Chapter Text
Jane: 1919. Code for the front door.
Ilya doesn’t mean to stand at the corner around Shane’s house for a full ten minutes after his Uber driver pulls away. He tells himself he’s just letting the bite of the cold air knock some sense into his head. As he stands frozen in place, the wind cuts through his jacket, ruffles his hair, and carries the light touch of early April in Montreal, the city still making the slow transition to spring.
The neighborhood is quiet. Nice and normal. Familiar to him now, Ilya's been here so many countless times over the years.
Ilya feels like an intruder.
He hasn’t seen Shane in a month. Not since the game they played the night his father died, when everything in his life seemed to break apart all at once. The before and after of it feels sharp and unfinished, like a sentence cut off mid-thought, leaving him gaping open, empty and lost.
But they’ve talked. God, they’ve talked. And more.
The calls blurred together—late nights, early mornings, time zones collapsing in on themselves. Voices low and intimate, Skype showing faces and bodies warm and glowing in the dark. Hands moving out of frame, breath hitching, faces familiar and devastating as they pretend distance is just another inconvenience that they can work around.
Just another in a long list of reasons why they can’t be together. Not really.
It was after his father died that it really hit him. After the phone call, when Ilya confessed his heart and soul. He laid it all bare for Shane to hear, but not understand. But really, it was Ilya who needed that release.
In the house in Russia that’s too big and too quiet, with his brother who hates his guts, and the weight of everything he’s lost and spent settling into his bones. Through it all, the loneliness and emptiness, the one person he wanted—needed—when he was at his lowest, is Shane.
The realization terrifies him.
Because he loves this man in an all-consuming way. In a way that asks for things he cannot have. They cannot be together. Not openly, not honestly. Not without detonating every aspect of their lives. Everything they’ve built, their careers, their reputations, and Ilya’s fragile claim to calling Russia home.
They can never be something.
So what the fuck are they doing?
What have they been doing for the last seven years? Orbiting each other. Falling deeper, more irrevocably, into a trap. Is Ilya supposed to keep letting this happen—to keep feeding this thing between them—until it finally kills them both? Because the longer it goes on, the more it will hurt when it ends. And it will end. He knows that. He’s always known that, since the very first time he laid hands on Shane Hollander.
And yet.
Here he is again.
Standing on Shane’s street, his heart in his throat, already halfway undone and he hasn’t even seen him yet. Because they couldn’t wait until after the game. Because he can’t stay away, even when he knows better. He can’t help the way he’s pulled back in, over and over, like a gravity that doesn’t care how badly he wants to escape.
You can still leave, he thinks. It's not too late to turn around and leave.
The idea flashes bright and tempting—and then sputters out just as fast. Because leaving Shane has never been something Ilya is good at.
He forces his feet to move. He walks up the path and punches in the code. The door unlocks with a soft click, and Ilya lets himself in.
“Hey.” Shane greets him from the kitchen, nursing a can of ginger ale. He smiles, easy and open, with an edge of sadness for Ilya’s loss. “You look good.”
Ilya nods. If he opens his mouth, he’s not sure what might come out.
The truth settles heavy and unwelcome in his chest—he’s not sure whether he’s here to fuck Shane or end things with him. Or maybe those two impulses have finally become so tangled in his grief-ridden brain that he can’t even tell them apart anymore.
In the cold clarity of hindsight, he would have realized that while raw with grief, he shouldn’t have been there at all.
Shane steps closer, slow and hesitant, like he’s unsure. His arms come up around him, a warm and steady presence that grounds him. It's a stark contrast to the cold air he’d come in from, and Ilya doesn’t resist. He sinks into it, bones going slack, forehead pressing into Shane’s neck and shoulder, as if he’d been holding himself up by sheer will alone.
“I’m so sorry about your dad,” Shane murmurs.
“Thank you,” Ilya replies. But the words feel inadequate, hollow in his mouth.
They kiss.
It’s soft at first, tentative, lacking the rough hurriedness of their usual meet-ups. It’s like Shane is checking in on him even now. And Ilya melts into it anyway, lets himself be pulled under. He lets the world fall away and narrow to the familiar press of Shane’s mouth, the heat of him, the way Shane fits against him like they were always meant to fit together.
They stumble to the couch, hands everywhere, clinging, remembering. The kiss deepens and turns desperate without either of them really meaning it to. When they part for air, Ilya opens his eyes.
Shane is looking at him like he’s something precious. Something worth loving. He’s looking at him like he’s been waiting for this moment. Like Ilya is finally home.
And that’s what breaks him.
Fuck.
Because Shane is good. Shane is always so good. And Ilya has come back hollowed out by grief, carrying something feral, untamed, something with teeth inside his chest. And all it wants—all it has ever wanted—is Shane.
That’s the worst fucking part.
I’m so in love with you, and I don’t know what to do about it.
Shane’s hands frame his face. His thumbs brush gently beneath his eyes, where nights of too little sleep and too much vodka have left their mark.
“I wish I could’ve been there for you,” Shane says quietly.
“You were,” Ilya says automatically. Because Shane called. Because he texted. Because Shane never stopped being there, his presence was constant and devastating, even an ocean away.
Shane smiles at him like that means something. Like it changes anything about their circumstance. It’s a beautiful smile. His eyes crinkle. His freckles stand out in the light. It’s a beautiful, damning smile.
That’s when Ilya knows he can’t keep doing this.
He pulls his head back abruptly, breaking the contact.
Shane's hands linger in the air for a second before dropping. “What’s wrong?”
Ilya stares past him, at the wall, at the window—anywhere but Shane’s face. His heart is slamming so hard he feels suddenly lightheaded, the beat of it cracking against his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya finally says. “I can’t do this.”
Shane’s brow furrows. “Can’t… do what?”
“I can’t do this anymore.” The words come out too clean, practiced. Detached. Like he’s reciting something memorized. “I can’t do us anymore.”
The silence that follows is instant, absolute, and horrifying.
“What?” Shane says. He’s not angry yet, though Ilya knows he’ll get there. He’s just stunned. “Ilya, you just got back. I know you’re still processing your loss. We don’t—we don’t have to talk about anything right now. We don’t have to do anything at all. We can just… take a breath.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Ilya snaps, the words tumbling out of his mouth wrong. The grief flares sharp and ugly in his chest. He pushes Shane off his lap, harder than he needs to, and he forces himself to meet his eyes.
Shane’s eyes are already glassy. The hurt in them shines bright and unguarded, like so much of him.
God, it nearly undoes him.
“This has gone on long enough. This—” Ilya gestures uselessly between them. “We knew it would end eventually.”
Shane’s voice comes slow and with a tremble, like he’s forcing the words through clenched teeth and a jaw that won't move. “No. No, there is something real here, and you know it. I know you feel it too.”
Ilya shakes his head. “No, Hollander. There cannot be.” His own voice sounds distant to his own ears, like he’s underwater. “We both know that.”
Shane’s jaw clenches tight, the hurt shining in his eyes. “You don’t think what we have is worth fighting for?”
Ilya opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. The truth is too big, too tangled—love and fear knotted together so tightly they couldn’t be separated. And all he can do is shake his head again. A silent, cowardly answer.
Shane stares at him like he’s just grown another head. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
The hurt in his eyes goes cold, hardening into something sharper—fierce and furious, and unmistakably Shane Hollander.
And Ilya knows he’s lost him.
“You asshole. You come to my house,” Shane says, voice rising, “today—hours before the game—and this is when you decide to do this?”
Ilya flinches. He hadn’t meant for it to happen now. Or maybe he had, because if he waited any longer—another minute, another kiss—it’s possible he never would have done it at all.
“I’m sorry,” he says. The words feel thin. Useless. Insulting.
Shane laughs once, sharp and humorless. He stands abruptly, needing to put space between them as fast as possible. “You’re sorry,” he repeats, incredulous. “Fucking unbelievable.”
“I didn’t plan this,” Ilya says, defensive and scrambling now. But it’s too late. “I just—I came here, and you were so… so kind, and I realized I can’t keep letting you—”
“Love you?” Shane cuts in, his voice cracking despite himself. “Is that the problem? That I love you?”
Ilya’s chest tightens until it hurts to breathe.
Yes, he thinks. And that I love you more than anything I’ve ever survived.
But he doesn’t say that.
Shane drags a hand through his hair, the anger rolling off of him in waves. “So that’s it?” He asks, fury simmering under every word. “You show up, you end things with me, and then we’re just supposed to go play a game like nothing happened?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Ilya says, standing unsteadily.
“You did,” Shane says flatly.
They stare at each other, seven years of almosts and never-quites stretched tight and ready to snap. In mere hours, there will be a puck drop, a crowd, a game that will demand violence and control and focus that neither of them will have to give at the moment.
Shane’s voice is sharp and wounded and furious. “Get out.”
Ilya does. He turns for the door before he can lose what little resolve he has left. Before he gives in, drops to his knees, and begs the man he loves for forgiveness.
So instead, he walks away.
All the way to the rink, through warmups and speeches and the roar of the crowd, a singular truth beats against Ilya’s skull: All I want is Shane. It’s always Shane. Shane, Shane, Shane.
The arena is too bright.
Ilya feels off the second he steps onto the ice—the lights glaring down, the roar of the crowd pressing in. The familiar ritual doesn’t steady him the way it’s supposed to. Tape, skates, muscle memory. His stick feels wrong in his hands. His legs feel like lead. Everything is a half-step off, like his body showed up but left the rest of him behind in Shane’s house.
He tells himself to focus. To keep his mind on the game instead of on Shane. On them.
It doesn’t work.
Montreal scores early. Then again. And again. The goals stack up so fast the scoreboard starts to feel like it’s mocking him: 6–0.
Ilya is a mess of sloppy passes and near-misses. He hesitates where instinct should take over. He overthinks every play. Pulls back when he should drive forward. The coaches shout his name, over and over, irritation and anger setting in. His teammates shoot him confused glances when the puck sails wide, missing the goal again and again.
He just can't fucking focus on the game.
On the ice, Shane is a force of nature.
Ilya’s never seen him play like this.
Every move is perfection without restraint. Shane hits hard and keeps going. He skates like he’s chasing more than a win tonight. Every time he touches the puck, the crowd surges, the sound swelling into something wild and electric.
Montreal is winning.
Shane doesn’t even look like he cares.
He looks furious.
Ilya knows that fury. He’s seen it in private, tightly controlled. Tonight, it’s sharpened into something else. Shane takes hits he normally avoids, refusing to give an inch.
I did this, Ilya thinks, sick to his core with guilt.
He already misses him, and that realization lands with brutal clarity. He thinks of Shane’s touch. His couch, his bed, the shower where they’d be pressed together, wet bodies desperate for more, never able to get enough.
I shouldn’t have ended it. I fucked up. I shouldn’t have—
Shane gets the puck near center ice.
Ilya reacts on instinct, angling toward him, legs burning as he closes the distance. It feels inevitable, like gravity pulling them in. The crowd senses it, noise rising, anticipation crackling through the arena.
Shane glances back.
What the fuck is he doing?—
Every hockey player knows that glancing back with the puck in the neutral zone is a death wish. And it's not a mistake Shane Hollander would ever make.
For one terrible suspended moment, their eyes lock.
There’s nothing soft there. Just hardened fury, cold and absolute, like something inside Shane has finally snapped clean in two.
Ilya freezes, and his momentum slows.
It’s only a heartbeat. But it’s enough.
Because in that frozen sliver of time, he sees Marleau coming in fast from Shane’s blind side. Too fast. Shane doesn’t see him—he can’t, his focus still locked on Ilya. That look still burning in his eyes.
The hit lands with a sound that seems to crack the air open. The impact echoes through the arena. Shane is launched backwards, his body folding wrong as he slams into the ice, and lands like a dropped weight.
He doesn’t move.
The world in Ilya’s head goes silent.
Ilya can’t breathe. He can’t move. He stares at Shane’s body, sprawled and still and wrong, and his mind refuses to accept what his eyes are seeing.
Move, he begs desperately. Please move. Just—move, Shane.
Nothing.
Terror detonates inside him, flooding every vein. Somewhere to his right, Hayden Pike is screaming, “Marleau, you motherfucker!”
Bodies crash together, gloves drop and fists slam. The crowd erupts and the announcer’s voice cracks over the speakers, but it all dissolves into meaningless noise. Ilya doesn’t see the fight. He doesn’t hear the whistles or the announcer.
All he can see is Shane, lying still on the ice.
He skates toward him, but hovers, his knees weak. His heart slams so hard it feels like it’s pounding against his ribs.
“Hollander?” His voice cracks. “Shane—hey.”
No response.
The ref is there, holding him back. The medics are already kneeling beside Shane, careful and efficient in their work. One of them removes his helmet.
Ilya hovers uselessly, unable to tear himself away, his chest tight with a fear so sharp it borders on pain. “Is he—” he starts.
The ref forces him back. “Step back, Rozanov.”
“Is he okay?” Ilya snaps. “Fucking tell me!”
“Get to your bench, Rozanov. I’m not gonna tell you again!”
Ilya doesn’t remember skating away. He doesn’t remember sitting down. He watches, numb and shaking, as Shane is lifted onto the stretcher, his face pale and slack, bruises already blossoming beneath the harsh arena lights.
The crowd falls into a hushed silence as he’s wheeled off the ice.
Ilya stares after him until he’s gone.
The rest of the game fades away in a blur. The final horn blows. The handshakes. The loss.
Ilya remembers none of it.
All he can think—over and over, mercilessly—is that he ended things that afternoon.
And now he doesn’t even know if he has a right to be afraid for the man he might have broken.
*
This shouldn’t have happened. This shouldn’t have happened to Shane. He shouldn’t be at the hospital right now. He shouldn’t be hurt. He shouldn’t be—oh god, how badly hurt is he?
He should be with me. We should be in his bed, or in his shower, fucking or getting ready to fuck again, we should be—
I shouldn’t have ended it. Fuck fuck fuck, I shouldn’t have ended it.
What if he never speaks to me again? What if he never looks at me again? You selfish bastard, Rozanov, what if he's—
*
Morning comes gray and sleepless.
Ilya hasn’t really lived through the night so much as he was dragged across it—pacing the hotel carpet, checking his phone for news updates until the screen blurs, replaying the moment Shane hit the ice over and over until it feels carved into the inside of his skull. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees him unmoving. Every time he opens them, the fear is there, waiting.
By the time he reaches the hospital, it’s coiled tight in his chest, something sharp and live.
The nurse eyes him for a moment before waving him through. “He’s… talkative,” she says, like a warning.
Ilya nods, but her words barely register. His fingers feel numb as he pushes the door open.
“Ilya!”
The sound of his name—bright, unguarded, and happy—hits harder than any check on the ice.
Shane is propped up against too many pillows, the color back on his face. Ilya takes him in, cataloging the bruises, the sling—the lazy, unfocused smile on his lips that Ilya has never seen.
It’s disorienting.
Ilya forces himself forward, his heart slamming in his chest. He schools his expression into something neutral as he quietly shushes with his lips, closing the door behind him to give them some modicum of privacy.
“I um,” Ilya breaks off, because the words just won’t line up the way they should. “I just wanted to… Are you okay?” He finally manages.
“Concussion and a fractured collarbone. Out for the playoffs. But…” Shane pauses, his grin crooked and loose.
“Could have been worse,” Ilya supplies softly.
“Could have been worse,” Shane echoes, pleased, like they’ve completed something together. His head falls back against the pillows. He winces at the movement, but the grin remains, loose and sloppy on his face.
Ilya swallows. Relief upon seeing him loosens something in his chest—but not enough. Not nearly enough. He doesn’t know where they stand. He doesn’t know if they even exist at all.
“Marleau feels terrible,” he says, reaching for anything that isn’t the topic that pains him most. “He did not mean to hurt you.”
“I know,” Shane replies easily. “Part of the game. We all get our bell rung eventually, right?”
“Right,” Ilya says.
He must look as wrecked as he feels, because Shane’s smile falters. His good hand lifts, wavering in the air. “Hey. Hey!” He says louder, insistent in a way that is so not like him.
Ilya’s feet move before his mind can catch up. “Okay. Okay,” he mutters, closing the distance quickly. He takes Shane’s hand before his voice can rise loud enough to draw attention. “Shhh. Shhh.”
“Yes,” Shane says, instantly calmer. His fingers curl around Ilya’s like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like it’s something still allowed. “Better.”
The contact sends a sharp ache straight through Ilya’s chest.
“You scared me,” he admits quietly. The words carry more weight than he intends—fear stacked on guilt stacked on love until he feels crushed beneath it all. If he hadn’t ended things. If he hadn’t chosen that moment. If Shane hadn’t been so angry on the ice, playing with his life instead of just his heart—
“I’m sorry about that,” Shane says. “I was looking forward to last night, after the game.”
Ilya blinks slowly. “Last night?” he repeats carefully.
“I’m mostly mad at Marleau for fucking that up.”
“He feels really bad,” Ilya says automatically, the farce of normal conversation pressing down on him. He swallows the lump in his throat and presses ahead, “What… what did you mean you were looking forward to last night?”
Shane squints at him, bothered by the light. “I figured you would’ve come over to my place. We’d have our little usual post-game celebration,” he says with a wink.
The room tilts.
“Do you—” Ilya stops. Swallows. Then tries again. “Do you remember yesterday?”
“No. I don’t remember the game at all. The doctor said it’s expected after a hit like that.” Shane pauses and then grins wildly with a dopey expression on his face. “Hayden said we won though. He said I kicked your ass.”
Ilya’s stomach drops. “Do you remember anything from before the game?”
“Nope,” Shane says brightly, drawing the word out so there’s a little pop at the end.
Something in Ilya fractures.
“I do remember… that I had a whole plan to ask you something.” Shane’s words slur a little around the edges.
Ilya’s pulse roars in his ears. He tightens his grip on Shane’s hand, grounding himself as much as he can. “Maybe it’s better if you just rest now.”
“I was going to ask you—”
“Hollander,” Ilya cuts in, sharper than he means to.
Shane beams. “Will you come to my cottage this summer?” he asks, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Don’t go to Russia. Come to my house. We’ll have so much fun. It’s so private. No one will know.”
Ilya can’t breathe. “Hollander, you know I can’t do that.”
“We could have a week,” Shane insists, his voice warm and coaxing. “Or even two. We’d be completely alone. Together.”
Ilya stares at him, at the open affection, the absence of walls, the way none of Shane’s usual carefulness is there to soften the blow. The way Shane isn’t bracing for rejection because he doesn’t remember there was one.
Shane doesn’t remember the game.
He doesn’t remember their fight.
He doesn’t remember the look in his eyes when Ilya ended it.
He’s forgotten the worst thing Ilya ever did to him.
“Maybe,” Ilya whispers. “Maybe.”
The lie tastes like ash in his mouth.
He knows he could never do it. He knows this promise is as fake as all the ones he’s already made. But Shane relaxes, satisfied, his thumb brushing over Ilya’s knuckles like a vow.
And Ilya stands there, holding the hand of the man he loves, guilt pooling heavy in his chest—not just for what he did yesterday, but for what he’s doing now. For letting Shane believe they’re still standing on solid ground.
He’s torn by the choices in front of him, between honesty that will break Shane all over again, and the unbearable temptation of this fragile, unearned second chance. Between accepting the invitation and condemning himself to another long summer without Shane. Unfortunately, he already knows which choice he’ll make.
And it kills him.
The door swings open.
“Oh no,” Shane mutters as Ilya turns and their hands separate.
Ilya thinks, distantly, that this is how it always ends—someone walking in, and him letting go.
They text. They banter. They slip back into a rhythm that feels dangerously familiar, easy in a way that makes Ilya wary.
The fear doesn't leave as much as it quiets—coiling tight in Ilya’s chest as days pass, then weeks, without Shane's memory breaking the surface. In the absence of disaster, something heavier settles in its place.
Guilt takes root, heavier and harder to outrun. It grows.
“I’m coming to the cottage,” Ilya says.
If memory returns, he's terrified of what it will take with it—and what it will leave behind.