Chapter Text
The lake was too still.
That was the first thing Ilya noticed when he stepped out onto the dock that morning, phone already in his hand, the coffee he had set down beside him cooling in the morning air. The water stretched flat beneath the pale grey light of dawn, smooth as glass, untouched by wind or movement, and something about it immediately made the tightness in his chest worse.
The cottage was never this quiet.
Normally there was always sound here at this hour. The creak of the dock shifting against the water. Wind moving softly through the trees. Anya barking at the wildlife as she chased things around the yard. The distant cry of loons somewhere out across the lake. Shane inside the kitchen, half awake and making coffee too strong on purpose because he thought Ilya’s offended commentary about it was funny.
But this morning the silence felt unnatural. Heavy. Like the entire world had stopped breathing.
Ilya looked down at his phone again.
Still nothing.
No texts. No missed calls. No annoyed message from Shane telling him to relax and stop acting insane because he’d gotten distracted, or fallen asleep on the couch, or forgotten to charge his phone for the hundredth time in his life.
Just silence.
His thumb pressed automatically against Shane’s contact again before he could stop himself. The call rang once before going straight to voicemail, and the knot in his chest pulled tighter.
“Come on,” he muttered quietly, staring out over the lake as the automated message started again. “Enough.”
Shane had gone to Montreal the day before for sponsor obligations and some alumni charity event involving the Metros. He had complained about it for nearly a week beforehand while still agreeing to attend because retirement apparently hadn’t fixed his inability to say yes to every person he liked. He was supposed to drive back to the cottage last night. At first, Ilya had only been irritated when the hours stretched past midnight without an update. Shane was terrible at answering his phone when distracted, even worse when exhausted. There had been an incident during their second year together where he had somehow managed to leave his phone inside the refrigerator for six hours and then acted like that was a perfectly reasonable thing for an adult human being to do.
But sometime around three in the morning, irritation had curdled into something else.
Something colder.
Now, sitting alone on the dock with dawn beginning to bleed slowly across the water, Ilya could feel it moving beneath his skin like a live wire. His pulse wouldn’t settle. His thoughts kept circling the same terrible possibilities no matter how hard he tried to force them elsewhere.
Where are you?
Another text sent. Another unread message.
Ilya leaned forward slowly, elbows braced against his knees, phone clenched tightly enough in his hand to make his knuckles ache. The panic sitting in his chest felt horribly familiar in a way he immediately hated. Not panic exactly. Anticipation. Like his body had already decided something awful had happened and was simply waiting for the rest of him to catch up.
His mother had once described fear like that when he was young. Quiet and patient. Sitting beside you long before disaster arrived.
“You always know,” she had told him once in the dim kitchen of their home in Moscow, speaking so softly he had barely heard her. “Your body knows before your heart does.”
The memory hit hard enough to turn his stomach.
“No,” he said aloud immediately, sharper this time, as though he could cut the thought out of the air before it settled fully into place.
He stood too quickly, the dock shifting beneath him with a low groan as he paced once across the damp boards. His fingers dragged roughly back through his hair before he called Shane again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
By the fifth unanswered call, his heartbeat was hammering hard enough to make his fingertips numb.
He tried Hayden first. No answer. Cliff picked up after the third ring, voice thick with sleep until he heard his.
“Have you talked to Shane?”
The exhaustion disappeared instantly. “No. Why? Wasn’t he doing that thing in Montreal?”
“He is not answering. Hasn’t been in almost 24 hours.”
At first he tried for calm. Shane forgetting his phone wasn’t unusual. Shane getting distracted wasn’t unusual. Shane accidentally passing out somewhere after a long event wasn’t unusual either. But the more Ilya spoke, the quieter Cliff became, and by the time he said, “He was supposed to come home last night,” the concern in his voice matched his own.
“You want me to start calling around?” he asked carefully.
Ilya looked automatically toward the cottage behind him. Toward the upstairs bedroom window standing partially open to the morning air. Their room. Their bed. Less than two nights ago Shane had been there beside him, warm and half asleep, one arm heavy across Ilya’s waist while rain hammered against the roof hard enough to shake the windows.
The image arrived suddenly and viciously beside another one his mind supplied without permission.
Shane alone in Montreal.
Shane not answering.
Shane—
His chest seized so hard it nearly stole his breath.
“I am going to Montreal,” he said.
“Ilya—”
“I am leaving now.”
Cliff exhaled softly, gathering himself before answering. “Okay. Fine. Call me when you get there. And listen to me for a second. If something feels wrong, don’t go inside alone.”
Too late.
Something already felt wrong.
Not imagined. Probably not irrational. Something deep and instinctive and terrible, settling heavier inside him with every passing minute. Ilya ended the call, grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter, and left the untouched coffee cooling beside the lake.
By the time he reached the highway, Shane still had not answered.
The drive to Montreal passed in a blur of grey highway and mounting panic. Later, Ilya would barely remember any of it clearly. Only fragments. The relentless rhythm of tires against wet pavement. The ache in his jaw from clenching his teeth too hard for too long. The way every vibration from his phone sent adrenaline crashing violently through his chest even though none of them were Shane.
Hayden finally called him back less than halfway there, voice rough with confusion and concern.
No, he hadn’t talked to Shane.
No, Shane hadn’t answered him either.
Yes, he’d start calling around.
By the time Cliff looped Zane, Troy and Harris into the situation, Ilya was already approaching the city limits, pulse hammering hard enough to make his vision blur at the edges. Everyone kept offering versions of the same explanation. Shane forgot his phone sometimes. Shane got distracted. Shane fell asleep places he absolutely should not fall asleep.
Probably he was fine.
Ilya stopped believing that before he even crossed into the city.
The Montreal skyline emerged slowly through the dull early morning haze, all steel and glass beneath low clouds, and something inside him twisted harder with every passing block. His hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel. His thoughts had narrowed into something sharp and ugly and repetitive.
Answer the phone.
Please answer the phone.
By the time he parked outside the condo building, his entire body felt wired too tight.
The elevator ride lasted less than a minute. It still felt unbearable. He called Shane again while the numbers climbed overhead.
Straight to voicemail.
The hallway outside the condo sat silent and empty beneath soft recessed lighting. Ilya crossed it quickly, already reaching for his keys, and froze only briefly when he noticed the deadbolt wasn’t engaged from the inside.
His pulse lurched.
The lock scraped loudly as he shoved the key into place.
The condo beyond was dim and quiet. Not dark exactly. Pale afternoon light spilled through the massive windows overlooking the city, washing the open-concept space in cold grey tones, but nothing else moved. No television noise. No exercise equipment noise from somewhere deeper inside the apartment. No sarcastic voice immediately calling out a greeting because Shane had heard him come in.
Just silence.
“Shane?”
Nothing.
The door shut hard behind him.
And then he saw the phone. It sat abandoned on the kitchen counter beside Shane’s wallet and keys like they had simply been dropped there carelessly after coming home.
Ilya stopped breathing.
For one terrible second, the entire world seemed to tilt sideways beneath him.
No.
No, no—
“Shane!”
The shout ripped out of him sharp and loud, echoing violently through the condo as he crossed the room in seconds. His fingers closed around the phone. It was dead, of course.
His chest tightened so hard it hurt.
“Shane!”
Still nothing.
The panic became absolute then. Not the slow, creeping dread from the cottage anymore. This hit all at once, full force, every instinct in his body screaming that something was horribly, catastrophically wrong.
He was already moving before the thought finished forming, rounding the hallway corner so fast he nearly slammed into the wall.
The bedroom door stood half open. Ilya hit it hard enough for it to swing wide and slam into the wall behind it. The room was dim because the curtains were closed. Shane slept better when they softened the city sounds outside the building.
His hand was shaking as he reached for the switch on the wall.
At first, his eyes struggled to adjust to the light in the room. Then his mind refused to understand what he was seeing.
Shane was in the bed.
That was all his brain supplied initially, desperately trying to force the image into something normal. Shane in bed. Shane asleep. Shane home.
But the room felt wrong immediately. Everything was too still. The blankets lay smooth, barely disturbed except where they draped loosely across Shane’s waist. One arm rested over his stomach. His head was turned slightly toward the window, his black hair falling across his forehead the way it always did.
Too still.
Shane always moved in his sleep. Little things. Small unconscious shifts. Breathing. Fingers twitching. Something.
There was nothing. None of his soft little sounds he swore were not snores. His chest wasn’t moving.
“Shane.”
The word came out smaller now. Softer. Broken and almost unrecognizable.
Ilya crossed the room so fast he stumbled against the edge of the bed, knees slamming painfully into the mattress as his hands grabbed Shane’s shoulders hard enough to jolt his body sideways.
Nothing.
“Shane.”
His skin was cold to the touch in that way Ilya vividly remembered from his mother’s final nap. A deep, unnatural cold that shot straight through Ilya’s hands and lodged violently in the center of his chest.
“No.”
The word broke apart coming out of him. His hands shook violently as he grabbed at Shane’s face, his throat, searching frantically for warmth, for breath, for anything at all.
But there was nothing. No pulse beneath his fingers, no rise to his chest. Just the silence, the emptiness where his Shane was supposed to be.
There were no signs of a struggle. No violence. Nothing overturned or broken. No signs of any medications or drugs. The room looked painfully ordinary around them, soft daylight spilling quietly across the bed while Shane lay there impossibly still beneath his hands.
“No. No baby. Shane. Любимый. Please. Don’t leave me. Please sweetheart. Open your eyes.”
Of course, Shane’s eyes didn’t open. He looked peaceful, almost like he might wake up any second if Ilya just held onto him tightly enough. But nothing Ilya could do would wake him up.
Somewhere deep inside him, something finally shattered beyond repair.
And the sound that tore out of Ilya afterward barely sounded human.