Chapter Text
The first time it happens, Shane thinks—absurdly, stubbornly—that if he just keeps moving, his body will remember what it’s for.
Skate. Breathe. Read the ice. Win your battles. Get off the boards clean.
That’s what bodies are supposed to do.
He doesn’t know yet that his is rewriting its own rules.
The noise in the arena is a living thing, a roar that has learned his name and his number and how to rise when he so much as leans into a stride. Ottawa is loud tonight—Saturday night loud, full of beer and winter breath and people who have paid to watch men throw themselves into walls and call it sport.
Shane is used to it. He feeds on it.
He should feel normal. The routine is the same as it’s always been: pregame meal, tape, warm-up, the little coin-flip of nerves in his gut when the lights dim and the music spikes. He should be locked in—present in that razor-thin way that makes the rest of the world fall away until there’s only ice and blades and the next shift.
Instead, it’s like someone turned the saturation up too high.
The whites of the boards are too white. The lights above the rink glare a little sharper than they should. The sound comes in waves, sometimes muffled like his ears are underwater, sometimes so crisp it hurts.
He blinks hard behind his visor.
“Hey.” Ilya’s voice cuts through it, low and close, as if he can sense the static gathering behind Shane’s eyes. Their shoulders bump as they line up near the blue line for introductions, bodies pressed together in that casual intimacy that comes from sharing a life and a bench and a thousand little touches no one else ever sees. “You okay?”
Shane’s first instinct is to smile. To make it nothing.
He tips his chin, lets his mouth do what it always does—half grin, half promise. “Fine. Just… thirsty.”
He says it like it’s a joke, but his tongue feels thick. His mouth is dry in a way that doesn’t make sense, like he’s been chewing chalk.
Ilya’s gaze flicks to him, a quick up-and-down. The captain’s look. The husband’s look. The one that doesn’t miss much.
“You drink,” Ilya says, like an order softened by the fact that it’s Shane.
“Yeah, yeah.” Shane lifts his shoulders. “Bossy.”
Ilya’s mouth twitches. It’s not quite a smile. “Da.”
The announcer calls their names; the crowd surges. Shane skates his loop, taps his stick on the ice, feels the familiar bite of his edges—
—and for half a heartbeat, his legs feel like they belong to someone else.
Not weak, exactly. Just… delayed. Like the signal has to travel farther than it should.
He blinks again and forces his focus back to the rink.
It’s fine. It’s always fine until it’s not, and even then he’s learned how to play through it.
He has played through worse.
The puck drops, and the game starts the way games always start: with violence disguised as choreography.
The Centaurs push early. The first shift is fast, aggressive, the kind of opening that tells the other team they’re not going to be allowed to breathe. Shane takes his first stride, feels the burn in his thighs, feels the boards rush by in a blur.
He should feel alive.
He feels… wrong.
It’s subtle at first. A wrongness that could be chalked up to adrenaline or dehydration or the brutal travel schedule they’ve been living inside for weeks. He’s had days where his body doesn’t feel like his body. Every player has.
But this is different.
He can feel his heart beating too hard for the work he’s doing. His skin is hot under his gear, sweat gathering at the base of his neck almost immediately. When he exhales, his breath feels… sweet, somehow, like he can taste it in the back of his throat.
He does not like it.
He shoves the feeling down the same way he shoves everything down that might cost him a shift.
By the end of the first period, he’s drained half his water bottle and still feels like he could drink the Rideau Canal dry.
“What’s up with you?” Lucas Haas asks during a stoppage, leaning in close so only Shane can hear over the noise. Lucas’s eyes flick to Shane’s face. “You look kinda…”
“Handsome?” Shane offers automatically.
Lucas snorts. “Wasn’t gonna say it, but sure.”
Shane grins at him because that’s the easier option. It costs him nothing to be flippant. It costs him everything to admit that something is wrong.
On the bench, Ilya watches him with a focus that makes Shane’s skin prickle. Ilya doesn’t ask again—he knows Shane. He knows questions can feel like hands on a bruise.
Instead, he does what he always does: he stays close.
He taps Shane’s shin pad with the toe of his skate once, a small thing, a private signal. Here. I’m here.
Shane wants to be comforted by it.
Instead, it makes something in his chest tighten, as if his body recognizes the word here and wants to argue.
The second period is worse.
Shane’s vision flickers at the edges when he changes direction too fast. Not darkening, not blacking out—just a faint strobing, like the lights above the rink are turning on and off in time with his pulse. His hands feel clumsy on the stick. He fumbles a pass he would normally catch in his sleep, and the puck skitters off his blade like it doesn’t recognize him.
He hears the crowd’s collective inhale.
He hears his own name, chanted, urging him back into himself.
He forces his legs to move faster.
There’s a moment halfway through the period when he skates to the bench after a shift and nearly misses the gap in the boards.
He almost slams into the frame.
He catches himself at the last second, glove grabbing the top of the boards hard enough that his knuckles ache. The bench is there. The familiar faces. The smell of sweat and sharpened steel.
“Shane.” Ilya’s voice is right there, too close to ignore.
Shane sits heavily, breath coming a little too fast. He tips his head back and closes his eyes for a second.
His heart is hammering.
A trainer appears at his elbow, quick and practiced. “Everything okay?”
Shane opens his eyes and forces them to focus. “Yeah.”
The trainer doesn’t look convinced. “You’re pale.”
“I’m always pale,” Shane says, and it’s true enough that the trainer hesitates.
Ilya doesn’t.
Ilya leans in until his mouth is near Shane’s ear, his voice pitched low. “Tell me truth.”
Shane swallows, throat clicking. He tries to laugh. It comes out wrong. “I am.”
Ilya’s hand comes up like he can’t help it—fingers hovering near the back of Shane’s neck, not touching, restrained by memory of every time Shane has flinched away from being handled. The instinct to hold versus the promise to respect.
Ilya’s jaw clenches like a man biting back a hundred words.
Shane wants him to let it go. Wants him to stop looking. Wants the weight of Ilya’s attention off his skin because it makes the wrongness in his body feel real.
So Shane does what he knows how to do: he sharpens his expression into something bright and defiant and says, “Captain, I’m fine. Save the eyes for the refs.”
Ilya’s stare doesn’t move.
But his hand drops back to his lap, fist closing around his own glove like he’s gripping something that keeps slipping away.
The third period starts with the score close enough to taste.
The opposing team is getting chippy. The ice feels smaller. Every hit is harder. The boards rattle under the impact. Shane’s lungs burn like he’s breathed in fire, and still his mouth is dry.
He keeps swallowing and swallowing, as if he can drown the feeling.
He cannot.
At some point—he cannot later pinpoint exactly when—his thoughts start coming in slow, strange fragments.
Need water.
Too bright.
Why are my legs heavy?
Focus. Focus. Focus.
He hears the shift call. He hops the boards.
The cold air hits his face like a slap, and for a second it helps. It shocks him into clarity. The puck is at center ice. Ilya is out there with him, a steady presence to his left, skating like he owns the surface.
Shane glances at him without meaning to.
Ilya’s eyes are on Shane.
Not the puck. Not the defense.
Shane.
Something hot and sharp flickers in Shane’s chest. Irritation, maybe. Fear, maybe. He doesn’t have time to name it.
The puck comes free along the boards. Shane reacts on reflex, body moving faster than thought, stick out, shoulder down. He wins it clean, rips it off the boards, and suddenly there’s open ice in front of him.
The crowd rises.
Shane’s heart punches.
This is the part he knows. This is the part his body was built for.
He takes off.
His skates cut deep, carving lines into ice that looks like glass under the lights. The defenders back up, trying to read him. Shane can read them, too. He sees the gap, the angle, the way the goalie shifts his weight.
He moves left, then right, and the world narrows to a point—puck, stick, net.
He could do this in his sleep.
And maybe that’s the problem, because it feels like he is asleep.
The distance between him and the net stretches in a way that doesn’t make sense. The noise of the crowd gets suddenly far away, like someone has closed a door. His vision tunnels—not black at the edges, but blurred, shimmering, as if the air is made of heat.
He keeps skating anyway.
He pulls the puck to his forehand. He sees the far corner.
He shoots.
The puck snaps off his stick, a clean, lethal sound.
For a split second, everything is perfect. The puck rockets toward the net. The goalie drops. The red light behind the glass waits like a promise.
Shane watches it happen as if from a distance.
The puck hits inside the post and disappears.
The horn blares.
The crowd explodes.
Shane’s legs keep moving for one more stride, then his knees go soft.
Not in relief. Not in celebration.
Soft like the strings have been cut.
He thinks, disoriented: Why am I falling?
His stick clatters.
His hands jerk.
The ice rushes up.
He hits hard on his side, shoulder taking the brunt, and for a heartbeat the cold shocks him again—
—and then his entire body locks.
It is not pain. It is not the normal sting of impact. It is his muscles seizing control away from him like a coup.
His jaw clenches so hard his teeth ache.
His arms pull in tight, rigid. His legs straighten, then shake.
He can’t breathe.
The world fractures into flashing light and sound and the sickening, helpless awareness that he is trapped inside himself.
Somewhere, far away, the horn is still sounding. The crowd is cheering because they think he’s celebrating.
Then the cheering changes. The pitch shifts.
It becomes panic.
Because Shane isn’t getting up.
He can hear it as if through thick water—the collective oh that sweeps across an arena when something fun becomes frightening.
A whistle shrieks.
Skates scrape, sudden and frantic.
Shane tries to blink. His eyelids won’t obey. His vision jerks. The lights above smear into streaks. His tongue feels like it doesn’t fit in his mouth.
He thinks, distantly: Something is wrong. Something is so wrong.
He tries to call for Ilya.
His throat makes a sound he doesn’t recognize.
Then his body jerks again, violent, unstoppable.
His shoulders slam against the ice. His helmet knocks the surface with a hollow thunk. His teeth bite down on the inside of his cheek hard enough that he tastes blood.
He is dimly aware of someone shouting his name. Of a voice that isn’t just loud but raw.
“Ilya—” someone tries to say, but it’s swallowed by the sound of Ilya’s skates cutting brutally across the ice.
Ilya is there before Shane can even process the movement. He drops to his knees so fast it’s almost a fall, gloves on Shane’s shoulders, then hovering—hovering, because you don’t hold a seizing person down, because you don’t know what to do with a body turning traitor.
“Shane.” Ilya’s voice is nothing like it is on the bench. It isn’t captain-calm. It isn’t controlled. It is a sound torn out of him. “Shane, look at me. Look at me.”
Shane cannot.
His eyes roll back. His body convulses.
Ilya’s hands shake as he pulls them back, then puts them down again gently at Shane’s sides, as if he can make himself a barrier between Shane and the ice without touching him too much. His whole body is rigid, held on a leash only because the trainers are already rushing out and he can’t afford to make it worse.
The medical staff floods the ice. Their skates are careful but fast. Someone kneels at Shane’s head, checking his airway. Someone is timing the seizure. Someone is already calling for the stretcher.
Ilya hovers like a man about to leap off a cliff.
“Don’t—don’t touch him,” the trainer says automatically, then softer, seeing Ilya’s face. “Captain, let us work. Please.”
Ilya’s eyes are wide and bright and furious with fear. “He is my husband.”
The words rip out of him like a weapon.
The trainer’s expression flickers—recognition, sympathy, urgency. “I know. I know. Let us help him.”
Shane’s seizure breaks, then surges again, another wave of uncontrollable movement. His chest heaves. A sound escapes him, half-groan, half-choked breath.
Ilya’s hands press down on his own thighs like he is physically restraining himself from grabbing Shane, from hauling him up, from making it stop through sheer force of will.
He cannot.
No one can.
The arena has gone eerily quiet except for the shouts on the ice, the sharp commands of medical staff, the distant echo of announcers who don’t know what to say.
Shane’s world is pain and cold and blinking light.
Then the convulsions start to slow, like a storm losing momentum.
His body slackens abruptly.
For a terrible second, he is too still.
Ilya makes a sound that isn’t a word.
“He’s breathing,” someone says, quick and firm. “He’s breathing.”
Shane sucks in air like he’s been underwater. His chest rises, falls, rises again. His eyes flutter.
His gaze skitters across faces he can’t recognize.
Ilya leans in, close enough that Shane can smell him—ice and sweat and that familiar hint of cologne Shane bought him last Christmas because he liked the way it clung to Ilya’s throat.
“Shane,” Ilya says again, voice shaking now, threaded with something like pleading. “Shane, stay with me. Da? Stay.”
Shane tries to answer. His mouth doesn’t cooperate. His tongue feels heavy. His jaw aches like he’s been punched from the inside.
He manages a broken, hoarse sound.
Ilya’s eyes fill, but he doesn’t let the tears fall. Not here. Not on the ice.
The stretcher arrives. The medical staff moves with the brisk efficiency of people trained for this exact nightmare. They stabilize Shane’s head, slide him onto a backboard, secure his straps.
Shane is barely aware of it. The ice beneath him is so cold it feels like it’s burning through his gear. His muscles are trembling in the aftermath, exhausted, angry.
He hears someone say, “Blood sugar’s unreadable on the meter.”
He doesn’t know what that means.
He hears someone else say, “We need IV access. Now.”
He feels a sharp sting in his arm, then pressure.
His vision swims.
And through all of it, he can feel Ilya’s presence like gravity, close and furious, held back only by the hands of other men.
“Captain, you can’t come onto the stretcher,” someone says, a voice strained with necessity.
“I am going,” Ilya says flatly.
“Not on the ice,” the trainer says. “We’ll take him to the tunnel. You can meet us there.”
Ilya’s gaze snaps to the trainer’s face like a blade. For a second, Shane—half-lucid, drifting—thinks Ilya might actually fight them.
But then Ilya’s jaw tightens.
He nods once, sharp. “I will be there.”
Shane’s eyes flutter again. The ceiling of the arena tilts as they lift him. The crowd becomes a blur of color. Somewhere above it all, the scoreboard flashes his goal.
A goal that now feels like it belongs to someone else.
The last thing Shane sees before his vision goes dark again is Ilya skating alongside the stretcher at the edge of the ice, following like a shadow, his face stripped down to something Shane has never seen on him in public.
Fear.
Pure, undisguised fear.
The back hallway behind the rink smells like disinfectant and rubber mats and old sweat baked into concrete. It is a different world than the ice—narrow, utilitarian, lit with harsh fluorescent lights.
Shane comes in and out of awareness like a radio losing signal.
He hears voices.
“—seizure lasted—”
“—no history—”
“—high glucose—”
“—ketones—”
“—possible DKA—”
“—call ahead to Civic—”
Words that scrape past his understanding.
His body feels like it’s been thrown down a flight of stairs. His muscles ache, deep and all over. His head throbs. His tongue hurts—when he tries to swallow, he tastes iron and realizes he bit himself.
His throat is still dry.
Dry in a way that feels cruel.
A paramedic leans over him. “Shane? Shane, can you hear me?”
Shane’s eyes crack open. The paramedic’s face swims into focus. “Mm.”
“Can you tell me your name?”
“…Shane,” he manages, voice broken.
“Good,” the paramedic says, relief softening his tone. “You had a seizure on the ice. We’re taking you to the hospital.”
Shane tries to move his arm. It’s heavy, sluggish.
“Where’s…” he starts, then loses the word.
The paramedic seems to understand anyway. “Your husband’s right behind us.”
As if summoned, Ilya’s voice cuts in, tight and hoarse. “I am here.”
Shane turns his head slightly, and there he is—standing just outside the paramedic’s space, like he’s obeying instructions by the thinnest margin possible. His hair is damp, his cheeks flushed from exertion and adrenaline. His eyes are bright in a way that makes Shane’s chest tighten.
Ilya reaches out, then stops himself, fingers hovering near Shane’s shoulder.
“Shane,” he says again, softer this time, like he’s trying not to break the world with his voice. “I am here.”
Shane tries to swallow. It hurts. His throat feels like sandpaper. “Sorry,” he rasps, because that’s his instinct—apologize, make it smaller, make it manageable.
Ilya’s face changes. Something sharp crosses it, pain and anger tangled together.
“Do not,” Ilya says, voice low. “Do not say sorry. Not this.”
Shane blinks slowly, exhausted by the effort of being conscious.
The stretcher rolls. Doors open. Cold air hits his face again—outside, the night is winter-hard, sharp enough to cut. The ambulance lights flash red and blue against the brick walls.
They load him in with practiced hands. The paramedics climb in after him. The doors swing shut.
And Ilya—
Ilya tries to climb in too.
A hand catches his arm. “Sir—family can ride in a separate vehicle.”
Ilya turns, eyes flashing. “He is seizing on ice and you tell me separate vehicle?”
The paramedic at the door meets his gaze. “We need space. We need to work.”
Ilya looks like a man being asked to do the impossible.
For a second, Shane sees him not as captain, not as the terrifying force the league respects, but as the boy underneath—the one who learned too young what it feels like to lose someone without warning.
Shane’s throat tightens.
He reaches out with trembling fingers and catches the edge of Ilya’s hand.
The contact is weak.
But it’s real.
Ilya freezes, then leans in so his forehead almost touches Shane’s.
“Look at me,” he says, voice shaking like it’s built from threads. “You stay.”
Shane blinks, tries to focus. “I’m… here.”
Ilya inhales sharply. He nods once, as if locking the promise into place. “Good.”
Then the doors close, separating them with a hard, final sound.
The hospital is fluorescent and cold and full of waiting.
Shane is transferred, prodded, scanned. He loses time in chunks—minutes swallowed by nausea, by pain, by the sensation of liquid flooding his veins through the IV. Someone explains something about his blood sugar being extremely high. Someone mentions dehydration. Someone mentions an acid buildup.
Shane drifts through it like fog.
At some point, his jersey is cut off. His gear is removed. He is left in a hospital gown that feels too thin and too honest.
He hates it.
He hates that his body did this on live television. He hates that his teammates saw. That Ilya saw. That the whole arena watched him become something helpless.
He tries to sit up and immediately feels dizzy.
A nurse appears at his side. “Easy,” she says. “You’re still pretty sick.”
Shane swallows. His mouth still tastes like metal. “Where’s… my husband?”
The nurse glances toward the door. “He’s been here. They had him step out while we got you settled.”
As if on cue, the door opens.
Ilya walks in.
He has changed out of his gear—someone must have forced him to, or he did it on autopilot. He’s in sweats and a hoodie, hair still damp, face scrubbed raw by worry. His eyes are red-rimmed.
He looks like he hasn’t blinked in hours.
For a moment, he just stands there, staring at Shane like he’s trying to confirm Shane is real.
Shane’s throat tightens.
Ilya crosses the room in three long strides and stops at the edge of the bed.
He doesn’t touch Shane immediately.
He stares at Shane’s hands, at the IV in his arm, at the bruising beginning to bloom along his shoulder where he hit the ice.
Then his gaze lifts.
“Do you understand,” Ilya says, voice low and trembling with something Shane can’t name, “how many seconds you did not move?”
Shane tries to answer. Nothing comes out.
Ilya’s jaw flexes. His hands clench, unclench.
“I watched you,” he continues, and his voice breaks on the word like it’s too sharp to hold. “I watched your body—” He stops. Swallows hard. “I could not help you.”
Shane’s eyes sting.
“I’m sorry,” Shane whispers again, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Ilya’s face twists, pain flashing.
“Stop,” Ilya says, almost a hiss, not cruel—desperate. “Stop saying sorry like it is… like it is penalty.”
Shane’s breath shakes. “I didn’t— I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Ilya says, and the words land heavy. He steps closer, finally, and reaches out, careful this time. He cups Shane’s wrist gently, thumb brushing the skin just below the IV tape like he’s grounding himself in something solid.
His hand is warm. Steadying.
Shane closes his eyes briefly, letting the touch anchor him.
A doctor knocks and steps in without waiting for an answer, because hospitals don’t ask permission. She introduces herself, explains that Shane presented with very high blood sugar and signs consistent with diabetic ketoacidosis. She says the words like she’s said them a thousand times, but her eyes are kind.
“You likely have Type 1 diabetes,” she says.
Shane stares at her.
He knows the word diabetes. Everyone does. It’s something people joke about with desserts and diets. It’s something old men get told about at checkups.
It is not something that happens to him.
“What?” he says, because his brain refuses to accept it.
The doctor continues, explaining insulin, explaining that his pancreas isn’t making what it should. Explaining that the seizure was likely provoked by severe metabolic imbalance.
Shane hears it, but it doesn’t land.
His world has narrowed to one sentence, repeating in his head like a chant.
You likely have Type 1 diabetes.
Beside him, Ilya goes very still.
So still Shane can feel it through the hand on his wrist.
Ilya’s gaze locks on the doctor with the intensity of a man memorizing an enemy.
“What do we do,” Ilya asks, voice controlled in a way that feels like violence pressed into a small space.
The doctor answers calmly. Treatment plan. Insulin drip. Monitoring. Education. Endocrinology consult. Time.
Time. Like time is something you can prescribe.
Shane’s stomach churns.
He turns his head to the side, swallowing hard. The room feels too bright. Too loud.
The doctor finishes, tells them they’re going to keep him overnight at least. Maybe longer. Leaves them with pamphlets that feel like mockery.
When the door closes, the room becomes quiet in that heavy, pressurized way.
Shane opens his mouth, searching for something—humor, denial, anger, anything that will make this feel less real.
Nothing comes.
Ilya’s hand tightens around his wrist.
Shane finally looks at him.
Ilya’s eyes are wet.
He isn’t crying. Not yet. But he looks like he’s balancing on the edge of it.
Shane’s chest aches.
“Ilya,” Shane whispers.
Ilya swallows. His voice is rough. “I told you drink.”
Shane huffs a laugh that breaks in the middle. “Yeah. Guess you were right.”
Ilya’s mouth trembles, almost a smile, then collapses into something else.
“You do not get to be brave alone,” Ilya says quietly. “Not with this.”
Shane’s throat tightens so hard it hurts. He stares at the ceiling because if he looks at Ilya too long, he might fall apart.
“I didn’t know,” he says again, softer. “I swear.”
“I know,” Ilya repeats, and this time he lets his other hand come up, careful, gentle. He touches Shane’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, like Shane is something breakable. “But now we know.”
Shane’s eyes burn.
He blinks hard.
“I’m scared,” he admits, the words pulled out of him like something raw.
Ilya exhales shakily, a sound that’s half relief, half agony. “Da,” he murmurs. “Good. Be scared. Tell me. I am scared too.”
Shane turns his head into Ilya’s touch, desperate for the warmth.
Ilya leans in and presses his forehead to Shane’s, just for a moment—an anchor, a promise.
“We do this,” Ilya says, voice steadying as if saying it makes it true. “You and me. Together.”
Shane nods once, because it’s all he can manage.
His eyes slide shut.
For the first time since the ice rushed up to meet him, he lets his body stop fighting.
He lets himself be held—by the bed, by the IV drip, by the steady pressure of Ilya’s hand.
Outside the room, the hospital hums on, indifferent and relentless.
Inside it, Shane finally understands that his life has shifted on its axis.
And when he opens his eyes again, the first thing he sees is Ilya still there.
Still here.
Like he promised.