Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shane couldn’t move. The lights were too bright and his head felt so, so light and so impossibly heavy at the same time. He knew he was on a stretcher, knew he wore a brace to stabilize his head, knew that he couldn’t do more than blink against the lights and the sounds and the voices all bombarding him at once. His body felt like lead. His mind spun around like cotton candy.

And yet, he needed to tell them --

“My parents….”

“Your parents? Your coach is calling them, okay?”

“Okay… tellim ‘m fine, okay?”

“Tell who?”

“He’s g’nna worry…”

“Your coach is calling your dad.”

“No… not him…. ‘lya….”

“Who? Hey, Shane, you really need to keep your eyes open, okay?”

“Tellilyai’mokay --”

But his tongue suddenly felt too big to fit his words around. “He’s g’nna worry,” he barely managed repeat, and then everything went black.

Hayden followed behind the ambulance and waited for hours, it felt, in the waiting room before anyone bothered to come out and tell him and Shane’s parents about his condition. Hayden only caught the first part of the paramedic’s spiel. “He’s stable,” is all he needed to hear, really, and after that he checked out.

“There is one other thing,” the paramedic began, and Hayden, Yuna, and David looked back up quickly, concern coloring their expressions. “He kept trying to say something as we were loading him into the ambulance, but we couldn’t quite make it out. We think he was trying to say ‘tell… someone I’m okay’, but we couldn’t understand the name. Something with an L.”

Yuna and David exchanged glances with one another, then Hayden. “I don’t know of anyone he’d need to know that wasn’t already on the ice with him,” Yuna said in a hushed voice.

But Hayden thought he knew.

“He’s always texting this girl,” he told them slowly, wondering if he even should be telling them if Shane never had. “Her name is Lily --”

“That could’ve been it,” the paramedic interjected, nodding shortly. “It could’ve been ‘tell Lily I’m okay,’”

“Lily?” Yuna asked.

Hayden floundered for a moment, then hung his head apologetically. “They’ve been texting each other for… like, years. He thinks he’s sly about it, but any time we’re in Boston he takes off and, well, he’s never confirmed they’re a thing, but he always clams up anytime we mention her.”

Yuna looked at David, her brows knit together. “He’s always on his phone when he’s home,” she said, “but when we ask he usually says he’s talking to you or Rose.”

“Well,” Hayden admitted, “we thought Rose might’ve been Lily at first, because as soon as he met Rose he stopped texting Lily, but then they split up and suddenly he’s talking to Lily again.”

“Years?” David questioned.

Hayden nodded. “Since… God, 2011, at least?” he ball-parked, and Yuna and David’s eyes went wide.

“Well,” David continued, schooling his expression quickly. “I suppose she’d want to know, right?”

Hayden agreed, and suddenly he was thankful for having grabbed Shane’s hockey bag before leaving the match. He rifled through the pockets until he found Shane’s phone. As soon as he unlocked it, he grimaced.

“What?” Yuna asked quickly after seeing the expression on his face.

He flashed the screen in her direction so she could take in the missed notifications: dozens of texts and even a missed call from one, singular contact. Turning it back around, Hayden unlocked Shane’s phone, thankful that his friend had never bothered to change his passcode in all the years he’d known him, and couldn’t help but see the messages.

Lily:
Are you okay?

Lily:
Talk to me as soon as you can

Lily:
I’m sorry I can’t be there with you

Lily:
Shane

Lily:
Please

Lily:
Talk to me

Lily:
Shane, I need to know you’re okay

Lily:
I need you to be okay

Hayden tried not to wince as he typed out his message:

Shane:
This is Shane’s friend. He’s stable but asleep right now. Nothing we can do but wait for him to wake up. He wanted us to tell you

He hit send and made to lock the phone before three tiny dots appeared on the screen, indicating Lily was drafting out a response.

Lily:
You shouldn’t have invaded his privacy

Lily:
Thank you

“You've never met her?” Yuna asked him softly, and he frowned, shaking his head.

In his hands, he held Shane’s phone. Shane, one of the most private people Hayden had ever met in his life, did not allow just anyone access to it. He didn’t think Shane even knew that Hayden knew his passcode, but he’d never abused it. He’d never gone through his messages, or his photos, or his emails. He was surprised to see the photo on his home screen -- the All-Star 2017 East Side team. Shane himself knelt down front and center, a rare, genuine grin on his lips.

He reopened the messages from Lily. Her contact image, rather than a portrait, depicted a sunset, picturesque and beautiful. When Hayden enlarged it, the full photo revealed a crown of curls that could have been blonde, bathed in a golden hour’s glow, in the bottom of the shot. Nearly cropped out, but there. Real.

Shane:
Do you want me to call you when he wakes up?

He hit send before he could change his mind and delete the message. Lily’s response came in seconds.

Lily:
No

No? 

Maybe, he tried to reason, she was so distraught that she couldn’t speak over the phone. Maybe she didn’t want to talk to him.

Lily:
Please just

Lily:
Text?

Lily:
Tell him I’m sorry

Lily:
He will understand

When the doctor returned, Hayden and Shane’s parents all stood in unison. “He’s waking up,” the doctor told them, “if you would like to see him.”

And oh, was he a sight for sore eyes, Hayden thought. He sat up, head lolling on the pillows behind him, his arm nestled safely in a sling, and the swelling of his face from the fall’s impact had begun to set in. It wasn’t matured, yet, and Hayden knew he had about a day or two before his eyes would likely be blackened and his freckles hidden under bruises.

But he smiled when he saw them, and that was all Hayden could ask for.

Yuna and David reached for him on either side of the bed, and he wondered if Shane could hear how badly he slurred his words.

“‘m fine,” he whined, but his dark eyes glittered and Hayden knew he wasn’t actually put out by their concern. Embarrassed, maybe, but not upset.

“You hit the ice pretty hard there, Kiddo,” David murmured, brushing his free hand through Shane’s sweat-dampened hair. “How are you feeling?”

Shane blinked at the question. “Feelin’ good,” he said then, grinning up at his dad. “Like I’m floating away.”

Yuna met her son’s eyes and bit back a watery laugh. “You fractured your collarbone. You’ll feel it soon enough.”

But Shane, his eyes closed against the lights, offered the barest of head shakes the brace would allow. “Mhm, what about the game?” he asked them. 

“We lost,” Hayden answered, but there was no heat in his voice. “Marleau got you in the first minute of the game. I came with you and brought you your bag, so you can have a change of clothes when they finally let you leave.”

“Lost?” Shane repeated, his eyes fluttering open, blinking rapidly against the hospital light, trying to find Hayden’s gaze. “Boston won?”

Hayden tried to keep the grimace off of his face, but he didn’t know if it worked out. “Marleau got you good,” he said bitterly. His knuckles still ached. He would have to apologize to him, eventually, because he knew it had been a perfectly legal move, and he could see, in retrospect, the look of terror on Marleau’s face as Shane didn’t move.

But a dopey sort of smile began to tug at the corners of Shane’s mouth. “G’d for Boston,” he mumbled.

Then, slowly, a line began to form in between his brows. He reopened his eyes to look at Hayden. As if walking out of a fog, his eyes darted towards either of his parents.

“I need a favor,” he said, slowly, careful to enunciate his words. To Hayden, he said, “Alone?”

Yuna and David pressed kisses to Shane’s head and stepped out, promising to return with food that wasn’t from a hospital and to see about discharging him.

“I need you to call someone for me,” Shane said once they were out of the room. The door hadn’t even clicked shut before Shane turned his dark eyes onto Hayden’s, and the sudden lucidity of his speech made Hayden pause.

“Lily?” he guessed, and Shane’s eyes widened. Against the drugs in his system, the poker face he’d mastered over the years seemed to disappear, and Shane’s expression flipped between shock and confusion before settling on something like resignation.

“I texted her,” Hayden continued. “She said explicitly to not call her, and to tell you she’s sorry? But that you would understand.”

Shane frowned. Gesturing for Hayden to come closer, he whispered, “Lily is a secret. Seven year secret. I need -- I need to call, but you can't tell.”

“What do you mean, Shane? Tell what?”

But Shane’s eyes were way, way too serious as they bored into Hayden’s. “Not just my secret,” he said, just as softly. “You can’t tell. Do you promise? Lily will be your secret, too.”

And fine, maybe Hayden was too curious for his own good. Maybe he did want to know who Lily was. Maybe he unlocked Shane’s phone and called Lily for his own, selfish reasons.

Mostly, Hayden knew Shane needed this, and Shane trusted Hayden implicitly at this moment.

The call rang once before it picked up, but they were met with silence on the other end.

“Are you there?” Shane asked, his eyes closed, brows furrowed, using every bit of willpower in him to keep his words even and clear.

And then --

“Shane.”

Hayden stiffened.

“You scared me,” the voice said, but it was… wrong, somehow, to Hayden. Too soft. Too vulnerable. His accent felt thicker than Hayden had heard it in a long time, emotion blurring the line between English and Russian.

“I’m sorry,” Shane apologized. “We all get our bells rung eventually, right?”

“Marleau feels terrible,” Ilya replied. “He expected you would brace yourself. He will probably send fruit basket.”

Shane smiled at that. It was clear in his voice when he replied, “You’re going to the playoffs, though.”

Ilya tsked on the other end of the line. “Not the kind of victory to celebrate. We did not beat you in fair fight.”

“It was legal,” Shane argued. “Marleau didn’t do anything wrong.” Then, after a beat: “I’ll still take that fruit basket, though.”

Ilya hummed. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Concussion and a fractured collarbone,” Shane answered, though his words were beginning to run together, and Hayden could hear sleep threatening to overtake him.

“Rest, lyubov,” Ilya breathed into the phone.

“‘m sorry I didn’t text you,” Shane apologized.

“Shh. I am just glad to hear your voice now. I will see you soon, yes?”

Shane tried to nod, the motion stilted by his brace, not realizing (or not caring) that Ilya couldn’t see the motion through the call. “Talk to Hayden,” he said. “He’s keeping Lily secret for us.”

Ilya remained silent long enough that Hayden wondered if the call had dropped, but then he heard Ilya blow out a breath. “Okay, I will talk to Pike. You sleep now, okay?”

Shane’s only response was a quiet hum under his breath, and then he was asleep.

Hayden didn’t know what to do with the line.

“I will be there as soon as I can,” he said, voice clipped, and then the call ended.

Yuna and David offered to stay, but Hayden turned them down. “You know Shane,” he tried to reason with them. “He wouldn’t want you two to worry about him.”

David nodded. Gently taking his wife’s hand, he said something about cleaning up Shane’s place and preparing meals for him for when he’s released, and thankfully, mercifully, they left.

It felt like some kind of cosmic joke, then, that it wasn’t five minutes after they left that Ilya Rozanov arrived, wearing sunglasses and a ballcap that hid his trademark curls from paparazzi.

(And this is where Lily’s contact image began to make sense, and he wondered, now, if he would be able to recognise Rozanov’s mop now that he knew to look for him.)

Hayden led him inside Shane’s room and shut the door behind them, allowing some small amount of privacy, and then Rozanov removed his sunglasses to reveal puffy, bloodshot eyes. He beelined straight for Shane, who slept soundly against the mountain of pillows Yuna made for him. One hand held one of Shane’s. The other hand brushed gently over the swelling, bruised skin where his freckles hid.

“You know, then?” he asked, his voice uncharacteristically low. It wasn’t angry, Hayden realized, or accusatory. It was… resigned?

“I can guess,” Hayden answered. “He just asked me to keep your secret and had me call you.”

“And will you?”

Hayden’s eyes narrowed, then, and he wanted to get defensive. As if he’d ever betray his best friend like that, as if he’d ever willingly hurt him in that way. The insinuation struck him to his core, and he nearly -- nearly -- spit out a response he was sure to regret --

But Rozanov wasn’t looking at him.

Rozanov wasn’t paying him any attention at all.

He sat in the chair pulled beside Shane’s bed and held onto Shane’s hands with his own, his head bent low and resting on the cot like a pillow, and though he made no sound, his shoulders held so much tension Hayden thought he’d snap like a rubberband at any moment. His entire body trembled, Hayden realized.

He’d been terrified for Shane.

And suddenly, flashes of Shane crumpled on the ice returned to Hayden, but not just Shane. Rozanov was the first person at his side. Rozanov was the first person to call for medical. Rozanov hovered, refusing to get out of Shane’s line of sight until his coach forcibly pulled him off the ice, and even then he was staring at Shane, watching them load him onto the gurney, watching them wheel him away.

The hard outer shell of the player Hayden had grown to despise cracked within seconds to reveal… Ilya, he supposed. Not Rozanov, not the Captain of the Raiders. Just a man, holding the hand of Hayden’s best friend, looking like he’d spent the day grieving.

“I will trust you with this because he trusts you,” Rozanov said quietly, lifting his head and wiping errantly at his cheek with his shoulder. “We are… complicated.”

Hayden considered Ilya Rozanov and everything he thought he had known. A man renowned for getting under other player’s skins, for being one of the strongest, one of the best --

-- but it was never just Rozanov.

It was always Hollander-and-Rozanov.

Hockey’s golden boy versus hockey’s bad boy. Brain versus brawn. A package deal.

From the moment they were drafted, they'd been pitted against one another. For all Hayden knew, the moment Ilya Rozanov decided to come to North America sealed the deal of his and Shane’s partnership -- a narrative they’d never had any say in, but that the league (and sponsors, and commentators, and fans) all pushed.

Hayden hadn’t truly met or befriended Shane until Shane’s rookie season, and by that point, the rivalry narrative had already been in full swing. Everything, everywhere was Hollander versus Rozanov.

He’d never known a Shane that wasn’t embroiled in it.

“Seven years?” Hayden asked, and Rozanov looked up, confused. Hayden elaborated: “Shane called it a seven year secret. Is that… is that really how long this has been going on?”

He could see Rozanov think it over. “I think so,” he admitted. “Like I said. Is complicated. We were… casual for many years. Or tried to be. October is when we realized it was no longer casual, but we did not want to acknowledge it. January, at All Stars game, we accepted it. And now….”

“You two have been together longer than I’ve even known him,” Hayden said on an exhale, finally moving to sit down in the chair opposite Shane’s bed. “And it’s serious?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Rozanov’s jaw clenched, his eyes hardened, and he looked up to meet Hayden’s eyes as if daring him to question it. To question him.

Rozanov, though, picked his next words carefully. “I can speak for myself only. I have known Shane my entire career. I have seen him at his best and at his worst. I have stupid diet foods in my home for him. I make sure he has clean sheets and clothes, no waiting on cleaning. I make sure I have ginger ale in my fridge. I see him few times a year, in only pieces at a time, and I cannot complain because I would take him in any amount if it meant I could still have him.

“I have loved him since the beginning, but I was too young to know it. Too angry. But I have not told him yet. Not in English, at least, so he does not know.”

“What are you going to do?” Hayden heard himself asking.

“Do?” Rozanov repeated. “What do you mean, ‘do’? I wait. I do what Shane wants.”

“C’mon, man,” Hayden said. “You say it’s been seven years. Even if it only just got ‘serious’,” and here, Hayden pulled his hands up to make quotation marks, “you’re telling me you would keep hiding just to make him… what, comfortable?”

“It is not just comfort,” Rozanov spit the word out like poison between his teeth. “It is safety. It is a life.”

“It’s miserable --”

Rozanov tried to tamp down the frustration that began building up in his chest. Hayden could see it in the way he held himself, how he looked like a spring ready to fly. It was strange, he thought, to know that this is the man Hayden (and the entire Metros team, and most of the league) hated. This is a man famously disliked for his childish antics and cocky behavior. A man who had a reputation for enjoying the “simple pleasures” of fame: fast cars, liquor, and sex.

But for all Hayden knew, objectively, that this was that man, he couldn’t see any of it in that moment. At that moment, this was a man who was just… tired.

“It’s not safe for me in Russia, but I am still Russian citizen. Shane is not safe in league for his own reasons. My opinion? He would be safe if it were anyone but me, but he will not listen to this. So we hide. We steal moments when we can. We find light in the tunnel, as the saying goes, yes?”

Hayden nodded. “You’re going to burn yourself out,” he tells him. “This kind of thing, the anxiety and stress it’ll cause, it’ll get to you.”

“It is not permanent solution,” Ilya admits, “but if it means I get him at all, I will take it for as long as he will give it.”

In his sleep, Shane tried to turn onto his side towards the sound of Ilya's voice, but the brace and the bed caught him, holding him still. He made a sound, something in between a groan and a hiss, his eyebrows pinching together in pain for a split second before Ilya reached forward to pull one of Shane’s hands to his lips. Rather than kissing it, though, he looked as if he were praying, his lips brushing the skin with whispered words.

Hayden couldn’t understand him. He spoke in Russian, his voice even despite the still clear panic in his reddened eyes.

Then, Shane pulled in a deep inhale. His eyelids fluttered.

Hayden looked at Shane and Ilya's joined hands, then followed it up to the man himself, and Hayden couldn’t ignore the way his expression lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Ilya,” he breathed, and he smiled. Hayden had never seen him smile like that.

Ilya didn’t break. He didn’t cry. He looked at Shane with his brows furrowed and lips set in a line. Slowly, he brought one of his hands up to brush against Shane’s cheek, holding him so softly Hayden wondered if Shane would have even felt him had he not seen him there.

“You scared me,” Ilya murmured. It looked for a moment like he tried to smile at Shane, but it cracked on his next breath.

He let go of Shane’s cheek to pull the cap off of his head, running his hands through his hair to dislodge the curls that had begun to dry against his scalp. “Shane,” he said softly, and then he leaned forward to press a kiss to Shane’s forehead.

If his cheeks glistened with wet streaks, Hayden wouldn’t comment on them.

“Hey,” Shane said, and the word in his mouth felt like a coo. He placed a hand on Ilya's head and pulled him back down, pressing their foreheads together, breathing together, before he deliberately kissed him on the lips.

And Hayden finally, finally, saw what he hadn’t been able to comprehend. Shane, his best friend, looking dopey-eyed at Ilya Rozanov. Shane, bruised almost beyond recognition with a broken collarbone restricting his movements, consoling a lovesick, heartbroken Ilya Rozanov.

“We never talked about injuries,” Shane said. “Why haven’t we talked about them?”

“They would not let me see you,” Ilya muttered into Shane’s hair.

“I’m okay, Ilya, I promise.”

“I thought you were dead,” and finally, Ilya broke.

Hayden didn’t think either of them even remembered he was there, but quietly, he walked towards the door. Exiting the room, he shut it firmly behind him to grant them the privacy they deserved.

And if he spent the rest of his evening standing guard to protect that privacy, it would be no one’s business but his own.