Archive of Our Own

Shane distinctly remembered the bassline pounding heavier, louder, faster, in his ears before.

Earlier, when Rose’s warm (sweaty, sticky) arms were wrapped around his neck and shoulders, as he was swaying (always just enough off beat to notice it himself, just enough to feel embarrassed by it, to wonder how he was able to turn and glide and move with so much grace on the ice but couldn’t do anything but awkwardly shuffle his feet on a dancefloor) in front of her, acutely aware of Miles’ body slowly pressing in closer behind him, of his breath on his neck, of his hands starting to reach-

He was sure that the bassline was louder, then. He had felt it buzzing in his chest, vibrating through him like the liquid in the glasses on the tables around him. Creating ripples in the stillness.

Even when he had looked up and seen an image that he had previously only had to experience in his imagination, in the dark, lonely moments where his mind slipped and folded in on itself, the taunting voices of his insecurities sliding hot up the back of his neck and slithering around his ears-

Even when across nearly the entire dancefloor (but somehow still too close, way too close, freezing his off-beat shuffling in its tracks), he had somehow locked eyes with Ilya through the strobing lights and pulsing colors of the club-

Even when he had managed to tear his gaze away from the intensity, the ferocity reflected in his normally bottomless blue eyes long enough to notice the lithe body pressed tightly to his in an almost-mockingly weak attempt at passing for dancing instead of foreplay, the blinding lights somehow only highlighting her manicured hands sliding down his thigh, running up his defined arm, tangling in the curls at the back of his neck-

Even when his hands gripped her narrow hips and held them somehow tighter to his own, pressing himself against her in a way that struck Shane as nauseatingly familiar, before he slid one big hand up her stomach, cupping her breast, squeezing, shamelessly, and when Shane saw his lips gliding across the side of her neck up to her ear before he slid his tongue around her lobe, pulling it into his mouth to suck on it as his eyes slipped closed, breaking contact with Shane’s-

Even then, Shane was certain he had heard the bass thump on, steady and unforgiving and loud, drowning out even the sudden sound of his own heartbeat, of the blood rushing in his ears.

Shane had somehow made it back to Rose and Miles with a steadily growing pit in his stomach. Only snatches of conversation pushed through the music and the roaring in his ears as Rose spoke to him, curled around his arm and pressing lightly against him, hinting. Suggestive. He had finally raised his eyes from where they had been fixed on the table in front of him, and he had seen rather than heard Rose sigh, just for a second, before she said something about leaving with Miles and early call times in the morning. She had unwound herself from Shane’s arm (which remained frozen in place, his forearms leaning heavily on their high top table, as if he needed it to stay upright) and kissed him lightly on the cheek, and before he knew it, she was gone. He thought maybe he had responded, had said something to her about staying a bit longer, grabbing one more drink with Hayden (wherever he had disappeared to), but he couldn’t be sure. For a while, he had steadfastly refused to turn around, his eyes locked on the flashes of colored light reflecting off of the shiny surface of the table where he now stood alone. When he had chanced another quick peek, Rozanov and his dance partner were nowhere to be seen. The initial shock he had felt had slowly begun to turn to anger, simmering hot and low in his gut, the rage like a worn door trying to hold back the flood of hurt threatening to overtake him, bending and creaking against the hinges.

He had pushed off of the table and headed directly to the bar, determined to ignore lipsonherneck handseverywhere hipsgrinding feelingthehardpressofhis-

All of it.

The brain-rattling bassline had seemed endless, like a heartbeat, pumping on and on.

Shane had thrown back one shot of tequila quickly, savoring the burn in his throat, signaling for another before his voice of reason started whispering about consequences and his diet and his rules about drinking during the season. He had twirled the second shot glass around slowly with his finger on the slick bar, vague doubts creeping in. Another flash in his mind of long blonde hair, of light pink nails digging into golden, sun-kissed skin, vivid and intrusive, and Shane had been shuddering at the bite of the second shot.

He had just started to push back from the bar when someone took the stool beside him, sliding a glass gently toward him. Shane had taken him in slowly, his gaze sliding over tanned skin; large, powerful hands; lean muscle; dark blonde hair, shaved at the sides but long and surprisingly soft looking on the top; light blue-green eyes; and a shy smile.

“You looked like you could use another. And maybe some company?” His voice had been warm, clear, and a little higher-pitched than Shane had expected.

Shane had looked down at the glass in front of him and back up into the earnest eyes of the stranger, and taken a sip. Vodka in a rocks glass. The liquid burned in his throat, far less smooth than he had become accustomed to.

“Did your friends abandon you?”

The tone was joking, but Shane’s eyes had squeezed shut, just for a second. Then he had nodded, taking a longer drink and relishing the burn and the bitterness it left in his throat. He had tapped his glass lightly against the blonde man’s when it was offered casually, maybe hopefully, before turning in his seat and leaning a bit closer to hear that smooth voice over the music, the rhythm driving on around them.

—

Shane couldn’t hear the bass as well, now. He wasn’t sure when the music had faded to background noise; maybe when the two shots he had taken in rapid succession had started to kick in. The room was starting to spin, just a little, and his thoughts felt fuzzy around the edges. He heard a voice speaking close to his ear, but the words crept slowly into his brain, like they were traveling through water. “What?” he asked, the delayed response obvious even in his own impaired awareness.

“Hey, you don’t look so good. Are you okay?”

Shane swallowed, his mouth surprisingly dry. “Feel a little sick,” he responded finally, trying to swallow uselessly again against the sandpaper coating his throat. “I don’t drink, don’t drink very much.”

“Do you want to get some air?”

Air sounded good, really good. The crisp Montreal chill would surely shock his system, clear his mind enough that he could remember how he had gotten to the club that night. What time was it, anyway? He didn’t know how long he had been sitting at the bar, how long ago Rose and Miles had left, how long since he had seen Hayden, or anyone else he knew, for that matter. Anyone besides Rozanov and whoever he had decided to spend his night with, since apparently Shane wasn’t-

He shook his head quickly, and the room tipped sideways unpleasantly. “Air,” he repeated, pushing back to stand up from the bar. His feet became tangled in the legs of the barstool, and he wavered before a large hand caught his bicep in a firm grip.

“Careful. Here, let me help.”

Shane leaned heavily against the other man, both grateful and more than a little embarrassed about how drunk he had apparently gotten by mistake. He tried to remember what he had last eaten, and when, but his brain was sluggish. The lights of the club were disorienting around him as he tried to navigate the space, flashes of red and blue and purple and pink swirling, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the onslaught of colors as he stumbled alongside his companion.

“Come on, let’s get you outside. Maybe if you sit down and breathe for a minute-”

Shane felt a rush of cold air, heard a distant clunk behind him as he wobbled and was guided a bit hastily to sit on the ground.

“Here, scoot this way. You can lean on the wall over here.”

Shane tried, but his limbs seemed to belong to someone else; they wouldn’t obey him. His muscles felt limp and heavy. He belatedly realized his eyes were still closed against the lights, but when he managed to lift the weight of his eyelids again, the world in front of him remained dark and hazy. His head lolled to the side, and he managed to focus briefly on the sight of a hand wrapped around his arm, and then he was being moved with some difficulty until he felt cold stone at his back, biting through his thin t-shirt.

“Should find m’friends,” Shane slurred, feeling his body slide further to one side. He wasn’t sure if the movement was bringing him closer to the ground or more upright, his normally acute bodily awareness muffled, like he had been spun in a circle over and over and then pushed away to try to walk on his own, a child struggling to locate a piñata.

“They left, remember?”

Did they? Shane tried to think back, but his head was beginning to throb, and he found that he couldn’t remember who he had even been looking for.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you out. You’re okay.”

Shane smiled, powerful waves of relief and happiness flooding his system. He was okay. He wasn’t alone. Everything would be fine.

“You have such a nice smile, pretty boy.”

A smooth hand slid down his bare arm (softer than he was used to, uncalloused), and his body felt even more sensitive than normal to textures against his skin, forcing a sudden shiver. He made a small noise, pulling his arm toward himself just a bit, shrinking away from the touch, his movements effortful. He tried to remember what he had been doing before this, but his thoughts slipped away like fish in a lake whenever he tried to grab one. Where was he again? A passing image of the rink, red and blue blurs around him, floated through his mind. A game, he thought slowly. There was a game today? Had they won? He felt colder, noticing a thin layer of sweat coating his skin. Had he forgotten to shower afterwards? Why couldn’t he remember?

Shane wrinkled his nose as he suddenly became aware of the unpleasant smell around him, cigarettes and urine mixed with something rotten, like the dumpsters near the fast food restaurants when he jogged past them in the mornings sometimes. “Where am-” he started, then trailed off, the rest of his question vanishing before he could force his mouth around the words.

The same clunk from earlier reached his ears, further away now. Twice in quick succession. He thought he heard footsteps. Sounds trickled slowly into his awareness, their meaning slithering away nearly as soon as it arrived. He couldn’t think, why couldn’t he think?

He felt a wet slide against his neck on one side. Had he spilled something on himself? Was he bleeding? He was jostled forward, pressed briefly against someone’s warmth, and then his back felt even colder as his skin scraped against the rough surface behind him. His shirt? He must’ve spilled something, to need to take his shirt off.

He distantly registered the press of lips, the sharp sting of a bite against his shoulder, his collarbone, but he felt so far from his body that he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time his dreams had featured kisses pressed to any available skin, hot and demanding, a low, deep voice in his ear, powerful, rough hands holding his hips.

Without warning, Shane felt the warmth against him disappear altogether, and he whined softly as bitterly cold wind blew painfully against his chest.

“Shh, I know, baby.” He heard rustling, then a vaguely metallic sound. A hand gripped his chin.

“I’ll warm you right back up. Open that pretty mouth for me, can you do that?”

“What the fuck are you-”

The footsteps were louder now. Suddenly, the hands and the body heat disappeared, and Shane collapsed sideways, unable to move his arms in time to catch himself. His cheek scraped against the ground, and he groaned at the sting and the gritty, cold surface beneath him. His mind flashed in and out of awareness.

Shane heard more loud noises, voices, yelling, but the words were unintelligible, the meaning unable to penetrate the fog in his head. He thought he heard high-pitched sounds, like animals howling, and repetitive solid, heavy, wet thumps, a beat almost like the bass he had heard earlier; he could just barely hear it over the pounding in his head. He blinked his eyes open, but the world blurred around him, the movement of his gaze creating a lag like a blurry, shaky photograph when he tried to focus on the sources of the sounds. His head spun violently. Inky black crept in around the edges of his vision, and he let his eyes fall shut again.

—

Ilya pushed on the metal door to the alley with a little more force than strictly necessary, feeling just the tiniest bit of grim satisfaction when it swung open widely, banging against the stone wall behind it. He closed his eyes briefly as the freezing Montreal night air hit his overheated skin, sucking in what he tried to wrestle into a long, slow breath instead of another sharp gasp clawed up from the depths of his tight lungs.

The weight crushing his chest hadn’t eased for weeks, for months, increasing exponentially the second he had stepped foot in the club with a single-minded plan to nurse his bruised heart with expensive vodka and escape anything related whatsoever to Shane fucking Hollander, only to immediately come face-to-face (well, face to soft, straight black hair, the hair that he loved to tangle his fingers in at the back of Shane’s perfect neck, the skin there probably smelling faintly like sandalwood and-) with the man himself. He had frozen in place for seconds that felt like decades, his eyes skimming across the tight white t-shirt clinging to Shane’s broad shoulders before sliding down his back and further, catching on the way his pants molded to him in all the right places, before he had snapped out of his daze with a jolt, ducking his head and turning abruptly toward the bar. He had pounded a few drinks in quick succession, hoping to avoid being seen until Shane inevitably became overstimulated by the intense atmosphere and crowded space and left, finally allowing Ilya to work on forgetting him in peace. When he had looked again, his mask of indifference carefully in place, and seen Rose Landry draped all over Shane like a tacky scarf, his brain had short-circuited; the anger that rose up in him had been so hot, so immediate, that it shocked even him.

And, well, if he thought he might have seen quick, bright flashes of pain in Shane’s eyes from across the floor, later, when their gazes had finally met, then it must have been a trick of the lights.

He needed a fucking cigarette.

Ilya pulled his lighter out of his pocket, swearing quietly as it refused to ignite in the wind behind the club. As he clicked the lighter again, his frustration growing, his eyes slid to the right. He vaguely noted the outline of two people sitting pressed together against the filthy alley wall, and he fought the urge to roll his eyes, bitterly thinking about the cold, empty, nondescript hotel room waiting for him when he finally stumbled back that night, hopefully too drunk to think about anything before he passed out. He returned to his cigarette for a few seconds before movement down the alley again caught his eye. He turned fully sideways (hunching his shoulders under the half-true guise of blocking the wind), though his eyes were on the couple, not the cigarette hanging from his mouth.

His lighter clattered to the concrete as every muscle in his entire body froze, all at once.

Ilya couldn’t process what he was sure he was seeing in the deep shadows of the alley. His stomach lurched, but he tried to settle it, insisting that his eyes must be playing tricks on his exhausted brain and battered heart. Then, a soft whine echoed off of the concrete, and Ilya would know that sound anywhere, in his sleep, in a coma, on his deathbed-

He heard the stranger’s next words, and white-hot fear shot through him like lightning, shocking him out of his paralysis.

He was moving before his brain had time to hope to catch up.

“What the fuck are you-” he snarled, the rest of his breath leaving him in a grunt as he grabbed fistfuls of the back of the man’s shirt, hauling him up and backwards and throwing him several feet to the side, away, far away, watching him land hard on his back and slide another few inches across the concrete from the force. He scrambled, trying to right himself, and his eyes were wide, his hands up. Ilya’s body had several ideas for how to move forward with that, but everything screeched to a halt when he saw Shane collapse in his peripheral vision and heard his groan, the clear pain in his voice.

Ilya immediately dropped to his knees, his hands shaking, reaching but not touching as he frantically took in Shane’s disheveled state, terrified to move him, to make anything worse, as if it could be worse than this. “Shane,” he breathed, his stomach lurching violently when he registered the white t-shirt still tangled around his wrists, his chest bare against the freezing ground, his breath rushing out in rapid, shallow pants. Shane’s eyelids fluttered open with seemingly Herculean effort, and Ilya was suddenly very certain he was going to throw up at the emptiness, the complete disconnect reflected there. Like Shane didn’t recognize him, didn’t see him at all.

Ilya finally laid his hands on Shane (gently, so gently) and pulled his head carefully into his lap, trying not to jostle him unnecessarily. “Shane,” he whispered again, brushing his dark hair back out of his eyes, his heart racing when Shane still didn’t respond, not even a flicker of recognition. “Moye solnyshko, please.” He heard the desperation rising in his own voice, felt his throat closing in panic, tried to track his thoughts as they raced from ambulances to cars with blacked out windows to tabloids to police, and then-

“Ilya?”

The oxygen caught in his chest, trapped, at the sound of the faint, breathy reply. He blinked his eyes clear before meeting Shane’s, relief washing over him like a tidal wave when he saw those impossibly deep, dark eyes focused on his face and holding. “Are you hurt? What happened?” he asked, frantic but soft, smoothing the hair back from Shane’s forehead again with gentle hands. “How did you get here?” His panic surged as he watched Shane’s eyelids drift closed again.

“Ilya,” he repeated weakly, dreamily, his lips pulling up the slightest bit at the corners in a dazed, disoriented, beautiful smile. Ilya felt his chest crack open.

“I am here,” he murmured, tracing the line of that smile with his eyes.

Until he saw the blood. Trickling slowly down Shane’s cheek in a thin, steady stream toward the corner of his mouth.

The world fell away.

All Ilya saw was red.

The man had pulled himself to his knees and turned toward the club in a clear attempt to escape when Ilya landed the first hit to the side of his face. He heard a sickening crunch as his fist collided with bone, but he felt nothing. He heard himself screaming distantly, a mixture of Russian and English intermittently reaching him over the sound of blood rushing in his ears, the repetitive thumps of his fists. He struck out again and again, watched blood running from the man’s nose with fierce satisfaction. The man was saying something; Ilya wasn’t sure what, couldn’t translate fast enough through the fog of rage. He felt like he was a teenager again, struggling to understand a new language as everything flew by him way too quickly for him to catch. He landed blow after blow, clinical. Precise.

His awareness flickered back for a moment, long enough to notice the blood pouring from the man’s nose, from a cut above his eyebrow, another on his jaw. He was babbling something, his hands raised above him in a feeble attempt to block Ilya’s. Ilya leaned in closer, the man’s cries of, “I didn’t even do anything!” and “Please let me go, I’m sorry!” finally audible. He batted the man’s hands away easily, gripping one of his wrists as he leaned closer, nearly touching his ear.

“You say sorry,” he hissed, his accent thick even to his own ears. “You are not sorry. Not yet.”

He squeezed a finger in his grip until he felt it snap.

Ilya heard murmuring behind him around the man’s howl, and he glanced up long enough to see a group beginning to gather by the now-open club door, drawn by the sounds of his violence. His eyes caught on one face in the crowd, and he stood, walking back inside with purpose. People scattered away from him quickly, some gasps echoing over the music. The group was still contained inside the club, their view limited, and he hadn’t seen many phones or cameras, not yet, but he knew they would be coming. He noted a few of his own teammates pushing to the front of the crowd, their eyes wide, but he avoided them, grabbed Hayden Pike’s wrist firmly, and dragged him outside.

“Rozanov, what the fuck are you doing? Are you going to fucking kill him? I’ve always known you’re a psychopath, but what could he have possibly done-”

Ilya pulled Hayden in closer, where the sound of the music would cover their exchange.

“Get him out of here.”

“Who are-”

“Pike,” Ilya interrupted immediately, his fragile patience fraying quickly. “Now. Before they see.” Without another word, he turned Hayden and pushed him (carefully) to the side, toward Shane, tucked away in the deeper parts of the shadows cast by the buildings amidst the dim streetlights. Ilya paused long enough to hear Hayden’s sharp intake of breath, to see him drop to his knees beside Shane’s frighteningly still form, before he turned back to face the bloody man in front of him, now somehow upright and scrambling the other direction down the alley.

“You think you can fucking run?” Ilya screamed, his control slipping, the red crowding the edges of his vision again. He launched himself at the man, his fist cocked back. He landed another solid hit to his ribs, his own voice and the man’s screams both muffled in his ears again, like he was underwater. He felt hands on him, pulling him backwards, and he threw them off, striking out blindly again toward the man.

“Roz! Roz, man, Jesus, you have to stop!”

More hands grabbed him this time, pinning his arms back, and he struggled against them, ignoring the familiar voices pleading with him to calm down, to stop straining toward the man.

Just long enough.

Ilya watched as Hayden’s form disappeared around the corner, out of the alley and away into the dark, and he gave in to the insistent pulling from his teammates, the rage leaving his body all at once, leaving only a deep hollow behind.

—

Ilya tapped the keypad and let himself into the house as quietly as he could, glancing over his shoulder one more time, just in case he had somehow missed someone pursuing him the last fifty times he had checked. He slipped his shoes off by the door and made sure that the deadbolt was firmly latched behind him. When he turned, he was face-to-face in the dark entryway with Hayden Pike, looking disheveled and panicked and more exhausted than usual. Ilya was determined to ignore him until Hayden shifted sideways, blocking Ilya’s attempt to walk past him deeper into the house. Ilya stared at him, unblinking, his gaze hard. Hayden, to his credit, only leaned back a few more inches in response. Ilya might have been impressed, on a different night.

“Where is he?”

“How did you even get in here?” Hayden hissed, tugging at his own hair, not for the first time that night by the looks of it. “How do you have Shane’s door code?”

“Where is he?” Ilya’s voice was soft. Dangerous.

“He’s in the living room,” Hayden whispered, glancing over his shoulder automatically. Ilya attempted to move past him a second time, and Hayden put his hand up but hesitated, as if he had initially planned to grab Ilya to physically prevent him from passing and thought better of it. “Rozanov, you have got to give me some answers here. What happened at the club? How did you get involved in this in the first place? How, and actually, more importantly, why are you here?”

Ilya sighed and turned to face Hayden fully. “Is not my story to tell, Pike,” he responded quietly, the edge gone from his voice. He desperately needed to lay eyes on Shane, to confirm that he was unharmed, still breathing. Hayden stared at him for a few long seconds while the panic climbed steadily up Ilya’s spine, digging its claws in deeper with every inch. Then, mercifully, the tension shattered, and Hayden sighed, dropping his hand back to his side.

“This conversation definitely isn’t over. But I appreciate what you did tonight. I don’t want to think about what could’ve happened…” Ilya barely suppressed a shudder. “And you had the door code, obviously, so.” Hayden huffed out an annoyed breath. “I sure as fuck didn’t give it to you, and I doubt Shane’s parents did either. I can’t think of anyone other than us who knows it. So there are obviously some things that I don’t know.”

“Could fill ten books with what you do not know, Pike.”

“Fuck you, Rozanov. You really are always an asshole, even now.”

“Was being generous, with only ten.”

Ilya glanced at the clock on the microwave. 2:21 a.m. It had been at least an hour since he had sent Shane with Hayden. Hayden studied his face for a few seconds, his gaze searching, and then he turned his body to the side. Ilya had to tamp down the urge to shoulder check him on the way by, just for the extra minutes he had wasted with this inquisition. He hurried past Hayden and straight into the living room, his heart racing. He forced himself to stop short a few feet into the room once he could finally see Shane, laid out on the couch with his head pillowed on his arm, hanging slightly over the edge of the cushion, his chest rising and falling steadily. Ilya’s fingers burned with the need to touch him, to fall on his knees beside him and never leave his side again.

He pressed his thumbs into his forehead, trying to physically push the panic away along with the pounding headache it brought. “How has he been?” he asked, working hard to suppress the emotions flooding his body in his tone. Neutrality. Casual interest.

He was pretty certain he hadn’t hit anywhere near that mark.

“He’s been in and out,” Hayden replied in a whisper, leaning heavily against a wall, his eyes on Shane as well. “Mostly out. He was dead weight in the alley; it was a nightmare trying to hold him up to walk and getting him into my car.” Ilya made a valiant effort not to visibly flinch as the word “dead” seemed to fill the whole room. “He was a little more with it once I got him in here, for a little while. He was conscious, but he seemed confused and was mostly talking nonsense. Then he passed out again, but his breathing is back to normal, and he’s not sweating or making noises like he’s in pain anymore.” Ilya might be the next one to pass out, and Pike would have to tend to both of them. He would probably leave Ilya on the floor.

Hayden fell silent, and Ilya felt his eyes on him, felt his skin crawling, forced his breathing to stay as even as he was capable of. “I don’t think he should be alone tonight,” Hayden said pointedly.

Ilya’s eyes snapped back to him, instantly furious at the implication. “I would not ever leave him alone. Not like this. Not ever,” he hissed. Hayden nodded, something almost like clarity with a hint of bewilderment passing briefly over his face.

“If you’re sure you’re good, I’m going to head home. I’m close, if anything happens. My number is on that list on his fridge, with his parents’ and Jackie’s. My wife’s.” Ilya would have smiled fondly at Shane’s perfectly organized emergency contact list, if he was capable of smiling at that moment.

Hayden scratched the back of his neck, clearly less than comfortable with the situation as a whole. “Call me if you need anything. And keep the number. Just in case.” Ilya nodded, swallowing hard, his throat suddenly dry.

“Thank you,” he murmured as Hayden turned to walk toward the door. “For helping him. For making sure nobody saw.” Hayden looked a bit surprised, but he nodded shortly. Ilya waited restlessly to hear the sound of the front door closing, to let his mask drop, but Hayden stopped again after he took a few more steps.

“Rozanov,” he called quietly. Ilya tore his eyes away from Shane, briefly wishing all manner of horrors on Hayden Pike before he forced himself to remember that he was the only reason Shane had gotten home safely that night.

“He said your name a few times,” Hayden continued, his voice almost too casual. “Most of what he said was gibberish, but it seemed like he was asking for you.” Ilya’s stomach plummeted, and he squeezed his eyes shut until the front door closed softly in the room behind him.

He knew he should re-lock the deadbolt now that Pike had finally gone, but he couldn’t bring himself to let Shane out of his sight, even for a moment.

Anyone who wanted to come through that door tonight would have him to contend with.

His attention returned to the couch immediately when he heard a soft rustle in the silent air. He opened his eyes in time to see Shane’s arm slip off of the fabric, his face now pressed to the edge of the cushion in a way that almost defied the laws of gravity. Ilya frowned, wondering belatedly why Hayden had put Shane on the stupid couch instead of in his much more comfortable and much safer bed upstairs. He bent down and slid Shane carefully into his arms, cradling him against his chest as he stood.

“Hayden Pike is weak man,” he muttered to himself, to Shane, as he headed to the stairs. “Said he could barely hold you up to walk to the car. Idiot. Should spend more time lifting weights and less time running his mouth if he cannot even carry little you in emergency.”

He reached Shane’s room and laid him carefully in bed. He was still shirtless, his white t-shirt-turned-handcuffs no doubt removed by Hayden. He hesitated briefly, then slid Shane’s pants off as well, leaving him in his boxer briefs. He didn’t know what Shane remembered, what he had even comprehended in the state he had been in, but… Ilya wanted him to be comfortable, but he didn’t want him to be afraid, to wonder whether he was safe, even for a second, when he woke up.

Ilya stripped his own (bloody, he noted vaguely) clothes off as well before tucking a blanket carefully around Shane and turning the overhead light off in favor of the much dimmer bedside lamp that he knew Shane preferred. He knew he needed to wash the blood from his hands and arms (and probably other parts of him, too), but it was excruciating to force himself to walk into the en-suite bathroom. He kept the door open and scrubbed his skin raw in the sink as quickly as possible, grimacing when he saw red flecks on his neck and cheeks as well. He was a fucking sight.

When he was certain that he was free of blood, he settled carefully onto the bed next to Shane, pulling his head gently into his lap. His fingers fluttered above Shane briefly, abnormally cautious and unsure of whether and where to touch him. Ilya settled on resting one hand lightly on Shane’s head, running his fingers slowly through his hair. Shane felt fragile in a way that he never had before. Shane wasn’t a fighter like Ilya, but he was strong, and powerful, and unstoppable. On and off the ice, Shane sometimes felt ten feet tall and borderline untouchable to Ilya (who would never admit out loud exactly how much inspiration and motivation he took from Shane’s strength, both physical and mental). He was Shane Hollander. He shouldn’t feel breakable.

In the stillness, Ilya’s mind finally had space to release the full weight of the events of the night, and his hands shook as the overwhelm ran through him. “You scared me, moye solnyshko,” he whispered into the empty air, his voice thick. “What if I had not gotten there in time?” A new wave of nausea rushed in, and he did his best to shove those thoughts as deep into the recesses of his mind as he possibly could. He allowed himself to hold Shane a little tighter as the guilt that had been gnawing at his stomach for much longer than just that night surged to a new all-time high. He couldn’t stop the vivid, intrusive flashes in his mind of the way Shane’s head had lolled to the side while that fucking man touched him, pressed his face against his neck, or the sight of that disgusting hand holding him upright, keeping him from slumping all the way to the ground while he unbuckled his belt with the other. Ilya couldn’t forget the absolute emptiness in Shane’s eyes, and his own utter certainty of what was coming next if he didn’t stop it.

Ilya squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled harshly, trying in vain to force the memories and the “what ifs” down. He had seen Shane sitting at the bar, had seen him drinking with someone once in between his own trips to and from the dancefloor, from one dance partner to the next, in a blur of wandering hands and blinking lights. He hadn’t seen who it was, had just assumed it was fucking Pike, for fuck’s sake, or one of Shane’s other teammates. He hadn’t looked closely, too caught up in his own urgent attempt to prove how much he didn’t care what Shane Hollander was doing with his time and who he was spending it with to catch on until it was almost too late.

It was his fault. If he hadn’t been so intent on proving how fine he was, how disinterested he was in Shane, with his fucking movie star girlfriend and obvious happiness with his life sans Ilya, he would never have taunted Shane like that, with that woman whose face he had already forgotten. Shane probably would have left the club with his girlfriend, would be here curled around her right now, sound asleep. Safe.

Quiet tears slipped out of Ilya’s eyes no matter how desperately he tried to stop them, how hard he bit the inside of his cheek and told himself furiously that he had no right to cry over a problem he had created, no right to be here, no right to hold Shane like this, no right to feel this way about something that was never his to begin with. They hadn’t even spoken for months.

But he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t. Couldn’t break the stream of worst-case-scenarios playing on a loop in his mind, couldn’t stop the endless images of Shane alone and completely at the mercy of a monster, couldn’t tear his hands away from his soft skin, couldn’t prevent his ears from seeking out every soft, even breath that confirmed that Shane was still there, still okay. Couldn’t fathom being anywhere but right here, as close as possible, where he could protect him.

He had already failed Shane once, nearly catastrophically. He would drown in it, allow the rising, ever-present waves of guilt and shame to pull him completely under, if he failed him again.

Then he heard Shane’s breathing change, felt him start to stir against his legs. Ilya’s heart beat faster as he hurriedly swiped at his cheeks, swallowed once, twice, in the hopes of steadying his voice as Shane’s eyes finally blinked open. “Shane?” he whispered, his voice shaking on the single word, despite himself.

“Ilya?” Shane mumbled, blinking again, harder. “Where… Where am I?” His voice was slow, his eyes glassy, and his focus clearly drifting, but he was awake. Ilya did everything he could to hide his shaky breath of relief, forcing stillness and calm, for Shane’s sake if not his own.

“We are at your house,” he murmured, watching Shane’s reactions carefully. Despite the months without any contact, he didn’t seem particularly surprised to see Ilya there. “How are you feeling?”

Shane looked disoriented for a moment, squinting at the room around him. “I feel…” He trailed off, his face twisted in confusion, brow furrowed. Ilya resisted the urge to smooth his thumb down the little lines between Shane’s eyebrows until they disappeared. “I feel fuzzy,” he eventually decided.

“Are you dizzy?” Ilya asked softly, and Shane thought about that for a while.

“Yes. The room is a little… spinny. Not sick, though.” The words still slurred together at the ends.

“Are you-” Ilya stopped, took a breath, swallowed hard, and tried again. “Are you hurting?”

“My head,” Shane answered after a beat. “M’head hurts. Feel sore, everywhere.”

Ilya’s arms tightened involuntarily where they were wrapped around Shane, and Ilya immediately moved his hands to the mattress with a start, chiding himself silently. Shane frowned, the lines between his eyebrows deepening. He reached one arm toward Ilya’s with a noticeable delay; there was a slowness, a heaviness to his movements still. Ilya cautiously reached his arm back toward Shane, and Shane snatched the tip of Ilya’s index finger, correcting course to instead grip his whole hand before flopping his arm back down against his own chest. His frown disappeared, his face relaxing. Ilya bit the inside of his cheek harder and managed to stave off the sudden, embarrassing tears this time.

“Wha happened?” Shane asked, staring up at Ilya, whose breath caught, as it always did at the sight of those deep, dark eyes reflecting the low golden light. An unbreakable habit.

“What do you remember?” he asked carefully.

Shane was quiet for several minutes, but he didn’t take those eyes off of Ilya’s face above him. “The club,” he finally responded. “Dancing. I hate dancing, d’you know I hate dancing?”

The corners of Ilya’s mouth made a valiant effort and almost managed to lift, that time. “Yes, I know this.”

“Dancing, and then you were there.” The pure, unguarded vulnerability in his face was almost too much to look at straight-on. “You were dancing… And I had some shots. Tequila, ‘cause vodka makes me think about you… And I wanted t’think about not you.”

The words pierced somewhere between his ribs, the edges sharp and jagged.

“Someone bought me a drink… And it was vodka anyway. I don’t-” He frowned, turning more toward his side and curling his body slowly a little more around Ilya’s. “Don’t remember his name.”

Shane reached up and traced one of the curls that had fallen across Ilya’s forehead lightly with his finger. Ilya didn’t breathe, transfixed, until Shane’s hand dropped back down to the bed.

“He looked like you, kinda.”

He half-expected Shane to startle at the sound his ribs must have made as he felt his chest crack clean open.

The room was silent for a long time after that. If he listened hard enough, Ilya thought he could hear both of their hearts beating, the rhythm slightly out-of-sync.

“Don’remember anything after that.” Shane finally concluded. Ilya wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that Shane had blacked out at that point, or sick to his stomach at the thought of being the one to tell him the rest.

“Ilya,” Shane suddenly whined, and Ilya’s hands were cradling his face in an instant, the shift in his demeanor so rapid that it nearly made Ilya dizzy.

“What is it, solnyshko?” he murmured, frantically searching Shane’s face for any signs of pain, trying to relax when he found none. Shane just looked dazed, squinting up at him.

“Sole nee co,” he tried to repeat, terribly, then his face broke into a hazy smile. “What, are you speaking French?”

Ilya laughed aloud at that, and Shane’s dreamy smile widened. “No, I speak Russian,” he replied, smiling genuinely for maybe the first time in months. “You are the one who speaks French, remember?”

Shane giggled. “I don’t speak French,” he said, the fond exasperation clear in his voice. His eyes slipped closed again.

“Say it again,” he commanded softly, then added, “Please?”

As if Ilya could refuse him anything.

“Solnyshko,” Ilya murmured, his throat tight, the word coming out choked and small. A tiny, content smile drifted briefly across Shane’s face anyway.

Despite everything, he was still the most beautiful thing Ilya had ever seen. His skin glowed in the dim golden light, his freckles practically sparkling. He was incandescent. He was sunshine.

Ilya brushed his fingers lightly against his cheek, craving that warmth on his fingertips. “What did you have to ask me, sweetheart?”

“Why does my head feel fuzzy?”

Ilya’s stomach twisted sharply, and he hesitated, unsure if now was the right time, if Shane was ready to hear this. Then Shane opened his eyes, staring up at Ilya in expectant silence, and his resistance crumbled to dust.

“I think that drink you got, it was not just drink, yes?” Shane’s face contorted, his confusion clear. “I think someone put something else in the drink, not only vodka. You understand?”

“Like… drugged?”

His voice was suddenly so fearful and small, and Ilya breathed through the immediate spike of rage, the instant regret that he hadn’t left the stranger unable to even crawl out of that alley.

“I think so, yes. I found you, and you were… not right. Confused. Not standing up or walking.” He tried to remember the wording Hayden had used, his English vocabulary more unreachable than usual in his current mental state. “Not conscience.”

“Unconscious,” Shane corrected absently. Like it was muscle memory.

Despite the distress evident in his voice just a few seconds before, his speech was starting to sound more slurred, and his eyelids were looking heavier again. “I don’remember anything else, Ilya.”

“Is okay,” Ilya said firmly, reaching to run his fingers gently through Shane’s hair, trying to soothe his headache. Shane’s eyes tracked the movement of his arm about a second behind. “You do not need to remember. You are safe now, solnyshko. I promise.”

Shane moved his head away, avoiding Ilya’s touch, frowning deeply. Ilya felt the panic twisting his insides again, threatening to escape.

“I-”

“Your hands,” Shane whispered, interrupting him and slowly bringing their intertwined fingers closer to his face. He squinted at Ilya’s hand as Ilya’s heart hammered faster against his ribs. He hadn’t really taken the time to look at himself except to ensure that he was free of blood before dirtying any of Shane’s sheets, but now, in the extended silence, he recognized that his knuckles were split and swollen, the skin red and angry around the beginnings of what would probably be deep bruises by morning. He didn’t feel any of it. Not yet, anyway. Ilya fought off a dizzying wave of nausea at the thought of Shane even glimpsing the side of him he had revealed in the alley.

He could never live with himself.

Shane slowly set Ilya’s hand down before inspecting the other, just as thoroughly. Then he met Ilya’s gaze. Ilya hoped that he wasn’t reading the overpowering and still-growing level of shame directly from his eyes. He looked away, fixing his gaze on the blanket beneath their bodies.

“What happened to your hands?” Shane asked seriously.

“Is nothing. Do not worry about them.”

Ilya pulled his hand gingerly out of Shane’s grip, planning to tuck them both under his thighs where Shane couldn’t see, but Shane caught him again despite his disorientation, as if drawn to Ilya’s skin by a magnet. He blinked his huge, dark, bottomless eyes at Ilya as a heavy silence filled the space, and Ilya felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, being pulled forward over the precipice with nothing to grab onto.

“It looks like you hit someone.” Shane’s voice was quiet, still a little slurred, but definitive.

“Ah, but you know me. Always with the chirping and the dropping gloves, cannot help it,” he deflected. That earnest openness, that vulnerability from before, was still obvious in Shane’s eyes. Ilya looked away so he didn’t have to lie directly in the face of it, hating himself just a little more with each word.

“Ilya.”

Ilya could live 1000 years, and he still might never get used to the sound of his name falling from Shane’s lips so easily. Like it belonged there. His selfishness was consuming him, warring with his guilt. He didn’t deserve it, but he ached to hear it over and over, even if just for tonight. Even if just here, in this liminal space where neither of them could manage to raise their usual walls.

“I saw you.”

Ilya’s stomach dropped through his feet; his whole body tensed, and he knew Shane must be able to feel it where he was pressed against him. “What do you mean, you saw?”

Shane scrunched his face up for a second, as if in pain, and Ilya moved immediately to soothe him, his split knuckles forgotten, but the expression was gone as soon as it had appeared. “The music was gone, and I don’t know why the music was gone, but it was s’cold, and the room was spinny, and I saw you up above me.”

Ilya could’ve cried with relief; not the fight, he didn’t mean the fight, he hadn’t seen. “Do not worry about that right now. Please,” he added, his voice strained.

“Is that when you hit someone?”

“Shane-”

Shane played gently, absentmindedly, with Ilya’s fingers, somehow dazed and intensely focused all at once as he slid each digit between two of his own, one after the other. “Did you hit someone because of me?” he eventually asked, in that small, uncertain voice again, the one that made Ilya’s windpipe feel like it was being squeezed shut.

“I am okay, Shane. You need to rest now. Can talk more tomorrow about it, yes? When you are feeling better again.”

“Da,” Shane responded, sighing contentedly, closing his eyes and curling his body closer still, pressing his face into Ilya’s stomach. Ilya felt another little tug on his heart, and the smallest, fondest smile slipped across his face.

“Just sleep, solnyshko,,” he murmured, unable to stop himself from tracing his fingers gently down Shane’s uninjured cheek, across his scattered freckles, his other hand still tangled loosely with Shane’s. The room was silent for a few minutes, the low golden light from the lamp casting shadows on Shane’s face that only highlighted his sharp cheekbones, his soft lips. Ilya couldn’t tear his eyes away. He sat as still as possible, rubbing his thumb across Shane’s cheek lightly, again and again.

After a while, Ilya was sure that Shane had drifted off and was preparing to settle back against the pillows further himself, when he heard Shane’s soft, sleepy voice break through the early-morning stillness again.

“Ilya… Thank you for protecting me.”

Ilya sucked in a sharp, stunned breath; he heard his own lungs rattle with the force of it over the sudden sound of his ears ringing. Only five words, but they hit him like a sledgehammer in the gut.

Language failed him entirely. He couldn’t scrape together any combination of words in English or Russian with any coherence. He blinked back the tears that welled up in his eyes, silently commanding them not to fall even as one slipped out and trailed down his cheek, unbidden. He felt that achingly familiar but all-too-often ignored pressure inside his chest, the swirling of the emotions he had worked for so long to keep down rising anyway, rocketing past all of his carefully constructed defenses, clawing their way up his throat, pressing against the backs of his teeth. It was quiet for a long time while Ilya fought to keep them contained behind his lips, knowing that if he let them escape into the bubble of stillness that surrounded the bedroom, there would be no taking them back ever again.

“I am so sorry I was not there to stop this. I will never forgive myself for this,” he finally whispered, another tear slipping out, burning down his cheek with something hot like humiliation.

“But Shane, this will never happen again. I swear, I promise.” He choked on the words, forced that much out before cutting himself off with another harsh breath, his chest tight. He scanned Shane’s face; his eyes were still closed, his breathing even and steady against Ilya’s body.

If there was ever a time, ever a moment, Ilya realized with startling clarity, it was right now. His heart beat wildly against his ribs as he made the decision to finally, finally, let go.

“I will always protect you, moye solnyshko.” Ilya stopped and swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat, his hand trembling slightly on Shane’s cheek. His eyes slipped closed as he took a deep breath, steeling himself.

“I love you, Shane.”

Immediately after the words left him, Ilya’s mind quickly reversed course; his fear wanted to snatch them back, to shove them down his throat and feel them burn all the way down. They didn’t do this, didn’t do vulnerability, didn’t do real feelings, let alone while Shane had a girlfriend and, by all objective measures, they had ended whatever they were to each other months ago. He felt lightheaded, the regret squeezing the air out of his lungs. How could he be so stupid, so reckless, to say it out loud-

And then, Ilya looked down, and he watched the slow, shy, unfathomably gorgeous smile spread across Shane’s face. Ilya’s heart swelled like it might truly burst as Shane nuzzled further into Ilya’s touch on his cheek, his eyes still closed, and squeezed his hand lightly.

That was it, then. Nothing else mattered. Not Rose Landry, not their past mistakes, not anything they had said before when they were too scared to take the leap, not the destruction of that day at Ilya’s house a few months before, not the league, not anything. This was it: the corner he hadn’t let himself even hope they could ever truly turn in their relationship. It felt slightly unbelievable that something so monumental came on the heels of the earlier events of that night, but Ilya wasn’t about to question it. Not anymore.

And the guilt, the shame, the intrusive memories, the fear–it all eased as he stared at that honest, unguarded smile, brilliant as the sun in the soft lamplight of the bedroom.

It didn’t even matter that Shane hadn’t said it back, not tonight, not after everything he had been through. Ilya knew there was plenty of time for that now.

—

Ilya stayed up throughout the night, refusing to allow himself even a moment of sleep so he could monitor Shane’s condition constantly. He didn’t wake again, sleeping soundly without so much as a whimper. Ilya’s nerves were frayed by the time the sun started to rise, the adrenaline seeping away slowly, leaving him sore, shaky, and unsteady in its wake. But more than anything, in spite of everything, he was happy, happy in a way he couldn’t remember being for years, maybe ever before. He was giddy and excited and hopeful.

Around 9:00 am, while Shane was still sound asleep, Ilya finally forced himself to extricate his body from the bed to take a shower. His skin was grimy from the club and the alley, sweaty from exertion and from the adrenaline and fear, and he stood under the nearly-scalding water in Shane’s bathroom for longer than strictly necessary in an attempt to wash the remnants of the 12-hour emotional roller coaster and the sleepless night down the drain (with the door wide open, just so he could hear Shane moving if he happened to wake up. Just in case.). When he walked back into the bedroom, Shane hadn’t moved a muscle as far as he could tell. He quietly borrowed a pair of sweatpants and a well-worn, soft t-shirt, smiling to himself as the scent of Shane’s laundry detergent surrounded him and scraped the edge off of some of his nerves. He left a glass of water on the nightstand before he walked downstairs, searching for the phone he had abandoned about two seconds after Hayden had closed the front door the night before.

It didn’t take long; as soon as Ilya crossed the threshold into the living room, he heard the device vibrating furiously against the wood of Shane’s coffee table. He didn’t reach it in time, his movements stiff from the hours spent slouched against the headboard, trying to move as little as possible to avoid disturbing the man in his lap. Ilya picked up the phone just as the call cut off, and his eyes widened as he scrolled through a seemingly endless stream of notifications. Texts and missed calls from multiple teammates and his agent, voicemails, social media notifications, a foreboding five missed calls from his coach without a single voicemail attached.

Ilya had known that it would be nearly impossible to avoid media coverage after the way he behaved the night before in such a public space, but he had hoped on some level–because the man had run and disappeared from the alley while Ilya’s teammates had held him back like a rabid animal, and because he hadn’t seen even a hint of police lights by the time he had successfully shaken the others off, snarling that his reasons were none of their business and convincing them that he wasn’t planning to go after the man again, all so he could escape and get to Shane–that he might just get lucky. Just this one time.

He listened carefully to the house for a moment, ears sharp for any possible signs of movement upstairs. Hearing none, he walked to the dining room table and unlocked the phone, bypassing the majority of the notifications without reading them with a quick sweep of his finger. He stopped on a text from Marly in the early hours of the morning, only containing a link followed by “dude…” and then, several hours later, “call me if there’s anything I can do, Roz.”

The beginnings of dread rolled in his stomach as he stared at the link, but what else could he do? Waiting would only delay his ability to deal with whatever backlash awaited him, and, though he wouldn’t say it out loud, with the high he was riding after his conversation with Shane the night before, Ilya felt capable of conquering anything. He tapped on the link, and a TMZ article opened.

NOTORIOUS BOSTON CAPTAIN ILYA ROZANOV EXPLODES IN VIOLENT ASSAULT AT NIGHTCLUB AFTER GAY HOOKUP GONE WRONG

“Fuck,” Ilya whispered, his heart rate increasing rapidly as he skimmed the inflammatory article, the confidence he had been feeling diminishing with every second. It ended with a clip of Ilya in the alley. He was screaming, his face red and eyes wild, alternating nonsensically between English and Russian profanity and threats, blood splattered on his clothes, his face, and his hands as he pointed furiously and struggled against Marly and several other teammates as they tried to pull him backwards. Ilya watched himself break loose, punch the bleeding man (who was coincidentally turned fully away from the camera, his face hidden) again, then finally be subdued by his team, still screaming about the man running away from him until the clip cut off. Ilya ran his hand through his hair anxiously, tugging hard, his stomach churning. He didn’t recognize the face staring back at him through the screen, frozen in blind, unrestrained, animalistic rage.

Not for a long time, anyway.

His exhausted brain moved slowly, reading and rereading sentences and words that took too long to contextualize as he forced himself to finish the entire story. The article had a quote from an “anonymous source” who said they had seen Ilya pursuing an unknown man at the bar, aggressively flirting and buying drinks before the two disappeared out the back door of the club together.

He wondered briefly if that person had gotten it wrong, had thought that the man who drugged Shane was Ilya, given their vague resemblance. The idea sickened him.

Another source said they had seen Ilya and the man kissing outside the bathrooms shortly before the fight, and the claims only became more outrageous and fantastical from there as he forced himself to keep reading. But. Shane’s name wasn’t mentioned anywhere, not a single time.

Ilya scanned several more articles anxiously, trying to ignore the rolling of his stomach as he saw how widely the news had already been disseminated, but no sources mentioned anything about a dark-haired man sitting at the bar, interacting with either Ilya or the other man, dancing, being present in the alley, or being dragged away during the fight by none other than Hayden Pike. He felt some of the tension leak out of his shoulders as he concluded that as far as the media was concerned, Shane Hollander had been nowhere near the club last night. In that, at least, he had been successful.

He opened a few text threads, not replying to any. Most of them were a mixture of concern and thinly-veiled disappointment from various teammates, including several asking whether he had been suspended or disciplined in some way. Ilya knew the footage was damning, and the spin put on the situation by the tabloids reflected badly on him and on his team as a whole. Even if it had just been a bar fight, he would have been in some trouble, but the fact that he had been “outed” (inaccurately, but outed nonetheless) and painted as some kind of predator who apparently beat men up in alleys for refusing to fuck him, added a whole new level of problem to his situation. He didn’t call his agent or his coach back, unable to bring himself to tackle those conversations quite yet.

Ilya knew he needed to make some sort of statement, but what was there to say? He couldn’t tell the truth, and deflections from him might lead to additional scrutiny, and someone in that bar had to have seen Shane there…

Ilya had been comfortable with himself for a long time, knew who he was and who he liked to fuck, and he wasn’t ashamed of being bisexual. But concerns about Russia loomed large in the back of his mind, creeping behind the immediate questions about the decisions the league and his team would make. He forced himself to stop scrolling after another 10 minutes reading social media posts and article comments full of homophobia and vitriol. He set his phone facedown on the table and held his head in his hands for a while, consciously reminding himself to breathe, in and out, occasionally rubbing at his chest, as if that would unclench it.

Ilya wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he heard quiet footsteps on the stairs; his head snapped up, and he met Shane’s eyes immediately from across the room. “Hi,” he said softly, some of the heaviness of his situation lifting from his shoulders already.

“You’re here?” Shane asked, looking focused and alert, but confused nonetheless.

“Of course I am here.” He worked to keep the indignation out of his voice at the implication that he would have left. Shane was recovering; it had to be normal for him to be a bit off still. “How are you feeling?”

Shane watched him for a few seconds, then quietly padded across the room and leaned against the island a few feet away. From that distance, Ilya could see that Shane had deep circles under his eyes, and his skin looked paler than normal. “Exhausted,” he admitted, “And kind of sore.”

“You need something? Pain medicine?” Ilya started to rise, but Shane waved him off.

“No, I’m good.” He hesitated, chewing on his bottom lip absentmindedly. “I don’t remember everything that happened last night.” Ilya watched him, quiet while Shane wrestled internally, the struggle clear on his face and in the hard, tense line of his shoulders.

“You really think I was drugged?”

Ilya’s heart broke a little as he nodded in response. He watched Shane take a deep, shaky breath, as if to steady himself, before looking away, at the floor somewhere to the left of Ilya’s feet.

“I remember being at the bar with Rose and Miles, and seeing you. I remember sitting at the bar and getting a couple of drinks, and a guy I don’t know coming up to me and giving me another drink. We talked for a bit, but I have a lot of gaps after that… The next thing I remember is being freezing cold, outside I guess? And I couldn’t see very well. Everything was spinning, and I was so dizzy. I sort of remember seeing you for a minute, but it’s blurry. And I remember talking to you for a little bit here, but I thought I had maybe dreamed that part. I guess not, though, since you’re here.”

He met Ilya’s gaze again, a clearly forced half-smile on his face, not even close to reaching his eyes. “Help me fill in the rest?”

“Is not much to tell,” Ilya responded, frowning at the memories. “I was not with you at the bar. I thought I saw you talking, once, but I thought you were with Pike. I went outside for a cigarette, later, and someone I did not know was with you. You seemed not okay, not normal. You were not standing up, were leaning and flopping.” He hesitated. “Are you sure you want to know-”

“Yes,” Shane responded firmly. “I need to know all of it. Please.”

Ilya sighed quietly, tugging on his ear, his discomfort shooting waves of tension throughout his body and squeezing his chest. “I saw him touch you, take off your shirt. I did not know was you, at first. But you made a noise, like pain, and you fell down to the ground. He-” Ilya stopped and swallowed hard, trying to ignore the embarrassed flush quickly darkening Shane’s cheeks. He fixed his gaze on the edge of the counter next to Shane’s hip, trying to give Shane as much privacy to hear this as he could manage.

“He said ‘open your mouth.’ I knew you were not okay, would not have… done that, in public place. I went over, and you were confused and not awake. Eyes open but not seeing. I tried to wake you, and did for a moment, but then you were… unconscious, again. I got Pike to take you home, then I came to make sure you were okay.”

The room was quiet for a few long seconds, the silence heavy.

“Jesus,” Shane muttered, rubbing his face absently. Ilya tracked his movements and noticed that his cheek wasn’t cut, only scraped. Probably from falling on the hard concrete. That explained the blood he had seen, the final sight that had snapped his control completely.

“Was anyone else…”

“No,” Ilya replied immediately, shaking his head emphatically. “Was no one else there outside. No one saw. Just me.” Shane looked somewhat relieved, though the embarrassment remained clear in his heated cheeks and his distance.

“I don’t even remember Hayden being here,” he admitted, almost sheepish. “I guess I’ll talk to him about it later… Or maybe not. Maybe never again, and we can forget any of it ever happened.” Ilya watched him cycle through pulling on his hair, then catching himself and crossing his arms over his chest, only to tap his fingers repeatedly, obsessively against his arm. “I can’t believe this. I… Thank you. I’m- I’m glad you were there.”

“I am too,” Ilya replied softly, and Shane nodded once, awkwardly, before he tensed again, digging his nails into his arms.

“I can’t believe how fucking stupid I was.” His voice was angry, disgusted. Ilya’s heart ached. “I could’ve ruined everything for myself, if anyone had seen. And he could’ve… Fuck. It all could’ve been a whole lot worse.”

“Is not your fault, Shane,” Ilya said gently, cautiously coming to stand next to him at the island. “You know that, yes? You did not do anything wrong.”

Shane huffed out a laugh, the edge bitter and biting. “Is not your fault,” Ilya repeated more firmly, ducking his head a little to force Shane to look him in the eyes. He did, briefly, then looked away again, inadvertently catching sight of Ilya’s hands, which were much more colorful in the morning light with the beginnings of deep bruises than they had been the night before.

“Your hands,” Shane murmured, and Ilya tried to subtly turn his knuckles toward his body. “I remember hearing some other things, too.” This time, Shane did meet Ilya’s eyes, and his were sharp. “You left some things out of your story.”

Ilya huffed, trying to push away his immediate defensiveness. “Is not important.”

“You fought with him?”

“I- I made sure he would never do this again. That is all.”

“Tell me what happened.” Shane’s tone left no room for argument.

Ilya squirmed briefly, considering how to explain clearly, so that Shane would really understand, then relented. “I do not think fight is right term,” he tried with a small, tired smirk. Shane’s face stayed blank. Pushed by the weight of his gaze, Ilya felt the sarcastic shield slip, and he let the smirk fade. He knew that avoiding real conversations was one of the reasons they had ended up in the situation they were in before, and finally being honest last night had gotten him to where they were now. He intended to keep going that way, despite his initial urges to avoid or protect himself. He was going to try, really try.

He would do anything for Shane.

“I did not know what else to do,” he admitted honestly. “When I saw what was happening, when I saw was you… I could not just leave you. I could not just leave him. And when I saw you were hurt, bleeding…” He reached his hand tentatively up toward Shane’s scraped cheek, but Shane ducked away, and Ilya let his hand fall awkwardly back to his side, frowning slightly. “Was like I snapped. I just lost control. I- I needed to hurt him back.”

Shane’s face twisted, his eyes unreadable, and Ilya felt the beginnings of anxiety stirring in his chest. “What happened to him?”

“He ran off, after. I do not know. I was more focused on getting here.”

“And somehow no one saw any of this?” Shane questioned, and this time, Ilya was the one to break their eye contact.

Honesty. Not defensiveness.

“There is video. Of me, not of you. Pike had taken you away. Media is calling it ‘gay hookup gone wrong,’ or something like that. Tabloids.” As if on cue, Ilya’s phone began to vibrate with another call on the table. He ignored it, but Shane’s gaze was fixed on it until it fell silent again. He turned back to Ilya, his dark eyes wide.

“What are you going to do?”

Ilya shrugged, forcing nonchalance into his movements. “Nothing. Was always going to happen at some time. No point in trying to take back now.”

“Nothing? You weren’t there with a guy. Surely someone there could vouch for you, tell them that’s not what it was.”

“No. Is no point. They have already decided what happened.”

“What about the league? Or Russia? Can you even go home now, if you wanted to? Are you even safe?”

“I will be fine. Russia is Russia. News is already out now, is everywhere online. I will figure it out. But I am safe here.”

Shane fell quiet again for a moment. Ilya could have seen his mind racing from across the room, from across a stadium. He was already moving to soothe Shane’s anxiety, to ground him, when Shane interrupted him abruptly.

“I want to see the video.” His jaw was set, his eyes fierce.

Icy panic spread through him like someone had injected it directly into his veins. “Shane, no. I don’t want-” Ilya heard the fear in his voice, the guilt and shame he had barely stuffed down clawing their way up his throat again.

“Why?” Shane snapped, and Ilya shifted back in surprise, automatically adding more distance between them, eyes wide at his sudden shift in tone. “This was about me, so why can’t I see what the rest of the world has seen already? What are you still hiding?”

Ilya paused for a long moment, his exhausted brain scrambling to find the right English words to explain the shame he felt at his loss of control, the face he didn’t recognize, the violent person he had worked so hard to leave behind, so Shane would understand, so they could move back into the honest, real place they had been the night before, instead of whatever minefield this morning was turning out to be. His sleep deprivation was catching up with him quickly, and the words seemed to fade away from him as soon as he had almost grabbed them.

While Ilya struggled, the silence stretching between them, Shane abruptly breathed out heavily, pressing his palms hard into his eyes. He seemed to physically deflate. “I’m sorry. I’m- This has been a lot. My head isn’t really… right, yet. We don’t have to do this. You don’t owe me an explanation. Honestly, you didn’t need to do any of this. But thank you. For helping me, and for making sure no one saw me, and for staying to make sure I was okay.”

Ilya softened immediately, just like he always did with Shane. Inevitable.

“I told you last night, remember?” he asked quietly, stepping into Shane’s space and stroking the back of his hand lightly down his uninjured cheek, across the freckles he could never stop working to memorize. “I will always be here to protect you.” He slid his hand to the back of Shane’s neck and leaned in, the ache of the months he had spent missing the press of Shane’s lips against his own suddenly overwhelming him. He needed the comfort, the reassurance of him, the physical reminder that everything was okay, that he was okay. That they were back to being them, and maybe something even better, now.

And Shane jumped back like he had been electrocuted, knocking into the counter and fumbling, putting several feet of distance between them immediately. Ilya froze, his mind struggling to catch up with that reaction, that blatant rejection.

“Shane-”

“I-” Shane looked panicked, his cheeks flushed, his eyes wide and darting everywhere but Ilya’s face, one hand roughly running through his hair, tugging anxiously. “I appreciate the sentiment, but. We can’t- You know we can’t do that anymore.” He took another step back, and Ilya couldn’t move, his hand still frozen in midair.

“But, last night-” Ilya choked out, and Shane shook his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I already said I appreciate you intervening at the bar and helping me out last night, Rozanov, but. You know I’m with Rose. I could never- Look, I will always be grateful. But this doesn’t change things between us. We are not anything. Whatever we were doing was already over. It’s been over.” His face shifted, then, and his eyes were icy, his posture rigid and tense.

Ilya couldn’t catch his breath. His heart slammed against his ribs, and the ache was like a knife, the point white-hot and lodged deep. He half-expected to see blood pooling on the floor at his feet, as if Shane had actually cut him. Unbidden, memories from the night raced through his mind again. Shane’s body curling further into Ilya’s lap, his unguarded eyes reflecting the golden light, the smile and squeeze of his hand after Ilya had finally, finally said out loud his deepest secret, an undeniable fact he had known for much longer than he was willing to admit even to himself. He had known that Shane felt the same, even if hadn’t been able to speak to say it back. Shane had made it so clear.

The truth slammed into him like a freight train.

He didn’t remember.

Ilya felt sick, his heart throbbing in his chest, the ache almost paralyzing. This couldn’t be happening. Shane had to remember something that important.

He was desperate to reach out to Shane again, to pull him back into his arms and hold him there, to confess everything all over again, to kiss him and kiss him until he had conveyed every ounce of his feelings and there could be no more room for any doubts about any of it.

Instead, he did the only thing he could do. He forced air into his lungs, clenched his jaw, and slid his carefully constructed mask of cool indifference over his face, shoving everything else down into a box that he would hide somewhere deep behind his ribs and never, never open again. At this, he had years of practice.

“Right,” he said, forcing his voice to remain steady. “Do not worry about it, Hollander. You and me, same page.”

He couldn’t get another steady breath in, gasping as quietly as he could. He knew Shane would pretend he hadn’t heard it, even if he did. Ilya finally convinced his feet to move, and he crossed the room and picked up his phone, sliding it into his pocket.

“I should be getting back anyway. To Boston. Lots to do. Hockey games to win. You are good, yes?”

Shane nodded slowly, watching Ilya with a strange mixture of suspicion and what might have been guilt in his dark eyes. Ilya couldn’t think about that now. Not with the still-rising panic making him lightheaded, creating black spots that danced across his vision.

“Great. Am glad you’re okay, Hollander. And you are right. We can just forget all about it.”

When he reached the front door, Ilya couldn’t stop himself from turning to look over his shoulder, briefly, his mind screaming at him to stay. Shane was still standing in the same spot, his eyes fixed on the floor, his posture rigid. He didn’t look up.

Ilya forced himself to close the door behind him, though he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead hard against the wood after it clicked shut, just for a second. He pulled out his phone and sent one singular message, ignoring everything else waiting for him, his body running on autopilot. He walked a block away before he emptied the contents of his stomach into some bushes, doubled over as his vision went black around the edges. Then, when he could stand again, he ordered a Lyft, which came blessedly quickly, whisking him off to the airport and as far away from Shane Hollander as he could reasonably get.

His phone buzzed once on the ride, and he glanced at it briefly before swiping the notification away and turning it all the way off.

Ilya: I had to leave. He is better today, I think. Is awake and talking normally. But can you check later to be sure?

Pike: I will. I know we’re not exactly friends, but I owe you big time for helping Shane like you did. I’ve seen the headlines. Are you okay, Roz?

—

A six-game suspension.

It could have been worse.

His coach had been utterly furious, had yelled until Ilya couldn’t even attempt to focus on the words anymore and had to hold the phone at least a foot away from his ear. Disappointment, embarrassment. Out of control. Lucky he hadn’t been arrested. It went on and on and on.

He tried not to let the words replay in his head after the call disconnected.

His agent and the league wanted him to “address the situation,” make a statement to “control the narrative” and explain his behavior… but only the explanation they found palatable. His agent wrote him a brief, bland statement apologizing for letting Boston and his team down and saying that he was taking the time off during his suspension to “get some help” with his partying and “work on his relationship with alcohol.” Ilya had approved it to be posted across his social media pages without arguing. He couldn’t tell the real truth, not ever, so he didn’t see the point in fighting whatever story they wanted to impose on him.

It had also been made crystal clear to him by his coach and the higher-ups that there were to be no comments related to his sexuality, no clarification, no “coming out” of any kind. So besides the single statement, which even he had to admit sounded nothing like him, he remained obediently silent as the tabloids continued to run more elaborate stories about his “gay double life,” and the speculation on social media became more unfounded and more vicious by the hour.

And maybe the suspension was warranted. He had lost control in a big, public way. But from his coach’s and management’s reactions, Ilya couldn’t help but think that his biggest crime in their eyes wasn’t supposedly drinking way too much on a night out, or getting in a bar fight, or even being stupid enough to be recorded while doing it. Plenty of players in the league did that and worse on a regular basis, and each time, the problem was quietly swept away with the ever-changing news cycle. No extended coverage. No rampant speculation. No real consequences.

No, the words were vague, but the implications were startlingly clear, even for someone who still struggled at times to read between the lines of a nuanced language he would never really be fully done learning: Ilya being forced out of the closet, even inaccurately, was the problem, the thing the league couldn’t look past. Anything else was forgivable–fucking hundreds of women (or thousands, depending on who you asked; the reports got more exaggerated every year, and Ilya had never cared enough to correct the record), his reputation as a “ladies’ man” constantly preceding him, being almost as famous for his charisma and ability to “close” as he was for his hockey stats–that was all perfectly acceptable. Encouraged, even.

Ilya Rozanov, notorious womanizer who never slept alone, who loved them and left them, who had a roster three-deep in every city with a professional team; well, he wasn’t spoken of like Canada’s golden boy and national sweetheart, but no one associated with the league in any capacity–teammates, coaches, management, commentators, journalists–had ever brought up any of those aspects of Ilya’s reputation in anything less than a neutral light, and the majority of the time, it was overtly positive.

He wondered, in the darker moments of the aftermath, how many women he would have to sleep with (or be rumored to have slept with, given the discrepancy between his reputation and the truth) to balance out the idea, the rumor, that he had fucked just one man. That was what the league could never get past, even if they refused to say it out loud.

After he approved the statement for his agent to post, Ilya had turned his phone off and thrown it onto the table closest to him, and there it stayed, finally silent.

They would all be thrilled to see how well he was “working on his relationship with alcohol,” he thought sarcastically as he poured himself a third glass of vodka, alone in his dark house. He took this one upstairs to his room, to stare blankly at the walls there instead of from the spot on his couch he had occupied for most of the day since he had returned home. He had initially turned on the television, hoping for some sort of distraction, but he had immediately seen his own face staring back at him, red and flecked with a stranger’s blood, blood he had put there, while he screamed and thrashed like a man possessed.

The television hadn’t lasted.

Ilya took a long drink from the glass before setting it down on his nightstand, flopping down on his bed with a little more force than necessary. He laid there motionless for a few minutes, eyes open and fixed on the lights of the city outside his window until they blurred together, halos stretching and connecting in an intricate web. He couldn’t bring himself to raise his head, even to reach his pillow. His neck ached in time with the throbbing in both of his hands. But why would he bother to move? Comfort was for people who didn’t ruin their entire lives with a series of unfathomably stupid fuck-ups, each somehow bigger than the last. Like he was competing with himself to see how idiotic and reckless he could actually be before he died trying.

He had ruined things with Shane, pushing him too hard and chasing him straight out the door and out of Ilya’s life altogether, all because he couldn’t get his shit together enough to talk about what was in his head instead of springing a whole new version of himself, unannounced and unexplained, on someone who genuinely wore the same five shirts in a rotation to avoid too much change, for fuck’s sake. He was too emotionally stunted to admit to himself, let alone to Shane, what he had actually wanted, what he had really intended by asking him to stay and cooking him food and letting his first name fall from his lips between them, and Ilya had paid the price for his spectacular failure of communication on that day; the impact had sent him reeling for weeks. And then, as soon as he had finally been able to come to terms with what he really wanted from Shane, with Shane, Shane had shown up with a beautiful movie star on his arm and a smile on his face, the real one, the one that made his eyes sparkle and his cheeks crinkle. The one Ilya had foolishly thought Shane reserved for him alone, had felt entitled to. He had spun out, barely functioning at all through the haze of his grief and anger and self-loathing. And now, even after all of those mistakes and his attempts to manage them, Ilya had still been so unable to control his own emotions that he had become immediately consumed by jealousy at the sight of Shane in the club with her, and he had decided to get his petty, selfish revenge, had used someone else whose name he didn’t even remember for the sole purpose of lashing out, of trying to soothe the howling, wounded animal in his chest. Of hurting Shane back. And the worst part was that it seemed to have worked exactly as he had hoped, and he had pushed Shane too far again, right into the arms of the man who almost-

Ilya couldn’t bring himself to say it, even in the dark emptiness of his lonely room. Even inside his own head.

And now he had lost Shane again. Never really had him back in the first place.

As deep as that ache reached inside of Ilya, as gutted as it left him, he knew this was the way it was supposed to be. Shane was perfect. He was good, kind, selfless. He was sunshine. He deserved so much more than Ilya in all his brokenness could ever hope to give him. Shane had never deserved to be dragged down by the dark, yawning thing inside of Ilya, the hole Ilya could never fill, the missing piece in his heart that would always make him worse than someone like Shane. They were doomed before they even met.

He loved Shane. He loved Shane more than he had ever loved anything, more than he had thought himself capable of loving. Enough to really try to be better, to fix the void inside himself. And still, even with all of that love, with all that effort, Ilya had hurt him, over and over again. He had lashed out, he had withheld, he had changed directions and changed his mind, always dragging Shane along with him, and he had tangled them up inextricably. He had hurt Shane for years, unable to stop himself. Unable to hold back the twisted, self-destructive part of his mind that always overtook him eventually.

Watching the video of himself outside the club felt like looking directly into the eyes of the person Ilya knew he really was deep down, no matter how desperately he tried to pretend otherwise.

Finally impossible to ignore.

Angry, selfish, out of control, thoughtless, impulsive, violent, worthless. The truth was, he made Shane worse just by being around him. He had never really deserved a second of Shane’s time, a speck of his attention, an ounce of his forgiveness for anything he had done. But it had felt so good to stand in Shane’s light, to pretend he deserved to be there, to feel the gentle warmth on his skin and in his heart, pushing back that ever-lurking darkness. And Ilya was too selfish to give it up, content to continue dragging Shane down to his level so he didn’t have to face losing him.

He knew now that he couldn’t do it anymore. Shane had finally seen the truth of him, and he had rightfully left Ilya behind, had found someone else who could give him light in return, instead of the pain Ilya always left in his wake. And Ilya swore to himself that he would really stop this time. He would let Shane go, let him be happy and fulfilled. Let him be with someone who deserved him. Even if it killed him to do it.

Ilya broke everything he touched. He would not break Shane.

The ice melted slowly in the empty glass on his nightstand as he finally surrendered to sleep, unable to face the oppressive black room for another minute.

—

The next two days passed in a similar blur. Ilya watched himself go through the motions– picking at food that tasted like ash in his mouth, forcing himself into the shower, draining bottle after bottle of vodka until he finally passed out– but it felt as though he was miles away from his body. Like he was floating above, just a bystander unable to tear his eyes away from the gory scene of someone’s slow-motion detonation.

The thought of leaving the house had floated across his mind, occasionally. Of going out, of finding someone to lose himself in, like the old days. Someone to dull the fierce ache of his shattered heart, just for a little while. Just long enough for him to breathe without feeling like his chest was being crushed.

He dismissed the thought as soon as it appeared. He knew better than to even try. He knew that no matter what he did, it would only end right back here, with him drunk, alone, and completely unable to clear the images of liquid brown eyes staring up at him and freckles scattered like constellations on warm skin from his mind.

If he couldn’t look at that, Ilya didn’t want to see anything at all.

—

Ilya lost track of time, for a while, and nights bled into days and back. He eventually ran out of vodka, and he couldn’t bring himself to order more, let alone leave his house for a store. The unintentional sobriety only made the pain fiercer, sharper, and he spent hours simply staring into space, forcing himself to do nothing but feel it, soak in it, just the way he deserved. So he would remember it when his weak, pathetic heart inevitably wanted to crawl back to Shane just one more time despite all of his promises to let go. Sometimes he slept, but fitfully and plagued by abstract nightmares of pounding music and flashing lights and himself running, legs pumping until his lungs burned, but never quite catching up to where he intrinsically knew that he desperately needed to be.

Ilya had no idea how many days it had been now, was barely present, the dissociation nearly constant. He had just forced himself through a shower and walked downstairs to resume his vigil on the couch when a pounding on his door shook him from his trance.

He ignored it entirely, didn’t even make a move toward the entrance. He had absolutely no interest in seeing his coach, or his agent, or a particularly brave reporter, or Marly, or anyone else who thought they could pull him from this trench.

He didn’t want to swim up this time.

The pounding continued, maybe even increased in intensity, booming and echoing like cannonfire through the otherwise silent, stale air inside the house. Ilya’s eyes remained fixed to the blank living room wall in front of him.

He had nothing more to give these people.

After far too many minutes, the knocking, blessedly, ceased. Ilya released a long breath, propping his elbows on his knees and lowering his head to rest in his hands, his neck suddenly feeling too tired to hold it up anymore.

Then, the pounding started again with renewed vigor.

Ilya snarled in Russian and threw himself off of the couch, stalking toward the door. “I do not know what the fuck you think you are doing at my house, but I do not want to see-” he was spitting as he flung the door open, and he stopped dead, as if the wind had been knocked out of him by a particularly fierce check into the boards. All of the words tumbled from his chest, and he audibly sucked in a ragged, gasping breath.

“Hi.”

Ilya realized belatedly that his mouth was hanging open and snapped it closed, leaning further into the hand still holding onto the door, suddenly feeling like he might collapse without the extra support. He didn’t respond, just stared openly at Shane’s face in utter shock.

Shane smiled slightly at Ilya’s prolonged silence, a little awkward, but less rigid, less tense, somehow, than his usual smile. “I was hoping we could talk.”

And you know what? No, actually. Shane fucking Hollander did not get to just show up on Ilya’s front porch without any invitation or warning, didn’t get to walk straight through the shattered glass and broken furniture and burning building that was Ilya’s life at this point, and ask to talk. He didn’t get to stand there, smiling, his skin actually glowing in the soft morning light, his freckles shining against his slightly flushed cheeks like stars, his deep brown eyes sparkling, looking more beautiful than Ilya had ever seen him in all the years they had known each other, and tempt Ilya to break every promise he had made to himself about finally leaving Shane alone.

He couldn’t go through this again. He just couldn’t. He was barely surviving it now, hanging on by a rapidly fraying thread. He would never survive losing Shane a second time if he let him in to talk now. He couldn’t sit and listen to Shane list all the reasons why he couldn’t have him just for the sake of closure, or whatever Shane thought he was doing.

“You should not be here, Hollander,” he muttered, breaking their eye contact and finally regaining his voice, even if it came out raspy and far too vulnerable. How many days had it been since he had spoken out loud? Ilya wasn’t sure. “What, you do not even ask now? Just show up here at my house? Where are those Canadian manners you love so much?”

Shane’s smile widened, the look in his eyes playful somehow. Ilya felt like he was sinking, thrashing and trying to tread water, but unable to break the surface no matter how frantic his movements became.

“I did try to call you,” he replied, a teasing edge to his voice. “For a couple of days, actually. You never picked up. Straight to voicemail.” Ilya thought of his phone, powered off and facedown on his table and bit back a groan.

“Is nothing to talk about,” Ilya said in a tone he hoped was firmer than it had sounded to his own ears. “We talked at your house. Everything is fine. Go home.”

“Ilya.”

Ilya visibly winced, taking a half step back, the need to put more distance between them a physical ache, like the stinging of another jagged cut across his skin. He kept his eyes down, doing anything to avoid being pulled in by Shane’s gravity. He had to stop it this time. He couldn’t-

“How did you get here?” Ilya asked abruptly, his mind catching up to him, realizing the time of day and the reality of the distance between Montreal and Boston all at once.

Shane’s face scrunched up in that soul-crushingly adorable way it did when he was confused, or when something happened that he didn’t expect, hadn’t prepared for.

“I drove,” he answered plainly, and Ilya’s stomach rolled.

“By yourself? Overnight?” he asked weakly, and Shane looked even more confused by the second.

“Yeah, it’s only-”

“Jesus, Hollander, why would you do that? What if something had happened?” Ilya’s heart started to race, images flashing through his mind of abandoned roadside rest stops and empty convenience stores and Shane, with his car broken down in the dark on the side of the road, or alone in a desolate parking lot, until he wasn’t, until-

Ilya forced himself to pause, to take a deep breath, in and out. He had to stop this. Shane had made his feelings perfectly clear, and he had made certain that Ilya understood that Shane wasn’t his to worry for anymore.

Shane’s face softened, and he leaned forward, almost imperceptibly. “Ilya, nothing happened. I’m totally fine. It was-”

“Great,” Ilya interrupted him, his stomach in knots, shoving his broken heart and everything it wanted him to do as far down in his body as he could, trying desperately to lock it up like he used to. “You are fine. But like I said, you should not be here. Is bad time, I have things to do. I do not have time to talk. Drive safely.” He started to push the door shut, despite every instinct screaming at him to pull Shane inside and kiss him until they both forgot everything that had gone wrong between them. He was keeping his promise this time.

Shane grabbed the door, holding it firmly open, pushing back against Ilya’s admittedly less-than-wholehearted attempt to shut it in his face.

“I broke up with Rose.”

Ilya froze, his hand still on the door below Shane’s. Shock coursed through his body like electricity, tensing every muscle. Entirely automatically, his gaze snapped back to Shane’s. He looked serious now, his dark eyes running over Ilya’s face, studying him. Ilya’s hands started to shake, and he gripped the door harder to disguise it. “What?” he breathed.

“I’m- I’m gay, Ilya. Like, all the way. I came out to her. Or, she sort of came out for me. It’s complicated… It doesn’t matter. We aren’t together anymore.” Shane shook his head as if to clear it, still firmly preventing Ilya from shutting the door on him.

“I wanted to talk to you because some things are starting to come back to me, from that night.”

Ilya wondered, not for the first time that day, if his stomach might fall directly through his feet. He felt as though someone had gone ten rounds with his chest as the bag. His throat felt sealed shut; he couldn’t speak.

“But I don’t know if everything I’m remembering is right,” Shane continued, undeterred by Ilya’s silence and pale, stricken face. “So. I need you to repeat what you said that night.”

And Shane couldn’t mean that. He hadn’t remembered any part of Ilya’s confession by the morning, had barely even recalled that they had spoken during the night, and he had been essentially asleep when Ilya had decided to bare his soul anyway. So Ilya knew, without question, that Shane was not asking what he thought he was asking, what he wished he was asking.

He knew he should just tell Shane that he was sorry, but he didn’t remember everything either of them had said while Shane was half-conscious and out of his mind, but that it was nothing important anyway. He knew he should let Shane leave. He would not break him. He would not drag Shane down with him again, wouldn’t dare put the pressure on Shane to try to figure out a way to let Ilya down gently if he told Shane the truth in the bright, unforgiving light of the morning. He wouldn’t allow Shane to feel even one ounce of guilt about the state Ilya was currently in, wouldn’t let Shane blame himself for any of it. He would hold this dam together by his fucking fingernails if he had to, and he would break when the door was closed for good, releasing the deluge alone, in the dark. Like he had always done. Like he had to do.

But it was there, rising in his chest despite all his efforts. It was the hope he just couldn’t manage to snuff out, and his heart, his fucking traitorous heart, picked up speed again.

“Ilya.” Shane’s voice forced Ilya to look up at him again, and their eyes locked. “I need you to repeat what you said that night.”

Ilya’s panic was plain on his face; his whole body trembled under the weight of Shane’s stare. “I can’t,” he whispered hoarsely, barely audible as the words squeezed out through the unyielding pressure in his chest. But Shane heard him anyway. His gaze only flashed darker, more fierce, that stubborn edge creeping into the set of his jaw. Ilya had the nearly-hysterical thought that those eyes could somehow see straight through the facade he was grasping to hold together, through to the carnage that was Ilya’s life, his mind. His heart.

“Say it.”

The dam cracked. Ilya’s resistance was quickly waning, and he was losing the battle to the masochistic part of his mind that told him he deserved to hear the rejection from Shane in the clearest, most direct way possible, so there could be no mistakes this time.

And still, his stupid, broken heart hoped.

Ilya swallowed hard; his throat felt like it was coated in shards of glass. “I…” He was forced to stop and tried to suck in a shaky breath; the vice grip around his chest refusing to loosen even as the dizziness made his vision narrow. Shane’s dark, focused eyes were all that he could see.

“I love you,” Ilya whispered, his voice broken and as ruined as he felt. Something flashed across Shane’s face, but Ilya couldn’t place it, and it was gone before he could try to force his brain to decipher it.

“Say it again,” Shane said quietly, and Ilya barely suppressed an actual whimper, his father’s voice in his head whispering in disgust at how split open, how shattered, how pathetic he was. What he was letting Shane see instead of hiding away. Ilya silently begged anyone who was listening, begged Shane, to just let this end, to let him return to licking his wounds alone.

“I love you,” he repeated, barely more than a breath.

Shane moved suddenly, pushed his way inside, and nudged the door shut behind him with his foot, forcing Ilya to finally stop white-knuckling the wood. Ilya just stared, unable to process, momentarily transfixed by the way the light streaming in from the windows highlighted Shane’s skin, creating a hazy ring around his whole body. He was perfect. He was angelic. He was holy, and Ilya started to shrink away from him, overwhelmed and aching to return to the place inside himself where he had been hiding from this, until Shane’s hands on his cheeks stopped him from running. His eyes flicked back and forth between Ilya’s for just a moment as they both stilled, suspended in the space between. Then he pulled Ilya forward and kissed him, hard and without hesitancy.

The dam broke.

Ilya fisted Shane’s hoodie, gripped his arm, grabbing at him urgently, holding him as close as he possibly could. His own harsh breathing and the small, disbelieving sounds dragged up from deep in his chest reached his ears, but he couldn’t stop. He licked frantically into Shane’s mouth, sliding one hand to the back of his neck, pressing them even closer together, trapping him there.

Shane kissed him back with no less ferocity, but gradually, he began to slow down, even as Ilya continued to ramp up in his desperation. His thumbs brushed soothingly across Ilya’s jaw, his cheeks; the press of his mouth became slow but deliberate, deep. He made no move to pull away, and Ilya felt himself relax incrementally with every kiss, eventually managing to calm himself enough to match Shane’s pace, to stop chasing his mouth like a starving man, like he wanted to crawl inside Shane’s skin so he never had to let go of him again.

After what felt like hours, Shane finally pulled back, and Ilya choked back a sharp protest when he caught the smile on Shane’s face. His expression was gentle, open, affectionate, and almost unbearably fond. Ilya swallowed hard, his own eyes wide, his hands still shaking where they were tangled up in Shane.

“I love you too,” Shane murmured, pressing another kiss against Ilya’s lips even as his jaw dropped open.

“What?”

Shane’s smile grew impossibly wider. “I said I love you too, Ilya.”

The disbelief rocked him, stealing his breath and almost bringing him to his knees even as he finally felt the vice start to loosen around his chest for the first time in months.

“How could you-”

“Ilya,” Shane interrupted softly with a small, affectionately exasperated huff, brushing their noses together before pulling back just far enough to look him fully in the face. “I’ve been in love with you for so long. Probably since the first second I met you, honestly.” He exhaled softly, a contented sigh, and kissed Ilya again. “How could I? How could I not?”

A few stray tears slipped down one of Ilya’s cheeks as he blinked at Shane, his jaw slack, speechless. He buried his face in Shane’s neck, wrapping his arms around him tightly. Shane hugged him back, tangling one hand in Ilya’s curls and running his other up and down Ilya’s back, helping the tension to slowly leach out of him.

“I’m so sorry,” Shane murmured into his hair. “I’m so sorry that I forgot what you said. I’m so sorry it took me this long to remember.” He pressed a soft kiss to a curl, and Ilya shuddered. “I’m so sorry it took me so long to be able to be as brave as you were, Ilya. But I remember now. I’m here.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Ilya whispered back, and Shane shook his head immediately, jostling Ilya’s own with the movement.

“I do,” he said firmly. “I’m so sorry that I left before, that I ran away from you. I’m so sorry for Rose, Jesus, and for kicking you out the other day when you are the only reason I’m healthy and safe.” He gently tugged Ilya’s head up to meet his eyes again. “You protected me. You took care of me,” he said softly, his brown eyes shining, a little wet in the early light. “After everything. And now this just blew up, and you’re suspended, and fuck, outed, for fuck’s sake. And all of that is because of me. Because you were looking out for me, just like you always do.”

Ilya reached up to cup Shane’s jaw, and another piece inside of him felt just a little more settled when his fingers remembered the action, the motion as easy and automatic as breathing. “I am sorry too, that I did not stop this from happening to you. I would give anything to have been there even ten minutes earlier,” he said quietly, squeezing Shane’s chin gently when he started to shake his head, stilling him. “But I do not regret any of these things. Not the suspension, nothing. This is not how I would choose to come out, if I had the choice, but because of all this focus on me and my ‘big secret gay sex life’-” Shane smiled, just a little, at that. “-no one has said anything about you. Is exactly what I wanted. Being suspended, being outed… I would do it one hundred more times, one thousand more times, if it was to keep you safe.”

Ilya didn’t think he had ever seen Shane’s eyes as tender and unguarded as they were at that moment. It was like staring straight into Shane’s head and finally, finally, knowing exactly what he was thinking. There was no doubt left in Ilya’s mind, and the whiplash of that absolute certainty after months of nothing but doubting every part of himself was dizzying.

“Ilya…”

“Maybe you do not remember,” he murmured, pressing another featherlight kiss to Shane’s lips and smiling uncontrollably when he felt Shane lean in against his hand on his chin, chasing Ilya’s mouth. “But I told you this that night too: I will always protect you.”

“I remember,” Shane replied softly, almost shyly. “I don’t think that’s all you said, though.”

It was strange, the sensation of his heart being put back together inside his chest in real time.

“You’re right,” he whispered, close enough that his lips brushed against Shane’s with every word. “I said, I will always protect you, moye solnyshko.”

Ilya grabbed Shane fully this time and leaned him up against the door, the breathless laugh Shane let out spreading warmth all the way through him to his toes. Ilya kissed him soundly, pouring every emotion inside of him into the slide of his lips against Shane’s, into the way he tilted his head to deepen the kiss, into the way his fingertips pressed into soft skin carefully, like he was holding something precious. Finally trusting, Ilya threw everything he felt, unmasked after so long running, so many years hiding, into the space between them, unable to hold it back for another second.

And Shane caught it.