Chapter Text
As Shane walks away from Ilya, there is a tiny pang of guilt settling in the pit of his stomach immediately. Two parts hope, as well, for Ilya to follow him and physically hold him back. However, the largest part of him, confused as it is, knows Ilya would never do that. He would never do anything unless he knew Shane was fully on board with the idea. Which is exactly why this day has been so fucking crazy. That is why this same large part of Shane does not turn around, does not walk back into the living room to apologise.
Instead, he makes his way up the stairs, trying to ignore the shallow silence around him. The birds are still chirping outside, the gas fire on the other side of the room still whooshing comfortingly in his ear. It sounds the same as the gas fire in his own bedroom. The t-shirt balled up in his fist smells of Ilya, and a little bit of Shane now too. An intoxicating merge.
He knows now that Ilya won’t follow him, will stay on his sofa looking suspiciously sad, as if Shane had shattered his world, until Shane has left. The sight of the crumpled bedsheets breaks Shane’s heart as he walks into the room, a stark reminder of the early afternoon bliss they shared less than an hour ago. Before Shane ruined everything. Before Ilya did, too.
Shane moves around the room as quietly as he can, as if making a noise might split the air around him and take him up into a void. Before he folds Ilya’s shirt, he indulgingly presses it up to his face, inhaling sharply and allowing a single tear to escape. He wipes it away with the sleeve and then neatly folds it, putting it back on the chair where Ilya had pointed for him to grab it from earlier. He takes the sweatpants off too, a little reluctantly because other than Ilya’s, they’re also just really fucking comfortable, folds them and lays them atop the shirt.
For a moment he stands in Ilya’s bedroom in just his boxer briefs, so tempted to crawl into the bed and cry until Ilya comes to fix everything. One thing Ilya has always been able to do is make the constant hum below Shane’s skin settle with a graze of his lips over Shane’s. It is not something Shane has put much thought to before, it is similar to how the hum disappears when he picks at a scab or when his mother holds his face between her hands and hums soft tones to the top of his head. So when Ilya brushed his lips against Shane’s in a featherlight kiss and whispered for him to stay, the answer had been easy. The hum had quieted and it sounded like a wonderful idea. When he had reached over to touch more of Ilya, when they had kissed for a little while and softly dozed off into an afternoon nap, things felt good.
When the tuna melts were being prepared, and Shane realised that Ilya had his ginger ale and that the bread was organic and wholegrain, when the fucking cheese was his safe replacement and he wasn’t going to break diet it had felt fucking fantastic, if also equally confusing and a little unsettling, but Ilya was being so kind so Shane had ignored the slight hum under his skin. Then, Ilya had taken a call from his father and returned on edge and Shane tried the talking thing but Ilya didn’t want it. When Ilya had pulled Shane to his chest and brushed his lips over his hair, the buzzing under Shane’s skin had felt electric, not angry or confused, but exciting. As if it was tethering him to Ilya, as if Ilya’s skin was setting his own on fire. Maybe, as if Ilya was feeling it too. And then Ilya said his name. His first name. He cannot ask Shane to stay and make him feel warm and comfortable and like it’s IlyaAndShane instead of Hollander versus Rozanov.
One part guilt, two parts hope and a large part confusion make place for anger. At himself, for walking away. At Ilya, for changing the rules. At Hayden, maybe, for knowing about Lily. He needs to leave. He physically shakes off his thoughts and locates his clothes. Ilya had been so intoxicating earlier, his clothes are a messy pile by the side of the bed. He swiftly dresses himself, hoping Hayden won’t mention the crumples on his shirt when he gets back.
Shane makes the bed, because he can’t not do that, and finds Ilya’s briefs near the bottom as he does. Flashes of Ilya underneath him, inside of him, hovering over him, bring the tears right back into his eyes. The room smells overwhelmingly of him, the briefs feel heavy in Shane’s hand. He looks up at the art above the bed and thinks for a hint of a moment it looks like two players bent over for a face off, the colours suspiciously familiar, but he shakes off the thought and tells himself it’s just an abstract piece. Ilya likes abstract pieces, he realises fondly.
As his feelings of longing, fondness, anger and shame thrash inside of him, fighting for dominance, he does the weirdest thing he’s maybe done so far today (and that is saying something because he said Ilya and slept in the man’s arms), he pockets Ilya’s briefs and rushes out the house before he can pass judgement on himself.
Shane opts to walk back to the hotel. It is over an hour, but the walk helps him calm down a little and clear his head before he enters the room. Hayden is sitting on his bed, scrolling his phone, and looks up in surprise when Shane walks in.
“Thought you said you were staying with Lily?”
“Change of plan,” Shane grumbles.
Okay, so maybe his head isn’t entirely clear quite yet.
“Everything OK?”
“Fine.”
Thankfully, Hayden’s stomach interrupts his follow-up question and Shane is taken out of his slump with a task at hand, finding Hayden food. Shane passed a restaurant on the way here that looked promising, organic something, and Hayden easily agrees, happy to spend time with his friend away from the children.
Dinner is easy, distracting Hayden with questions about Jacki and the kids works a charm and by bedtime, any thoughts Hayden may have of Shane’s early return are long forgotten. Instead, Shane listens to anecdote after anecdote of Ruby being a beast (which sounds like Ruby taking after her dad’s disregard for personal space) and Emma’s utter brilliance (although he thinks most four year olds can draw a stick figure with a face). Hayden’s chatter turning to white noise as Shane moulds his features into polite dinner conversationalist. He obediently coos at about fifteen pictures of Arthur that Jacki shared earlier today, and lets out an appropriate “WOW”, carefully hiding his inappropriate disgust as the sixteenth picture is one of a dirty nappy Hayden did not mean to show. The unexpected reality of the image has Shane’s nausea and buzz return straight back to base, and currently base is overwhelmingly dire.
“I don’t think that colour is normal,” he says, eyes wide and shocked.
“Yeah, that’s why she sent it, I forgot to tell her I gave him the red beet puree this morning… all good.”
“Remind me to never eat red beet again,” Shane laughs, although he partly means it too because that cannot be normal.
They go to bed on time, because while they do not have a team meeting in the morning as Shane may have told Ilya, they do have access to the hotel gym and Shane agrees with Hayden it will be a good idea to get a workout in earlier before the gym fills up. Having no exercise before they have access to the ice feels a little too long for comfort. Especially in Shane’s current mental state.
Shane ignores the wave of nausea that hits him thinking of the game, of facing Ilya on the ice. His phone has stayed painfully silent all day and he won’t be the first one to reach out before tomorrow. He is not the one who changed the rules.
Sleep is surprisingly easy to come by all things considered, Shane thinks when he wakes up. But then supposes he must have exhausted his mind and body with two orgasms and a breakdown.
He joins Hayden for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, they are kind enough to mix his protein shake for him, which he accompanies by two eggs, a bowl of organic low-fat yoghurt with oats, a banana and a pint glass of water. He and Hayden join a table where J.J. sits alone and they eat their breakfast in silence. Shane quietly thankful that neither Hayden nor J.J. function before their second cup of coffee.
It is exactly then, after his second cup of coffee, that J.J. suddenly looks at Shane suspiciously.
“Weren’t you supposed to be with your girl this morning?” He looks hesitantly between Hayden and Shane before settling on Hayden, “or were you pulling my leg, there was no girl?”
Shane stiffens in his seat, he does not want to be talking to another person about his change of plans. He doesn’t think he can do it without breaking down. Not before he gets a workout in, anyway, to sweat off the distant buzz under his skin and the nausea that continues to swirl at the pit of his stomach when he thinks about meeting Ilya on the ice.
Hayden huffs out a forced laugh, clearly having noticed the way Shane tensed up, but laser-focuses his gaze on J.J.
“Of course there wasn’t a girl, this is Shane, he was just taking a nap. You were just so excited, couldn’t help but mess with you.”
Shane feels even more nauseous when he thinks about the nap that he did take, at Ilya’s perfect house.
If his workout is a little intense for a pre-game grace routine, Hayden and J.J. don’t mention it. They don’t mention the extreme pace of the treadmill, nor that his weights may seem a little too heavy for him to be able to handle his stick properly later today.
Shane thinks that maybe if he makes his muscles ache just enough, if he tires his body out a little too much, maybe it will distract from the hum under his skin, the unease in his stomach, the ache in his fingers to just grab his phone and call Ilya. He has never had the urge to call before.
He works up a sweat before Hayden and J.J. are even warmed up, he is also out of the gym well before they’re cooled down. He showers in the room and dresses, grabs his duffel with his game gear and is out the room before Hayden returns. He doesn’t know where he is going, but he needs to be away from everything and everyone. Away from J.J. and Hayden, who kept looking at him like something was wrong.
He’s well out of the hotel and down a park when he realises with a start that he’s wearing yesterday’s jacket and that Ilya’s briefs are still sitting heavy in its pocket, suddenly feeling like a hot iron about to burn his skin.
He thinks of disposing them into the nearest bin, but that seems like a terrible idea, so instead he settles himself on the nearest bench and opens a side pocket of his duffel bag to stuff them into, before allowing himself to finally really cry. Why it is seeing Ilya’s underwear that makes him tip over the edge, he doesn’t quite want to investigate yet, but with no one in sight for miles across the park and the only thing near him that isn’t his own belonging to Ilya wrenches his insides in a way he can’t quite deny.
He lets the tears fall, he lets the sobs overtake him and when he is spent and a headache starts to build up, he forces himself through a few breathing exercises to compose himself.
When he takes his phone out of his coat pocket, he ignores a few missed calls and texts from Hayden, ignores the twist in his gut at the realisation Ilya hasn’t reached out, and looks up how long the walk to the rink is from where he is. Just over an hour. He shoots Hayden a nonsense message about meeting up with Lily, mainly to stop the questions, and to ask for cover missing the team bus, then sets off on his second attempt of walking off his emotions.
The game is just fucking weird. There isn’t really another way to describe it.
For the first time in his life Shane lies to his coach and says he’s not feeling well. Coach claps him on the shoulder and tells him to suck it up, so that doesn’t work.
When they’re bent over for the first face off of the game, Ilya holds his eyes firmly down to the centre. Shane wants to smash his helmet down on the ice and scream. He wants to throw up.
“Hollander…,” The ref hesitantly urges, “stick to the ice?”
Shane looks back at Ilya, who is still steadfastly ignoring his gaze. They had gotten into the habit of a stick tap at the start of a game in acknowledgement of each other, but it’s not until the ref interrupted that Shane realises he was waiting for it.
He puts his stick to the ice. Ilya waits a beat.
“You forgot rules, Hollander?”
No, Shane thinks as Ilya touches his stick down, you did.
He barely reacts to the puck drop at all. He’s slow to follow Ilya, Hayden is the one to block a pass to Marleau and Shane only just catches up in time to recognise Hayden is searching for him on the ice. He responds too late and the puck lands back on Ilya’s stick, perfectly aligned to score less than two minutes into the game.
When he returns to the Metros bench, his coach is immediately by his side.
“Sorry, son,” he says, “I wasn’t aware you were feeling that unwell. Now that you mention it, you do look rather peaky.” He looks at him with a smile Shane assumes is supposed to convey concern, but looks more like annoyance, and with that, he’s benched for the afternoon. Shane knows it’s only because he’s more of a liability to the team than he is an asset right now, but the anger swirls right back up inside of him.
He watches Ilya cross the ice with intent, actively ignoring Shane’s gaze anytime he is forced to turn his head towards the Metros’ bench for play, his eyes and his body on fire.
He’s aggressive tonight, more so than usual, and quiet at the same time. He doesn’t chirp, ignores every easy snide that is presented to him by the Metros’ poor play, but slams anyone and everyone into the boards at every opportunity he gets. He gets into a nasty fight with J.J., which makes Shane realise he hasn’t actually seen Ilya fight before. He’s seen Ilya instigate them, evoke them, but it’s always Marleau who throws the actual punches when someone lunges for Ilya. Tonight, Ilya is relentless, both on the puck and on his opponents.
Shane averts his gaze, unable to mould his face into anything but utter anguish as he starts to think that maybe Ilya is as affected by the whole affair of things as he is, and it only helps to grow the ball of rage sizzling underneath his surface.
Ilya changed their rules, and now Shane is losing his demeanour in front of the world to see. This thing between them has never affected him on the ice, if anything it had always lit a fire in him, knowing that the better he played against Ilya, the more riled up Ilya would be to pound into him good later that night. So when it was Ilya who changed the rules, it kind of feels ridiculously unfair that he is playing one of the best games of his career when Shane is benched because he changed the rules.
The Metros lose pathetically, it’s not even worth mentioning the score (7-2, and the two goals they scored were more flukes than achievements, really).
“So…..,” Hayden says, looking around the coach that evening making sure no one is listening, “I take it lunch with Lily didn’t go very well?”
“Lunch with…,” Shane starts, before he remembers his lie. Fuck, he really does need to work on his lying. “Right, yeah, no, we broke up.”
“Ha!” Hayden cheers, before realising the impact of Shane’s words, “fuck, sorry Buddy. Just.. glad you finally acknowledged she was someone to you. You don’t have to hide that from me you know.”
Shane hopes that’s true.
They’re on the way to the airport to fly out to Florida later tonight, and Shane cannot wait to get out of Boston. Maybe if manages to put some distance between himself and Ilya he can finally shake this static fuzzing around his mind, some of the irk that has settled under his skin.
When he had been excused to the changing room just before the conclusion of the game, because he was hugging himself, shaking back and forth and making loud humming noises, he had not hesitated. He was well aware he was making a spectacle of himself but he couldn’t help it. At some point he swore Ilya even looked at him from across the bench with concern across his features, but it had only made him more uncomfortable.
He had rushed into the changing room, he had only barely made it over to the sinks on the far end of the shower room before he had emptied his guts into them. He was grateful to be in the showers before his teammates trickled in, and even more glad to notice they were to defeated to debrief or even wonder why their captain had been so absent. Only Hayden and J.J. had thrown him some worried glances.
Shane had been out the showers, dressed and made his way to his usual seat on their team coach before anyone else had, silently hoping that his cap pulled low and large headphones would disperse anyone from sitting next to him, but of course Hayden did not take the hint. Or at the very least ignored it.
“Shane?” Hayden pulls him from his thoughts.
Shane despises how his name sounds, from Hayden, from his coach, from himself, now that he’s heard what it sounds like spilling from Ilya mid-climax.
He shudders.
“She must have been really special,” Hayden whispers and puts a hand to Shane’s knee. It’s supposed to be comforting, he’s sure, but it just makes the scratch of his pants tickle on the wrong side of loud, and it reminds him how fucking comfortable Ilya’s sweats had been.
He can feel the tears creeping up, but he will not let them fall. Hayden can’t see him cry.
“Hey buddy, it’s okay,” Hayden hushes and squeezes his knee, “you’re going to be alright.”
Is he?
The coach comes to life, and pulls out of the Boston Raiders’ Arena car park. Shane closes his eyes. Soon he’ll be in the sky, on his way to Florida and far away from Ilya.
“Yes, Hayd, I’ll be fine,” he says back and then pulls his knee away from Hayden’s hand, trying to do so calmly so Hayden doesn’t feel like he’s shutting him out. He appreciates the gesture, he appreciates Hayden’s concern, but he just wants to be alone.
The drive to the airport is spent in silence, everyone subdued and maybe slightly confused. Not even their coach seems to have the words to berate them with just yet. They had been on a winning streak so far this season, so the heavy defeat was not just that, it was a humiliation.
Like yesterday, Shane thinks bitterly. He feels a little bit responsible but mostly he thinks it’s all Ilya’s fucking fault.
Fucking Rozanov.
Shane makes his way from the private car park to the private lounge without thinking, having walked this walk a million times before. Usually, though, he does it in a blissful haze, full of thoughts of kisses and cock and Russian whispers.
As if not enough of his routine has been disrupted, enough of his rules broken, before he gets to the private lounge, their pilot pulls him, coach, and their head of management aside.
“Follow me,” he says and instead of leading them to the private lounge, he leads them to something akin a boardroom. In the room they find a few people in suits, looking solemn, and to Shane’s absolute horror two guys in a uniform that states Airport Police, carrying massive machine guns.
“What’s going on?” Coach asks, which is Shane’s exact question too.
Shane sees their second pilot standing in the corner with a third pilot he does not know.
The man closest to Shane speaks in a low, confident and commanding voice, “We’ll brief you in a few minutes, Mr Desjardin, when the others get here.” Shane can’t help but trust him. He doesn’t quite understand why he is here, this looks like a management concern, but he also doesn’t quite want to leave. The room spins around him. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast, he realises. No wonder he looked pale when coach pulled him.
Even worse, he realises, he rinsed that breakfast right down the Raiders’ shower sinks.
“Can I sit?” He asks, longingly eyeing a plate of cookies sitting on the table, though they will definitely not be macrobiotic.
The man who spoke nods and gestures to a chair near Shane, which he takes gratefully.
And it’s a good thing he did, because when the door opens again, they are joined by none other than O’Reilly, Boston’s coach, a woman who Shane presumes is their Head of Management, a fourth pilot, and Ilya.
Ilya looks equally as lost and perturbed as Shane feels. They catch each other’s eyes and for a flash of a second Shane thinks he recognises a kinship there, a shared worry, a question, but it is gone as soon as it appeared and Ilya averts his gaze.
“What is happening?” he asks curtly, moving to stands as far away from Shane as he politely can without raising eyebrows. He crosses his arms in front of him, looking stiff and almost boyish. Shane wants to reach out and smooth the crease in his forehead with a kiss.
He wants to punch him in the mouth.
“Thank you for joining us,” the smooth-voiced stranger starts, “I think it’s best if you all take a seat.”
“Just talk,” O’Reilly barks with an authority Shane would not have advised, considering the two heavily armed officers at the far end of the room.
“Please, Mr O’Reilly,” the man pressures calmly, “trust me when I say it’s best you sit down.”
Coach Desjardin takes the seat across from Shane, after which the rest of the group follows suit and soon everyone except Ilya is sitting. To the absolute irony of life, the only seat left available is next to Shane. Ilya takes it reluctantly.
“Again,” says the man, “thank you all for joining us. I am Joe Sylvester, and these are my colleagues Emma and Ken. We have pulled you in here to make you aware of an acute situation.”
Joe looks heavily between Shane and Ilya and for a second Shane thinks he knows.
“We’re part of Homeland Security,” Joe continues, “and I am afraid we are going to have to ground both of your teams for a little while.”
Shane expects chaos to erupt, which it almost does, but Joe has the ability to settle everyone, before they can voice any disagreement, with a simple raise of his hand.
There is a high chance this is not about him and Ilya, but it feels almost impossible that Shane is the only one noticing the distracting presence of the other man’s body so close to his, the impossible force he needs to fight to keep him at distance. Like a magnet, he can feel the electric sparks returning to his surface, achingly trying to touch.
“A situation has arisen that forces us to consider the safety of both teams may be at risk, so it has been decided that we will move you to a secure location until any threat can be identified and, if deemed necessary, neutralised.”
“That sounds like you will kill someone,” Ilya retorts.
Shane isn’t sure what Ilya is saying or why he said that, just the sound of his voice making Shane’s head spin and his teeth ache. He’s vaguely aware of the dialogue being important, but he’s mostly aware of the vein on Ilya’s hand looking like it would be very soothing to rake his fingers over. Like if he did that, maybe the lights would stop screeching and the air would stop suffocating him.
“Well, Mr Rozanov,” Emma hums gently, “of course that is not our aim, but your safety is our main concern right now.”
The room is quiet for a while, apart from the overwhelming noise of Ilya’s cologne distracting all of Shane’s senses. Ilya’s hands lay on the table in front of him, Shane is sitting on his own. Stopping them from reaching out. Ilya’s little finger twitches in Shane’s direction, maybe he feels it too.
The air feels heavy, forming a tight bubble of heat around their bodies. An unacknowledged thread from Ilya’s pinky finger to Shane’s hands hidden underneath him pulls tight between them.
O’Reilly finally speaks up again, breaking through the haze surrounding Shane and Ilya.
“So... where will the Raiders go?”
“Both teams will be transferred to a secure location at the airport,” Emma explains, “there is a location specifically for such events. Granted, it isn’t exactly designed for a group of this size so we will need to squeeze in a little, but I am sure we’ll be fine.”
This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. Someone is playing a joke on them, there are cameras here somewhere. They’re on a prank show, surely. Except those guns look really fucking real, and Ilya’s gaze is turned to his coach in terror and Desjardin looks about as pale as he accused Shane of being just a few hours ago.
The room is spinning in earnest now. Cold sweat trickles down Shane’s back, his ears are ringing and he can feel his hands shaking.
“Fuck, Hollander, are you okay?”
He cannot deal with Ilya’s voice of concern. Ilya doesn’t have a right to be concerned about him, he broke that right when he broke the rules.
Emma is next to him, crouching, hushing as she talks to him.
“Shane,” she says, but no one other than Ilya should ever be saying that again, “Shane, look at me, look at me…”
He tries, but his eyes won’t go where his brain tells them to. It’s kind of hard when the room is spinning and Ilya is right behind her. His gaze lands on Ilya’s, who looks wide-eyed, worried, but nods encouragingly at him to listen to Emma.
“Shane,” she says, when his mind will finally focus on a crease just above her eyebrows.
“You’re going to be fine,” she says, “you are good here. We’re not even sure if this threat is for the Metros, we just need some time to investigate and make sure you’re safe in the meantime.”
“What do you mean, ‘threat’?” he manages to ask.
“Well,” she says, “for your own safety it is best if you know as little as possible, so we’re going to keep that under wraps for now.”
“No he needs all the information to stay calm,” Ilya says and fuck. Ilya knows him.
“I’m sorry,” Emma looks genuine as she offers her apology, “for now that is classified information. I promise I will share more as soon as I can,” she reaches and places a hand over Shane’s shaking one, “for now I need you to pull yourself together and put your captain hat back on for a little longer, okay?”
“Is that why we are here?” Ilya asks.
“You okay?” She whispers, just loud enough for Shane to hear and he nods. Someone has shoved the plate of cookies from the middle of the table right in front of him and he thinks if there was ever a time to break his diet, this may be it. He grabs three and stuffs them in his mouth together, giving his jaw something to do other than hurt as it tenses.
“As Emma said,” Joe pulls the attention of the full room again, “we are moving to a safe house just off airport base, airport police will escort the coaches,” he nods to the two men in the back of the room, “and when you get there, there will be a combination of military police and airport police around to support your safety.”
“Can we peddle back a bit?” Asks the woman from the Boston Management team, “did you say the space is a little small for a group this large?”
“Yes…” Emma sighs.
“So… what you’re saying is the Raiders and the Metros are going to be locked down together?”
“Yes.”
The room erupts into total chaos now, everyone shouting their personal and professional objections in a cacophony of competition and ancient bad blood.
“SILENCE.”
Joe really does know how to command a room.
“I understand you think they’ll kill each other before whomever threatened them will have a chance to, but we have no choice. It is a combination of security resources, available space and I don’t give a shit about their personal feelings,” he argues, “but to answer your question Mr Rozanov, this is why we asked for you and Mr Hollander to join us in this briefing. We are hoping the two of you as captains can put up a joint front for your teams, to set a good example, so to speak.”
Desjardin huffs.
“They hate each other the most out of all of them.”
Yesterday, that wasn’t true. But today? Maybe.
Fuck.