Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Misses Irina Rozanova, Post Scene: Shane Hurt in Game in Episode: s01e05, Mentions of Suicide, mentions of dementia, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, We Know there is a happy ending but this made me cry, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-18 Words: 3,250 Chapters: 1/1

Haunted by Stillness

Summary

Ilya has a bad night waiting for the visiting hours to start so he can see Shane after watching him go down on the ice. For he spends the night with his brain creating patterns between the stillness of Shane on the ice and the stillness of his Mother when he found her. And the possibilities of if Shane wakes up but starts having confusion and memory problems like his father. He spirals fast.

Notes

We know there is comfort and there is a happy ending. Writing this made me cry. You've been warned.

I did add partial of the hospital scene, so there is some comfort in this fic, but mostly Ilya spiraling.

It happens too fast and not fast enough.

One second Shane Hollander is there, cutting across the ice like he owns it, like he always does, controlled and precise and so infuriatingly calm that Ilya already feels the familiar irritation rising in his chest. He’s tracking him, already thinking two moves ahead, already anticipating the shift, the pressure, the inevitable clash.

Then there’s impact.

Shane goes down.

Not stumbling. Not catching himself.

Down.

Flat.

And for a moment, Ilya expects the next part to play out like it has in the hundreds of hockey games that had come before this one. The automatic recovery. The push back to his skates, the glare, the anger, the continuation of something they both understand.

It doesn’t come.

For Shane doesn’t move.

Doesn’t recover.

There’s noise everywhere, but it folds in on itself, warps into something distant and high-pitched, like Ilya’s hearing it from underwater. The whistle is blowing, people are shouting, skates are cutting into the ice, but none of it lands properly because Shane is still there, still wrong, still…still.

Too still.

Ilya is moving before he realizes it, closing distance he shouldn’t be closing, his body pulling toward something his mind is already trying to reject. He slows himself down too late, forces his edges to bite into the ice in a way that looks intentional, controlled, normal.

Nothing about this is normal.

Shane’s arm twitches.

It’s small. Barely anything. But it’s enough to make something cold and violent flood through Ilya’s chest because he’s seen that before too, that strange, disconnected movement that doesn’t look like control so much as something misfiring.

No.

No, no, no.

He swallows hard, but it doesn’t help. His throat feels tight, like the air has thickened around him.

There’s a memory already pushing in, uninvited and unstoppable.

A doorway.

A too-quiet apartment.

“Мама?” he had called, he had been too young to know of anything besides someone getting back up. But he’d know soon that sometimes people don’t get back up, they don’t recover. Especially if they are someone Ilya loves. 

Twelve year old Ilya had been met with silence then. 

The same silence is here now, buried under thousands of voices.

“Get up,” Ilya hears himself say, and it doesn’t sound like him at all. It sounds younger. Thinner. “Come on, get up.”

Shane doesn’t.

The trainers swarm him, and Ilya forces himself to stop moving, to stop staring, to stop anything that might make this visible to anyone else, because this is not his, this reaction, this panic clawing up his throat like it has a right to exist.

It doesn’t.

It can’t.

They bring the stretcher out.

And suddenly it isn’t just his mother anymore.

It’s his father too.

Not the version in the hospital bed, not yet, but the one in the coffin, laid out too neatly, hands folded, face emptied of everything that had once made him loud and difficult and alive. Ilya had stood there and stared and tried to reconcile the shape of him with the absence inside it.

Now Shane is being strapped down in that same awful stillness, his head held in place, his body handled carefully like something fragile, something that might break further if touched the wrong way.

Ilya is pushed back by the ref and one of his teammates. He doesn’t know who, he can’t hear them. Though they must be saying something. 

He gets to the bench. He sits. Someone says something to him and he nods like he heard it, like he understood.

He didn’t.

The game keeps going.

Of course it does.

The puck drops and Ilya moves because that’s what he’s trained to do, he’s trained his body to operate on muscle memory, and it performs for him now. The ice is the one place where everything is supposed to make sense.

It doesn’t.

The ice feels wrong under his skates, like the edges aren’t catching properly, like there’s a delay between what he tells his body to do and what actually happens. The puck comes to him and he handles it, passes, shoots, checks, all of it technically correct and completely disconnected.

He keeps looking toward the tunnel.

He knows it’s pointless. He knows Shane isn’t coming back through it, not tonight, maybe not for a while, maybe…

Stop.

He tries to focus on the game, but his mind won’t stay there. It keeps slipping, sliding sideways into places he doesn’t want to go.

Hospitals.

White walls.

Machines.

Shane lying in a bed, eyes closed, or worse…open, unfocused, confused.

He loses track of time. Of shifts. At some point there’s a goal and his teammates are on him, grabbing his helmet, shouting in his ear, and he reacts half a second too late, just enough to feel it, just enough to know he should feel something more.

He doesn’t.

Everything is muffled. Distant. Like the game is happening behind glass.

By the end, he can’t remember how it finished.

He only remembers the stretcher.

Ilya doesn't know how he got back to his hotel, but he's here.

He doesn’t know where Shane is. 

He could guess the hospital, but he knows he’s not on any list to get answers. 

Ilya shuts the door and leans back against it for a second longer than necessary, his hand still on the handle like he might need to leave again immediately, like staying in one place is suddenly a bad idea.

His gear bag hits the floor. He doesn’t remember dropping it.

The hotel room is too quiet in a way that feels aggressive, like it’s pressing in on him from all sides.

The news has nothing new than what happened during the game. 

He moves through the motions because stopping feels worse. Shower. Clothes. Routine. His body knows how to do this while his mind is offline. 

The hot water should help. It always helps.

It doesn’t.

It makes everything louder.

The sound of Shane hitting the ice replays, wrong and sharp and echoing. It blends with another sound that isn’t really a sound at all, more like a memory filling in the gaps…the quiet of that apartment, the way silence can feel heavy, physical, like something you have to push through just to breathe.

He braces his hands against the tile and squeezes his eyes shut.

But that only makes it clearer.

His mother in the bathroom with the empty bottle of pills.

Shane on the ice.

The same angle of the body. The same stillness. The same immediate, instinctive understanding that something has gone very wrong.

When he found his mother, there hadn’t been answers either. Just the sight of her, too still, a bottle tipped over on tile floor. He hadn’t understood what he was looking at right away. His brain had refused it, tried to make it into something temporary, something fixable. 

She’ll wake up.

She has to.

She hadn’t.

Now it’s Shane on the ice, that same unnatural stillness burned into his vision, and Ilya can’t stop replaying it, can’t stop layering the images over each other until they blur into something unbearable.

His mother on the bathroom floor.

Shane Hollander on the ice.

His mother on the bathroom floor.

Shane Hollander on the ice.

Both of them unreachable in that moment.

Both of them beyond him.

“No,” he mutters, shaking his head like he can physically dislodge the thought. “Not the same.”

But his brain doesn’t care about logic. It cares about patterns.

And it finds them everywhere. Including the devastation of it being the two people Ilya loves. 

By the time he gets out of the shower, his chest feels tight, like something is sitting on it, pressing down harder with every breath.

He grabs his phone before he even sits down.

Refresh.

Nothing.

Refresh.

His thumb keeps moving, over and over, dragging the screen down like repetition might force something new to appear.

One update. Minimal. But finally. 

The Metros released a statement with the hospital name and that Shane is being evaluated. 

And then his thoughts start shifting again, sliding somewhere worse.

Because it isn’t just about whether Shane wakes up.

It’s now about how.

His father had woken up every day for years.

And still disappeared.

Ilya sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, phone clutched in both hands, and suddenly he can see it too clearly, the way things unravel slowly, the way a brain can betray you piece by piece.

He doesn’t know how bad the hit was.

He doesn’t know if Shane lost consciousness for seconds or minutes.

He doesn’t know what’s happening in that hospital room.

The lack of information isn’t neutral. It fills itself in with the worst possibilities…

What if Shane wakes up and something is… off?

What if it’s small at first?

Forgets a play. Misses a detail. Laughs it off.

What if it gets worse?

What if one day Shane looks at him…really looks at him…and there’s nothing there? No recognition. No irritation. No history.

Just that blank, searching confusion Ilya had seen so many times, standing in his father’s kitchen, repeating himself, trying to explain who he was, why he was there.

“Ilya,” he whispers to the empty room, like grounding himself, like reminding himself he exists in this space, in this moment.

It doesn’t help.

His breathing gets uneven. Too fast. Too shallow.

He presses his palm hard against his chest, like he can keep his heart from breaking out of it.

“Stop,” he says, but it comes out thin.

Because his mind is already running ahead.

What if Shane forgets hockey?

What if he forgets everything that makes him him?

What if he forgets…

Him.

The word lands harder than anything else. 

Because that’s the part Ilya has no right to, no claim over, no way to fight for.

They don’t exist anywhere that matters. Not publicly. Not in a way that survives something like this. 

If Shane forgets him, then he’s just… gone.

Like he was never there at all.

Ilya lets out a sharp, unsteady breath that almost turns into a laugh, except there’s nothing funny in it.

It stretches. It hides things. It delays the inevitable.

His phone lights up and he lunges for it, heart slamming hard enough to hurt.

Stable. Under observation. Suspected concussion.

The words blur for a second before he forces himself to read them again, slower this time, like he can extract something more from them.

There’s nothing there.

His father had been “stable” too.

That word means nothing.

He hadn’t been there for his father. He could only send money even when he was asking for him. 

And then suddenly there wasn’t time anymore, just fragments and regrets and the hollow realization that he hadn’t been there when it mattered most.

“I wasn’t there,” he mutters, pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead like he can block the thought out.

The guilt twists sharp in his chest.

Because it’s happening again, isn’t it?

Different circumstances. Different reasons.

Same result.

He’s sitting in a hotel room while Shane is somewhere else, hurt, alone, surrounded by people who have a right to be there.

Doctors. Teammates. Maybe family.

People who can ask questions. Who can stay. Who can care openly.

Ilya has no place in that room.

No one knows about them. No one can.

If something is wrong...really wrong...he won’t be the one they call.

If Shane wakes up scared or confused or in pain, Ilya won’t be there to see it.

If things get worse...

He swallows hard, the thought cutting off before it can fully form.

He won’t even know.

The realization lands heavy and suffocating.

With his mother, there had been no chance to fix anything.

With his father, there had been time, but he hadn’t used it the way he should have.

And now with Shane…

There is time, maybe. There is still something here.

But Ilya is locked out of it by his own choices, by the way they’ve built this thing between them to survive in the shadows.

He stares at his phone again, refreshing, waiting for scraps of information like it’s all he’s allowed.

“I can’t even be there,” he says, quieter now.

It’s not anger.

It’s something worse.

Because for all the fear clawing through him, for all the desperate, overwhelming need to know that Shane is okay, to see it with his own eyes…

He’s the only one who has to sit here and pretend it doesn’t matter.

And that, more than anything, makes the waiting unbearable.

Nothing that tells him Shane is okay. And will be Shane. Nothing that tells him he isn’t.

He wants to call.

God, he wants to call.

He wants to hear Shane’s voice, even if it’s slurred, even if it’s irritated, even if it’s confused, just something real to anchor him to.

But he can’t.

He doesn’t know what he would say. He doesn’t know what he’s allowed to say. Or who would be listening. 

He doesn’t know how to say ‘I’m scared you won’t come back to me the way you were.’

So he sits there instead.

Refreshing.

Waiting.

Spiraling in tight, relentless circles he can’t break out of.

Time loses shape. The room feels smaller, then too big, then unfamiliar, like he’s not entirely in it anymore.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees it again.

The fall.

The stillness.

And he hears the sharp crack as Shane hits the ice. 

He remembers the bounce of his head off it and hit it a second time creating the softer echo of the sound. 

Then the way everything stopped.

And underneath it, threaded through it, the slow erosion of his father’s mind, the final, unmoving stillness of his mother.

Loss layered over loss until it feels inevitable.

Morning announces itself by the light coming through the window, Ilya in the same spot. Nothing has settled.

If anything, it’s worse.

Because now there’s been time for it to become real.

At 8:59 a.m., Ilya is already outside the hospital. 

He hasn’t slept. He hasn’t really stopped thinking.

Visiting hours start at nine.

He watches the entrance like it’s the only fixed point in the world.

He could still leave.

He thinks about it for a second. Just a second.

Then he thinks about Shane lying in a hospital bed, possibly awake, possibly not, possibly looking around a room he doesn’t recognize, trying to make sense of something that won’t make sense.

Alone.

The decision isn’t a decision after that.

At nine, he’s out of the car, moving before he can second-guess it.

Inside, everything smells the same…clean and sharp and wrong and he can just picture how much Shane would hate it, for it’s not his organic cleaners. 

He gives Shane’s name at the desk and nearly stumbles over it, his voice catching in a way that makes him clear his throat and try again.

When they point him down the hall, his heart is beating too fast, too loud, like it’s trying to outrun him.

He walks. Keeps walking.

Until he’s standing outside the door.

And suddenly he can’t move.

Because he knows this moment.

He has lived this moment.

Hand hovering. Breath held. Afraid of what’s on the other side.

Afraid of what might be missing.

His chest tightens painfully.

He closes his eyes for half a second.

Then he pushes the door open.

Because not knowing is worse.

The door opens before he’s fully ready for it.

Ilya steps inside like he’s bracing for impact, like his body still expects that same awful stillness, that same silence waiting on the other side of a threshold.

But it’s not silent.

There’s a machine beeping in a steady, unhurried rhythm. There’s the faint rustle of sheets. Light from the window, too bright, too normal.

And in the middle of it…

Shane.

Propped up in the hospital bed, hair a mess, one arm carefully supported, a sling awkward against his chest. His face is pale, a little bruised, but…

Alive.

Awake.

And looking directly at him.

For a split second, Ilya just stands there, unable to process it, like his brain has to catch up to something it didn’t dare to expect.

Then Shane’s face breaks into a loose, lopsided grin, eyes a little unfocused but unmistakably him.

“Heeeey,” he says, dragging the word out like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “You made it.”

Ilya exhales, and it feels like something inside his chest actually gives way, like a knot pulled too tight for too long finally snapping loose. He hadn’t realized how much he was holding in until that moment, until the sound of Shane’s voice…his voice, not empty, not confused, not gone…cuts through everything.

He takes a few steps closer without thinking.

“You’re…” His voice catches. He clears his throat, tries again, steadier. “You’re okay?”

Shane nods, a little too enthusiastically, then winces like even that was more effort than it should’ve been.

“Yeah,” he says, still smiling, still a little floaty around the edges. “Yeah. Mild concussion. Broken collarbone.” He lifts his good hand slightly, like he’s presenting the information. “That’s it. That’s the list. Pretty short, right?”

Ilya lets out something that might be a laugh, except it’s shaky, uneven.

Shane keeps going, words spilling easily, like he’s trying to reassure him without even realizing it. “Doctor says I’ll be fine. Just gotta rest. No skating for a bit, so out for the playoffs which…” he makes a face “...kind of sucks, but whatever. Everyone gets their bell rung eventually, right? Could’ve been way worse.”

Could’ve been worse.

The words land differently this time.

Because they’re true.

This is not a still body in a quiet room with empty pill bottles. 

This is not blank eyes that don’t recognize him.

This is not slow erosion, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left to hold onto.

Shane is right here. Talking too much. Smiling like an idiot. Entirely, unmistakably himself.

Ilya feels it all at once, the relief crashing into him so hard it almost knocks the air out of his lungs. It floods through him, warm and overwhelming and terrifying in its intensity, because it’s so much, because it could have been the opposite, because he knows exactly what the opposite looks like.

He steps closer to the bed, close enough now that he can see the details…the faint crease between Shane’s eyebrows, the way his fingers tap absently against the blanket, restless even now.

Alive.

Still here.

Still him.

Something in Ilya’s chest aches, sharp and deep, but it’s different from before. Not that hollow, dropping feeling. Not that dread.

Something fuller. Heavier.

Safer.

“Yeah,” Ilya says quietly, more to himself than anything. “Could have been worse.”

Shane’s smile softens, just a little, like he’s catching something in Ilya’s tone even through the haze of painkillers.

“I’m okay,” he says, more gently this time.

Ilya nods.

And for the first time since the impact, since the ice, since all those memories tried to drag him under, he believes it.

This is different.

Shane is not slipping away.

He is not gone in pieces.

He is here. And he will stay here.

Ilya lets that settle, lets it anchor him, lets it quiet the noise in his head just enough to breathe properly again.

For now…

That’s enough.