Chapter Text
Shane Hollander looked like he had just heard told that the players union had voted for a lockout. He was pale with red rimmed eyes and rumpled clothes. His posture was stiff, as if he was anticipating a blow.
Ilya wondered if he had driven the 4 and a half hours from Montreal to Boston and that was why he seemed so tense.
He was still achingly beautiful.
Ilya didn’t even want to know what he himself looked like.
They had hopefully cleaned off the vomit at least to spare some of his dignity.
He was already laid up in a hospital bed after trying and failing to kill himself. He didn’t need Hollander seeing him any lower than that.
He opened his mouth to say something.
Maybe “I’m sorry that I bothered you while you were probably planning the perfect way to lock down your movie star girlfriend; let’s just forget it ever happened” or “I didn’t mean to say the L word in front of you” or maybe “someone stole my phone and the text was a total coincidence; isn’t that crazy?”
Instead, what came out was “what are you doing here?”
To his horror, tears started streaming down Hollanders face.
“What am I doing here? God, Ilya. Did you think that I was going to see that message and just go about my day? I drove to your house as soon as I saw it. Your friend Svetlana showed up and told me what happened and where you are.”
Ilya cringed in embarrassment.
So now Sveta knew who Jane was.
Even if Hollander hadn’t mentioned it, she’s not an idiot. He had inadvertently outed himself to a stranger because of Ilyas stupid decisions.
Even when Hollander did his best to avoid Ilya, he still managed to find ways to make his life harder.
“I’m sorry. I should not have sent that to you. There’s no need to worry about me; I am fine.”
“Fine” was a massive overstatement given that he was about to be sent to inpatient treatment, Hollander was already upset enough. There was no reason to give him more to freak out about.
Rather than being reassured, Hollander only looked more distressed. His brows were scrunched together the way they got when he was especially worked up.
“Ilya, she said that you tried to kill yourself!”
Fucking really Sveta? You couldn’t come up with a better story to deflect him?
“Look Hollander,” Ilya started. It looked like he would need to level with him to get him to go.
“I made a dumb decision. It is my problem, not yours. I will be back on the ice and beating you again soon. It was nice of you to come,” no it wasn’t; Ilya would be tormenting himself by examining every second of this interaction for months now “but I meant it when I said it was not your fault. I don’t need anything from you.”
Another lie; I need you like I need air. I feel like I’m drowning without you.
Ilya wasn’t sure what he said wrong, but Shane looked shocked and even a little angry.
“Do you think I’m only here out of guilt?”
Obviously?
Ilya wasn’t even sure how he was supposed to answer that. Hollander may as well be asking if the sky is blue.
Of course the golden boy showed up in his hospital room because he feels bad that his ex fuck buddy caught feelings and decided to swallow a bottle of pills about it.
Hollander was a good person, and Ilya was a truly pathetic sight right now.
He was the captain of a Stanley Cup winning team, but he had become the equivalent of the sad shelter dogs in the fundraising emails the MSPCA sent him.
He had no one to blame for that but himself, but it still stung to know how far he had fallen in the eyes of someone who used to see him as sexy and cool.
He tried a different tack. If Hollander was guilty and worried, he would give him a reason that he didn’t need to be.
“They are going to help me. I have already agreed. You can go home to Rose Landry and tell her you paid me a visit. Maybe she can mention it in an interview so everyone will know what a good person she is, letting her boyfriend spend the day checking on his fuckup rival in the hospital.”
He was more than a little bit embarrassed by the bitterness that his words revealed, especially because he knew that Hollander wasn’t nearly that cynical.
He really needed to get a better grasp on his emotions in front of him going forward if they were going to have to keep seeing each other.
Instead of the huff and eye roll he expected, Hollander was quiet for a long moment.
He took a shuddering breath and simply said “let me start over. I think I’m going about this all wrong.”
“Ilya, I’m not here because I feel sorry for you, or just because I blame myself, though I do no matter what you say, or because Rose is playing some sort of fucked up publicity game. I’m here because when I saw that message, I thought that maybe you were dead, and when I did, I wanted to die too. So I told
Rose the truth, that I couldn’t be with her anymore and never should have tried in the first place, and I got in the car and didn’t stop until I got to your house, because I don’t know how to live in a world where you don’t exist.”
Silence.
Hollander was quietly crying now. Ilya felt like he should offer some sort of reassurance, or at least acknowledge what he said, but he was frozen.
Hollander had dumped the perfect woman who could have made him a star even among people who have never stepped foot in a rink because of him.
Hollander was going to ruin him.
Not on purpose, never that.
Hollander would never knowingly do anything to hurt him.
Ilya was just not the kind of person who was meant to be known and still loved.
He was difficult, and he got mean when he felt backed into a corner, and sometimes he was so lazy that his curls would get greasy and unmanageable because the effort required to wash his hair felt insurmountable.
”I love you Ilyusha, and I always will” said Mama. She had been laying in bed in the dark all day and Ilya was hungry, so he had gone in to try and get her so she would make dinner. “Sometimes, though, you make it so hard to.”
Either he kept a person at arms length so that they don’t realize the truth about him, like Sveta, or they eventually realize that he’s not worth it, like Mama Hollander did before and will again.
It nearly killed him this time. He doesn’t think he can survive it again.
So much for the help Anthony promised him was available.
They can offer it to him, but as long as the loss that brought him to this point is right on the horizon to pull him back down, it will never work.
“Hollander,” he tried to reason. “You are upset. I scared you and it is making you say crazy things. Tell Rose Landry that you were wrong. Of course she will take you back.”
Encouraging Hollander to be with the woman who represented everything Ilya could never be made him feel like he was chewing glass, but it was the best thing he could do for him.
He had been selfish enough by sending that text. He didn’t need to make it worse.
“I don’t want Rose,” Hollander said dumbly.
He seemed confused about where this conversation was going, like he couldn’t understand why Ilya didn’t just gratefully leap into his arms.
He wanted to so badly that it took everything he had to hold himself back, but he couldn’t risk it.
“Don’t let the reporters hear you say that” Ilya retorted before he could stop himself.
He was being petty, but he had almost died. Even if it was his own fault, he still felt like he had earned the right to be.
It was the truth in any case.
Ilya had been cast as the villain in the Shane Hollander Story before he even moved to North America.
By being Russian and just as good as Canadas prodigal son, he had slotted naturally into the role of antagonist. Sure he had deliberately played into it over the years, but he was only giving people what they already expected to see.
“Do you think I care about that?”
Ilya gave him the most withering look he could muster.
He couldn’t handle Shane fucking Hollander of all people acting like it’s outrageous to think that he’s concerned about his press coverage and reputation.
“Ok fine,” Hollander conceded. “I get that, but I’ve been starting to think that maybe I have my priorities wrong.”
“I thought your only priority was hockey,” Ilya replied dryly.
He knew Hollander well enough to know that his “hockey robot” reputation was far from all there was to him, but hockey was the unquestioned love of his life and nothing would ever come close.
That had always been an invisible wall between them.
They could never be anything more than a dirty secret.
Even if Ilya was the kind of man who could earn Hollanders love, the rivalry that had been foisted on them meant that the league could never accept anything warmer than reluctant professional respect between them, and Hollander would always put what would advance his career first.
If it came down to risking hockey or Ilya, he knew that Hollander would cut him off without a second thought.
“I always thought so too,” Hollander finally said, interrupting Ilyas thoughts.
“Hockey has always been the only thing I’m really good at. I know that I’m weird, and intense, and people don’t usually like me, but because I was so good at hockey, I could at least get them to respect me.”
Ilya was baffled at why anyone wouldn’t like Hollander.
He was like the sun, so bright and overwhelming that Ilya could barely look directly at him but was pulled helplessly into his orbit.
“I like how intense you are” he protested against his better judgment. A small smile appeared on Hollanders face but he but kept going.
“It’s been my whole life, and I’ve given up so much for it, but then I saw that text from you and I noticed that you said ‘loved’ instead of ‘love’ and I felt like the world was ending.”
“Hollander…” Ilya murmured. It felt wrong; he should be calling him Shane.
“When I was with you, I was always trying to prevent it from impacting my career. Sneaking you in through the back when you come over, pretending that I agree when the guys talk shit about you in the locker room, leaving that day in Boston because I realized I felt too much for you to pretend that I didn’t and I couldn’t let that happen.”
Ilya closed his eyes at the memory. He had been glued to that spot on his couch, cum drying on his stomach, until well after the sun went down.
“Thats why I dated Rose too. I need you to know that I didn’t love her. She’s great, but I don’t think I even can love a woman in that way.”
While he knew that was probably the case, he was surprised to hear Hollander admit it out loud.
“I just kept hearing about how impressed all the other guys were, and the commentators were going crazy for her, and I was trying so hard to be the kind of guy everyone wants me to be, but I just felt like a fraud. Every time I kissed her, I wished it was you instead.”
He looked almost angry.
“It was stupid of me. It wasn’t fair to you or to her. I should have just told my team to fuck off when they talked shit about you and told Rose that I’m gay from the start. I won them their cups anyway; they owe me. We’ve wasted so much time because I was afraid.”
Ilya felt a complex tangle of emotions at hearing those words.
The part of him who had resented Rose Landry for everything she represented was relieved that wasn’t Hollanders dream girl after all.
A kinder part felt heartbroken for himself, for Hollander, and even the smallest bit for Rose Landry. They had wasted months on a fake relationship because all of the homophobes in the hockey world made Hollander, a better player than every single one of them, feel like he wasn’t enough.
He even allowed himself to be angry at the league. He had given them his whole life; it was unfair how they forced this stupid fucking rivalry gimmick on him on top of that and taken away the chance to be with the man he loves.
“I was afraid too,” he conceded. “I have a green card, so they cannot make me go back to Russia, but if I did anyway, I would be in danger if they knew about me. It isn’t good there for people like us.”
Not that Ilya could see himself going back to Russia at all at this point.
Even if he was still welcome in his fathers house, which he was not sure he would be after he had done the same thing his father cursed his mothers memory for, he was always the worst version of himself in Moscow.
If he was actually going to change, it meant that he had had to leave his old home and all of the bad memories that came with it behind.
He changed the subject. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
He couldn’t imagine what the reaction would be if it was discovered that Shane Hollander was spending his weekend in Ilya Rozanovs hospital room.
A rueful smile tugged at the corner of Hollanders mouth.
“Just Rose. I didn’t even have time to tell anyone else; I just got in my car and drove. I don’t have practice today, but I plan on telling Theriault that I have a family emergency so I can explain why I’m not there tomorrow.”
Ilyas heart clenched.
“Missing practice? I have been a bad influence on you,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.
He didn’t feel capable of responding to any of the other things Hollander had confessed to him. He felt like if he did, he wouldn’t be able to control what he said next, and he risked blowing everything up.
“I think after all these years you’ve started to rub off on me.”
For the first time in months, Ilya grinned, delighted at his boldness and his choice of words.
He knows that he should keep trying to get him to leave. Turn him away more firmly this time. It would be best for everyone.
He just doesn’t have the strength.
“I have missed you,” he confessed quietly. “These past few months have been…very hard.”
If Hollander was going to be so honest with him, he figured that he owed him a truth of his own.
“I don’t blame you, for leaving or for being with her. I am…not an easy choice. She is. And she is good for your career.”
Shane closed his eyes.
“I know. I’ve told myself over and over again that we don’t make sense and being Rose does. I don’t care about what makes sense anymore though. I care about what I want, and I want you.”
Ilya wanted to say yes so badly. To fall into Hollanders arms and let him stroke his hair and tell him everything would be ok.
He was broken though, and Hollander needed to know that.
“It would be hard for you. Your teammates hate me, your parents would not understand, the league would be angry. You would have to hide the knives and pills when I get too sad and wash me in the shower like a baby because I’m too tired to do it myself. I am not worth it.”
Ilya braced himself for the inevitable rejection.
“I know all of that, and I don’t care,” Hollander declared firmly.
Ilya blinked. That had not been the answer that he expected.
“I don’t care. It stopped me for a long time but I’ve lived without you for the past few months and it was shit, and then I thought you were gone forever and I knew that I would give up everything I have to bring you back. I don’t care what it costs me anymore. I earned everything that I have and if the Metros want to cut me for this, I can earn it again for someone else.”
Ilyas eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Hearing Shane Hollander say that he would leave the Metros was like hearing Putin suggest throwing a Pride Parade near the Kremlin
“I just want you. All of you, if you still want me.”
If?
“Hollander, there is no world where I do not want you. It’s just that I can only do this if you’re sure.”
I will die if I think that I have you and then I lose you anyway.
“I know. I’m sorry that I ran last time, but I won’t do it again. I know what I want now. I mean it. I love you.”
He had the look in his eyes that he got during faceoffs.
The one that said he would do whatever it takes to get what he wants.
The last of Ilyas resolve crumbled.
“Shane.”
For the first time in months, he folded into Shane’s arms and everything felt right.
Ilya was horrified to discover that he was crying, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“I love you too. So much it scares me.”
Shane just pulled him closer to his chest.
“It scared me too,” he murmured. “It doesn’t anymore though.”
Ilya breathed in his scent. The sesame body oil that he used (“it has antioxidants Rozanov”) and a hint of ice and something uniquely Shane.
Shanes warmth soaked into him. He could feel it in his bones.
He thought that he would never feel this again. He had been given another chance at life today, and he needed to use it for everything it’s worth.
“I am going to try and do what I need to get better,” Ilya said quietly. “I think that they are right that I need help.”
Shane stroked his hair. “I think so too.”
“My mother swallowed a bottle of pills too, but she didn’t survive. I think maybe I do this for you but also her. No one helped her.”
Shane was quiet for a moment. “She would be proud of you,” he finally murmured.
Ilya hoped so.
He knew that the next few months wouldn’t be easy.
He was probably going to be told that he needs to stay in the hospital for a while, and he will have to talk about his feelings and be honest about things that he would rather not think about at all.
He and Shane also had decisions to make about what to say and to who.
No one else in his current life knew that he was queer except for Sveta, and the same thing was probably true for Shane with Rose Landry. How and when to come out and talk about their relationship would be complicated, and Ilya was nervous about the kind of response they would get.
There was still so much to figure out, but he knew that he could do it.
Yesterday, he thought that he had nothing but his career, that there was no reason left to live.
Today, he was proven wrong.