Chapter Text
Right after their wedding, Ilya starts a little tradition.
Every week on Thursday, on his way home from his appointment with Galina, Ilya stops by a florist on the corner of the street to buy Shane a bouquet.
A bouquet that always, week after week, consists of sunset roses and white lilies.
The sunset roses, as Shane calls them, are mainly orange roses with subtle red and yellow ombre. Beyond the usual romantic connotations, the exact color and shade of the roses Ilya gets is probably the closest thing Shane has to a favorite color. It's the color Shane has come to love and crave after many summers spent at the cottage; a reminder of the sunsets and sunrises they sit and watch on peaceful days, of the apricots Ilya makes sure to buy because he knows Shane loves them, of the bonfire they light and lie next to as they talk and confess and exist comfortably in each other's presence.
Plus, roses in general are pretty meaningful to them. It's right there in Ilya's last name—their last name now, since as of this summer, they are both legally Shane and Ilya Hollander-Rozanov. Rozanov comes from the Russian word for rose; Роза, Розанов, Rozanov.
Ilya tells him, the first time he presents the bouquet to Shane, that orange roses apparently symbolize desire, excitement, and celebration of new beginnings. Shane has never really been one to believe in the meanings of flowers, or, well, care; but he figures that desire is a pretty good word to summarise their relationship, from its treacherous beginning to now. And maybe they'll bring some good luck to their new beginnings: their new marriage, their new joint team, and their new hockey season.
(Shane still isn't a hundred percent sure that the roses aren't an unnecessary attempt at reclaiming the flowers from Rose Landry, at stumping the last of Ilya's lingering jealousy, even though she and Ilya are pretty good friends now. But, alas, Shane doesn't really care. He's not about to complain about his beautiful husband buying him beautiful flowers.)
Lilies are self-explanatory. After a decade of having Ilya's name saved as Lily on his phone, making the flower into a symbol of all the pieces they weren't allowed to have of each other, Shane is glad that it gets to just be a symbol of love and commitment now.
Ilya also mentions that the guy at the flower shop said white lilies represent hope, remembrance, and a fresh start. Shane thinks it's poetic, in a bittersweet way. Hope for the future, remembrance of their hardships, and the excitement of a fresh start.
The whole thing comes together with green leaves and baby's breath, which Ilya admits are purely for aesthetic purposes at the flower-shop-guy's suggestion. Shane laughs a little, because it helps hide the tears gathering in his eyes and swallow down the lump in his throat. He'll never get used to the feeling of having everything he's ever wanted, he thinks. He doesn't understand how everything worked out so beautifully for him, but he wouldn't trade a single second of it for the world.
It's a sickeningly sweet and romantic gesture, and it must show on Shane's face the first time Ilya brings home the flowers, because from that moment onwards, Ilya makes it his mission not to miss a single week.
So, this week, when Ilya comes home with a bouquet of white lilies and blood red roses, Shane is, rightfully, caught a little off-guard.
"They did not have the sunset roses," Ilya confesses as he kisses Shane right underneath his ear. Shane can feel him grinning into the sloppy mess his tongue leaves behind. "Problem with shipment, they told me. But I know just how to make it up to you, yes?"
Well, Shane thinks as he puts the flowers gently in the vase on their dining table before Ilya pulls him into their bedroom enthusiastically, there are worse things in the world.
Terror is an old, unwelcome friend of Shane Hollander.
He is, despite years of denial, a gay hockey player who's been in locker rooms his whole life, where his very being is painted out to be the biggest insult, where his very existence is taboo. He's a gay hockey player who fell in love with the most complicated person possible, who started fucking his rival in secret hotel rooms at age nineteen. He's a gay hockey player who spent more than a decade in denial, terrified; who's hid and loved in secret.
He's a gay hockey player who's been handed the weight of the world to carry on his shoulders, over and over again. A gay hockey player, who's been made to feel responsible for the entire Asian-Canadian population of aspiring kids since he was still a kid himself, who's been foisted a "role model" title he did not want. A gay hockey player who hid behind the golden boy image and closed himself off completely, because he was a flawed person who was not allowed to display any flaws, which is inherently contradictory because humans are supposed to be flawed. And so, the only way to convince people of his squeaky clean persona was to become a blank slate, something distinctly not human at all. To hide all of himself, at all times, constantly.
Anxiety has a way of feeling like terror when in abundance. Or maybe, they were never that different to begin with.
Either way, Shane knows terror.
He knows its ugly, dark corners. He knows panic attacks and the constant pit of anxiety eating away at his stomach. He knows what it's like to live in a constant state of fight-or-flight, and try to drown it all out with more adrenaline, and more pressure, and more motion, and more hockey.
It's better now, since everything's fallen apart. Since they've been outed and got married, and everything that Shane was terrified would fall apart, fell apart. And Shane survived.
In the wake of such bloodshed, of every nightmare he's had coming to fruition, every drop of terror he's collected in his lifetime raining back on him with the force of a flood, Shane finds himself becoming pretty fucking fearless.
When the worst has already happened, Shane finds that there's not much else left to be scared of. What else could happen? Are they going to be outed again? The good thing about secrets is that they can only be revealed once, and then they're not secrets anymore. Is Shane going to get called slurs? It's the NHL; that was going to happen regardless. Shane has become pretty desensitized to it, to be honest. Are people going to realize that Shane Hollander is a flawed person like everyone else? Well, it's on them if they fell for the blank slate act in the first place. Everyone with common sense probably figured pretty early on that no one is perfect.
Is Shane going to be hated by the league and the media? Probably. That's fine, though. People who hate him for who he loves aren't people Shane needs anything from anyway. Better to be hated for what he is than to be loved for what he isn't. While they tear themselves apart with hatred, Shane will wake up next to his beautiful husband, have lunch with his loving parents, play hockey with his amazing team, and live the impossible life he's built to the fullest.
There is nothing left in this world that Shane can't get through now that he has nothing to hide, and he has his husband by his side. This, Shane knows. There's nothing that could break him anymore.
Well, except for one thing. One very far, very impossible thing.
Ilya is glory personified.
He's a light show. A breathtaking glint of gold for the world to be blinded by; a comet too fast for a wish, but just magnificent enough to marvel at in memory. He's a star, and he's the sun itself, and he might as well be the whole universe.
Terror is, as desire, a pretty good word to summarize their whole relationship. A much less pleasant one.
It's terror that made them hide, for years and years; it's terror that made them fuck other people, just so what they had could feel less serious, less important, less destined; less like love and belonging and home.
It's terror that made them kiss in the shadows and fuck with the curtains drawn.
It's also terror that surrounds Shane on days when the line between Ilya and Irina blurs. When Shane's husband stays in bed for longer, Shane quietly hides any medication they keep at home in between folded towels and sheets in their linen closet. Even when he knows Ilya wouldn't do what Shane fears the most, but he becomes irrationally scared of it anyway.
Ilya has always been destructive. A light show of a different definition, like the final glow of light rays being sucked into a black hole. Destructive in a selfless way, with the tendency to fold in on himself, stretch and break the fabric of time in his suffering, bury it deep somewhere no one can reach; just so he doesn't hurt the people who love him. He lets it grow and consume and rot his insides until there's nothing more it can take. Eventually, his destruction becomes clear and visible, and only then does he ask for help.
And it kills Shane every time.
So, terror is an old, unwelcome friend. A foe, in hindsight. One Shane no longer belongs to consistently. One that shows up only in bits and pieces, and shakes everything with less magnitude than it used to.
It no longer colours his entire life.
Or, so Shane thinks. Until one warm May day.
Turns out, it only takes half a heartbeat to make Shane's life fall apart in all its splendid, cruel entirety.
And Shane can't do anything but watch.
It's their second playoff series in the season. The Centaurs are leading the series 3–0 against the Voyageurs, and they've come overly prepared for game four. Considering everything that went down between Shane and his old team, the Centaurs are out for vengeance, and Shane doesn't doubt that they'll win tonight and sweep the series 4–0.
The game starts heated right after Ilya wins his face-off against J.J., and it's clear that it will end heated.
It's a miracle the Voyageurs even made it to the second series, considering that they're one of the lowest-ranking teams in the playoffs. But, Shane suspects that it has very little to do with the Voyageurs playing well, and a lot more to do with the Nashville Hunters' star goalie being replaced by their backup due to an injury. And even then, Shane remembers how hard Ilya laughed when the Voyageurs won what should've been a relatively easy series in game seven and in overtime.
So, the Centaurs are giving it their all to win the series without giving away a single victory to an undeserving team. Sweat-coated skin glints under the harsh arena lights as everyone runs themselves to the ground.
They're in power play after Mitty managed to score himself a major penalty after punching Tanner Dillon; otherwise, Shane and Ilya wouldn't be on the same line. The Centaurs' roster is currently arranged so that Ilya plays first-line center with Troy and Bood, while Shane plays second-line center with Luca and Tanner. Ilya is versatile enough to play left wing, though, so that's their current power-play formation. It's had a ridiculous success rate.
They're up 3–1 when Ilya makes what might be the best pass of his career, and Shane catches the puck like he's magnetic. It's not unusual—Shane always plays his best games when he's playing with Ilya; it turns out their chemistry on-ice is just as good as their chemistry off-ice—but they're particularly explosive today. And Shane allows his chest to swell with pride at that.
Ilya is playing like a fucking god.
His husband, Shane knows, convinced himself that he was the inferior player to Shane during the three years he was with the Centaurs during their rebuild. Shane has never once believed that, though. He's always known better than to underestimate Ilya fucking Rozanov. Because the whole reason why they work has always been that they are perfectly equal and balanced, in all aspects of their life, including hockey.
Today is the very proof that Ilya was wrong. Because Shane is, in a way that doesn't happen with anyone else, actually struggling to keep up. He can see that Ilya is doing the same, sweat dripping down his face as they're pushing each other well past their limits. Shane loves that about them, that Ilya is the only person on this planet who can challenge Shane like this, who can make Shane better in this way. He's well aware that no one else could ever complete Shane like Ilya can.
It's breathtaking, exhilarating, and Shane thinks this might be his favorite game that he's ever played. Because he can say, confidently, that he hasn't been this in love with hockey since his first cup win. Maybe not even then.
Skates slash and grind against the ice, the weight of the puck against his stick is thrilling, and Shane is picking up speed and flying through the rink; the whole thing is hypnotizing. Shane has never been more focused on the game in his life.
Maybe that's why he misses it.
The puck bends to his will, and the fourth goal of the match is one well-aligned shot away as he slams his stick into it, sliding the puck between Drapeau's legs too fast to catch.
And—
Everything stops.
Shane doesn't see it happen.
He doesn't see what he'll later fear is the last real moment of Ilya's life. The last seconds where his husband is alive and breathing and unharmed, where Ilya is the same bright light he was just this morning as Shane woke him up with peppered kisses all over his body.
He doesn't get the chance to analyze the speed at which Comeau is skating towards Ilya, the exact angle of the hit, how hard they tumble together on the ice; Shane doesn't see the momentum throw both of their bodies with such force that somehow, in some impossible, improbable way, Comeau's skate hits Ilya's neck.
He doesn't have the time to reason, explain, or understand it. The how of it all remains a mystery through the silence of the arena and the ever-hungry pit that's suddenly appeared in Shane's stomach. There's only one thing Shane knows.
Ilya goes down.
And in that moment, Shane Hollander feels, deep in the stardust of his bones, that he's never known sheer and absolute terror like this, and he will never know it again.
There's a small, traitorous part of Shane that's always suspected he'd outlive his husband.
It's an ugly thought that rears its head only beneath the wrinkled cloth of hane's worst nightmares, and Shane covers it back up every time. Because it's not the kind of thought he can afford to have.
But Shane is, above all, a missionary of logic. A man of rules and patterns, someone who analyzes, calculates, and evaluates. He braids information into prediction, detangles its knots and kinks to arrive at a conclusion he can use to formulate a plan.
And the facts stand: Ilya isn't necessarily the healthiest guy.
He's an athlete who takes good care of his body, sure, but never to the borderline obsessive extent Shane does.
Ilya has years of smoking under his belt that Shane needs to consider. He's quit for Shane's sake, for the most part, but that doesn't erase all the damage his lungs must have already sustained. And it doesn't stop Shane from holding his breath every time Ilya has a routine check-up.
He drinks and parties like there's tomorrow. To be fair, the parties have dwindled to a reasonable amount these past few years, probably since Ilya is in an actual, committed relationship now and doesn't have to go searching for hook-ups at bars and clubs, but Ilya still likes his vodka and beers just the same.
And, well. Ilya has his genetics. Depression and dementia. He has moles all over his body that, while Shane adores, are still worrisome, because Shane cannot realistically keep an eye on all of them. But god, he tries. He makes Ilya go to the dermatologist every six months, lathers him up in sunscreen any time the sun comes out, and he looks over the moles weekly for any signs of asymmetry, discoloration, any of the obvious signs of skin cancer.
Plus, there's the McDonald's, all those disgusting McGriddles and fries and milkshakes that feel like digestible packs of health issues and diabetes and heart problems. He still enjoys the occasional RedBull or Monster before practice, no matter how many studies Shane sends him on their effects on the heart and kidneys.
Ilya still drives too fast, too confidently. He still owns that god-awful Ducati that Shane has hidden the keys for. He crosses the street without looking. He takes unnecessary risks and expects things to work out.
There have been moments over the past few years, few and far between but no less relevant for it, where Shane's been hesitant to leave him in the same house as a bottle of pills.
Sometimes it feels like Ilya's life is the epitome of "here for a good time, not a long time," and Shane does his best to convince himself that the human body is resilient, and Ilya is, at the end of the day, a professional athlete whose health is very closely watched. But it never stops him from worrying, and from fearing.
So, Shane knows somewhere deep and ugly in his soul that no matter how much he begs and pleads, the chances of Ilya being taken from him are statistically much higher than the chances of it happening the other way around.
But fuck, Shane isn't ready for it. He thought, perhaps naively, that they had at least twenty more years until Shane had to worry about these things.
Never once did he ever consider that they'd come so close so soon.
Shane isn't a person. Not really. He doesn't feel like it now.
Sometimes, he thinks he's only living by tangling himself in Ilya's veins and arteries. A fucked up modern-day twist on vampirism and folklore, where he can only live as long as Ilya does. Where his life source is the blood that coats the Centaurs' home arena ice more and more with every passing second. Where his useless heart only beats when it's in tandem with Ilya's and not a single beat more. His lifeline is a wiry branch off of his husband's tree, and it will rot and fall off together with Ilya's when the time comes.
Between the paralyzed stillness of the arena and the subsequent vanishing of any air in Shane's lungs, Ilya is bleeding out.
Shane, selfishly, can't help but feel like he's the one being drained.
There's a blood skate on Comeau's left foot dripping onto the ice with meticulous precision. Shane can see it out of the corner of his eye, just barely. There's an order to it, a pattern to its ruthless way of milking Ilya's life out of him; the puddle of red grows steadily, seismically spreads on the scratched white surface.
Drip, drip, drip.
The edges of Shane's vision go blurry with every drip; it feels like he's watching the scene through a screen. And the screen is pulsing, moving, shaking in beat with the drips of blood on the ice, and Shane can't hear anything but the rushing of his own blood in his ears. Until—
There's a deafening scream somewhere in the stands.
Shane's stomach churns.
A little further left, just where Shane has to turn his head a little to see, everything gets so much worse.
He knows what he'll find. His mind has painted thousands of different scenarios already. But what appears in his imagination is much easier to grapple with than the proof in front of his eyes. Because Shane could deny his imagination if he really tried, he could reject the reality of what might be happening. But seeing it with his own two eyes removes any uncertainty.
Shane spots the crimson stain. Blinks once, twice, a hundred times; tries to see if the scene changes. A shutter of a camera lens in a stop-motion horror; He watches the red bloom like the roses that have haunted their relationship since the beginning of time; the blood red ones dying in their fancy vase back home. Rozanov, Розанов, Роза; it's in Ilya's very name.
He hopes that that's not an omen. Desperately, he prays that that's not a pattern he can cling to; that there is no correlation between the two dots his brain wants to tie together. A future written in red ink, with a finality Shane will not ever fucking accept.
Time, uncharacteristically, does the only thing it's not supposed to do.
It stops.
And Shane moves instead.
Within two blinks, two shutter clicks; between one heartbeat and the next, Shane is knee-deep in a sea of his husband's blood. His hands search desperately, trying to find the source, the origin of a waterfall stream through the force of the water trying to drown him.
Panic-ridden and shaking, presses his bare hand on his husband's bleeding neck.
"Ilya," he chokes out.
He's bent over and leaning over Ilya until they're nose to nose, because Shane can't pull his hands away from the wound to caress Ilya's cheek. And the only other solution he has is to lean down and brush his nose against Ilya's. A soft plea to wake up. A desperate cry of a husband who's too close to becoming a widower.
Ilya doesn't answer. He must've been knocked out when his head hit the ice, and if he didn't have this gaping wound, Shane would find that enough reason to spiral. That he's unconscious, eyes closed and body motionless, but his focus is on the growing puddle of blood—there's so much fucking blood.
Shane wants to call Ilya's name again. Beg and plead for a flutter of his blond eyelashes. But the words get caught in his throat. The only sound he can make is something between choking and a sob.
Ilya's—Irina's—necklace is coated in blood. It's reminiscent of a patchy paint job, steadily and continuously seeping into the holes and crevices of the chain, coating the crucifix entirely. Shane, hysterically, thinks it's poetic in its own fucked up, miserable way.
He pushes down all the facts he knows about neck wounds; the ones his mother rattled to him when he began skating in the junior leagues and refused to wear his neck guard because of how constricting it felt. He swallows all of it down and prays he doesn't choke on that too.
Ilya's blood seeps through the gaps between Shane's fingers and coats his nail beds in a way Shane is sure it'll stain for days to come. And cruelly, sickeningly, Shane feels his own pulse pound the skin right next to his aching throat. In tandem with Ilya's thready pulse under his desperate fingers. Intertwined, even in death, as they've always been in life. What a fucking joke.
He presses his hands on his husband's neck, more aggressively, more forcefully than he would ever dare. Because Shane, in any moment but now, would never hold Ilya and hurt him. But Ilya isn't really Ilya under his hands now; he's a bleeding wound. He's brutally split skin and the steady, terrifying gush of blood; he's a body that could both be alive and dead. And Shane needs to press down with all the force in his trembling body if he wants to have a husband by the end of the day.
He buries his nose in Ilya's cheek. Nuzzling him like a cat, trying to wake him up, or maybe just trying to get close. Shane wants nothing more than to somehow crawl inside Ilya's skin right now. So that if Ilya's body dies, it can take both of their souls with it.
Time flows funny in tragedies. Terror melts it into something abstract, something distinctly non-linear, and the laws of physics break under the strain of Shane's swallowed cries.
Everything goes from not moving at all to moving too fast.
Within two blinks, the medical staff is on the ice, and one set of hands replaces Shane's on his husband's neck. Someone is pushing him away, but Shane clings on. His bloody hands claw at Ilya's shoulders, trying to slot themselves into place. They leave bloody drag lines behind in the shape of claw marks, something as animalistic and feral as he feels.
Someone wraps their arms around his waist from behind, someone stronger and bigger than he is, because Shane knows he must be thrashing. He must be jabbing and kicking and trying to free himself from the bruising grip someone has on him, because there's no version of this story where Shane doesn't fight tooth and nail to get to Ilya. So he must be thrashing. He might even be screaming. But he can't see or feel anything except the bloody streaks left on Ilya's jersey from where Shane was clawing just a moment ago and the phantom thudding of Ilya's fading pulse still in his fingertips.
His ears are ringing, echoing one thought on repeat. His husband. Shane's heart beats to that rhythm, an irregular thump thump thump of his his his his hishishishishis—
His husband. His husband. Ilya is his husband. Ilya is his. He belongs to Shane—belongs with Shane. That's a fact of the universe as much as the laws of physics and space and time, the very laws that Shane is sure just broke, somehow. Ilya is his. And he can't be taken away from him, because that just doesn't make sense. They signed a marriage certificate, a contract, built a life out of stolen moments, and it needs to be enough because if it isn't—
Time bends and stretches. Timelines overlap. Something splits, and Shane exists, with all his being, in two moments simultaneously.
Their wedding day.
It echoes, all around.
To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish.
'Til death do us 'part.
Shane regrets, above all, that he left his wedding vows unchanged. 'Til death do us 'part has never been fitting for what they have. It feels too weak, somehow, fickle and unbalanced. Like repeating the sentence somehow meant accepting that death is powerful enough to stop this overwhelming, overflowing love. Which is just factually wrong. Shane would know, as a well-established man of facts and reason. Nothing in existence could ever be powerful enough; Shane and Ilya don't work like that. And Shane feels like he should've spoken it into the cosmos when he had the chance. He should've looked at Ilya dead in the eyes, taken in the smoothness of that burgundy suit and the sun-catching glints of their matching rings, and repeated it a thousand times over.
To have, and to hold, and to never let go from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish.
In life and through death. Through everything that might lie beyond. Through the cracks and chips in time and decay itself, until the world devours itself and we're frozen and immortal in the memory of the universe, a snapshot of two boys simply, softly holding each other.
Distantly, Shane hears someone say something right next to his ear. He can feel their breath warm on his cold neck, but Shane is so detached from his body that it takes minutes, hours, days, weeks to decipher the words.
"—Shane!"
Something snaps back. The world crashes into him.
Shane stares at the hands around his waist; dark, calloused, and perfectly balanced between gentle and unyielding.
Bood.
"Bood," Shane whispers. But it sounds more like a gasp, a last desperate breath. It might just be a sob. "Bood, let me go. Let me go. Please just—let me go to my—my Ilya."
"Shane," Bood says firmly. And it sounds so wrong, because Bood never calls him Shane. Shane is always Hollzy. And Bood's voice is supposed to be loud and steady, not shaky. And Shane finally, finally becomes aware enough of his surroundings to feel the trembling of Bood's hands against his waist. "Shane, please. They're working on him. We need to give them space so they can—so they can make sure he's okay."
"He's my husband," Shane chokes out, not quite managing to choke down the sob that's been building up long enough to boil over. Bood makes a similarly choked noise at that. "You need to let me go. He's my husband."
Shane can't take his eyes off the medical staff rolling Ilya onto a backboard, or a stretcher, or something Shane can't pick out against the sudden blurriness of the world. He can pick out the rough shapes of Troy and Wyatt and Luca and Evan, together with Boyle, LaPoint, Holmberg, Chouinard, and Young. They're forming a wall around the medical staff and Ilya's motionless body, blocking the view of the nauseating scene from the stands.
Shane knows, even through the fog, that he'll be very grateful for that later. That the Centaurs are coming together so seamlessly to protect both their captain and the crowd, without having to be told.
Especially when he can also pick out blurs with white jerseys, in comparison, standing around uselessly—the Voyageurs.
He can see in his periphery that Hayden is right in front of him, staring at his thrashing figure in Bood's arms like he's contemplating moving into the frame, blocking Ilya from Shane's view. But he doesn't do that; he must know Shane would never forgive him if he did.
Nevertheless, it's too late for that anyway. Shane's already seen. There's nothing Hayden can protect Shane from when Shane is already covered in Ilya's blood.
Ilya is the one who tells Shane the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Shane has never really been into Greek Mythology. It wasn't something he paid attention to in English classes growing up—not that he paid attention to much of anything at all in English class; he was always too hockey-driven to care about most school subjects—and he never really developed the general curiosity or appreciation towards the arts that supposedly came with growing up either.
He knows that many of the guys know the basics of Norse mythology from the Marvel movies, which they all seem to like well enough—Thor and Loki and whatever other superheroes exist. And maybe a bit of that knowledge bleeds into Roman or Greek mythology as well. Shane assumes they're similar.
So, It's not a huge surprise that Ilya knows, he supposes.
Ilya likes to read, sometimes. They don't have enough time with their careers, and whatever free time they have goes into more important hobbies like rewatching plays or working out, maybe even hanging out with friends and family if that can be considered a "hobby". But Shane knows that Ilya sometimes buys a paperback in the airport bookshops when he doesn't feel like watching movies the whole flight.
And unlike Shane, who does also read but sticks pretty much exclusively to hockey analyses or biographies, Ilya likes to venture out into different genres and try his hand at different things to see what sticks before deciding what he likes and what he doesn't.
Shane doesn't know exactly how Ilya learns about Orpheus and Eurydice, though. The only pieces Shane recognises from ancient Greek literature are the Iliad and the Odyssey. And Shane is so uneducated on the subject that he isn't even sure if those are books, a series of multiple books, poems, or something else entirely.
What he does know, however, is that he's never seen Ilya consume whatever media Orpheus and Eurydice appear in.
But Ilya learns about it somehow, evidently. And he explains it to Shane after someone in a movie they're watching makes a reference to the myth.
Naturally, they argue about it.
"I don't get what's so hard about not looking back," Shane says. "It's just one trip back from hell, and then you have a whole lifetime promised to you, right? It makes no sense to look back. What was the point of all of it, then?"
Ilya's answering scoff is just condescending enough to piss Shane off.
"The journey back from the underworld," Ilya emphasises underworld to correct Shane, "is long and dangerous. And Orpheus didn't know for sure if Eurydice was following him. In some versions of the story, Orpheus hears Eurydice in pain, I think. He doesn't know if she is okay or if she is even there in the first place. Either way, the gods like to lie. They like to trick mortals and fuck with their heads and whatever. They are…fuck—something with D. Like, not as they appear."
"Deceptive?" Shane fills in before shrugging. "Still, if you died, and Hades or Hermes or whatever told me that I could bring you back, I feel like I would've had more self-control. If the alternative was to lose you forever, even if I had to put my trust in untrustworthy gods, I would have never looked back."
Ilya shakes his head. "You would look back," he says with certainty that leaves Shane a little unsteady; leaves him momentarily second-guessing his side of the argument. "I would also look back. The trick here was not that Eurydice wasn't following Orpheus; it was that what Hades asked was never possible in the first place. The reason Hades agrees to give Eurydice a chance is the same reason Eurydice can never make it out. You can't love someone and not look back. To love is to look back."
Shane breaks free from Bood's hold when Ilya is being wheeled out.
Or maybe Bood lets him go. Shane can't tell. He only knows movement. Movement and panic and hurry until he's darting across the ice, faster than he's ever skated in his life. Faster, even, than he was just a moment ago.
He feels like a toy; one of those figurines with a winding key. Where if you hold the toy still, and spin the key enough times to activate the mechanism and create momentum, it will walk for as long as it can. That's what this feels like. When Bood holds him back and his insides twist and spin until the key is maxxed out; until he's thrashing against the hands holding him back, twitching and shaking, begging to be set free. When Bood finally, mercifully lets go, Shane has no choice but to move.
The ambulance is unceremonious. Shane sheds his gear on the way there, throwing everything but his undergarments to the sides somewhere along the tunnel. His skates, his jersey, the padding…none of that is irreplaceable. Maybe someone will gather it and put it in the locker room for him; maybe they'll throw all of it out. Shane couldn't care less if he tried.
It's all covered in blood anyway. Shane wouldn't be surprised if they were sent straight into the trash. The blood has soaked through Shane's jersey into the padding, and even onto his undergarments in the areas where there wasn't much padding to absorb it. Shane is still covered in it.
He pulls himself into the ambulance without waiting for approval or pushback. His cheeks are wet with tears he didn't realize fell from his stinging eyes, and his arms are dipped in red from hands to elbows. He wonders if any pictures of him have been taken. He wonders what the point of pictures would even be when he's sure they wouldn't be appropriate to post on most corners of the internet. He can't imagine someone wanting to look at such a sickening sight anyway.
"You're his family?" one of the EMTs asks, but he's closing the doors of the ambulance behind them, so Shane supposes it's just a formality. They already know. Even if they didn't know him and Ilya, which Shane assumes is unlikely considering that these are the EMTs working the rink, they would've pieced everything together from his reaction. Shane doesn't have the energy to worry about hiding, about privacy and boundaries, and all sorts of insignificant stuff he might've worried about this morning.
"His husband," Shane forces out, letting himself collapse onto the seat with his eyes fixed on Ilya's unconscious body. He's trembling from head to toe, and his knees won't hold him up for much longer. He doesn't know where to put his hands, what he's allowed to do without fucking up Ilya's delicate body. He deliberately avoids staring at the blood, the soaked gauze the EMT is switching out.
He reaches out and takes Ilya's right hand in his left.
Ilya is already connected to a bunch of monitors: an ECG monitor that's flashing a green jagged heartbeat, a blood pressure cuff on his upper arm, a pulse oximeter on his finger. There are also bags of saline that are being hung up, running directly to the large IVs going into Ilya's motionless arms. Shane doesn't know when the EMTs did all of this. He doesn't know how to grapple with the fact that he's already missing moments, despite all his efforts to keep his eyes on Ilya, despite his constant battle to stay present.
They've already cut Ilya's jersey and padding right down the middle; the fabric lies all shredded up under Ilya's back, draping over the edge of the stretcher.
The ambulance jerks into motion, too fast and too slow altogether, with the casual urgency of a team of medical professionals who are used to dealing with life-threatening injuries. Their every day normal contrasting so harshly with Shane's abnormal. Something so infinitely beyond abnormal, past the point of incomprehensible.
The gravel crunches. The lighting coming in from the small windows changes from the bright lights of the arena to the muted outside world, to that of the familiar Ottawa roads.
Shane's hand hesitantly finds Ilya's pale cheek. He lets the back of his index finger trail down the length of his face, temple to chin; over the day-old stubble Ilya didn't shave this morning. There's an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth; it must've been placed when Shane was shedding his gear with a no-doubt animalistic ferocity. It's fogging up with every small breath Ilya manages, and clearing back up. A relentless rhythm. Shane clings to it.
Distantly, he thinks about his parents.
They were there tonight. They were with him and Ilya just an hour ago. They hugged Ilya tight enough to make him wheeze right before the game, and Dad mussed up his hair, which Shane later had to fix with an indifferent hand swatting at the blond, curly bird nest he's come to know so well; a motion that's become instinctive and natural throughout the years.
They're still there, Shane is pretty sure, he hasn't seen them since Ilya went down and narrowed his vision in the shape of a pinhole like he's always done. They're probably running to their car, cutting through the crowds of people and rushing to get the hospital information from Coach, if Shane knows anything about them.
It puts things into perspective, a little bit.
Shane isn't the only one who cares about Ilya. Far from it. Ilya's never managed to quite believe it, never managed to see the sheer love and care he attracts through the distortion of his insecurities, depression, upbringing; but he's so, so loved. By so many people.
His parents just watched one of their sons bleed out from the stands. Shane doesn't want to imagine what the injury looked like from that point of view. He's sure the videos will end up somewhere on the internet soon enough. Shane can't imagine their helplessness, because it would've killed him to love Ilya for so long and watch what happened tonight from a distance, unable to do anything.
Shane thinks it might be a privilege to be wearing Ilya's blood right now. Because at least he's close enough for it to stain, for it to leave an ugly, painful trace behind. If the agony is all Shane has left of Ilya at the end of this, if the worst happens, Shane will unflinchingly bathe in it; he will let it eat him alive until every part of him is digested by the same earth that will hold Ilya through rot and decomposition. If nothing else, Shane hopes he gets to keep the pain.
He wonders what happened with the game. It would've been cancelled, he's sure, an injury this severe and uncertain would silence everything, stop the turning of the whole hockey world. But he doesn't know what's happening with the Centaurs, with Hayden and JJ, with the rest of the Voyageurs, and with Comeau.
Was it on purpose?
Yes, his mind breathes. If Shane knows anything about Comeau, yes, it was a purposefully bad hit. Yes, Comeau aimed for Ilya, and he aimed for it to hurt, and likely for it to take Ilya out for the rest of the season.
There's no doubt in his mind about that. Comeau is vicious; he's a shark who's out for blood, and Ilya's warmth would've been the first obvious target. But he hopes, against the doubts and questions in his jumbled brain, that Comeau didn't try to kill Ilya.
He hopes desperately that the severity of the injury was an accident. That, despite all the hatred in the league and the resentment between Shane and the Voyageurs, this wasn't what it came to. Professional hockey, in all its ugliness, didn't quietly slip into the clothes of hunting; didn't turn them into predators and prey, hunters and the hunted with blades on their feet instead of guns in their hands; didn't put their lives at risk in the name of—what? Some stupid, unfair prejudice? Disapproval? Bigotry? Homophobia?
Is it revenge? Are they making him shoulder some punishment for his "betrayal"; for how they relentlessly, and so wrongly, believe he threw games for years or tripped on purpose that day? Is this punishment for falling in love, for wanting to keep that love safe and warm; which, for so long, meant keeping it hidden? For wanting to keep himself and Ilya safe from the way the world would view their love, turn it into something else, something uglier and sour, something to have an opinion on?
It hurts to swallow. Even Shane's mouth tastes like blood.
Jackie and the kids almost came down from Montreal, Shane thinks.
Something about Ruby and Jade's school came up and turned their plans into a rain-check promise in the Hollander-Rozanov-Pikes group chat, immortalised in little chat bubbles somewhere between those of Hayden and Ilya's relentless chirps that hold no real bite now. Plans to meet up some other time soon that still have yet to be made, that might never happen now.
Shane could not be more thankful that the Pike kids weren't there tonight.
The centaurs were, though. Whether they were on the bench or on the ice when everything went down, they saw it happen. His and Ilya's work family, as they jokingly call them. But it's not really a joke at all, and they all know it. They're a good bunch of guys.
Shane hopes it doesn't scare them too much, especially the rookies. No matter how the day ends. Fear is never a good thing, especially not when it's directed at your life's passion, and this isn't the kind of fear they could turn into victory, use as fuel to achieve something grand. He hopes that he's the only one who comes out of this scarred, and no one else has to feel the pain he will shoulder.
The monitors they've attached to Ilya beep weirdly. And everything falls apart once more.
"We're losing control of the bleed," forces out the EMT who's crouched over Ilya's body with his hand pressing on the gauze. It can't have been more than a few seconds since he switched it for a clean one, but it's soaked through already. "BP's crashing—"
The ECG monitor beeps, and it would sound almost right if not for every other machine going off.
Deafeningly, it rings in Shane's ears and steals his breath away.
"Hang on—" The other EMT—an older guy, from what Shane can see; the one who closed the doors and asked Shane if he was family—mutters a swear under his breath and presses two gloved fingers to the uninjured side of Ilya's neck. "I don't have a pulse! Starting compressions."
The younger EMT swears as the older one, in one smooth motion, straddles the bench and interlocks his fingers over the center of Ilya's chest.
Shamefully, Shane looks to the side. With the first violent jerk of Ilya's body, Shane, with his stomach in his throat, realizes that he can't watch this. He knows he will never, ever forgive himself for looking away, but he can't fucking watch it happen.
And he can't fucking breathe.
Eurydice, Shane thinks. Orpheus.
"I've got airway."
The beeping of the monitors overlap, Shane wants to claw his ears off to escape the painful noise. The younger EMT pushes a button to silence it. Then, he switches the oxygen mask on Ilya's face for an airway bag. Squeezing it rhythmically with one hand while the other keeps direct pressure on Ilya's bleeding neck.
It hisses like a snake.
Shane sees it all happen from the blurry corner of his eye.
"Epi ready?" the older one asks, compressions unwavering.
The younger one briefly pulls away from the bag and the wound, swiftly jamming a syringe into a small, glass vial; then, right into the IV on Ilya's arm. "Pushing epi now."
"Still PEA," the older one grunts. The younger one moves to the neck wound again, switching the pressure dressing, squeezing the bag.
Shane doesn't know how long they continue the CPR. He tries to line up his breaths with the older EMT's rhythmic compressions. But his vision feels fuzzy around the edges, so he concentrates on inhaling with every other compression. The focus it takes to keep up that pattern works a little like a grounding technique.
He doesn't know if they break Ilya's ribs, or bruise his cotton-white, delicate chest. He doesn't know if he'll get to kiss away the damage of today, or if he'll have to bury the love of his life contused and broken.
Shane has a sneaking suspicion that, without Ilya here, he doesn't know much of anything at all anymore. It feels like the world is actively losing its meaning, draining itself devoid of any color in slow motion, and there's nothing Shane can reach out and grab to stop it, no red string of fate he can hold onto.
Shane is wrong about many things.
He was wrong, all those years ago, when he let his eyes linger in the golden glow of Ilya's body, when he tasted Ilya's mouth against his back in the cottage, when he memorized the map of every mole on Ilya's constellation-riddled night-sky skin, and vowed to follow it to the ends of the earth, and through it all, thought to himself: I could not love him more.
He was wrong. He's being proven wrong with every passing day as his love grows and multiplies, stretching beyond the borders of what Shane thought was possible. It keeps going and going, almost a year after their wedding, as Shane suspects it will go on until the end of time. Ilya continues to monopolize Shane's entire universe.
Eurydice. Orpheus.
He was dead wrong about that too, Shane thinks. Ilya was right. As he usually is, when it comes to love and war and sacrifice. Shane is a fool. I would have never looked back. He's such a fucking fool.
They're in a tragedy. Shane averted his eyes from his husband's unmoving body just moments before. In his cowardice, or in his blind trust, or in his desperate need to avoid any sight he would later relive in his nightmares. But he can't keep staring at the walls of the ambulance when Ilya is right there. He can't keep sneak glances from the blurry corner of his eye. He won't ever forgive himself if he's looking away from Ilya's last moments.
He can't let Ilya go, and he can't let Ilya out of his sight.
Shane looks back.
He looks at the stretcher. At Ilya's pale hand in Shane's, the ring finger that his wedding ring adorned just this morning. At the slope of his nose with its bumps from being broken over and over again, at his golden eyelashes that lay uncharacteristically still, at the ladder of his abs that Shane must've gone down thousands of times. Shane looks and watches. He commits it all to memory. If Ilya is yanked into the darkness, Shane wants to take in his husband one last time.
Then, impossibly, cutting through Shane's premature grief with the sharpness of a scalpel, there's movement.
Shane's unsteady breath hitches.
"Pause compressions."
The older EMT, for the second time in the time-loop Shane has managed to find himself in, presses two gloved fingers to the uninjured side of Ilya's neck.
Someone exhales.
"I've got a pulse!"
Shane's body goes limp. Relief floods through his body, like waves of cold water through his burning skin; it makes every hair on his body stand up. He thinks he slumps, very ungraciously, on the bench next to his husband. He hadn't even realized he'd stood up.
His heart is threatening to beat out of his chest. He's sobbing pathetically while clutching Ilya's hand.
Shane wonders if, somehow, Ilya is connected to Shane's lifeline too. If Shane's beating heart can keep Ilya alive in the same way Ilya's draining blood was killing Shane. If it's transactional like that, equal. If they're head-to-head even in death, as they've always been in life. The only two people in this world who can match each other's talent and drive and competitiveness. He wonders if their never-ending tug-of-war can tug both of them over the same line until the end of their days. Dead or alive, if they can be together.
When they arrive at the hospital, a bunch of nurses take over to rush Ilya to an OR. Letting go of Ilya's hand at that moment is the hardest thing Shane has ever done, but he has no other choice. Afterwards, he stays rooted in that spot for what must be an eternity, watching the nurses turn a corner and disappear out of Shane's sight.
Shane can't help but think about what happens now. Whether that was the last time he would ever see Ilya. He almost wants to ask the nurse who grabs his arm and gently leads him to the waiting room if his husband will make it back to him. But the question doesn't make it past his throat, and Shane just swallows as the nurse talks to him with a kind-sounding voice. His mind doesn't process any of the words, but her voice is a nice distraction from the storm raging inside his head.
In the waiting room, the EMTs hand Shane Ilya's necklace and wedding ring in a little plastic bag.
As the nurse leaves with the EMTs, Shane carefully slides the jewelry into the palm of his hand. He holds the end of the chain in his trembling fingers and threads the wedding ring through it, wrapping the gold chain around his palm tight enough to hurt; tight enough to guarantee that it's not going to fall off and get lost. Shane isn't risking it going anywhere. He holds the crucifix charm in the centre of his palm, squeezing a fist around it.
He figures that if he has to wait, he'll just wait while holding onto this stray piece of Ilya's soul—until he can hold onto Ilya again.