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It didn’t really click for Shane until he watched his boyfriend almost successfully break down their steel-inforced bathroom door; Something Is Wrong With Ilya.
Shane was in the tub with a fifteen minute timer set on his phone. He doesn't really listen to music, but he’s trying to be fully dedicated to the task at hand: relaxation. Not that he needs it, but he can only hear “relax, Hollander” and “you’re so tense, sweetheart” and “God, Hollzy, loosen up” before he felt like he had something to prove.
So he’d set up some lavender-infused essential oil, lit a few candles and placed them carefully around the sink (not around the tub, where he could knock them over and start a fire). But he’d also ordered himself noise cancelling headphones, which was where it all went wrong.
There was a very faint, low thudding weaving through the classical music nearly blowing out Shane’s eardrums. He squeezes his eyes together almost subconsciously. He won’t get distracted; he is relaxing, goddamit.
But over the course of about thirty seconds, the thudding gets significantly louder, and Shane realizes there is nothing in his house that should ever be making that noise. He scowls and opens his eyes, running a quick mental checklist of what could be broken, when he sees it.
Ilya’s dark figure, barely visible through the heavily frosted glass, throwing his entire body weight against the bathroom door.
And the bathroom door, that’s made to withstand every kind of natural disaster imaginable, is bowing against the hinges with each impact.
Shane gasps and tears off his headphones.
“Shane! Отвечай мне!”
Ilya is roaring.
It’s horrifying. It sends Shane scrambling out of the tub with a sudden fear so palpable his hands go numb. In all the years they’ve known each other, he could never have imagined a noise like that coming out of Ilya’s body.
“Shane, открой эту еба́ную дверь!”
“Ilya!” Shane shouts, but it’s not loud enough. His feet can’t get purchase in the small tidal wave of bath water he’d brought onto the floor with him, and he barely catches himself before he can slam the back of his skull into the corner of the tub.
“Shane!” Ilya bellows.
Shane’s heart is suddenly beating so fucking quickly that his eyes blur. “Fucking- shit-” For the first time since he first stepped onto the ice, his body doesn’t know how to move where it wants to go. His feet, so used to gliding around in skates, take a full three seconds to slide, uncoordinated, towards the door.
There’s a distinct cracking sound- a splintering in the wood at one of the hinges. Shane yelps and grabs the handle, yanking it inward.
Shrouded in the dim orangey lighting of the bedroom, Ilya’s body is reared back, ready to throw himself again.
“Stop!” Shane shrieks.
And by the grace of God, Ilya registers him.
He stumbles backwards, almost falling over in an attempt to re-orient himself. He looks like a wild animal, flushed red, eyes bloodshot and bulging. The entire right side of his body- the one that had been taking the brunt of the impact- looks raw.
Shane stares at him, ass-naked and dripping bath water all over the floor.
Ilya stares back, eyes flying over every inch of Shane’s body, like he’s checking for something. He must find it, because after a moment his chest heaves, and he chokes out a breath.
“Fuck, Shane,” he moans. It sounds like he’s being strangled.
“Ilya,” Shane says, so unbelievably confused and heart racing. “Ilya, what the fuck?”
Ilya’s face crumbles, the fight drained out of him. “I-“ He visibly swallows. “I thought-“
“What?” Shane demands, more in panic than anger, but it still comes out sounding like he’s mad. “Fuck, are you okay? What are you doing?!”
Ilya makes a low whining noise, like he’s still trying to get his bearings. He stumbles backwards a few feet over to the edge of their bed, sinking down into the duvet. “You weren’t answering,” he says, his voice hoarse. Shane watches him squeeze his eyes shut.
“I was taking a bath!” Shane gestures wildly at himself, bare and flushed and soaking wet, and decidedly not relaxed.
Ilya doesn’t respond. He’s doing that thing with his jaw, like he’s sucking his cheeks inward, hollowing out his face. Shoving down something uncomfortable that he doesn’t want to think about.
Shane grabs a towel hanging near the door and haphazardly swipes at himself before slowly moving towards Ilya, trying not to scare him away.
He’s got a very short window to catch Ilya before he goes back into his shell. So he goes in for the kill- gently settling onto his lap so they’re sitting chest to chest. He grabs Ilya’s face, slowly rubbing his cheeks with his thumbs.
He isn’t fast enough. Even though Ilya’s green-blue eyes are traced with watery red, his expression has gone stony and absent.
“Hey,” Shane tries anyway. “What just happened? I’ve never seen you like that.”
Ilya slowly meets his eyes, swallowing again. His hair is limp against his forehead. Shane brushes it away, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, leaning back again to give him room to speak.
“You weren’t answering,” Ilya repeats finally, staring up at him.
Shane nods, trying to follow his train of thought. “I had noise cancelling headphones. I set a timer. I was trying to relax, I thought you were downstairs.”
“I was,” Ilya says slowly. “But I came up to use bathroom. You said you were taking a bath, so I knocked, I said your name, you did not answer. I thought… you were hurt.”
Shane’s shoulders slump. He closes his eyes, pulling Ilya’s head into his neck and wrapping his arms around him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m okay, I promise. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Sorry,” Ilya echoes against Shane’s wet skin.
Shane can’t tell if he’s just repeating him, making fun of him, or issuing his own sentiment. Shane doesn’t even know how they got to this point- Ilya was fine five minutes ago.
“No more headphones,” he promises, because he doesn’t know what else to do, and at least that’s something. “And I’ll leave the door unlocked next time, I don’t even know why I locked it in the first place. We’ll need to have someone fix that frame, though…”
Shane trails off before forcing out a laugh, trying to sound light-hearted. “You almost got through, you almost broke it down. You should join the fire department.”
He’s hoping it’ll earn him a reaction of some kind- a laugh, a snort, even a huff of annoyance.
Ilya just makes a tiny noise that definitely isn’t English, or Russian, or anything Shane could possibly decipher.
It’s too late. He’s checked out.
Shane just holds him tighter, waiting for him to come back, and wondering where he went wrong.
See, Shane knows Ilya loves him.
He’d seen it, again and again. Everything he’d sacrificed- he left Boston and moved to Ottawa for Christ’s sake. The initial confession, teary-eyed and earnest, with Ilya’s crucifix hanging between their chests, had quickly been filed away into the mental room of Absolute Truths.
That door isn’t opened often- it holds the foundations that the rest of Shane’s life and routines are built on. These are what Shane falls back on when something changes and he has to move things around.
When the Voyageurs had drafted him, Ottawa Is Home had to give way for I Live In Montreal Now, and it was Mom And Dad Live In Ottawa and Mom And Dad Are Home that had caught him before he’d fallen. In the summer after he’d graduated high school, Mom Makes My Lunch had become The Dietician Will Decide My Lunch, but both stood on atop I Am An Athlete And I Have To Eat Like One.
Ilya Loves Me was founded right next to I Love Ilya (which had probably already been there for a lot longer than he’ll admit). With it came a bunch of sub-blocks, all stacking on top of each other.
Some of them had already existed, floating around aimlessly back when what he and Ilya had was fleeting and unnamed- but Ilya Loves Me had given them a concrete place to sit. The fact that Ilya snores when he sleeps, his disdain for birds, his obsession with McGriddles, the way he likes to be on top of Shane during sex but beneath him when they’re napping on the couch.
They came together into a carefully chiseled, heart-shaped silhouette. It became a monument of sorts, somewhere he visited often, and it was probably Shane’s favorite part of himself, but now-
“There’s a hole here,” the carpenter says, pointing at the meeting point of one of the hinges on the bathroom door. “And here, and at the bottom. The nails were shoved in too far, it splintered. We’ll have to order the parts, replace the frame. That’s some pretty impressive damage.”
“Yeah,” Shane says numbly.
He stares at the small gaping spaces where the structure had given out, and feels the chasm in the center of that monument suddenly making itself known.
It’s like a physical representation of the crude placeholder “Under Construction” signs all over the creeping empty spaces in his mind.
The carpenter fixes the door the following day.
Shane stares at it that night, in faint moonlight, under the heavy weight of Ilya laying against him, chest to chest.
This is just one door, though.
One opening, in a series of unfurnished sort of caves that had been missed in the excitement of the construction of everything else. They’re all connected- an enormous, eerie, haunted space with some pretty awful ghosts that Shane didn’t know about, filled with panicked voices assuming the worst.
“I’m gonna fix it,” he whispers into Ilya’s hair.
He only gets a snore in response.
Shane doesn’t sleep.
Ilya does, though. He sleeps soundly, heavily, dead to the world without stirring even once. He sleeps through Shane getting up for his workout in the morning. He sleeps through Anya yipping at their doorway, ready for a walk. He sleeps past lunch, and then into the afternoon, until Shane finally whips out the blender, hoping the sound will stir him.
It doesn’t.
“You need to eat,” Shane says, at his bedside, holding out the protein smoothie he’d made.
Ilya looks up at him blearily. He’s still so out of it. He wrinkles his nose, moving from his side to lay on his back, rubbing at the crease between his brows, and Shane feels a rush of relief.
“You wake me up to torture me with nasty…” he waves his hand, grumbling, voice hoarse. He sits up anyway, and allows Shane to hand it to him.
“You slept for, like, fifteen hours.” Shane says.
Ilya shrugs, curls unruly and insane, sticking up all over his head. There’s a pillow mark on his flushed cheeks. Shane watches him climb out of bed, scratching at his bare stomach.
He realizes, with a sinking feeling, that Ilya still doesn’t look rested.
It happens again. And again.
Shane waits for him to mention it. If he presses too hard, Ilya will close off, slinking away back into the chasm of Unknown Ailments- so he just leaves space, hoping he’ll crawl back out.
He doesn’t.
Instead, Ilya starts leaving trails. Clothes on the floor, instead of back in the drawer or into the laundry basket. Leaving Anya’s tiny dog shoes on to track mud into the house after walks. Not closing the blinds when the sun starts to go down. Leaving dishes in the sink, calling over his shoulder that he’ll do them in the morning.
Shane knows, scrubbing aggressively at a salad bowl at 10pm- with water so hot it made his skin feel raw- that he really can’t just expect him to just do all those things. Especially when they haven’t explicitly talked about it. Shane hated when people expected him to just pick up on things, when there was no real indication or clear understanding that he was supposed to.
But it’s not that Shane needs it to be sterile. It’s just that home is the one place he can control. It doesn’t demand anything- no extra effort or performance when he’s already exhausted from the rest of the world.
It’s just that Ilya already did things to help make it happen. He knew all of Shane’s little… quirks. Things they hadn’t really discussed before, but Ilya had picked up on anyway and taken in stride, quietly and without ceremony. Like making Shane comfortable was a given.
But Shane’s level of comfort is… a lot of extra work. He knows this.
While his parents had always been accommodating- to the point that it had taken Shane a few years of public school to realize something was off about him. Other people had… not been so accommodating. Not until he’d made a name for himself, proven he was valuable, and people could just shrug it off as “athlete rituals”.
But he still got ribbed by his teammates in the locker room. Hayden still scoffed, Ilya still teased. It was obvious that people had to go out of their way for him.
Ilya had to go out of his way for him.
Maybe he’s sick of it, Shane thinks, slowly running a drying towel over the edge of the bowl. Maybe he’s trying to tell you without making a big deal about it.
He puts the bowl in the glass cupboard. Turns off the kitchen light, double checks the lock on the front door, glances at the blinds for the millionth time to ensure they’re closed.
“You’re late,” Ilya mumbles sleepily as Shane stiffly settles into bed next to him.
Shane leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead, his heart pounding. You’re late.
Did he wake him up? Ilya hadn't gone to the bedroom that long ago. And Shane always did the dishes before bed. Was this another thing he was trying to hint at? Maybe he’d been too loud in the kitchen, and Ilya couldn’t sleep.
Or maybe he’d had gotten a surge of energy- they hadn’t had sex for three days. Maybe he’d been planning on laying him down into the mattress, soft and slow, taking control like he so clearly needed to after a rough few days. Maybe Shane had ruined it, taking so long to clean up.
“I can hear you thinking,” Ilya mumbles. His hand reaches for Shane’s against the pillow.
His eyes suddenly snap open. He frowns, propping himself up onto his elbow, pulling Shane’s hand up with him.
“What are you doing?” Shane stares at him.
“It’s so hot,” Ilya says, dragging it into the lamplight, inspecting it the way one would a new engagement ring. “Did you burn it? We didn’t use the oven-”
Shane blinks. “No,” he says quickly. “I was just doing the dishes, the water was hot. I’m fine.”
“It looks burned,” Ilya presses.
He’s right. It kind of feels like it, too, and it’s obviously radiating heat in comparison to the cool hands it’s being cradled in.
“Ilya, it’s fine,” Shane insists. He earns a glare in return. “You can’t burn yourself with water from a kitchen sink, I promise. Go back to bed.”
It feels like a lie. It might be one, Shane doesn’t know. It’s been so long since he’s done the dishes alone- Ilya’s usually the one washing while Shane dries and carefully places everything back where it belongs. He doesn't remember using water that hot, and he hadn’t even realized it was tonight. He was too deep into his head.
And what, is he supposed to tell him that? That something as menial as the dishes not being done on time had upset Shane so much he unknowingly burned his own fucking hand in dish water scrambling to fix it?
Ilya watches him, eyes flitting back and forth like he’s looking for something.
You’re late.
Shane makes a split-second decision and swings his leg over Ilya’s, maneuvering himself so he’s settled on top. He pulls his raw hand from his boyfriend’s grip and uses it to tangle into the back of Ilya’s hair, pulling him forward into a filthy kiss.
Ilya hums appreciatively. He slips his tongue into Shane’s mouth, and Shane is relieved to feel him twitch under his thigh.
It’s the most alert Shane has seen him in a long time. With a sinking feeling he tries not to portray, he realizes that this is probably what Ilya’s been wanting, and Shane had been too swept up in his own head to notice.
“Love you,” Shane breathes as Ilya moves on to suck at his neck. It feels like an apology.
“Люблю тебя,” Ilya moans back against his skin, his hand already snaking forward Shane’s sweatpants.
And Shane knows that. It’s an Absolute Truth.
It’s everything atop of it that feels like it’s going to collapse, and that’s not one’s fault but his.
It all comes to a head three days before Christmas.
He hadn’t slept well. They’re preparing food for family dinner, and he’s been failing all day. He’s nearly an hour behind schedule, and he’s already broken his subconscious promise to clean up as he went, and Ilya hadn’t gotten up until an hour ago, and Shane doesn't know what’s wrong.
It must be the pie, he thinks. The stupid chocolate peppermint pie that’s too sweet, too full of sugar, stuffed full of the bad kind of carbs. He can’t eat it- he has no desire to- but he knows his parents are going to poke at him for it, insisting that, “you can cheat just this once, Shane, you’re on vacation,” even though he can’t. They know that, and it’s mean when they try to fuck with him like that, because it would throw off his entire diet, all of his macros, and the dietician has the perfect formula laid out for him to be at the top of his game until retirement-
“It’s just pie,” Ilya says bitingly. “Will you relax?”
Shane snaps.
It’s explosive, and mean, and it comes out all wrong and angry.
“Well, one of us is already busy doing that right now, so someone else has to pick up the slack!”
Ilya’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean!” Shane snarls. “I’m always cleaning up after you, after your mess! You let the laundry pile up until I finally lose our game of chicken and do it myself, you destroy the kitchen and then it’s my job to tidy up while you sleep- and oh, my God, Ilya, the sleeping- you’re always napping now! You can’t stay awake long enough to do anything!”
He is covered in flour. He’s yelling at Ilya, who’s staring at him, frozen, face vaguely angry but otherwise completely void of expression, and it’s like he’s not even there. Like he’s not even listening, until Shane slams the glass dish against the counter.
Ilya flinches and snaps out of whatever bored stupor he’s in.
“I want to relax!” he shouts back, eyes blazing. “It is always panic, panic, panic with you, you can enjoy nothing!”
The yelling really isn’t helping, and Shane’s complete embarrassment of a pie that he committed to making is sitting there, taunting him, on the counter-
The counter, which is one of the many that’s covered in fucking dishes, that were all dirtied by Ilya, and they’re not going to have time to clean them before they leave for Shane’s parent’s house. There’s not enough time, and Shane has to do them before they go to bed, and it’s probably gonna take the better part of an hour, which means his workout schedule tomorrow is gonna be fucked, because he’s going to be behind on sleep.
And Ilya, who he knows loves him, is clearly irritated with him, and Shane can feel his eyes welling up with tears.
He makes sure to slam the door behind him when he runs away, leaving Ilya home alone.
He’ll regret it until the day he dies.
Yuna and David are kind enough to pretend they don’t see the botchy skin and red eyes Shane is sporting when he shows up alone, Anya in one arm and the half-finished pie on the other.
“Where’s Ilya?” Yuna asks carefully.
“Not coming,” Shane says testily. He’s had over an hour to sit and stew in his own anger on the drive here, and he’s not going to let go of it now.
David raises an eyebrow, taking Anya out of Shane’s hand, leaving him with the stupid half-baked pie. “Something happen?”
Shane ignores him, storming into the kitchen.
A few hours later, his anger has dissipated, and given way to tears instead.
He’s curled up on the couch, trying to psych himself up enough to head back to the car and head home to face the aftermath of his temper tantrum, when Hayden calls.
“Hey, Hayden,” he sighs, swiping at his watery eyes as if his friend could see him through the line.
“Where are you?”
Shane’s brows furrow. “I’m… at my parents? Family dinner.”
“Are you okay?!”
“Hayden, what? I’m fine-”
“Then what-” rustling echoes over the line. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
What the hell? Shane pulls the phone away from himself and looks at Hayden’s contact photo like it will give him answers, before pressing it back to his ear. “No, I’m not hurt, why would I-”
“I showed up with cookies and your front door was wide open, and the heater is off, and your blinds are open, and there's blood all over the kitchen floor! What the fuck happened, man?”
Shane’s stomach drops.
He sits bolt upright, knocking Anya off his lap. Yuna must see the look on his face, because makes her way over to him immediately.
“What’s wrong?” she demands.
Shane ignores her, gripping the edge of the couch. “Hayden, What are you talking about? What do you mean, blood?”
Shock flickers over Yuna’s face. Shane’s heart pounds.
“Blood!” Hayden repeats, sounding like he’s shaking. “There’s only one thing that word means, man. And it’s like, a lot-”
Shane suddenly feels a wave of nausea.
“Where’s Ilya?” Breathless. Begging. The only thing that matters.
“I don’t- why would I know where your boyfriend is? Didn’t you just say you guys are at family dinner?”
“I am,” Shane says tightly. “Ilya- we got into a fight a few hours ago, he stayed home. He isn’t there?”
Yuna’s on her phone, nails clacking, before putting it up to her ear. Shane hears the faint noise of a ringing line, and her face grows more and more tense when no one picks up. “He’s not answering.”
“Shane.” Hayden says unnecessarily, sounding tense. Like he’s breaking the news, as if Shane can’t already figure for himself that something is terribly, terribly wrong. “His phone is still here.”
Shane goes silent. He looks back up at his mother, who visibly steels herself before looking at him and holding her hand out. Shane hands her his phone, heart pounding, because suddenly, he has no earthly idea what to do.
“Hayden,” Yuna says, all business. “How much blood are we talking about?”
Shane doesn’t hear Hayden’s response, but judging by the way her face falters, the final nail in the coffin has been set.
Blood, all over the floor. Ilya, home alone, because Shane had thrown a tantrum and left to go to have a warm, home cooked meal. A home cooked meal that Ilya would never get to have, because he didn’t have any family of his own, and Shand had been so fucking mean to him, throwing it in his face how he was struggling, instead of giving him the space he needed to talk-
He’d left Ilya alone, and vulnerable.
“Did someone kidnap him?” He cries, panic surging through his chest. “Stab him and-and leave with him? Who would do that? Nobody knows where we live, how would they-”
These kinds of things happened, though. Shane had heard stories. Maybe someone had been watching, waiting for Shane to leave, so they could break in. They must have thought no one was home, Ilya had been a surprise, and they’d stabbed him after he tried to fight them off-
Yuna shoves his phone back into his grip, already back on her own phone. Shane knows she’s calling 9-1-1 without needing to see it.
“Check your cameras,” Hayden’s voice, tinny and faint, from Shane's phone. His hand almost doesn’t cooperate as he presses it shakily back to his own ear. “You have one at the front door, right?”
“They’re disabled,” Shane chokes out. “They- we were supposed to be getting new ones installed in a couple weeks, ours went out in the storm a few days ago. Hayden-”
The panic completely wins over now. He gets to his feet, gripping the phone, brain scrambling and bending and breaking around thoughts of Ilya, hurt, Ilya, bleeding, Ilya, alone and in pain-
“Fuck, Hayden,” he’s stuttering all over the place, “you have to find him, I’m almost an hour away, I’m too far-”
“I will,” Hayden responds immediately. “But-”
“Sweetheart,” Yuna says from across the room.
Shane looks up, tears bubbling and falling down his face, unable to stop them. His mother looks hesitant.
“Is Ilya on any medication?”
Shane shakes his head. “No, no, why-”
“He’s not,” Yuna relays to the operator on the other line. “But- yes, yes, mental health issues run in his family. His mother was depressed, she, um… committed suicide, when he was a child-”
Shane feels a surge of anger so palpable he can taste it.
“What are you talking about?” he demands, shooting to his feet. Hearing someone mention Ilya’s darkest secret, something it had taken him eight years to finally confess to Shane, so flippantly- “What does that have to do with anything?!”
Yuna glances at him with a look so devastating, so foreign on her usually schooled features, and it clicks.
“You think he hurt himself?” Shane shouts. “Are you serious?”
He registers, distantly, that he has never yelled at his mother like this before. He’d never even gotten close to this- sure, there were few times with raised voices in the kitchen as a teenager, but never with this kind of venom. Never with this much heat.
And certainly never with the intention to make her be silent.
Shane Hollander didn’t do that. He respected his mother- deeply, wholly, entirely. That was an Absolute Truth.
And yet, here he was, absolutely burning with rage, hurling spitfire at her like a fucking coward.
“Have you even met him?” He demands. Yuna’s expression becomes pinched and she opens her mouth. “No- have you fucking met him?! He would never do that!”
“Shane,” David says from across the room.
A warning. Defending his wife. His father is a quiet man, but Shane has no doubt in his mind that if it were anyone else on the planet speaking to Yuna like this, they’d be flat on the floor by now.
But he ignores it, blood rushing through his ears and nausea climbing up his throat, and snarls, “Why would you tell them that?!”
He knows, deep down, this is coming from a place of desperation. An animalistic need to protect Ilya’s honor, because Ilya would be so hurt and so deeply offended that someone would accuse him of something like that. Ilya’s a professional athlete, a cocky, brazen whirlwind of undeniable talent and relentless motivation, a force that can’t be reckoned with-
“You don’t know him like that! His mother has nothing to do with this, that is so fucking-”
“Shane, stop!” David roars.
It’s loud, so uncharacteristic of him, that Shane flinches, voice momentarily shocked out of him.
Yuna takes the moment of redirected focus as an opportunity to take Shane’s phone out of his hand, already moving swiftly away to the kitchen before he can protest.
David makes his way across the carpet, and Shane, trembling with rage, chest heaving, can not even meet his father’s eyes right now.
He feels fucking crazy- like he’s the last line of defense to something precious.
“Ilya wouldn’t do that,” he seethes at the carpet. “He wouldn’t, so stop saying that. He’s hurt, and he’s all alone, so we need to find him-”
David’s shoes come into view.
Shane feels him grab his shoulders, firmly, and he shakes his head as if that will make him go away.
It doesn’t.
“Shane.”
From the kitchen, light years away, Shane hears Yuna lean into the phone, Hayden on the other line, and say the words, “suicide risk”.
Low, and sad, and firm. Like it’s already been decided.
And suddenly Shane’s knees buckle, and David is holding him up by his shoulders.
A sob rips through him- a terrified, high pitched keen- as the anger temporarily gives way for something much darker.
The drive back to Shane and Ilya’s place is significantly quicker than it should be. None of them mention it.
When they pull up to the driveway, the police are already there, milling around and walking back and forth through the open doorway like they own it. Shane is maneuvered to the couch, where he’s bombarded with questions that David quickly takes over answering for him. Yuna bustles around, pacing, on the phone and talking to detectives and making demands.
Shane quickly finds himself angry again, taking to the two cops standing over him, with their stupid little notepads, not so subtly glancing around his house.
“So Mr. Rozanov has been tired, lately, you said?” One of them asks, while the other stares above them and fucking whistles at the chandelier, like this is a tour around a department store.
“Yes,” Shane says shortly.
“Can you go more into detail? Was he less social? Did he seem to get sudden bursts of energy?”
They’re trying to diagnose him, Shane realizes. Put him in a box. They think they know what’s wrong with him, and that’s why he’s missing.
“You don’t know him,” he hisses. David sighs quietly, hand pausing from where it’s softly rubbing his back.
An hour goes by, and there's still no sign of Ilya.
Another, and Hayden returns, flushed and visibly exhausted, and eyes red.
“I couldn’t…” he shakes his head, cutting himself off. His chin trembles and he scrubs gloved hand over his face, obviously trying to fight back his own emotion. “I couldn’t find Rozanov. No footsteps either. It snowed again, it must have covered them up. I’m sorry, Shane, I…”
Shane doesn’t trust himself to speak. He slinks forward until his head is between his knees and tries not to throw up.
He fails.
His father, apparently, had known he would. A small trash bin is shoved at him before his body gives up. It’s mostly bile- he distantly realizes he hasn't eaten anything since this morning- but it doesn't make a difference. He chokes in between heaves, gasping, feeling like a small child as his eyes well up and hot tears quickly follow.
When they still have no leads on Ilya a couple of hours later, Shane feels like he might do it again.
“He’s most likely intoxicated,” an officer informs Yuna in the kitchen. “The glass in the trash can came from a bottle of strong vodka. Is he a drinker?”
Shane clenches his jaw so tight he swears he hears a tooth crack, and stares pointedly at the floor.
The clock ticks away the next sixty minutes, and it feels like a lifetime.
“You’ve got to eat something, man.”
Hayden sits next to him now. He swapped places with David a while ago.
Shane shakes his head. He’s repulsed at the thought, even as he’s taken to clasping his hands together to stop their weak trembling and his stomach rolls.
Hayden sighs, smart enough to know when a battle is lost.
Or, maybe, he was just too guilty to put up much of a fight at all.
He should have left by now- it was definitely past the twin’s bed time- but when Shane had said so, Hayden had shaken his head adamantly, jaw clenched, looking like he was going to cry, and insisted he “isn’t going anywhere until Rozanov’s obnoxious ass is home”.
And sure, Shane knows Ilya and Hayden don’t actually want each other dead, even if Ilya muttered comments about him disappearing that had Shane narrowing his eyes sometimes. But it’s that reaction- that level of worry, of seriousness- that feels like the final push off a cliff.
“Let’s at least get you a jacket or something to wear, then,” Hayden says. “You’re shaking.”
It’s not because of the cold, Shane wants to say, but it’s an excuse to get away from the room full of cops, so he stands.
Hayden follows him into the bedroom, hands hovering like he thinks Shane is going to collapse or something.
“I’m fine,” Shane snaps.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” Hayden offers quietly.
Shane swallows. Doesn’t respond. Ducks into his closet and returns with a heather gray hoodie that reads “Ottawa Centaurs” on the front, and “Rozanov” on the back, and storms back out of the room.
Shane feels a literal, palpable shift in the air when Ilya returns.
It’s late. So late, now the wee hours of the morning. Hayden had finally gone home, released firmly by Yuna and one of the detectives. David has taken to rubbing smooth, deep circles against Shane’s back. Shane doesn't know if it’s helping. Nothing will, he thinks, until-
His head snaps up and he whirls towards the doorway, the movement making him dizzy.
“Ilya!” He cries out.
And there he is.
Standing in the entry way, shoulders hunched, clothes dripping onto the floor. He looks awful- skin flushed and blotchy, eyes dazed, hair matted. Ilya looks small. He looks scared. He looks like he’s been through hell and back.
He’s home.
Shane stumbles to his feet. He can’t stop the sobs that break loose. The rest of the room and everyone else in it fade away as Shane’s vision tunnels to Ilya, Ilya, Ilya-
He charges forward, throwing himself into his boyfriend’s chest.
Ilya shakes against him. Shane gasps and grips the back of his jacket with his entire fist, the other hand coming up to thread into the back of Ilya's hair. The movement pulls them flush together, and fuck, Shane can breathe again.
“Fuck,” he gasps, strangled. “Fuck, Ilya, where were you, what-”
“I am okay,” Ilya says. It’s muffled. “I am okay. I’m sorry I made you worry.”
He can hear the cops rustling behind them, muttering amongst themselves, and he feels another surge of protective anger. He pulls back, holding Ilya’s biceps like he’s trying to claim him, tell everyone else to go away while he gets answers- “Where were you? We- are you okay? You’re so cold-”
“I’m okay.”
Shane tugs Ilya’s wet jacket open, searching for the wound he knows must be there. “Fuck, were you outside this whole time? It’s cold, it’s snowing, you could be hypothermic-”
Behind Ilya, movement- and a figure that is decidedly not wearing a uniform.
“Who are you?” Shane demands. Something hysterical in the back of his mind screams that this must be who had done this to him-
Ilya doesn't seem worried, though. He doesn't seem anything at all. He looks like he’s a million miles away.
“I drove him here,” the woman says. She’s tiny. She holds her hands up, clad from head to toe in warm running clothes. “I found him outside, out… out on the bridge. Alexandra, out on Murphy street? He needs to go to the hospital, but he wanted to come here first. Said he was worried about the press?”
Shane feels his brain stutter in confusion. None of that makes any sense, because there’s no reason Ilya would have been so far in that direction.
He turns back to him. “Where were you?” he asks sharply. “Did someone break in? Take you?”
Ilya finally, finally blinks at that. He stares at Shane with glossy eyes- actually looking at him now, and asks, “How would someone take me?”
Shane stares at him, mind racing. He’s starting to get pissed off now.
“Where did all the blood come from, then?”
And Ilya frowns and fucking looks down at himself, like he doesn’t know what Shane is talking about.
But he has to, because there’s no way someone broke into their home and got stabbed and it wasn’t either of them, and Ilya conveniently went missing at the same time. Shane’s not a fucking idiot. But Ilya’s acting weird, and Shane knows when he’s lying. “Why would you have left if you were bleeding like that? How did that even- and why were you all the way…”
Over Ilya’s shoulder, the strange woman shifts awkwardly from one food to the other.
Shane falters.
“You were out on the bridge?”
Ilya nods. He’s got that weird, distant look in his eye again, like he’s checked out.
It’s the same look he’d gotten that day when he’d broken down the door. The same look he got when he lay in bed for hours. The look that Shane so badly wanted to break into- wanted to pull back the curtain and find what he was hiding, what was hurting him, so Shane could finally put the pieces together.
“Why were you out on the bridge?” he asks quietly. Just for the two of them, willing silently for Ilya to just wake up for a second.
Ilya opens his mouth. Closes it again. Looks at their feet.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Making a mess.”
Shane follows his eyes. The nausea is rising again. He’s missing something. Something important, something dreadful.
His mouth is dry. “Ilya,” he breathes, “what were you-”
Suddenly a dark, dark swarm at the back of his mind makes itself known, and it feels like maybe he’s not missing anything at all. Maybe he knows. The signs are right here in front of him, horrifying and strong enough to make the whole monument in Shane’s mind begin to sway-
“Mr. Ronzanov.”
It’s gone as soon as it had come, slinking back away into the caverns it came from. Shane’s grip on Ilya’s biceps tightens.
The detective behind them starts droning. “We got a call at around 6pm with a report that you were missing and possibly injured. We've had a few search cars out looking for you. If you follow me, we can have a paramedic assess you.”
Ilya’s eyes flicker up, and he looks uncharacteristically small all of the sudden. He looks scared.
Shane wants to scream.
“Give us a second,” he snaps instead, fueled by righteous anger.
Because Shane is it right now. He’s the last line of defense, the only thing standing in front of the shaky, unstable temple of Ilya’s heart. And yes, he may have been slow to realize it was missing so much, but he’s fucking working on it.
And these stupid people have the gall to act like they know Ilya- like they’ve already decided which meager accusations, like sticks and straw, to toss into the empty caverns, and call it a good enough foundation to build on top of.
“Ilya. Look at me.”
He clasps his hand against Ilya’s cheek, forcing him to meet his eyes, steering him away from what’s made him shrink into himself.
“Where are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” Ilya rasps, but he lifts his arms up, and Shane feels a wave of relief that feels suspiciously similar to nausea as he takes Ilya’s hands into his own.
His fingers are a deep, swollen, shiny purplish-red. The middle one has a white, raised blister that makes Shane’s stomach roll.
“Frostbite,” he says.
Which means Ilya’s been outside, in the snow, this entire time, with nothing to properly cover his hands. But Ilya’s smarter than that- he grew up with snow, he’s lived with it his entire life- he doesn't even like it, he’d never willingly go outside at night, below freezing-
Except Shane doesn’t really know that, does he? He’s missed so much already, what if he missed that too?
He rolls back Ilya’s bunched up sleeve, staring at it like it will give him answers.
It takes a moment. There’s a towel tied haphazardly around his upper wrist- one of the ones with the blue ribbing, from the kitchen. It’s bulky, twisted up weird, too big to fit under Ilya’s jacket in the first place.
It’s also drenched in blood.
Shane feels the world tilt on its axis.
“Was stupid,” Ilya murmurs, staring at it with glassy eyes. “Accident.”
Accident.
“Shattered a bottle in the kitchen. I was drunk. I’m sorry. Was the good vodka.”
Shane shakes his head, trying to fight the words away. He unwraps the towel letting it slump heavily to the floor. Ilya’s arm is tacky with blood, half-dried, smeared across the freckled skin and golden hair.
An accident.
One that left his wrist mangled with a deep, jagged slice. The kind they saw on the ice, from a blade gone wrong. It’s horrifying, graphic- Shane can see the way the skin separates and he thinks he really might throw up again.
“Ilya,” he whispers, dragging his gaze up.
Ilya’s face is wrong, wrong, wrong. His expression is guilty, like he’s been caught doing something he’s not supposed to do. “It was an accident. Was stupid. Look, was just in bad place, the bottle was stuck on the counter when it shattered. All okay, is not bleeding anymore-”
He’s rambling, defensive, growing almost angry.
It’s too incriminating.
Suicide risk.
It feels like something’s starting to click into place- something enormous, darkening the clouds, shoving everything else out of its way. Things are toppling over, clattering against each other, shattering, and Shane feels his lip tremble.
He grips Ilya’s arm tighter, scared that if he lets go, he’ll slip away.
“Okay,” Shane swallows heavily, blinking rapidly, because he refuses to cry right now. He turns his head to where the officer behind him is waiting patiently. “Can we talk to that paramedic?”
And because he’s a coward, he avoids Ilya’s eyes, unable to take the betrayal he knows he would see in them.
They bring Ilya to the ER by ambulance.
He scoffs the whole way there, insisting that it’s not a big deal, and we could just drive, and it is late, and it’s protocol for me, yes, but they should be sleeping.
When they get there, hidden away in a private wing, he puts up a fight about the door being open with the nurse, voice growing louder, and louder.
“Shane is bad with the loud noise,” he insists. The nurse hadn’t budged. “This does not make sense, there is cop right there-”
Shane doesn't know if Ilya’s just clinging to that as an excuse to start a fight, or if Shane isn’t hiding his discomfort as well as he thought he was- but either way, it doesn't matter, and it’s not happening, and he doesn't want it to. He wants to put his trust in someone else right now- people who have answers, and protocols, and are trained for things like this.
“Ilya,” Shane says lowly, his voice hoarse. He stares at the floor. “Drop it.”
And Ilya had fallen silent, the scowl on his face loosening into something apologetic. Shane hated that he’d made him feel that way, but he has a feeling that this night was about to get a lot more serious and a lot more invasive. Cooperation already wasn’t easy for Ilya. If he could ease him into it, it felt like the least he could do.
Yuna goes back and forth with the doctor, writing things down, calling God-knows-who. Shane has no doubt in his mind that whatever’s about to happen is going to happen in the best way it can, and it’s almost entirely because of her. He loves her for it so much that his heart aches.
David flits in and out of the room, trying to be useful, but there's nothing to do right now but wait- except trying to get Shane to eat something from the vending machine, apparently.
“You need to eat, son,” he says for the millionth time.
Shane shakes his head and silently wills his father to go away. He refuses to be his project right now. Hot tears slip down his face as he stares at his own shoes and tries to make his head stop spinning.
“They didn’t need to come,” Ilya says when David’s finally left again.
Shane drags his head up to look at him, feeling like his face is stuffed with cotton. “What?” He croaks.
“David and Yuna,” Ilya says, gesturing. It’s uncoordinated. Shane doesn't know if it’s exhaustion, or if he’s still drunk, but it’s so out of place to see on him, and it breaks his heart. “It is late. They should sleep. You should sleep too.”
“It’s morning,” Shane responds uselessly. Grasping onto the detail, because he has no idea what else to do. “None of us are trying to sleep.”
Ilya makes a face like he’s mad at himself. “Sorry.”
He’s acting as if everyone’s being unreasonable, like their worry is unwarranted. Like he didn’t go missing, both physically and into his head, and like his mother didn’t kill herself, and he didn’t almost break down the bathroom door-
“Ilya…” His voice breaks.
He can’t stop it. But he’s so exhausted, so drained, and this is so not about him, he needs to get it together, but-
“No,” Ilya begs. “Moya lyubov, please don’t cry. I’m sorry-”
I’m sorry. It’s so heartbreaking, such a testament to how badly Shane’s failed, how far he’s let him drift away.
“Fuck you,” Shane sobs. It’s a reflex, now, after so many years. There’s no heat in it. “Fuck, Ilya…you were missing for hours…”
Ilya nods, entirely unfazed. Maybe vaguely sheepish, if anything. “I know.” God, he’s so Slavic. “I’m sorry. I forgot my phone, I did not remember the time it was-”
“We didn’t know where you were,” Shane moans. “There was so much blood, it was fucking… smeared all over the floor, and I was too fucking far away, and we couldn’t find you-”
Ilya frowns at that. “I thought the blood was clean. I tried, with the towel, I thought…”
It doesn’t make any sense.
“You- why would you leave if you were bleeding? You’re so much smarter than that, if you’re hurt, you stay put, you at least fucking call for help! Hayden thought someone had been murdered-”
And of course that's what grabs his attention, because they’re insufferable about each other no matter the situation. “Why was Pike at our house?”
Shane looks at him incredulously. “Because he’s my best friend, Jackie made us cookies, he was dropping them off! And then we freaked him out when he showed up and the front door was wide open, and neither of us were home, and there was a bunch of blood on the kitchen floor!”
Ilya winces, like it’s just now dawning on him.
“He thought we’d been stabbed, or kidnapped, or robbed or something. God, Ilya, it was…” Shane swallows, nausea washing over him. “There was so much blood.”
Ilya’s hand drifts to his freshly stitched wrist, covered neatly in a white hospital bandage. “I tried to clean it,” he says quietly. “I promise.”
Shane goes silent. Then, almost breathlessly, because he thinks maybe he doesn't actually want to know: “What are you talking about?”
“Before I left. I tried to clean it. I wiped it with the towel in the kitchen. I was drunk, I clearly did not see how much there was. I probably got more on the floor because I kept moving around, I’m sorry.”
And then suddenly Ilya’s pleading. He’s twisted in his hospital bed to face him, good hand gripping the hand rail of the hospital bed.
“I will try to be clean,” he says, eyes wild. He looks young. Childish. “I know you hate the mess. I’m sorry I haven’t been-”
Shane suddenly has a mental image of Ilya- this one, and then a version much younger, on his hands and knees, trying to mop up his own blood as he drips more of it onto the floor in a gruesome, never-ending cycle. He feels the image land like a stone, then start sinking into one of the enormous caverns in his mind. He’s too exhausted and weak to drive it away. It taunts him; you said you wanted answers. Here they are.
“Ilya, please stop.”
It’s too faint. Shane’s not entirely sure it came out at all.
Ilya’s head snaps up, darting over Shane’s face, and he suddenly looks worried.
“Дорогой-” Sweetheart-
Shane almost wishes he’d agreed to eat something from the vending machine when David had offered. He's going to pass out, he’s sure of it. “Is that what you’ve been thinking? That I’m going to be mad about the blood?”
Ilya makes an aborted movement, like he was going to nod but decided against it at the last second.
I will try to be clean. I know you hate the mess.
Shane did this.
His ‘comfort’, his stupid little rituals, his obsessive late-night dishwashing.
No fucking wonder Ilya hadn’t opened up to him yet. Shane had made their home unbearable, so swept up in his own issues that he trampled all over Ilya’s.
He’d made his boyfriend think he’d be more mad about blood on the floor than he’d be worried about the person who’d put it there.
Shane leans forward, clutching the armrests. He looks up at Ilya, this enormous thing looming over them, and he gives one last push.
He needs to put it into words.
“Ilya, did you… you really did hurt yourself, on purpose, didn’t you?”
Immediately, Ilya shakes his head. “No,” he insists. “I shattered the bottle, I would not- that is fucking embarrassing, I am not sad teenage girl-”
Because Shane gets it, he does, but Ilya has always somehow been kinder about these things- mental… stuff- when it’s in regards to other people. He doesn’t mean what he’s saying, which means he’s deflecting. Shane knows that much.
“Stop,” Shane says. Ilya falls silent. Shane hates it; hates that his boyfriend follows him so blindly. It’s so undeserved. “You were bleeding. Badly. You knew you needed stitches, and you left instead of calling for help. That woman… Irina…”
Shane can barely get the name out. He almost feels like he isn’t allowed to. The very few things he’s earned in regards to Ilya’s mother are to be treated carefully, cradled between two palms and cherished.
It almost feels like blasphemy, that name coming out of his mouth. It felt like an omen, coming out of that woman’s.
A reminder of what can happen here.
What almost did happen here.
“She found you on the top of a bridge after nearly eight hours.” He takes a deep breath. “What were you doing on that bridge?”
He needs him to say it.
Ilya’s eyes well up and a tear slips down his cheek. Shane watches him angrily brush it away with bandaged fingers. “I went on walk! Fresh air, and you- you left! I didn’t want to scare you, it was fine-”
Shane sobs. He can't help it. He’s so fucking scared. “My mom thinks you tried to kill yourself.”
My mom. He’s such a coward, he can’t even put it in his own words. He’s shoving the blame on someone else, trying to make it seem like the accusation is coming from anyone but him, still giving him room to run.
The monitor at Ilya’s side starts beeping a little bit faster.
“It was the first thing she said, when Hayden said there was blood. She told the police, when they asked about ‘history of mental illness’, she said ‘his mother committed suicide’. And I- I yelled at her, because there was no way that you’d- you would never-” he can’t even finish getting the words out.
Ilya just stares at him.
He’s so beautiful, Shane thinks.
Bright, brilliant eyes. The sparkle of mischief they get right before he says something hilarious that Shane pretends he doesn’t find funny. Unruly curls he’s never bothered to tame. Strong muscles, powerful legs and deft fingers. The way he dips his head to meet Shane’s eyes when he’s worried, the way he’s unable to control his expression when he’s disgusted with something.
The way that even from their very first time in that hotel room, he’s prioritized Shane’s pleasure when they’re together. The way he treasures his consent, looks at Shane like he’s in awe when he undresses, treats Shane’s submission like it’s something powerful.
Ilya’s beautiful in a way that radiates from the very deepest parts of him.
Shane doesn't know what he would do without that beauty in his life. He really, truly can’t even imagine it. Even when he didn’t get to have Ilya yet- when he was just a quick night in a hotel room twice a year- it was enough to tide him over until the next time.
Shane’s life would be so fucking bleak, without him. It would be such a sorry excuse for existence.
And he thinks, sitting here in a hospital chair, that he got a glimpse of it tonight.
“You did, didn’t you?”
There’s no use in asking, but he feels like he owes it to Ilya to try anyway.
“I didn’t try,” Ilya says weakly. “I was just… I am so tired, I didn’t-”
“You didn’t stop it.”
“I am tired,” Ilya whispers. His voice cracks.
Shane stands. His head pounds with the motion, feeling both a million pounds and like his brain is floating away. He unlocks the railing at the side of the bed and pushes it down.
He takes Ilya’s face in both hands, gentle like he’s holding glass, and tilts his chin up so they’re making eye contact. The ointment they’ve spread across his reddish, wind-burned skin is tacky against Shane's fingers. He thinks distantly that it’s probably aloe vera, and if he closed his eyes, he could maybe pretend it’s the end of a long day outside at the cottage, with Ilya sitting on the marble countertop, moaning dramatically as Shane gently rubs into his sunburned skin and lectures him about being careful.
Instead, his eyelids are swollen with tears so thick that he can barely see Ilya at all, and Ilya’s been bested by harsh weather for an entirely different reason. “Why wouldn’t you call me?” he whispers.
Ilya clenches his jaw. “You should not have to clean up after me.”
“Clean up after you,” Shane echoes, like a useless Canadian bird.
Ilya almost looks annoyed. Cradled between Shane’s palms, though, he can’t deflect like he clearly wants to. “We fought, because I was being an asshole, and I am sleeping too much, and am lazy, and I make mess you have to fix. You were angry-”
“So- you thought you couldn’t call me? Because I was mad?”
Ilya scowls, like he’s hurt. “Yes, Shane, you were mad. Is not your fault, it was mine, but I cannot-” He blinks several times, growing visibly frustrated, eyes growing teary- “I come to your country, I move into your house, your family dinners, I take your mother!”
Took her- as if Shane isn’t the happiest man alive every time he sees Ilya with his mother. As if Yuna could be forced to do anything she didn’t want to. As if she could possibly be anything but violently protective of him.
“I have no one, Shane! I have no one! No father, no mother, no home anymore, no friends, it is all yours, and I stole it! You are… что это за чертовы- You are stuck with me! I cannot do that to you anymore!”
The enormous missing puzzle piece finally slides into place, filling in the empty caverns Shane had been scrambling to cover.
“Ilya, you didn’t-” Shane cannot fuck this up. He cannot stumble over his words right now, he has to get this right- “You didn’t …intrude, why would you think… I’m not ‘stuck’ with anything- I want you, I picked you-”
“Da, that is the problem!” Ilya says desperately. “You deserve better than that, you are too nice to say it! I make messes, and I don’t clean them up, I am lazy,-”
“What are you talking about?!” Shane cries. “You’re, like, the furthest thing from lazy on the planet, you’ve won a fucking Stanley Cup-”
“You said, in the kitchen!”
“What? I’ve never said you were lazy-”
“I don’t do the laundry!” Ilya is shouting now. “I use the kitchen and I don’t clean it up, I can’t even wipe my blood off the floor!”
There’s movement in the doorway. Shane flinches, glancing up to see someone in scrubs peer into the doorway, tense, like they’re waiting to intervene.
Shane stares at the guy, hoping his well-cited terrible poker face property conveys to him to fuck off.
The nurse does, nodding to himself like he’s deemed the situation okay, but it’s too late. Ilya has shrunk back into himself, and Shane wants to scream. They fucking ruined it. He still has to try, though; it is imperative that this gets through, or he's lost Ilya forever. “That is not what I meant, when I brought it up.”
“Then what, Shane?” Ilya demands.
“I brought it up because I’m fucking worried about you,” Shane’s thumbs sweep over Ilya’s wet cheeks, trying to clean him up, keep him together. “Not because I think you’re… fucking lazy. You’ve always done those things- I don’t ask- it’s not like you have to do them, you choose to do it because you know it bothers me if they aren’t. And then all of the sudden you stopped, and you’re tired all the time, and you’re sad, and it’s like you don’t have any energy. You’re different, I just wanted you to talk to me!”
He’s not doing this right. It’s coming out all angry, all self-absorbed. Shane doesn;t do this- he thinks before he speaks- but his brain hasn’t caught onto the urgency like his mouth has, and he has no choice but to just let it run and hope something will land the way he needs it to.
It’s Shane's responsibility to make sure he never ends up on a bridge again. He has to make sure the thought never even crosses his mind.
“Что ты хочешь, чтобы я сказал?!” Ilya yells.
Shane freezes.
Russian. He doesn't know Russian.
He’s been trying, studying, taking that class with a private tutor, but whatever Ilya’s said… it’s gone completely over his head.
Ilya’s trying, in the only way he really can, to tell Shane how he feels, and Shane can’t understand him.
He doesn’t think he’s ever hated himself like this before. “I- I don’t-”
“I know." Ilya growls, like he already knew this. “I know, Shane.”
Shane reluctantly lets go as Ilya swipes at his cheeks with thickly bandaged fingertips. He clenches his jaw and purses his lips, glaring at the wall. Away from Shane. Shane doesn't know how Ilya could have ever beared to look at him in the first place.
“That is problem. I can’t explain it. You can not understand, because I can’t say it out loud. I… do not even know what I would say. I- I feel like my mother. I get sad like her, sometimes.”
Shane feels like Ilya’s just taken a sledgehammer to his heart. “The same way she did, when she died? You felt like that today?”
It’s obvious what he’s saying, but it still feels like somehow he’s not allowed to- not when it’s in regards to Irina Rozanova. The nosy nurse, the cop in the hallway, the detective doing an interrogation in the living room… these people don’t get to have her. They don’t get to have this pivotal, painful part of Ilya.
“Yes,” Ilya bites out, like it’s been forced out of him. Like he’s given up on getting a choice at all. Shane can’t help the hiccup in his chest. “Not a lot. But tonight, it… yes. I’m sorry.”
Shane lets out a strangled noise. “Ilya-“
“You would be okay.” Ilya says it like a promise.
Shane wants to scream in his face, because no he fucking wouldn’t.
It would be like the sun had disappeared. It would be like living underground, in that dark cavern in his mind. Nothing would ever be enough, ever again. He would never move on, he’d never leave the cottage again. He’d drive himself into a puddle of blood and bone, cry himself to sleep. He’d let himself starve in their bathroom behind reinforced steel, rest easy knowing that no one would ever be able to get past it the way Ilya had tried to.
“You would be sad,” Ilya goes one, his voice quiet now, like he’s delivering news. “Yes, but you would be okay. You have family, they are here, you have your home. I… kept you back, for a long time. I hate myself for it. Sometimes it’s too much.”
The door to their room swings open.
Shane doesn't move. He doesn't think he can. His head spins.
“Your drug test came back clear,” the doctor says with a cheery smile.
Ilya glares at her. “Yes. I am professional athlete.”
Shane stares at their intertwined hands. “You drank half a bottle of vodka,” he says quietly.
“Yes, but I did not do drugs,” Ilya grumbles, like that’s any different. Like he wasn’t trying to do the same thing.
“Yes, the test was clean,” the doctor repeats, with that stupid cheery look on her face, like they were waiting on her input. “ So we can start you on some pain medication- but we also need to discuss next steps. You have Mr. Hollander listed as your medical proxy, would you like him to stay in the room?”
Shane blinks at that. “He- what?”
“Is fine,” Ilya waives his hand, but Shane can see his shoulders are already tightening. “You are keeping me, yes?”
“You are not under criminal arrest,” the doctor starts.
Ilya’s face immediately morphs into something cold. Shane almost shudders at the calculated precision of it.
“...but we are concerned about what’s happened tonight. Our initial assessment finds that you may be danger to yourself right now, and we do believe it would be in your best interest to place you on a psychiatric hold for the next 72 hours.”
72 hours.
“But that’s Christmas,” Shane says. He suddenly, irrationally, feels like he’s about to cry again. He feels like a fucking child, but the thought of Ilya being gone on Christmas, their first Christmas together…
“Yes.” the doctor nods solemnly, “He would be released Christmas morning. We understand the sensitive nature of this, and we want to assure you we don’t take it lightly. Mrs. Hollander expressed that privacy is a concern, with you being…”
“Ilya Rozanov,” Ilya provides, equally solemn. His eyes have started to get that distant look in them.
The doctor just nods, having the gall to look relieved that he’s given her an out. “Yes, with you being a well-recognizable figure. It’s not the first time we’ve had a high profile patient. We’ve arranged for it to be discreet. You will be in a separate location, about five minutes away- still on the campus, but not in the main building. It’s private, and quiet, and we’ll be able to monitor you and keep you safe while we get to the root of what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again, okay?”
Ilya takes a moment. He doesn't even look like he’s registered her words, floating off in whatever world he slinks into. Shane grips his hand tighter, lip trembling.
The movement seems to bring him back, if only a tiny bit. “As long as it is quiet.”
The doctor nods, turning back to exit the room.
Shane, in a sudden bout of insanity, fucking sprints after her.
Yuna is in the hallway. Her head snaps up, staring at Shane like he’s lost his mind as he yells out the doctor’s name.
The doctor startles and turns, her hand pressed to her heart.
Shane can’t find himself to care. He’s fucked up enough today; he needs to know he isn’t doing it again.
“Does he really need all of that?” Shane asks desperately. “The 72 hours, being held like that?”
He knows how it sounds, but sue him, he’s selfish. He can do it, he can make up for it, he can take care of Ilya, he’s already never going to let him out of his sight ever again-
The doctor takes a deep breath before settling him with a reluctant look. “Mr Hollander, as his medical proxy, you can deny the psychiatric hold.”
Shane’s heart skips a beat.
“But I would not advise it,” the doctor says. Her eyes almost look haunted. Shane stares at her. “Forgive me for being frank, but please do trust me and my medical expertise when I say that you almost certainly cannot provide him the kind of care he needs at this moment.”
Shane feels his shoulder slump.
Suddenly he’s crying again, in a hospital hallway, in front of a bunch of strangers, because he knows this woman is right.
He let Ilya suffer like this, building and building until he felt like he had no choice but to remove himself from it.
Shane failed.
“Sweetheart,” Yuna says from behind him. Shane's fists are clenched at his sides. He squeezes his eyes shut, shoulders shaking, watery sobs tearing through his body. She comes up behind him and takes him into her arms.
“He’ll hate me,” Shane cries into her shirt.
Yuna sniffles her own tears. Holds him tighter.
“It’s what he needs, baby. We have to keep him safe”
They gave Ilya something that cleared up his pain, and also put him to sleep.
Yuna speaks to the doctors, goes over the plan. They’re going to keep him on campus, in a private location, where he’ll have 24/7 access to a phone. He will never be drugged against his will, or forced to do anything he doesn't want to. He'll have a therapist, a warm bed, three meals a day, and a whole team of people with the singular job of keeping him safe.
For a few hours, Shane can’t bear to go in to see him.
He throws up again, in the bathroom. He slumps against the toilet seat, sweating, and thinks he must have passed out, because suddenly his Dad is there, shaking his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Shane says immediately.
He feels a sick surge of gratefulness when his Dad seems to mentally blame it on the time and the energy exerted today.
It doesn’t stop him from steering Shane back to the chair in Ilya’s room. He runs a hand over Shane’s hair, like he’s still a little kid. He covers him with a blanket as Shane almost immediately starts dozing off, cheek pressed into the pillow stuffed between him and the wall.
Hayden shows up about twenty minutes later with a flowery diaper bag over his shoulder.
Shane, half asleep, stupidly feels like crying again.
“You gotta eat, buddy.” It’s the first thing Hayden says, with a look on his face that says he isn’t going to take no for an answer.
He feels a surge of panic, expecting Hayden to hand him a bag of Cheetos or FunYuns or something objectively evil and filled with so many preservatives it would still be around after the apocalypse- but Hayden digs into his bag and pulls out a protein bar.
It’s the exact brand he eats at practice. The one he has to bring with him back in cases from Montreal, because he can’t find them in Ottawa.
Hayden’s holding it with an amused expression, like it’s a teasing, casual thing and not a lifeline.
“I love you,” Shane chokes out.
Hayden laughs, like it’s a joke. Like Shane isn’t close to tears, faint with relief at the tiny bit of normalcy.
He eats it in slow bites, fighting back nausea. Hayden sits next to him, carefully avoiding looking at Ilya, asleep and quietly snoring.
“Why do you even have this?” Shane asks, swallowing hard.
“I know you, buddy,” Hayden says with a mouth full of kids star-shaped cinnamon puffs. “Jackie and I have a few of these stashed away pretty much everywhere.”
That makes Shane laugh for some reason. “What do you mean?”
Hayden looks at him seriously for a moment, brows furrowed.
Shane squirms under his gaze. Hayden must notice, because he turns away and says, “You’re scary when you’re hangry, man.”
He shakes the container, now empty, and moves onto the next kiddie snack.
Yuna shows up a while later. She smiles conspiratorially at Hayden, who nods his head. He stands and claps his hands together, making Shane flinch.
“Alright!” he says, a bit too loudly. Shane stares at him. “I’m gonna head to the bathroom.”
“Alright,” Shane says. And then, because he feels like being a dick, “do you need help, or something?”
Hayden looks at Yuna, whose face remains passive as she comes to sit on the chair closest to Ilya. “Uh… no. Just didn’t want… you to wonder where I went. So I’ll just…”
He scurries out of the room.
Shane feels a faint smile poke at the corners of his mouth.
Yuna has taken to gently combing through Ilya’s hair with her hand. Ilya leans minutely into the motion. Shane knows that means he’s deep into asleep, because he’s always been weird about people being gentle with him like that.
They don’t talk for a moment. Yuna stares at Ilya’s face like she’s searching for something. Her lips are pursed in a way they do when she’s trying not to be emotional.
Shane remembers suddenly, with a surge of guilt and a lump growing in his throat, that the last time they were in a room together, he was yelling at her.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, eyes trailing down to the floor.
He hears Yuna rustle.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs back, even though they both know it isn’t.
“No,” he says, blinking hard. “It’s not. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. It wasn’t fair.”
Yuna nods. She doesn’t look mad at him. Shane doesn’t know what to do with his guilt, if she’s not. “You were angry. You were scared.”
But he made her scared too. He’s twice her size, and he stood across the room and bellowed at her like he was fighting on the rink.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Shane said. “It’s… it’s my fault this even happened. I had no right to lose it like that.”
Yuna frowns, hand faltering on Ilya’s hair. “Shane-“
He shakes his head, already fighting off whatever she’s about to tell him. “It is. Something was wrong, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know how to ask him about it. I was trying to give him space. I thought he’d come to me.”
He clings tighter to his chair, swiping at his cheek. “I fucked up.”
Yuna takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if I’m going to say this right. I want you to let me know if I don’t, or if I’m crossing a line. I do not want you to take this the wrong way, Sweetheart, okay?”
Shane’s eyes narrow. “Okay?”
“You’re two men,” she says. Shane stares at her, unsure where she’s going with this, but she plows forward. “Men aren’t always the most… forthcoming, with their emotions. And you were double out of luck, because I’m not always good about that either. But the two of you probably don’t communicate like that with each other very often, do you?”
Shane thinks about the night in the hotel room at All-Stars, Ilya crying into his shirt, finally telling him that he wouldn’t be able to go home if he came out. He thinks about that day at the cottage, when their confessions had broken a levee. He thinks about Irina, and the way Ilya went away sometimes.
Yuna takes his silence as what it is: confirmation.
“It’s not your fault,” she says. “It’s something that you’ve never really been conditioned to do. Athletes especially have a reputation for that. I think maybe… neither of you know how to do that, yet. You do it in other ways, sure, but your first instinct is to avoid it.”
“Or yell at your mom,” Shane mumbles, like an offering.
Yuna smiles. “Or get angry. Anger’s a pretty big one.”
Yeah, Shane’s kind of gathered that now.
“You should go take a walk,” She says. “Now that you’ve eaten. I think your dad is going to start climbing the walls soon.”
Shane also gets the sense that she probably wants to be alone with Ilya, so he does.
Ilya wakes up about an hour later.
Shaw goes in to see him, thumbs tucked in the front pockets of his jeans, and gets a ridiculous wave of déjà vu.
“Hi,” he says, feeling bizarrely shy all of the sudden.
“Hi,” Ilya echoes, visibly amused. “Have you eaten?”
Shane gives him a Look. “Yes, asshole. Hayden gave me a protein bar.”
“Good,” Ilya says. “Are you okay?”
Good lord. Shane doesn’t know if he can do this.
He has to, though. It doesn’t matter what Yuna said, this was his fault. He’s going to make sure this never happens again.
He comes and sits next to Ilya’s bedside. Takes his hand. Brushes a thumb over the bandages.
His boyfriend tried to kill himself.
Shane takes a deep breath.
“No, Ilya,” he says. “I’m not. Because you’re not. And after talking it over, you haven’t been for a really long time, and I let you down."
Ilya frowns. Shakes his head. “No, moya lyubov, it was my-”
“Don’t,” Shane interrupts. “Don’t. Let me talk, okay?”
Ilya closes his mouth.
Shane takes another deep breath. “I’ve fucked up. Majorly. You’ve been hurting, for a long time. And I noticed. I know you, Ilya. I knew something was off. I think maybe I was waiting for you to come to me, first. I think I didn’t know how to talk to you about it, so I didn’t say anything at all, and that wasn't fair. It meant you had to carry all of that by yourself.”
Because Ilya had been right about that- just not in the way he meant it.
He really didn’t have anyone.
Shane had his mom. His dad. His team. Hayden. He had people who looked out for him.
Ilya had spent his entire adult life without a mother, in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language, and he’d done it alone. And yeah, all of Shane’s people looked out for Ilya too, but it was different. Ilya couldn’t escape him.
“But that’s not how this works, okay? Ever. You don’t just keep this to yourself. I don’t care how you have to tell me, but you fucking tell to me. I’m going to pick up more Russian classes. I didn’t realize you felt like you couldn’t even articulate yourself, Ilya, fuck-”
Shane huffs out a breath. He takes a moment to swipe at his eyes, before grabbing Ilya’s hand again. He squeezes it harder, this time. “That must feel so fucking lonely.”
Ilya's face crumbles.
Shane has never hated himself more.
“Yes,” Ilya chokes. “Yes, it- is it lonely.”
Shane nods quickly. “I know that now. And I- I’m so fucking sorry. And you think… Ilya, I need you to really listen to me. I need you to know this. No more misunderstandings, no spinning it to turn it against yourself, okay?”
He’s close. The caverns are filled with the answers he’d been looking for, but he was sure there were more. He’s in the home stretch.
Shane is never going to fuck up like this again.
“I love you. Not because you forced me, or because you - tricked me, or something. I love you all on my own. You have to trust me on that, okay? You didn’t just show up one day, and invade Canada, or whatever it is you think you did. You came out, knowing you could never go home again. Then you quit the team that you love, and you came to Ottawa, so we could have a life together. Together, you and me. As a team. Because we’re pretty fucking great together, Rozanov.”
“Yes,” Ilya smiles thickly. “We are.”
Shane nods, satisfied. “You did some of the hardest things a person can do. Canada is yours as much as it’s mine. As much as it’s my mom’s, and my grandparents, and you would never say they didn’t belong here, would you?”
“Shane,” Ilya says drily, “That is different. I do not know if you can see, but I am a white man.”
Shane shakes his head wildly, clinging to his hand. “It’s not different. I’m not talking about race, Ilya. Canada is your home. And not because you don’t have another one to go back to, but because you fucking earned it, and you’re here, and you’re kind of a landmark now, anyway. You’re famous, you know.”
He’s rewarded with a watery smirk.
“You’ve been through all kinds of hell,” Shane leans forward. “And we’ve never really talked about it. So I need you to promise me we’re going to, alright? It doesn’t have to be immediately, but I need to know eventually. I need to know what you’re thinking, so I can help you, or at least be there. Because this can’t ever happen again, Ilya. You can’t disappear. I know you’re in pain, but…”
Fuck, Shane can’t shove away the sob that bursts out of him. That stupid protein bar had apparently given him the energy to cry even more.
“You can’t die like that, Ilya. I… I wouldn’t be able to take it. I’m not that strong.”
He means it.
And judging from the look in Ilya’s eyes, he knows that too.
A doctor comes to take him.
Shane helps him pull on his jacket. The doctor pauses, looking reluctant.
“I’m sorry, the chain can’t come with you,” She says. “You’ll have to take it off. We’ll have a bag to keep it in, but-“
“I’ll hold onto it,” Shane says immediately, before he can think about what that means.
Ilya stares at him.
Shane feels mortified.
“Oh my god, I’m sorry. I didn’t-“
“Yes,” Ilya cuts him off quickly, staring at him with an indecipherable expression. “Yes, please.”
He clips his mother’s crucifix around Shane’s neck, and Shane feels like he’s just been handed the entire world, and all of the responsibility that comes with it.
It’s warm, having been sitting against Ilya’s skin so long. Warm, like the smile Ilya gets when he talks about her.
“I’ll take care of it,” Shane promises.
Ilya smiles at him with a look that can only be described as fond. “I know,” he says softly. He looks like he means it.
They’ll pick Ilya up on Christmas day.
Shane repeats it to himself, over and over again, like a mantra.
He needs to be here, he reminds himself. It’s the safest thing for him.
And it gives Shane time to make a game plan, fix what he’d broken, and make sure it stays that way.
Ilya smiles at him as he walks down the hallway. The doctor leads him around the corner, disappearing from view.
Hayden holds onto Shane’s shoulder, holding him up.
Shane presses a hand over his chest, over the Centaurs sweatshirt, and feels Irina’s crucifix under the soft fleece.
He’ll never get to visit her grave, he’s realized. He’ll never get to see where she rests. Tell her, face to face, that he is so wholly in love with her son.
This feels close to that, though. He’s going to try his best. With the pieces in place and Ilya’s beautiful monument in his head, he thinks he has a bigger picture now.
I’ll take care of him, he promises.
His heart thumps steadily, and it almost feels like a response.