Chapter Text
April 2021
The air in Shane Hollander’s Montreal apartment was thick with the quiet tension of a secret held for twelve years. On the screen, the highlights of Montreal and Ottawa's last game played silently— another moment where he and Ilya Rozanov had brushed against each other on the ice, a collision of bodies and buried history.
Shane, methodical and always with a plan, watched Ilya across the room. Ilya was staring at a photograph on his phone—a faded image of his mother, taken in a Moscow park a lifetime ago.
“We should go,” Shane said, his voice cutting through the silence. “Before July. You should visit your mama’s grave. One last time.”
Ilya didn’t look up. “No. And it would be suspicious if we both disappeared to Russia. Rivals don’t take vacations together.”
“I thought of that,” Shane replied, a familiar determination in his eyes. “We say we’re filming clips for the Irina Foundation. For the mental health charity. An announcement coming July 7th. It’s plausible. It’s even… noble.”
He moved closer, his voice softening. “And it would be good for me to see where you grew up. You’ve seen Ottawa. You’ve walked practically every street of my childhood. Let me see yours.”
Ilya finally met his gaze. The hazel eyes that could glare with such intensity on the rink now held a deep, weary sadness. “I’ll think about it, Shane. But it’s risky. Not just the travel… everything.”
Shane reached out, his hand coming to rest gently on Ilya’s shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”
He said it with the confidence of a man who had planned his life around this secret love, around late nights and hotels. He said it like it was a fact.
(Little did this man know what he signed up for.)
The words hung in the air, unspoken but felt. Ilya looked at Shane, at the unwavering faith in his expression, and felt a chill that had nothing to do with their hockey careers. Going back to Moscow wasn’t just a pilgrimage; it was a return to a past that had shaped him in shadows and silence, in a way Shane’s sunny Ottawa childhood never could. It was opening a door to a world where their carefully constructed narrative—the rivalry, the charity, the planned July wedding—could unravel in the face of old ghosts and colder politics.
“Okay,” Ilya whispered, the word a surrender to hope and fear alike. “We’ll film for the Foundation.”
Shane smiled, the planner seeing his scheme fall into place. But in Ilya’s mind, the image of his mother’s grave was already merging with other memories: the stern faces of relatives who wouldn’t understand, the watchful eyes of a society that hadn’t changed in all the ways he needed it to, the silent judgment of a homeland that might see his return as a betrayal.
They were going to Russia. Shane, with his plans and his promises. Ilya, with his ghosts and his dread.
And between them, the unspoken truth: that some journeys, no matter how well-planned, lead you into stories you haven’t drafted, into risks you haven’t calculated, into a past that doesn’t care about your future.