Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hatchet!AU, Slow Burn, Pining, Plane Crash, Stranded for Two Years in the Wilderness with the Love of Your Life and He Doesn't Have a Clue, The Ilya Rozanov Story

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Into the Woods

Collections:

Call of the wild, Hollanov Plane Crash, Heather rivalary Fics, The Best of the Best According to Tabitha (HR)

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-16 Completed: 2026-06-04 Words: 66,811 Chapters: 28/28

Into the Woods

Summary

When Shane reluctantly agreed to kick off his MLH career with a photoshoot, he imagined, somewhat vaguely, a hockey uniform and some dramatic lighting on the rink. Shoot a few pucks. Pose intensely. That kind of thing.

The marketing agency, apparently, had other ideas.

A plane flight gone wrong, a desperate crash landing, and suddenly hockey’s two brightest young stars find themselves stranded in the heart of the Canadian wilderness. With no way home and no rescue coming, they only have one hope for survival -- each other.

Chapter 1: June 12, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

This is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: Heated Rivalry meets YA wilderness survival classic Hatchet. I really don’t know. Write the fanfiction you want to see in the world, I guess.

Enjoy!

6/8/26 Update: Thank you so much to Floo_Flame for the beautiful cover! I love it! <3

When Shane reluctantly agreed to kick off his MLH career with a photoshoot, he imagined, somewhat vaguely, a hockey uniform and some dramatic lighting on the rink. Shoot a few pucks. Pose intensely. That kind of thing.

The marketing agency, apparently, had other ideas. 

We’re going for groundbreaking -- pull out all the stops -- we’re thinking wilderness, we’re thinking back to nature, we’re thinking rugged masculinity. What we’re really doing is setting out to capture the essence of hockey, the raw, animal power. Besides, Wardrobe has been foaming at the mouth for the chance to dress Shane in fur -- no kidding -- tasteful, classy, but give the fans what they want, you know what I mean? Anyway, it’s a very remote location, pristine, stunning, practically a vacation -- four days, private plane, no expense spared. These photographs will singlehandedly set the visual narrative for your entire rookie season, Shane. This is going to be big. This is going to be really fucking big. Diana in Vogue big. Linda Evangelista big. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What do you think? Do you see the vision here? Are you with us? Are you in?

“No,” said Shane. 

“We’ll get back to you,” said his mom, and ended the call. 

They eyed each other over the kitchen table. As he usually did, Shane caved first. 

“This is stupid,” he said. “It’s really fucking stupid. I’m not missing a week of training just to fly north and stand around taking pictures in front of some trees.”

His mom cracked a smile. “In a fur coat,” she said. Shane’s scowl deepened. He crossed his arms over his chest and shoved himself back in his chair, gearing for a fight.

“Right. In a fucking fur coat.”  

“It all sounds a little silly to me too,” his mom confessed. She picked up her wineglass, took a sip, then leaned forward. Her voice lowered. Shane could tell the moment it happened, the shift from mother to manager, and he steeled himself. “Still, Shane, these are professionals. If they think a photoshoot in the woods is the best way to introduce you to the public…”

“I’m going to look like Paul fucking Bunyan, mom! This is stupid! It’s really, really fucking stupid!” 

“It’s a chance to set the visual narrative,” she corrected. She took another sip of chardonnay and patted his arm. “And don’t swear so much, honey. It’s uncouth.” 

Which is how, a mere three weeks later, Shane found himself here -- standing on the tarmac of a private airfield that looked more like a kid’s soccer field than somewhere planes had any business taking off or landing, squinting against the early morning sun while the photographer harangued the stone-faced pilot about adding another trunk of clothes to the plane. He shivered against the breeze, rocked back on his heels, and thought dispiritedly about the workout he’d be halfway through if he were at home right now. 

He tried, for a moment, imagining what these photographs might look like when they were done. But his mind stalled out somewhere around the image of himself leaning seductively against a boulder, and with a shudder he went back to running through the steps of his workout again. 

Ten minutes or so passed. Shane heard a car pull up on the patchy asphalt behind him -- the photographer calling in reinforcements, probably -- but he stayed where he was, eyes unfocused, arms crossed over his chest, weight shifting uncomfortably while the pilot and the photographer continued to squabble.

A car door opened and slammed. Under the sound of arguing and the hum of the plane engine, Shane heard footsteps strolling closer. They stopped at his elbow; a hand clasped his shoulder and gave him a friendly shake. Before Shane had time to startle, a familiar, deep voice leaned in and drawled, “Should be fun, Hollander, no?” 

Shane’s heart dropped. Slowly, disbelief warring with a sinking, mortified dread, he turned and looked to his right. 

And sure enough, there he was -- Ilya Rozanov. 

Rozanov’s eyes were hidden behind a pair of expensive sunglasses, his curls were buried under the hood of his black sweatshirt, the shit-eating grin plastered across his face was the widest Shane had ever seen it, but it was absolutely, unmistakably, him. The sight of Rozanov here at this middle-of-fucking-nowhere airfield, duffel bag slung casually over his shoulder as though he had every intention of following Shane onto the rusty old deathtrap of a bush plane in front of them, was enough to short-circuit Shane’s brain entirely. 

Shane stared. Rozanov gave him another Cheshire grin.

“Will be like vacation,” Rozanov said, either not noticing or choosing to ignore Shane’s dumbfounded silence. “Take a few photos, go for a swim. Campfire, pretty trees. You know. Nice and relaxing.”

Shane finally found his tongue.

“You’re coming?” he choked out. It sounded rude even in his own ears, and he winced -- whatever drama the media liked to stir up, he didn’t actually hate Rozanov -- but if Rozanov was offended, he didn’t show it. He just hummed and lightly shook Shane’s shoulder again. 

“Why not?” Rozanov shrugged. He raised his free hand to shield his eyes and squinted past Shane to the plane. “My agent calls me up, he says magazine wants to take photos for cover. Fine, I say. Ah ah, he says. Not so fast, Ilya. They want Canadian photos. For these photos, they fly you out to the middle of the woods, dress you up like a supermodel, make you wrestle a bear.” 

Shane snorted a laugh, then caught himself and blushed pink. Somehow, impossibly, Rozanov’s grin widened. 

“So I think, okay,” Rozanov went on, with obvious relish. “Why the fuck not. Wrestle some bears. Fight a wolf. Sounds good. Sounds Russian.” He paused for effect, then brought out smugly, “‘Right up my alley.’”

Shane laughed again. Rozanov gave him a friendly shove. 

“Why? What did they tell you?” 

Raw power, Shane thought sourly. His laughter died -- though, embarrassingly, his blush seemed like it was here to stay. Stunning visuals and a fucking fur coat. “Nothing,” he said aloud. He shrugged. Rozanov was probably looking at him strangely, he knew. He stared at the plane to avoid meeting his eyes. “My mom really wants me to do this shoot,” he added. “She thinks it’ll make for good press, I guess. You know. Set the narrative.”

“Set the narrative,” Rozanov echoed slowly, in the tone of someone committing the phrase to memory. He sounded, for a moment, on the brink of asking Shane to explain what the fuck that meant. But just then, in Shane’s first piece of good luck all day, the photographer turned to them and started waving his arms wildly; and so before Shane had to confess that he didn’t have a clue, Rozanov was slinging an arm over his shoulders and laughing in his ear. “Here we fucking go, Hollander!” 

The photographer had won. He bounded towards them, his face split in a manic smile while, behind him, the pilot swore and grappled with the trunk of clothes like he was trying to wrestle an alligator onto the plane. “It’s time,” the photographer gushed, skidding to a stop in front of them. “Makeup, wardrobe, and lighting are already at the camp. All we're waiting for are our stars!" He beamed at them, looking unhinged. Rozanov clearly must have thought the same, because the next moment his arm tightened protectively around Shane’s shoulders. 

It was weird. 

It was also, almost, unsettlingly…nice.

While Shane’s brain was busy stalling on that revelation, the photographer was still rambling on. “It’s just the three of us flying up together. It’s only a two hour flight, so if this asshole can get us there on time, we’ll start shooting this afternoon. Are you ready, boys? You’re looking a little green, Hollander. All good? Yeah? Rozanov? Perfect. Away we go!”

About an hour and a half into the flight, the photographer -- Greg, apparently -- finally stopped talking. Rozanov had put his headphones on and closed his eyes about five minutes after takeoff, and so Shane had been the one stuck giving increasingly strained answers to every half-baked idea Greg decided to hurl at him. A shot of the two of them under a waterfall? Sure. Wrestling each other in the water? Anything for the fans. What did Shane think about going shirtless under the fur coat? Posing on a log? Peering down at the camera like a fucking squirrel? Why the fuck not. 

But even Greg’s fount of lunatic ideas had to run dry eventually; and when he finally paused for breath, still beaming at Shane from the other side of the tiny cabin, Shane took advantage of the lull to follow Rozanov’s lead and shove his headphones in. 

He made a show of fiddling with his iPod, but he didn’t turn it on; after ninety minutes of Greg, the (relative) silence was bliss. The plane still rattled around them, the dials on the instrument panel chirped and whirred, Rozanov’s music blared to his right -- but it wasn’t so hard, with his headphones muting the worst of it and Rozanov’s broad shoulders a warm, jostling reminder that he wasn’t alone on this child-sized excuse for a plane, for Shane to close his eyes and let his thoughts drift. 

As it so happened, they didn’t have to drift very far.

Ilya Rozanov. It had been six months now since Ottawa, a year since the draft. They hadn’t crossed paths since then, but it wasn’t hard to see the story the league was trying to write: the two brightest young prospects in a generation, both of them star centers, drafted into a rivalry as old as the MLH itself. Of course they were destined to be archrivals. Capulets and Montagues had nothing on it.

But the thing was -- though he knew that Boston and Montreal were sworn enemies -- though there was no getting around the fact that Rozanov was, genuinely and sincerely, an asshole -- though he knew he was supposed to hate him -- Shane couldn’t help it. He liked Rozanov. 

He had spent years expecting to be the number one draft pick when his turn came. And then, when it was finally his time, there Rozanov was, cheeky grin and that fucking number one finger and all. And although that should have been the worst feeling in the world -- and it had been, for a little while -- the thing was that after that, after the hurt feelings had had time to fade and the reality of it had set in, Shane had started playing the best hockey of his life. It turned out that hockey was a hell of a lot more fun when there was someone else playing who could finally fucking keep up. 

And it wasn’t just hockey, either. Shane liked Rozanov. Sure, Rozanov had been kind of a dick that night in the hotel gym, but he had been sweet, too. Sharing his water bottle. Asking Shane questions like he was genuinely curious to hear what Shane thought. And now this: signing up for the same harebrained photoshoot, claiming the seat next to Shane before horrible Greg could take it, letting his shoulder bump companionably into Shane’s every time the plane shook. 

It was stupid. But Shane couldn’t help but wonder, if things had been different, if they might have been friends. 

As though sensing Shane’s thoughts, Rozanov elbowed him. When Shane ignored him, Rozanov elbowed him again. The fifth time Rozanov’s pointy elbow dug into his ribs, Shane finally cracked one eye open and gave him a sour look. 

“What?” he asked. 

“You look sad,” Rozanov said. It was such a non sequitur that Shane could only blink at him, taken aback. Rozanov waited a beat. Then, when Shane didn’t answer, his face cracked into a grin. “Maybe you are still thinking about draft?” 

Okay, Rozanov was being an asshole. That was familiar ground, and Shane snorted and elbowed him back. "Piss off," he suggested. Rozanov shoved him, still grinning. 

"No," he said.

That was all it took. Suddenly they were both wrestling, pushing and shoving at each other like kids, ignoring the lurching of the plane and Greg the photographer’s yelping protests as they tussled and laughed. 

“We cannot all be the best, Hollander. Is okay. No shame in number two.”

“Fuck you.”

“Was probably because of your backhand.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my backhand, asshole!”

“It is so weak, Hollander.”

“It isn’t, what are you --”

“Like a little baby.”

“Hey! Fuck you!”

Rozanov was cackling, slapping Shane’s hands away as Shane tried to shove him out of his seat. “I hope you really do have to wrestle a bear,” Shane said. He knew he probably looked like an idiot, grinning from ear to ear. Luckily for him Rozanov looked even stupider, his curls flying in every direction, ugly expensive glasses askew on his head, his dumb smug smile even wider than Shane’s. “I hope it eats you.”

“Dirty way to become number one,” Rozanov answered seriously. He stopped wrestling long enough for Shane to catch his wrists, and for a moment they just smiled stupidly at each other, both of their chests heaving. 

A heartbeat passed, then two. They were near enough that Shane could see the moment a new expression flickered across Rozanov’s face. Shane couldn’t tell what it was, exactly; but it made something warm curl in the pit of his stomach, all the same.

Rozanov stared at him a second longer. Then, as though he didn’t quite realize what he was doing, his eyes dropped down and caught on Shane’s mouth. He swayed forward, just a little. 

And at that moment, as suddenly as though a switch had been flipped, every light in the plane abruptly shut off.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: A crash landing and a confession.

Chapter 2: June 12, 2010. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

The photoshoot had been Ilya’s idea. His agent had handled all of the details, of course, but the idea, the inspiration, had been Ilya’s. Four days camping in the woods with Shane Hollander? Sounds good. Sounds great. If Ilya also had to bring along an annoying man with a camera and a couple of trunks of fancy clothes for some plausible deniability, then whatever, takova zhizn’, such is life. At least he’d get the chance to look at Shane Hollander dressed up as a sexy Canadian lumberjack out of it, and that was what the Americans liked to call making lemonade out of lemons.

Anyway. All of that is to say that it was pretty fucking ironic, all things considered, that this wilderness getaway he’d orchestrated to eke out a little tête-à-tête time with Hollander seemed more likely to end up gruesomely killing them both. 

Fifteen minutes had passed since the lights shut off, fourteen minutes since the emergency lights flickered back on and immediately started flashing red, ten minutes since the pilot announced, in a grudging monotone, that something important in the instrument panel had apparently blown up. Navigation was out, radio contact was out, the plane was losing altitude fast, and their only hope was to find “a big enough stretch of water for a dead stick landing,” whatever the fuck that meant. Seatbelts on, please. Remain calm. No smoking. 

The threat of a plane crash and their imminent, fiery deaths had finally shut up photographer Greg, so that at least was a small blessing. Hollander, sitting on Ilya’s left, was silent too. Ilya could tell that it was a panicked silence, though, not least because, about thirty seconds after the lights went out, Hollander had seized Ilya’s hand, and he hadn’t let go since. His grip was tight enough it was probably already leaving bruises. Ilya might have snarked about sabotage, if they had a hockey season ahead of them instead of -- well. Instead of a plane crash and their imminent, fiery deaths. 

“Hollander,” Ilya said. He leaned in close and pitched his voice loud enough for Hollander to hear it over the racket of alarms and the shrieking of the wind hurtling past this piece-of-shit plane. Hollander, though, didn’t answer. His eyes were squeezed shut, his chest rising and falling so rapidly that Ilya’s own lungs ached, watching him. “Hollander!” Ilya tried again, louder this time. He squeezed Hollander’s hand, then shook him. Except for his breath hitching, Hollander didn’t give any sign that he'd heard Ilya at all. 

Ilya didn’t know what, exactly, he wanted to say to Hollander. But if these were their last few minutes on earth -- and from where Ilya sat, red emergency lights flashing on one side and Hollander’s pale, panicked face on the other, it seemed pretty certain that they were -- then it felt monumentally stupid to waste that time sitting next to each other in silence. 

As far as Ilya was concerned, there were plenty of better ways to spend three minutes.

Hey Hollander, I think you’re really hot. Do you want to kiss? We can kiss even if these other idiots are here, who cares, we’re all about to die anyway, it won’t fucking matter. In three minutes this stupid fucking shitty plane is going to crash into a stupid fucking shitty tree and we’re all going to explode in a giant fucking fireball. I won’t ever play for Boston. You won’t ever win the Cup. It’s so unfair, isn’t it? The only thing that would be worse -- worse than exploding, worse than photographer Greg, worse than this asshole pilot who can’t even fly a fucking plane -- the only thing worse than dying like this would be if I don’t even get to kiss you before the end. Just once. Just to see. 

It seemed obvious enough to Ilya. Then again he’d been flirting pretty obviously with Hollander back in that hotel gym in Los Angeles last year, and Hollander hadn’t picked up on that either. Maybe he was just a bit slow on the uptake when it came to these things. 

Every siren and alarm in the plane was screaming. The wind howled past them. Then, underneath the wind there came a new, even more horrible sound -- a shrieking and scraping, tearing sound -- the tops of the trees, ripping off the metal shell of the plane as they tore past. They didn’t have three minutes left. They probably didn’t even have one. 

“Seatbelts on, please,” intoned the pilot drearily. “Brace for impact. In ten…nine…” Annoying Greg breathed a shaky little sigh and fainted, slumping forward in his seat. Hollander gave a hitching, choked sob. Fuck this, Ilya thought, suddenly and fiercely; and without pausing to think anything else, he unbuckled his seatbelt and swung himself over and onto Hollander’s lap. 

That, finally, got Hollander’s attention. His eyes flew open and found Ilya’s. His face was very pale and his eyes were very bright and his lips were pink and parting a little as he stared at Ilya. Ilya drank in the sight of him, painfully aware that it was very likely the last thing he would ever see. It was lucky for him, he thought, a little hysterically, that Hollander had such a pretty fucking face. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hollander demanded. He was near enough that Ilya could feel the brush of his breath as he spoke. “Are you crazy? The plane is about to crash, Rozanov. Put your fucking seatbelt on.” A laugh bubbled out of Ilya’s lips; he couldn’t help it. Unbelievable. Turns out that Hollander was the most boring person in the entire world, and now it was too late for Ilya to do a goddamn thing about it. 

“Six…five…”

Well. Maybe not quite ‘too late.’ 

“No,” Ilya said. Hollander’s eyes narrowed, like he wanted to argue. Ilya felt a burst of affection in his chest, so sudden and sharp it stole his breath. Four seconds until this piece-of-shit plane exploded, and Hollander was worried about seatbelts. God. What a dork. “Think I’ll take my chances, Hollander, sorry. Lecture me later, okay?” 

And before Hollander could waste their last three seconds on earth sniping at Ilya, Ilya leaned forward, and kissed him. 

Even years and years and thousands of dollars of therapy later, Ilya never managed to remember the crash. Not really. Not all of it. Definitely not the first few moments, when they burst out from the treeline and onto a sudden, miraculous ribbon of blue water. Not the smash of the plane into the lake a heartbeat later, or the wrenching scream as the wings tore loose, or the shock of the doors and windows bursting open and the rush of dark water flooding in to swallow them alive. He remembered Shane’s arms trying to hold him, then the force of the crash and the shock of the water tearing them apart. He remembered pain, and his lungs burning, and a sudden burst of clarity, sharp and clear as a revelation. He remembered thinking, No. Not now. Not like this. 

And he remembered the miracle -- his hands scrambling and seizing the strap of his bag, the give of Shane’s seatbelt button under his fingers. 

The water was dark and cold. The walls of the cabin were closing in around them, the pressure of the impact crushing the thin sheet metal like a fist. Ilya’s lungs were on fire. Everything hurt. But he pulled Hollander's limp body up and kicked, he clutched him to his chest and kept kicking, he kept on kicking and kicking and kicking, and even though everything in him wanted to open his mouth and scream, he didn’t breathe in, and he didn’t let go. The plane groaned as it settled on the muddy bottom of the lake. It sounded like a tomb closing. It sounded like the end. 

Ilya kicked again -- and this time, somehow, his shoulders found the jagged hole where the plane's door had been. Hollander was deadweight in his arms, his bag was an anchor around his back, his lungs were screaming, but Ilya was strong. He kicked them through and pulled them up, up, away from the mangled shell of the plane, away from darkness and death, towards light-and-air-and-life above.

Chapter End Notes

Moving forward the goal is weekly updates, but as I am both a slow writer and a few days out from starting graduate classes, that might be optimistic. Good vibes + comments appreciated!!

Next time: Shane panics. Ilya could really use a cigarette.

Chapter 3: June 12, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

When Shane came to, he thought, for one beautiful, wild moment, that it had all been a dream. The photoshoot. The plane. Ilya fucking Rozanov. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for reality to rush back in and set him straight. 

This is not a bed. That’s a stick in my back. Everything hurts. Holy shit, I’m alive. What the fuck. What the fuck. 

He opened his eyes. 

He was lying flat on his back on what appeared to be a grassy knoll at the edge of a long, narrow lake. The sky above him was blue, though if he tilted his head a little he could see that it deepened to cobalt at one end of the sky and had turned practically to gold at the other. Birds were chirping around him. A breeze rifled past. It might have felt nice, except that he was so sopping wet even the gentle summer air was enough to set him shivering. Every part of him hurt. The worst were his lungs, which felt like some wild animal had crawled inside his chest and scratched them to pieces, and his throat, which tasted horribly like bile and blood and seaweed. 

But he was alive. He was alive. The plane had crashed, and he was alive. 

“What the fuck?”

Shane didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until, at his right shoulder, someone cleared their throat. “Plane fell,” drawled a familiar voice, now rather the worse for wear. “I saved you. Still want to give lecture about seatbelts, Hollander? Go ahead. All the time in the world.”

Though every muscle in his body was screaming at him to lay right the fuck back down again, Shane swallowed a curse and shoved himself up. 

Rozanov, looking almost as bedraggled and miserable as Shane felt, was sitting next to him, knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, his feet bare, his fancy designer jeans and his dark sweatshirt sopping wet. There was a jagged cut across his forehead that dripped watery red blood down the side of his face, along with a hundred other smaller cuts and bruises and some weedy plant that snaked through his hair and clung limpet-like to his clothes. He was turning a soggy pack of cigarettes over and over in his hands, staring at it morosely. He looked like the next breeze might knock him flat. 

“Hi,” Rozanov said. He stopped toying with his ruined cigarettes long enough to glance sideways at Shane. He raised one hand and waggled his fingers in a wave. “Some vacation. Next time Canadian magazine calls and asks for crazy photos in the woods, you and I tell them to go fuck themselves, okay?” 

Rozanov was alive.

The plane had crashed, but Shane was alive, and Rozanov was alive. 

Rozanov’s duffel bag was on the grass in front of him. Rozanov dropped the cigarettes and leaned forward to rummage through it, muttering what sounded like a string of curses in Russian while Shane gaped. Eventually he pulled out a sandwich and held it out. When Shane -- his brain still stalled out somewhere around We’re both alive and steadfastly refusing to start up again -- only stared at him, Rozanov huffed and tossed it in his lap. It landed with a squelch. 

“Eat,” Rozanov commanded. “Will help. You know.” He waved his hand vaguely at Shane’s face, then poked him in the shoulder. “With the shock.” 

“I’m not in shock,” Shane answered automatically. Rozanov snorted. 

“Sure. Just a regular Saturday for Shane Hollander.”

“Shut up.” 

“Plane crash, no big deal. Almost drown, no big deal. Stuck in the middle of forest with world’s number one best hockey player, probably no one around for fifty thousand miles, stupid fucking Canadian animals everywhere trying to eat us, no big deal.” 

As though on cue, a squirrel popped up from the grass nearby. Rozanov glowered at it. “Eat,” he said again. He shifted to the side and bumped Shane's shoulder. “Finish the fucking sandwich first, okay? Then panic later.” 

It was probably good advice, although already too late: whatever Shane had told Rozanov, panic was already roiling his gut and rising like nausea in his throat. He fumbled to unwrap the plastic wrap from around the sandwich with shaking fingers. The bread was wet. He took a bite anyway. It tasted like lake water, but it did help, a little. 

Shane finished the whole thing in a few bites, then hesitated, staring at the balled up plastic wrap in his hands. It was smeared with mustard and algae. There was nowhere to throw it out.

“What should I do with this?” he asked. Rozanov propped his chin on his hand and gave him a look. 

“Save it,” he advised. “Next time squirrel comes by and tries to mess with us, you throw it at him.”

“I mean it. This is garbage, I can’t just --”

Rozanov exhaled noisily. “Throw it in the lake, then. Who cares?” 

“It’s garbage, Rozanov, I can’t --”

“So what? There is a whole fucking plane in the lake, Hollander. The fish won’t give a shit about your sandwich wrapper, chert voz'mi.”

Rozanov continued to mutter darkly in Russian, probably about how stupid Shane was being. Shane, however, didn’t hear him, because at Rozanov’s words, the panic simmering in his gut rose up and slammed into him with the force of -- well. With the force of a fucking plane crash. 

There was a whole fucking plane in the lake. A whole fucking plane, and two dead bodies. Fuck. Fuck. Greg and the pilot were dead and they were still down there and maybe they had died when the plane crashed, or maybe they had drowned slowly and horribly, oh God, oh fucking Christ, and Shane would have been down there too, dead and, and bloating, and being eaten up by fish and turtles and whatever else lived in this horrible fucking lake if Rozanov hadn’t -- if Rozanov -- 

“What the fuck?” Shane choked out. It felt like he was drowning again. His chest was heaving, each breath coming faster than the last, but somehow his lungs were empty, not one single breath making it past the horror and bile rising in his throat. “What the fuck?!”

He really was drowning again. Rozanov had pulled him out but he was going to drown here on solid ground, right here in the grass, because he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t stop his heart from racing, he couldn’t -- 

A strong arm wrapped around Shane's middle, tugging him around until he was leaning against a broad, damp chest. While Shane had been busy panicking, Rozanov had shifted; he was next to Shane now, tucking Shane into his embrace and murmuring something in Russian while Shane’s shallow, desperate breaths broke down into outright sobs. Rozanov kept his right arm wrapped firmly around Shane’s back. He raised his left hand and cradled the back of Shane’s head gently, holding him close. 

“Okay,” Rozanov murmured. He might still have been speaking Russian, for all that Shane could tell; but his voice was low and deep and strangely remorseful, and Shane latched onto it like a lifeline. “We are all good here, Hollander. Cry as much as you want to, okay? Solnyshko. Zólotse. Is okay. No one will ever hear a word about it from me, I promise.” 

“Fuck, we just -- we almost -- Rozanov, we --” 

“Yes. Almost.” Rozanov propped his chin on top of Shane’s head. His right arm tightened around Shane's back. “Better go to Las Vegas next time, da? Put all this good luck to use.”

Shane couldn’t hear Rozanov’s heartbeat through his sweatshirt, but he could feel the rise and fall of his chest, steady and slow. It was that, finally, that loosened the panic gripping his lungs. He drew in one shuddering, gasping breath, then another. Rozanov continued to murmur in his ear, mostly in English, sometimes in Russian, for a few minutes longer, until finally the worst of the panic attack faded. Shane felt wrung out when it was through, so limp and utterly useless that it was all he could do to burrow against Rozanov’s chest. His hands found their way to Rozanov’s sweatshirt and clung there. It felt, a little, like they were back in the plane again, and they would both be lost if he let go. 

“You kissed me,” Shane mumbled raggedly, after a few more minutes had passed in silence. Rozanov’s left hand, stroking gently through his hair, fell still, then started again. “Right before the plane went down. You kissed me.”

“Yes,” Rozanov admitted. He cleared his throat. “Sorry.” 

“Why did you do that?”

Rozanov shrugged. “You have a pretty face,” he said. Shane choked. Rozanov patted his back. “And beautiful freckles,” he added, as though that wasn’t worse. “No one else around for a goodbye kiss, so. Had to pick between you and annoying Greg.” Rozanov shrugged again, then ducked his head. Shane could feel the press of lips against his temple. It was weirdly comforting, even if it did make the blush on Shane’s cheeks grow hot. “Easy choice.” 

And, well -- it wasn’t like Shane hadn’t kissed him back, when Rozanov had dumped himself unceremoniously onto his lap and caught Shane’s face in his hands. Too exhausted to press it, Shane shoved away the questions still buzzing in the back of his mind. He tucked his face against the crook of Rozanov’s shoulder and focused on the steady rise and fall of Rozanov’s chest instead, the comforting scritch of Rozanov’s fingers against his scalp. The tension in his own body didn’t ease, exactly. But, somehow, it felt easier to bear. 

“The plane really crashed,” Shane said at last, after a few more minutes had passed. Rozanov hummed. “We’re really alive.” 

“Yes. Hard part is over now, da?” Rozanov nosed against the top of Shane’s head. Shane couldn’t tell which one of them he was trying to reassure. “All we do now is wait. Easy.”

“Right. Someone will come for us.” Shane squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to believe it. “They’ll find us soon," he said. "They’ll come.”

Chapter End Notes

Next time: Ilya builds a shelter. Shane's past comes back to bite him.

Chapter 4: June 12-13, 2010. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

I promised exactly two things in this chapter, and unfortunately you are getting neither of them today. Sorry, guys. Next time!

Instead, may I present: Ilya picks fights with the local wildlife. Shane misses the crossword.

The first twelve hours or so after the crash dragged by, slowly and excruciatingly.

Each minute felt as painful as bare skin over rough concrete, and Ilya knew, even as it was happening, that the scars of it would never leave him, not ever, not until the day he died. Standing, shouldering his duffel bag, hauling Hollander up too. Leaning into each other and teetering like a pair of drunks as they staggered away from the plane crash. Walking. Walking. One foot in front of the other. Walking and walking. Walking when all Ilya wanted to do was collapse into the grass, curl up like a baby, and cry. 

They made it to the far side of the lake eventually, past a jetty of trees and around the curve of the shore into a tucked-away little corner that Hollander annoyingly insisted on calling a “bay.” The grassy verge of the forest tipped into a small, sandy beach about a half dozen yards from the treeline, and after a few more feet of sand, it dipped again into the lake. They were far enough away from the crash now that they couldn’t see the tail of the plane, sticking up out of the water like a particularly grotesque tombstone. Here, the water was clear and shallow. The lake bottom, at least as far out as Ilya could see, seemed about equal parts pebbles and weeds. In the other direction, a few yards from the edge of the water, there was a kind of rocky promontory jutting up out of the grass. It wasn’t much -- a few splintered fingers of rock leaning drunkenly into each other to make a kind of half-assed cave -- but though the whole thing looked as though one good storm would be enough to knock it flat, it had been a long day. The sun would be setting soon. No one had come. In the course of a few hours, Ilya had kissed Shane Hollander, survived a plane crash, saved Shane Hollander from said plane crash, and staggered five miles without spotting the faintest, teensiest sign of human life anywhere.

He was, in a word, tired.

Making up his mind at once, Ilya stopped. Hollander, leaning into Ilya's side and kept more-or-less upright only thanks to the arm Ilya had wrapped around his shoulders, swayed into him and nearly knocked them both over. Ilya waited for him to steady, then nodded towards the rock pile. Hollander blinked. 

“What...?”

“Five stars,” Ilya said, in the brightest voice he could muster. He let his duffel bag drop from his shoulder. It landed in the grass with a squelch. “Better than the Ritz. Good job, Hollander. Looks nice and cozy.” Cozy was apt enough. Nice was a stretch. Still, needs must. Ilya gave Hollander’s shoulders a shake and was rewarded with a scowl. “Only the best for best hockey players in the league, no?"

"It's a fucking cave, Rozanov."

"Okay, it is a fucking cave. So what? Tomorrow when we are rescued, off you go back home to your own bed. Twin sized sheets and one pillow." Ilya squeezed Hollander's shoulders again, then shoved him gently forward. "Tomorrow, you can be boring old Shane Hollander again. Tonight we sleep.”

It hadn't been a bad plan, as far as Ilya’s plans went. The only trouble with it was that Ilya had not reckoned -- and, in his defense, could not possibly have reckoned -- on the utter terror that was nighttime in the northwoods. 

Somehow, the night passed. The minutes crept by: horribly, horrendously, each one as long as a goddamn century. The two of them cowered together beneath their pile of fucking rocks, shivering from the cold even as they clung together, too afraid to sleep, too afraid even to close their eyes. The night was pitch black. The wind moaned. Animals snuffled around at the edge of the water, squabbled and snapped at each other, howled, until finally an hour or so before dawn Ilya gave up on hoping that it would pass. He clutched Hollander's hand, fumbled with his mama's cross, and simply started praying that whatever rabid animal tried to have a go at them first, the end would at least be quick.

In short, it was the scariest night of Ilya's entire goddamn life. 

Eventually dawn came. The sun rose, golden and beautiful. The animals fucked off. A few squirrels popped by and stared at Ilya, their beady eyes glinting in the rosy light, their little whiskery noses twitching as though they were taunting him. Ilya cursed them roundly in Russian. When that didn’t work, he gave them another earful, this time in English. Hollander -- who, remarkably, had managed to doze off, somewhere between the wolves howling and the temperature dropping to approximately five hundred degrees below zero -- blinked awake and frowned at Ilya. 

“Did you just call me a ‘motherfucking son-of-a-bitch bastard?’” he asked sleepily, more bemused than aggrieved. Ilya groaned and tipped forward. They were still cuddled up together in their sorry excuse for a cave, and his face landed on Hollander’s stomach. That was alright, though. There were worse places to be. 

“No,” Ilya said. His voice came out muffled. Hollander reached up and began to gently stroke through his hair. He was probably only doing it because he was too exhausted to think straight, but still, Ilya would take what he could get. Resisting the urge to preen, Ilya added, with affected grouchiness, “It is all these fucking squirrels, Hollander. They are laughing at me.” 

Hollander’s fingers stilled, then started stroking again. 

“Why would they laugh at you?” he asked. He sounded genuinely curious. Ilya resisted the urge to poke him.

“Chuzhaya dusha, potemki,” he muttered instead. When Hollander frowned again, Ilya huffed. “Who fucking knows?” he translated. He rolled over and blinked up at Hollander. Every muscle in his body hurt. He felt about a million years old, curled up like some exhausted, unwashed gremlin in Hollander’s lap, squinting up at him through the hazy half-light. Hollander, of course, was as beautiful as always. Ilya wondered what Hollander would do if he tried to kiss him again. Give him a bloody nose, probably. “Their minds are -- fuck, how do you say it? --”

“Inscrutable?” Hollander suggested. Ilya groaned and rolled back to hide his face in Hollander’s stomach again.

“Sure,” he said. “Fine, yes. Inscrutable. Inscrutable, fuck. Are you always this way, Hollander?” 

He couldn’t see Hollander anymore, but he could feel the sudden wave of affront, radiating off of him. “What way?” Hollander asked. Ilya sighed.

“Like a fucking scrabble board,” he answered honestly. Hollander burst out into a surprised little laugh. Ilya was suddenly, deeply grateful that Hollander couldn’t see what that yelp of laughter did to him. “Like the goddamn New York Times.” 

“Oh.” Hollander sounded pleased now. Fuck. Fucking fuck. What the fuck was Ilya supposed to do with that? What the fuck was Ilya supposed to do with him? “Yeah. My dad and I like to do the crossword together, when I’m home.”

Of course they did. You are the most boring person I have ever met, Ilya thought. I must be crazy, for being so crazy about wanting to kiss you. But what could he say? Where could he even begin with Shane Hollander, who cared about stupid things like seatbelts in the middle of a goddamn plane crash, who did the New York Times crossword puzzle with his dad, who had the most beautiful freckles Ilya had ever seen? What could he do when Hollander beamed down at Ilya like maybe there would be a tomorrow after this, like maybe they weren't both going to die lost and alone here in this godforsaken forest, eaten by wolves in their sleep? 

“Come on,” Ilya said. Though every single bone in his body protested, he pushed himself up. Outside, the sky was lightening. The squirrels scattered. The waves lapped on the shore. “Up you get, Hollander. Time to put all that good rugged ‘Canadianness’ of yours to use, and find us something to eat."

Chapter End Notes

Next time, take two: Ilya builds a shelter. Shane's past comes back to bite him.

Chapter 5: June 16, 2010. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

By the fourth day after the crash, Ilya had grudgingly accepted that no one was coming for them.

(“It is a plot,” Ilya said mournfully, sitting at the edge of the lake as the sun was setting on the second day. It was, objectively, very beautiful. The sky above them was a hundred different shades of orange and pink, while at their feet the lake unfolded like a watercolor painting all cut up into ribbons, the last rays of sunlight touching each ripple and wave with gold. A breeze murmured through the trees. The air was still warm and smelled stickily and sweetly of pine. It was almost -- almost -- enough to make Ilya forget that in another hour or so dusk would fall, and the hell that was Canada At Night would start up again. 

“What’s a plot?” Hollander asked. He was sitting next to Ilya in the sand with a little pile of rocks next to him, picking them up one by one and throwing them with a sideways flick into the lake. Ilya unwrapped his arms from around his knees to gesture vaguely at the other end of the lake, towards where the plane crash still sat, safely out of sight. 

“This. The crash. Being stuck here forever.”

“Not forever," Hollander corrected automatically: and then, curiously, "How is it a plot?”

“You know.” Ilya waved his hand again, then shrugged. “Lure Boston’s best player onto a shitty little plane, make the plane crash in a horrible fireball in the middle of fucking nowhere, boom, competition gone. Finally Montreal can win a playoff game again.” Hollander snorted.

“It’s not much of a plan,” he said, “Considering I was on the plane too.” He elbowed Ilya. Ilya elbowed him back. They tussled for a moment, then lapsed back into companionable silence again. Hollander went back to skipping rocks. Ilya closed his eyes and savored the last warm kiss of daylight on his face. It was…nice, almost. Easy. Or at least it was, until Hollander cleared his throat and added, thoughtfully, “And besides, you’re not Boston’s best player.”

“What?” Ilya’s eyes flew open. Hollander didn’t even have the decency to crack a smile. He just propped his chin on his knees and gave Ilya a serious look. 

“You don’t play for Boston yet,” Hollander said. Ilya shoved him. Hollander shoved him back. “You don’t play for anyone yet. You haven’t gone even one single period on the ice in the MLH.” 

“Doesn’t matter. Still the best.”

“Canada beat Russia at the last Prospect Cup.” 

“I hear there is this one Canadian player who is not so bad,” Ilya allowed. This time he collared Hollander and tugged him closer, pulling him in until Hollander tipped over into Ilya’s side. Pressing his luck, Ilya bent down and pressed a quick, chaste kiss to his head. “He might even be pretty good one day, maybe. If he ever fixes his backhand."

Hollander was pressed close enough against Ilya’s chest that Ilya could feel it when he laughed. “This is why people call you an asshole, you know,” Hollander said. Ilya had to duck his head to hide his smile. 

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”)

Four days now since the crash. Four nights spent shivering together in their half-assed excuse for a cave, while every wild animal within a hundred miles traipsed past specifically to scare the living shit out of Ilya. Four days of stiff bones and aching muscles that never seemed to settle, no matter how much they stretched or tried to walk it off. Four days of a relentlessly clear sky. Never more than a smudge of a cloud. Never ever even the barest hint of a plane. 

And, worst of all, four days come and gone, and now there was nothing left to eat.

Ilya, always a firm believer in the importance of snacks, had had the prescience to stuff his duffel bag full of chips and granola bars and a few messy sandwiches before the flight; and so, for the first few days at least, they’d had food. By morning on the fourth day, though, the sandwiches were no more than a distant memory, every last crumb and salty fleck of potato chip was gone, and the last of his granola bars were gone, too. There was still no rescue in sight. The situation, in a word, was growing pretty fucking dire.

“Okay,” Ilya said. He dropped down to a crouch on the grass outside their shelter. Hollander was already sitting cross-legged on the ground, arranging a little pile of sticks and birch bark he’d collected into a campfire. How exactly he intended to light it was beyond Ilya; but Hollander must have had his ways, because when Ilya scrubbed his hand through his hair and shook out the water from his morning swim, Hollander yelped and smacked his hand back down. 

“Don’t get it wet! Fuck!” 

“Enough with your sad make-believe fire, Hollander. Listen.”

“It’s not ‘make-believe,’ Rozanov. I’m trying to --”

“Yes, okay. Fine. Listen. All the food is gone.” 

Admitting it aloud felt like a punch to the gut; but it did, at least, catch Hollander’s attention. He dropped the handful of twigs in his hand and stared at Ilya. Ilya might have felt bad about being the one to put that stricken look on his face, if his stomach wasn’t too busy twisting and tying itself into hungry knots to care about anything else. 

“That’s not true,” Hollander said. “I went into your bag this morning. There were still a few bars there.” 

“Two,” Ilya corrected. “Then I ate one, and you ate the other.” He poked Hollander lightly in the stomach. As though on cue, Hollander’s stomach growled, and he flushed pink. Ilya gave him a pointed look. “So today it is time for us to stop being so lazy, yes? No one is coming to rescue us today. Or tomorrow either, probably. Or the day after. And meanwhile every night there are wolves coming around, just looking to see if we are weak enough yet to eat.” 

Hollander pinched the bridge of his nose. “Rozanov, I keep telling you, they’re not wolves, they’re --”

“So today,” Ilya said loudly, talking over him, “You go into the woods and you find us some food, da? And while you are gone, I will make us a better home.” 

Whatever stupid defense Hollander had been about to make on behalf of his horrible Canadian wildlife, it died on his tongue. He stared blankly at Ilya instead, looking so bewildered that Ilya replayed his words in his mind, wondering if he’d accidentally said all that in Russian. 

“You go find berries or mushrooms or some shit, okay Hollander?” he said, just in case. He poked Hollander in the chest. “And I will fix our home.” 

“Mushrooms are dangerous,” Hollander said, as though by rote. Then he blinked, and said, “Our home?” 

Ilya wondered if maybe the lack of sleep was starting to get to Hollander, too. 

“Yes,” Ilya said patiently. He reached back and patted the stone wall of the cave behind them. Hollander continued to stare. “This shitty little pile of rocks we have been sleeping in, Hollander. Our home. I will make it better. Safer.” He paused. Hollander still looked bewildered. “Maybe you know a better word?” Ilya prodded. “You know. What word means ‘make it so nasty animals cannot break in?’” 

That, finally, drew a smile out of Hollander. “Impenetrable?” he suggested. Ilya grinned at him. 

“Impenetrable,” he repeated. “I will make an impenetrable home for us. And meanwhile you go out and find us some lunch, okay?” 

That was enough to wipe the smile off of Hollander’s face again. “I don’t know what’s safe to eat,” he said. “I don't know how to do any of this. I only ever made it up to Beaver Scout as a kid, Rozanov. We never had to do any of this, this wilderness survival shit!” Hollander gestured at the forest around them, a little wildly. “What if I bring back something poisonous?" he demanded. "What would we even do if one of us got sick? If both of us did?" 

It was probably a valid concern, and Ilya probably should have responded with soothing words and a vote of confidence in Hollander’s ability to tell one kind of berry from another. It was too late, though. Ilya could no more have assuaged Hollander’s concerns than he could have conjured a plane from thin air, because the moment Hollander said ‘I only ever made it up to Beaver Scout,’ every other thought promptly fled Ilya’s brain, and the only thing left was sheer, utter delight. 

“Sorry,” Ilya said slowly, hardly daring to believe his luck, “When you were little kid, you were a what?”

“A Beaver Scout,” Hollander repeated, and had the temerity to look perplexed when Ilya burst into a loud, ringing peal of laughter. “What?”

“What the fuck is a ‘Beaver Scout?’”

“It’s just -- it’s the scouts?” Hollander was back to staring at Ilya like he had lost his mind. “You know. Friends of the Forest. ‘Sharing, sharing, sharing.’”

Ilya tried, with a Herculean effort, to get himself back under control again, but it was impossible; whatever he did, little giggles kept bursting out, until finally he had to clap his hand over his mouth and stare at Hollander’s make-believe campfire so that Hollander’s ridiculous, affronted face wouldn’t set him off again. 

“Bozhe moy, Hollander,” Ilya said at last. He wiped at his eyes and chanced a quick sideways grin. Hollander glowered back at him. “No no no, don’t be mad. It is perfect. You are perfect. It is very good to know I am in safe hands, yes? There is no one else I would rather be trapped here with, Mr. Expert Beaver Scout.” 

Hollander’s cheeks went pink. “Shut up.”

“You think I am kidding? I am not kidding. Do the Beaver Scouts give out little badges, like in Russia?” Ilya reached over and tapped Hollander’s chest. Hollander batted him away and gave him the finger. Ilya beamed. “Tell me, did you have all of them?” 

“Not all of them,” Hollander muttered. As far as denials went, it wasn’t much of one. Ilya’s smile widened. Without pausing to think better of it, he leaned forward and kissed Hollander’s cheek, right where his freckles disappeared into his blush. 

“Here is the new deal, then,” he said, drawing back before Hollander had time to do more than blink. “You go out and find us some food, okay? And when you come back, I will give you ten hundred new beaver badges. Special, just for you. You will have the most beaver badges of anyone in Canada.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“This is your big chance, Hollander. Finally, you can beat me in something.”

“Fuck you.”

Ilya, never one to resist an opening like that, grinned at him. “Yes, sure. But lunch first, okay?” he said. And before Hollander could finish spluttering, Ilya chucked him under the chin, and rose to his feet. 

They worked together at the edge of the forest for awhile, Ilya stripping sheets of birchbark off the trees to fill in the walls of their shelter, then gathering great armfuls of pine needles and staggering back to the cave with them to make a kind of resiny, pokey nest on the hard stone ground. Eventually Hollander wandered off deeper into the woods. The sun rose higher in the sky; the day grew hot. Ilya, giving up on his home improvement project for the moment, stripped down to his briefs and splashed into the lake, past the shallows to where the water was blissfully cool. He waded out until he was deep enough and then toppled over onto his back. He lost track of time as he floated there, the waves rocking him gently, the breeze a tender caress against his skin. Long enough that he would have a nasty sunburn later, probably. But it was hard, with the waves cradling him like a little child, for him to bring himself to care.

He pulled himself out of the water eventually; struck with a sudden burst of inspiration as he pushed his way through a stretch of clayey sand, he made it back to shore and spent the next hour laying his birchbark strips over every hole and gap in the rocks and patching them into place with mud. He was still at it when Hollander returned from the forest, sweaty and tired, with Ilya’s sweatshirt folded together and slung over his shoulder like a sack. Ilya sat back on his heels and grinned at him. Hollander eyed Ilya’s haphazard attempt at wattle and daub as warily as though he expected the shelter to suddenly come alive and bite him. But he didn’t say anything; when Ilya gave him an expectant look, he only rolled his eyes, checked Ilya lightly with his hip, and moved past him to carefully spread the sweatshirt out on the ground.

In the end, Hollander hadn’t found much -- about two handfuls worth of wild blueberries, which they devoured in a minute flat. A pair of speckled eggs less than half the size of Ilya’s fist; Ilya wrinkled his nose at having to eat them raw, but he dutifully managed to swallow his down anyway. A few small green apples that were so sour that, despite his hunger, Ilya could only eat them slowly, grimacing with each bite. A grasshopper hopped past while they were eating. Ilya picked it up and waggled it enticingly in front of Hollander’s face until Hollander, turning slightly green, insisted that he toss it back. 

“No fun,” Ilya grouched, even as he set the grasshopper carefully back onto the carpet of stray pine needles beneath them. When he looked up again he saw that Hollander had flopped down onto his back, one arm cradling his stomach and his other hand shielding his eyes as he stared up at the perfectly blue, utterly planeless sky. 

“How much longer until they find us, do you think?” Hollander asked, in the smallest voice Ilya had ever heard. Ilya gazed at him for a moment, a hundred different answers flitting one after another through his mind. Then he lowered himself gingerly to the ground beside him, lying on his back too and following Hollander’s gaze up, shifting closer until their arms touched. 

“Soon,” Ilya lied. He turned his head sideways and nosed against Hollander’s shoulder. The sleeve of Hollander’s t-shirt had rucked up, just a little. Ilya kissed his bare skin and closed his eyes. “Very soon,” he said. “I am sure of it.”

"Yeah? Really?"

"Really."

Chapter End Notes

Like Ilya, I did not realize that Beaver Scouts were a thing until I started doing research for this story. I was just as charmed as he was.

Next time: Shane makes a discovery. Ilya goes fishing.

Chapter 6: June 20, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

Everything was so awful that Shane had a hard time believing in it, most days. He went to bed in the pitch dark, huddled up against Rozanov on a bed of sticky, jabby pine needles, and even though it had been more than a week now since the crash he still woke up each morning expecting to find that it had all been a horrible dream. The lake. The plane crash. Rozanov somehow, miraculously, saving them both. The forest and the cave and the hot sun and the freezing nights and four days now of growing skinnier and snappier with nothing more than berries and raw bird eggs to eat. 

So yeah, everything was awful, so awful that as hard as Shane tried, he could only pick out two good things about this whole ordeal. There were the stars, firstly. He had sat outside their shelter for a few nights now to gape at them, until Rozanov’s hissing pleas to come inside had grown too frantic to ignore. Shane had gone camping a few times as a kid, so it wasn’t like he’d never seen stars before, but somehow the beauty of them seemed to strike him like a punch to the gut each time. The sun set, a dreamy half-light hung in the air, and gradually the sky grew darker, darker, until it was so dark it looked like it would melt beneath your hands if you touched it. And every inch of it -- every inch! -- was pricked clean through with a hundred stars. A thousand. Ten thousand, maybe, including the great messy streak of the Milky Way across the southern edge of the sky, looking as though the heavens were a glass someone had knocked over and hadn’t quite gotten around to cleaning up yet.

The stars were great. That was one good thing. The second good thing, to Shane’s utter consternation and confusion, was Rozanov. 

Ask Shane what he thought of Ilya Rozanov before this whole mess, and Shane probably would have said that Rozanov was a fantastic player. That he was champing at the bit to go up against him again. That he didn’t know him well personally, but that he liked him -- or might have liked him, anyway, if the MLH big-shots hadn’t been so hellbent on making them out to be rivals. 

Anyway. Nine days ago Shane had had no strong feelings about Ilya Rozanov one way or the other, except maybe for the little competitive zing that came from greatness recognizing greatness.

Ask Shane now, though. Now that he woke each morning cuddled up with Rozanov in the dark of their cave, sunlight peering through the gaps in Rozanov’s bark-and-mud wallpaper. Now that they spent every morning stumbling together through the forest looking for food, Rozanov’s warm touch and incessant ribbing the only things keeping Shane sane. Now that Rozanov’s arm over his shoulders was a familiar weight and the sound of his voice was enough to draw Shane out of the crush of his own thoughts. Now that they were the only two people left in the world. Now that Rozanov had saved his life. Now that Shane had kissed him.

What did Shane think of Rozanov now? 

Shane woke up with the sunrise on the eighth day after the crash. The chill of the night was already fading around him into a gentle, dewy warmth; Rozanov’s arm was heavy over his ribs, his chest rising and falling steadily where he was sprawled out against Shane’s side. Shane could tell from his breathing that Rozanov was still asleep. He shifted his arm, careful not to wake him, and reached up to gently stroke his fingers through Rozanov’s curls. 

“I’m hungry,” Shane said aloud, although in truth "hungry" didn't even begin to cover it. Probably there weren’t any words big enough for what eight days without enough to eat felt like. Shane wondered, fleetingly, what the wrenching, hurting hollowness in his stomach would feel like at the end of another whole week without rescue, and had to suppress a shudder. He turned to press his lips against Rozanov’s hair, which was soft and greasy and smelled overwhelmingly of pine. He closed his eyes. “I am really, really fucking hungry.” 

If they had a frying pan, one of those small cast iron camping ones, they could at least cook the eggs before they ate them. Well, a frying pan and a fire. A frying pan and a fire and some kind of grate for the pan to rest on. A frying pan, a fire, some kind of grate, and a way to eat the eggs besides scooping them up with their bare hands. A frying pan, a fire…

Shane sighed. A moment later, he felt Rozanov’s arm tighten around his chest.

“You are thinking again,” Rozanov accused, his voice groggy and gruff from sleep. The sound of it was almost as comforting as the warmth of his body, and Shane found himself smiling into Rozanov’s curls without quite meaning to. “Stop it.”

“Stop thinking?” 

“Yes. It is very annoying.” Rozanov rolled over so that they were chest-to-chest. He burrowed his head against Shane’s shoulder. Shane knew he probably smelled terrible after eight days without a proper bath, but Rozanov didn’t seem to mind. “No point complaining, Hollander,” Rozanov said, as though reading Shane’s thoughts. “Everything is horrible. It will all be horrible until they get off their asses and rescue us.” 

“It would be better if we had a fire,” Shane said, mostly just to be contrary. Rozanov huffed. 

“Sure. Fine. You make us a fire and I will take it back.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Rozanov tilted his head back enough to make a face at Shane. Shane smiled back. “Five stars,” Rozanov said. “Better than the Ritz. Would come back for vacation anytime.” Shane’s smile lingered for a moment longer, then faded. 

“I don’t know how to make a fire,” he confessed. He stroked his fingers through Rozanov’s curls again. This time it was Rozanov’s turn to sigh. “There's some way to do it by rubbing sticks together. The friction, I guess. Or by striking two rocks hard enough. But I don’t know how. I’ve tried every day since we landed here, and I can’t do it.”

Shane's cheeks flushed red, admitting it. He might just as well have come right out and said he was useless. But Rozanov only hummed and burrowed more comfortably against his shoulder. 

“No big deal," he said, as though it really wasn't. "You will learn.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then probably they will come to your house and take away all of your beaver badges,” Rozanov said seriously. Shane groaned and pulled back from him, rolling away until he was lying on his back on the bare stone ground. Even though most of the morning chill had gone by now, he still abruptly found himself missing Rozanov’s warmth. “It is a pretty bad look for Canada, Hollander. A beaver scout who cannot make a fire, tch.” 

“Shut up.” 

“We will make a deal.” Rozanov pushed himself up and scootched over enough to loom over Shane. Even in the darkness of the cave, Shane could see his smile. “I will catch a fish for dinner tonight, yes?” Rozanov said. He leaned down and knocked their foreheads together lightly. “A very big one. Delicious. But only if you make us a fire to cook it.” 

They were near enough their chests brushed. If Rozanov turned his head just a little, their noses would bump too. After eight days with no one but each other for company, Shane probably should have been used to Rozanov’s handsiness by now. Each time, though, it lit a fire in his belly, a hot, fluttering tangle of want and fear that Shane shied back from looking at too closely. 

Shane pasted on a smile and shoved Rozanov back. “Fine,” he said. “You figure out how to catch a fish with no fishing pole or net, and I’ll make us a fire out of nothing.” Rozanov grinned.

“First one done wins,” he said, and ducked back to press a quick kiss to Shane’s cheek before rolling to his knees and reaching for the birchbark door.

Two hours later found Shane slouched in front of a pile of twigs and wood shavings, staring glumly at the pair of flinty stones in his hand. They were well into morning by now -- the sun had risen, the fog had lifted, and birds were singing cheerfully from every branch and bush nearby -- but Shane might just as well have stayed in the cave and caught a few more hours of sleep, for all that he’d managed to accomplish. Two hours of striking rocks together from every conceivable angle, and not a thing to show for it except a few bruised knuckles and a scrape of blood on his wrist. 

To be fair, Rozanov’s attempts to skewer a fish with a spear didn’t seem to be going anywhere, either. Shane shaded his eyes with his hand and looked over at the lake, where Rozanov was lunging around in the shallows with a pointy stick, swearing up a storm. “Any luck?” he called. Rozanov paused long enough to give him the finger. Shane cracked a smile and saluted him back. 

It wasn’t much of a consolation that Rozanov was as useless at this wilderness survival schtick as Shane was, though, because the morning was wearing on, the sun was growing hot, and soon enough they’d both have to throw in the towel, trudge out into the woods, and go back to gathering whatever measly odds and ends of food they could find. Shane dropped his gaze back down to his unlit campfire again, his shoulders slumping. He had (foolishly) allowed himself to dream about hot, roasted fish, sizzling and dripping on his tongue. The thought of having to go back to eating raw eggs and unripe apples felt almost unbearable.

No, more than felt -- it was unbearable. Shane shoved himself to his feet, nearly kicking over the pile of sticks in his haste. Rozanov’s duffel bag was just a few yards away, tucked safely under the bedding in their cave. There had to be a spare granola bar still in there, somewhere -- or a candy bar -- chips -- something. Rozanov had brought practically nothing else but food with him. They’d eaten like kings that first night. There had to be something chocolatey and delicious and sweet still there, buried under Rozanov's sweaty t-shirts and sweatpants and his useless phone charger. There had to be. 

Shane had the duffel bag out in the clearing in front of the cave the next minute; a moment later and he had it open, Rozanov’s clothes and their few precious possessions scattered around him on the grass. Nothing in this pocket -- nothing here. His heart leapt at the sight of bright red wrapper, then fell just as fast when he realized it was already ripped open and empty. A pair of musty-smelling sneakers, a pair of headphones that didn’t work, a razor blade turned rusty from its dunk in the lake. Shane growled and gave the duffel a hearty shake. In this whole enormous bag, there had to be something…

"Shit. Fuck." Shane shoved himself to his feet, duffel bag in hand, and gave it another vicious shake. A few silvery gum wrappers floated out and settled on the ground like snowflakes. A sock. Half a roll of grip tape. “Fuck!” Shane snarled, and shook it again, one last time.

From out of the corner of the bag, two small, neon rectangles tumbled out and bounced onto the ground. Shane stared down at them. Still caught up in the greedy, almost delirious grip of his own hunger, he didn't realize at first what he was looking at. The moment he did, though, his breath caught in his chest, and he fell to his knees on the ground.

Cigarette lighters. Shane stretched out his right hand, hardly daring to touch them, half-afraid he was only imagining things. The lighters winked back at him cheerily. 

Lighters. Not one, but two. Enough to start a fire -- enough for months of fires. Shane pressed his fist to his mouth; not sure, even as he did so, if he was trying to hold back laughter or a sob. Fucking Ilya Rozanov and his fucking cigarettes. Fucking, wonderful, impossible Ilya Rozanov, going ahead and saving them once again.

"Fuck me," Shane whispered. And before the lighters had a chance to vanish into thin air, he shot out his hand the rest of the way, and plucked them from the ground.

It took another half an hour or so of failed attempts and muttered oaths, but by the time Rozanov -- fishless, shirtless, dripping wet -- jogged his way out of the water to join Shane in front of their cave, the campfire was brightly and merrily ablaze. 

Shane, crouched down next to the fire and carefully feeding it sticks, chanced a quick glance up to grin at Rozanov, and found Rozanov already beaming down at him, his face split in the widest, most beautiful smile Shane had ever seen. 

“Shane Hollander, fire master!” Rozanov crowed. Before Shane quite knew what was happening, Rozanov had swung him up off the ground and spun him around. Shane yelped. Rozanov laughed. “Moy malen'kiy bobr-skaut!” 

Rozanov smacked a kiss to Shane’s cheek before setting him down again, still grinning like a loon. Before Shane could take a step back, Rozanov tugged him close and wrapped his arms around him. He was sopping wet and mostly naked and sunburned and ridiculous and Shane couldn’t help but lean into his embrace anyway, his eyes falling shut of their own accord, his cheek finding its way to rest over Rozanov’s heart. 

“You didn't catch a fish," Shane pointed out. Rozanov hummed. "That means I win."

“You win,” Rozanov agreed. His arms tightened around Shane. It would have been too much, eight days ago. It probably would have been too much even now, with anybody else. But with Rozanov, all Shane felt was safe. “How did you do it? Snap your fingers? Poof, scout magic?” 

“Something like that,” Shane said. The fire in his belly flared up again, want and affection and gratitude and desire all hopelessly at war with fear. Shane shook his head to quell it and managed to paste on a smile. It was a good thing that Rozanov couldn't see his face, because he probably wouldn't have believed in it for a moment. "Come on," Shane said, clearing his throat. "Put on a shirt, and then we can come up with a plan for outsmarting these stupid fish."

Chapter End Notes

Thank you so much for all of the comments and kudos so far! The comments especially have been a delight. I'm so glad that you all are having as much fun reading this silly mashup of a story as I am writing it <3

Next time: the boys try their hand at fishing, part two. Ilya hatches a plan.

Chapter 7: June 27, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

Against all odds, Rozanov did manage -- twice -- to catch them a fish.

The first time was an accident: when Rozanov, halfway through telling Shane a colorful story involving the Russian juniors hockey team and a Tim Hortons drive thru, tripped over a rock with his makeshift spear, missed the spot he’d been aiming for, and still, somehow, managed to strike a massive, snaky-looking fish through the belly. The second time, two days later, was also pure dumb luck. After two hours of stabbing at every passing shadow with nothing to show for it but a splinter in his thumb, Rozanov finally flung his spear towards the shore and, swearing like a sailor, lunged at the next passing fish with his bare hands. Whether because the universe decided they were finally due for a bit of good luck, or because the fish was simply too astonished to swim away in time, it worked. Rozanov rose from the water like Venus from the waves, spluttering and swearing, a silvery suckerfish clasped triumphantly in his hands.

Eating the fish was messy, with nothing more than Rozanov’s pocketknife to clean them and no better way to cook them than to cut the meat up into chunks and roast it on sticks over the fire like fleshy marshmallows. But by the time they were done they had picked clean every bone, licked their fingers ten times over, and commiserated over every drop of juice that fell into the flames. Afterwards they crawled into bed with full bellies and slept more soundly than they had since this whole horrible ordeal began. Even the racket on the first night, when they stupidly gutted the fish too close to the cave and subsequently had to endure an all-out brawl between every raccoon within a ten mile radius, wasn’t enough to dim their good spirits. Shane just closed his eyes and began to replay old hockey matches in his head. Rozanov muttered darkly in Russian and shimmied down until his head was on Shane’s belly, apparently content to drown out the racket with Shane’s fingers in his hair and Shane’s stomach grumbling quietly beneath his ear. 

It was an experience they hadn’t managed to replicate more than twice, though; and after glutting themselves on hot, cooked, juicy fish, the famine that followed each feast was practically unbearable. Sometimes in the morning Shane even crawled out of their cave just to catch the first sunlight of the day slicing through the surface of the lake, wrapping his arms around his knees and watching ravenously as the light caught on every dark, scaly body shimmering through the weeds.

The lake was positively teeming with fish. But however bountiful the lake, it didn’t matter -- because Rozanov, though in most respects an unexpectedly excellent companion to end up stranded in the middle of nowhere with, didn’t have the first fucking clue what he was doing when it came to fishing.

“You’re supposed to hit the fish with the spear, Rozanov,” Shane called. It was a beautiful afternoon, hot and bright, with the barest hint of a breeze and just enough clouds to throw an occasional shade over the sun. Shane was lounging on the shore in a Raiders t-shirt and an old pair of gym shorts he’d nicked from Rozanov’s duffel bag, his legs stretched out far enough the water lapped around his ankles, his hand raised to shield his eyes. He’d spent the whole morning visiting every berry patch and crabapple tree within walking distance of the cave; now he was taking a well-earned break, slowly working his way through a small heap of wild strawberries as he watched Rozanov curse and bound through the water like an oversized, irritable puppy. “What are you doing, trying to scare them to death?”

“Piss off, Hollander.”

“If that's your plan, it’s not working.” 

Rozanov wiped the sweat and water off his face with his forearm and made a show of glowering. After a little more than two weeks in the wilderness, the permanent sunburn on his skin had mostly faded into bronze, except for a few patches on his shoulders and the back of his neck. He still shaved religiously each morning with one of the beat-up pack of razors from his duffel bag, but despite his best efforts his jaw was stubbly and nicked here and there with little scabs. His hair was unkempt and greasy. His hands were pockmarked with splinters. The circles under his eyes were well on their way to becoming a permanent fixture. And yet, somehow, the way the honey-colored light caught every flex of muscle on his bare chest was enough to make Shane’s mouth run dry. 

“Is harder than it looks,” Rozanov said primly, thankfully interrupting that particular train of thought before it had time to get very far. Shane blinked himself back and managed a smile. “You think you can do better, Hollander?” 

Shane popped a strawberry in his mouth. “Just trying to help,” he demurred. Rozanov snorted. 

“Very helpful,” he said. He slung his spear over his shoulder and began to wade back through the water towards Shane. “Mr. Fishing Expert over here, yes? Mister Bobr-skaut.”

Shane raised his hands defensively, but it was too late -- Rozanov was already splashing up and out of the water, his face splitting into a grin as he tossed his spear onto the sand and pounced on Shane. 

“Get off!” 

“Your turn, Hollander!” Rozanov crowed. He caught Shane in his arms and heaved him up. Shane yelped and tried to kick him. Rozanov, dripping wet and grinning like a maniac, ignored him and spun them back around to face the lake. 

“Put me down, asshole!” 

“So bossy,” Rozanov tsked, wading back into the water. Shane scrabbled uselessly at his chest, half-laughing, half-swearing. “Rozanov, try this. Rozanov, stop that. Chyort voz'mi, Hollander. It is hard to keep up.” 

“I’m not being bossy, I’m just --”

“Always with the directions. Always backseat driving.” 

“Fuck you!” 

“Maybe it is time now for a demonstration, da?” Rozanov concluded; and, up to his waist now in the water, he grinned crookedly down at Shane one last time, and dropped him. 

The lake was cold. The water was sharp and clear and cold, and also shallow enough that when Rozanov dropped him, Shane’s back and legs smacked hard into the weedy bottom before he kicked back to the surface again, sputtering and cursing. Rozanov was laughing, the asshole. 

“What the fuck?!”

“Go ahead,” Rozanov said. He walked backwards away from Shane, past the weeds to where the shallow, rocky lake bottom slipped off a ledge and suddenly deepened. He pushed himself off and began treading water, apparently indifferent to the cold. Russians, Shane thought sourly, and gave him the finger. Rozanov grinned back and gave him two. “Mr. Expert,” he said. “Show us how to catch a fish.” 

Shane glared at him. When that didn’t do anything except make Rozanov's grin widen, he turned his glare down to the water instead. 

The water was perfectly clear. Shane was standing about waist-deep, right in the middle of a patch of lazy dark weeds and gravel. And right in the middle, as it turned out, of a fuck ton of fish. 

Small, quick, silvery fish that darted around his legs and nipped curiously at his feet. Fish the size of his hand, drifting in and out of the weeds and apparently utterly indifferent to his presence. And larger fish -- not many, but a few -- some nearly the size of his forearm, thick and fleshy, sitting as still as logs on the bottom of the lake. 

Shane thought back to their roasted fish dinner three nights ago. His mouth watered. 

“Give me the spear,” he said, holding out his hand and making a "gimme" motion without looking up from the water. Rozanov snorted, but a moment later Shane heard him splashing obediently back towards the shallows. He kept a wide enough berth from Shane that the fish didn’t stir. “No sudden movements,” Shane warned anyway, and for once Rozanov listened; the water barely rippled as Rozanov walked slowly back and pressed their makeshift spear into Shane’s hand. It felt awkward and ungainly -- nothing like a hockey stick -- but Shane hefted it anyway, his eyes fixed on the bottom of the lake. The nearest fish was barely three feet from him. He drew his arm back, slowly, slowly…threw…and…

…and the spear landed and stuck in the sand, quivering a little from the force he’d thrown it with, a few inches to the left of where the fish had been. 

Shane stared. Rozanov, standing just behind him, burst out laughing. 

“I told you!” he crowed. He waded forward and draped himself over Shane’s back, his arms over Shane’s shoulders. Shane, still stung by the near miss and staring at Rozanov’s stupid, defective spear, didn’t bother trying to shrug him off. “Is harder than it looks.”

“It was right there. I had it.” 

“Yes. These fish are sneaky fucking bastards.” Shane could feel Rozanov’s smile against the back of his neck, and he flushed. “Next time try a little to the right, okay? Then when you miss again, at least you miss in the right direction.”

Shane continued to stare at the spear. It was still sticking upright in the water, standing in place and rising about six inches above the surface, at the center of a quickly fading circle of ripples. Beneath the surface, the knobby line of the wood seemed to shimmer and sway of its own accord, almost as if…

Shane reached up and clutched Rozanov’s arm, so suddenly that Rozanov broke off whatever it was he was saying. “You’re right,” he said.

“Yes,” Rozanov agreed; then, a moment later, “Right about what?”

“Aim to the right,” Shane echoed. He turned, staggering a little from Rozanov’s weight, and this time caught both of Rozanov’s forearms in his, tugging him closer until their foreheads knocked together. Shane was grinning as widely as Rozanov now. “The water refracts the light,” he said. At Rozanov’s blank look, he quickly amended, “It bends it. That’s why you’re not hitting the fish. It’s -- it’s like an optical illusion, Rozanov. The water refracts the light. It distorts everything. Even when your aim is good, you miss, because the fish aren’t where you think they are.” He gave a small, breathless laugh. “You have to aim to the right.” 

Rozanov was giving him a look that somehow managed to be both fond and exasperated at the same time. “I should throw you in the lake again,” he said. Shane laughed. Rozanov huffed. “You are very annoying, Hollander. What the fuck is ‘optical illusion?’” Shane beamed at him.

“Catch us another fish, and you can throw me in the lake a hundred times,” Shane promised, and knocked their foreheads together one more time before pulling back and shoving Rozanov towards the spear. 

Later that night -- when their bellies were full and their fingers licked clean, when their fire had burned down to ashes and the stars were out in full splendor, the sky clear enough that they could see them even in their cave, poking here and there through the gaps in the rocks -- when the distant animal brawl over the fish bones had finally died down, and Shane’s mumbled plan for building a fish pen around the weed patch tapered down into a sleepy silence -- when Rozanov’s breathing had slowed enough that Shane, lying with his head on Rozanov’s chest, thought he was already asleep, despite Rozanov’s thumb still rubbing a slow, soothing pattern into his shoulder -- Rozanov turned his head so that his lips rested against the crown of Shane’s head, and quietly said, “I have an idea too, Hollander.”

“Mm?” Shane’s eyes were closed. Despite the rocky ground beneath them, the stickiness of the pine needles, and the chill that even Rozanov’s warm body couldn’t quite ward away, he was comfortable. It was hard to focus on anything when Rozanov’s sweatshirt was so soft under his cheek and his stomach was full for the first time in three days. “What idea?”

“We have done a pretty good job, yes?” Rozanov said, still in that same quiet, careful voice. “Making this our home. Making a fire. Fishing.” 

“Pretty good,” Shane agreed. Rozanov hummed, his mouth still pressed against Shane’s hair. 

“But it is two weeks now since the crash,” Rozanov went on, after a short pause. He must have felt Shane stiffen against him, because he dug his thumb harder into Shane’s shoulder, as though to ground him. “And maybe they will find us tomorrow. But maybe -- maybe we are stuck here for longer, Hollander. Maybe it will be a long time before anyone comes looking for us here.” 

Shane was wide awake now. “You shouldn’t talk like that,” he said. He could barely get the words out. “You shouldn’t give up.” Rozanov shook his head. 

“I am not giving up,” he insisted. “But even if it is only one more week, or two -- it would be better if we had more supplies, yes? Better clothes to wear. Better food.” His arm tightened around Shane. “A fucking blanket.”

“We only just figured out fishing, Rozanov. What do you want us to do -- go hunting? Skin a deer? Fuck, we can barely --”

“I want to go back to the plane,” Rozanov said. He raised his voice to talk over Shane, but he needn’t have bothered; the moment he said it Shane froze, every word, every thought, dying on his tongue. “I want to take out every fucking thing we can. Everything. Clothes. Emergency box. My fucking sunglasses. I want to find it all and bring it to shore. Bring it here, for us.” 

Shane didn’t remember the plane crash. He didn’t remember the scream the metal made when it struck the water or Rozanov’s hands scrabbling frantically at his seatbelt, racing against the oxygen left in their lungs. He didn’t remember anything until he came to on the shore, choking and gasping for air. But he dreamed about it, almost every night. The crash, the darkness, the bodies in the water. And at Rozanov’s words -- at the thought of diving down into the water, of going anywhere near the crash again -- panic rose in his chest so fast he felt like he was drowning, too.

The next thing Shane knew he was on top of Rozanov, his knees on Rozanov’s thighs, his hands pinning Rozanov’s wrists into place above his head, trembling with his whole body. He shook his head frantically, even as his throat closed almost too tightly for him to speak.

“No,” he managed to choke. Rozanov tugged his hands free and reached for Shane’s arms, rubbing up and down as though Shane was a wild animal he was trying to soothe, but Shane couldn’t feel his touch, couldn’t feel anything except for cold and dark and death death death… “No.”

“I am a good swimmer,” Rozanov insisted. “I could go in and out, Hollander. Take out what we need.” He gave up on stroking Shane and wrapped his arms around him instead, pushing them both up until they were sitting curled into each other in the center of the cave. Rozanov tightened his embrace, but Shane couldn’t feel it. Image after image flashed past his eyes: the mangled husk of the plane, the pilot and the photographer’s dead bodies still strapped into place, Rozanov floating silently in the dark water too, his eyes open and unseeing, trapped in the plane, trapped and drowning, trapped and already -- 

“I need you,” Shane whispered. He was crying. He didn’t know when he’d started. Rozanov was murmuring something in Russian now, his hands on Shane’s cheeks as he pressed their foreheads together, but Shane kept talking, desperate to get this out before panic sealed his throat shut again. “I don’t need anything down there. I need you.” 

“Okay,” Rozanov whispered. He kissed Shane’s lips, then his cheeks, then his lips again. “Okay. Is okay. I am here, yes?”

“Don’t go.” 

“No,” Rozanov agreed. He wiped the tears off of Shane’s cheek, then kissed him again. “No. Just a stupid idea. You are right, solnyshko. Shh. I’m sorry.” Shane nodded, unable to answer. Rozanov continued to hold him, cradling Shane's head and tucking Shane's face against his neck, rocking him until Shane’s tears dried and the nightmares faded back until they were only phantoms again. 

“I’m sorry.” Shane couldn’t tell which of them said it, this time. But he closed his eyes and let the words carry him down, past grief, past fear, down until darkness folded like a second embrace around him, and sleep carried him away at last.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: the weather turns.

Chapter 8: July 12, 2010. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

Candidly, Ilya could admit that the biggest problem in his life right now was the fact that he was trapped in the middle of fucking nowhere. He slept under a pile of rocks. He drank from a lake. He shit in the woods. It had been weeks now since the last time he’d had anything to eat that wasn’t raw eggs, burnt fish, or berries smaller than his thumbnail. He was filthy and sunburnt and always hungry and always, always tired. His hockey muscles? Gone. His hair? A mess. Only a few months to go until he was due to start his rookie year in Boston, and look at him: scrounging for food in the dirt like a goddamn squirrel, bathing in the lake with nothing but sand to scrub himself clean, lying awake half the night praying for deliverance while every wild animal within a hundred miles barked, howled, and growled their intention to eat him up like an Ilya-shaped kolbasa the moment they had the chance. 

So, yes. The fact that he was trapped here, with no way out and no rescue coming, was problem number one. But Ilya had a second problem too, and this one was nearly as much of a doozy as the first: Shane Hollander.

The problem was that Ilya was falling in love with Shane Hollander, and he didn’t have the first fucking clue what to do about it. 

Ilya had thought, back when he’d first dreamed up this utter trainwreck of a photoshoot, that a camping trip would be a good way to get Shane out of his system. A few days together in the woods -- sneak a few kisses, maybe a furtive handjob or two -- finally get a good look at those freckles up close -- and then, curiosity sated, they could both return to reality and let their woodland dalliance fade into a fond and distant memory. 

Even setting the plane crash aside, though, that plan was doomed from the start -- because as it turned out, the more Ilya got to know Shane, the more completely fucking crazy about him he was. Shane did the crossword with his dad. Shane learned everything there was to know about hockey from his mom. Shane stayed out late until the stars came out and woke up early, every day, to watch the sunrise. Just looking at him did something funny to Ilya’s heart. Sometimes when Shane smiled at Ilya just so, sitting next to the fire or being a big baby about how cold the lake was or scrunching his nose as they ate raw turtle eggs for breakfast for the tenth fucking day in a row, it was all Ilya could do not to tackle him to the ground and kiss him senseless, right there on the spot. 

The thing was that Shane was so earnest and so funny and so brave and so goddamn exasperating, all at the same time. He kept them fed and kept them warm and talked about being rescued like he really believed someone was coming for them. He made Ilya laugh even when every bone in Ilya’s body wanted to fall to the ground and scream from the unfairness of it all. He was gentle, too. Shane didn’t let his guard down for anyone, but he had cried while Ilya held him. He had said he needed Ilya. Nobody had ever needed Ilya before. 

I love you, Ilya thought, while Shane fell asleep in his arms each night. I love you, when he floated on his back in the lake, closed his eyes, and remembered what it had felt like the one time they’d really, truly kissed. I love you. I would die if you weren’t here. I love you, I love you, I love you. 

It was just Ilya’s luck, wasn’t it? Falling in love, and not being able to do a goddamn thing about it. 

The Storm, as Ilya and Shane both took to calling it afterwards, came exactly one month to the day after the plane crash.

The sky had been overcast for the better part of a week now; but from the moment he woke up, Ilya could tell that something bigger was brewing. The sky seemed to hug the earth, the angry, roiling masses of gray and purple clouds dragging so low they nearly snagged on the trees. A bitter, biting wind hissed through the pine needles on the forest floor and kicked up little whirlwinds of dirt around the campfire. Everything was dark. Shane was already up, because of course he was: sitting on the ground in front of the fire in the tattier of Ilya’s two sweatshirts, patiently feeding one little gnarled stick after another into the flames while the wind cackled and danced maniacally around him. 

Ilya trudged the dozen feet or so from the cave to the fire, yawned, then dropped down into the dirt next to Shane. He followed Shane’s gaze and stared at the pathetic, sputtering fire for a minute or two. Then, because he was a glutton for punishment, he slumped into Shane’s side and tucked himself under Shane’s arm. Shane made room for him, patiently waiting while Ilya fussed and maneuvered himself around until he was practically in Shane's lap. Shane was warm and solid and he smelled fustily like smoke and damp and sweat and pine. Ilya loved him and loved him and loved him.  

“You slept in late,” Shane observed mildly, blissfully unaware of the utter disaster that was Ilya’s heart. Shane’s arm was heavy over Ilya’s shoulders. He was stroking his thumb idly up and down, tracing the number eight onto Ilya’s arm. “It’s practically noon.” 

Ilya tilted his head up enough to peer at the sky. There wasn’t a single ray of sunshine making it through the towering storm clouds, but he supposed Shane would know. 

“You know me, Hollander,” he said with a shrug, nestling his head back against Shane’s shoulder and dropping his eyes down to the fire again. “Very lazy.” 

“You’re not lazy.” 

“No, it is true. Lazy and sleepy. Your fucking wolfbird would not shut up all night.” Ilya didn’t look to see it, but he knew Shane smiled. 

“You can go back to bed, if you want,” Shane offered after a beat. He tossed a handful of sticks into the fire. It flared up brightly, though the next gust of wind was nearly enough to extinguish it again. Ilya felt the rise and fall of Shane’s chest as he huffed. “It’s going to rain soon anyway.” 

As far as offers went, it was pretty fucking tempting. Drifting to sleep with rain drumming on the roof of the cave, Shane Hollander stretched out next to him, not a thing in the world to worry about except which dream of Shane his unconscious would see fit to grace him with this time? Yes, please. Sign Ilya up. 

The trouble was -- (and God help him, Ilya was starting to sound like Shane now) -- the trouble was, if they crawled back into bed, then that meant no breakfast now, and no food later either. Ilya sighed. With a colossal effort, he pushed himself up and eyed the lake. 

The water was darker even than the sky, so dark that it was practically black, except for where the wind harried the surface and tore it up into foaming whitecaps and steel-gray waves that slapped against the shore. Between the lowering sky and the biting wind and the fact that it was definitely going to rain any second now, it all looked distinctly uninviting. Still, if Ilya waded in now and managed to catch a fish right away, then maybe there would be just enough time to cook it before -- 

He never finished the thought. As though all the storm had been waiting for was for Ilya to finally drag his ass out of bed, there came, from directly above them, a deafening, earsplitting crack of thunder, so deep and so close it shook the ground beneath them. All the world froze. Even the waves on the lake and the flames of the fire stood still. Ilya’s eyes met Shane’s. 

The next moment, the sky erupted. 

In all his nineteen years, Ilya had never, not ever, seen a storm like this. Lightning followed thunder followed lightning again, like artillery guns, like hellfire, so vicious and so quick it seemed each bellow would split the earth and each splintering bolt that followed would be the one that struck them dead. And in between the lightning strikes came the rain -- sheets of rain, freezing, biting, tearing, rain like the world had been turned upside down, falling so heavily and so fast that Ilya could not tell the air from the water from the muddy ground. He was in the plane again. He was trying to breathe but only water filled his lungs. The world was crushing in on itself like a fist and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move, he was drowning -- 

Ilya was in the cave. Shane was there too, drenched to the skin, one hand clutching Ilya’s elbow while with his other hand he shoved Ilya’s duffel bag into his arms. It was pitch black, except for when flashes of lightning threw everything into sudden, terrifying relief before vanishing and plunging them back into darkness again. All of the walls that Ilya had made around the holes in the cave were gone -- water poured in, the wind shrieked, and then something harder than rain began to fall, chips of ice that pummeled the outside of the cave and tore bloody strips everywhere they struck Ilya’s bare skin. Shane cursed and pulled them back into the farthest corner of the cave, under the steepest, narrowest overhang of rock. He shoved Ilya down, crawling after him and pushing them back and farther back, until they were as far under the rocky overhang as they could go. Shane stuffed the duffel bag in front of them like a shield and then curled himself around Ilya, whispering a steady stream of nonsense into his ear while the world ended around them. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re not drowning, Ilya. Fuck. It’s only a storm. It'll be over soon. You’re okay. Shh. Fuck. Ilya, you're okay. We’re okay.”

Ilya pressed his face against the hollow of Shane’s throat, and prayed.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: After The Storm, Ilya broaches a topic. Shane has some feelings about it.

Chapter 9: July 12, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

Shane didn’t know how much time passed. It felt like hours. Days, even. But he didn’t know. Maybe it was minutes only between folding Rozanov -- folding Ilya -- into his arms, certain down to his bones that they were both about to die -- between the thunder crashing above their heads and the scream of lightning and falling trees -- and the moment that the storm finally, finally began to turn, the howling wind and lightning fading until they were no more than a distant, angry growl. Shane didn't know. All he knew was that he had been clutching Ilya long enough that he couldn’t unclench his hands from their death grip on Ilya's ratty old t-shirt. All he knew was that Ilya never once stopped praying. 

The worst of the storm eventually moved off, but the rain didn’t stop. It rained and kept on raining, and this time it really did go on for hours. Shane could tell because, despite himself, he started to drift in and out of consciousness, awake and clinging to Ilya beneath the tenuous shelter of the cave one moment, then dreaming he was at home in his own bedroom the next. Eventually it all began to blur together. Rain, mud, Shane’s arms around Ilya, his face buried in Ilya’s hair, his bedroom in Ottawa, darkness and cold and hunger, rain and rain and rain. 

Eventually the rain ended, or at least died down enough that they couldn't hear it anymore. Shane managed to push himself up just enough to squint down at Ilya. Ilya’s eyes were closed. They blinked open, though, when Shane, aiming to wipe a streak of mud off of his cheek, poked his nose instead. 

Ilya looked terrible. His eyes were two dark bruises. His lips were bloody. Every inch of him was covered in mud. Still, somehow, he wrinkled his nose, and managed to smile.

“Hi,” he said. Shane scraped up the ghost of a smile back. 

“Hi,” he whispered. 

“You are alright, Hollander? Not hurt?” 

“I’m fine. I’m good.”

“Good,” Ilya echoed. Despite the fact that he looked more or less like he’d spent a night in the trenches, he managed to scoff. “Typical beaver scout, yes? Feeling good. Regular old day in the fucking woods for Shane Hollander. Next time we go camping, sign me up.” Shane laughed. Before his voice had time to break, he let his shoulders slump and his forehead thunk down onto Ilya’s chest. Ilya disentangled them enough to reach up with one hand and shakily card his fingers through Shane’s hair. 

“I want to go home,” Shane said. His voice came out muffled against Ilya’s chest, which was lucky, considering how badly it was shaking. Ilya sighed. 

“I know, Hollander. Join the fucking club.” 

“I miss my parents. I miss my bedroom. I miss real food, and hot showers, and, and hockey -- fuck --”

“Will make a pretty good news special one day, da?” Ilya mused, still gently stroking Shane’s hair. Shane shook his head, unable to speak. “Mr. Hollander, we are here to ask you horrible personal questions about the worst month of your fucking life. How did it feel, crash landing in a lake in a fucking plane?" 

“I don’t remember the plane crash."

“Yes, true. Okay. Same question then, Mr. Rozanov. How did it feel to save Shane Hollander's life? What is it like, knowing you are the world’s sexiest hero?” 

“Shut up.” 

“Tell us what you think about this Shane Hollander, hm?” Ilya tugged on a strand of Shane’s hair, then leaned forward enough to kiss his head. “Say the plane crashes again. You are trapped in the shittiest forest in Canada, wolves everywhere. No food and fucking storms trying to squash you like a little bug. What do you think? Shane Hollander, is he still your first pick travel buddy?” 

Shane lifted his head. 

“Yes,” he said. Ilya was smiling, but at Shane’s words he fell quiet. His hand slipped a little lower, sliding from Shane’s hair to stroke his muddy cheek. “I mean -- if the plane crashed again. If I had to pick one person to be here with. If it could be anyone. I would pick you.”

Ilya was still gazing at him, although there was a strange look in his eyes now: half-assessing, half-afraid. “Stupid choice, Hollander,” he said at last, softly. “I am not much of a beaver scout.” Shane leaned into his touch. 

“You’re not a beaver scout at all,” he said. 

“Yes, fine. Not much of a honorary beaver scout,” Ilya corrected. He was still stroking Shane’s cheek. “Probably you -- what is it? -- pulled the short end of the stick, no? Anyone else in the league you could have taken stupid photos with, and you got stuck with me.” 

Shane knew that Ilya was only teasing. He meant it as a kindness, probably; poking fun at himself until Shane forgot his exhaustion and the eighteen hours it had been since the last time he’d eaten and the fucking Armageddon of a storm that had just nearly killed them both. But whatever Ilya meant by it, it fell flat; because all Shane could think of was how intolerable it was that Ilya didn’t know that there was no version of this story without him. There was no world where Shane didn’t want Ilya, where he wasn’t stupidly, selfishly grateful, down to his bones, that Ilya was here. If neither of them had ever stepped foot on that plane -- if the only Ilya Rozanov Shane had ever known was Boston’s asshole rookie center -- then everything about Shane’s life would have been smaller, would have been worse. 

“The short end of the stick” -- as though Ilya wasn’t the only good thing in this whole fucking ordeal. As though Shane wouldn’t have died without him. 

“I’m not glad we’re here,” Shane said at last, awkwardly. “I mean. Obviously I'm not. But I am glad that -- if I have to be here with anyone -- it’s with you.” 

He felt horribly exposed, even saying that much. But Ilya only continued to pet Shane’s cheek and gaze at him, his eyes narrowed, as though he was searching for something in Shane’s face that he couldn’t quite find. Shane felt himself blush. 

“You’re my best friend, Ilya,” he added, a little desperately. That, finally, seemed to do the trick. A look flashed across Ilya’s face, there and gone too quickly for Shane to make anything of it. Then Ilya smiled. His shoulders relaxed, his eyes turning teasing again as he pinched Shane’s cheek. 

“Best friends,” he agreed solemnly, ignoring Shane’s yelp as he leaned up and pressed a pursed kiss to the tip of Shane’s nose. “Yes. Time for us to get up now, best friend. We will see the damage, okay? And then you and I will take a bath in the lake, so we do not smell so much like a pair of motherfucking trolls.” 

They left the cave.

As it turned out, “damage” was what Ilya would have called "a motherfucking understatement.” 

Shane stood in the center of what had been the grassy embankment between the cave and the lake, turning in a slow circle and staring. The pile of rocks that made up their cave was still there; the lake was still there. The sky was a watery blue above him and there was a streak of ash on the ground still marking the spot where their campfire had been. 

That was the start and end of it, though. From the look of everything else around him, it hadn’t been a summer thunderstorm that had passed them by, but a fucking tornado. 

Everything -- everything -- had been torn apart. Saplings and huge ancient oak trees, banks of reeds along the edge of the lake, the outcrop of rocks that had sat above the western edge of the bay -- all were gone, razed to the ground or flung into the depths of the lake as though by some horrible, gigantic hand. Half of the shoreline had collapsed into the water, which sat and seemed to glower at them, bloated and preternaturally still now that the storm had gone.  It was eerily quiet. There were branches everywhere, leaves everywhere, mud and rocks and here and there a still, stiff-necked animal that Shane tried not to look at too closely. But not a single bird call -- not a rustle of leaves -- not even the quiet lap of the waves against the shore. It was as though the storm had torn the skin off the earth and left only bones and blood behind. 

Ilya drew up next to Shane. Neither of them spoke. But after a moment Shane reached down, and fumbled for Ilya's hand. 

Hours passed; but though they hunted through every inch of the ruin left behind by the storm, it didn’t do any good. There wasn’t a single dry stick left in the forest to start a fire. There was not one unbroken egg or untouched berry bush anywhere that they could find. When the sun began to set, they gave up on a fire and food and crawled back into the cave. The ground was cold and wet beneath them; everything reeked of fetid, oozing mud. Shane hesitated just inside the entrance, disgust warring with exhaustion. Ilya, though, only took his hand and tugged them forward into the farthest, driest corner of the cave. He collapsed with his legs sprawled out, his back propped up against the stone, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He didn’t let go of Shane’s hand. He just pulled Shane down too, arranging them so that Shane was sitting between Ilya's legs, his back against Ilya's chest. When Shane tried half-heartedly to draw himself back and sit up, Ilya only shook his head and tightened his arms around him. 

“Please,” Ilya said. Though he had eaten as little as Shane had -- though he had slept even less -- he had been strong and smiling all day. Now, for the first time, his voice cracked. “I want to talk. It will be easier, like this.” 

And, well. It wasn’t exactly a hardship, was it? -- letting himself be held by Ilya. Shane relaxed into Ilya's embrace, doing his best to ignore the stench of the cave and the hollow emptiness in his belly. Though it was dark enough it didn’t make much of a difference, he closed his eyes. 

Ilya took awhile to start; gathering his words, maybe, or bracing himself for however he thought Shane would answer. Finally he began, slowly, “Was lucky for us, today. That we hid in time. That we did not lose our home, when the rest of the forest fell.” Shane nodded. Ilya’s arms tightened around him. 

“Maybe we will not be so lucky, the next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Shane said. He kept his eyes closed, though he could feel his heart beginning to beat faster. “This was a freak storm, Ilya. It won’t happen again.” Ilya dropped a kiss to Shane’s forehead; an apology, Shane realized a moment too late, for what he was about to say next. 

“I think we will die here, if nothing changes,” Ilya confessed. His voice was very quiet. All the same, each word struck Shane like a knife. “The next big storm, maybe. Or a wolf. Or winter, when all the food is gone. If nothing changes, we will die.”

“We won’t be here until winter,” Shane ground out. He had to force himself to speak through the panic rising in his throat. They wouldn’t be, though. They couldn’t. “Someone will come for us.” 

“It has been a month now,” Ilya said, still in that same quiet voice. Shane shook his head. Ilya kissed him again. “Probably -- probably they think we are already dead, Shane.”

“No. They’d still look. Even if they thought that, they’d still --” 

“I don’t want to die,” Ilya said, cutting him off. “I do not want to watch you die.” 

“Ilya…”

“I know you will be angry with me. But I think we do not have a choice anymore. Not after today."

“Ilya, what --”

“Prosti, solnyshko. Ya tebya lyublyu. But I am going back to the plane crash. Okay? Everything that is there, I am taking it for us. Every piece. And when I come back, I will make us a better home. Metal walls, blankets. Coats and a radio, maybe. We will be warm. We will have enough food. We will call for help.” Ilya nuzzled against the top of Shane’s head. Shane’s eyes burned. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya whispered again, whatever that meant. “You will not ever want to speak to me again, I know. But I would rather you be mad at me forever, than keep sitting back on my ass and waiting here for us to die.”

No. No. Everything inside Shane screamed to say it. No, you can’t go back into that death trap. No, I won’t let you. No. I refuse to lose you too. But Ilya was right, wasn’t he? If nothing changed. If no one was coming. If there was another storm, or months more of this -- winter -- another year -- longer. If this was really it, then they had to try. 

Like hell was Shane letting Ilya go down there alone, though. 

“We’ll build a raft,” Shane said. He felt Ilya’s lips press against his forehead again. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried with everything in him not to cry. “And you'll tell me everything you remember -- everything -- about what the crash was like. Okay? We'll go together, Ilya. You only go if you go with me.”

He felt Ilya exhale, then nod. Then Ilya's lips were back, pressed against Shane's skin as he teased, “Tired of letting me be the big hero all the time, hm?” He sounded relieved. Shane shook his head. He loved Ilya, and he hated him a little, too -- hated the panic that ratcheted through his body at the thought of the plane, hated that Ilya offered himself up so easily, hated that Ilya was right.

“You're my friend,” Shane said. His voice cracked. “Dumbass.” At that Ilya finally fell quiet. He didn't let go of Shane, though.

It was a long, long time before either of them got any sleep that night.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: the plane crash, revisited.

Chapter 10: August 3, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

The raft had been Shane’s idea; a fact that Ilya, it seemed, was never going to let him live down. 

In Shane’s defense, it was a good idea. Whatever it was that Ilya hoped to salvage down there at the bottom of the lake, he had no actual plan for getting any of it back to shore. He had only given a sort of shrug and mimed swimming when Shane had asked him the morning after the storm. But five hundred trips ferrying things from the wreck one at a time was approximately four hundred and ninety-nine more trips than Shane’s heart could bear, so. A raft it was. 

The trouble was, it turned out that building a raft was really fucking hard when you didn’t have rope or a saw or even so much as a damn hatchet to do it with. There was no shortage of felled branches, thanks to the storm. But with no way to trim them into shape and nothing to hold them together once they were in the water, the whole project was excruciatingly, infuriatingly slow going. 

“My plan is faster,” Ilya observed one morning, about a week in. He was standing ankle-deep in the water with his arms crossed over his chest, watching as Shane’s latest attempt at a raft bobbed and rolled drunkenly a few yards out. Shane, clinging to the jumble of branches in a vain attempt to hold them together, lost his balance, tipped sideways, and came up spluttering. Ilya leveled him with a pointed, distinctly unsympathetic look. “Probably we could have the whole plane rebuilt on shore again, good as new, by the time you finish your little…” He uncrossed his arms long enough to wiggle his fingers at Shane, “...boat.” 

He was probably right. But as Ilya’s plan entailed diving down alone into the carcass of the plane and lugging suitcases and sheets of rusting metal from the middle of the lake to the shore singlehanded, he was just going to have to suck it up and deal.

It took about three weeks before Shane managed to find enough large, fanning branches to strip of their leaves and weave together into something that almost, charitably, if you squinted, could be called a raft. Ilya laughed for a good five minutes the first time he saw it, and didn’t stop laughing until Shane finally gave up on explaining how it all worked and just shoved him into the water. But, ungainly and ugly as the raft was, the complicated interlace of branches somehow held together. If the two of them held on to opposite ends of it, it mostly stayed balanced. And, as long as they only rested their shoulders on the wood and kept everything from their chests on down in the water, they could swim the raft out into the deep end of the lake, and it wouldn’t break. 

“It is the ugliest boat I have ever seen in my entire life,” Ilya proclaimed, when they got back to shore after their maiden voyage and collapsed, exhausted and giddy, onto the sand. He was grinning ear to ear. Shane, flat on his back next to him, flopped his arm over in a half-hearted attempt to punch Ilya's shoulder, missed, and wound up smacking his mouth instead. Ilya, because he was an annoying shit, licked Shane's palm, then laughed when Shane yelped and rolled away. “Good job.” 

“Piss off.” 

“No, really. Is very impressive.” 

“It works, doesn’t it?” 

“When you are old and slow and cannot play hockey anymore, there is a good career for you here.” Ilya was still laughing. Shane rolled back towards him and made a face. 

“Shut up.” 

“Shane Hollander, Master Boat Builder. MVP Carpenter.” 

“Ilya Rozanov, the most annoying man in the world,” Shane countered, but he was smiling, too. He scootched closer. There was a streak of sand across Ilya’s cheek, so Shane reached over and thumbed it away. “It doesn’t matter what it looks like, Rozanov. It’ll work.” 

Ilya quieted. He turned his head enough to bump Shane’s fingers with his nose. “Tomorrow we will see,” he said. Shane’s smile faded. Ilya -- noticing, maybe -- nudged his fingers again. “You are nervous.” 

“Yes,” Shane admitted. Ilya hummed. “Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“I am not nervous about the crash,” Ilya said. Shane gazed at him. The morning was growing late; there were no clouds, and now that the sun had risen above the tree line, it was beating down on them where they lay sprawled out in the sand. A few feet away, waves lapped against the shore. They would have to get up soon. But Shane didn’t move, and Ilya didn’t either. “I know it will be horrible. Cold and dark. Bad memories -- dead bodies.” Shane, who usually did everything he could to avoid thinking about that part of it, had to swallow back a sudden surge of nausea. Ilya, though, only shrugged. “But we will be there together. When I am down in the water, I will know you are up above, safe on the raft. So, I am not nervous about the crash. Only the rest of it.”

Shane had to swallow twice before he could trust himself to speak. “The rest of it?”  

“Not waiting around to be rescued anymore,” Ilya said. His voice was quiet, like a confession. “Making a new life here, in this fucking place. It scares the shit out of me.” 

It scared the shit out of Shane, too. He only shook his head, though. With a certainty he didn’t feel, he said, “That’s not what we’re doing, Ilya. We’re still going to get out of here. We’re going to play hockey again. We're just buying ourselves more time, is all.” 

Ilya only gazed at him, with a too-knowing look in his eyes that made Shane’s skin itch. Shane rolled away and pushed himself to his feet. He made a show of stretching, then kicked Ilya in the shin. 

“Come on,” he said, before Ilya had a chance to say anything else. “Big day tomorrow. Stop lazing around, and help me catch lunch."

The plan was to swim the raft to the far side of the lake, where the tail of the plane still crouched above the water and marked the crash like a vulture marking a grave. They had no rope to hold the raft to the plane with once they reached it, so they would have to take turns: one up above on the raft, one diving down into the water. One, then the other, until they had hauled up everything that the raft could bear. Swim to shore to unload, then back to the wreck. Again and again, until they had stripped what was left of the plane down to its bones. 

“I will dive first,” Ilya said. He looked at Shane across the campfire. It was growing late; the sun had mostly set, and the stars were out. The red firelight and the shadows softened Ilya’s face, filling in the hollows that the last two months had carved into his cheeks. He looked beautiful. He looked like a boy again. “You will be okay up top, waiting?”

No. No, Shane would not be okay, treading water and counting the seconds until Ilya ran out of air down below. But it was too late to say that, wasn't it? Shane folded his hands in his lap before he could do something stupid, like reach across the fire and take Ilya’s hand.

“Is this going to be worth it, Ilya?” he asked. Ilya’s eyes flickered down to the fire, then up again to rest on Shane’s face. Shane knew that look. He had seen it before on the ice, standing across from Ilya at the faceoff. That was the look that made people whisper things behind Ilya’s back, things like Reckless and Aggressive and That goddamn motherfucking Russian motherfucker. It helped, a little, seeing that look on Ilya’s face now. However much the firelight gentled the rest of him, there was nothing weak or uncertain in Ilya’s eyes.

“Yes,” Ilya said, and didn’t say anything more.

The plane crash was clear across at the other end of the lake; though they were up with the sunrise, it was past noon by the time they reached it.

It had been nearly two months since the last time Shane had seen the crash, but he’d dreamed about it often enough that, at first, the sight of the plane tail sticking up out of the water didn’t hold any particular horror. As they got closer, though -- close enough to see the faded yellow paint on the side, the battered sheets of metal hanging loose where the tornado had blown through -- the plane tail seemed to loom up larger and larger, until it towered above them. The closer they came, the more the breath in Shane's lungs grew short. His chest started to heave, and then the muscles in his legs began to seize, until finally he had to stop, clinging to the splintery wood of the raft so tightly that his hands bled. 

Ilya stopped swimming, too. 

This was the plane that had nearly killed them. This is where they had both nearly died, and now they were going back -- Ilya was diving down into the pitch black water while Shane waited up above, and then it would be Shane’s turn, down into the darkness, down into -- 

“This was the worst day of my life,” Shane said. His voice cracked as he spoke. He didn’t have to look to the side to know that Ilya was watching him. “I never wanted to come back here.” 

Back into crushed metal, broken windows, and dead bodies; and if one of them went down and didn’t come back, then the other would be left waiting up above, treading water forever, waiting and waiting while down below -- 

“So this will be the second worst day of your life,” Ilya said pragmatically, interrupting the panicked rush of Shane's thoughts. He leaned across the handful of logs that separated them and clasped Shane’s hand. The raft rocked at the sudden movement, but didn’t flip. “But then it will be over. Okay? It will be really fucking scary, and probably we will both have nightmares tonight. But soon it will be over. We will go home.” 

Shane drew in a deep breath and fumbled to turn his hand over in Ilya’s. He gripped him so hard it probably hurt, but Ilya only squeezed his hand back. “If anything happens to you down there -- Ilya, if you get trapped -- “

“Nothing will happen, Shane.” 

“I am never, ever going to forgive you. Just -- remember that for me, okay? When you’re down there in the wreck, holding your breath for too long and being stupidly brave, just -- just remember that if you don’t come back, I am never going to stop being mad at you.” Shane couldn’t wipe his eyes with one hand in Ilya’s grip and the other clinging to the raft, so he just turned and glowered at Ilya and hoped that Ilya couldn’t tell how close he was to crying. It must have worked, because Ilya smiled. “I’m never going to shut up about it, either. Wherever the afterlife is -- if you die -- I’m never letting it go. I'm going to find you there and you're going to be stuck with me for good. You’re going to be so fucking sick of me. So you’d just -- you’d better be careful, alright? You’d better be fucking careful and come back.”

Ilya looked as though he was about to say something. Before he could, though, Shane drew in a deep breath and began again, raggedly, "And if something happens to me -- if I go down and get stuck -- then --" 

"Then I come down and find you," Ilya said simply. He smiled at Shane again and squeezed his hand once more, hard, before letting go.

“Come on, solnyshko,” he said. The raft had drifted during Shane's outburst. Ilya shoved it back around again, and nodded towards the plane. “Time to go.”

Chapter End Notes

Next time: Ilya dives down into the crash. Shane handles it about as well as you'd expect.

Chapter 11: August 4, 2010. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

CW: brief description of a drowned body

Sorry in advance for this chapter, y'all....I don't think the scene inside the plane crash is *too* graphic, but we don't exactly fade to black either. If you want to skip that bit, 1) fair and 2) it's the section that begins "The body in the plane."

When Ilya was very young, his mother tucked him into bed each night with a story.

His favorite began, as all good fairytales do, with a prince, a beautiful princess, an evil curse, and a kiss. Ilya curled up under the covers, his mother’s arms around him, and closed his eyes as she told it. She had a beautiful voice for stories, and it wasn’t long before Ilya was swept away: to the dark forest and the enchanted lake, Prince Siegfried and his crossbow, the shimmering magic as the swans transformed into princesses before his eyes. 

“And when the prince saw that the swan he chased was the princess Odette, he broke his crossbow and swore that he would never love anyone else but her,” his mother said. She stroked Ilya’s hair. Her hand shook, a little. Ilya kept his eyes closed and snuggled closer. He let her story carry him far, far away, away from his father’s raised voice and his mother’s tears. “They talked and danced, and danced and talked, until even the stars grew tired in the sky. They never wearied, though. Odette could have stayed talking with the prince forever, and the prince felt just the same.” 

“What happened next, mama?”

“Well. The sorcerer’s curse was that at dawn every day, Odette would turn back into a swan again. It would always be so, until someone came who promised he’d love her and only her forever.” 

“Like Siegfried.”

“Like Siegfried. When dawn came and the curse returned, he promised he’d come back for her.”

“Good,” Ilya said. He was most of the way asleep, and the words came out blurry and mumbled. “And the next night he did come back. They got married, and she was a princess again.” 

“Yes,” his mother agreed. Even though it was a happy ending, she sounded sad. She bent and kissed his head. “All of the terrible things were over. They got married, and she was a princess again.”

She stood and began to move around the room; dimming the lights, drawing the curtains. Ilya cracked his eyes open enough to watch her. “Do you think Odette was scared?” he asked sleepily. She pulled the covers up to his chin, then sank down onto the edge of the bed and brushed his hair back from his eyes. “When it was time to leave and turn back into a swan?” 

“I would be,” his mother said. She smiled and let her hand slip down to stroke his cheek. “Wouldn’t you?”

Ilya thought of dark, enchanted water. He thought of arms turning into wings and sleek feathers and how heavy it must feel to carry a whole curse inside of you. He thought of promises and a farewell kiss. 

“Not if the prince loved me,” he decided at last. “Not if he promised he’d be there waiting when I changed back.” 

Ilya had gone over the memory enough times in his mind that, though it had been months, he knew more or less exactly what would be waiting for him down at the bottom of the lake. He knew where the metal walls of the plane had folded and where the windows had burst from the force of the crash. He knew where the precious trunks of clothes had tumbled loose. He remembered which door had EMERGENCY EXIT written over it in large, red letters, and he knew that if there was an emergency survival kit anywhere, it was probably there. 

He knew exactly where Greg the photographer and the pilot had been sitting, too. But he tried not to think about that. 

“You wait here,” he told Shane for the fifteenth time. They were at the wreck now; it was hard to see with the sun directly overhead, reflecting off of the water, but Ilya thought he could make out the outline of the plane looming below. Shane was holding onto his monstrosity of a raft with one hand and a loose bit of the plane tail with the other. He looked like he couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to punch Ilya or kiss him. Best friends, Ilya reminded himself sternly, and cast Shane a grin before pushing himself away from the raft. He was treading water now, squinting down at the wreck. “Count to one hundred. If I am not back…”

“Then I’m going to kill you,” Shane said flatly. 

Well, so much for kissing. Ilya shot him another grin anyway. 

“Ya lyublyu tebya, solnyshko,” he said, because he couldn’t quite bear to leave without saying it one more time. Then, before he could think better of it, he drew in a deep breath, and kicked down. 

It was dark below the water. That was the first thing Ilya noticed. It was noon up above, bright and sparkling without a single cloud in the sky, but even just a few feet below the surface everything turned strange and murky, like a watercolor painting that had gotten the colors all mixed up. It wasn’t hard to see the plane, though. Even in the dim light it loomed up, a dark, massive silhouette, the metal twisted and the sharp edges of the crash only blunted a little by the weeds that had taken root along the sides.

Shane was right, calling it a tomb. It looked like one. This close, it was impossible to forget that there were two dead bodies in there. This close, it looked like it was rearing up from the depths to swallow Ilya, too. 

Ilya’s lungs started to burn. He ignored them, and pushed himself down.

Ilya’s mother took him to see Swan Lake the spring before he turned twelve.

He didn’t want to go. Ballet was stupid, and he had hockey in the morning. But it was rare to see his mother smile about anything at all these days; and so one evening, when his father was staying late at the station and Alexei was out with friends, they dressed up in their nicest clothes, Ilya in a suit jacket that was too small for him and tugged at the shoulders, his mother radiant in dark velvet and imitation pearls. They caught a taxi and arrived just a little before the curtains went up. Their seats were not very good. But when the lights dimmed and the theater grew quiet, Ilya found himself scooting to the edge anyway, peering over the balcony to the orchestra pit and the dark stage below. 

Ballet was stupid. But, well. He remembered this story. 

All was well for the first and second acts. The music was moody and dark, which he liked. He had played hockey long enough to recognize athleticism when he saw it, even if the sight of the dancers made something hot and uncomfortable squirm in the pit of his stomach. And the set was just like his mother’s stories -- dark woods and an enchanted lake, white swan wings and a moon big enough to fill up the whole sky. When intermission came and the curtains rose, Ilya’s mother turned in her seat to smile at him. 

“You remember our bedtime stories, Ilyushka?” 

“Yeah,” Ilya said. An hour or so of sitting in his seat had made him fidgety, although he was trying hard not to show it. His mother -- noticing anyway, probably -- reached over and tousled his hair. “You always said this is where it ended. But there’s a whole other half left.” 

Her face clouded. It was only for a moment -- Ilya probably wouldn’t even have seen it, if he wasn’t so used to looking for that sad, tired look in her eyes these days -- and when she caught him looking, she quickly mustered a smile again. Still, it made Ilya’s heart sink.  

“Well, maybe I liked your ending better.”

“Mama.” 

“Hush, Ilya. Does it matter?” 

Yes, Ilya thought. Yes, of course it matters. When you’ve been carrying a curse around inside your heart for as long as poor Odette had, of course it mattered if love was real and the prince kept his promise and everything ended happily, the way it was supposed to. But there wasn’t a way to say that that wouldn’t make him sound like a little kid, so Ilya just slouched back in his seat and kicked at the balcony wall until people began to file in again and cast him dirty looks. He stopped. The lights dimmed and the curtain rose. His mother reached over and clasped his hand as the ballet began again. 

Halfway through the third act, Ilya tugged his hand back out of her grip. When the ballet ended, he didn’t speak to her the whole cab ride home. 

The body in the plane wasn’t a body anymore. 

Ilya had thought he knew what two months in the water would do to Greg the photographer and the pilot. He had known this part was coming, and so he had forced himself to imagine it in these three weeks since Shane had agreed to return to the crash. And he had been right, mostly. But knowing did nothing to lessen the horror of it. 

Greg’s clothes were still there. His seatbelt was still on. His hair waved gently in the water, stringy and dark as a patch of weeds on top of a skull that only had strips of flesh still clinging to it. But his eyes were gone. Half of his face was gone. The other half was green and white and so swollen with water it looked more like a mask than a person, rotted and bloating, leering at Ilya. It didn’t matter how far Ilya shoved himself back against the wall of the plane. He couldn’t press himself back far enough or make himself small enough to get out. Wherever he turned, the body was there, swelling larger and larger until it filled the whole cabin. Ilya’s lungs were on fire. He couldn’t move. 

Ilya could not have rescued them both. He would never, not ever, regret choosing Shane. But it didn’t matter. The corpse still glared at him like an accusation: You did this. You left me here. This is your fault. 

Ilya’s lungs were screaming in his chest. He seized the nearest thing he could reach, and fled -- kicking past Greg’s body to the gaping hole where the door had been, kicking up and up until he could see sunlight and sky and the dark, wavering outline of the raft above. 

“They died,” Ilya said a week later. He slammed the passenger door shut and slouched down into the seat. Practice had gone late, and his mother must have been idling in the car waiting for him for a while now; even with the driver’s side window rolled down, the front seat smelled like cigarettes. She raised her eyebrows until Ilya finally huffed and fastened his seatbelt. “That’s what really happened at the end. She didn’t want to be stuck as a swan forever, and he felt like a piece of shit for betraying her --”

“Language, Ilya.”

“-- and so they both gave up and threw themselves into the lake and they died.”

“Well, now you know why I liked your version better.” She flashed him a tired smile. Ilya glowered back. 

“It’s stupid,” he said. She rolled up the window and pulled away from the curb. Ilya shouldered around to face the door and spoke to her reflection. “The ballet is stupid. She probably would’ve been better off just being a swan, instead of having to marry someone horrible like the prince.”

“Horrible?”

“He didn’t love her! He didn’t even wait one night before falling in love with someone else!” 

“It’s only a story,” his mother said. Ilya glared out the window. 

“He should’ve known,” he said. “He should’ve known it wasn’t her at the palace.”

His mother was quiet for a little while. Ilya watched in the glass as she tapped her fingers against the wheel. She reached to the side -- for another cigarette, probably -- but then seemed to think better of it and pulled her hand back again.

“He hurt her,” she agreed at last. “But he didn’t mean to. And she forgave him in the end, didn’t she? Maybe…maybe sometimes life is just very hard, Ilyushka. Maybe it isn’t always as easy as we want it to be, protecting the people we love.” Ilya glowered out the window and didn’t say anything. She sighed. “I think that’s what she was doing, anyway,” she said. “Protecting him. When she went into the lake at the end, I think she did it so he could let her go. So he would not have to live with a curse, like she did.” 

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work, did it?” Ilya muttered. There was a bruise on his forearm from practice. He dug his thumb into it, pressing down until it hurt. “He just jumped in too.” 

“Well, yes,” his mother agreed. Ilya didn’t have to look this time to see her smile. “Sometimes love makes us do very stupid things.” 

When Ilya broke the surface with a gasp, Shane was there.

He was hauling Ilya up onto the raft before Ilya had time to make sense of anything; cursing at him, probably, though it was hard to tell through the ringing in Ilya’s ears. Ilya’s chest was heaving. He was choking on air, so desperate to breathe that it felt like it might kill him. He let Shane manhandle him up onto the raft even as it bucked and threatened to tip under his weight. He kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut. It didn’t do much good, though. Even through his closed eyes he could see his mother’s face, then Greg’s, and then his mother's again. 

“Two minutes!” Shane was still cursing. Ilya latched onto the sound of his voice gratefully, pressing his face into the logs and trying to will his heart to stop hammering in his chest. “You promised you’d come right back, Ilya. You promised --”

“I am fine,” Ilya said. He still couldn’t seem to get enough air into his lungs, whatever he did; the words came out a croak. Before Shane could start shouting again, Ilya let go of the raft and fumbled for him. Without looking, he caught Shane’s hand and pressed whatever it was he’d snatched from the wreck into his palm. “All good. Just -- just need a minute.” 

“A minute?! Ilya, you --” 

“First prize from the plane,” Ilya said, folding Shane’s fingers clumsily shut. “What do you think?” Shane broke off long enough to look at what Ilya had handed him. The silence didn’t last, though, because then he was -- oh god, he was crying -- 

“I’m going to kill you,” Shane said. His pretty voice broke. “These are -- these are fucking sunglasses, Ilya.”

All that for a pair of sunglasses. Of course. Of fucking course. Ilya felt a wild laugh start to rise in his throat. He forced it down and cracked his eyes open instead. 

Shane was a mess. He was less than a foot from Ilya, his arms on the raft, the rest of him in the water, his eyes red and his face all splotchy as though he’d spent the whole two minutes that Ilya was gone crying. Ilya’s sunglasses -- lost on the day of the crash, crusty now with zebra mussels and mud -- were clutched in his hand. Ilya knew, the moment he looked at him, that Shane was furious. He was furious and messy and alive, and Ilya didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful to see anyone in his life. “I’m going to kill you,” Shane said again. Ilya managed a weak smile.

“They are good sunglasses,” he said. “Designer. Maybe if you are nice, we can share them.” Shane wiped furiously at his eyes. 

“Shit,” he said. “Fuck. I’m so mad at you. Ilya, I thought you got stuck down there. I thought…”

“All good,” Ilya said. He forced himself up onto his elbows, though his heart was still racing and his lungs hurt and every muscle in his body seemed to be yelling at him to lay right the fuck back down again. “Just…taking in the sights. I am sorry I scared you.” 

“Taking in the sights,” Shane echoed. Ilya nodded. Then -- because Shane looked like he maybe needed a hug, and Ilya knew that he definitely did -- he tugged on Shane’s arm until Shane let himself be pulled higher up onto the raft. Ilya draped himself on top of him. It wasn’t much of an embrace. But Shane’s body was warm from the sun and his chest rose and fell. He was alive. Ilya could touch him and hold him and Shane could yell about how mad he was and Ilya could crack jokes about it and Shane was alive to tell him what an asshole he was being. There were dead bodies in the water, but Shane hadn’t seen them. Shane was here and safe and his.

“There is a change of plans, sweetheart,” Ilya said. He didn’t mean for the endearment to slip out, and immediately he felt himself flush. Shane didn’t say anything, though. Probably he was still too mad at Ilya to have noticed. “We are not going to take turns on this anymore. Okay? You stay up here and guard the raft and all the wonderful things I bring back.”

“What, like your sunglasses?” Shane mumbled. His voice was ragged. Ilya kissed his shoulder. 

“Yes,”  he agreed. “And while you stay up here and do that very important job, I will be the one going back down.”

“No.” 

“Yes, solnyshko.” 

“No. We agreed. We said we’d take turns. You just nearly drowned down there, you think I’m going to let you --”

“If you try to go down, I will leave,” Ilya cut in. He raised his head. Shane was already glaring at him. It took every ounce of strength Ilya had not to lean forward and kiss him. “I will tear up your raft and swim away and let the whole fucking plane rot at the bottom of the lake. Okay? And then you and I, we can freeze to death this winter, or be eaten by a bear. And it will be your fault.” 

Shane had mostly been scared before, but he looked furious now. He shoved himself away from Ilya, pushing back from the raft and into the water. “You don’t get to decide that,” he said. His voice was shaking. “We agreed to take turns.”

“So I am calling a new play.”

“This isn’t fucking hockey, Ilya. You’re not my captain.”

“Shane…”

“It’s because of the bodies, isn’t it?” Shane said. His eyes were red like he wanted to start crying again, though he didn’t look one whit less angry. “You think I can’t handle it.” 

Ilya’s lungs had finally stopped burning; his heart was beating normally again. He felt more exhausted, though, than he had when he first surfaced. 

“You are the bravest person I know, Shane Hollander,” he said. “The next time it is time to do something big and stupid and crazy, I promise it can be your turn. But not today. If you try to go down, I swear on my mother’s grave I will leave.” 

Shane didn’t know about Ilya's mother. That, maybe, was what made him hesitate, treading water and staring at Ilya. Whatever he was thinking, though, it didn’t take long before the anger returned. His eyes narrowed; his jaw tightened. “Fuck you,” Shane said. “I could leave too.” Ilya shook his head. 

“You won’t.”

“I will.”

“No,” Ilya said again. “You won’t.” He shoved himself clumsily off the raft and into the water again. He saw his mother’s face, and then Greg’s, and then his mother’s. He saw Shane, looking at him as though, if Ilya went through with this, Shane would never, ever forgive him. Ilya dredged up a smile. It felt like a bruise, the way that it pulled at his face. “I will bring up something better than sunglasses next time, okay? Wait right here. Won’t take long.” 

“Damn you,” Shane whispered. 

“I know,” Ilya said. He wanted to kiss Shane. He wanted never to have met him. He wanted his old life back -- before the plane crash, before the forest, before Shane’s stupid freckles and his stupid smile and the way he was crying, he was so angry at Ilya right now. Ilya wished he didn’t know what two dead bodies looked like. He wanted to do whatever selfish, horrible thing he had to do to keep Shane from knowing that, too.

Ilya wanted to kiss him.

He drew in a deep breath instead. He gave Shane one last small, stupid smile. "Won't be long," he promised again, and dove back down.

Chapter End Notes

We will get more lighthearted again, I promise!! But not just yet lol.

Next time: Shane is angry. Ilya doesn't know how to fix it.

Chapter 12: August 12, 2010. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

It had been more than a week since they’d returned from the plane crash, and Shane still wasn’t speaking to Ilya. 

Well -- not all the way not speaking. Shane would say some things. “Put out the fire, Rozanov” or “Pass me that spear, Rozanov” or “Piss off, Rozanov,” when Ilya’s heart got the better of his head and he bumbled across some invisible line, trying to win his way back into Shane’s affections. Mostly, though, Shane ignored him, as best as you could ignore someone who was the only other someone within the nearest million miles. As best as you could ignore someone who was supposed to be your best friend.

Ilya didn’t blame Shane, obviously. If their roles had been reversed and Ilya had been the one forced to huddle in safety on the raft while Shane rooted around in the bowels of the plane crash with no one but a dead body for company, Ilya would have been pretty fucking pissed with him, too. It was hard, though. It was hard not to touch Shane. It was hard not to fall asleep next to him. It was hard not to look his way with a smile. It was really fucking hard to know that, with every will in the world to do otherwise, all Ilya had managed was to fuck things up beyond fixing instead. 

Shane's well-deserved-but-bitter animus and Ilya’s broken heart aside, their trip to the plane crash had been a resounding success. Two undamaged trunks of clothes, which had yielded shoes, shirts, fur coats, hats, and even a couple of pairs of sunglasses not completely caked in mud. Not one emergency kit, but two. Thermal blankets. A pair of sleeping bags. A tiny metal cooking set. First aid kits, chlorine packets. A tarp. And, most precious of all, a hatchet, a rifle, and a box of fifty shells. 

It was worth it. If they were really stuck here for the long run -- and it really, really seemed like they were stuck here for the long run -- then they had a chance, now, of not freezing to death or starving when the first snowfall came. Shane might never speak to Ilya again. Ilya would be haunted till the day he died by the sight of Greg's dead body. But they would eke out another few months here. A year, even. 

So it was worth it. Even if Shane hated him forever, even if Ilya was red-eyed and drooping from exhaustion, it was worth it. Who knew: they might even live long enough to escape from this fucking place. They could play hockey again -- sleep in a real bed again -- go to Boston, go to Montreal, and forget each other even existed. They could grow up and move on and deal with bigger problems than the sorry state of Ilya's heart.

Ilya was miserable. Shane was furious. Still, it was worth it. 

If their roles had been reversed -- if it had been Ilya trapped on the surface, while Shane was down there below in the plane -- Ilya probably would have held onto that grudge forever. He didn't think he'd ever have forgiven Shane for making him feel so afraid. But, to no one’s surprise, it turned out that Shane Hollander was a better person than Ilya in this and every other way. 

It only took eight days before Shane cracked. 

The night had grown late enough that, had this been a week and some change earlier, before the crash, Ilya would have long been in bed. It was dark except for their campfire, and chilly. There were clouds covering most of the stars, and a damp, heavy feel to the air that meant it was probably going to rain soon. Even the smoke from the fire felt sluggish, as though it was barely holding back a yawn and just waiting for Ilya to call it a night. Ilya, though, stayed where he was, his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs, one of the fancy designer sweatshirts from the crash pulled low so that the sleeves covered his palms. He was glowering into the fire. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tired. But each time he closed his eyes, the first thing that greeted him was Mama’s face, sightless and pale on the bathroom floor. He’d blink that away, and there was Greg, bloated and eyeless, somehow still staring an accusation. Useless. Asshole. Selfish. Blink -- Mama. Blink -- Greg. Blink -- 

“You look like shit, Ilya.” 

Ilya startled so badly it was probably only good luck he didn’t tumble into the flames. He caught himself with an oath and blinked himself into the present in time to stare as Shane sank down to the ground next to him. 

It shouldn’t have been such a shock, hearing Shane say his name. But, well. It had been eight days. Nine, nearly. And practically all Ilya had done during that time was mope, and all Shane had done was avoid him, and -- 

“I’m still mad at you,” Shane said, which was 1) no more than Ilya deserved and 2) devastating all the same. Ilya didn’t know what to do with the tumult of emotions in his heart. He scowled, then slumped his shoulders, then began to lean sideways into Shane, then caught himself and straightened up again so fast he nearly toppled over again. Shane, either oblivious or choosing to ignore Ilya’s flustered indecision, just followed Ilya’s gaze into the depths of the fire. “This isn’t me forgiving you,” he added. 

“No. I know.” 

“You agreed we’d take turns out there, Ilya.”

“Yes,” Ilya said. He had. 

“You broke your word.” Yes, he’d done that, too. “I didn’t know if you would come back up again, each time you went down. Having to sit there, not knowing, it -- it was the worst feeling in the world. You hurt me.” No use protesting that, either. Ilya would never, not ever, deliberately hurt Shane. But he had managed to do it anyway, like an idiot. He had. Of course he had. 

“I know,” Ilya said. Then, without the slightest hope that it would do any good, he added, quietly, “I am sorry.” 

Shane didn’t answer. But he didn’t move away, either.

“When you came back up again, that first time,” Shane began at last, haltingly, after the silence between them had stretched long enough that the last of the logs on the campfire had broken and the fire itself had dimmed down to a simmering, ember red, “You mentioned your mom. Do you remember? You said…”

“I swore on her grave I would leave, if you tried to swim down,” Ilya finished tiredly, when Shane trailed off. “Da. I remember.”

There was another long, strained pause before Shane spoke. If he was searching for a gentler way to phrase his question, though, he didn’t find it, because in the end, all he blurted out was, “Is she really…?” 

“Dead? Yes.” 

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

“Is okay. I was a kid, so.” Ilya shrugged, then risked a quick glance sideways. Shane was chewing on his lower lip, still staring into the fire. “Was a long time ago.”

“Was she sick?”

Ilya unwound his arms from around his legs long enough to shove his palms against his eyes. He pressed down until they ached. He didn’t want to have this conversation. He didn’t want to exist in a world where Shane hated him. He wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep until Shane forgot why he was so mad, until everything could go back to the way it was, until he stopped seeing Greg and Mama’s dead faces every time he closed his fucking eyes. “Very sick,” he said. The words came out muffled. Shane was silent. “So sick she took a whole bottle of pills, and did not wake up.” Shane drew in a quick, sharp breath. Ilya didn’t look up. “I found her,” he added. And at that, to his utter mortification, his voice suddenly cracked, and he began to cry. 

He was in Shane’s arms the next moment. Shane was pulling Ilya close and bundling him into his lap, and Ilya was weeping, so exhausted and so heartsick and so, so tired of Shane hating him that it was all he could do to shove his face against Shane’s neck before the wail rising in his throat had time to tear loose. “Sorry,” he gasped, “I’m sorry, I --”

“I’m sorry,” Shane said -- and, oh God, as if Ilya bawling like a baby wasn’t bad enough, now he’d made Shane start crying, too -- “I didn’t know. Ilya, the plane --” 

“I see her,” Ilya said. The words felt like bile on his tongue. Each one hurt. Still, somehow, he couldn't seem to get himself to shut up. “And then I see him. Over and over. I cannot sleep. I cannot -- fuck --” 

“Ilya.”

“You see now why it had to be me, not you?” Ilya's voice was a mess, words jumbled up with tears as he scrambled to press himself closer to Shane. Shane’s arms tightened around him. “Too late already for me. But I do not want you to ever know what it is like, seeing that. Not you, solnyshko.” 

“You don’t get to decide that alone, Ilya,” Shane said. His hand was in Ilya’s hair; his mouth was against Ilya’s ear. “We’re in this together, remember? That’s what we agreed. You and me together.” 

“Prosti menya. Ya tebya lyublyu. Prosti, prosti…” 

“Shh,” Shane said. He held Ilya, and rocked him, while Ilya cried and cried. “I know, Ilya. I’m sorry, too.” 

Ilya didn’t remember Shane putting out the fire or dragging them both to their feet. He didn’t remember stumbling into the cave, or collapsing together onto the pile of blankets. He didn’t remember closing his eyes and folding himself into Shane, or Shane’s strong arm tucking itself around his waist. He didn’t remember when his tears finally gave way to an exhausted, stupefied sleep. 

Ilya never remembered any of that. But when he woke up the sky was gray, raindrops pattered against the stone roof of their shelter, the air smelled fresh and clean, and Shane was still there, warm and gently breathing, asleep at Ilya's side.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: the boys' relationship turns a corner.

Chapter 13: October 10, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

Firstly, THANK YOU for the comments and kudos -- they mean more (and are more motivating!) than I can say!

Secondly, please note the rating change! Honestly I think this is probably more of a hard M than an E, but better safe than sorry :)

Finally, CW for internalized homophobia. Happy endings ahead for everyone, I promise!!

This was a nice hotel -- the nicest Shane had ever been in, probably -- and when he fell back onto the bed, the mattress felt like heaven beneath him. Like sinking into a cloud. Like a million dollars. He had been all dressed up in his nicest suit, and now he was naked, and he didn’t remember when that had happened but a frisson of excitement curled in his stomach, hot and sweet, all the same. Even if he didn't know how he'd gotten here, he knew what was coming next. 

The city drifted past the glass windows like they were underwater. The light touched everything: the bed, the carpet. His skin. The handsome face above him, the beautiful hazel eyes, the strong, muscled arms coming to rest on either side of his head, that smile and that laugh, those lips, all for him, and Shane closed his eyes, breathless already with longing, waiting -- 

It was nighttime. The windows were open and the room smelled duskily of pine and woodsmoke. A warm breeze rippled the curtains. Everywhere Shane moved, he was tangled up in naked limbs and warm skin -- arms around his chest, a bare thigh between his thighs, hands stroking his skin purposefully, reverently, then sliding lower until he bucked against their touch and gasped. A mouth against the back of his neck, hot breath against his ear. A firm hand gripped him, thumb sliding over the head of his cock. “You like?” murmured a voice, squeezing his cock and laughing, and Shane laughed breathlessly too, then gasped. Yes, he liked, he liked, he liked…

The locker room showers were empty; the other players and the press had long since gone home. The only things Shane could see through the billowing steam were the outlines of tiles and a few hazy benches. He moved under the nearest showerhead and closed his eyes, letting his shoulders fall and the hot water sluice down his back with a sigh. It had been a hard game; his muscles were achingly sore, and his limbs felt heavy and tired and good. He reached down to loosely fist his cock. He pumped his hand once, twice, feeling the muscles in his arm work. This had been his game to win, hadn’t it? -- and he had won. He felt desire settle under his skin, heavy and restless, turning his cheeks red, filling his cock. He had been good. He had been the best. He had -- 

“What -- Hollander wins the game, Metros say thank you so much, now piss off?” Shane’s eyes flew open as a familiar, husky voice scoffed. “Hah! Some team.” 

Fuck. 

The locker room showers had been empty. There was someone else here now, though -- bare torso, toweled waist, golden, curly hair darkened with water, that beautiful, dangerous smile that set Shane's whole heart aflame…

“Rozanov,” Shane said. The moment seemed to hang in the air between them, the steam and Shane’s voice and Ilya’s shit-eating grin, all motionless, all waiting. Then it snapped; the tension broke. The room rushed back again, and suddenly Ilya was there. 

Ilya was there. He was crowding against Shane, pushing him around and then pressing him back until Shane's back hit the locker room wall. Shane melted against the tiles, and still Ilya came closer, pressing against him until there was nowhere they weren’t touching. Ilya’s chest was warm and slick with water. His nose bumped Shane’s. When he spoke, Shane felt Ilya’s breath brush against his lips.

“Is okay,” Ilya murmured. At the sound of his voice, Shane’s eyes fluttered closed. “You can celebrate with me.” 

Shane felt Ilya’s towel slip loose and fall to the floor. Even with his eyes closed, Shane could tell Ilya was as hard as he was. Ilya shifted his hips closer, just a little, nudging their cocks together until Shane gasped, then cursed. Shane rocked his own hips forward, chasing Ilya’s touch.

Ilya’s hands were on his hips. Ilya was laughing into his mouth. When had they started kissing? Shane couldn’t remember. He couldn’t think of anything except for how good it felt, touching Ilya like this. 

“You want my dick, Hollander?” Ilya said. “I know. Next time.”

“Rozanov…”

“You will like this, Mr. Hat Trick.” Ilya smiled against Shane’s lips. “Mr. MVP.”

“Fuck, Rozanov, I need -- “

“Anything,” Ilya promised, and dropped to his knees.

The dreams started in the summer. 

At first Shane tried to ignore them. He’d wake up before Ilya, strip down, and douse the fantasy of Ilya’s touch with a morning swim -- or, when that failed, duck behind a well-placed bit of brush to hastily and shame-facedly jerk off. It was normal enough, he reasoned. He was nineteen. Now that each day wasn’t a desperate scramble for survival, his brain had time to dwell on the fact that it had been months since the last time he’d gotten laid. And if the only other person around happened to figure rather prominently in his fantasies -- well, so what? That was just making do. It wasn't as though his brain had a hell of a lot else to work with, considering. 

But the seasons changed, and even with all their dearly-purchased wealth from the plane crash they were still no nearer to being rescued than they had been before, and meanwhile the dreams kept coming, each one more vivid and real than the last. Each touch left Shane reeling, convinced he could still feel Ilya on his skin even after he woke up. Each imagined kiss left him staring at Ilya's lips, aching and ashamed, desperate for more. The dreams came once a week. Then twice a week. Then practically every single fucking night. 

By the time September rolled into a glorious, flame-red October, even Shane had to admit that he might have something of a problem.

It wasn’t that he thought Ilya would mind, exactly. Ilya had been the one to kiss Shane on the plane, after all. He had been the one who'd said that Shane had beautiful freckles. But near death experiences and Ilya’s dubious taste aside, the problem was that Shane wasn’t…you know. 

He liked girls. He liked talking to girls, and spending time around girls, and kissing girls, and having sex with girls. If he used to look at the other players in the locker room, every now and then -- if he'd noticed their bodies, the way they laughed and roughhoused with each other -- if he'd sometimes thought about what it would be like, to be touched like that -- well, that was just an occupational hazard. It wasn’t like he could help it. It definitely didn’t mean that he was --

Well. It didn’t mean that he was like that. 

He was a hockey player! He was a fucking hockey player. Number two draft pick, headed to the best team in the MLH just as soon as he managed to get out of this goddamn place. He was going to be the best hockey player in the entire fucking league, one day. A couple of Cups under his belt, and his number retired and hanging from a flag under the roof of the Centre Bell. 

He had spent his whole life becoming the best. He had spent his whole goddamn life doing every single fucking thing right.

So he wasn’t gay. 

He wasn’t.

There was no bed this time -- no hotel room, no penthouse, not even the locker room showers. They were sprawled out under the stars instead, tangled together and kissing, naked and hard and moving against each other lazily. The moon hung heavily in the sky, spilling past the trees into the inky black water of the lake. Waves lapped against the shore. Crickets hummed. A bird called, somewhere. The nighttime breeze was cool but not cold, and the dirt-and-pine-needle ground under Shane’s back was still warm, remembering the sun. 

There was no fantasy Ilya in Shane’s arms tonight. This was Ilya himself. This was Shane’s Ilya. Hockey muscles turned rangy with hard living and hunger, curls greasy and too long, the scruffy facial hair he could never quite manage to shave away with his cheap beat-up razor chaffing Shane’s skin as they kissed. Ilya was murmuring in Russian, and that was familiar. He was obnoxiously heavy, resting his whole weight on top of Shane, and that was familiar too. He kissed Shane as though there was nowhere else he’d rather be. He kissed Shane as though he could kiss him forever. And Shane felt -- 

-- giddy. Giddy. Like there was nowhere else he’d rather be, either. Like he could go on kissing and touching Ilya forever, too. 

“Solnyshko,” Ilya murmured. He reached between them and tugged on Shane’s cock, twisting his hand until Shane was cursing into their kiss. Ilya’s fingers were rough and calloused. He grinned and nipped at Shane’s lips again. “Moy malen'kiy bobr-skaut.” Shane curled his fingers in Ilya’s hair, tugging his head up until Ilya’s eyes blinked open and met his, hazel turned black and shining in the dark. 

“You’re always calling me that,” Shane said breathlessly. He rocked into Ilya’s grip. Ilya twisted his hand obligingly. “Tell me what it means.” 

Ilya hummed. “It means ‘pain in my ass’,” he said, mock-serious. He ducked his head and worried at Shane’s throat, mouthing little, biting kisses along his pulse, then laving each spot with his tongue. Shane let him, his breath escaping with a huff. “It means ‘worst hockey player.’ ‘Draft pick number two.’”

“Liar.” 

“Yes, liar,” Ilya agreed easily. As though he couldn’t keep himself away any longer, he leaned up and claimed Shane’s mouth again. He kissed him slowly and sweetly, even as his hand set every nerve in Shane’s body ablaze. “I cannot tell you every nice thing I say about you, Hollander. Would not want it to go to your pretty head.” 

“I already know bobr-skaut. Tell me what ‘solnyshko’ means.” 

“Mm. No.” 

“Ilya.” 

“Shane,” Ilya countered, lingering on the “a” and drawing Shane’s name out. He was grinning, and God, Shane was so crazy about him, he was so -- “Fine. Maybe if you are nice, I will tell you.”

Shane smiled back. He shifted his hips so that their cocks rubbed together, making Ilya hiss. “I’m always nice to you.”

“Ha!” 

Shane reached down. He batted Ilya out of the way and took both of them in his hand. Ilya, getting the idea, began to rut into Shane’s grip, and for a while the only sound was the sound of them fucking, panting, punching breaths into each other’s mouths and the slide of their dicks together, the stutter in Ilya’s voice as he moaned Shane’s name.

“I’m always nice,” Shane said at last, his voice unsteady. Ilya stared at him dazedly, his mouth open, his bare chest slick with sweat, so close to coming it didn’t look like he’d understood a word that Shane had said. 

“Prove it,” he managed at last, thrusting his dick into Shane’s grip. The words came out a groan.

“Sweetheart,” Shane breathed. It was so easy, saying it. Ilya was heavy and warm on top of him, the moon in his eyes, his hair a tangled halo around his face, his cock thick and hot and perfect in Shane’s hand. Ilya, strong and beautiful and his and his and his. “Ilya. Baby.” 

“Shane…”

“Sweetheart,” Shane said again. It came out ragged this time, his voice breaking around the word as he came.

Shane woke up in their bed, cuddled up under the blankets next to Ilya with his arm around Ilya’s waist, Ilya’s name on his tongue and his dick so hard he could have wept.

He woke up. It was another moment before awareness sank in, though -- just long enough to stutter out Ilya’s name with a groan, to grind his hips once, twice, hard, against Ilya’s thigh, before Ilya's throat cleared, and Shane froze. 

Too late, he looked up. Ilya was awake, the warm, sleepy look in his eyes quickly fading into confusion. He stared at Shane. Shane stared back. Then, horribly, the look in Ilya's eyes changed again, and he opened his mouth. 

Before Ilya could say anything, Shane shoved himself back, scrambled to his feet, and fled. 

He chose his hiding spot well enough that it took Ilya nearly an hour to find him. 

Even the utter mortification of waking up and finding himself humping Ilya’s leg hadn’t been enough for his dick to get the goddamn message -- and so Shane had had to finish himself off behind a copse of trees, and then he'd had to strip down and scrub himself raw in the freezing lake. Finally, shivering cold and red with shame, he’d thrown his clothes on again, tucked himself into the smallest, most uncomfortable corner of the shoreline that he could find, and waited.

The sun rose higher. The frost vanished from the pine-needle ground. The minutes ticked past as Shane’s mind turned over and around and in on itself, loathing and embarrassment and tears all jumbled together. He was curled up on the edge of a nasty, seaweed-crusted rock at the edge of the water, shivering a little, his arms wrapped around his knees to hold himself together. A quarter of an hour passed. A half hour. Three quarters. And suddenly it was mid-morning, and Ilya was there. 

Somehow, with a stealthiness he seemed to possess at no other time, Ilya had made his way under the boughs of a half-rotten pine tree and down an incline of slippery, moss-covered rocks, past a field of smelly, crunchy dried seaweed to scale Shane’s boulder and drape one of their fur coats around his shoulders. Shane cracked his eyes open and peered at him, red-eyed. Ilya smiled back and leaned sideways into him, so heavy he nearly knocked Shane into the water. 

“Found you,” Ilya said. 

I’m sorry. It was right there, on the tip of Shane’s tongue. He’d been thinking of nothing else this whole fucking hour, nothing else but I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I fucked this all up and I’m so sorry the whole time he'd spent scrubbing himself clean in the freezing fucking lake, the whole time he’d crouched here shivering on this horrible fucking rock. What happened earlier didn’t mean anything. You’re my best friend. Please say that we’re okay. I’m sorry. 

“I’m not gay,” he blurted out instead, and immediately flushed red. 

Ilya -- because he was the kindest person in the world, and a much, much better friend than Shane deserved -- didn’t laugh. Instead he just hummed, keeping his shoulder pressed up against Shane’s and following Shane’s gaze out across the hazy gray fog of the lake. “Okay,” he said, while Shane let his forehead thunk back against his knees and contemplated whether pitching himself into the lake and letting the water swallow him whole would do anything to make this whole situation less mortifying. Through the pounding of his pulse in his ears he heard Ilya add, almost as an afterthought, “I am.” 

Time slowed to a crawl, then stopped. Shane lifted his head. 

Ilya was still staring out across the lake. If it wasn’t for the restless way his fingers were tapping against his forearm, Shane almost might have thought he was bored. “You’re what?” Shane said, numbly. 

Ilya shrugged. “Gay,” he said.

“No, you’re not.” 

“I am.”

“You’re not!” Shane couldn’t seem to stop his voice from rising. He couldn’t seem to think, he couldn’t... “You were -- fuck, you were just telling me about Svetlana two days ago, you --” 

“Okay,” Ilya interrupted, still sounding horribly, infuriatingly calm. “Fine. Not all the way gay." He made a so-so motion with his hand, then shrugged again. "Kind of gay. Same thing.” 

“That’s not -- what the fuck does that even mean, Ilya?!” 

“Tss! You are right in my ear, solnyshko. Stop yelling.”

“Don’t call me that!” 

Ilya huffed and glanced sideways, casting Shane a quick, exasperated look. “It is fine, Hollander,” he said. Even now, with Shane spiraling into a panic attack and yelling in his ear, Ilya mostly just sounded fond. “That is all. Whatever you are. Gay, not gay. Whatever. It is all fine.” 

Shane had to take several deep breaths before he trusted himself to speak. “This morning,” he said at last, unsteadily. Ilya was still watching him. It took everything Shane had in him not to close his eyes. It took everything he had in him not to run. “What happened. It was an accident. It was just my brain being stupid. I don’t think of you like that, Ilya. You’re my best friend, and I don’t want you to think…” 

He trailed off, not knowing how to end that sentence without crying again. Ilya, though, only watched him, his eyes half-lidded and his face quiet in the golden morning light. 

“I was fifteen the first time,” Ilya said at last, after a few minutes of quiet. His shoulder was still warm against Shane’s. His voice was warm too, and gentle, any trace of boredom or irritation from earlier gone. “With my coach’s son. And it was good. It was fun. It is fun with girls, too. It does not matter, okay? Not to me. You surprised me, a little,” he added, apparently unable to help himself. Somehow, impossibly, Shane's blush deepened. Ilya grinned and leaned forward to press a quick, chaste kiss to Shane’s cheek. “But it was okay. More fun to wake up to your dick than to a fucking wolfbird, da?” 

Despite himself, Shane choked out a laugh. Ilya chucked his chin, then kissed him again. “It is all fine, solnyshko,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet and made a show of stretching. “Breakfast whenever you are ready, yes? Five star, gourmet. Raw fucking fish and birds' eggs, made special just for you.”

Shane felt his throat close. “Ilya…”

“Don’t take too long,” Ilya added. There was nothing but affection in his voice now. He ruffled Shane’s hair, then began to pick his way down, off of the boulder and back towards their stretch of the shoreline again. “Ya tebya lyublyu, okay?”

"Ilya."

One last wave, and Ilya was gone.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: Ilya is "kind of gay." Shane has no idea what to do with that.

Chapter 14: October 24, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

Shane woke up before Ilya. It was early enough that the gaps in the cave walls were still dark; the world outside was very quiet, and except for the sound of Ilya’s slow, steady breathing, the world inside their shelter was quiet too. It was bitingly cold everywhere except for where they touched, so Shane shuffled nearer to Ilya and tucked himself under his arm. Ilya mumbled something in Russian and, still asleep, curled his arm around Shane’s back, drawing him close. Shane closed his eyes. 

He had been dreaming about Ilya again. Not the usual kind of dream, thankfully; although, to his deep consternation, those still came more nights than not, regular as clockwork. Tonight’s dream, though, had been -- different. Softer. The lake had still been there, and the woods, although the two of them must have been in a cabin or a cottage;  the memory of a mattress and clean pillows stirred in Shane’s mind, even as the edges of the dream began to fade. They had been lying together, more or less exactly the same way they were lying together now. Only, in his dream, they had been kissing.

Just kissing. Not even the kind of kissing that went anywhere, just -- just kissing, just to kiss. Which wasn’t to say that it was gentle: even in Shane’s dream, Ilya was all lean muscle and rough skin and more than a little pushy. Kissing him wasn’t anything at all like kissing girls. But the way it made Shane feel -- 

Shane wasn’t an idiot. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten about those last few moments aboard the plane, or that he hadn’t noticed how often Ilya kissed him on the cheek, or the temple, or the top of his head, or the back of his shoulder, or the tip of his nose, once, or…well. All the fucking time, really. But Shane had always somewhat vaguely chalked that up to Ilya-being-Ilya. Obnoxious, and affectionate, and, you know…European… 

The point was that it didn’t mean anything, when Ilya kissed him. It was just Ilya being a pain. It was just Ilya being sweet. It had never meant anything before, and even if Ilya was “kind of gay” now, it still didn’t mean anything. Just because Ilya liked boys and girls didn’t mean that Ilya liked him. 

It was different, though, in Shane’s dream. The way dream-Ilya kissed him, it made Shane feel warm and wanted and safe. The way dream-Ilya kissed him -- that was what it felt like to have somebody, wasn’t it? That was what it felt like to kiss someone who loved you. 

Caught up in the usual disaster of his thoughts, Shane didn’t notice that Ilya was awake until Ilya, with a heavy, long-suffering sigh, moved his arm up and started patting at Shane’s face, smacking his nose and his forehead before finally clapping his palm against Shane’s cheek. “Oh, good,” Ilya mumbled. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet. His voice was still low and burry with sleep. “I thought for a moment it was only a dream.” 

Shane reached up and slotted their fingers together, tugging Ilya’s hand down a little so that his fingers stopped poking into Shane’s eyebrow. “What did you think was a dream?” he asked. Ilya shrugged, still without opening his eyes. 

“This,” he said. “The crash. The cave. Shane Hollander, my horrible archrival, waking me up so fucking early all of the fucking time.”

“I didn’t wake you up,” Shane protested. Ilya heaved another sigh, finally cracking one eye open enough to peer at Shane through the darkness. 

“There he is,” he intoned. Their hands were still twined together. Ilya tugged Shane’s hand closer and pressed a kiss to his thumb. Shane felt himself blush and was suddenly, painfully glad that it was still too dark for Ilya to see. “The most boring hockey player in the world. What is it, three in the morning? You are worse than a fucking alarm clock, solnyshko.” 

Shane smiled; he couldn’t help it. “Better not let anyone catch you going around calling me that,” he said. Ilya’s hand was warm. Shane rubbed his thumb over Ilya’s knuckles, then gently tugged his hand away. “They might get the wrong idea.” Ilya sighed, then yawned. 

“Yes, true. Fine. I take it back. I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t!” With a suddenness that caught Shane entirely off guard, Ilya rolled over on top of him, ignoring Shane’s laughing, yelping protests as he peppered his face in kisses. “I love you,” Ilya crooned, making himself as obnoxiously heavy as he could, while Shane, swearing, tried vainly to shove him away. “My favorite beaver scout. My archrival number one.” He finished with a great, smacking wet kiss to Shane’s cheek; then, while Shane was still catching his breath and laughing, he rolled off of him again, closed his eyes, and nuzzled deeper under their pile of thermal blankets and fur coats. “Fuck, it is cold. Remind me why we are awake again?”

“I have to piss,” Shane said. Feeling suddenly daring, he leaned forward and pecked a quick, chaste kiss of his own to Ilya’s forehead. He thought he saw Ilya's cheeks turn pink, although that might only have been a trick of the dim light. “Go back to bed. I’ll be back soon.” 

Ilya grumbled at the loss of body heat; but Shane ignored him, and soon enough he was outside, his breath steaming in the freezing morning air, the grass crunching beneath him from the frost as he shifted his weight. Ilya was right -- it was fucking cold. Usually he went a little ways into the forest to piss; but today the thought of returning back to their warm nest of blankets and Ilya’s grouchy, affectionate embrace was too tempting, and so he made for the nearest scraggly old oak tree instead, already thinking longingly of the dream-cabin again as he reached for the waistband of his sweatpants. 

All of a sudden, from behind one of the gnarled roots of the tree, an animal jumped out. 

Shane didn’t scream. Whatever story Ilya liked to spin about it afterwards, he didn’t scream. Yelped a little, maybe, because it was fucking startling, when he had his dick out ready to piss and a goddamn fucking fox leapt out of the grass towards him. He yelped, stumbled back, tripped on a tree root, and fell. The fox, equally startled, splayed its paws and froze. It was holding something brown and fluffy and weakly twitching in its mouth. Shane stared. The fox stared. Finally the fox, apparently deciding that, flat on his ass or not, Shane was a problem it’d rather not deal with, dropped whatever it was that was in its mouth and fled. 

Shane stared. The rabbit -- because it was a rabbit, velvety soft and so plump it made Shane’s mouth water, just looking at it -- wobbled to its feet, gave one good look around, and then, apparently deciding that life wasn’t worth it, toppled down dead. 

Ilya wandered out of the cave with one of their fur coats wrapped around him like a blanket, barefoot despite the frost on the ground. “Is it a wolf?” he called warily, stopping a few feet past the entrance and peering at Shane through the gray half-light. “I am not coming to save you if it is a wolf.” 

“It’s not a wolf,” Shane said. His heart finally began to slow, even as his face split into a grin. He pushed himself to his feet; then, remembering himself, blushed and hastily tucked himself back in before jogging forward to where the rabbit lay, still warm, on the ground. “It’s breakfast.”

Chapter End Notes

Next time: the boys go hunting.

Chapter 15: November 19, 2010. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

Happy two month posting anniversary to this silly fic! Have another chapter to celebrate 🥳

Ilya nestled the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, closed one eye, and squinted. Even wrapped up in two sweatshirts and a fur coat, one of their thermal blankets beneath him to keep out the snow and Shane Hollander, warm and fidgety, cuddled up against his side, he was fucking freezing. They had been out here for hours now, huddled behind a hummock of snow while around them dawn turned to mid-morning turned to late morning, all because Shane insisted that he had spotted a herd of deer in this clearing two days ago, and then he had insisted that the best time to hunt deer was ass-o’clock in the morning, and then he had insisted that they had to go hunting together, because apparently freezing to death behind a snowbank was more fun when you had someone there to freeze to death along with you.

Which, okay, yes, in fairness, Ilya had never once turned down an excuse to snuggle up with Shane, and he wasn’t about to start now. But even so.

The trouble all began the morning that Shane killed that rabbit. Shane, because he was competitive as fuck, had wasted no time setting his sights higher. “We’ll get a deer next time,” he’d said confidently, as though he’d had anything to do with catching the rabbit besides shrieking like a banshee and scaring the poor thing to death. Still, what was Ilya supposed to do? Tell him that’s crazy? Tell him neither of us know a fucking thing about hunting? Tell him no? Say no to Shane, to his Shane? Impossible. 

But that was three weeks ago. Their last, sinfully delicious mouthful of rabbit stew was no more now than a distant memory. The little brown pelt, haphazardly skinned into more-or-less a miniature blanket by Shane, was tucked cozily down at the foot of their bed; a little smelly and crunchy, maybe, but good for keeping their feet warm now that stupid Canada had decided it was close enough to winter for snow. At Shane's behest, they’d gone out “hunting” practically every day since then. But, apart from seven fewer shells out of their precious stash of fifty, they didn’t have a fucking thing to show for it. 

Still, Shane insisted. And Ilya, utterly helpless in the face of those freckles and those eyes, followed. 

That was just the story of Ilya's life these days, wasn't it? Shane swore he'd die without Ilya in one breath, then called them best friends the next. Shane wasn't gay, never mind that sometimes he woke up with his dick hard, panting Ilya's name. It was all fucking confusing. And so Ilya just -- followed Shane’s lead. Even when Shane himself didn't seem to have the first fucking clue what he wanted. Even when every new twist and turn felt like a fresh knife in Ilya's heart.

It would have been easier, if they hadn't meant anything to each other. If this was the beginning again, back when Shane was just a pretty face and some hockey statistics, Ilya might have kissed him. Who knows, he might even have asked Shane if he could suck his dick. It was too late for that now, though. What would he do now, if Shane pushed him away? What would he do, if Shane looked at him with those beautiful eyes, shook his head, and said, "Ilya. Stop. You know it's not like that." 

Shane loved him. Ilya knew that Shane loved him. Only, when Shane said it, he never meant it the way that Ilya meant it. He never meant, I love you, and it kills me. He never meant, I'm yours, you're mine, you're it, you're everything.

“There,” Shane murmured, breaking into the melancholy spiral of Ilya's thoughts. He was pressed near enough against Ilya’s side that his breath gusted, warm and a little damp, against Ilya’s ear, and Ilya had to squeeze both eyes shut to keep from doing something stupid. Like leaning closer. Like taking Shane’s hand. Shane, blissfully unaware of just what he was doing to Ilya’s heart, poked him. “Do you see them? Two deer right over there, between the trees.” 

Between the trees -- as though shooting a shitty collapsible rifle was as easy as shooting a hockey puck. As though there was a chance in hell Ilya would manage to hit a deer with a whole fucking forest in the way. Shane poked him again. Ilya swallowed down a sigh and dutifully opened his eyes. 

Sure enough, there were two -- no, three -- deer on the other side of the clearing, not more than thirty feet, maybe, from where the two of them were crouched in their wretched little hovel in the snow. They were right in the middle of a thicket of young birch trees, their bodies stocky with winter fat, their brown fur coarse and shaggy, their spindly legs stepping daintily through the snow as they moved closer to the trees and began to strip off the last of the withered autumn leaves. Ilya could practically hear their teeth working, they were so close. Despite himself, he felt a shiver of excitement run under his skin. 

“You are not allowed to hate me if I miss,” he warned under his breath. He risked a quick glance sideways to where Shane was watching him, his eyes bright, his cheeks flushed pink. Fuck. Ilya snapped his gaze back to the deer, though it was already too late; he could feel an answering blush already rising in his cheeks. “It is your fault we are so shitty at hunting.”

“My fault?” 

“Da, yes. We would already know how to do this shit, if you had done a better job paying attention in Beaver Scouts.” 

“I was seven!” Even in a whisper, Shane sounded indignant. Ilya smiled; he couldn’t help it. How did anyone ever manage to focus on anything else when Shane Hollander was around? How did anyone ever manage to resist prodding at him and teasing him and burrowing their way under his skin? Ilya couldn’t do it. Even with the deer right there, all he could think about was Shane’s stupid voice, his stupid smile, how warm his stupid shoulder was, pressed up against Ilya’s. “We made friendship bracelets and sang campfire songs. They didn’t teach us hunting.”

“Songs?” Ilya echoed. Too late, he remembered that he was supposed to keep his voice down. Shane shoved him. Ilya winced. The deer, though, probably (correctly) assuming that Ilya wasn’t much of a threat, only looked up at the noise, shuffled around a little, and then went back to munching happily on their trees, utterly indifferent to the two of them. Shane continued to eye them warily for another moment, then turned back to glower at Ilya. Ilya lowered his voice obediently, though he couldn’t quite manage to hide his delight. “Shane. You never told me about the songs.”

“Shoot the damn deer, Ilya.”

“Will you sing a Beaver Scout song for me tonight, if I hit it?” 

“No.”

“Solnyshko.” 

“We’ll have dinner tonight if you hit it,” Shane said. He reached up and tucked one of Ilya’s overgrown curls behind his ear. Had he touched Ilya more, since that morning at the lake? Or was that only Ilya’s foolish, greedy heart, forever wanting more than it could have? Shane’s fingers were freezing where they brushed against Ilya’s face, but Ilya smiled at him anyway. Shane, forgetting that he was supposed to be cross, smiled back. “We’ll have a deerskin blanket if you hit it.” 

Will you be proud of me if I hit it? Ilya thought. Will you let me kiss you? Will you smile at me again, just like that, the way you are smiling at me now? What would it take to tell you I love you, and for you to finally listen? I’m going out of my mind waiting for you, Shane Hollander. Tell me what you want and I will do it. Tell me anything. I’d do anything. 

Ilya shouldered the gun again. 

“Better not hold your breath,” he advised, and lined up the shot.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: Ilya bets the house.

Chapter 16: December 1, 2010. Shane.

Chapter Notes

I'm heading out for vacation with family in a few days, so I'm afraid that after this updates will be on hold for a little bit. Hopefully this chapter is enough to tide us all over in the meantime. It's a big one ;)

Enjoy!

They were in the cottage again. The bed was the same: the same mattress, the same dark sheets. This time, though, it was morning. Sunlight filled the room, thick and honey-sweet where it touched Shane and Ilya’s skin, carding through Ilya’s curls and kissing his hands, strong and rough with hockey calluses. Shane was on his back on the bed and Ilya was sprawled out between his legs, his hands on Shane’s hips, his mouth around Shane’s cock, taking his time. Shane was dizzy with desire. It was too much, all of it: the slow wet heat of Ilya’s mouth -- the way the sunlight played over the fan of his eyelashes and the flecks of gold in his eyes -- the crook at the corner of his lips -- the way Ilya looked when he blinked and glanced up at Shane and smiled. 

Ilya rubbed his hands over Shane’s hips again, then smacked his thighs. He pulled off of Shane, though he didn’t go far; when Shane gasped, Ilya laughed and leaned back down and nuzzled against his cock, whispering an apology in Russian. His head was still in the cradle of Shane’s hips. His lips were wet with spit and his eyes were very bright. He was so beautiful Shane almost couldn’t breathe, looking at him. 

“Solnyshko,” Ilya said. Shane smiled back at him dazedly. He wanted Ilya to take him in his mouth again and he wanted Ilya to stay exactly where he was, his lips red, his cheeks flushed. Shane wanted to come. He wanted to linger in this moment with Ilya forever. He wanted to hear Ilya’s voice, wanted Ilya to call him sunshine again, wanted the slick wet sound of Ilya’s lips around his cock, the little breathless moaning noises Ilya made, like he could come from this and only this, just from making Shane feel good, just from sucking him off. Shane wanted, he wanted…

“Sweetheart,” Shane answered. He reached down and let his fingers trace from Ilya’s eye down the curve of his cheek. When he reached Ilya’s lips, Ilya turned into his touch and took Shane's fingers into his mouth, suckling gently. Shane’s breath caught. Desire surged within him like a tide, rising and rising. “Ilya.”

Ilya bit down lightly on Shane’s fingers, then let them go. "What do you want, Shane Hollander?” he murmured. He rubbed his cheek against Shane’s cock again. Shane stared back at him, longing racing under every inch of his skin. What did he want? Everything. Ilya’s mouth, Ilya’s voice, Ilya’s strong hands, Ilya’s laughter, Ilya’s dick. He wanted to shove Ilya onto his back on the mattress and swallow him down until Ilya was out of his mind with desire too, until all Ilya could say was, “Solnyshko, sweetheart, Shane.” He wanted Ilya to come down his throat. He wanted Ilya’s hands in his hair. He wanted Ilya to promise that Shane wasn’t the only one going crazy with this, that he felt it too. How much would Ilya give, if Shane asked? Everything. Shane wanted everything. Whatever Ilya would give him, he wanted. 

“Tell me,” Ilya insisted. He turned his head and kissed Shane’s cock. “Shane. What do you want?” 

“I want you.” 

“Yeah?”

“I want --”

“Shane.”

“Ilya,” Shane breathed, and opened his eyes. 

He was in the cave again. He and Ilya were wrapped around each other under their pile of blankets and furs. It was late enough past daybreak that the sunlight dappling the cave floor had turned from rose to yellow, but the air around them was still bitterly cold: ice sparkled in the far corners of the cave, and snow piled nearly six inches high at the entrance. Their breath fogged and mingled between them where they lay facing each other, arms wrapped around chests and thighs slotted together, Ilya wide awake with his eyes trained on Shane’s face, Shane’s erection hot and unmistakable, pressed flush against Ilya’s hip. 

Shane’s mind slowed, then stalled. 

They were -- 

That was -- 

Fuck. Not again.

Fuck.

Fuck. 

Shane jerked back at once, though it was already too late. Shame crept over the back of his neck and stained his cheeks a slow, dark red. All these months, he had been so good -- waking up before Ilya, stamping out the worst of his dreams in the snow and the cold, reminding himself, over and over and over again, of every reason why this -- this lusting after Ilya -- was a terrible idea. Ilya was his best friend. Ilya loved him. Ilya shouldn’t have to deal with whatever fucking gay crisis Shane’s subconscious couldn't seem to stop having. Ilya was so beautiful and so kind and so funny and Shane loved him so, so much. He couldn’t bear it if Ilya thought…if Ilya assumed…

He had to -- fuck -- he had to move. He had to say something. If Ilya thought Shane was trying to be a dick -- if he thought Shane was just trying to screw around with him, or, or worse -- if he thought Shane was trying to take advantage…

“I’m sorry,” Shane choked out. It was hard to speak around the catch in his throat, but he forced the words out anyway. His breath was coming faster and faster. Ilya, on the other hand, looked like he’d stopped breathing altogether. “I’m sorry, I -- shit, Ilya, I’m so sorry. This isn't what it looks like. It’s not anything, I swear. I'm sorry.” 

Ilya didn’t answer. They were near enough, though, that Shane could see the moment that Ilya’s jaw tightened. Even through the haze of his own panic, Shane knew that look. That was Ilya’s face-off look. That was Ilya’s third period, one point down and less than thirty seconds on the clock look. That was the look Ilya got when he was about to throw himself headlong into something reckless and crazy and monumentally stupid. Shit. How badly had Shane fucked things up, that Ilya was wearing that look now?

Shane broke off talking and squeezed his eyes shut.

He could still fix this. Ilya would listen. He just had to find the right words, that was all. Whatever Ilya thought of him now, Shane could fix it, and then they would be okay again, and --

Ilya’s hand came up to cup Shane’s cheek. The warm, rough touch of his palm was enough to short circuit every other thought in Shane’s brain. Without thinking he looked up again, and met Ilya’s eyes. 

Ilya’s jaw was still tight. He still had that look on his face, calculating and a little afraid. He still wasn’t breathing. But somehow he managed a small, strained smile, and stroked his thumb once, hard, over Shane’s cheek. 

“I am going to try something, okay?” Ilya said. He sounded brave right up until his voice broke at the end. Without thinking Shane raised his hand to cover Ilya’s. He realized, with a start, that somewhere along the way he had stopped breathing, too. “You will tell me if it is not good, yes? You promise?” 

“Ilya, what…?”

“Promise, Shane.”

“I promise. Ilya…”

“Good,” Ilya said. He drew in a deep breath and smiled again, unsteadily this time. “Okay. Good. Shit. Here goes nothing, da?” 

Shane frowned. “What?” he began. He never got any farther, though -- because before he could finish Ilya was surging forward, and kissing him. 

Ilya was kissing him. Ilya’s teeth scraped Shane’s lip, and Ilya was shaking, a little, and he was kissing Shane like this might be the last chance he ever had to do it, too-eager and too-rough and too-desperate and -- 

And holy fuck, Ilya was kissing him. 

Shane’s mind snapped into gear again in time to realize that this was really happening, and then the next thing he knew he was flat on his back on the ground and Ilya was on top of him. Shane’s arms were around Ilya’s neck, dragging him down, pulling him closer. Ilya was kissing his mouth, his cheek, his neck, his mouth again, tongue and teeth and panting breaths and -- oh fuck, Ilya was hard too, Shane could feel him -- Ilya’s hands were everywhere, cradling Shane’s face, running down his sides, reaching for his waistband, fuck -- 

It was nothing like kissing dream-Ilya. It was nothing like the well-worn, threadbare memory of the plane. This was so much more than any dream, so much better than any memory. It was like stepping out into the sunshine after a hundred years of winter. It was like the whole world, opening up. Ilya was stroking Shane’s dick, murmuring something in Shane’s ear, Shane couldn’t make out a word he was saying but he clutched him closer anyways. “I know. I know. Fuck, Ilya. Please.”

His hand was on Ilya’s dick. He fumbled a little, not sure what he was doing, but Ilya only groaned and kissed his neck, and so that was -- that was alright, wasn’t it? -- it was like touching himself and nothing at all like that, the way Ilya’s dick fit into his palm, how good it felt to twist his hand and hear Ilya choke out a string of curses, to rub his thumb over the head of Ilya's cock and feel the wet stickiness of precum there, to feel Ilya shudder in his arms. 

“I know,” Shane gasped. He didn’t know why he kept saying that. He felt like he didn’t know anything. He felt like the whole world had turned on its head and now everything was better and realer and more bewildering than before. “I know. Me too. Ilya.”

Maybe, in a different world, Ilya would have laughed at Shane for how quickly he came. Maybe, if everything had been different but they’d still, somehow, managed to find their way into bed together, Ilya would have teased. Shane would have blushed. They might have texted afterwards, maybe, or then again maybe not. How many years might they have spent, wondering? How much time wasted, thinking what if? 

Shane came. Ilya came too, not much more than a heartbeat later. The rush, and then the ebb, and then bliss, and then -- 

Shane cracked his eyes open, his chest still heaving. His hand was still clutching Ilya’s hip. His knuckles brushed against Ilya’s dick, softening now. Ilya was staring at him, panting for breath, his pupils blown wide. Ilya was near enough to kiss, so Shane leaned forward and kissed him. 

“Ilya,” he said, whispering it like a prayer against Ilya’s lips. He probably couldn’t have said anything else if he’d tried. 

“Was fun,” Ilya said. The words came out gravelly and hoarse, like he’d dredged them up from somewhere deep inside himself. He kissed Shane, then drew back. Not far enough that it mattered, really. Their legs were still tangled together; Ilya’s arm was still heavy over Shane’s ribs. Not far. Still, Shane felt the loss of him like a blow to his chest. “For you too? You liked it?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, stupidly. He shifted closer, and Ilya let him, and that was -- that was better, wasn’t it? That was more like it had been, just now, before. Shane leaned up and kissed Ilya again, just to see, and Ilya kissed him back, and that was -- good. It was good. Shane felt his heartbeat slow. He let himself relax, a little, into Ilya’s embrace. “I liked it.”

“Maybe you are a little gay too?” Ilya offered, and Shane laughed, and then ducked his head into the crook of Ilya’s shoulder so that Ilya wouldn’t see it if he started to cry.

“Yeah,” he whispered, against Ilya’s warm skin. “Yeah, maybe. Shit. I don’t know, Ilya. Maybe.” 

Ilya reached up and began to stroke through Shane’s hair slowly, mechanically. Shane leaned into his touch. For a while there was nothing but quiet between them. 

It felt like hours passed; although it was minutes only, probably, before Ilya spoke again. His voice was rough. He sounded like he did when he’d been rehearsing something in his head for ages, trying to get the words exactly right. “We are still best friends,” Ilya said at last. “You and me. The sex is…it is just sex, yes? It does not change anything. Not about us.” 

Shane’s mind was still a hazy glow, every thought so awash in Ilya, Ilya, Ilya that he could barely piece together a word actual-Ilya was saying. Still, somehow, he struggled up and elbowed his way on top of Ilya's chest. He peered down. Ilya squinted back. He looked love-drunk. He also looked, for some reason, as though he was about to cry. 

“Best friends,” Shane agreed. He bent down and kissed Ilya as sweetly as he could, trying to kiss that look away.

“It does not change anything,” Ilya insisted. Shane kissed him again. He couldn’t help it.

“Of course not.”

“You are sure?” 

“Yes."

"You promise?"

"Yes, Ilya. Yes. I promise.”

Chapter End Notes

Next time: the lake freezes. Two best friends who are maybe "a little gay" for each other take advantage.

Chapter 17: February 14, 2011. Shane.

Chapter Notes

And we're back! Thank you so much for the comments + kudos on the last chapter, reading them was the highlight of a very long car ride <3

I bumped the chapter count up a bit, but fair warning that moving forward we're going to be channeling Heated Rivalry with some of these time jumps.

Enjoy!

Shane woke up by degrees. 

The cold came first. It had been so bitterly, heartwrenchingly cold for so fucking long that he had practically forgotten what being warm felt like; but the moment that he woke up, the temperature hit him like a hard check straight into the boards all the same. Cold in the air, cold in the ground, cold that clung to every inch of the rocky walls of the cave, limning the gray stone in frost. It didn’t seem to matter that the ashy heap of their fire was still smoldering, nor that they'd buried themselves underneath a veritable mountain of blankets and coats and pelts and ratty old sleeping bags. Probably not even all the blankets in the world would have been enough to keep the cold from biting his skin raw. 

After the cold came the sunlight, syrupy and golden where it poked through the cracks in the cave walls. And then the sound of the birds, like a thousand piece orchestra set directly outside just to harangue him into consciousness. Then the familiar growl of hunger in his belly. Then the crack of his joints as he stretched. Then, finally, last of all -- best of all -- came Ilya. 

Judging from the dampness on Shane’s neck and the line of kisses that Ilya was busily pressing there, Ilya had been awake for a while now. He paused for a moment when Shane stirred, then went back to kissing him again. He was humming something under his breath, though his voice was too low for Shane to make out what it was. That stupid Beaver Scout song again, probably. Shane smiled without quite realizing he was doing it, and arched his neck enough to give Ilya room. 

“G’morning,” he said, around a yawn. 

“Good morning,” Ilya answered. His breath was very warm; without thinking, Shane shivered and leaned into his touch. Ilya wrapped his arm more snugly around Shane’s waist and tugged him close. “An hour past sunrise already, tch. You are being very lazy today, Hollander.” 

“I’m not.” 

“You are,” Ilya said. He sounded pleased, though; or at least he sounded pleased as best as Shane could tell, when each word came out muffled against his throat. “Every fucking bird in the whole fucking forest is awake before you.” 

“You’re still in bed.”

“Yes,” Ilya agreed, with an unrepentant sigh. “I am lazy too.” He nosed against the underside of Shane’s jaw, then kissed him again. “You are a terrible influence.” 

Shane felt his cheeks redden. “Yeah, well,” he said, defensive even as Ilya began to hum contentedly again and kiss his way up the side of his face. “You’re a menace.”

“Mm. What is a ‘menace?’”

“You know.” Ilya had reached Shane’s cheek by now, peppering kisses over his blush. Shane huffed and rolled over so that they were nose-to-nose. He caught Ilya’s face between his hands and gave him a look. Ilya grinned back, unabashed. Shane bumped their foreheads together, leaned up to peck a quick kiss to Ilya’s lips, then drew back again. “Someone who’s dangerous to hang around with.”

Ilya seemed to consider it, his head cocked to the side, looking down at Shane. He was bundled up in as many sweatshirts and coats as Shane was, and the overgrown curls of his hair were wild and greasy, even with most of them tied back. The sunlight caught on all of the strands that had slipped loose and on his pretty, stubbly face. Shane brushed the back of his fingers over the corner of Ilya’s lips. Ilya turned his head just enough to bite down on the pad of Shane's thumb, then smiled again when Shane made a face. 

“I think you like hanging around with me,” Ilya decided at last. Understatement of the fucking century, Shane thought, but he only smiled back. “I think you would be very bored if I was not here. No one to boss around except for the stupid squirrels, hm?” 

“I don’t boss you around.”

“No one to get you out of bed when you are being lazy. No one to catch you a rabbit for dinner. No one to clear away all of this fucking snow.” Ilya trailed his hand down Shane’s side, finding the hem of his sweatpants with practiced ease and slipping beneath it. Shane shivered. Ilya’s smile turned into a grin. “No one to tell you what a nice dick you have.”

Shane’s cheeks were bright red now. “Shut up.”

“Why?” Ilya ducked his head to nuzzle against Shane’s cheek again, even as his hand slid lower. “Is it gay to tell your best friend you like his dick?”

“A little gay, yeah.”

Ilya laughed. He had started trailing his knuckles lazily over Shane’s cock, which was growing hard already; but at Shane’s words he drew back, pulling his hand out of Shane's pants and patting his cheek instead. “Time to get up anyway,” he decided, ignoring Shane’s protests as he pushed himself up. Shane struggled to sit up after him. “I have a surprise for you.”

“It can wait,” Shane said plaintively. Ilya grinned again. 

“Bossy,” he repeated affectionately. He let their blankets fall to the ground as he pushed himself the rest of the way up, dragging Shane with him. “Come on, solnyshko. I have something to show you.”

Outside of their cave the snow was two feet deep in most places, though here and there along the lakeshore the wind had pushed it into drifts that reached nearly to Shane’s chest. But early in the winter, Ilya had taken it upon himself to keep the area between their cave and the lake tamped down as far as it would go; and so when they stepped outside, Shane’s feet only sank an inch or so down, into the fresh, dazzlingly white layer of snow that had fallen overnight.

He blinked, squinting against the glare of the morning sunlight. Ilya, following him out, swore under his breath at the sight of the new-fallen snow. He shoved one of their pairs of sunglasses into Shane’s hand, then propelled Shane forward. 

“Come on,” Ilya said. Shane tried half-heartedly to glower at him. He was half-hard in his sweatpants still, even despite the cold. As though Ilya could somehow tell through the layers and layers that Shane was wearing, his lips quirked up in a grin. “What? Is something bothering you, Hollander?” Shane jammed the sunglasses on, then swatted at him. 

“Asshole.”

“Vozlyublennyy,” Ilya countered fondly. He shoved Shane forward again. “Come on. Is this way, if the stupid snow has not ruined it.” 

It was a fifteen minute walk, probably, from their cave to wherever it was that Ilya was leading them; or at least it would have been, if Ilya hadn’t insisted on walking along the very edge of the lakeshore, the two of them skirting past the tallest of the snowbanks and skidding, every now and then, on a patch of ice hidden beneath the snow. 

There was, at least, something of a path for them to follow. Ilya had clearly been this way before; checking their traps along the eastern edge of the camp, maybe, or else searching for firewood that wasn’t totally encased in ice. But even with the path already carved out, it was slow-going. Shane trudged behind Ilya, his jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering, thinking longingly the entire time of the nest of blankets waiting for them back at home. The smoldering remnants of their fire. The warm, rough touch of Ilya’s hands.

As though sensing his thoughts, Ilya looked over his shoulder and cast Shane a wink. Without breaking his stride, he reached back to take Shane’s hand. Shane felt warmth bloom all through his chest the moment that Ilya touched him; but before he could say anything Ilya was already looking forward again, too late to see the confused, shy smile Shane gave him in return.  

“We are close now,” Ilya promised, and tugged Shane forward. 

They rounded the far curve of the bay almost half an hour after setting out, sidestepping around a snowbank and a copse of resiny trees to cross onto a narrow stretch of open ground in front of a small, rocky inlet. It was a corner of the lake that Shane had never been to before, hidden by a sheer cliffside on one end and a dense thicket of pine trees on the other. The cliff and the forest between them had managed to block most of the wind; what snowfall had made it through was light enough that Shane could see the bumpy outline of the shore beneath it. The lake itself was solid ice, sparkling and gleaming in the sun.

Someone -- well, Ilya -- had cleared away a lopsided rectangle of snow from the surface of the lake, large enough it stretched almost from one end of the inlet to the other; sheltered from the wind as it was, the ice beneath was almost perfectly smooth. Ilya stopped at the edge of the treeline, eyeing the lake and letting out a small, satisfied hiss between his teeth. Shane drew to a stop next to him. Though they hadn't been walking for long, he could feel his heartbeat hammering in his ears. He was still holding Ilya’s hand. 

“Is this a new hunting spot?” Shane hazarded, after a beat or two of silence. Ilya, startled out of whatever complacent reverie he was caught up in, blinked, then cast him an exasperated look. 

“You think I would miss out on the chance to touch your dick, just to catch a stupid rabbit?” he asked. Shane shrugged. Ilya huffed and dragged him nearer, letting go of Shane’s hand to drape his arm over his shoulders instead. It was nice: being tucked up against Ilya’s side, feeling Ilya press a kiss against his temple. Still, Shane found himself fleetingly -- stupidly -- missing the warmth of Ilya’s hand. “No. We are not going hunting.”

“...It’s pretty?” Shane offered. Ilya heaved another, long-suffering sigh.

“We are not here to sightsee, Shane.”

“We can’t go ice fishing, we haven’t brought anything with us.”

“We are not fishing.”

“Then what --”

“It is a surprise! It is a fucking surprise. Stop asking so many questions, chort voz’mi.” As though to make extra-sure that Shane listened, Ilya squeezed his arm, reeling Shane in and holding him in place. “I am going to get something,” he warned, ducking his head. “Wait right here. Do not move.”

“Ilya…”

“Wait, Shane.” 

And, well. It wasn’t like there was anything else Shane could do, when Ilya asked like that. He nodded. Ilya ducked down a little more to meet his eyes, staring at him intently as though, if he only stared hard enough, he could will Shane into standing still. Shane flicked Ilya's cheek. Apparently satisfied, Ilya poked out his tongue, then straightened again and gestured elaborately, one final time, for Shane to stay put. 

“I will be back soon,” he promised. "Very soon, okay? Do not move." Then he blew Shane a kiss, turned around, and jogged into the cover of the trees, back the way they had come. 

Left to his own devices for the moment, Shane wrapped his arms around himself and turned his gaze back to the lake, stomping his feet and shivering a little against the cold. While they'd been busy trekking their way out here, the sun had risen high enough that the sky had lightened to a clear, crystalline blue. There were a few clouds scudding past overhead. Beyond them, high, high above, Shane could make out the faint, whispery trail of a plane.

It was a passenger plane, probably; and at any rate it was too far away to have any hope of seeing them. Still, Shane stood and stared at the trail of clouds until they vanished. A strange feeling -- something like despair, but also something like relief -- was churning up his insides, whipping his thoughts up into a storm.

Did he want to be rescued? Yes. Obviously yes. He wanted to wake up and not already have to worry about where their next meal would come from. He wanted to sleep in a real bed. He wanted to take a shower, and wash his clothes, and not dread the day that the obsessively-rationed mess of toiletries Ilya had brought with him in his duffel bag finally ran out. He wanted to hug his parents. He wanted to play hockey. He wanted to play fucking hockey. He wanted to play hockey so badly it hurt like a fucking knife to the chest, every single fucking day.

He would already be over halfway through his first season with Montreal by now, if the marketing agency hadn’t hired the worst plane in the fucking world for the stupidest fucking photoshoot of all time. He should already be racking up goals. He should already be vying with Ilya for Rookie of the Year. 

But at that thought, the swell of self-pity in Shane's chest died, because -- because that was just it, wasn’t it? Once they were rescued -- once they recovered enough to play hockey again -- he and Ilya would go back to being rivals. They would see each other once every few months, maybe, on the ice. And then Ilya would leave. Shane would forget what it felt like to wake up next to him, Ilya’s nose buried against his shoulder because he was cold, Ilya’s arm solid and comforting around his waist, Ilya's breath hot against his skin. He would forget the stupid Beaver Scout song Ilya liked to sing, just to annoy him. He would forget how beautiful Ilya was when the setting sun caught on his cheekbones and the flecks of gold in his eyes, the pine-and-campfire breeze ruffling his curls. He would forget what it felt like to kiss him. He would forget melting into his embrace. He would forget coming apart into Ilya’s hand while Ilya whispered feverishly in Russian against his lips, words that Shane always shied back from asking about when he came to his senses again.

All of it. He would have to forget all of it. He could not have hockey, and this whatever-it-was -- this friendship -- this -- this thing with Ilya -- too. 

Did he want to be rescued? Did he want to go home, if Ilya was the price he would have to pay to get the rest of his life back?

Caught up in his thoughts, Shane didn’t hear Ilya tramping back through the snow until Ilya was at his shoulder again. Ilya, apparently noticing Shane’s distraction, bent down, right up against his ear, and blew out a warm, damp gust of breath. “You can look now, solnyshko."

He sounded oddly nervous, beneath his huff of laughter when Shane jumped and swore. Shane, halfway through turning around to shove Ilya, paused instead at the catch in his voice. Before he could open his mouth and demand to know what was wrong, though, Shane blinked and looked again, and finally noticed what exactly it was that Ilya was holding in his hands. 

Hockey sticks.

Two of them.

They were smaller and bulkier than real sticks would have been. They had been obviously, ineptly, laboriously carved from a pair of tree branches by hand. But they were, unmistakably, hockey sticks. And there, balanced precariously as Ilya tried to hold it and the sticks at the same time, was a wooden disk: bark still clinging to the outside, hatchet marks still visible in the center, three inches exactly across, the precise same shape and size as a regulation hockey puck. 

Ilya was gazing at Shane expectantly, as though waiting for him to say something. Shane couldn't have answered if he'd tried, though. Whatever he might have said, the sight of Ilya standing there -- happy and nervous and beautiful and awkwardly holding a set of hockey sticks that he must have spent hours and hours carving in secret -- was enough to drive every last word from Shane's tongue. 

Shane stared at Ilya. Ilya stared back. Ilya waited. And waited. And waited some more, until, eventually, it must have become clear that Shane wasn’t going to speak, because finally he cleared his throat and tried as best he could to give a little nonchalant kind of shrug. “I have heard you are so-so at hockey, so. I thought it would be fun to play. It will probably be pretty embarrassing for you, going up against the number one draft pick in the MLH, but it is either me or the squirrels for a scrimmage, so --” 

Ilya never got any farther. Before he could finish Shane was lunging forward, wrapping his arms around Ilya’s neck. Before Ilya could finish, Shane was kissing him. 

Ilya's mouth was warm. His lips were chapped. He caught Shane's face between his hands and drew him in, his mouth opening beneath Shane's, his eyes wrinkling a little in the corners as he smiled. He kissed Shane back like kissing him was the easiest thing in the world. He kissed Shane like it was a sigh of relief, like scoring on the last play of the game, like coming home. 

“You dumbass,” Shane managed, when they finally broke apart. Both of them were bright-eyed and breathless, grinning at each other stupidly from across the inch or so of space that was all Shane could bear to keep between them. Shane's arms were still around Ilya's neck. Ilya's gaze darted down to Shane's lips, then back to his eyes again. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s play hockey.” 

Somehow, impossibly, Ilya’s grin grew wider. “You are sure?" he prodded. "You promise you will not cry when I win every game?” 

“You fucking wish.” 

“Number one pick,” Ilya reminded him. He swooped down to kiss Shane again before Shane could answer. Then he shoved the nicer of the two sticks into Shane's hand, grinned at him again, and began to jog towards the ice. 

Shane drew in a deep breath, wiped hurriedly at his eyes, and followed.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: the boys celebrate an anniversary.

Chapter 18: June 11, 2011. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

This chapter alternatively titled, "Ilya YEARNS (and plans a date)"

Edit 8/6/26: Now featuring BEAUTIFUL artwork from Ailo5541!! Link at the bottom! 😍

Shane had called the plane crash the worst day of his life, back that first summer. And it wasn’t that Ilya thought he was wrong, exactly. It had definitely been the scariest fucking day of Ilya’s life, bar none, and sometimes he still woke up in the dead of the night, his breath coming in great, heaving gasps against the imagined rush of water in his lungs, pawing at Shane’s chest until Shane fumbled awake and murmured that it was alright, that they were okay, that it was over. 

They had nearly died. They were well and truly stranded here. A year later and no one had come looking, and maybe no one ever would come looking, and they would be trapped here for another whole winter, scraping by on an occasional deer until either the weather changed or their luck ran out. So, yes. The plane crash had been awful. Worst day of his life? Ilya could see where Shane was coming from.

The thing was, though, that it wasn’t the worst day of Ilya’s life, and not only because Mama’s death would take first place in that category every single time. Ilya hated the nightmares, obviously. He hated sleeping in a cave. He hated never having enough to eat. He hated all the stupid Canadian animals that could not seem to bear letting a single night go by without causing enough of a racket to raise the fucking dead. 

But, more than he hated all of that, Ilya loved Shane. 

He loved falling asleep next to Shane every night and waking up next to him every morning. He loved the way the sun brought out the freckles on Shane’s cheeks. He loved that Shane insisted on making their bed each morning, never mind that their “bed” was a heap of ragged fur coats and two worn-out sleeping bags. He loved the stupid fancy words that Shane used and how grouchy he got when he was tired and the smell of campfire smoke that clung to his hair. He loved Shane’s eyes. He loved his smile. He loved kissing him. He loved Shane’s hand on his dick, he loved Shane’s mouth on his dick, he loved rubbing one off together, laughing and breathless and goading each other to see who would come first. He loved making Shane come. He loved the stupid, soft look Shane got on his face afterwards, the way his eyes would dart down to Ilya’s lips when he thought Ilya wasn't looking. He just -- he loved it. All of it. Everything. He loved him. 

So Ilya couldn’t hate the plane crash. The rest of it, yes. The hunger, the winter, this awful fucking forest, the fear that prowled in his belly like a living thing, heavy and restless. But the crash? The thing that had brought him to Shane? Never. 

All of which is to say, the anniversary celebration was Ilya’s idea.

It was still evening, though it was late enough that the first messy splashes of the sunset were starting to turn the sky pink and gold in the west. The ground beneath Ilya was still warm, and the breeze drifting across the lake felt like summer, ruffling his hair and kissing an apology to the streaks of sunburn on his cheeks. Ilya was sitting crosslegged in the clearing in front of their cave, barefoot in the grass, his shirtsleeves rolled up. There was a small pile of sticks on the ground next to him, and every now and then, when he remembered, he tossed a handful of them into the fire. Crickets were sawing away from every direction; in the forest behind him, the last birds of the day were calling out their goodnights. The campfire flared brightly, sending up little showers of sparks that danced and bobbed before winking out. Shane wasn’t back yet, but he would be soon. 

Ilya closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He had spent most of the day tramping through the forest, gathering berries and wild onions and those small sour apples that Shane liked, and now his arms and his face were burnt and his muscles were achingly sore. It was a good kind of ache, though. It was the kind of ache he used to get from hockey. When he had spent the past twelve months alternating between drowning and starving and freezing practically to death, it was nice to remember that his body had once been good for other things, too. 

The plan was to stay awake until midnight, or at least as near to midnight as they could figure it. Shane had insisted a week ago that there was some way to tell the time from the stars, and Ilya had asked him what it was, and Shane had admitted that he didn’t know, and then Ilya had tackled him, and from there they had descended into wrestling each other in the shallows and getting completely soaked, and then the next logical thing had been to tramp back to shore and strip out of their wet clothes, and that had quickly led to a very memorable blow job that made Ilya smile, thinking of it now. 

Anyway. 

They would treat themselves to a feast tonight, and then they would stay awake to watch June eleventh tip into June twelfth, and then they would kiss, and it would be a year to the day since their first kiss, and Ilya would -- well. Tell Shane that he loved him, probably. Tell him that he would die without him. Tell him that he didn’t care if he ever played hockey again, he didn’t care if he ever made it out of this fucking place again, just so long as he got to keep Shane in return. 

All in Russian, obviously, because Ilya wasn’t an idiot, and he knew better than to spoil a good thing when he had one. No sense in scaring Shane off by letting him know just how completely around-the-bend crazy for him Ilya was. 

Still. It would be nice, celebrating a year together in the woods like that. 

Another half hour or so passed. The sun was fully setting by now, turning the whole sky and the lake beneath it pink and tangerine orange, like the inside of a painting. Fireflies were gamboling along the shore and the grassy, bushy fringes of the forest. Ilya’s campfire had finally settled down into a strong, steady burn, and the air all around him smelled like woodsmoke and pine and honeysuckle. Beneath the crack of one of the branches in the fire splitting, Ilya heard the pad of footsteps behind him. 

“Two rabbits!” Shane said, from just past Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya tilted his head back to look at him. Shane was flushed and happy, sweat on his face, streaks of dirt on his arms and his cheeks, and, sure enough, a pair of rabbits garotted and slung over his shoulder. He tossed them onto the grass and tumbled down himself at Ilya’s side. “I think there was one in the third trap too, but something got to it before me. There was fur all over.”

“A wolf,” Ilya said promptly. He raised his arm. Shane slotted himself against his side easily, huffing out a laugh when Ilya started to nose against the ticklish spot at the back of his neck. “Two dozen wolves, probably. Careful. Probably they only left you other two rabbits as bait, so you would lead them back here.” 

“Brave of you to stay outside all night, then.” 

“Yes. Brave and stupid. This is what I get for planning a nice night for you -- eaten by wolves.” 

Shane laughed again. He craned his neck back to give Ilya a kiss. “Thank you for making the fire,” he said, pulling back and smiling. Ilya smiled back.

“I found you your horrible, nasty apples, too.” 

“Mm. Then thank you for the apples.” Shane kissed him again.

“And blueberries.” 

“Thank you for the blueberries.” Another kiss.

“And also onions.”

“Onions?" A fourth kiss. "What would I do without you?” 

Ilya could tell from his voice that Shane was teasing, but the question made his heart skip a beat, all the same. 

“Come on,” Ilya said, finding his voice again and nudging Shane up. “My turn to cut up the rabbits. Your turn to go clean up and get pretty for dinner.”

Ilya cleaned the rabbits as quickly as he could; but even so the stars were coming out by the time he finished, and it was fully dark by the time they were licking the last of the roasted-rabbit-and-onions from their fingers. With the sun gone, there was a chill in the air; so while Ilya cleaned up from dinner Shane wandered into the cave, emerging a minute or two later with a couple of sweatshirts and one of their sleeping bags bundled into his arms. Shane laid the sleeping bag out on the ground next to the fire and pulled on the baggier of the two sweatshirts. Ilya, walking back towards him from the lakeshore, recognized the black sweatshirt he’d been wearing on the day of the crash, and felt his heart twist in his chest. 

They cuddled up together on their makeshift blanket, a pile of blueberries heaped between them for dessert and the fire burning cheerily in front of them. The moon was above the treeline now. Every single star was waxing in the sky. Shane tipped into Ilya’s side, then rested his head on Ilya’s shoulder. “Two more hours,” he said, like he had the first fucking clue what time it was. God. He was so stupid and Ilya loved him so much. Ilya buried his face in Shane’s hair, because it was either that or spill his heart out. 

“Just think,” Ilya said. His voice came out muffled. Shane hummed and settled a little more comfortably against Ilya’s side, taking Ilya’s hand in his. “This time one year ago, you were falling asleep in a little tiny twin bed in Ottawa, dreaming happy dreams about next day's sexy lumberjack photoshoot with your favorite archrival.”

“I didn’t know you were going to be there,” Shane pointed out. He rubbed his thumb over the back of Ilya’s hand, then added, almost as an afterthought, “And they weren't happy dreams. I didn't want to do the photoshoot.” 

“You are Canadian, Shane. You are supposed to like taking hot photos in the woods, posing with a bear.” 

“My mom was the one who thought it was a good idea,” Shane said, ignoring Ilya. “I always thought it was stupid.” He yawned and snuggled a little closer against Ilya’s side. “An hour and a half,” he said, just to be annoying. Ilya bent down to find his lips, and kissed him. 

Shane fell asleep a little before probably-midnight, curled up against Ilya’s side, the stars shining brightly overhead, the fire burning low in front of them. Ilya stayed awake, though, his arm wrapped around Shane’s shoulders as he fed the last of the sticks into the fire. Gradually, the stars began to fade. The sky lightened to gray, then to pale yellow in the east. Ilya bent down, and kissed the top of Shane’s head. 

“I love you,” he said, speaking quietly over the hushed sleep-soft rasp of Shane’s breath, while all around them the dawn rose on their three hundred and sixty-fifth day here, lost in the woods. “I have loved you this whole time. It feels like the scariest thing in the world, loving you this much. But also the best thing.” He kissed Shane again, then jostled his arm. When Shane blinked awake and looked up at him groggily, Ilya smiled.

“Happy one year in the woods, solnyshko,” he said. “Come on. Is time now for us to go to bed.”

Chapter End Notes

ARTWORK by Ailo5541: Shane and Ilya's anniversary date

Next time: Ilya meets some more of the local wildlife.

Chapter 19: September 6, 2011. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

They had had nothing to eat but fish, fish, and more fucking fish for four days straight now -- and so when Ilya woke up to find the sky overcast for the first time in a week, a breeze drifting from across the lake and the temperature dipping down low as though it, too, was ready for a change, his first thought was, Fucking finally. His second thought was, Time to go hunting.

He rolled over to tell Shane so and found his favorite person already gone. Shane’s side of their bed was neatly made, the fur coat folded and the sleeping bag tucked snugly around Ilya. But Shane himself was missing, and that was unusual enough that Ilya blinked stupidly at the empty half of the bed for a solid minute before he finally managed to pull himself together. He pulled on a sweatshirt, stretched until he felt his back crack, and ducked outside. 

He spotted Shane the moment he stepped out, and all at once the faint curl of worry in the pit of his stomach vanished into a laugh. Though the sky was gray and the temperature felt nearer October than to August, Shane had stripped naked and waded out waist deep into the lake. His hair was sopping wet, his arms were wrapped tightly around his chest, and even from two dozen yards back Ilya could see that he was shivering. His face was all scrunched up, too, with a kind of stoic grumpiness that did something funny to Ilya’s heart. 

Without pausing a beat, Ilya began to strip out of his clothes. 

“Good morning for a swim, solnyshko!” he called. Shane startled, then peered at Ilya through the morning haze and frowned. “Want some company?” 

“Better not,” Shane warned morosely. “It’s cold as fuck.” Ilya grinned at him and finished tugging off his sweatpants anyway.

The water was perfectly fine. It was a little warmer than the air, even, especially when the breeze rippled across the surface of the lake and ruffled Ilya’s hair. What a baby, Ilya thought fondly. He reached Shane and, ignoring Shane’s half-hearted attempt to bat him away, draped his arms over Shane’s shoulders and plastered himself flush against Shane’s back. 

“Good morning,” he said, in the huskiest voice he could manage around a yawn. He nuzzled against the back of Shane’s neck, then kissed his jaw. “It is okay now. You are safe from this horrible, freezing water. I am here to warm you up.” 

“I’m taking a bath,” Shane said. "Get off." Despite his words, he caught Ilya’s hands in his, holding him where he was. Ilya hid a smile against Shane’s shoulder. 

“We can take a bath together,” he suggested. He lowered his voice again and nipped at Shane’s ear, leaning his weight forward and making Shane stagger a step or two deeper into the water. “Much sexier.”

“I’m serious, Ilya.” 

“Mm. Me too.” 

“I’m gross.”

“Never,” Ilya said loyally. He kissed Shane’s ear again, and this time felt Shane shiver. “But if you want to make yourself extra clean and pretty, then no complaints from me. Happy to help.”

He could feel Shane smiling now. “You’re distracting,” Shane accused, turning in Ilya’s embrace so that they were face to face. Ilya smiled back and kissed him properly, taking his time.

“Lies,” Ilya answered, when he drew back at last. He nosed against Shane’s cheek. “When have I ever distracted you?” 

“I can think of a time or two.” Shane was the one to turn his head and kiss Ilya, this time. “Or twenty. A hundred.”

“Please. It is not a ‘distraction’ when I ask if you want me to suck your dick first, then take a bath, or the other way around.” Shane laughed against his lips. Ilya smiled. “It is called ‘being a considerate lover.’” 

Shane’s nose wrinkled, even as he kissed Ilya again. “Ilya. No.” 

It felt like a blow to the chest, hearing Shane say it. Still, Ilya managed to keep his smile fixed where it was, his voice teasing and light as Shane’s hands settled on his waist and began to rub slow circles over his hips. “‘A considerate friend,’ then,” he amended. If Shane noticed the catch in his voice -- if he frowned, or mentioned it -- then -- well. Then Ilya would blame it on the weather, probably, or on the early hour, or on this lukewarm fucking lake. 

Shane, though, didn’t say anything. He just smiled at Ilya again, his eyes drifting down to rest on Ilya’s lips. 

“I thought I’d wash our clothes today,” Shane said, apparently utterly oblivious to the fact that he’d managed to shatter Ilya’s pathetic, mortified heart into about a hundred million pieces. “And the sleeping bags. It would probably be good to wash them now too, before it gets too much colder. But then maybe after that, we can -- you know.” He flushed prettily, no matter that his mouth and Ilya’s dick were close personal acquaintances at this point. He leaned forward to press a quick, close-mouthed kiss to Ilya’s lips. Ilya let Shane kiss him. He let Shane draw back, too. 

It is cold already today, solnyshko, he could have said. It is cold and gray and probably going to rain. Don’t wash the stupid clothes. Come back to bed, with me. 

“Have fun with boring laundry,” he said instead, and ruffled Shane’s hair. “I am going to catch us lunch.” And then, when Shane’s smile slipped, he added, “And then whatever you want when I get back, okay? Handjob, blowjob, whatever. It all sounds good to me.” 

Shane was still staring at Ilya’s mouth. He was frowning a little now, though, as though somehow he could see the words that Ilya had swallowed back. “Ilya,” he said. 

“Later.”

“Ilya.”

“Later,” Ilya promised again. And before Shane could say something he didn’t mean, like “Wait” or “Don't go” or “I didn’t mean it,” Ilya kissed him once more, and turned back towards shore. 

Lunchtime came and went without a single animal to show for it. It was as though the forest had somehow cottoned on to Ilya’s bruised feelings and, out of sheer spite, had decided to make his miserable mood even worse. There were birds galore and more stupid squirrels than he could count but, even now, four hours in, not so much as a single animal worth spending one of their few precious rounds on.

At first Ilya had tried a thicket of brambles for a hideout; then, when that failed to yield anything more than a few bloody scrapes on his arms and a bit of side-eye from a passing raccoon, he’d given up and trudged deeper into the forest, pushing through the underbrush and a brief but heavy shower of rain before finally hauling himself up onto a kind of granite promontory jutting up from the forest floor. This far from home, he wouldn’t be able to carry back anything much bigger than a fox. But, whatever. Shane had probably caught another twelve fucking fish by now. He was probably still there at the edge of the lake, happy and full, scrubbing away at their shitty threadbare sleeping bags, as though that would do a single fucking thing except ensure that they’d be damp and miserable when the two of them went to bed tonight. 

Ilya reached the top of the rock. It was more-or-less flat on top, with a few tufts of grass and clusters of pine needles here and there. Ilya set the rifle down at his side and sprawled out on his back, staring morosely up at the gray triangle of sky that was all he could see through the trees. 

He was being stupid. He knew he was being stupid. Shane probably hadn’t meant anything by what he'd said. Even more probably it was Ilya’s fault, letting his stupid tongue get ahead of his brain and picking the wrong fucking word in English. “A considerate lover?” No wonder Shane had recoiled.

Only…only Shane had to feel it too, this thing between them. He must. How couldn’t he, when Ilya felt like he might die of it, sometimes: of loving Shane this much, of keeping it all in. When they kissed -- when they had sex -- when Ilya trailed his hand down Shane’s side, Shane moaning into Ilya’s mouth as he came -- when Shane clung to him afterwards and murmured, “I know, I know,” to every Russian love confession Ilya pressed into his skin -- Ilya felt it, the way that Shane loved him back. He could feel it, actually feel it, the vastness of this thing between them, this wonderful, terrifying thing that neither of them seemed brave enough to speak into existence. 

Not to wax too rhapsodic about sucking Shane’s dick, but. Sometimes Ilya thought he could see his whole future rising before him, afterwards. When he lay there in the cradle of Shane’s hips, panting for breath, grinning a secret smile into Shane’s skin, he saw it. A lifetime of this. A lifetime together. Rescue first, obviously, yes, but then -- a house. A dog. A wedding, rings, a marriage, kids. All of it. It felt like a vision, how clear it was. And that -- that wasn’t just him who felt that way, right? It couldn’t be. Shane had to know. Shane had to feel it, too. 

Ilya lost track of how much time passed, caught up in his thoughts. By the time he pulled himself out of his head and let his eyes drift down, the faint shadows on the ground had lengthened. The air around him had grown colder too, the breeze picking up like it was in the mood to storm tonight. He and Shane would have to cover up the holes in the walls of the cave soon, before it got too dark to see. He and Shane would -- 

Fuck. Shane. 

He had told Shane he would find lunch for them and then head straight back. Instead he had lingered here moping for hours, letting the whole afternoon slip by while meanwhile, back at the cave, Shane was still waiting for him. Wondering what was taking so long, probably. Pacing the ground anxiously. Worrying himself sick. 

Ilya scrubbed at his face, all of a sudden feeling more exhausted than he had any right to when he’d just whiled away the entire day flat on his ass on this stupid rock.

It was time to go home. It was time to set whatever unhelpful existential crisis this was aside. They had bigger things to worry about than figuring out “what are we?”, right? Dinner, for one, if Shane hadn’t gone ahead and caught them another round of fish while Ilya was gone. The storm that was clearly on its way now, the wind growing sharper and making the trees around him rattle uneasily. Tomorrow, and the next day. Fall, then winter, then whatever the fuck they were going to do when their box of bullets finally ran out. 

Well. One thing at a time. 

It was time to go home. 

Ilya rolled over and pushed himself to his knees. His arms and his back were stiff from lying here brooding for so long, and he grimaced a little as he stretched, muttering curses under his breath as he pushed himself the rest of the way up. He bent down stiffly and grabbed the rifle, slinging it over his shoulder before dusting chips of stone and pine needles from his hands. He glanced around the rock one last time, making sure he had everything. Rifle, extra rounds, water bottle, bruised ego, all accounted for. He sighed and stretched again, and finally looked up. 

And there, across the clearing, was a wolf. 

It was gray and enormous, its fur all flecked through with silver, its tail swishing slowly back and forth, its golden eyes fixed on Ilya as though it saw straight into the muddled mess of his heart and wasn’t impressed by any of it. 

A wolf. 

A motherfucking wolf.

“Fuck,” Ilya breathed. The wolf continued to stare at him. Ilya stared back. It wasn’t, objectively, as big as a deer, but that didn’t matter. It was still the most massive, the most beautiful animal he had ever seen in his whole entire life. “Fuck. Look at you.” 

He wasn’t scared. He knew that he should be, strictly speaking, because that was a wolf not a dozen yards from him, and Ilya didn’t need to be a Beaver Scout to know an apex predator when he saw one. The wolf wasn’t doing anything , though, except apparently sizing him up and finding him wanting. Shit. Ilya laughed a little, wonderingly. Shit. If only Shane were here.

If only....

If...

…If only Shane were here instead of where he was -- at home, without their rifle, without anything, bare-ass naked and scrubbing away at the laundry still, probably, utterly oblivious to the danger he was in.

Shit. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Here Ilya was, and here the wolf was, and meanwhile its pals were probaby creeping their way towards the cave at this very moment, already licking their lips, just looking for the chance to turn Shane into their next main-course meal. 

Ilya didn’t pause to think. He threw himself over the side of the promontory, sliding ten feet down and staggering when he landed but managing to keep his feet, already reaching behind him for the rifle. His heart was racing so fast he could feel it in his throat, his palms growing so sweaty that he fumbled the stock and nearly dropped the gun. He swore and tightened his grip on it until his knuckles turned white, shoving the butt against his shoulder. He felt like he hadn’t breathed, not once, since he saw the wolf there at the other end of the clearing. There were black spots in front of his vision. He cocked the gun anyway, and aimed. 

The wolf, meanwhile, was still eyeing him, calm and a little bored, as though this were any other ordinary Tuesday and it had an engagement elsewhere to keep. If it could have yawned, it probably would have. 

“I do not want to shoot you,” Ilya said. His voice was shaking. “But I will, if you do not get out of the way.” The wolf cocked its head. Ilya swallowed. Feeling desperate and pathetic and like any second now he might faint, he added weakly, “Please. I need you to move. I need to get home.”

The wolf stared at him for a second longer. Then it swished its tail once, twice. Between one blink and the next, it was gone. 

Ilya swore, slung the rifle back over his shoulder, and ran. 

It took him about fifteen minutes of sprinting flat-out through the underbrush to reach their cave. He burst out from the forest with his chest heaving, looking like a crazy person, probably, with mud all over him and leaves and grass stuck in his hair. Shane was crouched in front of their cave next to a small fire, fully dressed, thank fuck, with his hair still damp and that look on his face that meant he’d worked himself up into something just a few notches shy of a panic attack. He looked up when he heard Ilya crash through the trees, and all at once the look melted into relief. 

Shane dropped the stick he was holding and stood. Ilya stared at him. No limbs missing. No great big bloody bite marks anywhere. He was walking towards Ilya, and that was okay. That was -- 

Ilya’s head finally caught up to his eyes. He’s fine, he realized. He’s fine. And at that the surge of relief in his chest was so sudden, so huge, that before he could think better of it Ilya was lunging forward, and tackling Shane to the ground. 

They both landed hard in the grass, Shane with a little “oomph!” as Ilya’s weight knocked the air out of his lungs, Ilya with a laugh that sounded more like a sob. 

“You are okay,” Ilya said, clinging to Shane as though, if there was a single inch of them that wasn’t touching, Shane might turn into some stupid wolf’s dinner after all. “Fuck. Thank fuck.” 

“Did you think I wouldn’t be?” Shane asked, after a beat. He didn’t sound mad that Ilya had knocked the wind out of him, or that now after his morning bath he was all covered in mud again. Of course he didn’t. He was so kind, and so perfect, and he loved Ilya. Ilya buried his face against Shane’s neck. Shane reached up as best he could with Ilya on top of him, and gently petted his hair. 

“I thought you might be eaten,” Ilya said, against Shane’s skin. Shane paused, then kept petting him again. “I thought I might come back and you would be gone. Shit. Fuck. You scared me.” He raised his head to meet Shane’s eyes. He knew his own eyes were probably wild. Shane frowned when he saw them, and cupped his cheek. “Shane. Solnyshko. I saw a wolf.” 

Finally, finally, Shane’s eyes grew wide too. “You saw what?”

“A wolf. A fucking wolf.” 

Shane’s hand had gone very still on his cheek. “Ilya.”

“I know,” Ilya said. He was babbling now, practically, but he couldn’t help it. He had been so scared, and now he was so relieved, and Shane was here and fine and staring back at him like he couldn’t believe it either. Ilya leaned down and kissed him, because there was no universe in which he could have done anything else. Not after this. “I’m sorry I hid,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you here alone.” 

Shane was already shaking his head, even before Ilya finished. “I’m sorry, too,” he said. He drew in a deep breath, as though to steel himself. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. Ilya, I wanted to tell you…” 

Whatever Shane had to tell him, it would have to wait, because if he had to hear right now that Shane wanted to reset this thing between them after he’d just spent the past fifteen minutes thinking Shane might be dead, Ilya really might lose his mind. “Tell me later,” Ilya said, cutting Shane off before Shane could finish. He leaned down and kissed him again. 

“Ilya.” 

“Please,” Ilya begged. Shane must have heard the catch in his voice, because his hand was in Ilya’s hair again, stroking gently through his curls. “Whatever you want to tell me, tell me later. Please.” 

“Okay,” Shane whispered. He kissed Ilya again, then drew Ilya down until Ilya’s head was tucked against his shoulder. Ilya closed his eyes. Shane wrapped his arms around him and held him close. “Later. Okay.” 

They stayed like that, curled up on the ground together, until the clouds above them finally broke, and the rain began.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: the boys plan for winter, round two

Chapter 20: November 2, 2011. Shane.

Chapter Notes

Shane loved Ilya.

Like, loved loved him.

It was exhilarating, admitting it. Frightening as all get out, too, obviously, but mostly just -- just amazing. Just the best. 

He knew, logically, that there were all sorts of reasons why falling in love was a terrible idea. Either this whole wilderness survival ordeal would end with them being rescued, or it would end with them dying horribly of starvation or exposure or something else equally awful, and either way loving Ilya only made absolutely everything about it a hundred times more complicated. But, for once in his life, Shane couldn’t bring himself to care. He was in love with the best person in the world. The world’s best person loved him back. He was giddy with it, most days, except for every now and then when the whole thing scared him shitless. 

Besides, however hard it was for him, it was a thousand times worse for Ilya. There was the whole Russia thing, for one. There was Ilya’s family, for another. However breezy Ilya seemed to be about liking men and women, however open and unafraid about showering Shane with affection, there was clearly still some kind of deep-rooted repression at work there. All this time, and Ilya would still only ever tell Shane he loved him in Russian. All this time, and he still sporadically, doggedly insisted that they were just friends. 

But that was okay. It was all okay. Ilya had been so patient with Shane, those months it had taken him to go from “absolutely, definitely not gay” to “maybe gay, but just a little” to “very much gay and very much gay for you.” If Ilya needed a little bit of patience from Shane in turn, a little bit more time, then, well. It was the least that Shane could do. 

Ilya wasn’t ready to talk about it yet? No problem. The important thing was that they both knew what they meant to each other. All the rest of it could wait. 

It was funny, nearly a year later, to think that Shane had once been terrified to even let himself think about having sex with Ilya, when now a morning spent curled up together in bed, lazily sucking Ilya’s dick and listening while Ilya fell apart above him, was, to his mind, the very best kind of morning there was.

It was bitingly cold outside, with frost on the ground and a threat of snow lurking in the hulking gray clouds on the other end of the lake. Inside the cave, though, it was warm. Their fire from last night was still burning, casting a cheerful, flickering glow over everything. Their belongings were all neatly tidied away: their hockey sticks propped up in one corner, a few day’s worth of food locked away in another, the bedding as clean as they could manage to keep it. The morning was long and languid, and Ilya was exactly where Shane liked him best: sprawled out naked on top of their nest of coats and animal skins and sleeping bags, propped up on his elbows, his legs spread apart, his pretty eyes blown wide and his lips open, panting for breath as he watched Shane swallow him down.

He was murmuring a steady stream of Russian, though Shane -- distracted, admittedly, by the lovely, familiar weight of Ilya’s cock in his mouth -- could only understand bits and pieces of it. But in between garbled strings of endearments that Ilya seemed to be making up on the spot, Shane caught solnyshko, ya tebya lyublyu, moy vozlyublennyy. Sunshine. Sweetheart. I love you. Beloved. He smiled and took Ilya deeper, his eyes sliding closed, savoring the intimacy of sex together, of loving Ilya so much. 

Ilya was close now. He always got especially tender and sappy like this, right before he came. Shane reached up with one hand, patting from Ilya’s stomach to his ribs until Ilya, getting the idea, caught Shane’s hand in his and brought it to his lips. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya murmured again, the words coming out fervent and worshipful and a little disbelieving. Shane could relate. He could hardly believe his good luck most days, too. “Shane, solnyshko, I am --”

Shane hummed around Ilya's dick. Ilya cursed. He kissed Shane’s hand again, squeezing his fingers so hard it might have hurt, if it hadn't also felt so good. “Shane.” 

How lucky, that Shane got to be the one who made Ilya’s voice break like that. How lucky, that they could spend their whole morning in bed, and for once not have to worry about anything except getting each other off. How lucky that he could have this and not be afraid. How lucky, that Ilya loved him. 

Shane took Ilya deeper. Ilya moaned and bucked his hips. They were still holding hands when Ilya came, flushed and panting, beautiful, in Shane’s mouth. 

Ilya toppled backwards onto their bed afterwards, letting go of Shane’s hand to flop his arm over his eyes with another muffled curse. Shane grinned. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pausing only long enough to press a last fond kiss to the crease of Ilya’s hip before pushing himself up onto his elbows. He shuffled forward and tucked himself snugly against Ilya’s side. 

“How was that?” he asked. His voice came out hoarse. He cleared his throat, then slotted their legs together and draped his arm over Ilya’s chest. “Scale of one to ten.” 

Ilya turned his head and lifted his arm enough to crack one eye open. He gave Shane a soft, bleary smile. “Fifty out of ten,” he declared. Shane grinned and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “A hundred out of ten. They should make a new Beaver Badge. ‘Shane Hollander, World Champion at Sucking Dick.’” 

“Well. I learned from the best.” 

“You did,” Ilya agreed. “Fuck.” He turned his head even more, nosing against Shane’s forehead until Shane finally propped himself up and leaned over to kiss him. “Any time you want a demonstration, let me know.” 

Ilya let his free hand stray down, trailing his fingers over Shane’s dick. Shane, though, shook his head. He tugged Ilya’s hand back up and pressed a kiss to his palm, grinning when Ilya made a little moue of disappointment. “Later,” he promised. “Let’s just stay like this for now, yeah? This is nice.”

“Would be nicer if I could touch you,” Ilya groused. But he laid back good-naturedly enough and let Shane rearrange them, moving where Shane told him to, wrapping one arm obediently around Shane’s waist and stretching the other out beneath them for a pillow. Shane laid himself back down at Ilya’s side again when he was done, and gave him another kiss, close-mouthed and sweet. 

“It’s going to snow today,” he said, when they parted. Ilya hummed.

“Good. No reason to get out of bed.” 

“And there’ll be more snow coming. The lake will start to freeze over pretty soon.”

“Mm. It is lucky you have me to keep you warm.”

“So lucky,” Shane agreed, smiling. He slid his hand up Ilya’s neck and buried his fingers in Ilya’s hair. “It’ll be harder to find food, though.” Ilya shrugged and turned his head to hide a yawn. 

“We have enough food for today. And for tomorrow and the day after too, probably.” 

“I mean for this winter.” 

Ilya shrugged again. “We were okay last year, da? We will be okay again.” 

They hadn’t been okay; not really. Both of them had been painfully thin and hollow-bellied by the time the last of the ice had thawed, gaunt and always exhausted and so desperate for green food again that they had practically torn the first of the spring onions out of the ground and eaten them raw, dirt and all. Shane let his eyes rest on Ilya’s lips, the healthy flush of pink on his cheeks. He felt the flex of Ilya’s muscles beneath his head, stubbornly rebuilt again over the spring and summer and fall. He sighed and scrubbed his fingers gently over Ilya’s scalp. 

“I want to visit the apple trees again, before the snow gets too bad,” he said. Ilya gave a long-suffering groan. Shane ignored him and added, “And I want to go fishing.” 

“You hate when the lake is cold, solnyshko.”

“Yeah. But I hate seeing you go hungry, even more.” 

“Well. It is a good thing, then, that I am not hungry.” 

“Ilya.” 

"Shane."

"I'm being serious," Shane said. His voice -- a little hoarse, still -- cracked, without him meaning it to. Instead of answering, Ilya propped himself up on his elbow. He waited until Shane looked up at him, then raised his hand and traced his thumb lightly over Shane’s lips. 

“We are better at hunting now,” Ilya said. All of his pretend exasperation from a moment before had gone. He sounded earnest now, and sweet. Shane smiled back at him without thinking, the warmth in Ilya’s voice managing to settle something anxious and fearful in his heart. “We are better at making furs. We are better at fishing through the ice. We are better at all of it.” 

“It terrifies me,” Shane confessed, lowering his voice to match Ilya's. Ilya ducked down and kissed him. Shane let Ilya coax his mouth open, let Ilya turn the kiss into something tender and comforting. Still, the moment they parted, he added, “The idea of another winter here terrifies me. We were lucky, last winter. What if --"

“It was not luck, solnyshko,” Ilya said, cutting him off. He sounded gentle still, but certain. “We have our home. We have the hatchet and the gun. We have hockey, if sex gets too boring and we want to do something else for a change. Hard to imagine, but still. Good just in case.” Shane huffed out a small laugh, despite himself. Ilya’s eyes wrinkled in the corners as he smiled. “You have me, yes?” he said, quieter this time. Shane’s laughter faded as he gazed back at him. It felt, somehow, even more intimate than sex had been: Ilya paging so calmly and tenderly through all of Shane’s fears, and laying them to rest. “And I have you. The best person I know.” 

Shane had to swallow before he could trust himself to speak. “Yeah?” 

“The most clever. The most brave.” Ilya bent down and punctuated each affirmation with a kiss. “The kindest. The best hunter.”

“Don't forget 'The World Champion at Sucking Dick,'” Shane added, and managed to startle a loud, delighted bark of laughter from Ilya.

“Yes,” Ilya agreed, still laughing. He gathered Shane up in his arms, holding him so tightly that finally -- finally -- Shane felt the last of his anxiety fade into silence. “Most important of all, you are the World Champion at Sucking Dick. Moy vozlyublennyy." His voice quieted, but he was still smiling when he added, "My best friend.” 

I love you, Shane thought, as Ilya tucked them back under the fur blankets again. He wrapped his arms around Ilya and settled his head over Ilya's heart, closing his eyes. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Outside, the snow began to fall. Inside, Ilya's breath slowed and deepened. Before too long Shane was also drifting: warm and safe, cradled in Ilya’s embrace. His breath evened out. Slowly, gradually, the quiet, steady thump of Ilya's heartbeat lulled him to sleep, too. 

Chapter End Notes

:)

Next time: Shane and Ilya ring in the New Year.

Chapter 21: December 31, 2011. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

I meant to bump the chapter count up with the last chapter, but then posting time came and I completely forgot -- sorry!! It's correct now :) 28 chapters total, 7 left to go!

Enjoy!

It had been hours now, and Ilya’s fingers still hurt like a motherfucker. 

He tried to flex them surreptitiously, only the moment he did they suddenly started burning again and, without meaning to, he let out a loud, pained hiss between his teeth. Shane, in between throwing another log on the fire and checking to see if the water was boiling yet, threw a glare over his shoulder. He somehow managed to look equal parts irritated and terrified. Ilya, because he was the most pathetic, lovelorn man in existence, felt his own stupid heart flip over in response. “Stop moving.” 

“It is fine, Shane.” 

“It’s not --” Shane cut himself off abruptly, though he was too late to stop his voice from fumbling and cracking at the end. “Fuck. Just -- just stay where you are, alright? And stop moving your fucking hands.” 

“What is the word in English?" Ilya groused, flexing his fingers again on purpose, just to see Shane's jaw tighten. "When someone is worrying so much it is driving you crazy.”

Shane’s cheeks flushed pink. Usually, Ilya liked watching Shane’s freckles disappear into a blush. Then again, usually Ilya was the one who had put that blush there, and not because he’d gone and given himself frostbite and scared Shane half to death, either.

“I have to get more logs,” Shane said stiffly. He shoved himself to his feet without waiting for an answer. “I’m serious, Ilya. Don’t fucking move.” 

Shane was bundled up into a coat and gone before Ilya could say anything. Ilya, wretched and unhappy, hunched his shoulders and glowered into the fire. It took everything in him not to flop back onto their blankets and call it a fucking day. He probably would have, if it probably also wasn't two-to-one odds that, if Shane walked back in and found him wallowing on their bed a good six feet back from the fire, he’d combust on the spot. 

So. Sulking it was.

The worst part about this whole horrible, awful night wasn’t even the blizzard, or getting lost and staggering around in circles for an hour like the world’s most pathetic merry-go-round, or how desperate and miserable he’d been when Shane had finally found him, or how fucking cold he was, still, down to his bones. The worst part wasn’t the blistering redness in his fingers. It wasn’t even how badly it hurt to move them, a tingling, spiky kind of pain that Ilya hoped was just his veins coming back on-line, and not some sign that his hands were in imminent danger of falling off.

That was all bad, obviously. That all would have been more than enough to be worrying about on its own. But it wasn’t the worst of it: because worse than a blizzard, worse than fucking frostbite, was that Ilya had had plans for tonight, and now every single one of those plans had suddenly and spectacularly gone kaput. 

Visit their traps before it got too dark, and bring home something nice to cook for dinner? Hah. He’d tried that, and got lost in a fucking blizzard for his trouble. 

Sex after dinner? Shane was game for anything, usually, but Ilya had scared him, and then Ilya had goaded him, and about two hours after making it back inside again Ilya’s hands had exploded into the nastiest fucking blisters he’d ever seen in his entire fucking life, so -- not a definite no, but if Shane drew the line anywhere, it was probably at that. 

The plan after dinner, after sex, had been to romance Shane with a few well-chosen anecdotes about hockey and some cuddling. The plan had been to coax Shane into looking at him in that sweet, surprised way he got sometimes, like somehow he was the one who couldn’t believe his luck. The plan had been to kiss, at as-near-to-midnight-as-they-could-figure-it. And afterwards -- afterwards. The plan had been that, afterwards, Ilya would tell him. 

“I love you. I love you so fucking much. I love knowing we don’t need anyone else in the world but us. I think we should get married, here or anywhere, if we ever get out of this stupid fucking forest or even if we don't. I love you. I always, always, always want to be with you. All I ever want is to know that you're safe. All I ever want is to know that you're mine." 

Well. Rehearsing that whole little speech, working himself up to saying it, was the first New Year’s resolution that Ilya had ever made, and now apparently it was going to be the first one he was ever going to break, because he could not possibly tell Shane he loved him when Shane was about ready to kill him, and he could not possibly propose that they spend the rest of their lives together when right now Shane was probably busy thinking over how likely it was they’d have to fucking do that anyway, and regretting every choice he’d ever made that had led to him stepping foot on that fucking piece-of-shit plane in the first place. 

Ilya scowled down at his hands. He flexed them again, just in time for Shane to step back through the deerskin door. “Ilya!" 

“Fuckkk,” Ilya groaned, because this was supposed to be the best day and now it was the worst, just the absolute worst, and even though he knew he was almost certainly going to get another earful about it from Shane, he finally gave in and let himself topple backwards onto their bed, his arms spreadeagled, his fur coat spreading around him like a cape, and -- of course, of fucking course -- misjudging the distance just enough that the back of his head smacked against the ground with a nasty, painful thunk. 

“Ilya!” 

Shane sounded alarmed this time, which was terrible but was, at least, a step up from “Shane sounded about ready to rip Ilya’s head off.” He was on his knees at Ilya’s side the next moment, looming over and prodding at his temple. “Are you okay? Are you bleeding?" 

Shane’s fingers were cold and damp from the snow. They weren’t gentle, exactly, but that was okay. That was nice. Ilya liked the way that Shane forgot he was supposed to treat Ilya like some fragile, breakable thing, even as he fretted over his prostrate body on the ground. “Ilya,” Shane said again. He swallowed, then added, quieter but just as urgent, “Sweetheart. You’re scaring me.” 

“I had a whole plan for tonight,” Ilya blurted out. He hadn’t meant to say it, but, well. How could he keep the words from spilling out, when Shane called him sweetheart? What could he do, when Shane looked at him like that? “Very romantic. Dinner. Sex. A midnight kiss. All of it.” He risked a glance at Shane, his heart pounding painfully fast as he waited to see what Shane would say. Shane, though, didn’t say anything. His face was soft and worried and tired and flushed from the cold and just -- just beautiful. Just Ilya’s favorite, favorite face. Risking his luck, Ilya chanced a smile. “And then instead of all those nice things, I got lost like an idiot and scared you instead.” 

Shane didn’t smile back. He did brush his thumb over Ilya’s lips, though, his face still drawn and his eyes fixed somewhere just a little below Ilya’s eyes. Ilya waited for him, barely breathing.

“When the storm started, and you weren’t back,” Shane began at last, haltingly, “All I could think was how unfair it was. All this time -- us, together -- and we haven’t -- fuck, I don’t know. Haven’t fallen asleep in a real fucking bed together. Haven’t met each other’s families, haven’t -- haven’t gone on a date that wasn’t here in these fucking woods.” He wiped hastily at his eyes. Ilya stared up at him. “Shit, Ilya. We’ve never even fucked. And I know we can’t, obviously -- I mean, not here, not without -- you know. Anything. But I think about it. All the time, I think about it. About doing that, with you.” 

“You want that?” Ilya asked, after a beat. His hands felt like they were burning up. His head was pounding. He barely noticed any of it. He barely noticed anything except for the way Shane was looking at him now. “If someone finds us. If we get out of here. You would still want that? With me?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, Ilya. Of course I would.” Shane wiped at his eyes again. His voice was growing faster and more agitated now. “The whole time you were gone -- when the storm started and you weren't back, and then when I was out there, looking for you -- all I could think was, we’re going to die out here, and we're never going to have any of that. We're going to die, and he’s never even going to know how much I love him.” 

Shane's voice broke at the end. Ilya’s hands were frostbitten and blistered and more painful than anything he'd ever felt in his entire fucking life. Still, he reached up carefully, and, as lightly as he could, rested his palm against Shane’s cheek. 

“I know,” Ilya said simply, because he did. That was why he had made Shane promise that nothing between them would change, wasn’t it? Back at the beginning. Because Shane loved him, and Ilya had known, even then, that he would not be able to bear it, losing that. Losing his best friend. Ilya raised his other hand to cup Shane's cheek. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” he added -- because Shane loved him, and that should have been enough but Ilya still, somehow, even now, couldn’t help himself wanting more. “Ya tak sil'no tebya lyublyu. Moy vozlyublennyy. Moy Shane.” 

One expression after another flitted across Shane’s face, there and then gone too quickly for Ilya to make out. Finally, though, Shane settled on a smile. “I know,” he said. He didn't know, obviously -- but it was nice, still. Hearing him say it. Shane tilted his head into Ilya's touch. Then he raised his own hands and rested them on top of Ilya’s, so careful and light Ilya could barely feel them.

“Come on,” Shane said, clearing his throat. His voice was normal again, brisk and exasperated and fond. Ilya smiled back at him. “If you promise to stop moving, I’ll sit with you by the fire and tell you everything I’ll let you do to me once those pretty hands of yours are working again.” 

Ilya’s smile cracked into a grin. “Promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.” 

“Mm. Fine. Only because I am feeling nice.” Ilya pushed himself up, Shane letting go of his hands long enough to help him. “A kiss first, though,” Ilya added, trying his luck. Shane laughed.

“You rounded off your first near death experience crawling into my lap for a kiss, too,” Shane teased. He fiddled with the collar of Ilya's coat and smiled at him. His eyes were bright. “I’m noticing a pattern.” Ilya scoffed. 

“Please. I do not need a ‘near death experience’ to get a kiss from you anymore.” 

“No, you don’t,” Shane agreed. He smiled again as he leaned forward and caught Ilya’s face in his hands. "Not anymore."

Chapter End Notes

(In case anyone is fretting -- Ilya's hands will be okay!! Don't worry!!)

Next time: The Rescue.

Chapter 22: May 28, 2012. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

For all that it ended up being one of the great turning points in Ilya’s life, one of the most monumental, life-changing Before and Afters, May 28th started out ordinary enough. 

He and Shane woke up together, as they usually did. They were all wrapped up in each other without even the tiniest bit of space between them, as they nearly always were. It was early as fuck, because Shane liked a routine, and for whatever godforsaken reason that routine included racing the birds to see who could start their day first. Ilya, for his part, could have gone on sleeping until noon, especially seeing as how they had exactly nowhere to be and precisely nothing to do. But, well. He loved Shane. If Shane insisted on waking up at the ass crack of dawn every day for no fucking reason, then God help him, Ilya would wake up, too.

Well. For a certain definition of “wake up,” anyway. 

“Solnyshko,” Ilya groaned, rousing out of sleep the moment he felt Shane stir. He rolled over on top of Shane before Shane could do much more than start to pull the blankets back, and immediately made himself as heavy as he could. “Vozlyublennyy. No.” 

“You can go back to bed,” Shane said. He sounded wide awake already. He also sounded fond and just the tiniest bit exasperated, as though out of the two of them Ilya was the one being ridiculous. He scrubbed his hand through Ilya’s hair, then reached down and patted his hip. “Come on. Off.” 

“It is so nice and comfortable here.” Ilya nosed against Shane’s temple, peppering sleepy, messy kisses as he went. “Moy lyubimyy matras.”

“A lovely mattress for you, maybe,” Shane huffed. It was probably just a lucky guess, but Ilya grinned against his cheek anyway. God. Shane was so smart, and so perfect, and so ridiculous and stupid also, and Ilya loved him so, so much. Shane tapped Ilya again, sharper this time, aiming for his hip but hitting his ass instead. “You don’t have to get up yet.”

“I do,” Ilya countered. He kissed Shane again. “You are going to go take a freezing cold bath in the lake, yes? If I am not there with you, who knows. Maybe a bear will find you. Or our friend, the wolf.” 

“Your friend.”

“Our friend.”

“Mm. Well. I’ll take my chances.” 

“I will be lonely,” Ilya tried, switching tacks as Shane made to push himself up again. “You know I cannot sleep if you are gone.” He kissed Shane again, slow and sweet this time, coaxing Shane’s mouth open. He couldn’t see Shane soften, exactly -- it was too dark for that -- but he could feel it in the way Shane melted against him, the way Shane’s fingers curled when he caught the back of Ilya’s head and held him close.

“Yeah?” Shane said softly, pulling back just far enough to mumble the words against Ilya’s lips. Ilya rubbed their noses together. Shane leaned into his touch, nudging him too. “You’d miss me?”

“Shane.” Ilya bent down and kissed him again. “Always.” 

“Good thing you’re stuck with me, then.” 

It was a good thing. It was the best thing. Ilya only smiled, pulling back enough to squint and meet Shane’s eyes through the darkness. “Ten more minutes,” he bargained. Shane crooked a smile, too. 

“Ten more minutes,” he agreed, and let Ilya fold him back into his arms, where he belonged.

Ten minutes quickly turned into an hour or so, partly because both of them lost themselves in amorous kisses that gradually turned into just-as-amorously rubbing one off together, partly because neither of them had the first fucking clue how to keep track of time. But this time, when Shane finally got up, Ilya got up with him, only grousing a little as he helped Shane make their bed. Then they were outside, stretching and yawning and grinning at each other in the dove-gray light. Then they were racing down the grassy embankment and across the sand into the lake. Then Shane was yelping from the cold, dancing up and down in the shallows. Ilya was laughing, splashing him while Shane spluttered and cursed. Shane was tackling him and toppling them both into the water. And then, and then, and then.

The morning ripened around them, the last of the fog burning away as the sky turned from primrose to rich honey-gold to blue. Eventually they gave over tussling and paddled out deeper, treading water for a while, then floating on their backs and staring up into the perfect, cloudless sky. Their laughter from earlier faded, but the moment didn’t. Ilya could still feel it, this painful, exhilarating, wonderful something stretching between them. It felt electric. It felt like looking up and meeting each other's eyes across the ice, like winning a breakaway with five seconds left on the board. Ilya stared up at the enamel blue sky, his limbs spread out, the water murmuring in his ear. Shane was nearby, close enough that, every now and then, their fingers brushed. 

Ilya didn’t say anything, but he stretched out far enough to tangle their fingers together. The next wave came, washing over their joined hands. When it passed, Shane turned to smile at him, and squeezed his hand back.

They swam back to shore eventually, their stomachs growling as the sun rose higher and the air warmed around them. Shane splashed to shore to fetch one of their spears; Ilya caught them a fish. He built them a fire, then gutted their catch while Shane ducked back into the cave to find them clothes. Half an hour later, they were licking the last of the meat and juice from their hands. Another half hour later and they were sprawled out in the sand, Ilya’s shorts rucked down enough for Shane to mouth at his dick, Ilya stammering out curses and endearments with his knees spread apart and his fingers clutching Shane’s hair, too blissed out even to know if he was speaking in Russian or English anymore. Shane crawled on top of Ilya to kiss him, finishing him off with his hand and only breaking away long enough to grin when Ilya came with a groan. 

“You liked that?” Shane asked, as though he hadn’t just blown Ilya’s brain out through his dick and left him entirely speechless. He propped himself up on his elbows on top of Ilya’s chest and peered down at him, his chin in his hand, mock-serious. “You’re looking a little peaky down there, Rozanov.” His lips quirked into a smile again, like they couldn’t help it. “Was it too much? Need a breather?”

“I’ll show you too much,” Ilya growled. He rolled them over while Shane was still laughing, pinning him in the sand and kissing him until his laughter turned into breathless, needy sighs, then into moans, and finally into, “Ilya -- fuck, Ilya -- just like that…sweetheart, please…” 

It was a good day, when it started. An entirely ordinary, utterly perfect day.

They found themselves stretched out in the grass that afternoon, mostly dressed again. Somewhere between morning and noon a few cottony clouds had drifted into the sky. Shane was flat on his back, stroking lazy fingers through Ilya’s hair while he rattled off what each new cloud reminded him of. Ilya’s head was pillowed on Shane’s stomach. His eyes were closed, his thoughts drifting, too. 

The sun was warm against his face. The grass was soft beneath his back. Shane’s stomach was soft too, especially now that the desperate, vicious hunger of winter was over. Shane’s hand felt nice as his fingers scritched gently against Ilya’s scalp. Ilya thought of the frostbite scars on his own fingers, the callouses from the hatchet and the spears and the gun, the callouses on Shane’s hands, too. All of the new constellations of freckles on his cheeks. Their lean muscles and sunburned skin. The way he loved Shane, as real and physical as any of the rest of it, like a truth etched under his skin. It all felt of a piece, all of these hundreds and hundreds of ways the forest had marked them.

And Ilya thought -- how unfair it was to feel all of this, to be practically incandescent with love, and for Shane not to know. For Shane not to feel everything that Ilya felt, too. 

“D’you think that cloud looks like a loon?” Shane asked, squinting up. “The one over there on the right, next to the sun.” He poked Ilya's shoulder, then pointed. Ilya opened his eyes and craned his neck back to look at him.

“I think we should get married,” he said. 

He had thought, for so long, that it would be the scariest feeling in the world, saying it aloud. And it was, at first. At first it felt, almost, like a second plane crash -- the rush of disbelief, followed the next moment by absolute, blind panic. But then after the shock, after the terror, stronger than both, he felt something else, too -- joy. 

Wild, dizzying, all-consuming joy. Ilya scrambled to sit up, moving so fast he accidentally jabbed his elbow, hard, into Shane’s stomach. “Sorry,” he gasped. He felt so overfull with happiness he wondered, distantly, that there was room for anything else inside him, that his heart could find space to beat or his lungs to breathe, that he could somehow still string words together when inside every single inch of him was a chorus of I love you, I love you, I love you, and now you know. Shane was flat on his back on the ground, wheezing and staring. Ilya leaned over him on his hands and knees, grinning like a madman. “Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“Ilya --”

“We should get married.” 

“Ilya.” 

How could Ilya possibly explain it -- this certainty in his heart, the enormity of all these exhilarating, wondrous emotions that he felt? English was too small. Even Russian was too small. He beamed down at Shane. He had been so scared, for so long, that he would tell Shane, and Shane would answer No. But now -- “I love you,” Ilya said. "I want to marry you." He cupped Shane’s cheeks in his hands, bent down, and kissed him. 

Shane kissed him back, at first: his lips parting like it was second nature, his hands coming up to cradle Ilya’s on either side of his face. He knows, Ilya thought dazedly -- This is what it feels like, kissing when we love each other, when he knows. He laughed a little, breathlessly, at the wonder of it. He smoothed his thumbs over Shane’s beautiful cheeks and drew back just far enough to blink his eyes open, to smile down at Shane and see if Shane felt the magic of it, too. 

Shane’s eyes were already open. His skin was flushed, his lips shiny with spit and pink from kissing. He was staring up at Ilya. He didn’t look dazed, though, or exhilarated, or bewildered or shocked or uncertain or even afraid.

He looked hurt. 

Before Ilya had a chance to do more than blink, Shane was pulling his hands away and pushing him back. Shane scrambled to sit up, wiping furiously at his mouth with the back of his hand, like he was trying to scrub Ilya away. He was still staring at Ilya, but when Ilya tried to move closer Shane shoved himself back on the grass, out of his reach. Ilya froze. Shane scrubbed at his mouth again. “What the fuck?” he demanded, and that wasn’t right. That wasn’t -- “I’m not even allowed to say ‘I love you,’ but you get to -- married? Not even fucking boyfriends, you want us -- married?! What the fuck, Ilya!” 

The panic in Ilya’s chest eased, a little. Okay. Boyfriends. He could do boyfriends. “Boyfriends” seemed utterly inadequate to express everything that they were to each other, seemed honestly pretty fucking stupid when they’d spent the past two years entwined in absolutely every single fucking way, but whatever. If Shane wanted to call them boyfriends, then sure, absolutely, Ilya could be his boyfriend. Boyfriends first, husbands later, that would work, no problem. 

He opened his mouth to tell Shane so, when all of a sudden the rest of what Shane had said caught up to him, smacking into him with all the force of a check straight into the boards.

He snapped his mouth closed again and stared. Shane stared back, his eyes too-bright and unhappy, his chest heaving.

“What do you mean?” Ilya said, slowly. 

“What do I mean? What the fuck do you mean?” 

“You are ‘not even allowed to say I love you,’” Ilya said. Shane shook his head. Dread settled in Ilya’s stomach, all of the joy from a moment before turning, slowly, to ice. “Shane,” he said. It sounded like someone else’s voice in his ears. It felt like somebody else’s hands, twisting uselessly in his lap. “What do you mean?” 

“You won’t ever let us talk about it,” Shane bit out. His jaw was set. He was staring somewhere a little past Ilya’s shoulder, as though he couldn’t quite bear to look at Ilya himself right now. “Every time I try, you tell me to stop, or -- or you say we're just friends, or -- or you start speaking in fucking Russian. Fuck. And -- look -- I know this is hard for you, alright? This whole being in love with each other thing.” He gestured agitatedly between them. “I know how hard it must be with, with your family, and hockey, and Russia. But this isn’t fair either, Ilya! We don’t have to talk about it, fine, whatever, but you don’t get to shut me down over and over and then just --” 

“You love me,” Ilya interrupted. Shane scrubbed his eyes again and looked at Ilya long enough to glower at him. 

“Yes. Obviously.” 

“And -- you know I love you.” 

“Yes, Ilya.”

“You never said anything.” 

“You never fucking let me!” 

That wasn’t right. Ilya would have known how Shane felt. He would have -- “For how long?” he demanded. “How long have you known this, and did not tell me?” Shane swore under his breath and shoved himself to his feet. Ilya clambered up after him. His ears were ringing, a buzz of panic building under his skin. “Shane. How long?” 

“I don’t fucking know, Ilya! It’s been ‘ya tebya lyublyu,’ this, ‘ya tebya lyublyu’ that for fucking months now, fuck. I don’t fucking know.” 

Time slowed, then stopped.

There was black on the edge of Ilya’s vision. “Say it again,” he said. His voice was low, each word coming out clipped and measured and precise. It didn’t sound like his voice. If that had been his voice, he would have been screaming. If that had been his voice the words would have been bloody. That’s how they felt -- like each one had been torn straight out of his throat. “What you just said. Say it again.” 

Shane, halfway through pacing on the grass in front of Ilya, drew to a stop. He wrapped his arms around himself. He looked hurt still, and upset, but he also looked, for the first time, a little guilty, too. He paused a beat, then seemed to steel himself. He tilted his chin up, and finally met Ilya’s eyes. 

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” he said, in perfect Russian. 

There was a roaring sound in Ilya’s ears. His heartbeat, maybe, or shock, or maybe just the utter, paralyzing mortification of realizing that Shane had known this entire fucking time. Every confession that Ilya couldn’t bear to swallow, every late night promise he’d made, every single time he’d thanked God or Mama or the fucking universe for bringing them together -- every single time, Shane had known. 

Shane had known, and never said a goddamn fucking thing. 

“You speak Russian?” Ilya said at last. The roaring in his ears was growing louder. Shane dropped his gaze, then caught himself and looked up at Ilya again, his eyes flashing a challenge, like this was a fucking faceoff. He looked guilty still, but mostly he looked angry. Well, fuck it. Ilya was angry now, too. “This was -- what? A fun party trick you were waiting to pull out? Or maybe you just did not think to mention it. Too many other, more boring things to talk about, than how perfect, clever Shane Hollander knows English and French and fucking Russian.”

“I learned it from you, Ilya,” Shane snapped. “It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. You say it all the fucking time.” 

In his most private, intimate moments. When no one else was supposed to fucking be listening. Ilya squeezed his eyes shut, because he couldn’t bear to look at Shane right now. As though from far away, he heard himself say, “Have you known I love you the whole time?”

“I don’t know. For a long time.”

“The whole time?” Ilya insisted. His eyes were still shut, but he could practically see Shane throw up his hands.

“I don’t fucking know! How long is ‘the whole time?’”

“The whole time, is -- shit! -- the whole fucking time, Shane! Since getting on the plane. Since June two years ago. Have you known the whole time?” 

Ilya’s voice was ragged, his breath coming so fast he almost choked on the words. All that answered him, though, was silence. 

And then -- “Ilya. Look at me.” 

Ilya didn’t want to. But even now, furious and hurting and so embarrassed he wanted to sink right down into the ground and let it swallow him whole, he couldn’t bring himself to ignore Shane. He wrapped his arms around his chest, too. Then, slowly, he blinked his eyes open.

Shane’s face was pale. His eyes were fixed on Ilya’s face. “Ilya,” he said again. Ilya’s own eyes were burning. He wiped at them hastily. Shane waited for him, then said, “You need to tell me what you mean.”

“Solnyshko --”

“What do you mean, you’ve loved me since the plane? We barely even knew each other before the plane.” 

“Shane, I --”

“No,” Shane said. He shook his head, before Ilya could -- fuck, he didn’t even know. Refuse to answer. Collapse to his knees. Beg Shane to let them go back to the way it was, back to this morning, back to holding hands in the water, back to when Ilya’s confession was still locked safely away inside his heart, where it could not ruin everything. “No more excuses,” Shane said. Ilya watched him swallow. “We’re talking now. What do you mean, you've loved me since the plane?” 

“It was my idea,” Ilya burst out. It was like someone had reached into his chest and smashed something precious inside of him, and now every confession, every secret, was pouring out. Once he started, he couldn't stop. “The photoshoot was my idea. My agent set it all up. The photographer. The shitty plane. You were so beautiful that night after the draft, in the hotel gym. I was going crazy. I could not stop thinking about you. So I thought -- maybe, if we were somewhere private -- in the middle of nowhere, taking sexy photos together -- then, maybe, you would want to --”

“Have sex with you?” Shane finished, when Ilya trailed off. His face had gone entirely blank. It was a thousand times worse than his anger, somehow -- the hollow-eyed way he was staring at Ilya now. “You thought you’d fly me out to the middle of the woods, and maybe then I’d let you fuck me?”

No, Ilya thought. No. Nonononono. Don’t say it like that. It was never like that. 

Only -- it had been, hadn’t it? At the beginning. It had been something cheap and meaningless, something dirty and stupid he'd wanted to get out of his system. Before the plane. Before the crash. Before Ilya had realized that Shane Hollander was the best person in the entire world, before he'd realized that he loved him.

Ilya didn’t answer. The pounding in his ears was growing louder now. A shadow crossed over his eyes. He dropped to his knees, hard enough and suddenly enough that he felt his skin split. Good. Maybe, if he was bleeding, he would have something else to think about, other than the betrayed fucking look on Shane’s face. Other than the fact that he was the reason that look was there. 

The ground grew dark again. As though from very far away, he heard Shane call his name. Slowly, reluctantly, Ilya dragged his gaze up. 

It wasn’t his heartbeat he heard roaring in his ears, after all. It wasn’t his own grief clouding his vision.

It was a plane. 

Above the lake, close and growing closer, until it was close enough and loud enough it seemed to fill the whole sky -- a plane. 

Chapter End Notes

Next time: Shane and Ilya make the news.

Chapter 23: Three Headlines

Chapter Notes

1) I am genuinely in awe of the social media fics in this fandom, but regretfully my own coding skills don't extend much further than usually managing to remember the tag for italics lol. This is about as fancy as it's going to get.

2) This is the only interlude chapter -- we're back with the boys and the *pining* again after this, I promise!

Hockey Stars Discovered Alive Two Years After Crash

The New York Times staff writers

May 29, 2012

Hockey fans across the world rejoiced last night as news broke that rookies Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov were found alive earlier that afternoon. 

Hollander, 21, and Rozanov, 20, disappeared nearly two years ago, when the Cessna 172 they were flying en route to a photoshoot abruptly lost radio contact and disappeared over northern Québec. Search efforts were suspended after five months due to the isolated terrain and winter weather conditions. Despite pleas from Hollander’s parents and many members of the international hockey community, all individuals aboard the craft -- Hollander, Rozanov, photographer Gregory Martin, and pilot Alexis Gagnon -- were declared missing and presumed dead. 

On Monday, however, their story took a sudden, unexpected turn, when an amateur pilot discovered Hollander and Rozanov alive and sheltering alongside an unnamed lake several hundred kilometers north of La Mauricie National Park. The men were immediately evacuated to the nearest hospital. Despite nearly two years of total isolation in the Northwoods, both Hollander and Rozanov were pronounced in good health, according to a statement released by the MLH.

“It's a real miracle,” MLH Commissioner Crowell said, speaking at a press conference earlier today. The Commissioner was visibly moved as he answered reporters’ questions, twice wiping away a tear. “Those boys were the brightest stars in the hockey world two years ago. Once-in-a-generation talents, both of them. I know we’re all still processing their return, and I know there are some open questions about what this means for Boston and Montréal, professionally and financially. But rest assured, the hockey world wishes nothing but the best for those two boys. Nothing but the best. It’s a miracle to have them back with us again, it really is.” 

No member of the Hollander or Rozanov families could be reached for comment. 

This is a developing story and will be updated. 

Defeated Rivalry?

Why the long-anticipated Hollander-Rozanov faceoff may fizzle out before it starts

John Holms | July 1, 2012

Sports Illustrated

As much as Hollander and Rozanov’s disappearance set the hockey world reeling two years ago, their miraculous return has, in some ways, proven even more of a shock. It’s a situation utterly without precedent in MLH history: 2010’s top draft picks vanished without a trace before the start of their rookie season, sending Montréal and Boston scrambling to cut their losses. Now that they’re back, do Montréal and Boston still have dibs on their old rookies? Do they still want dibs? For a better understanding of the legal firestorm Hollander and Rozanov’s return has whipped up, I reached out to Suzanne Jefferies, sports contract lawyer extraordinaire and a professor at Georgetown Law. Suzanne, great to have you with us. 

Jefferies: Great to be here. 

Holms: So, Hollander and Rozanov.

Jefferies: Hollander and Rozanov. It’s incredible, isn’t it? I think Warner Brothers is buying the movie rights as we speak. 

Holms: We’re all familiar with the tragic crash two years ago, as well as Hollander and Rozanov’s dramatic rescue just this last month. Why don’t we dive straight in, then, with the legal side of things. Talk to us about the mess this has kicked up for Boston and Montréal. 

Jefferies: Well, to put it mildly, it’s been a shitshow. 

Holms: (laughs) Is that a legal term?

Jefferies: Sure, you can quote me on that. If anything, I’d say their contract department would probably call “shitshow” an understatement. 

Holms: Tell us more.

Jefferies: Well, to start, let me just front this by saying that I know we all hope for the best for those two boys. To survive a plane crash, to rough it out with no human contact in the Northwoods of Canada for two years -- for two winters, no less! --

Holms: (nodding along) Sure.

Jefferies: -- and then to come back, you know, in relatively good health, all things considered -- still determined to play professional hockey again, if we’re to believe the reporting -- well. It’s incredible, is all. And on a personal level, just speaking as a fan, I know that there’s nothing I’d love more than to see one or both of them back on the ice again. 

Holms: But…

Jefferies: But. It’s complicated, right? I mean, at a certain point, when you’ve been missing for that long, the good folks at the RCMP are looking for a body, not a rescue. For all intents and purposes, to the rest of the world, these two boys were dead. 

Holms: Right.

Jefferies: So imagine you’re Boston or Montréal back in 2010. Where does that leave you? You’ve got a season ahead you still have to plan for. You’ve got a key position on your roster that you suddenly have to fill. You’ve just spent a hell of a lot of money on Rozanov or Hollander, and now your hotshot rookie and his publicity-generating rival are both gone. On a human level, of course, this is a tragedy. But on a business level, it’s what we would call --

Holms: A shitshow. 

Jefferies: (laughs) Yeah. A shitshow. You’ve got these signed contracts, millions of dollars spent, and no player. First and foremost, priority number one, you’ve got to go back to the drawing board and try to fill that spot. And secondly, if you can, you want to recoup that money. How do you do that? Well, what I would advise my clients -- and what both teams, in fact, did -- is to declare the contracts void. 

Holms: Talk us through that. 

Jefferies: Well, Hollander and Rozanov’s exact situation, obviously, there’s no precedent there. But the chance that a player might sign a contract, and in between signing and playing their first game, something happens -- a major injury, say, or an arrest -- that’s not such a far-fetched hypothetical, is it? So the lawyers who write these contracts, they plan for that. You ought to read the fine print sometime, it’s really amazing the contingencies they come up with. 

Holms: Legally, though, Hollander and Rozanov were only ever declared missing. We all assumed they were dead, but…

Jefferies: Right. And that complicated it, for sure. That’s probably why it took Boston and Montréal as long as it did to start the process of declaring the contracts void, because, you know, for a few weeks, for a month or two, even, they were still holding out hope that Hollander and Rozanov would be found alive, and that this investment they’d made would pay off.

Holms: “Investment?” Sounds heartless. 

Jefferies: What can I say? Hockey is a business. 

Holms: They did eventually void the contracts, though. 

Jefferies: They did. The Hollander family in particular put up a hell of a fight to slow the process down, but eventually both teams did. If Hollander and Rozanov manage to get themselves into good enough shape to play professional hockey again -- still a big “if,” considering -- 

Holms: (nods) Right.

Jefferies: -- then they’ll have to do so by, essentially, reentering the draft as prospects. That raises a whole other host of issues. They'll be about the oldest prospects there. There's going to be a lot of unknowns with their health, with the long-term effect their ordeal has had on their bodies, on them mentally. So the question becomes, will Montréal and Boston want them back?

Holms: What do you think?

Jefferies: Honestly? I think it's a longshot even one of them makes it that far, never mind both of them.

Holms: Well, indulge me. Let's say they do.

Jefferies: Let's say they do. The rivalry the media was building up between them two years ago -- if you’re a franchise, that was compelling, money-making stuff. But now? Isolated for two years in the woods with no one but each other? Somehow surviving all that time, scraping their way back into the upper echelons of professional sports, and facing off against each other on the ice? Good grief. Talk about a riveting story.

Holms: The fan fiction practically writes itself.

Jefferies: (laughs) Exactly. 

Holms: Any chance a team might try to scoop them both up? After two years living together in the woods, it’s going to be hard to pitch them as rivals again. Maybe a different angle -- close friends -- 

Jefferies: Well, I don't know about that. If the gossip rags are to be believed, they haven’t spoken to each other since the rescue. But at any rate, even setting that aside, if Hollander and Rozanov somehow manage to get themselves back into the kind of form they were in two years ago -- and again, I'm not holding my breath there, John, as much as I know we'd all love to see it -- but if they do, then I can't imagine that enough teams would turn them down for one team to then be able to jump in and say, you know what? We'll take them both. I mean, for all those other teams to say "no," it would take a real scandal. 

Holms: Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Jefferies: Here's hoping.

Holms: Thank you so much for your time, Suzanne. As always, it's been a pleasure.

Jefferies: Any time. 

Pilot Speaks Out!

TMZ reporters nab exclusive interview with Hollander-Rozanov rescuer. Keep reading for the SHOCKING details!

By TMZ Staff

Published August 10, 2012 12:10 PM PDT

Trouble in paradise? Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s dramatic rescue three months ago may have seemed like a storyline lifted straight out of Hollywood, but new reporting reveals that the hockey rookies’ infamous rivalry is no performance.

“They barely spoke a word when I found them,” recalls David Farley, the amateur pilot and fishing enthusiast who discovered Hollander and Rozanov in May. “Hollander, he told me their names, told me what had happened. That Rozanov fellow, though? Not one word to me or to Hollander. Didn’t seem to want to have nothing to do with either of us. I asked, you know, if there was anything they wanted to run and fetch before we took off, to bring back with them. And Hollander, he started getting a little teary, started mumbling something about hockey sticks. But Rozanov? He marched straight onto my plane and buckled himself right in, didn’t say a thing. Cold as ice. Hollander just sort of clammed up and followed him. Sad, isn’t it? Imagine being trapped in the woods all those months with someone you can’t stand. I bet they’re both relieved to have a whole ocean and a couple of time zones between them again, I’ll tell you that.”

Hollander refused to comment for this story. Rozanov could not be reached.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: Ilya is a mess. Svetlana stages an intervention.

Chapter 24: February 14, 2013. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

I was very nervous about how the last chapter would go over, so the comments and kind responses were an especial treat. Thank you, everyone! I haven't had a chance to respond yet, but please know that I loved them all! xo

In return, here are about 3,000 words of poor Ilya being an utter disaster 😅 Enjoy?

There were so many shitty things about Ilya’s life right now that, if you were to ask, he would be hard pressed to call any one of them the worst. They were all equally bad, all mind-numbingly, interchangeably awful. His family. Russia. Those motherfucking lawyers at the motherfucking MLH. The horrible cold bed he had to pretend to sleep in every night, and how everyone just expected him to walk around wearing clothes all the damn time now, and how these days two shots of vodka was enough to make his head start to spin. Not a single star in the night sky. Not a whiff of campfire smoke anywhere. It all sucked. The worst? Hah. Go ahead, take your fucking pick. 

Except -- well. That obviously wasn’t true. They were all equally bad, except for the thing that was in every single conceivable way The Worst, which was having to spend the rest of his life cobbling together some semblance of an existence without Shane Hollander in it.

But that was in such an unspeakably horrendous category of its own that Ilya tended not to count it. He usually said no, even, when people asked him if he missed Shane. And it was true. He didn’t miss Shane, because “miss” didn’t even begin to cover it. He never even let himself think about Shane most of the time, because he knew that the moment he did, every little patched up piece of his heart would shatter into a hundred million pieces, and then he’d be right back where he started. Refusing to shower for days on end, again. Sobbing his stupid heart out, again. Railing against the universe, again. Begging them to take him back, to just drop him off any old place in Canada, he’d find his own way home. Again. 

He could barely remember that first month back, it had all been such an endless, slogging nightmare of grief. He wasn’t sure, even now, that he had made it through to the other side. It was true that he could get up, most days. He could talk to his father, and put up with Alexei’s bullshit, and smile and change the subject when Svetlana started to stare at him too knowingly. But all the while he felt like the cursed princess in his mother’s bedtime stories, like his real self was trapped underneath a false skin, raging forever against his stupid, shitty luck, battered and bruised and weeping.

Still, he was doing better. He ate when he was supposed to, and he showered when he remembered, which was almost always now, and he dressed in clothes that usually didn’t earn him more than maybe one or two strange glances on the street. He never thought about Shane anymore, or at least not any more than he could help it. It was progress. He was doing well. He was coping. 

“You look like shit, Ilya,” Svetlana said flatly.

Ilya pulled the covers down enough to glare at her. He was admittedly a little fuzzy on how many drinks he’d had last night, but he did distinctly remember locking the door. “You are breaking into my home now?” he accused. The words came out more croaky and less biting than he’d meant them to be, but he cleared his throat and glared harder to make up for it. Svetlana only glared back, one eyebrow raised, looking supremely unimpressed. “I should call the police.”

“Breaking into your hovel,” Svetlana corrected. She tugged the blanket the rest of the way off of Ilya’s face, ignoring his bleary protest. “Breaking into the saddest apartment in Moscow.” 

“Hey.”

“Look at this mess, Ilyushka.” 

“You are free to piss off and stop looking at it, anytime.” 

“When was the last time you washed any of these clothes?” 

“Washing clothes,” Ilya said, with as much dignity as he could muster when he was miserable and hungover and Svetlana was still glaring at him, like she wasn’t the one who had broken into his apartment in the first place, “Is something we did not do in the wilderness. Forgive me if I have fallen out of the habit.” 

That was usually enough to shut people up, when they got too comfortable staring at Ilya like he was an exhibit at the fucking zoo. Svetlana, though, only flicked his ear. 

“Get up,” she said. When he groaned and tried to pull the blankets back over his head, she flicked him again. “I’m making you breakfast, and we are putting your stupid, smelly clothes in the wash, and then you and I are having a talk.” 

Three overcooked eggs, two cups of black coffee, and some indeterminate number of ibuprofen later, and Ilya found himself slumped on the floor underneath his apartment’s single grimy window, coffee number three clutched between his hands, squinting balefully up at Svetlana through the grayish light. Svetlana, for her part, eyed the floor. Then, apparently deciding that no amount of love for Ilya was worth getting that near the carpet, she pulled over one of the kitchen chairs, settled herself cross-legged on the seat, and scowled at him. 

“You called me crying again last night,” she said, without preamble. She took a sip of her own coffee, then added, “That is three times already this month.” 

“I am fine.”

“You obviously are not.” 

“I am fine enough.”

“Three times,” she reminded him again, in case Ilya was in any danger of forgetting how pathetic he was. “And every single time it is the same story. Always, on and on about --”

“Stop, Svetlana.” 

She must have heard the warning in his voice, because she did stop. Not that it mattered, really. Ilya knew perfectly well how that sentence ended. 

“I do not remember calling you,” he said, after a pause. He cleared his throat. Svetlana snorted and took another sip of coffee. 

“Yes. Because you drink too much.”

“You drink too.”

“Not because I am sad,” she countered, a little testily. “Not because I am looking for an excuse to cry myself to sleep.” 

“I’m not --”

“And besides,” she added, raising her voice before Ilya could finish, “Out of the two of us, I am not the one who has to be ready for the Draft in four months.” 

Ilya might be hungover, miserable, and the current occupant of the saddest flat in Moscow, but even so he wasn’t one to let an opening like that pass by. He drew his shoulders up and took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “Well, maybe I am not, either." 

As momentous as finally saying it aloud was, as much time as he'd spent working himself up to it these past few weeks, it was a (fleeting, bittersweet, but still) satisfaction to, for once, catch Svetlana entirely off guard. 

“What,” she said at last, after a good minute or two of gaping at him in astonished silence, “Is that supposed to mean?”

“I have been thinking that maybe it would be better if I do not try to go back to the MLH after all,” Ilya said. He had rehearsed this speech at least a hundred times, but it turned out he needn’t have bothered; literally anything was easier than having to talk about Shane, and the words practically tripped off his tongue. “All this stupid training every single fucking day, and for what? I am not as good as I used to be. I probably won’t ever be as good as I used to be. Boston has already made it pretty fucking clear they are not interested anymore. It would be humiliating, Sveta, to go from -- what? Number one, to some team’s charity case?”

“Ilya. You know that's not how it will go.”

“And Papa is getting worse,” Ilya said, ignoring her. “He will not be able to live alone soon. Who the fuck else am I supposed to leave him with? Polina doesn’t care. Alexei? Hah.”

“Ilya.” 

“So, probably it will be better for everyone if I stay. Who gives a shit about hockey, anyway? Only you and a few other very boring people.” 

“Ilya.” 

“And luckily, I have many useful skills now.” He chanced a grin, though he knew it didn’t reach his eyes, and began to tick them off on his fingers. “I can skin a rabbit,” he said. “Or tell you which plants are okay to eat and which will give you the runs. Or scare away a wolf. Or --” 

“You are an idiot,” Svetlana said, unfolding herself from her chair with a scowl. And before Ilya could answer, before he could promise that this was the smartest choice he’d ever made, probably the only smart choice he’d made since calling up his agent and saying, “What do you think about a photoshoot in Canada this summer?”, she added, “Like we both don’t know you are only being stupid because you are afraid of seeing Hollander again.” 

She was in Ilya’s lap the very next moment: plucking his lukewarm coffee from his hands, setting it to the side, wrapping her arms around his neck and looking at him. They were near enough that Ilya could feel the puff of her breath on his cheek. They were near enough that there was not one single place left for him to hide. 

He stared back at her for as long as he could bear it; and then, when that was too much, he closed his eyes and slumped forward, tipping his head onto her shoulder. Svetlana kept one hand clasped around the nape of his neck. With her other hand she reached up, and gently began to card her fingers through his hair. 

“Why are you afraid, Ilyushka?” she murmured.

“I love him,” Ilya confessed. Svetlana knew that already, of course. It still hurt like anything, saying it aloud. 

She tightened her hand around the back of his neck. It was such a relief it was almost dizzying, being held again by someone who would not let him go. “I am glad that you had him, all that time,” Svetlana said. For the first time her voice cracked, too. “I’m glad that he had you.” 

“Yes," Ilya agreed, because loving each other was something to be grateful for, even if it was over now. He shook his head, and added raggedly, "I hurt him.” 

“No.”

“I did,” Ilya choked. Svetlana squeezed his neck again, and at that Ilya couldn’t help it. He shoved his face against the crook of her neck, and began to cry. 

It had been months since the last time Ilya had cried like this -- like losing Shane was a fresh wound, like maybe if he stormed and wailed loudly enough the universe would stop taking and taking and would finally fucking let him keep something for a change. He sobbed until his stomach heaved and his throat tightened, and when it became too much he followed Svetlana’s voice, letting her calm his gasping lungs only just enough for him to start sobbing all over again. 

The better part of an hour passed by the time he finally stopped, wrung too dry to do anything more than slump the rest of the way into Svetlana’s embrace. He was a mess of tears and snot and shuddering, hiccupping breaths, but Svetlana didn’t seem to mind. She just held him, still petting her fingers through his hair the same patient way she had the whole time he’d been crying. “What are you so afraid of, Ilyushka?” she asked again. Her voice was very gentle. 

“He hates me,” Ilya rasped. He squeezed his eyes shut. There was not a single breath in him left to cry, but he felt his shoulders tightening anyway, that same familiar burning behind his eyes. Svetlana, though, only clucked her tongue. 

“I know that’s not true,” she said, dismissively enough that Ilya managed to draw himself back, scrub his face, and glower at her. 

“I love him,” he said, saying each word slowly, in case she had somehow missed that part, “And I hurt him, and now he hates me.” 

It was no good. Svetlana still looked utterly unconvinced and even, for the first time, the tiniest little bit amused. “Ilya,” she said, patiently, as though he was a child, “He loves you.” 

“Yes, he did, until --”

“Not until. Now. He loves you now. Idiot.” 

“He thinks I seduced him,” Ilya said, because apparently even crying his heart out wasn’t enough to earn him a fucking break, and now Svetlana was going to make him explain himself, too. He could feel a blush beginning to sting his cheeks red. “He thinks the whole thing was a set-up. He thinks I lured him to the woods to -- to have my way with him.” He could see Shane’s face in his mind's eye even now, the horrified, frozen look in his eyes when Ilya had confessed that the photoshoot had been his idea all along.

It was unbearable. Ilya wanted to disappear. He wanted to curl up under the blankets of the loneliest bed in the saddest apartment in Moscow and never, ever leave again. Svetlana, though, only laughed. 

“Do you realize how stupid that sounds, Ilya?” she asked, still petting his hair.

“I --” 

“Hollander is too good at hockey,” she said. She kissed his temple, then shoved him gently but firmly the rest of the way back, until they were sitting face-to-face. “I refuse to believe he is dumb enough to think you would do something as stupid as that.” 

“He is not dumb. The photoshoot was my idea.” 

“Did you plan the plane crash, too? And the two years with no rescue? That is a lot of effort for a couple of scenic blowjobs, Ilya.”

“Sveta --” 

“Ilya,” she countered. There were about a hundred different emotions in her voice -- fondness, mostly, and exasperation, but also an undercurrent of sadness that Ilya was too exhausted to know how to answer. “Ilya,” she said again, “I know you are not really afraid that Hollander thinks those crazy things about you.”

“I don’t know what he thinks.” Ilya shrugged, then shuddered. Svetlana watched him, her gaze gentling. “He has tried to talk to me, a few times -- but I can't, Sveta. We were fighting at the end. It was awful. I hurt him.” 

“You do this when you are scared, Ilyushka,” Svetlana said, after a beat. “You run and hide. Like you are hiding from me, in this horrible apartment. Like you are hiding from him.” She stroked her fingers over his cheek, still watching him. “I know you have real things to be afraid of,” she said. “Russia, and the League. And maybe you two will decide that it is not worth trying to make this work. But that is something you should talk to him about, Ilya. It is something you should decide together.” 

“There is no ‘together’ anymore,” Ilya bit out. He hadn’t thought he had anything in him left to cry, but somehow he was crying again. Svetlana just sighed and wiped his wet cheeks with the back of her hand. 

“I have listened to a lot of drunk three a.m. phone calls these past few months,” she confided. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Ilya’s cheek, lingering there a moment before drawing back and smiling at him. “I think I am pretty much an expert on every single wonderful thing there is to know about Shane Hollander. The sexy parts included.” 

“Sveta,” Ilya groaned. He let his head thunk back against the wall. Svetlana laughed. 

“You trusted him with your life, all those months you were together in the woods," she said. "I think maybe it will be okay, now, if you let yourself trust him with this, too.” She tapped her fingers against his heart and smiled at him again. 

She was on her feet and in the kitchen again before Ilya could answer. “Enough about your sad love life,” she called over her shoulder. Ilya could hear the sound of the coffeemaker heating up again, the clink of dishes as she tidied up. “The important question is, what are we going to do about your hangover?”

“Nothing,” Ilya said. He wiped his eyes, cursing under his breath and staring up at the water-stained ceiling. “Suffer.” 

“My father has a surefire cure for hangovers,” she said, ignoring him, as usual. Ilya winced as she slammed a cabinet door. However sore his head felt, though, and however much his eyes burned, his heart, at least, felt lighter than it had in a long, long time. “Do you want to know what it is?” 

“No.”

“Hockey practice!” Svetlana said brightly. She reappeared in front of Ilya again, a fresh cup of coffee in her left hand. With her right she reached down, waiting expectantly until Ilya finally, grudgingly, let himself be hauled to his feet.

“Come on, superstar,” she said. She stood on tiptoe to press one last kiss to his cheek, before pressing the mug into his hands. “Let’s get you cleaned up, and then let’s get ready. We only have four months left to show Boston how stupid they were to ever let you go.”

Chapter End Notes

Next time: Shane comes to a decision.

Chapter 25: June 26, 2013. Shane.

Chapter Notes

Sorry for the wait, everyone! Sometimes life gets in the way, and sometimes a chapter is just weirdly hard to write for no reason, and this time it was both :P

Thanks for your patience (and for the lovely comments!), and enjoy!

It was three in the morning. There were less than seven hours left to go before his flight to Chicago, and Shane was wide awake: curled on his side in bed, his laptop propped on the pillow in front of him, the light from the screen dimmed low. He rewound the video back to the beginning again, his eyes narrowing against the brightness. 

The familiar wash of rapid-fire Russian started up. The camera inched across the stands in a slow pan, then spun back to the ice. It wobbled, a little. The moment it steadied, Shane started counting under his breath. 

Five…four…three…two…

A brutal high stick, a gasp from the crowd, and the Russian center went down, hard, onto the ice. He was up again before his teammates had time to get in more than a few retaliatory punches, but even with the lousy camerawork it was obvious he was hurt: his face was one huge grimace, his skating unsteady as he clutched his arm and staggered towards the boards. There was another murmur from the stands, followed by a sudden, expectant hush. Shane’s mouth twitched. Even with the volume turned down as far as it would go, there was no missing the roar when the announcer called, “Rozanov vykhodit na lod!” 

And there he was.

Dressed in a white and red uniform a size or two too big, grin obvious even under his helmet, a few stray blonde curls peeking out as he swung over the boards and onto the ice, shorter and ganglier than Shane had ever known him but still obviously, unmistakably, Ilya.

Shane couldn’t help it. However heartwrenching all these months of silence had been, there would never, ever be a world where he saw Ilya, and failed to smile. 

Shane had pleaded nerves (true) and a headache (false) at dinner, and managed to escape up to his room the moment it was dark enough to reasonably pretend he was going to bed.  He’d changed and brushed his teeth and flown through packing the last of his things. And then, with a familiar guilty, giddy, swooping feeling in the pit of his stomach, he’d grabbed his laptop from his desk, tucked it under a blanket to hide the light, turned down the volume, and started down the old familiar rabbit hole once more. 

The trouble was that there weren't very many videos of Ilya. There should have been, if the universe had been even the teensiest bit fair. There should have been hours and hours of footage of Ilya on YouTube, highlight reels and interview clips and montages of that ridiculous, beautiful smile that Shane missed so badly he could hardly stand it, most days. If the universe had been fair. If they had been rescued sooner. If Ilya hadn’t gotten it into his head to plan a photoshoot in the middle of the fucking Northwoods in the first place. Then they would have been three years deep into their MLH careers, at the top of their game and playing along with the League’s silly, superheated rivalry, probably, instead of sitting on their asses and not talking for over a fucking year because someone was a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot who refused to answer even a single one of Shane’s emails.

Still, even at his lowest -- even during those first few months back, when losing Ilya had still been a fresh wound and his body and his heart hadn’t known yet how to thread their way between anger and grief and all the strange indignity of having to relearn how to be a person in the world again -- even then, Shane hadn’t blamed Ilya for his silence. Not really. Shane knew what it was like, after all: missing Ilya, missing the forest, missing the fragile, frightening, beautiful life they’d built together, just the two of them, out of nothing -- and then how quickly everything had gone to shit, how they hadn’t even been able to talk about it afterwards, to fix things, to say, “Of course I love you, of course it’s you, always and only, sweetheart, solnyshko.” Shane knew exactly what it was like to not be able to tell anyone about it now, the horror of losing each other the way they had, the absolute worst ending to the very best part of his life. It was all really, really fucking hard, and that was even without Russia and the world’s shittiest family thrown into the mix, too.

So, Shane didn’t blame Ilya. He couldn’t help himself, though. As utterly predictable as Ilya’s silence was, Shane missed him. 

When the noise and the claustrophobia of his parents’ house became too much to bear -- when he sent another email begging for a phone number, begging for a chance to talk, and one hour, two hours, two weeks passed by without Ilya answering -- when the world felt too fast and too sharp and every inch of his body seemed to ache with knowing that Ilya was gone, like a fever he couldn’t shake -- Shane reached for his computer. 

It wasn’t much. Still, until the draft -- until he saw Ilya again -- it was the best that Shane could do. 

After nearly six straight hours of staring at his screen, Shane really did have a headache now. He wasn’t tired, though; and however much his eyes burned, he couldn’t quite bring himself to close his computer and call it a night. He squinted against the glare as he clicked on the newest video -- two months old, a wobbly home video from a scrimmage in the Russian league -- and pressed play. Ilya skated out onto the ice, to a round of tinny cheers. His stupid grin never changed. Somehow, it still made Shane’s stupid heart skip a beat every time. 

Without thinking too much about it, Shane slipped his hand beneath the waistband of his sweatpants. It was weird, probably, to be jerking off to a YouTube video of your -- best friend? Boyfriend? Fiancé?? -- fresh off a penalty for slamming into one of the other team’s defensemen like a fucking madman. But, well. It was late, and Shane was less than twenty-four hours away from seeing Ilya again. He was only human.

“Ilya Rozanov — posle mesyatsev somneniy, vnov' podayushchiy bol'shiye nadezhdy…” God. Had it been like this, in the woods? Just the sound of Ilya’s name and Shane was half-hard already.

Fuck.

“Shane?”

“-- V iyune etogo goda Rozanov vnov' primet uchastiye v drafte severoamerikanskoy ligi --” There was Ilya, not even ten seconds back in the game and already in the middle of everything, throwing his shoulders around like he hadn’t just spent the past two minutes in the penalty box. What an idiot. Shane bit his lip, circling his thumb over the head of his dick the way Ilya used to do, cutting off a moan between his teeth.

“Shane?” 

“-- Yego schitayut pretendentom na vybor v chisle pervykh nomerov drafta…” 

Fuck. Ilya was smirking now as the camera zoomed in. He used to make that same face back home, in the forest. That was Ilya’s “fucking try me and find out” grin. That was his “I wish you would” grin. That was the grin he wore right before he pounced on Shane and proceeded to drive him right out of his fucking mind. 

Shane jerked his hand rougher, faster, pushing into his own grip. He was leaking already, fuck. He’d already come once tonight, but maybe -- 

“Shane, honey, I’m coming in.” 

Without warning, the door swung open. Shane startled back to his senses just in time to let out a yelp, pull his hand out of his pants, and slam his computer shut. 

His mom was standing in the doorway: her hair frazzled from sleep, wrapped up in a robe and slippers, blinking and frowning at him blearily. Shane stared back at her, red-faced and gaping too much to string even a single word together. Apparently deciding his silence was as good as an invitation, she made her way inside and snicked the door shut. 

“Mom,” Shane managed at last, his face growing redder as she sat down on the edge of the bed. He flinched back and, belatedly, tugged the blanket up to cover his lap. “What are you -- can you please not --”

“It’s three in the morning, Shane,” she chided around a yawn. As though she wasn’t also awake! As though she wasn’t the one who had broken into Shane’s room in the first place, right when he was in the middle of --! “Honey. How long have you been up? You know we have an early flight.”

“I’m not up,” Shane defended. When she only raised an eyebrow, he flushed and amended, “I was asleep earlier. I was just -- I wasn’t -- you’re up, too!” 

His mom blinked. “I was coming back from the bathroom, and I saw the light under your door,” she said -- and yes, okay, that accusation had sounded a lot more damning in his head, but still -- “What are you doing?” 

Jerking off to home videos of Ilya. Jesus fucking Christ. No wonder his parents were worried about him. 

“Nothing,” Shane lied. Then, when his mom only gazed back at him, unimpressed, he added lamely, “Just nervous about tomorrow. You know.” 

As a deflection, it did the trick. His mom’s face softened at once, her touch growing gentle as she reached over and patted his cheek. It had the unfortunate side effect, though, of apparently giving her permission to settle in for a talk. Shane watched with growing horror as she made herself comfortable on the bed. “You don’t have to be nervous,” she said. Shane somehow managed a wan smile, even as his laptop still practically screamed at him from where it was peeking out under the covers. “I know it won’t be the same as the first draft. But you’ve been working so hard, honey. You’re just as good as you were before. And the teams recognize that. The commissioner asked you to speak before the first round! They don’t do that for just anyone, you know.” 

“I know. But --” 

“So really, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I know, Mom.”

“Is it the flying you’re nervous about?” She leaned over to peer into his eyes. Shane leaned back and grimaced. “You should have told me sooner, Shane. We could have driven.”

Considering it was an actual passenger plane they were taking this time and not whatever Cretaceous-era Cessna Ilya’s publicist had booked under the table, Shane wasn’t actually nervous about flying. Probably, unless the universe had even more of a bone to pick with him than he realized, it would be alright. 

“I’m not nervous about that,” he answered truthfully. And then -- because it was three in the morning, maybe, or because it was the night before The Draft 2.0, or maybe just because he missed Ilya so badly he couldn’t even stand it anymore -- Shane blurted out, “I’m just nervous about seeing him again. That’s all.” 

It was something, at least, that his mom understood immediately who he meant.

“I know Ilya is important to you,” she said carefully, after a beat. Shane hardly ever let them talk about Ilya -- he hardly ever let them talk about his time in the forest, full stop -- and it was clear that she was choosing her words carefully. Shane felt the familiar, sick clench of fear in his chest as he waited for her to go on. He swallowed it down and fixed his eyes on his lap. “And I know it will probably be…strange…to play against him, after all the time you two spent together.”

“I don’t want to play against him,” Shane said. It was as good as a confession, and he immediately blushed, his mind already backpedaling and spinning out a dozen excuses. His mom, though, only frowned. 

“Well, not right away, obviously,” she allowed. “But you’ll play against each other at some point. Once the season starts --”

“I don’t ever want to play against him,” Shane repeated. His chest was still twisting with panic, his mind was screaming out Stop Stop Stop!, but his mouth, apparently, had other ideas, because the next thing he knew, he found himself choking out, “I love him.”

His mom broke off and stared. Shane could practically feel his stupid brain doing a face palm. “I’m gay,” he added anyway, just in case he'd been worried this moment couldn’t get any more mortifying. “Ilya is, too. Kind of. And he loves me, and I love him.” 

As far as coming-outs went, it probably could have been worse, although just at that moment Shane would have been hard-pressed to imagine how. He finally managed to snap his mouth shut and sat there, his face growing steadily redder and redder, his hands twisting under the covers (his right hand still sticky, oh God, oh fuck), while meanwhile his mom continued to stare at him. Her mouth opened and then closed a few times without a word coming out, as though Shane’s confession had actually managed to break something in her brain. 

“Okay,” she said at last. Shane could practically see the effort it took, pulling herself back together. He swallowed. Please be happy for me, he thought inanely. Please don’t try to manage this. Please just be happy. “Alright. That -- that makes sense, I guess. You two went through hell together. Of course you and Ilya are close.” 

“In love.”

“In love,” she echoed. Even if she didn’t quite believe it, she didn’t stare at him in dumbfounded silence this time, either. Shane felt his shoulders relax, a little. “But -- Shane, sweetheart, it’s been a year now. Are you sure…” She trailed off, as though she herself wasn’t quite sure how to finish the thought.

That was an easy one, though. “Yeah,” Shane said. As excruciating as this whole conversation was, as much as he wanted to just curl up under the blankets and disappear, he couldn’t hide the smile in his voice. “I still love him. I’m sure.” 

They sat in silence for a while -- his mom processing, probably, Shane’s own thoughts ricocheting back and forth between panic over spilling his deepest, most precious secret, and half-fearful, half-giddy anticipation when he remembered why they were having this conversation in the first place. Only seven hours left until the flight to Chicago. Less than a day now until he would see Ilya again. 

His mom was the first to break the silence. She cleared her throat. Before Shane had a chance to do more than startle and blink, she wrapped her arm around his shoulders, and dragged him into a hug. 

“I love you,” she said. The words came out muffled against his hair. Still, Shane thought he could hear tears in them. Belatedly, he wrapped his left arm around her, too. “Thank you for telling me. Shane -- sweetheart -- I'm so proud of you. I love you. I probably should have started with that first, huh?”

“Probably,” Shane agreed. His mom laughed a little, then sniffed. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Ilya loves me too, you know,” Shane said. His mom’s arms tightened. He closed his eyes and ducked his head against her shoulder. “He loves me a lot. It’s just that everything’s even harder for him. You know. With Russia.” 

“Oh, honey.”

“I don’t want to play against him. I know this has to stay a secret, but -- Mom. I don’t want to go back to having to pretend we’re rivals again.” 

“After everything you two have been through, no one will try to push that anymore,” she promised. She stroked her hand through his hair. “But the draft is a different story, sweetheart. You know that. The odds of you two ending up on the same team…of you even ending up in cities near each other…” She trailed off again. Shane, though, only shook his head.

He knew that she was right. But he had tried it both ways now: living without hockey, and living without Ilya. If it came down to it, if he could only pick one, he knew which he would choose. 

He had already spilled his heart enough for one night, though, so Shane kept that thought to himself and stayed silent. By the time his mom finally pulled back, wiping her eyes and managing a weak smile, the alarm clock next to his bed was blinking three forty-five. She saw it, grimaced, and pushed herself to her feet. 

“Well. Plenty of time to figure out what we're going to do about that tomorrow.” She fussed with her robe, then leaned down to kiss his forehead. “I love you, Shane."

“I love you, too,” Shane said. He wiped hastily at his own eyes. “Next time, please knock.”

“Next time, go to bed,” she countered. She lingered for a moment, her hand on the door. “It really will be okay, sweetheart," she said. "You know that, right?" 

He loves me, Shane thought. Whatever complicated welter of emotions had filled him before, all he felt now was happiness, irrepressible and effervescent. He wants to marry me. The next time he asks, I’m going to say yes. 

“I know,” Shane said. Six hours, he thought, and closed his eyes. “Good night, Mom.”

Chapter End Notes

Next time: The Draft, 2.0

Chapter 26: June 26, 2013. Shane and Ilya.

Chapter Notes

I just want to confess up front that I know less than nothing about the ins and outs of the NHL draft. Please forgive any mistakes!

Double line break = change in POV
Single line break = change in scene

Enjoy! <3

The plane was late. 

Something something a storm in Chicago, something something a backlog of flights, Shane didn’t know. The moment the gate agent chirped, “Two hour delay -- so sorry for the wait!” his brain had turned entirely to static, and it had been one long buzz of panicked, spiraling gray noise ever since. 

His dad had wandered off somewhere to find them food. His mom was pacing back and forth in front of the windows, texting furiously and glowering at her phone, like she could bully the air traffic controllers and the weather into submission through sheer force of will. Shane had stopped paying attention to anyone else, though. He was curled on a seat next to his dad’s luggage, his knees and his hood pulled up, his eyes squeezed shut, his thoughts racing. 

He’d had this whole day planned out for weeks now. Arrive in Chicago a little past noon, make it to the hotel by two, go to their rooms, drop off their things. His mom had signed him up to make some stupid little introductory speech before the first round started, but that wasn’t until five. That still left a good two hours, at least, to scour the hotel and track down Ilya. 

The plan, admittedly, got a little fuzzier after that -- to kiss Ilya first? To throw himself into Ilya’s arms? To tell Ilya he loved him, or tell him he was an idiot, or promise that no matter what happened tonight Shane wasn’t going anywhere? -- or, on the other hand, sex first, maybe, and then take advantage of how lovey and dopey Ilya always got afterwards to pin him down and knock it into his beautiful thick head that they were in this together for good. Shane wasn't worried about which way things would go, though. Loving Ilya always seemed to work itself out. 

...Or, well, more like Shane hadn’t been worried, right up until the part where now there was a storm in Chicago and their plane was grounded and he’d only have, maybe, fifteen minutes to hunt Ilya down before it would be time to leave for the draft. Across the terminal, the horrible, awful gate attendant was tapping the microphone to speak, again. Shane, giving up on even the barest pretense of dignity, folded forward and buried his face in his knees. 

What now. What the fuck now. A three hour delay? Four hours? "We regret to inform you that O’Hare has been struck by lightning, the whole airport sizzled to a crisp, we’re so sorry for any inconvenience but we’re afraid there will be no getting into Chicago at all, ever"? Fuck! It had been three hundred and ninety three days since the last time Shane had seen Ilya, and he was so fucking close now, and still -- still! -- the universe couldn’t cut him some slack, for once in his fucking life.

His mom dropped into the seat next to him, right in the middle of what was promising to build into a truly spectacular crescendo of panic. “Two and a half hours until boarding,” she said darkly, and Shane had to bite back an oath before it slipped through his teeth, because fuck, that meant -- “We’re going to have to go straight from the plane to the United Center.” 

“No.”

“We’ve already told the commissioner that you’ll speak, Shane. They’re expecting you.” 

“I don’t have anything to say to them.” 

“I’ve written you a few remarks. Just something short.” Even without looking he could practically see her fingers flying over her phone. “You can practice on the plane.”

“I don't give a shit about Crowell,” Shane said. He knew he sounded like a child throwing a tantrum, the way the words snapped out and then broke. He didn't care. “I need to find Ilya.” 

Shane felt his mom shift in the seat next to him. The next moment her hand landed on his back, rubbing a circle that did absolutely nothing to soothe the knot of anxiety in his shoulders. Shane gritted his teeth and fought down the urge to shrug her off. “You have the whole weekend ahead of you, honey,” she said. She lowered her voice, her usual briskness fading into something softer. “There’s just the flight and this evening to get through. We’ll take it one thing at a time, alright? The flight, your speech, the first night of the draft. Ilya will be there. You’ll find him afterwards, and then your dad and I will cover for you while you find somewhere private to talk. I promise. Let’s just get through everything else first.”

As if it hadn’t already been three hundred and ninety three days since the last time he’d seen Ilya. Longer, since the last time he had told Ilya he loved him.

“The flight first,” Shane agreed hollowly, into his knees. His mom squeezed his shoulder. Across the terminal the gate attendant tapped the microphone once more, and began, “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please…” 

It was stupid to blow this much money on first class for a two and a half hour flight, especially when Shane hadn’t even been drafted yet and, for all he knew, might not even be drafted at all -- a fact which he had pointed out to his mom again and again in the two months since she’d bought the tickets, to little avail. Now, though, he was grateful. If leg room and a towel for his face were the only breaks he was going to catch on this utter disaster of a day, he’d take them. 

He had the window seat, and his mom had the aisle, and his dad was behind them, humming quietly and already leafing through his sudoku book with a level of tranquility that Shane, unfortunately, could not relate to at all. 

After the delays, after one wretched announcement after another, after a round of weather forecasts that all seemed to darkly suggest that Chicago was in the throes of some apocalyptic-level storm, they were now, finally, scheduled to land at 3:30. Even if they breezed through arrivals, though -- even if their luggage was miraculously right there waiting for them, with a straight shot through from the carousel to the taxi line, a cab already pulled up and their name on it -- they still wouldn’t get to the United Center until past five. No time to shower, no time to do anything but change into his suit in the nearest bathroom and dash backstage. No time to breathe. No time to find Ilya. 

Shane's mom, evidently reading his thoughts, reached over and took his hand. She squeezed it once, hard. “Practice your speech,” she said. A bored-looking flight attendant was standing in front of them, droning about turbulence and holding up a limp seatbelt. Shane had a sudden vision of Ilya unbuckling himself and swinging over onto his lap in the seconds before the plane crash, and he felt a sudden, hysterical burst of giggles rising in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t laugh. If he started to laugh he’d start to cry, and if that spiraled into a panic attack or a nervous breakdown or whatever, then they’d ground the plane even longer, and then -- “Once we’re there, your dad and I will find out where Ilya is sitting. We’ll figure out a way for you to meet backstage once your speech is over.”

“I can’t do this.”

“I’ve told you, honey, I’ve already written it out for you. It’ll be quick. Just thank them for the opportunity to speak, thank the League for their support, tell them how excited you are to be back. Done.” 

“No -- mom -- I can’t do this. It's not just the speech. It's all of it. It's the draft, it's their stupid pretend rivalry --" 

"There won't be a rivalry this time, sweetheart."

"You don't know that!"

“Shane. Honey. Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

“Shane.”

He scrubbed at his face angrily. His mom leaned in and waited until, finally, reluctantly, he looked up and met her eyes. “It doesn’t matter if you're picked in the first round tonight or the seventh round tomorrow, sweetheart,” she said, in probably the gentlest voice he had ever heard. “Not to your dad. Not to me. Two years stranded and alone in the middle of nowhere, and you survived, Shane. You came back to us. My baby.” She smiled at him. Her eyes were very bright. 

Unable to keep meeting her gaze, Shane dropped his eyes again. “I wasn't alone,” he said. She cupped his cheek, stroking over the faded line of a scar. This time he let himself lean, a little, into her touch.

“No,” she agreed. “You weren’t. I know. But Shane, honey, look at everything you made it through. What you and Ilya made it through. I know it won’t be easy. But whatever comes next, you two aren’t alone this time. Whatever happens tonight, I promise you, we’ll figure out a way to make it through this, too.” 

For at least the five hundredth time in the last five minutes, Ilya pulled at the collar of his shirt, grimaced, and had to almost physically tamp down the urge to jump to his feet and get the fuck out of here. 

He hated this. He really, really fucking hated this. There were too many people and too many cameras, and between the team tables on one side of the floor and the crowd of prospects on the other, there was barely enough room to even fucking breathe. The crowd and the thunder and whatever shitty pop song they kept blasting on repeat all seemed to be vying with each other to see which could be the loudest. He was (begrudgingly) sober, because Svetlana had staunchly refused to let him have more than a finger of vodka before they’d left the hotel, and to top it off the ceremony was half an hour late because, wouldn’t you know it, whatever boring guest speaker Crowell had lined up apparently hadn’t bothered to show. 

And, as though all of that wasn't bad enough, Shane wasn’t here. 

He wasn’t here!!

Of all the fucking goddamn things, it was Draft Day, Take Two, and Shane Hollander wasn’t even fucking here.

It just figured, didn’t it? Ilya had dragged himself to the gym and the hockey rink and back again every single fucking day for months and months. He had schlepped his sorry ass from the slums of Moscow onto a plane for the longest flight of his life, then booked himself into the cheapest hotel room he could find, because apparently spending two years legally dead in the woods meant that he was fucking poor now. He had forced himself into the world’s most uncomfortable suit, and put up with Svetlana’s increasingly pointed jabs, and spent a solid forty five minutes staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, hyping himself up for whatever it was he was going to say to Shane when he saw him again but, somehow, never quite managing to find the words to begin. 

Ilya had done all of that. He was here in this awful place in his awful suit, excruciatingly sober and speechless with nerves, and it turns out he needn’t have bothered, because Shane Hollander was nowhere to be found. 

The worst part about it was that Ilya had been certain, walking through the arena doors an hour ago, that he would know exactly where Shane was the moment they were finally back in the same place again. Like a sixth sense, or like God or Mama whispering in his ear, or maybe just the magnetic pull that came from one soul knowing another as well as he knew Shane. He had hung back at first, even; hiding behind Svetlana because he had been so sure that he and Shane would collide into each other the moment they came near enough for that particular electromagnetism to kick into gear, and he just knew that, if they did, everything he was feeling would tumble right out of his mouth in an instant. I love you, I’m sorry, please let’s get out of here, let’s go back to the woods, take me with you, I love you, I love you, I love you. Spilling his guts out like that would probably be enough to scare Shane right off again, though, which -- would not be great. Would not exactly be the outcome Ilya was hoping for here, after everything. 

But Shane hadn’t crashed back into his life the moment Ilya and Svetlana walked inside, and he didn't turn up when they searched the arena high and low, and when Svetlana finally had the bright idea to ask the nice lady at the registration desk if the Hollanders had arrived yet, it turned out that the reason Shane was nowhere to be found was because Shane wasn’t even here at all. Maybe, when you were the best, you didn’t have to bother with the MLH draft like mere mortals did. Or, maybe, when your -- boyfriend? Best friend? -- had broken your heart, skipping the draft was just the price you paid not to have to see him again. 

Svetlana -- reading Ilya’s mind, apparently -- reached over and clasped his hand. “Stop panicking,” she ordered under her breath. Her voice was more exasperated than comforting, but Ilya found himself relaxing a little, all the same. “Probably there is just bad traffic because of the storm. He will be here.” 

“I hate this.”

“He’ll be here, Ilyushka.” 

“Everyone is staring at me.”

“Yes,” she agreed. She squeezed his hand, then smiled when he turned and glowered at her. “It is because of your face. You look ready to murder someone.” 

He glowered harder. She reached up with her free hand and pinched his cheek. 

“Relax,” she said, gentler this time. “There are -- what? A few speeches and round one tonight? Then drinks, dinner, the party after. And Hollander will be here by then, so. Easy.”

“Sveta.”

“I will make a deal with you.” She squeezed his hand again. “If Hollander is still not here by dinner, the first round of shots is on me. Okay? Two rounds even, if you want. And then, when we get back to your hotel afterwards, I will let you cry about how pretty your boyfriend’s eyes are, and I promise I will not tease you even a little bit.” 

“Sveta.” 

Another half hour had passed. The storm outside was growing louder, the crowd inside was growing restless, the opening speaker still wasn’t here, and, wouldn't you know it, Shane Hollander wasn’t here yet, either. 

Ilya had slouched about as far down as he could go in his seat without actually sliding all the way to the floor; and as that seemed as good a position as any to hunker in and wait for this horrible day to be over, he hadn’t moved since. Svetlana kept poking his shoulder and hissing increasingly unflattering comments in his ear, but Ilya closed his eyes and ignored her. His stomach was churning badly enough he thought he was going to be sick, so. Svetlana could wait. 

Shane wasn’t here. A year and a month half-dreading, half-dreaming of this moment, a year and a month falling asleep every night thinking about seeing Shane again, and now here Ilya was, and Shane wasn’t fucking here. 

It was impossible for Ilya to imagine a world where Shane hadn’t done absolutely everything he could to make it back into this room again, where Shane wouldn’t’ve torn down the sky if it meant a second chance to play in the MLH. Which, in fairness, was the reason why Ilya had never considered it, in the hundreds and hundreds of scenarios he’d played out in his head over the past year. He had imagined Shane angry, and he had imagined Shane sweet, and he had imagined Shane taking one look at him and then walking away, this time for good. But he had never imagined Shane simply not showing up at all. 

Well. More fool him, apparently. This is what he got for letting Svetlana bully him into going back to the gym. As bad as slowly rotting away in Russia would have been, playing in the MLH without Shane was, no contest, at least a hundred million times worse. 

“If you are going to throw up, you should go now,” Svetlana advised, cutting through Ilya's wallowing with her usual lack of sympathy. She ruffled his hair. “I think they’re starting.” 

Good. Great. The sooner this stupid ceremony started, the sooner they could get out of here, and the sooner Ilya could remind Svetlana that she’d already promised him two rounds of shots, no takebacks. He cracked his eyes open, squinting up at the ceiling and trying to decide if it was worth it to risk sitting up. His stomach gave an unpleasant heave. Better not, he decided. He sighed and closed his eyes again. 

“Pinch me if they say ‘Ilya, first pick, Boston,’” he advised, and moved his legs out of the way about a half second too late to avoid Svetlana's kick.

Even through his closed eyelids, Ilya could see that the lights overhead were dimming. The crowd was finally quieting, too. He and Svetlana were too far in the back to see even if Ilya had been sitting up, but he could imagine it: Crowell strolling across the stage, leering and waving, like he hadn’t just kept them all waiting for over an hour. Like he didn't even care that his number one star wasn't even fucking here. 

Ilya tightened his arms grimly over his stomach, and settled in.

“On behalf of the entire MLH,” Crowell began, just as awful and smug as Ilya remembered him, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the fiftieth anniversary of the MLH Entry Draft!” Cheers and a standing ovation, if the stomping of feet was anything to go by. Ilya -- barely -- stifled another sigh. Whoever was in charge of the sound system was clearly in Crowell’s pocket. Rihanna had only been at half volume before, but Crowell’s voice boomed out across the arena now, louder even than the thunder outside.

“Fifty years of MLH history, here in this room,” Crowell went on, when the applause died down. Ilya grimaced. Svetlana poked him again. “It seems fitting that this year, of all years, we take a moment to remind ourselves of the power that hockey has to make the impossible possible. To give us hope when things seem hopeless. To find the inner strength within ourselves, when ‘inner strength’ is the only thing that we have left. And so it is with great pride that I present our guest of honor this evening -- Major League Hockey’s very own, Shane Hollander!” 

Time slowed, then stilled.

Ilya sat up. It was like he was the only one moving in a world that had suddenly turned slow-motion. Even the thunder outside was muted, no louder than the ringing in Ilya's ears, no louder than the hammering of his heartbeat in his chest. He couldn't see anything past the sea of heads in front of him. He shoved himself to his feet, but the moment he did reality seemed to catch up to him again. Time started spinning, fast and then faster. On every side, the crowd leapt to their feet, too. They burst into applause. Of course they did. How could they help it? Shane was here. 

“Um. Thank you, Commissioner. And, uh, everyone. It’s an honor to be here tonight.” 

Someone swayed in front of Ilya; their head moved to the side. And there, clear across at the other end of the arena, Ilya saw him. 

Shane. 

Dressed in sweatpants and a ratty black sweatshirt, soaked to the bone, shivering and trying to squint past the glare of the spotlights and the media scrum -- Shane. He looked like Ilya’s earliest memories of him: healthy and pink-cheeked and clean-shaven, shifting his weight uncomfortably, like he had anything to be nervous about after everything he had been through. Like he had a single thing to prove to any one of these motherfuckers here. 

Shane cleared his throat. “Um,” he said. He peered down at what looked like a handful of soggy notecards and shifted his weight again. “I won’t keep you long. Or any longer than I already have, I guess. Sorry about that,” he added, glancing up. He brushed his sopping wet hair out of his eyes and grimaced. Ilya stared at him. He felt like he might die if he looked away. “Our flight was delayed. But, uh. We got here as soon as we could, so. Thank you for waiting, I guess.” 

Ilya didn’t realize he had started to move until he felt Svetlana’s hand close around his wrist. He looked at her. She was staring at him, her eyes wide, saying something. Whatever it was, though, Ilya couldn’t hear it. All he could hear was Shane’s beautiful, perfect voice, and his own heart racing. 

“Anyway. I -- sorry, these are hard to read. Um. Thank you for inviting me. I just want to say a little about how supportive the League has been, and what an honor it is to be here with you, and, you know. Just. Everything that hockey has meant to me, these past three years.” Shane paused and broke off. The silence stretched on, long enough it grew uncomfortable. The players on Ilya's right and left began to stir uneasily.

Ilya turned away from Svetlana to look at the stage again. It was hard to tell from where they were standing, this far back. But he thought he saw Shane swallow, and then he thought he saw Shane square his shoulders, and then he really, definitely did see Shane crumple his notecards up into a ball and drop them to the floor. Shane looked up and out across the crowd again. 

“Actually,” he said, raising his voice so that it echoed through the arena, “If it’s okay. I want to talk about Ilya.” 

Shane shifted his weight again. Between the glare of the spotlights and the way every single face on the arena floor seemed to be staring straight at him, he could barely see. He could barely hear, either, although that one was probably his own fault. It was just that it was hard to hear when his heart was beating this loudly, or when his own words kept playing and replaying in his ears. I want to talk about Ilya. Fuck. Even if he managed to make it through this stupid speech without dying of embarrassment, that was probably only delaying the inevitable, because there was definitely a nonzero chance his mom tracked him down after this and killed him. 

It was strange, though. Usually, when Shane had a panic attack, his lungs seized up and his palms started sweating and his mind spun around like crazy, like his brain was a bicycle with the brakes cut off. Now, though, even though his thoughts were racing and his heart was a mess -- somehow, for some reason, Shane wasn’t afraid. Maybe because Crowell didn't seem so scary when he and Ilya had already faced down actual, literal wolves; or maybe because, even if he couldn't see him, Shane knew that Ilya was out there, somewhere, on the floor. Whatever the reason, Shane mostly just felt restless. He just kept thinking, over and over, like a mantra, I love him. I love him. I'm not letting you assholes ruin this for us again. 

Shane tugged the sleeves of his sweatshirt down until only his fingertips peeked through. Then he gripped the podium as hard as he could, drew in a deep breath, and leaned in.

“I didn’t really want to speak here tonight,” he began. “I really, um. I really hate doing this kind of thing, actually. But Ilya promised me, back during our first summer in the woods, that the next time one of us had to do something really big and stupid and crazy, it would be my turn. So, uh. I was thinking about that, on the plane ride here, and about how this might be a good chance to, you know. Set the record straight.” He paused. On every side, the arena had gone silent.

Okay, Shane thought, a little hysterically. Okay. Good. Great. Here we fucking go.

“I didn’t really know Ilya, the last time we were here,” Shane said. He cleared his throat again. “We’d only talked a few times. But the League had already decided to pitch this whole story, about us being rivals. It was supposed to sell more tickets, I guess. And we played along with it, because we were kids, and we were stupid, and we didn’t know any better. But -- even then -- it wasn’t real. I didn't know Ilya, but I knew that he was a beautiful player. I knew that I loved watching him skate. Even then, you know, I kept thinking -- I like him. He makes me better. Maybe, if you all hadn't made this so hard for us, we could be friends.” He paused. It felt like the entire arena was holding its breath around him.

“You know the next part, obviously. The plane crash. And the two years we spent together after that in, uh. In Canada. But probably you don't know that Ilya saved my life the day that we crashed. And then he just -- he never really stopped. Saving me, I mean. Um. It’s because of him that I’m here. It’s because of him that I didn’t drown, or starve to death, or lose my mind.” 

Every single eye in the stadium was fixed on him. Every single person seemed frozen where they stood. Shane tightened his grip on the podium to keep himself from reaching up and scrubbing at his face. He would probably panic about this later, but that was okay. Just as long as he said what he had to say, first. “It’s more than that, though,” he went on. “I’m a better person now than I was before, thanks to Ilya. I wouldn’t change anything about the two years that we spent together. So, just -- if there are any teams here wanting to play up this whole rivalry thing again, or make a PR campaign about how much we hate each other, or whatever -- I just want to let you know that that’s not going to happen. Not this time. I want to play hockey. But if playing hockey means playing along and lying about what Ilya means to me, then. Uh. Then I won’t.” Shane laughed, though it only took about a second before his breath hitched into something closer to a sob. He couldn't help it, this time. He reached up hurriedly, and wiped his eyes.

This was so long to the MLH, probably. Shane didn't regret it, though. He'd meant it. If he had to choose -- if it was hockey or Ilya -- then it would be Ilya first, always, in every single universe. 

There was a murmur rising from the crowd now; not loud enough to drown Shane out, but loud and growing louder. Someone was shoving their way forward from the back of the arena, pushing their way between the crammed-together seats towards the aisle. One of Crowell's flunkies, probably, or possibly Shane’s mom, finally snapping out of shock long enough to demand to know what the hell Shane thought he was doing. Shane drew in a deep breath and steeled himself. They couldn't drag him off yet. There was one last thing he had to say, first. 

“Ilya is the most important person in my life,” he finished, in a rush. “And the best person, and just -- just my favorite person. He always will be. And I, uh. I love him.” 

Plane crash aside, telling the entire world that he loved Ilya was, probably -- objectively -- both the stupidest and the scariest thing that Shane had ever done. Once the words were out, though, all he felt was a rush of relief, so huge and so heavy it literally made him stagger on his feet. He clutched onto the edge of the podium again, ducking his head against the spotlights and the lightning-burst flashes of the cameras. He blinked at the reporters swarming the stage. And then he looked out a little bit farther, past the cameras, and finally managed to make out who it was racing their way towards him from across the arena floor. 

Shane couldn’t help it, the way every single part of him lit up like sunshine.

“Hey, Ilya,” he said. “I love you.” 

And maybe because there was nothing more to say, or maybe because Shane was here and Ilya was here and Shane had missed him and Shane loved him, but all of a sudden Shane couldn’t stand to stay still for even a second more. He let the microphone go and grinned at Ilya again. Then he vaulted the four-or-so feet from the edge of the stage to the arena floor, and ran. 

It felt inevitable, when Shane collided with him. Like there was no other way this story ever could have ended. Like Odette sloughing off her curse at last. Like finally, finally, finding his way home. 

Ilya started babbling apologies the moment Shane threw himself into his arms. Shane, though, even sopping wet and shivering, only laughed. His arms were around Ilya's neck. He was clutching Ilya so tightly to him there wasn't a single inch of space between them. “Hi,” Shane said -- crazy, breathless, Ilya’s favorite person, Ilya’s favorite everything. “Hi, Ilya. I love you. I missed you.”

There was shouting all around them -- camera flashes, hollering. Crowell was somewhere nearby, probably, having an aneurysm. Ilya squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in Shane hair, and Shane pressed his face against Ilya’s neck and went on laughing, and Ilya was crying, and it was hard to tell when Shane was soaked through but maybe he was crying, too, and --

“Hi,” Shane said again, low and giddy. Ilya had forgotten what he sounded like. How could he have forgotten that, when Shane's voice was his favorite sound in the whole entire world? “I love you. You're such an asshole. Why the fuck didn’t you check your email?” 

There was no way to answer that, of course, other than, ‘You’re brave and I’m a coward and I promise I will spend the whole rest of my life making it up to you.’ Ilya tightened his arms around Shane instead. “Too late,” he said. His voice was shaking. Shane would definitely be able to tell that he was crying now, but that was okay. Ilya figured he had earned a few tears, after everything. “You already told everyone you love me. No takebacks now.” 

Shane's arms tightened.

“I probably fucked this all up, huh?" he asked. He didn't sound sorry, exactly, but his voice dropped lower, and his body grew tense in Ilya’s arms. Ilya nosed against his temple, then kissed his freckles. Shane reached up and dug his hand in Ilya’s curls. "Maybe I can say that we're just friends?” Shane offered after a beat, and at that Ilya couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing.

“Yes,” Ilya said. "I have heard that one before." He pulled back just far enough to cup Shane’s cheeks in his hands, then leaned forward again and knocked their foreheads together. Shane smiled at him. His eyelids fluttered closed. Ilya closed his eyes, too. He didn't have to think back too far to find the words for this part. He had dreamed about their first kiss, every night that Shane was gone. "But no. I think I’ll take my chances, Hollander. Sorry.” This time, when Ilya said it, there was no plane crash coming. There was nothing to be afraid of. This time, they had all the time in the world.

Ilya cradled Shane's face between his hands. "Lecture me later, okay?" he murmured, and kissed him.

Chapter End Notes

Next time: A hotel room and a (long overdue) heart-to-heart.

Chapter 27: June 26, 2013. Shane.

Chapter Notes

It wasn’t that late -- the clock on the bedside table hadn’t ticked over into midnight yet, and the official MLH dinner and afterparty were probably still in full swing on the other end of town -- but it was late enough that the city noise had quieted, a little. The storm had quieted too. Back home, next to the lake, it would have been late enough and dark enough to see every single star in the sky.

This being Chicago, of course, there wasn’t much to look up and see, besides a couple of airplanes and the moon. But Ilya had pulled the curtains shut hours ago, and Shane had dimmed all of the lights until it was almost like being back in the cave again. Ilya’s body was warm and naked, pressed up against Shane’s, and that was familiar, too. His arm was heavy over Shane’s waist, his fingers trailing lazily from the cleft of Shane’s ass to his hip and back again. 

Shane buried his face against the crook of Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya’s skin was clean and still damp from the shower. He smelled faintly like hotel soap. When Shane pressed a kiss to the soft triangle of skin where Ilya’s shoulder met his chest, Ilya ducked his head and nuzzled against Shane’s hair, kissing him too. He dipped his fingers lower. It felt, a little, like a second kiss; the featherlight brush of Ilya’s fingertips over the pucker of Shane’s skin, sensitive still, like every part of Shane was. Shane shivered and drew his own arm tighter around Ilya’s chest in answer. 

They’d never fucked in the woods. They had, in fairness, done just about everything else that a bit of creative thinking and endless time on their hands could cook up; so it was stupid, probably, for Shane to feel this love-drunk and sappy now. He couldn’t help it, though. It felt immense -- sharing this with Ilya, too. It felt beautiful. Now Shane knew what it felt like, to have Ilya inside him. Now he knew and wouldn’t ever forget it: Ilya’s hand, slick with lube and fumbling with nerves. The strange discomfort of it melting into pleasure, Ilya’s fingers giving way to the nudge of Ilya’s cock, Ilya sliding in at last. The thrust of his hips. The heat of him. Ilya whispering, “I love you, I love you, ya tebya lyublyu, I love you,” against Shane’s lips like it was a prayer, before he broke off into a groan and came inside of him.

“What are you thinking of, lyubimyy?” Ilya asked, around a yawn. Shane felt Ilya drag his lips through his hair, then kiss him again. 

“You fucking me,” he answered honestly. Ilya murmured something in Russian and slid his hand lower again, pressing one blunt fingertip against Shane’s entrance. It burned, a little. It felt good. Shane rocked his hips into Ilya’s touch. He didn’t think he could go again this soon after, but maybe… “How fucking hot it was.” 

“Yeah?” Another kiss, more awake this time, more heated. “You liked?”

Liked. Loved. Wanted to do that with Ilya again, all the time, every day, for the rest of their lives. And we can, Shane thought, giddy. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, high enough to grin down at Ilya. Ilya smiled dopily back, then turned his head and nuzzled an open-mouthed kiss into the palm Shane had pressed against his cheek. Everyone knows now, Shane thought. Whatever happens next, we don’t have to hide. They already know. “I liked,” he agreed. He brushed his thumb over Ilya’s jaw. “And you? It was good for you, too?”

Ilya pretended to think about it. “Was so-so,” he decided at last. “Not so bad for a rookie. Good enthusiasm, more practice, probably there is room to improve.” He was grinning before he even managed to finish, though, and the moment Shane dove down and tackled him, he burst out laughing. “Prosti, solnyshko! Prosti! I give!” 

“‘So-so.’ I’ll show you so-so.”

“You asked, no?”

“I was being romantic, asshole!”

“‘Fucking hot,’ da, very romantic.” 

“You’re such a jerk.” 

“I am your jerk now,” Ilya reminded him, breathless and still laughing. Even with the lights off and the curtains drawn, Shane could see the way Ilya’s eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled. All of these months and months of devouring any video of Ilya that he could find, Shane thought -- and, somehow, he had forgotten what Ilya looked like when he was happy. It stung a little, realizing it; but it was a good pain, like pressing his thumb against a bruise that had already started to heal. The memory of an old hurt, fading into nothing in the warmth of Ilya’s arms. “You have told the whole world we are gay and in love. Looks like you are stuck with me, Hollander.”

Shane smiled back at him. 

“No takebacks, right?” he said. Ilya pushed himself up until he was sitting and caught Shane’s bare waist in his hands. Shane slid his arms around Ilya’s neck. He hadn’t remembered everything he should have about Ilya, but that was okay. There would be time now to relearn it. There would be time now for everything.

“No takebacks,” Ilya agreed, and kissed him. 

They fucked again, and then they talked some more; and, somehow, somewhere between their thousandth kiss of the night and dawn, Shane fell asleep. When he woke up again, it was morning. The curtains were drawn back, the sky was gray, and the windows were speckled with rain. The other half of the bed was empty. Shane didn’t have to wonder for too long where Ilya had gotten to, though. The moment he pushed himself up, he saw him -- sprawled out on the floor next to the window in a pair of gym shorts and Shane’s own hoodie, one leg drawn up and his eyes unfocused, the bottom pane of the window cracked open enough to let in the breeze. There was a half-finished cigarette loose in Ilya’s hand. 

Shane gave himself a moment to file this away, too: their first morning waking up together, anywhere besides the woods. His first time catching Ilya stealing his clothes. The first morning after their first time. Then he swung himself out of bed, pulled on one of the half-dozen pairs of joggers Ilya had left littered around his suitcase, and padded across the room to join him.

“Good morning,” he said. His voice was scratchy still with sleep. Ilya, startled out of his thoughts, glanced up. As though by instinct, he smiled. Shane smiled back and nudged Ilya’s thigh with his toes, until Ilya, finally getting the idea, spread his legs apart. Shane folded himself between them, his hand on Ilya’s thigh, his back against Ilya’s chest. He pulled Ilya’s free arm around his waist, then followed Ilya’s gaze out. Ilya’s hotel was at the cheap end of downtown, tucked between a midrise office building and a parking garage. It was early enough still that there weren’t many cars out. They had another few hours, probably, until the second day of the draft started. Shane smoothed his thumb over Ilya's knee. “You’re up early.” 

“Mm.”

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Yes.” Shane rubbed Ilya’s knee again, then pinched him gently. Ilya sighed. “No,” he admitted. He pulled back from Shane far enough to take another drag of his cigarette. It was definitely against the rules to smoke in here. Shane didn’t say anything, though. “But I did not mean to wake you too.” 

“You didn’t. I’m usually up before you, remember?”

Ilya was silent. Then, quietly, “Yes. I remember.” 

When Ilya didn’t say anything more, Shane took his hand, the one that was currently wrapped around his waist, and wound their fingers together. 

“I haven’t been sleeping well lately, either,” he said. He tugged Ilya’s hand up. There were faint, spidery white scars on Ilya’s fingers. Frostbite, Shane thought. He brought Ilya’s hand to his lips and kissed them. “Not for this whole last year.”

“More than a year,” Ilya said. Shane could see him through the reflection in the window, staring at their entwined hands. “Thirteen months.” 

“Yeah. I know. Three hundred and ninety three days.” When Ilya made a low noise in answer, Shane added, “I counted. I’m pretty sure my parents thought I was crazy.” Shane kissed Ilya’s hand again. “They were worried, mostly. I think we went through four different mattresses in the first three months, trying to find one I could sleep on for more than a few hours at a time.”

“Shane.”

“I know. It’s so stupid, right? All that time we spent dreaming about falling asleep in a real bed again, and sometimes I got so sick of tossing and turning that I gave up and just slept on the floor.” 

“Me too, sometimes.”

“We might just as well have stayed in the woods, huh?”

“No.” 

At the conviction in Ilya’s voice, Shane craned his head and looked back. Ilya was already gazing at him, his mouth set and his eyes bright. Shane squeezed his hand. Ilya squeezed back at once, and stubbed out his cigarette in one of the room’s chipped coffee mugs.

“No,” he said again. His voice was quieter this time, but just as firm. “I used to think that, too. But no. I have been thinking about it all night, since you fell asleep. About all of the ways I hurt you. About all of the apologies I have to make.” 

“You don’t have to apologize for anything, Ilya.”

“I do,” Ilya insisted. He caught Shane’s chin in his hand. “I let you think that I was ashamed of us, in the woods. I let you think that I was afraid.”

“Afraid of Russia, maybe,” Shane conceded. “Afraid of your family. But I knew you loved me.”

“I should have told you so. I should not have made you guess.”

“You did tell me so,” Shane said. He knew that this was important. He could see the remorse on Ilya’s face, could feel the way that Ilya’s hands were trembling. Still, he couldn’t quite keep the smile from his voice when he turned in Ilya’s arms, and added, “Ya tebya lyublyu this, ya tebya lyublyu that, every day, ten times a day. Ilya. Sweetheart. You always made sure I knew. You told me you loved me all the time.” He kept his own voice gentle, but Ilya only shook his head.

“And then I stopped,” Ilya said. "They found us and they took you away and I stopped." His voice was growing faster. Shane wanted to quiet him, to kiss him. He wanted to draw all the pain and loneliness and grief out of Ilya’s voice like poison from a wound, spit it out and bury it, far away where it could never hurt Ilya again. 

Ilya was probably right that they should talk about this, though. Not saying what they meant is what had gotten them into this whole thirteen-months-of-silence mess in the first place. It was better, probably, to say everything they felt, and see where that got them for a change. 

“I stopped talking to you after they found us,” Ilya said again. “I was afraid you would not forgive me. Or I was afraid I would not deserve it, if you did."

“Forgive you for what, Ilya?” 

“The plane crash.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my idea. The photos, in the woods…”

“Yeah. I know. But it wasn’t your fault.” 

Ilya hesitated, staring at him. Shane stared back, exasperated and fond. Finally Ilya shook his head. “I asked you to marry me,” he said, pivoting abruptly. He had started crying; not much, but enough that the skin under his eyes was damp. He blinked rapidly, almost angrily. Their hands were still entwined, but Shane reached up with his free hand and wiped the tears away gently. “You did not even know I loved you --”

“Ilya. I knew.”

“-- and I did not let you talk about us, ever --” 

“We were both being stupid. That’s all.” 

“-- and I hurt you. When I asked you to marry me, it hurt you. That is why I could not say anything to you when I was in Russia. I did not know how to fix things. I wanted to make you happy, and instead I fucked everything up, and --”

And, well. It was one thing to let Ilya pour his heart out, and another thing entirely to let Ilya go on thinking, for even one minute more, that Shane wasn’t the happiest he’d ever been, sitting on the shitty carpet of this shitty hotel room, right here in Ilya’s arms. 

“I love it,” Shane said, cutting him off. He tugged his hand free from Ilya’s grip and wrapped both his arms around Ilya’s neck, finally turning the rest of the way around to face him. Ilya, caught mid-apology, broke off and blinked. Shane smiled at him. “I think it’s your best plan yet.” 

“...What?”

“Getting married. Spending the rest of our lives together. The photoshoot wasn’t your greatest idea, I'll admit. But this? I think you’ve got a winner this time, Rozanov.”

“Shane, what are you --” 

“Yes,” Shane said. He laughed a little. He couldn't help it. “I'm saying yes. I’ll marry you. On one condition though, okay? You have to let me say something first, and you have to let me say it all the way through to the end. No interrupting.” 

Ilya nodded. He was crying and laughing at the same time. Shane dried Ilya's eyes, then leaned close and knocked their foreheads together. It was almost as intimate as a kiss: pressed together and breathing the same air, the last of their secrets finally melting away in the space between them. Shane nuzzled against Ilya. It was hard, but he resisted the urge to close his eyes. This part was important. He wanted to look at Ilya, for this. 

“I’m sorry that I told the whole League I love you before I talked to you first,” he began. “I would have told them I just meant it as friends, if you’d wanted -- but I still should have asked. I know it makes everything more complicated for you now, with going home. It probably would have made it hard for you even if we had played it off as friends. I’m sorry.” 

“I am not going back to Russia.”

“I know. Because of me. That's why --”

“No.” Ilya shook his head. His eyes were open too, seeking out Shane’s. They were still bright, but his voice, at least, was firm. “It was me, too. I kissed you, remember?”

“Well, yeah, but --” 

“I do not want to go back,” Ilya said. “I did not want to, even before yesterday. I do not ever want to go anywhere again where I cannot be with you.” 

Shane drew in a deep breath. Exhaled. Leaned forward and pressed a swift, close-mouthed kiss to Ilya’s lips. “Okay,” he whispered, when he drew back. “I’m still sorry, but -- okay.” 

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry for a few other things, too.”

Ilya sighed plaintively and leaned his forehead into Shane’s. “Can we get back to the part where you said, ‘yes, Ilya, I do,’ instead?” 

“I’m sorry I let you go without saying goodbye,” Shane said, ignoring him. “I’m sorry I didn’t say I love you before they separated us, that night after we were rescued. In the hospital.” Ilya’s breath hitched. Shane kissed him again. “I’m sorry you weren’t picked first round this time. You should have been. You deserve it.” 

“Shane.”

“I’m sorry we left the hockey sticks you made us behind. I loved playing hockey with you on the lake. I miss them."

"Shane."

"But that’s it. That’s all that I’m sorry for. Leaving the hockey sticks, and leaving you.”

“Lyubimyy.”

“Ilya -- sweetheart. I meant it yesterday, when I said there wasn’t a single thing about those two years that I would change.” Shane nosed against Ilya, nudging him up until Ilya blinked and met his eyes again. Shane smiled. “I think we’re going to play hockey together,” he said, his voice low, like it was a secret. “I think some team will look at how hot that kiss was yesterday, and think -- yeah. I like their energy. That’s the kind of fireworks I want on my first line.” Ilya gave a wet laugh. Shane smiled at him again. 

“But even if they don’t,” he went on, “Even if you and I never play in the MLH -- this is the happiest I’ve ever been. Okay? I want to make sure that you know that, before I tell you yes. I want you to know that I don’t regret anything. Every minute I spend with you makes me happy. Everything about you is my favorite thing. Ty lyubov' vsey moyey zhizni, Ilya.” 

“Shane.”

“Of course I’ll marry you. Of course I will. I love you so much.”

Outside, between the concrete and the wall of windows, the gray rainclouds were clearing, a blue sky and sunlight peeking through at last. Somewhere, on one of the tables behind them, Shane heard his phone start to buzz. He ignored it, though. There would be time to take his mom’s call later, time to shower and change, time to walk out into the sunlight and catch a cab for the United Center, holding Ilya’s hand. Here, now, he had Ilya in his arms, cigarette breath and laughing tears and all, Ilya's mouth already opening beneath his in a kiss, Ilya already melting into his embrace. The love of his life. His fiancé. His best friend. 

Everything else could wait.

Chapter End Notes

Next time, for the last time: Back to the woods.

Chapter 28: Epilogue. August 1, 2018. Ilya.

Chapter Notes

Back at last, with a fittingly sappy epilogue to this entirely self-indulgent story. Enjoy, and if you notice that the timeline seems off with the cottage + Anya....shh. No you don't.

“--And the kitchen here,” Shane finished. He let the stick drop and sat back on his heels, looking pleased. “No wall along this side, just windows and a door facing the lake. What do you think?” 

Ilya thought that Shane looked good enough to eat, with a smudge of wet sand on his nose and a few rivulets of sweat running from his forehead down his temples to his chin. He tore his eyes away, though, and dutifully looked down at the floorplan Shane had sketched into the sand. 

“It is good,” he allowed. “Pretty. Too many windows, though.” He looked back up in time to catch the scandalized look on Shane’s face. He grinned, then leaned forward and kissed him. “What if a bear looks in and sees Anya, hm? ‘What a pretty girl, such a tasty snack’ -- and then next thing we know, crash, bang, there is glass everywhere, poor Anya is gobbled up, no time even to say ‘I told you so, solnyshko,’ before the bear comes for you next.” 

He bit Shane’s cheek and growled. Shane scrunched up his nose. “That’s what I keep you around for, isn’t it?” he countered, elbowing Ilya back. Ilya grinned. Shane rolled his eyes, but kissed him again anyway. “Rumor has it, wrestling bears is right up your alley.”

“Mm. Who told you this?”

“You did.” 

“Oh. Must be true, then.”

“Must be.”

“Fine. Keep your windows, malysh.” Ilya nosed against Shane, then kissed him again. “More light to see your beautiful face, no choice but to keep your handsome Russian husband around at all times to handle the bears, sounds like a win-win to me.”

It was getting on towards noon. Anya was already splashing around down at the lake, barking happily at a couple of birds. The sun was directly overhead, hot enough it had blazed through every cloud in the sky. Seeing as their tent was still in pieces and their cottage, at this point, was no more than a plot of grass and a messy sketch in the sand, Ilya pushed himself to his feet and began to strip out of his t-shirt right where he was. Shane shaded his eyes and squinted up. Ilya gave him an affectionate leer. “Like what you see, Hollander?” 

Shane just crooked a lazy smile. Even after all these years, it was enough to make Ilya’s heart do a stupid little somersault in his chest. “Depends. You going to catch us lunch, Rozanov?” 

There was a cooler in the Land Rover. Lunch for today was sandwiches and cut-up fruit, a couple of beers for Ilya and ginger ale for Shane. Ilya didn’t need to catch them anything. It was probably against the rules, even, going fishing in this not-exactly-the-middle-of-nowhere lake, and that was the last headline they needed: “Centaurs Stars Miss Start of Season, Outcry from Fans and Ten Game Penalty for Illegal Spearfishing.” 

Ilya dropped back down onto his knees in front of Shane, pressing into his space until Shane, laughing, toppled over backwards. Ilya followed him down, his arms braced on either side of Shane’s head, their chests pressed together, both of them grinning like idiots. “You like when I take care of you, hm?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, breathless already. He nosed up and kissed Ilya. “I do.” 

“You like how good I am for you.”

“Jesus, Ilya.”

“What do you want, solnyshko?” Ilya nipped at Shane’s lips. They were both sweaty and covered in sand and streaky lines of sunscreen. Shane’s breath tasted like gas station coffee and mint toothpaste. Ilya never, ever wanted to stop kissing him. “You want me to catch you a fish? Ten fish? Or, what do you think -- maybe I should take off all my clothes first, give you a show? Let you be lazy and sit here and watch your captain do all the work.”

“Lazy?” Shane echoed, somehow managing to sound affronted even when he was melting into a puddle beneath Ilya. 

“Mm. Yes. Sometimes, yes. It’s good.” One more kiss, and then Ilya pushed himself up enough to smile down at Shane again. Shane blinked up at him, making a face. “I like watching you be lazy.” 

“Lazy. I won the Cup for you, asshole.”

“That was -- what is it? -- a walk in the park for you, malysh,” Ilya said, shrugging one shoulder. Shane sputtered. “Shane Hollander, second best hockey player of all time, wins Stanley Cup with assist from his sexy perfect husband. Tch. Boring. Old news.” 

“Fuck you.”

“After lunch,” Ilya promised, and let himself be dragged down for one last, laughing kiss before rolling to his feet again.

The cottage was Shane’s idea. 

“We have enough cars already, sweetheart,” -- murmured over Ilya’s shoulder, arms wrapped around Ilya’s waist and breath unfairly ticklish in Ilya’s ear, “Property’s a better investment.” 

“It would be nice to get out of Ottawa every now and then, wouldn’t it?” -- directed wistfully at the ceiling this time, underneath a pile of Ilya and Anya and more blankets than Ilya could count. “You know. Somewhere outside the city, where we could see the stars.” 

“Mom’s been asking when we’re coming to visit next. I think she misses us, living so far away.” Shane poured another glass of vodka, slid it across the counter, and then, with affected carelessness, as though he didn’t know exactly the way to Ilya’s heart -- “Dad too. He says he has a new pasta recipe for you to try. I guess he always cooks better, when you’re in the kitchen helping.” 

It didn’t stop there, either. “Anya would be happier with more space, don’t you think?” one day, and “You miss the lake too, don’t you?” the next. Brochures for general contractors on the kitchen island. Paint samples in the bathroom. A dozen tabs pointedly left open on Ilya’s computer, each with some variation of “buildable lakefront property, Quebec” already entered in the search bar. It all finally came to a head on a Tuesday afternoon, when Shane -- halfway through blowing Ilya’s mind out through his dick -- all of a sudden sat back on his heels, wiped his mouth with his hand, and said, “I’ve found a place in Lanaudière, near Mom and Dad. It’s mostly just trees right now, but there’s a well already on the site for water, and --”

“Yes,” Ilya interrupted. He sat up so quickly he nearly kicked Shane in the ribs, and grabbed his perfect, beautiful, ridiculous husband’s face between his hands. “Lanaudière, yes. In a tree, in a tent, underneath a fucking rock again, wherever you want us to live, solnyshko, we will live. Just please, please, stop talking about fucking wells and finish sucking my dick now, please.” 

Shane beamed at him. And that, as they say, was that. 

Ilya did not catch them a fish; but as he did manage to strip Shane naked and coax him into the water for a messy handjob before lunch, he still counted it a win. They stretched out on the sand with Anya afterwards, staring up at the sky. Shane’s head was on Ilya’s stomach. Ilya combed his fingers through his damp hair, gently working the tangles out. 

“The last time we laid like this in the woods, I asked you to marry me,” he said, and looked down in time to see Shane smile. 

They eventually got the tent set up and a fire ready. Mostly, though, they spent the afternoon splashing around with Anya in the water, or sprawling out naked like a pair of hedonists on the boulders along the shore, or pulling their clothes and shoes on long enough to, at Shane’s insistence, traipse through the woods collecting berries, which as it turned out was mostly just an excuse for Shane to pin Ilya against a tree and kiss him senseless.

A perfect afternoon gave way to a perfect sunset, which gave way in turn to a night filled with more stars than Ilya could count. Shane built up the fire and then cozied back against Ilya’s side, staring into the flames and tugging on the sleeves of his sweatshirt, the way he always did when he had something on his mind. Ilya pressed a kiss against the top of his head. Anya, because she was the smartest and best girl in the world, evidently picked up on Shane’s mood too. She gave a little whine and nudged her head against his knee, until Shane finally stopped worrying at his sleeves and let his hand settle on her back instead, scritching through her fur. 

Time passed. An hour, maybe, or maybe only fifteen minutes; Ilya never could tell, at night. But, somewhere between a log splitting and a loon calling out on the lake, Shane drew in a deep breath.

“Thank you,” he said. He craned his neck back and looked up at Ilya. Ilya hummed and bent down to kiss him, properly this time. 

“For dinner?”

“No. I mean, yes. But no.” 

Ilya, because he loved Shane, graciously declined to laugh. He settled his arm more snugly around Shane’s shoulders instead, tucking him closer. “For admiring your perfect fire?” he hazarded. When Shane didn’t answer, Ilya hummed. “For picking out such cute bandanas for Anya? For putting up the tent so quick, singlehanded, no mistakes?” 

“I helped with the tent.”

“Mm, no. You didn’t.” 

“I did.”

“Sitting on a log and reading out the wrong directions does not count as helping, lyubimyy.”

Shane elbowed him half-heartedly. “Asshole.”

“Ty lyubish' menya,” Ilya countered easily, jostling him back. They tussled for a minute, until Anya lifted her head and gave an exasperated chuff. When they settled back again, Shane was leaning even more heavily into Ilya’s side than before. Ilya dropped another kiss to his head. “Or maybe this is a thank you in advance,” he mused aloud, after a beat. “That is it, yes? ‘Thank you, Ilya, for the amazing sex we are going to have tonight inside of the perfect tent you singlehandedly made without any help whatsoever.’ You are welcome, malysh. Anything for you. We will have to make love in the sleeping bag, though, so that Anya does not --” 

“For the photoshoot,” Shane interrupted. He looked up at Ilya again. It was dark enough, and his eyes were bright enough, that for a moment Ilya saw the whole night sky reflected in his gaze.

It did something funny to Ilya’s heart, how beautiful Shane was. Thankfully, before Ilya had time to blurt out something maudlin and stupid, Shane was already speaking again. “For, you know. Being smart enough to realize that there might be something between us, even back then. And brave enough to do something about it.”

“I did not need much convincing to come up with a plan to kiss you silly in the woods, sweetheart,” Ilya said, when he managed to find his voice. “You are very pretty, in case you have not noticed.” 

“I never would have thought of something crazy like that. Setting up a whole photoshoot, just on the chance that you might like me.”

“Da, well. One of us is fun and sexy and likes to do very stupid, impulsive things, and the other is boring, so. It balances out.”

Shane laughed. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. But I just -- I've been thinking about it a lot tonight, I guess. Being out here in the wild with you again. Being this happy. I've been thinking how grateful I am, that soon we’ll have this place that we can always come back to and just be the two of us.”

“The three of us,” Ilya somehow managed, around the lump in his throat. Shane nodded and dug his fingers into Anya’s scruff. 

“The three of us,” he agreed. “I mean, I like to think we would have found our way to each other eventually, no matter what -- but I’m glad you took it out of the universe’s hands. I’m glad you were brave enough to see what we could be, right from the start.” 

Ilya buried his face in Shane’s hair. It was frightening, a little -- knowing he held every good thing in the world in his arms, feeling the way his heart existed outside of himself, warm and solid and pressed up against his side. Had he been brave? Maybe, but -- it had been inevitable, too. Loving Shane. Moving heaven and earth, just for the chance to see those pretty freckles of his again.

“Thank you for the photoshoot, Ilya,” Shane said, and Ilya huffed out a wet laugh. Where to even begin?

“Thank you for saying yes,” Ilya decided at last, and tugged Shane the rest of the way into his arms for a kiss.

True enough, the photoshoot had been Ilya’s idea. Credit where credit was due, though. The cottage was Shane’s -- and as far as happily ever afters went, a home in the woods with the love of his life was just about the best place that Ilya could think of to start. 

THE END

Chapter End Notes

This story has been an absolute joy to write, friends. Whether you've been here since the beginning 28 (!!!) chapters ago, or just started reading once it was finished, please know that your comments and kudos along the way have meant the world <333 Thank you!!

9/4/26 Update: Astute re-readers may notice that this fic is now part of a series! :) What can I say -- this morning on the bus the plot bunny bit, and now here we are with a sequel in the works.

I currently have two other active fics and an actual real life job (ugh), so updates may take a minute. Feel free to subscribe if you're interested, no worries if not, and thank you again so much for all of the love for "Into the Woods" -- it has truly been such a delight! <3

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