Chapter Text
The Bell Centre had always felt enormous to Shane Hollander, but on that particular night it seemed less like a hockey arena and more like the inside of a cathedral built for noise, pressure, and impossible expectations, with twenty thousand people crowding the stands beneath the white glow of the rafters and the retired numbers hanging above the ice like silent witnesses to everything that happened below them, while the rivalry between the Montreal Metros and the Boston Raiders pulsed through the building with the familiar electricity that had followed Shane and Ilya Rozanov for almost their entire professional careers.
Only now, hidden beneath years of insults, fights, body checks, and headlines about hatred and obsession, there was something infinitely more dangerous than rivalry.
They were in love.
Officially, undeniably, ridiculously in love, though the list of people who knew the truth was so absurdly small that Shane sometimes had to stop himself from laughing whenever reporters asked whether there was “any mutual respect” between him and the Boston captain, because mutual respect had turned into stolen weekends, whispered phone calls across time zones, matching apartment keys hidden in travel bags, and Ilya falling asleep with his head on Shane’s chest while insisting that he was not cuddling, he was merely “occupying available space.”
Shane’s parents knew since his dad walked in on them at the cottage.
Hayden Pike knew because he had accidentally walked into a hotel room in Chicago and discovered the two captains arguing over takeout containers while wearing each other’s sweatpants, after which he had stared at them for a full thirty seconds before saying, “Honestly, this explains so much.”
Nobody else knew.
Not JJ, not Drapeau, not Comeau, not Berkes, not Schneider, not Wilson.
Not Cliff Marlow, despite being Ilya’s closest friend on the Raiders.
Not Carmichael, Hammersmith, St. Simon, Connors, Sebbin, or Johansson.
And certainly not the thousands of fans who had spent years treating the Hollander-Rozanov rivalry as one of hockey’s great blood feuds.
Shane stood at center ice during warmups and watched Ilya skate lazy circles through the Boston zone, the captain’s “C” bright against the black Raiders jersey, his stride powerful and smooth in that infuriating way Shane had loved long before he admitted it to himself, and when Ilya glanced toward him there was the briefest flicker of something soft beneath the public mask, a tiny curve at the corner of his mouth that nobody else would have noticed.
Shane noticed everything.
He noticed the way Ilya rolled his left shoulder when it was stiff.
He noticed when his tape job changed.
He noticed when he was tired, when he was frustrated, when he was trying not to laugh.
And tonight, as the anthem ended and the crowd roared for puck drop, Shane noticed that Ilya looked exhausted.
The game itself was exactly what everyone expected from Montreal versus Boston: vicious forechecking, hard hits along the boards, scrums after whistles, and enough chirping to keep the officials glaring at both benches for sixty straight minutes, with Shane scoring late in the first period on a rebound from Comeau, only for Ilya to answer midway through the second by threading a pass through traffic to Sebbin for the tying goal.
The crowd was deafening.
The rivalry was alive.
Everything looked normal.
But halfway through the third period, with the score tied 2–2 and the game balanced on a knife’s edge, Shane saw something that made his stomach drop before his brain fully understood it.
The puck had barely crossed the blue line when Shane saw Ilya falter.
It was not dramatic at first. There was no crushing hit from Schneider, no collision with Wilson, no tangled skates along the boards. One moment Ilya Rozanov was gliding backward through the neutral zone, barking instructions at Johansson while tracking the developing Montreal rush, and the next there was a strange hesitation in his stride, as though his body had forgotten, for a single impossible second, how to move.
Shane noticed because he always noticed.
Even in the middle of a tied game, even with twenty thousand people screaming and the season standings hanging over both teams like a storm cloud, part of his attention was permanently locked onto Ilya. He saw the captain’s shoulders tighten. He saw the stick slip lower in his hands. He saw the brief, unfocused look cross his face.
And then Ilya collapsed.
Not stumbled. Not fell. Collapsed.
His body simply folded in on itself and hit the ice with a sickening crack of helmet against frozen surface, sliding several feet before coming to a stop near center ice.
The whistle blew almost immediately, but Shane was already moving.
“Ilya!”
The name tore out of him before he could stop it, loud enough that Hayden’s head snapped around in shock. Shane dropped his stick and sprinted across the ice with a speed that had nothing to do with hockey, skates carving violent arcs into the surface as players from both teams turned in confusion.
Cliff Marlow was coming from the other direction, shouting for the trainers, but Shane reached Ilya first.
He dropped to his knees so hard they slammed painfully against the ice and grabbed Ilya by the shoulders, turning him onto his back.
The sight nearly stopped his heart.
Ilya’s eyes were open but empty, staring at nothing. His mouth was slightly parted. His skin had already taken on a horrifying gray pallor beneath the bright arena lights.
“Hey,” Shane said frantically, patting his face with shaking gloves. “Hey, baby, look at me. Come on, look at me.”
No response.
Shane ripped one glove off with his teeth and pressed trembling fingers against Ilya’s neck, desperately searching for the familiar pulse he had felt countless times while lying with his head against Ilya’s chest in hotel rooms and borrowed apartments.
Nothing.
Cold panic exploded through him so violently that it felt like drowning.
“Trainer!” he screamed, his voice cracking into something raw and animalistic. “Get the fucking trainer now!”
The arena had fallen into stunned silence.
Cliff slid to a stop beside them, his face draining of color the instant he saw Shane’s expression.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“There’s no pulse,” Shane gasped, his hands shaking uncontrollably against Ilya’s neck. “Cliff, there’s no pulse.”
The words hit the surrounding players like a physical blow.
The Raiders medical staff burst onto the ice, but Shane could not make himself let go. One of the trainers had to physically pry his hands away from Ilya’s chest.
“Captain, we need room.”
“No,” Shane snapped immediately. “No, I’m staying.”
“Shane—”
“I said I’m staying!”
The trainer took one look at his face and stopped arguing.
CPR began instantly.
The first compression drove Ilya’s body downward against the ice, and Shane made a horrible strangled sound that he would later barely remember making. He crawled closer despite the trainers’ attempts to keep space around them, staring at Ilya’s face as if sheer force of will could drag him back.
“Come on,” Shane whispered desperately. “Come on, Ilya, don’t do this. Don’t you dare do this.”
Hayden arrived beside him and grabbed his shoulder.
“Shane—”
“He was fine,” Shane said wildly, not even looking at him. “He was fine this morning. We talked this morning. He can’t—”
The trainer preparing the AED interrupted him.
“Clear!”
The shock made Ilya’s body jerk violently off the ice.
Shane flinched as though he had been struck himself.
Nothing happened.
The trainers resumed compressions immediately, counting aloud over the suffocating silence of the Bell Centre.
Every second stretched into an eternity.
Shane could hear himself breathing too fast. He could hear the compressions. He could hear Cliff swearing under his breath somewhere nearby. But mostly he could hear the terrifying absence of Ilya’s voice.
No sarcastic comment.
No muttered Russian insult.
No laugh.
Just silence.
The second shock was prepared.
“Clear!”
Ilya’s body jerked again.
Still nothing.
Something inside Shane shattered completely.
He lurched forward, grabbing at Ilya’s hand despite the trainer trying to hold him back.
“Wake up!” he shouted, tears spilling freely down his face now. “Ilya, wake the fuck up! You promised me you’d be there next week, remember? We have that cabin booked, you asshole, so open your eyes!”
The entire arena heard him.
Hayden’s grip tightened painfully on his arm, but Shane barely noticed.
“I can’t do this without you,” he choked out, clutching Ilya’s limp hand against his chest. “Please. Please, baby. Please don’t leave me.”
The word baby echoed through the stunned silence like a gunshot.
Players stared openly now.
JJ looked utterly bewildered.
Drapeau’s eyes had gone wide behind his visor.
Cliff was staring at Shane with dawning realization, horror and understanding mixing together on his face.
But Shane no longer cared who knew.
The secret was dead on the ice beside Ilya.
The trainers paused again to check for a rhythm.
The longest three seconds of Shane’s life passed.
Then one trainer suddenly leaned closer, fingers pressed hard against Ilya’s neck.
“Wait.”
Nobody moved.
The trainer looked up sharply.
“I’ve got something. Weak pulse.”
Shane’s breath caught so violently it hurt.
Oxygen was fitted over Ilya’s face while the trainers continued monitoring him, and Shane remained kneeling beside him, still holding his hand, tears dripping unchecked onto the ice.
“Come on,” he whispered brokenly. “Stay with me. Stay with me, sweetheart.”
And then, impossibly, Ilya’s eyelids fluttered.
Once.
Again.
Slowly, painfully, his eyes opened.
For a moment they were unfocused, wandering across the bright lights above the rink, and Shane felt fresh terror spike through him when there was no recognition in them.
Then Ilya’s gaze found his.
Confusion flickered first.
Then recognition.
“Shane?” he rasped weakly through the oxygen mask.
The sound of his voice destroyed whatever composure Shane had left.
A sob escaped him, harsh and uncontrollable, and he bent over Ilya’s hand as if he needed the contact to stay upright.
“I’m here,” he cried, pressing frantic kisses against Ilya’s knuckles. “I’m right here. Oh my God, Ilya, I thought you were dead. I thought I lost you.”
Ilya’s fingers twitched weakly around his.
The stretcher was brought onto the ice, but Shane refused to let go until the paramedics absolutely had to separate them.
As they lifted Ilya, his eyes never left Shane’s face.
“Love you,” he whispered, barely audible beneath the oxygen mask.
Shane broke completely.
“I love you too,” he sobbed openly, heedless of the cameras, the players, the crowd, the entire hockey world watching him fall apart at center ice. “I love you so much, you stupid stubborn bastard. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
The Bell Centre remained utterly silent except for the sound of Shane crying as the stretcher disappeared toward the tunnel, and only when Ilya vanished from sight did Shane finally collapse forward onto the ice, shaking so violently that Hayden had to kneel beside him and pull him into his arms while the truth of their relationship hung exposed before twenty thousand stunned witnesses and none of it mattered even remotely compared to the miraculous fact that Ilya Rozanov was alive.
-
The ambulance ride was a blur of flashing lights, clipped medical terminology, and the suffocating smell of antiseptic, but the waiting was worse.
By the time Shane reached the hospital, still wearing half of his Metros gear because he had left the Bell Centre without even changing out of his uniform, the adrenaline that had carried him through the chaos on the ice had begun to drain away, leaving behind a trembling exhaustion that settled deep into his bones like cold water.
A nurse guided him to a private waiting room near the cardiac unit after a brief, startled recognition of who he was, though the look she gave him changed entirely when she noticed the way his hands would not stop shaking.
“Mr. Hollander, the doctors are evaluating him now,” she said gently. “He’s conscious. That’s a very good sign.”
Conscious.
The word should have reassured him, but it only made the terror more real, because conscious meant there had been a period when Ilya had not been.
Shane sat for approximately thirty seconds before standing again.
He paced the length of the small room.
Sat down.
Stood up.
Checked his phone without reading any of the dozens of messages flooding in from teammates, coaches, reporters, and people whose names he barely registered.
Hayden arrived twenty minutes later carrying a duffel bag with Shane’s clothes and an expression that was equal parts concern and disbelief.
“You should change,” Hayden said quietly.
Shane looked down at himself as though noticing for the first time that he was still wearing his Montreal game pants, skates long gone but socks and compression gear still clinging uncomfortably to his legs.
“I forgot,” he admitted.
Hayden handed him the bag. “You didn’t forget. You were busy having a public emotional collapse in front of all of Canada.”
Under any other circumstances Shane might have laughed.
Instead his face crumpled for a fraction of a second before he looked away.
Hayden’s expression softened immediately. “Hey. He’s alive.”
Shane nodded once, but the motion was jerky and unconvincing.
An hour later a cardiologist finally entered the room, and Shane was on his feet before the doctor had fully crossed the threshold.
“He’s stable,” the doctor said quickly, clearly recognizing the panic in Shane’s face. “We believe he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest, but he responded to resuscitation efforts relatively quickly, which is extremely encouraging. He’s awake, oriented, and asking for you.”
The last three words hit Shane harder than everything that came before them.
Asking for you.
The doctor led him down a quiet hallway lined with dimmed lights and closed doors, and with every step the fear returned in waves, because some part of him was still convinced that he would walk into the room and find this had all been a mistake, that Ilya would be unconscious again, or worse.
The room was dark except for the soft glow of monitoring equipment.
Ilya lay propped slightly upright in the hospital bed, pale against the white sheets, an IV in his arm and cardiac leads attached to his chest beneath the open collar of a hospital gown. The steady beep of the heart monitor filled the silence with a rhythm so precious that Shane felt tears sting his eyes immediately.
For a moment he simply stood in the doorway.
Ilya looked smaller somehow, stripped of his gear, his captaincy, his usual intimidating presence. But when he saw Shane, his expression softened in that familiar private way that almost nobody else had ever witnessed.
“There you are,” Ilya murmured, his voice still rough from the oxygen and the ordeal.
Shane crossed the room in three quick steps and stopped beside the bed, staring at him as if he needed visual confirmation that he was truly alive.
“You look terrible,” Ilya said weakly.
The absurdity of the comment almost broke him on the spot.
“You had a cardiac arrest,” Shane whispered. “You’re not allowed to make jokes right now.”
“Pretty sure near-death experience gives me special privileges.”
Shane let out a shaky breath that sounded dangerously close to a sob. He reached for Ilya’s hand carefully, as though afraid too much pressure might make him disappear.
The skin was warm.
Warm.
That simple fact nearly undid him.
Neither of them spoke for several seconds. The monitor continued its steady beeping. Outside the room, distant hospital sounds drifted faintly through the hallway.
Then Ilya frowned slightly. “Shane?”
Shane realized too late that his grip had tightened painfully around Ilya’s hand.
“Sorry,” he muttered, loosening it immediately.
Ilya studied him more closely, and whatever he saw made the teasing disappear from his face.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
The single word, spoken with familiar affection, was the final crack in the dam.
Shane sat down abruptly in the chair beside the bed and covered his face with his free hand. His shoulders began to shake almost immediately, and he tried desperately to control it, because he was Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal Metros, the guy who kept his composure in Game Sevens and media scrums and playoff disasters.
But this was not a playoff disaster.
This was the memory of Ilya lying motionless on the ice with empty eyes and no pulse beneath Shane’s fingers.
A broken sound escaped him.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Ilya said softly.
That did it.
Shane bent forward, forehead nearly touching the edge of the mattress, and the sobs came hard and uncontrollable now, weeks or months of carefully maintained emotional restraint obliterated by the delayed realization of how close he had come to losing the person he loved most in the world.
“I thought you were dead,” he choked out between breaths. “Jesus Christ, Ilya, I thought you were dead.”
Ilya tried to sit up farther, wincing slightly, but his focus never left Shane.
“Hey. Look at me.”
Shane shook his head violently.
“Shane.”
Reluctantly, Shane lifted his face. His eyes were red, tears streaking down his cheeks in a way that would have horrified him under any other circumstances.
Ilya reached up with surprising steadiness and cupped the side of Shane’s face.
“I’m here,” he said quietly. “See? Breathing. Talking. Annoying you already.”
Shane laughed and cried at the same time, a miserable, exhausted sound.
“You weren’t breathing,” he whispered. “Do you understand that? I checked. There was nothing there.”
The confession seemed to hit Ilya harder than the rest. His thumb brushed gently across Shane’s cheekbone.
“You got to me first?”
Shane nodded.
“I kept trying to wake you up,” he admitted, voice trembling. “I was yelling at you, and you wouldn’t answer, and then they started CPR and—” His breath hitched again. “I’ve never been that scared in my entire life.”
Ilya’s expression crumpled with a grief of its own, not for himself, but for what Shane had been forced to witness.
“Come here.”
Shane hesitated only a second before leaning forward carefully, and Ilya wrapped his arms around him as much as the monitors and IV lines allowed. Shane buried his face against Ilya’s shoulder, holding him with desperate gentleness, as though terrified that squeezing too tightly might break him.
For a long time neither of them spoke.
Ilya simply held him, one hand stroking slowly through the damp curls at the back of Shane’s neck while Shane’s breathing gradually steadied against his chest.
“You know what my first coherent thought was?” Ilya asked eventually.
Shane pulled back slightly, eyes still wet. “What?”
“That you were going to be unbearable about this for the next fifty years.”
A watery laugh escaped Shane despite himself.
“I’m serious,” Ilya continued softly. “I remember waking up and seeing your face, and all I could think was that if you were there, then I was okay.”
Shane closed his eyes briefly, overwhelmed all over again.
“You scared me so badly,” he whispered.
“I know.” Ilya pressed a kiss against his forehead, lingering there for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
Shane looked at him then, really looked at him—the pale skin, the exhaustion around his eyes, the monitor tracing each precious heartbeat across the screen—and fresh tears threatened again, though these were quieter now, born of relief rather than panic.
“The whole world knows about us,” he said weakly.
Ilya blinked. “What?”
“I may have had a mental breakdown on national TV.”
For the first time since Shane entered the room, Ilya looked genuinely startled.
There was a long pause.
Then, incredibly, the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
“You finally found a romantic way to come out,” he murmured.
Shane stared at him in disbelief. “You almost died, and that’s your takeaway?”
“My takeaway is that my dramatic boyfriend apparently declared his love in the middle of the Bell Centre.” Ilya’s smile softened. “Honestly, I expected fireworks.”
Another helpless laugh escaped Shane, and this time when he leaned down to kiss Ilya, it was slow and trembling and full of everything he had been too terrified to feel while the outcome was uncertain.
When they separated, Shane rested his forehead against Ilya’s and listened to the steady, miraculous beeping of the heart monitor between them.
For the first time since the collapse on the ice, the fear loosened its grip enough for him to breathe.
And wrapped in Ilya’s arms, with that stubborn heartbeat sounding steadily beside him, Shane finally allowed himself to believe that he had not lost him after all.
The discharge papers took far longer than either of them expected, partly because hospitals seemed to operate on a timeline designed specifically to test the patience of professional athletes, and partly because every doctor, nurse, and cardiac specialist who entered Ilya’s room had one more instruction, one more warning, one more reminder that surviving a cardiac arrest did not mean he was magically invincible again.
No strenuous exercise.
No skating until cleared.
No stress if possible.
That last one made both of them laugh hard enough that the nurse threatened to add “avoid sarcasm” to the official paperwork.
By the time they were finally allowed to leave, the media situation outside the hospital had become a small circus. News of Shane’s breakdown at the Bell Centre had exploded across every sports network in North America, and the revelation that the two captains were together had eclipsed even the game itself.
Cliff had texted Ilya approximately forty-seven times, alternating between genuine concern and increasingly offended messages about being the last best friend on earth to discover that his captain had been secretly dating Shane Hollander.
Hayden’s messages were worse.
PIKE: You know, most people do a soft-launch Instagram post.
PIKE: You two did CPR and a public declaration of love.
PIKE: Very on brand, honestly.
Shane ignored all of it.
He was standing beside Ilya’s wheelchair in the discharge lounge, one hand resting lightly on the back of the chair as though he needed constant physical contact to reassure himself that Ilya was still there.
“Stop hovering,” Ilya muttered for perhaps the hundredth time that week.
“You nearly died.”
“That was five days ago.”
“Yes,” Shane said immediately, “and I’m still very unhappy about it.”
Ilya tried to roll his eyes, but the fondness in his expression ruined the effect entirely.
-
The drive to Shane’s condo in downtown Montreal was strangely quiet. Snow drifted lazily past the windows, softening the city into blurred white and gold, while the radio remained off and the usual tension that accompanied any trip between Montreal and Boston was absent for the first time in years.
Shane kept glancing over every few seconds.
At red lights.
At stop signs.
At random intervals for no reason at all.
Finally Ilya sighed dramatically. “If you keep checking whether I’m breathing, you are going to cause an actual accident.”
“I’m not checking whether you’re breathing.”
“You’re checking whether I’m breathing.”
Shane tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “I’m checking whether you’re okay.”
The honesty of it hung in the car for a moment, quiet and unguarded.
Ilya reached across the center console and squeezed his wrist gently.
“I’m okay,” he said softly. “Still annoying. Still handsome. Still yours.”
Shane swallowed hard and turned his hand to lace their fingers together for the rest of the drive.
The condo looked exactly as it always had—floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the snowy Montreal skyline, dark hardwood floors, the ridiculous expensive couch Hayden constantly mocked him for buying—but the atmosphere felt entirely different now that the secret was gone.
For years, whenever Ilya stayed there, every trace of him had to be hidden before teammates visited. Extra toiletries disappeared into drawers. His clothes were folded into Shane’s suitcase instead of the closet. The spare key was never mentioned.
Now Shane carried Ilya’s overnight bag straight into the bedroom and set it beside his own without hesitation.
“Welcome home,” he said quietly.
The words made Ilya pause.
Home.
Not my place.
Not the condo.
Home.
Something soft flickered across Ilya’s face before he covered it with his usual dry humor. “If this is home, I would like to formally request better snacks.”
Shane laughed for the first time that day, a real laugh instead of the strained versions he had been producing for reporters and concerned teammates.
The evening passed slowly. Shane made soup because the discharge instructions recommended “light meals,” and Ilya complained that he was being treated like a Victorian invalid. They watched half a movie before Ilya fell asleep against Shane’s shoulder, exhausted from the simple effort of leaving the hospital.
That should have reassured Shane.
It didn’t.
Because once the apartment went quiet and the lights were dimmed and Ilya was asleep beside him in bed, the memory returned with brutal clarity.
Ilya lying motionless on the ice.
No pulse beneath Shane’s fingers.
The trainers counting compressions.
Shane stared into the darkness, listening.
Breathing? Yes. He could hear Ilya breathing.
But after several minutes, that wasn’t enough.
Carefully, trying not to wake him, Shane shifted closer and rested his head lightly against Ilya’s chest.
Beneath his ear came the steady, rhythmic thump of his heartbeat.
The tension in Shane’s body eased so suddenly that it was almost painful.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
He closed his eyes.
A sleepy voice murmured above him. “What are you doing?”
Shane froze. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“Mm.” Ilya’s fingers drifted lazily through Shane’s hair. “Why are you using me as a pillow?”
Shane hesitated.
Then, too exhausted to lie, he admitted in a whisper, “I needed to hear it.”
Ilya went very still.
For a moment there was only the sound of that precious heartbeat beneath Shane’s ear.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Ilya said softly.
Embarrassment flushed hot through Shane despite the darkness. “I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
Shane’s arms tightened slightly around Ilya’s waist. “When I can hear it, I know you’re okay.”
The vulnerability in the confession made his throat ache. Shane Hollander, fiercely competitive, emotionally guarded, captain of the Montreal Metros, was admitting that he could not fall asleep unless he could hear the man he loved still had a heartbeat.
Instead of teasing him, Ilya simply wrapped an arm around his shoulders and held him closer.
“Then listen,” he murmured. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”
Shane fell asleep there, cheek pressed against Ilya’s chest, lulled by the steady rhythm beneath him.
It became a habit almost immediately.
On the couch while watching television, Shane would gradually slide lower until his head rested across Ilya’s chest.
During afternoon naps, he curled against him like a heat-seeking missile.
In the middle of the night, Ilya would wake to find Shane unconsciously seeking him out, palm spread over his sternum as though verifying that his heart was still beating.
At first Shane tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.
By the third week, even Hayden noticed.
They were sitting in Shane’s living room when Hayden arrived with groceries, only to find Ilya stretched across the couch with Shane practically draped over him, one ear pressed against his chest while scrolling through his phone.
Hayden stopped in the doorway.
“…Are you listening to his heart?”
Shane looked up without moving. “Maybe.”
Hayden stared for a long moment. “That is simultaneously the most romantic and most concerning thing I have ever seen.”
“Pike,” Ilya said lazily, “if you value your life, leave him alone.”
Hayden wisely chose to retreat to the kitchen.
After the door swung shut behind him, Shane muttered against Ilya’s shirt, “I’m not being weird.”
“You are absolutely being weird,” Ilya said, threading his fingers through Shane’s curls. “But you’re my weird.”
Shane tilted his head slightly, listening again to the steady beat beneath him.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Each heartbeat was a reminder that the nightmare on the ice had not been the end of their story.
And every time Ilya’s arms tightened around him in quiet understanding, Shane felt the lingering fear loosen just a little more, replaced by something warmer, steadier, and infinitely stronger than the terror that had nearly broken him in the Bell Centre.
As long as he could hear that heartbeat, he could finally believe that Ilya was truly here, alive beside him, and that was enough to let him sleep.