Chapter Text
It’s like a drug, Shane thinks, the way Ilya makes him feel. He presumes, anyway, given that he’s never actually done that. Drugs, that is. He’s done enough Ilya to light up a blood test, if there was one that measured such things, and he will be forever grateful that there’s not. It’s bad enough that he can never quite forget the feeling of Ilya’s fingers pressed into his hips, the dull ache his teeth leaves in his throat, the way Ilya’s heart beats hard enough against Shane’s chest after they fuck that he thinks it might be strong enough to work for them both. He wishes he could hate it, resent it, but he can’t, so he feels resigned to hating himself a little instead.
Anything less than enthusiastic consent is an automatic no, he remembers from high school sex ed, and from the NHL’s primer on How Not To Disgrace The League that every rookie was required to complete. It was a comprehensive workshop on all things social and sexual, and Shane remembers the other rookies he came up with laughing and tossing ribald asides to each other throughout the dust-dry powerpoint sessions. He paid attention, of course, but to this day he wishes there had been a section like Enthusiastic Consent Can Still Be Harmful, or Just Because You Enthusiastically Consent Doesn’t Mean You Won’t Get Hurt, or Don’t Do it, Shane Hollander, Just Simply Do Not. But there wasn’t, and at the time he and Ilya had started whatever this fucked up thing between them was he’d known better, only he hadn’t really, and so here he was, hopelessly in love with someone he suspected was simply incapable or unwilling - or hey! Both! – to love him back.
He lets himself be pressed back against his hotel room door, ‘lets’ being the operator here because consent is crucial, guys, and willingly tips his chin up, failing immediately to hold onto his defiance when Ilya is right there and magnetic and beautiful, pinning Shane’s hips in place with his huge, possessive hands. Those hands that never fail to make Shane feel entirely singular in Ilya’s attention but that then take pieces of his feeble heart with him when he leaves. It hurts every time, god knows that it does, but in for a penny, Shane supposes, because he’s consenting to that too if it means he can have this. Ilya’s mouth is hot against his neck, demanding and taking and giving in equal measure, and that swoop is back in Shane’s belly like cresting a rollercoaster, the thrill of the puck finding the back of the net when he’s not sure it will. Shane wants him, aches for him, can’t get enough of it, even though he knows it’s going to leave marks long after the ones on his skin have faded.
Weirdly, he’s not ashamed of what they do, he muses with hopeless resignation as his body sparks alight from every point of contact, nor of who he’s doing it with. But he is ashamed of his desperation, of how readily he submits to the overwhelming want he knows he shouldn’t feel, not with the example of love and devoted partnership his parents have modelled so effortlessly his entire life. That’s what he should want, he thinks, what he should be striving to emulate. Not this twisted, fucked up thing he and Ilya have, this thing that takes and takes and leaves Shane feeling confused and hollow, stained in a way that has nothing to do with the physicality of their meetings.
Ilya’s fingers bite into his jaw for a moment before gentling, thumb stroking over Shane’s lower lip to burn a trail for his own lips to follow. “Where have you gone, Hollander?” he asks softly, his beautiful eyes direct and unrelenting, demanding honesty no matter what it costs Shane.
Nowhere safe, Shane thinks. Certainly nowhere far away enough to escape this, or to ever find peace again. So he tries to lie. “Nowhere,” he says, knowing better than to try and let his eyes close to avoid the way Ilya can read him like no one has ever been able to or cared enough to do before.
He watches as Ilya hears the lie, the way he lights up with delight at catching Shane out, and it fucking kills Shane that he can’t even hide this much from him. “You are not being honest, I think,” Ilya says, as though he has any right at all to chastise Shane for his honesty when that asshole has never said a single emotionally honest thing to him.
“Maybe you should think less, then,” Shane suggests, a lot smaller and a lot less acerbic than he’d intended, but it seems to strike a chord, because Ilya’s brows dip down momentarily, and Shane thinks that the only benefit to this thing they have is that for as easily as Ilya can read him, Shane can read him just as well.
It’s such a slap in the face that Ilya is the one person he really gets. He’s spent his whole life hearing that he’s intense, and the ‘too’ is always unsubtly implied. Shane Hollander: hyperfocused, asocial/antisocial/socially inept, weird, robotic, peculiar. A big part of that is because he just doesn’t get a lot of what other people seem to pick up naturally. He’s not good with people, not in the way that someone like Ilya seems to be, skimming effortlessly over swirling social eddies that Shane is sort of aware of, but has no idea how to parse. He hates that he can see where he’s lacking, but that he can’t… fix it, can’t apply his focus to solving whatever the problem is.
With Ilya, it’s different. Maybe because he’s also as singularly focused as Shane, his brain works the same way about a lot of things. Shane can look at him and read his desire, his anger and frustration, his sly, clever humour, the too-big smile when he’s being insincere and the anticipatory smirk when he’s about to say something cutting or cruel. Shane may not always understand the motivation behind it, but he can read it just the same. He thinks that maybe he doesn’t want to understand the motivation behind the ways he interacts with Shane, thinks that it would only make things hurt worse, further highlight the ways he refuses to be the only thing Shane has ever wanted to have outside of a rink.
“Maybe you should talk less,” Ilya counters, and Shane thinks distractedly that it was meant to be more cutting, but Ilya’s hands cradling his face and soft, gentle kiss against Shane’s mouth take a lot of the sting away, more than he meant them to.
Shane kisses him back because the only alternative is to not, and that’s not an option at all. Not for Shane, never where Ilya is concerned. He slides his hands up underneath the loose dark tank top Ilya is wearing, spreads his fingers to rest in the spaces between his ribs. He digs his fingertips in to try and mark Ilya as indelibly as he has marked Shane, knowing all the while that it’s a wasted effort. Ilya shudders a little, a seismic ripple that startles Shane, makes him wonder if Ilya is ticklish, but then Ilya has an arm wrapped around his waist as the other cradles the back of his head and the kiss changes.
The softness and gentleness are still there, but Ilya is suddenly not pressing Shane back against the door, instead holding him close against his own body. He uses his size and strength to hold Shane, to wrap him up as though he is something precious, something of value, and it’s… he’s… it’s not right, it’s so fucking unfair that he can make Shane feel like the only person in the world who matters to him in moments like this, only to leave an hour later, leaving Shane with nothing but scraps to subsist on until Ilya deigns to feed him more affection when it suits him to do so. There’s a kind of emotional whiplash he doesn’t like, that puts his back up like an irate animal and it throws him solidly out of the lust-induced haze he usually feels whenever he and Ilya share space.
Ilya doesn’t seem to notice, getting his hand down the front of Shane’s sweats to cup him firmly, possessively, long, clever fingers wrapping around his cock to stroke with mind-melting familiarity as Shane’s brain kicks into a gear he hadn’t known it even had.
“No,” he murmurs.
“No?” Ilya repeats, gently amused. He follows it up with something murmured that Shane can’t make out.
“No,” Shane sighs, and he hates this, fucking detests how weak Ilya makes him, how easily he can read that Shane doesn’t mean it, not really.
Ilya says something else in Russian, and he could be calling Shane a fencepost for all he knows, but the way he says it, the little drag of the rounded vowels at the end make it sound like an endearment, and Shane would rather be fucked through the mattress in absolute silence than whatever the fuck is happening right now.
“Ilya, stop,” he says, still soft, still almost unsure he wants to say it, even though a giant warning klaxon has started flashing in the back of his head.
For all his faults, Ilya has never once made Shane fear for his safety. Pushed him? Sure. Made him uncomfortable? Like it’s his reason for getting up every morning. But not once has Shane ever thought that Ilya would be anything other than absolutely respectful of a hard drawn, clearly defined boundary. Not that Shane had ever managed to find one he wouldn’t happily pole vault over for their mutually assured pleasure, a fact Ilya has no qualms weaponising. His hand pauses, still but not letting go yet, drawing back just enough to look at Shane’s face.
“Stop?” he asks, something of a tease in his voice, but clearly looking to elicit clarification.
Shane stares at him, trying to decide if this is the line he wants to draw.
Ilya’s searching expression relaxes back into something self-assured, and his fingers grip Shane a little more firmly as he leans in to kiss him again, eyes open and creasing at the corners, warm and happy and lovely.
“You’re hurting me.”
The reaction is immediate, almost violently so. It wasn’t what Shane meant to say at all, but the second the words are out he acknowledges to himself that they’re right, though not in the way Ilya probably thinks given the way he’s suddenly three feet away from Shane, his face frozen into an expressionless mask. “I hurt you?” he asks, the words blunt and overly-loud.
“Y- no… yes,” Shane finally settles on. He lifts his hand to unconsciously press the heel of it to his sternum, Ilya’s eyes narrowing slightly as he follows the movement, clearly connecting dots Shane isn’t sure he can follow. He’s so fucking beautiful in the low lamplight, his curls a golden halo that Shane can still feel beneath his fingertips.
“I hurt you how?” Ilya demands, his eyes still fixed on Shane’s hand.
Shane drops it, watches Ilya shove a hand through his hair, waits for him to meet his eyes. “You pretend to want things, pretend I can have things that we both know you won’t let me have,” he says, his newfound self-esteem carrying him past the point of no return. He wishes he’d never discovered it, because it’s making Ilya’s face do something awful.
“Oh, you mean I hurt your feelings?”
Close enough, Shane supposes, his chest aching again. He goes to lift his hand again, sees Ilya zero in on the movement, doesn’t. “I guess so.”
Ilya scoffs, mean and sharp. “So sorry, Hollander, I didn’t mean to make you get so emotional about a casual fuck.”
Asshole. So many times he has lobbed the word at Ilya in exasperation, reluctant affection and disbelief, but now he thinks it with vitriolic anger. “I think you should go.”
“Is that so?” Ilya demands, taking a step towards him again, eyes alight with something Shane doesn’t recognise. Something he isn’t afraid of but that he really doesn’t like. He steps back a little, his heels making contact with the door, a soft thud that makes Ilya pull up short and stare at him, his face shifting through a range of expressions Shane doesn’t have time to read. “Jesus, I’m not going to fucking hit you, Hollander,” he says, voice hollow.
“I know,” Shane tells him, and it’s true; if nothing else, Shane can trust that Ilya is not a bad man. But I also know that if you touch me I’ll let you just drag me back under, he thinks to himself. Still, saying that out loud would give Ilya the ability to hurt him even worse, so he says nothing.
They stare at each other for what feels like a thousand years until Ilya throws up his hands, the movement sudden and startling, and Shane actually flinches this time, pure reflex.
Ilya looks stunned, and then he just looks fucking mad. “I so don’t need this,” he snaps, lip curling up in a way that is so far from sexy that Shane wants to look away, but he can’t, won’t, forces himself to watch. “Fucking move, Hollander.” Even now he won’t step closer to Shane, won’t bully him out of the way. Instead, he waits for Shane to move away from the door before disappearing through it so fast Shane can barely track his departure.
It’s a long time before Shane can look away from where the Do Not Disturb hanger has fluttered to the floor.
Ilya thoroughly ignores Shane for the next seven weeks.
They play against each other once, Montreal scraping the win, and Shane allows himself one look at Ilya before the game. When he is very pointedly ignored, he gets it, doesn’t look again. Ilya doesn’t say anything to him during the faceoff, checks him once into the boards and once on open ice with enough force to rattle Shane’s teeth, doesn’t so much as glare at Shane when Shane hooks him twice, stealing possession of the puck both times.
And it’s… fine. The contact still makes something zing through Shane’s blood the way it always has, but he understands the rules now: it’s just hockey. It’s not foreplay, it’s not a prelude to something infinitely more intimately physical, it’s just hockey. Shane loves hockey, loves the rules, the structure, the way it rewards hard work and is never anything more than it pretends to be. He knows it’s different for him than it is for Ilya, has never really understood how Ilya can be as good as he is, can understand the game as well as he does, can breathe it the way Shane does, but still not have it be everything to him the way it is to Shane.
It’s not a surprise when there’s no room number sent to his phone after the game.
Shane goes out for drinks with his team, lets himself be photographed with an achingly beautiful blonde woman in a bar, and goes home alone.
He misses Ilya.
I would never hit you, Ilya messages two weeks later, late at night, apropos of nothing.
Shane reads the message when he wakes up the next morning. I know that, he sends back, because it’s true, and not for a second did he think otherwise.
He gets no reply.
A week after that Ilya messages him again. Boston had won against Detroit 3-1, but it hadn’t looked like an easy win, and the Bears hadn’t played as cohesively as he was used to seeing. Ordinarily, before, Shane might’ve messaged Ilya, asked him about it or made a bitchy comment about failed leadership to encourage him to vent if he wanted. But they didn’t do that anymore, so he lets his mom call him instead, lets her commentary of the game wash over him. He loses time before bed just lying on the couch and staring at his silent phone, face down on the coffee table, until his eyes start to burn a little with fatigue and he hauls his body up to get ready for bed.
Sleep has been harder to come by in the last two months, something he’s not looking too closely at thanks to his well-honed instincts for self-preservation. He checks in with his body as he focuses on relaxing, feels good but somehow less, and just drifts, waiting for sleep to come. He thinks about nothing in particular, and he definitely doesn’t think about Ilya, or the tired but triumphant smile he wore at the buzzer.
He must actually fall properly into sleep at some point, because the sharp zzt-zzt of his phone vibrating on the bedside wakes him in the early hours of the morning, the world half-formed beyond the dark windows of his bedroom. He reaches out for it and winces when the screen brightness assaults his eyes.
What is that thing where you know you’re a failure and you’re just waiting for everyone to notice?
Shane is confused, but responds immediately, only belatedly realising how it will seem to Ilya that he’s awake at 0430 and instantly replying to a contextless message. Imposter syndrome?
Yes, Ilya replies immediately. How do you make that go away?
Jesus, what a question for bullshit o’clock on a Tuesday. Still, he’s clearly got something on his mind, and Ilya has never been the kind to accept empty platitudes as an attempt at reassurance. If I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know, Shane tells him, too honest in the small hours.
The little dots bounce, pause; bounce, pause. Please, the reply eventually comes. What would a perfect hockey boy like you know about failure.
It’s not punctuated as a question, and Shane can hear the dismissal, accented so familiarly that Ilya might as well be in the bed beside him. He bites his lip, considering how to reply. He could laugh it off, make a joke of it. He could be brutally honest in the way that Ilya always seems to elicit from him, allow himself to be laid out for emotional flaying. He could lie, but no, he couldn’t. He settles for something kind of in between. You’ve taught me plenty, he texts back eventually, and it’s too real, too honest, but he thinks Ilya won’t realise that, will think it’s self-deprecating half-joke. It really isn’t.
I certainly have, comes the reply. You like it when I teach you things, yes?
He’s not wrong, but Shane refuses to be drawn back in. He stares at the words before exiting out of the message, puts his phone on Do Not Disturb, rolls over and falls straight back into sleep.
Difference between misdemeanour and felony?
The question is concerning enough for Shane to immediately drop out of the conversation he’s having with his dad over lunch, frowning at his phone as he sends an immediate reply. Did you mean to send this to me, or search it online?
You are the most boring person I know, I presumed you would know the answer.
God, he’s such an asshole. Why are you even asking? Am I going to have to front bail?
When the reply comes it takes Shane a moment, but it makes him actually laugh out loud. It’s a photo of a dog on the street somewhere, an obviously well-loved shaggy mutt with a sparkly green bandanna tied around its neck, and what is clearly Ilya’s hand scratching beneath the blissed-out creature’s chin. Do not steal that dog, Shane sends back, wondering if this means Ilya’s a dog person.
Such a buzzkill.
Shane huffs another laugh and pockets his phone, reaching for his glass for a drink and catching his dad’s indulgently amused smile. “What?”
“You look like your mom when you smile like that,” he says without prying any further, and Shane just loves him.
I miss the way you look on your knees, Ilya sends him at nine a.m. Shane stares at his phone, trying to figure out what he could possibly be doing at that hour that would make him send a message like that.
He doesn’t answer it, even though he misses being on his knees for Ilya just as much. His newfound self-confidence carries him through the rest of the day, the next four days until Ilya tries again. Shane thinks maybe he gets it now, a little bit, how much Ilya enjoys the control Shane hands him, because while what he’s doing is to protect himself he kind of likes the way Ilya is still offering overtures, still reaching out in spite of Shane’s refusal to engage. There’s a power to it he’s unfamiliar with, and he’s not unhappy to explore it like this, curious to see where it leads.
Number one thing I will not miss about staying in hotels when we retire is the horrifically bad coffee, Ilya later messages.
Shane ignores the way his stomach flips over the ‘we’ in the message, knows logically Ilya means the royal we. He flicks back through his mental calendar and realises Ilya has probably landed in Tampa for tomorrow’s game. The only place worse for coffee than the Delta is the Hyatt in Buffalo.
You’ve clearly never stayed at the Marriott in Detroit, Ilya sends back. Like it’s been strained through a dirty sock.
His distaste makes Shane smile. Disgusting mental image, so thanks for that.
I aim to please. Shane stares at the phone, waits. What are you doing?
He looks down at the dumbbells on the floor, takes a photo of them and sends it.
Better not be skipping leg day.
It could be innocent, but Shane remembers Ilya biting the inside of his thighs, encouraging Shane to wrap them around his head as he sucked his cock sloppy and slow, telling him to do your worst, Hollander, I can think of worse ways to go when Shane raised concerns about smothering him. Still, he decides to allow Ilya the benefit of the doubt. That was yesterday, he responds carefully. DOMS will have me laid out tomorrow, I’ve increased my squat PB.
Send me photos, Ilya texts back immediately.
Shane just sighs and mutes his phone, goes back to working out. At least there’s one good thing to come from missing Ilya like he was missing a piece of himself: his gains have never been so good.
I had a dream about you last night.
Shane feels his face flush, is glad he’s removed his pads post-game so they don’t worsen the heat lighting up his cheeks. He’s just about to stow his phone when it vibrates in his hand with a follow-up message.
We were arguing about faceoff positioning. Even in my dreams you are boring.
It’s so unexpected it makes him laugh. Me being boring is old news. I think this dream says more about you than it does about me.
It says you are perfect soporific.
Shane’s eyebrows shoot up. Been reading the dictionary in your spare time?
Ilya sends a photo of a word of the day desk calendar on his bedside table, a yellow post-it tucked in the back that says GET EDUCATED ASSHOLE, LOVE FROM MARLY in blocky print with a whole bunch of crooked love hearts drawn all over it.
Shane laughs again, can’t help it. Did you actually dream that, or does it just suit your new word of the day to pretend?
This time it’s Ilya who doesn’t reply, not until a lot later.
I dream about you most nights.
And that’s it. There’s no follow up, no joke to turn something that could be considered sweet into something else that stings, just a simple statement of fact. For the first time since drawing this particular line in the sand, Shane feels his grasp of the situation slip. He decides to try something. I don’t remember my dreams, he tentatively texts back.
And Ilya’s final message for the night is equally as confusing. Lucky you.
On Monday the next week Ilya sends an opening message that effortlessly draws Shane into a days-long text conversation that is equal parts hilarious, snarky and mundane. They share screenshots, asides about their teammates and competitors, bitch about training and their coaches, trade mundane photos, and Shane suspects he’s becoming pathologically conditioned towards excitement whenever he sees a dog on the street for the opportunity it provides to interact platonically with Ilya.
You should share this one on Instagram, Ilya suggests when Shane sends one to him of a big gangly puppy with a happy lolling tongue doing his best to sit on a Montreal sidewalk, tail a blur, the message explaining that the pup managed two seconds of obedience before he was too excited to sit anymore and threw himself at Shane’s legs for a pat.
The internet just about melts down when Shane does and Ilya likes it, comments the best boy <3 on it.
Shane has a sneaking suspicion the comment is less about the dog than it is about Shane following his instruction, but he just likes the comment, ignores the warm glow that fills his chest and doesn’t text Ilya about it at all.
Is Berkes suddenly blind?
The message is waiting for him after Montreal’s loss against Tampa Bay, and it startles Shane into a laugh as he drops down onto the bench in front of his visitor cubby. I think he wears glasses for reading, Shane replies, pretending to misunderstand, as the rest of his team commiserates about their loss around him.
You could skate blindfolded, in the dark, with a hand tied behind your back and miss less passes than Berkes did tonight.
Everyone has off days, but Ilya’s not wrong; tonight hadn’t been Berky’s best work, and he makes a mental note to check in with him before the end of the night. Still. Careful, that sounded almost like a compliment. There’s no reply to that, so Shane puts his phone away and hits the showers. The reply comes as he’s letting himself back into his apartment after a quiet dinner with Lane, Berkes, JJ and Hayden.
It is.
Shane freezes halfway through toeing off his shoes. He waits for the slap that usually comes after something like that from Ilya, but there’s nothing, no bouncing dots, no follow up condition, nothing. His mind races as he thinks back on the last however many years they’ve been entangled, trying to remember a time when Ilya had ever handed him a compliment without Shane having had to earn it. He comes up distressingly blank, and feels like he’s been set adrift. Thank you, he replies, just barely managing to keep from adding a question mark to the end.
They’re due to play against each other in two days. It will be the first time they’ve seen each other in almost thirteen weeks.
Later that night, much later, Shane is in the hazy twilight of pre-sleep when his phone buzzes on the bedside table. He knows before picking it up that it will be Ilya, squints at the screen and swipes the brightness down before opening the text.
What is that word for when feelings are only going one way?
Shane frowns, still fuzzy and relaxed. Unrequited?
Yes. Shane waits, dots bouncing for a very long time, starting and stopping as unease finally starts to creep through his belly. Now your feelings have changed, this is how you want me to feel for you, yes? More power for you, maybe?
Shane feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Ilya, the way I feel about you has never changed. His reply is too fast, is too honest and gives too much away, but not for a second can he stand for Ilya to not understand.
All my brain thinks about now is that it has been four months since we fucked, Ilya replies.
If the previous question had been a gut-punch, this statement is like being hit by a fucking car. Shane stares at the blue message bubble and touches the screen twice to prevent the screen from fading off as he gnaws absently on his thumbnail. He hates that he can’t see Ilya, or hear his voice. Because trying to garner context from a text message is impossible, but Shane thinks that maybe this isn’t just Ilya trying to reset their status quo, but he can’t be sure, and he’s spent actual months trying to wrest back a fraction of his soul he’d unwittingly surrendered to Ilya when they were both nineteen.
This is where you ignore me now, right? Because I message you about fucking?
For the first time Shane feels guilty for the way he’s been ghosting Ilya without explanation. He’s not surprised that Ilya’s figured it out, but he absolutely is surprised that it’s taken him this long to call it out; Ilya has never been the shy and retiring type.
Well joke’s on you, Hollander, because I miss your idiot fucking laugh more than I miss having you on your knees for me.
It’s maybe the most honest thing Ilya’s ever sent him, and it’s devastating. The back of Shane’s eyes begin to burn and he decides that midnight is simultaneously too late and too early to try and figure out what Ilya’s angle is. He powers his phone entirely off for the first time in weeks and stares into the dark of the room until his brain is so overwhelmed that it also shuts off, and he falls asleep sometime before dawn.
“Hollander.”
Shane’s head snaps up at the vaguely familiar voice hailing him as he exits the dep, ginger ale in the canvas bag he has hooked in his elbow. “Marlow,” he says after a beat, thrown by the American appearing out of Shane’s context for him here in front of his local dépanneur in a thick coat and dark sunglasses. It takes a moment for him to realise the Bears must’ve flown in a day early before their game. He hasn’t heard from Ilya.
“How are you?” he eventually manages after a too-long pause. “How was your flight?”
Marlow smiles like he noticed it, but isn’t the kind of asshole to call it out. “Quiet,” he says, then holds out his bag of cheese curds.
Shane hesitates, thrown by the oddity of the situation. He takes a couple of curds, satisfyingly squeaky when he chews. Marlow watches him, makes a vague gesture for Shane to lead the way and then just… ambles along beside him for a bit when Shane confusedly turns towards his apartment. Marlow offers him the bag again, which Shane waves off, but Marlow grins and shows Shane the contents of his own reusable bag, filled with more bags of the white cheddar curds. Shane huffs a surprised laugh and accepts another small handful of cheese. He’s not sure what to say, what Marlow expects of him, but the silence between them as they walk isn’t strained.
“Been a while since we’ve played against each other,” Marlow eventually observes.
Nearly thirteen weeks, his brain supplies unhelpfully. “Yeah.”
“How’ve you been?”
The question is innocuous, but Shane feels he has to swallow down something that isn’t quite normal laughter bubbling up the back of his throat. Well, Cliff, he imagines saying, I’ve been trying to emotionally distance myself from your best friend in an attempt to rescue what’s left of my shredded heart because he won’t allow me to be in love with him, which I can’t exactly help. Turns out it’s not going so well, because despite having not seen him for three months he’s all I think about, and will probably be all I ever want for the rest of my life. “Yeah, not bad,” he says instead.
Marlow sighs, just a soft little sound, and startles the hell out of Shane by gently grabbing his elbow to draw him to a halt on the empty sidewalk as he shoves his sunglasses up onto his head. The day greys out as a thick cloud passes in front of the weak sun, and the slightly metallic scent that precedes snow in the city whirls past on a cold and wet breeze. Shane looks up at him, waiting and unsure.
“Look, Hollander, I like you, man. But if you’re not into my boy, then you need to cut him loose, okay, because he’s properly fucked up over you, and you seem like too decent a guy to string him along like this.”
Shane freezes, or maybe the entire world does. He knows he should be laughing right now, pretending he has no idea what Marlow’s talking about, offering up a confused denial. For some reason he can’t, though. “How do you know that?”
Marlow looks confused. “He told me?” he states simply, and there’s a very obvious ‘duh’ in there that even Shane can hear.
Shane finds that very hard to believe. “Rozanov told you he’s fucked up about me?”
“Oh,” Marlow says, his confusion clearing a little as he laughs. “No, god no; I think Roz’d rather drop dead in the street before talking about anything that actually matters to him. He told me you and him had a thing, but given that that’s been going on for literal years now, I figured out pretty quick that it’s not a casual thing. Not for him, anyway.”
The insinuation isn’t subtle, and despite the fact that Shane wants to correct Marlow that it’s Shane who is desperately not casual about Ilya, he pulls his focus back to what really matters about this surreal conversation. “So how do you know, then?” he presses.
The look Marlow shoots him is a complicated mix of disbelieving, incredulous and pitying. “I know my boy. The last few months he’s been properly obsessed with his phone, like he’s living and breathing for a text from Jane.” He levels a look at Shane. “You guys are not subtle, by the way.” He shakes his head a little and repositions his scarf to cover more of his throat. “He’s been off for the last couple of weeks, distracted, snappy. He’s sad, too, I think. Talks about you the way he talks about his mom, sometimes.”
All Shane knows about Ilya’s mother is that she died when he was young, but he suspects he still misses her like he’s missing a piece of himself just from the way Ilya doesn’t speak about her. “It’s complicated,” he offers, and it’s weak, but it’s also the god’s honest truth. It’s the most complicated thing in the world.
“No shit,” Marlow laughs again, but again it’s a nice laugh, not mean or condescending. “Doesn’t help that you’re both idiots who lack basic communication skills, either.”
He’s not wrong, but he says he knows Ilya so he should also know better. “Fuck off,” Shane tells him without heat. “When was the last time you got Ilya to talk about anything that actually matters to him?” Then a horrible thought occurs to him. “He… did he ask you to tell me this?”
Marlow’s expression darkens. “Are you fucking kidding me? He’d murder me to death if he knew we were talking about this.” He sighs. “He’s my best friend, Hollander, and I want what’s going to make him happy. That’s it.”
Shane chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, debating whether or not to confide in Marlow, if he can be trusted. Marlow seems content to wait him out, at ease on a random Montreal street in a way Shane has never been at ease anywhere in his life. “If I tell him…” He hesitates, swallows hard. “The things I want to tell him, the… the way I feel. About him, I mean. If I tell him, he’s not going to want to hear it.” And there it is. Shane’s biggest, most profound fear laid out at Marlow’s feet. He feels like he’s eviscerating himself, but also that evisceration might actually be less painful.
“Of course he’s not,” Marlow says immediately. “That kid believes he’s terminally unlovable, and that he doesn’t deserve to have nice things.” He shrugs and levels an insistent look at Shane. “I guess it’s up to you to decide whether or not it’s worth your time and effort to convince him otherwise.” Shane stares at him, turning the words over and over in his mind.
Marlow watches him do that, nods once, then reaches out and claps his hand to Shane’s shoulder. “Think about it. And maybe never, ever, ever mention to Rozzy that we had this chat, yeah?” He grins once more, teeth shockingly white against his dark stubble, then turns back the way they came. “See you tomorrow night, Hollander.”
“Bye,” Shane manages weakly as he watches him go, then pulls out his phone as the first soft flurry of snow swirls down from the sky.
23:14 is the timestamp for Ilya’s last message to him. It’s 11:14 now, and Shane wills the symmetry to be a good omen. I miss everything about you, he finally replies. His heart is thudding in his throat and he feels vaguely ill, so he locks his phone, puts it back in his pocket and finishes his walk home, delaying the inevitable check for a reply by stowing his shoes, brushing the light dusting of snow from his coat before hanging it up, and stowing his drinks in the fridge.
I don’t know what you want from me, the first reply reads.
I don’t know what this means.
I don’t know anything anymore.
I need you to tell me.
As a kid, when he was particularly overwhelmed, Shane used to climb into bed and pull the blankets up over his head to minimise the amount of things he had to interact with, whether by sight, scent or sound. He does this now, waiting for the bed to warm before opening their conversation. He thinks about Marlow’s advice, his assessment of Ilya’s sense of self-worth. Decides that for this, to try and give Ilya this nice thing, if Shane can be considered that, he can be brave. He wants to be deliberate with each press of the letters, but his anxiety gets the better of him and he has a whole paragraph typed out before he can really think it through.
I’m scared that if I tell you what I want that you won’t want the same thing. I’m scared that if I say that I feel more for you than I’ve ever felt for anyone, if I tell you that I live for your messages and the moments we steal for ourselves, that if I admit that I’m starting to fall in love with you that I’ll never hear from you again. I’m terrified that I could admit that ‘starting to fall in love with you is a lie’ because I’ve actually been in love with you for years. I’m terrified that if I let you fuck me again that that’s all you’ll ever allow us to have, and I am so tired of trying not to admit to myself that I’d let that happen if it meant that I got to have some small part of you. I could tell you that when I think about you I think of words like future, and forever, and mine. I could tell you that you can have anything, everything of me, and I could tell you that you can have it all in hacked-off parts if that’s what it takes to keep you. I could tell y
His flying thumbs stop. His stomach is fucking writhing and his eyes are prickling; his skin feels too tight and his own useless heart is unbearably heavy. He doesn’t reread what he’s typed out, just highlights and deletes it all, in part because it’s the most frightening thing he’s ever admitted to himself, let alone Ilya, and also in part for the fact that he doesn’t want it to be too much for Ilya to understand without the massive burden of translation.
I want more from you than I think you’re willing to let me have, he settles on. Rereads it twice before sending it. It feels like a million years before Ilya replies, which the time stamp lies about and suggests is actually only two minutes.
What more can I give you? How is everything not enough for you?
Shane stares at the plain letters in disbelief. It takes him a moment to realise that he’s angry. Everything? he shoots back. I told you I wanted more than just hooking up and you called me a ‘casual fuck’.
The dots bounce for a long time, then stop. Shane slaps his phone down onto the mattress after ten minutes of waiting for a reply and wonders if he could get away with murdering Marlow during tomorrow night’s game.
His phone vibrates again and is in his hand and unlocked before the vibrations are finished.
You’re right. I’m sorry. I was a coward then, because I was scared. You scared me with being honest and saying the things that I wanted to say too. I am not good with being honest like this, like with feelings. I am scared of many things when it comes to you.
That… it’s a lot. Certainly more than Shane had thought he’d get, and he can barely allow himself to begin to hope before another message comes through as he’s reading.
Can we talk maybe? I worry I don’t have good English for texting the things I want to say to you.
Shane shoves the blankets down so his head is free, and it feels like surfacing from deep water, air finally filling his lungs again. Of course, he sends back, and wriggles up the bed. His phone starts vibrating and he can’t help the nerves that tear through him at the generic call screen with Lily appearing in the middle of the screen.
He takes a deep breath and slides his thumb across the bottom of the screen to accept the incoming call.