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David was in the car before he’d really processed what was happening.
He and Yuna had been sitting in the living room, the television playing quietly while he tapped away on his laptop, glancing over the screen at the TV, waffling between continuing to work and closing his computer to watch the game properly. Yuna was watching more intently, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. The game hadn’t really begun in earnest, but there had been a struggle for the puck and—
“Oh my god,” had come from Yuna, breathy and much more worried than David had ever heard her genuinely get from a hockey game.
“It looked like a clean hit, Hollander just did not see it coming. Ilya Rozanov still on the ice—”
“What?” David had asked, immediately moving over to her, gaze flicking to the television. Horribly, his question was answered by a crumpled form on the ice, outfitted in red and blue. Shit. Shit. “Is that Shane?”
“He’s going to Montreal General, probably,” Yuna had said, without really looking at him. He kept his hands on her shoulders, eyes still flicking over the TV, trying to scrape more information from the blob of medics around his son’s body. He knew hockey was a dangerous sport. Hell, he’d been on his college team and only been taken out after a knee injury made it impossible to play at the same caliber as before. But Shane looked bad. It probably looked much worse than it was, but David had a difficult time rationalizing at that moment.
They took a flight. David tried to make Yuna laugh, but was unsuccessful. Both of them knew, logically, that Shane was going to be completely fine. But Theriault hadn’t said much of anything, which and of itself was worrying.
What if Shane wasn’t okay?
Shane was going to be okay.
This was his fault, kind of, David thought, sitting on the plane. White noise from the engines and the speed of hurdling through the air dulled everything but his own mind. He knew that he and Yuna had pushed Shane, when he was young. That Shane did a lot of what he had because he wanted to make them proud, wanted to live up to the image of him they had in their minds. So if Shane was hurt, well, some of that was owed to David. His stomach hurt a little bit, but he did a crossword and fell asleep and tried to stop worrying.
Then he was in a liminal, fluorescent-lit hallway in the hospital, following his wife into Shane’s room, which they’d been directed to by a slightly flustered young nurse.
And Shane is okay. He’s concussed, and his collarbone is fractured, but he’s okay. He’s sleeping, when they enter the room, not privy to the debrief provided by his doctor. Yuna and David nod, taking in the information. David keeps one hand on Yuna’s, the other on Shane’s forearm. Laying there like that, David thinks he looks remarkably young.
“Sweetheart, can you reply to some of the messages he’s getting?” Yuna asks, turning to face him once the doctor leaves with an assurance that he’ll be back shortly with some paperwork. “People are probably worrying.”
David nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Of course. Where’s, ah, his phone?”
Yuna takes it off the bedside table and hands it to him.
David kisses her on the cheek and gives her hand a squeeze before rising with a quiet groan. While he wants to stay in the room with Shane, he’d rather not be asked about insurance. It isn’t like they can’t pay, but it still gives him a headache regardless. Yuna will handle it. She always does.
He settles on a bench in the quiet hallway, four large glass windows lining the wall across from him. There’s a fake snake plant to his left, and the hum of hospital noise is somewhat comforting. He stares at his shoes for a moment, contrasting the leather with the greenish patterns. He takes a deep breath. The hallway smells like antiseptic and rubber.
Whenever David Hollander is in a hospital, he thinks of two days. The first is the day he was injured. When he was twenty and in significantly better shape. His fracture had bled through his gear and dribbled on the ice while his ears rang. The pain is gone but the limp remains. The second day is always Shane’s birth. Yuna had been deeply curious about what was happening on the other side of the curtain, and thus David had unsteadily narrated the entirety of the c-section. It’d been tough, but he did it. And then Shane had been right in front of them, tiny and pink and impossible-looking, and David had felt his whole life shift.
He comes back to himself, shaking his head at nothing. He looks back down at the phone in his grasp, turning it over in his hands. Even without unlocking it, he can see just how many messages Shane has received. Something warm flickers in his middle. People care about his son.
He unlocks it and taps into the messages app. He doesn’t quite know where to begin, so he starts at the very top.
David had liked Rose, that one time they’d met. She’s been nice; bubbly and humble. Shane had been a little quieter, standing behind her, shifting on his feet. Nervous. The only other girl Shane had ever introduced to them was Jessica, back when he was eighteen and chronically shy, so David and Yuna had assumed that Rose was something special. Which had been disproven after Shane stopped bringing her up entirely.
Why is she still texting Shane? And calling him ‘babe’?
There. That’s nice and diplomatic. He doesn’t force himself to worry about the ‘babe.’ He puffs up his cheeks and exhales, moving down the list to the next chat.
Hayden. Hayden is easy, too. Thankfully. David went to his wedding. So it isn’t hard to formulate a reply, especially when a traitorous spark of pride lights up his chest at the words hitting Marleau. Good man.
David scrubs a hand over his face. He can hear Yuna and the doctor talking in the other room. Down the hallway, a loud beeping begins and ceases within the space of thirty seconds. There’s an abstract blue and green painting on the wall opposite him and the glass window is cool against his hair. It’s been a long day. He wants to go see Shane. Hold his hand, maybe.
He needs to pump himself up to reply to the next texts. It isn’t necessarily hard, but it is draining; to formulate a perfect response to a person he doesn't know. He’s never been great at navigating that sort of thing, at adjusting his idiosyncrasies to match somebody else’s. That’s always been Yuna’s forté. They match, in that way.
His French is rusty, but that looks fine. It’s already sent, anyway. And he doesn’t think he’s messed up anything to the point of drastically changing the meaning of the message. So he moves on.
He answers four more messages with the exact same text (This is Shane’s dad. Shane is OK. Visiting hours start at 8 tomorrow. Thank you for your concern for my son.) before reaching the bottom of the unread list. All of the other names, he’s vaguely recognized, but this one is entirely new.
Lily.
And the texts are, well. Different from the other ones.
They look panicked, for lack of a better word. Frantic and scared. David can’t read Cyrillic, but he can guess that those words aren’t particularly calm. David feels something in his stomach sink. Who is Lily?
Now, David has always made a point of not intruding on his son’s privacy. Maybe it’s the stress of the day, maybe it’s the fact that he wants badly for somebody to care this much about Shane, maybe it’s the fact that he’s never even heard Lily mentioned before, or maybe it’s just curiosity, but against his better judgement, David scrolls up.
Boston. That's a clue. And a long call. David’s mind whirs at a million miles a second. Lily, Boston, Lily...Boston… He comes up empty. He scrolls.
This has more to chew on. Shane got drunk. Drunk! Which he almost never is. And he called this person. This Lily. Another phone call. Hayden driving. Shane wanting to be ‘like him.’
But it’s the first message that David can’t look away from. Ilya. He blinks. Blinks again. A Russian Ilya. In Boston. Who calls Shane by his last name. Who isn’t saved under his actual name.
And Shane cares about him. Well, shit.
David continues to scroll. He doesn’t want to draw any conclusions before he’s absolutely sure. Even still, he can feel his heart pounding. It’s a massive invasion of Shane's privacy. A massive, massive invasion. And he feels horrible. But at the same time, he needs to be sure. Shane won’t talk to him. Shane hasn’t seriously confided in David and Yuna since he was small. David just wants to know his son. Especially about something like this.
He zips past that one. Nope. Nope. At least this narrows the precise nature of the relationship between Shane and this Lily. This…Ilya. If he were a worse man, he might have had the courage to click on some of the images Lily sent and confirm that it really is Ilya Rozanov—oh God—but David has neither the will nor the questionable morals.
With every flick of his thumb, the truth comes into starker and starker reality. His son is in a…is relationship, the right word? It seems hot-and-cold to David. But steadier, recently. With Ilya fucking Rozanov. Since…since 2013. Even earlier.
Yuna is going to flip.
But some small part of David is ecstatic. He and Yuna had thought that Shane was alone through all of this. Through being at the top. But no, he had somebody else. Maybe the somebody else. The only other person in the world who could understand what it felt like. And yeah, maybe it isn’t ideal that it’s him, but if Shane cares about him the way he clearly does, even through these messages, then there’s no way Rozanov is as abrasive as he pretends to be.
2011. It screams up at David, the tiny little gray timestamp that simultaneously destroys everything he knows about his son in an awful way and a deeply, deeply joyful way. He’s had somebody. Even if it’s been hard—it looks hard—he’s had somebody. Somebody who texts him frantically. Who lingers on the ice long after he’s been physically pushed away. Who, David supposes, just happens to be Ilya fucking Rozanov.
Still, he worries. He flicks all the way down to the bottom of the thread, watching as his cursor blinks. What to say?
Nope. Too mundane. He doesn’t want to reveal that he knows, though. But he doesn’t want to leave Lily—Ilya—hanging. Not when he’s so clearly torn up.
He sends it before he can stop himself. A new message comes through almost immediately, and David, for a second, can imagine Ilya sitting somewhere, bouncing his leg and frantically clicking through gossip articles. How horrible it must be, he thinks. To care so much and be so secret.
David, for the first time in his life, sees through the words completely. They translate, simply, to: you can’t know who I am. Is there a time I can see Shane when you won’t be there? His heart squeezes. He’d never really thought he’d feel sympathy for Ilya Rozanov, but so much has changed in the space of fifteen minutes. So much. He feels like his entire worldview has been deconstructed and rebuilt, this time with space for a man he thought he hated.
He shouldn’t give himself away. He doesn’t want to scare Ilya. He can’t imagine what it would be like if he were in Ilya’s position. If Yuna was hurt and far away and he didn’t know anything about how she was doing. If he couldn’t visit because everybody thought he hated her.
Yes, David lies. Maybe if he can acclimatize him, in a sense, to the idea that David and Yuna like Lily then maybe he’ll be more susceptible to the idea that they’ll like Ilya too. Maybe he should have already brought this to Yuna, but she’d try to brute force the interaction, and David isn’t sure whether or not that would work well.
Ilya doesn’t send anything else. David takes a shaky (when did that happen?) breath and stands. It’s almost crazy, how little the world feels different. Nobody knows, David is sure. It must just be him, Shane, and…Ilya.
When he reenters the hospital room, his first instinct is to pull Yuna aside and tell her everything. But he restrains himself, instead focusing entirely on a reawakening Shane, shifting in the hospital bed. He blinks and stretches his neck, lifting his shoulders and sitting up slightly. Immediately, his bleary gaze falls on Yuna, sitting beside him.
She makes an ‘ah’ sound and squeezes his hand. “Shane, sweetheart,” Yuna says softly as David sits beside her. He still feels like his head is ringing. As his eyes fall to Shane's face, where his skin is pale and his freckles stand out more than usual, some of the messages he saw flash before David’s eyes.
I’m so tired, Ilya.
Wish we were different.
I miss you.
God, his poor son.
“Mom,” Shane rasps. “Dad. Hi.” His eyes flick between Yuna and David, and David thinks he can see a flicker of something scared when Shane’s eyes land on him for a split second before moving back to Yuna.
“You have a concussion,” Yuna explains. “And a fractured collarbone. But you’re fine, okay? This isn’t anything terrible, your play in the long-term shouldn’t be impacted, but you won’t be able to finish the season.” She rubs up and down his arm, reassuring Shane in exactly the right way.
Shane nods slowly and closes his eyes. “Okay,” he says, almost sing-songy. It must be the pain medication.
“Honey,” David whispers to Yuna. “I need to talk to him for a moment. Alone.”
Yuna pauses for a moment, looking at him, her gaze searching, pupils jumping back and forth. “Okay,” she says. Then she turns back to Shane. “I’ll be back in a minute, sweetheart.”
Then the pair of them are alone, and David is suddenly out of his depth. He shouldn’t have invited Ilya, he thinks. Hell, he isn’t even one hundred percent sure it is Ilya. Fuck, who is he kidding—it’s Ilya. But still. He should have spoken to Shane first. But this is how it’s ended up, and now he’ll need to figure it out.
“Kiddo,” he begins.
Shane’s eyes flick up to meet him, then land on the ceiling. “What?” he asks.
David doesn’t know how to transition into this. He doesn’t want to freak Shane out. But there’s really no way to ease him into it, and any sort of preamble would probably just stress them both out, so before he’s thought too much about it, he’s saying, “Are you in a relationship with Ilya Rozanov?”
Shane’s entire body locks up. Suddenly, the loopiness from his pain medication dissipates, and Shane looks like he’s going to cry. “No,” he says. “No, I don’t know why you’d think that.”
“Son,” David says, and takes his hand, even though Shane doesn’t take it back. “I saw some messages, and it really looked like—”
“I’m not.” Shane reaffirms.
“He’s really worried,” David tries. “He’s going to try to come see you tomorrow.”
“You talked to him?” Shane demands, eyes widening. David doesn’t want to point out that the sentence disproves Shane’s earlier point, so he stays quiet. “Dad, I—Dad. Dad. I’m sorry.”
“Breathe, son,” David says. “Nobody’s mad at you. Nobody knows. Not even your mother.” He’s doing a pretty good job, David thinks to himself. Better than he thought he’d do. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to love Shane, even if loving Shane comes with this kind of…surprise.
Shane closes his eyes and his chest shudders. He winces. “I didn’t mean to,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to.”
David leans forward and pulls Shane close. It’s probably inadvisable due to his injury, but it’s all David can think to do. “It’s okay, Shane,” he says, cupping the back of his son’s head. “Doesn’t change anything.”
“Yes it does,” Shane says into his shoulder. “It does, dad. It’s s-so fucked up.”
David just shakes his head. “I’m happy you had each other,” he says. “For…a long time, right?”
Shane nods again, and sniffles. Then he freezes again and pulls away. “How far did you scroll? What did you see?”
Again, messages flash before David’s eyes. These, however, aren’t anything he’d like to dwell on. “Not long, kiddo. I just guessed.”
Shane visibly relaxes. “Okay.”
With Shane calmer and the secret out, a wave of exhaustion crashes over David. They talk quietly for a few more minutes before Yuna re-enters.
She glances between them, eyebrows knit. “Is something going on?”
Shane looks uncomfortable, and David turns to him, a question in his gaze. Shane gives a miniscule nod, and David lets out a long sigh.
“I saw something while I was answering messages for Shane,” he says, gesturing for Yuna to sit. Just her proximity is enough to relax him. “You’re going to want to sit down for this, honey.”
Yuna’s expression shifts from apprehensive to actively concerned. “What? Is it bad? Shane?” Her head whips to Shane.
David turns to him too. “Your turn, kiddo.”
Shane takes a deep, shaky breath. “I—uh. You—you know Ilya Rozanov.”
Yuna’s gaze hardens. “I do. What does he have to do with this? Did he tell Marleau to hit you like that? God, I always knew he was an asshole—”
“No, mom,” Shane says, and it sounds strained. David’s heart squeezes. “He—he and I—”
“He what?” Yuna snaps. She turns to David, and he just shakes his head. Then she’s back on Shane.”
“Honey, let him breathe,” David says, reaching out to grab her hand.
She huffs but nods, backing off. “I’m sorry, Shane. You’re worrying me. What about Ilya Rozanov?”
Shane closes his eyes again, like he’s bracing himself. “Ilya and I, we’re kind of…we’re not really rivals. I, uh…I love him.”
Yuna is completely silent. Then she laughs. “What?”
Shane is quiet. David nods.
Yuna sits back. “What?” she echoes. “He’s an asshole.”
“Kind of,” Shane says. David could swim in how much affection taints the words. “Sometimes, yeah.”
David and Yuna return in the morning. They’re later than they planned to be, arriving at almost ten. They’re both rather haggard, last night lasting many hours into the morning. After leaving the hospital last night, they’d talked for over an hour in the hotel room, changing into pajamas slowly as they tried to come to some sort of agreement about their feelings.
Yuna had been having more trouble accepting the idea. It was probably because she was so personally involved in Shane’s career, David thought. It wasn’t just accepting the relationship, it was accepting the dissolution of the rivalry.
David, however, was having less trouble. It was hard to adjust to, at first, but once he’d fully recognized that it was true, that truth became concrete. It just…was.
They take the elevator up, the easy jazz almost taunting.
David keeps Yuna’s hand in his, relishing in her soft skin, the feeling of her wedding ring clicking on his. They can weather anything. They can weather this.
He rounds the corner, and freezes.
Through the glass door, David can see a man bent over Shane’s bed. He’s in a dark coat and his hand is cupping Shane’s cheek. Shane has his eyes closed, leaning into the touch. They don’t seem to be saying anything.
“Wow,” Yuna whispers. “Oh my lord. It’s actually him. I need to sit down.”
“Yuna, honey,” David murmurs, keeping her in place. “Look.”
She tenses for a moment but then her shoulders slump and she obliges. “He looks…comfortable,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve seen him so loose since he was a baby.”
David nods. He pulls her closer.
Through the little window, he sees Shane’s lips begin to move, a smile breaking his stiff expression open. He looks bright. He looks safe. The man—Ilya—smiles, too. He pinches Shane’s cheek slightly and says something that neither David nor Yuna can hear.
Eventually, they do go inside. It breaks the quiet, the perfect stillness, a little bit. The ensuing conversation is stilted and disjointed and Shane almost hyperventilates, but doesn’t. Ilya keeps him grounded, somehow.
David thinks about two things whenever he’s in a hospital; his college injury and the birth of his first son. But going forward, he’s certain a third will join. The acquisition of his second one.