Archive of Our Own ^beta

For the majority of Ilya Rozanov's life, he has been alone.

He came to America at seventeen, a boy with a suitcase and a dream and a grief so large it lived inside his ribs like a second skeleton. But before that—before the planes and the billet families and the English words that never quite fit right in his mouth—he was still alone. Alone in the apartment in Moscow with the too-quiet rooms. Alone in the aftermath of a mother who chose to leave and a father who chose to pretend she never existed. Alone in the way that follows you, the kind that becomes less a feeling and more a fact, like the color of your eyes or the shape of your hands.

Ilya learned early that alone was survivable. That you could build a life inside it, furnish it with hockey and money and the hollow echo of your own laughter in expensive rooms. That you could fill it with people who wanted pieces of you—your talent, your name, your body—without ever letting anyone close enough to see the parts you kept locked away.

He learned that alone was safe. That alone meant no one could leave.

So he built his cage carefully. Made it beautiful. Made it comfortable. Made it so no one would ever guess that the bars were there at all. He made a museum of expensive, sterile leather and cold glass, and called it a home, one entirely too quiet for a man whose mind was perpetually running at a hundred miles an hour and whose soul was slowly starving to death on a diet of his own hollow laughter.

Ilya was sprawled across his sectional, one leg thrown over the armrest, a half-empty bowl of leftover takeout balanced dangerously on his stomach. He’d been flipping channels for the better part of an hour now, the remote a restless extension of his hand. Sports highlights. A movie he'd already seen. Some reality show about people renovating houses in places that cleary didn't have winter. His phone was face-down on the cushion somewhere near his hip, already proven to be a bad distraction too. Nothing stuck. Nothing held.

It was a Tuesday in mid-February, when the season had settled into that long, grinding stretch between the All-Star break and the trade deadline. The Bruins had played in Ottawa two nights ago, a win, 4-2, where Ilya had put up a goal and an assist, and then flown back to Boston for a few precious days of home ice. Next game was Friday. Against Montreal, actually. The thought had been sitting at the back of his mind all day, a low hum of something complicated that he wasn't ready to examine.

The All-Star break was three weeks behind him, now. Three weeks since he’d stood in a painfully generic hotel room in Tampa and watched Shane Hollander look at him like he was seeing him for the very first time. Three weeks since Shane had smiled at him across that ugly patterned carpet, an expression so soft and impossibly wondering, like they weren't supposed to be rivals anymore. Like Miami had actually meant something. Like they'd crossed a line neither of them knew how to uncross.

They hadn't talked about it. Of course they hadn't talked about it. That wasn't what they did. What they did was text at 2 AM and pretend the messages meant nothing. What they did was watch each other’s games on nights off and lie to themselves about the sudden, tight anxiety in their chests when the other took a heavy hit. What they did was exist in the agonizing, suffocating space between rival and something else entirely, something Ilya didn’t have a word for in English, and was too terrified to name in Russian. But the texts had changed, now they were warmer, more frequent, less careful. And every time his phone buzzed, Ilya felt his treacherous heart lurch toward the sound like a compass desperately finding north.

He clicked the remote again.

And stopped.

The image on screen made his thumb freeze over the button.

An airplane. In a field. Surrounded by crushed snow and emergency vehicles and the harsh, violent glare of red and blue rescue lights. The fuselage was dark, broken, tilted at an angle that looked wrong in every conceivable way physics allowed. Rescue workers swarmed around the metal carcass like frantic ants, carrying stretchers, moving with the urgent, grim precision, of people who did this for a living.

Ilya's hand dropped to his lap. The remote slipped from his fingers, landing somewhere on the cushion. He didn't notice.

"-emergency landing near Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, approximately forty kilometers south of Montreal," the reporter was saying, her voice a practiced, terrifyingly measured cadence of professional grief. "The regional flight from New York to Montreal experienced a bird strike during final descent, causing a catastrophic failure in both engines. The pilot was able to execute an emergency landing in a frozen field; a maneuver aviation experts are already calling a miracle."

The camera angle shifted. A wider shot of the scene-the plane, dark and broken against the white expanse of the field, rescue vehicles clustered around it like metal flowers blooming in snow.

"Eighty-seven passengers were on board. Early reports indicate dozens of injuries, ranging from minor to critical. Rescue operations have been underway for a couple of hours, with patients being transported to hospitals across the greater Montreal area, including the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur, the region's Level 1 trauma center."

Montreal.

The word bypassed his brain entirely and landed in Ilya's chest like a puck to the ribs, shattering the fragile, quiet architecture of his evening.

He knew, logically, that this was an irrational spike of adrenaline. That metropolitan cities had plane accidents and emergency landings and terrible, senseless tragedies happening all the time. That Montreal was a massive, sprawling area with millions of people, and the mathematical chances of anyone he knew being on that specific, doomed flight were-

He did the math anyway. He ran the schedules in his head the way he always did, the way he was pathologically incapable of stopping when it came to Shane.

Shane hadn’t been in New York—Ilya knew because he knew the Voyageurs' schedule better than his own, because he always knew where Shane was playing, because he was pathetic like that and hopelessly tethered to the man's orbit. Montreal had played at home on Saturday, and since Tuesday was an off-day, Shane was probably safely locked inside his pristine apartment, doing whatever infuriatingly structured things he did on off-days. Cooking those weird, tasteless healthy meals. Organizing his equipment with terrifying precision. Reading one of his boring, dense books. Being boring. Safe.

Not on a plane. Not falling out of the sky. Not in danger.

Ilya exhaled a harsh, jagged breath. Let his heavy head fall back against the leather couch. Told himself to stop being a ridiculous, paranoid idiot.

But his eyes remained glued to the screen as he rubbed the back of his neck absently, feeling the fine hairs standing at attention, the primal, animalistic part of his brain completely ignoring logic and schedules and the objective fact that Shane was safely on the ground. Somewhere deep in his chest, a small, icy thread of unease had begun to wind itself tightly around his ribs, a physical shiver working its way down his spine, slow and freezing, settling heavily in his gut.

He’d never been a fan of flying. Not really. It wasn’t a phobia, exactly—more a profound, uncomfortable respect for how quickly everything could go wrong, how fast gravity could reclaim you. The cold, unfeeling physics of it. The way you willingly surrendered your life to metal and engineering and a pilot you’d never looked in the eye. He’d done it hundreds of times, would do it thousands more, but he always felt that tiny, involuntary click of pure relief when the rubber wheels finally screamed against the tarmac. Always.

Not that he’d ever confess that to a living soul. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.

But right now, watching the grainy news footage of ambulances converging on some frozen, blood-stained field outside Montreal, that unease magnified tenfold. Eighty-seven people. Eighty-seven families. Eighty-seven versions of the phone call no human being ever wanted to receive.

Stop it. He told himself, closing his eyes against the glare of the television. You're being ridiculous. Shane is fine.

The shiver returned anyway. Deeper this time.

Ilya pulled his phone off the cushion, swiped it open, and stared at the blinding screen. No messages. No missed calls. He opened their chat and typed out a text anyway. Deleted it. Typed it again.

You awake?

His thumb hovered over the send button, trembling almost imperceptibly. What was he even asking? Hey, I know you're fine, but I just watched a plane crash near your city and now my lungs aren't doing what they are desing for, is that weird? Pathetic. Embarrassing. Too transparent.

He deleted the letters, one by one. Tossed the phone back onto the cushion beside him as if it had burned him. He rubbed both hands over his face, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes so hard he saw stars, trying to violently scrub the tension out of his muscles. The news anchor was still talking, her voice a relentless drone of tragedy. Ilya changed the channel to something, anything else.

Twenty-three minutes later, his phone vibrated against the cushion.

The sound cut through the ambient noise of the TV like a blade. Ilya's head snapped toward it, his body moving before his brain had fully registered the name on the screen.

Jane

The icy thread in his chest immediately pulled taut, snapping around his lungs the second he read that stupid nickname. He answered on the first ring. Didn't even look at the button he was pressing, just did it, brought the phone to his ear with a hand that was suddenly not quite steady.

"Hollander?"

Nothing.

Just breathing. Ragged. Shallow. The desperate, high-pitched wheeze of someone trying very, very hard to force their lungs to accept oxygen and failing completely.

"Shane." Ilya tried again, his tone shifting instantly, the gentle mockery vanishing, replaced by something firm and unyielding. He was on his feet now, the TV forgotten, the massive, empty room shrinking around him until the only thing that existed in the entire universe was the small speaker pressed to his ear and the sound of the person he cared the most falling apart on the other end. "Tell me what is happening, zolotse. Talk to me."

A gasp. A wet, shuddering inhale that caught on something incredibly sharp in Shane's throat. Then a voice—Shane’s voice, but entirely wrong, scraped raw and thin and gutted by terror—trying to force a thought through his paralyzed vocal cords and failing.

"I—I can't—I can't—"

"Yes you can." Ilya kept his voice pitched low, kept it as steady as bedrock, even as his own heart was hammering a frantic, sickening rhythm against his ribs. "You can breathe. You have done it before. You will do it now. Just—try. Just one word. One breath. Whatever you can give me."

A sound leaked through the speaker. Half sob, half devastated surrender. "Ilya."

"I am here. I am right here. Just concentrate on breathing."

Another gasp. Another desperate, uncoordinated struggle for air. Ilya closed his eyes, pressing his free hand flat against the cold drywall of his living room, grounding himself in the unmoving walls of the house so he could be the immovable object Shane desperately needed him to be.

"I didn’t—I didn’t know who else to call." Shane’s voice was fractured, splintering at the edges, a fragile glass pane cracking under immense pressure. "I just—I saw your name and I—I needed—"

"You call me." Ilya's voice came out harder than he intended, but not at Shane. Never at Shane. It was the fear, sharp and immediate, lodging itself between his ribs. "You call me always. Tell me what is happening. Where are you?"

Another wet, shuddering exhale. Ilya could see him through the phone—Shane, somewhere, alone, falling apart, his face doing that thing it did when the world got too big and too loud and too much. The Captain’s mask would be gone, shattered into a million useless pieces on the floor. And underneath it, just Shane. Just the terrifyingly vulnerable boy who needed everything to be in order. His Shane.

Except Shane wasn't his. Not really. And he could never truly be, not in the way Ilya wanted. They were still circling the event horizon of something enormous and gravity-defying, still pretending they could go back to how it was before Miami, before the hotel, and just step back into the safety of their rivalry like it was a comfortable old jacket.

"My mom."

The two words redirected Ilya's chain of thought so fast they landed like a physical blow. His hand tightened on the phone.

"She was—she was on the plane. The one that—it had to do an emergency landing. She was on it, Ilya. She was coming from New York, she was supposed to—she was coming to see me, and now she’s—she’s—"

The words dissolved into a sound that wasn't quite crying and wasn't quite breathing, something raw and animal that made Ilya's chest crack open. The plane. Montreal. The emergency landing.

Yuna. Yuna was on the plane. Fuck.

"Shane." His voice was rough, the carefully maintained calm slipping just a fraction, because the floor had just dropped out from beneath them both and he was blindly scrambling for purchase. He was already moving, his legs carrying him away from the wall, his eyes tracking across the immaculate surfaces of his home. "Where is she? Do you know? Is she—"

"Sacré-Coeur." The name of the hospital came out wet, smeared heavily with tears. "They took her to Sacré-Coeur. She’s in—she’s in surgery, Ilya. My dad called—he called from the car, and he told me—he told me she has a—her leg, it’s broken, really bad, and her spleen—they had to—they’re operating, and I’m just—I’m just sitting here—"

"Where?" Ilya’s brain shifted into an icy, terrifyingly clear state of tactical hyper-focus. He strode into the foyer, his hand snatching the heavy ring of keys off the console table. The metallic clatter was loud, but on the other end of the line, Shane was too deeply submerged in his own panic to register the sound. "Where are you right now, Shane?"

"I'm at—" A pause. A shaky breath. "I'm at Hayden's. We were having dinner. Jackie made pasta, but there was—there was so much noise, Ilya. And my dad called, and I just—I went to the guest bathroom, and I’ve been in here for—I don't know how long, and I just—I can’t breathe, the tiles are so cold but my skin is burning, and I can’t think, I just—"

"Shane." Ilya’s voice was an iron rod cutting straight through the spiral. He kicked off his slides, shoving his bare feet violently into the first pair of sneakers he found by the door. He didn't bother with the laces, just crushed the heels down in his haste to move. "You are doing good. You are telling me the facts. That is good. Now—your dad. He is driving from Ottawa?"

A wet sniffle. "Yeah. He was—he was at home when she didn't—when she didn't call after the flight was supposed to land. He saw the news. He called the airline, the hospital, fucking everyone—and then they told him she was—that she was alive but—" Another sob, sharp and devastating. "He's coming. He said it'll take—he said an hour and a half, maybe more with the roads, and he told me to go, to get to the hospital, that he’d meet me there, but I can’t, Ilya, I can’t move, I can’t—"

"Yes you can." Ilya yanked open the hall closet, his free hand blindly snatching the first heavy winter jacket his fingers brushed against. He awkwardly shoved his arms through the sleeves, pinning the phone tightly between his shoulder and his ear so he wouldn't lose Shane's voice for even a microsecond. "You can move. You are moving. You are going to stand up, you are going to unlock that bathroom door, and you are going to let Hayden know what happened. And then you are going to let him drive you to the hospital, and you are going to sit in that waiting room and breathe until your father gets there. Do you hear me?" He yanked open the small drawer beneath the mirror. His fingers bypassed the watches and the spare cash, closing around the smooth, dark blue cover of his Russian passport. He shoved it deep into the inner pocket of the coat without a second thought.

"But I can't—"

"You can." Ilya shoved the heavy front door open, stepping out into the biting, unforgiving cold of the Boston night. He moved toward the detached garage, his unlaced sneakers silent on the frost-heaved concrete. "You are the strongest person I know, Shane Hollander. You have carried an entire franchise on your back since you were twenty-two years old. You can carry yourself to a hospital waiting room. One step at a time."

"My legs," Shane choked out, the words a fractured, breathless scramble over the line. "Ilya, my legs won't—they're numb. Everything is buzzing."

A violent wave of frustration slammed into Ilya's chest, hot and bitter. He knew exactly what Shane needed right now. Ilya's hands literally ached with the urge to reach through the cellular network, to grab Shane by the shoulders, to pull him down to the floor and crush him against his chest until the frantic bird trapped in Shane's ribs finally calmed down. But he couldn't. There were five hundred miles of frozen, dark highway between them. Five hundred mile that Ilya was about to try and break with his bare hands.

For now, his voice was the only lifeline he had.

"Then you sit on the tiles until the buzzing stops," Ilya commanded gently, absolutely refusing to let Shane spiral back down into the dark. He kept his pace steady across the driveway, the freezing wind cutting through his open jacket, a sharp physical contrast to the white-hot adrenaline burning in his veins. "But you breathe. With me. Right now. Inhale."

For a moment, nothing. Just the ragged, uneven static of Shane's breathing. Then—a small, shuddering sound, like he was trying and failing and trying anyway.

"Again," Ilya pushed, his voice an unyielding anchor. "You are safe, zolotse. Listen to me. Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Hold there, Shane. Keep it in your lungs."

A strained, trembling pause carried over the line.

"Now exhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Push it all out. Good."

A shuddering breath came through the speaker. Then another, slightly deeper, fighting past the tight knot in his throat. Ilya walked the impossible tightrope of providing absolute, unyielding structure for Shane while his own heart threatened to violently hammer its way out of his ribcage.

"Tell me what you feel," Ilya demanded softly, forcing Shane's brain to engage with the physical world instead of the panic in his head. "Ground yourself. The tiles are cold. What else?"

"The—" Shane's voice hitched, but he was trying. "The grout. It's rough. My hands are flat on the floor."

"Keep them there," Ilya instructed. He had absolutely no idea what grout meant, but if it was something hane could hold onto then it worked for him. The low, rumbling cadence of his certainty was actively acting as a physical splint for Shane's fractured mind. Slowly, painfully, he listened as the jagged, panicked edges of Shane’s hyperventilation began to smooth, dulling into something resembling exhaustion. "Exhale again," he murmured, reaching the side of the garage. He pressed the button on the wall with numb fingers. "Good. You are doing so good, Solnyshko."

The massive garage door began to rise with a heavy, mechanical groan, a sudden industrial noise that threatened to swallow the silence of the night. Ilya instinctively cupped his large hand tightly over the phone's microphone, terrified the sudden auditory input would assault Shane's raw, overstimulated senses and shatter the fragile progress they had just made. He slipped quickly inside the dark space, yanking open the door of the Porsche—the lowest, fastest, most ridiculously overpowered car he owned—and dropped heavily into the driver's seat.

The heavy thud of the door sealing shut instantly locked him in a pristine, soundproofed vacuum of expensive leather and suffocating tension. He pulled his hand away from the microphone, the sudden silence of the car's cabin almost deafening.

"Shane?" Ilya asked, his voice dropping instinctively to a softer, far more private register now that he was enclosed in the dark. "Are you with me?"

A long, wavering exhale brushed against the speaker.

"Ilya." His name was a small, devastated whisper. Ilya was still not used to Shane calling him by his first name, and he had certainly never, ever heard him say it in this specific tone—hollowed out, miserable, clinging to the two syllables as if they were the only solid things left on earth. "I'm scared."

Ilya didn't think it was biologically possible for his heart to hurt any more than it currently did. He pushed the ignition button. The V8 engine roared to life, a guttural, violent vibration that traveled straight up his spine.

"I know, moya lyubov. I know." He said it without thinking, the Russian endearment slipping past his defenses because it was the absolute truth, because it had always belonged there. "But she is going to be okay. She is strong. Like her son."

A wet, broken sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't been strangled by terror. "You don't know that. You don't know her."

"I know you." Ilya threw the car into reverse, the tires crunching loudly over the ice as he backed out of the garage. "And if she raised you, she must be made of the same stubborn stuff. So she will fight. And you will wait. And your father will arrive soon. And everything is going to be fine."

"Ilya—"

"You can do this, Shane. You do not have any other choice.” Ilya took a deep breath himself, trying to calm his beating heart. “Listen, I want you to get out of that bathroom before Pike punches the door down, and I want you to tell them what happened. That is all you need to do right now. Da? They will take care of the rest. You just have to breathe and get out of the room. Can you do that for me?"

Ilya shifted the car into park. He sat in his driveway, the exhaust pluming in thick white clouds in the rearview mirror, the cold street sprawling out empty before him. He was Ilya Rozanov. He had a game in three days. He was sitting in an idling sports car at midnight, his passport burning a physical hole against his chest, preparing to violate half a dozen protocols in his contract and traffic laws, ready to drive six hours across an international border into a winter storm.

And for what? Because the man who still pretended to hate him on national television had called him from a bathroom floor and couldn't catch his breath? Was he really about to do this? Was he truly this far gone, this hopelessly, irrevocably lost to him?

The answer was a terrifying, undeniable yes. He would drive this car straight into the freezing Atlantic if Shane Hollander asked him to.

A pause over the line. Then, so quiet Ilya almost missed it.

"Yeah. Okay. I'm going."

"Good boy. Everything will be alright, Shane. I promise."

He had absolutely no right to make that promise. He held no power over the universe, no authority to guarantee survival, much less any control over the fragile mechanics of the human body. If he possessed that kind of power, he would be able to walk down the street holding Shane’s hand without the suffocating fear of the cameras. He would be able to look the boy he loved in the eye and tell him the truth without the constant voices in his head whispering that he was too rough, too broken, too much for someone as purely good as Shane. If he had that superpower, his own mother would be here, alive, breathing, instead of just a ghost haunting the corners of his mind.

But he could still try. He would push his will into the universe, demand it to bend, if only just this once, for Shane. Surely, the cold void of the world would be forced to listen to his frantic prayer just this one time, if it was only for Shane’s sake.

And it didn’t feel like a lie to say it. Not when Ilya knew it was the exact anchor Shane needed to hold onto. Not when he needed to be a fortress of absolute certainty so Shane could afford to fall apart in peace. Not when, out of all the people in the entire world, Shane had called Ilya during a panic attack.

"She is going to be fine," he promised again, his voice a low, gravelly vow, desperately praying that whatever god was listening would hear the absolute devotion in his voice and spare the boy he loved from the agony of grief.

Another pause. Then, so soft it was almost a ghost of a sound:

"Okay."

"Okay," Ilya repeated. He listened intently for a long, agonizing second, tracking the fragile cadence of the static over the line. Only when he was absolutely certain that the ragged, desperate edge had finally faded from Shane's breathing, settling into a heavy but steady rhythm, did he allow himself to issue the final push. "Now go. Go back out there. Your mom needs you."

He didn't hang up. He refused to break the connection until he had proof that Shane was actually moving. Through the tiny speaker of the phone, Ilya listened to the faint, telltale rustle of heavy fabric as Shane finally forced himself off the freezing bathroom tiles. He heard the unsteady, dragging scrape of a shoe against the floor, a long exhale that rattled heavily with leftover anxiety, and then, the sharp, distinct metallic click of the deadbolt unlocking.

"I'm opening it," Shane whispered, his voice sounding terribly small and completely hollowed out against the sudden echo of the hallway.

"I know. I am right here," Ilya murmured to the dark cabin of his car, his grip on the leather steering wheel tightening until his knuckles turned bone-white. "Go to them, solnyshko."

The faint squeal of a door swinging open filtered through the line, immediately followed by the muffled, frantic urgency of Hayden Pike’s voice in the background, asking a rapid-fire string of questions. Shane didn't answer his teammate right away. Instead, Ilya heard the rustle of the phone shifting as he pulled it close to his mouth for one last, desperate second.

"Thank you," Shane breathed into the microphone, a fragile, exhausted little thing.

"Always," Ilya vowed to the empty air.

They murmured their reluctant goodbyes, neither man wanting to be the first to sever the invisible thread holding them together across countries. But inevitably, finally, the line went dead, leaving behind a sterile, synthetic dial tone that sounded entirely too loud in the suffocating silence of the Porsche.

Ilya sat perfectly still in his car. The engine was a low, vibrating hum beneath him, the phone still pressed uselessly against his ear even though there was nothing left on the other end but sterile buzz. For one long, stretched-out moment, he simply didn't move.

The house loomed in his peripheral vision—too massive, too empty, too painfully quiet. The kind of place he’d bought simply because his accountant told him it was a good investment, because it was what star athletes were expected to own, because he genuinely didn't know what else to do with the millions they paid him to chase a piece of rubber. It had never felt like a home. It was just a highly secure vault where he slept when he wasn't living out of a suitcase.

He lowered the phone. Stared at the black glass, the silent, undeniable evidence of a three-minute call that had just fundamentally rearranged the axis of his entire universe.

Yuna. Shane’s mother. In a hospital. In surgery.

And Shane—Shane—alone, trembling, a raw nerve exposed to the air, calling Ilya because there was no one else who could understand the way his brain broke down, because he couldn't make his mouth form the words for anyone else, because—

Ilya’s chest physically ached, a deep, bruising pain behind his sternum.

He turned his head. Looked through the windshield at the dark, sprawling expanse of Boston. The city was asleep, blissfully unaware that one of its most famous residents was about to do something incredibly, monumentally reckless.

Montreal to Boston. He’d made the drive before. Knew the rhythm of it intimately. The highway, the border checkpoint, the endless, hypnotic stretch of asphalt through upstate New York, bleeding into Vermont, and finally crossing into Quebec. A six hours drive normally, but in good weather, driving the speed limit, with no stops, it took roughly five.

Five hours of driving. Five hours of agonizing, helpless waiting.

He thought about Shane, sitting in that sterile, brightly lit hospital waiting room. Shane, who couldn't sit still for two minutes on a good day without tapping his foot or analyzing a play. Shane, whose brain ran like a supercomputer, constantly processing, calculating, catastrophizing every possible outcome. Shane, alone, staring at a set of double doors, waiting for a surgeon to come out and deliver the news that would dictate the rest of his life.

He thought about his own mother.

The memory came entirely unbidden, as it always did, a dark tide rising to choke him. Finding her. The apartment. The absolute, suffocating silence. The way the rotation of the earth had simply stopped in that exact moment, freezing his life forever into a permanent Before and After. For a few terrible, innocent minutes, the young boy he had been thought she was just deeply asleep on the rug, or that she had stumbled and hit her head. But when he had dropped to his knees and touched her shoulder, and she was cold—cold in a terrifying, unnatural way that had absolutely nothing to do with the harsh weather of his motherland—every single pillar holding his world up had violently collapsed at the same time.

He thought about how incredibly, devastatingly lonely he had felt in that exact second. How he had curled his small body down next to hers, hidden his face against her unmoving chest, and just wept until his throat bled, clinging to the only anchor he had until his father finally found them hours later. He thought about how, in the hollow days after, he had desperately searched the cabinets for the pills she'd taken, wanting nothing more than to follow her into the dark. But his father had already sterilized the house, clearing out anything sharp or poisonous, leaving Ilya trapped in a world he no longer wanted to exist in. He thought about how deeply lonely he had been after that day. How lonely he still was, most days, walking through a world that felt hollowed out, like all the color had drained out of it along with her.

How incredibly lonely he had been, right up until the exact moment he met Shane Hollander.

Shane, with his stupid, perfectly symmetrical face and his infuriatingly boring habits and his eyes that sparked with absolute fire when he fought for the things he loved. Shane, who looked at Ilya like he was actually a person worth knowing. Shane, who made the unbearable weight of the world feel a little less crushing just by existing on the same ice as him.

He absolutely refused to let that happen to him.

He didn't want Shane to ever know what it felt like to walk this earth with only half a heart beating in his chest. To have a massive, gaping crater in his life where a person who loved him unconditionally was supposed to be standing. And if, God forbid, the absolute worst happened tonight and Yuna didn't make it—then Ilya was not going to let him receive that news alone. He would not let Shane inherit that specific, hollowed-out loneliness. Not like Ilya had been. Not like Ilya still was, underneath the smirks and the multi-million dollar contracts and the carefully constructed walls of arrogance.

He looked at the glowing digital clock on the dash. 11:58 PM.

Five hours. Unless you drove a machine built for the Autobahn like you actually meant it.

Ilya shifted the car into drive.

The highway unfolded in front of him like a dark, endless ribbon, totally empty at this ungodly hour. Ilya pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator and felt the massive engine respond with a violent surge of power, felt the familiar, intoxicating hum of speed vibrating beneath him, watching the world blur past the windows when you stopped caring about trivial things like speed limits or physics.

Five hours was for normal people. Five hours was for people who didn't have Shane Hollander’s terrified voice lodged in their chest like a piece of shrapnel. Ilya drove like a man fleeing from a ghost. He drove like a man desperately chasing a lifeline. He drove like the difference between the two didn't even matter anymore.

The miles dissolved under his tires. The darkness pressed heavily against the tinted windows. His phone sat face-up in the passenger seat, completely silent, waiting. Every few minutes, his eyes darted to it, praying for a text, dreading what words might illuminate the screen.

Nothing came.

He gripped the leather steering wheel tighter and pushed the car faster into the dark.

The border came and went in a surreal, dreamlike blur of harsh fluorescent lights and sleepy, routine questions from a bored guard. Purpose of your visit? Personal. How long do you plan to stay? I don't know. Any goods to declare? Just myself. The agent looked at the dark blue passport, looked at the bruised, exhaustion-lined face of the man behind the wheel, and looked at the clock. He handed the passport back and waved him through into Canada.

Ilya was accelerating back onto the pitch-black highway before the ink on the stamp could even think about drying, his tires biting aggressively into the asphalt. The roads were mercifully clear, a bone-chillingly cold but pristine stretch of dry pavement, the specific kind of dead-of-winter February night that froze the entire world into something sharp and brittle and unnervingly still. He made terrifyingly good time, pushing the German engineering to its absolute, screaming limits as the car handled the sweeping curves beautifully, greedily devouring the miles in a blur of pure velocity, and Ilya simply let the machine consume the earth beneath them, because every single mile conquered was a physical mile closing the bleeding gap between him and Shane.

If he were a man who still harbored even a microscopic fraction of faith in God, he might have convinced himself that a divine hand was actively smoothing the roads ahead of him, ensuring that no animal would run across, no black ice would form under his spinning tires, that absolutely nothing in this frozen wasteland would be allowed to interrupt his desperate journey. He might have comforted himself with the poetic delusion that his mother's ghost was sitting quietly in the passenger seat, watching over him, fiercely refusing to let her son shatter his own life when he was finally rushing toward the man who held his heart. Not when Shane so fundamentally, desperately needed him.

But Ilya hadn't believed in a benevolent universe since he was twelve years old, since the precise, devastating second his small knees had hit the carpet next to a body that was already surrendering its light to the earth. He knew with absolute, freezing certainty that the universe possessed no morality, that it didn't care one way or another whether a hockey player wrapped his silver Porsche around a concrete overpass or made it safely to a hospital waiting room. And if he were being entirely honest with the ghosts in the car, he didn't really care whether he lived or died either. Not for a long time.

But he cared about Shane, cared with a violent, all-consuming intensity that terrified him down to his marrow.

Shane and his stupid, scattered constellation of freckles that Ilya had memorized under poor light from bedside lamps, Shane and his deeply infuriating, painfully boring routines that somehow grounded the chaotic static of Ilya's mind, Shane and his fiercely intelligent eyes and that blindingly beautiful smile that he guarded so closely, Shane and his unbelievably soft, relentlessly tender heart that Ilya felt completely unworthy of holding. Shane, who had seamlessly rewritten Ilya's ruined internal wiring, who made him feel, for the very first time in a decade of walking through a grayscale world, like maybe there was actually something solid on this earth worth sticking around for.

His mind was entirely devoid of anything resembling rational thought, wiped clean of everything except the rhythmic, desperate cadence of a name that had become the only religion he practiced, the only frantic prayer he was willing to offer to the dark roads as he drove.

Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane

Two hours and twenty-three minutes after leaving Boston, he crossed the invisible, freezing threshold into Quebec.

Two hours and forty-seven minutes after leaving Boston, the first glowing green highway signs for Montreal materialized out of the gloom, reflecting off the hood of the speeding car.

Three hours and twelve minutes after leaving Boston, he was ripping the wheel to pull off the desolate highway and plunge into the sleeping grid of the city, his burning eyes frantically tracking the blue hospital signs pointing the way toward Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur.

Three hours and twenty-eight minutes after leaving Boston—two hours and thirty-two minutes faster than Google Maps would have told you was possible— Ilya Rozanov violently slammed the transmission into park in the starkly lit hospital lot, killed the screaming engine, and found himself completely submerged in a sudden, ringing, suffocating silence.

His heavy hands were painfully locked into rigid, cramped claws from strangling the steering wheel, his lower back radiating a dull, throbbing ache that he completely ignored, his dry eyes burning with a cocktail of pure exhaustion, leftover adrenaline, and a profound, terrifying vulnerability he was nowhere near ready to name.

He had fucking made it. He was physically here.

And as he stared through the windshield at the imposing, clinical brick facade of the emergency room entrance, he realized he was about to do the second most monumentally stupid thing he had ever attempted in his entire life. Second only to driving a sports car like a suicidal lunatic through the pitch-black night on potentially icy roads, wild animals and speeding cameras. But as he forced his cramped fingers to release the wheel and reached for the door handle, every ounce of his self-preservation simply evaporated. The press, his team, the consequences—it all faded into meaningless white noise. The only thing in the entire universe that mattered was waiting behind those glass doors.

He only cared about Shane.

The sliding doors of the Hospital parted with a mechanical hiss, and the blast of sterile, artificially heated air hit Ilya like a physical wall. The emergency room at three-thirty in the morning was a bizarre, purgatorial space. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a relentless, clinical glare that stripped the shadows from the corners and made Ilya’s burning eyes water. The air smelled aggressively of industrial bleach, stale coffee, and the quiet, metallic tang of human desperation.

His body was operating entirely on the fumes of an adrenaline high that was rapidly, violently crashing. His hands, shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, were trembling with a uncontrollable tremor, his fingers locked into a permanent, cramped curve from strangling the steering wheel for three and a half hours. Every muscle in his back screamed, but he pushed the physical agony aside, forcing his heavy, uncoordinated legs to carry him toward the main reception desk.

Behind the plexiglass, a tired-looking clerk barely glanced up from her monitor.

"Bonjour," she said, her voice flat.

"I need—" Ilya started, and stopped. His brain, fried from the drive and the panic, stubbornly refused to supply the correct English words, let alone French. His tongue felt thick, his thoughts muddied, the language barrier suddenly towering over him like a brick wall. He swallowed hard, forcing his jaw to unlock. "I am looking for Yuna Hollander. She was in the plane. The crash."

The clerk’s fingers paused on her keyboard. She looked up, her professional detachment hardening into a protective shield. "Are you immediate family, monsieur?"

"No. I am..." Ilya’s voice fractured. What was he? A rival? A ghost Shane kept locked in the dark? "I am a friend. I need to know where she is."

"I am sorry, monsieur," the clerk said, not sounding sorry at all. "Hospital policy. For the passengers of the flight, we are only releasing information to immediate family members. If you are not family, I cannot tell you anything."

"You don't understand," Ilya growled, the frustration spiking hot and fast in his chest. He leaned closer to the glass, his massive frame casting a shadow over the desk. "I need to know-"

"Rozanov?"

The voice came from his left. Ilya whipped his head around. Standing near a bank of vending machines, holding a flimsy cardboard tray carrying three steaming cups of coffee, was Jackie Pike.

She was wearing a pair of faded leggings and a massive, oversized Montreal Voyageurs hoodie that undoubtedly belonged to Hayden, her hair thrown up in a messy, chaotic bun. She looked utterly exhausted, the pale skin under her eyes bruised with heavy purple shadows, but her gaze was sharp, locking onto Ilya with a mixture of profound confusion and absolute disbelief.

She blinked, her eyes dropping from his bruised, exhausted face to his completely unlaced sneakers, taking in the sheer, impossible reality of the Boston Bruins' captain standing in a Montreal trauma center at three in the morning. "What are you doing here?"

For a fraction of a second, the instinct to lie flared in Ilya's chest. It was a survival reflex honed over ten years of secrets, ten years of carefully constructed animosity, ten years of hiding the softest part of himself behind a smirking, arrogant mask. He could say he heard the news and came to pay his respects to a colleague. He could preserve the lie. But then he remembered the sound of Shane’s voice on the phone.

I’m scared.

The memory of that broken, terrified whisper shattered the last remaining pillar of Ilya's pride. He let the survival reflex die right there in the fluorescent-lit hallway. Hayden’s inevitable questions and the risk of the entire world finding out meant absolutely nothing compared to the desperate, blinding need to put his hands on Shane and hold him until the world stopped being so terrifyingly vast and scary.

He closed the distance between them, his posture entirely stripped of its usual bravado. He didn't look like an arrogant superstar; he looked exactly like a man desperately begging for a lifeline.

"Jackie," Ilya said, his voice thick, the Russian accent bleeding heavily into his fractured English. "Please. Where is Shane?"

Jackie froze. She looked at him—really looked at him—and Ilya watched the incredibly fast, terrifyingly sharp gears of her mind turn. She processed the desperation in his eyes, the absolute, unshielded panic radiating from his massive frame, and the logistical impossibility of him being in this city unless he had driven like a madman the second the news broke. Ilya saw the exact moment the math clicked perfectly into place. Her eyes widened, just a fraction, a micro-expression of absolute, world-altering realization.

And then, because Jackie Pike was fundamentally one of the best, most relentlessly practical human beings on the planet—and currently skyrocketing into Ilya’s top three favorite people on earth—the shock completely vanished. She didn't gasp. She didn't drop the coffees. She didn't ask a single damn question about what kind of relationship he and Shane actually had that resulted in Ilya driving all the way to this hospital in the middle of the night, just so he could be here for him. The fierce, maternal caregiving instinct that made her such an incredible mother, and the profound love she carried so deep in her heart that practically made her Shane Hollander's unofficial older sister, simply overrode everything else.

Her expression softened into something impossibly warm and profoundly understanding. She smiled at him, a tiny, brilliant spark of wonder lighting up her exhausted eyes.

"Okay," Jackie said quietly, her voice a steady, grounding anchor. She tilted her head toward the elevators. "Come on. Follow me."

Ilya exhaled a breath that felt like it had been trapped painfully in his lungs since Boston, his broad shoulders slumping just a fraction as he fell into step beside her. As they navigated the blindingly white, labyrinthine corridors, Jackie effortlessly filled the heavy silence, her voice a low, soothing hum that demanded no effort from Ilya's fried brain.

"I just came down to grab these," she murmured, shifting the cardboard tray of coffees slightly as they finally reached the elevator bank. She pressed the glowing call button with her knuckle, offering him a small, grounded smile. "The coffee in the surgical waiting room tastes like literal battery acid." She let the sentence hang there for a moment, deliberately giving Ilya’s exhausted brain a few quiet seconds to process the mundane information. The low hum of the hospital ventilation filled the space between them. "Shane’s dad is upstairs," Jackie added softly, her voice dropping to an even gentler register now that she had his focus. "He got here about an hour ago."

Ilya let out a microscopic breath, his rigid shoulders dropping perhaps a millimeter more. David. Okay. Shane had his father. He was safe.

"He drove like a maniac all the way from Ottawa," Jackie continued. Ilya let out a short, rough puff of air, a dark, exhausted amusement flickering briefly in his chest. He could certainly understand the sentiment.

The elevator arrived with a soft, artificially cheerful chime. Jackie stepped inside and waited patiently until Ilya followed her in. She let the heavy doors slide completely shut before she spoke again.

"And, of course," she said with a sigh, a deeply fond, almost sad smile pulling at her mouth, "the second David walked in, Shane immediately tried to kick Hayden and me out. He told us to go home. Said they were totally fine and we needed to sleep." She shook her head slowly. "He completely put his walls up."

She shot Ilya a wry, knowing look as she pressed the floor button. "Hayden basically told him to shut up and sit down. We weren't leaving him alone."

"Thank you," Ilya rasped, his thick accent bleeding heavily into the quiet space. The two words felt utterly inadequate, but they were pulled from the very bottom of his chest. His hands were still trembling deep in the pockets of his jacket. "For staying."

He didn’t know if it was his place to thank them or not, considering they were Shane's chosen family and he was just a ghost hiding in a closet, but it felt like the absolute right thing to do. It made Ilya's chest ache with a profound, staggering realization: Shane was so deeply, fiercely loved. He had a family that dropped everything to drive through the night, and friends who refused to let him suffer in silence. He let the thought comfort him.

Jackie didn’t take offense at the gratitude; if anything, her smile only grew softer, looking at him with a warm, reassuring light in her tired eyes. "Of course we stayed," she said simply, leaning back against the metal rail. "He’s our family” She watched him attentively for a long couple of seconds, her sharp gaze calculating, as if trying to figure something out, maybe if he was actually worth Shane's heart or not. Whatever raw, unshielded truth she found in Ilya's open eyes seemed to satisfy her, because the heavy scrutiny melted away, and she continued with a spark of genuine mirth in her tone “But I have a feeling it’s not us he needs right now."

After watching the illuminated floor numbers tick upward for a second, she turned her gaze back to him, a sudden, playful lilt entering her voice. "I'm guessing you're the one Shane locked himself in the bathroom to call. Hayden is currently sitting up there entirely convinced that Shane was having a meltdown to his secret Boston girlfriend."

Ilya blinked, the sheer, staggering absurdity of the comment piercing straight through the heavy static in his brain. He let his heavy head fall back against the cool metal wall of the elevator, his voice dropping into a deadpan, exhausted gravel. He was already deep enough in this mess, he might as well be completely sincere about this one thing. He just desperately hoped Shane would eventually forgive him for burning their secret to the ground. "We are the same person."

Jackie let out a soft, breathy laugh, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a deeply fond, knowing twinkle. "Yeah, I kind of figured that out about sixty seconds ago," she smiled, the expression wide and genuine. "Honestly? It's a really good thing we are already standing inside a trauma center. Because when my husband sees you walk into that waiting room, he is absolutely going to have an aneurysm."

Completely against his own will, a laugh actually punched its way out of his chest.

It was a rough, gravelly sound, scraped raw by hours of suffocating panic and pure adrenaline, but it was undeniably real. His broad shoulders shaking slightly as the humor of the situation finally caught up with him. He was Ilya Rozanov, the ultimate villain of Montreal, currently standing in a Canadian hospital at three in the morning just to hold their golden boy's hand. He could already visualize the exact, horrifying shade of purple Hayden Pike's face was going to turn, the sheer psychic damage the winger was about to endure the second the elevator doors opened.

"I will gladly pay for his medical bills," Ilya rasped, his thick accent wrapping around the words as a familiar, arrogant smirk finally managed to break through the exhaustion on his face. He was still terrified for Yuna, and his hands were still shaking deep in his jacket pockets, but the crushing weight on his chest felt just a fraction lighter.

"But seriously," Jackie continued, her smile fading into something much gentler, much more serious as she seamlessly guided the conversation to the only thing that truly mattered. "Shane is okay. And Yuna is going to be okay. I need you to know that before we walk out there. Nobody has said a single word about her being in mortal danger, alright?"

Ilya felt a massive, suffocating band of iron physically snap around his ribs, a full lungful of air rushing in for the first time in hours. "It's just... it's a very long, very complicated surgery," Jackie explained, keeping her voice slow and remarkably steady. "She's been in the OR for about four and a half hours now. They said the seatbelt absolutely saved her life, but it did a lot of mechanical damage to her body when the plane hit the ground."

Ilya listened as if his ears were packed tightly with cotton, but he forced his sluggish mind to latch onto her calm, patient tone.

"It’s a comminuted fracture in her right femur," she explained gently, her brow furrowing slightly. The complex English medical term slipped right off Ilya's exhausted brain, but Jackie didn't miss a beat, unknowingly offering the exact translation his mind desperately needed. "The bone broke into multiple pieces, so the surgeons are having to put it all back together with titanium plates and screws. That takes hours on its own. But the impact from the belt also ruptured her spleen."

Spleen. Another word he didn't quite know. An organ. Something inside. Ilya didn't need a medical dictionary to grasp the gravity of it.

"They had a general surgeon go in first to stop the internal bleeding and take the spleen out," she reassured him quickly, seeing the sudden, rigid tension locking Ilya's jaw. "They said you can live perfectly fine without one, so there shouldn't be any permanent damage once she heals. But a nurse came out about twenty minutes ago. She had a minor complication—her blood pressure dropped. They stabilized her immediately, but they had to slow down the orthopedic work. It's just going to be a while longer before they finish closing her up."

Ilya closed his eyes, his head resting heavily against the unforgiving metal of the elevator door. He hadn't caught every single word, but the gist of it was completely clear. Four and a half hours. Hours of Shane sitting in a hard plastic chair, trapped entirely inside his own head, waiting for a surgeon to come out and give him his life back.

"She is strong," Ilya whispered to the metal doors, the words sounding terrifyingly fragile, less like a statement of fact and more like a desperate, exhausted prayer. "She will be okay. It is just bones. Bones heal."

"Exactly," Jackie agreed instantly, her voice a fierce, unwavering beacon of optimism in the suffocating space. "She's going to be completely fine, Ilya. And once she's out of recovery, she's going to need intensive physical therapy, but the doctors expect a full recovery."

Ilya was too fried to even begin to analyze what it did to his chest to hear one of Shane's best friends—people who were supposed to hate him on principle—suddenly addressing him by his given name. It felt entirely too intimate, too unguarded, a permanent shifting of the ground beneath their lives. But his exhausted brain simply lacked the capacity to panic right now.

Jackie shifted the coffees again as the elevator began to slow. "Shane just..." She paused, her tone softening. "He needs someone to help him carry the waiting part. Hayden and I are trying, we really are, but he's totally shut down. We can't reach him."

Before he could ask exactly what she meant by "shut down", the elevator dinged—a bright, artificially cheerful sound that grated against Ilya's raw nerves—and the heavy metal doors slid open to reveal the sterile, blindingly lit expanse of the fourth-floor surgical wing.

"He's at the end of the hall," Jackie said softly. She stepped out into the quiet corridor and looked back at Ilya. Her expression held such unwavering support that the ache in his throat sharpened. "Go to him."

The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, a sterile, blindingly white tunnel that ended in a small, agonizingly quiet surgical waiting area. Ilya stopped at the threshold.

He saw him immediately. Shane was sitting rigidly in one of the plastic chairs, his posture stiff and completely unnatural. Beside him, David Hollander was leaning close, his hand gripping Shane’s pale fingers in a silent, desperate attempt at comfort. Crouched directly in front of Shane’s knees, taking up a massive amount of space, was Hayden Pike. The big right winger was speaking in a low, continuous murmur—too quiet for Ilya to catch the actual words, but the desperate, reassuring cadence was obvious—his heavy hand gripping Shane’s tense shoulder with unwavering firmness.

But Shane wasn't registering any of it. His gaze was completely blank, his unblinking eyes fixed with terrifying intensity on the sterile white wall opposite him, utterly lost to the room. It was a hollowed-out stare that made Ilya’s stomach drop.

It was Pike who saw him first. The man's head snapped up as Ilya and Jackie approached, and as he slowly stood up, his features immediately twisted into a mask of profound bewilderment. His eyes darted frantically from the exhaustion on the face of his fiercest rival to his wife, silently demanding an explanation for the impossible absurdity of Ilya Rozanov standing in front of him right now.

He didn't care. The only thing that existed in his narrowed universe was the echo of Shane’s desperate voice on the phone. The only thing that mattered was the crushing, suffocating terror currently drowning the man he loved—a specific, agonizing fear that Ilya knew intimately, a darkness he had navigated blindly since he was a child. He looked at that empty, lost expression on Shane’s face, and his own exhaustion burned away.

"Shane," Ilya breathed.

The word tore out of his throat, completely unrecognizable. It was stripped of all its usual arrogant smoothness, jagged with raw urgency, the heavy cadence of his Russian accent bleeding thickly through the desperation. Slowly, agonizingly, Shane blinked. He dragged his gaze away from the blank wall, his head turning as if fighting a massive physical weight, until his eyes finally found the doorway.

The exact second their eyes connected, a massive shift occurred in Ilya's chest. It was as if his consciousness, which had been floating untethered since he backed out of his driveway in Boston, suddenly slammed back into his physical form. He was finally back in his own body. He finally had control of his limbs.

Shane just stared at him, and for what felt to Ilya like several excruciating millennia, the world stood perfectly still. Then, the fragile mask on Shane’s face finally cracked, his bottom lip began to tremble, a minute quiver, and the glassy emptiness in his eyes was instantly drowned by a sudden, hot rush of unshed tears. He looked utterly shocked for a split second, his brain failing to process the logistics of Ilya standing there, before the shock melted completely into something much more vulnerable.

"Ilya," Shane sighed.

If Ilya had been operating on anything more than pure survival instinct, if his brain hadn't been completely hijacked by the primal need to protect, he might have recognized the relief that saturated every single syllable of his name in Shane's mouth. He might have realized that his presence was the exact anchor Shane had been praying for.

But every single electrical impulse in Ilya’s brain was entirely focused on moving.

Shane didn't look at his father’s confusion or Pike’s stunned silence. He pushed himself up from the chair, his legs unsteady, and unknowingly shoved Hayden out of the way as he began to walk toward him. Ilya didn't wait. He crossed the remaining distance in two massive strides, meeting Shane halfway in the middle of the waiting room, and wrapped his arms around him with every ounce of strength he possessed.

The physical impact of their collision knocked the breath out of both of them. Shane didn't hesitate; he completely surrendered, his knees giving out slightly as he let his entire, exhausted weight collapse heavily against Ilya’s shoulder, his fingers violently fisting into the fabric of Ilya’s jacket. The dam finally broke with a quiet, ragged gasp, a silent, devastating release of the hours of terror and panic Shane had been forcefully holding inside his chest. He let himself shatter entirely into the one person who knew exactly how to put him back together.

Shane’s face was buried so deeply in the crook of Ilya’s neck that his hot tears were soaking directly through the collar of Ilya's jacket. The only sensory input Ilya truly registered was the erratic, stuttering rhythm of Shane’s heart beating frantically against his own ribs.

"I have you," Ilya rumbled, the words vibrating thick and heavy deep in his chest.

Shane’s fingers twisted violently into the fabric at Ilya's shoulders, a desperate, white-knuckled grip trying to anchor himself. He let out another ragged, silent gasp, crying quietly into the dark sanctuary of Ilya's coat.

"You came," Shane choked out, his voice muffled and scraped raw.

Ilya pressed his cheek fiercely against Shane’s damp hair, his massive arms locking around him in an ironclad vow. "Of course," he whispered, the truth of it simple and absolute. "You called me."

His English felt entirely inadequate after that, too clumsy for the fragile thing trembling in his arms, so he abandoned it completely. The soft, rounded vowels of his native tongue spilled into the narrow space between them. "Ya zdes', solnyshko. Ya derzhu tebya. Ya nikuda ne uydy."

He pressed his lips hard against the sweaty curve of Shane's temple, ignoring the salt of the tears, his hand rubbing slow, heavy, deliberate circles between Shane's shoulder blades, manually forcing the frantic panic out of the boy's lungs with the sheer, immovable force of his presence.

Behind them, the stunned silence in the waiting room had taken on a thick, suffocating quality.

"Shane?"

The voice was older, scraped rough with exhaustion, fear, and profound confusion. Shane’s father had slowly stood up from his plastic chair, his tired eyes darting frantically from his sobbing son to the massive, bruised Russian winger who was currently holding him together as if his life depended on it.

And Hayden. Hayden looked like he had just taken a blindside hit to the jaw at full speed. His mouth was slightly parted, his eyes wide, staring at the two of them as if gravity had just suddenly reversed itself. He looked helplessly toward Jackie, silently begging his wife for a translation of a reality that mathematically and historically did not compute. Jackie simply walked past her paralyzed husband, placing the cardboard tray of coffees quietly on a small table and putting a gentle, restraining hand flat against Hayden's chest, a silent command to let it be.

Shane flinched at the sudden sound of his father's voice—a violent, involuntary jerk of his spine—but he didn't pull away from the embrace. Instead, his fists tightened their desperate death grip on the fabric of the jacket, burying his face impossibly deeper into the cedar-scented sanctuary of Ilya's shoulder, desperately trying to hide from the sudden influx of questions and eyes.

Ilya felt the flinch travel through Shane's bones. His protective instincts flared into a fierce, almost territorial heat. He shifted his weight, subtly angling his broad shoulders to physically block Shane from the rest of the room, creating a dark, enclosed pocket of safety built entirely out of his own body.

"It is okay," Ilya said, and he didn't know if he was speaking to Shane, to David, or to the bewildered idiot staring at them. He kept his eyes entirely focused on the side of Shane's head, his jaw tight. "We sit down now, da? Your legs are done working for today."

He didn't wait for permission or for Shane's sluggish brain to process the command. Keeping one arm locked like a solid iron band around Shane’s waist, Ilya practically carried the Captain of the Montreal Voyageurs back to the bank of plastic chairs. He sat down first, pulling Shane down firmly with him, maneuvering them with a practiced, effortless strength until Shane was tucked securely against his side. Shane went completely boneless, surrendering every ounce of his exhausted weight, his head falling heavily onto Ilya’s shoulder. His breathing was still a ragged mess of hitched gasps, but the violent shaking had finally begun to subside under the heavy, unapologetic weight of Ilya's arm.

David took a hesitant step forward, his brow furrowed so deeply it looked painful. "Rozanov? What... how are you..." He trailed off, the sheer impossibility of the intimacy completely short-circuiting a brain that was already battered by the terror of his wife's ongoing surgery.

Ilya finally looked up.

He met David Hollander’s exhausted, baffled eyes, offering no excuses, no carefully crafted PR deflections, no apologies for the way his hand was still possessively rubbing circles into his son's back. He was entirely too tired to lie, and Shane was entirely too broken to hide. If the universe wanted to rip the secret from their hands tonight, then Ilya would gladly hand it over, so long as he didn't have to let go of the boy leaning against him.

"I drove," Ilya stated simply, his voice a low, immovable absolute in the quiet room. "Shane called me. So I drove."

He braced himself for the inevitable, catastrophic fallout. He had just detonated a bomb in the middle of a sterile, brightly lit hospital waiting room, completely and irrevocably shattering the meticulously crafted illusion of their bitter rivalry right in front of the people who knew Shane best. He expected immediate, righteous anger. He expected to be physically pull away from his son, to demand a furious explanation, to yell at the hated Boston’s captain for daring to touch his boy in his most vulnerable moment.

He expected the absolute worst, because Ilya’s only blueprint for a father was his own, a man who swept the broken pieces of his heart away into the dark rather than sitting on the floor to help hold them together. In Ilya's mind, a father was someone who demanded strength and decorum, someone who would view this desperate, public display of shattered composure and forbidden love as an unforgivable failure.

Not to mention the fact that they were both men.

Logically, somewhere beneath the deafening roar of his own panic, Ilya knew that David Hollander was absolutely nothing like his father. He knew that none of Shane’s family operated that way. He knew perfectly well that the man currently trying to breathe against his chest had grown up enveloped in a warm, fiercely supportive environment that Ilya could scarcely even comprehend. But logic had completely abandoned him on an icy highway somewhere outside of Boston. Right now, operating purely on the instinct to protect, Ilya tightened his grip around Shane’s shaking shoulders, his jaw locking as he prepared to ruthlessly defend his right to stand exactly where he was against anyone who tried to tear them apart.

But the explosion never came.

Over the top of Shane's trembling head, Ilya's defensive, burning gaze collided directly with David's.

Shane's father was a man fundamentally, almost confusingly different from his intensely driven, constantly calculating son or his high-strung wife; David had always been the quiet, grounding earth to their chaotic electrical storms. He didn't look shocked. He didn't look disgusted, and he certainly didn't look angry.

He just looked.

David had spent almost forty years loving a woman whose brain ran at a hundred miles an hour, twenty-seven years raising a son who felt everything so deeply it sometimes broke him. He had learned, long ago, that the world didn't always make sense, and that the people you loved didn't always fit into the neat little boxes other people built for them. He had learned that the only questions that ever really mattered were simple ones: Is my child happy? Is he safe? Is he loved?

He looked at the massive Russian hockey player currently wrapped around his son like a second skin. He saw the way Rozanov's hands—hands that had scrapped with Shane on ice for a decade, hands that had thrown punches and delivered checks—were now rubbing slow, grounding circles into Shane's back with a tenderness that couldn't be faked. He saw the way his jaw was set, not in arrogance, but in defense, like he was ready to fight the entire room if anyone tried to take Shane away from him. He saw the exhaustion carved into every line of Ilya's face, the dark circles under his eyes, the way his clothes were rumpled from hours of frantic driving.

And he saw Shane. His son. His beautiful, brilliant, sweet and way high-achiever son, who had been a hollowed-out shell when David walked into this waiting room an hour ago, who hadn't responded to touch or voice or presence, who had been lost somewhere inside his own head with no way back.

Shane was breathing now. Shane was present now. Shane was curled against this man's chest like it was the only safe harbor in a storm, and for the first time since David had been told about the plane, he was certain that his son could actually survive the night.

David's eyes softened. The tension that had been living in his shoulders since he'd called Yuna's phone over and over and gotten nothing, drained out of him in a long, slow exhale. He didn't ask how. He didn't ask why. He didn't ask for how long. He didn't ask about the decade of rivalry or the public animosity or the carefully constructed lies.

He just settled back into his plastic chair, sitting on Shane's other side and, without a word, reached out and took his hand—the one that wasn't currently fisted in Ilya's jacket. Creating a quiet triangle of support around the boy they both loved.

Ilya's brain short-circuited.

He stared at David, utterly frozen, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the anger, the accusations, the something that had to be coming, because this—this quiet acceptance, this uncomplicated love—didn't exist in Ilya's understanding of the world. But nothing came. 

He just sat there, his thumb rubbing slow circles into Shane's knuckles. He didn't look at Ilya with suspicion or judgment. He didn't demand explanations or promises. He just was there, a steady, quiet presence, asking for nothing except the chance to support his child.

Shane, still tucked against Ilya's shoulder, let out a shaky breath. His fingers tightened briefly around his father's hand, a small, unconscious acknowledgment of the connection. His weight sagged further into Ilya's side, his breathing finally, finally beginning to even out into something that resembled rest rather than survival. Ilya looked down at the top of Shane's head. Then he looked at David, who was watching his son with an expression of such profound love that it made Ilya's chest ache with something he couldn't name.

Of course, exactly like every other good, fragile thing in Ilya’s entire life, the profound, quiet tenderness of the moment was violently shattered, in this case by the obnoxiously loud voice of Hayden Pike.

"What the—ough!"

Ilya didn't even bother to lift his heavy head or tear his gaze away from the top of Shane’s messy hair to visually confirm that Jackie had just physically elbowed her idiotic husband in the ribs. He simply tightened his arms protectively, completely ignoring the baffled, sputtering man who was currently having his entire understanding of the universe forcefully rewritten.

"We are just going to go for a quick walk downstairs to stretch our legs," Jackie announced, her voice suddenly rang out with a saccharine, terrifyingly sweet cheerfulness that brooked absolutely no argument. "We’ll be right back!"

"But Jackie—"

"Hayden."

“Yes, baby, I’m sorry”

Without waiting for a single word of acknowledgment from the three men huddled in the center of the room, she clamped her hand onto her husban’s wrist with the vice-like grip of a seasoned hockey wife and ruthlessly dragged her stunned, unresisting husband backward toward the open elevator doors. Ilya listened to the sound of them stepping inside, to the muffled thump of Hayden's body hitting the elevator wall, to the doors sliding closed with a definitive shush.

And then, silence.

With the chaotic energy of the Pikes gone, the only sounds left were the low, sterile hum of the hospital ventilation, the distant, rhythmic beep of cardiac monitors down the hall, and the soft, steady cadence of Shane's breathing against his chest.

Ilya let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and let his heavy head fall back against the cold plaster wall. His eyes burned, desperately wanting to close. The adrenaline was finally crashing, leaving him hollow and aching. But Shane was still pressed flush against his side, still breathing just a fraction too fast, still trembling in small, involuntary waves that traveled right through Ilya's chest. So he kept his eyes open. Kept his arm locked securely around those shaking shoulders. Kept his thumb moving in slow, grounding circles against Shane's bicep.

Across from them, David shifted slightly in his plastic chair. Not moving away, just... settling. Getting comfortable in the gravity of the situation. His thumb never once stopped its slow, rhythmic circles over Shane's pale knuckles and Ilya watched the way the rigid fingers relaxed incrementally with every single pass. Watched the way David's gaze never left his son's exhausted face. Such a small thing. A father quietly holding his son's hand in a freezing hospital waiting room, demanding absolutely nothing, just offering a steady presence.

Ilya had never experienced anything remotely like it in his entire life.

He looked down at the top of Shane's head, his throat tight. The messy, sweat-dampened hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck, and Ilya wanted to press his face there, to breathe him in like he'd done a hundred times before when Shane was asleep and couldn't see how desperate Ilya was for the scent of him. But he couldn't—not from this angle, not with Shane curled against his chest like this. So instead he pressed his nose into Shane's hair, right at the crown of his head, and breathed deep.

Shane shifted against him, a small, hesitant movement, and Ilya felt more than heard the shaky exhale that escaped his lips.

"I feel so stupid." Shane whispered, his voice thick, wavering, and deeply embarrassed. "I'm sorry about this. All of it. You shouldn't have to—"

"Stop." Ilya's voice was quiet but firm, his hand coming up to cup the back of Shane's head. "You do not apologize for being human, Shane. Never to me."

Shane tilted his head back just enough to look up at him, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy, his face blotchy in a way that would probably embarrass him later when he had the energy to be embarrassed. Right now he just looked exhausted and open and impossibly young despite everything.

"You're really here," Shane breathed, and there was something wondering in his voice, like he was still trying to make the math work in his head. "I called you, and you just... got in your car and drove. In February. At midnight."

Ilya shrugged, the movement jostling Shane slightly against his side. "Was not midnight when I left. Was almost midnight. Close enough."

"That's not the point."

"What is the point?"

Shane's brow furrowed, that familiar crease appearing between his eyes even through the exhaustion. "The point is, it's the middle of the season. You're supposed to be in Boston. And you drove six hours—"

"Three and a half."

Shane blinked. Then his expression shifted entirely—the exhaustion still there, the red-rimmed eyes, the blotchy skin, but something else flickering through the haze. His jaw tightened. His spine straightened just a fraction, and suddenly he looked less like someone who'd been crying his little heart out and more like someone you did not want to argue with. Ilya thought he looked cute.

"Three and a half?" Shane's voice climbed, sharp with disbelief. He actually pushed back enough to look Ilya in the face, his eyes narrow. "Rozanov, the roads are shit this time of yeart there's black ice everywhere. You could have wrapped your stupid car around a tree, and then where would we be? Huh? Then I'd be sitting here waiting for news about my mother and also waiting for news about my—" He stopped abruptly, the word catching in his throat, but his glare didn't waver. "News that I would have to learn over the internet because no one would have thought it was important to tell me, because nobody fucking knows about us. No, no you don't get to do that. You don't get to drive like a maniac just because I had a bad night."

Ilya blinked at him. The shift was so sudden, so completely Shane—the way his brain could flip from devastated to angry in seconds—that for a moment Ilya just stared. Then something warm bloomed in his chest.

It was ridiculous. He was being yelled at, in a hospital waiting room, at three in the morning, by a man who looked like he'd been put through a washing machine. And all Ilya could think was: This is what it feels like to have someone who would be angry if you died.

"You are scolding me," Ilya said slowly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite his best efforts to suppress it.

"Yes, I'm scolding you! Somebody has to! You clearly don't have a single functioning brain cell when it comes to your own safety!"

"I have many brain cells. They were all focused on getting here."

"Then they're the wrong brain cells!" Shane's voice cracked slightly, but he powered through, his hand still fisted in Ilya's jacket like he was trying to anchor himself to something solid. "You don't—you can't just—do you have any idea what would've happened if—"

"I didn't." Ilya's voice was soft now, amused and tender in equal measure. "I am here. In one piece. Your mother is the one in surgery, not me. Focus on the correct crisis, Hollander."

Shane stared at him, his jaw working. Ilya could see the war playing out on his face—the need to keep yelling versus the bone-deep gratitude that he'd come at all. The gratitude won. It always won with Shane, Ilya was learning. No matter how much he wanted to be practical, to be careful, to be the responsible one—Ilya made him want to throw caution into oncoming traffic. Which was ironic, given the current conversation.

"You're such an idiot," Shane muttered, but his voice had gone soft, and he slumped heavier against Ilya's chest, his grip on the jacket loosening just enough to be comfortable. "A complete, reckless, stupid idiot."

"A very safe idiot," Ilya corrected, pressing his smile into Shane's hair so he wouldn't see it. "Who made excellent time."

"Don't brag about speeding."

"Is not bragging. Is stating facts. There is difference."

Shane made a sound that was almost a laugh—small and tired and cracked at the edges, but real. It vibrated through Ilya's chest, and Ilya felt something in his own ribcage finally, finally start to unclench. It had been wound tight since the moment he'd answered the phone in Boston and heard nothing but ragged breathing on the other end.

"You're impossible," Shane whispered against his collar.

"You called me, so really, you did this to yourself."

Shane huffed, but there was no real irritation in it. Just exhaustion and relief and that warm, wondering thing that had been growing between them for years, the thing they were both too scared to name until tonight.

Across from them, David was watching. And there was something in his eyes—a glint of recognition, maybe. The look of a man who'd also broken a few speed limits tonight, for a reason that wasn't so different from Ilya's. The look of a man who also loved someone whose brain ran at a different speed than everyone else and whose body was currently broken on a surgical table.

David Hollander had spent forty years loving Yuna—her intensity, her brightness, her glorious, overwhelming way of filling every room she entered. Forty years of watching her burn bright and trying to keep up. Forty years of knowing, with absolute certainty, that there was no version of his life that made sense without her in it.

And Ilya? Ilya had spent ten years circling Shane. Ten years pretending he didn't feel it, didn't need it, didn't wake up in hotel rooms reaching for someone who was already gone. And tonight, when he'd finally stopped pretending—when he'd admitted to himself, in the dark of his car at a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, that he loved Shane Hollander more than he loved his own life—he looked up from the pretty boy in his arms and saw the same love reflected back at him in David's tired eyes.

The same fear. The same fierce, bone-deep devotion. The same absolute refusal to let the people they loved face the dark alone.

David watched him—watched the way his hands cradled Shane's shoulders like he was something precious, watched the way he pressed his face into Shane's hair like he was breathing him in, watched the way his thumb never stopped its slow, grounding path against Shane's arm—and he understood.

This wasn't just attraction. This wasn't just convenience or secrecy or whatever story these kids had been telling themselves. This was the real thing. The kind of love that made you drive through the night without thinking. The kind of love that made you sit in hard plastic chairs and refuse to sleep because the person in your arms needed you to be awake. The kind of love that David had spent his entire adult life feeling for Yuna. He saw it, clear as day.

Ilya Rozanov loved his son the way David loved his wife. Completely. Desperately. Without question or hesitation.

And from the way Shane was curled into Rozanov's side, from the way his fingers were twisted into his jacket like he'd never let go, from the way his breathing had finally evened out and he'd laughed despite his panic—

Shane loved him back just the same.

David's eyes burned. He blinked rapidly, looking away for a moment, giving himself a second to process the weight of it. When he looked back, Ilya was watching him.

There was something in Ilya's expression—a flicker of uncertainty, maybe, or the barest hint of defensiveness, like he was bracing for David to say something, to pull Shane away, to tell him he didn't belong here. But David didn't do any of those things. He just looked at Ilya, really looked at him, and let everything he was feeling show on his face. The recognition. The acceptance. The quiet, overwhelming gratitude that someone loved his son this much.

Ilya's ears went hot. He felt the flush creeping up his neck, but he didn't look away. Didn't hide. Just tightened his arm around Shane's shoulders and let himself be seen.

The silence that followed was heavy, but not uncomfortable—the kind of quiet that comes after something important has been said without words. David cleared his throat softly, swiping at his eyes with his free hand. Then, slowly, he pushed himself up from his chair. The plastic creaked under him, the sound loud in the stillness.

"I'm going to find some water," he murmured, already moving. He squeezed Shane's hand once before letting go, a small, deliberate pressure. "Give you two a minute."

Shane's head lifted slightly, a flicker of concern crossing his exhausted face. "Dad, you don't have to—"

"I know." David's voice was gentle, firm. He straightened slowly, his body protesting the hours of sitting. "But I'm going to anyway. Been sitting too long. I need to move."

He looked at Ilya then—a long, steady look that made Ilya's spine straighten instinctively. But there was no judgment in it. No warning. Just that same quiet acknowledgment from before, the look that said; I see you. I see what this is. And you don't have to be scared of me.

David nodded once, just a small movement, and then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor.

The quiet that followed was different—softer, more private, like the room itself was giving them permission to breathe. Shane exhaled slowly, his shoulders dropping as some of the tension finally released its grip. He shifted against Ilya, tilting his head back just enough to meet his eyes. They were still red-rimmed, still exhausted, but underneath all of that there was something lighter. Something that looked almost like peace.

Then his forehead creased again. "What were you doing?" He asked, his voice still thick but steadier now. "When I called. What were you doing?"

Ilya blinked down at him. "What?"

"When you answered. You picked up so fast. What were you doing?"

Ilya hesitated. It felt stupid to admit now, in the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital waiting room, that he'd been spiraling over a news report. That he'd watched a plane crash on television and immediately thought about Shane—where he was, when his last game was, whether he could have been on that flight, if he was safe. That he'd typed out a text and deleted it three times because he couldn't figure out how to say that he couldn't properly breathe with just the thought of something bad happening to him, without sounding insane.

But Shane was looking up at him with those eyes—still exhausted, but focused now, present in a way they hadn't been all night—and Ilya found he didn't want to lie. Not about this.

"I was watching the news," he said quietly. "They showed the plane. The emergency landing. And I thought—" He stopped, his jaw tightening.

Shane's fingers curled tighter into his jacket. "You thought what?"

"I thought about you." The words came out rougher than he intended, stripped of all his usual careful control. "I did the schedule in my head. Montreal played at home Saturday, so you should be safe, but I could not—" He exhaled sharply. "I could not make my brain stop. So I sat there trying not to think about you. And then you called."

Shane was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. "You were scared."

"I was... concerned."

"Same thing."

"Is different. Concerned is rational. Scared is—" Ilya cut himself off, frustrated with his own inability to find the right words. "I do not get scared, Hollander. I am Russian. We do not have that word."

"Liar."

"Rude."

Shane's mouth twitched. It was small, barely a movement at all, but Ilya saw it. Felt it, more like, in the way the tension in Shane's shoulders eased just a fraction.

"You're a terrible liar," Shane murmured. "You were scared for me. And then I called, and I was having a full meltdown on your phone, and that definitely helped."

"Immensely," Ilya deadpanned. "Was exactly what I needed. Ten out of ten experience."

Shane let out a real laugh this time—short, surprised, punched out of him before he could stop it. It was watery and exhausted and absolutely the most beautiful sound Ilya had heard in hours.

"I'm sorry," Shane said, but he was smiling now, just a little. "That's terrible."

"It is not terrible." Ilya's voice softened. "You called me. That is the opposite of terrible. I am always happy when you call me." The words came out before he could stop them, more honest than he'd intended. But Shane was looking at him with those impossibly bright eyes that seemed to see right through him, and he did not want to take it back.

The hour was late, the adrenaline had long since burned away, and something in Ilya Rozanov's chest was cracking open whether he liked it or not.

"I fell apart on your phone."

"You trusted me with falling apart." Ilya's thumb traced a slow path against Shane's shoulder. "That means everything, Shane. That you wanted me. That you chose me."

Shane's breath caught. His eyes went bright again, but the tears didn't fall this time. They just sat there on his lower lashes, catching the harsh light.

"I would never have called anyone else," Shane admitted quietly. "I just—I needed to hear your voice. I needed you to tell me it was going to be okay, even if you didn't know. Even if you couldn't promise. I just needed you to say it. I never thought—I didn't even have to ask you to come."

Ilya's throat tightened. He thought about the phone in his hand, the way his thumb had hovered over the send button on a text he never sent. The way his heart had lurched when Shane's name appeared on the screen. The way he'd answered without thinking, without strategy, without any of the careful walls he'd spent a decade building.

"You called," Ilya said simply. "I came. That is how it works. You do not have to ask."

Shane shook his head slowly, a tiny movement against Ilya's chest. "That's not how it works for most people."

"I am not most people."

"No." Shane's voice was impossibly soft. "You're really not."

For a moment, they just looked at each other. Ilya was acutely aware of everything—the weight of Shane against his side, the warmth of him, the way his fingers were still twisted into Ilya's jacket like Ilya was something worth holding onto.

And Ilya wanted to tell him. Wanted to tell him every single secret he had ever kept, every single thought that had filled his head during all those miles he'd driven. How scared he'd been. How worried. Wanted Shane to know him. All of him. The good parts and the broken ones and all the messy, complicated space in between. Ilya wanted to tell him everything.

"When you told me what happened," Ilya said quietly, his thumb resuming its slow path against Shane's shoulder, "I thought about my mom."

Shane went still.

"I remembered how it felt," Ilya continued, the words coming slowly, painfully. "When I found her. How lonely I was, like the floor was gone. And I was not going to let you sit here alone and feel that. I could not."

Shane's eyes went bright again, but he blinked rapidly, forcing the tears back. "I didn't know that," he whispered. "About your mom. I mean, I knew she—but I didn't know you were there. That you found her."

Ilya nodded, not trusting his voice.

"That's—" Shane swallowed hard. "Thank you. For telling me. And for coming. For not letting me be alone."

"You are never alone." The words came out fierce, absolute. "Not anymore. Not while I am breathing. You understand me, Hollander?"

Shane stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I do." And then he reached up, his fingers brushing against the dark circles under Ilya's eyes with a gentleness that made Ilya's chest ache. "You look terrible," he murmured. "When did you last sleep?"

Ilya caught his wrist, turning his head to press a kiss to Shane's palm without thinking. The gesture was so natural, so automatic, that he did not realize what he'd done until he felt Shane's fingers curl against his cheek.

"I do not remember," Ilya admitted against his skin. "Sleep is for people who are not worried about their—" He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "Sleep is for people who are not worried about the people they love."

The words hung in the air between them. Shane's eyes went wide, his breath catching audibly.

"The people you— Ilya " Shane's voice cracked and his face crumpled in a completely different way. Not the panic from before—this was softer, more vulnerable, his bottom lip trembling as fresh tears welled up. He tried again.

"I love you," Shane whispered, the words tumbling out like he could not hold them back anymore. "I know this is—I know we don't—but I love you. I have loved you for so long, I don't even remember what it felt like before. And I'm sorry if that is too much, I'm sorry if you aren't ready, I'm sorry—"

Ilya's brain short-circuited. Completely. Entirely. Every single thought evacuated his head at once, leaving nothing but static and the sound of Shane Hollander saying those three words into the space between them.

Shane must have seen something in his expression—horror, maybe, or shock, or just the blank look of a system that had completely crashed—because he stopped mid-sentence. His eyes went impossibly wider. His face went pale beneath the tear tracks.

And then he tried to pull away.

It was a small movement, barely a shift, but Ilya felt it like a physical blow. Felt Shane's muscles tense, felt him start to retreat, felt the fragile thing they had built tonight start to crack.

Ilya's arm locked around him. Tight. Immovable.

"Stop," Ilya said, his voice rough. "Do not—Shane. Stop moving."

Shane froze, his eyes searching Ilya's face with something that looked terrifyingly like resignation. Like he was bracing for impact. Like he already knew what was coming.

Ilya stared at him. This beautiful, broken, impossible man who had just handed him his entire heart like it was nothing. Like it was something Ilya deserved.

"You love me," Ilya said slowly, testing the words. They felt huge in his mouth. Terrifying. Right.

Shane flinched. "I shouldn't have—I know it's too soon, I know we haven't talked about it, I just—with everything that happened tonight, I couldn't—"

"Shane."

"—keep pretending that I don't feel this, and I understand if you don't feel the same, I don't expect—"

"Shane."

Shane's mouth snapped shut. His eyes were bright and wet and absolutely terrified.

Ilya cupped his face with both hands, ignoring the way his own fingers were trembling. Ignoring everything except the man in front of him who had just shattered every wall Ilya had ever built.

"I love you too," Ilya said. The words came out rough, scraped raw, absolutely certain. "I have loved you for years. I did not know how to say it. I did not think I was allowed to want it. But I love you, Shane. I love you."

Shane stared at him. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Nothing came out.

Then, slowly, incredibly, his face broke into something Ilya had never seen before. It was exhausted and tear-streaked and absolutely radiant. It was the kind of smile that started in his eyes and spread outward, warming everything it touched. It was the smile of someone who had just been given permission to stop running.

"Yeah?" Shane whispered.

Ilya let out a sound that was half laugh, half something else entirely. "Yeah."

Shane surged forward, pressing his face into Ilya's neck, his whole body shaking with something that might have been laughter or crying or both. Ilya held him through it, one hand cradling the back of his head, the other pressed flat against his spine, grounding them both.

"You're such an idiot," Shane mumbled against his skin, his voice muffled and wet. "I cannot believe you made me say it first."

"You did not even let me finish my sentence."

"Your sentence was going nowhere."

"It was going somewhere. I was building up to it."

"You were not."

"I absolutely was. I am a very romantic person."

Shane pulled back just enough to look at him, one eyebrow raised. His face was a mess and he was absolutely beautiful. "You're literally the least romantic person I have ever met."

"Rude. I drove three and a half hours for you."

"While speeding."

"Romantically speeding."

Shane laughed. It was wet and wobbly and perfect. "That isn't a thing."

"Is a thing in Russia."

"You are not in Russia."

"Thank God for that." Ilya pressed his forehead against Shane's, breathing him in. "I love you," he said again, softer this time, like he was still learning the shape of the words. "I love you, and I am not going anywhere. Okay?"

Shane nodded, a tiny movement that brushed their noses together. "Okay." His hand came up to curl around the back of Ilya's neck, holding him there. "I love you too. Just so we're clear."

"Crystal clear."

"Good."

They stayed like that for a moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other's air, and Ilya could feel Shane's pulse through the point where their skin touched, could feel the way his breath kept catching like he was waiting for something—like he, too, couldn't quite believe in this, couldn't quite believe that Ilya would stay, like he was waiting for Ilya to disappear the way he always had.

Ilya had spent ten years disappearing from Shane Hollander. Ten years of hotel room doors closing behind him, of leaving before the sun came up, of pretending that what they had was just convenience, just release, just something to burn through until the next game. Ten years of walking away because it was easier than staying.

But he was so tired of walking away. So desperate for a place to stay.

So he tilted his head, just slightly, and kissed him.

It was soft at first—barely a press of lips, a question more than a statement—but Shane made a sound against his mouth, small and desperate and relieved, and something in Ilya's chest exploded. So he pulled Shane closer and kissed him like he meant it, like he meant every single word they'd just said and a thousand more he didn't know how in english.

And Shane kissed him back like he was drowning and Ilya was air, like he'd been holding his breath for years and had finally been given permission to breathe, his fingers curling into the hair at the nape of Ilya's neck, holding him there, keeping him close, like he still couldn't quite believe Ilya would stay.

But Ilya wasn't going anywhere. Not now. Not ever. He knew that with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, heavier and more real than anything he'd ever felt.

He could not believe he had gone ten years without this. Without the right to hold Shane like this, to kiss him like this, to let himself feel the full weight of what Shane meant to him. Every hotel room, every stolen night, every goodbye that left him hollow—it all led here. To this moment. To Shane warm and alive and his in a way he had never allowed himself to want.

The kiss deepened, turned desperate, turned into something Ilya couldn't control and didn't want to—he poured every mile he'd driven into it, every second of terror, every prayer he'd whispered to a God he didn't believe in, kissing Shane like he was trying to memorize the shape of him, the taste of him, the way he fit so perfectly against Ilya's mouth.

And then he tasted salt.

Not just Shane's tears—though those were there, mixing between their lips, warm and wet and overwhelming—but there was more, too much salt for it to be only Shane, and Ilya pulled back just enough to breathe, just enough to see, and realized with a jolt that his own face was wet. When had that happened? When had the tears started? He couldn't remember, couldn't remember the last time he had cried, couldn't remember the last time he had let himself feel anything this much.

Shane was looking at him with those impossibly bright eyes, his own face a mess of tear tracks and wonder, and he raised one hand slowly, gently, brushing his thumb across Ilya's cheekbone, catching a tear before it could fall.

"Hey," Shane whispered, his voice wrecked and beautiful. "You're crying."

Ilya shook his head, a tiny, automatic denial. "I do not cry."

"Uh-huh." Shane's thumb traced the same path again, following the trail of another tear. "Tell that to your face."

"Is the hospital. Bad air. Makes eyes water."

Shane laughed—soft and wet and the most stunning man Ilya had ever seen. "You're ridiculous."

"Okay," he admitted, his voice rough. "Maybe a little crying. But only because you are very emotional tonight. Is contagious."

Shane's laugh was brighter this time, louder, filling the small space between them. He pressed his forehead back against Ilya's, breathing him in.

"I love you," Shane said again, like he could not say it enough. Like he needed Ilya to hear it, to believe it, to carry it with him. "I love you so much. I'm so fucking grateful you are here."

Ilya kissed him again—shorter this time, softer, just a brush of lips to remind himself that this was real. Then Shane's hand slid down from his neck, pressing flat against the center of Ilya's chest. Right over his heart, which was currently trying with all its might to violently beat its way out of his ribcage.

"Your heart is going crazy," Shane murmured against his lips.

"You are very annoying."

Shane smiled, close enough that Ilya could feel the curve of it. "You love it."

"Da," Ilya said quietly, the word slipping out before he could stop it, warm and certain and absolutely true. "I do."

For a moment they just breathed each other's air, foreheads pressed together, Shane's hand still flat against the frantic rhythm of Ilya's heart. Ilya could feel each beat like a countdown to something he couldn't name.

Then the elevator dinged.

The sound was soft, polite, entirely out of place in the quiet of the surgical wing. But Ilya felt Shane tense against him, felt the way his breathing began to quicken again. Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Three sets of them. Low voices, hushed but not urgent. Ilya kept his arm locked around Shane's shoulders, kept his thumb moving in that slow, grounding path against his bicep—the one that seemed to calm him earlier. He wasn't going to let go just because company was coming. Not now. Not after everything.

Shane shifted, pulling back just enough to break the press of their foreheads, to be able to see. But he didn't let go—his hand stayed curled in Ilya's jacket, his body still pressed warm against Ilya's side. Just enough space to face whatever was coming, but not enough to lose the connection.

David appeared first, a paper cup of water in his hand. His eyes found them immediately—found the way they were still tangled together, found the tear tracks still fresh on both their faces—and something in his expression softened, like he'd already known what he'd find and was glad to be right.

Behind him, Jackie emerged from the stairwell, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd spent too many hours in hospitals. And behind her, looking significantly less shell-shocked than when he'd left, was Pike.

The man's eyes landed on them and, for a split second, his step faltered. Ilya watched him take it in—the way Shane was curled into Ilya's side, the way Ilya's arm was wrapped around him like a protective shield, the way neither of them had moved apart despite the audience. Hayden's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

Then Jackie's elbow found his ribs, and he made a sound that was half grunt, half surrender.

"Hayden," Jackie said sweetly, "sit down and be quiet."

Hayden sat, dropping into the chair closest to the vending machines. Jackie sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched. She didn't say anything. Just watched them with that warm, knowing look that made Ilya feel like she could see straight through to his bones.

David settled back into his plastic chair, the one he'd occupied for hours, and reached for Shane's hand like he'd done a thousand times before—like it was the most natural thing in the world. Shane didn't even look. He just moved his hand, the one that had been pressed flat against Ilya's heart, sliding it off Ilya's chest and onto his own thigh, close enough for his father to reach. David's fingers found his instantly, wrapping around them with that same quiet, unthinking ease. Like muscle memory. Like love so ingrained it didn't need words.

The gesture was so natural that Ilya felt his heart breaking a little.

For a long moment, no one spoke. The silence wasn't uncomfortable perse, but it was heavy with everything none of them knew how to say. Then Shane shifted against Ilya's side, his fingers tightening briefly on his dad hold before he spoke.

"I should—" Shane started, his voice still rough but steadier now. He cleared his throat, tried again. "I should explain. About us. About... everything."

Surprisingly to Ilya, it was Hayden's idiotic head that snapped up at Shane comment. "Shane, man, you don't have to—"

"I know." Shane cut him off, but there was no sharpness in it. Just exhaustion and something that looked almost like peace. "I know I don't have to. But I want to. I'm so tired of lying. To the people I love. I can't—not anymore. Not after tonight."

Ilya felt the words land in his chest like stones. He looked down at Shane, at the way his jaw was set with that stubborn determination that Ilya had spent ten years pretending to hate, and something warm and aching bloomed behind his ribs.

"Shane," Ilya murmured, low enough that only he could hear. "You do not have to do this tonight. You are exhausted. You have been through enough."

Shane tilted his head back to look at him, and his eyes were puffy but absolutely certain. "I know I'm exhausted. I'm so exhausted I can barely think straight." A small, tired smile tugged at his lips. "Which means I'm too tired to panic about this. And I don't want to keep pretending. Not with them. Not after tonight. Not when the last thing I said to my mom was a lie."

David leaned forward slowly, his brow furrowing with gentle concern. "What do you mean, kid?"

Shane's cheeks flushed—just a little, a faint pink that crept up from his collar. He glanced at Ilya, then back at his father, then at Hayden and Jackie, who were watching with matching expressions of careful attention.

"I ask her for vodka," Shane said quietly.

Ilya blinked. "What?"

Shane's flush deepened. "The vodka you like. The Russian one—the fancy one I can never remember the name of." He wouldn't look at Ilya, his gaze fixed somewhere on the opposite wall. "You mentioned it once. Months ago. I don't even remember when. But I remembered. And I asked my mom to bring some from New York. They don't sell it here, and I wanted—" He stopped, swallowed. "I wanted to have it for you. For when I went to Boston on Friday."

Ilya's brain stopped working. Completely. Entirely. He stared at Shane, utterly frozen, trying to process what he'd just heard.

Shane kept going, his voice getting smaller but somehow more determined. "The game on Friday. In Montreal. I thought maybe I could come over after. Stay the night. We could—I don't know." He finally glanced at Ilya, just for a second, blushing even more, before looking away again. "But when my mom asked why I needed it, I lied. I told her it was for a teammate. Someone on the team who liked it. Which was stupid, because none of my teammates drink that stuff, and also I'm a terrible liar, and she definitely knew I was hiding something, but I just—I couldn't tell her the truth. Not then." His voice cracked, wobbled, broke. "And now she's in surgery, and the last thing I said to her was a lie."

Ilya couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except stare at the man pressed against his side—this impossible, ridiculous, devastating man who had remembered a throwaway comment from months ago, who had asked his mother to smuggle alcohol across the border, who had been planning for Friday, planning for them, while Ilya had been sitting in his empty apartment trying not to think about how much he missed him.

David was the first to move. He leaned forward, his free hand coming up to rest on Shane's knee. "Shane. Look at me."

Shane did, his eyes holding that familiar shine he hadn't been able to shake all night.

"First," David said quietly, "mom is going to be fine. She's going to wake up, and you're going to have plenty of time to tell her everything you want to tell her. About the vodka. About Ilya. About whatever else you've been keeping from us. You'll get that chance."

Shane's breath hitched.

"Second," David continued, his voice gentle but firm, "you don't owe us any explanations. Not tonight. Not ever, if you don't want to give them. You're allowed to have a private life. You're allowed to love who you love without having to justify it to anyone. That's not lying, son. That's just... living. On your own terms."

Ilya's throat closed.

He stared at David—at the way he looked at Shane, at the way his voice wrapped around every word like it was something precious. There was no judgment there. No disappointment. No edge waiting to cut. Just patience and so much love. Just the quiet, absolute certainty of a man who had spent years looking at his son and seeing someone worth looking at.

Ilya had known, logically, that Shane grew up way differently than him. He'd seen the way Shane's face softened when he talked about his parents, filed away the small details that painted a picture of a childhood nothing like his own. But knowing something and seeing it were two different things.

Seeing it was this: David looking at his twenty-seven-year-old son—captain of an NHL team, grown man, professional athlete—with the same expression Ilya imagined he'd worn when Shane was a little boy and scraped his knee. Like nothing had changed. Like Shane would always be his little boy, and that was a privilege, not a problem.

Seeing it was this: the way David's voice never wavered, never hardened, never lost that undercurrent of warmth even when he was saying something serious. The way his eyes never left Shane's face, tracking every flicker of emotion, like he was cataloguing his son's heartbeat in real time.

Seeing it was this: Shane nodding, quick and eager, not because he was scared of his father's disapproval, but because he wasn't. Like he needed David to know he understood, he agreed, he was listening but he just needed to make his point heard. Like earing this wasn’t something strange or remarkable. Because he knew, with absolute certainty, that David was on his side. Because he'd always known. Because that was just how it worked in the Hollander house.

Ilya's eyes burned.

He blinked rapidly, looking away for a moment, pressing his face into Shane's hair to hide. It didn't help. The tears were there anyway, hot and unwanted, spilling over before he could stop them.

This was what it looked like to be loved by a father who stayed. Who held your hand in hospital waiting rooms. Who looked at you at twenty-seven the same way he looked at you at seven—like you were the most important thing in the world

Ilya had never had that. Would never have that. His father's love came with conditions, with performance, with the constant grinding pressure to be enough—and even then, it wasn't love. Not really. Not like this. But Shane had it. Shane had always had it. And as Ilya held him in that freezing hospital room, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing, the warmth of his body pressed close, he waited for the envy to come.

He knew envy. Knew it the way he knew the back of his own hand, the way he knew the sharp bite of a Moscow winter, the way he knew the hollow echo of an apartment where no one waited for him. Envy was an old friend. An unwelcome one, but familiar. He'd felt it watching other kids with their parents at the rink when he was young. Felt it watching teammates pull out their phones to call their mothers after games. Felt it a thousand times, a million times, in a thousand different ways.

So he waited for it now. Waited for the familiar twist in his gut, the bitter taste on his tongue, the small, ugly voice that whispered why not me, why not mine, why not ever.

But it didn't come.

He searched for it—really searched, dug deep into the dark corners of his chest where all the old wounds lived—and found nothing but space. Nothing but warmth. Nothing but the steady, impossible realization that what filled him wasn't envy at all.

It was gratitude.

Huge, overwhelming, bone-deep gratitude. So big it made his ribs ache, made his breath catch, made fresh tears spill silently into Shane's hair.

Because Shane knew. Shane knew what love was supposed to look like. He'd grown up with it, breathed it in like air, had it woven into the very fabric of who he was. He knew what it felt like to be held without conditions, to be loved without performance. And with all that knowledge, with all that history, with every example of what love should be burned into his bones—

Shane had chosen Ilya.

Shane had looked at Ilya Rozanov—broken, sharp-edged, terrified of his own heart—and seen something worth keeping. Something worth calling at midnight. Something worth coming back to, over and over again. Something worth being brave for. Something worth holding onto in a freezing hospital waiting room while his mother was in surgery. Shane had seen something in Ilya that Ilya himself couldn't find. Had found something worth loving in all the broken, messy, complicated space between Ilya's ribs.

He pressed his face deeper into Shane's hair, hiding the tears, hiding the wrecked expression he could feel pulling at his features. His arm tightened around Shane's shoulders, pulling him closer, and he let the gratitude wash over him like a wave.

Thank you, he thought, though he didn't know if he was thanking Shane or David or whatever cold, indifferent universe had somehow, impossibly, led him here. Thank you for loving him the way he deserves. Thank you for making him someone who could love me back.

Yeah. No envy. Just this. Just gratitude. Just the overwhelming, terrifying, beautiful certainty that somehow, against all odds, he'd been chosen by someone who knew exactly what love was supposed to look like.

Shane moved a little, not pulling away—never pulling away, not anymore—just adjusting, settling deeper into Ilya's side like he belonged there. Like this was normal. Like they'd been doing this for years instead of hours. His free arm—the one not currently being held by his father—slid around Ilya's back, palm pressing flat against the space between his shoulder blades. Warm. Solid. Grounding. And then he just... kept talking.

"—But I want to tell you. I don't want to hide anymore. Not from you. Not from them." He glanced at Hayden and Jackie, then back at his father. "I've been hiding for ten years. I'm so tired of it. And after tonight—after thinking I could lose her without her ever knowing who I really am—I just..." His voice broke again. "I can't. I can't keep—"

Ilya stopped listening.

Not because he didn't care—he cared, god, he cared so fucking much—but because Shane's hand was moving in slow, absent circles against his back. The same motion Ilya had been using on Shane's shoulder all night, mirrored back at him without thought, without intention, like Shane's body had simply decided that this was how they held each other now. Like it was instinct. Like it was habit. Like it was something they'd done a thousand times before.

And maybe, in a way, they had. In the dark. In those stolen hours when the world didn't exist and Shane's skin was the only map Ilya needed. But those moments had always been borrowed, always temporary, always tinged with the knowledge that morning would come and they'd go back to being strangers. This wasn't borrowed. This wasn't temporary. This was Shane, in front of his father, in front of his best friends, holding Ilya like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like he'd been doing it his whole life. Like he never planned to stop.

lya stayed there for a moment longer, still hidden in the soft, dark warmth of Shane's hair, breathing him in. Letting the familiar, comforting smell of him—cedar and salt and something impossibly Shane—calm the last of the static in his chest, ground him in a way nothing else ever had. When he finally lifted his head, David's eyes had softened, and he was squeezing his son's hand gently.

"Then tell us whatever you want to tell us," David said quietly. "We're here. We're listening. And we're not going anywhere."

Shane nodded, a small, grateful movement. He took a breath, clearly gearing up for another round of explanations, when Hayden's voice cut through the quiet.

"You just said ten years." Hayden's voice was quiet now, all the earlier chaos drained out of it. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, looking at Shane like he was trying to reconcile every version of him he'd ever known with this new information. "You're telling me that for a decade—while we were rooming together on road trips, while I was sitting next to you in locker rooms, while I was complaining to you about Ilya Rozanov—you were just..." He trailed off, shook his head. "I don't even know what I'm asking."

Shane's jaw tightened. Just a fraction. His hand, still pressed warm against Ilya's back, didn't stop its slow circles.

"It wasn't like that," Shane said quietly. "It was never like that."

"Then what was it like?"

Shane was quiet for a long moment. Ilya watched him—watched the way his gaze drifted to the blank wall opposite, the way his thumb kept moving against Ilya's spine like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the moment.

"Complicated," Shane finally said. "Messy. Confusing." A small exhale. "We were eighteen when this started. Both of us. Terrified. In way over our heads. And at the beginning we were just fooling around."

Ilya's fingers pressed a little harder against his shoulder—a silent reminder that he was here, that he was not facing this alone. Not anymore.

"We didn't know what we were doing," Shane continued, his voice softer now. "Didn't know what it meant, what it would become. We just knew that when we were together, it felt—" He stopped, searching.

"Like coming up for air," Ilya offered quietly.

Shane glanced at him. Held his gaze for a moment. Then nodded. "Yeah. Like that. Like I was—like we were, finally just ourselves. Not Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, just Shane and Ilya."

Across from them, David was very still. His hand hadn't moved from Shane's. His eyes hadn't left his son's face. Hayden was quiet too, processing. When he spoke again, his voice was different—softer, stripped of its usual bravado.

"God," he said. "You two were just kids."

Shane nodded, his eyes bright.

"Eighteen," Hayden continued, like he was working through it out loud. "You were eighteen. Fresh out of juniors." He shook his head slowly. "I've known you for nine years, Shane, and I thought I knew you pretty good, but—but I have literally never met a version of you that wasn't somehow tangled up with him and I didn’t even suspect it.”

Shane's mouth opened, then closed. There wasn't really anything to say to that. It was true. Every version of himself he could remember, from that terrified rookie to the captain sitting here now, had Ilya somewhere in the margins. Even when they weren't together, even when they were pretending, Ilya was there. A constant. A thread running through everything.

"Ten years."

"Yes Hays, I heard you the first time."

"I don't think you understand how long ten years is, Buddie. That's—that's a decade. That's—" Hayden did some rapid mental math. "That's like, a third of our lives, you need to be a little patience with me here. That's—"

Hayden's mouth opened and closed several times. Jackie patted his knee sympathetically.

"I think what he's trying to say," Jackie offered, "is that the mental image of you two together is going to take some time to process."

"Together," Hayden repeated weakly. "Together together. For ten years. While he was breaking my nose in playoffs."

"That was one time," Ilya said.

"One time? You cross-checked me into the boards so hard I saw stars!"

"You were in front of my net."

"I'm always in front of your net! That's my job!"

"And I always cross-check you. Also my job."

Ilya felt the familiar itch of mischief crawling up his spine. It was strange, after hours of terror and tears, to feel something so normal—but Shane was warm against his side, and Yuna was going to be okay, and Hayden Pike was so easy to rile up. He couldn't help himself.

"That's not—" Hayden sputtered, and for a moment he was fully distracted, caught up in the familiar rhythm of arguing with Ilya Rozanov. It was almost comfortable, this back-and-forth—a dance they'd done a hundred times on ice, just with less blood and more fluorescent lights. Then Hayden caught himself. He blinked, looked back at Shane, and something in his expression shifted. Softened. Like he'd remembered what they were actually here for.

He shook his head, a small, rueful smile tugging at his mouth.

"You," he said to Ilya, "are very annoying."

"I know."

"But you're also—" Hayden paused, glanced at Shane, then back at Ilya. "You're also apparently... this. So I'm going to figure out how to be okay with it."

Ilya raised an eyebrow. "Is that your way of saying you accept me?"

"It's my way of saying I'm trying."

"Trying is first step. Is very good. I am proud of you."

Hayden made a sound that might have been a laugh, buried somewhere under all the exhaustion. "You're impossible."

"Da, because you are so easy."

Across from them, David's quiet voice cut through. "He's got you there, Hayden."

Hayden's head snapped toward Shane's father, betrayal written all over his face. "Not you too."

David shrugged, unrepentant. "I'm just making an observation."

"Observe less."

"I don't think that's how observing works."

Shane laughed—soft and surprised, the sound vibrating against Ilya's side. It was small, barely there, but it was real. And Ilya felt something warm spread through his chest at the sound of it. For a moment, the silence was comfortable. Full of breath and warmth and the slow, settling weight of everything that had been said.

Then Hayden's brow furrowed.

"Wait," he said slowly. "So what was all that with Rose, then? You two seemed serious. For a while there, I thought—"

He felt Shane stiffen beside him. Ilya kept his face carefully neutral, but something cold flickered in his chest. Rose Landry. The actress. The beautiful, famous woman who had been all over the tabloids with Shane. The one from the club, with her perfect smile and her hand on his back. The one Shane could go out in public with. Didn’t need to hide.

He had tried very hard to stop thinking about Rose after Shane told him they weren’t compatible.

Shane made a sound low in his throat. "Hayden—"

"I'm not trying to—" Hayden stopped, ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not trying to be difficult. I just... you seemed serious. You brought her to team events. Jackie and I had dinner with you guys. You held her hand. You introduced her to your mom." He paused. "I thought you were happy."

The silence that followed was heavy. Ilya felt Shane's breathing change—just slightly, just enough to notice.

"I was," Shane said quietly. "Not the way you think, and not the way I wanted to. But I was."

Hayden waited.

Shane took a breath. Let it out. Took another.

"I didn't always know," he began slowly. "What I wanted. Who I was. I mean, I knew I felt things for Ilya, but I also thought—" He stopped, swallowed. "I thought maybe I could be normal. Maybe I could want what everyone else wanted. And with her I tried, I really, really tried. But I just couldn’t."

David's hand tightened on Shane's, just slightly, just a reminder that he was there. But it was Hayden's face that Ilya found himself watching.

Something complicated moved across it. A shadow, quick and dark, crossing his usually open expression when Shane said the word normal. Like the word itself had landed wrong. Like it had hit something tender.

Ilya thought about all the times Hayden had protected Shane on the ice. Dropping his gloves without hesitation, stepping between Shane and anyone who came at him wrong, fighting battles that weren't technically his. He'd always assumed it was just hockey—linemates looking out for each other, the way teammates did. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe Hayden had been protecting Shane from more than just opposing players. Maybe, without even knowing what he was protecting him from, Hayden had been standing guard for years.

He wondered how bad Pike felt. That he couldn't protect Shane from this—from himself, from the years of hiding, from the loneliness of it all. Probably as bad as Ilya himself. Probably worse, in some ways, because Hayden had been right there the whole time and never known.

And wasn't that a thought to have. To feel empathy for Hayden Pike of all people.

"Rose was the first person I ever told. About me. Or more like, she realized and confronted me about it." Shane continued, his voice softer now, his eyes flickering to his father. David was watching him with that same steady, patient love—a look Ilya was beginning to believe was always on his face when he looked at his son. Like there was no version of Shane that could make that love waver. “She was really good about it, really kind. She helped me see that it wasn't—that I wasn't broken. That I could want both, or neither, or whatever, and it didn't make me less of a person." He swallowed hard. "She helped me understand that I'm—that I like men. That it was okay to be gay. That it is okay that I'm gay."

The words hung in the air, heavy and light all at once. Heavy with everything they cost him to say. Light with the relief of finally saying them.

David nodded. Just once. A small, deliberate movement.

"Okay," he said. Not a question. Not a demand for more. Just okay. Like Shane had told him the sky was blue, and David was simply acknowledging it.

Something shifted in Shane's expression—a tiny crack in the careful composure he'd been holding onto, a flicker of something that looked almost like wonder. He didn't speak. Didn't need to, not with his dad.

David squeezed his hand. "I mean it, son. Okay."

And that was it. That was all.

No dramatic embrace. No tears streaming down faces—though David's eyes were wet, and Shane's were bright, and Ilya's own throat was doing something complicated that he refused to examine. Just a father, holding his son's hand, accepting him. Quietly. Completely. Without condition.

Ilya had to look away for a moment. Just a second. Just long enough to press his face into Shane's hair and breathe.

When he looked back, Jackie was watching him. Her expression was soft, knowing—like she understood exactly what that moment had cost Ilya to witness. She didn't say anything. Just gave him a small, warm smile, and turned back to Shane.

"Rose sounds like a good friend," she said quietly.

Shane nodded, his face doing that thing it did when he was trying not to cry. "The best. She still is." A pause. "She's the one who told me to stop being a coward and actually talk to him."

Ilya blinked. "She told you to talk to me?"

"She told me a lot of things." Shane's mouth curved, just slightly. "Mostly that I was being an idiot and that if I didn't do something about it, I'd regret it for the rest of my life."

Ilya didn't know what to say to that. He thought of the months of silence, the ache of it, the way he'd thrown himself into meaningless encounters just to feel something other than the hollow space where Shane used to be. And all that time, Shane had been... Learning? Growing? Becoming someone who could finally say the words out loud? It was thanks to Rose Landry that Shane found the courage to come back to Ilya in Tampa?

Jackie leaned forward slightly. "So when did it—" She gestured vaguely. "When did it become... this?"

"All Stars' Game," Ilya said. "That was where something changed."

Jackie's brow furrowed. "But that was just a few weeks ago."

Shane nodded.

"So you're telling me," she said slowly, "that you two have been dancing around each other for ten years. And you only actually talked about it a few weeks ago?"

Ilya shrugged. "We are not very smart."

Shane huffed a laugh. "Speak for yourself."

"I am speaking for both of us. We are equally stupid. Is part of our charm."

Jackie shook her head, but she was smiling. "That's insane."

"Is love," Ilya corrected. "Insane love. There is difference."

Jackie's smile widened, her head resting against Hayden's shoulder. She looked at Ilya—really looked at him, with something warm and approving in her eyes. "I like him," she said simply, nodding toward Shane. "He's good for you, Shane. You made an excellent choice, just so you know."

The words landed in Ilya's chest like something fragile and unfamiliar. He wasn't sure himself. Wasn't sure Shane had made a good choice at all. There were a thousand reasons why this could fall apart, a thousand ways Ilya could mess it up, a thousand voices in his head that still whispered too rough, too broken, too much.

But Shane had chosen him anyway. This beautiful boy had looked at him in the middle of all this chaos and said I love you like it was the simplest thing in the world. And if Shane let him—if Shane kept choosing him, day after day, year after year—Ilya would spend the rest of his life trying to prove Jackie right. Trying to be the keeper Shane deserved. Trying to make sure Shane never regretted this moment, never looked back and wondered what he'd been thinking.

Shane's flush deepened, but he didn't look away from Jackie. "I know," he said quietly. Not I think so. Not I hope so. Just I know. Like there wasn't a single doubt in his mind. Like Ilya being made for him was as obvious as gravity, as undeniable as the beating of his own heart. Like Ilya was perfect for him the same way Shane was perfect for Ilya.

He didn't turn to look at Ilya. Didn't need to. He just said it—simple and sure—like he'd known it for years. Like it was just a fact, no different from the ice being cold or the sky being blue. And maybe he had known. Maybe, through all those years of hotel rooms and secret phone calls and pretending, Shane had known something Ilya was only now letting himself believe.

I know.

Shane knew. Shane had always known. And Ilya was going to spend the rest of his life making sure that certainty was never misplaced.

"Please stop making bedroom eyes at my best friend in front of me and his father," Hayden complained.

David held up both hands immediately. "No, please don't get me into this." But he was chuckling as he said it, his shoulders shaking slightly.

Ilya felt a grin tugging at his mouth. This—this was what he'd never let himself want. Not just Shane, but this. The easy teasing. The warmth. Being included in the kind of family banter he'd only ever watched from the outside.

"Bedroom eyes?" he repeated, genuinely delighted now. "You think I make bedroom eyes at Shane? This is not bedroom eyes; this is ‘I love you’ eyes."

"I don't know what you make! I'm not an expert on whatever this is!"

"I make many eyes at Shane. Some are bedroom. Some are 'I want to kill you on ice.' Some are both. He is very good at reading them."

Shane groaned against Ilya's shoulder. "Please stop."

"He knows all my looks," Ilya continued, warming to the topic.

He was being himself. Completely, unapologetically himself. And they were laughing with him, not at him. Jackie's head was tipped back against her chair. David had a hand over his mouth. Even Hayden, face buried in his palms, was shaking with something that might have been laughter.

He'd spent so long building walls, making himself small in all the ways that mattered, convincing himself that alone was safe. That if no one got too close, no one could leave. But this—this ease, this warmth, this feeling of taking up space without apologizing for it—was something he'd never let himself want.

And yet here it was. Here he was. And they were still laughing.

"Is very impressive," Ilya continued. "Ten years of practice. From across the ice, I can tell him—" He made a series of exaggerated faces. "This one means 'meet me after.' This one means 'you are in my spot.' This one means 'your hair looks stupid today but I still want to kiss you.'"

"That last one is not a real look," Shane muttered against his shoulder.

"Is absolutely real. You just miss it because you are too busy staring at my ass."

Shane's head snapped up, his face now approximately the color of a tomato. "I do not stare at your ass."

"You do. Is okay. I stare at yours too. Is fair."

"Ilya Rozanov!"

"What? We are being honest now. This is honesty time."

Jackie had given up on subtlety entirely, openly laughing with her head tipped back against the plastic chair. Even David had a hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking.

They're not just tolerating me, Ilya realized, something warm and unfamiliar unfurling in his chest. They're actually enjoying this. They're enjoying me.

And from somewhere behind his hands—currently pressed firmly over his face—Hayden made a muffled groaning sound. He'd curled forward at some point during the conversation, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his palms like a man trying to block out the world. "Okay. So. Ten years. Rookie showcase. Rose was—" He waved a hand vaguely. "—a whole thing. And Tampa was—" Another vague wave. "—recent." He paused. "I have approximately seven hundred more questions, but I'm going to try really hard to be chill about this."

"Try harder," Jackie murmured.

"I am trying!" Hayden pointed at Ilya. "My mortal enemy is apparently in love with my best friend, and has been for the better part of a decade. Give me a break."

"I am not your mortal enemy," Ilya corrected. "I am your captain's lover."

"Same thing." Hayden complained, at the exact same moment Shane muttered under his breath, "Oh my God, why wasn't I on the plane with Mom."

Ilya ignored him completely, too busy soaking in the warmth spreading through his chest—the impossible, terrifying warmth of watching Hayden Pike, of all people, complain and gripe and try, already halfway to accepting him without even realizing it, and for the first time in his life Ilya thought maybe, just maybe, he could stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Is not the same thing," he continued. "Mortal enemy implies we are still fighting. We are not. I am part of the family now. You have to accept me."

"Have to?"

"Is in the rules."

"There are no rules!"

"Family rules. Very important. Jackie already likes me. David likes me. Shane loves me. You are outnumbered."

Hayden lifted his head just enough to glare at Ilya through his fingers. "I hate you."

"No you don't." Ilya pressed a little closer to Shane, letting the warmth of him seep into all the cold places

"I really, really do."

"You bought me a birthday shot last year. At that bar in Boston. After the game."

Hayden froze.

Ilya's smile widened, pressing a little closer to Shane, letting the warmth of him seep into all the cold places. This—this easy back-and-forth, this ridiculous argument—it was exactly what he'd never known he needed. To be seen. To be known. To be teased and to tease back, like he was just another person instead of Ilya Rozanov the villain, the Russian, the outsider.

"I know you remember," Ilya continued, clearly enjoying himself. "We were both there. You bought a round for your linemates. And then you saw me, and you—"

"I was being polite!"

"You bought me a shot. And we clinked glasses. And you said—"

"Don't."

"—'good game, Rozanov.' And I said—"

"Ilya."

"—'good game, Pike. See you next time.' And then we drank." Ilya smiled, slow and infuriating. "That was bonding. You cannot take it back now."

Hayden dropped his face back into his hands with a thump. "I hate everything."

Jackie patted his back sympathetically. "There, there, honey. You'll survive."

"Will I?"

"Probably."

Hayden made a sound that might have been a laugh, buried somewhere under all the suffering. His shoulders shook slightly. "I need a minute," he mumbled.

Shane's voice was quiet, steady. "Take a minute. We're not going anywhere."

Hayden looked at him then—really looked at him. Something in his expression shifted, softened. The jokes fell away, and for a moment he was just Shane's best friend, sitting in a hospital waiting room, trying to find the right words.

"I'm glad you're okay," he said finally. "I mean it. After tonight, after everything—" He stopped, swallowed. "I'm glad you're okay."

Shane nodded, his eyes glistening.

"And I'm sorry," Hayden continued, his voice rougher now. "That I wasn't—that you couldn't tell me. That you had to go through all of that alone. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you the way you needed."

Shane's breath caught. Just a little.

"But I'm glad," Hayden said, "that you came out the other side of it. That you're still here, a better man. That you're—" He gestured vaguely at Shane, at Ilya, at the two of them tangled together. "That you have this. Even if I don't understand it. Even if it's weird." A small, awkward shrug. "I'm glad."

Shane nodded, a small, grateful movement, his expression softening.

"Thanks, Hays."

Hayden waved it off, uncomfortable with the sincerity. "Yeah, well. Don't get used to it. I'm still going to need therapy."

Jackie patted his knee. "We'll get you a good one."

Hayden made a sound that might have been a laugh, buried somewhere under all the suffering. His shoulders shook slightly.

Shane leaned his head against Ilya's shoulder, watching his best friend slowly come apart at the seams with a soft smile plastered in his face. He was still pink, still flustered—but there was something else there too. Something lighter. Something that looked almost like relief.

"You're enjoying this way too much."

"Am enjoying this exactly the right amount. Is perfect amount."

"You're evil."

"I’m a man in love.” Ilya expressed proudly. And then, just low enough that only Shane could hear. "You good?"

Shane glanced at him. Held his gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Yeah," he whispered back. "I think I am."

Ilya believed him.

The waiting room settled into something almost peaceful—the quiet hum of the lights, the distant beep of monitors, the soft sound of Shane breathing against his chest, solid and real and his. Hayden was still muttering into his palms. Jackie was still wiping her eyes. David was still smiling that small, quiet smile. All of it—the grief and the relief and the ridiculous, wonderful chaos of this new thing they were building together—hung in the air like a held breath.

And then a door opened.

Not the elevator. Not the stairwell. One of the heavy double doors down the hall, the ones that led to the restricted areas where families weren't allowed. A figure in surgical scrubs emerged, clipboard in hand, eyes scanning the waiting area. 

Ilya's heart stopped.

He felt Shane tense beside him, felt the way his hand froze mid-circle against Ilya's back. Felt the collective intake of breath from everyone in the room as the surgeon walked toward them.

"Hollander family?"

David was on his feet before the words finished leaving the doctor's mouth. Shane tried to stand too, but his legs wouldn't cooperate—Ilya felt the way they shook, the way his weight sagged, and he tightened his arm around Shane's shoulders, holding him steady.

"Here," David said, his voice rough. "We're here."

The surgeon smiled—a small, tired, genuine smile that made something in Ilya's chest crack open with relief.

"Mrs. Hollander is out of surgery," she said. "The procedure went well. She's stable, and we're very optimistic about her recovery."

Shane made a sound—small and broken and infinitely relieved—and Ilya felt his own eyes burn.

"The orthopedic team was able to repair the fracture in her femur with plates and screws," the surgeon continued. "The spleenectomy was successful, and she tolerated the procedure well. There were no complications beyond what we'd discussed with the family earlier."

"Can we see her?"  David asked, and his voice held everything—the hours of waiting, the fear, the desperate need to finally lay eyes on his wife.

"Very soon." The surgeon's smile widened. "She's in recovery now. The anesthesia needs to wear off a bit more, and we're moving her to a private room on the fifth floor. Give us about twenty minutes, and then you can go up. Two at a time, for now—she'll be tired, and we want to keep things calm."

Shane nodded, quick and eager, tears streaming down his face. "Okay. Okay. Twenty minutes. We can—we can wait twenty minutes."

The surgeon nodded, made a note on her clipboard, and disappeared back through the double doors.

It was over. The words echoed in Ilya's skull, slowly making their way to every part of him that had been braced for impact. Yuna was okay. The air changed. What had been heavy and tight for hours suddenly felt like it could actually fill their lungs again. Shane turned into Ilya's chest and buried his face there.

His breath came in short, uneven gusts—hitching, stuttering, catching on something sharp in his throat. But he didn't make a sound. Just pressed closer, fingers curling into Ilya's jacket, shoulders shaking with the force of holding it all in. Like even now, even after everything, some part of him was still trying to keep it together.

Ilya held him through it. One hand cradling the back of his head, the other pressed flat against his spine. He didn't say anything. Didn't need to. Just let Shane fall apart against his chest in complete, devastating silence.

"I told you," Ilya whispered into his hair, his voice rough. "I told you she was strong. I told you."

Shane nodded against him—a tiny, jerky movement. His breath hitched again. But he didn't cry. Not really. Just kept breathing in those short, uneven gasps, letting Ilya's arms hold him steady until they evened out.

David was finally crying, quietly, his hand still wrapped around Shane's. Jackie had her face buried in Hayden's shoulder, and Hayden—Hayden was patting her back with one hand while surreptitiously wiping his own eyes with the other.

For a long moment, no one moved. No one spoke. They just breathed together, letting the relief wash over them. Eventually, Shane pulled back just enough to look up at Ilya. His eyes were shining with something that looked a hell lot like joy.

"Thank you," he whispered. "For being here. For—for everything."

Ilya shook his head. "You do not thank me for this. This is not—" He stopped, swallowed. "There is nowhere else I would be, Shane. There is nowhere else I want to be. Not ever."

Shane's smile was wobbly and radiant. He leaned up and pressed a kiss to Ilya's mouth—soft and brief and full of everything neither of them could say.

Behind them, Hayden made a gagging noise. "Get a room. There's a hospital full of them and you're choosing to do this here."

Ilya flipped him off without looking away from Shane. 

Jackie laughed. David shook his head, but he was smiling.

Shane's hand found his, fingers lacing together. Ilya looked down at them—his scarred, battered hand wrapped around Shane's—and felt his throat tighten.

"Twenty minutes," Shane murmured. "Then you're meeting my mom."

Ilya's heart stuttered. Not with fear—not anymore—but with the sheer, overwhelming weight of what that meant. Shane wanted him there. In front of his mother. In front of everyone. Not as a secret, not as something to hide, but as his. He'd spent ten years never staying long enough to become a problem, making sure no one got close enough to see the cracks. And now here was Shane Hollander, looking at him like staying was the only option, like leaving wasn't even a thought.

"She will be—she will be on drugs. Very strong drugs. She might not—"

"She'll love you anyway." Shane squeezed his hand. "Trust me."

Ilya still swallowed hard. "I am—I am very nervous."

"Good." Shane grinned. "You should be. She's terrifying." Shane's grin softened into something more genuine. "I'm kidding. Well, mostly." He squeezed Ilya's hand. "I know she's going to love you. She already loves you, actually. She just doesn't know it yet."

Ilya couldn't find the words. Couldn't find anything except frozen in the impossibility of this moment—this boy, this family, this life that somehow, impossibly, was becoming his.

He looked around the room. At David, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, already planning how to rearrange the furniture in Yuna's room to make her more comfortable. At Jackie, whispering something in Hayden's ear that made him snort and shove her away. At Hayden, who was doing a terrible job of looking traumatized, a small smile tugging stubbornly at his mouth. At Shane, warm and solid beside him, holding his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He had came to America at seventeen with nothing but a suitcase and a grief too large for his small body to hold—he had spent his whole life building cages. Beautiful cages, comfortable cages, cages so well-constructed that no one ever guessed the bars were there. He'd filled them with expensive beautiful things and people who only wanted pieces of him, because that was safer than letting anyone close enough to see how broken he truly was.

But this—this freezing hospital waiting room, surrounded by people who were starting to really know him and wanted to stay anyway, next to the only person Ilya had ever loved—this was something he'd never learned how to build, something no one had ever taught him. Something he'd stopped believing existed.

A home.

He lifted Shane's hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. Shane smiled at him, soft and wondering and full of love.

And for the first time in his life, Ilya let himself believe that he wasn't just passing through in a world that didn't have a place for him. That he wasn't a ghost haunting his own existence. That five hundred miles away from the cage he'd called a house, five thousand miles away from the country where he'd first learned that being alone was safer, and after fifteen years of starving on the cold comfort of his own company—he had finally, impossibly, found somewhere to stay.