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The cold Boston wind is nothing compared to the frigid temperatures of Russia. Ilya inhales deeply, the frozen air a welcome friend as he settles into his new home. Briefly, he wonders about the air in Montreal. He remembers the air in Saskatchewan, how it was nice, clean. Thinks about the strong breeze in that parking lot that kept him from lighting a cigarette until the one and only Shane Hollander appeared and shook his hand. Like he’s able to control the fucking air.
“How is Boston?” Svetlana asks over the phone.
“Fine. Cold, like home. The air quality is better.”
He remembers having asked Hollander something similar about Boston. Thinks about the electricity in the air the night of the draft in that gym, the both of them panting and sitting across the floor from each other, the sizzle in his lungs when their hands brushed.
Recalls the playful wisps that had pulsed around them while they filmed that commercial, the both of them laughing and breathing each other’s air, followed by deep exhalations in the shower as they checked each other out.
Remembers the tingle that zipped through his heart when they were kissing and stripping each other in hotel room 1410. Hollander had made quick work of Ilya’s belt and pants, and the Russian couldn’t help the breathless “Fuck, Hollander,” that had escaped him, or his wheezing grunts as Hollander sucked him down for the first time, too much, too good, all too quick. He often thinks about the lungful of endearment he got watching Hollander fold his pants and underwear before joining him on the bed. Replays the moan that forced all the oxygen out of his lungs as he orgasmed, blessed as the recipient of Hollander’s first time ever giving a blow job, how he blew Hollander vigorously in return and left afterwards with a renewed ability to breathe.
Ilya drags a final puff off the cigarette he’s currently smoking. It doesn’t have the same effect on his lungs as touching Hollander does. He’s still curious about Hollander, he thinks to himself as he stomps out his cigarette. Curious about the air Hollander is breathing now.
He wonders if Hollander ever thinks about him.
***
Over the years, a void has canyoned its way through Ilya’s chest. It formed the day he found his dead mother. It’s grown as the years have gone on, his family hollowing him out day by day, demand after demand. For temporary relief, he’s able to fill it with girls, smoking, alcohol, exercising, hockey.
Hockey has always been there for him, but it’s almost not enough anymore. Because it’s getting harder to breathe. Like it’s a chore. The relentless phone calls from his brother demanding money along with his father being an asshole and slowly losing his mind make breathing feel more a punishment.
But something changes at his and Hollander’s first All-Star game. There’s a fluttering in his throat during the press conference when Hollander steps in and practically saves his ass. His nostrils flare to suppress the grin that wants to spread across his lips at Hollander’s replies as they’re sitting on the benches during the skills portion of the weekend. Almost can’t believe the breathless “Woah” he puffs out as Hollander drops to his knees the very second Ilya requests him to. He mentally curses Scott Hunter for cockblocking him, but he still kisses Hollander with zeal, his lips sucking Hollander’s like he’s trying to suck the air out of him. An excitement zings through his larynx when they exchange numbers. His lungs ache two weeks later when it’s announced they won’t make it to Montreal due to the fucking snow.
All of it changes something in his respiratory system. As if Hollander is now a part of it. Like he’s sitting at the head of Command Center of Ilya’s ability to breathe.
Then he loses Rookie of the Year. Fuck, he’s not even in Russia yet and it’s already smothering him. He can feel his father’s disappointment curling around his throat while Alexei’s demands press down on his chest. As he lights up a fourth cigarette, he contemplates how smoking may one day lead to difficulty breathing, yet here it is acting as a source of additional oxygen. It doesn’t exactly feel good, but it’s something.
That kiss on the balcony with Hollander, however, blows a current of dazzling air back into his lungs. It’s a welcome feeling, even though the other man stomps away from him afterwards. He supposes he should consider himself lucky, because Hollander’s boring texts get him through the summer. Each one is a breath of the freshest, most purest air cutting through the thick and toxic smog his family creates. He’ll never admit it, but he grins stupidly at each one.
***
The next two years of sending Hollander teasing texts teases his own air supply. Each boring response fills Ilya’s airways with endearment. Each time Hollander dodges intimacy with him it’s a slight kick in the gut; it doesn’t necessarily hurt but it still knocks the wind out of him.
His heart beats irregularly, lungs bouncing in anticipation when Hollander texts him an address for them to meet at to finally fool around again. Ilya has never looked so forward to sex.
Hollander is the type of once in a lifetime gorgeous that has Ilya’s breath hitching. He’s so sweet, so good, so receptive, so inviting, so lively, so fucking perfect. He groans and comes hard with gasping breaths after realizing he just made the other man come hands free. Oxygen floods his entire body in a euphoric rush of Hollander.
It terrifies him.
Hollander caresses his throat, kisses him softly, and graces his forehead with the sweetest of kisses.
Ilya’s lungs almost explode. Even still, he can’t help but trade a couple of soft kisses with a cuddly looking Hollander in the stairwell. He’s smiles widely as he steps in the back of the cab, smiles the whole ride back to his hotel, the joyous look only falling from his face after Marleau makes a comment. Slowly, the realization of what just happened with Hollander and how it makes him feel dawns on him. His heart wobbles, pulsing with something that leaves him feeling uncertain and entirely out of his depth.
He decides to hold his breath. The agony goes on for weeks. It worsens during the Olympics in Sochi when Latvia beats Russia on home ice. The pressure and humiliation have strangled him practically lifeless. He feels more like an animate puppet than a human being, like his respiratory system has been ripped out. He needs to breathe.
Ilya distances himself from everyone. He hides. Hollander still finds him.
The air vibrates between them, like some sort of magnet is trying to draw them towards each other. But that can’t happen. Especially, not here. Not in fucking Russia. His chest aches, his lungs screaming for air, his heart turning blue and choking on despair.
“I wanted to see how you’re doing,” Hollander begins, looking beyond adorable in his fuzzy jacket. Ilya wants to smoother himself in it. In Hollander. “We—"
“We aren’t anything,” Ilya bites out, oxygen level critical. “Go away, Hollander.”
The kicked puppy expression on Hollander’s face steals away any hope he had for air. Ilya feels like a monster. Then again, he considers that maybe monsters like him don’t deserve to breathe; not when they hurt people like Hollander.
The lecture from his father about Russia’s loss and the gala following it is like a slow asphyxiation that just won’t end in the sweet release of death. Eventually, Svetlana comes to his rescue like the angel that she is. She leads him to Sasha who makes a reference to French boys that has Ilya sucking in his lips and daring the other man to utter the name that always seems to be on his the tip of his tongue. He holds his breath through the encounter, only able to wheeze out an exhale after rereading Hollander’s text for the nth time.
The months after the Olympics trudge forward with swallow breathing. Like suffocation is teasing him. It won’t let him breathe easily, nor will it put him out of his misery.
When he wins his first ever Stanley Cup, he’s able to breathe, but it’s only a brief repose. A small part of him is disappointed when he doesn’t receive a congratulatory text from Hollander. Then again, he wonders if he had if it would have caused one, if not both, of his lungs to collapse.
He finally reunites with Hollander in Las Vegas at the awards show. Just being in Hollander’s presence is like being gifted with the blissful oxygen his body has been craving. It makes Ilya feel crazy. Like he’s got some sort of addiction. Like Hollander holds some sort of power over him.
After their skit on stage, he sees the panicked way Hollander is breathing, sees how he all but runs away and ducks inside a restroom. Ilya’s quaking lungs make him follow. He smirks to cover up his stuttered breaths.
Hollander looks disheveled in a way he never usually does. “What the fuck do you actually want from me, Rozanov?”
What does he want? He wants to be able to fucking breathe. He wants to fuck around with Hollander and then go on his merry way and able to take a fucking breath without it feeling like there’s a cavity in his chest. He wants to stuff Hollander into his soul so that every time he goes to take inhale it won’t feel as excruciating painful as it does now.
Instead, he says the stupidest thing possible: “I want you to suck my dick.”
He hopes it will relieve some of the tension in his chest, hopes that it will actually lead to Hollander sucking his dick so that Ilya will finally reobtain the capability to use his airway. But the crushed and watery way Hollander is peering at him has his nostrils flaring for a waft of oxygen that doesn’t come until they kiss messily. With their agreement made, Ilya leaves Hollander and returns to his seat feeling like an asshole. Usually, kissing Hollander feels like relief, but this time it had just felt like some sort of death sentence.
What happens later in that penthouse punches Ilya right in the chest and forces him to breathe. The air in his throat hitches as Hollander puts on a show for him, heart lurching in his chest as if it wants to leap out of him and dive into the other man.
He’s never exhaled as shakily as he does when Hollander tells him, “I need you.”
The sex they have is intense. Ilya grunts and pants through it. Just like the last time he had sex with Hollander, he’s gifted with oxygen. But, this time, breathing doesn’t feel good like it normally does. Instead, it’s a merciless reminder of what he needs but can never have. And then Hollander brings up Russia.
Ilya’s diaphragm deflates. He makes up a lame excuse about needing to sleep. Hollander takes the bait and leaves the bed to get dressed. It’s like all the air in the room follows him, leaving Ilya breathless and alone.
“So, uh...” Hollander calls from the foyer. “I’m off.”
“Goodbye, Hollander,” Ilya rasps out.
Once the door clicks shut, an obstruction forms in his throat.
They hadn’t kissed.
His lungs heave like they’re sobbing with sadness. Like there has been a loss. A feeling that’s already burrowing an even bigger hole into his heart.
It feels like grief.
***
People often take breathing for granted. It’s easy to. You forget you’re doing it. It’s something that just happens naturally. But breathing is a gift. It’s something that should be treasured, taken care of. Often, if you don’t take care of yourself, if you aren’t careful, you put your ability to breath in danger. And life is ruthless. It continues on whether you specifically are breathing or not.
Ilya has been reckless with his air supply over the years.
He’s trying to do better. He’s even trying to quit smoking, if not for his health, then as an attempt to get the voice out of his head, the one that’s always saying “Smoking is bad for you.” It’s not as hard as he’d thought it would be. Lately, smoking’s been restricting his breathing rather than aiding in it. Begrudgingly, he suspects it has something to do with a certain Canadian that infiltrates his thoughts more than he’d like to admit.
But that Canadian is so incredibly sincere. Genuine and authentic and so earnest. He takes Ilya’s breath away. He makes breathing feel less like a burden. Even with the three hundred miles between Boston to Montreal that feels like an ocean wanting to drown him, thoughts of Hollander help Ilya breathe. He’s fairly sure asphyxiation would hurt less than loosing Hollander. He’s not really sure why.
Regardless, they keep up their schedule. But the summer after Montreal wins the cup for the second year in a row has Ilya checking his phone an obscene amount. He repeatedly watches the ridiculous documentary Hollander has done about his cottage. His chest caves in when Svetlana asks if he’s seeing anyone, if what he’s got going on with the infamous Jane is serious. His breathing if off the rest of the night, his mind filled only with thoughts of Hollander.
It’s almost as if Ilya has handed his ability to breathe over to Hollander. Kind of like a voodoo doll. He’s tempted to swear on his life that Hollander is able to control how easy it is for Ilya to inhale and exhale. It’s like his smiles are a lifeline that controls the beat of Ilya’s heart. Thoughts of Hollander feel like a warm breeze on a sunny day. Like rejuvenation. Like life. Because Hollander is one of the only people on the entire fucking planet that can actually make him laugh big and loud and genuinely because he provides Ilya with enough oxygen to do so. It’s a slightly terrifying realization.
He thinks about that realization while he bites his lip almost bloody as he waits for Hollander’s text agreeing to come over to Ilya’s house for a sexy times rendezvous. His traitorous heart giggling like a love-struck teenager at Hollander’s cuteness when he finally arrives, endearingly taken with the architecture and design of Ilya’s home. It has Ilya’s windpipe demanding that Hollander stay awhile.
He pants heavily while they’re fucking, trachea shivering with the view of Hollander on top of him. Snorts out a breath of displeasure when Hollander suggests he should go. Breathes an imploring “Stay,” against Hollander’s lips. Lungs squealing in delight when the other man agrees to stay. He wakes with a vibration of pleasure buzzing through his heart when Hollander is the first thing he sees after opening his eyes.
Huffs out laughs at Hollander’s boring comments on the coach. Nostrils quivering as he admits that he likes Hollander. The call from his father is like a needle that pops his lungs like a balloon. But when he returns to the couch, Hollander is there to patch the wounds his family has left. Ilya pulls him down for a cuddle they’ve never indulged in before. Presses reverent kisses to the dark head, inhaling graciously.
Watches in oxygen overdoes as Hollander climbs into his lap and then strokes their dicks together. He moans airy and blissful. Breathes out a passionate “Shane!” because that name is tattooed across his heart and fans the flame keeping his soul alite.
A quiet “Ilya,” sends sparkling oxygen cascading into his veins, making him feel euphoric.
He presses beholden kisses on Hollander wherever he can reach. He can’t remember the last time breathing felt this easy.
It doesn’t last long.
Because he sees the air rushing out of Hollander’s chest, his nostrils flaring like a panicked animal whose breaths come out stuttered as they get ready to flee from the danger in front of them. He sees the frantic look on Hollander’s face. Hears the words “I can’t do this,” emerge from Hollander’s lips.
“Hollander,” he exhales desperately. “Hollander.”
“I’m sorry,” Hollander says before running away.
Ilya’s windpipe collapses. His lungs crack and shatter. His heart sputtering to a stop.
He feels like the living dead.
***
Breathing without Hollander is like trying to breathe through the fires of Hell. It’s made worse when the news about Hollander’s involvement with Rose Landry is revealed. It’s torturous when Boston and Montreal play each other again. But with each vicious slam of Hollander up against the boards, Ilya only feels as though he’s recklessly throwing away the brief gusts of air he’s been able to take in just from seeing the Canadian in person.
His chest throbs after the game. He’s used to fooling around with Hollander after their games. This time, he’s trapped in a hotel room with Carmichael. Unable to breathe, he demands they go to a club so he can try to fill the void with the other things that have always worked: alcohol, girls, sex. Anything that’s not Hollander.
Out of all the clubs in Montreal, he just had to choose this one. It feels as if his airway has a vendetta against him. Like it wants to punish him. His team hasn’t even been there five minutes before he spots that guy Miles: Rose Landry’s friend. Ilya combs the room with his gaze, lungs howling in pain as soon as his eyes find Hollander dancing with Rose Landry.
Devastation blows in as a brisk wind, snatching his last bit of oxygen and running away with it. Invisible hands are throttling him. His heart wheezes in agony. Because Hollander doesn’t want him. He wants Rose Landry. He left Ilya bereft of oxygen and ran right into the welcoming arms of a woman. Everything hurts. Since Hollander ran away, Ilya’s chest has been a barren place devoid of life. Because Hollander fills his lungs with spirit. His very being is the air that Ilya wants to breathe for the rest of his life. He wants to breathe each and every one of Shane’s breaths, to pump oxygen back into him the same way he does for Ilya.
He chugs a beer and wonders if it’s just as hard for Hollander to breathe as it is for him. Obviously not, if he’s with a famous actress. Ilya decides to retaliate. If Hollander wants to play this game, then fuck him and his ability to perform lifesaving CPR on Ilya with just one bat of those long eyelashes like he’s some sort of fucking oxygen genie.
Ilya busies himself with the first girl that attaches herself to him. But then Hollander is standing right there. He’s right in front of Ilya. There for the taking, for Ilya to stomp up to him and drag him to a private space so they can patch up their shared wound so the Russian will be able to breathe again. Ilya’s throat shakes with an eruption of emotions ranging from anger to yearning to regret. He doesn’t move.
Taking any hope of air with him, Hollander turns and leaves.
Had he actually been able to get oxygen to his brain, Ilya thinks he would have run after Hollander.
He returns to the hotel alone, lungs crying in anguish.
***
At the All-Stars game four agonizing months later, Hollander approaches.
Ilya’s lungs have been deflated since he left. He’s been panting in distress as though he’s been running an endless marathon ever since Hollander’s abrupt departure from his life. A breeze brushes past him and makes his heart trembles with a mixture of hope and terror. Hope for some sort of reconciliation, terror of being told he’s not needed anymore. Because he needs Hollander. He can’t breathe without him. Bitterness digs its jagged nails into Ilya’s lungs, allowing him to breathe but not without pain.
But his heart begins trying to beat again when Hollander sits beside him shares that he didn’t bring anyone with him. Ilya can’t help himself, voice box acting on its own. “You’re looking very pretty today,” he says.
A bright burst of laughter has sunshine streaming into his lungs when Hollander admits he hired a stylist. That Rose Landry is no longer in the picture because:
“We’re just not compatible.”
Fear’s hands release their strangling grip from Ilya’s neck. When Hollander goes off to circulate, the light in his lungs transforms into sweet, sweet oxygen. For the first time in months, Ilya’s able to take a deep breath.
He finds Hollander alone on the beach after the All-Stars game, having intentionally gone looking for him.
“What room are you in?” Hollander asks.
Ilya’s lungs shiver with want, with a need that runs so deep it’s almost quite literally a matter of life or death. As if a mere draft of Shane is the only thing needed to keep him going. He fears that it’s true.
But his respiratory system panics when Hollander sits at the end of his bed looking as serious as anything.
The capability to breath leaving as quickly as it had returned a couple days prior. He lungs tremble violently like an earthquake as Hollander tries to draw feelings out of him. Feelings that he knows he has but doesn’t want to admit. Is too scared of Hollander running away again.
His heart groans at him for laughing at Hollander saying he thinks he’s gay. It urges him to do something. To wrap Hollander in his arms and never let him go. He joins Hollander on the bed. His throat contracts with Hollander’s apology for running away, airway clogging at the admittance that, before he had run away, it had been nice.
“It was,” Ilya agrees, mouth going dry.
“It felt like we were something.”
Ilya throat bobs precariously. “We can’t be something, Hollander.”
“Would you want to be, if we could?”
“We can’t,” he forces out, feeling near hyperventilation.
His heart almost gives out when Hollander says, “I don’t think I can keep pretending I don’t like you anymore.”
“You don’t like me.”
“Yeah, I do. I think I like you maybe a little too much.”
Ilya sighs a miserable breath. He opens up about everything that stifles him: his family, fucking Russia. Explains how they make him not be able to breathe. He recognizes the earnestness on Hollander’s face. The sincerity and open comfort he’s providing.
Unbelievably, he starts to cry.
“Sorry,” he chokes out.
But then Shane is climbing into his lap and cradling him like he’s still important to the other man. When they finally kiss, Ilya’s esophagus trembles. Heart contorting with massive feelings as it gasps in desperate alleviation and release. The whirlwind that is affection, adoration, devotion steals away his ability to breathe. An emotion that for years he’s believed himself incapable of having for another person swirls in his heart. It’s massive and all-encompassing and wild like the spiraling, uncontrollable winds of a tornado. He clings to the man in his lap, desperate for the comforting air that he always provides.
The sex they have afterwards is softer than ever before. It replenishes his empty diaphragm with oxygen, bright and saccharine and harmonious.
“Goodnight, Shane,” he exhales carefully, testing the waters, praying Shane won’t bolt.
He’s met with a shy smile but a confident, “Goodnight, Ilya.”
Once the door to his room has closed, he flops back on the bed with a massive sigh of relief making his lungs glow with a feeling he’s too afraid to assign a name.
***
The death of his father forces an early return to Russia. The winter wind in Moscow howls like a cold and angry omen of something to come.
He should have known it was foreshadowing for his brother, his family, and fucking Russia because they all suck oxygen out of him like air-thirsty vampires. He should have known that even at his father’s funeral, Alexei would hunt him down and demand to know what the plan going forward is.
“I don’t know, Alexei, he just died! Give me a minute to fucking breathe!”
“What about me?” Alexei demands. “Do I get to breathe?”
Ilya wants to strangle his brother. What the fuck would he know about not being able to breathe? How does he think Ilya feels almost one-hundred percent of the time? But the look in Alexei’s eyes tells him everything he needs to know. There’s nothing left here for him anymore. His career is in America. The only thing he truly wants in life is in Canada.
He growls out an ultimatum. Alexei takes it. Svetlana helps make his decision to leave everything in Russia behind easier and covers for him so he can go for a walk, take a breather. It feels like a tremendous weight has been lifted off his chest. Breathing comes a bit easier now, but it’s still not enough.
The frozen Moscow air bites unforgivingly at his lungs. He wants to call Shane. Needs to. His lungs are demanding it.
The sound of Shane’s voice is a current of replenishing joy.
“I never want to come back here again. I hate it here. All I want is you. It’s always you. I’m so in love with you, and I don’t know what to do about it,” Ilya admits emotionally in Russian. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that, but he no longer feels like he’s suffocating.
“How do you say, I wish you were here right now?” Shane asks sweetly.
The air pulses with electricity. Ilya’s heart shudders with want, lungs tugging towards the sound of Shane’s voice as if they want to bury themselves in it. A small smile puffs its way onto his lips.
“I wish a I was, too,” he whispers in rough, breathless emotion.
***
Breathing is less arduous once he returns to Boston. It’s easy and wonderful when he sees Shane.
But then Shane goes down on the ice and doesn’t get back up.
Ilya freezes. His body quakes with a violent torrent of emotions. He puts a hand on his heart. He tries to take a breath but nothing happens. It feels like he’s choking. He doesn’t know what to do.
Because this feels worse that not being able to breathe at all. It feels like the death rattle. Terminal.
Ilya surveys the scene with wide, disbelieving eyes. No. No, not him, too. Not Shane. He’s mentally transported back to the most horrific day of his life: the day he found his mother. He couldn’t breathe then, and he most definitely can’t breathe now. Not when his Shane is lying unmoving and seemingly unconscious on the ice. Not when the man who breathes life into Ilya’s very being looks as stiff and lifeless as his poor mother had.
Everything around him blurs out except for Shane. The gasps of crowd, the growls of the fights between the rest of the Boston and Montreal players, the referees shouting at him to move back, even his own demands to know whether or not Shane is okay, everything is muffled. The ball of light in Ilya that is life flickers precariously, dimming with each moment that Shane’s body stays in a crumpled heap. Less and less oxygen pumps through his veins, like it’s being drained out of him and into the bitter cold of the ice just as it had that freezing day in February 2003 when he discovered his dead mother.
It's as if the universe is playing a cruel trick on him, viscously pinching his nose closed and stuffing his mouth with grief as it pins him down and suffocates him while forcing him to watch as it eradicates everything in the world that brings him joy, everything that gives him a reason to continue seeking out ways to breathe.
But then he sees Shane’s lips form the shape of Ilya’s name and a rush of oxygen expands his nearly shriveled lungs back to their normal size and he gasps in urgent relief.
Medics take Shane away in a rush. Ilya watches them with clenched lungs the entire time, his throat convulsing and swallowing back the bile that wants to choke him. The game continues. Ilya forces himself to inhale and exhale, but it feels nothing like breathing.
It feels like death.
That’s why when he enters the hospital, he’s determined to end things with Shane once and for all. He’s let himself get attached. He’s become dependent on Shane. He loves Shane. That’s dangerous. He can’t allow it to go any further. He’ll learn to live without oxygen, even if it means living in pain.
He’s unable to breathe the entire walk to Shane’s room. Heart clawing desperately at itself, begging for a breath that will never come because he’ll be leaving his lungs with Shane as soon as he ends this “thing” between them once and for all. It’s what’s best for Shane. Ilya will make do for himself without the other man, without the ability to breath. Because Shane deserves better. He deserves to be able to breathe easy without an oxygen thief like Ilya in his life. Ilya’s chest screams at him, wailing with heartbreak, pleading for him to change his mind as misery’s unforgiving fist creeps around his windpipe, tightening it’s hold with every step he takes closer towards Shane. With sorrowful determination, he ignores the agony, or rather, accepts it because this is how he’ll feel from now on without his main source of air.
But then a beautifully open and high on pain medication Shane calls Ilya by his first name and holds his hand and smiles like sunshine, like Ilya is his sunshine, and asks him to join him at his sacred cottage for the summer. Suddenly, misery is replaced by longing, by a hope that makes Ilya want to keep breathing. His dying lungs are reinflated with air and a radiant emotion that he’s too afraid to admit to Shane in English.
He doesn’t say yes. But he also doesn’t say no.
Ilya leaves the room with a suppressed smile.
He’s able to take a breath.
***
The playoffs are rough. With bruised ribs, breathing is far from easy. It’s almost a relief when Boston is eliminated. His chest feels dull as the Admirals win the cup but it’s sparked back to life when the unthinkable happens.
He calls Shane in a rush.
“I’m coming to the cottage,” he heaves, lungs expanding with an excess of air he never thought possible until seeing Scott fucking Hunter kissing a man on national television.
The very second he plops down in his seat for his flight to Montreal, Ilya’s breathing glitches. It’s a weird sensation. Like he simultaneously can’t breathe but is inhaling too much air all at the same time. Like his oxygen wants to choke him. The turbulence racing chaotic through his body threatens to shake his resolves. But he makes it there.
Ilya's throat quivers in delight the second he catches sight of Shane in his incredibly boring car. Lungs clawing their way towards the other man. Heart gasping desperately for a kiss, but they can’t. Not here. Not yet.
His tense midsection relaxes as Shane tells him, “I would like to relax with you,” heart glowing as it bounces with laughter when Shane tells him about the silent retreat lie he gave his parents to keep them away.
Once they’re at the cottage, he’s finally able to kiss Shane again. Glorious oxygen surges into Ilya’s bloodstream.
Breathing is finally easy again but then Shane makes a request. “For the next two weeks, let’s just be honest with each other about what we actually think and maybe how we really feel?”
Ilya's lungs seize with fear. His heart palpitates. “I will try.”
Because the air that Shane brings him feels like freedom and grace and an innate understanding that almost leads Ilya to believe that they share part of the same soul. Therefore, the least he can do for Shane, is try, no matter how much it scares him.
And being able to make love to Shane in the daylight helps fill his chest with the courage to do so.
***
“Why are you making so many burgers?”
“Well, the recipe was for eight, so...”
“So, you cut it in half,” he huffs playfully. “What you can’t do math?”
A pout purses on Shane’s lips. “Leave me alone.”
There’s a burst of adoration in Ilya’s chest, heart clenching with cuteness aggression. He wraps his arms around the other man, kissing him behind the ear as he breathes in a pure lungful of Shane. “No.”
Never.
Though the taste of his breath turns sour when Shane gets a text from Rose Landry, Ilya’s determined to be candid about his feelings. So, that next morning when he wakes up with Shane in his arms, he whispers “I like you.”
His heart and lungs squeal with happiness when Shane says he likes him back, esophagus spasming as Shane clarifies that what they have was just for fun at first but that it isn’t that way now and hasn’t been for a long time. Shane is being honest, so Ilya decides to be honest back. He spots the glittering look in Shane’s eyes when he talks about joining a Canadian team, no longer wanting to have a Russian passport.
“I could marry Svetlana. Would be easy to get American passport.”
But then his lungs start strangling each other as soon as he notices the tears that have collected in Shane’s waterline. He works to remedy the situation by telling Shane about his problem: the one where he wishes all women were this slow hockey player with freckles.
“Don’t marry, Svetlana,” Shane mumbles. “We can figure something else out. Okay?”
“Okay,” Ilya appeases quickly, a hopeful breeze about starting a life with Shane swirling around his heart.
Later that night, he snuffs out sleepy breathes after being awoken by Shane.
He listens as Shane explains some plan for Ilya to play of Ottawa. For them to start a charity together, like a hockey school, to act as a cover story about how they became friends. That it would be a real, actual charity that would help people. Continues on about them only being two hours apart year-round, about they could actually be seen in public together. That, one day, they could be together for real. That he wants for them to be together more than anything.
Stray tears make their way out of Ilya’s eyes. Because Shane unknowingly breathes life for the both of them. And now he wants to breathe Ilya’s mother back to life by honoring her. He wants to dedicate his mother’s namesake foundation to suicide prevention to aid in keeping countless other people breathing. He’s formed a long-term plan for the both of them. He wants to be with Ilya.
He’s so full of love-soaked oxygen that he can’t help but smother Shane in kisses, finally sharing his biggest secret out loud in gasped Russian before switching to English and breathing out a passionate, “I love you.”
“Holy shit.”
Oxygen alludes him. But then—
“I love you, too,” Shane says with starry eyes.
Ilya’s lungs and heart burst. Suddenly, breathing has never been easier. “Fuck, Hollander,” he huffs tearfully.
“Does it feel like agony for you, too?” Shane asks as they’re cuddled together.
Inhaling deeper than he’s ever been able to, Ilya shakes his head with a gleaming smile. “Not anymore.”