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There was a crash - making most of the room flinch - the sound of someone banging the doors open, and before Ilya could turn his head, Bood says in a quizzical voice, eyebrows drawn together like he was seeing a round puzzle piece from the same puzzle box of all normal-shaped puzzle pieces, “What the hell is Shane Hollander doing here?
===
Moments Earlier
It had been several hours since the unfortunate plane descent, and Ilya was just about to crawl out of his skin in his impatience.
He was sitting beside Bood, on a couch facing the doors to the large, private, and, decorated suite where most of his team converged after the almost plane crash. Half of the team was sitting around a large table with a pretty tablecloth topped with the beginnings of a centrepiece, others talking, others just nursing drinks, others fiddling with their phones, and the rest, including Ilya, scattered among the smaller couch sets and chairs lining the walls.
The suite, apparently, was pre-decorated for an event tomorrow, and the hotel provided it generously after Coach Weibe requested a large private room for the team after the harrowing plane incident, when it became apparent that everyone achieved an unspoken agreement to stay together, sticking with each other in small groups like they didn’t have their own hotel rooms. They all needed a moment to decompress and call their loved ones, or, in Ilya’s case, wait for Coach Weibe and Dale, their equipment manager, to arrive bearing a new phone, as his, along with a few others, got wrecked during the plane’s horrendous descent. It slid almost halfway through the plane, ending up under Haas’ seat, screen broken and dark no matter how much he pressed the ‘on’ button after all the hubbub.
“What is news saying now?” Ilya asked Bood, his eyes trained on his fingers as they fidget on the small bandage he has on the side of his palm, courtesy of broken glass on the plane’s floor, as he was trying to find his phone as soon as they landed.
“Still nothing, just that our plane needed an emergency landing. I don’t know who’s cutting off info about us or anything else; it might be the airline or the league wanting to verify information first.” Bood says, shoulders shrugging, eyes on his very finely working phone, thumbs scrolling.
Ilya nods his head in thanks. He must be so worried, Ilya thinks, he can vaguely remember the words he sent over Instagram, and knew Shane must have read them by now.
Shane
You are the best thing in my life.
I love you. Always. Maybe from the first time I saw you.
I am thinking only about you right now. A million memories. Thank you for those.
Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe it.
Stupid, he shouldn’t have sent those, but he was terrified and in the moment, he needed Shane to know, know that even if turned out that Ilya did not exist anymore, Shane would have his heart, his spirit, he would be with him in whatever form he can, because he was Shane’s, he owned Ilya, body and soul.
Get it together, Ilya chastised himself. It’s done, and Shane needed to know anyway. He’d have his phone soon enough and can text him, assure him Ilya is okay.
The doors opened, and in walked Dale and Coach Wiebe like angels sent from above, bearing several small paper bags of Ilya’s salvation. “Fucking finally!” Ilya exclaimed with a whine as he stood up, Coach Weibe walked up to him and handed him a paper bag as Dale branched away to hand the other players their own bags.
“Sorry, sorry, they took some time at the store transferring all the data from the broken phones.” Coach Wiebe said as both he and Ilya sat down, the man helping Ilya with the box containing both his old broken one and his new one, with Ilya quickly swiping up and starting the phone, and the sweet, sweet sound signalling it’s turned on, at last.
Ilya barely opened the messages app when a chorus of “ping, ping, ping,’s” started sounding, one after the other, a seemingly endless sound, overlapping each other as a continuous string of messages pop up on his screen faster than Ilya could read, all coming from one single contact, Jane.
“Whoa, Cap,” Bood whistled beside him, as Coach Wiebe raised both his eyebrows. “Maybe you should’ve texted Jane with one of our phones?”
“I—” Ilya couldn’t respond to that, his throat tight as he tried and failed to read the messages popping up on his screen, because the simple matter was, he didn’t know Shane’s number, has been saved so long in his phone but never committed it to memory.
Ilya, please, please be okay
Ilya, I swear to God
I love you, my love
Always
From that first time at the rink, I was yours
Fuck, we took so long to accept it
Please be okay, please I need you to be okay
Fuck everyone else
Fuck Ilya
I love you so much, my love
Fuck the memories, all I want is you
Mom says you’re okay
Please, fuck, be okay
You’re in my heart, too
I’m going on a plane
The crashing of the doors then sounded, making everyone’s still jittery nerves jump. Both Bood and his eyesight was in line and in full view of the door; Coach Weibe turned his head and eyebrows shot up as Bood said, “What the hell is Shane Hollander doing here?”
Ilya felt electricity zap across his back, and the small hairs of his arms stand as saw Shane in a random non-descript hoodie, still holding the door open with the empty hallway behind him as if afraid to go completely inside, with red-rimmed eyes he was casting around the room like he was desperately looking for something, the All-Star seemingly uncaring that he had the attention of the whole room on him. The Centaurs seem to be stunned into silence at seeing the Prince of Hockey suddenly in their midst, looking harried, hair dishevelled, as if he’d been running his hands through it and Ilya’s heart broke seeing Shane in this state.
You, he’s looking for you, Ilya thinks, his head apparently having to remind him of the fact because he himself was frozen right now, with an image in front of him he could not compute. Shane just had a game in Washington a handful of hours ago and Ilya was quite sure that that game was just ending when he and the Centaurs got off the plane.
Coach Weibe must be on the same line of thought as he answered Bood’s question with a question of his own, “Didn’t they just have a game in Washington?”
Shane must have heard the Coach’s dulcet tones from across the room because his head snapped forward and his eyes, fresh with unshed tears, locked onto Ilya’s, who was still stuck on the couch.
“Ilya,” Shane sobbed, freeing the door and running to where he was seated.
“Shane—?” Ilya said as his body finally moved to stand up but barely managed to as Shane was already there, wrapping his arms around him and crashing Ilya back down to the couch and ended up kneeling between Ilya’s legs. “Ilya, Ilya,” Shane sobbed into his neck as he buried his face up and into Ilya’s hair, inhaling his scent in between sobs; Ilya can feel Shane’s whole body trembling, arms tight around Ilya’s torso.
“Hey, hey, моя любовь, it’s okay, I’m okay, shh, shh.” They stayed like that for minutes, and Ilya just kept repeating a string of incoherent assurances, bracing Shane’s head tightly with his right hand and his back with his left. He’s not sure he can form sentences right now because he almost died a few hours ago and now his Shane was here.
“I thought you were gone,” Shane whined against Ilya’s skin, his voice muffled but small, and Ilya could not prevent the tears forming at the corners of his own eyes at the sound.
Ilya shushes him again, “But I’m not. I’m here, мой любимый, see? Hush now, let me see your face,”
Shane, still hiccupping, came up to face him at last, letting Ilya’s hands pull his head up, face sandwiched between them, “You’re not allowed to die, Ilya. Not before me,” Ilya smiled, the corners of his mouth turning up in amusement, “Do you have to win everything?”
“I have to not lose you.” His voice cracked on the last word. "But I'd lose a thousand times anywhere else if it meant I got to keep you, Ilya."
Ilya used his thumb to wipe the corners of Shane’s eyes, “Okay, okay.” he said, nodding, as Shane continued to sniffle and stare Ilya’s face, eyes hungry for every detail, like he’d disappear if he stopped looking at him. “How are you even here, my love?”
As if on cue, the doors of the suite opened again and in walked Yuna Hollander, with a stack of papers in one hand and a suspiciously large paper bag on one elbow with a cup of coffee in the other hand. Unlike Shane, she spotted them immediately and seeing Ilya’s face, she broke into a relieved smile.
Before going to them, though, she turned around and twisted the locks on the doors shut, the heavy ‘schwip, click’ sound echoing through the cavernous room, this 5’10 asian woman effectively locking an entire NHL professional hockey team in.
“Boys, no one goes out of this room, please. I’m glad to see you all are okay.” She says, turning and pleasantly, addressing the room at large, but somehow, the hairs at the back of Ilya’s neck stood up. Shane took this as his cue to burrow back into Ilya’s neck, sniffling all the while, and at the same moment, Ilya remembered that they weren’t the only people in the room. He looked around his teammates and coach, whose expressions range from shocked to befuddled to outright scared. Yuna strode across the room like the queen she is and upon reaching Ilya, wrapped a free arm around his back and kissed his hair, “Especially you, sweetheart. You gave us quite the scare.”
“Sorry.” Ilya says, voice suddenly tight with emotion.
“Shh, none of that,” Yuna says, straightening and looking directly at Ilya, hand on the other shoulder her son was not currently buried in. “Also, to answer your question, I pulled in some favours and chartered a jet to fly us here. David’s at Ottawa and I was already with Shane in Washington. I told him you were safe, dear, but you might wanna call or ping him a text later, he was also beside himself when the news broke, even if I already assured both of them that I got confirmation there were no serious injuries among the team from the emergency landing.”
“I will,” Ilya said, nodding, leaning his head against Shane’s his left hand combing through Shane’s hair, overwhelmed with emotion and amazed at the powerhouse that was Yuna Hollander. “My phone was broken, and Coach just got back with replacement.”
At the mention of said coach, Yuna trained her gaze to where Coach Weibe was sitting beside Bood in the C-shaped couch and smiled, extending her hand to him. “Coach Wiebe, Yuna Hollander. Ilya’s told us all about you.”
The coach, with a look rivalling Bood’s confused face, managed to school his features into a professional expression, shook her hand and said, “Mrs. Hollander, nice to finally meet you. I wish we could have met under pleasanter circumstances.”
“Indeed,” Yuna said with a sigh. “and speaking of said circumstance,” Yuna once again turned to address the gathered athletes in the room, her eyes sharp and determined.
“Everyone, sorry for intruding on you like this. My name is Yuna Hollander. Some of you I’ve already met, some I’ve not had the pleasure to, but I’m confident everyone knows my son, Shane.” A few scared nods pepper the room, and Ilya, in spite of everything, could not hide a small smirk.
Yuna smiles, nods to herself and continues, “I’m sure all of you are still shaken by what happened and while this is the last thing I want to do, to ask this of you, my first instinct as a mother is to protect my sons.”
With that sentence, Coach Wiebe’s face then relaxed into a seriousness that belied his understanding—Ilya knew he confirmed it before anyone else.
Yuna raised the hand that contained the sheaf of papers. “These are NDA’s, just boilerplate stuff and are just an assurance that this... knowledge would not leave this room today, up until my boys are ready to come out on their own.” She placed the papers down onto the table, which some of the nearest players took a piece of, then clasped her hands together. “Now, as Ilya has spoken highly of you all, I am pretty sure we don’t need this and I am not at all forcing you to sign this without your lawyers if you choose not to do so or without your due diligence, so I am opening up the room for some questions, as I am sure you have many, and hopefully, at the end, you can decide if we need the NDA’s or not.” Nods around the room again. Yuna smiles warmly and claps her hands together, “Great! Your questions can start now.”
Several hands shoot up into the air, and Ilya couldn’t suppress his huff of laughter at the silliness of it all, like a schoolteacher asking a room of kindergarteners if they wanted to have their lunch hour first before nap time. Shane elbowed him as best he could as their position allowed and shifted so he is sitting cross-legged and sideways against Ilya, facing the room, but with his arms still around the other man, head leaning against Ilya’s arm. Ilya leaned his head against the top of Shane’s and smiled mischievously at his teammates.
Yuna points at Haas, who has his hand in the air.
“Hello, ma’am, I’m Luca, uhm, Haas. I’m pretty sure I know but I-I don’t wanna assume, umm, but can I ask why Shane Hollander is here and, umm, crying and hugging our captain?” The rookie can’t even look at Yuna directly, his eyes trained on the floor, a flush brightening his cheeks.
Yuna smiles at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling, “Well, nice to meet you Luca. And to answer your question, that’s usually what happens when two people love each other very much, and one of them was in an almost-accident.”
Several more hands shoot up into the air as Haas blushes again and quips, “Okay, thank you, ma’am.” Yuna points at Bood this time, “Hi, uh, Mrs. Hollander, I’m Zane Boodram, the team calls me Bood. Wow, this is big huh. I, uh, just want to ask who else knows about this-about them, I mean?”
Yuna nods and replies, “Aside from me and David, Shane’s dad, Hayden and Jackie Pike know, and I believe Rose Landry does as well as Ilya’s best friend, Svetlana-?” At this, she turns to Ilya for confirmation, and Ilya nods at her and the room and adds, “Scott Hunter has a suspicion, I think, but does not know for sure.” Yuna hums at that and turns back to the room as Wyatt, who’s beside Bood, whistles for effect and says, “Wow, so it’s like Top secret, secret.”
Bood elbows him, “Yes, idiot, why did you think there are NDA’s? Also, they’re them.” Bood’s arm gesture at Ilya and Shane, still wrapped around each other, Shane blushing and Ilya, chuckling like a maniac.
Harris cleared his throat, “Yuna, Mrs, Hollander, if I may, Harris here, Cens Social Media Manager,” Yuna smiles and nods at him and he continues, “So about the NDA’s, do you just have these lying around, or? These are indeed boilerplate but still pretty detailed and quite specific. My friend’s a lawyer, so I’ve seen documents like this before…” he interjected from the conference table, shaking the NDA that’s in his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Harris, and Great question! I had them done by our lawyer a week after we found out about Shane and Ilya in a rather sudden manner.”
“What?” Shane, who was all but non-verbal just moments before, gasps, as Ilya, smiling, quips at the same time, “Of course you did.”
“When did you find out?” Haas pipes up.
Yuna purses her lips to fight a smile as Shane stares up at her indignantly, “Mom, why? That was an accident.”
“Luca, we found out about three years ago. And, Yes, Shane, accidents happen, and we needed to make sure we have security set in place.” Yuna says at the same time Haas quips yet again, “What was an accident?”
“But we’re careful!” Shane protests.
Ilya smirks and stage-whispers to Haas, “His Dad catches us at cottage, we were making out all wet from the lake, very hot—” at the same time Yuna replies to Shane, “Tell that to your father who unwittingly walked in on his son and Ilya Rozanov grop—”
“MOM! ILYA!”
“Alright, alright.” Yuna pats Shane’s hair over his blazing red cheeks, and Ilya can’t help but laugh and kiss them, the skin warm beneath his lips. “It’s okay, моя любовь, your mother is just looking out for us,”
By this time, the rest of the centaurs are looking at them with a mixture of amusement, awe and surprise still, but Ilya knew, even without talking to them, that these were his teammates and this is a safe space. The questions continued to pour in from the others, and the three answered as best they could.
“Who kissed who first?” Young quips.
Shane, “Ilya, definitely.”
Bood, “How long after that did you go to bed together?”
“Seconds, next,” Ilya grins, to hoots from the room.
“Who propositioned the other one first?” Dale.
“That’s Ilya too,” Shane says at the same time Ilya replies, “Shane,”
Ilya was immediately affronted. “Lies! You are liar, Hollander, you propositioned me,”
“No, I didn’t, that was you!”
“Liar, everyone must know this, everyone! Shane Hollander! Is! A Liar!”
“Well, you were the one who suggested that CCM shoot!” Shane intones.
“Ah,” Ilya smiles fondly then and looks at Shane and says, “Then, yes, the answer is me again.”
“Do we want to know the specifics of this argument?” Wyatt groans.
“Please don’t,” Bood said in all sincerity.
Yuna, amused, quips, “Boys, let’s focus,” and the two settle down.
Harris asked again, this time, “Who said I love you first?”
Ilya smiles, “Ah, yes, this one is also me.”
Harris gasps and says, “You again, Ilya? That’s like almost all of the relationship stages now!”
Ilya grins and says while nodding, “Shane was very scared and very gay.”
“I am regular gay,” Shane pouts at Ilya, eyebrows scrunching together, earning wide eyes from half of the room, because what do you mean Shane Motherfucking Hollander, Prince of Hockey and Canada’s Golden boy, just pouts like that at his rival and apparently, boyfriend, Russian Terror of the Ice, Ilya Rozanov?
“Wow, never pegged you as the whipped one, cap.” Bood whistles again.
Ilya’s brows scrunch together as he asks, “What is this, whipped? Like cream?” and Harris had to explain to him what whipped means in this context, even going so far as to mime a whip in his hand, with sounds and all, to Shane’s chagrin and ever-deepening blush and Ilya’s raucous laughter.
“Well, Shane and I have not experimented with leather in the bedroom yet, but yes, I am whipped for this man,” the Russian finally answers.
Troy, who had been silent all this time but was looking at Ilya and Shane with a mixture of pride and fondness, “Cap, I just want to say I’m happy for you and Hollander. But how long has this been going on? I know I almost guessed a while ago but I just want to make sure how long I’ve been right.”
Ilya rolled his eyes and huffed a laugh, “Guess.”
“Umm, a couple of years?” Dykstra piped up. Ilya shook his head.
Troy questioned, “When you guys started the Charity? Wait, is this why you started that?”
Ilya, smiled and said, “No and yes. We needed to, what is word, change narrative,” looking down at Shane at the last word, who smiled fondly at the memory.
A chorus of “Aah’s” filled the room.
“Since the All-Star games where you guys were teammates?” LaPointe suggests, continuing the guessing game. Yuna is hiding her smile behind a hand now, while Ilya fully laughs, and says, “Nope,” Popping the ‘p’.
“Stop it, Ilya, just tell them.” says Shane, who was becoming redder and redder, nudging Ilya with a shoulder.
Ilya nuzzled his nose into Shane’s hair, which smelled of the 2-in-1 shampoo/shower gel they had for athletes in the stadium’s showers, and not the expensive seaweed shampoo he has in his condo, which makes Ilya realise that Shane came straight from the ice and onto the chartered jet to go to Florida. Yuna must have heard about the plane and arranged things while Shane was still playing. Suddenly, Ilya couldn’t speak. “You tell them, мой любимый.” He says, almost whispers, hand tightening against Shane’s back.
Shane, his Shane, looked at him with searching eyes for a beat and nodded, seemingly understanding that Ilya needed a moment. He turned to the room and said, “Since we were rookies.”
A series of shocked “What’s??” and “Huh’s?” littered the room like someone shook a tree branch during early fall, and the leaves fell in a beautiful, copper deluge. This will never get old, Ilya thinks as he smirks, people getting shocked at how long he and Shane had the rivalry is also how long he and Shane had loved each other.
“Ah-ah. The summer before.” Ilya corrects, as Shane rolls his eyes.
“The summer before your Rookie year? You mean you’ve been keeping this secret for close to 11 years?” After everything, that seems to be the thing to shock Coach Wiebe.
“Yes.” Ilya replies, his thumb sweeping against the side of Shane’s pointer finger in comfort.
“Until when?" Coach Wiebe asks.
“Until we retire, probably,” Ilya answers at the same time Shane says, “Next summer.”
Now it was Ilya’s turn to be shocked. His head whips down to face Shane with a bewildered, “What?” Ilya looks up at a fondly smiling Yuna in confusion and again looks down at Shane.
Shane brings up a hand to hold against Ilya’s face. “I don’t wanna wait anymore, Ilya. I want to come out as soon as we can. Unless, you don’t want to yet?” Shane ends with a flash of uncertainty that Ilya immediately wants to wash away.
“да, of course I want to, моя любовь, but—just why, we had plan? There is even big boring life plan binder at home with so much boring details.”
“Fuck the binder,” Shane says forcefully as Ilya’s jaw drops, and Shane laughs.
“Not the binder! How dare you!” Teased Ilya, who was so focused on Shane, he barely even noticed Yuna pulling out several large bundles of somethings from the suspicious paper bag and handing it around the room while whispering, the Centaurs unravelling the long strands of what looked like a spiky rope.
“I’m serious, Ilya. Mom told me about the plane as soon as I got out of the showers and even after we knew you were okay, all I could think about was—well, what if you’d d-died and left me?” Shane paused with a sob and fully faced Ilya, kneeling in front of him, and gritted his teeth for a moment before continuing, “Who would even be your next of kin, Alexei? You don’t even like him!”
Ilya interjects with a solemn nod, “I do hate him.”
“Right! They’d take you back to Russia, and no one would know about us, and I can’t even claim your body if you did die and I—I felt like dying, Ilya. I can’t do any of this without you. I’d end up hating hockey because it took you away from me, and live like a hermit for the rest of my life. Nothing else matters. Not anyone, not Montreal, not the League or Crowell, nothing matters but you, but us.” Tears were now steadily streaming down Ilya’s face. “We’ve wasted so much time,” Shane continued. “Years of denial, years of hiding what we are to each other.”
Ilya was vaguely aware that everyone else had quieted to the point you could hear a pin drop in the room, and that Coach and Bood had left the couch and stood away from them, while Yuna had walked to the far side of the room beside the doors.
“Shane, my love, what are you saying? You will not be, what is this, a hermit?” Ilya says, earning a laugh from Shane, “Is this because I almost died?” Ilya teased, searching Shane’s smiling eyes, pooling with fresh tears.
Shane was serious again, “No, Ilya, it’s because I almost died.” Shane had shifted to just one of his knees in front of Ilya by now, and the bright overhead hotel lights switched off completely, drowning all of them in darkness for a split second before a click sounded, and a thousand fairy lights enveloping the room winked in existence, bathing them all in a warm, soft glow, and for a moment there, Ilya thought they were somehow, impossibly, in space. Ilya looked around the room for a split second, at his teammates, holding what seemed to be meters upon meters of fairy lights looping around the room, most of whom were crying and smiling, to Yuna, who was also silently crying into her hand, and back to Shane.
“What is this?” Ilya asked him. “Are you trying to burn hotel down?”
Shane’s lips curved up. “They’re battery-operated. Fucking relax, Rozanov. Since you’re the one who instigated almost all our relationship stages, let me be the one to start this one.”
Ilya’s heart started to race, as he remembered telling Shane, years ago, that he would propose to him by covering the dock at the cottage with candles.
“There’s nothing in my life that matters to me more than you, Ilya.” Shane starts.
“Shane—” Ilya starts, but Shane laughs and says, “Could you not interrupt, for once in your life?”
“Shane,” Ilya said again with more insistence, unable to stop himself.
“Ilya,” Shane says in that annoyed but fond way of his. Ilya never could resist his name on Shane’s lips.
“моя любовь, моё всё, I think I loved you even before we met in person—there was that nagging feeling I had throughout Juniors that I had to find you, to see you, like a string pulling me to that parking lot where you were smoking next to a No Smoking sign. I didn’t know then, but I already chose you. I’ve loved you since we were seventeen, Ilya, and I promise to always, always choose you.” The tears in Shane’s eyes began to fall.
He took a deep breath and took something from his pocket. Then, Shane was holding a ring pinched between two fingers and said, “Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov, will you marry me?”
Was he in a dream right now? Did the plane crash really happen, and was this heaven? Surely not. He can feel the calluses on Shane’s palm from years of practice, as sure of his existence as he was about his own answer. In a tight, trembling voice, Ilya said, “You know my middle name.”
“It’s on Wikipedia—”
“Yes,” Ilya interrupted.
“Sorry, I know you don’t like your dad and I should’ve just asked you, but I—”
“No,” Ilya clarified. “Yes.”
Shane stared at him with confusion, and Ilya nodded to the ring.
“Yes,” Ilya said again. “I am saying yes, Hollander.”
“Oh.” Then Shane’s lips spread into a wide, earnest grin. “Yeah?”
“Yes, yes,” They kissed, crashing into each other, and the room erupted in howls and screams and woo-hoo’s from Ilya’s teammates, a thunderous clapping erupting a moment after.
Ilya came up for air only to pepper Shane’s face with kisses, all the while repeating, “I love you, я тебя люблю, my Shane, моя любовь.” He was saying it like a litany, like a prayer, his love for Shane as something holy.
“I love you so fucking much,” Shane says, forehead pressed to Ilya’s, with a quiet, steadfast reverence, fingertips trembling against Ilya’s cheeks.
While the celebration and talks of ordering drinks and pizza continue around the little cocoon Shane and Ilya are ensconced in, a little voice in Ilya’s head questions what he did to deserve this, but he shakes his head to dispel it. He knows—he knows he and Shane both worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get to where they are now that questioning this stroke of fate is being unfair to himself, and that the universe is sometimes kind enough to dole out a spark of light in the form of Yuna and David Hollander’s son.
===
At the end of the night, everyone in the room signed every single one of the NDAs. The newly engaged couple insisted it isn’t needed but Shane’s mom is a force of nature and while devils like Crowell work hard, Yuna Hollander works harder. The Centaurs, on the other hand, could not care less because they insisted they’d take the secret to their graves anyways so what was a measly signature?
All of this became a moot point when a few short months later, the couple gets outed in a way none of them foresaw. Well, at least most of them, because Yuna had a certain twinkle in her eye that says otherwise—but that’s a story for another day.