Chapter Text
“Hey, Hollander. How’s your girl doing? Jesus, man. Sorry!”
Scott Hunter doesn't look sorry. Scott Hunter looks amused, quizzical. It’s the way he always looks at Shane, and it has made Shane feel so fucking paranoid ever since they were sitting next to each other at All Stars, years ago, and Ilya said his room number to Shane on the way by, like a fucking idiot.
Shane scrambles to pick up his phone from where he’d spiked it into the seatback tray when Scott started talking. The plane gives a little lurch beneath them, and Scott holds on to the back of Shane’s seat for balance.
“I'm just waiting for the bathroom,” Scott says, too gently, like he’s talking to a nervous shelter dog. He even gestures ahead of himself, like he thinks it’s possible that Shane forgot he’s sitting in the last row, right before the bathrooms. Why is Shane always making an ass of himself around Scott Hunter? Maybe he’ll just think that Shane is afraid of flying. That’s a normal thing to be afraid of, right? Maybe not for a professional hockey player, but…
Shane is still too spooked to say anything. Glances at his phone quickly and sees that only the last couple of messages with Rose are visible. His earlier whining about wanting to talk to Ilya has been pushed out of view by Rose’s excessive emoji use and her habit of sending like five three word texts instead of just writing a full thought. Not that Shane has been stupid enough to tell Rose Ilya’s name, but even just wanting to talk to a guy. Being nervous about talking to a guy who is also going to be in Florida this week. He eases out a breath when he’s sure that Scott wouldn’t have seen anything incriminating.
Is it weird that Rose called him my holemate in one of the texts? Maybe Scott didn’t read that part.
“Oh, uh, okay,” he says finally. “Sorry, I just. Didn't see you.”
“Okay.” A short, awkward silence. Scott looks like he's trying to work out what to say, or maybe telepathically force the people in the bathrooms to piss faster so this conversation can end. Shane catches up on the last few seconds and remembers the initial question.
“Oh, uh. Rose is good.” He considers leaving it at that, just for plausible deniability or whatever, but finds himself opening his mouth and being honest, because Ilya isn't the only idiot. “She’s not my girl anymore, though. We’re not…we broke up? But we're still, like, friends. We just weren't compatible, as…dating. But she's…uh. She's great.”
“Okay,” Scott says, surprised. “Sorry to hear that, man.”
“Oh, it's okay.” How many times can they say okay in this fucking conversation? Jesus. He's a mess. He grasps for something safe to say. “I'm glad to get back to focusing on hockey for a while.”
“Mm, yeah, you really need help in that department,” Scott says, laughing a little as someone finally vacates one of the bathrooms and puts Shane out of his misery. Scott pats the back of Shane’s seat and then is gone. Shane is left to breathe out shakily, his phone clutched to his chest, talking himself down.
Was that a friendly comment, or was he making fun of me?
Probably both, because you acted like a fucking weirdo. Get it together.
He looks up, which is a mistake, because then he’s looking up the aisle, to the front of the plane, towards where Ilya is sitting. If he leans out just a bit, he can see a little of Ilya’s shoulder, and a little of his hair.
He doesn’t do that, because it would be pathetic, because he’s already done it like five times. He’d found himself doing it before the plane had even taxied down the runway. It's like his eyes are magnetized to Ilya’s body.
Ilya is sitting with Cliff Marleau, and Scott Hunter and Carter Vaughn are sitting behind them. Shane has been able to hear them a few times, loud chirps or raucous laughter rising above the rest of the noise of the plane. Shane prefers the front too, but thought it would be impolite to make a stink when he was booked near the back, and so he’d settled back here, alone, to ride it out.
Ilya hasn't looked at him once.
Not that Shane expected him to. He’s given Ilya no reason to look at him. It’s frankly shocking that Ilya ever even looked at him in the first place, and it’s shocking that Ilya kept coming back, and it’s especially shocking that Ilya looked at him the way he had in his house before Shane fucked it up by running.
It’s just something he’s noticed. Ilya hasn’t looked at him. Ilya’s eyes aren’t drawn to him the same way his eyes are drawn to Ilya. He’s always known that he’s the one feeling the more outsized, awful, uncomfortable things between the two of them, but he hates to get the actual proof of it.
Maybe Ilya has moved on from whatever it was between them. It wasn’t everything to him, the way it was to Shane. Ilya always had other people he could go to. Other people he could fuck. More adventurous people, probably. People who didn’t freak out about a fucking tuna melt and a daytime couch hookup and an utterance of his first name. It’s probably better for both of them if things stay the way they are now. A clean break.
But Shane doesn’t want that, and he’s trying to work up the courage to be brave. Ask for more. Admit he wants more.
He knows he has to be the one to do it. Ilya had been reaching out, in Boston. Clumsily, maybe. Not quite in the way that Shane needed him to reach out, but he had been reaching out, and Shane rejected him, and then he went out and got a famous fucking girlfriend, and so he needs to be the one to reach out this time if he wants to fix things.
Which he does! He wants to fix things so badly. He wants things to go back to…he wants Ilya to know that…well, he's working on it. Maybe he's not exactly sure what he even wants. He wants to talk to Ilya. He wants Ilya to kiss him. He wants Ilya's dick in his mouth. He wants Ilya to fuck him. That's a good start, right? He can figure out the rest on the fly.
Who is he kidding? He's never done anything on the fly.
He tries to fool himself into thinking that his back is cramping, and so he shifts in his seat just a little, and he looks at the poof of curls and the side of Ilya's shoulder. Ilya is turned away from the aisle, clearly talking to Cliff. There are a lot of big gestures and motions. Are they fighting? Are they laughing? Shane’s so far back, with so many rows of people between them, that he can’t see. And what does it matter, anyway?
He goes back to staring at his phone, and then he gets paranoid about Scott Hunter leaving the bathroom and seeing something else that he shouldn’t, so he puts it face down on the tray.
He closes his eyes, and he leans his head back against the seatrest, and he tries to run through his last game. He visualizes every goal, remembers every check into the boards, every stolen puck, every giddy hug from every teammate. He does a play-by-play as close to accurate as he can make it, because it always calms him down. It feels useful. Preparing himself for the next game. It doesn't work this time. He finds himself staring down at his hands crossed over his phone on the tray instead as the plane hits another mild spot of turbulence.
The All Star game this week is supposed to be an opportunity to let loose and have fun, and he's going to be on Ilya's team this year, and even beyond everything else, even beyond whatever it is that they have or had, it's such a golden opportunity that his chest feels too full every time he thinks about it. Like, even if Ilya is still annoyed about the way Shane acted like a complete loser freak with his first crush, even if Shane works up the courage to talk to him and Ilya lets him know that he's just not worth it anymore, at least they'll be playing some fantastic fucking hockey. That’s not nothing.
Scott leaves the bathroom and heads back to his seat without even looking at him. That's what Shane was hoping for, obviously, except then it makes him feel like he was too weird the first time and now Scott just wants to get away from him.
Get a grip. Stop thinking.
He still feels wired from the charity event last night. He always hates those things, and he tried to get out of going, especially because it would mean a late flight out to Vancouver before having to head right to Florida a day later, but his mother was insistent, and so Shane had gone. He’d suffered through an immensely awkward evening wearing an uncomfortable suit and shaking the hands of too many irritating old men, and his skin still feels too tight, itchy.
Ilya was there too, the one potential bright spot, but he never seemed to be where Shane was, despite Shane’s best efforts. Not like he was openly avoiding Shane, but just like he disappeared every time Shane got close, and Shane spent all night hyping himself up, telling himself that he had to grab Ilya and at least try to explain things, and then not doing it, because he's a coward. It was enough to make him spend the entire evening on edge, because he'd been hoping to talk to Ilya before the game. Hoping, ideally, to talk to him before they even got to Florida. They’d been staying in the same hotel, and maybe Shane was just being too stupidly optimistic, but he’d figured…well.
He’d spent half the night lying in his bed, staring at their old text thread, trying to convince himself to just text the room number. Leave the response in Ilya’s hands.
But it didn't happen. He’d been too afraid of the silence. Ilya had been like a ghost at that event, and then he was a ghost at the airport, and now they’re on a plane, and it’s too late. There’s nowhere private to talk except the bathroom, and…no. Absolutely not.
He looks up from his tragic examination of his hands just in time to catch Ilya’s head turning back around to face the front. His heart lurches, physically thumping, loud against the walls of his chest. Had Ilya been looking at him?
He’d probably turned around to say something to Scott. Shane is probably just seeing what he wants to see.
He itches to text Rose something about what a pathetic loser he is, because the freedom of having someone to talk to about this—even if all she knows is that his “mystery crush” is someone who works in the organization and is going to be in Florida with him—is heady. Freeing in its newness, in how ordinary it is, maybe. He doesn’t have too many friends who aren’t involved in hockey, and there’s only one person who knows for sure that he’s gay, and it’s nice to have her. It’s nice to have anyone, really. Stop. You’re being pathetic again.
He clenches his fingers into fists instead of reaching for the lifeline of Rose. He doesn’t want to overwhelm her. They’ve only been doing this for a little while, the whole friends thing, and Shane is trying not to be too much. Trying not to be too greedy with her time. He’s starting to believe that she meant it when she said she wants to be best friends, but he can hardly understand why, and until he figures out the rules, he needs to remember to breathe, and keep his shit together, and stop spiraling.
He tries to pull up a movie on the screen in front of him, but everything he tries to put on is weird, glitchy, keeps fizzling out and then coming back.
The plane lurches again, jolting his elbow off the armrest.
He slips his favorite headphones over his head and fumbles with his phone. He’ll put on some meditation thing or something, something that will calm him down. He looks up again as he sees movement from the front of the plane.
Ilya’s standing up, and he’s starting down the aisle.
Their eyes meet.
What the fuck? Is he coming over to talk? And is Shane happy about that or upset? He can't tell. He’s probably both things. His head is a white noise machine.
The window seat next to him is empty, his stuff spilled into it, his bag gaping open. Should he move it? Let Ilya in? Should he move over and take the window seat and let Ilya take the aisle? Or would that look too eager? Ilya is probably just going to the bathroom and is only looking at Shane because Shane is looking at him.
Nope, Ilya is smirking now. He’s definitely coming over to say something.
But maybe he was just heading to the bathroom and now he’s smirking because he can see the look on Shane’s face. The want. The hunger. Like, Shane is pretty sure he might be literally drooling, like a Pavlovian response to the fact that he’s sitting down and Ilya’s dick is about to be closer to his mouth than it has been in months.
Can they fuck in the bathroom?
There’s no way. Shane’s stupid for even considering it.
The plane drops. There's no other way to describe it. It's like it stops working, all at once, but only for a second. Shane’s stomach drops with it. It feels like he imagines riding roller coasters probably feels.
Shane is on planes a lot. He doesn't usually have a problem with them, which is sort of funny, considering how much anxiety he gets about literally everything else. He doesn't love when he can’t control things, so he doesn’t love that he has to trust the pilots and the navigators and all the air traffic controllers who are probably exhausted and don’t get paid as much as they should and are therefore under a lot of stress while holding Shane’s life in their hands. He doesn't love being stuck in small spaces with people, either. He doesn’t love feeling trapped—well, okay, sometimes he likes feeling trapped, but only in super specific circumstances involving literally one specific person.
But the things he does to cope with his regular anxiety all work on planes, and so he’s never been too overwhelmed by it. He's felt turbulence before. He's felt his stomach drop out of his body before, too. He knows that it happens sometimes.
Something about this feels different.
Ilya hasn’t made it very far down the aisle yet, busy chirping at one of the players sitting behind Scott when the plane drops, and Shane watches the way his feet leave the ground for a second, the way he drifts up. Both people in the aisle seats on either side reach out on instinct and grab his arms to steady him, and it's stupid for Shane to wish that Ilya had reached him before the drop because then he could have been the one to…
The seatbelt light comes on, and a flight attendant hustles past Shane from the back galley, toward the front.
Just watch the flight attendants, his dad told him once, one of the first times Shane had flown. If something happens and you're afraid, look at the flight attendants, and you’ll see how calm they look. They fly on planes every day, so if they don’t look worried, then you have nothing to worry about either, okay?
Uh, so what does it mean that this flight attendant looks so tense?
She neatly bullies Ilya back into his seat on her way by, saying something with professional calm under her breath, but Shane can see that she looks harried, frustrated, frightened. Ilya looks rattled too, and he resists a little, and then he finally holds up his hands in surrender and sinks back into his seat. Shane would have to be delusional to think that Ilya was resisting because he was hoping to make it back to him, but…
But Ilya turns around and looks back at him. Eyes right to him. Not so delusional after all, are you? Shane thinks, triumphantly. He smiles a little without thinking about how—
This time, the plane drops so far that the flight attendant hits the ceiling. Like gravity has stopped working. There’s screaming, shouts of oh fuck. But the plane levels off, and the flight attendant falls back into the aisle. Someone's bag comes crashing down on Shane's head. Oh, it's his bag. His bag from the seat next to him, and all his shit is now scattered around him and his chair and the floor. His headphones are gone, ripped off his head somehow. His phone. Where’s his phone? He feels something on his face, and he reaches his hand up and feels something wet, and he pulls away his fingers to find the tips red, bloodied. He scratched himself, maybe? Or his bag? He didn’t even feel it.
The pilot is saying something now, but Shane can't make out his voice. He always has trouble understanding the announcements on planes, but it’s worse now. Everything is too loud. There are three guys sitting a few rows up, laughing and cheering. Not hockey players, but probably around their age. Young and stupid and drunk. For some reason they start cheering “olé, olé olé olé”. Scott Hunter starts to get out of his seat to help the flight attendant up, but she barks at him to keep his belt on, and Scott obeys. She staggers to her feet, and she looks okay. Rattled, but okay. She looks back and locks eyes with Shane for some reason, and then Shane remembers the blood on his face, but he shakes his head and waves her off, and she nods. Ilya turns and looks at him again, leaning out into the aisle to see him. Frowns.
The flight attendant disappears into the cockpit. The fasten seatbelt sign stays on. The plane is shaking now, rattling his head, fraying his nerves. Is this, like, a real problem? The plane jolts again, but less. It feels like regular turbulence again, like they’re flying through a storm. Someone up ahead whoops with adrenaline.
“Fucking hell Rozy, why couldn't you have been the one to hit the roof?” yells one of the guys up front. Shane doesn’t recognize his voice.
“Was she okay?” asks a woman sitting across the aisle from Shane, straining against her belt to stand up enough to see over the top of the seats. “Did she get up?”
“You are scared to face me, Landon?” Ilya calls, his voice only slightly shaky. The olé guys are still going, laughing louder, somehow not realizing that no one else thinks they're funny. Shane's ears are ringing in the way they do when everything gets to be too loud, and he starts looking around for his headphones, but he can't find them. He sees Ilya turn to say something to Scott Hunter, but his gaze meets Shane's again, and his mouth purses unhappily. “Hollander! What happened to your pretty face?”
“Oh shit,” says Martin Dollard as he turns and spots the same thing Ilya did. Dollard is a player from Seattle, and seeing the open concern in his expression, Shane now feels guilty for being surprised he was going to be in the All Star game. “Yo, Hill. Pass me that towel. Here, Hollander.”
Dollard tosses the towel back and misses by a few rows, but people are kind enough to pick it up and pass it back. Shane would normally not be thrilled using a near-stranger’s towel that has just been on an airplane floor, but he’s desperate not to get blood all over himself, so he takes it with a polite thanks, Dollard that makes the bigger man smile wide.
“Who sat Hollander alone?” Ilya calls back over the noise of the plane shuddering again. “He is dating celebrity, yes? Deserves celebrity treatment. Someone to open his drinks, maybe to make sure he doesn't get head injury before we even play the game? Okay back there?”
“I don't know,” Shane mutters, embarrassed. Embarrassed at Ilya’s concerned-but-pretending-not-to-be tone, embarrassed at the laughs that follow. Embarrassed that he's bleeding, even. This is why they tell you to keep your belongings stowed away: so they don’t fly all over the place and injure you mid-flight. He's usually such a rule-follower, too.
He wipes at the side of his head with the towel and frowns at the amount of blood on it afterward. He looks for his phone again so he can check in the camera app.
“Oh my god, you poor thing,” says the woman across the aisle, reaching into her bag and pulling out a little packet that she hands over to him. An individually wrapped moist towelette, just like his mom always carries.
“Is it a cut?” he asks her, stupidly. She nods, and she digs through her bag again.
“I have a mirror in here somewhere, actually, hold on. Looks like something just sliced you a little bit.” She doesn't look like his mother. She's probably not much more than a decade older than him. It still makes a heat grow behind his eyes, because she reminds him of his mom for just a second.
“Hollander?” Ilya asks loudly.
“Fuck off, Rozanov, leave the kid alone,” Scott says back. Ilya rolls his eyes and starts to reach for his seatbelt, saying something under his breath to Scott. He's probably just chirping Scott for his age the way he always does, but what if he's talking about Shane? He won't expose them; Shane's sure of that. But that doesn't mean he can't be saying something even worse. Look at that pathetic loser. Can't even take care of himself. Freaks out about every little thing.
But there's a bang so loud that Shane ducks on instinct, and then the entire plane is shaking, and then it's dropping again, the way it did before, except this time it's angling forward. He can tell because the woman's bag falls out of her lap, and Shane's shit all goes rolling down the aisle, towards the front, and Shane is too afraid to even scream. He looks towards the empty seat next to him, the window. He’d pulled the shade down earlier because it sometimes rattles him to see how high up they are, but…
He fumbles, reaches across the seat for it.
The plane drops straight down again, for longer this time, and it’s like gravity stops existing, and when the plane stops dropping, his forearm hits the armrest hard and cracks and–
The woman across the aisle screams and–
Wind rushes past him, something hitting his face on its way by. The wind–
The wind? Why is there wind?
There's too much light. Did something break? Is the roof—
He tries to see, but—
He tries to move, but his arm screams in pain, and he screams with it, and the plane tilts wildly to the left, and—
He drags his eyes away from his arm, and he—
Ilya is looking back at him but then the plane jolts, and Ilya's head slams forward as he hits the back of the seat in front of him, and Shane's vision goes black and spotty for a second because his head snaps forward too, and at first he thinks they've landed, crashed, but then it—
Are they leveling out? Is it over?
A groaning, whining, shuddering sound. It sounds like a boat, like a boat turning, or–
He pulls his arm, curls it towards his chest, and—
“Hold on, hold on!” someone yells.
“No no no no no.” Someone else. Someone is loudly screaming for their mother. Hopefully it's not him. He wants to.
Whoever is sitting in front of Shane is praying in French. Shane is—
An explosion of glass, and a shriek of metal, and the woman across the aisle stops screaming and the French prayers stop and something is– something just– something has slammed into him, through him. Into his side, pinning him to his seat. A metal rod. He tries to breathe. Can't, except for little gasps. He tries to grasp this horrible thing with his hand that still works, but it's blood-slick and the thing is in him and he tries to get up but he can't undo his buckle and he doesn't know where he'd go anyway, he just—
It's so fucking stupid but if only Ilya had made it down here before– before– before, because then Shane would have pulled him into the seat next to him and then they could be holding hands at least at the end or maybe Ilya would hold him and Shane is afraid he's so afraid and he doesn't want to look down at the thing that's in him because he looks to his left and he sees that the woman who isn't his mother has had– her head is– there's something sticking out of—
He looks up, and he can see the back of Ilya's head flopping out into the aisle, and maybe Ilya is dead now too, and then everything falls away, fizzling into white, like the entire front of the plane has been destroyed.
And then Shane's half of the plane hits the ground, and it begins to roll.