Work Text:
Jane:
Do not open your Instagram
Do not look at your messages
I tried to delete them but it won’t let me
If you love me, do not open your messages
Naturally, Ilya immediately opens his Instagram messages. Heart in his stomach, pounding unsteadily, he clicks the profile of Shane’s face.
Reads once. Reads twice. Reads a third time.
ShaneHollander
I’m so sorry and I love you so much
I’m so grateful to have loved you and been loved by you
I know this is going to be hard but please, please keep going. I’ll be waiting for you but I’ll be so fucking mad if you get to me early.
Tell mom and dad I love them
Tell them to look after you
I love you. I’ve always loved you
Bewilderment first. Then, a dull throb of pain. Then more bewilderment.
Then—
“Holy shit, Montreal’s plane had to make an emergency landing.”
Ilya’s head snaps up.
In his hand his phone buzzes.
Jane:
I can see you’ve read them, asshole
Sorry shouldn’t call you that right now
I’m okay, don’t freak out
“What happened?” Someone else is asking it. Ilya turns his head. Listens. An engine blown out. A fire. He starts losing English a little and looks back down at his phone.
Some cold and terrible feeling smothers him.
It’s not grief. He knows the weight of grief. He knows it in the slight twist in his gut even now when he walks around an American mall and sees Mother’s Day cards, or when he eats certain blinis that taste just like hers. He knows it in the call of a stern man’s voice, so much like his father. Ilya knows grief.
This, is something worse.
please, please keep going.
Shane begging him to stay alive even after he’s gone. Shane, who mostly smiles just in the corners of his mouth, and hugs with his whole body, and blushes when Ilya flirts with him, even now. Shane, the entire reason he abandoned a country, a team, a career, and what he would abandon so much more for.
This terror drowning him isn’t grief.
It’s pre-emptive grief.
It’s hearing his father’s wet cough from the other room and tensing, wondering, now? Five minutes from now?
It’s the mornings he would walk past his parents’ room and linger in the cracked doorway, eyes on his mother as she lay under the sheets, unmoving, awake, and ignoring him as he called to her.
It’s them old and grey and Shane dying and somehow Ilya is forced to live on.
It’s the game where Shane got laid out and stayed there on the ice, unmoving, hand outstretched just a little like it sometimes is when he sleeps, only this time they don’t wake him up.
It’s a plane that doesn’t land.
His phone buzzes again.
Jane:
I’m still here. Okay? Call me when you can.
Ilya is on a coach for the next thirty minutes. His team so loud around him.
If he doesn’t hear Shane’s voice in the next ten seconds, he’s going to die.
He opens the contact page and calls. Puts the phone to his ear.
It rings once. Then—
“I really am so sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything, I just, it was, I needed to say something and I didn’t have service—”
Ilya almost says Hollander. Some distant vestige of sense catches him at the last minute.
“Jane,” he says. That’s all he says.
Shane is silent for a moment. “Jesus, are you still on the coach? They can’t hear me can they?”
“No.”
“Okay. Okay, listen. I’m okay. Everything is going to be fine. Call me when you get to your hotel.” He hesitates, just slightly. “Ilya?”
“Da?”
“I love you,” Shane says, and Ilya has to press his index finger and thumb to his eyes to stop them from burning.
He breathes. “Ya tebya lyublyu.” Shane exhales and it hitches. Something near a sob. Ilya hates himself a little for being so utterly useless at consoling his boyfriend after a near death experience. Not even that. Getting his boyfriend to console him. He closes his eyes. “Malysh,” he begins.
“Don’t. Not yet. Jesus. I need to— not yet. We’re okay.”
“We’re okay,” Ilya repeats.
“Call me when you can. Yeah?”
“Da.”
“I love you.” Shane hangs up before Ilya can say it back again.
Ilya sits in a numb silence for some amount of time.
He replays Shane’s voice. The urgency of his words. Still alive, he tells himself. The man he loves more than anything or anyone in the world is still alive. As of, when he checks the call log, six minutes ago.
Then, because Ilya hates himself, he opens instagram again.
I’ve always loved you.
He locks his phone.
When they’re a few minutes from the hotel, his phone buzzes again.
YH:
We just spoke with him. He’s okay, honey. You’re both going to be okay. I know how scary that must have been for you but just try to remember that he’s okay. We’re here and we’ll see you soon.
His phone buzzes again.
DH:
Here if you need to talk, son
Ilya can’t reply. Not yet.
He moves in a daze. Through the hotel, into the elevator, up to his room.
It’s a small mercy, he has a room to himself for this trip.
He’s texting before he’s in the door.
Immediately, his phone starts ringing. Ilya bolts the door behind himself and finds himself sinking down to the floor in the small space between the wardrobe and bathroom door. His back to the hard wood of the wardrobe. Feet pressed against a skirting board.
He answers.
“Malysh?”
“Hey,” Shane says, and his voice cracks. Ilya’s heart does something it shouldn’t and he has to press a hand to his chest. “Sorry. I am fine. Really.”
Shane is crying.
Shane is crying and Ilya isn’t anywhere near close enough to him. A plane would take hours.
“Don’t be sorry,” Ilya says, hearing the unsteadiness in his own voice, the stronger edge of Russian consonants. “Where are you?”
“Hotel in Boston.” He snorts softly. “The irony.”
Ilya needs to touch him, to feel his heartbeat in his chest. But he has to settle for this.
“Do you— do you want to talk about what happened?”
“I honestly don’t really know. They sort of explained afterwards but I didn’t listen. I was just sat and then the plane just dropped. Not like turbulence just— it just fell, Ilya, and I couldn’t— all I could think about was how much time we’ve wasted—” Shane’s voice cuts off on a hitching breath. “Not, not wasted. Just…”
“Wasted on arguments,” Ilya says faintly. “I understand.”
“I used the WiFi. Messaged you. It sort of steadied. Dropped a bit. I don’t know, it’s a blur. Then we were landing.” He exhaled. “We’ve got a flight tomorrow morning to get back to Montreal. I don’t really know how I’m going to get on it.”
“I could drive to you. Drive you back.”
It’s an absurd, ridiculous offer. Ilya puts his phone on speaker so he can start looking up car rentals.
“No,” Shane says. “No, I want to stay with the team. Make sure we all get back. It’ll be okay. Just… I might call you before.”
“Whatever you need,” Ilya says, meaning it in more ways than he can say. He puts the phone back to his ear.
“I really didn’t mean to scare you,” Shane says and his voice breaks again. “Fuck. Sorry, I think the adrenaline is…”
“Stop with the sorry.” Ilya rubs a hand over his face. “I— I think is best we speak about this in person.”
“Oh. Yeah. Of course. Um. I can—”
“Hollander, if you hang up phone now I will kill you.”
Shane’s laugh is soft and weak. “Mixed signals, Rozanov.”
Ilya takes a breath. “Right now you are not okay. We will talk until you are more okay. I’m not doing… not until I can be with you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Just…”
“I love you,” Ilya says.
Shane exhales. “God, I love you. Congratulations on winning the game.”
“You give me whiplash.”
“You’re the one who wanted to change the subject!” Ilya doesn’t want to think about it for a second. The thought of Shane dying. The thought of Shane so scared he sends his last words to Ilya. “You’re back in two days, right?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “Morning flight on Wednesday.” If he doesn’t try and get a red eye on Tuesday night after the game. Which, he might. “Have you spoken to your parents?”
“Yeah. They’re freaked out but fine.”
“Good.”
“I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Grimacing, Ilya presses the phone harder to his ear as if Shane could feel it. “You must have been so scared.”
“No— no. I mean, yes. But no. I can’t stop thinking about if it was you.” Shane exhales raggedly. Ilya blinks a few times. “I keep thinking— if it was me, if I was gone—”
Ilya couldn’t hear it. “Hollander.”
“My parents get everything, they know what I’d want and that they’d need to call you and— and they’d know to look after you. And I keep thinking if it was you. If you died, I— I don’t even know who your next of kin is. No one would know to tell me. I— I’d never be able to— I wouldn’t—”
“Hey, hey. Shane.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ilya shakes his head. “Stop. I’m okay. Everything is okay. You can’t keep thinking about this. You need sleep. Yes?”
“Yeah,” Shane says quietly. “I wish you were here.”
“Me too. I can stay on phone while you fall asleep.”
“Really?”
Ilya settles more into his spot on the floor. “Really.”
He listens as Shane gets ready for bed. Listens as he settles into the sheets. Talks to him quietly in English, then in Russian. Tells him about the summer they have before them. The years they have ahead.
Eventually, Shane’s breathing goes soft and steady in the way that tells he’s asleep. Ilya closes his eyes and listens.
He keeps his phone on and the call live as he gets changed and lies in bed. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine Shane is with him. A little, anyway.
He lies in his bed and he stays awake. He listens to Shane breathe. That dark shadow of fear doesn’t leave.
At two thirty in the morning, he makes the decision. He hangs up the phone, grabs his bag, and walks out the hotel room. He drafts an email to the coaches.
His father died and he took five days off.
He has never missed a game for sickness. He’s only been off for injuries when they happen during the game. Played through bruised ribs. When he says family emergency and need to miss the game, he knows it’ll be fine.
He gets to the airport at three. Gets tickets for a flight at four. He lands in Ottawa at six. By seven thirty, he’s at the cottage and texting Shane.
Me:
Call me when you wake up?
Immediately, Shane is typing.
Jane:
You have practice soon. I’ve got to get my flight.
Ilya’s heart thuds unsteadily.
Me:
Call before flight?
His phone starts vibrating.
“Hey. You should get to practice,” Shane says. Ilya glances around the living room. Light reflects of the lake and glimmers across the ceiling. The blanket next to him smells faintly like Shane.
“They won’t miss me,” Ilya says. “You will.”
“You haven’t lost your sense of humour.”
“Would be terrible. You would be upset.”
“I would,” Shane says softly. “How’re you doing?”
“Missing you.”
“I know the feeling.” There’s noise on the other end of the line. Ilya listens. Pike’s voice, telling Shane they have to go. “Ah— oh. Okay. It’s going to be fine. Okay? Just…”
“I love you,” Ilya says.
“Oh God, don’t say that.”
Ilya shrugs. “I don’t love you.”
“Il— I mean—”
“I’ll see you at home, malysh. I love you. You will be fine. I am with you. Yes?”
“Yes. I love you.” He hangs up.
Ilya looks at his phone for a long moment. His throat tight. Too many words. What would he even say? There’s no urgency of a plane crash to force the words faster as he starts to type. Then, stops. Then starts again.
A few minutes later, a message pops through.
Jane has shared Health data with you. Accept. Reject.
Ilya frowns and clicks accept. From his backpack, abandoned on the floor next to him, there’s a quiet ping. He dug through the front pocket and found the watch Shane had practically coerced him into getting, saying how useful all the data it monitored was.
On the little screen, it reads:
Show Jane’s health data? YES. NO.
Ilya clicks yes.
A heart appears on the screen with numbers below it.
A heart rate. Shane’s heart rate. Live.
Ilya stares at it for a full minute. The strange little animated pulse.
Steady numbers below it.
Eventually, he texts back.
Me:
Thank you
Shane sends a heart back.
For a while, Ilya sits and watches it. Watches it climb up a little around the time he knows when Shane is boarding, a little higher as they take off. Slowly steadying again.
He slides the watch onto his wrist and then gets up and walks out the cottage again.
The drive is short and familiar by now. About halfway there, he realises he hasn’t even texted them. Technically, they might not be home.
But when he pulls the car up, the door opens immediately.
Something in his chest relaxes just slightly more as Yuna steps out and smiles at him. Ilya gets out the car and walks straight up the path and into her arms.
Yuna hugs like Shane. A slightly rocking motion back and forth. A hand at Ilya’s nape. Holding him like he’s smaller and softer than he really is. For a moment, Ilya’s eyes burn so much he squeezes them shut. Yuna doesn’t let go until he does. Even then, her smile is shaky and her eyes damp as she reaches up and brushes a thumb beneath his eye.
“You’re meant to be in Washington for the game in two hours.”
“Told them I had family emergency. Lying is bad. I know.”
Yuna laughs softly. “There’s always an exception. Come in, honey. I’ll make some coffee.”
She disappears into the house, headed for the kitchen. Ilya toes his shoes off and lingers in the sitting room. There’s a photo of Shane as a child on the wall, so absurdly joyous and carefree it almost doesn’t look like him. He glances at the watch again and watches Shane’s heart beating steadily until he feels calm enough to walk into the kitchen.
“Have you slept?” Yuna asks, getting two mugs out.
“Ah. No. Not really.”
Ilya sits at the kitchen table, hands folded together. For a moment, he’s back in that day where he’d sat and listened to Yuna and David say there were no nice men in Montreal? Being Hollanders, they have both apologised for that since then. But still.
He looks up and finds his words.
“I want to make a plan for when I die,” he says, and Yuna’s head jerks up, her eyes wide and horrified. The mug in her hand falls to the kitchen floor and shatters. Ilya flinches at the sound and they both stare at each other for a few seconds. Belatedly, understanding strikes. “Ah! No, no, no.” Ilya shakes his head. “God, no. No.” He gets up, walks over to start picking up the mug.
“Honey, no, your feet are bare,” Yuna says, her voice unsteady as she reaches for him.
Ilya ignores her, piling the shattered pieces into the largest one. “My words are not very good right now. I didn’t mean that.”
“Ilya, Ilya, please. Let’s…”
“I should take mug outside or David might hurt himself taking bag out later if he doesn’t know—”
“Put the goddamn mug down in the sink, Ilya, please.” Yuna’s voice is firm and unsteady all at once. Ilya looks up at her from the floor. She looks unsteady. Guilt gnaws through him. Ilya carefully lifts the shattered mug onto the side. He opens the drawer where he knows the trash bags are and gently puts the mug in it, then leaves the bag on the side for later. Carefully, slowly, he moves Yuna out of the way so he can take a new mug from the top shelf. He pours them both a coffee and carries them over to the table.
For a few moments, Yuna stands and wipes her face. Eventually she joins him.
“I did not mean to scare you,” Ilya says. “Or upset you. Or—”
“What do you mean, honey?” Yuna looks at him, eyes so familiar that it’s comforting in itself.
“I spoke to Shane last night. He was panicking but not about him. About me. If opposite happens. How will he know? What happens?” Ilya swallows. “I don’t want him to not know. I thought you might be able to help me.”
Yuna takes a slow, deep breath. “Yes. Yes, I can.” She wipes another tear and clears her throat.
“Ah.” Ilya glances down at his watch and then takes it off to lay it on the table between them. Yuna frowns at it. “Is Shane’s. His heartbeat.” When Yuna looks at him, her eyes are full of tears again. Ilya winces. “Ah, not good? Bad?”
“Not— no. Oh, God.” Yuna laughs wetly and wipes her face. She takes a tissue from her pocket and dabs her eyes and her nose. Then, she reaches over and settles one hand on Ilya’s. He turns his over to hold hers properly. “I’m so glad he has you.”
“Is me that is lucky.”
“Let’s just say you both are.” Yuna takes a deep breath. “Tell me what your current plans are.”
Ilya chews his lip, a bit guiltily. “I have not changed everything for a while. I think everything still goes to my father.” Yuna stares at him. “Is not good, I know.”
“So right now, if something happened to you, everything would go to your brother? He’s your next of kin?”
“Um. I think, yes.”
“Right. I’m assuming you don’t want that?”
“No.”
She studies him for a moment. “What do you want? Let’s start simple. Your money, your assets. Homes. Cars.”
“I…” This is where Ilya reaches a sticking point. Because the instinct is there. He wants Shane to have everything. He wants Shane to have every last piece of him. “I want to leave it to Shane,” he confesses. “All of it. But… but I think not to keep. I think for him to sell most of it and put the money in the foundation. From the cars and the house. Can I do that?”
Yuna nods. “Yeah, honey, you can.”
“Okay. I think also something for my niece. She has fund from me for when she turns eighteen but maybe some more. Make sure she can afford freedom.”
“Alright. Anything else?” He shrugs. He trusts Shane. Yuna nods. “Okay. The other key thing is power of attorney and next of kin.” When Ilya only blinks at her, she says, “Next of kin is who needs to be notified. Like an emergency contact.”
Ilya thinks of Alexei getting the call from the hospice. He thinks of getting the call from Alexei. His brother’s flat voice. Somehow still better than that of a stranger.
He hesitates. He hesitates because this is not his family by blood. By love, yes, because only God knows how much he loves the Hollanders. But not blood.
Glancing at Yuna, he asks, quietly, “Would you?”
She blinks and then nods tightly. “Of course. If that’s what you want.”
“I know is unfair on you but— but I don’t want him to hear from a stranger.”
“You don’t need to explain. I understand.” She squeezes his hand gently. “Would you want me to be your Power of Attorney, too? That’s the person who, if you couldn’t make decisions, would do it for you.”
Ilya realises what she means. If he was kept alive by machines. Would he want Shane to be the one to turn them off?
Selfishly, he wants to say Shane. He trusts Shane, loves him. But the thought of Shane thinking for even a second that Ilya’s death was on his hands is nauseating. Ilya looks at the watch again. Shane’s heart rate is low and steady.
“Who is yours?” He asks.
“David,” Yuna says quietly. “You can have it be more than one person.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. All three of you then. If that is okay?”
She nods. “Do you have a solicitor who can change all this for you?”
“Uh. Probably.”
Yuna huffs and presses her free hand to her head. “The things you could get if you had good management, Ilya.”
“Sounds like offer,” he says with a smile, just to watch her laugh. She lets go of his hand to wipe her face and then sip her coffee. “I think I also want different management.”
“Finally,” she says. “I have a list for you.”
His smile grows further. “You are so like Shane.”
“I think you mean Shane is so like me.”
Ilya sips his coffee and shrugs.
Shane texts when he lands, the message popping through on the watch between Ilya and Yuna.
Jane:
Just landed. Call when I get to the cottage?
“Ah. I should go. He will probably be mad.”
“Probably,” Yuna says gently.
Ilya hugs her goodbye and she holds on for longer than usual. He waits, happily leaning into her and savouring it.
By the time he gets back to the cottage, he’s exhausted. But he showers and puts his stuff away so Shane doesn’t come in to clutter.
On his watch, he watches Shane’s heat rate increase as he hears the crunch of tyres on gravel, parking beside Ilya’s car and probably realising he’s not alone.
It’s seconds later when the front door is practically thrown open.
Ilya pokes his head around the corner of the hallway and Shane skids to a halt on the floor, staring at him.
He looks, as Shane always does, beautiful. But the shadows beneath his reddened eyes are devastating.
“Hi,” Ilya greets softly.
“How… what…”
“Less talking. Come here.”
Shane moves so fast it’s almost alarming. But then he’s in Ilya’s arms, embracing him with so much force Ilya tips into the wall to stop himself from falling.
And just as quickly, Shane pushes away from him.
“You’re missing a game!” He exclaims.
“Shut up,” Ilya says dizzily, catching the front of Shane’s shirt and using it to drag him into a kiss.
Shane melts into it immediately, a soft sound slipping from him and it wrecks Ilya. Ilya kisses him, tastes him, tries to pull him closer and closer until eventually all he can do is lift Shane onto his hips and carry him blindly through the space and down the steps until they reach the sofa. Shane’s hands are curled in his hair tight enough to almost hurt. But Ilya just sits down and lets the weight of Shane’s body over his ground him in place. He slides his hands over Shane’s tee, beneath it, less interested in progressing things than in getting as close as he physically can.
Between Shane’s ragged breaths, Ilya tastes salt.
He grips Shane’s jaw in his hand so he can move back without Shane following. Tears drip down Shane’s face and Ilya’s entire body begins to hurt.
“Hollander,” he whispers, and Shane clings to him. Ilya hugs him as tightly as he can and tries to focus on soothing Shane more than the burn in his eyes and the tremble in his voice.
It’s fairly useless when Shane looks at him, sees the tears, and says, voice trembling, “Oh, God, Ilya.”
Then they’re both crying and clinging to each other. Sometimes it bewilders Ilya still when people call Shane the hockey-robot or refer to him as unemotional. It’s more than likely that Shane, with his tightening jaw and furrowed brow and wet doe eyes and fidgeting fingers, is more emotional than anyone else Ilya knows. He feels so much, so deeply. Too much, sometimes. There’s an absurd feeling that comes with the trust Shane puts in him to make that go quiet. Ilya takes a certain amount of vicious pride in being the only person who can do it.
But with Shane’s heartbeat still monitored on his wrist, and with Shane’s real heart thumping so hard in his chest against Ilya’s that it’s nearly concerning, and with Shane crying and Ilya crying too, there’s only so much he can do.
After a while, Shane starts to pull away, to apologise. Ilya grips him so tightly, one hand slipped to the small of Shane’s back beneath his shirt, the other wrapped around Shane’s nape, and doesn’t let him move. Belatedly, Ilya realises he’s shaking. Even more belatedly, he realises that Shane has begun murmuring soothing nonsense into his ear and stroking his hair.
Suddenly, he’s flung back years to a Florida hotel room. Losing his words and starting to tear up when Shane should have been nothing to him, when Shane had run and then come back with apologies and I like you a little too much. Holding Shane then, being held by him. After the tuna melt incident, he’d been determined to close off to Shane again. Even when he told Shane his hotel number, he’d prepared himself to be as cool and uninterested as he could be, whilst also doing everything possible to make sure that Shane wanted him as desperately as Ilya wanted Shane. And Shane had wrecked the walls he tried to put between them. Whether he intended to or not, he always did.
Ilya makes himself sit back. Forces himself to breathe slowly and deeply. Shane rests his head against Ilya’s, eyes closed, mirroring his breathing.
“I need to tell you some things,” Ilya says.
Shane exhales raggedly. “I love you.”
Ilya smiles helplessly. He grazes a thumb over Shane’s cheekbone, across freckles and tears.
“I love you too. But not that.” Shane opens his eyes and Ilya makes himself breathe. “I spoke with your mama. About what you worried about.” When Shane starts to shake his head, Ilya just gently catches his chin and holds him still. “You don’t need to worry. Everything will be fixed. If… if something ever happens to me, you will know.”
“You can’t ever leave me,” Shane says, a bit desperately, and Ilya nods.
“I won’t,” he says, because despite the fact he knows that they won’t live forever and that terrible things happen to good people and that he has a genetic makeup for disaster waiting on him, he can’t say that to Shane. So he promises, “I won’t.”
His voice breaks. Shane hugs him again.
They tip over at some point, curled into each other, limbs tangled. Ilya strokes Shane’s hair and tells him he loves him until he’s so tired from a night of not sleeping and so much emotion that Ilya drifts asleep soundly.
Later, he wakes blearily in semi-darkness. He can hear whispering. Shane, but also his parents. Probably checking on them. Making sure Shane is okay. The sofa still smells like Shane. Ilya closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.
When he wakes again, it’s to Shane whispering his name. Knuckles gently stroking his cheek.
“Malysh?”
“Hey. Come with me.”
Ilya rubs his eyes blearily, disoriented in the darkness and extends a hand. Shane curls their fingers together and tugs him up and off the sofa. Sleep clings to him in his stiff limbs and hazy vision as he blinks through the darkness and frowns as Shane lets go of him to open the back door.
Outside, there’s a haze of golden light cutting through the night.
Ilya blinks a few more times.
Realisation dawns as his heart thumps. He stares at the candles laid out across the pontoon. Then at Shane, holding the door open with one hand and the other stretched out to Ilya.
For a dumbfounded moment, all Ilya can do is look at Shane and think I get to spend forever with you.
A small smile, almost bashful, lifts the corners of Shane’s mouth.
“Ready?” He asks, voice soft.
Ilya nods without hesitation. “Yes,” he says. “Yes.”
His pulse beats on the inside of his wrist. Shane’s heartbeat mirrored on the watch on the outside. He reaches out and takes Shane’s hand, following him towards the candlelight.