Chapter Text
“Is he alright?” Ilya shouts, hands on his shoulder pulling him back as the ref’s fingers press insistently into his chest.
Ilya isn't sure he's breathing. He knows he's upright, somehow still standing. But he can't remember the last time he took a breath. Maybe the gods had tied his breathing to Shane's, maybe that's why he couldn't seem to make his body do anything but look on at the crumpled form of Share Hollander with dumb horror.
Shane still hasn't moved.
“Get back to your bench, Rozanov, I'm not going to tell you again.”
He doesn't go. Of fucking course he doesn't.
Shane is not moving. He's right there and he's not fucking moving and Ilya can do absolutely nothing about it. Everything inside of him is screaming alarm bells, magnets pulling him to Shane's side while absolute fear freezes him in place. It feels like one of those waking nightmares where his body is frozen but his mind is serving up every terrifying thing he's ever thought.
The medics kneel over him and work, there’s a spinal board being brought onto the ice. The bright yellow of it makes Ilya's stomach turn and he has to swallow back the bile on his tongue.
“Come on Rozanov, get back here.” He hears someone order but he refuses, is absolutely incapable of doing anything but hover at the edges of the scene before him.
If it was only his career, his life, on the line, Ilya would have already been on his knees beside Shane, talking to him, touching him, holding him until he woke up again. But it was not just him who would feel the ripple of that decision. If he did something as reckless as go to Shane's side, Shane's career would be ruined, he’d be outed, he could lose everything - Ilya couldn't do that to him.
So he holds himself back. Upright. Locks his knees and keeps the distance even though every molecule that he's composed of is screaming at him to do something.
“Is he okay?” Ilya shouts again, voice more pathetic than he's ever heard it, and he feels someone pulling his jersey, dragging him backwards on his skates and he fights it, digs his edge in to stay planted to the spot.
Shane is strapped to the board. A gurney is wheeled onto the ice and he's lifted onto it.
“Is he alright? Fucking tell me!”
The medics make off quickly for the tunnel and Ilya watches them go, blood roaring in his ears.
He's going to be sick.
He wanted to skate after them, to hold Shane’s hand as he was loaded into the ambulance, driven to the hospital. He wanted to be the one at his side, telling him it would be alright, that he'd take care of him. But he was stuck to the ice, like new velcro, like super glue. His body would not move.
“You okay, son?” One of the coaches asks as he stands at the bench, staring at the tunnel where Shane had been evacuated.
No. He wasn't alright. His heart was in that ambulance.
“Yes,” Ilya lies because it's not just his life on the line and because to say nothing would give him away. He's already half sure everyone in the arena knows - how could they not? How could they not see him dying right in front of them?
The game continues. Ilya's heart isn't in it, it's several kilometers away, in an emergency room, in a bed with a man who didn't move an inch before he was taken away.
He wants to go back in time. He wants it like a junkie wants a fix, in his bones.
His mind flashes with the sight of his Mama’s arm in her bedroom, all those years ago, hanging limply. She hadn't been moving either.
But Shane wasn't dead. He couldn't be.
He could not.
He'd feel it, wouldn't he? Isn't that what love did to people? Tied invisible little strings between souls so you'd know, instantly, when your matching piece left the earth?
The buzzer for the game sounds, the subdued crowd makes one last gasp of noise, and then Ilya is in the locker room and Marleau is apologizing and his teammates are speculating and Ilya cannot be here anymore.
He showers in a daze, packs his things, and then sits on the bench, waiting for the coordinator to round them up to return to the hotel. He says nothing, does nothing. He doesn’t feel like he’s inside his body, but yet the mortal haunting of it is inescapable.
Inside he's dying. Complete organ failure. Inability to breathe, to blink, to do anything but follow direct orders. Get dressed. Put your shit in the bag. Get on the bus.
Outside the arena, someone shoves a microphone in his face and asks him point blank what this hit means for him. He knows the right answer is a difficult recognition of the hard hit, something along the lines of the reality of the game. He knows they're probably expecting him to crack a joke about his only real rival going down and opening the rest of the season up with possibilities. But the answer he wants to give, the one on the tip of his tongue, is that he can barely function because his heart is in the hospital.
He doesn't have to answer because Marleau pushes the microphone and snarls at the holder before urging Ilya forward and into the safety of the bus.
Back at the hotel, he can barely be in the same room with Marleau and his ruminations on the hit. Ilya knows he’s sorry, that it was a clean hit and Shane just wasn’t looking, but it was still too much for him. He felt trapped, itchy all over, like none of his clothes fit. He needed to get out. To go for a walk, take some air and try to figure out what the fuck was wrong with his brain that was causing it to loop the replay of the hit again and again.
So he went out, into the cold, and stood on the sidewalk to try to decide on a direction. What he really wanted to do and what he was having to repeatedly tell himself he wasn’t allowed to do, was go to the hospital, sit by Shane’s bedside and hold his hand.
But he didn’t know Montreal well enough to even know what hospital he was taken to and what excuse did he even have for showing up and pushing his way into Shane’s room? Visiting hours would clearly be over and he wasn’t family - he’d never get past the security. Montrealers notoriously hated his guts - there was no way he was going to sweet talk his way through a night shift nurse in this town.
He was a man of action in every aspect of his life, always pushing forward, always reaching for the next thing, but with this all he could do was wait. It was not something he had any interest in doing and yet he had no choice. The secret of their situation was like a gag in his mouth, choking him, reminding him that he could have nothing tangible in this world before the cruel fates took it from him.
Ilya pulls the collar of his coat up around his neck and turns right onto the street, the brisk cold of the late winter freeze wraps around him like a familiar embrace, matching the way his blood runs cold with the possibility that Shane would not recover.
It had been a nasty hit. The sound of his helmet hitting the ice would be burned into Ilya’s brain until he died, he was fairly sure. The crack and the crowd’s startled gasp, the whole arena going still as his body slid another few inches across the ice. It had been a long time since Ilya saw a hit that bad. The last time, the man had ended up in a wheelchair.
He would still love Shane in a wheelchair.
He would still love him in any way, if it meant he got to keep him.
He's three blocks away when his phone rings in his pocket and he glances down at the screen, Svetlana’s photo flashing brightly.
He should answer it but he knows that if Sveta were to ask him about the hit, Ilya wouldn’t be able to keep himself from falling apart. So instead he ignores the call and continues his walk through the downtown streets.
Ilya isn’t sure how long he wanders through the city, the low hum of late night traffic and distant party-goers keeping him company as his thoughts spin. His muscles ache as he returns to the hotel, sore not from the game but from the tension that keeps every inch of him taut with stress. The walk hadn't helped, but at least it had given him something to do apart from hyperventilate in his bed like a crazy person.
Back in his room, Marleau has already thankfully passed out so Ilya's left to sit on the edge of his bed in the silence, his eyes unfocused on the carpet under his feet. He's not sure how long he sits, coat still on, boots still tied. Only when his phone lights up with a Twitter notification does Ilya come back to himself, fingers tapping open the screen, determined to swipe through the hashtags from the game. With a renewed desperation, he searches for news on Shane’s condition, hating that he has no other way to find out how he’s doing, but coming up empty handed again and again until he’s sick with it.
If only one person from Shane's life knew about Ilya, maybe he wouldn't be so in the dark. Maybe he'd have a text, an update, a number to call that wouldn't hang up on him. He would have something. But it all felt like a fever dream now. If he hadn't felt the impact of Shane's body hitting the ice in his own spine, he would think the whole thing they had was a figment of his overactive imagination.
By three, he’s texting with his team coordinator asking for details about where Shane’s been taken under the guise of a sportsmanlike visit to wish him a speedy recovery. Ilya tries to make it sound casual and not like a desperate plea, but he’s not sure it would pass any scrutiny if anyone thought to consider it.
He doesn’t sleep. He sits. He stares. How could he do anything else when every time he closed his eyes his brain flickered to life with a slow motion reel of Shane’s hit, his unmoving hand, his Mama’s hanging arm. It was haunting him, eating him from the inside out.
How had he let it get to this point?
When did Hollander become Shane?
He no longer even thought about any of it as a mistake but still he knew it needed to end. Not because he didn’t want him - God, he wanted him too much - but because they couldn’t have more. He couldn’t have more. This was the perfect fucking storm of why they couldn't have more. If he'd gone to Shane's side… No one in that arena would have accepted it.
Ilya had never been allowed to have what he wanted and this time he'd known it wouldn’t be different, but still, he’d wanted. Wanted it so badly that now he was in too deep and he was terrified that Shane was dead and that no one would even tell him until the media stuck another microphone in his face in the morning and asked him:
“Rozanov, tell us how you feel about the death of Shane Hollander last night?”
And he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from breaking down and telling the whole world without words that he was in love with him and now he had nothing left.
The very idea that this was a real possibility come dawn made Ilya crawl off of his bed to the toilet to puke up the meager bile from his stomach.
He checks Twitter again for an update, which was ridiculous because nobody was even awake at this hour to do any semblance of reporting, but still he looks. How could he not? How could he not be at the hospital right now?
He needed to end things but he needed to hold his hand. He needed him to wake up. To move. To not be like his mother's corpse, unmoving, soul disappeared into the abyss. He needed Shane to not leave him behind. Shane was already somewhere Ilya couldn't go - he couldn't go any further or Ilya would crumble.
The next few hours are spent concocting the stories he would use to get through the hospital and to Shane’s bedside. The lies he would tell the nurses and the security guards and maybe Shane’s parents. He even knew what he would tell Hayden fucking Pike if he came across him.
By seven, Ilya is dressed and in the lobby, looking like death warmed up as he waits for his team coordinator to come down for breakfast. Cornering him in the business center, Ilya presses for an update and receives nothing of value on Shane’s actual status.
“Montreal isn’t releasing a lot of news, they’re keeping pretty tight lipped on this,” he says, writing down a phone number Ilya can call if he runs into anyone at the hospital who pushes back on his visit. “He’s alive but really that’s all I have right now. But it’s good that you’ll stop in to see him, extend the team’s apologies and all.”
Ilya releases a breath at the confirmation that he was alive and someone from the Voyageurs knew he was coming under the pretense of being a respectful colleague and not someone deeply terrified that the love of his life was alone in the hospital without anyone to hold his hand. He nods his head and takes the phone number.
“Will be good to visit, I think. He will appreciate the effort,” Ilya says with a rough voice, his head ducking to hide his pained expression. His voice sounds frail, even to him. How could nobody know? How could they not see him falling to pieces behind his careful facade?
“Yep, just make sure you’re back for the bus to the airport at eleven.”
“Of course,” Ilya confirms and, without wasting another second, hails a cab and asks to be taken to Montreal General Hospital.
The smell of disinfectant stings his nostrils as he walks through the doors, the bright light hurting his eyes after a night spent awake in the dark. At the desk, he asks for Shane's room number and receives a look of disbelief from the attendant.
“I was told they called ahead, said I had permission to visit,” Ilya says calmly, pulling the paper from his pocket and readying to call the number on it even though his hands are shaking.
“No, of course - you're Ilya Rozanov. You can go up. He's in room 3015, neurology. Up this elevator, down to the left.”
Ilya thanks them, trying his best not to let his voice wobble at the idea that Shane wasn't just in a general ward, but the specialized neuro unit. That couldn't be a good sign. How long had he been unconscious? Would he even recognize him? Would he even be awake?
The thought of Shane not recognizing him is one he refuses to even confront.
If Shane didn’t remember him… He wouldn’t have to end things. He could keep the secret, try to move on. It would cut his legs out from under him but at least he’d know Shane was alive and could have the life he deserved, one filled only with good things and sunlight. He wouldn’t have to hide with Ilya in the dark.
His palms are slick and his skin feels too tight, his foot tapping as he waits for the elevator. He presses the button a third time. Glances around for the stairs. He could take them two at a time, cut off a minute. But then the doors open and he steps in and holds the door close button until the elevator rises and he releases his held breath.
He's dizzy by the time he reaches Shane's floor, his body revolting from the neglect. He hadn't eaten since before the game, hadn't slept. Surely the adrenaline rush would cease and the taste of blood in his mouth would disappear. Surely.
But then he sees it. 3015.
He doesn't stop at the desk, doesn't stop when he's cut off, footsteps determined, body pulled forward like a magnet or gravity or some other cosmic thing. He doesn't even look through the window before he slips through the door and closes it behind him.
“Ilyaaa,” Shane calls, voice light in a way that brings a rush of relief through Ilya that feels like a tsunami. He can hear the painkillers and the concussion, but that's unimportant because Shane is alive, Shane is awake, and Shane knows who he is.
“I, um, I just wanted to…” He pauses, takes a breath that feels full of knives. “Are you okay?”
“Concussion and a fractured collarbone. Out for the playoffs, but - “
“Could have been worse,” Ilya completes the sentence and Shane mimics it. “Marleau feels terrible, he didn’t mean to hurt you.” He doesn’t want to talk about this. He wants to crawl into that bed and hold him until the pressure inside of his chest eased for the first time in ten hours.
“I know. Part of the game. We all get our bell rung eventually, right?” Shane replies practically, eyes flickering open and then closed against the light.
“Right,” Ilya agrees and he exhales the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding at the sight of those eyes, dark and flickering.
“Hey,” Shane calls and Ilya feels the magnet pull, feels the string that ties him to his soul yanking. “Heeeyy.” Ilya goes to him because he doesn’t have a choice.
“Okay - okay, shh,” Ilya coos and reaches for his hand and inside his carefully built facade disintegrates at the touch.
“Yes, bet-ter,” Shane insists and Ilya agrees, it is better. To hold his hand, to touch the bruising on his cheeks from his visor. He feels the fear in his gut begin to ease, his heart rate finally drifting back into a normal range. Shane’s touch shouldn’t do this to him, but it does and Ilya doesn’t know what to do with that.
The rest of the conversation goes off the rails, if Ilya had anything to say about it. There was no way Shane was actually asking him to come visit him this summer, it was insanity. It was the drugs. It was someone with a concussion’s wild idea that the world was different and they weren’t rivals and two men who played professional hockey could definitely find a way forward, together.
He tried not to take it too seriously, tried to shove his hopes back down into a place he wouldn’t revisit because it was impossible.
As he held Shane’s hand and brushed his cheek, Ilya did his best to hold himself together and pretend that not sticking around and seeing him through his recovery wasn’t a mistake. They weren’t more to each other, there was no expectation, and Shane wouldn’t have wanted it anyways. He wasn’t accountable for fixing this and he wasn’t the one Shane wanted the comfort of recovery from, not really.
Except when the nurse came in and he had to pull away, all he could think of was the way Shane looked at him with those usually understanding eyes, the same ones that found him in the dark and cherished him in a way he’d never had before.
As Ilya moved to leave the room, he looked back and tried to hush the man, terrified of what he’d say in his drugged state. Not for Ilya’s sake, but for Shane’s. Ilya didn’t care so much anymore, not about himself, but he would give anything to keep Shane’s secret for as long as he wanted it to remain one.
Leaving the hospital, Ilya finds himself sitting in the back of a taxi with his lungs empty and tears on his cheeks.
He wants to go back. He wants to sit at the edge of that hospital bed and hold Shane’s hand. But instead he goes back to the hotel, takes the bus to the airport, and pretends like he isn’t still leaving his heart in a Montreal neuro unit, drugged up and left to heal all alone.
Ilya can’t be more to Shane but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to be. He just wish he knew what to do with that.