as though to steel herself, “he said yours. Based on last night.”

Based on the way he broke down, she didn’t say. 

Ilya’s vision blurred. He didn’t know how he even had anymore tears left to cry. He’d grown up thinking that crying was a sign of weakness, that Rozanov boys were above such thing as tears. He’d gone years choking them back, shoving down the feelings that made the tears want to build in his eyes. He’d replaced the sadness with anger, and translated that anger to his strong skills on the ice. Somewhere along the way, Shane had softened him and it was his fault now that Ilya couldn’t stop fucking crying. 

Still, he nodded, admitting what he didn’t dare say out loud. 

A small whimper sounded from Yuna, but she nodded too, her fingers brushing over the words on her son’s chest. 

“I won’t say them,” Ilya promised. “He can’t go if I don’t say them.”

“Shane loves you so much, Ilya,” Yuna said. “He’s been happier than I’ve ever seen him, these last two years. You are always going to be our family, because you’re the man who’s made our son so happy.”

“He has made me happy, too,” Ilya practically whispered, his chest tightening as the conversation progressed somewhere he was terrified of. 

“I need Shane to get better too, but the doctors…I know it’s not fair to ask you to do it, but…I don’t want him to have to stay in a place he hates forever. I don’t want my baby to live somewhere that scares him. If the doctors say they don’t think he’ll get better, will you say it?”

It’s an impossible ask. Ilya would never forgive himself for saying the words that would kill Shane, for letting him leave everyone who loves him forever. But Yuna looked terrified at the thought of Shane alive but not really alive, of having to stay here where the lights were too bright and the machines were too loud. Shane would hate it, Ilya knew, and he’d already done enough to put Shane here in the first place. 

So he nodded, despite the fresh tears and the small, pained noise that escaped him. “I promise, Yuna. I promise I will.”

Ilya turned back to the heart monitor and counted the peaks, hoping he never had to see the day they stopped.

---

If someone told Ilya two years ago that he would one day end up sitting at a bar in Montreal with Hayden Pike, he would have laughed until he cried. 

“Shane would be so proud of us,” Ilya scoffed as he took another drink of his beer. He would’ve preferred vodka shots, but this was the shitty beer that Shane would drink on the off occasion that he went out to a bar and decided to have a drink. “Look at us, getting along so well.”

“You’re still an asshole,” Hayden returned, though a small smile tugged on his lips at the thought of his best friend seeing them sitting together at a bar. Shane wouldn’t believe it. 

“I know,” Ilya returned solemnly.

“Hey, I don’t know what happened, just that Shane said you two got into a fight a–”

“You talked to Shane after?”

“Yeah, uh…” Hayden winced, taking a long drink of his beer before admitting, “He called me from the car after he left your place. We talked the whole way, right up until the accident.”

Hayden heard the whole thing. He would have heard the crunch of metal and squealing of tires. He would have heard breaking glass and the sounds of metal against pavement. Would he have heard Shane in pain?

“Fuck,” Ilya hissed. The dark circles under Pike’s eyes and the haunted look there made too much sense now. He’d heard everything. He didn’t need to wait for the emergency contact call because he already knew Shane had been hurt, even from kilometers away. 

“Yeah, fuck,” Hayden returned, a sharp breathy laugh escaping him. “He said some stuff, though. For what it’s worth, he’s sorry for whatever happened.”

“I don’t care,” Ilya said, his mind reeling with the weight of the conversation they were having now. He and Pike did not talk about serious things. They didn’t talk at all, not without either Shane or Jackie there as an intermediary. “He won argument by getting into car accident.”

“He’s gonna be okay, Rozanov,” Hayden said. “Hollzy’s a fucking beast, a car crash can’t keep him down. I bet he’ll be asking to get back on the ice within the week.”

Ilya laughed through the sharp pain in his chest, able to clearly picture Shane doing it too. His voice would still be rough from the tube, his abdomen still covered in bandages like a mummy, but he’d beg them all to help him put on his skates. 

“I bet the first thing he asks is how many games he’ll miss,” Ilya joked back, shaking his head in fondness for the man he loved. 

“Fuck, he’ll try to be at the first optional morning skate after the break, won’t he?”

“‘I’m the captain, I have to set a good example,’” Ilya and Hayden repeated simultaneously from memory, howling at the predictability of Shane Hollander. 

“We’ve gotta team up against him, Rozanov. You and me, we’ll make sure he actually recovers at home, okay?”

Okay.

The smile slid off of Ilya’s face immediately, the fingers gripping his beer bottle going numb in an instant. 

Because Shane wouldn’t demand to go back to practice. He wouldn’t tell them both about his responsibilities as a captain, and he wouldn’t try to coerce them to let him get out onto the ice before the Montreal medical team cleared him. 

Because Shane already said it.

Okay. 

“Hey, Rozanov, what happened?”

“I need to get back,” Ilya said, waving to catch the bartender’s attention to close his tab. “Visiting hours end soon, and I want to say goodnight to him.”

---

When Ilya made the familiar trek back to the ICU room—room 1117, at the end of the wing on the right—there was a crowd of people in scrubs filling up the room and spilling out into the hallway. There was a metal cart with red drawers inside the room, and a second one waiting on stand-by right outside. 

Shane was flat on the bed, those white pads back on his chest and across his ribs. 

The heart monitor wasn’t a flat line, but they weren’t the normal steady peaks that he was used to seeing. It was all disorganized and chaotic, little waves that didn’t make any sense to him but seemed to distress the people in scrubs.

Yuna and David were standing to the side, watching from outside the room through the wall of clear glass. Yuna had her hands covering her mouth, sobbing as David held her. 

No, no this couldn’t be it. 

Ilya hadn’t said the words yet, Shane couldn’t be going because it wasn’t time. It wasn’t time. 

“What is happening?” Ilya asked them, voice shaking with both adrenaline and fear as he reached them. He watched as a woman stood on a stepstool and began to pound on Shane’s chest rhythmically with both gloved hands.

CPR. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Chest compressions given at a depth of at least 5 centimeters at a rate of 100-120 compressions per minute. Ilya had gotten CPR certified when he started playing in the MLH, if only because he’d seen the video of a man who’d gotten hit with a puck in just the right spot to stop his heart. 

Watching them brutalize Shane’s chest, Ilya didn’t think he’d ever be able to actually do it if he needed to.

Yuna only cried, unable to answer Ilya. David tried, opening his mouth and closing it again and again but unable to come up with the words. 

A woman standing just outside the room took pity on them all. She wore light blue scrubs and the badge on her chest read “Nicole RN Manager”. 

“Shane went into cardiac arrest. They’re doing CPR to try to restart it.”

“His heart didn’t stop,” Ilya said, watching the monitor continue to give those chaotic waves even after they shocked Shane. “It’s making waves.”

“Not all cardiac arrests have a flatline,” Nicole explained gently. “Shane’s in what we call ventricular fibrillation. His heart is pumping but it’s not coordinated enough to move blood and oxygen through his body. His brain isn’t getting the oxygen it needs, so we have to do compressions and give medications.”

“He’s suffocating?” Ilya gasped. 

“The compressions help,” Nicole explained. “You see Mathis there? The one doing the compressions?”

Ilya did. The woman had only pumped on Shane’s chest for a couple of minutes, and now a man in the same light blue scrubs was replacing her after the shock. 

“His hands are acting like Shane’s heart. He’s pumping the blood and oxygen for Shane, until the medications and the shocks can get his heart going again.”

Ilya watched the team as they worked on Shane. It was chaotic, but everyone seemed to know what job they had. It was synchronized, in the same way that Ilya and his line could move the puck down the ice like they were one cohesive unit.

“Hold compressions for pulse check.”

“No pulse, resume compressions. Charge to 200 joules.”

“I’m clear, you’re clear, everyone’s clear!”

“Shock delivered, still in VFib. Resume compressions.”

It felt like Ilya’s heart was shocked right alongside Shane’s. Yuna sobbed, David told her it would be okay. Ilya watched.

Okay.

“300 mg of amiodarone.”

“Hold compressions for pulse check.”

“No pulse, resume compressions. Charge to 200 joules.”

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

“I’m clear, you’re clear, everyone’s clear!”

“Shock delivered.”

“We have sinus rhythm!”

“We have a pulse!”

“Good work everyone, we got ROSC. Now let’s g–”

The rest of the words faded as the team dispersed. Some grabbed more medications, moving at the direction of the woman standing at the foot of the bed in dark blue scrubs. The bed railings were brought back up and Shane was being wheeled out of the room, the team talking about other scans and tests they were going to run.

Ilya looked to Nicole, who still stood there even after the crowd dissolved. “He’s…?”

“We got him back,” Nicole promised. “They’re going to take good care of him, Mr. Rozanov.”

Hockey fan, Ilya thought through the muddy mix of adrenaline, fear, grief, and everything else the scene in front of him had dredged up in his hand. She’s probably a Metros fan. Shane should sign something for her when he wakes up.

Alive.

Shane was alive. His heart was working on its own now, even if his lungs still weren’t.

And that, that was something, Ilya supposed.

That was all they had, really.

So Ilya clung to the fact, as he and Yuna and David returned to the now empty ICU room to wait for their Shane to come back to them.

---

Ilya was alone in Shane’s hospital room for the first time since they arrived at Montreal General.

He sat where Yuna normally did, where he can hold onto Shane’s hand and with the other brush over the rest of his skin—his chest, his face with the slowly healing bruises and freckles, the corner of tape around his jaw that was holding the tube in place, his hair that occasionally gets cleaned by staff or Yuna. 

Ilya only saw Shane’s brown eyes once in the six days since the accident, and he’d wished that he hadn’t. 

The team was trying to wean down on sedation. They said something about trying to get him off of the ventilator, to get the tube out of this throat, but to do that they needed Shane awake and aware. The thought haunted Ilya, of Shane ever being aware there was a tube reaching all the way down to where his lungs started, but they said it was a necessity.

As Ilya could have guessed, Shane panicked. His brown eyes were flooded with nothing but pain and visceral fear, his hands that were restrained down to the bed reaching up to try to claw at the tube. Nothing that Yuna, David, or Ilya said to him was enough to break him out of that animalistic panic. Eventually, for Shane’s own safety, they had to sedate him again.

They didn’t try it again. His blood pressure dipped down again. The ventilator still chugged away. 

Ilya still watched the heart monitor, which hadn’t shown anything but the persistent, rhythmic peaks that he was used to seeing. 

By the end of this, Ilya would be an expert in the way Shane’s heart beat. 

“I need you to wake up,” Ilya spoke in a low voice so as to not agitate Shane, brushing his thumb along his freckles with a feather-like touch. “They are talking to Yuna and David now about how long they have been breathing for you.”

Seven days. That was the limit, they said. At seven days on the vent, they’d have to make a decision. Withdraw care or give Shane a trach to avoid infection, because apparently the thing still keeping their Shane alive could also be the thing that killed him. 

“They’re going to try again tomorrow morning. Mathis said you can hear us, probably. If you can, I need you to listen to me. You’re so good at listening to me, Shane, I need you to do it again.”

Nothing, not that Ilya expected anything else. Just the whirs of the ventilator, the occasional alarm from it that he’d learned wasn’t really all that concerning at all, and the beep of Shane’s heart on the monitor.

“You have to wake up, and you have to be calm. Please wake up, Shane,” Ilya’s voice cracked. He was so tired of crying. After this, he hoped he never had a reason to cry again. It didn’t seem like he’d even have any tears left for the rest of his life, all of them spent on Shane. “We are going to retire. Then you will move to boring Ottawa and we will be so boring together. I will get to wake up with you every morning and I won’t take for granted again. You have to wake up and call me asshole for kicking you out, for being mad about lame party when all that matters is getting to be with you. I don’t know how to do this without you, so you have to wake up.”

Ilya took in a shuddering breath, his chest lurching at his next thought. His throat tightened, lips numb as he tried to form the right words. It needed to be said though, because the doctors were talking to Yuna and David now. He saw it every morning when the group of them gathered outside of Shane’s room to talk about him—the glances, the words left unsaid, the waiting and the conversations they kept promising to have. It was time. 

The moment was here. Ilya wasn’t ready for it, he wasn’t sure he ever would be, but he’d promised. 

He promised Yuna, who accepted him in as another son without any questions. Even when her real son was all the way in Montreal, she still visited him. They had Saturday brunches together when Ilya was in town, and they talked about things that had nothing to do with the one person that had connected them.

Ilya had lost his Mama, and no one would ever replace her for as long as he lived. But God, did Yuna Hollander fill in some broken pieces of his heart that he didn’t think could ever be fixed. 

He promised her to look after her son. He promised to make sure that their Shane didn’t suffer any longer than he needed to. 

So through the tears, through the searing pain that threatened to tear Ilya’s chest in two, he said it.

“Tomorrow, if you are too tired,” his voice wobbled, thick with the tears that now streamed steadily down his face and onto his lap. “If you are too tired and you cannot wake up, it’s okay. You’ve fought so hard, we all know it. I will look after Yuna and David, and they will care for me. It’s okay if you can’t fight anymore, Shane. You can rest.”

Okay.

I will love you forever, Milaya.

The world was never going to be kind to the Rozanov boys. Ilya fought against it for so many years, but he knew it now. 

He knew it. 

“You can rest, Shane. Ya tebya lyublyu.”

Ilya wept.

---

Yuna and David invited him to stay with them in their hotel room that night. 

Hayden and Jackie joined too, bringing takeout from Shane’s favorite restaurant in Montreal, the one that was always their best chance at convincing him to break from his regimented diet.

They all told stories.

Ilya learned about the time Shane punched a kid at school for making a girl cry when he was nine years old. It was the first time Shane refused to apologize for breaking the rules. David took him out to get ice cream and never told Yuna about it.

He learned that when Shane was drafted, the first thing he’d done was buy a jersey for Yuna. He’d bought the first one he could find—a rookie who’d joined the team a year before he did by the name of Hayden Pike—since it was too soon for them to have a jersey with his own last name on the back of it. She already had one, having been a lifelong fan of the Metros, but he said it was their good luck charm when he played. She wore it for every game, even now. 

Hayden shared the time that he first found out about Boston Lily. How Shane had been texting someone in their hotel room, a grin on his face. How, suddenly, he’d slammed the phone down and tried to cover up his furiously blushing face. Hayden never saw what was sent but he did see a notification from ‘Lily <3’ that night asking him to come over after the game. Then Shane, rule-following Shane Hollander, actually did break curfew the next night to go somewhere else. Ilya only laughed, having an idea of what had been sent to make Shane react that way. 

Ilya told them about how nervous the hockey camps made Shane. How he tried to keep a pack of boys and girls in grade school on a schedule. How most of the kids made him awkward and a little stiff, but how last time in Ottawa there’d been this little girl who was quiet, far too-quiet for most hockey personalities. She was good though, that much was clear. Shane had taken to her, had shown her how to do his signature shot on goal and cheered loudly when she’d done it in the final scrimmage match of the camp. He’d beamed when she shyly asked him to sign her Metros shirt, and told her that one day, when she was drafted first into the PWHL, he would be the one to ask for her autograph. 

It continued on, all night, none of them sleeping when they could celebrate the man that had brought them all together. They drank ginger ale, and picked at leftovers of Shane’s favorite foods, and told stories about their Shane Hollander.

---

Shane panicked.

It took time for the sedation to wear off, but once it did his body jerked and fought, his eyes wild and unseeing again. Monitors screamed as evidence of his panic, and the nurse watching him gave that look, the one that said this wasn’t going the way any of them needed it to.

“Is okay, Shane,” Ilya tried, voice loud enough to be heard over the monitors but not loud enough to scream and bother anyone else in the unit. “Your family is all here. Your boyfriend is here. Your Pike is here. Everyone is here, you are okay. Breathe, Shane, I know you can do it.”

Panic. But, those brown eyes shifted to watch him. Good, Ilya thought around his own fear. It was the first sign of awareness that they’d had in nearly a week.

“Tube must be very uncomfy, I know, but it has to stay in. You can breathe around it now, da? You won’t let silly little tube win, will you? What will people say, the great Shane Hollander, second best hockey player in MLH, bested by a tube.”

“Ilya,” Yuna sighed, reaching out for his arm with her hand that wasn’t holding onto Shane’s. 

But, there it was. Something in Shane’s eyes cleared, never leaving Ilya’s face. His chin dipped, and Ilya wanted to believe that it was his attempt at a nod.

“Good, so good, Shane. You are very brave,” Ilya coached, his hand brushing through Shane’s hair. Shane’s body still fought, his hands trying to break through the restraints and clutching onto Yuna and David’s hands in a way that must have been painful for them, but he watched Ilya’s face. He listened.

He was listening.

“Look at all the people you have here. That is Mathis, your brilliant nurse. There next to him is Oceane, she is very smart respiratory person who has been keeping you breathing. She is in charge of tube, yes? Listen to her, it’s time to listen to her now. You have to fight a little more for us, Shane. Just a little more.”

And God, Ilya wanted to cry when he did it. Shane’s head turned to the other side where Ilya was pointing, where Oceane stood. She wore grey scrubs, her long dark braids tucked up into a surgical cap. She grinned when Shane focused on her, and began to talk to him about what they were doing. 

It was a slow process of careful measures to make absolutely certain that Shane was able to take over his breathing before the removed the tube. Still, Ilya cried in relief when the doctor actually did it. 

“We turned off his Levo today, too,” Mathis explained that evening as he came in to check on Shane. The man in the bed was sleeping, exhausted from a day of so much work, but he was there. 

Alive. 

Heart beating. 

Breathing. 

“That is shock medicine?” Ilya asked, hating how much he’d learned in the last week.

“It kept his blood pressure up,” Yuna added, a brief crack on her expression revealing she must’ve had the same horrible realization as him. 

“Exactly. It’s a good sign,” Mathis confirmed. “Dr. Blais is hopeful we can move him out of the ICU in a couple of days. You’ll be surprised how fast this part goes, now that he’s awake.”

It couldn’t be quick enough. 

The last week felt like a lifetime, leaving Ilya exhausted and worn down. He didn’t know if he would’ve survived it at all if it hadn’t been for Yuna, David, Hayden, and Jackie. 

They kick all of them out of the room that night, stating that it was even more important for Shane to get his rest now, but the next morning they’re there again. 

Ilya let Yuna and David have their time with Shane first. He may not have known what it was like to have such attentive parents, but he still remembered his Mama. He remembered birthday wishes that always came true, even when he had no idea how she managed to make them happen. He remembered gentle touches, and comforting hugs, and little bears, and everything that made a parent’s love important. 

So he stayed back. 

Until.

Ilya lifted his head as Yuna and David came back into the ICU waiting room. They both still looked as exhausted as he felt, but they both held themselves lighter. Their eyes shined with happiness and relief rather than tears now. 

“Please go see him,” Yuna told Ilya.

“You don’t want more time?” Ilya asked, knowing it hadn’t been more than a half hour since they’d gone in.

David laughed—and fuck, wasn’t that just the best sound in the world?—and shook his head. “All he could ask about was you. Go ahead, Ilya, before he starts asking the nurses for you too.”

So he did. 

Ilya made the familiar walk from the waiting room to room 1117. End of the hall on the right. 

This time, there was no crowd waiting outside.

There were no angry alarms of monitors that watched Shane’s vitals.

There was no rhythmic whirring and puffing of the ventilator.

There was just Shane, laying in bed, looking exhausted but smiling.

“I hate you, Shane Hollander,” Ilya said, surprised by the wetness of his words that betrayed him crying again. “This was all very dramatic and very mean.”

Shane reached out with one hand, and of course Ilya went because he was drawn to the man like a magnet. Where Shane went, Ilya knew he would go no matter what. 

“I’m sorry.”

Shane’s voice was weak and rough from the days he spent with a tube brutalizing his throat. Still, it was a wondrous noise that made Ilya smile. 

“No, no sorry,” Ilya spoke, reaching with his free hand for Shane’s freckles. Shane closed his eyes against the touch, leaning in. When he opened them again, his brown eyes shone with nothing but love and affection. It was a heavy look, weighted down by important emotions that Ilya didn’t think he’d ever get to feel in his life.

But he did.

And fuck, Ilya was never going to take it for granted ever again.

“No, I–” Shane coughed, and Ilya fed him ice chips until he could speak again. “When I was sitting in that car, after the crash, I realized what I said. I knew I said it, and I couldn’t, I thought…”

“I did too, moy lyubimyy. You scared us.”

“I was in that car, and I thought I was dying and,” Shane coughed, wincing as he struggled to finish his thought. “It all seemed so pointless. The hiding, the sneaking. I want you, I want people to know I’m yours, you’re mine. I think…I think we should tell people. This summer, when the season is over.”

Ilya thought his heart might’ve stopped. He glanced at the heart monitor, seeing Shane’s steady peaks of his heart and knowing that if Shane’s heart still beat then his must too. 

“Are you sure? We don’t have to,” Ilya tried, even when his chest swelled with something light and impossibly bright. 

I want people to know I’m yours, you’re mine.

“I don’t think I’ve been more sure of anything else,” Shane breathed. “You should tell your team, too, if you want. Before then. I don’t wanna waste anymore time with you.”

Ilya smiled, daring to lean forward and press the gentlest kiss he’d ever given to Shane’s cracked lips. 

“We can talk about it. You need to get better first,” Ilya told him. There was a lot left to recover from. Oceane had talked about swallow tests, and oxygen monitoring, and other things that went right over Ilya’s head. Dr. Blais had told them about Shane’s other injuries, the abdominal trauma that would take weeks of PT to recover from. Shane was almost assuredly out for the season, something they hadn’t even begun to broach with him.

“Right,” Shane said, squeezing Ilya’s hand. “Did they say how long until I can play again?”

If Hayden were here, Ilya would have looked at him and grinned. 

Their Shane, so predictable. So brave. So strong. So stubborn.

Instead, Ilya tipped his chin back and laughed. He laughed until it turned to tears, first happy and then something sadder, as his body purged all of the pent up emotions he’d been growing since the accident. 

“Don’t ever do this to me again, okay?”

“Okay,” Shane agreed, lifting their joined hands to press a kiss to Ilya’s knuckles.

“Hollander,” Ilya groaned, eyeing him with a pointed glance until Shane fixed what he’d done.

Okay.

“Right, right,” Shane said with a little laugh, although the softened look in his eyes let Ilya know he understood the seriousness of his request. “I’m here with you, Ilya. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Better, moy lyubimyy, thank you.”

“But really, what about hockey?”

Ilya laughed, and kissed his stupid boyfriend until the heart monitor beeped in protest.