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Ilya had always thought there were people built for attention and people built to watch it happen.
Shane belonged, infuriatingly, to the first category.
Even when he was doing nothing, he seemed to gather a room around himself. It was not vanity. Shane was too instinctively generous for that, too careless in certain private ways to understand fully what he looked like from the outside. But people turned toward him anyway. They always had. Teammates gravitated in his direction during morning skate. Reporters laughed harder at his dry little jokes than they deserved to. Arena staff who had known him for years brightened when he passed. Children along the glass looked for him first.
He did not perform for it.
That was the annoying part.
If Shane had been smug, if he had worked for admiration, if he had courted it with obvious hunger, Ilya could have dismissed him more easily. Instead Shane moved through the world with the loose-limbed ease of a man who did not realise half of what he was doing to it.
This afternoon he was at centre ice after practice, still in partial gear, hair damp at the temples and sticking out badly where he had shoved a hand through it. He was talking to one of the younger defensemen, demonstrating something with his stick and skates and broad patient gestures. Every few seconds he would stop, laugh at himself, reset, and try again.
The kid was hanging on every word.
Of course he was.
Shane crouched, drew a route in the ice with the blade of his stick, then looked up and said something that made the rookie grin so hard he nearly forgot to answer. Shane grinned back, bright and easy, then nudged the kid’s shin pad with his stick in mock annoyance.
Idiot, Ilya thought fondly.
He stood by the boards unlacing one glove slower than necessary and watched.
Shane had many talents. Some were measurable and marketable. Vision. Hands. The kind of intelligence that made ugly plays look inevitable by the time he finished them. But there were softer talents too, the ones no stat tracked. He made nervous people calmer. He made tense rooms lighter. He made strangers feel included before they had earned it. He made difficult things look manageable.
He made Ilya, against all common sense, want impossible things.
Shane glanced up mid-sentence, found him instantly across the rink, and smiled without interrupting himself.
That was another problem.
He always found him.
No matter how many bodies moved between them, no matter the noise or distraction, Shane’s eyes landed on him with irritating consistency, as if there were a thread stretched taut between them that only one of them had agreed to acknowledge.
Ilya lifted his chin once in greeting.
Shane’s smile widened, subtle enough no one else would clock it, then he went back to the conversation.
Show-off.
When practice finally broke, players peeled away in noisy clusters toward the tunnel. Shane lingered to collect stray pucks because apparently he had never once learned to leave a task for someone else. He skated one-handed, gathering them lazily with the toe of his stick, then turned with three balanced absurdly against the blade.
He nearly collided with a linesman and laughed, apologising immediately.
Ilya closed his eyes for one brief second.
Hopeless.
By the time Shane reached the tunnel, Ilya was waiting just inside it. “You know there are staff for this,” Ilya said, taking one of the pucks from his stick and dropping it into the bin.
“Yes, but then how would I show off my elite puck-balancing skills?”
“You have none.”
“That hurts.”
“Good.”
Shane bumped their shoulders together as he passed. “You watched me the whole time.”
“I was trapped.”
“Mm.”
The sound was smug. Ilya disliked how much he liked it.
They walked toward the room with the rest of the team filtering around them, conversation echoing off concrete walls, the air smelling of sweat and sharpened steel and melted ice. Shane was still half-smiling to himself. There was a flush in his face from practice, a damp curl at the nape of his neck where his hair escaped, and something open in his expression that made Ilya feel abruptly, stupidly tender.
It was an occupational hazard at this point.
That night’s game started fast.
The building was loud early, crowd already restless from the rivalry and the standings and the fact that both teams disliked each other in that professional, carefully deniable way. Hits came hard in the first ten minutes. Whistles were met with boos. Every scrum took one second too long to separate.
Shane loved games like this.
He became sharper in them, somehow lighter on his edges, eyes brighter with challenge. Midway through the first he slipped through traffic, stole a puck clean, and set up a chance so obvious that only a terrible finish kept it off the board.
When he came by the bench afterwards, breathing hard, he knocked his glove once against Ilya’s shin pad.
“You owe me assist there,” he said.
“I owe you nothing.”
“Selfish player.”
“Bad finisher.”
Shane laughed and leaned over the boards to watch the next shift.
Ilya looked away before he did something embarrassing, like smile.
The hit happened later than it should have.
Second period. Puck chipped deep. Shane chased first, shoulder to shoulder with one defenseman, both men digging hard for the angle while another skater came late through the circle. Standard race. Standard pressure. The kind of play that happened twenty times a night and usually meant nothing.
Shane reached it half a stride ahead.
He turned neatly off the wall, one hand low on his stick, body opening to move the puck up the boards.
That was when the second man arrived.
Late enough to know better. High enough to mean something by it.
He drove through Shane’s numbers with both skates still churning, shoulder rising on contact, one forearm wedged in after as if to make sure the message landed. Shane had no time to brace. His stick flew loose. His body snapped forward and hit the boards shoulder first, then helmet, then the hard ugly fold of a man crumpling faster than he should.
The sound of it cracked across the ice.
Glass shuddered. The crowd inhaled all at once.
Shane dropped to both knees.
For one terrible second he did not move.
Then he put a glove down, tried to push himself upright, and faltered when his left arm gave under him.
Ilya was already over the boards.
He did not remember vaulting them. One moment he was on the bench, the next his skates were carving hard across open ice while whistles shrieked uselessly around him. All he could see was Shane still down by the wall, one hand pressed to the ice, head lowered, the other arm tucked close to his body.
The player who hit him had backed away now, palms half raised, talking to the officials with the smug blankness of a man pretending surprise at his own violence.
Something bright and murderous opened inside Ilya’s chest.
He would remember later that two linesmen reached him first.
Only that.
Because what he felt in that moment was simple and absolute:
You touched him.
Ilya hit the crowd like a man stepping through fire. A striped sleeve caught across his chest. Another arm hooked around his waist. He tore halfway free on instinct alone, skates biting hard enough to spray ice in a white arc. The officials swore at him, dragging him sideways while bodies crowded the wall and sticks clattered underfoot.
“Easy.”
There was no easy. The player who had thrown the hit stood three feet away now, gloves still on, mouth moving in quick defensive bursts toward the referee. Explaining already. Gesturing toward the puck as if everyone in the building had not just watched him choose something uglier.
Ilya lunged again.
This time it took both linesmen fully braced to hold him.
“Back off!”
“Then let me go.”
His voice came out low enough to be worse than shouting.
Across the tangle of legs and officials, Shane finally got one skate under himself. He rose slowly, shoulders hunched against the pain, one hand immediately finding his left arm as if he could hide what hurt by holding it close. His helmet sat crooked. A line of red marked the bridge of his nose where the visor had caught skin on impact.
Their eyes met.
Shane gave the smallest shake of his head.
Not now.
It was barely anything. A fraction of movement. But Ilya knew every language Shane’s body spoke, and this one was clear enough.
Not now. Stay there. Don’t be stupid.
Ilya went still with effort so violent it made his jaw ache.
The referee’s arm shot up toward the penalty box. The crowd roared for blood, for justice, for whatever version of violence they preferred when it wore a home sweater. Shane skated toward the bench under his own power, which should have been reassuring and was not. He kept the left arm tight to his side and did not swing it once.
Ilya watched until he stepped through the bench door. Then he looked back at the man who had hit him.
The player was still talking.
Still shrugging.
Still pretending.
Ilya smiled at him.
It was not a pleasant expression.
Shane stayed on the bench for the rest of the period with a trainer crouched beside him. Ice disappeared under his shoulder pads. Once, when he thought no one was looking, he pressed his eyes shut and leaned forward with his forearms on his knees.
Ilya nearly climbed over the boards again.
Instead he took his next shift and played fifteen seconds that later earned him a warning from the coaching staff. He finished every check. He arrived a heartbeat after whistles. He drove one winger into the glass so hard the bench rattled behind it. He won a puck battle with enough force that both men went down and only one got back quickly.
None of it mattered.
Nothing short of the right target would matter.
When he came back to the bench, breathing hard, Shane was upright again. Pale under the flush of exertion, mouth set, eyes bright with pain and stubbornness.
“You’re done,” Ilya said.
Shane did not look at him. “I’m fine.”
“You are lying in public now.”
“I’m playing.”
“No.”
The coach turned before it could become a scene. “He’s done for the period,” he said to Shane, then to Ilya, sharper, “and so are you if you take another penalty like that.”
Ilya said nothing.
Shane muttered, “Traitor,” to the coach.
The coach ignored him with veteran skill.
They lost in overtime.
Ilya remembered none of it except the final horn and the walk to the room with rage sitting under his skin like fever.
Shane was at his stall with his gear half stripped off, a trainer working carefully at the shoulder. The pads came loose first, then the undershirt peeled away inch by inch. The bruise was already blooming. Dark purple high along the collarbone, spreading downward in ugly shadows. The shoulder itself looked swollen, the muscles around it clenched in reflexive defense.
Ilya had seen bruises before. He had given plenty.
This one made him sick.
“It’s not broken,” the trainer said. No one had asked. “Sprain. We’ll image it tomorrow. Ice tonight, mobility tomorrow morning.”
Shane nodded once.
The trainer left them alone with the kind of speed that came from experience.
Shane sat on the edge of the stall, pads gone, undershirt dragged halfway off and bunched around his ribs. The bruise was spreading fast now, dark under the fluorescent lights, ugly along the collarbone and shoulder. Every few seconds the muscles there jumped on their own.
Ilya could not stop looking at it.
“It’s fine,” Shane said.
“No.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“No.”
Shane sighed. “You always do this.”
“Because you always say stupid things when hurt.”
That got the smallest flicker of a smile. It vanished quickly when Shane tried to roll the shoulder and hissed through his teeth.
Ilya’s jaw tightened.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I’m checking range of motion.”
“You are checking how much pain you can ignore.”
“That too.”
Idiot.
The room around them was loud enough to give privacy. Showers running. Stalls banging shut. Teammates talking over each other three rows away. But here, in this small pocket of space, it felt close and sharp.
Shane looked up at him. “You need to calm down.”
“I am calm.”
“You tried to climb through two linesmen.”
“I was motivated.”
Shane laughed once before wincing again. “Jesus.”
Ilya stepped closer. “Let me see.”
“It’s already visible.”
“Shane.”
Something in his tone must have landed, because Shane went quiet and let him move in.
Ilya touched the uninjured side first, hand at the base of his neck, then the good shoulder, steadying him before his fingers hovered near the bruise. He barely made contact. Shane still flinched.
A clean, bright fury moved through him so hard he had to breathe through it. “Late,” Ilya said.
“Yeah.”
“High.”
“Yeah.”
“Coward hit.”
Shane’s eyes lifted to his face. “Probably.”
Ilya looked at the bruise again. “I should have gotten him then.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’d have gotten tossed.”
“I do not care.”
“I care.”
That stopped him. Shane reached out with his good hand and caught lightly at the front of Ilya’s shirt. Not restraining. Just touching.
“It’s hockey,” Shane said quietly. “Sometimes guys take runs.”
“Not like that.”
“No,” Shane admitted.
For a second neither of them spoke, then Shane’s thumb brushed once over the fabric at Ilya’s chest. “Don’t be insane next game.”
Ilya stared at him. “You know that is impossible request.”
A reluctant smile tugged at Shane’s mouth. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Ilya.”
He bent slightly, lowering his voice. “He put you into boards from behind.” Shane held his gaze. Ilya did not speak loudly. He did not need to. “I remember things like that.”
The smile left Shane’s face. “You’re scary when you go quiet,” he murmured.
“Good.”
Shane exhaled, half tired, half fond despite himself. “You’re going to do something stupid.”
“I am going to do something correct.”
“That’s worse.”
Maybe.
Ilya looked once more at the bruise spreading over Shane’s skin and felt that same cold certainty settle deeper.
Nine days until they played them again.
Enough time for Shane to heal. Enough time for everyone else to forget. Enough time for Ilya to decide exactly how hard a clean hit could hurt.
.
Nine days passed slowly for Ilya and quickly for everyone else.
The league moved on by the next morning. Analysts called it unfortunate, borderline, the kind of thing that happened in hard games between teams that disliked each other. Clips rotated for a day, then disappeared beneath newer noise. Commentators found fresher outrage. Opposing fans defended it. Their fans wanted blood, then forgot they had asked.
That was the useful thing about public anger.
It burned hot and brief.
Private anger lasted.
Shane’s shoulder improved by degrees. The swelling went down first, then some of the colour. Yellow edged the bruise where purple had been. He got range back, though not without stiffness, and pretended not to notice when certain movements still made his mouth tighten.
He noticed the slight pause before Shane reached for things overhead. The careful way he pulled shirts on. The one night he woke when Shane rolled over too fast and sucked in breath against the mattress, trying not to make noise.
That same night, half-awake and angry all over again, Ilya had pushed the fabric from Shane’s shoulder and looked at the bruise in the dark.
Even dimly lit, it was ugly.
He had bent without thinking and pressed his mouth to the centre of it. Not a kiss, exactly. Nothing light enough for that. More the helpless placement of his mouth over something he hated, as if tenderness could undo damage if given enough sincerity. Shane, warm and sleepy beside him, had made a soft sound and slid fingers into Ilya’s hair. “It’s okay,” he murmured.
It was not okay.
Ilya kissed the bruise again anyway. Then lower, where the colour bled into healthier skin. Then once at the edge of Shane’s collarbone, careful there, because that was where the swelling seemed worst.
Shane stirred onto his back with a small wince and blinked down at him through sleep-heavy eyes. “You’re glaring at my shoulder,” he said.
“I am kissing it.”
“Same face for both, apparently.”
Ilya ignored this slander and smoothed his palm over Shane’s ribs, keeping his touch light. The room was mostly dark, only a thin stripe of streetlight cutting across the bed. It caught the fading bruise in pale silver and made it look stranger somehow, less like skin and more like damage done to something delicate.
He hated it with renewed force.
Shane must have felt some of that through touch alone, because his expression softened at once. He lifted a hand and threaded lazy fingers through Ilya’s hair.
“You know it doesn’t actually need revenge kisses.”
“It needs many things.”
“Mm. Such as?”
“A time machine.”
Shane laughed softly, then stopped when it tugged somewhere sore. “Ow. Tragic.”
“A better survival instinct.”
“That one feels personal.”
“It is.”
Shane’s thumb brushed the line of Ilya’s temple. “You’re very sweet when you’re furious.”
“I am never sweet.”
“No?” Shane’s voice had gone warm with sleep again. “What would you call this?”
He gestured vaguely with his free hand: the dark room, the sheets tangled around their legs, Ilya bent over him as if his shoulder were something sacred and wounded. “Practical care,” Ilya said.
“That’s embarrassingly romantic.”
“It is medical.”
“You’re kissing a bruise.”
“I am assessing recovery.”
“With your mouth.”
“Best diagnostic tool.”
Shane smiled so softly it hurt to look at him. Then he tugged once, gently, on Ilya’s hair until he came up far enough to be kissed properly. The kiss was slow, drowsy, all warm breath and familiar softness. Shane always kissed like he had nowhere urgent to be when he was half asleep, as if time itself had loosened around him. When they parted, he rested their foreheads together. “You can let it go,” Shane murmured.
“No.”
“Ilya.”
“He hit you from behind.”
“I know, I was there.”
“I watched you hurt.”
Shane went quiet. There were moments, still, when tenderness worked on him faster than anything else. Teasing rolled off. Logic amused him. But plain feeling, offered without polish, always seemed to still him where he stood. Or where he lay, in this case. His hand moved from Ilya’s hair to the back of his neck, holding there with absent care. “I’m okay,” Shane said more quietly.
“I know.”
“You very clearly do not.”
“I know now,” Ilya corrected. “I did not know then.”
Something in Shane’s face shifted again. He slid his fingers under the collar of Ilya’s shirt and drew him down until their mouths met once more, softer this time, almost grateful in the way it landed. Ilya felt it everywhere.
When the kiss broke, Shane brushed his nose against Ilya’s. “You’re going to murder someone over this.”
“Maybe.”
“That was not reassuring.”
“It was not meant to be.”
Shane sighed, fond and exasperated in equal measure. “Please try to keep it legal.”
“I always keep things legal.”
“That is an outrageous lie.”
“Sleep,” Ilya said.
“Deflection.”
“Sleep.”
Shane smiled and closed his eyes. Within minutes his breathing had gone slow and even again, one hand still tangled loosely in Ilya’s shirt as if he had fallen asleep mid-thought.
Ilya stayed awake longer. He looked once more at the bruise beneath the stripe of streetlight. Then he bent and kissed the fading centre of it one last time.
.
By game day, the mark had yellowed at the edges and almost disappeared.
Ilya remembered it perfectly.
Shane was cleared to play, taped under the pads and under direct instruction to be sensible, which meant nothing. He moved well enough in warmups, though Ilya still saw the fraction of hesitation when he extended too far left. No one else noticed.
No one else was looking properly.
Morrow took his usual laps with the loose swagger of a man who believed time had protected him. He joked with a teammate at centre. Flipped a puck onto his blade. Smiled when the crowd booed during introductions, as if being disliked made him interesting.
Ilya watched him once, briefly, then looked away. He did not need to stare at things he intended to solve.
Shane coasted by during line rushes and tapped sticks with him. “You have that face again.”
“I have many faces.”
“The scary one.”
“This is normal.”
“No, normal one is rude. This one is sly.”
Ilya adjusted his glove. “Focus on game.”
“I am focused on game. I am also focused on the fact you look like you’ve been planning a felony.”
“It would not be felony.”
“That is not comforting.”
The horn sounded to clear the ice. Shane lingered half a second longer, expression softening in that way it sometimes did when no one else was looking. “Don’t do something dumb because of me.”
Ilya rolled his eyes. "The world doesn't revolve around you Hollander."
Shane smirked then pushed backward a few feet, then pointed his stick at him. “Behave.”
Ilya adjusted one glove. “No.”
“Ilya.”
He gave him a flat look.
Shane’s mouth twitched. “At least try?”
“I will consider nothing.”
"Asshole." He turned to skate toward his line, then glanced back once over his shoulder. For just a second the teasing dropped out of his face, leaving something quieter there. Trusting and warm. The sort of look that always hit Ilya harder than it should have. “Be careful,” Shane said.
Then he was gone. Ilya watched him take his place for the opening draw.
The world did not revolve around Shane Hollander.
It was only, occasionally, arranged around him.
The first period proved this almost immediately. Opening draw, puck back clean, two quick touches through the neutral zone, and somehow Shane was already the centre of everything. He curled low to support, took a pass in stride, slipped between two sticks, and chipped the puck deep before absorbing contact that would have flattened less stubborn men.
He popped right back up.
Of course he did.
Ilya changed on schedule and took his first shift with the calm focus of a man who definitely was not watching Shane every time their lines overlapped. The game had bite from the start. Rivalry nights always did. Hits finished hard. Sticks lingered in ribs. Gloves found small handfuls of jersey after whistles. The crowd reacted to every collision like it was personal.
Ilya liked games like this.
There was honesty in them.
No one pretended they were here for elegance.
Midway through his first shift, a winger tried to chip past him along the wall. Ilya stepped into the lane, angled shoulder through chest, and folded him neatly into the boards hard enough to jar the puck loose. Their bench erupted. The crowd answered in kind.
Simple hockey. Good hockey.
When he got back to the bench, Shane leaned down the row to bump his shin pad with a glove. “Cute.”
Ilya did not look at him. “You are next if you annoy me.”
“Promises already.”
Then Shane hopped the boards for his turn. He was impossible to ignore in motion. Some players skated hard. Shane skated like trouble had personally offended him. Every route was sharp. Every cut seemed one stride quicker than it should have been. He hunted pucks with cheerful malice.
A loose rim around the far side became his because he wanted it more. He stole it off a defenseman’s stick, pivoted out of pressure, and sent a blind pass into the slot that nearly became a goal.
The building rose, then groaned when the goalie got enough of it.
Shane circled away laughing to himself.
Show-off.
Idiot.
Mine.
Morrow took regular shifts and did nothing memorable.
Ilya preferred it that way.
He kept track without seeming to. Which side he favoured turning toward under pressure. How quickly he moved pucks when forechecked. Whether he answered contact or avoided it. Cowardly little habits often dress themselves as systems play. If he knew Morrow's weaknesses, it'll be easier to hurt— beat him. In the game. Obviously.
Late in the period, Shane drew a penalty by refusing to lose a puck battle behind the net. Two defenders leaned on him. He came out with possession anyway, got hooked trying to turn to the front, and still nearly shovelled a pass through before the whistle.
As he skated past Ilya, he spread his arms to the crowd like applause had been expected.
Humiliating behaviour. “You’re welcome,” he said.
“For what?”
“Generating offence. Beauty. Hope.”
“You generated one penalty.”
“Exactly. Momentum.”
Ilya shoved lightly at his shoulder pad. “Sit down.” Shane grinned and did not. The power play came and went without a goal, though Shane rang one shot off the outside of the post and looked personally insulted by physics.
When even strength returned, the pace only sharpened. Their defense pair got caught on a long shift. Ilya blocked one shot with the inside of his leg, cleared another rebound, then chased a centre through the neutral zone and lifted his stick just before a breakaway could become dangerous.
He came back to the bench breathing harder than he liked.
Shane handed him a water bottle without being asked. “Heroic,” Shane said.
“Drink your own water.”
“I am sharing resources. Very noble.”
“You are talking too much.”
“You say that every game.”
“Because every game you talk too much.”
Shane smiled, softer now, eyes bright with exertion and amusement. The period wound down scoreless.
Not quiet. Never quiet. Just unresolved.
Final minute, puck chipped high into their zone. Shane tracked back forty feet to lift a stick, take a hit, and still make the clean outlet that started a rush the other way. He reached the bench at the horn flushed, breathing hard, hair damp at the temples.
He looked annoyingly good like that.
“Tell me I was amazing,” he said, dropping beside Ilya.
“You were good.”
“Liar.”
“Vain.”
Shane laughed and nudged their knees together under the bench for half a second before standing again.
The first period ended tied.
The second would not stay civil for long.
The second period began with the kind of pace that made mistakes expensive. Line changes got sharper. Gaps got tighter. Every puck touched in the neutral zone seemed to arrive with a body attached to it half a second later. The game had shed whatever friendliness remained in it during intermission.
Good.
Ilya liked clarity. His first shift of the period started in the defensive zone. Lost draw, scramble low, bodies layered in front of the crease. He tied up one stick, kicked another loose puck to safety, then took two strides and separated a winger from the rebound with enough force to make the glass jump.
Clean.
Necessary.
They went the other way immediately.
Three passes later Shane carried over the blue line with speed, delayed just long enough to freeze both defensemen, then slid a drop pass into space no one else had seen. Their trailing defenseman blasted it wide by inches.
Shane threw his head back in theatrical suffering.
Even from sixty feet away, Ilya wanted to laugh.
He did not.
He changed instead.
The next few minutes turned ugly in smaller ways. Officials warned people sternly and accomplished nothing.
Morrow’s line came out after an icing.
Ilya noticed before he was over the boards.
Shane did too.
Their coach sent Shane’s unit for the offensive-zone draw. Good matchup on paper. Better for other reasons. Shane lined up on the hashmarks, rolling one shoulder once beneath the pads. Tiny movement. Probably pain. Definitely hidden.
Ilya felt something cold and precise settle in his chest.
The puck dropped.
Shane got there first.
Of course he did.
He pinned the puck, worked it free with his skates, spun off one check, then cut up the wall with possession. Morrow came from the middle lane late and hard, tracking the angle badly or pretending to.
Ilya saw it unfold a second before impact.
Shane moved the puck.
Morrow kept coming.
The hit landed numbers-first and ugly.
Not catastrophic. Not high enough for disaster. But square enough between the shoulders and delivered late enough that Shane had no chance to brace. His chest hit the glass first with a violent crack, then his shoulder, then he dropped awkwardly to one knee beneath the boards.
The arena sound changed.
There was always a different noise for dirty hits. Less cheer, more outrage. A rawer thing.
Ilya was already moving. Gloves still on. Stick in one hand. Three strides from the top of the circle before the whistle even came.
Morrow looked once toward the officials instead of the player he’d hit.
Coward. Fucking asshole.
Ilya was going to kill that motherfucker.
Shane stayed down for a second, one hand braced on the ice, the other clutching near the shoulder pad.
That was enough.
Ilya hit Morrow before anyone could arrange themselves into reason.
Not a punch yet.
A full-body crosscheck through the chest that launched him backward into the boards beside the net. Morrow bounced off the glass, stunned, hands flying up too late. Then gloves dropped everywhere. Teammates surged in. Opponents answered. Officials shouted names no one cared about.
Ilya got one fist twisted in Morrow’s jersey and tried to reach him through traffic.
“Stand up.”
Morrow grabbed linesman stripes instead.
Pathetic.
Shane was back on his skates by then, face tight with pain and fury. “Ilya!”
Whether warning or encouragement, impossible to know.
It did not matter.
Two officials wedged themselves between them before anything cleaner could happen. Ilya was dragged backward still trying to get around a shoulder. Morrow pointed from behind the pile, saying something brave from six feet away.
Ilya smiled at him.
Slowly.
Morrow stopped talking.
The penalty box door slammed behind Ilya. Two for roughing. Morrow got two for boarding and two for embellishment attempts in Ilya’s private opinion. Across the ice, Shane rolled the shoulder once on the bench while the trainer spoke in his ear. Then he looked directly at the box.
Ilya lifted a brow.
You alive?
Shane gave a tiny nod.
Then, because he was insane, he mouthed: psycho.
Ilya mouthed back: deserved more.
Shane’s smile appeared despite himself and vanished just as fast.
Good.
The shoulder hurt, then.
Ilya knew it already.
He also knew Morrow would have to touch the puck again eventually.
And when he did, there would be room. There was always room in a hockey game for justice if one was patient enough to make it.
The penalty expired eventually. Ilya stepped out of the box with the same expression he wore for faceoffs, flights, funerals, and most photographs.
Calm enough to be misleading.
The game moved on around him for a few shifts. Special teams ended. Lines reset. Coaches matched what they wanted matched. The officials, having mistaken temporary order for control, relaxed by degrees.
Ilya did not.
He played two clean shifts.
Nothing reckless. Nothing emotional. Nothing anyone could point to later and say there it was. Patience was easier when sharpened by certainty.
Across the ice, Morrow had changed how he moved.
That was interesting.
He looked over both shoulders now on retrievals. Moved pucks a little quicker. Finished routes with more caution than swagger. Men often became smarter immediately after fear introduced itself properly.
Too late for growth bastard.
Midway through the period, their defenseman forced a turnover at centre and sent the puck deep with a hard rim around the glass. It wrapped fast, climbing the dasher before dropping behind the net.
Morrow turned to get it.
Right shoulder check first.
Then left.
Better habits already.
He settled the puck and opened his hips to reverse it up the strong side. That was when he lost sight of the middle lane.
Ilya came through it at full speed. Three long strides from centre ice to the top of the circles, edges biting hard enough to hiss. He lowered his hands on the stick, tucked one shoulder, and drove through the line where chest met sternum. He left the ice only at the last instant.
Just enough.
The hit detonated.
Shoulder through body. Legs lifted clean. Morrow’s skates rose as if yanked by wire and his back crashed high into the glass before he spilled downward in a heap of limbs and equipment. The boards boomed. The crowd erupted half a heartbeat later, delayed only by disbelief.
A Flying Shanahan.
Old-school violence with timing so perfect it looked inevitable. Ilya landed balanced, turned, and saw Morrow trying to push himself up on one elbow.
Still conscious enough to be accountable.
Good.
He dropped his gloves.
Twenty thousand people recognised the gesture at once. The sound inside the building became something animal. Morrow got one glove off before Ilya was on him.
Left hand latched high in the jersey collar. Yanked upright. Right hand free. The first punch split through guard and snapped Morrow’s head sideways. The second buried into cheek. The third was shorter, tighter, all shoulder and torque, landing somewhere unpleasant near the ear.
Morrow swung back wild and late.
Ilya slipped it, dragged him off balance by the jersey, and fed another right over the top.
Detroit style. No wasted motion. No dramatic wind-up. Just ugly efficiency and old-school intent. The bench was pounding sticks against the boards now.
Morrow tried to clinch.
Ilya refused him the comfort.
He shoved him back to arm’s length and landed two more in quick succession—jaw, temple—before Morrow sagged to one knee.
The linesmen moved. Too slow. Ilya hauled him halfway upright again with the fistful of jersey and drove one final right hand straight through the opening that remained. Then he wrestled him down cleanly to the ice as stripes finally crashed in from both sides.
It took two officials and a lot of yelling to separate them.
Ilya stood when told.
Breathing hard. Knuckles split. Helmet crooked.
Morrow stayed down longer than pride would have preferred, then rolled over with blood on his lip and confusion all over his face.
Much better.
The crowd chanted Ilya’s name in thunderous waves.
He ignored them.
As he was escorted toward the box, he looked to the bench.
Shane was standing at the boards.
One glove on the dasher. Mouth slightly open. Eyes bright with equal parts disbelief and something warmer, sharper, far more dangerous.
Their gaze locked.
Shane looked furious. Shane looked impressed. Shane looked, irritatingly, a little turned on.
Ilya lifted one eyebrow.
What?
Shane shook his head once, helpless smile breaking through despite himself.
Idiot.
Then he tapped twice over his own shoulder pad. The same shoulder. Ilya felt the last of his anger settle into something cleaner.
Message received.
Five minutes for fighting. Two for charging. Worthless accounting. Ilya sat in the box while the attendant tried not to grin at him. That asshole got what he deserved anyway, Ilya wasn't feeling guilty at all.
Across the ice, play resumed.
Thirty seconds later Shane scored.