Work Text:
The Hospital
Shane’s head spun as he blinked himself to wakefulness, smacking his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth. He felt his chest expand with only a twinge of pain and the pull of the sling against his neck.
The drugs the nurse had given him before he fell asleep that evening after his parents left must have been working. And damn were they good drugs. He felt light despite what he remembered the doctors saying to his parents earlier—about his fractured collarbone and concussion and how he would be out for the rest of the season. He recalled what he’d told them, staring up into their concerned eyes with what was undoubtedly a delirious smile: could have been worse.
For a moment he tried to adjust himself to get more comfortable in the hard hospital bed. Why wasn’t it soft like Ilya’s bed, the one he’d fallen asleep in? Shane smiled privately to himself, thinking of Ilya’s curls and the way it felt to have that broad chest pressed against his back as he slept.
Ilya—shit. He would be worried. No one would know to contact him and tell him that Shane was okay and he would worry, because he did that even if he would never admit to it.
Pushing himself up on his good side, Shane did his best to blink the world into focus, taking in his fuzzy surroundings. He sort of felt like he was still in a dream, head floaty and body not all the way under his control.
With a breath, he flopped on his pillows and scanned the room. Maybe a nurse would walk by and he could flag them and tell them to—
Fuck, what exactly was he supposed to tell them?
Right, Ilya. They needed to call Ilya and tell him that he was going to be okay.
But instead of a nurse, when the room came into focus, he saw someone sitting in the chair by the door. Shane furrowed his brow, wishing that he had his glasses. There was a man, a huge one in fact, folded up into the small hospital chair, cheek to his shoulder as his chest rose and fell softly.
Shane didn’t need glasses to recognize those curls, the moles that dotted his face and throat. He new them all by heart, had kissed them…well, not nearly as many times as he’d wanted to. And as he took in the six foot three hockey player, curled sleeping like a child in the plastic chair, something settled inside of him.
He still felt foggy and distant, but he knew this feeling faintly—the anxiety subsiding like a receding wave. There was only one person he’d ever met who caused this…
Shane swallowed hard, his throat dry, and whispered, “Ilya…”
And how—how was he there? The captain of the Boston Bears, his supposed rival, sleeping in Shane Hollander’s hospital room. He blinked in awe, wondering if he really was dreaming. A little snore came from across the room and Shane giggled to himself. Another thing Ilya would never admit to, snoring.
“I do not do this Shane.” Ilya had fixed him with a glare, arms folded across his bare chest as he sat beside Shane in bed after the All-Star Game, when he’d jokingly called out his snores. “Is you,” he offered haughtily. “I would never.”
The pillow caught Shane as he fell back into a fit of giggles, flush rising to his cheeks while recalling how he’d teased Ilya some more about it before the blonde had rolled over on top of him and they wrestled playfully until Ilya pinned him down and fucked him again.
So okay, a snoring Ilya—not a dream then. Somehow Ilya had found him. Had made his way here to the hospital and found Shane. Well, his drug-addled brain supposed it made sense. Ilya was more resourceful than he ever gave himself credit for.
When Shane opened his eyes again, trying to clear his throat to call out to Ilya, he finally noticed someone else in the room. She sat in another empty chair by where Ilya slept, eyes focused on him intently. She looked relieved? Maybe happy? People’s expressions were too much for him to process right now.
“Uh, hi,” Shane said softly, still finding his voice. He furrowed his brow, taking her in. She was thin and small, long blonde hair falling to her shoulders with a gentle wave. Her eyes scanned him carefully, seeming surprised that he had called out to her. “I-I’m sorry, are you a nurse?”
The woman clutched her hands together, seeming unsure for a moment as she glanced at Ilya and then back at Shane. She looked put off, confused. Shit, maybe she was a doctor. He’d just assumed because she was a woman that she was a nurse. Fuck. He was definitely fucking this up.
“O-Or a doctor?” he amended, working to push himself up against his pillows. He winced for a moment as a bolt of pain lanced through the medicated haze and he fell back to the bed with a breath.
The woman hopped to her feet quickly, rushing to his bedside as she tucked her hair behind her ear. Shane took shallow breaths as he looked up at her and the woman put a careful hand on his good shoulder, as if to press him back to the bed.
“Easy, you are okay Shane,” her voice hummed in his ears. He blinked slowly, feeling warmed by that tone. Her voice was kind, soft…and accented…“But you cannot move fast like that…is-is bad for healing.”
Why did she sound so familiar? Shane squinted up at her in the low light of the hospital. She was furrowing her brow, still stroking his shoulder tenderly. It almost sounded like Ilya, like she was—
“You’re Russian?” he questioned, brows raising. She smiled at him, pleased. Shane’s gaze traveled between her and Ilya. “D-Did Ilya bring like a Russian doctor to check on me?”
Jesus, Ilya. He knew that the man could do wild things sometimes, but this? They were in a perfectly fine hospital, he didn’t need a—
“—special doctor! I-I’m so sorry, you really don’t need to—”
The feeling of confusion welled up again and he knew his heart was beating hard, but the woman reached a palm up and stroked his cheek, brushing his hair back off his forehead.
“Russian, yes,” she nodded, voice gentle. “Doctor, I am not. Calm down, Shane. Just breathe, is okay. You are okay.”
He listened to her, leaning into the pillows and closing his eyes as he endeavored to take the deepest breath he could. The pieces slowly slotted back into place, like they did when Ilya touched him or whispered to him in those quiet moments were they held each other—before the noise of the world got too loud again.
When he opened his eyes, the woman was still gazing down at him gently, stroking his cheek in a familiar way. He peered up into her hazel eyes and felt a pang of familiarity through the fog.
“I see why he likes them so much, your—” her thumb delicately danced across the high point of his cheeks. “These.” She struggled with the word, in a way that Shane was all too familiar with.
“Freckles.” He was sure his voice was a whisper.
She nodded, not as if she really understood, but more like she was agreeing with him. Her thumb didn’t stop moving and Shane wasn’t sure why he felt so comfortable with this stranger touching him—why this woman, this not-doctor, felt familiar. Almost in the way Shane’s memories of his childhood felt, like when he was learning to skate and would fall on the ice and his mother would help him up, brushing his tears away.
His brow furrowed as he worked to push through the now mellow and comfortable daze. When his eyes opened, he looked at her—really looked at her. The way her eyes were shaped, the pink of her lips and the point of he nose, the way the blonde hair kissed her face. Russian. She said she was Russian—rolled those R’s the same way he was familiar with, the same cadence and tone, the same face when searching for a word that may never materialize.
And it suddenly occurred to him who this woman was. She could tell he knew by the look of sudden realization on his face.
“Y-You, you’re—” Shane went to sit up again, but she moved her hand back to his shoulder, easing him back down. “B-But how?” He shook his head, moving his good hand to run through his hair, gripping it at the roots.
“You can’t be. B-But you’re—” Even in his concussed state he knew this was crazy. There was no way she was who Shane thought she could be, because…well because…
“Dead,” the woman nodded to him. Her eyes turned down for a moment, shining when she looked back up to him, searching Shane’s eyes before something more determined flickered in their hazel glow. “Yes, I know.”
Shane swallowed and leaned back into is pillow, hand on his face as she stood there beside him. “H-How? This doesn’t make any sense.” And with his eyes closed, Shane felt the laugh bubble up in his chest until he was giggling quietly again.
“I’m crazy. I got whacked in a game and now I’m fucking crazy. I’m hallucinating.” He shook his head, despite the dizziness he felt. That’s what this had to be. The drugs. He was hallucinating, seeing things.
Because there was no way the woman in front of him was Ilya Rozanov’s mother.
Ilya hadn’t spoken much about his family in all the years that he and Shane had been doing…well, this. But after the All-Star Game, after Shane had told him the truth about how he was gay, Ilya had offered up some truth of his own. Namely, his mother was dead. That she had died a long time ago.
He frowned, thinking back to that moment. How Ilya had turned away from him, sniffling. He’d looked so small then, distraught from the memory alone. Shane knew it was the truth.
But when he opened his eyes, he saw the woman standing at his bedside gazing across the room at the man sleeping in the chair. Her gaze was affectionate, open. Shane watched her for a moment wondering if that was what pain looked like when you cared deeply for someone. Is that how Ilya had looked at him when he came here and found Shane passed out in a hospital bed?
She chewed her lip, looking just like Ilya before taking a deep breath, eyes turning back to him. “How are you here? If you’re—H-How do you know me?”
The woman smiled warmly. “I am by his side, Shane.” The way she said his name sounded just like the way Ilya said it. I really was her. “I am with Ilya, but he does not see. You do not see, until now. So I know you. You are part of Ilya’s life.”
Shane processed what she was saying. So she was a ghost o-or a spirit? She was tethered somehow to Ilya? He groaned softly trying to wrap his drugged mind around it, but the concept slipped through his sloppy grip like water. Until he realized—
“All the time!?” Shane went to lunge forward again because really? She was there with Ilya all the time? Even when he—when they—Jesus Christ…
The woman laughed as she soothed him back down, her smile just like Ilya’s when he was teasing Shane. “I come and I go,” she comforted, stroking his head as if she knew what he was thinking. “I do not know how it works. I am not everywhere always.”
There was a smirk on her lips, a mischievous playfulness in her eyes that Shane recognized. He knew his cheeks were red. Because Jesus, what if she had seen them—well… “Kind of everywhere, but nowhere at same time. Is hard to explain,” and she shrugged as if she had made peace with it.
Shane could only hope that some things did indeed remain private even where the supernatural were concerned. “So you’re with him…that’s why you know me. Know that we’re—” and Shane’s voice, already soft, was lost in his throat.
He hadn’t been prepared to do this at all, much less with Ilya’s mother…
“Lovers,” she nodded slowly.
And gross. That word sent a ripple through him but he didn’t have the heart to correct her. She toyed with the sheets at the edge of the bed and Shane’s mind wandered unbidden, curious as to how a ghost, a spirit, whatever, could be so solid. She had touched him hadn’t she? He had felt her warmth…When he raised his studious eyes to her face she didn’t seem translucent.
“You are thinking so loud,” the woman said then, gaze knowing, head tilted to the side. Shane flushed. “This is something he says to you often, da? Ilyusha.” Something balmy spread through his chest when Shane heard that. She was right, it was something the blonde told him often, along with the fact that he was boring. He felt himself smile—it was clear she knew Ilya, even now.
The two of them were silent for a moment as they watched him sleep, Ilya’s shoulders tensing unconsciously as he wrapped his arms tighter around himself. Shane wondered how long he had been there like that, to fall asleep sitting.
“He has been like this for hours,” the woman offered up, and for a moment Shane wondered if she could also read his mind. When he looked up, she was still gazing at Ilya longingly. “He came after your parents leave. Beg hospital staff to let him in, let him stay. He tell them is his fault you get hit.”
“What—it’s not Ilya’s fault. I-I wasn’t paying attention. I w-was—” looking for him, died in Shane’s throat. But she observed him sympathetically, like she knew.
“Not his fault. Not yours. Accident,” she added. “But he worry. Is scared. Nice nurse decide to let him stay, turn…away…”
“Turn a blind eye,” Shane whispered.
Ilya had begged to be let in to see him. Slept in an uncomfortable hospital chair for…hours apparently. All for Shane. Because he was worried, because he wanted to see him and make sure he was okay.
Shane thought for a moment if the situation was reversed, if it had been Ilya who had taken the hit and lie there splayed out on the ice, what he would have done. He knew without hesitation that he would rush to the man’s side too, no matter what it took.
His heart clenched in his chest and Shane turned, looking up at the woman beside him. Lovers, she had called them. She knew.
“You aren’t…” he glanced away, pressing his lips together. Toying with the sheets, he steeled himself the best his hazy brain could allow before meeting her eyes. “You’re not disappointed?” She studied him, following each word as he spoke. “In Ilya…for being…”
Why did this feel so much like dying?
“For being with man?” she finished for him. Direct, like Ilya was when he wanted to be. Shane peeked behind his hair at her, wondering if now was where he received her ire. He nodded.
The woman took a deep breath before tucking her hair behind her ear and turning to glance at Ilya over her shoulder. His snuffles could be heard from where she stood.
“Not disappointed,” she whispered, shaking her head.
Her gaze wouldn’t leave his sleeping form and Shane could tell she wanted to reach out and touch. He knew because he often felt that way when he looked at Ilya; felt the desire burning white hot in his fingertips. But if Ilya couldn’t see her, it was doubtful she would be able to touch him. Shane thought about how he would feel if his mother never touched him again. His eyes stung.
“My heart hurt. Is sad because he is lonely,” her voice wobbled and tears dripped from her lashes.
The woman’s watery hazel eyes found him again and she paused and pressed a clenched fist to the middle of her chest. She hit it against her sternum hard, burying it deep into her sweater, twisting until Shane thought it must have been painful.
“Because his father and his brother…are so cruel. Because nobody in Russia support him. Because I see way he tries to fill—” she rubbed her chest again, eyes turned toward the ceiling before she closed them and Shane blinked the water from his own lashes, feeling his lip tremble. “Fill hole, in his heart.”
Shane’s chest ached as he watched her tears stream across her temples. “And I am sad because I see—” she took a shuddery breath, eyes searching somewhere past him.
“I see me, in him. How there are days where he cannot get up from bed. He cannot eat.” Shane’s eyes welled again. How could he not have known this about Ilya? That it was sometimes that hard for him? Was Shane really that distant that he couldn’t even tell?
“How he lie there, alone. I feel his sad—is like my sad. And I miss him…moy rebenok.” My baby. And Shane wasn’t sure how he understood that, but right now the how didn’t matter.
She brushed the tears from her face with her delicate fingers, wiping her chin where they had collected with the back of her hand. He wasn’t sure why—or if it was allowed exactly—but he reached up and took her hand in his, feeling the solid weight of it, the warmth. And she let him. It was so small in his own.
Shane wasn’t sure what to say in that moment, in the heavy silence that sat between them.
He wanted to tell her that he would protect Ilya. He wanted to promise her that he would fix it, fix everything. His vision blurred and he felt the tears stream down his cheeks, the sob welling up in his chest. He wanted to tell her that he could be enough, but he was terrified he wasn’t.
“Oh, moya lyubov,” she cooed when she noticed his tears. She eased herself down to the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around him, careful of the side with his arm in a sling. My love.
“I see the way he look at you, even when you are not looking. I hear how he talk about you, how he laugh with you and when he read your notes. I feel his heart when you are on ice together, how proud he is of you.”
And Shane hiccuped in her arms as she held him, petting his head. “I-I’m sorry,” he choked out. He was so sorry that he couldn’t protect Ilya, couldn’t tell Ilya, couldn’t tell the world—that he had only just gotten the courage to admit it to himself.
“Shhh,” she hummed. “No sorries. Is okay. Da, is okay.” He sniffed, feeling lightheaded and pulled his face back from her chest.
Before he could apologize for staining her sweater, she brushed the sleeve across his cheek and beneath his nose. “I am sad, sometimes Shane,” she smoothed his hair back from his face and held his cheeks in her palms. “When I watch him. When I feel how he hurts. When I want to reach him but I cannot.”
Her smile was small, secretive like the ones Ilya sometimes gave him when they were out around others. “But never for loving man,” she shook her head, rubbing his freckles with her thumbs, forcing Shane to see the honesty, the sincerity in her eyes that looked just like Ilya’s. “Never, never for loving you, Shane. I am not sad, not disappointed. Only proud.”
He swallowed hard, more tears building at his lashes as his brain scrambled to process what she’d said. “L-love…he—me?”
The woman next to him grinned conspiratorially, brows furrowed as if it were obvious. “Da, yes.”
“Ilya, h-he…But he’s never said—”
She sighed, thumb tracing his brow and moving to his lash to catch a tear before it fell. This close, her eyes sparkled. It was like the way Ilya’s caught the sun, bursting with light. “In Russian he says.” Shane’s gaze flickered to the corner where the sleeping man sat.
“What…he…” The revelation was almost too much. Ilya loved him? Had told him, albeit in Russian?
“You love him too,” she whispered, easing him back to the pillows. “My Ilyusha.”
Shane’s face heated and his heart throbbed in his chest. He let his wet eyes trace her face before nodding slowly. “I do,” he breathed, the admission floating in the air between them. “I-I love him.”
He said the words slowly, as if tasting each one, seeing how it felt in his mouth. A part of him startled at the fact that the world did not indeed come crumbling down around him.
So he said it again, this time stronger. “I love him.”
Nodding, the woman offered him a tender smile, as if to tell him he did well. He gripped the sheet in his fist, wondering why it was so fucking difficult to say every other time, but felt easy here. “I-I want to say it…I just…I—”
“I know,” she replied, soft, understanding. She stroked his face and looked at him as if she really did know. And his heart ached for how Ilya had lost this when he was just a child. Had been alone in his family ever since.
“I know is hard, is scary. The world,” she glanced away as if looking at something far off, brows knit together. “Is not nice, can be cruel. Especially hockey world,” she added sympathetically as her eyes returned to Shane’s face.
He bobbed his head with a sigh. “Especially the hockey world.”
“But world is more than hockey, da?” she offered. Shane’s tired brain knew she was right, but for him that’s all it had been, all he had known. He loved it but he loved Ilya too. And selfishly, he wanted a world where he got to have both.
“I think,” she paused, her eyes meeting his, head tilted towards him as if to make sure he was listening. “I think such big world should have space—for love and for hockey. Yes?”
Shane wanted to believe her. He wanted it as much as he wanted Ilya…so more than anything. He nodded and she nodded along with him, grin breaking across her face. Like Ilya’s it was contagious, he couldn’t help but smile back.
“Also, you and Ilyusha…you are not people who give up,” she shrugged as if stating a fact. “You are like bull.”
“Stubborn,” Shane chuckled, his chest still kind of tight, head swimming.
“Da, yes stubborn.” She reached up and held Shane’s hand in hers. “Ilyusha was like this since he was child,” she waved her other hand toward him, referencing a memory Shane did not know.
“I can see that,” he replied quietly, blinking slowly. Shane’s head felt heavy so he turned, resting his cheek on the pillow as he opened his eyes to her again. “How else was he, when he was a child?”
Stroking the back of his hand with her own, the woman beamed at him as if she had been asked her favorite thing in the world. “He was good boy. Funny, kind…mama’s boy.” Shane laughed gently, body feeling floaty. Of course he had been. It was why the hole she’d left behind ached so deeply. “Moy malenkiy krolik.” My little bunny.
She held Shane’s hand, resting her other palm atop his, stroking his knuckles. It was comforting as the tides ebbed and flowed around him. “When he was little, we sit sometimes. In garden,” she whispered, voice wistful. “He put his head in my lap while I read and touch his curls. My favorite, his curls. Like sunshine.”
Shane smiled back at her, drowsier now than he had been before, the fight and fear having totally left him. “My favorite too.”
“You must rest,” the woman told him definitively, pausing to stroke his head. “You must get better so he does not worry. Ilyusha was so scared, like little boy.”
“I know,” Shane whispered back. He recalled somewhere deep past the cloud that now surrounded him, the way Ilya had called out to him on the ice, trying to get as close as possible. And Shane had been terrified. Terrified that maybe he would never get to see Ilya again. “I know he worries…I worry…”
His eyelids fluttered as her hand held his cheek and the fog settled closer. “I know, I know,” her voice was a quiet hum, distant. “But remember moya lyubov, you and Ilyusha, you are stubborn.”
Her gentle face faded as it became harder for Shane to stay awake. But he could still feel the warmth against his face, in his chest. “So with each other, I know you can be brave.”
Shane wanted to argue with her. He didn’t feel brave. He felt scared—of his feelings, of his future, of the world—but the energy had left him completely. And before he could tell her, he fell slowly and deeply, fading into black.
~
When he woke, there was a dull throbbing in the back of his head and his chest felt heavy and stiff. Seemed like for the most part the painkillers had worn off. Shane squinted at the light that now streamed in through the cracks in the blinds covering the window, groaning softly at how the throbbing intensified until he managed to turn away from it.
He smacked his lips together and sighed out a breath, sore and achy. The noise it seemed, triggered a flurry of moment, some clattering and then rushed footsteps on the tile floor. With a grunt, he forced his eyes open to find Ilya beside him, chest heaving as he stared down at Shane, eyes wild.
“Ilya…” he whispered as the man came into focus.
“Jesus, Shane,” he exhaled, all the air rushing out of his lungs, leaving him deflated. Shane watched, squinting up at him, as Ilya looked panicked, covering his mouth with one hand.
He hesitated for a moment before letting his fingertips trace Shane’s free hand against the bedsheets. “You scared me,” Ilya added, eyes guarded. Shane could feel the trembling in his fingertips.
With a breath, Shane flipped his hand over and reached up, gripping Ilya’s in his own. “I know, I’m sorry. Didn’t see it coming.” The man glanced to the door, making sure no one was poised to come in before turning back to Shane, squeezing their hands together tightly.
Ilya shook his head, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Do not apologize, was not your fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault either Ilya, you know that right?” The man was quiet, eyes darting from Shane’s face to their hands, avoiding his gaze. He shrugged and Shane was about to repeat himself when snippets of this same argument came back to him from last night.
“You were here,” Shane whispered, sitting up a little straighter despite the pain. He scanned the room, looking for her—blonde hair and hazel eyes. Hazel eyes that looked just like—“You were here, last night, you slept here.”
Ilya raised his brows, seeming surprised—caught. “How did you know?”
But where was she? Ilya’s mother? Shane dodged the man beside him, rustling the blankets as his heart pounded and he searched every corner of the room. “Where—” he grunted, turning toward his bad arm, wincing in pain.
“Shane!” Ilya leaned over him, capturing his gaze as one hand hovered against his good shoulder. “What is wrong? Why are you looking—”
No. It couldn’t be. Shane knew he hadn’t imagined it. “She, but she was…”
He’d felt her fingertips like rain across his cheeks, seen her eyes well up with tears. “I-I know I saw her. She has to be, she has to…” She couldn’t leave again, not when she had been so kind, so loving. When Ilya hadn’t gotten to see her.
She had told him…he was stubborn, they were stubborn and that the world was big, that there had to be space for them.
“S-She told me—” Shane could feel his throat tighten.
“Shane, who? Who is she? Who was here?” Ilya questioned, seeming frazzled and frustrated. When Shane looked up into his eyes and saw the fear reflected back at him, he remembered what else she had said. He is lonely. Shane remembered the pain on her face, had felt how badly she had wanted to hold Ilya in that moment.
“Your mother…”
Ilya looked as if he’d been slapped. He took a step back before freezing, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His face that had just been open a moment ago was closed off and Shane wondered if he was even breathing.
“Ilya she…she was h-here, last night. I—we—” Shane reached toward him the best he could, but Ilya didn’t budge.
His lashes fluttered and his face for just a moment flickered. Sadness. Anger. Betrayal. “You are sick,” he murmured finally, after the silence had settled like lead in Shane’s stomach. He flinched at Ilya’s voice. It was stern, but he could hear something else, something that maybe sounded wounded.
“Ilya, please—” Shane begged as he reached out again. “Please just listen. I swear she—”
“Your medicine,” Ilya replied, turning towards the beeping cluster of machines. “It is—it is wrong, something is wrong. Is not right. I will call doctor. They need to check on you, check concussion.”
Shane could feel the prick behind his eyes as he struggled, pushing himself forward. “No Ilya, I-I’m serious. It’s not that, just listen to me!”
Ilya turned away from him, jaw set as he took a few steps forward toward the nurse’s call button. “I promise Ilya, she was here. I spoke to her, she—she said that she was with you, that she was sad for you b-but she knew about us a-and—”
“Do not lie!” Ilya roared, whipping around toward him. His chest was heaving, his eyes watery as he grimaced before letting his face fall to his hands. He shuddered a breath before raising his face and Shane watched through his own tears as the droplets coated Ilya’s lashes. “Not you. Not about that.”
Trembling, Ilya reached up the heel of his hand and scrubbed his face, turning his back toward Shane. He tried to hide himself, but Shane could see him choking on a sob. His head and chest throbbed but he managed to extend his good arm, catching the hem of Ilya’s t-shirt with his fingertips.
Cheek turned to the pillow, Shane held him, just the bit he could reach. “Ilya,” he pleaded again. He could hear the wetness in his own voice.
“Is not a joke Shane,” Ilya breathed, shaking. “Please…I—”
“Her little bunny,” he whispered, feeling the tear slide across his temple into the pillow. “She called you that. Moya malenkiy krolik.” Shane tried to wrap his mouth around the words, form his tongue to the sounds he wasn’t used to making. He knew it wasn’t right, but it had to be enough.
Ilya turned back to him, eyes steeled on his face. Shane smiled gently as he watched them fill with tears again. He looked just like her, even when he cried.
“She said you were kind. And funny.” Shane did his best to swallow past the lump in is throat as Ilya dropped his weight into the chair at the bedside. He’d collapsed as if his legs had given out, like all his strings had been cut.
Shane reached for his hand and Ilya didn’t refuse, eyes scanning his face in utter disbelief. His chin quivered, tears streaking down his cheeks. Hazel eyes rimmed red, shining as the tears came and came and Shane could feel himself crying and wondered if he looked the same.
“She said you would lie in the garden with your head in her lap.” Ilya sobbed then, squeezing Shane’s hand with his own fist, so hard his knuckles were white.
He fell forward against Shane’s chest, head tucked beneath his chin. Shane buried his freckles in those familiar curls. He could smell the sport shampoo and something that was distinctly Ilya. He let himself close his eyes as he recalled her words, Ilya hiccuping against his throat.
“She would read to you and pet your head. She said your curls looked like sunshine.”
Ilya came apart, wracked with the force of his sobs and Shane nuzzled against him the best he could, ignoring the dull pain on his other side as he ran his thumb over Ilya’s knuckles just like his mother had done for him last night. He wanted to wrap Ilya up in his arms, hold him tenderly. It didn’t matter that they were in a hospital or that someone might see.
He shushed Ilya and stroked his hand as the sobs tore through him, Shane’s own tears wetting those sunshine curls. Part of him felt guilty, that he’d gotten to meet her and Ilya had not. But she had known, known that Shane would do his best to relay her message—to comfort the boy they shared and loved so desperately.
The waves that had once seemed like a riptide pulling him under slowly passed and Shane held Ilya through it, until he looked up, blinking back at him with dewy eyes. Using their clasped hands, Ilya wiped his tears and running nose. As much as Shane wanted to be disgusted, all he could find within him was fondness.
Gently slipping his hand from Ilya’s, he reached up and held the man’s cheek, brushing the wetness under his eye. “She loves you,” he whispered. “So much. So much it makes her sad for what you’ve gone through…your father, your brother.”
Ilya took a shuddery breath. “Is not, I—”
“She sees herself in you, on the days where you can’t get out of bed. When you feel completely alone. She hates that you feel that way. I hate that you feel that way, but I hate more that I didn’t even know.” He rubbed his thumb across Ilya’s cheek as the man squeezed his eyes shut. “She wants you to know you aren’t by yourself.”
“Shane,” Ilya croaked. He turned his face to the Shane’s palm, taking a grounding breath as he found himself there.
“She knows about us,” he added, lip quirking up in a smile as he traced over Ilya’s brow. His eyes opened once more, watching, waiting, reading like he always did to anticipate Shane’s reaction.
“She said we’re both stubborn.”
He laughed and Ilya blew out an annoyed but relieved breath as Shane traced a finger down his cheek. “You are more stubborn than me. Is comment about you,” Ilya retorted, voice still wavering.
“Whatever,” Shane rolled his eyes. They paused, Ilya leaning closer to him, holding Shane’s wrist with both of his hands. “She said she isn’t disappointed. That we’re together.”
He watched Ilya carefully. “She said she’s proud of us. That the world should be big enough for hockey and…” The word bubbled up in Shane’s throat, Ilya’s attention rapt. He wanted to say it, he burned with it. But not here, now, like this.
“And that together…together we can be brave.”
Ilya closed his eyes and kissed Shane’s palm, bringing it down from his face and holding it tightly with both his hands. He exhaled and rested his head against Shane’s arm, cheek pressed to the sheets.
“Da, is true,” he said finally, eyes never leaving Shane’s face. “You make me want to be brave.”
“Ilya…”
This time when he said the man’s name, there was no weight, no heaviness or fear in his chest. Because he knew— Ilya loved him. And Shane loved Ilya. And he had to believe the world was big enough for that.
Shane fixed his gaze on the man he loved, and took a breath to ask the question that had been stewing in his mind for longer than he knew what to do with: “Do you want to come to my cottage this summer?”
~
The Cottage
Ilya sat on the big boulder not far from the dock, listening to the way the trees rustled in the wind, the call of the birds echoing as the grapefruit sun rose into the sky. He chuckled to himself as he held the cigarette to his lips, thinking of how terrifying the noise had been just the night before when he heard it—a loon, that’s what Shane had called the bird. He’d jump—heart stuttering in his chest at the call through the dark—a thousand times if it made Shane smile like that, freckles dancing in the fire light.
He inhaled a deep breath of smoke, watching the morning sunlight sparkling on the water. One cigarette wouldn’t kill him, he’d quit mostly after all. But he felt he needed one after the heaviness of the last few days. Ilya thought about resting his head in Shane’s lap, the way those big hands pet through his curls, the warmth of the man’s thigh pressed to his cheek.
It was decidedly different from how his mother had held him, all those years ago when he was just a boy. But it had the same feeling of home, even as he fought his way to speak through the tears.
Closing his eyes, he tilted his face toward the sun, letting the cigarette burn between his knuckles. He sighed, blowing the air from his lungs.
“I am sorry,” he said in Russian to the morning air. “For telling him the truth. About you, how I found you.” Ilya inhaled as the breeze rolled by, his bare shoulders prickling with goose flesh at the chill. “But I wanted someone to know the truth, someone other than me to carry it when it is too much.”
The calls of the birds were the only sound that came in reply. Ilya opened his eyes and took another lazy drag, tapping the ash against the rock where he sat, shorts still rumpled from sleep. “I thought he should know,” he added. “So he can understand why sometimes I…”
His voice caught in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut when they stung, trying to swallow down the familiar sound of his father and brother’s voices about how boys were not weak, they did not cry.
Suddenly he wished he had—all those years ago dressed in a black suit, holding Alexei’s hand as they watched the coffin lower into the grave. But he’d pushed it down then too, despite how the pouring rain might have given him cover. Back then Ilya had wondered if she would be okay, alone in that impersonal wooden coffin, so far below the earth.
“I want him to understand,” he pressed forward, past the lump in his throat. “On those days, those days when I feel how you felt for so long.” Ilya knew that wasn’t the same as naming it, the feeling, the imbalance in his brain—depression. But it was as close as he’d ever gotten in all these years.
“I wanted him to know too how I feel about you, how I saw you even after,” he continued. I don’t want you to think that she was weak, he’d told Shane. I don’t want you to think I am weak, went unsaid. “But it is the truth,” he replied to his own thoughts, because perhaps she heard those too. Perhaps she just knew him well enough.
He curled closer to himself, now wishing he’d put on a sweatshirt before he stumbled out of bed, peeling himself from the warmth of Shane’s back. Ilya rested his chin in his palm, watching the water as it rippled gently, glimmering like treasure.
Clearing his throat, he opened his lips. “I am trying to be brave, like you think I can be. It is so much harder in life than on the ice,” he chuckled to himself, taking a quick puff.
“But I told him,” Ilya whispered after tilting his head back to blow smoke toward the rising sun. He closed his eyes, feeling the gentle rays warm his face. “I told him I love him, that I want to be together.” The sun danced across his eyelids, warm red and orange.
“We don’t know what will happen,” Ilya added with a shrug, flicking the ash of his dwindling cigarette. He immediately wanted another to curb the unsettling feeling in his gut when he thought about the future.
But he pictured freckles, smooth black hair and dark almond shaped eyes; the way Shane’s lips ticked up in the corner when he tried not to smile; the way he said fuck off but really meant I love you, you’re mine. Ilya could see it all clearer than he ever had before.
And he settled. The knot in his chest loosened and suddenly the future was not as terrifying as it once had been. For the first time in what felt like so long he wasn’t alone when he envisioned himself there.
“I don’t know what will happen, it does not really matter to me,” Ilya revised. “But you know, Shane is making plans like always.” He smirked toward the water. If his mother was with him everywhere, like Shane had told him in the hospital, like Ilya had always longed for, then she knew what kind of man his boyfriend was. “But I know I love him. And I know that as long as we are together, it will be okay.”
A breath. “He is my future. This is what matters.” The air felt cleaner here than Boston, crisper, ripe with something he couldn’t detect. Maybe it was the first time he’d been able to take the breath all the way into his lungs in a long time.
Shane being what he wanted meant undoubtedly a lot would change for him. The plan he had shared with Ilya last night was a good start, more than he had ever dreamed they might have. And he found with every moment at Shane’s side here at the cottage, in their own little world, he grew greedier.
Ilya knew that choosing Shane meant giving up Russia, what was left of it. His nose tickled and his eyes pricked at the thought that when he’d seen his mother’s grave after his father’s passing it was likely the last time he ever would.
He brushed the tear away as he reached up and clutched her cross necklace in his fist. It was okay, he told himself. Because he knew she wasn’t really there, alone beneath the earth. What had happened to them at the hospital had confirmed this.
“I’m sorry mama,” Ilya murmured, biting the inside of his cheek. He imagined if she was there and could talk to him, she would tell him not to be, that she had not been able to choose her happiness, so she was glad that he could choose his.
“Please forgive me and continue to stay with me.” Ilya wiped his face and sniffled. “With us. And thank you,” he smiled as he stubbed the cigarette out. “For meeting Shane.”
Ilya sat there in silence, the sun higher in the sky now, the scenery no less picturesque than when he came out earlier, feeling too big for his skin. There was a rustle on the path and he turned just as Shane approached him tentatively. He had a blanket thrown over his shoulders and a mug in either hand—a gentle offering from his boy.
Shane glowed in the morning sun and Ilya couldn’t help the way his lips curled into a smile. Something about Shane seemed particularly relaxed as he made his way over and handed Ilya his mug before ambling up the rock and sitting next to him.
Ilya caught the moment he noticed the cigarette butt as he went to toss the blanket across Ilya’s bare shoulders, and he tried to look sheepish as those dark eyes found his face. He must have been doing a great job because Shane dug into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter—setting them gently on the rock between them with a put upon sigh.
“Hollander!” Ilya teased in mock surprise. “You are being very bad. Do you not know smoking is bad for you?”
Shane rolled his eyes, hiding his smirk behind a sip of his coffee. “These are your cigarettes, asshole.”
With a hand on his chest, Ilya sat up straight. “I do not know what you mean. I am good boy. Rule follower.” Shane raised a brow and Ilya grinned childishly with a shrug. “But I will take off your hands, make sure your health is good.” Shane nodded as if giving in, and wasn’t his boy so kind to look the other way when he thought Ilya needed something to take the edge off.
“Da, make sure your health is good so I can fuck you for many many more years,” Ilya couldn’t help but add. Shane choked on his coffee, coughing as he patted his chest and glared up at Ilya’s smug grin.
“God I hate you,” he finally replied once he caught his breath.
Ilya shook his head, sipping his own warm drink. “Is not true, you are liar. You love me.”
And for a moment Ilya wondered if there had been just the hint of questioning in his tone, because Shane looked at him then, head tilted to the side as those deep brown eyes flicked across his face.
Shane reached up, cupping his cheek and brushing his thumb beneath Ilya’s eye, wiping away what must have been the tacky residue of dried tears. “I do,” he whispered. “I love you.” Ilya’s heart soared as Shane leaned up to capture his lips in a chaste kiss.
After a breath they pulled back, just enough for their foreheads to still touch. “And I love you too.”
His boyfriend chuckled, sitting back and grinning into his mug. “I know. I knew before you said it last night. Your mom told me you did.”
Ilya’s brows flew up. Shane had never mentioned that was part of their conversation. He nodded, looking pleased. Ilya recalled there was some saying about a cat and cream, he thought it was fitting. “She told me you’d said it in Russian, when we were on the phone that time.”
“Mama!” Ilya exclaimed, tilting his head back toward the sky with a groan. Shane laughed and Ilya felt his cheeks warm. He supposed maybe he was the liar, because he was Russian and definitely blushing now.
“I did not…” he rubbed a hand across his curls. “I did not yet have the words, in English. To say this to you.”
He knew Shane understood what he was trying to say. Not that he didn’t know such common words in English, but rather he was not prepared for what they meant, for Shane to understand him.
“I know,” Shane whispered with a nod. He smiled up at him again and Ilya wondered how there had ever been a time where he couldn’t admit to himself that he loved this man. “I wanted to hear you say it yourself anyway. When you were ready.” Ilya bobbed his head, smiling back just slightly. “I wanted to be able to say it back.”
Ilya hummed, wrapping his arm around Shane, pulling him close. He went easily, his head finding Ilya’s shoulder, nose pressed to his throat. Ilya felt the brush of his sleek black hair against his jaw and closed his eyes, reveling in the feeling.
“What were you doing out here?” Shane’s voice was a soft vibration against his chest. “Besides smoking.” Ilya squeaked when Shane pinched his nipple in protest.
“Jesus Hollander, so violent!” he teased and Shane nearly set his heart alight with his laugh in response.
Ilya pressed a kiss to his head, burying his face in the scent of seaweed shampoo and whatever distinct smell this place seemed to have. “I was talking to my mother,” he breathed, eyes closed.
Shane stroked across his chest, fingertips dancing at his sternum. He touched the cross on his necklace reverently. “Is…habit of mine. When I am alone or I feel…too much.”
“I didn’t know that,” the man whispered to his skin, pressed against his side.
“I know moya lyubov. Why would you?” Ilya asked gently, not accusatory. “We have not yet spent mornings together like this.” When he glanced down, Shane’s dark eyes seemed sad and distant, he chewed his bottom lip in the corner.
Ilya slid his hand from Shane’s shoulder to his jaw, cradling it like something precious before tilting his head back and kissing him tenderly. “Do not look like that. Is past now, we have whole lives to learn our habits. To be together.”
Shane nodded, giving him a faint smile before closing his eyes and kissing Ilya again, less mildly but not as heated as their kisses last night. Something that left room for the promise of more, of later, of we have time.
“I’m glad that I got to meet her,” Shane said finally, turning to lean against Ilya again, both hands wrapped around his mug. “She was beautiful, just like you said. And kind.”
Ilya’s heart clenched in his chest and he rested his cheek on Shane’s head, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath. “Yes, I am glad you got to meet her too.” He paused but Shane waited patiently. “I dream about her, sometimes…”
He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the image he’d seen when he was twelve—finding her lying there in her bed, her arm hanging lifelessly over the edge. The image had haunted him, still did on nights he was alone and sleep escaped him.
Instead, Ilya imagined her the way that he saw sometimes in his dreams, lying there in the garden or in a hammock, eyes closed peacefully. Her arm hung there, almost the same as in the nightmares, but it was not limp. Her dainty fingers moved back and forth across the blades of grass and Ilya watched in awe as she seemed to sigh with the breeze.
“Not like nightmare, but dream where I see her. She calls me over, calls me Ilyusha…krolik.” His voice was wet but the warm air of Shane’s breaths held him there—grounded him. “I tell her about you. Sometimes you are inside, not far away and I want you to come meet her. I turn, try to get you to come out. Wish you were faster before she disappears.”
Before he knew it, Shane set down his mug and took Ilya’s from his hands. He gazed up at him, eyes wet with unshed tears as he cupped Ilya’s face in his palms. His freckles blurred as Ilya’s fell, but he willed himself not to hide, not from Shane, not anymore.
“Often you are too slow,” Ilya blew a raspberry playfully before sniffling. Shane chuckled, blinking fast so his tears fell anyway. “I wake up…empty. Sad. That you did not get to meet each other. So now I am…” he searched for the word in English, nodding in Shane’s grasp as he found it. “Grateful. That you have met. Even if I could not be there to see.”
Shane smiled back, brushing the remaining tears away. “Me too, Ilya. Me too.”
He pressed their foreheads together and they took deep breaths in one another’s embrace, the trickling of water and the calls of the loons a melody Ilya would carve into his heart if he could. Right next to where he kept his mother, right next to where he kept Shane.
~
“Do you think she is still with us?” Ilya asked as he walked with Shane’s hand in his.
After sitting a while longer by the water, they determined it was time to go back inside and get started on breakfast. They strolled up the path together, taking their time, debating what they should eat. Pancakes, Ilya had demanded. It would always be pancakes.
“Who? Irina?” Ilya grinned at the way his mother’s name rolled off Shane’s tongue. He did his best to copy Ilya’s accent, was almost perfect. She would have loved you, he thought to himself as Shane seemed to ponder the question. She does love you. He knew it.
“Well I suppose she’d be with you. She’s part of you,” Shane continued. And Ilya loved the way that sounded too.
“But you are part of me also,” he offered. “I carry you with me everywhere.” And Ilya wanted to kiss that delicious blush on Shane’s freckled cheeks. “You and me we are, what is phrase: deal that comes together.”
“A packaged deal,” Shane suggested as they made their way up the steps.
“Da, this. Packaged deal. You are mine and I am yours.”
Shane stopped when he got to the top of the steps, Ilya just one behind him and they turned to face the water, hands still intwined.
“I think—” but before Shane could finish the thought, a gust of wind picked up, blowing through the trees and rippling across the lake water. It made waves that sparkled in the morning sun, reflections of light gleaming off the water’s surface and shining blindingly in both of their eyes.
Ilya heard the branches sigh and looked up at Shane to find his bangs askew, button up shirt nearly blown off one shoulder.
Shane laughed, head tilted back as he reached up to comb his fingers through Ilya’s disheveled hair. And Ilya felt a warmth, the feeling of home and mine and ours settle inside of him as he gazed up at his love, sunshine streaked across his smiling face, freckles dancing like twinkling gems.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Shane grinned down at him breathlessly. Ilya felt his own smile form as Shane pet tenderly through his curls, their whole world, their future unfolding in his eyes. “Always and forever.”