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It started completely randomly.
To preface: sometimes, Shane gets trapped in this doom spiral of focusing on one thought. One thorn snagging at the carefully stitched fabric of his life, tearing holes in what was a very deliberately arranged, very specific way of going about his days.
Ilya usually fixed this. Completely. Shane’s brain had a tendency to switch off around his boyfriend, a breath of fresh air, to the point that this, too, had become a part of Shane’s routine. Every action had an equal and opposite reaction and every problem— or at least unavoidable ones that Shane couldn’t simply sidestep— had a solution.
Except.
Yeah, so, it had started completely randomly. The game on Tuesday had ended in their favor, a regulation win: 7-2 against Buffalo, on the road. Nothing unexpected, but wins tended to freeze an easy smile on Shane’s lips, and tended to loosen up his teammates too, no longer on edge in anticipation of their wound-up captain’s disapproval or wrath.
It was a good, if boring game. They’d secured the lead somehow fifteen minutes into the first period, which had Shane wondering if he’d somehow miscalculated when reviewing tapes, but from the first goal—JJ’s, him on the assist— it was smooth sailing.
Until the locker room, that is.
Ever since Shane had discovered his unfortunate reality of liking men in a sexual persuasion, he had been overly careful in locker rooms, an anxious buzz forever under his skin, dissecting about every slantwise glance. Hell, Shane spent half of his first season avoiding physical play until Ilya called him out on it.
The locker room has never boded well for him. It didn’t That day, either.
It was a throwaway comment, JJ and Hayden overly excited about Shane finally being with Boston Lily, her finally (said with an air of the long-suffering dramatics— underserved, in Shane’s humble opinion) and officially being Shane’s Lily (which Shane had preened at— got chirped to hell and back) and had immediately shoved their heads into his personal space to read his and “Lily”’s texts.
“She calls you Hollander, capitaine?” JJ smirked, clearly misconstruing something completely in his head, to which Shane didn’t bother paying much attention except for the eye roll he couldn’t hold back. He could feel his cheeks flush, a sort of giddiness to him that only his “Lily” (his Lily!) could bring about.
Reading the texts brought back the memory of typing them furiously, Shane’s mom having gone through Ilya’s financial investments (almost none to speak of, not that Ilya should’ve given her access to his bank accounts) and going Momager on him, which made Shane go “Momager on him too” as Ilya had swiftly retorted.
Shane sighed, filing away the impending damage control as a later problem.
He turned to Hayden instead, who had been uncharacteristically quiet. He was squinting at the chat, which made Shane instinctively switch his phone off. “What?”
“You don’t have a profile photo for her?” Hayden frowned.
Shane froze.
He remembers having every retort ready, he usually did when it came to this one big secret that he had, every feasible response mapped out before going into a conversation that was about him and Ilya, but all of it was stopped in favor of examining the fact that—
He didn’t have a profile photo for Ilya.
This hadn’t originally been an issue. It was suspicious, yeah, but having a profile photo of a random girl instead was definitely overkill. Also, Shane prefers not to break Ilya’s heart.
It did however, it occurred to Shane, become an issue when they announced the charity, and the love of his life got up on a podium to give his beautiful speech that Shane had teared up just hashing out with him— when they announced publicly that they were friends.
What, then? Would Ilya forever remain a pseudonymous, faceless contact in Shane’s phone? The most important person in his life?
Weren’t those things mutually exclusive?
“Shane—?” Hayden tried, him and JJ having twin furrows in their brows, just in time with Drapeau throwing his arms around all of them.
“Capitaine! That was a massacre. We deserve drinks, non?” He grinned with all his teeth, half the amount that a normal person has.
“You know what? Let’s fucking go,” Shane agreed quickly, something so completely out of character that it made the entire locker room erupt in cheers.
He was quickly ushered out of the room, off to some nondescript bar, leaving most of the equipment to the equipment manager, which was something that Shane tried not to make a habit of, but it was something that just seemed to happen when they’d kicked ass so spectacularly that the boys’ egos inflated hard enough for them to practically float away.
Saved by Patrice Drapeau. Shane never thought he’d see the day.
Off the ice, anyway. Drapeau was, admittedly, hell of a defenseman.
-
It was stuck in Shane’s head, is the point.
It wasn’t the first time Shane had thought of it. If he was completely honest.
The first time was when he had been changing Rose’s profile picture in his phone, just a week or so before the life-changing All Stars Game. Shane’d taken the photo: Rose in a sundress, well-manicured hand in front of the camera, shielding her face from it as she laughed unabashedly.
At the time Shane had been stuck in this liminal space where he had endless determined energy and nowhere to put it, the grueling waiting game until February where he was also finally allowing himself to be lovesick for the right person, and— goddamn did it come so easy.
It was about as natural as stepping onto the ice, second-nature. Shane Hollander was made to love Ilya Rozanov.
It was a passing thought then, fueled by this restless energy coiled tightly inside him, thumb hovering over Lily in his contact list, a grey placeholder composed of two blobs in a sea of candid profiles that Shane had taken himself.
It was a passing thought: I don’t have a photo to put here even if I wanted to.
The thought refused to pass now, stuck in his head, pushing heavier, more imperative titles out of the way and sitting down in a corner of his brain, always knocking into Shane, making itself known.
It jumped up and down, waved its hands screaming, Hey! Notice me!
It wasn’t just that it was so horribly impersonal, it was also that it had made his mother look at him like he was a kicked puppy the first time she'd seen it, it was that everyone else had photos of their loved ones in their phone except for absolute douches who couldn’t be bothered and got divorced anyway, it was that—
Ilya was off, these days. Shane could tell. He was paler, awake at odd hours. He would always tell Shane that he was fine, but he clearly wasn’t, and clearly didn’t trust Shane to tell him if he wasn’t.
Shane hated so much about their situation. The secrecy used to be thrilling, but now it really just seemed like an inescapable cage.
It bled into every part of their life, into walks, into grocery shopping. No matter how much he tried, Shane couldn’t will away the image of Ilya’s face where it was burned into his eyelids, the face that Ilya had made when Shane had practically ripped his hand from his boyfriend’s the moment some old lady who probably didn’t even follow hockey had turned the corner into the aisle.
Even if Ilya didn’t dare say it, Shane could tell that he wanted simple things that came free with a relationship, rituals that Shane couldn’t grant him. Shane couldn’t even grant himself any.
It was that, Shane loved taking photos. It wasn’t even frequent enough to be called a hobby, but he enjoyed the intimacy of clicking random photos, to be fought over whether the photos were good or not.
Shane had taken around one hundred photos of Ilya with a digital camera stocked somewhere in the cottage. Ilya, with his golden curls and his sun-kissed body, miles and miles of skin, Ilya and his eyes, a colour Shane hadn’t decided on yet, mid laugh, mid jump, mid leaning in for a kiss— Ilya, Ilya, Ilya; just how it should be.
One hundred photos of Ilya, each more perfect than the last— how much more perfect could perfect get? — and none of them downloaded, none of them within reach, none of them where Shane could see them every day.
Shane Hollander was made to love Ilya Rozanov.
He was moulded into it, one handshake in a freezing cold parking lot in Regina, and he was done for, making space for Ilya in his life since even before he let himself call him by his first name.
He was made to love Ilya Rozanov, but he couldn’t do it properly, the way he deserved.
-
It very, very quickly became a problem.
Shane spent half of his time staring at the profile picture, the lack thereof, when texting Ilya. He started avoiding it sometimes, faced with his own reality, a grave shortcoming, a card that he had been dealt to him that he didn’t want.
It spiraled into this: Shane Hollander in the kitchen, overcome by guilt he couldn’t overcome, making Ilya salad.
Something was wrong. Shane knew it the moment he stepped into Ilya’s Ottawa house (a whole house, why had he gone and bought a house? He didn’t even know if he would like it here, back then, and he’d gone and bought a house) the air heavy with something that Ilya was failing at hiding from him.
In moments like these, which occurred frequently since their guards had gone down around each other, they were practically incapable of lying. A decade of learning to read each other paragraph by paragraph, and now they had access to the whole book. It was usually exhilarating.
Right now, though, Shane had a lump in his throat.
They’d fucked, of course, that was half of their standard greeting. They had it down to a science, the fucking. The talking was more of an art, and let’s just say that if Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were sat in front of an easel, it was more likely to spontaneously combust than get painted.
“Shane,” Ilya said. Shane waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.
In his periphery, Shane could see his boyfriend leaning against the kitchen island, fiddling with his hair, a faux nonchalant expression on his face. Shane could practically smell the incoming shrug.
“Hm?” Shane asked, pretending to be nonchalant himself, cutting up a cucumber fast-paced, the rhythmic tick tick tick against the wooden cutting board weirdly soothing the high-strung environment.
Ilya scratches lightly at his cheek with his index finger, “Are you mad at me?”
The knife slips and Shane slices his finger through.
“Fuck!” Ilya says it first, and Shane is just kind of stood there, staring at the blood seeping out from the nasty cut on his index finger, one that might just sit him out from a few games, what with stick-handling being a necessary part of getting pucks into the crease. Shane wonders if Ilya even said fuck in English, or if Shane, ever in love, just has an auto-translate in his head for certain Russian swears at this point. Shane sounds it out, “Fuck,”
That sounds about right, maybe Ilya did say it English.
“Lyubimy,” Ilya whispers, beloved, cradling Shane’s bleeding finger in his arm, leading Shane over to the sink, washing away the blood. Shane can’t hear him, hyperfocused on his face, the concern pleated into the furrow in his brow, the fear sparkling in his eyes, irises a colour Shane hasn’t decided on yet.
Shane feels his vision blur with tears, his chest set to burst: too full of love, full of gratitude, full of babbling, unsurmountable grief.
“I’m so sorry,” Shane says, his voice warbling. He bites into his knuckles to stop the sob trying to tear out of his throat.
“Shane, what is wrong?” Ilya looked terrified, torn between paying attention to the wound, or to his crybaby boyfriend, which makes the tears slip out from Shane's eyes involuntarily, rolling down his cheeks and officially making it a Thing.
“I’m okay, it’s—” Shane says, shaking his head, trying to sidestep what is quickly making itself known as an unavoidable obstacle. Shane sighs, rubbing at the tears. "Nothing."
Ilya quickly decides to have none of it, gently prying Shane’s hands away from his face. “Sweetheart, I cannot help if you do not tell me. I am going to wrap up your hand and then you will tell me what is bothering you. Yes?”
Shane takes a shaking breath, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “Yes.”
Ilya leads Shane to sit on a stool at the kitchen island, pulls one up for himself. The offending extremity is disinfected so gently with a cotton swab that the waterworks nearly start again. Ilya pulls out a roll of gauze and some ointment, and Shane wonders, a little bitterly, if Ilya knows what he is doing, because Shane definitely can’t tell.
“Finally, I get to pay you,” Ilya jokes, and sometimes Shane gets the sense that his boyfriend dumbs himself down a little bit around him, sands his edges and pretends not to know common turns of phrases so Shane can correct him and they can fall back to a familiar song and dance that maybe doesn’t need to exist anymore, just because he knows it will soothe Shane.
Because Shane needs so desperately to be in control.
Regardless, Shane takes a breath and responds in kind, tries not to let the guilt swallow him whole, “Repay me?”
“Yes. That. For every time I got into stupid fight and you had to patch me up.”
“That was once, Ilya.”
“You did not have to. We were children back then. You did not know me.”
“I wanted to.” Shane says, and Ilya freezes, almost discreetly. He resumes movement promptly, and maybe the change would’ve been unnoticeable to anyone but Shane. Shane hopes so. This intimacy is all they have. “You should know by now that any moment we could have together, I wanted.”
The silence stretches taut between them, charged, “So bad.”
“Yes, I know this. I know how this feels.”
Ilya wraps up the finger neatly, the blood blooming almost unnoticeably on the bandage.
And then, this beautiful, stubborn man: he waits.
He waits for Shane, each and every time. To get his shit together. To finally be brave, to stop living in fear of the sun, to let it burn him once so he can feel the warmth the second time. To let go of his intricate rituals, to let a little chaos into his life, to live.
-
Sometimes Shane felt that maybe his life, so painstakingly organised, wasn’t very organised at all.
Shane remembers the first time he picked up a roll of yarn and a crochet hook. His grandmother used to do it, his father’s mother— the original Mrs. Hollander. Shane knew now, much older and much more exhausted, that she and her side of the family didn’t like Shane very much. They especially didn’t like Yuna. It’s not even very complicated the reason why. Just plain old bigotry.
He remembers that evening, when he, all of twelve years old, had extended an olive branch to his grandmother, asked her to help him learn this new skill, scrounged for one commonality between him and these people so determined to treat him like an outsider.
He remembers figuring out, all on his own, how to make a slipknot, how to make a chain stitch, hook over the string of yarn, then under and finally through the slipknot, over and over again until the string had become plasticky with his sweat.
Shane wonders if that’s why he’s so averse to crochet, so turned off from it. The repeated failure, the inability to make one stupid scarf.
“Aren’t your people meant to be good at this sort of thing? Handicrafts?”
Still Shane can see the similarities between that old, tired string of yarn that he’d worn down into a thread, between his carefully constructed life and the only thing he’d ever been successfully able to make: a very long chain stitch; one strong pull and it all unravels.
-
“I don’t deserve you.”
Shane fractures the uncomfortable silence and Ilya’s head snaps up, surprised. Or, no, actually. He looks bewildered.
His jaw hangs open, then closed, like he can’t decide how the hell he’s meant to respond to that.
“I am not going to dignify that with a response.” Ilya decides.
Shane blinks, confused. Ilya waves it off, “Hamilton lyric, not important. What the fuck, Hollander?”
“It’s true. You know it. I’m a fucking coward Ilya, I don’t—”
“You are a coward? Hollander—” Ilya loses his words, and Shane can tell it means that his brain is running a mile a minute. He runs his fingers through his curls and tugs, like that will help, and Shane resists the urge to flick him on the wrist, stop hurting himself. “You are the bravest fucking person I have ever met.”
“Don’t straight up lie to me just because you don’t know what to say.”
“Shane.” Ilya pleads, grabbing both of Shane’s hands, cradling them between his own.
“I used to think…” Ilya tries, and he looks frustrated with himself. Shane doesn’t know how to fix it, so he decides to let it run its course.
“I did not deserve to be loved, that I made it hard.” Ilya says, finally, bent down slightly so he can meet Shane’s eyes. “That I would make it hard for you. You would hate it.”
“What the fuck?” Shane furrowed his brow, indignancy lapping at him at the mere thought, no longer at a loss for words. “Ilya, loving you is the easiest thing in the world. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“You say things like that and also say you do not deserve me?” Ilya scoffs.
“You love me so much and I’m so scared all the time.” Shane grabs onto Ilya’s hands, squeezing. It irritates the cut on his finger, sharp pain running through his finger. “I’m hurting you. You don’t think I can see it?”
“You are saying that like it is one-sided. Like only I love you and you are being some sort of— tyrant.” Ilya tries, tugging his hands out from Shane's, readjusting the grip until the pain disappears, a determined fire burning in his eyes, something that Shane is only used to seeing on the ice.
“You’ve done so much for me. You’re so far away from your home for the past decade, your friends— Svetlana!” Shane takes a shaking breath, all of his thoughts, every guilty barb in his throat tumbling out, tearing him apart, desperate to have Ilya admit Shane's fault, “You moved countries for me, and I can’t even update your profile photo in my phone!”
Ilya was about to say something, reared up, mouth already open— but stops in his tracks, “Profile photo— what?”
“Fuck,” Shane breathes, “Nothing. It’s— stupid”
Ilya furrows his brow, grabbing Shane’s chin and gently tilting his head up, until their eyes meet naturally.
“Well, it is stupid enough to make you think all of these stupid things, I think.” Ilya says, the dots connecting in his head in real time where Shane can see them. Shane’s cheeks burn in embarrassment. “So, you should maybe, probably tell me, yes?”
“I don’t even have your real name saved in my phone." Shane says petulantly, "The love of my life.”
Ilya gapes at Shane like a fish before leaning up to kiss him viciously.
-
“You are right,” Ilya says, later, when they’re both seated on the couch, tucked into each other’s sides. “I am sad. I want to share that I love you with the world but I cannot.”
He’s tapping away on Shane’s phone, and Shane didn’t stop him from picking it up, but is quickly growing curious as to Ilya’s intentions. “So, I am hurting you. By being so scared.”
“You are saying this like you being so scared is not logical.”
“You’re tired of this, admit it.” Shane gently grabs Ilya’s face, tracing the bruises under his eyes, a clear aftereffect of not sleeping.
Ilya buries his head into Shane’s shoulder, slipping the phone onto Shane’s stomach, and mumbling something.
“What?”
“It is not you, Shane.” Ilya admits, finally. He turns his head, ear against Shane’s beating heart, and says, “My brain is fucked up. Like my mother’s.”
“Oh?” Shane says, and he’s trying to be patient, but the fear so clearly seeps into his voice that it yanks a laugh out of Ilya.
Shane smacks him on the shoulder. “Nothing about this is funny.”
“No, it is not.” Ilya agrees, looking away. “I am seeing a therapist about it.”
Shane doesn’t really have anything to say except, “Oh.”
A moment of silence passes, before Shane picks up his phone to see what Ilya had done with it.
He’d updated the profile photo on the Lily contact.
It was an old photo, one that Shane hadn’t even known existed. Both of their feet, nudging against each other under a table, presumably at a dinner with Shane’s parents.
A lump develops in Shane’s throat. “Our plan isn’t working, is it?”
“No. No I do not think so.”
-
It’s winter already, by the time of the home opener. The Canadian Tire Centre is buzzing, the Ottawan hockey fanatics excited about the prospects on the new team, the second overall draft pick slotted for the Centaurs, which was now a half-decent team.
It was a pretty normal day, but Ilya’s heart was swelling with joy, with excitement.
The moment he stepped into the locker room with a pep in his step, his entire team turned to look at him suspiciously.
Oh, come on. He’s not nearly enough of a basket-case to warrant such a reaction.
“Okay, boys,” Ilya clapped his hands, grin wide on his face. “We kick Nashville ass, score lots of goals, and go out for drinks, that is what happens today!”
Troy saunters up right after him, throwing an arm around Ilya’s shoulders easily, matching his grin. “What’s got you so cheery today, Cap?”
“Yeah, Cap,” Bood points at Ilya’s head, where a neat crochet beanie sits. It’s very clearly amateur, but Ilya hasn’t taken it off since he was given it, this morning. He would rather sweat through his hair, in fact. “Is that a new toque?”
“First of all, it is a beanie,” Ilya immediately comments, restating his stance on the exact argument that he’d had with his beautiful boyfriend while receiving the gift, which renews the smile on his face.
“Someone made it for you?” Troy asks, arching an eyebrow, easy smile on his face.
“Yes. It is a gift from my Jane.” Ilya says, words tumbling out easily.
The entire room cheers, as it usually does at any mention of the captain’s elusive girlfriend, but this time, Ilya doesn’t give into the segway. He pauses, considers.
“Actually.” Ilya clears his throat, pulling the rapt attention of his team, his family, to him. “It’s a gift from my Shane.”