Chapter Text
Shane feels out of his body.
Every part of him is reacting at once. Since he’s hung up the phone, it’s as if lightning has struck every part of his skin in concord. He handled it in the moment, but now he’s alert. He tingles with the horror of it.
His palms are sweating. His stomach is doing this flippy thing where he thinks he might actually throw up. He tries to swallow and it goes down dry. He’s just drunk some ginger ale, but he feels like that must have been a thousand years ago.
The worst part is his heart. It pounds in his chest. It’s so rapid and loud it fills up his ears, even as he can faintly hear his phone ringing again on the counter. He knows Ilya is saying something, but his only awareness is consumed by his heartbeat.
When he goes for a good run, he hears his heartbeat in his ears, feels it in his chest. This is different. That one feels nice, satisfied. This heartbeat wants to choke him. It pounds up his chest into his neck and into the back of his throat.
He tries to breathe, but gasps at the difficulty. He is paralyzed.
Shane had thought the worst was his heart, but he realizes it’s the racing in his mind. There’s no tangible thought he can voice. It’s just bouncing, bouncing, bouncing around in sheer terror. This terror is freezing him, consuming him.
He needs to get out of his head. He needs to shed his skin and leave his brain and be free from this body. This cannot be real. There’s just no way. He needs to call them back, to know for sure.
“Shane?” Ilya’s voice comes into focus again as he starts to reach for him.
Shane shakes his head quickly.
He wants to let Ilya in, but he feels himself jerk away on instinct. Don’t–
But then the regret hits just as fast. He knows he will be safe in Ilya’s arms. And yet this version of Shane can’t allow it right now.
“I–” He chokes and moves swiftly, throwing his arm over the top of the kitchen sink and dry-heaving.
He is so scared.
There’s a nasty taste of the salmon he just ate in his throat and it makes him gag more, vomiting into the sink. It splashes down, acrid, and he feels tears prick at his eyes.
Shane can’t speak. He just can’t. There’s no possible combination of words in any of the languages he knows to explain how he feels right now.
He spits up more bile into Ilya’s stainless-steel kitchen sink.
“My… parents…” he croaks out. It’s the best he can do, to explain. He’s not ready for more words yet.
“Shane,” Ilya approaches and holds him very delicately from behind. He guides him to the couch like a too-full glass that he doesn’t want to spill.
Shane inhales, gasping, breath cutting off in his throat.
“Breathe,” Ilya commands, and he’s rubbing circles on Shane’s back as he hugs the arm of the couch. As if that will do anything.
Shane feels his teeth chattering. He doesn’t think he’s cold, but his whole body is shuddering with chills. As Ilya has told him to, he takes in a big gulp of air through his mouth. He hadn’t realized he wasn’t breathing fully. Maybe that explains this fuzzy, disconnected feeling.
He wants to be out of his head. He thinks it again, more desperately. And the feeling washes over him. He is floating in a space outside of himself where the only thing that exists is a fierce terror.
The only thing grounding him is Ilya’s hand on his back, through his shirt. The tactile warmth is enough to keep him from losing his mind.
He’s not alone. He has Ilya.
Shane shudders through a few, slow breaths before he looks up.
Ilya is staring down at him, face wholly concerned. His mouth is set in a hard, pinched line and his eyes are dark and tight at the corners. When he makes eye contact with Shane, his expression softens.
“I’m here, Shane,” Ilya reassures him.
Shane takes in his first steady breath in minutes, letting the oxygen fill his lungs and flood his system with warm relief. He still feels so cold.
__
The panic felt so important in the moment; it was the only thing he could focus on. Now, mouth washed out with a cup of water and Ilya holding him gently against the plush of his couch, Shane feels embarrassed. Just another emotion to tack onto the dartboard of his day.
He almost says sorry. It’s reflexive, a habit, really. The kind he’s been chided about enough by Ilya to recognize it for what it is. Canadian apologies, Ilya’s voice reminds him. So he swallows the instinct down.
What comes next doesn’t feel like a reflex or a choice. The words press up against his ribs, his throat, until there’s nowhere left to put them.
“What if they die?” Shane blurts out. He hasn’t told Ilya about what he heard on the phone, and Ilya hasn’t asked yet. He’s been very patient, just letting Shane exist in his comfort with no questions.
“Your parents?”
“Yeah.” Shane hears his voice tremble as he says it. He’s not fully back in his body. He’s almost there. The screaming electricity is gone. Now he just feels heavy. Like his brain is plummeting back to him at breakneck speed.
“I don’t know, Shane.” The honesty in his voice starts to stir the fear inside him again, the not-knowing of it all.
“Will you tell me what they said in that phone call?” Ilya brings him back immediately, voice at his ear as he squeezes him tighter for a second. He demands things of Shane often. Come here, don’t speak, suck me. This is different, Ilya can tell that, and it makes Shane love him a thousand times over. He needs to be asked right now.
Shane sighs, blinking hard. He stares down at his waist where Ilya’s arm is cradled around him, focusing on his moles and the light blond hair there.
“They got into an accident. There was a drunk driver. He hit them… All I know is they’re in the hospital now.”
“Oh, Shane,” Ilya murmurs. Shane feels his heavy exhale behind his ear and lets Ilya pull him tighter again, tucked close.
They’re still like that, for a long moment. Shane breathes in the scent of Ilya.
Behind them, Shane’s phone buzzes on the counter again. They both tense up.
“Do you–” Ilya starts, but then presses a kiss to Shane’s hair. “I will see who is calling so much.”
Shane makes a sound of agreement and lets Ilya drape a blanket over him as he stands up.
__
“You will fly to them today.” Ilya is not asking. He has read through Shane’s texts and seen who has called. He scrolls on Shane’s phone some more and frowns.
Shane nods. He wishes he had left already. And yet here he is, clutching a throw blanket like a lifeline on Ilya Rozanov’s couch as he works him through the moment.
He hasn’t cried yet. He’s not sure why, and it feels like he’s not acting how he’s supposed to. Most people cry if their parents are hospitalized, right? He thinks of his Mom’s face, imagines it black-and-blue unconscious in a gown and sterile bed, and swallows.
Maybe he will cry, after all.
“I see that I can text your coach. I will tell him about this.”
Shane nods, moving over so his head is on Ilya’s tense shoulder and he can vaguely make out what he’s reading on his phone. He doesn’t have his glasses, but he doesn’t really care. The world is better like this for the time being. The letters Ilya is typing out are just nice little shapes. Not a message to his coach that he has to skip a game because his parents are – where they are.
__
As Shane puts on his shoes, his fingers fumble with the details. He’s still shaking, just a little bit. His plane ticket is booked, and his bag is neatly at the door. Ilya stands close by.
He stares down at his feet, mentally preparing for the journey. He inhales sharply, squeezing his hands into fists until he feels his nails bite at his palms.
There’s a pressure in his chest that has nothing to do with his parents.
As if summoned, Ilya moves forward, draping Shane’s hoodie over his shoulders.
“Should I come?” he asks softly, squeezing at Shane’s bicep, but keeping a barrier between their bodies.
Shane’s first and only instinct is yes. He wants Ilya to be with him. He thinks of the car ride to the airport, the hours on the plane, the hospital hallway, the waiting. How much easier it would be if Ilya were there beside him. How much less alone it would feel.
He can’t answer right away.
He stares at the door instead. At the handle. There’s a chipped-off piece right where it opens that has always bugged Shane.
He knows what the answer is. He’s known since the moment he picked up the phone.
“No,” he says, so quietly he’s not even sure if Ilya hears it.
It’s the right answer. Both of them know it. And that doesn’t make it any easier.
It just can’t happen. Ilya’s a captain. Shane’s a captain. So he can only leave because he has to. For Ilya there are games. There are expectations. There are people who need him to show up. If Ilya skips a game, there are questions. Shane knows that he would – for him, for David and Yuna – but he would have to lie. What’s Ilya going to say, “I have to skip games to fly to Ottawa, this place I do not have family, because of different reasons than Shane Hollander?”
“I’m sorry,” he adds, quieter, because the no feels too blunt on its own.
It’s not reflexive right now. He means it.
He’s sorry for everything.
For Ilya, for himself, for them. He’s fucking sorry that his parents are dying and he’s in a different country with the love of his life that he can never tell anyone about. He’s fucking sorry that they didn’t come out already. He’s fucking sorry that his parents have to live with this, their secret.
He’s sorry for the fans.
He’s sorry for the team.
He’s sorry for the fucking NHL. He’s fucking sorry for the schedules and expectations and rules that somehow get to decide what kind of son he’s allowed to be today. To decide how his boyfriend is allowed to love him, and when.
It’s very possible that his parents will never see him married.
He’s imagined this day with Ilya before, walking down the aisle. His mom’s tearful smile. His dad’s proud, steady presence. It was always one day. Soon. Not– not never. This is the first time he’s really felt like their happy ending is an impossibility. Like he’s hidden himself away for too long that this is all that’s left for him. He’s planned for after we retire, once I get another Cup. All of that is empty promises now.
He feels young again, leaving Ilya’s after a hook-up that left him shameful and hollow after so much expectation.
Ilya’s hand clasps around the back of his neck and he feels him press a reverent kiss there. His thumb moves to dig at the edge of Shane’s shoulder-blade, relieving tension.
“You will text me,” Ilya says.
Shane nods, fingers tightening over the handle before he leaves.