Archive of Our Own

Shane registers the pain first; so much pain that the cacophony of the whole stadium roaring and then falling silent is, ironically, just background noise in his scrambled brain. His right shoulder burns, and the collision is making his head fuzzy and his whole body ache uncontrollably. Breathing hurts, his chest is on fire. It’s too much. The pads, the gloves and the skates, and the helmet. It’s all too much. He wants to— he doesn’t even know. Thoughts are hard. He wants to get out of here. Yeah. Definitely. Get out of his gear, out of this cold rink, to… to go home. He wants to go home. Even if, these days, home has been looking more and more like a pair of blue eyes, a boisterous but private laugh (reserved only for him), a Russian accent coating fond teasing English, and gentle hands that take him apart with utter reverence.

He squeezes his eyes and winces when the lights are too bright and the noise is too… loud. Weirdly, his first thought is that he wants someone to put noise-cancelling headphones on his ears right now. He wishes he could close his ears. It’s quite unfair, if you ask him, how you can close your eyes but your ears must be working all the fucking time. He’d have a blast if he could just— well, anyway. Not the time. Not the place for this dissection of the human ear anatomy, if the voices trying to get his attention are anything to go by. 

What the hell do people want from him? Who are these people? And why is he supposed to pay attention to them? Everything is so wrong and Shane is so confused. He’s sure he keeps hearing “Hollander? Hollander,” but he doesn’t know what to do with it. Is he supposed to answer? His head is throbbing, he must have been hit a little too hard, he just needs Ilya to know that he’s alright. Oh, right. He is down, on the ice, during a game, right? So, not okay. Right. Right. That’s why people are screaming his name.

So he needs to move, say something, but then a worried voice reminds him that there’s a reason if he’s only focusing on something else he needs to do. 

“Tell me! Fucking tell me!” He hears. It’s Ilya. Shane knew he’d worry. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Ilya’s voice so broken, so pleading, so scared. 

He tries to turn his head but there’s a collar on his neck that he swears was not there just a second before. He is sure of that. When— when did they manage to— oh, he’s also strapped to a spinal board, apparently. He can’t move. But… okay. He can work with it. He will. Because Ilya keeps begging for someone to please, please, fuck, tell him if Shane is alright and Shane doesn’t ever want to hear that distress in the other man’s voice again, so he must do something. Ilya is always so sad. He thinks Shane doesn’t notice but Shane has catalogued all of Ilya’s sad silences and looks and wishes he could do something about every single one of them. So he needs to do this.

He manages to move his left arm, because his right one hurts like hell, and hissing because of the sharp pain that is plaguing him, he grabs the wrist of one of the trainers, halting their movements.

Also, how many people are exactly helping him to reach an ambulance? Is he about to die? Well, that would be one more reason to get Ilya to know, so he ignores his own questions.

“Shane?” This woman keeps repeating, because Shane’s gaze is completely unfocused and his pupils are acting a little bit funny. “Shane?”

She doesn’t understand, Shane thinks. Or maybe he doesn’t understand. Is she talking? Fuck. This is exhausting.

“What’s wrong? Shane? We’re getting you to the hospital,” she tells him eventually and Shane is fucking glad because that gives him something to latch onto.

“Il— ya,” he stutters, brokenly and pained. He’s basically groaning, while squeezing his eyes shut to block the light out, but hopes they will understand him.

“What?”

Shane groans again, tries unsuccessfully to turn his head towards the back of the tunnel, where the rink is. “Ilya,” he repeats, and then forces himself to open his eyes to check whether or not someone has finally, fucking got him and is going to talk to Ilya.

“He’s not making sense,” someone says, though, and he wants to huff, because, Jesus Chris, how can people be so dumb, but then someone else crouches down next to him and tries to reassure him.

“We’re calling your parents, don’t worry.”

That somehow tips him over the edge. He musters all of his strength, with so much effort that he may have to sleep for the next three days to recover, and shouts a loud “Rozanov!” 

He immediately regrets it because his skull feels like it’s getting stabbed and he feels a thousand times more confused than before but at least that gets everyone’s attention.

“Uh, what?” One of the trainers asks unhelpfully.

“Roz— anov, get—” he breathes out, trying so, so desperately hard not to pass out before he gets confirmation that Ilya will know. 

God only knows Shane would be desperate, wrecked even, if Ilya had to be rushed off the ice on a stretcher. He kind of got that impression while the other man was in Russia for his father’s funeral and all Shane wanted to do was to teleport to Moscow and hug him until the pain subsided.

“Rozanov?” Another voice asks, and he manages to nod. 

His shoulder hurts a bit more, if he’s honest, but he can handle it. He will. For Ilya.

Maybe he should be concerned that all he can think about is Ilya Rozanov, while he’s half unconscious and in pieces after a bad hit, but thinking straight isn’t his strong suit at the moment so he isn’t.

“Yes,” he murmurs, low. It’s almost agonizing. These people are stupid, honestly.

“What about Rozanov? We gotta get you to the hospital, buddy,” another man tells him. This is a voice that Shane recognizes. It’s Anthony, a cool and patient guy in his forties who’s been working with the Metros for as long as Shane has been in Montreal. Shane likes him. He’s the person to turn to when something hurts.

“Tell him.”

It’s the last thing Shane is able to hum before starting a battle against unconsciousness.

He doesn’t want to lose consciousness, he hates losing control and his mind has become a mess of confused thoughts. He feels like he’s slowly losing his grip on whatever reasoning he’d be otherwise capable of, and he absolutely hates it, so he tries to keep his eyes open even though the stadium's fluorescent lights hurt.

Truthfully, Shane doesn’t exactly understand why they are keeping him in the stadium, in a room reserved for injured players of the home team, instead of rushing him to a goddamn hospital as they told him they would. Seriously, he’s hurting. What’s these people’s problem? He made sure they’d tell Ilya about his condition, they can go now.

And he would tell them as much, if only talking weren’t so difficult, such a demanding task. 

But he doesn’t have the time to worry much because suddenly he hears a very familiar, very terrified voice approaching.

“— is him? Where— Shane!”

Rozanov? Ilya? What is he doing here? And how did he manage to sneak into the Metros area of the stadium? Why is he here? Isn’t there a game going on? Ilya is the captain, he should be playing, shouldn’t he? God, Shane is so fucking confused and so fucking tired. 

“Roz—” he starts to blurt out but then, as soon as Ilya’s concerned face falls into his visual field, he loses his battle with unconsciousness. 

Ilya sees Shane’s eyes close in slow motion, even if it couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds, and suddenly he isn’t in Montreal anymore. He is in Moscow, twelve years old, and utterly terrified, devastated, lost.

“Rozanov? Rozanov! What the hell,” someone yells. 

Oh, well, he must have zoned out. Yeah. 

“What? What is happening?”

Ilya profoundly hates the way that his accent thickens when he’s tired or stressed or scared and anxious, but now he couldn’t care less about the fact that people might judge him for his not perfect English.

“Why is he— asleep?” Panic is dripping from every syllable of his and he knows— God, he knows— that asleep isn’t the right word but he is sure he wouldn’t find the words even if it were Russian he’d be talking in. 

Shane can’t die. He can’t leave him like his mother did. And that simple thought manages to make him scoff bitterly at himself. 

He seriously thought he could break things off with Shane. How was he so stupid? Even if Shane disappeared from his life, Ilya would still be in love with him for the rest of his days. 

Because that’s what he is: in love with Shane Hollander. 

And not twelve anymore. But still equally terrified. 

“What—”

It looks like he will keep repeating what until the end of time.

“He kept asking for you, so we figured we should get you if we wanna leave and get him to a hospital. He wouldn’t let us move,” one of the trainers tells Ilya, shrugging, even. As if that were completely normal, as if the whole NHL hadn’t been revolving around the fierce rivalry between Rozanov and Hollander for years at this point.

How did it go? Hollander is asking for Rozanov? Oh, okay, let’s get him. 

Ilya is losing his mind. Shane wouldn’t have left if he hadn’t come to him? 

“Okay, so what?” He apprehensively asks, and without even realizing, slips out of his skates. Why? Who knows. He just gets rid of them. It’s probably just muscle memory: get out of the skates to get out of the stadium.

“Shane? Hollander?” The trainer on his right tries to nudge Shane, keep him awake and talking, and maybe, probably ask him what they are supposed to do with Rozanov. But Shane keeps his eyes closed and Ilya isn’t sure he is breathing, so eventually decides for everyone. Even if it will probably cost him his career, fuck up his whole life, turn it upside down.

“Can I come?” He asks, still a little unsure. This is not normal, after all.

One of the Metros guys lifts a perplexed eyebrow and looks at him as though he had grown another head in the last five minutes. “Where?”

“I come to hospital with you, with Hollander,” Ilya repeats, sure of that, sure enough that he won’t get Shane out of his sight, at this point. Eyebrows raised and a second away from the biggest eye roll of his life.

“You have a game to finish, Rozanov,” somebody reminds him, and Ilya distinctly knows that he should at least talk to the Boston management before fleeing the stadium like a concerned spouse, but Shane seems to regain consciousness at that exact moment and winces, groaning so much that Ilya worries his own heart will get out of this carrying some irreparable damage. So he makes the decision anyway.

He starts walking towards the exit. “Let’s just—” he wildly moves his hands, uselessly. Why can’t they read his mind? Maybe his thoughts could get into their heads in English without him having to translate. Fuck. He’s completely delirious.

“Let’s go, come on! I do not fucking care about hockey.”

That’s how he ends up in the ambulance next to Shane, in a space so cramped that it’d give a spelunker a claustrophobic attack. Or maybe it’s just his chest pad. Maybe he tightened it too hard before the game. Or maybe it’s a panic attack. Who knows? At least, if this whole mess gets out, he has no family left he should go back to Russia for. He feels less guilty. 

Anyway, he’s about to ask for help, for someone in the ambulance to help him breathe — there are two paramedics, they must know what to do, he certainly does not— when Shane groans and squints, looking around. Ilya never thought a pair of eyes could hold such power over him. He immediately forgets all about himself and leans forward to catch the other man’s gaze.

“Ilya? Wha— oh,” Shane mumbles, looking at him with the effort of someone who’s trying to stay awake and alert even if it’s so hard.
And Ilya’s heart stutters in his chest, violently reminding him that there’s no world where Ilya Rozanov does not love Shane Hollander.

Shane’s face shouldn’t be covered in bruises, his skin should only carry the prettiest freckles Ilya has ever seen, not the evidence of the brutality of the sport they chose. 

“Shane? Is okay,” he instinctively says, leaning a bit more forward, ignoring the confusion and the bewilderment on the faces of the other occupants of this ambulance. The sirens scratch his eardrums, he can’t imagine what that must feel like for Shane. He remembers his first concussion, back in Russia. It wasn’t funny. “You are okay, lyubimyy,” he whispers softly, even if he doesn’t really know if Shane is. He sure as hell hopes, doesn’t know what would happen if Shane weren’t. 

Maybe that’s why he places a trembling hand on Shane’s head, softly caressing his hair, drenched with sweat. He shouldn’t, really. But Shane seems to relax under his touch, as though Ilya’s fingertips were a switch to flick to lull him to sleep. So he doesn’t stop, keeps slowly scratching Shane’s scalp until they reach the hospital, and feels like someone is trying to rip his heart out of his chest when Shane is taken away from him.

Nobody pays attention to him, they take the stretcher with Shane into the ER and start firing numbers and words that Ilya has no chance of ever deciphering to the hospital staff. So he’s left standing at the entrance like a puppet whose strings have been cut for God knows how long. He simply can’t bring himself to move, to go somewhere else. It’s not his fault that he feels like he can’t breathe, like he’s about to collapse. It hasn’t happened in ages. It feels like half a century since he last had a panic attack, but this must be it. That’s probably why he finds himself being dragged around by a nurse. 

He realizes that someone is squeezing his bicep through the protective layer he is still wearing only when someone drops something in the hallway and the noise echoes right through his head, bringing him out of whatever spiral he’d fallen into.

“What? Who are you?” Suddenly that’s the first thing he asks, trying to get out of the man’s grip. The man, a nurse in his twenties, Ilya probably thinks, looks at him like Ilya is a drunk weirdo he rescued from the streets in the middle of the night, but then answers all the same.

“I’m Nurse Wilson, I think you want to follow me,” he says, tilting his head to indicate a white door which does nothing to ease Ilya’s anxiety.

“Oh, where— where are we?” 

Honestly, maybe he should get himself checked for a concussion too. He doesn’t remember the last ten minutes.

“We are at Montreal General Hospital, you came here with your friend, I’ve been told you were waiting in front of the waiting area, so I came to get you.”

With his friend? “You do not watch hockey,” is somehow what Ilya ends up blurting out, making the other man laugh. 

“No, I really don’t, is it serious?” 

Oh, this is nice, Ilya thinks. This person won’t have questions then. He laughs, a bit hysterically maybe, and just tries to take a breath (failing).

“How is Sh— how is my friend? They took him.” 

They took him from me. Please give him back. 

The nurse smiles a bit, kind of sadly, and that makes Ilya’s skin prickle with unease. “Is it serious? Tell me, please! Is he… dying?” 

Fuck. He feels so stupid for asking this specific question. He knows Shane is not dying, but he wants someone else to tell him, someone who is not his tired and scared brain. And this man, this kind man, maybe can help.

“I’m sorry, mister Rozanov, but I’m not authorized to talk about mister Hollander’s condition, he is a famous personality in Mon—”

Ilya snaps. He doesn’t want to, but he does. “Oh, so you fucking know who we are!” He spits back vehemently, putting some distance between them just to make sure the other man knows that he doesn’t have to ask the security to escort him out of the hospital.

“Yes, and I’m sorry, but I’m just doing my job—”

“And I am his—”

Ilya pauses abruptly. I am his what? What could he possibly say to justify the visceral need to see that Shane is still breathing with his own two eyes or he’ll most likely collapse and never recover? He definitely is not Shane’s boyfriend, no matter how much he would give, to be. That is rich, coming from someone who wanted to break off any kind of arrangement just some hours before…

The man’s piercing gaze is still fixed on him when he realizes that he has nothing to beg for, no right, no place in Shane’s life. 

“I am Russian,” he ends up saying, feeling so stupid that he’d actually slap himself. Of all the things he could have said, he chose the most ridiculous one. I am Russian. So what? Should that have been threatening? Ridiculous, Rozanov.

“And I’m Canadian, what’s your point?” 

Ilya’s mouth opens and then closes; he lost this argument, definitely.

“Look, you can wait there, there’s a private waiting area, and as soon as we have permission, we’ll let you know what’s going on,” Nurse Wilson tells him eventually, and what can Ilya do except nod and accept his fate? 

He sighs heavily, sits down on a cold and uncomfortable chair, and drops his head, closing his eyes and nodding. “Okay,” he mumbles defeatedly, trying to catch a deep breath.

As soon as he’s alone, though, he begins to spiral. Thoughts are swirling dangerously in every direction except the one that he should be following, that is Shane is going to be okay, everything is going to be alright. 

He tries to close his eyes to relax, but keeps seeing his mother’s unmoving body and his father’s angry eyes, so that is definitely not an option. No.

Eyes open. 

Someone hits the row of seats he’s sitting in but keeps walking, not acknowledging him in the slightest. He decides he’ll get rid of his shoulder pads and chest protector, wondering when exactly he discarded his elbow pads, feeling more grounded when he is left wearing his jersey over his compression shirt only. Feeling less like he’s suffocating. Then he realizes he’s wearing Marlow’s shoes and shakes his head with an annoyed huff. He’s a mess. That has never happened to him before. And that’s something, considering that he’s recently buried the only parent he had left.

When Yuna Hollander saw her son go down on the ice and not get back up, she immediately regretted the exact moment she encouraged him to put on a pair of skates and pursue a hockey career. 

Now, as she crosses the hospital hallways that will bring her to Shane’s room, her sole focus and concern is getting to her son and helping him however she can. Her first instinct is always to put herself between him and harm’s way, no matter how ugly things may get.

She doesn’t care about his career, not if it has to be at the expense of his health, but she knows that Shane might see things slightly differently, so she braces herself for a quick and efficient chat with his doctors, to assess the damage, the situation, and then to deal with whatever Shane’s reaction may be.

What she absolutely, under any circumstances, was not expecting is to find Ilya Rozanov fast asleep on four chairs in the closest hallway to Shane’s room. 

She stops dead in her tracks as soon as her eyes rest upon the boy who usually looks like a living menace, bane to the existence of every single NHL player and the most famous North American ladies' man, who now looks so small that a part of her instinctively wants to hold him and comfort him. That must be her motherly instinct, she supposes. 

She stares at him for a second or an hour, she doesn’t know. Honestly, she wonders what the hell Rozanov is doing here. His hair is disheveled, pointing in every direction, as if he had passed his hands through it so many times, his face is a bit red, and one of his cheeks is squished on top of his right hand acting like a makeshift pillow. His lips are slightly parted, like he’s breathing through his mouth; overall, he looks like shit.

But that doesn’t answer her question. If he had been taken to the hospital because of an injury (she wouldn’t know because she was out of the house before the game even resumed after Shane’s hit), he certainly wouldn’t be sprawled out on these uncomfortable, not made for sleeping, chairs, and… he wouldn’t still be wearing his gear.

What— is that protective gear lying in a corner next to the door? What kind of parallel universe has she stepped into?

She decides to open the door and walk towards Shane’s room. There must be someone she can talk to, even if it’s almost three in the morning. They’ll know why Ilya Rozanov is seemingly guarding her son’s whole hospital floor with his life.

The problem is that as soon as her hand touches the door handle, the Russian boy shoots upright, so fast that his head must be spinning, because he immediately finds purchase on the wall on his right. 

“Oh, hello,” Yuna says, bewilderment creeping up on his face. What the— “Rozanov?”

She squints and observes him. He is a total mess, looks absolutely devastated, and… weirdly greenish. She’s about to ask what’s going on when she spots his eyes go wide as two saucers before he darts away and the next thing she knows is that Ilya Rozanov is doubled over a bin, retching and then dry-heaving until he has to grip the disgusting bin itself to stay upright. 

Yuna is slightly concerned. She would probably be freaking out if only her only son weren’t in a hospital bed. Nonetheless, she approaches the man. “Rozanov?” She tries, but when he doesn’t acknowledge her, she goes on. “Were you hurt in the game? With Shane? Hollander, I mean. I— I’m his mom. I— I didn’t see…”

Ilya would honestly laugh at the fact that Yuna Hollander felt the need to clarify which Shane she was referring to. Hollander. As if Ilya’s life hadn’t revolved around him since they were barely eighteen. He can’t, though. Not when their relationship— their whatever they are— is on the verge of being ruined. Fuck. What is he supposed to do? Shane doesn’t want to— fuck fuck fuck.

He makes a bolt for the toilets. Leaving a stunned Yuna behind.

She takes a few seconds to recover, blinks once or twice, as though she could snap out of whatever reality she has found herself in, and then decides that finding her son is her priority, so she simply keeps going until she finds the door. 

“Shane?” A trembling whisper escapes her lips against her will when facing her son’s bruised face and his bandaged arm, and it’s pure instinct that brings a hand of hers to pat his hair, but he only grunts at the contact and keeps sleeping. 

So Yuna decides to call David and update him. He’ll help calm her down.

And Shane keeps sleeping, softly snoring, but Yuna loses track of time whenever she is talking with her husband, so she doesn’t realize when her boy starts to stir, slowly awakening.

“Yeah, David, I don’t know…” she whispers. And then, because life is funny that way, “yeah, Ilya Rozanov, yeah! Here— and then was vomiting all over—” she adds, but can’t go on because Shane interrupts her.

His eyes are barely open while he mutters “Ilya?” Before fixing his bleary gaze on his mom, expectantly. 

Yuna’s heart skips a beat or two; she clearly knew Shane would be okay but hearing his voice after the hell that the night has been so far is such a relief that she might collapse, were she not sitting down.

“Shane, honey,” she moves to cup his cheek, seconds after hanging up the phone call. 

“Mom? Il— Ilya? Ilya,” Shane mumbles, squinting when the lights keep bothering him. Fuck. He’ll never take the darkness for granted ever again.

But Yuna only frowns. Why is Ilya Rozanov Shane’s first thought? Perhaps because she said his name while he was sleeping? 

“Shane, how are you? Are you in pain?” She asks instead, concern growing exponentially in her gut.

Shane shakes his head and immediately regrets the action, so he settles for pouting. “No,” he mutters hoarsely. “Ilya… was vomiting? Is he— okay?”

“Shane.”

“Mom.”

Luckily, she hands him a cup with cold water, and that helps him feel a little more alive.

“Okay?” Yuna tentatively asks again, begging for her son to just speak to her, tell her he’s alright, and maybe praying for Ilya Rozanov to just disappear from their lives. 

“Mom. Is Ilya here?” Shane tries again.

“Why are we calling him Ilya?” Yuna's arched eyebrows are about to graze her hairline. Come to think of it, she’s lucky she still has hair that is not completely gray, at this point. 

In another world which apparently is not the one they are living in, Shane Hollander would wake up and pester his mother for answers about his condition and how long he will be forced off the ice. 

However, in this world, Yuna figures, Shane Hollander’s only focus as soon as he regains consciousness after a nasty, brutal hit on the ice is Ilya fucking Rozanov.

He has the audacity to huff, to literally huff at his mother, Yuna thinks. “How is he? Why is,” Shane coughs roughly and she wants to snap at him so much for his stubbornness — she is worried, sue her— “he here?”

Hell if I knew! Yuna thinks. “I found him sleeping in the hallway, I don’t know, then he woke up, saw me, and started puking in a bin. When I approached him, he ran to the toilet…” she shrugs, almost missing the way Shane’s face seems to crumple. 

He swallows a few times, his Adam’s apple bobs repeatedly, probably frantically, and he looks like he’s fighting a silent battle against himself. Then, with the fierce determination Yuna is very privy to, he imperceptibly nods. “Can you…” He pauses mid-sentence because it’s hard and everything hurts, despite the painkillers he’s been given. “Can you find him? Please, Mom.”

Yuna blinks once, twice, then again, and then once more, wishes she could read her son’s mind, wants to ask a thousand questions and then some more, but Shane begs again.

“Please, I promise I’ll tell you everything, just— I’m worried, can you get him?”

Jesus Christ. He is worried. Her son is in the hospital and he is worried about his arch rival. Is this a joke? Maybe she hit her head somewhere on the way here. 

“Yeah, okay, don’t worry Shane, you don’t need to explain yourself, I’ll try to find him.”

Rozanov is standing at the nurses’ desk when she finally spots him, somehow looking even smaller than before, when he was curled into himself, asleep and clearly unsettled. He’s smiling kindly at one of the nurses. To be honest, Yuna is sure she has never seen him smile. Smile. Not smirk. She probably didn’t believe Rozanov could be anything but a pretentious prick— excuse her language. 

His smile disappears completely when he spots her, though. She feels almost guilty.

“Uhm… hi. Rozanov,” she greets him with a nod, as soon as they are standing closer. 

“Hello,” Rozanov murmurs, his bad boy façade crumbles so fast she’d be impressed in any other circumstance. His accent sounds different from the interviews, where he usually sounds so confident.

This version of Ilya Rozanov is a shell of the man she thought she knew. She clearly doesn’t know him at all, and for a while, she wonders how much her son knows him.

“Are you okay?” She has to ask. Not because Shane was desperately worried, but because there’s a boy in front of her who looks a lot like a lost, scared kid.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hollander. I was— I do not have phone now, so I asked—”

“Rozanov,” she cuts him off and tilts her head, as if changing the angle might change the way she sees him, change what she sees in him. “Shane wants to see you, would you like to come and see him?”

She doesn’t know that Ilya feels like a kid on Christmas morning because of that offer, but maybe she has a hunch, judging by the way his eyes instantly brighten. She can’t stop the frown that creeps up her face.

“Yes,” Rozanov replies immediately, almost desperate, and then clamps his mouth shut, patiently waiting for directions.

Yuna has honestly no idea where this version of Rozanov comes from but she won’t have answers unless they reach Shane, so, slowly, they walk to his room, walking side by side in awkward silence.

When she opens the door, Shane’s head is a little tilted to the right, half of his face squished into the pillow. He looks so cute and she loves him so very much. He’s softly dozing off, probably knocked out cold by the pain meds. 

Rozanov, on the other hand, looks frozen on the spot, pale as if someone had shot him in the chest and drained all of the blood from his body. He gulps a couple of times, opens his mouth, and then closes it again, unsure of what to say. If Yuna observed him a bit longer, she could almost determine whether he is about to cry, which is such a wild scene to witness. 

Ilya Rozanov, Russian terror of the NHL, crying at her son’s bedside? Well, she couldn’t have conjured the image in her wildest dreams.

He is apparently taken back to reality when Shane stirs, maybe because one of them clears their throat— Yuna doesn’t remember if it was her or Rozanov. 

“I— I wanted—” he keeps stammering, then stays silent when he apparently doesn’t know what to say.

Shane, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any trouble finding words. “Ilyaaaa,” he cheekily exclaims, once he sets his eyes on the other man in the room, under Yuna’s baffled expression.

She carefully studies the way the Russian’s features basically change as soon as Shane acknowledges him, but something in him — something that resembles fear, she notes — still keeps him as still as a statue.

“Hey,” so Shane insists, a bit high on the medication probably. And when Rozanov still stays unmoving, he doubles down. “Heeeeey, come here come here,” he encourages him.

That seems to help Rozanov move, and Yuna expects him to get closer to the bed, maybe even sit on the chair next to the bed, but she certainly doesn’t expect him to grab Shane’s extended hand and squeeze it as if his life depended precisely on that. 

She certainly doesn’t expect Ilya Rozanov to quickly drop his head on her son’s good shoulder and start quietly shaking with sobs. 

And yet, that’s exactly what happens, leaving her gaping like an astonished fish. 

Shane murmurs something she can’t hear but she does hear Rozanov’s next words.

“I’m sorry, I am so sorry, I was so worried, Shane.” 

He sounds so sincere that Yuna thinks that maybe she could reassure him, even if she still has no idea what’s happening in this room. But her son precedes her.

“Ilya, hey, I’m okay, look, I’m fiiiiine,” he singsongs, probably a little bit unaware of the situation. 

“You were not fine, they—” Ilya slowly pulls away, and then starts caressing Shane’s face, softly tracing his freckles with the back of his fingers. “They told me to— to come and I did not know what was—”

Ilya wanted to break things off tonight. If everything had gone according to his plan, he’d now be in his hotel room, wallowing and sulking and maybe even crying because he would never be allowed to touch Shane again. But nothing went according to plan, so now here Ilya is, leaning down to bury his face between Shane’s hair and the pillow. 

Shane manages to grab one of his hands and squeezes. For some reason, he looks a whole lot more sober. “It’s okay, it’s okay, you are okay,” he repeats, nodding imperceptibly against his concussion.

Ilya, on his hand, feels like he’s deflated, coming down from a rush of adrenaline and panic that would probably take a whole day of sleep to recover from in other circumstances. 

He will never leave Shane if Shane keeps him. That’s what he decides as soon as he’s touching his soft skin again and smelling his calming scent.

“I am sorry if people are saying things, I did not mean— I was worried, you told them to call me and—”

Yuna surprises them both, she’s fairly sure they had forgotten about her for a second or two. “Wait, Shane told the trainers to get you?” She can’t help herself, feels like she’s floating around in a secluded corner of space where nothing is where and like it is supposed to be.

Ilya shrugs. “They told me that they could not go to the hospital if I did not come with them, so I went with them,” he explains.

“I did not tell them to get you, I wouldn’t, you know,” Shane frowns, eyes bleary and tired. Ilya loves him so much it hurts.

“What?”

“What?”

Shane wonders why everyone in the room doesn’t understand him. He’s sure he’s speaking English.

“I told them to tell Ilya that I was okay, because I knew he would… worry.” His words are slurred and both Yuna and Ilya want to tell him to shut up and go to sleep, that they can talk about it another time, but Shane seems determined to explain.

He closes his eyes and keeps talking. “He was so sad, Mom, because Russia…” he murmurs, as if Ilya weren’t there anymore. “He couldn’t also think that something happened to me.”

Yuna is shocked, there’s no other possible explanation, so she thinks they’ll forgive her for her confusion.

“Wait, you know each other…” 

It sounds like a question because of her aforementioned shock and all that, but it really isn’t. So she presses on.

“I mean, are you… friends?” 

There’s no way they are just… friends. She’s sure. But entertaining any other possibility is completely not conceivable right now, so she waits for them to eventually explain. The problem is that Shane looks like he’s two seconds away from a deep, medication-induced slumber and Ilya is staring at Shane like he’s the greatest thing to ever grace this planet, no coherent thought in sight.

“Shane,” he gently whispers, voice breaking at the end, gaze so soft he looks like he’s about to melt in a puddle on this hospital floor. And then he essentially throws himself at Shane, and under Yuna’s horrified gaze, he starts peppering his head with kisses, muttering something in Russian that she can’t understand.

Shane starts to giggle. God, he is really out of it, but he looks so relaxed, so at ease, so at peace that she can’t help but wish she could see that smile on her son’s face until the day she dies. 

This is apparently her reality. One where Ilya Rozanov showers Shane in kisses and Shane giggles in return, trying to tilt his head so that he can return at least one kiss.

Okay, so… they must be… what? Boyfriends? Her heart aches, because Shane definitely did not feel safe enough to come to her with this. He didn’t feel like he could tell his mother. 

“What’s that mean?” Eventually, Shane asks, curious and surprised, looking at Ilya once the other man’s ministrations are over. 

Yuna wonders what this is about, acutely aware of the way Ilya’s cheeks have reddened. They look almost like they must be hurting him. What the hell? 

“Nothing.”

Hm. Funny. He’s lying.

She smirks.

“Ilyaaa.” 

Shane is so funny like this. Looks like a happy and carefree kid. 

“Shane.”

Oh, come on. Just tell him already, Yuna thinks. She can’t say no to those eyes, and she is his mother. She has had to tell him no more than once and still finds it impossible to resist Shane’s soft brown and pleading eyes.

“Ya loobloo ty—” Shane tries to repeat the Russian phrase that Ilya has told him more than once in the last five minutes but Ilya cuts him off abruptly. 

“I love you.” 

The numbers on Shane’s heart monitor skyrocket, so much that Yuna is tempted to call a nurse, or maybe take the elevator to the roof and scream until her throat is raw because this can’t be the real world, this must be some weird, crazy dream her mind must have come up with after too much wine.

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya says again. “Means I love you.” 

Yuna can see how terrified he is from a distance. She’s pretty sure his eyes are glistening with tears, and her heart kind of clenches. This is nothing like the Ilya Rozanov that she knows.

“Is true…” he adds, while her soon looks like he’s seen a ghost holding the Stanley Cup. 

“I mean… can you say something to me? Please.”

Then, as Shane seems to have lost all of his ability to speak, he moves, tries to get up, and get away from the bed. “Okay, I will… send you text, yes? Sorry.”

“Oh. I love you too! Where are you going? Mom.”

Yuna laughs, maybe hysterically, maybe because this is the only thing she can think of doing in this situation. “Tell him,” Shane looks exasperated, and she laughs even more. Meanwhile, it’s Ilya’s turn to look speechless and dumbfounded. Yuna has to tell Ilya Rozanov that Shane loves him? Oh boy.

“You— I—” 

Very eloquent, Rozanov, she thinks, in the privacy of her own mind.

“Really? You love me? Is true?” 

“So much,” Shane genuinely replies, and the smile on his face is so tender that Yuna feels like she’s intruding. And maybe she is, but there’s something that stops her from leaving. 

“C’mere,” Shane slurs. His speech is a clear indicator of how drained he must be feeling, but that apparently doesn’t deter him from grabbing Ilya’s jersey to bring him close, closer. 

Ilya goes willingly, and as soon as just a few inches are separating them, he reaches Shane’s face and kisses him right on the lips. 

“Ya teebeea loobloo,” Shane grins, high on the meds and all the love too. 

Ilya chuckles and realizes he’s been crying only when Shane’s good hand starts wiping his cheek. “That is terrible,” he declares proudly, with such fondness that Yuna feels dizzy.

Wow. Just… wow. She has no words. She can’t wait for David to arrive. 

“I love you so much, Shane,” Ilya breathes out heavily, “thank you.”

Shane frowns, “Thank you? For what?” 

He’s now petting Ilya’s hair as if he were a scared puppy, and Ilya looks like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. “Is okay, I will tell you later.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Shane pouts, and Yuna laughs, can’t stop herself. 

That gets the boys’ attention, forcing them to face her, both of them with cheeks going up in flames.

“Oh, your cheeks are honestly a concerning shade of red.”

And well, that is certainly not what Shane nor Ilya would have expected from her, after this whole display of affection, so they can’t help but laugh and try to hide their faces together, away from her scrutinizing (but lovely) gaze.

It doesn’t take much for Shane to fall asleep, but having Ilya close by, sharing his body heat through the arm that Shane is clinging to, helps a lot. So that now leaves Ilya alone with Yuna, and despite the absence of awkwardness when Shane was awake, now Ilya can’t shake the feeling of uneasiness that’s creeping up his spine.

What if, now that Shane is sleeping soundly, his mom decides that Ilya is not good for her son? That Ilya Rozanov is still an asshole and doesn’t deserve her son’s love? What if she wants him to leave Shane’s hospital room? What if she was only friendly to avoid upsetting her injured son? 

“Hey, are you okay? You’re breathing…” Yuna gestures around with her hands towards her chest. You’re kind of not breathing, she wants to say.

Ilya’s head snaps up to look at her. 

“Yes, okay,” he nods, fixing his eyes on Shane, because there’s nothing he’d rather look at, and because looking at Yuna requires more courage than he’d ever admit. 

She frowns, studying him from a distance, analyzing the gentle way he moves around Shane, the effort he is putting in not waking him up. Then she registers that he is still wearing the game jersey and grimaces. 

“Look,” she offers, wondering how she ended up looking out for Ilya Rozanov, “I brought a bag with Shane’s clothes, do you, uh, wanna change? They must fit you.”

Ilya looks at her as though she had grown another head, looks almost spooked by her offer. She briefly wonders how people must have treated this boy in the past if this simple suggestion has him looking like this.

“Oh, I think I can stay like this.”

“You must be all sweaty, feeling—”

At that, Ilya’s panic becomes visible on his face. “I smell?” 

He looks mortified. She has to fix this.

“No, no! It’s just— that can’t be comfortable, please take Shane’s clothes, there’s two of everything.”

Part of her is afraid that this young man will burst into tears right in front of her— she’ll have to ask Shane what the hell is going on, seriously — but eventually, he simply accepts her small push and stands up to take the bag.

When he gets back, wearing Shane’s joggers and a tee from a hockey camp that Shane attended last year as a charity event (with the name Hollander plastered across the shoulders), she smiles and decides that she’ll take care of this boy if it’s the last thing she does. 

“Better?” She cautiously asks.

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hollander.”

She’ll get him to call her Yuna, but now is not the time.

“Listen, have you talked with your coach?” 

All color leaves Ilya’s face, and he suddenly looks like he’s about to faint and she, yet again, wonders why. 

“I did not have phone so I asked the nurses if I could—”

He’s clearly missing the word, and that’s confirmed when he bashfully (Yuna still can’t wrap her head around the fact that she’s just put Ilya Rozanov and bashfully in the same sentence) looks at Shane and with a smile says, “Shane always tells me words when I do not know,” like he’s somehow admitting an embarrassing defeat.

“Borrow? They gave you their phone?” She gently offers, without judgment.

“Yes, thanks. I spoke with Marlow, he said coach is angry, but I can go back to Boston with my own flight…” 

“Oh, so you won’t fly out with the team?” 

“No, I did not know if Shane was okay, they tell me nothing.” He shrugs. He shrugs, as if he hadn’t just altered Yuna’s whole world.

What else is he risking, giving up for her son? God, “I have so many questions,” she ends up sighing.

“Are you… angry with Shane?” Ilya wonders, a little anxious.

“Oh, no, no. Absolutely, I just— wonder how this happened?”

“Maybe we can…” he looks around, fixes his eyes on Shane from his seat beside the bed, “we can wait until Shane—”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.”

She smiles, then after a few moments of silence, asks, “Are you in trouble? I’m sorry if you are.”

Ilya smiles, a genuine smile that tenderly lightens his features. “Is okay, I will be fine, is for Shane… I am captain. And best hockey player ever.”

He shrugs. Again. God. This man will be the death of Yuna. 

He cheekily smirks, and finally, she recognizes Rozanov, NHL professional asshole. Somehow, she is glad. But still she scoffs. No one is better than Shane.

“When Shane isn’t playing, you mean?” She teases.

He clicks his tongue, “Eh, no, but is okay, I love him anyway.”

“Okay…” She has to laugh. What more is there to do? 

Wow. Just… wow.

Shane really took the “if you can’t beat them, join them” to a whole new level.

She snorts, fondly. 

Typical Hollander.