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He can't shake the sound from his ears. Hours later, even in the silence of the hotel room, Ilya still hears it: Shane's body slamming against the boards after the collision with Marlow. Shane crumpled on the ice at a wrong angle. Paramedics talking about a spinal board. Shane not getting up.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed, shoes still on, checking his phone every minute. No one's texting Ilya Rozanov to tell him how Shane Hollander's doing, because no one knows Ilya Rozanov needs to know. That's always been the point: he and Shane did a hell of a job making themselves untouchable to the outside world. Well. Here's what that costs.
He could call someone. A reporter, a team manager, anyone with a Metros contact. He could text Pyke. He's the only person in Shane's life whose number Ilya actually has saved. Not that he's ever used it, but Shane had insisted, made him put it in.
For emergencies, he'd said. If this isn't an emergency.
Or he could just show up at the hospital tonight, tell them he came to check on an opponent. Good sportsmanship, from captain to captain, nothing more.
Someone would notice, though. Shane's parents might be in the room. Some hospital employee might snap a photo of him (of them) without thinking twice.
It's too risky. He can't risk it for Shane. If anyone connected the dots, Shane's the one who'd pay for it, Ilya knows that much. He's got nothing left to lose anyway. He tells himself that, and for a second, he almost buys it.
He checks his phone again. There's a folder in his camera roll renamed "Boring." Six photos in it, all pretty much the same, of him and Shane. A selfie he took backstage at the NHL Awards in Vegas. They're the only pictures he has of the two of them. It's probably the thing he cares about most in the world.
He'd been an asshole about it, before the Awards. Just disappeared. Stopped answering Shane's texts. Shane kept sending them anyway, checking in at first, then flat-out begging for some sign of life.
The Olympics had just wrapped, and his team had crashed out early. They'd played like shit, and his father hadn't let him forget it.
Shane found him in the stands at the Sweden-Finland game. Sat down right beside him like it was nothing, like there was nothing strange at all about Shane Hollander showing up next to his archrival on Russian soil. Ilya had been terrified.
Of what, exactly, he still couldn't say, not even now. Maybe just having Shane that close. Maybe how exposed he'd felt that whole week. Or maybe it was simpler than that: Russia wasn't safe for people like Shane. He hadn't wanted to put him in danger. So he'd protected him the only way he knew how, by pushing him away first, before Shane could be the one to go.
He'd said things that still rise in his throat like bile. Shane had never brought it up again, not directly, but Ilya had seen something shift behind his eyes, something that never quite came back.
That's his specialty. Killing the light in Shane Hollander's eyes, then showing up months later like nothing happened, because Ilya was an asshole and Shane was so good, so soft and generous, that he never knew how to say no to him.
And now here Ilya is again, wondering if he'll get another chance to be an asshole, or if that chance was already taken from him tonight, out there on the ice.
The hours crawl by. He lies down on the bed without undressing, staring at the ceiling, telling himself he'll sleep, that tomorrow he'll know something, that tonight's panic will look ridiculous in daylight.
Ilya's mind keeps going where it wants to go. He doesn't get to choose what he remembers. It all comes at once, messy, cruel in how tender it is: he remembers wanting Shane so bad after the All-Star Skills Competition, those stupid freckles, his polite little manners and his annoying fingers in his hair. He remembers their first time, how badly he'd wanted him. Shane kept insisting he'd already done this before, but Ilya knew it wasn't true. He'd come inside him so fast, so easily, that he'd had to run.
That time too, he'd run.
God, what a coward.
A small moment with Shane comes back to him: they'd had phone sex after his father's funeral. Classy, looking back on it now, but Ilya had known it was the only way to get out of his own head that day.
Shane had been wearing those slutty glasses Ilya loved so much. They'd end up becoming his favorite thing about Shane, right after the freckles, obviously. Ilya thinks back to Shane kissing the tips of two fingers and reaching out, pressing them to the screen. His heart had just stopped. Maybe that was the exact moment he'd understood he loved him.
He hates himself for how much he likes remembering. He hates the way his body, even now, even with fear twisting his stomach into knots, reacts to those memories like nothing terrible happened just hours ago. How can his body still want anything, while Shane is somewhere in a hospital bed, maybe awake, maybe not, maybe with someone beside him, maybe completely alone.
He rolls onto his side, curls in on himself, and tells himself he's disgusting.
That he's exactly the kind of man his father always said he was: weak, ruled by the flesh, incapable of real discipline.
His father.
Here it comes, his father's voice, always right on time for the worst moments. It's never needed an invitation. It just shows up and takes over.
You're lazy. Always crying, Ilya, crying like a girl in front of everyone. Have you no shame?
He'd been ten the first time he heard it, after he'd burst into tears over his dog dying. Tonight he looks at himself from the outside and tells himself his father wasn't entirely wrong.
Because what else is he, if not weak, a man who's spent years pushing away the person he loves most in the world, just because he's scared of what people might think?
What else is he, if not a coward? He said "I love you" in a language the other person doesn't even speak, on purpose, so he could tell the truth and run in the same breath.
He gets up, goes to the bathroom, flicks on the light over the sink. He's disgusted with himself: just a few hours ago he'd had it in him to go to dinner with the guys, to laugh (laugh!) at some joke about Hollander. He's disgusted by how well he lies, and disgusted that he's trained himself to be this good at it.
He thinks about his mother. He always does, when things get this dark. About how she died alone, with no one noticing she needed help before it was too late. He'd been twelve, Ilya. He learned, after that, a rule he's never really questioned: love either stays hidden, or it gets lost. He never considered a third option, because no one ever showed him one.
And here he is now, living proof the rule works: Ilya is nobody. He can't go to the hospital to see how the fucking love of his life is doing. He's not getting texts from Shane's parents to put his mind at ease.
He goes back to bed, but he doesn't sleep. He lies there staring at the ceiling while outside the sky very slowly starts to grow light.
He makes himself promises he knows he doesn't deserve to make: that when Shane gets better, he'll apologize properly. For the Olympics. For every time he ran. For every single time he chose fear over him. He'll tell him how he feels, in a language Shane can actually understand.
But what if he doesn't get better? What if that was the last game Shane Hollander ever played?
Ilya's stomach knots around a thought he can't quite let himself finish: how is he supposed to get back on the ice without Shane on the other side of it. Without that way he has of raising an eyebrow before he even says a word. Without crashing into each other at center ice, close enough that for a second it's just the two of them and not twenty thousand people watching.
And what if Shane dies? Without anyone knowing Ilya loved him? Without Shane ever knowing how desperately Ilya loved him?
Dawn comes in thin through the curtains he left open. Ilya hasn't slept a minute. His body feels heavy, his head completely empty.
He checks his phone. A statement comes, finally: Shane's condition is stable, he's under observation.
This is what he wanted. Updates about Hollander.
Or maybe it isn't.
It doesn't say if Shane is scared, if he's alone, if anyone held his hand last night, if he's in pain, if he's thought about Ilya even once.
It's not enough. At six in the morning he gets up and looks in the mirror. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, his face pale.
Fuck this.
He splashes some water on his face, heads down to the hotel lobby. He doesn't run into anyone, none of his teammates are up at this hour.
He calls a cab to the hospital.
He doesn't know what he'll say if someone recognizes him in the hallway. He doesn't know what he'll say to Shane, if Shane's even awake, if Shane will want to see him, if Shane will wonder what the hell took him so long to show up.
He was given Shane's room number by an overly interested woman working behind a desk at the hospital. She seemed impressed by Ilya's display of sportsmanship.
The door was open a crack, so Ilya gently pushed it open.