Chapter Text
Now
Ilya Rozanov is no stranger to the sensation of flowers choking his lungs.
He can remember the taste of petals on his tongue as he presses Sasha into a wall, inhales the smoke from his lungs and bites into the tender flesh of his shoulder. He can remember thorns cutting into the bones of his ribcage, Svetlana threading her soft hands across his calloused palms and guiding him towards his bed.
He can remember the crushing weight of Shane’s body on top of his, his face buried in his neck as he inhales the scent of his cologne and prays that the prickling sensation behind his eyes is caused by the leaves tickling the back of his nose, and not by this.
But those moments, they were fleeting (although it did not feel that way at the time) – the plant dead before it even had the opportunity to really grow. There is no sunlight for them in his chest, no water for their roots and no soil to give them nutrients. They grew, and they died -
The door clicks shut with a softness that feels louder than if Shane had slammed it. He almost wishes he had.
Ilya doesn’t move at first.
He stands in the middle of his entryway, still, listening to the echo of it - Shane’s footsteps fading down the front steps of his porch, the faint murmur of his house moving in the late autumn breeze, the distant hum of early morning traffic, his quiet suburban street just beginning to wake up.
It’s early, morning light barely peaking over the horizon, and the clouds are dark. They threaten a storm, the wind already building into a gust.
It’s early, and it’s cold and -
Gone.
Shane is gone.
The knowledge of his absence settles somewhere deep in Ilya’s chest, eating away at the arteries connecting his heart to his body and sucking the blood from his veins. He feels sluggish, like he’s not in his body.
He exhales slowly, controlled, the way he’s trained himself to breathe after a bag skate – He breathes in, steady. He breathes out, measured. He breathes in, disciplined. He breathes out –
He breathes out –
He breathes out -
And his lungs burn a little, but that’s not unusual. Everything burns a little these days.
He tells himself it’s fine.
It has to be fine.
Shane has left, and the door is closed between them. He had left –
But he had also been here. Ilya can still smell his cologne on the collar of his sweatshirt, the one he picked up off the floor, and it smells like autumn leaves and the smoke of a fire. He can taste Shane’s mouthwash on his tongue and the purr of his car’s engine as he pulls out of the driveway.
And he can see the Halloween decorations still haphazardly hanging in his living room, and the photo of Shane and Ilya at the first hockey camp for the Irina foundation, and it’s the only photo he can safely hang, but it’s enough.
It’s enough, it has to be. It’s the only physical evidence he has, of this. Because Shane’s cologne is already fading and he can’t taste the mouthwash anymore and his car has left the driveway -
The first cough hits before he can finish the thought.
It doubles him over.
Sharp. Sudden. Violent.
His hand flies to his mouth on instinct, the other bracing against the wall. Another cough follows, deeper, dragging something up from his chest that shouldn’t be there. His lungs seize, spasm, like they’re trying to reject something embedded too deep to reach.
“No,” he rasps, breath hitching. “Blyat”
Fuck.
Another cough, and something soft lands in his palm.
Ilya freezes.
No. he prays. Please, God – don’t do this.
But God did not listen to him when he was four and was falling from a tree with no idea how long until he hit the ground. And God did not listen to him when he was twelve, and he had held his mother’s cold hand between his two warm ones. And God did not listen when he was seventeen and standing in a foreign country in the howling wind trying to get his cigarette to spark. And God did not listen when he was twenty-six and his front door was slamming closed and flowers, those fucking flowers choked his lungs and his throat and tore at his stomach lining and drank deeply from his blood.
Slowly, he pulls his hand away from his mouth.
And God did not listen.
A petal.
Pale, delicate - almost translucent, with the faintest blush of pink along the edges.
For a moment, his brain refuses to process it.
Then it does.
Oh.
Of course.
His stomach drops so hard it feels like the ice has given out beneath him, but it’s not the ice giving out, it’s his knees.
And Ilya is no botanist, but after all this time he’s not unfamiliar with flowers. And he thinks he’s seen this one before, and he knows it looks breathtaking in the spring.
“No,” he says again, but this time it’s quieter. Thinner. And he doesn’t pray.
The cough comes back worse.
It tears through him, ripping up his throat, dragging more petals with it - two, three this time, fluttering down onto the hardwood floor. And he wonders if this is a nightmare, and if he pinches himself awake, will he still be in the warmth of his bed? Will Shane be breathing deeply next to him? Will the sound of Ilya jerking out of sleep be enough to wake him up? Will he grumble against Ilya’s chest as he forces his eyes open, squinting against the early morning sun streaming through the gap in his curtains?
Ilya rests his head between his knees, and he still doesn’t pray.
His whole body shakes as he tries to breathe through it, tries to force his lungs to settle, but it’s too late. He knows this feeling. Knows it with a kind of intimate, bone-deep dread.
For a second - just one - he considers that maybe it’s a fluke. That maybe this is something else. An irritation in his chest. The beginnings of the flu. Too dry air, stirred up by the brewing autumn storm. Asthma… anything.
Anything but this.
But the petals are in his hand, and that’s all the evidence he needs.
He looks at them, at their familiar shape and soft colours. He thinks maybe he has seen them in the park Shane likes to run through near his apartment in Montreal. Has seen them along the Ontario highway in spring.
Shane.
Oh no.
Oh no.
He curls forward, one hand pressing hard against his sternum as if he can physically hold his lungs together.
And he had thought, after last time – after Shane had breathed air into his lungs and whispered I love you, and he had felt it so deep it had uprooted the roots eating into his stomach – that maybe, someday soon, the taste of petals on his tongue and thorns in the back of his throat would be nothing more than a distant memory.
But it hadn’t been enough, and maybe he was a fool to think that it was.
And maybe, Shane hadn’t been telling the truth. Not in its entirety. Or maybe he had, but that truth had changed – the same way the seasons come and go, and the bees are born and they serve the hive and then they die. And maybe Shane doesn’t love him. Or maybe Shane did love him, past tense or maybe he does love him but just not enough.
But there’s no room for doubt, not really - because this is how it works. He knows this. He’s lived it. And he will continue to live it. Just as he had when he was twelve, and fifteen and twenty and twenty-six.
He just had hoped… had thought… that maybe it was over.
He coughs again, one final petal falling into his lap, and he resigns himself to the fact that there is a plant, and there are roots and leaves and that it is growing.
Fuck.
And he had thought they’d been… fine. Hadn’t they?
Because Shane had come to see him. Drove all the way down after that stupid Halloween party in the middle of the night. He had stayed, had kissed him like he needed the breath from Ilya’s lungs more than he needed actual air.
And Shane had whispered I love you on the phone the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that and every night for a year.
And Shane had kissed him on the crown of his head, and had brought him a beer from the fridge, and had taken Ilya’s feet into his lap, thumb pressing aggressively into his arch and didn’t complain once that Ilya’s feet smelt like his skates –
And was that not enough?
Is that not love?
He stares down at the petals in his lap.
And maybe it’s the way Shane had hesitated to leave this morning, lingering by the door like he wanted to say something, and then didn’t. Or maybe it’s the way Shane ended their phone calls, hanging up before Ilya can finish saying I love you. Or maybe it’s the way Shane doesn’t watch his games. Not like he used to. Doesn’t send him feedback, doesn’t tell him where he was loose on the puck or had missed a pass. Like he doesn’t care.
Ilya hadn’t pushed Shane; He never pushes when it comes to this. He can’t afford to.
Another cough tears through him, and this time it brings up a small cluster - petals tangled together, damp and trembling in his hand.
His stomach twists violently.
He squeezes his eyes shut, breathing ragged.
Not again.
He can’t do this again.
The first time nearly killed him- literally. Weeks of pretending it was nothing. Months of acting like it wasn’t real. Years of hiding it from everyone, especially Shane. The slow, creeping terror of waking up each day and wondering if this was the day his lungs finally gave out.
And that was before they were -
Before this.
His grip tightens around the petals until they crumple in his fist.
If Shane finds out - The thought sends a fresh spike of fear through him, sharper than the pain in his chest.
He can’t let that happen. He cannot let Shane see this.
Because what would that mean? That Ilya loves him more? That Shane’s feelings… aren’t the same anymore? That their relationship, already something they have to hide, already something fragile under the weight of their rivalry, is breaking from the inside?
And Shane would blame himself, or worse -
He’d pull away.
To protect Ilya. To “fix” it. To do something noble and devastating and completely unbearable.
Ilya knows him well enough to be sure of that.
And Ilya, Ilya would rather suffocate on petals than watch Shane walk away.
Another cough builds, sudden and vicious, and he barely manages to turn his head before it spills onto the floor again. Petals scatter across the hardwood, soft and delicate and completely at odds with the violence it takes to bring them up.
He stares at them, and his vision blurs.
For a moment, he just breathes – shallow and uneven, trying to keep himself from spiraling, from letting the panic take over.
He’s alone. Alone in his house, alone in his own mind – and his eyes flick, almost instinctively, toward his phone on the floor next to him.
And he thinks maybe, he shouldn’t be alone. And he thinks maybe, he should call someone – maybe he should call Shane, and he thinks maybe he doesn’t fucking know how.
Because then what? What does he say?
Hi, it’s back. I’m dying again.
Hi, it’s back – and it’s because you don’t love me, not like you used to.
I’m dying again, and I think maybe it’s because you’re breaking my heart.
The words feel absurd in his head. He feels absurd, sitting here with his head pressed between his knees surrounded by these tiny translucent petals.
His hand curls slightly into the floor, frustration flashing hot and quick through him.
He’s faced down arenas full of people. He’s played through injuries that should have benched him. He’s taken hits that knocked the breath clean out of him and gotten back up anyway.
His gaze snaps back to the phone.
Move.
Call him.
Move.
Call someone.
His arm shifts, slow at first, uncoordinated, like it doesn’t quite belong to him. His fingers stretch toward it -
And then -
The phone buzzes. Once. The sound of it vibrating against his floor is loud in the quiet. Jarring.
He freezes, and it buzzes again.
And finally, it starts ringing.
The sound cuts through everything - through the silence, through the panic, through the fog in his head.
For a second, he just stares at it. And he doesn’t quite believe it – because the sun is only just peaking on the horizon, and his street is only just waking up, and who would be calling him? Not his team. Not Shane.
And he wonders if he’s imagining it -
But the screen lights up, casting a pale glow across the floor.
Svetlana.
And he can remember the feeling of her hand pressed against his back as a flower forced its way up his esophagus. And he remembers her forehead pressed against his, matching him breath for breath.
And he remembers the sound of her voice choking around her words –
I can’t love you like you need me to Ilya.
And then –
How do we fix this? How do we fix you?
He thinks, maybe somewhere, God is listening, and in this moment, God has sent him Svetlana. And that’s enough. It has to be enough.
But another cough rises, and this one is worse - deep, tearing, dragging something heavier up with it. He chokes on it, gasping, fingers scrambling against the floor as his lungs seize.
“Fuck-”
The word dissolves into another choke.
He grabs the phone with shaking hands and answers the phone, before he can second guess himself.
Her voice is immediate.
“Ilya?”
He tries to speak, and nothing comes out. Instead, a broken sound - half breath, half sob - slips past his lips as another petal catches in his throat.
“Ilya?” she says again, sharper now. “Ilya, what’s wrong.”
He’s choking, he thinks. He’s dying.
“Ilya,” she says, and she sounds panicked, but Ilya struggles to hear through the pounding of blood in his head. “Breathe. Slowly. In through your nose.”
He tries, and it comes out uneven, but he manages it.
“Good,” she says. “Again.”
He follows her rhythm, focusing on her voice instead of the panic clawing at his chest. After a few seconds, the coughing subsides enough that he can speak.
“It’s back,” he rasps. “Maybe.”
“Okay,” she sighs. Then, softer: “How bad?”
He looks down at the petals scattered across the floor, and he knows now the roots are already growing deep into his belly, and the leaves are following the shape of the veins as they loop around his spine, and the flowers are already beginning to bloom.
“At the start,” he lies.
“What do you want to do?” she asks.
The truth is, he doesn’t know. Because he doesn’t know what this means. And taking action would mean talking about it, talking about Shane and he just wants to pretend like this isn’t happening. That it isn’t real.
And maybe it isn’t, and he’ll wake up with clear lungs (he’ll breathe in deep) and the faintest memory of thin white petals (he’ll roll over) and the lingering grogginess of a strange dream (he’ll press his lips to Shane’s hair and sigh).
He swallows.
“I don’t know,” he admits finally, voice thin. “I want to pretend like this isn’t happening, that it doesn’t mean anything.”
There’s a quiet exhale from the other end of the phone.
“Okay,” Svetlana says. “That’s one option.”
“Why are you calling me Svetlana,” Ilya rasps, he feels almost lightheaded. “Is early, you should still be asleep.”
“Yes,” Svetlana says. “I woke up with a bad feeling…just… wanted to hear your voice. Make sure you were okay.”
Ilya laughs. “Timing is good.”
Svetlana laughs with him, until her laughter turns to tears and Ilya feels so drained and the effort it would take to get up off the floor seems monumental.
“There are options,” she whispers. Ilya can practically see her on the other end of the phone, sitting in her bed, using her sleeve to pat her face dry. “You know that. You could get surgery to remove some of the roots. You can try iodized herbicide again -”
Ilya grimaces “Svetlana-”
“No listen Ilya,” she interrupts. “There are options, yes? We can manage it, figure it out. It doesn’t have to… doesn’t have to get bad, again.”
“Svetlana-”
“Please Ilya,” she practically begs. “I can come to Ottawa. We will figure it out-”
“No.” Ilya says firmly. “No, don’t do that. Is okay, I will be okay.”
And It’s Svetlana’s turn to whisper his name: “Ilya-”
“I just… hate them, the pills and the surgery – they don’t help,” he continues. “I feel like shit all the time. I can’t-” he cuts himself off, frustrated. “I can’t play like that.”
And the puffer kills the flowers in his lungs, but the roots wrap in tight around his stomach and squeeze. And the fucking pills ease the thorns that twist around his ribs, but the flowers choke his breath. And the surgery rips out the roots, but the thorns cut into his bones until they snap – one, by one, by one.
“And you’d rather play while dying?” she asks, not unkindly.
He doesn’t answer. Because yes. Because hockey is the only thing that has ever made sense. Because losing that on top of everything else, on top of losing Shane, feels like too much.
Svetlana must be thinking something similar, because it’s her who brings him up first. “Have you told him?” she asks.
Ilya closes his eyes.
“No.”
A beat.
“Are you going to?”
“No.”
This time, the silence stretches longer and he can almost her thinking, the clicking of her brain as she sorts through option upon option. They’ve done this before, survived this before. They can do it again.
“I think you’re making the wrong decision,” she says finally.
Ilya nods, even though she can’t see him. “Okay,” he says.
“But I can’t force you. And I won’t. This is your choice, Ilya.”
“Okay.”
“But I’m not letting you ignore this Ilya, yes? So, you will do what I say, and I won’t tell Shane for you.”
“Okay.”
“Good.” she says, voice all business now, “you call your team doctor. Today. Not tomorrow.”
Ilya exhales slowly.
“…Terry.”
“Yes, Terry,” she says. “And your coach. You need them looped in if you’re planning to keep playing through this.”
“I can manage it,” he says automatically.
“I know you think that” she replies. “But we’re not gambling with your lungs, Ilya. Not this time.”
He doesn’t argue.
“Second,” she continues, “we figure out a treatment plan that works around your schedule. Herbicide in controlled doses, maybe. Something to slow the growth without completely wrecking your performance.”
“I hate it,” he mutters again.
“I know,” she says. “But you’ll hate suffocating more.”
That… is hard to argue with.
“Third,” she adds, “you don’t ignore symptoms. If it gets worse, you tell someone. You tell me.”
He huffs out something that might be a laugh. “You?”
“Me, yes,” she says. “Preferably before you collapse in public.”
He leans his head back against the wall, exhaustion settling into his bones now that the worst of the coughing has passed.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
There’s a pause.
Then, softer:
“I still think you should tell Shane.”
Ilya’s throat tightens again - but not from the flowers this time.
“No.”
“Ilya - ”
“No.”
Svetlana sighs. “I think you’re wrong,” she says again.
“I know.”
Another pause.
“Call me after you talk to the doctor,” she finally says.
“I will.”
“And Ilya?”
“Yeah.”
“…Don’t wait too long.”
The line goes quiet. He brings the phone to his chest and breathes.
Before
He watches a lone figure skate out onto the ice. He wears a Canadian training uniform, and it makes him think of Shane.
Shane – Shane. His name turns easily in his mind, and Ilya’s not sure when he went from Hollander to Shane, but lust is a tricky thing, always playing games.
There’s a tickle in the back of his throat, and he coughs – trying to clear it. It doesn’t work, and his chest hurts. He wonders if it’s from that check into boards during the Latvia game, or if it’s from the freezing air of the rink – always colder in Russia, crueler, to him, maybe.
Or maybe it’s from the ache of failure, the burn from exhaustion – the bottomless pit of loss.
He hasn’t felt this shit in fucking years, and the lights of the rink are too bright and the air is too cold and he wants to go home, to Boston, to his house and his team and he wants to play a game of hockey with the people he knows like the back of his hand and he wants to fucking win.
And most importantly, he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be watching the stupid Canadian figure skating team mark out their program, and he doesn’t want to hear their blades against the ice, barely hidden under the sound of the coaches yelling from the sideline, and he doesn’t want to watch the lights dim, and then brighten, and then dim against as the technicians track them across the ice –
He doesn’t want.
If he looks down at his phone, he thinks he will see a missed call from Svetlana, and another two from his coach and another three from his father with texts to match and the thought of calling them back, of unpicking the game and unravelling where Ilya went so fucking wrong makes him borderline sick. The nausea eats away at his stomach, and he keeps his eyes fixed on the ice.
There are footsteps behind him, heavy as they approach. He closes his eyes, for one tender moment and forces himself to breathe.
“Rozanov -”
He doesn’t turn, but he knows that voice. He knows the way it sounds across the ice, frustration evident as tells Ilya to shut the fuck up, Rozanov, as the puck drops between them. And he knows the sound of it pressed against his ear, breathy as he begs for more, harder, faster. He knows the sound of it through the tinny speakers of his phone as he watches post-game interviews with his breakfast, and its soothing cadence from his surround sound system, warm and familiar. Sometimes, if he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend he’s in the room with him -
Again, his name, and Ilya’s heart aches.
“Rozanov, hey-”
“Not here.” Ilya says flatly, eyes still fixed on the ice below him. Home ice, Russian ice, his ice… once.
“I saw you up here,” Shane says, barreling through Ilya’s weak attempts to curb stomp the conversation before it even starts. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
God his voice, it sounds so wrong here – and they can’t be seen, not now – because if Ilya meets Shane’s eyes, he worries he might cry and he doesn’t know what’s worse, crying in front of Shane, or crying at all.
“Fine,” Ilya says shortly. Then, “go sit down.”
Shane ignores him again.
“Are you okay?”
“Please, go.”
There’s a pause, and yet Shane doesn’t leave. Because of course he doesn’t.
Shane – Shane. His name still feels unnatural, his mind wrapping around its vowels and if his brain struggles to understand, then perhaps it is too early to let his tongue learn the stretch of the s.
“You didn’t answer my text,” Shane says, softer now, stepping closer. “I just-”
He’s right, Ilya hadn’t answered his text, are you okay? still emblazed behind his eyelids every time he blinks, like it’s mocking him.
“No, I did not answer your boring text, Hollander.” Ilya sneers, finally meeting Shane’s gaze. “Now, you go.”
And his chest aches, and his stomach clenches, and his eyes are dry and tired and he feels like shit. He thinks maybe he looks like shit too, like he hasn’t slept – like maybe he has a start of a cold, his throat scratchy and eyes itchy.
He doesn’t want Shane to see him like this, he doesn’t want anyone to see him like this, so he does what he always does and he pushes. He lashes out, thorny and brutal and prays that it’s enough to chase him away.
And it must be, because Shane stops fighting, and Ilya thinks maybe that hurts even more.
“Okay.” Then, “Okay, fine.”
Shane turns and takes a few steps towards the stairs, and those stairs will lead him back down to his place amongst his peers, with people who will smile with him, who can laugh with him – who can touch him without feeling like their whole world is ending because that touch is just that, touch. Not something to second guess, not something to chase after – for them, it’s freely given and so fucking normal. For Ilya, it’s something he has to beg for, behind closed doors and in dark rooms.
He can’t do that here, not now – and he’s never felt so exposed.
But Shane stops, his foot hovering awkwardly above the step, the pause is long enough to almost be awkward. If Ilya didn’t know any better, he might think Shane has changed his mind, but he does, know better that is.
Finally, Shane turns to look back over his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” Shane says. “You played beautifully; you always do.”
He leaves, and Ilya watches him go.
His throat is scratchy and his eyes burn and his chest is so tight, and he claws at his clavicles in a futile attempt to rip his skin open to let the air in, to crack his ribcage open and make sure his lungs are still there -
And he can’t breathe -
He.
Can’t.
Breathe.
And maybe it’s not his lungs at all, maybe it’s his throat, because there is something moving inside it and he still can’t breathe –
He.
Still.
Can’t.
Breathe.
Instead, Ilya chokes.
A sharp, violent sound tears out of him as his body folds forward, hands flying from his chest to his neck, fingers pressing hard like he can feel it from the outside, like he can stop it -
something is there -
something is stuck -
He coughs, and nothing comes up.
He coughs again, harder this time, his entire body convulsing with it.
Pain rips through his chest, raw and sudden, and whatever this is inside him rips loose, dragging upward in a way that makes his stomach lurch. It comes up with a tearing sensation that feels wrong, pulling at his diaphragm and eating away at what little air he has left, and it’s like whatever this is has roots, buried too deep in his chest and his veins and his lungs to come free cleanly.
Ilya gags, choking on it as it reaches the back of his throat and it feels soft on his tongue.
Delicate.
His hand flies to his mouth just in time, as he coughs again only for it to land in his palm.
When he brings his hand back to his lap, for a moment he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at.
Because he has seen this before, many times – he’s seen them on his pillow in the early morning, and he’s seen them in his bathroom sink and the floor of his shower, and he’s seen then them in his hockey bag and in the center console of his car.
In his hand, is a petal. Just one, not enough to cause the damage he feels, like he’s insides have been shredded.
It’s white, with the faintest hint of color at its center, fragile enough that it trembles with the movement of his shaking hand.
He inspects it closer; he’s half expecting to see it has thorns. But it doesn’t, and it’s still just a single white petal.
He sighs, and his exhale catches the delicate underneath of the petal and blows it away. He watches, almost absentmindly, as it floats down from where he sits almost hidden in the rafters, to where spectators sit beneath him, and he wonders if maybe one of them is Shane.
Ah.
Shane.
The petal disappears from his eyesight, and he closes his eyes.
And later, Ilya will call Svetlana, because he always calls Svetlana (and has since he was twelve years old and there were petals in the hallway and petals in Ilya’s hair and petals in the bathroom sink and petals in the black body bag).
And Svetlana will sigh and whisper again and maybe she will start crying and refuse to help because Ilya has gotten himself into this mess, because he always gets himself into this mess and she will say - Your heart, shrink it Ilya. Three sizes.
But she will come anyway, because she always does, and she will save him from his father’s tight grasp and the overbearing sensation of knowing everyone’s eyes are on him, and she will drag him to a bathroom and hand him a stupid iodized herbicide puffer again, the kind that shouldn’t even be available in Russia, and he will say thank you and won’t ask how she got it. Sasha will offer him coke, and Ilya will contemplate accepting, just for a moment, but instead he will leave.
He will leave, and he will go home – to Boston – and he will listen when Svetlana tells him to call his coach and his team doctor and the trainers, and he will manage the symptoms and ignore the flowers on his pillow in the morning, and in his bathroom sink and shower drain. And he will ignore Shane Hollander on the ice, and he will ignore his texts and he will ignore the way he double takes when he sees his name in the news or hears his name in conversation and he will pretend he can’t feel the flutter of the leaves growing in his nose, and can’t feel the tightening of roots around his kidneys.
And after all this – a season of this - he will win the goddamn Stanley Cup, and he will hoist it into the air and he will yell for you, Mama and he will be surrounded by his team, by people who know him and care for him and who catch him when he stumbles and who never, not once, hesitate to touch him. He will win the Hart Memorial Trophy for his efforts, for his win.
He will fuck Shane Hollander in a hotel room to try and get him out of his system, to provide relief to his tender lungs and aching chest but it won’t work, because Ilya will ask him what he wants, and Shane will say you and the flowers will bloom deep in Ilya’s chest and the thorns will wrap tighter around his bruised ribs, just like they did with Svetlana, and in a fit of rage and self-pity he will tell Shane to leave, even though he doesn’t mean it, and he’ll make him think it’s because Ilya doesn’t care, that Ilya doesn’t want him, but the truth is that he’s just trying to not cough up petals all over his fucking back - And Ilya will do this.
He will do this all, he knows this –
But right now, he can still see the petal disappearing behind his closed eyes, and he wonders, briefly, if he really has the energy to do it all again.
His throat tickles, his chest feels too tight – and he can’t breathe.
After
Ilya can hear a car pulling into the driveway, and his chest hurts.
The cold helps, a bit. It always has. The frigid air burning back the green leaves that have taken to growing beneath his tongue and stunting the expansion of the vines in his throat and eating away at the roots that have grown so deep into his belly.
It’s easier in the cold, everything grows so much slower. Not like in summer, when the flowers blossom and Ilya chokes on their pollen as he hurls them up one by one.
It’s easier to hide too, he doesn’t drown himself in mouthwash to veil their sickly-sweet scent on his breath and he doesn’t need to lie and say he changed his cologne to something with a floral base, even though Ilya hates florals and Shane knows he hates florals and Ilya is basically known for smelling like whisky and vanilla and old tobacco and –
I mean, I’m not complaining… I just really loved your other cologne.
Okay Hollander, you convince me. I change back just for you.
The distance helps as well, weeks spent on the road - away from their house in Ottawa and Shane’s apartment in Montreal, weeks spent with nothing but late night phone calls and rushed voice notes and an early morning face time requests if Ilya is lucky, and God he’s so lucky as he sweeps the petals off his pillow once again to hide the evidence.
It had been harder to hide it from his team, than it was to hide it from Shane, and that thought used to alarm him – the knowledge that these people see him more, know him better, than his partner.
Now he is just grateful.
Grateful that it’s Hazy, with his too sharp eyes and his fucking goalie superpowers, who is more likely to catch the wheeze of his chest when Bood slaps his back harder than he should.
That it’s Barrett who is more likely to see him massaging his throat in the locker room, trying to make the vines unstick so he can head back out on the ice, and asks if it’s asthma. Fucking asthma. And Ilya says yes, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
That it’s Haas - his poor rookie, his amazing rookie – who is more likely to find him throwing up in the shower, and who will run to find Terry, and the trainers and Coach Wiebe and together they will drag him out and lay him down on the cool tiles which will ease the burn of this too-tight skin and they will whisper about how quickly he’s deteriorating, and that they thought his condition was supposed to be manageable under treatment and careful planning and they’ve done everything right why is he getting worse and should they call an ambulance?
And Ilya is grateful he gets to tell them to fuck off and not accept their help. And he’s grateful that he will go home to his empty house because Shane is still in Montreal, and he will lie in bed and he will wish Shane is there until his pillow is covered in petals and maybe blood, and Ilya begins to choke on the leaves again.
And Shane sees none of this, because Ilya doesn’t let him – and he doesn’t know to look. To Ilya, that is a blessing.
And then he ruined it, ruined it all by starting one stupid fight over a fucking cookout, and then catching one stupid fucking flight and deciding it was a good idea to open Shane’s Instagram before take-off, and letting Yuna fuckingHollander be his emergency contact and letting her come into his hospital room and take him home.
Now, Ilya sits at the edge of the dock, boots planted firmly on the ice beneath it, elbows resting on his knees as he stares out over the frozen lake. He likes sits here in summer too, his feet dipping into the fresh water as the sun pounds down on his back, listening to the sound of the water lapping against the wood and the crickets that are hidden in the reeds.
In winter, everything is still. Silent.
The surface of the ice stretches out endlessly, pale and unbroken, reflecting the dull grey of the sky above. There’s no wind blowing snow out onto the ice today, no movement – nothing but the sound of the car moving into park, and the door opening.
His throat burns.
Not sharp anymore - not the violent, tearing pain of coughing fits - but a constant, low, smoldering heat. He inhales slowly through his nose, letting the cold air cut through his lungs.
It dulls the sensation.
A little.
Not enough.
He presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, fighting the urge to cough.
He’s been losing that fight more often lately.
Too often.
His hands tremble slightly where they hang between his knees. He curls them into fists, forcing stillness.
He can hear the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow behind him, and he doesn’t need to turn his head to see who it is, he already knows.
And he knows that Yuna ratted him out, the second Shane asked. Just like she said she would when Ilya asked her not to.
And he knows that if Shane leaves now, he’ll make it home in time to get a few hours’ sleep before his game tomorrow, and that’s important because he knows that Shane isn’t on IR right now, not like Ilya is.
And he knows he should tell Shane to go away, tell him that this isn’t his fault, that Ilya loves him and sometimes that love hurts him but he’s okay, because Shane is more important than the fear and the pain and the breathlessness.
Because if Ilya tells him this, Shane will go home. He will go home, and play his game and he will win, all the way through to playoffs until he’s hoisting the cup in the air and Ilya will watch from his couch and hope he’s still okay enough to get out of bed tomorrow and kiss Shane when he comes home.
But still, there is still a small part of him that hopes that maybe Shane will choose to stay anyway. That he will ignore Ilya’s feeble attempts to get him to leave, and he will wrap him in his arms and run his hands up his side until Ilya is warm from his touch, and not the burning sensation of flowers stuck in his throat.
And he hopes that Shane will fix this thing that’s growing inside Ilya’s chest, and that with him here now, the cottage can work its magic on Ilya once again– just like it did that first summer.
When he closes his eyes, he can smell it – the damp earth after a summer storm, the burning ozone of the too hot day, the smell of flowers outside their bedroom window, so much sweeter than the ones that bloom in Ilya’s chest.
The footsteps are closer, his time is up – and Ilya wants.
“Ilya?”
Ilya keeps his eyes closed for one second longer.
Then he opens them, and all he can see is ice.