Chapter Text
Ilya slept terribly and woke up worse. The whole house still smelled like tuna melts, sex, and disappointment. Ilya lay in bed reliving the brief and improbable domestic bliss of the day before.
Shane, here in his home. The first round had been… well, frantic was the word. As usual they had crashed into each other with a hunger and physicality that was wholly untamed. But this time, something new had taken shape between them and neither of them was careful about it. Ilya had held his hand through it, had covered Shane’s hand and held it without questioning it. Ilya had heard himself say “sweetheart” in a voice he rarely engaged. Neither of them had acknowledged any of that. Too fast, too hungry.
After, Shane had collapsed in his bed, arms draped over his head. Ilya had traced his freckles and kissed him slowly and without an agenda – an act that was probably its own kind of confession. Something deep and reckless in Ilya had proposed they spend the night and to his surprise Shane had agreed. Ilya never wanted his hookups to spend the night but with Shane he couldn’t get enough of these little moments.
They had slept together that afternoon – truly slept with the afternoon sliding past– and when Ilya had woken, Shane was still there curled into him. Now in the morning chill, Ilya was waking up with his arm sprawled across the empty spot, holding nothing.
He flipped to his back and scowled at the ceiling.
Hungry for more than each other, they'd had tuna melts in the kitchen like two people who did this all the time. It had been so dangerously easy. Shane laughing at something Ilya said. Ilya not looking away when Shane caught him staring.
The couch had been slower. More. And then Ilya had slipped on that dangerous easiness of domesticity: "Shane." Shane had frozen. Ilya had frozen, too, his body tuned to Shane’s face and breath, willing Shane to respond. And then -- then!-- Shane had said Ilya’s name back. Not a nickname, not Rozanov, not any of the approved labels of what they were supposed to be to each other. Ilya, with an intensity that sent a shiver down his spine.
Then: "I should go."
Before Ilya could process that he was really leaving, he was gone, taking Ilya’s plans with him. Ilya hadn’t even walked him to the door; he’d just stood and watched Shane fumble on his shoes and fumble out excuses and practically run out the door. Ilya had eventually dumped their dishes in the sink and considered texting. Considered a lot of things. But in the end, all he managed was the dishes before he told himself he was tired, put himself to bed, and tried not to miss the thing he’d never really had.
He grabbed his phone from the nightstand -- to check the time, that’s all – it was 8:30. Morning skate was at ten, which meant leaving by nine-fifteen, which meant he needed to get the fuck up and go. Instead, he lay there and looked at the ceiling and thought about Shane's face in that half-second after he'd said Ilya’s name back. For a moment, there had been something clear, intense, and unguarded in his eyes – the real Shane with every carefully set lock thrown off, just for a second, before he snapped them back. With a blink, he had remembered to guard himself, but Ilya almost thought he’d seen his own thoughts reflected back in Shane’s face.
Ilya got up. He was not going to lie in bed thinking about Hollander's face. He was a professional and he had a game today.
Unfortunately for all of his best intentions, he found the underwear on his way to the shower. Just there, on the floor, half tucked under the radiator near the bathmat: Shane’s underwear. Ilya stood in the doorway of his bathroom and looked at them.
Hollander had left so fast he hadn't known he'd left something. Or worse, he had known but simply needed to leave that urgently.
Ilya stared at them numbly. Then he stepped over them, got in the shower, and turned the water up until it was too hot to think or feel anything else. When he got out he stepped over them again, unmoved. Not now.
He got dressed. He got his keys. It was time to be a professional hockey player in the city that loved him, and to not think about the underwear by the radiator, and to not think about Hollander's face in that perfect half-second, and he was fine. His music was probably too loud and his foot was probably too heavy on the accelerator of his signature orange Porsche, but he had work to do.
The arena was quiet and familiar. Teammates were scattered around the ice stretching, drilling, and talking with trainers.
Ilya glided into the rink and focused on the feel of the ice today. He turned up the music in his earbuds until it was loud enough to be the only thing in his head and then skated until his legs burned faintly and his lungs were working and there was no room left for anything that had happened yesterday in his bed, in his kitchen, on his couch; no energy left for his eyes to fixate on the empty Visitor’s bench. He pushed himself until Coach tapped his shoulder and said to save it for tonight.
Ilya nodded, still ringing with energy. He slammed his puck at the boards and left the ice.
The pre-game rest period was mandatory — ninety minutes minimum, league rules, Coach's rules, common sense. Ilya went home, which still smelled like yesterday. He lay on his bed with his shoes on, staring at the ceiling and listening to music, entirely focused on the twin acts of breathing and not thinking. Sleep was not going to happen.
He was aware of the underwear. He was aware of them the same way he was aware of the empty half of the bed, the crumbs in the kitchen, and the condoms in the trash can. A physical mess would be easier to clean up than the emotional one, but he was not prepared to deal with either. It would all still be there when he came back alone tonight.
That thought was not useful at all; he turned up the music.
At four-thirty he got up, grabbed his water, and went back to the arena. His foot was heavy on the accelerator again. It was game time.
As home team, Boston took the ice first. Ilya plunged into the crowd noise — the arena filling, the energy still loose and anticipatory, twenty thousand people settling into their seats with their friends, their beer, and their expectations. This was home, even more than his apartment in some ways. He took a lap, nodded to Marleau, and let the ice welcome him.
He was doing handling drills when the Metros came out. The crowd noise shifted and the energy went up a notch, but Ilya dutifully kept his eyes and his attention on the drill he was finishing. He counted it out over and over, increasing his speed, focused just on the puck and his stick. He didn’t intend to look up. There was nothing for him to see over there.
Hollander was third through the gate and onto the ice.
He looked boringly fine. Loose, moving like nothing had happened yesterday in this city or on a couch or anywhere, really. He took the ice mid-conversation with his lineman and skated his first lap without looking anywhere near Ilya's side of the red line.
Ilya went back to his drill. He wasn't here to watch. He was here to warm up – and then to fucking win – with his team.
He switched to his next drill. He barely noticed as Hollander completed his first lap and then took a pass and released a shot on goal. As the puck hit the post with a sharp ring, the small cluster of Metros fans in the visitor's section cheered, and even then Ilya wasn't paying attention to any of it.
He skated a slow loop toward center ice. Unhurried; just catching a breath between drills. This was normal, too. Players drifted toward center during warmup. It happened all the time.
He ended up near the red line. Close enough that if Hollander had been looking at him with the usual current of tight attention they'd been running on for eight years, then he would have felt it by now. Ilya would have gotten something back. A glance, a smirk, or the self-aware posture of someone who knows they're being watched and is deciding what to do about it next.
He got nothing. Instead, Hollander was at the far end taking shots, and the only direction his eyes went was the net.
Ilya stood at the red line, his eyes boring into Hollander’s back.
Look at me, he thought, with a cold intensity that surprised even him. You were in my kitchen yesterday. You said my name. You can look at me.
Hollander did not look. He traded a few words with Pike before skating into a new position, where Pike began feeding passes toward Hollander to fire at the net. The crack of the shot like a sharp inhale; the huffed thud of impact as an exhale. Crack-thud. In-out. One-two. Ilya moved off, chirping at his rookies about proper stretching.
The puck dropped and Ilya went to work.
He played the first period clean. Disciplined. He was a professional and this was his ice and twenty thousand people had paid to watch him be excellent, so he would be excellent. He won board battles, he moved the puck, he made Boston look good. The crowd ate it up. His linemates fed off his energy the way they always did when he was locked in.
And he was locked in. He was not thinking about Hollander.
The first time their paths crossed on the ice was midway through the first — a neutral zone battle for a loose puck, both of them bearing down on it, and for a split second they were close enough to touch – closer than they’d been at yesterday’s goodbye. Hollander got there a half-second faster, moved the puck to Pike, and skated away without a glance at Ilya.
Ilya let him go. He was playing clean. He was a professional.
The second time, though, Ilya hit him.
It was legal. A clean shoulder check along the boards in the offensive zone, Hollander battling for position, Ilya arriving with his full weight behind it. Hollander took it, stayed up, and moved the puck. That was that.
Ilya's teammates didn't blink. The refs didn't blink. Shane fucking Hollander didn’t blink.
Ilya skated away and felt something twist in his chest.
I'm right here, Hollander. You can’t hide all night.
By the second period, Ilya had stopped pretending he wasn't targeting Hollander.
Not dirty. He wasn't playing dirty. But when there was a choice — when the puck was loose and two players were equally worth pressuring — Ilya's blades took him toward Hollander every time. He rode him into the corners. He finished every check he was entitled to finish. He made himself a physical fact that Hollander couldn't easily ignore the way he'd ignored him during warmup, the way he'd ignored him since yesterday, the way he apparently intended to keep ignoring him indefinitely.
Hollander simply adjusted. He simply avoided Ilya better and more smoothly and more god damn professionally than before. He started moving the puck faster to compensate, anticipating Ilya's pressure before it arrived. It made him sharper. Ilya's attention was making him a better player in real time, which was so profoundly irritating that Ilya hit him harder the next time just on principle.
Pike pushed back: “Back the fuck off, Rozanov”
Ilya grinned, Finally he thought. But the ref had already skated between them and Hollander had already moved on and it was over before it started.
And Ilya knew – because of course he knew – that Hollander hadn't looked at him once.
The play that would change everything happened late in the second.
A puck went deep into the corner — Boston's offensive zone, the boards behind the net. A classic Hollander-Rozanov puck battle that the crowds loved. Ilya was bigger and he knew these boards and he knew Hollander. He swooped in with intent to claim the puck or at least the attention that he deserved. Fuck Hollander. Fuck Pike. Fuck the Metros. This was his house.
But Hollander was faster. He reached the puck a moment before him and started to turn — and that turn, that fraction of rotation, changed the geometry of everything. Instead of taking the hit across his back and shoulders, which he could have absorbed, he caught it at the side. Ilya's shoulder met the junction of Hollander's ribs and arm. Hollander's momentum carried him forward and sideways, and the boards were right there, and the sound —
The sound was sickening. Not the usual thud of a body check. It was the sound of injury, and Ilya knew it before the whistle blew.
Hollander went down hard and didn’t move.
Ilya stood at a short distance, eyes wide and barely breathing. He heard the referee blow the whistle. He heard the Boston crowd take a collective gasp and then hang in a silence for a moment before dropping into a buzz of collective speculation and debate. He heard a teammate calling his name. Ilya heard these at a distance, but his ears were tuned directly toward Shane, on the ice, listening for a breath or – God willing - words. His whole body was tuned into Shane’s on the ice, willing him to respond.
The Metros trainer was over the boards fast. Someone moved Ilya backwards but he didn’t blink as the trainer crouched down and said something, and Hollander's hand moved slightly in response which meant he was conscious which meant —
Ilya exhaled.
He was conscious. He was responding. His hand had moved.
Живой [Zhi-voy]. Alive.