Chapter Text
The first thing Shane became aware of was the gentle, rhythmic motion of fingers carding through his hair. The second thing was the sound of voices—his mother’s soft murmur and his father’s low, steady tone. And then, a third voice. Raspy, weak, but unmistakably Ilya.
He kept his eyes closed, clinging to the fragile moment, afraid to shatter it. He was still slumped in the awful chair, his neck screaming in protest, but his left arm still spewed across Ilya.
“…six days,” Ilya was saying, his voice a dry scrape. “I only remember the truck. The rolling. Screaming for Shane. Then… nothing.”
“You gave us quite the scare,” Shane’s mother said, and Shane could hear the smile in her voice. “Both of you.”
There was a shuffle, the sound of a chair being pulled closer. His father spoke next. “Shane never left. Well, except for when they forced him to get scans. He’s been right here, even convincing nurses to let him sit in the chair and hold your hand.”
A beat of silence. Then Ilya’s voice, softer. “He is stubborn.”
“He is,” his mother agreed. There was a pause. “He told us, you know. Three days ago. Sat us down right in this room straight out of a coma and said, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m gay.’ As if we hadn’t known for a while, probably years.”
Shane’s breath hitched, but he forced it to stay even. They knew. All this time.
His father chuckled. “He said you figured it out about six months back. That is about the time I saw a change. The media calls you rivals, but we saw him hold back the rivalry. Now we know why that you are his friend in all of this, his straight ally.”
Straight ally. The words hung in the antiseptic air.
Another silence, longer this time. The fingers in his hair stilled. When Ilya spoke again, his voice was so quiet Shane had to strain to hear it, directed not at his parents, but downward, toward him.
“I am not a straight ally.”
Shane’s heart stopped. Or maybe it started beating for the first time.
“I have been with lots of women. That was not … fake. But" Ilya continued, the confession flowing like a secret he could no longer contain. “The heart, it does not care about… categories. I am bisexual. I have only been in love with one person.”
The implication was a physical warmth that flooded Shane’s chest, so intense he was sure it must be visible. Him. It had to be him. The secret texts, the second too long contact after checks, private nights after games.
“He is brave, your son,” Ilya whispered. “Braver than me. I was afraid. Of Russia, the league, the fans, of… ruining this. What we have on the ice. What I hoped we could have off it.”
Shane could not pretend any longer. The truth was too overwhelming to face with closed eyes. He reached up and grabbed Ilya’s hand, intertwining their fingers. He let his eyelids flutter open, meeting Ilya’s gaze immediately. Those eyes, those beautiful eyes, went wide with shock.
“You’re awake,” Ilya breathed.
“So are you,” Shane whispered, his voice rough with disuse and emotion. “I heard you. All of it.”
A smile spread across Ilya’s face. “Even the part at three AM? When you were asleep?”
Shane’s brow furrowed. “What part?”
Ilya’s smile turned tender, knowing. He leaned his head back against the pillow, his eyes never leaving Shane’s. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” he repeated, the Russian words now clear and deliberate in the quiet room.
The memory surfaced—the hazy, dreamlike moment between sleep and waking. He’d thought it was a dream. A beautiful, cruel dream.
“I love you too,” Shane said again, but this time it was a vow, spoken in the full light of day, with his parents as witnesses and their broken bodies in twin hospital beds. The rivalry was a fiction. The crash had made a truth of their lies. And in this shared, painful room, with their hands clasped between them, something new and unbreakable was being built from the wreckage.