Chapter Text
“Ilya. Come on.”
“What?”
“You know what you’re doing.”
“I know nothing.”
“You— oh my god. You’re like a fucking boa constrictor! Get off me before I suffocate, asshole!”
But this just makes Ilya squeeze him tighter, until Shane is laughing and kicking and trying to free himself from the parasite that is his husband clinging to him.
Ilya, who clearly has other ideas, just buries his face in the space between Shane’s shoulder blades and moans. “My husband is so eager to leave me. What could be more important than staying right here in our bed for the rest of forever?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Probably the dinners we’ve both agreed to attend tonight, husband.”
The word is still new, still sparkling on his tongue every time he finds an excuse to say it, sweet with absolute rightness. Shane knows Ilya feels the same, because he’s going a bit overboard with the frequency he’s using it as well, but then again, they’re kind of allowed to be annoying about it right now. Any pair of newlyweds, freshly returned from a perfect, weeklong honeymoon in Spain would be annoying about it.
Shane has a husband now. The whole world knows he has a husband. There is truly nothing left to do but flaunt that fact as loudly and proudly as he’s been wanting to for literal years. When the season starts up, the first season of his career on a new team and playing with his now-husband, he’ll likely need to remind himself to act professionally just as much as he’ll need to remind Ilya.
Well, maybe not just as much. Ilya, as shameless and filterless as ever, will probably need a mandatory human resources powerpoint presentation about how grabbing your husband’s ass in locker rooms can be harmful for team morale.
But, that’s a problem for a fast-approaching, but ultimately later date. They still have a few weeks of summer before preseason training begins, and Shane will have to adjust to his new reality.
Living in Ottawa. Playing for the Centaurs. Being married. All of it.
“We could cancel,” Ilya says, mouthing along the back of Shane’s neck. “We are newly married, they would have to understand. If not, they are homophobic.”
“Hayden being mad that I’ve canceled dinner on him three times this summer doesn’t make him homophobic,” Shane offers.
Ilya huffs. “No, it just makes him the worst.”
At this point, Shane and Jackie are both 99% sure that Hayden and Ilya giving each other shit is just how they express their love. It’s probably the only way those stunted idiots actually know how to communicate. Giving each other shit is how Shane and Ilya express their love too, but with a lot more sex afterwards, which naturally makes their dynamic distinctly different from the frenemy relationship budding between his husband and his best friend.
“You have to be nicer to him now,” he says, knowing it’s a lost cause but trying anyway. “You’re basically family.”
This statement causes Ilya to gag dramatically. “Me and Pike are basically nothing.”
“You are the godparent of his children through marriage,” Shane points out, eliciting a deep sigh from Ilya.
“Okay. His children I will claim because they are cute and think I am very funny and wise.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “They think you’re their own personal jungle gym because you let them climb on you like monkeys.”
He feels Ilya’s breath against his neck as he laughs. “You sound jealous. Scared they like me better than Uncle Shane?”
“Hardly,” Shane says, even though he knows they do. Kids will always prefer the person who cooks them chocolate chip waffles for dinner over the stick-in-the-mud babysitter nagging at them all to brush their teeth before bed for three full minutes. “I’m very aware of your tactics of distraction, though, and they aren’t going to work. I need to get to Montreal this weekend anyway to sort things with the house, you know this.”
He has an early meeting tomorrow morning with his real estate agent to talk about putting his property in Montreal on the market. It probably could be done over the phone, but Shane likes to stay involved with his real estate investments, which means he’ll be there to discuss in person. Plus, there’s the matter of moving out his furniture and belongings and he’d like to oversee that as well. It doesn’t make him a control freak, like Ilya suggests. It makes him responsible.
But it had been Ilya’s idea to join him there tomorrow, driving over with Anya so Shane wouldn’t have to be alone in the city he now has very complicated and painful feelings toward. A city that used to be his home and yet had discarded him so easily, proving that perhaps it never really was. Shane hadn’t mentioned his unease at returning, but of course, Ilya sensed it anyway, and being the perceptive husband he was, more attuned to Shane and his tells than anyone else in the world, he’d offered to come before Shane even thought to ask.
He still has a hard time remembering that the two of them being seen together won’t mean the end of the world. Because that already happened and the world hadn’t ended as he feared, but instead kept right on spinning, indifferent. He no longer has to do things alone, fists clenched and teeth gritted, if he doesn't want to. And in this case, he doesn’t want to.
“But you could go tomorrow,” Ilya tries. “Stay here tonight and then we go together in the morning.”
“I told you, Hayden and Jackie are leaving on vacation tomorrow, so it has to be tonight. I haven’t seen them since the wedding. It’s way overdue.” Shane jabs an elbow into his unexpecting husband’s side, making him yelp and loosen his hold enough for Shane to wiggle out of it.
“You cheated!” Ilya protests loudly. “And your pointy elbow will leave a bruise!”
“You’ve survived worse,” Shane tells him unsympathetically, walking over to the dresser to change and pack a weekend bag.
Ilya wallows in their bed, making no move to rise as he watches Shane putter about their room.
“Are you just ignoring the fact that you have to be somewhere in an hour?” Shane asks him eventually.
As is their tradition, apparently, the family who owns the Ottawa Centaurs always takes Ilya and Zane Boodram out to a nice dinner before preseason training begins, both as a thank you to the captain and alternate who carry their team and as a pulse check for the upcoming season. It’s a very nice gesture, and one Shane can’t really wrap his mind around since he’s exchanged maybe five words with the owner of the Metros in his 11 seasons of playing for them, even after Shane had put in the hard work to win his franchise three Stanley Cups. Still, he’s grateful for the hospitality the Centaurs have always shown Ilya. And Shane supposes he will have to get used to being included in that hospitality as well.
Fresh out of excuses and ideas, Ilya flips onto his stomach and groans loudly into the pillow. Shane smiles at his exposed back, the stray bits of red sunburn lingering from their honeymoon that will turn into a dark tan by the end of the week. Like a stubborn child, Ilya had been so terrible about reapplying sunscreen, only acquiescing when Shane offered to rub it on for him. He’d missed a few spots, clearly.
Ilya has such a beautiful back, so wide and muscular, dotted with adorable moles and freckles like someone flicked a paintbrush over him and let the drops land where they may. This back had been on display for Shane all week, and if he had to choose between the view of the gorgeous beachside cliffs of Mallorca and the view of Ilya’s mountainous bare shoulders, he knows Spain doesn’t stand a chance. Spain is already a memory, dreamlike and fleeting. But Ilya, thankfully, he gets to keep forever.
“Ilya. Get up.” Shane says firmly. “Lateness is a bad look.”
Ilya lifts his head from where it’s buried in the pillows. “Don’t wanna go.”
“Oh, boohoo, poor baby has to go eat expensive steak and drink expensive wine with his buddy and the nice people who are paying for it. What a tragedy.”
Ilya glares at him over a shoulder, but Shane can see he’s fighting a smile. He loves when Shane gets sarcastic, even when that sarcasm is at his expense.
“I don’t know why you’re pouting. One night apart isn’t going to kill you.”
Shane is all talk. He already feels a small stinging sensation in his chest at the thought of sleeping in a bed without Ilya occupying the right side like always.
“Oh, I did not know it was a crime to miss my husband,” Ilya retorts, his tone thick with annoyance.
This makes Shane laugh.“You can’t miss me if I haven’t left yet, idiot. And we’ve spent every single day together this summer.”
Ilya lifts his brows. “So?”
A touch of anxiety wells up in Shane’s chest, and he does his best to smother it, to stomp out the embers before a stray gust causes it to catch fire.
“So,” Shane starts, keeping his voice even, “we live together now. We work together now. We’re going to spend every waking moment of our lives together for the foreseeable future—”
Ilya cuts him off impatiently. “Yes. Exactly. I am not hearing a problem with this.”
“Neither am I! It’s just going to be an adjustment, is all. And letting ourselves miss each other every now and then isn’t a bad thing.”
So he’s heard, anyway. It sounds like a bad thing to Shane, being away from Ilya. It was a bad thing for most of their relationship, a heavy, lingering ache that could never fully be assuaged, even after stealing a few days together whenever they could. He’s not entirely sure why he feels so adamant on insisting that the opposite is true now. That distance is good.
Ilya’s expression grows serious, his voice somber. “I have had enough of missing you, Shane. Enough to last a lifetime.”
And the look in his eyes, the hazel color of them a bit dimmer than moments ago, makes Shane wish he could take back whatever stupid fucking point he was trying to make.
“Hey.” He crosses over to the bed, perching himself on the side and taking Ilya’s face into his hands. “So have I. I’m sorry, I think I’m, like, projecting or something. I’m going to miss you a lot, and it feels silly, but—”
I never, ever want to be far from you. I miss you when you’re one room away. I don’t think I love you like normal people love each other.
“You sleep better with me there,” Ilya finishes for him and turns his head, pressing a kiss into Shane’s palm. “I know because is the same for me.”
The anxiety twinges again, demanding to be acknowledged, threatening to linger and expand if it isn’t. Shane reaches down to fiddle with the gold cross necklace at the base of Ilya’s throat, twisting it a bit on its chain before speaking again.
“You’re not worried?” he asks softly, eyes averted. “About getting sick of each other when all this starts up for real?”
He’s not asking the question he actually wants an answer to. Shane doubts he could ever be genuinely sick of Ilya, and if he ever is, he has no problem disappearing into his own world for a while when he needs space. It’s the reverse that makes him anxious: Ilya living with him, spending every day with him, slowly discovering that Shane is better in small, inoffensive doses. After all, he would hardly classify himself as an easy person to live with. He likes to think, after being in a long term committed relationship for three years, that Ilya knows this and isn’t going to be spooked by his idiosyncrasies. But sometimes he’s not strong enough to crush these insecurities on his own.
Ilya, to his credit, doesn’t even hesitate before speaking.
“Is that what this is about? No, Shane. I am not worried. I know we will get sick of each other. That is what married couples do, no? One of them folds the clothes wrong and then the other yells at them and then the bad clothes folder begs for forgiveness and the yelling one takes pity and then they fuck so hard they break the bed and is all better? That is the story of marriage. Tale old as time.”
“Wow, what a universal and unspecific example.”
That literally happened to them. Last week. At the nice ass resort they were staying at in Spain. Shane will never forget the extremely humiliating conversation he’d had with the concierge over the phone in their room, explaining the delicate situation with a hand clasped firmly over his cackling husband’s mouth.
Ilya rolls his eyes. “Fine, is the story of my marriage, then. I have only had a month of experience, Shane, I am sorry I cannot give more examples. You will just have to get sick of me more and yell about other things. Like organizing the fridge. Or loading the dishwasher wrong.”
Shane pushes his husband’s head away. “You’re a menace.”
He returns to the dresser to keep packing, taking out a few of Ilya’s shirts and placing them on the bed
“You are taking my clothes with you?” Ilya asks, brows furrowed.
“No. I’m just packing your bag while I pack my own. Saves time.”
Ilya gives him a shit eating grin. “Oh, this again?”
Shane glowers, knowing Ilya is referring to the suitcases they brought on vacation that Ilya was not allowed to touch. “I’m doing you a favor, you know.”
“Yes, I am very grateful. I married Shane Hollander and now I will not have to pack a suitcase ever for the rest of my life. Have never been so happy to be considered incompetent.”
“Okay, the way you do it is just so wrong and frankly concerning. You would think a guy who travels for half the year would learn how to optimize the space in a carry on, but no. No, you just dump unfolded, dubiously clean clothes in there and wonder why you have to sit on it to zip it closed. It’s a nightmare, Ilya..”
“Mmm keep talking dirty to me, sweetheart,” Ilya hums.
Shane launches a pair of socks at his head.
They continue to squabble about stupid, unimportant things while getting ready. Ilya mocks Shane for refolding all of their perfectly well-folded clothes before putting them in the bags. Shane demands that Ilya wears matching fucking socks to dinner like a sane person. They make eyes at each other in the bathroom mirror, exchanging stupid smiles every time they’re caught. There’s a new lightness between them now that’s almost intoxicating. The weight of keeping their love a secret has been lifted from around their necks, and Shane feels like he’s been bouncing on the moon ever since, despite the publicity and the backlash and all the shitty aspects of being outed.
When Shane is finally dressed, packed and ready, he heads for the front door, Anya on his heels. He’s sure that in his absence tonight, Anya will be keeping his side of the bed warm. Ilya is terrible at telling her no.
He bends down to give her ears a scratch. “Bye, Anya. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“We will ride with the windows down the whole way there,” Ilya tells him. “She will love it.”
“There’s a dog park near the house we can take her to,” Shane offers, standing. “I always go past it on my runs.”
Ilya smiles, looking irresistible in his cream dress shirt and dark brown slacks. Shane takes a step towards him, wraps his arms around his waist, tries to fight off the melancholy at the thought of spending their first night apart since before they got married.
“Have fun tonight. Tell Bood I say hello.”
He tries to make his voice upbeat, but must not do a very good job. Ilya’s grip only tightens and his lips press into Shane’s hair.
“I will.”
“Meet you at my place around ten tomorrow?” he asks.
“Your old place,” Ilya reminds him, his voice gentle, ever sensitive to the fact that Shane is in a transitional period. “Yes, we will be there.”
Shane pulls back, eyeing his husbands’ get up appreciatively. “You’re really showing me up, tonight, Rozanov. Damn.”
Ilya laughs and shakes his head, his hands sliding down Shane’s arms. “No, no, this ratty sweatshirt you refuse to throw away is very sexy as well. I can barely resist you, but I am showing restraint because you will yell at me if I ravish you and make us late to our stupid dinners.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Shane says, even as his cheeks heat. He glances down at the plain gray sweatshirt he’s had for nearly a decade now. “And this sweatshirt isn’t ratty, it’s just… well-loved.”
“Sweetheart, there are holes in the sleeves.”
“Whatever, okay? I’m going to Hayden’s, not the nicest steakhouse in the city.”
Ilya makes a face. “Certainly not if Hayden is the one making the steaks. He burned them last time.”
Shane laughs. “I better go. I’ll text you when I get there, okay?”
“Okay,” Ilya sighs, pulling him back in for a kiss.
And when Shane melts into it, pushing them both a bit closer to being late than he would prefer, he doesn’t feel as badly as he probably should.
***
Shane could truly make the drive from Ottawa to Montreal in his sleep. He practically has, having driven half-awake to make it back in time for early practices on multiple occasions. In the past, he’s made this two hour trip in silence, but Ilya has almost entirely broken him of this habit simply by giving him so much shit about it. Now, he listens absently to the hockey podcast playing from his speakers, tapping his fingers impatiently against the wheel.
Hayden had said Jackie was making the lettuce wraps he loves for dinner, and thinking of that now sends a warm feeling through his chest. He’s missed his best friends, and when the season begins and he’s officially living in Ottawa fulltime, he’ll be forced to miss them even more.
It sucks, moving away from the two people who have been constants in his adult life. Even though it isn’t remotely his fault, he feels guilty too, like he’s leaving Hayden behind somehow. If Ilya knew this, he would tell Shane he’s being stupid. But if Hayden had been the one to choose to sign with a different team, Shane knows he would feel a little bit betrayed.
The sun hasn’t fully set and the sky is a soft, delicate blue, pink and purple clouds floating lazily overhead. It reminds him of the sunsets in Mallorca, of how spectacular the water had looked, reflecting back the dazzling colors, painting the gorgeous man next to him in a soft, golden light.
His eyes remain on the road before him while his mind drifts toward these pleasant memories.
He doesn’t see the car crossing over into his lane until it’s too late to avoid it. He doesn’t even get the chance to brace himself before the world starts spinning and spinning and spinning.
***
Shane is conscious for the entire crash. That doesn’t mean he remembers it.
The brain has a funny way of blocking out trauma like this, of shielding the body from things that would hurt it to remember. But Shane’s ears are still ringing with the sounds of metal crunching and tires screeching, even if there’s a large blank space in his head where the memory should be. The crash was a blur, a blink. Terribly long and then suddenly over, a heavy silence now descending over the eerie stillness.
He’s not hanging upside down. That happens sometimes, after car accidents, and the thought has always terrified him. Somehow, after rolling countless times, his car landed upright, and he has enough presence of mind to be grateful for this fact. The windshield is shattered, as is the window by his head, mostly obscured by the airbag that had deployed.
To his right, the passenger door is completely caved in, the metal bent in a way that would have ruthlessly crushed anyone riding in the front seat. Shane feels his breath leave him all at once, tears springing to his eyes instantly.
Ilya. If Ilya had been with him, he would be fucking dead. Thank god Ilya wasn’t with him.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The tears won’t stop rolling now, and Shane wonders if it's from relief or his body trying to adjust to the onslaught of trauma response chemicals now racing through his veins. Probably a heady combination of the two.
He can see in the dim light, where the glass has torn little holes into the sleeves of his sweatshirt, a bit of blood welling up beneath the fabric.
This is good. Taking inventory is good. He should do that.
He forces himself back into his body. Miraculously, nothing feels broken right now. Sore, tender, bruised, but not broken. Then again, with the amount of adrenaline coursing through him at this moment, there’s a chance his fucking shin bone could be sticking out of his leg and he might not even realize.
God. He hopes his shin bone isn’t sticking out of his leg. Should he look? No. No, he’s not supposed to move. He’s supposed to wait for the paramedics to come and move him, right?
The paramedics. Fuck. He should call them since he’s conscious and capable of doing so. He has no idea who else saw the wreck or how many cars were involved and he’s heard enough about the bystander effect to know it might also apply to his current situation.
His phone could be anywhere in the car. By a stroke of luck, it managed to stay attached to the charger and Shane reels it in towards him until it’s in his hand. The screen is shattered, like everything else in this vehicle, but seems to be working. He dials the emergency line with shaking fingers.
***
The sound of an electric saw brings him back to himself. He thinks he fell asleep, oddly, waiting for the EMTs to arrive. Too exhausted to cling to alertness. He opens his eyes to find light beaming in from all sides.
Flashlights. People with flashlights are here, sawing open his car because it’s too crunched in for the door to work properly. Have they been trying to talk to him? He should probably call out, let them know he’s still alive in here.
The door must give way because even more light floods in now, directly into his sensitive eyes, and a swarm of voices surround him.
“Mr. Hollander? Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Shane mumbles, wincing. “I’m here.”
“We’re gonna get you out in just a second, alright? Stay still and hang tight.”
Shane thinks he gives a thumbs up. Everything feels distant and strange.
He blinks again and he’s out of the car, laying on something soft. Blinks again and there are faces leaning over him, sharp voices asking him questions. Something cold and hard slides around his neck, locking it in place.
“‘M fine,” Shane says. “Nothing broken. ‘M fine.”
“Mr. Hollander, can you tell us if you’re experiencing any pain right now? Can you rate it on a scale from one to ten?”
No, he isn’t in pain. Unless dizziness counts, and then yes, he’s in a lot of pain. The sky seems to be rotating in circles above him.
“No signs of external bleeding or injury, but his heart rate indicates blood loss… likely internal… quickly…move him to… up, up, up... Hollander? Shane.. stay awake… Shane?”
The words reach his ears in fragments. He’s still trying to tell them he’s fine. Dizzy, but fine. His mouth isn’t obeying him.
“My husband,” Shane tries to say. “Get my husband.”
His husband will know what to do. How to soothe them. How to make all this better.
“Shane? Did you say something?”
The world dips into blackness for a bit but comes spinning back to him, colors wheeling overhead. They’re moving now, him and the people standing over him. They’re touching him, placing cold things all over him, but he can hardly feel it.
My husband. Did you call him? He’ll worry.
“Eyes open, Shane. That’s it. Look right here, buddy, we’re almost there.”
“BPM is rising to 121, we need—”
“ — displaying signs of hemorrhagic shock, prep for immediate transfusion upon arrival—”
“ — tell them we got an incoming major trauma patient, critical condition —”
He surfaces again sometime later. Something is screaming by his ear, loud voices interrupting each other on all sides. He feels like he’s flying, barreling down a white walled hallway at breakneck speed.
For the first time, it occurs to him that he might be dying. Might not open his eyes the next time he closes them.
But my husband, he thinks sluggishly.
He can’t die. He’s married. That would be irresponsible.
“Shane, if you can hear me, just know we’re going to take good care of you,” a voice says from somewhere above him. It’s a soothing, competent voice. “You’re going to take a long nap while we patch you up, alright? You’ll start to feel really sleepy in just a minute. Don’t fight it, okay? Just let your body rest for a bit. We’ll do the rest.”
Rest. Okay. He can rest. That sounds nice. His husband would want him to rest.
As the blackness swirls in again, this time with a heaviness he knows he can’t fight, his worries seem to crescendo.
Don’t let me die. Please. For Ilya.
Everything stops spinning.