Work Text:
Hi. This is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail.
Shane had first heard that message when Ilya disappeared from Boston’s lineup in Nashville. No explanation, just “undisclosed reasons” and a media blackout that meant someone was injured or got arrested. Shane had called from a hallway outside the dressing room, heart hammering, and gotten the voicemail. That flat recorded statement: I will never listen.
Shane had left a message anyway. “Hey, just—saw you didn’t travel with the team. Are you okay? Call me back.”
And… Ilya… had called back, eventually, saying he’d seen Shane call. His father was dead. He was in Moscow. No, he hadn’t listened to whatever boring message he’d left. The greeting wasn’t a joke or an exaggeration—it was the truth. Ilya saw missed calls and responded to those. The actual messages disappeared unheard into the ether.
But when Shane said I’m so sorry, Ilya had made a tight, throaty sound that Shane felt in his own chest.
Before hanging up, Shane had told him: Call me if you need to talk. I’ll listen.
And sometimes they did call, and picked up the phone. And sometimes they didn’t. Ilya never left voicemails. Shane knew Ilya would never listen to any voicemails left for him, but… Shane… kept leaving them anyway. Voicemail-Ilya, with his lush accent around boxy English words, didn’t shut him down.
At first, he left nothing. The missed call notification was enough; a small proof that he’d tried, that he’d thought of Ilya in whatever spare moment he could find between practice and film review and the endless grind of the season. But then one night, alone in his Montreal penthouse with the rain hammering against the window, Shane had called knowing Ilya would be out with his team after their win on the ice, and knowing he wouldn’t answer.
The beep had sounded, and Shane had opened his mouth to hang up, to let the silence speak for itself. Instead, he’d said, “Hey. Just me. I’ll try you later.”
A pause, then: “This is Shane, by the way.”
As if Ilya wouldn’t know.
As if there were anyone else in the world who called him at midnight just to hear the sound of his own thoughts echoing back.
It became a habit after that—little messages left in the gaps between their schedules. Shane would call when he knew Ilya was traveling, or in a game, or three time zones away and definitely asleep. The voicemail would pick up, that familiar recording would play, hi, this is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail, and Shane would fill the space with words he couldn’t quite say face to face. Voicemail-Ilya didn’t say “we can’t” or “don’t” or switch to Russian that Shane couldn’t understand.
“I… uh saw your goal tonight. That backhand was disgusting. I mean that as a compliment, obviously.”
“There’s a new Thai place near my place. Thought maybe we could try it—ordering in obviously—when you’re back in town. If you want.”
“Hey, uh. I know you won’t get this, but I was thinking about you. And I… I guess I just realized how long it’s been since I’ve seen you. It feels like I’m on an island, maybe my own planet and you… I don’t know? Somewhere? Somewhere I can’t reach. I know you’re just in Boston but—sometimes it feels a lot further.”
A breath. The rustle of sheets as Shane shifted in bed.
“I… I think I might miss you.” And then: “Fuck,” just before he hung up.
Shane ended the call and dropped his phone on the nightstand. Through his bedroom window, the city stretched out in a grid of lights; he could see the corner where Yonge met Bloor, the intersection where he’d kissed Ilya against a brick wall at two in the morning last March. They’d been drunk on a win and each other, and Ilya had tasted like the vodka sodas he pretended were water.
Shane had driven past that corner four times this week. Twice on purpose. Twice because his autopilot was a traitor.
The building across the street had a light on in the window, and Shane wondered if someone was awake over there too, thinking about someone they couldn’t have, who wasn’t listening.
He never told Ilya about the messages. Never mentioned them when they finally connected, when Ilya would text sorry missed your boring call or call you tomorrow Hollander and they’d fall into their usual rhythm of half-arguments and hockey talk and the blurred-line intimacy of two people who’d spent years learning each other’s edges while carving out new ways to keep one another at arm’s reach.
When they did talk—actually talk, Ilya’s voice live on the other end—Shane kept it light. Chirped about Ilya’s turnover in the third period, argued about whether the Bear’s power play was actually better this season or just lucky. Safe territory. The same script they’d been running since 2009: competition, sex, distance. Never anything too deep. And that was… fine. It was enough, maybe.
It was better than nothing.
Shane assumed Ilya had been telling the truth, and that the voicemails disappeared into some digital void, unheard and unmissed. It was easier that way—safer—to say the vulnerable things to the void rather than to Ilya himself, who might look at him with those sharp hazel eyes and see too much.
So Shane kept calling.
Shane called after wins and losses, called when his flight got delayed in Denver, called when he couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to be that guy who texted at three in the morning. He talked about drills that went wrong, about Hayden’s new baby keeping half the team awake on the plane because Jackie came with the kids, about the way the ice felt slow in Dallas.
Little things. Nothing things.
Sometimes bigger things.
“I had a nightmare about us last night,” Shane said into his phone, standing on his balcony in December. Snow fell in thick flakes, gathering on the railing. His free hand gripped the metal until his knuckles went white. “We were at a press conference and someone asked about you, actually about me if I had someone, anyone, and I couldn’t—I didn’t know what to say. I have you.”
Shane shook his head. His breath fogged in the cold. “I barely even know what that means. Do you? What the fuck are we doing, I… ugh. Anyway. I woke up feeling like shit.” He watched his breath fog in the cold air. “I wish I was better at this. At hiding it, or not hiding it, or whatever I’m supposed to be doing. Do you know? Is that why it’s not agony for you?”
Shane could tell voicemail-Ilya anything. He could say all the things that would make real-Ilya’s face go blank and his shoulders tense in the seconds before he ruined it all. It was pathetic, probably. Confessing to a recording. But it was the only version of Ilya who’d listen.
He went inside and made breakfast, eggs and toast that he barely tasted, safe with the knowledge that Ilya would never listen to the voicemail at all, and that the thirty-second snippets, these pieces of himself, would be deleted and shredded in the digital deluge of time.
What Shane didn’t know—what Shane would never know because Ilya would never tell him—was that Ilya listened to every single one.
The first time had been an accident. Ilya had finished a game in New York and was scrolling through his phone, halfway leaning out of the shower, the water beating against his shoulders, when he’d noticed the notification. One new voicemail. He almost deleted it. His thumb hovered over the trash icon. Navernoye spam. Probably spam. But… then the name on the screen.
Jane.
He’d almost deleted it anyway out of habit, but something had made him pause, curiosity, maybe, or the bone-deep exhaustion that came with a double-overtime loss and the knowledge that Shane had probably watched the whole thing anyway.
He’d pressed play.
Shane’s words filled the tiny space between tile and steam, tinny through the phone speaker but unmistakably his: “Hey, that game was brutal. Hunter’s a force of nature and he really showed up to play, it looked like. Sorry about the loss. You played well, though. That save in the second period, how do you even do that, I mean—” A pause, then a huff of laughter. “I’m rambling. Anyway. Thinking of you. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
The message ended. The automated voice asked if he wanted to save or delete.
Sokhranit’. Save.
He had to keep this. He had to keep this and it wasn’t because of the words but the spaces between them: the small intake before he spoke, the way his tone softened around the edges when he thought no one was listening. It was intimate in a way their actual conversations never were; Shane unguarded, undefended, just talking because he wanted to, because he missed Ilya and didn’t know how else to say it. Thinking of you.
As if it were the easiest thing. As if it wasn’t the thing neither of them ever said.
Ilya had stood there until the water ran cold.
After that, he’d started saving them. Expecting, waiting, for them.
Every message Shane left, Ilya filed away like some kind of collector, organizing them by date, by team, by the particular quality of Shane’s mood. He hoarded them like a dragon. He learned to read the nuances the way he read ice conditions: by feel, by instinct. When Shane was tired, his consonants dragged, words blurring at the edges. When he was happy, his sentences lifted at the end, voice bright and young. When he was lonely—bozhe, when Shane was lonely—the pauses stretched long before he hung up, like he was waiting for Ilya to answer even though he knew the line was dead.
Ya zdes’. I’m here. Ya vsegda zdes’. I’m always here.
A useless declaration, he knew, considering the one person it was for would never hear it.
On the plane to Vancouver, Ilya pressed his forehead against the window and watched clouds pass below. His earbuds blocked out the cabin noise. The facsimile of Shane filled the space instead: there’s this Thai place near my apartment, thought maybe we could try it when you’re back in town.
Ilya hit replay. Let Shane’s hesitation before if you want wash over him again.
After a loss in Dallas, he lay in the hotel bed with his phone balanced on his chest. The screen glowed in the dark. Shane’s laugh crackled through the tiny speaker—that surprised huff when he caught himself rambling. Ilya’s thumb hovered over the pause button but couldn’t press it. One more time. The message was forty-three seconds long and he’d played it sixteen times. He’d memorized the cadence of Shane’s laughter, how he’d pause nervously before dropping a thinking about you, the breath he took before admitting I think I might miss you.
Sometimes Ilya whispered the words back to the empty room: I miss you too. Ya tozhe po tebe skuchayu.
His throat closed around them. His fingers tightened on the phone.
He could say it into the dark, alone, where no one would hear. He could mouth the words against his pillow at 3 AM with Shane’s recording playing on repeat. But to say it to Shane’s face—to watch Shane’s eyes go soft, to feel the weight of Shane’s hope pressing against his chest—that would be the end. He thought of Shane’s pathetic little I’m gay in Tampa, sitting on that hotel bed looking so fragile, when Ilya had told him plainly: we can’t.
His father’s ghost would hear it from the grave. His brother would know. Russia would disappear behind a locked door.
And… then his father died.
And Shane had started calling.
They couldn’t, that still hadn’t changed.
So why, even now, was he listening to voicemails at 2 AM in his empty bedroom, replaying Hollander’s ramblings like they were music? Why had he memorized the specific way Shane’s breath caught before admitting something vulnerable? Why did he keep making room in his phone’s storage for new messages when he should delete them, delete all of them, stop doing this to himself? We can’t. They couldn’t.
He’d filled his voicemail to ninety-seven percent capacity and then started deleting old team notifications, spam calls, anything that wasn’t Shane’s number on the caller ID. He’d become meticulous about it—checking the storage, making sure there was always room for new messages, treating each one like the treasure it was.
Sometimes he wondered what Shane would think if he knew. If he’d be embarrassed, horrified, touched. If he’d stop calling altogether, or if he’d start saying more.
Ilya thought he’d probably stop.
So he kept the secret close, hoarded these pieces of Shane the way he’d hoarded everything else about their relationship for years; private, precious, entirely his own.
And Shane kept calling.
Ilya listened.
He listened to every one. Ilya would finish practice, collect his phone from his stall, and check his voicemail count. One new message. Two if he was lucky and if Shane had been particularly talkative. He’d wait until he got home, until he’d showered and eaten and the house fell still around him, before he’d play them.
He knew the messages by heart now, and could recite Shane’s rambling thoughts about hockey plays, just as he could hear the exact way Shane’s laugh sounded when he thought no one was listening. He was so funny when he wanted to be. Not boring at all. He could hear him every time he hit replay, like now, as he cooked, stirring pasta with steam rising into his face. On the TV mounted above his counter, the postgame highlights played: Shane threading a pass through two defenders, the puck landing perfectly on his linemate’s stick. Three assists. The commentators were still talking about his vision, his hockey IQ, but the volume was on low.
All important sound came from his phone.
“Hey, it’s me.” The older message replayed through Ilya’s speaker while he stirred again, again, slower, slower. “You had three assists tonight. Three. I know you don’t need me to tell you that you played well, but you played really well. Like, stupidly well. I wanted to call you right after the game, but we were still on the ice, so.” A pause, some shuffling sounds. “I’m proud of you. I know that’s—whatever. I am.”
That was number forty-eight, and then Ilya started on message fifty-four.
“I’ve been thinking.” Shane sounded tired, words coming slower. “About how we do this. How we keep doing this. And I don’t have any answers, I’m not calling with some big revelation or anything. I was watching you play earlier and I thought—” A pause, an intake of air. “I thought that I want to keep watching you play forever. Every game. That’s dramatic, probably. But it’s true.”
Then silence.
Forever. Shane had said it like he meant it. Like he’d already decided. Like the choice was made and all that remained was for Ilya to catch up. And since when was Shane ever faster than him to know something? Shane that barely knew his own feelings?
Ilya sat on his kitchen floor, phone in his hand, forgotten pasta boiling over on the stove, and felt the truth of it settle in his bones: he wanted that too. He wanted Shane in the stands forever, both of them on the ice, forever, but mostly he wanted Shane’s voice in his ear, he wanted Shane—
Navsegda. Forever.
Tolko ty. Only you.
Soon he’d have to choose. Delete one to keep another. Number seven, maybe, from October—Shane talking about weather. Or number twelve, just Shane saying he’d tried calling and fumbling awkwardly before hanging up… but not the others. Not the ones where Shane said I miss you or I wish I was better at this. Not the ones where Shane laughed or confessed or spoke like Ilya was the only person in the world he wanted to tell his secrets to, thinking they disappeared into nothing.
Esli by ty znal. If you knew. If you ever knew.
Ilya had memorized those already anyway. Had them saved in places deeper than his phone’s memory, the tight, narrow space within his battered heart.
The pot hissed again. Ilya turned from his phone to see even more foam climbing over the rim, spilling down the sides in thick white rivers. Starch-clouded water sizzled where it hit the burner. He swore and grabbed the handle, jerking the pot off the heat. Steam billowed into his face as he dumped half the water into the sink. The pasta had clumped together at the bottom, overcooked and beginning to stick.
His phone buzzed on the counter.
Ilya wiped his hands on a dishcloth and picked it up. Jane. The name glowed on the screen—Shane’s name, the one Ilya had to use, the one that kept them safe and separate.
Ilya looked at the ruined pasta, at the mess on the stove, at his phone with its ninety-seven percent memory full of Shane’s unheard secrets.
He picked up his phone and typed:
The lie came easy. Necessary, even. We can’t. Those words were months old and nothing had changed. Nothing.
Nothing had changed, and he could avoid a little pain this evening—he could stretch dinner out for another hour if he wanted, give himself time to clean the stove, to think about what Shane might want to talk about that couldn’t wait for a voicemail.
If he wanted to know at all.
The voicemails were safe. They were ghosts, phantoms of a thing that could not be, would never be, allowed to exist in this liminal nothing of make believe.
Ilya set the phone down and went back to the stove, scraping congealed noodles from the bottom of the pot before starting over. Round two of pasta would, he hoped, be edible and… standing there, waiting… he went back to message twenty-seven and pressed play again, letting Shane fill the apartment; words, wanting, all of him compressed into sound.
Yeshcho raz, he thought. Yeshcho raz. One more time. Always one more time.
“Hey, uh. I know you won’t get this, but I was thinking about you. And I… I guess I just realized how long it’s been since I’ve seen you. It feels like I’m on an island, maybe my own planet and you… I don’t know? Somewhere? Somewhere I can’t reach. I know you’re just in Boston but—sometimes it feels a lot further.”
Ilya looked around his kitchen. Bare counters. The hum of the refrigerator. No one here but him. No one ever here but him.
“I… I think I might miss you. Fuck.”
The message ended like it always did. The automated voice asked if he wanted to save or delete. Ilya pressed save. He always pressed save.
He’d said no, he was busy and Shane would accept that lie because Shane always did, and tomorrow or the next day Shane would leave another voicemail that Ilya would hoard and replay and pretend was enough. He’d stand in this kitchen again, alone, listening to recordings of someone who wanted to talk to him, and he’d tell himself it was safer this way.
The water boiled over again.
Ilya grabbed the pot, jerked it off the heat. Steam billowed up into his face. His hand stung where the handle burned through the thin dish towel, and he dropped it into the sink with a clatter. Water sloshed over the sides, hissing where it hit the hot metal below.
Yob tvoyu mat’.
He stood there, dish towel hanging limp in his hand, staring at the mess. The ruined pasta. The empty house. His phone on the counter, still open to Shane’s unanswered message.
Nowhere meant safe. Nowhere meant his brother couldn’t find him, couldn’t use Shane against him. Nowhere meant he could keep going home to Moscow when the season ended, could stand at his father’s grave without shame burning through his ribs.
Nowhere was survival.
The voicemails lived in nowhere too. Ilya could replay them at three in the morning, could memorize the way Shane’s breath hitched before saying I miss you, could listen to him laugh about a bad practice or confess his nightmares, and none of it changed anything. The words stayed frozen in time, perfect and unchanging. Shane spoke and Ilya listened and the gap between them remained exactly as wide as it needed to be. Safe. Controlled.
Shane’s words couldn’t change, he couldn’t demand more, and he couldn’t look at him with hope Ilya would have to crush.
Except.
Ilya’s thumb hovered over the screen. Message fifty-four sat paused mid-sentence: I thought that I want to keep watching you play forever—
Forever was a long time to spend nowhere. A long time to hoard recordings like some kind of pathetic—
He looked at the text again. Can I call?
Hi. This is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail.
It would’ve been easy for Shane to call and to be ignored, if he wanted. That was how it worked. Except… this wasn’t a message for the voicemail, the void, Ilya realized. Shane was asking him. Right now. Wanting to hear him, talk to him, exist in the same moment instead of hours or days apart.
And Ilya wanted—bozhe, he wanted—
It would be dangerous. It would be stupid. Wanting more than the safe distance of messages was how people got caught, got exposed, got destroyed. His father’s funeral was barely six months past. His brother was watching. The world was watching. Crossing that gap from nowhere to somewhere, from recordings to real conversations, from controlled to alive could ruin everything.
It could ruin him.
But staying in nowhere, being nothing but a listener in the dark, hoarding scraps of Shane’s words while Shane stood alone on his lonely island thinking no one heard him—
That was already destroying him. Just slower.
Ilya opened a new text.
His thumb hovered over send. The smart thing would be to delete this too. Make the pasta. Eat dinner alone. Listen to the voicemail one more time before bed and let that be enough.
But it wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been enough for months, maybe years. All those recordings, saved and replayed and memorized—Shane’s voice in the dark, saying things he’d never say to Ilya’s face—what were they except proof that Ilya was too afraid to ask for more?
He typed one more line: