Work Text:
“Yo, Roz, were you trying to kill Grant out there?” Connors called to him as they marched into the locker room after soundly beating Tampa three to one, with Ilya scoring two goals and assisting on the other.
“Yeah, man. I thought he was going to piss himself when you checked him in the third. What did he do? Steal your girlfriend?” Carmichael added, throwing his helmet carelessly into the locker next to Ilya’s.
Ilya took off his own helmet, tucking it under his arm while he ripped off his gloves. “He looked at me funny,” he muttered, earning a handful of laughs from the room that Ilya didn't return. Actually, Grant had retweeted a post about a certain Canadian hockey player going to dinner with his certain movie star girlfriend. And Ilya couldn’t stand hockey players who didn’t know what to repost and what not to repost. No one needed to see the one-hundredth image of Shane and Rose. Especially not one where Shane was facing away from the camera.
Shane leaving him that day had felt a lot like grief. At first he had been in denial, telling himself that he didn’t care and deciding to fuck anything that moved because that’s what someone who didn’t care would do. But then he realized that someone who didn’t care wouldn’t specifically flirt with girls who had freckles and black hair. Or who looked like their friends had dragged them to the club and didn’t want to actually be there.
Now he was in the anger phase of grief. Every flinch, every comment could be the one that set him off for the day. He almost felt bad for the rest of his teammates who were still walking on eggshells around him, but then he remembered how loudly Marleau had eaten his pre-game bag of chips or Hammersmith’s tendency to stand in the middle of the doorframe, chatting instead of moving to the side, and then he felt a little more justified in snapping at them or implying less than tasteful (and worse, less than clever) things about their mothers.
He wondered what the bargaining phase would look like. Maybe he would get drunk and call Shane like heartbroken girlfriends or boyfriends always did and beg him to take him back, promising him more carefully cooked meals like grilled chicken and soggy steamed spinach or whatever the fuck Shane ate. Not that Ilya had been Shane’s boyfriend. Not that he was heartbroken.
Fuck, maybe he was still in denial.
“You good?” Marleau said under his breath as Ilya ripped off the rest of his gear and shoved it into his stall, still riled up from the game, Grant’s bland social media presence, and Carmichael’s questions.
“Fuck off, Marly,” Ilya responded, and Marleau put his arms up in surrender.
Ilya’s phone buzzed, the vibrations sounding loudly against his locker. He pulled it out, expecting to see Alexei’s name, but almost dropped it when he read ‘Jane’ instead. He stared at it for a moment, then automatically covered it with his hand so his teammates couldn’t see the name and then tease him about it or ask him to put the phone on speaker.
He gawked at the little white letters. Why the fuck was Shane calling him? Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he was calling to ask Ilya to take him back.
But Shane never got drunk. And Shane never called.
Ilya’s heart sank as his brain started to concoct a more realistic, more horrifying image. He saw that photo of Shane and Rose that Grant had reposted. The one of them going into a nice restaurant with entrees that cost at least one hundred dollars, which Ilya knew because he had googled the location and left a review even though he had never been. He remembered seeing the review Amber had left, saying her boyfriend had proposed to her at the restaurant and that the staff had been so lovely and accommodating. She mentioned a free dessert.
And so Ilya saw Rose Landry in his head, delicately placing a spoonful of free chocolate cake into her mouth before convincing Shane to let her do the same to him. He saw her flashing the ring that Shane would have given her, the empty box still lying open on the table.
Shane never called. In seven years, they had never called. So it must be that Shane was calling to tell Ilya that he was getting married. He would want to tell Ilya over the phone instead of over text because that’s what respectable Canadians would do to men who had been not-so-casually seeing each other.
And Ilya, being an idiot, tapped Accept Call and lifted the phone to his ear, his hands shaking, because he didn’t want Shane to have to text it to him. Or worse, leave a voicemail. He didn’t want to be able to look back at the evidence on his phone, a reminder that Shane had called him to tell him he was in love with someone else.
That, and Ilya imagined he would always answer when Shane called. Maybe this was acceptance.
“Hello?” Ilya said, trying to steady his voice, the locker room noise still loud behind him.
He couldn’t make out any talking through the clamor, and he waved uselessly at his teammates as if to dampen it, but most of it was coming from the other end. Ilya thought he heard screaming. He hadn’t thought the Metros had had a game today, but perhaps he had gotten the days wrong. Maybe Shane was also standing in a locker room, phone held to his cheek, as his teammates clapped him on the back.
“Hi,” a voice whispered from the other end, and Ilya froze at the pained tone.
“Hello? What is going on? Did you mean to call me?” Ilya asked nervously, glancing around at his team to make sure they weren’t focused on him, confirming that most of them were either undressing and checking their own phones or teasing St. Simone about the new tattoo he had gotten the other day.
“I—I think—” Shane stuttered, and Ilya frowned when he heard another scream from Shane’s end of the line that didn’t sound like a gleeful hockey celebration. Was there something beeping loudly, too?
“I think the plane is crashing.”
And Ilya’s world came crumbling down.
“Plane? What plane?” he asked weakly. Shane couldn’t be on a plane. He was at a hockey game. Ilya had gotten the dates wrong.
“Ilya,” Shane whispered, and Ilya felt his knees buckle slightly, forcing him to reach out and grab the edge of his locker to stay upright. Shane was crying. “I’m probably going to lose wifi soon. I need you to tell my parents—”
“No. What are you talking about? What wifi?” Ilya said with a gasp, drawing the attention of Marleau next to him, whose eyes went wide.
“Roz, what—”
Ilya waved a hand, cutting him off, then pulled his phone closer to his face with both hands, the edges pressing painfully into his cheek.
“I need—I need you—My mom—” Shane cried harder, and Ilya could hear his breathing shorten. Or maybe that was Ilya’s own breathing.
“Yo, Cap, who are you on the phone with?” Connors called.
Ilya ignored him, focusing on the man on the other end of the line who was somehow on a plane that was maybe going through some bad turbulence. What had he done with Ryan Price when he had been anxious about flying? Why couldn’t he remember now? All he knew was that he needed Shane to keep talking so that he could keep hearing his voice.
“Your mom,” Ilya prompted, but his voice cracked as a sob escaped him. The entire locker room fell silent, and the players slowly turned to him. Ilya furiously wiped away the tears that had found their way onto his cheeks. He knew he needed to move somewhere more secluded, but his feet wouldn’t budge. Somehow, it felt like if he even shifted a bit, the call would disconnect, and Shane would disappear. Because Shane was here. Right here. With him.
“Damn. He might actually be talking to your mom,” Carmichael whispered, and St. Simone smacked his arm.
Ilya disregarded all of them because he could hear Shane take a deep breath before speaking. “Can—Can you tell my mom and dad—that I love them, and I’m sorry—”
“Why can you not tell them yourself? I do not understand.”
Shane let out a breathy, exasperated laugh. “Because the plane is crashing.”
“No, it is not. Stop it—”
“Ilya. I need you to listen to me.”
“No, I will not listen. Why are you telling me this—” Ilya felt Marleau reach out to touch his shoulder, and Ilya shoved his hand away. Nobody in the locker room moved, but every player stared at him or at each other, trying to figure out what to do. Ilya wished he could tell them.
“Ilya,” Shane repeated. “The plane is crashing.”
Ilya let out another sob and fell to his knees, his body no longer able to support him. His chest shook with each staggered breath.
“Please.” Ilya didn’t know what he was begging for. “Please don’t—Hollander—”
“Can you call me Shane?”
Suddenly, Ilya saw the image of Shane in front of him, standing in the hallway of Ilya’s Boston house, ready to bolt for the door. He saw his own hand outstretched, trying to pull Shane back to him, begging him to stay. He saw Shane turn and walk out, leaving Ilya sitting by himself staring at two plates with tuna melt crumbs and a half-drunk can of ginger ale that he later stuck in the fridge just in case its owner returned. He hadn’t.
“Do you promise you will not leave me again if I do?”
He heard a shaky inhale on the other end of the call. “Okay. I promise,” Shane whispered.
“Shane,” Ilya said, just as softly. He heard a couple of gasps around him. It was over now. They all knew. There might have been other Hollanders in the world. There was only one Shane. “Please don’t leave me.”
Shane whined. “I’m so sorry I left you—”
“I will never forgive you if you leave me again, Shane, please—”
“I shouldn’t have gone. I wanted to stay. I just couldn’t. I—”
“You can stay. You can stay for me, please—”
Coach LeClaire had come out of his office and was surveying the scene with a slack jaw. “What—” he started, but broke off when Ilya let out another pained sound that broke even his own heart. He hadn’t realized he could sound like that.
“I’m sorry,” Shane whispered.
Ilya felt like he was going to throw up. He even leaned forward, curling his arms around his knees in case he needed to do just that. “I’m sorry too.”
Ilya could hear others crying in the background, and for the first time, he realized Shane was on a plane with all his teammates. He realized the Metros were falling out of the sky. Oh God, Shane was on that plane. Shane was falling. He was going to—it was going—Shane was—Shane—
Shane let out a little laugh, muddled by his own tears. “We were pretty stupid, weren’t we?”
“Shane,” Ilya could only whimper in response.
“I wish we had more time. I—I know it’s not—” Something rattled loudly in the background, and Shane paused. “—It’s not enough. But I wanted to have these minutes.”
“Minutes?” Ilya repeated quietly. Carmichael crouched down beside him, not touching, just sitting there.
“Yeah,” Shane breathed. “I think—I think maybe—minutes. I—I wanted to call you. I wanted to hear your voice—” Shane broke off again, and Ilya could hear his muffled cries.
Oh, Ilya thought. Shane is scared. And he wanted to crawl through the phone and hold him, even if it meant that he crashed too. It felt like he was anyway. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down. He needed to be here for Shane so that Shane could have all of his minutes.
Ilya shifted so that he could sit instead of kneel, his legs spread out next to Carmichael's. Slowly the rest of the room either sat with him or leaned against the walls, settling into their positions. They were here for the long haul. “I am here.”
“Okay,” Shane whispered.
“Are you bracing?”
“I’m bracing.”
“Good. Do you know where your life jacket is?”
“I’m not going to need a fucking life jacket. We’re not even over an ocean.”
“Ah, so it will all be okay. No need to panic.”
“Okay.”
They were speaking more smoothly, but both were still obviously crying. They hadn’t managed to stop that. Ilya couldn’t help but see images of Shane’s life flash before his eyes: Shane folding his clothes before climbing into bed with him, Shane leaning over a faceoff dot, Shane shaking his hand outside an arena in Saskatchewan. Which was funny because he thought it was usually the other way around. But maybe he was dying too.
Oh God, why was this happening to him? Why the fuck was Shane on a plane? This couldn’t be real, this couldn’t—
The rattling on Shane’s end was getting louder.
“Ilya, I need you to know that—”
“Shane, don’t—”
“—you’re my favorite person. I’m sorry I left you. And I’m sorry I’m going to do it again—”
“You are not going to leave. You are going to be okay. It is all okay—”
“And I need you to know that I love you. Just a little bit.”
Ilya’s voice caught in his throat, and his jaw hung open.
Oh God. Shane loved him. Fuck. No. Please, no. He thought of his mother telling him she loved him before he left for hockey practice. He hadn’t known it would be the last thing she ever said to him. He’d been too busy adjusting his bag strap to notice her voice wobble.
“I love you too, Shane,” he sobbed, closing his eyes so that he couldn’t see anyone else in the room. Just him and Shane together in darkness like always. It was such a pity he had never truly been able to see Shane in the sun. He thought about how Shane’s freckles would probably have darkened, and his hair would have gotten lighter. And he wouldn’t get to see it.
“Oh,” Shane whispered. “Just a little bit?”
Ilya shook his head even though Shane couldn’t see it. “No. I—I think I have loved you for years.”
“Oh.”
They sat there for a moment, breathing together. Ilya wondered how many breaths together they had left. He wondered how many of those breaths they had wasted on hurried gasps and moans and sighs when they could have used them to call each other and tell the other how their days were. Or laugh. Or say “I love you” a little earlier. Before one of them was on a plane.
He pictured a hockey clock, slowly ticking towards zero.
“I would have loved you for years,” he said, tears shining on his neck, dripping beneath his clothes.
Shane let out an ugly chuckle, almost indistinguishable from a tortured cry. “Me too. I would have loved you for years. And for a couple of minutes.”
Something sounded like a buzzer in the background, and the line went dead.
Ilya gasped, and for a moment, nothing moved. His mouth was open, but no other sound came out, even though he felt pressure on his vocal cords as if something was trying to. Like that moment right when you can see the bomb has hit and that the world has ended, but you haven’t heard the boom.
And then there was the boom.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, oh God, please no,” Ilya cried, pulling his phone away from his face for the first time and staring at the empty lock screen. He slid it open and tapped Shane’s contact, calling ‘Jane’ again. It went straight to voicemail.
“No. NO. SHANE!” Ilya screamed, tapping it again and again. And again.
He looked up at his teammates, holding the phone toward them as if they could do something. His coach had tears streaming down his face. Sebbin was staring at the ground, his face pale. None of them reached toward his phone.
His face crumpled, and he collapsed, his body falling against Carmichael, who immediately wrapped his arms around him. Ilya would have shrugged them off if he could have moved his own arms.
He inhaled, then groaned loudly. If Ilya hadn’t been the one making the noise, he would have assumed that someone had been shot and was bleeding out onto the locker room floor.
His cries got louder and more hysterical, and Carmichael just hugged tighter, as if he were trying to hold him together. Over the sound of his own sobs, he could hear the locker room commotion picking back up.
“St. Simone. Get someone from the Metros on the phone.”
“I’m fucking trying, Marleau. Fuck!”
“Regan, are you grabbing his stuff? Good.”
“This is fucking crazy.”
“Shut the fuck up, man.”
“No one is picking up.”
“Coach, can you—”
“On it.”
“A couple of news outlets have picked it up.”
“Well, what the fuck are they saying?”
“No information at this time.”
“Fuck. FUCK!”
Ilya let the Raiders’ voices crowd him out. He let Carmichael run a hand up and down his back. Wrangling his arm out from under him, Ilya pulled out his phone again and went to the call log to see if he had somehow missed a call.
Four minutes and sixteen seconds.
That was how long he and Shane had had together. Less time than a major penalty.
“I’ve got Jackie Pike on the phone,” Connors called out.
“Does she have any news?” Marleau said urgently, walking over to meet him and leaning in closer to the phone to try to hear.
Connors shook his head. “No, but she says someone told her they made an emergency landing near New York.”
“Good,” Marleau said, grabbing some of Ilya’s things from Regan along with his own. “Cadyn, can you buy me and Roz plane tickets to New York?”
Cadyn made a small noise of acknowledgment and pulled out his phone. “For when?”
“As soon as fucking possible.”
Ilya felt himself lifted off the ground by both Carmichael and Marleau, who supported his weight.
“I’ve got them!” Cadyn said triumphantly, holding the phone up as proof.
“Great. Send them to me,” Marleau said before pointing at the rest of the room. “No one says a fucking word. Got it?”
They all nodded seriously. Ilya felt a spark of gratitude emerge for a brief moment before everything else inside him drowned it out. And then he almost wanted them to tell people. He almost wanted them to tell everyone how Ilya Rozanov had died in the Boston Raiders’ locker room at the same time that Shane Hollander had fallen out of the sky.
“Come on, Ilya,” Marleau said softly. “Let’s go get your boy.”
“I’ll drive you,” Connors yelled, following them out.
The three of them navigated him down the hallway of TD Garden until they reached the parking lot. Carmichael helped Ilya into the passenger seat, then leaned over the door. “You got him, Marly?”
“I’ve got him,” Marleau confirmed, leaning forward from the back seat to pat Ilya’s back as Connors started the car.
Carmichael nodded firmly, then gave Ilya’s shoulder one last squeeze. “He’s going to be okay. He’s a stubborn motherfucker. If anyone could survive a plane crash, it’s Hollander.”
“Shane,” Ilya corrected automatically, his voice breaking.
Carmichael smiled sadly. “Shane. Tell him we’re rooting for him.”
Ilya felt barely conscious as they drove to the airport. Marleau kept reading off headlines from the back seat, but they didn’t say anything. Ilya wasn’t sure he wanted them to. He wasn’t sure he was ready for the one announcing casualties. The one that counted them. The one that listed them. The one that could have Shane’s name written in sans serif font somewhere in the middle of a column of alphabetized names.
He leaned his head against the window, the night air soaking into his skin, freezing his still-falling tears. He couldn’t even cry anymore, but water kept leaking out of his eyes as if trying to expel something poisonous from them.
Connors pulled up to the curb and gave Ilya a firm hug before letting Marleau march into the airport departures area, dragging Ilya behind him. They checked in. They went through security. They sat and waited to board. Marleau checked his phone. They boarded the plane. The plane took off.
Marleau put Ilya in the window seat so he could act as a barrier between Ilya and anyone who walked past, and Ilya used the opportunity to watch the city lights grow farther and farther away. The flight attendant came by and asked if they wanted anything. Ilya ordered a ginger ale and drank half of it before setting it down on his tray.
Only then did it occur to him that he was on a plane that could also crash, and he couldn’t tell if he was afraid. He wondered what he would do if it did.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and connected to the airplane wifi. Thumbing through his texts, he stared at the few he had refused to delete from Shane over the years. He tapped the contact information and hit call, holding it to his ear.
The phone rang.
It rang again.
It rang a third time.
“Oh my God, I just got my phone back, and I was about to call you, but then you called me first. I’m so sorry. The wifi cut out at some point, and I was trying to figure out how to call you after, but I couldn’t find my phone, and I don’t have your number memorized and—”
“Shane?” Ilya whispered, barely able to make the sound. Next to him, Marleau gasped.
“Yes, it’s me. I kept trying to get a phone, but—”
“You are okay?” Ilya whimpered, and a long pause followed over the phone.
“I’m okay, Ilya. Well, I have a couple of bruises, but we landed in one piece. We’re all okay.”
Ilya burst into new tears, which he hadn’t thought was possible, and he slumped back into his seat. “Okay. This is good.”
Shane laughed. “I thought so too. Holy fuck, Ilya—”
“Yes. Holy fuck.”
“I was in a plane crash.”
“No. You said the plane did not crash.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No,” Ilya said firmly, just to remind himself. “The plane did not crash.”
There was another pause. “You’re right. The plane didn’t crash,” Shane said softly.
“Good. Where are you?”
“The hospital,” Shane replied. “They wanted to just check everyone over.”
Ilya mouthed the word hospital to Marleau, who nodded and started using his own in-flight wifi to look up which hospital the Metros would have gone to. “Stay there. I am going to come find you.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that. I’m fine, really. You don’t—”
“I am already on a plane.”
“Oh,” Shane said, slightly awed. “You’re on a plane right now?”
Ilya could tell Shane was nervous now. “Yes, but this one will not crash. But just in case, I wanted to call you so you could be with me if it did. I did not think you would pick up.”
Shane huffed out a laugh. “I’m glad I did. How much longer is the flight?”
Ilya glanced at the screen in front of him. “About thirty-five minutes.”
“Okay,” Shane said softly. Ilya pressed the phone closer to his face and could almost imagine Shane kissing the spot on his cheek where it touched. “So we have a couple of minutes.”
Now it was Ilya’s turn to laugh. He wiped at his face, brushing off the stray tears. “Yes, we have a couple of minutes.”