Archive of Our Own

Contrary to popular belief, J.J. and Shane shared rooms on roadies just as much as Hayden and Shane did. Not that it mattered to fangirls online, who'd rather focus on Hayden's awkward side hugs with Shane as "proof" of their illicit gay relationship, and not the fact that the same instagram dump features Shane sitting in J.J.'s lap for half the photos.

J.J. is not salty about this. He loves the gays. He wants gay fans. He has gay fans. He simply wants to understand, academically, why Hayden "three kids and a wife" Pike reads as the gay one when J.J. is right there looking the way he looks.

Anyway.

The point is: J.J. knows Shane. Not in the way the internet thinks it knows Shane, which is to say incorrectly and with a lot of projection. J.J. knows Shane the way you knew someone after seven years of sharing hotel rooms and bus seats and airport terminals and every bad meal in every city that wasn't Montreal. He knows which side of the bed Shane sleeps on and that he takes exactly four and a half minutes in the shower and keeps his phone face-down on the nightstand at a precise forty-five degree angle. He knows Shane is physically incapable of leaving his locker untidy before leaving for a roadie. He knows that Shane's tell for lying is that he goes very still and very controlled at exactly the same moment, which is two things simultaneously and which reads as normal to people who don't know him and reads as obvious to people who do.

He also knows, because he is observant and has many gay friends and has watched Shane interact with said gay friends at several social functions over the years, that Shane Hollander is probably, at minimum, a little bit gay.

This is not a judgment. His friend Théo had hit on Shane at a party in 2013 and Shane had gone pink in a way that was not entirely the wine. J.J. had filed it. He'd filed the other things too, over the years, the way Shane received certain compliments, the specific way he didn't talk about his personal life, the name that had appeared in his phone sometime around 2011 and had been there ever since.

Lily.

Who, J.J. assumed, was most likely a man.

J.J. had mentioned his theory to Hayden on a bus somewhere in the midwest in 2016. Hayden had gone quiet in the way he did when he was deciding whether to say something, and then said that Jackie had wondered the same thing. They'd looked at each other for a moment and then let it go, because it wasn't theirs. It was Shane's, whenever Shane decided to do anything with it.

He'd never expected Rozanov.

But he's getting ahead of himself.

It is spring 2017. Marleau hits Shane into the boards in the first few minutes of a morning game in Boston, and Shane doesn't get up.

The arena does the specific quality of loud that happens when something is wrong on the ice, a held-breath sound that was somehow louder than normal noise, and J.J. is at the glass before he's consciously moved, two linesmen between him and the ice. He can see Shane face-down and the trainers coming out and he is going to kill Marleau. He is going to actually physically kill him. Gagnon has a hand on his arm and J.J. is six-foot-seven and outweighs Gagnon by thirty pounds and could absolutely remove him from the equation, but he doesn't, because Shane would want him to play the game, and because the referees are already watching him, prepared to issue a penalty, and he breathes out through his nose and watches the trainers lift Shane to a stretcher, with Shane mumbling.

Talking. He's talking. Slowly, with a lisp, but awake. Alive. 

J.J. exhales.

He thinks many specific and unprintable things about Marleau and saves them for later. They win the game. He does not care about the win.

The locker room is quiet in the way it gets when someone is hurt and everyone is privately doing the math on how badly. J.J. showers and changes and finds Hayden, and they make eye contact across the room and both move toward the door at the same time without speaking, which is the thing about having the same best friend for seven years: sometimes you just moved around him in concert.

Hayden gets a text in the cab that says Shane has been assessed and is stable, concussion and a broken collarbone, and he shows the screen to J.J. and they both look at it for a moment.

"His parents," Hayden says.

"I'll call Yuna," J.J. says, and does, from the hospital waiting room while Hayden goes in to sit with Shane. Yuna picks up on the second ring and J.J. tells her what he knows and listens to her ask the questions she needs to ask and answers them, and when he hangs up he sits in the plastic waiting room chair and looks at the floor and lets the evening catch up with him.

He'd watched Shane not get up. He'd stood at the glass and watched the trainers come out and done the very fast and very private calculation that everyone did when a teammate was down, the one that started at how bad and ended at please just let him get up, and Shane had gotten up, and J.J. is fine, he is completely fine, and he is also sitting in a hospital waiting room in Boston at eleven at night being quietly not fine and not planning to tell anyone that.

Hayden comes out twenty minutes later. "He's asking about the final score," he reports. "And whether the hotel breakfast tomorrow has those specific mini muffins. He seems—" Hayden makes a face. "Really happy, actually. It's a little unsettling."

"Painkillers," J.J. says.

"A lot of painkillers." Hayden sits down beside him. "He asked me if I thought his fish could feel existential dread. He doesn't have a fish."

"Go," J.J. says. "Call Jackie. She's been texting you since the second period, I can see your phone vibrating from here."

Hayden looks briefly guilty and immediately relieved. "You sure—"

"Vas-y. I'll sit with him. You need to get your shoulder looked at too, that check in the third looked bad."

"I'm fine—"

"Hayden."

Hayden goes. J.J. gives himself three seconds in the hallway and then goes into Shane's room.

Shane is lying in the hospital bed with a bruise spreading across his cheekbone and his arm in a sling, and he looks up when J.J. comes in and his entire face does something that is so open and immediately, uncomplicated happy that J.J. has to stop for a second. This is the thing about Shane on painkillers, J.J. is realizing. Shane, who held himself so carefully in every room, who was always controlled and always precise, was just—not, right now. All the things usually filed away were briefly and completely accessible, and looking at it was a little like looking at something too bright.

"Jayyy-Jay," Shane says, with the warmth of a man from whom every volume control has been removed. "J.J. You're here."

"Oui," J.J. says. He pulls up the chair and sits and looks at Shane's face, the bruise and the sling and the unfocused brightness in his eyes. "T'es correct?"

"I feel," Shane announces, with  great gravity, "like my head is in a different room than my body."

"That's the medication."

"It's very good medication." Shane seems to make peace with this immediately. He looks at J.J. with the focus of someone working hard to make their eyes track properly. "Did we win?"

"3-2."

"Good." He's satisfied. "Marleau's going to feel terrible."

"He should feel terrible right now," J.J. says, and keeps his voice even.

Shane hears something in it. He's always been good at that, at hearing the thing underneath the thing, even when J.J. thought he was being subtle. He looks at J.J. with an expression that's slightly more present than it was a moment ago. "Étais-tu inquiet?"

J.J. looks at him. At the bruise, the sling, the looseness of him, all the things so different from every version of Shane J.J. knew. He thinks about the glass and the trainers and the specific count of seconds before Shane moved.

"Un peu," J.J. says.

"Je m'excuse," Shane tries, and gets most of it. "Je—I didn't—" He loses the thread between languages and just looks at J.J. with the apology clear in his face, uncomplicated, present.

"C'est pas ta faute," J.J. says. "Marleau's an idiot."

"Marleau's an idiot," Shane agrees, with feeling.

A pause. Shane looks at the ceiling. The room is quiet except for the hospital sounds in the hallway, and J.J. sits with the particular strangeness of Shane like this—open, unhidden—and finds it both easier and harder than expected.

"Hey," Shane says, to the ceiling.

“Oui.”

A pause. Shane looks at the ceiling. J.J. looks at Shane.

"Do you think Comeau's been kind of a dick lately?" Shane says.

J.J. blinks. Of all the things he expected to come out of Shane Hollander's mouth in a hospital bed on painkillers, Comeau's been kind of a dick lately was not on the list.

"Yeah, capitaine," J.J. says.

Shane turns his head. His eyes have the unfocused brightness still, the too-bright quality of someone with all their filters gone, but he looks, suddenly, deeply gratified. "Right?"

"What did he do to you?"

"Okay so in play reviews—" Shane tries to push himself up on his good elbow, gets maybe four inches off the pillow, and makes a sound that is not a good sound.

"Non, non, non—" J.J. is up before he has thought about it, hand on Shane's good shoulder pressing him back down, other hand fixing the pillow. "Don't do that. You have a broken collarbone."

"I forgot," Shane mutters, flat on his back, looking surprised at himself.

"You have a concussion," J.J. tells him.

"I know what I have." Shane stays down, at least. J.J. stays close for a second, then sits back because SHane is fine, he is fine, he has been telling himself that for two hours and it keeps needing to be said. "In play reviews," Shane continues, like nothing happened, "Comeau does this sigh. Every single time I say something. It's like—" He does it. A pointed, soft, targeted exhalation of mild contempt.

J.J. stares at him.

"That sigh," Shane says. "You know that sigh."

"I know that sigh," J.J. agrees.

"It's been driving me actually insane and I can't say anything because what do you even say, like, 'hey could you stop sighing at me,' you can't say that, and now it's in my head during games. I'll make a call on the ice and I can hear it. Just—" The sigh again, somehow even more accurate the second time.

J.J. is quiet for a second. He opens his mouth.

"Don't laugh," Shane warns.

"I'm not laughing."

"You're doing your not-laughing face."

"This is just my face."

"J.J.," Shane says. 

J.J. presses his hand over his mouth. Shane watches him with the expression of a man who would be more offended if he had the full neurological capacity for it. Then his own mouth twitches. Then J.J. makes the mistake of making eye contact and they both go at the same time, and Shane immediately says "ow, ow, merde," and stops, and J.J. gets it under control, and they sit there in the aftermath of it.

"Don't make me laugh," Shane gets out. "My head."

"You started it," J.J. tells him, but he reaches over without thinking and pushes the hair back from Shane's forehead, off the edge of the bruise, and Shane lets him like it's nothing, like they do this all the time.

They don't do this all the time, J.J. thinks. But right now, with Shane this open and this just—Shane, more than he usually got to be in a room with other people—it doesn't feel strange. It feels like what it is, which is J.J. sitting next to his best friend in a hospital bed being quietly glad he's here to sit next to.

"So Comeau's been a dick," J.J. says.

"Ambient dick," Shane adds. "Like a thermostat someone turned up one degree and nobody else in the room can tell yet." He blinks at the ceiling. "I keep giving him the benefit of the doubt because maybe he doesn't know he's doing it. But I think he knows." He closes his eyes briefly. "I'll deal with it in the off-season. Or he gets traded. Either way." His face does the soft settling thing, the painkillers pulling him somewhere easy, and he's quiet for a moment.

"Poor Hayden," he says, sideways, out of nowhere.

J.J. blinks. "Hayden's fine."

"Jackie's pregnant again though."

"I know." Hayden had told him in November,  quietly, before practice.

"And he feels so bad about it, he doesn't say so but you can tell. She's already got the three kids and now she's pregnant and he's just on the road with us all the time and I want to do something for her but I don't know what because if I do something too small it's nothing and if I do something too big it's like I'm saying he's dropping the ball, and he's not dropping the ball, he's just—" Shane exhales. "He's a hockey player. We're all hockey players."

"Just text Jackie and ask what she needs," J.J. offers.

Shane goes quiet for a second.

"That's—" He blinks at the ceiling. "That's so obvious. Why haven't I done that."

"Because you've been overthinking it."

"Yeah," Shane says. He sounds about seventy percent asleep. "I do that." He blinks again, slower. His breathing has gone long and even, and J.J. thinks: okay, this is it, here we go—

"I was supposed to have a really good night tonight," Shane says.

J.J. waits.

"Like." Shane's voice has shifted. The funny has drained out of it slowly, the way light goes when a cloud moves. "I had actual plans. Not just dinner. The whole thing. I'd been thinking about it all week."

"What kind of plans," J.J. asks. Easy.

"Good ones." Shane's hand moves vaguely, loose at his side. "We were going to cook. He wanted to cook—he's got this whole thing where he acts like he doesn't care about food but he actually really does, he plans it, he asks what you want and then he remembers and he never makes a thing out of having remembered, he just does it." The corner of his mouth does something small and private. "He's kind of like that about everything. Like he pretends he doesn't and then he just—does."

J.J. is very still.

He has known Shane Hollander for years. He has eaten meals with him and lost money to him at cards and slept in the bed three feet away from him in more cities than he can count. He has seen Shane talk about hockey with the specific precision he used for things that mattered, has seen him talk about Hayden and his parents and the game, and he has never once seen Shane's face do what it is doing right now; the corner of his mouth going warm and private, a smile for somebody that doesn't even know it's visible.

J.J. keeps his voice easy. "Sounds like someone you know pretty well."

"Yeah," Shane says. Soft. A little sideways. "Yeah, I—we've known each other a while." He blinks at the ceiling. "I had the whole night figured out. And then Marleau's an idiot and now I'm—" He gestures at himself, at the sling, at the room. "Here."

"Is he going to wonder where you are," J.J. asks.

"He knows," Shane says, simply. Still the medication-soft voice, not quite tracking what he's saying, just saying it. "He always watches. He would've seen it happen." A pause. "He's probably been trying to reach me."

J.J. looks at him. Feigns ignorance. "He has your number?"

"Yeah." A blink. "Yeah, but I can't—if I call from my phone and someone checks the log—" And here J.J. can see it, the medication thinning at the edges, Shane surfacing slightly, enough to hear the shape of what he's been saying. He goes a little still. "I mean. It's complicated."

"Okay," J.J. says, carefully.

Shane blinks. He's looking at the ceiling. Something is moving through his face.

"He was supposed to come over after," Shane mutters. More to himself than to J.J. "After the game. We had the whole—" He stops. "I should—there should be a way to tell him I'm okay. He's going to be—" Another pause. His brow creases. "I don't know how to do that without it being—someone can't see me calling him. There's no version of that."

"I can call him," J.J. says.

Shane looks at him. "What."

"Give me your phone. I'll call, tell him you're okay." J.J. keeps his voice level. "Nobody sees anything."

Something moves through Shane's expression, the reading look, the one where he's taking stock. Even now, even loose and half-under, the reflex is there.

"J.J.," he says.

"You've got someone out there who watched you go down and hasn't heard anything. That's not good." J.J. holds his gaze, easy, no pressure. "Give me the phone."

A long moment.

Then Shane nods toward his jacket.

J.J. gets up. Finds the phone, brings it back. "Code?"

"1919," Shane says.

J.J. types it in. Opens contacts. Scrolls.

Lily.

Obviously he has seen this name before, peripherally, over Shane's shoulder. He and Hayden had ribbed Shane enough over it. But it was one thing to have a half-baked theory that Lily was a man to suddenly speaking to him for the first time without Shane introducing them. But… J.J. glances at Shane, who is looking at him expectedly. He presses call.

One ring.

"Shane." The voice comes back immediately—low, accented, pulled tight with hours of waiting, the voice of someone who picked up before the ring even finished.

J.J.'s brain does something very strange.

He knows that voice.

He knows it from the other side of faceoffs. From the wrong end of a breakaway. From years of watching it come out of a mouth on the opposing bench and knowing exactly what it was doing to his team's head. He knows it from a hundred press scrums and from highlight reels and from the specific way it delivered a chirp that you'd still be thinking about at the end of the period.

Ilya Rozanov.

The thought lands like stepping on something in the dark.

Lily. Ilya.

J.J. stands in Shane's hospital room and does not move. He is on the phone. He needs to say something. Rozanov is saying something, worried and fast, "blyad, Shane, I was watching when it happened, are you—"

"This isn't Shane," J.J. says. Somehow his voice comes out level. He doesn't know how. "It's J.J. Boiziau. I'm calling for him."

Silence.

"Boiziau," Rozanov says.

"He's okay," J.J. says. "Concussion and a broken collarbone. He's awake." He turns slightly toward the window, away from the bed, and drops his voice, and he is functioning on some separate track right now because the rest of him is standing in the back of his own skull going: Rozanov. It's Rozanov. Shane has had Rozanov in his phone since—since whenever, and J.J. is standing in a Boston hospital holding Shane's phone and—

He stops that. He stops all of it. He puts it somewhere else and closes the door.

"He wanted someone to know," J.J. says.

A sharp exhale down the line. "How bad."

"Bad enough. He'll be out a while." A beat. "You should come. His parents are getting here in the evening, you'd need to be gone by nine. But you should come tonight."

Silence.

"That is not—" Rozanov starts.

"I know it's complicated—"

"You don't know what it is." Not aggressive. Careful. The voice of someone holding something fragile. "And I don't understand how you—"

"I called the name in his phone," J.J. says. "He didn't tell me anything. I figured out the rest just now." He pauses. "I'm not going to say anything to anyone. That's not what this is."

A beat. "Then what is it."

J.J. thinks about Shane's face when he was talking. The smile that didn't know it was visible. He thinks about Shane saying he always watches and I had the whole night figured out, and he thinks: okay. What does this person need to hear.

"It's me telling you he was lying here talking about tonight," J.J. says. "The plans. The cooking. He was talking about you without knowing he was doing it, and then he figured out you didn't know where he was, and he couldn't sleep. So I'm calling you."

Silence.

"If someone sees me at a hospital—"

"You were on the ice when it happened," J.J. explains. "You stayed in the city to check on a guy you know. That's not a story."

"It is a story if it is me and it is him," Rozanov says quietly.

"Only if someone knows what to look for." J.J. exhales. "Look. I can't make you come. But he can't sleep and his parents land in a few hours and I'd rather he had tonight." A beat. "That's everything."

Rozanov is quiet for long enough that J.J. starts to think he's not going to.

Then: "You will text me when the hallway is clear."

"Yeah," J.J. says. "I will."

"And nobody—"

"Nobody," J.J. says. "I promise."

"Your number."

J.J. gives it. The call ends.

He stands there for a second with the phone in his hand.

Rozanov.

He lets himself think it, just for that second, before he turns around. The specific shape of it. Ilya Rozanov, in Shane's phone as Lily, for however long, and J.J. has sat next to Shane on a hundred flights and been right there, right there the whole time, and Shane had—

He turns around.

Shane is watching him.

The painkillers have thinned enough. J.J. can see the moment Shane comes back through them far enough to hear the last ten minutes of his own voice replaying, can see him go very still and very controlled at exactly the same time, which is the tell, the one that means scared.

"J.J.," Shane starts.

"He's coming."

"J.J., I didn't—" Shane's jaw is tight. "I didn't mean to say all of that, I wasn't—câlice, that wasn't supposed to—I was just talking and I didn't realise I was—"

"It's okay—"

"It's not okay, I don't—I've never told anyone that, not Hayden, not—nobody, and I just—" His voice goes fast and ragged, the panic fully through the medication now. "You weren't supposed to find out like this. I didn't want you to find out like this, I'm sorry, I'm really—"

"Hey." J.J. moves the chair right up to the bed. "Hey. Look at me."

Shane keeps looking at the ceiling.

"Shane." J.J. puts his hand on Shane's arm, careful of the sling. "Look at me."

Shane looks at him. His eyes are bright in a way that has nothing to do with the painkillers anymore.

"Nothing is different," J.J. says. "I'm in the same chair. You're in the same bed. Nothing about the last twenty minutes changes any of that."

Shane stares at him. "You know," he says. Checking.

"Yeah."

"You—" Shane swallows. "You called him."

"Yeah."

"You're being really normal right now."

"I'm trying to be," J.J. says. Which is the truth. He is working very hard at being normal right now, because on the other side of that door is a whole room of things he is going to have to sit with, and right now is not the time for that room. "Is it working?"

Something in Shane's face shifts, complicated and then a little less. "Kind of," he says.

"Good." J.J. exhales. "Good."

"I'm still—" Shane looks back at the ceiling. "I'm still kind of freaking out."

"I know. That's okay."

"I didn't mean to," Shane says. Quieter now, the panic draining back to something more like exhaustion. "I just started talking and I wasn't—I wasn't keeping track of what I was saying. I never do that. I don't know why I—"

"You've got a concussion and they gave you a lot of medication," J.J. says . "That's why."

Shane is quiet for a second. "Did I say—" He stops. "How much did I say."

"Enough," J.J. says. "Not everything. Just—enough for me to call the right person."

Shane closes his eyes. "Okay," he says, like he's taking stock of that.

J.J. keeps his face where he wants it. He thinks: enough for me to call the right person. He thinks about hearing the voice on the phone and the split second where his whole brain just—stopped. He thinks about Shane saying he always watches, he would've seen it happen, which is a thing you said about someone who mattered to you, and he thinks about not knowing, all this time, about being right there and not knowing. 

He thinks about.. about being the first, really. How he took this from Shane. And that's a thing he'll have to figure out what to do with, the specific weight of it, but not now, not in this room, not while Shane is lying there with his eyes closed trying to get his breathing back.

"I thought about telling you," Shane says. Still to the ceiling. "I want you to know that."

J.J. doesn't say anything.

"I just—I didn't know how. And every time it felt like maybe I could, I'd find a reason not to. And then—" Shane stops. "I kept not."

"Okay," J.J. says.

Shane opens his eyes and looks at him sideways. "That's it? Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?"

Shane is quiet for a second. "I don't know," he admits. "That you're not—I don't know. That it's fine."

"It's mostly fine," J.J. says. "It's a lot of information at once. But you're okay, and that's what I'm thinking about right now."

Shane looks at him for a moment. Then something in his face settles. "He stayed," Shane says. "You said he stayed? After the game?"

"He stayed."

The thing that moves through Shane's face then is too private for J.J. to look at directly. "Okay," Shane says. Soft. Mostly to himself.

J.J. reaches over and adjusts the blanket. "Dors," he says. "Your parents land in a few hours and you need to not look like you've been awake since yesterday."

"I have been awake since yesterday."

"I know. Try anyway." J.J. sits back. "I'll be here."

"You don't have to—"

"I know," J.J. says. "I'm going to anyway."

Shane closes his eyes. His breathing slows after a few minutes, and J.J. sits back in the plastic chair and looks at the window and lets himself, quietly, have the room.

Rozanov.

He turns it over. He thinks about Lily in the phone, about the way Shane's face had looked talking about the cooking, about he always watches and I had the whole night figured out. He thinks about calling that number and having that voice pick up on one ring, and the second before he had to speak where he just stood there and held it.

He thinks: I was right there. The whole time. All of it, right there, and Shane had—

He stops.

He thinks: I thought about telling you.

He thinks about whether that's true or whether Shane just believes it's true, and then he thinks: it doesn't matter right now. What matters is that Shane is in the bed and J.J. is in the chair and it's two in the morning and someone is coming in the morning who will make Shane look the way he looked when he was talking about the cooking.

That's enough, J.J. thinks. That has to be enough for tonight.

He picks up his phone.

He's asleep. Come whenever. Text me when you're close and I'll check the hallway.

The reply comes faster than J.J. expects.

I will be there at seven thirty.

J.J. looks at the time. It's barely past four in the afternoon. Rozanov has been sitting on this for three hours already—in a hotel room somewhere, or on a bus with the rest of his team, watching Shane's name not come up on his phone and not being able to do anything about it. J.J. thinks about that for a second and then stops thinking about it.

He is alright? Rozanov sends.

J.J. looks at Shane. Yeah, he types. He'll be okay.

A pause. Then: Thank you. For calling. And for…

The message sits there for a moment, incomplete.

Then just: Thank you.

J.J. puts his phone face-down on his knee.

Hayden comes back around five, freshly showered, with two coffees from somewhere that are not the machine in the hallway and are therefore significantly better. He sits with Shane for a while, and J.J. sits with both of them, and it is easy and familiar in the way that things with Hayden were always easy, and nobody talks about anything that matters, which is also familiar. Shane is drowsy and a little funny about it, drifting in and out, and Hayden does the thing where he pretends not to be relieved by making gentle fun of Shane's hospital gown, and Shane tells him to go to hell in a way that sounds like thank you, and J.J. watches all of it from the chair by the window and thinks about nothing in particular.

Around six-thirty, Hayden checks his phone and makes a face. "Jackie's been texting since five-fiftey," he says. "I should—"

"Go," J.J. says.

"You'll be here?"

"I'll be here."

Hayden looks at him for a second with the particular look he used when he was deciding whether to ask something. J.J. holds it steady and doesn't give him anything to grab onto, and after a moment Hayden nods and stands and squeezes Shane's shoulder and says he'll be back in the morning, and Shane says something drowsy and dismissive that means I know, I know, go, and Hayden goes.

J.J. texts Rozanov: Clear whenever you're ready. Room 412.

He puts his phone away and sits back and watches the Boston evening come through the window and does not think about what he's waiting for.

Shane drifts off properly around seven. J.J. watches his breathing even out and sits in the quiet of the room and lets himself, carefully, have a little of what he has been keeping in the closed room all day.

J.J. is alone with his thoughts, which are a lot of circling around the same ideas and points from earlier. What did he do, he thinks, for Shane to not have told him. But that’s not it, is it, because according to shane, J.J. is the only one he’s ever told. It’s a bit dizzying, and at one point J.J. end up watching highlights from other games to distract himself.

His phone buzzes at twenty-five past seven.

I am outside.

J.J. steps into the hallway. The evening nurse is doing her rounds at the far end and has her back to him. He texts: Clear. Elevator, turn left, 412 is on your right.

He waits.

Rozanov comes around the corner thirty seconds later. Dark jacket, jaw set, the particular controlled quality of someone who has been sitting with a lot of feelings and has gotten very practiced at not showing them. He is also,  J.J. notes despite himself, still in his button-up from the post-game press availability, which means he has not gone back to change, which means he has been ready to leave since before J.J. even called him.

He sees J.J. and stops.

They look at each other.

Câlice, J.J. thinks, not for the first time today. Ilya Rozanov.

"Boiziau," Rozanov says. Quiet.

"He's been asleep about half an hour," J.J. tells him, keeping his voice low. "He's more himself than he was earlier—the heavy stuff's worn off. He doesn't know you're coming. I thought that was better."

Rozanov nods once. Something moves through his expression, controlled and then not quite.

"His parents land at eight," J.J. says. "They'll be here by nine at the earliest, probably. You've got time."

"Okay," Rozanov says.

J.J. opens the door to 412 and holds it.

He doesn't go in. Just far enough to watch.

Shane stirs at the sound. Turns his head toward the door, blinking slowly, not quite there yet—and then he focuses, and his face does the thing. The same thing it had done when he was talking abouthis plans, the corner of his mouth going private and warm, except now it isn't for a person who isn't in the room. It's for a person who is. And it is exactly the same smile, and J.J. looks at it for just a second before he looks away, because it is too private to look at directly and it is also the answer to a question he hadn't known he was asking.

"Ilya," Shane calls. Breathy and rough from sleep.

Rozanov crosses the room and takes the chair beside the bed and puts his hand over Shane's good hand on the blanket, and Shane's eyes close again, and the tight held-in thing that had been in his face since J.J. first walked into this room finally, completely, lets go.

J.J. pulls the door shut.

He goes back to his chair in the hallway. Gets the machine coffee. Looks at the wall. Thinks about several things and lets himself think about them, quietly, because there's nobody here to perform normal for and the hallway is empty and he's been keeping the door closed all day.

He thinks: I was right there. The whole time. Every flight and every hotel room and every bad meal in every city, and Shane had been carrying this the entire time, and J.J. had been close enough to see it and never been let in to see it.

But J.J. stays in the chair and drinks the bad coffee and watches the hallway and tries to think about something else, and mostly can't, but it's okay. He's good at sitting still. It's one of the things he's good at.

And thirty minutes later, the door to 412 opens.

Rozanov comes out carefully, closes it behind him, stands in the hallway for a moment looking at the floor. Then he looks up.

J.J. stands.

"I've got some things to say," J.J. says.

Rozanov's chin comes up. "Okay."

"He told me today he's never told anyone. Not Hayden. Not me." J.J. watches his face. "He's been carrying it alone. That costs someone. I need you to be worth it."

Rozanov holds eye contact.

"Shane doesn't just let people in. But what he lets in, he keeps." J.J. stops. "Just be worth it."

A silence.

"I stayed," Rozanov says quietly. "After the game. I told my team I had something to deal with." He pauses. "I did not know if there was a way to get to him. But I was not going to leave."

J.J. looks at him. Thinks: yeah. Okay. I see it.

He puts out his hand. Rozanov shakes it. Short. Firm.

"His parents land in an hour. You should go."

"I know."

Rozanov holds his gaze a moment longer, something in his expression J.J. can't quite name. Then he turns and walks down the hallway.

J.J. watches until he's gone. Then he goes back into 412.

Shane is awake. Barely—eyes half-open, the bruise on his cheekbone fully committed to its project, the sling still there—but awake and looking at J.J. with the real look. Coherent. Present. Himself.

J.J. drops into the chair.

"I heard you," Shane says. "Through the door."

J.J. looks at him. "How much did you hear."

"Enough." Shane's mouth does something complicated. "You told him it cost me..? Something."

"It was true," J.J. says.

"I know." Shane is quiet for a moment. "I wasn't trying to listen. I just—I woke up and I could hear your voice through the door and I couldn't make out all of it but I got enough." He pauses. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know I didn't," J.J. agrees.

Shane is quiet for a moment, looking at J.J. with the careful considering expression, the one he used when he was deciding something.

"I wanted to tell you," Shane offers. "Fuck, actually. Not because of today. I thought about it a bunch of times."

J.J. nods.

"It wasn't because I don't trust you," Shane explains. "I need you to know that."

"I know," J.J. says.

"Do you?" Shane asks. He sounds genuinely uncertain, which is not something J.J. hears from Shane often.

J.J. looks at him. He thinks: honestly? I'm going to be turning that over for a while. I'm going to wonder if I did something, said something at some point that read wrong, made it seem like I wouldn't be a safe place for this. And I'm probably going to drive myself a little crazy with that. But it is not Shane's problem right now.

"Yeah," J.J. says. "I know."

Shane looks at him for a second and then exhales.

"Your parents landed about twenty minutes ago," J.J. tells him. "They'll be here soon. You need to look like you can form actual sentences."

"I have a concussion," Shane points out.

"I know. Do it anyway."

Shane almost smiles. "You're staying till they get here."

"Évidemment."

"And you're going to have to get to Hayden before he gets to me," Shane says. "Because he's going to have—" He makes a face.

"So many feelings," J.J. supplies.

"About Rozanov specifically," Shane confirms.

"I'll deal with Hayden," J.J. says.

Shane looks at him. The warm private look, not the medicated openness from earlier, the one that hadn't cost him anything because he hadn't chosen it. The real one. The one Shane Hollander gave out carefully, only to people he'd decided were allowed to have it.

"You're a really good friend," Shane says.

"I know," J.J. says.

"I mean it."

"I know you mean it." J.J. leans back in the chair, the one he has now been in for most of the last several hours. "Stop talking. Rest. Your mom is going to walk in here and she's going to have a lot of questions and you're going to need the energy."

Shane closes his eyes.

"Merci," he says. Soft and direct.

"De rien," J.J. says. "Toujours."

Shane is asleep in a few minutes. J.J. sits there and watches the Boston evening through the window and lets himself, quietly, be a little wrecked about it—about all of it, about today, about getting to be the first even if it wasn't the way either of them would have chosen.

He stays until he can hear Yuna Hollander's voice at the end of the hallway, tight with worry, David's hand at the small of her back, both of them still in their travel clothes.

J.J. stands up, straightens his jacket, and goes out to meet them.