Chapter Text
Shane was sitting on the bus next to Hayden, who was absolutely getting annoyed with the way Shane's leg was bouncing as he checked his phone for the nineteenth time since they sat down. He knew that Ilya's game was over (and that they had won while Shane had lost, which was annoying) and they were probably in the air already.
But.
Ilya always texted.
"Shane." Hayden's hand on his leg did nothing to still it. "You gotta calm down, man. You're gonna give yourself an aneurysm. He probably just got caught up in celebrating and forgot."
"Yeah. I guess," Shane mumbled, turning to stare out the window. He pressed his overheated forehead to the glass and tried to calm his breathing. Hayden was probably right, of course—Ilya must have just forgotten to text Shane before his plane took off.
But.
Ilya never forgot.
His phone pinged five times in quick succession and he got as far as seeing that they were Instagram DMs from Ilya when from a seat somewhere behind him, J.J. said, "Holy shit. The Centaurs' plane crashed."
"What?" Clearly, Shane hadn't heard him right. Maybe he hadn't said Centaurs. Or maybe he hadn't said crash. Because if he had said both of those words, then that meant Ilya—
And Shane refused to accept that.
"Yeah, man. Breaking news on ESPN. Guess they went down somewhere in bumfuck Georgia or some shit." J.J.'s tone was flippant, already moving onto the next thought, as if he hadn't just turned Shane's world on its head.
"Bet Rozanov regrets signing with Ottawa now, huh?" someone whose voice Shane couldn't identify further back on the bus joked, getting a good laugh from those around him.
"Hey!" Hayden barked, getting up on his knees and swiveling in his seat to face the back of the bus. "Yeah, Rozanov is a fucking asshole. But he's also a person, so we aren't going to sit around and joke about this shit."
"Well, fuck, Pike," Comeau shot back. "Didn't know you had such a hard-on for Rozanov. Does Jackie know?"
Shane carefully watched his best friend. Hayden looked like he wanted to say something else, but it wasn't worth the breath. "Hayd," he pleaded, voice as broken as his heart. "Just sit down."
Hayden, thankfully, listened. He scooped his phone up from where it had fallen to the floor. "I'm calling Jackie. She'll do her WAG thing and we'll get to the bottom of this, okay?" Shane nodded numbly and Hayden started speaking in hushed tones to Jackie. "Hey, Jacks…Yeah, we saw…He's right here…Not good, but I've got him. Hey, so can you…yep, exactly. You're the best, babe…Yeah, I will. Love you." He hung up and then to Shane said, "Jackie said to tell you she loves you and that we're gonna get you through this."
"Uh, yeah. Okay. Thanks." Hayden dropped a hand on Shane's shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze, but said nothing else. Hayden was one of the few people who could recognize when Shane's brain couldn't find the words and would just shut down on him.
He opened Ilya's DMs, hoping to find an explanation for what the fuck was happening. Ilya telling him that the plane hadn't crashed, that ESPN had gotten it wrong. That Ilya was 100% fine and not—no, Shane refused to even think the words.
Shane.
You are the best thing in my life.
Oh. Oh, no. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I love you. Always. Maybe from the first time I saw you.
Shane had to laugh at that, even though hot tears were spilling down his cheeks. He couldn't exactly say that that feeling was mutual—his first impression of Ilya was that he was a cocky asshole. Except…thinking back on it now, he could remember something else: a tug in the pit of his stomach, drawing him towards said cocky asshole.
So. Maybe. Maybe he had loved Ilya from that day in Saskatchewan. But, like with most things, it had taken his brain longer to catch on.
I am thinking only about you right now. A million memories. Thank you for those.
Shane wanted to scream—he very nearly did. Because if Ilya was…dead, if he had fucking died in a fucking plane crash, then all Shane would have is memories. He wouldn't even have a single goddamn picture of the man he loved so much it physically hurt sometimes.
Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe that.
Of course Ilya was in Shane's heart—he was Shane's heart. He thought that was enough for now, enough until they both retired and no one gave a shit about the Hollander-Rozanov rivalry anymore. Enough that he and Ilya knew what they had was real and lasting.
But now, in the face of what could be—fuck—Ilya's last words, Shane realized that it wasn't nearly enough. Jackie was using her WAG connections to figure out what happened because no one would have known to contact Shane. Because you can't exactly put your enemy-turned-recent-friend as your emergency contact or next of kin. People would ask questions, questions Shane had been so afraid to answer. Questions that seem so trivial now, in the face of Ilya's accident.
If it hadn't been posted on ESPN, how long would it have been before Shane learned of the plane crash?
Shane stared at the messages, committing them to memory. He tried and failed to not think about how scared Ilya must have been as the plane was going down. How he still managed to tell Shane he loved him one last time.
Hayden eventually managed to pull Shane's phone out of his grip. "Don't want you on the internet right now, bud. Let's just wait until Jackie calls me back. Then we'll figure out our next move, okay?"
"Yeah, okay." The words felt wrong in his mouth, like he wasn't the one saying them.
He tried and failed to get his heart rate under control, to even out his breathing, to bring his eyes back into focus. But, as he concentrated on his physical symptoms, his thoughts wandered.
Shane had been with Ilya in one form or another since he was eighteen. That was his entire adult life. Even when they weren't together, even when Shane was dating Rose, Shane was still Ilya's. There wasn't a single part of his life that wasn't colored by Ilya. Shane Hollander didn't know how to exist in a world without Ilya Rozanov.
And, now, he might have to learn.
"Shane! Bud, I'm gonna need you to stay with me, okay?" Hayden's panicked voice broke through Shane's thoughts. He pulled himself back to the present, focusing on the feel of the seat underneath him and the sound of Hayden's voice as he talked to Jackie on the phone. "Sorry, he's just…Yup….Okay…Yeah, of course I'm gonna stay with him…Do you really think I'd let him go alone?…Ouch, babe, that hurts…Okay, yeah. Love you, too…Yes, I will keep you updated. Okay, bye."
"What—" Shane couldn't finish the sentence.
"Jacks asked around," Hayden said, hand coming up to grip Shane's shoulder. Shane let the touch center him, ground him to reality as he tried to concentrate on what Hayden was saying. "And, as far as anyone knows, there aren't any, you know, uh. Fatalities."
As far as anyone knows. It's not exactly the vote of confidence that Shane was hoping for, but it was better than hearing Ilya is dead.
"Does she—"
"Yeah. She's texting me the name of the town now. Once we get off this bus, we're gonna rent a car and drive down there."
"We—"
"You can't seriously think I'm going to let you go by yourself? Shane, you can't even string together a full sentence. I'm not letting you drive who knows how many hours alone in the dark. Besides," he added with a wry smile, "Jackie would have my balls if I even thought about staying here."
"Doesn't she have them already?" Hayden laughed at the jab and Shane felt the knot in his chest loosen. Not by much, his heart was still wrapped in a vice so tight it was physically painful, but enough that he was glad he had Hayden in his life.
They were quiet for the rest of the ride, Hayden typing furiously on his phone and Shane staring out the window, itching for his own phone, but knowing that he would drive himself crazy googling different combinations of Ottawa, Centaurs,Ilya Rozanov, and plane crash.
When the bus pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, Shane shot out of his seat like it was on fire. Hayden stepped aside to let him into the aisle first, but was right on his heels as Shane rushed off the bus. Once on solid ground, Shane didn't know what to do. But, then Hayden was at his side. "Come on, let's go."
"Go where?"
Hayden pointed to where a nondescript black car sat waiting. It was clearly a rental and, when Shane realized that when Hayden had been furiously typing on his phone, it was to set all of this up for him, he couldn't hold it in anymore. His knees buckled as the tears started to flow and he would have hit the ground if Hayden hadn't been there to hold him upright. The other guys on the team and random hotel guests were watching Shane's very public breakdown—he could hear the whispers—but he didn't care. Let the world know how deeply he loved Ilya Rozanov because Shane was done hiding.
"Come on. Let's go get your man." Despite himself, Shane smiled. He knew that it had taken Hayden a long time to accept that the man in question was Rozanov, Shane's sworn enemy, and they still weren't best friends and probably never would be. But, Hayden had done…all of this, had defended Ilya when Comeau was talking shit…because he loved Shane and wanted to see him happy.
It only made Shane sob harder.
Not even bothering to stop and collect their bags, Hayden half-carried, half-dragged Shane in the direction of the rental car. Theriault's voice pulled Shane up short, Hayden fumbling to a stop next to him. "Hollander! Pike! Where the fuck do you think you're going?"
"Ignore him," Hayden muttered, tugging Shane toward the car.
"If you two don't get back here, you're both benched!"
Every part of Shane that eat, slept, and breathed hockey wanted to turn back. If he didn't, he'd be benched, and if he was benched, he would be letting his team and all of Montreal down. They needed him.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
You are the best thing in my life.
I love you. I always have. Maybe from the first time I saw you.
I am thinking only about you right now. A million memories. Thank you for those.
Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe that.
Ilya's last words burned on the backs of his eyelids, strengthening Shane's resolve. Fuck Theriault, fuck his teammates, fuck the entire city of Montreal. Ilya—his Ilya, his heart—needed him and nothing would ever be more important than anything else.
"I'm not fucking around. Get your asses back here."
And, for the first time in his life, Shane Hollander ignored a direct order from his coach and walked away from his team.
Once they were on the road, Shane shrunk down so far in his seat that he knew it was almost definitely a safety hazard, Hayden allowed him to have his phone back. He powered it back on—when had Hayden turned it off?—and was assaulted by an onslaught of messages and missed calls from his parents, Rose, Jackie, and even Svetlana whose number Ilya had given Shane in case of emergencies. Just like this one, he supposed.
His parents. Rose. Jackie. Svetlana. Hayden.
The only people in the entire world who knew the truth, who could reach out with their sympathies and questions because they were the only ones who knew that Shane was dying on the inside.
Six people. Only six people knew. The thought that Ilya could have died—might still die—with only six people knowing the truth gutted Shane. Ilya had been wanting to come out for months, maybe even years. But Shane was the one who held them back, who told Ilya to stick to the carefully laid out plan they had constructed.
Well, fuck the plan. He wanted the entire world to know. Now. Today.
They were about two hours outside of the town Jackie had given them when Shane's phone pinged with an incoming message. He scrambled to open it, hoping to any god that might be listening that it was Ilya telling him that everything was good, that he was okay, that Shane's heart could rest easy. But he stared in confusion when he saw that it was an Instagram DM from TroyBarrett17.
TroyBarrett17: hey shane. i know this is super out of the blue and feel free to tell me to fuck off, but i needed to tell you that ilya is okay. i know no one else has probably told you that yet.
Shane blinked down at the message, trying to make sense of it. He knew that Ilya was friendly with Troy, that he had come out as bi to him. But he had also told Shane that he had never told Troy about them. Had he changed his mind? Shane wouldn't blame him—most of the people that knew were Shane's friends and family. Ilya deserved to have more people in his corner.
Shane should have told him that a long time ago.
ShaneHollanderHockeyPlayer: what?
TroyBarrett17: sorry! but when ilya told me he was bi just sort of…put two and two together. i swear ilya didn't tell me anything! obviously this is something you guys are keeping under wraps
TroyBarrett17: but he's okay. a little banged up and confused but okay
TroyBarrett17: he asked for you
ShaneHollanderHockeyPlayer: thank you troy. i'm about an hour and a half away. can you tell him i'm coming?
TroyBarrett17: yeah of course.
TroyBarrett17: tell me when you get here and i'll come down to the lobby and grab you so you don't have to check in at the front desk. last thing we need is for some gossip website to get a hold of the visitor logs right?
ShaneHollanderHockeyPlayer: yeah. right. thank you again troy
TroyBarrett17: you're welcome shane
"Ilya?" Hayden asked when Shane locked his phone, feeling more than a little dumbfounded.
If only. "Uh, no. Troy Barrett, actually."
Hayden chuckled, shaking his head. "Man, what even is your life?"
Shane asked himself the same question daily.
When the GPS said they were five minutes out, Shane messaged Troy again. While he waited for a response, Hayden dropped him off at the front of the hospital with a promise that he would park and find Shane later. "Seriously, man," Hayden said, waving off Shane's protests. "I'll be fine. Just call or text me if you need anything. I gotta check in with Jackie, anyway. She's, like, super worried about you."
"Tell her I'm fine," Shane said automatically.
"Tell her you're freaking out in a very Shane way, but you aren't in immediate danger of killing yourself, you mean." Shane flipped him off and got out of the car. Hayden laughed as he pulled away from the curb. Despite literally every-fucking-thing, Shane chuckled before making his way inside the hospital.
Troy Barrett was sitting in a chair just to the left of the and main doors and he stood when he and Shane made eye contact. "It's not as bad as it looks," he said, gesturing to the sling over his right arm. His left eye was nearly almost entirely swollen shut, the skin around it an ugly, mottled purple that made Shane's stomach curdle. "I got off easy compared to some of the other—oh, shit, sorry. That was a fucked up thing to say." Shane could only nod, everything below his neck going cold and numb. If Troy looked like he just lost a prize fight with a gorilla and he got off easy, then what did Ilya—
No, he wasn't going to think about that.
"I need to see him."
"Right, yeah, of course." He led Shane past the front desk, barely stopping when the woman sitting behind it called out to them that Shane needed to sign it as a visitor. "He's with the plane crash," Troy said, as if that absolved them of following the rules.
"I'm very sorry to hear that," she said to their retreating forms, "but he still needs to—hey, get back here!" But neither Shane nor Troy heard anything else she said as the elevator doors closed.
"We'll deal with that later," Troy said, as if Shane were worried about anything other than getting to Ilya within the next five minutes. Then, as if he could read Shane's mind, he added, "We'll be there soon."
"Yeah. Yeah, okay."
"How you holding up, man?" Troy shook his head. "No, sorry, that was a stupid question. Ignore me."
"No, it's okay. I um." He paused. Shane wasn't the best at talking about his feelings—even with Ilya it was sometimes too overwhelming. And now, here was Troy Barrett, one of hockey's most notorious assholes, asking him to do just that and seemingly actually caring about the answer. It was all very overwhelming and Shane wished he had somewhere to sit. "All this has put a lot of things into perspective, I guess."
"Yeah, I know what you mean." The way he said it suggested that there was a story there and if Shane were someone else, he might have asked about it. But Shane was Shane and he let the two of them lapse into a tense silence.
They stepped off the elevator and Troy lead Shane down what felt like a never ending hallway. Shane peered into open doors as they passed, seeing various Centaurs laid or sitting up in bed in varying states of injury. He tried not to catch any of their eyes, but he failed when Wyatt Hayes hobbled out of one of the rooms, foot in a boot as he leaned on a man Shane didn't recognize but was sure wasn't a hockey player. He didn't look as injured as Hayes or Barrett, but there was a sizable lump on his temple, making him look like he had a single horn growing on the side of his face.
The man Shane didn't know paid him no mind other than a quick glance. Shane tried to give him the same courtesy, but he couldn't help but notice the way his face lit up when he greeted Troy. Or the way Troy was wearing an identical expression.
Interesting.
Unfortunately for Shane, he was so distracted by that development that he didn't notice Hayes staring at him in the unnerving way only goalies were capable of. "Hayes," he said in greeting because he couldn't just stand there saying nothing—that was weird. And he wasn't a goalie.
"Hollander," Hayes replied. His expression didn't change, but through the glint in his eyes, Shane could see the gears turning in his brain. He was close to figuring out the secret Shane had kept close to his chest for so many years, if he hadn't already. Goalies were so perceptive it scared Shane sometimes.
But, strangely, what didn't scare him was the idea that Wyatt Hayes knew about him and Ilya. Sure, there was an undercurrent of anxiety, but it wasn't threatening to drown him like it would have even just the day before.
A hand on his arm pulled Shane out of his thoughts. "Come on," Troy said, turning and walking down the hall, Shane quick on his heels.
Ilya's room was at the very end of the hall because, even injured, he couldn't make things easy for Shane. Troy moved to open the door, but paused, brow furrowed as he leaned in, pressing his ear to the door. Shane crowded against him. "What's going on?" he demanded, unable to get his ear against the door, so all he could hear was muffled voices on the other side—voices that sounded harried and concerned.
"I uh. I don't know. Maybe we should give them a minute."
No, fuck that. Shane had been separated from Ilya for too long already. Besides, if something was wrong with Ilya, there was no one better equipped to handle it than Shane. "Out of my way," he said, shouldering his way past Barrett, only slightly apologetic that he had jostled his injured arm.
He pushed open the door, trying to prepare himself for whatever he might find on the other side. He let out a breath of relief when he saw Ilya sitting up in bed. There was a bandaged plastered against his right cheek, a faint tinge of blood seeping through it (Shane would have to tell someone it needed to be changed). There was a slight glassy look in his eyes that could have indicated a concussion or that he was hopped up on painkillers. Shane didn't rule out the former, but suspected the latter because his left leg was elevated and wrapped in a bright white cast. It had black Sharpie scribbled over it, some of his teammates obviously having signed it already.
Standing next to him was his coach Brandon Wiebe, who was deep in conversation with a small woman with red hair cut in a severe bob at her chin. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but it was clear that theirs were the voices Shane had heard through the door.
Ilya caught sight of Shane and gasped so loudly that both Wiebe and the doctor turned to look at him, wearing twin looks of horror.
"Моя любовь здесь!" he exclaimed, giddy as a child.
Shane didn't know why everyone else in the room was looking so concerned because Ilya didn't seem to be acting any differently when he realized that Ilya was speaking in Russian and Shane was the only one who could understand him.
"Малыш, ты в порядке?" he asked, hesitantly approaching the bed, feeling very much like he was approaching a frightened animal who would run away if he made one wrong move.
"Теперь, когда ты здесь, стало лучше."
"I don't understand," Troy said from somewhere behind Shane. "Did he forget how to speak English? He was fine when I left and I was only gone like ten minutes."
"It's possible," the doctor said, "that, with his concussion, his brain has become too fatigued to continue translating everything into his second language. I was just about to go see about an interpreter, but it appears we may already have one?"
No one said anything, but everyone was looking to Shane as if expecting him to do something.
Oh.
She meant for Shane to interpret.
Right.
"I mean, I'm not fluent," he said, not taking his eyes off of Ilya, who was still staring up him with that starry, doped-up gaze like he would find all the answers to the universe in Shane's eyes. "And I don't really know a lot of medical terms"—and he was pretty sure knowing please fuck me wasn't going to help in this situation—"but I'll do my best."
"Shaaaaaane," Ilya moaned, blindly reaching out for Shane's hand. Without a second thought, even knowing that an NHL head coach who had the power to change the trajectory of both their careers was standing not even ten feet away from him, Shane interlocked their fingers. Ilya visibly relaxed and Shane remembered his own concussion from years ago and how the only thing he wanted was to hold Ilya's hand.
"Я здесь. Я с тобой," he said, voice barely above a whisper. It was a testament to Ilya's current state that he didn't poke fun at the way Shane hesitated over the words as he tried to translate them properly.
"Why are you here?" Ilya asked in English, voice just as quiet.
"Because you needed me."
"But people. They can see." They can see us, Shane had said to Ilya the day on the ice after Marlow took him out. It broke his heart to think about how many years they'd both spent terrified.
"Let them see. I don't care."
"Really?"
"Really."
lya stared for long enough that Shane worried English had slipped out of his brain again. But then he said, "Okay," with a contented smile. Hand still gripped in Shane's, he closed his eyes and was snoring within seconds.
Someone tapped Shane on the shoulder and he jumped about three feet in the air. "Sorry to startle you," Brandon Wiebe said when Shane turned to look at him. "But I think maybe we should talk?"
Shane wanted to tell him no, wanted to tell him that he wasn't leaving Ilya's side until Ilya told him to leave, that there wasn't anything they had to say to each other. But Ilya was sleeping and Troy Barrett was nodding at him, as if signaling that his coach was a safe person to talk to. And, well, Barrett knew his coach better than Shane did. So, with a sigh, he carefully extricated his hand from Ilya's iron-like grip and followed Brandon Wiebe out of the room and down the hall.
He allowed Shane in the family room at the end of the hallway first and shut the door behind them. Shane dropped into the closest chair, one that was hard and unforgiving underneath him, and stared straight ahead of him at one of those children's toys where you move wooden blocks along multi-colored wires. He sort of felt like that toy in that moment—there was a definite end goal that he was always going to arrive at, but there were so many twists along the way that it was making him dizzy.
"So," Wiebe began. Shane didn't look at him, choosing instead to glare at the garishly blue block like he could will it to move with just his mind. "You don't have to tell me anything more than what you're comfortable with, but I think I can guess what's going on here." Shane waited, silent, for Wiebe to tell him that he was going to out them, that he was going to bench Ilya, that he was going to go to Crowell. "And I wanted to ask you how you want to handle this."
"I—Sorry. What?" He was so confused it was making his head spin. He imagined himself as the blue block he kept staring at, crashing into the other blocks in front of it and if it would feel the same as him, could it have felt anything at all.
"I won't do anything you aren't okay with. You're in charge here, Shane."
In charge. Shane was used to being in charge. During games, practices, and in the dressing room, everyone looked to Captain Hollander to know what to do. He was the one who came up with the ten-year plan, the one that Ilya followed without complaint, even though Shane suspected he wasn't quite as happy in Ottawa as he let on. If he could control it, he would because that's just who he was.
But this situation—he couldn't control it. He didn't feel like he was in charge. But here was Brandon Wiebe, a man that Shane had never met and honestly didn't know much about beyond his name and the fact that Ilya respected him, telling him that he was following Shane's lead.
"Well, I plan to have Ilya stay with me while he recovers," he said haltingly, half-expecting the other shoe to drop any minute and tell him he was, in fact, going to ruin both of their careers one way or another. "So I would really like to be the one the doctors talk to about his condition and his care once he's released." Wiebe nodded as if Shane had told him his coffee order and not asked him to find a way to get doctors to divulge details about their patient to a person who, technically, doesn't have any right to that information. "But, uh, other than that…I think I might have a plan, but I need to talk to Ilya first."
"Completely understandable." The conversation sounded finished so Shane stood, ready to get out of this room and back to Ilya's side as fast as humanly possible. "Oh, Shane? One more thing."
"Yeah?"
"You have my word that I will not tell anyone about this without yours and Ilya's express consent. I know what it's like to need to keep something secret." Like with Barrett, Shane could tell there was a story there, but Shane was Shane and he let the moment pass.
Instead, he said, "Thank you," and only barely restrained himself from shoving Wiebe (who he figured must have sustained his own injuries, even if Shane couldn't see them) out of his way. His skin was buzzing with the need to get back to Ilya and he rushed out of the room as soon as Wiebe stepped aside with a knowing smile.
As he reentered Ilya's room, Troy Barrett still sitting at his bedside as if he were waiting for Shane to returned, Shane remembered what Hayden had said to him in the car earlier.
What even is your life?
Shane still didn't have an answer for that, but it was a life he wouldn't trade for anything, no matter how scary and dizzying it was at the moment.