Chapter Text
Ottawa, February 2021
To nobody’s surprise, Shane overdresses for the occasion. He dons a suit-and-tie, puts on his best shoes, and grabs one of those office-appropriate handbags his mother bought him at some point, or some sponsor left at his doorstep. He hairsprays his hair to filth, puts on cologne that stings against his freshly shaven jaw.
Throws a warm gray coat over it all. It’s really cold in Ottawa in February.
Ilya, on the other hand, shows up in black jeans, an expensive-looking but streetwear jacket, and a baseball cap.
The only thing they have in common are the sunglasses hiding both their faces.
Shane has never been to this building, so maybe it’s a good thing they run into each other in the parking lot. They look at each other; Shane opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t even manage a peep. All he can feel is the extreme windchill poking his cheeks like needles and the way his heart breaks just a little bit more at the sight of Ilya’s clenched jaw.
“Hey,” Shane tries in the end. His voice is probably too quiet, or maybe Ilya just doesn’t want to hear it.
“Let’s go in, yes.” The words are familiar, but they’re not phrased the same. There’s no real question in them; it’s like he said them just to say something.
Shane follows Ilya out of the parking lot.
The pavement click-clacks under the soles of his shoes in contrast to Ilya’s quiet sneakers. There’s irony in him wearing Reeboks while Shane isn’t, and Shane would probably bring it up and laugh under different circumstances. The world just seems so gray today. If at least it was sunny— But then that would just make him sad for different reasons.
The lawyer’s office is on the second floor.
The building is high-end, all glass, very luxurious. Marble floors and high ceilings and Shane is glad he can trail after Ilya and stare at those instead of navigating the different hallways and rooms. For the hundredth time, he tells himself to just get through this.
They take the elevator and they still don’t exchange a word.
When the doors open, there’s a reception desk right in front of them. Muzak is playing softly in a poor attempt at distraction. The spacious front office smells like laundry detergent and soap, and there’s a large aquarium lining the left-side wall. Maybe you’re supposed to watch fish eat other fish or hide in kelp, Shane thinks, so you don’t think about why you’re actually here.
“Hi!” The receptionist’s tone is like she’s mistaken working at a dentist’s office with working here. She definitely shouldn’t sound so fucking cheery. From what Shane can see, she’s wearing a long-sleeved dress with a floral pattern. He looks down at the tips of his shoes. He doesn’t want to see happy people right now. “Do you have an appointment, gentlemen?”
“Rozanov-Hollander,” Ilya offers without preamble. It sounds like he’s put a hyphen there, but there’s a chance he really meant it as a comma. Regardless, it’s a little line between them keeping them apart.
There’s a shuffle of papers, maybe she’s double-checking the itinerary, and then Shane – pointedly not looking – hears her stand up.
Her chair creaks just a little. It’s probably one of the wheels, he thinks absently while he worries at the loose threads on the inside of his coat pocket with nervous fingers. He looks from the floor to the aquarium to the stark white ceiling while counting her steps.
It takes eleven before she’s knocking on the door. One-two-three knuckles against wood.
“Mr. Thompson,” she says in that cheerful voice, “your 2PM divorce is here.”
Shane genuinely vomits in his mouth just a little. From where Ilya is standing, there’s a sharp inhale.
“You can let them in, Sandra.”
Mr. Thompson’s voice sounds warm enough that Shane manages to force himself to look up again as they’re ushered further into this hellscape. Where the reception area is tile, the lawyer’s office is all thick carpets and muffled steps. It makes it feel like this room itself is a dirty secret.
It’s all glass windows like the rest of the building, but at least it’s decorated. It’s got less of a fabricated smell—probably thanks to the flowers in practically every corner—and there’s a replica of a painting Shane recognizes but can’t place into the actual context of art. He does notice the personal items scattered across Thompson’s table, though, and that makes it feel a little friendlier. Shane’s not sure that’s good—this should feel like enemy territory, he thinks.
When there are no more decorations and chairs and tables to look at—Shane hurriedly glances over the client space; that table is full glass, too, and already layered with paperwork—he looks at the lawyer himself.
Caleb Thompson looks kind of like the dad from Shane’s old billet family. He’s Black, in his forties, silver streaks line his slightly receding hairline. He’s wearing a polite smile, but his hazel eyes have the same forever-looking-Shane-up-and-down quality.
“Mr. Rozanov, Mr. Hollander, take a seat.”
Thompson himself stands up from his heavy-looking wooden table and takes just a few long strides to get to the other, glass one. He takes the head while Shane settles on his right.
Ilya right across from him.
(God, what Shane wouldn’t give to sit next to him. What he wouldn’t give to nudge a shoe, or have his shoe nudged. How did they even end up here?)
You could cut the tension in the room with a butter knife, but Thompson must be used to that—he’s still all smiles, all good humor.
Shane shrugs off his coat and busies himself for a few extra seconds with hanging it over the backrest of his chair. Peripherally, he sees Ilya doing the same.
He clears his throat.
His body is itching everywhere, that’s how much he doesn’t want to be here.
After a moment of consideration, he puts his hands on the table, fingers entangled. Then he realizes they will leave clammy-cold-sweat marks on the glass and retreats like he’s wounded. He leans against the chair instead, the lapel of his coat digging into his back. It keeps him grounded in a way, actually.
“Okay,” Thompson sands, starting to look through the paperwork. “I know this is probably not a great situation for either of you guys, so I’ll walk you through everything. Sound good?”
Shane gives a noncommittal grunt.
“Yes,” Ilya grinds out at the same time.
Thompson smiles—small now—and looks first at Ilya, then at Shane. It crosses Shane’s mind that this guy might be a hockey fan. He might be tuning into every NHL game that he’s got the time for, and this situation is a wet dream for him. He’s obviously bound to keep it to himself, but should that be true, he’s got two people who have portrayed themselves as rivals for over a decade asking him to help them get a fucking divorce.
What a nightmare.
“I’ll take you step by step through the process, but if you’ve got all the paperwork I asked for, you should be good and it should be fairly quick. We’re looking at about three months tops. I won’t bog you down with details, what you need to know are really just three things—filing, separation agreement, final order.” It doesn’t escape Shane that Thompson is avoiding the D-word wherever he can. Divorce seems to be a dirtier word than dick here.
Ilya clears his throat. Shane’s eyes jump to him for a split second.
“What is this— separation agreement?” Ilya’s voice sounds a little rough around the edges, like he’s fighting a cold.
Shane slumps in his chair in an attempt to make himself smaller. It sounds like Ilya is saying I’ve already fucking agreed.
Mr. Thompson talks with his hands a lot. As he explains, his fingers tap the table, move the paperwork around. Like he’s putting on a little show. “You guys own a condo, right?” Nod, nod. “A separation agreement is essentially a document where we’ll say in legalese what’s going to happen with it. Whether you’re going to sell it, or one of you is going to buy the other out. If you had any debts, or let’s say, a joint bank account, or other property—that would be written down here, too.”
Shane knows. He stayed up last night and watched up to a hundred videos on Youtube about the forms that need to be filled out, what hands—clerks, lawyers, courts—they go through, what exactly he’ll need to sign. He told himself that he wanted to be prepared, but it felt like some weird passive form of torture so maybe he just wanted to have an outlet for all this hurt.
“Okay,” Ilya says. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” Mr. Thompson smiles again. He’s got a whole repertoire of different smiles, it seems. “That’s why I’m here. You can ask all the questions you have, really.”
“The agreement has to be signed before the divorce is filed, right?”
Thompson looks right at him, and Shane can feel Ilya looking at him, too.
“That’s correct, Mr. Hollander. You’ll have to come to a decision about the condo before we can move on, though I’ll obviously get started on the paperwork in the meantime. You can decide between the two of you or we can decide on mediation.”
There’s a huff of breath from Ilya’s side of the table. Shane wonders whether he doesn’t know the word—or, well, understand it in this situation.
“It’s like a negotiation,” Shane murmurs because his mouth is quicker than his head on some very rare occasions. He’s just wired this way—has been since the time of press conferences of long ago.
Ilya shoots him a look that’s hard to read because it’s clouded with a frown. “We can decide between us,” Ilya says resolutely. “Is our business.”
“Yeah, of course.” Okay, maybe Mr. Thompson is not a hockey fan. He seems taken aback by Ilya’s sudden grumpiness and if he knew anything about number eighty-one, he wouldn’t be. “Totally up to you. We’ll schedule a meeting at a later point in time. Today, I’d like to get the paperwork together so we can get going on the filing process. Can you show me what you’ve got?”
Shane is thankful to be doing something with his hands. The way Thompson keeps saying ‘we’ is making his skin itch more and more and he’s hungry for a moment of silence where there are no voices bombarding his head.
Out of his handbag, he grabs what he could gather. They have to be eligible for this, obviously, and since neither of them cheated or abused (Jesus, no, Ilya would never, Shane can’t even think it), there has to be evidence that they’ve been living separately.
He pulls out an extract from the land registry that proves his ownership of the Montreal apartment complex. Months and months of printed out bills with proof of payment for water and electricity. There are a few receipts from Montreal gas stations. Nobody needs to know they’re from away-games that they drove to. He hands over his tax statement, income statements—it feels like he’s proving his existence on paper.
Shane hands it all over in a file that he spent long minutes organizing by date and by (assumed) importance. Ilya hands over a stack of papers.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” Thompson puts the papers on top of Shane’s neat file and puts them to the side. “The next part might feel like a little bit of an interrogation, so let’s get through it quickly, shall we?”
Shane grits his teeth through every question and answer. In reality, he’d like to scream that everything can be found in his papers, but he dutifully gives dates and personal details.
It feels like it takes fucking hours.
Finally, Thompson pulls one more smile out of that repertoire—apologetic this time. “Thank you, guys,” he says. “Do you have any questions at this time?”
It is met with deafening silence.
“You have my number, should you think of anything later. I’m available to both of you, but you can reach out to me separately, of course.”
Shane closes his eyes and drags a lungful of air up through his noise with difficulty. He tries very hard not to imagine Ilya sitting in his apartment, on the phone with Caleb Thompson, inquiring if there was any way this could go faster.
It means he misses Thompson’s final words. When he comes back to Earth, the room is abuzz with movement—Thompson is shaking Ilya’s hand, and Ilya is already back in his jacket and baseball cap.
Shane quickly gets up and rubs his sweaty palm against the pantleg of his suit. “Um—thank you,” he says awkwardly when it’s his turn to shake the lawyer’s hand.
“It’s no problem, Mr. Hollander,” he says. Shane can’t read his face, though he wishes he could—there’s a look on his face when their eyes briefly meet that he doesn’t know what to make of.
Maybe it’s better that he doesn’t know.
He already feels small enough.
He hurriedly puts on his gray coat to leave.
Ilya is gone at this point, his cologne the only thing that lingers in the doorway.
Shane doesn’t know what else he was expecting.
Ilya punches the button to call the elevator one more time, but the damn display up top still shows it on the fifteenth floor. He should have just taken the stairs.
It’s too late to turn on his heel and run for them, though. He feels Shane behind him before he can hear him, and it’s too late for anything. Ilya’s jaw hurts because he’s been clenching it so much, but he clashes his teeth together yet again.
Finally, the number starts creeping down as the elevator begins its trek downward.
Shane smells nice. Clean, fresh, and Ilya recognizes the cologne. He recognizes the underlying scent that is just Shane, too, and it makes him turn to the side. He wants to tell somebody how horrible this all feels, but the only person he’s ever told those things is standing right next to him. It’s the one person he cannot tell.
After what feels like an eon, the elevator dings and its heavy doors open.
Thankfully, it’s empty. Ilya steps in. The Muzak is even louder in here, but it makes it easier to pretend and perform. He ever-so-casually leans against the mirror, hands in his pockets, and he looks directly at Shane.
Shane, who’s clearly wavering. Hesitating; eyes downcast. He looks so good. It’s not just the cologne—his entire appearance makes Ilya want to smash his head against the wall. His hair is fucking coifed, the spray or whatever he used making it look raven-black. His clothes are smooth, the coat he’s wearing is unfamiliar but hugging him like he’s a fucking fashion model.
God, it makes Ilya sick.
In the very last second, Shane quickly steps in. Last-minute decision, and Ilya can’t stop looking at him.
They’ve exchanged a total of five words today. In the last week, actually.
And Shane is still looking everywhere but Ilya.
He presses the button for the ground floor and leans back in. Bites his lip; tries very hard to stop himself from doing something stupid. But he’s Ilya—stupid is his trademark.
“You can’t even look at me?” he asks, voice clipped.
Like a petulant child, Shane immediately looks up and right at him. Ilya wishes he couldn’t still read him like an open book.
Shane’s face looks beautiful, even with a frown that currently crowns it. His freckles look strikingly dark against his face in the artificial light, and his lips are pressed into a thin line. It’s his expressive eyes that betray him as always—Ilya sees resentment, he sees anger, he sees that Shane is overwhelmed.
“Happy now?” Shane snaps moments before he looks away again. His shoulders are pulled up practically to his ears.
Just like that, the elevator ride is over. It adds eight words to their total.
It’s like Shane can’t wait for it to be over—he pretty much runs out the second the door gives him enough space to do so.
Ilya, on the other hand, drags his feet out.
Shane is a dot rushing through the parking lot by the time Ilya steps outside, and it doesn’t matter anyway. There’s a perfectly fine ashtray by the entrance and Ilya won’t complain if his husband isn’t there to tell him off for smoking.
His husband.
Ilya shivers.
Shane is not his anything anymore.
Once his cigarette is lit and he takes a good old drag out of it, he takes his phone out of his pocket.
Ilya balances his weight from one foot to the other. The cigarette is lit and forgotten between his fingers, its smoke occasionally wafting up and hitting his nostrils. His hands are very cold and he’s forgotten to put his sunglasses back on. The last thing he wants to do is talk to anybody.
He wants to be alone. Part of him thinks he deserves to be alone.
Ilya doesn’t have it in him to tell her, actually.
What’s there to tell, anyway? He can tell her about the weather—so fucking cold all the time—or he can tell her about how Shane felt two thousands miles away the whole time. Like he wasn’t even there at all.
He tucks the phone back into his pocket and puts out the cigarette he’s had exactly one drag of. He rolls his shoulders, trying to shake off this afternoon—the lawyer’s voice, Shane’s avoidant eyes, the cold feeling this building has enveloped him in.
Then he drives himself to that condo they’re going to have to deal with.
Shane doesn’t need to know there’s someone still living in what they’ve made.
Shane’s fingers are shaking. His handbag rests in the passenger seat like a witness to some heinous crime.
Too many things are happening at once. He’s trying to get the engine started, he’s trying to focus on even breaths so he can actually drive, and his phone starts ringing. When he sees it’s Rose, what he feels is partially relief. He’d rather talk to his mother, but Yuna Hollander has been… complicated to navigate. She loves them both too much.
So does Rose, but she’s better at hiding it.
The shaking in his fingers has calmed into a slight tremble. When the engine purrs into life and his phone connects, he accepts the call.
“Hey, Shaney.” Her voice is like smooth butter that coats the inside of his car. He turns the heating on and leans back in the driver’s seat, trying to collect himself.
“Hey.”
“Are you okay?” she asks gently.
“No.”
How could he be? Some percentage of him is still in Caleb Thompson’s office, and then another percentage got left in that elevator. Not to mention the part of him that’s still in the condo, or the part of him that’s still living in four years ago; or the part that isn’t anywhere at all.
Shane Hollander is a lot of things on the surface; a lot of things he used to care deeply about. The number on his jersey, the plans that failed, his mother’s name sharpied on to his hockey stick, the number of Cups to his team’s name, whatever. On the inside, Shane is all over the place—too scattered for any of the other stuff to matter.
Not in this parking lot—not after… not after this.
“How did it go? I’m alone, you can say anything.”
Shane sighs. His body finally slumps—he rests his head gently against the steering wheel.
He starts with the easy part. “Yeah, the lawyer is good. I think. I don’t have a lot of experience with this,” he scoffs, “but he seems decent. Helpful. I had all the paperwork, and… I think he did, too, I don’t know.”
“You didn’t talk at all?” she sounds concerned and Shane hates it.
He shakes his head. “No. I said hey. He said let’s go in. Then he asked me if I can’t even look at him or whatever.”
Rose is quiet for a second. “What did you say?”
“I just looked at him. And then I asked him if he was happy with that.”
“Shane.”
“What? What was I supposed to say to him then?”
Her sigh sounds staticky. Shane wishes he could see her face, or at least catch a glance at it. It’s difficult for him to read people’s moods and thoughts over the phone on a good day, and this is not a good day.
“I can’t tell you that, babe.”
“You’re being nice to me?” he asks, checking.
“Yeah, I’m totally being nice to you right now. So what happens next?”
Shane gulps. It feels like he’s swallowing razors, and he realizes he hasn’t drunk anything since he got up in the morning and forced himself to down a glass of water.
“He said it should take about three months. We have to deal with the condo and—and other stuff, mostly paperwork. Then it will be over, I guess.”
“Shane—”
“Don’t,” he snaps. He shakes his head even though she can’t see him. He can feel where this conversation is going, because this is exactly how her tone shifted last time. It’s exactly how his mother’s tone shifted, and even his father’s. He’s had to go through this so many times at this point that he can smell it over the phone. “I don’t want to talk about how we’re being hasty right now. I just walked out of a lawyer’s office, Rose.”
“No, totally, I know. Are you good to drive?”
His chest relaxes. The interior of his Jeep has gotten a little warmer now so he shakes his coat off and throws it to the backseat. His hands seem stable now, but his brain is still racing. Five thousand miles a second, existing in all of those different places and times at once.
“I think so. Can you talk to me though? Just for a bit.”
“You know I can talk,” she assures him, her voice a little higher now.
Shane pulls out of the parking lot and Rose becomes a pleasant buzz in the background of the ongoing traffic. Shane doesn’t necessarily tune her out, he knows she’s talking about her next project, but he’s not an active listener, either.
The drive back to Montreal is longer than he’d like, and he’s too busy avoiding any thoughts of where Ilya might be.
Too busy wishing it hurt just a little bit less.