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Ilya worries at his lower lip and frowns as he watches Shane on the ice.
He isn't moving fast enough, and he's missing what should be easy openings.
"Something is wrong with Shane," Ilya says to the Hollanders who are sitting on the opposite side of his enormous couch.
Yuna nods like she'd been noticing the same thing. David, however, just looks perplexed. "He's probably just having an off day."
"Maybe," Yuna says, sounding unconvinced, her eyes still fixed on the screen.
"It is usually me that makes him this bad at hockey, and I am not there," Ilya says.
Yuna opens her mouth to say something, probably about Shane winning against Ilya multiple times, but Shane sliding into the boards, falling on his ass, and not getting up stops her in her tracks.
They all hold their breath as the medical team rushes out to him.
Ilya can't comprehend what happened. There had been no one there. It was almost like Shane had just fainted on the ice.
Perhaps he had.
The idea makes Ilya nauseous.
He twists his hands into his shirt and watches as they pull Shane shakily to his feet and hold on to him as he comes off the ice.
The screen cuts to a commercial and he, Yuna, and David stare at one another, unsure what they should do.
They truly have no idea what happened.
They don't have enough information to go on.
Ilya and Yuna both try to call Shane, but it goes straight to voicemail for both of them.
It's another agonizing five minutes before Yuna gets a phone call from the Metros.
And Ilya winces internally. Of course Shane's mother would be his emergency contact. There's no reason she wouldn't be.
At least, not that anyone knows.
She grips David's shoulder as she answers and provides terse one word responses.
Finally she hits "end call" and says, closing her eyes,"he has the flu. He was playing with the goddamn flu."
Ilya sighs. His beautiful boyfriend apparently cares too much about hockey to even mention in passing that he felt off. "He did not say."
"Of course, he didn't," Yuna says, looking at the ceiling like it might grant her the patience to deal with this.
"Come on, let's go get our boy," David says.
XXX
They drive to Toronto and pick Shane up from his hotel.
Ilya drapes Shane over him in the backseat, brushing his bangs from his sweaty forehead as David throws his duffel into the trunk.
"You are not smarter than this?" Ilya asks.
Shane sniffles and turns his bright red face towards Ilya. "Apparently not. I didn't feel that bad before I was on the ice, though, honestly. I thought I'd be fine."
"You scared me. You scared your parents," Ilya says. "You were not fine."
"I'm really sorry," Shane says, and Ilya believes him.
Ilya takes Shane's hand and kisses his knuckles. "Is okay. But you will not do this again."
"No, he definitely will not," Yuna says. "The med team is taking his temperature before he gets on the ice from now on."
"Mom," Shane whines, "you can't make them do that."
"They should do it anyway," Yuna says. "No one should play sick. It's bad for everyone."
"She's right," David says. "My whole team at McGill came down with the flu one year. We forfeited two games because we didn't have enough players."
Shane doesn't comment, apparently because he's fallen asleep in Ilya's lap.
XXX
When they're home, hours later, Ilya sets out medicine, tissues, cough drops, and Gatorade on their coffee table before draping a blanket over Shane.
He turns on the TV and acts like he's watching, but he really isn't.
He's watching the labored rise and fall of Shane's chest, waiting to come up with the right way to ask, the right way to explain this to Shane.
That he wants to be the first to know everything about Shane.
That Shane should be the first to know everything about him.
He thinks about the day he bruised his ribs and how Shane probably found out from the news.
It shouldn't be like this, and he hates that it is.
"Shane," Ilya says, "I want us to come out, not to everyone, but to our teams."
"What? Why?" Shane asks.
"Twice now I haven't been the person that people called, that people told you were okay. I want to be that person, Shane," Ilya says as he cups Shane's chin.
Shane takes his hand and says, "I want that too. It scares me so much, but if you went down on the ice and no one told me you were okay? I'd be beside myself. When I'm feeling better, we'll do it."