Chapter Text
2010
It happened after Boston lost 4-0 to Montreal. A game they’re not supposed to acknowledge beyond trash talk on the ice. Then they only use polite distance anywhere else in public. That was the rule, unspoken but ironclad. Different teams. Different jerseys. Cameras were everywhere, and whatever existed between them existed only in the negative space. Missed eye contact, a brush of shoulders, and a tap of a foot. All accidental to anyone who may be watching. It was still new. Too new for certainty, but old enough for Shane to notice when something was off.
The arena was mostly empty by the time Shane headed down the service corridor that looped past the visitor facilities. His skates were off, his gym bag slung over one shoulder, the adrenaline of the win finally bleeding out of his system. Leaving his body tired and used. The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead, one of the few sounds left in the halls.
He heard the voice before he saw Ilya.
It was quiet. Barely more than a breath. And it stopped Shane dead in his tracks.
Russian.
Not loud. Not sharp. Not the performative bark Ilya used on the ice when he was trying to intimidate someone. This was lower, rougher around the edge. Like it slipped out before Ilya remembered to keep it in.
Shane stayed still.
Down the corridor, half-hidden by a concrete support pillar, Ilya was leaning back against the wall. His helmet was fisted in his grip. The packed gym bag sat at his feet. His head was tipped back, his blue eyes closed, throat exposed in a way that made something in Shane’s chest tighten.
This wasn’t the Ilya Rozanov who grinned for the cameras. Who flirted shamelessly with everyone. Who chirped and baited every player he could.
This Ilya looked…tired.
He murmured something again in Russian. It was short and clipped, almost like a reprimand aimed inward. Shane didn't understand the words, but he understood the shape of them well enough. The way he knew they were meant to be heard. That's what got him. Ilya was not performing.
Shane watched him perform all season. Hell, he’s watched him perform in private, too. Sharp humor was used to keep Shane away. This moment had none of that.
Shane should’ve walked away. He knew that. This wasn’t his space, not really. This was the kind of moment you pretended you didn’t see, didn’t hear. Especially this new, when whatever they were was fragile enough to shatter. But his feet didn't move.
Ilya exhaled, long and slow, like he was trying to steady himself. His shoulders sagged. For just a second, he looked… small. Not physically. He was still sharp, with coiled muscles, but emotionally. Like the weight he carried had finally fallen.
Shane stepped forward then. Slowly.
“You okay?” he asked, voice deliberately neutral.
Ilya startled. It was subtle, but Shane saw it, the way his shoulders tensed, the way his spine straightened, and if he had been pulled by marionette strings. His eyes snapped open, already sharp, the walls up.
He switched to English instantly.
“Perfectly fine, Hollander,” Ilya said, mouth curving into something that looked like a smirk.
“Go enjoy your victory.”
The performance was flawless. Except Shane knows what he heard. He studied Ilya for a beat longer. Took in the bruise blooming along his jaw, the way his weight had shifted.
“You sure?” Shane asked, voice soft.
For a moment, the mask slipped; there was surprise in Ilya’s eyes. But then it was gone as fast as it came.
“Da,” Ilya said automatically.
Shane nodded. He doesn’t push. That wasn’t how this worked. Not yet… and maybe never, if Ilya didn’t want it.
“Okay,” He said, walking past. “Take care.”
He kept walking down the corridor, the sound of the small Russian phrases in his head. The way they sounded on his lips. Shane doesn’t look back. He wondered if he had anyone he could speak Russian with here.
~
Shane noticed it in fragments at first.
Not the words. He didn’t understand those yet. But the moments. The way Ilya’s voice changed when he thought no one was listening. The way English disappeared, the second it became too much.
The first time after the hallway, it happened weeks later, in a hotel that wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Their teams were on opposite ends of the schedule, booked in to the same anonymous building. Shane hadn’t expected to see Ilya at all, much less hear him at two in the morning through the thin seam of a cracked door.
Ilya stood in the hallway in sweatpants and a t-shirt, one hand braced against the wall, the other pressed carefully to his ribs. He muttered something in Russian under his breath. Short and pained. Before he noticed Shane behind his slightly ajar hotel room door.
The switch, just like before, was immediate.
“Stalking me now, Hollander?”
Shane stood there in his own doorway, like a deer caught in head lights. Ilya had been in pain and hurting, not unsimiliar to when he stumbled upon him in Boston. Shane got the distinct feeling that Ilya didn't want him to see him like this. In a moment of uncertainty, he slammed his hotel door, severing their connection.
~
The next time, it was exhaustion.
Ilya showed up at Shane’s apartment after a red-eyed flight, slipping inside. The curtains stayed drawn. Phones were silenced. They didn’t even kiss right away. Sometimes they didn’t at all.
Ilya dropped onto his couch with a sigh, “Your couch is better than mine,” he said. “This is unfair.”
“You say that every time,” Shane replied, passing him a bottle of water.
“That is because it is true.”
Ilya drank half of it in one go, then slumped back, eyes fluttering shut. He kept talking, complaining really, about travel, about practice times, about nothing in particular, until the words started to tangle and slow.
English was becoming hard again as he got tired. Shane noticed this often. The words slipped further apart, until they became Russian. Consonants softening and the vowels stretching as his eyes drifted shut. Not asleep… not yet. Shane didn’t understand them, not really. Yet, he understood his cadence now. The way Ilya’s voice dipped when he was upset. The way it flattened when he was too tired to try.
Shane stayed quiet.
He sat on the arm of the couch instead of crowding him, close enough to reach, but far enough not to spook him. Ilya’s head tipped to the side, mouth still moving. Russian spilling out in low murmurs as he continued. Complaints, maybe. Memories. Or maybe it was meaningless.
At some point, Ilya shifted and winced. It was small and barely there. It was enough for Shane to notice.
He stood, grabbed the fluffy throw blanket from the back of the chair, and draped it over him with ceremony. Ilya didn’t startle… didn’t even snap fully awake again. Just made a quiet sound in his throat and shifted closer to the warmth.
The Russian stopped. A minute passed and then another. Shane thought he might’ve fallen asleep. But then he opened his blue eyes. They were unfocused at first. He looked at Shane like he was solving a complicated crossword; he had the same expression that Shane’s father often did.
“You did not tell me to shut up,” he said finally.
Shane shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “You weren’t talking to me.”
Something unreadable passes over Ilya’s face. Then… he muttered something in Russian, before pulling the throw higher over him.
Shane smiled.
Sometime after 2017
It happened years later. Shane still doesn’t know Russian, but he’s learned how to speak Ilya. Time has taught him what to listen for. They’re not hiding anymore. Not like they used to. Not at all if Ilya had his way. Yet, the cameras and the noise still exist.
Ilya was hurt. Slammed into the boards by a player twice… maybe thrice his size. It wasn’t bad, luckily. Not in a way that will make headlines for more than a day. Yet it was enough to leave him stiff when he walked, careful when he sat. Enough that Shane notices the way his jaw tightened in pain.
They were in Shane’s apartment again. A different one than before. It was bigger and brighter. Ilya liked how many windows it had, and Shane liked how he could see the night air and the city humming below them.
Ilya was on the couch, one arm braced along the back, the other resting across his ribs.
He exhaled.
Then, without looking at Shane, he says something in Russian. It’s quiet. Unforced. Not torn from him by pain or exhaustion. Just… there.
Shane stilled.
He didn't pretend he didn’t hear it. Doesn’t fill the space with English out of habit or courtesy. He just waited, like he learned to do. Ilya’s eyes flick toward him. There’s no performance waiting behind them. No grin, no deflection. Just a question, unspoken.
Did you notice?
“Yes,” Shane says gently. Not what. Not I heard you. Just yes.
Ilya’s mouth twitches. Not a smile. Something closer to relief.
He sighs and lets his head fall back against the couch, throat exposed, eyes closing. The Russian comes again, softer this time, stretched thin with fatigue. Shane doesn’t need to know the words to know what they are.
He stands, crosses the room, and kneels in front of him. His hand came to rest on Ilya’s thigh; on another day, it would have earned him a grin or a dirty comment. But he was too sore and tired today.
Ilya opens one eye. “You’re very calm about this,” he says, English returning easily now.
Shane reaches out and presses his thumb just below Ilya’s ribs, careful, testing. Ilya hissed softly.
“Too much?” Shane asks.
Ilya shakes his head. “No. That is the spot.”
Shane adjusted. Ilya exhaled, long and slow, and something inside him settled.
“You don’t ask,” Ilya says after a moment. “About the Russian.”
Shane met his gaze. “Didn’t feel like my question to ask.”
Ilya watched him for a long beat. Then he nodded, once.
“That is good,” he says quietly. “Maybe I teach you few words later.”
Shane’s hand stayed where it was… steady, sure. He doesn’t answer despite the urge to learn Russian for himself. He doesn’t need to. The map has been drawn slowly and carefully over years of paying attention.
Ilya murmurs something in Russian again.
This time, Shane answers.
“Yeah,” he says, soft and certain. “I’ve got you.”
Ilya’s eyes close. And he believes him.