Archive of Our Own

“Ilya.”

Shane’s voice crackles through the phone speaker, sharp and thin in the quiet of the early morning as the last rays of moonlight spill through open curtains. Whatever he says after that gets swallowed by the fog of sleep that still clouded Ilya’s head.

He sits up with a grunt the same time Shane says his name again, this time a little shorter — taut like the word had edges.

“Ilya.”

Ilya exhales through his nose and rolls his shoulders out, phone warm against his cheek and the dark room pressing in around him. The digital clock on the nightstand glows red at him, far too early to be forming any sort of coherent thoughts. 

“Shane,” he murmurs, voice thick with sleep. “What… what is wrong? Why are you calling?”

He drags his free hand over his face, knuckles scraping over the sharp jut of his cheekbones, blinking hard to dislodge the sleep that clung to his lashes.

There’s a sharp inhale on the other end that makes him pause. 

“Please,” Shane says, the word trembling. “Please tell me you haven’t seen it yet.”

Quiet stretches onwards, sucking the air from the Ottawa apartment bedroom, thick and suffocating. Ilya’s thumb tightens around his phone in his grasp, his own heartbeat suddenly sounding off so loud in his ears; a dull thud that seemed to echo between them.

“Seen what?” He asks him, voice cracking slightly.

Shane doesn’t answer right away — it feels like an eternity until he does as he listens to the sound of movement on the other line, like fabric rustling or maybe even footsteps like he were pacing perhaps. Then, there’s a shaky breath like he were bracing himself against something where he stood.

“I fucked up,” Shane whispers. “I don’t— I didn’t… God, Ilya, I think it’s everywhere.”

A cold chill creeps up Ilya’s spine. 

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet meeting the chill of the cold floor, grounding himself there in the quiet, in the heavy darkness, in the steadiness he knows Shane doesn’t seem to have right now.

“Hey, slow down,” Ilya says. “Talk to me, hm? What’s going on?”

Another pause, longer this time. He hears Shane sniff, and it’s wet sounding. He’s wished a lot of the time in these past few years he could be there for Shane when he needed it, and right now he felt it heavy in his chest where it sat. 

Eventually Shane exhales and says in a small, unsure voice,

“A video… leaked,” he begins. “Not of us, obviously. But of me. Me and… I need you to know, Ilya, it was before us. Before this, I mean. When we were— fuck, Ilya, I can’t believe this is happening right now.”

Ilya’s fist clenched at the sheets beneath him, barely enough to anchor him in the moment where he feels himself start to lift. 

“I’m sorry,” he hears Shane rush to say, even when he pulls the phone away from his ear, hitting the speakerphone with a sharp jab of his thumb so he can still hear as he starts to open up an array of apps on his phone.

“Shush,” Ilya instructs him, and there’s no real urgency nor heat to what he’s saying. He opens Twitter first… only to find it’s probably a big mistake.

He flicks through a few tweets at first, all with the same kind of implications. 

kaylee @puckbaby94

and i’m supposed to work in conditions like this? before an official statement from the mhl or even shane?? bruh

💬34    🔁4    ♥️112

josh w @jjwoshk9

If there was ever to be this kind of scandal within the MHL I’d have put money on it being pretty boy Hollander 

💬13    🔁2    ♥️46

Vincent LeMaire @VLeMaireOfficial_

Invasation of privacy is still an invasion. Remember folks to not get things twisted until there’s any real confirmation. That’s all I’m saying! ✌️

💬1.2k    🔁98    ♥️400

Ilya feels the tightness in his brow as his frown deepens as he reads each vague, implied post. 

But he doesn’t need to scroll very far to get the context. Just another flick of his thumb upwards and he comes across a retweet. He doesn’t take note of the account it comes from or what the caption is tagged as, in all its harsh crudeness. 

He feels his stomach curdle as he presses the play button, waiting for the pixels to begin moving.

It’s blurry at first; evident that wherever or whenever this was filmed was pre-4k HD camera quality. But Ilya isn’t caught up on the resolution, except maybe only when it obscures some of the video that’s playing out before him.

But not all of it.

“Ilya?” Shane’s voice crackles from the speakers. It doesn’t match the Shane that he’s watching — between another man’s legs, breathless and wanton. 

Ilya knows this Shane. Knows what it feels like when an unfamiliar hand reaches out and tangles their fingers into silky, dark cropped hair. Knows what it feels like when Shane drops his head down and takes all of him to the hilt with a garbled, desperate whine. 

It’s hot. It’s more than fucking hot without proper context. But it’s private too, something he hadn’t really given much consideration towards that somebody else on this earth knew what that felt like.

He blinks, ice setting into his veins. He looks at the view count that keeps climbing as the video loops back to the beginning again .

Now 2.4 million people, in a twisted sort of way, knew what it was like too. 

“I’m sorry,” Shane croaks. He sounds wrecked, like his voice was barely scraping out of him. “It was before the cottage, before the All-Star game,” he’s rambling, and Ilya could imagine him burning holes into his floor right now, probably pulling on his own hair akin to how it was when he was being filmed.

Ilya takes a sobering breath.

“Did you know you were being… recorded?” He asks him, voice remaining level despite himself.

The video is still playing on his phone. He can hear Shane, even with the volume dialed low — obscene noises that make his stomach do flips. 

Fuck, this was bad. He swiftly exits the app and takes Shane back off speakerphone to press the phone to his ear. It helps him feel closer, somehow. 

“No,” Shane says mournfully. “I never knew. He— he said he’d never tell.”

He sounds so young when he says it. Like he’s eighteen again, naked on Ilya’s hotel bed, twiddling his thumbs like he hadn’t just done something very forbidden and very gay for the first time asking him nervously if he’d keep his secret. 

Ilya had thought it was very cute, even then. 

And somebody had done it anyway. Some asshole had been sat on this footage for almost a decade and decided now, on some random Thursday to just release it to the whole world.

“I don’t even know if he is the one who released it…” Shane’s voice trails off as if reading into his thoughts. “The original video has been traced and they’re trying to get it down… but it’s already out there. Circulated.”

Ilya doesn’t like to think that Shane spent the first half of this hell trawling through these accounts, alone, trying to find who’d posted it only to come to a head when realising it was too late anyway. 

Ilya purses his lips and exhales slowly. He stands, because it feels like the right thing to do, and his apartment is cold and empty yet he feels like he’s burning on the inside.

“Have you spoken with Farah?” He asks him.

Shane pauses. “No,” he says after a few long seconds. “I… I’ve had my phone off after I realised the video was basically viral.” He swallows hard, audible even over the crappy phone line. “I just… I only wanted to speak with you.”

Ilya stares hard at the wall before him — his apartment isn’t very well decorated, still in the infancy years of making it his own, but Shane had been itching to give it his ‘professional’ touches regarding what he knew about interior design. There’s a painting he and Shane had picked out one night during a rabbit hole of online shopping.

It was abstract. Swirly blues and reds. Ilya had wanted just a simple framed photograph of them, nothing crazy. 

Shane had laughed like it was meant to be a joke and told him that the one he liked was on sale and added it to their basket.

“Shall I come?” Ilya asks him. Shane was in Florida right now. He had a game in three— two days. Ilya could get out there as soon as he could but he wasn’t sure if that might make things even worse.

“No,” he says, far too quickly, then curses and apologises softly. “Fuck. Sorry, I don’t mean it like that.”

Ilya shakes his head like Shane could see him and then says: “No. It is okay. It might be… better, if I don’t, actually.”

It wasn’t Ilya in that video, and there probably wasn’t another person on earth that might consider it was — but it still felt like staying away would keep at least one of their shared secrets under wraps still.

His stomach clenches. He really fucking hates how quickly he comes to that conclusion.

“Where are you now?” Ilya asks him, tracing slow, long footsteps around his bed as he talks.

Shane exhales, shakily, like the last of his panic had been shifted, for now, simply clinging on by its fingernails.

“In my hotel room. Everyone else is downstairs in the bar.”

It wasn’t unlike Shane to choose a quiet night in as opposed to partying hard with his teammates before a big, important game. It wasn’t unusual by any counts, but it now somehow made Ilya feel really quite sad to think Shane was having to face this all alone so far away from him. 

Would the Montreal team be supportive? Ilya forced himself to think. Hayden was (regarding the gay thing, not the Ilya thing) but could Shane count on the rest of his team to be cool.

Fuck. Was Shane in danger right now?

“Maybe I will come,” he says shortly, and he’s already spinning on his heel to glance at what he could gather up in the next ten seconds that he might need on a very last minute flight across the country. 

“No, no no,” Shane steadfastly dispels any of Ilya’s impulsive thoughts. “Thank you but… no.”

Ilya sighs and refreshes his feed. It’s more tweets of a mixed reception. He doesn’t read any of them to Shane of course — he doesn’t have to. But there’s more reposts and retweets of the video, as well as screenshots and stills.

It really was out there, forever. 

“What do I do?” Shane suddenly says, voice small and pitchy. He’d probably worked himself back into a tangle of panic again, and Ilya thinks maybe if he suggests flying to Florida once more, a third time might be the charm.

But to avoid Shane snapping at him, he just steadies himself and tries to rationally think of what he could do in this situation.

“Call Farah,” he says. “And then maybe Yuna.”

He hears Shane wince. Ilya doesn’t blame him — the last person he might wish to face after a sex scandal was the one mother figure in his life out of sheer embarrassment, but then he supposes that he’d basically outed he and Shane to his family by groping their son up against a window, half naked in front of Shane’s dad — all whilst that being the first time he’d actually ever met the guy.

“Do I have to?” Shane asks. 

Ilya smiles softly. It sounded like he’d perhaps been walked back down again from the edge. 

“Yes,” he says, voice low. “It’s either that or I’m gonna call myself an Uber to the airport and piss you off thirty eight thousand feet in the air.”

Shane scoffs, half hearted but there. 

“You already do that at sea level, idiot.”

“Mm,” Ilya hums. “I love you. Okay?”

Shane huffs. “Yeah. Yeah, fuck. I love you too. Fuck.”

“Don’t open Twitter,” Ilya instructs him. “Or any of the social media apps. Keep your phone on so I can call you. And then rest. Fuck, please try and get some sleep, sweetheart.”

Shane starts crying again, blubbering and hiccuping and squeaking out little apologies between breaths. 

He eventually settles and Ilya stays with him through it all. 

He tells him he loves him and that he’ll call in the morning. The time difference is something they don’t really consider but it doesn’t matter right now. When the sun is up, wherever they are, he’ll talk to him and get an update. 

The line disconnects and Ilya stares down at his dimmed screen, phone ready to fall asleep, half his reflections shown in the image of Shane leaked video paused under his thumb. 

He shuts it off and places his phone upside down on the dresser, like it’ll somehow make it disappear entirely. 

***

“Did you… see it?”

The Centaur’s locker room falls into a tense silence. Bood looks around, eyes wide like maybe he’d said something wrong, and all Ilya can do to prevent himself reacting too explosively is swallow hard and nod his head wordlessly.

It’d been the main topic of conversation in all things hockey related for the last seven, tortuous days.

Seven days of news articles circulating the same rehashed stories, seven days of statements and tweets and comments flooding every screen Ilya dared look at. Seven days of groupchats and social media DM’s pinging off with a slew of unwarranted thoughts – even the ones that were being kind and supportive towards Shane, Ilya didn’t want to see or hear any of them: his boyfriend had been outed in the most unfair way possible, and so far only he had been punished for it. It only felt fair to silently punish them all back.

“Not on purpose,” he says, lacing his boots for the third time now. “Is sick, yes?”

Bood looks around and then nods, almost frevorishly. “Yeah. Fuck, yeah, of course. Course it is… poor Hollander, man.”

Ilya’s teammates were rather fond of Shane, as apparent during their first summer spent together at their shared foundation at the hockey camp, and at first, Ilya had been bemused by the fact that somebody so anti-social such as himself seemed to always attract those that wanted to always hang out with him, pulling him from his perfectly curated safety bubble without realising it.

He remembers the first night of their first day at camp and Shane had gone up to Ilya, hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders haunched and eyes wide like he was some alley cat all spooked out with its fur sticking up along the back of his neck when he’d said in a rather whiny tone of voice:

“They wanna grab pizza and a beer, what do I say?”

Ilya had laughed really hard, then framed his face with both hands, smooshed his cheeks a little and placed a chaste kiss to his puckered lips.

“You say: Yes okay, I come for pizza and beer and not be boring and then you have fun, hm?”

So Ilya knew that Shane would essentially be in safe hands when it came to these things – he didn’t feel a sense of unease when it got brought up in the sanctuary of their changing room like he might’ve done anywhere else.

His mind is wandering, spiralling off the deep end of a long, twisted path as he faintly hears one of his other teammates quietly talk about a suggested lawyer that specialised in revenge porn crimes.

Ilya’s stomach twisted at those words but he felt all the more grateful he seemed to have landed in a team of very solid guys.

Tonight they play against the Aneheim Ducks – it should be a fairly straight forward game but two minues before they call time for the first period, the Centaurs are down one miserable point.

Ilya grits his teeth and swears hard in Russian as he bats his stick against the ice. He can hear a chorus of boos and jeers from the crowd but he was used to that, having played for Boston for so long – the hostility, he liked to think, only ever spurred him on to play even better.

But tonight he fails to get his head in the game: second period and he’s a hot mess. He’s slacking behind on all plays, he’s fumbling the puck in the rare instances he does manage to get control over it, and at the end of the whole embarrasing, terrible thing, the game is lost and the Ducks are cheering themselves on with bared teeth and waving sticks as Ilya retires to the bench to sit with his head in his hands.

When he gets back to the changing rooms he’s immediately gunning for his bag, that of which houses his phone, which he’s got to get his hands on again.

He can hear the rest of his team filter in, a little disdained as they chatter quietly to one another, clearly feeling sore about the fresh wound of losing. Ilya is sympathetic to their disappointment but he’s busy checking his messages, more specifically messages from Shane.

It’d been hard enough that they’d had to spend the last week totally apart, already a hard enough feat when you were in love, but given the new circumstances that had arisen in the last seven days, it was proving to be near enough torturous.

Shane often texted Ilya before and during and after any games he had time to watch when he wasn’t actually there for, not that he attended many of Ilya’s games to really keep their distance between any suspicions but he’d slipped into the back of the crowd with Pike a number of times to keep things cool.

But now his notifications remained Shane-less. He scrolled through their last messages from the night prior, how Shane had wished him luck and how Ilya had told him how much he missed him. But nothing more after that. He sighs heavily and drops his phone face down against the bench as he starts to make the effort to strip himself of his gear.

He manages to avoid any heavy lifting with conversing with his team and skates through the press junket he’s pulled aside to do. It’s quick and easy and he says all the words in all the right order into the microphone when all he really wants to do is just go back to his hotel room and call Shane up.

And that’s exactly what he does once he’s ticked every one of those boxes that comes with his job. He jumps into the Uber he calls, makes no attempt at small talk and texts his boyfriend to tell him he’ll be alone soon to talk, whether he reads it or not, he’s really hoping that he does.

By the time he’s shuffling into his hotel room his phone chimes in his jeans pocket, fishing it out with a breath of icy relief to finally see Shane’s name flashing at the top of the screen.

He calls him without fully reading it, but he only has to wait for it to buzz twice before it connects.

Shane’s face shows up – donned in his glasses, his hair a little ruffled where it peeks out from beneath the hoodie he’s got pulled up over his head. It looked as if maybe he’d spent his day in bed, which made Ilya’s chest twinge: he knew what depression days looked like when he looked hard enough in the mirror to trace the dark circles around his eyes and the downward curve of his mouth.

He knew that this week had been hard on Shane for the more obvious reasons, and he’d anticipated for him to sink a little bit into the hole that’d been dug out for him, but seeing it in real time like this where Ilya couldn’t do much to help other than frown at him through a phone screen, it was really proving as a strain on his own mental state right now too.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ilya says with a click of his tongue. Shane’s smile is tired and barely there, eyes squinting behind his frames. “Did you watch the game?”

He’s not asking because he truly cares about whether his boyfriend watched him lose horrendously, but it’s nice to try and talk like things were normal – like there wasn’t some purple big, tap dancing elephant in the room with them.

Shane hums, the sound is small and crackly, like he might’’ve not used his voice all day up until now.

“Glimpses,” he says, and then yawns, a tiny little squeaking sound emitting that has Ilya’s heart jumping in his chest. “Sorry you lost. The Ducks are something else, eh?”

They go back and forth, chatting with ease about the playoffs and upcoming games and what Ilya’s hotel room was like, even giving Shane a little impromptu tour that makes him laugh a bit, all whilst they skirt around the fact that Shane wasn’t anywhere near playing hockey at the moment. 

The video had ultimately gotten Shane benched for the first quarter of the season to avoid any unwarranted problems at upcoming games. Fans online had already been rowdy enough, some coming to Shane’s defense whilst others had been particularly colourful on how they’d felt about the whole situation.

Of course, Shane wasn’t the first gay ice hockey player given Scott Hunter’s coming out a few years before, whilst it had gained a lot of support and love as well as the disgust from some of the more older fashioned fans that included themselves in the sport, Ilya guessed that since Hunter was still for the most part, a private person about his very gay lifestyle, a lot of people didn’t feel the need to be loud about it.

But with Shane’s gayness visually as well as unfortuntely broadcasted for all to see, he’d ultimately taken a bigger hit for it.

Being benched, much to Ilya’s surprise, hadn’t knocked Shane as much as he’d anticipated it to. It even seemed like Shane was almost grateful for it.

“How is Yuna and David?” Ilya asks him as he flops back down on the bed, landing in the mountains of overfluffed cushions with a long sigh.

Shane is sat up now, having pushed his hood off from his forehead. He’d been staying at his parent’s cottage for the past week since he had no other commitments to hockey right now, and it was Ilya’s saving grace that his boyfriend wasn’t totally alone in all of this right now.

“They’re okay,” Shane tells him. “They’ve been so understanding about all this, even though when I’m with them I feel like I want to burst into flames still.”

Ilya winces, eyes crinkling. It couldn’t have been easy to have known his parents had also accidentally seen the video too, at least in a rather mortifying and fleeting glance. Ilya had to work Shane through a pretty lengthy panic attack over the phone after having to face his mom for the first time after the whole ordeal after they’d all convinced him to go stay with them whilst he was off the roster for hockey.

“I know,” Ilya coos, tipping his head a little; his curls that he’d outgrown a little sweep over his forehead. “But they love you. And they are probably happy to know you are okay with them at least.”

Ilya had texted Shane’s parents a few times during the dark hours Shane avoided any form social interaction over the past week, and had received an influx of updates about the well-being of their son to which Ilya was very grateful for – Yuna and David were everything somebody could wish for in a parent, and it made Ilya feel a slight twinge in his chest when he thought of his own mother and how she’d perhaps cope with all of this with them too if she were here.

“You’re right,” Shane says, voice small where its nestled in the back of his throat. “Farah thinks I should put out my own statement sometime next week. She thinks the worst of the storm should have passed for me to speak up about it.”

Farah was most probably right, and Ilya had no strong feelings towards dismissing her advise; yet there was still a strange feeling niggling about in his chest that made him want to tell Shane no. To project his own fears and anxieties further onto him, and tell him: just run away with me, don’t even look back on hockey ever again if this is the way they’ve treated you so far.

Shane didn’t need any more added stress, so he concludes in keeping his mouth shut and hums in silent comrodery.

“It just still doesn’t feel real,” Shane then says. He seems to be up, pacing about his room in his parents house: there’s the old trophies and ribbons Shane had collected since childhood. The rickety old twin bed he’d been sleeping on that still had band stickers half peeled at the headboard. There’s a poster that hangs by the open window – it’s of a Canadian mountain, and Ilya had once asked when he’d gotten to see the room up close and personal for the first time, whether it was just overspill of his parents decor that had made it into his childhood bedroom.

But Shane had very seriously insisted that the poster had been chosen by him as a tween – and Ilya knew that the love he had for this man was deep set and rooted, and could never be pulled away from him no matter how hard anyone or anything in this life tried.

“Da, yes, I know,” Ilya says gently, “but recognising your traumas is first step to healing them.” It was a line recited from his therapist, which Shane knows, his eyes twinkling and his mouth twitching trying to suppress a grin.

“I get it, Ilya,” he retorts, voice soft as ever. “I just said it because… because I don’t know what else to say and I miss you.”

Ilya pouts. He was used to this sort of homesickness that curdled in his gut every time they were apart for as long as they were right now, but this time, right here, he feels it tenfold, like it’s grown limbs and suckpunched him in the stomach.

“I miss you too.” He rasps, not bothering to hide the weight of his emotions in his voice.

“You’ll see me soon, right?” Shane says, adjusting his glasses.

Ilya swallows hard. “Soon,” he says and then presses two fingers to his lips and taps them against his screen. It’s not at all close as good as the real thing when it came to kissing Shane, but it’d do for now.

Shane awkwardly mirrors the action and Ilya feels himself growing a little misty eyed before they finally, and sadly hang up. 

***

Five days later and Ilya is finally touching back down on Canadian soil after what feels like the longest stretch of time without.

He’s not here for long, however: he’s got a game against Toronto and then a rest and then Montreal. Usually it’d be something getting worth excited about, but it was pointless if Shane wasn’t going to be on the ice with him.

It meant he only had two days at best to see Shane, finally, and the rest would have to be spent apart again.

Still, he refuses to dwell on how little time he has with his boyfriend during said little time as he sets his suitcase into the trunk of David’s car, ducking into the passenger seat with a polite nod and a quiet hello.

He got on extraordinarily well with Shane’s father – considering that from the jump, he had practically been introduced to the man whilst very suggestively fondling his son in a pair of wet swim shorts up against a window, leaving very little to imagination. But David had effortlessly folded Ilya into his family as much as Yuna and Shane had, and given his own strained relationship with his father, Ilya respected that as much as he appreciated it.

“Flight okay?” David asks, reaching over to turn the knob of the stereo down a notch. Often times Ilya wouldn’t have minded the lack of background noise to make way for a full two hours of conversing, but usually in this situation Shane was with him too. And Shane hadn’t just been outed publicly in the most egregious way possible so it kind of limited what they would talk about, as to spare them both from awkwardness.

So Ilya feels his stomach suddenly anxiously swoop at the idea of having to make small talk with a man he often loves making small talk with.

“Was okay, thank you,” he responds. He fiddles with his phone in his pocket, wondering if it were rude to fish it out and pay attention to that instead for a little bit so they didn’t have to be awkward about all this. “How is… everything?” He settles for instead.

David’s lips purse, his brows raise; he’s a man so void of conflict and troubles, Ilya had jokingly called him boring once, never to his face, but in a bid to really tease Shane about the word, but since meeting the man, he’d come to realise that it wasn’t boringness about him that made him the way he was:

He simply was a pretty happy guy.

Beautiful wife, good job, successful son. 

Ilya couldn’t fault him for that. If he wasn’t so deeply in love with his son, he might be a smidge jealous of the guy. 

They cruise along the interstate, the journey from the airport to the cottage was starting to feel double the mileage than it ever did before.

“As good as it can be,” David replies, tapping his thumbs against the wheel to a beat that wasn’t there. “Shane is… doing better, I think.”

Ilya nods. “Good,” he says, “I’ve been worried about him, you know how he gets into this, ah, how you say– head place.”

“Head space,” David corrects him kindly. “And yes. I do. He’s always been like that. We used to call him our little pill bug the way he always used to seem to curl in on himself when things got tough. He never liked to express himself too loudly.”

Ilya didn’t know what a pill bug was, sure that once it was deemed respectable enough, he’d whip his phone out and give it a quick google search, but he agreed with everything else David had said to him.

“Da,” he says, glancing onwards to the open road ahead. It was looking to be a nice day despite the chill in the air that’d greeted him as he’d stepped off the plane. 

“He’ll be alright,” David says, sounding like it was said perhaps for both their reassurance more than anything else. “He’s a good kid. People know that.”

Shane Hollander: hockey’s sweet little golden boy.

He barely chirped (and when he did it was comically bad). He didn’t fight. He kept his nose down, his hands clean. He played nice. Said his P’s and Q’s and he tried, always, to give everything he ever did his total, one hundred percent, if not more. 

He was a good kid. Is still a good kid and everybody had believed that… right up until that stupid video had found its way around Twitter and now it was like everything Shane had been building slowly, brick by agonisingly perfect brick, had all come crashing down.

He feels David glance at him, only in passing and Ilya keeps his gaze steady on the horizon.

He sees the other man in his peripheral reach for the dial, and Ilya hopes that it’s at least a good station to sink his consciousness into when David hesitates and says with complete sincerity:

“You’re good too, Ilya. You’re good too.”

When they finally arrive, Ilya feels a disjointed sense of relief bloom in his chest. He unbuckles his belt as David did too, checking for his phone and sunglasses. Ilya is glad that he’s here, finally, ready to more or less fold into Shane’s arms, but at the same time he wasn’t actually sure of what the hell he was going to say to him. 

He doesn’t have too much time to think on it, however, as he steps out of the car, sneakers crunching over gravel, the door swings open and there’s Shane, standing on the front step.

He’s looking better than Ilya had imagined: he’d perhaps expected unwashed hair and old clothes and a sunken face — but knowing his near enough perfectionist of a boyfriend, he’d likely made an effort, perhaps the first of all week, just for his sake. Or maybe he’d been strongarmed into actually managing to look after himself by one Yuna Hollander. Either or, he supposed.

“Privet, malysh,” Ilya practically coos as he hops the steps ahead of David, Shane’s arms open and welcoming where he folds himself between them, burying his head into the warm, familiar crook of his neck. 

“Hey,” Shane says with a breath, only letting up as he lifts his head to acknowledge his dad that jogs past them. 

“I’ll fix us some drinks, hm?” David says, giving his son a short pat on the shoulder. 

David’s footsteps faded without further urgency as they stayed there, listening to Yuna’s voice blend with his behind the door. All Ilya wanted to do was to hold his Shane right here, right now — sway with him, breathe him in, press his lips to the warm and steady pulse beneath his skin with a quiet sigh. 

“Fuck, I’ve missed you so much,” Shane mutters, his fingers had tangled themselves into the loose curls that now trailed down the nape of Ilya’s neck, blunt nails scraped back and forth against his skin.

Ilya held him tight. Perhaps if they stayed like this long enough they could somehow merge into one being, their hearts pressed together, separated only by layers of skin and bone and muscle — but he knew that it wouldn’t take long for Shane to grow anxious about being so open outside before he pulled away. 

Still, he savoured the moment and kissed him behind his ear. “I missed you too.”

A beat of silence, and Ilya could feel Shane start to smile where his face was pressed against his shoulder. It made his heart flutter dangerously in his chest. 

“We should probably head inside, huh?” He says quietly. 

Ilya hums. “Hm. Da, yes. But not yet, okay?”

Shane chuckles, the sound vibrates through him like a ray of sunshine making Ilya only hold him tighter.

“Okay,” Shane says, voice light, evidence of the grin he was directing into the sleeve of Ilya’s hoodie. “Not yet.”

Eventually after soaking one another in they make their way back into the house. Ilya is greeted warmly by Yuna, who pulls him into a hug, somehow managing to be the one to wrap him up in her arms despite the stark height difference.

It brings him comfort as she holds him like she’d done a hundred times before already, her palm rubbing up and down his back affectionately before she pulls away, sneaking a swift kiss to his cheek before she does so. It’s like nothing had changed, and it hadn’t, not really – not outside of this room and this house, Ilya could pretend like things were completely normal.

“Hi, mama,” Ilya grins, feeling like his face could split it two. “You missed me.”

Yuna chuckles and then tells him to go sit down so that they could fix him some lunch. “I’ll give you guys a minute, okay?” And with that, she disappears into the kitchen with David. 

Shane looks far too uncomfortable where he’s standing, essentially in his second home so Ilya immediately decides that he needs to fix that.

“Come,” he instructs softly, brushing past him, bumping their knuckles together until Shane reacts, reaching out and fumbling to lace their fingers together, slotted like they were made to fit.

He leads him to the family room – it’s more secluded than the main living room of the house, cosied up with tall oak bookshelves that towered from floor to ceiling, with one of them half obscured with a plush and expensive looking armchair, and the only wall not donned with masses of literature had a very comfortable couch pressed up against it.

Ilya makes a beeline for it, dropping down onto it with a loud, heaving sigh, his hand still attached to Shane’s.

“What.” Shane says, swinging their arms together ever so gently.

“Come,” Ilya says again. “Lie on me please.”

His eyes are starting to droop from the exhaustion of his flight and possibly of the entire two weeks almost catching up on him, but he can practically see the exasperated look that comes across Shane’s face as he flails a little bit, tripping up on his words before he manages to string one sentence together rather fluidly.

“We’re at my parent’s house,” is what he says.

Ilya cracks an eye open – of course, there Shane is, his face flushed with a shade of pink that he can’t help but grin at. But he purses his lips together for the sake of not having his head bitten off and gives his hand a lazy squeeze.

“No, no, nothing like that, just lay with me, hm? Come.”

Shane huffs like he’s going to protest, but he does as he’s asked, at first awkwardly climbing onto Ilya’s supine form, stiff and wooden like this was maybe the first time they’d ever so much as touched each other. But Ilya understood Shane so well that it always took him just a tiny bit more time to unclench and relax, even around his own boyfriend.

They’re chest to chest, Shane holding his weight like he was perhaps somehow afraid of crushing Ilya beneath him, when Ilya undoes their fingers to brush them against Shane’s jaw, holding it so gently in his grasp when Shane finally melts against him.

“You said you just wanted to–”

Ilya cuts him off with a swift kiss. “I know,” he says as their lips come apart. He can taste the lingering bubbles of the ginger ale he likely had before now there on his lips. He goes in for a second, chasing the feeling rather than the taste. “I missed you.” He’d said it already but he said it again.

Shane sighs, and it doesn’t sound all too weary even as he drops his head and buries his face in the crook of Ilya’s neck, mouth wet against his skin as he mumbles faintly. He repeats it back to him also, like every time they said it, it lessened the weight of which it held in their chests.

“Missed you too.”

Ilya cards his fingers through Shane’s hair, slowly raking the silky locks between his digits, quietly musing on how his hair seemed a little longer than it was the last time they’d been together to do this.

“How was the drive?” Shane asks him quietly. He feels the rumble of his voice where they lie chest to chest, and for a moment, Ilya can allow himself to believe that nothing was wrong and this was just another usual reunion in the scheme of hockey, and that they were okay and nothing had gone wrong.

“Was okay,” Ilya answers him, scratching his blunt nails against Shane’s scalp. “David is relentless. No pee stops for me, thinks I have bladder built like tank.”

Shane huffs a laugh, the sound and feeling of it shoots right though Ilya’s body before Shane is then making the effort to peel himself away from Ilya, pulling himself up and back onto his feet again.

“Then I better quit laying on top of you before you pee yourself on me.” He says as he stands, smoothing out his shirt with the palm of his hand.

It was then, just as Ilya had gotten to his feet also that Yuna had emerged from the other room. Her eyes were gentle, yet like always no matter the circumstances, held the kind of sharpness that came with her personality. She was never a woman that let her edges be rounded down, and for that, Ilya adored her.

“Lunch won’t be too long,” she informs them both. Her gaze flickers to her son and she seems to steel herself before she tells him. “I know you don’t want to talk about it and I get you want to just enjoy this time together but,” she takes a breath, fixing her hair that trailed neatly over her chest. “But, I think whilst Ilya is here it’s good to go over some things. Some legal things since soon enough you’re gonna be hitting the ground running with this, Shane.”

Shane, whom of which had silent at the appearance of his mother in the room, had let his shoulders sag, his head fall forwards. He groans a little, like a stubborn child, and if not for the unfortunate circumstances of the matter, Ilya would have perhaps chuckled a little louder than he did, quietly behind his hand. 

“I know.” He says voice barely lifting above a whisper, raising his head like it weighed too much for his shoulders to look at her. “God, better get this over with then, hm?” He says once he’s turned to Ilya, looking absolutely forlorn.

And god, Ilya could say it a thousand more times and it’d still ring as true as the first one, but he’d really, really missed this man.

“Come on,” Ilya encourages him, brushing pinkies with him until Shane took the bait and wrapped his hand up with his, giving it a tender squeeze. “All can be fixed with mama’s sandwiches and some ginger ale.”

***

In the almost two weeks in which Shane’s sexuality had been unfairly put on blast for the entire world to see, it hadn’t taken a whole lot of digging from both Shane’s legal team, Shane’s family, from Ilya even as well as anyone with an internet connection and enough time on their hands to go looking for themselves, to find out exactly where the video has leaked from.

The account in which the video could have been traced back to was created in July of 2011. It looks unassuming at first glance when Ilya had originally casted his gaze upon it the first time they’d found it.

There’s no profile picture, just the default grey blob display photo, that of which Ilya is sure is starting to haunt him in his dreams, along with no real display name other than just a singular period, and the username is nothing spectacular either, more so just an afterthought or maybe just a default suggestion given to the user when they’d signed up all those years ago.

u94bten is there at every corner of this whole fiasco, like some dark, looming cloud Ilya just can’t shake.

They have no idea who the account belongs to nor do they ever manage to maintain any contact from them after they all try to reach out in various levels of patience.

The account isn’t consistent in posting: the video clearly sits at the top, having amassed a few million views fairly quickly, but upon scrolling down, the other tweets span thinly over the last few years, most of them being retweets rather than anything original. One is for a Dr Pepper Christmas Ad. Another is an outdated joke about Lady Gaga. Another is a random tweet that had reached popularity back in 2012 that said RT IF YOU LOVE DICK!!!!

They don’t know who runs the account but Shane knows exactly who he’s with in the video. 

“LA blowjob guy.” Shane had told him the day after everything had blown up massively. They’d been FaceTiming, still miles and miles apart, odd ends of the world and feeling it sorely. “Kinda obvious now. Wish the nickname hadn't stuck, though.”

Ilya had his fair share of thoughts about the guy that Shane’d had a brief encounter with all those years ago, including maybe a twinge of good old fashioned jealousy.

It hadn’t felt like how it had during that awful period of time in which Rose Landry had been a prevalent and unfortunate presence in his life, but that was because when Shane had talked to Ilya about it: all two men that Shane had been with outside of his ‘fling’ with Ilya, they were in a happy and committed relationship. Ilya had won, there was no reason to feel mad about it anymore.

Shane couldn’t tell you an awful lot about this mystery guy he’d sucked off all those years ago, punching another hole in his belt after doing so. He’d tell you that they had met in a bar after a game, a straight bar no less because even Shane of today wouldn’t even be caught dead in a gay one. 

He’d tell you that they’d made eyes when Shane had been elbowed in the ribs by some rowdy woman who was making the rounds with all the team players that were there that night, mad and frustrated when Shane had swiftly shut her down. Shane had spilled his drink and this guy, totally random and unassuming had wandered over, called the bar staff over for a napkin and a replacement of Shane’s drink, which had been a ginger ale, which in turn had made the guy laugh, stick around and eventually, put his dick in Shane’s throat. 

“I was reckless.” That’s what Shane says, over and over again whenever they have to talk about it. His cheeks flush, his lips press together so tight they turn white. He folds his hands together and braces his whole body like hes about to hit the ground from thirty thousand feet above at top speed. “He didn’t know who I was, we never exchanged names and he seemed… okay.”

Ilya had asked Shane once upon a time if either men had ever hurt Shane during his experimental sexual encounters. Shane had said no, convincingly so. He’d still say no, if Shane was to ask him again, but the thing was, in Ilya’s eyes, filming somebody without their consent, whether it was them that leaked the video or not, that was pretty fucking hurtful. 

Ilya’s slept with a lot of people. He can count on one hand, with fingers left to spare how many videos he has of himself and other women that he’d asked permission to film, though, they all were deleted now. He’s never had anything concrete leak before, just stories floating around online about their encounters with The Ilya Rozanov, some true some false. Some from people he’d never ever slept with that were insistent on pushing a false narrative to hurt his character. There was a time where a tweet on Twitter went particularly viral because a woman that Ilya had in fact had sex with once had talked in great depth about what his penis was like (size, uncut, girth, the vein that snaked up the underside, the mole that rested by his balls, the curve, the colour of his pubes…)

It was weird, for sure, but it hadn’t bothered Ilya all that much. He’d gone to practice the next day and gotten a round of applause from his teammates and a clasp on the back from Marleau, which was funny because Cliff had absolutely seen Ilya’s cock before: soft and hard. But that was all besides the point.

Shane hadn’t even had his dick put on the internet.

He was barely in the video to begin with, everything covered by the fact he was belly, and the darkness of the room had pixelated the image so much that not even his buttcheeks were really visible.

But him with a dick stuffed into his mouth was. Him moaning and slurping and whimpering was very much there, clear as day, in the video. His hands wrapped around the base. His tongue lapping, his breath hot and heavy. 

It was all there. And it would be there now, forever.

“Well our best option as of right now,” Yuna says as she fixes the glasses that were sliding down her face, eyeballing her iPad that rested on the table before her, that of which she had been giving plenty of attention to over the last week, “is that we pursue this from every possible angle at once rather than just banking on one solution and hoping it sticks.”

They’re sat at the kitchen table, exactly where they’d been after Shane had been outed the first time, to his parents. Ilya had felt awkward then — a stranger in these kind people’s home, drinking their vodka and eating their pasta. His spine had been stiff and his ribs ached with the way he was holding his breath almost the entire way through, especially when Shane had gotten up to talk things out with Yuna in the yard, and Ilya had unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth, exchanged a very awkward glance with David who stared him down from the table and said, with a wince almost: “So. McGill. Good school, huh?”

It was awkward now, but for other reasons. The heat was off Ilya’s back but he could feel it simmering still from where Shane carried it now. He’s in a similar stance: body tense, knees locked. He’s polished off his sandwich and he’s knocking back his second ginger ale, mostly from the anxious tummy ache he’s festering. He’s not looking his mother in the eyes when she talks. Ilya taps his foot against his before he decides it isn’t enough, and rests his hand from under the table on Shane’s flexed knee.

“The good news is that our legal team has already filed emergency takedown notices with Twitter and Reddit. Pornhub as well as two sports forums and three file-sharing sites. Daily Mail too, they’re all getting fucked.”

She glances up, looking entirely humourless. 

“More copies keep generating unfortunately, but legally it establishes immediate non-consent on your part, which matters greatly.”

Shane rubs his eyes and sighs. “That’s great but it feels very unrewarding when millions of people have already seen it.”

“Yes.” Yuna says plainly before glancing back at her iPad. “But it’s imperative we implement it anyway.”

There are crumbs on Ilya’s plate that he pushes around with a thumb. Outside a bird can be heard keening but Ilya’s been here enough now to know it wasn’t a loon. Just a regular chickadee. All the things that felt familiar to the Hollander household except this one big ugly thing.

“So the second issue,” Yuna continues to say, sliding a finger up the screen and from where Ilya sits opposite her, doing his best to read upside down, it looks like screenshots of that weird, ghost account that posted it in the first place. “The second issue is identifying who actually uploaded it.”

Shane expels a tired sounding laugh out through his nose. “Like I’ve said before: good fucking luck with that.”

Yuna fixes him with a stony glare. “Shane.”

“No, mom, I already told you like I told you both and Ilya: I don’t fucking know who he was. No first name, no address, no nothing. We met, we chatted, we booked a hotel room and we…” the frustration in his voice bleeds out. His cheeks tinge with heat and his bows his head as he exhales strongly. 

The tension in the room feels dense. Even the birds outside seem to have gone quiet.

“Well we already know that the account itself is entirely anonymous,” Yuna says after a while, her voice considerably softer in tone now. “No identifying information, no linked emails we can currently access. The account was routed through a VPN and whatever IP data there was hasn’t led anywhere useful yet, so that’s a dead end for now” She sighs sharply and then sits up straighter. “Cybercrime also seems to believe that there’s a strong possibility the footage changed hands before it was uploaded.”

Ilya blinks. “What.”

“Well without tangible proof that the person Shane was with that night actually owns the account, there’s been… some suspicions.”

Shane sits up, chair legs groaning as they slide against polished hardwood. “What? What the fuck does that mean?”

Yuna chews on her cheek for a moment before she gives her son an answer. “It means,” she says slowly, staying calm in the face of him about to fly off the edge, “it’s a working theory right now, like everything else, Shane. But they think that the file, the original one from that burner account had been stripped of its— what did they call it, David, metadata? Anyway, it basically means that there are signs that may point to it having been exported before it even hit Twitter.”

It had felt like for twelve endless day, they were in this tummy turning free fall with absolutely no end in sight, and this was just another drop that made Ilya feel queasy.

“So what you’re saying,” Shane says, sounding like he might actually throw up too, “is that not only is it going to be impossible to find the guy I hooked up with without a name or anything… but it could have been someone else that leaked it?” He’s gone white. Maybe he really was about to be sick, Ilya thinks.

“He could have had his phone stolen,” Yuna supplies with a sympathetic shrug of her shoulders. “He could have had his iCloud hacked or whatever device he was saving it on breached.” She swallows and looks stiffly between Ilya and Shane. “Point is, nobody was innocent in this situation except for you, Shane. I need to know you know that.”

Shane makes an awful little noise. It punches right through Ilya like it were sharp and deadly. He watches as his boyfriend drops his head to the table and shudders on an exhale.

“I hardly feel innocent,” he complains. “And what fucking difference does it matter if they arrest one guy or two? The damage is done, my life is basically over.”

Ilya taps his foot with his and moves in towards him, not touching but making his presence known.

“It’s not.” Ilya tells him leaning in closer towards where his head was still slumped against the table. “It feels like it is right now but just wait until there’s another player with another stupid scandal, another stupid story to press and soon enough, this will blow over, hm?”

Shane takes a minute before he lifts his head, eyes puffy and red despite Ilya not having watched a singular tear escape them.

“Well until another player gets caught with another man’s dick down his throat I think we can agree this is pretty fucking bad.”

Ilya swallows hard. He’d never say it out loud for Shane’s sake but yeah, this was looking like it was indeed, in his words, pretty fucking bad.

***

Usually in the very little time that Shane and Ilya got to spend together between games and travelling, it was often spent being fucking every which way and mostly doing nothing, because they couldn’t exactly do much outside of just hanging out at the cottage. 

Ilya wouldn’t lie to say that in the two days he does get with Shane, before he’s having to travel back to Ottawa for the next game, he’s a little disappointed that they don’t so much as kiss. But he knows full well that sex (at least sex with Ilya) is the last thing on Shane’s mind right now, and Ilya himself isn’t really feeling particularly up to it anyway, considering he’s spent maybe every waking moment of the past week having watched his boyfriend online suck somebody else off that wasn’t him. 

It was less of a jealousy thing and more just… anger. Not towards Shane of course but the fact that Shane had been used like this. 

So he doesn’t get to do nothing with Shane in those two days he spends at the Hollander’s home. It’s a lot of legal talk and sitting around trying to make time out of nothing that wasn’t going on their phones because that was currently still a bad idea. They manage to talk a little about things outside of the tape, like hockey and the weather and it all feels very weird and surreal when Ilya is being dropped back at the airport ready to meet with his team in Toronto. He’d been lucky enough to get the time off for the weekend, having told everyone that he was catching a separate flight so he could go look at some cars, which everyone had bought fairly easily.

He can’t give David a big goodbye at risk of being seen, so as they’re pulling up into the stop and drop bay, David asks of him only just a minute of his time.

“I want to let you know that Yuna and I, we really appreciate all you do for Shane.” His hands curl around the steering wheel, lips pressed together tight when he looks at Ilya. “I know this week hasn’t been easy for him, and whilst it wasn’t you in that video and it isn’t you currently on blast on every social media site, it’s still hard on you, too.”

Ilya swallows hard. He didn’t feel like he had to garner any sympathy away from Shane this week considering what David had said was true: absolutely none of this linked to Ilya in any shape, way or form. That had been a worry at first, that somehow this would link them together, and both of their careers, as well as Ilya’s security here in Canada would be at risk.

But, unlike Shane, if Ilya was to take out his phone now and google his name, nothing more than just his Wikipedia account and an article about upcoming games would show. He was totally in the clear.

Yet, through the power of loving Ilya like their own son, they were still worried about him too.

“Thank you,” Ilya croaks, feeling his emotions choke him out momentarily before he blinks hard and clears his throat. “I want you to know that… that I will stand by Shane in all of this. None of what’s happened will change how I feel about him.”

David blinks, and it’s the same look in his eyes that Ilya had seen countless of times in Shane’s expression: the one that held back his emotions, guarding them there in the waterline and in the heaviness of their lashes.

“Have a safe flight, Ilya,” David tells him. “Text us when you land, okay?”

Ilya nods and pops the car door open with his thumb. “Okay.”

By the time Ilya gets onto his plane he’s already conversed with most of his team, his coach and of course with Shane, whom of which had been understandably hurt this morning when Ilya had to leave, given that they hadn’t had any real time alone together.

Jane: Miss you already. FaceTime me when you get to the hotel? 

Ilya fits his headphones snug around his head as the engine of the plane rumbles to life, taxiing down the runway. 

Lily: miss you more. of course my love cant wait to see you again soon 😘

He’ll likely lose signal as the plane picks up speed and he feels his body lift from the ground with it. He sits the phone on his lap, heavy like an anvil and rests his head back as he watches the earth grow smaller from beneath him, wondering what it would be like to leave all his worries and troubles to fly away with him. 

***

“I drafted a statement.”

Shane’s voice crackles through the speakers of his phone where it was propped up against the basic level grade coffee machine of his hotel room. 

Ilya tugs the towel off from where he’d draped it over his head after his shower, little droplets of warm water still clung helplessly to the curve of his curls as he peered down at his phone to see Shane through the screen, sat two hundred odd miles away at his parents kitchen table where Ilya had been just yesterday, glasses on, looking down what was likely the drafted statement in question.

“Oh?” Ilya says, sniffing. “Is good?”

Shane lifts his gaze over the frames of his glasses and then frowns. 

“Could you put some clothes on?” He says, tightening his voice in a way that likely was not helpful while Ilya was currently naked. “What if my parents walked past and saw you on my phone like that?”

Ilya chuckles but does as he’s told, or at least, he twirls the towel around his middle before he sweeps up his phone and takes it to the bed with him.

“They won’t,” Ilya reminds him with a nonchalant shrug. “You said they were out for the evening, we’re fine. Tell me about this statement, solnyshko.”

Shane huffs, giving Ilya one last final glare through the screen before he’s going back to reading from the iPad.

When he’s done he looks up at Ilya, puffing out his cheeks before he then takes his glasses off and swipes at his eyes.

“Well?” He says, voice trembling a little bit. “What do you think?”

Ilya sinks into the mountain of pillows that scaled his hotel bed. It wasn’t nearly as comforting at the bed he shared with Shane — whether that was in Ottawa or in Montreal… the best night sleep he ever had was always in Shane’s arms regardless of where they lay their heads, and right now, Ilya was missing that feeling more than ever.

“I think you are very brave,” Ilya tells him, his voice also having turned shaky. “Are you okay? How are you feeling?”

Shane scoffs and then rubs his eyes again. The picture was grainy because the hotel WiFi wasn’t that spectacular but Ilya could still tell he was holding back tears just because he knew Shane so well. 

“I feel fucking terrified,” Shane admits to him, laughing as he says it, which Ilya knows is another tell he’s holding back on just breaking down entirely. “But I mean, I don’t know. It’s something, isn’t it? What would you do, if this was happening to you?”

Ilya had pondered on that hypothetical question himself in the last couple of days, laying awake in and empty bed, having wished it had happened to him instead of Shane. 

There were maybe a lot of things Ilya would have done had it been him in that video shown off to the world without his consent. A lot of things that maybe Shane wouldn’t have approved of but at the end of the day, it hadn’t happened to Ilya. It has happened to Shane.

They rarely ever talked about it, mostly because Ilya was often desperate to avoid confrontation or any arising arguments with Shane in the very little time he got to spend with him, but Shane had a much more… skewered relationship with his sexuality than Ilya ever did.

Of course, the stakes were considerably higher for Ilya: he still held a Russian passport and if the league decided to throw him on his ass, his Visa could easily be rebuked, and he’d find himself in a world of hell he didn’t even want to begin to worry about right now.

But aside from that, Ilya didn’t really have any lingering doubts about his sexuality in the way Shane had, and still did to a degree. He was anxious about it almost constantly, about being discovered about being perceived as gay. 

“I’m an Asian man, Ilya. If they know I like men they’ll make up their minds exactly where I like them. I’m already scrutinised enough as it is in the league, I don’t need that as well.”

It hurt to know that all of Shane’s worst fears had indeed come very much a reality, but there wasn’t much they could do about that now. 

Ilya had perhaps alway know he liked boys as much as he liked girls. It’d been scary and thrilling the first time he’d gotten off to the thought of one, and then even more exciting when he’d had sex with one: Sasha. 

Shane on the other hand had obviously taken a little more time to warm to the mere thought that he could like men. Ilya couldn’t and wouldn’t fault him for that, not ever. Even if he’d laughed in his face a little when Shane had nervously come out to him in that Tampa Bay hotel room all that time ago, he knew deep down that if Shane needed time to figure himself out, then it was time Ilya was going to give to him.

He’d bottle it if he could. If it meant Shane got to love himself the way Ilya loved him… then yeah, he’d wait.

He huffs and runs a hand through his half wet hair, no doubt making his pillow damp. 

“I don’t know.” He tells him plainly. “I think maybe I would follow what you are doing. Being brave, I think. Have you heard from anyone yet?”

Anyone meaning any of his Metros teammates. His coach. Rodger fucking Crowell. His stomach hardens at the thought of pretty much everyone in that very short list of people who should absolutely be supporting Shane right now. A crime was committed, yet, nobody was seemingly acting like it.

“Well I heard from a few of the guys here and there,” Shane says, scratching the back of his head nervously. “Hayden and J.J have been in touch a bit which is nice.”

Ilya waits for him to continue, but when there’s nothing but a dead silence now stretching between them, Ilya’s brows shoot up, almost tangling into his mess of wet hair.

“And? What about rest of team? What about your coach? I know Crowell is probably shitting bricks right now but you’ve hear something, yes?”

Shane huffs. “The team are… busy, Ilya. You know that. They’re probably fine with me being… gay. It’s not a big deal. We’re not big group chat texters like you and the Centaurs are, anyway.”

Something told Ilya that they were, just without Shane knowing. He bites his lip and flares his nostrils as it to physically expel the temper he feels rise up within him.

“And Coach said he’ll let me know when I’m good to come back. That’s the last I heard from him. I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest.”

Ilya can’t be certain what his life would be looking like right now had it been a video of him sucking cock that went viral around the world but he’s very much certain he’d have the support and care from his team rallying around him without even a breadth of hesitation. 

He clenches his jaw and then forces himself to relax, because if Ilya can tell when Shane is quietly becoming upset, Shane can most definitely tell when Ilya is getting quietly mad.

“And I don’t want to hear from fucking Crowell right now,” Shane adds with a bite to his words. “He can read my statement tomorrow and suck my dick if he likes. I’m really tired of all this.”

Ilya’s expression softens, his heart dropping in his chest.

“Oh sweetheart, I know. I know you are, I’m sorry.”

Shane sniffs and then sits his glasses back on his face. If it’s a tactic in distracting Ilya from all this then it’s… almost kind of working. Ilya isn’t that weak.

Almost. 

“I miss you.” Shane says with a sigh. “I wish I was playing, that way I’d see you tomorrow.”

Ilya and the rest of his team had spent the day so far getting their asses kicked by Toronto, which hadn’t gone down well with Troy for obvious reasons so the rest of the team had gone out for misery drinks. Ilya was battling his own depression about the game with this right here. Talking with Shane in those unfairly hot glasses.

“I miss you too,” Ilya rasps. “You know, I am trained, like dog. I touch down on Montreal soil and my body thinks I am spending time with you. Makes playing very difficult when I have big, stupid boner in pants.”

Shane splutters a beautiful sounding laugh, the first one he’s heard in a long time, Ilya then realises, and can’t help but laugh back.

“You’re such an asshole. Go fuck yourself.” Shane says the words whilst grinning from ear to ear. He’s definitely blushing and it makes Ilya feel warm inside.

“I will have to,” Ilya laments with a pout. “No other choice when you’re so far away.”

Shane’s smile remains until his expression softens. “Hey,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry we can’t… y’know.” He says with a wave of his hand. “I would but. I just don’t think it’s… practical.”

Practical. When had anything Shane and Ilya had ever done been practical? 

He doesn’t dispute it though; he’d never push Shane towards something he wasn’t comfortable with, and as much as Ilya joked, he felt pretty rinsed after that abysmal match.

“You look tired.” Shane then comments, the mind reader. “You should get some sleep if you want to stay awake on the ice tomorrow.”

Ilya’s brows shoot up and his mouth curls. “Oh? Now it is you that is asshole? Chirping me when you are not even playing, hm?”

Shane smiles softly at him. Fuck. He missed him so bad it made his whole body ache.

“It’s good morale.”

Ilya snorts. “For you or for me?”

Shane narrows his eyes at him, still smiling. “Can’t it be for both of us?” He says.

But Ilya shakes his head. “Nope.” He retorts playfully. “I know you Shane Hollander. You want me to lose, hm? Will it make you feel better, if I throw the game tomorrow in your honour?”

“Fuck no!” Shane exclaims. “I’m depressed enough as it is — make tomorrow’s game an interesting one, please. Though, not too interesting. I want that fucking Cup for myself, Rozanov.”

Ilya chuckles. “Oh I know it.”

“Get some rest. I gotta go through this a few more times and talk with Farah when mom gets back home. I love you,” Shane says before he presses his fingers to his lips and then moves them to the camera.”

Ilya mirrors it like he’s done a thousand times before, wishing equally as the last that he could just kiss him for real instead of through a screen.

“Love you too. Talk tomorrow.”

***

“Fuck. Did you see this?”

Ilya tenses immediately as Luca crosses the locker room towards him, phone already halfway outstretched towards him. 

He’s bracing himself for the worst; he’s had an entire two full weeks of phones shoved under his nose with different reports and shares of that particular video that he’s ready to give his rookie a stern look and even sterner words, before he’s glancing at the screen to find it wasn’t what he was expecting. 

It’s Shane — just not how Shane has been popularly (or rather unpopular depending where you looked) depicted on the internet as of late. 

It’s from Shane’s Twitter account, which he rarely ever uses. So much so that his profile is an outdated headshot in the lowest resolution possible and his pinned tweet is a Metro’s post from the play-off announcement from the season that the Metro’s would go on to win eventually. 

“Man, poor guy.” Luca’s voice pulls Ilya back from his spiralling headspace to land him back there in the locker room. He can faintly hear the sound of the crowd rallying up, their cheers bleeding through the concrete. This was sure to be an interesting game. 

More so because Shane’s statement had now been posted to the world.

His eyes flicker over the screen before he gingerly takes the phone from Luca’s grasp. He holds the device tenderly, as if it were the real Shane here in his grasp, wishing it were him as he read over his vulnerably crafted words.

Shane Hollander ✔️@realShaneHollanderhockey

Over the last week, a private and deeply personal video of me was shared online without my knowledge nor my consent.

What had been circulated was recorded many years ago during a private encounter in which I was unaware I was being filmed.

This experience has been humiliating, overwhelming as well as incredibly painful to have to process publically. I’m still trying to process this to its full extent as to how and why this video of me was shared online.

I’m grateful to my family, friends, teammates and the many people who have shown me kindness over the past few days. Your support has meant more than I can properly express.

What has happened has forced aspects of my personal life into the public eye before I was ready to share them on my own terms. I’m hoping people can understand the human side of that and what that has been like for me. 

I’m asking for people to stop sharing the videos and related images out of respect for my privacy and everyone involved.

Legal and investigative steps are currently being taken, so I won’t be commenting on this matter any further until we have some answers.

Thank you for your understanding as well as your support.

— Shane Hollander. 

💬20k     🔁60k    ♥️400k 

Ilya watched as the numbers that indicated the engagement trickled upwards with every passing second. 

“It’s trending already,” Luca adds, peering over Ilya’s shoulder to look at the unchanging screen. Ilya had already heard the statement word for word when Shane had recited it back to him, but now, with a jab of his thumb he was opening the replies with a bated breath, steadying himself for what he may find.

The first one he saw came from Scott Hunter. Ordinarily, Ilya might have scoffed or made some stupid comment in order to keep the ruse of their petty rivalry. But Hunter’s words struck him as he read them from the screen.

Scott Hunter🌈🏒 ✔️ @RealScottHunter

Thinking of you, Shane. People can be cruel, but there are more of us standing with you than against you. Don’t forget that.

💬2k    🔁108    ♥️8k

Ilya swallows thickly as he watches more replies climb to the top of the stack; more hockey players offering Shane their support as well as their condolences on the matter.

“Do you think you’ll say anything?”

Ilya blinks and looks up from the phone into Luca’s gentle face.

He hands him back the device and wipes his clammy palm down the front of his jersey.

“Sure,” he says, managing to keep his voice level. “Hollander is good guy. My friend. Nice to see people being good about it,” he says nodding towards the phone in Luca’s hands. Then,

“Have Metros said anything about it? Tweet, I mean?”

Luca peers at his phone and then frowns.

“No.” He says with a shake of his head. “They tweeted about twenty minutes ago about tonight’s game. Retweeted a few players' stuff but…” he looks up and shrugs. “Nothing. Guess they want to just keep low about it all for now.”

Ilya’s jaw tenses, his back teeth grinding. But he swallows the bitter taste of his unease about it all with a hard bob of his head.

“Yes. Maybe.” He says. “Probably because they are too busy being afraid of getting asses whipped tonight. Go, go get ready.”

Luca snorts a laugh and heads off to his stall as per Ilya’s instruction. Ilya was looking forward to potentially whipping the Metro’s butts in the game tonight but frankly, it was more fun when he was playing against one particular person.

By the end of the first period, the Metro’s are up one point and if anyone is getting their lashings it’s definitely the Centaurs.

Still. All hope is not lost, evident in the way Ilya’s team pile into the locker room with a buzz still faintly surrounding them, chatting away as they make beelines for their stalls to grab water, collapsing heavily into their benches.

Ilya goes for his phone, finding a wall of notifications already stacked across his screen, blocking the very pretty photo he’d taken of the lake at the cottage that served as screensaver.

Jane: You’re trying to force east-west plays through traffic again.

Ilya snorts, thumbs flying over his screen.

Lily: game interesting enough for you? 😉

It doesn’t take long for there to be a response:

Jane: Considering we are winning, then yes. 

“Ilya.” Wiebe's voice travels through the locker room snapping his head up. “SportsNet’s grabbing you.”

Ilya nods and pockets his phone as he stomps his way back out the locker room and into the tunnel where he’s met with a small crowd of people mulling around waiting for him. 

“Hi, guys,” he says, introducing himself breathlessly. “Here okay?”

The interviewer nods and everyone shifts into place. The guy holding the microphone under his nose is an older man Ilya thinks he’s most definitely spoken to before. It’s easy for Ilya to put his Hockey Head on and just breeze through these sorts of questions when asked.

“Tough first period for the Centaur’s tonight,” the interviewer says into the microphone, brows furrowed seriously. “What needs to change heading into the second period?”

There’s a buzz from his phone in his pocket. Likely Shane was watching him from his couch back at home, trying to second guess what Ilya was going to say.

“Cleaner exists.” Ilya says, stooping his stature a little to speak into the mic. “Too many turnovers in neutral zone, maybe. We will wake up a little bit. Shift this frost.”

The man nods, pressing his lips together.

“And how does it feel,” he goes on to say, “not playing against Hollander tonight? I’d assume you saw the statement he posted just before the game. How did you feel about that? Was there a reaction from you?”

This would have been the first time anyone publicly had asked for Ilya’s opinion on the matter involving Shane and that god forsaken video.

He freezes for a moment, eyes traveling around the semi circle of people that surrounded him with cameras and microphones and notebooks. The usual posse of people that amassed during these soundbite interviews in between periods, but now it felt like he had the whole world watching him, trying to decipher his every minuscule reaction.

His phone buzzes hotly once more in his pocket. Then again. Then again. 

“Um. Well.” Ilya unsticks his mouth and swallows hard, though it does very little to let the words slide out easily. “I like playing against Hollander. Always have, makes for good game.” He looks the man in the eyes. Wishes he could sock him right in his thin lipped little mouth because he’s certain he’s not supposed to be asking questions about Shane like this.

“Hollander has our full support of course. I am hoping he will be back on ice very soon. The, er, league misses him. I think.”

He looks into the camera then, face unchanging but portraying perhaps a million emotions and feelings just to the one person he knew he was looking right at.

A few seconds later, his phone buzzes again.

“Thank you so much for your time, Mr Rozanov.” One of the crew members says and just like that, it’s over. Ilya sighs and turns on his heel to head back to the locker room for the final minute of the intermission. 

He’s reaching for his phone once he’s arrived back into the room, only he’s interrupted from looking at his texts from Shane at the sound of what sounds like a very passionate conversation happening by the stalls.

“—he’s a prick, I thought we already knew this.” That’s Bood’s voice and as Ilya rounds the corner he can see his team huddled around Luca, who’s holding up his phone for everyone to see.

“I hope you’re not talking about me,” Ilya jokes weakly as he walks towards them. Wyatt lifts his head at Ilya, half smiles and then shakes his head. 

“No. Fuck. Just some shit Drapeau is saying on Twitter. Look.”

Ilya moves fast to take a look, nudging Troy out of the way in the process. 

His heart beats fast in his chest and his mouth feels dry. His eyes skim the words first, letting his brain catch up as it translates, though, once it has, he kind of wishes it hadn’t.

Patrice Drapeau ✔️ @patricedrapeauReal

Team is playing like real men tonight! No distractions, no drama. Just hockey 💪🏼🏒 #GOMETROS

💬4k    🔁9k    ♥️15k

His blood boils from beneath his skin as he reads the words printed there on the screen over and over again. He’s surprised at himself, even, at how well he keeps his temper under wraps; if he explores how he wants to right now, he’d surely give himself away to everyone in the room.

“Told you. Absolute asshole.” 

Ilya swallows bitterly. “Yes. Well.” He moves away from the huddle and with that, everyone goes too. “We already know that. Not exactly new news.”

Luca hums as he puts his phone away, although even where it sits screen down in the stall, the weight of that tweet still felt heavy in the room like a poisonous gas.

“True. But still,” the rookie says as he drops onto the bench to fiddle with his laces. “I can’t imagine what Hollander would feel, seeing something like that after his statement.”

Ilya keeps his back turned as he processes all of this. The buzzing, he then realises, had stopped in his pocket. His heart drops like a rock in his chest.

“Have they said anything?” Ilya asks, voice scraping past his teeth. “Any of them?”

He turns and faces his team. They all look very sorry.

“No.” Luca shakes his head. “Not a single one.”

Ilya sniffs. He can hear the cheers from the crowd, the stomping of feet over the sound of his own rushing heartbeat pounding away at his ears.

“Come on.” He instructs them sharply. “Let’s show them how real fucking men play tonight.”

***

When Shane calls to FaceTime him that night he’s still icing his face with a bag of frozen peas that the hotel concierge had kindly let him have from their kitchens.

Shane’s face emerges on the screen, immediately wearing a scowl ready to chew Ilya out.

“I hope that hurts.” He says, voice clipped.

Ilya smiles smugly, removing the bag momentarily to show off the bruise that was wrapped around the lower half of his jaw.

“This?” He says with a scoff and a smile, despite how it rang his head like a bell. “Was weak baby hit from Comeau. Of course it does not hurt.”

Shane doesn’t laugh. “You shouldn’t have done that. It was stupid.”

Ilya snorts and shakes his head, pressing the frozen vegetables back to his skin, the cool sensation very much welcomed. 

“No, I know what stupid is. I saw it tonight. Stupid is twenty mudaki in red and white jerseys thinking they can make stupid fucking tweet about my boyfriend. And they play like shit.” He gripes.

Shane levels him with a flat look. “They won the game, Ilya.”

Ilya groans. “Da. Whatever. I don't care. Was worth it for punching him in his ugly nose.”

Shane sighs then, and when Ilya watches him, running a hand through tousled hair, dragging his fingers over his face to scratch at his jaw, he was once again wishing he was there with him.

“How are you?” Ilya then asks him, setting the bag down on the bedside. “Was big day, hm?”

Shane hums. “I deleted twitter off my phone. Just after… that tweet I saw. So it’s okay. Hayden and JJ have called. So you don't need to go beating them up, either, by the way.”

Ilya grins because he can’t help himself. “Oh I don’t know. I’m sure Pike would likely do something to warrant it from me.”

Shane ignores the jab and carries on talking. “I have a meeting with Crowell in two days.” He tells Ilya. He sounds nervous, understandably. Ilya feels nervous for him.

“In person?” He asks, sitting up a little on the bed.

Shane nods, his hair falling over his eyes before he sweeps it away with a brush of his fingers. “Yeah. I’m taking mom as backup.”

Ilya nods. “That’s good. I wish I could come with you, too.”

He could imagine it so perfectly: the two of them storming into his stuffy little office, marching up to his desk where he cowered like some snivelling baby, begging for their forgiveness before they’d even made their demands.

“Are you thinking about punching Crowell right now?” Shane’s voice pulls him back from his thoughts, and Ilya chuckles gently.

“No.” He admits. “But now I am.”

“Well keep it as a fantasy to a minimum. We’ve already devised a plan as to what we’re going to say to him during this meeting,” Shane informs him. “It’s a work in progress and honestly I’m kind of just tired of talking about this all the time.”

Ilya hums and looks at his boyfriend through the screen. “I know,” he says softly. “What do you want to talk about instead?”

Shane deadpans him through the screen. It’s crazy how good he is at doing that even with miles of distance between them.

“Well I had planned on talking about the game with you but since you spent most of it in the penalty box...”

Ilya grins hard, not caring that is blooms a new pain underneath his jaw. “Most! It was ten minutes, my love. That of which I sat and thought very hard about my actions towards your poor, wimpy goaltender.”

Shane’s expression is unchanging. Not impressed. “Ten minutes is still enough time to let the game slip, which it did. You were messy out there. You all were.”

Ilya presses his lips together, his voice lowering an octave as he gets serious for a moment.

“Yes, well, as your lovely teammate put it, we had… distractions. We were worried about you, Shane. That team of yours, really is no good.”

“Ilya, they won tonight and—”

“I’m not talking about hockey.”

A dense stillness fills the air between them. Shane blinks and shifts where he’s sat, like he isn’t sure what to do with the pressure of all that sudden tense energy that came down hard on both of them.

“Mom and dad are pretty upset, too,” he then admits in a small voice. “I think the team is just… embarrassed, that’s all.”

Ilya scoffs. “And what? They have never had sex before? Never gone down on anyone in their lives? Probably not, but still. They are only embarrassed because you were with a man. I hate them for that.”

“You hate them regardless,” Shane counters quietly.

“Keep not looking at your phone,” Ilya instructs him gently. “And I want you to call me once this meeting is done with Crowell. I’ll be back in Ottawa tomorrow afternoon. I fucking miss you so much.”

“I know,” Shane rasps. “I miss you too. Sorry you lost the game tonight.”

Ilya grins wickedly, eyeing up his bruise on the screen. “Ah. I did not lose. Not really.”

***

Two days later Ilya is back at home and Shane is here too. They hadn’t planned for Shane to come down to see him, since Shane had pretty much imprisoned himself in the sanctuary of his parents home and Ilya hadn’t pushed for him to make the drive down here to see him in the two days he’d be around.

But Shane had insisted that he was up for it, though he’s definitely more than relieved that he hadn’t been seen or spotted at all when he’s standing in Ilya’s kitchen checking Ilya’s phone for any updates about being seen in Ottawa.

“Put that down now,” Ilya says, swapping his phone for a can of Canada Dry. “New rule. We play like is end of world, no phones, no internet. Just us please, hm?”

Shane grins and pulls the tab of his can open with a hiss. “Well. Some phones. Mom is still sending me updates about our game plan with Crowell for the end of this week. God, I’m fucking terrified.”

Ilya doesn’t need to think twice about moving towards Shane to wrap him up in his arms, squishing the can of ginger ale between them is worth it for the way Shane melts against him.

“Remember what I tell you,” Ilya murmurs against his hair. He smells like seaweed and coconut. “You’re brave. You’ve been so brave and now you just have to be brave again for a little bit more.”

Shane makes a strangled kind of noise, but that was probably because Ilya had given him a strong squeeze before letting him go.

“I know.” Shane sighs quietly as he sets his drink down on the side. “I just keep wishing this hadn’t happened. Dad talked with the cybercrime unit yesterday. Still not a lot to go on… I’m thinking maybe we’ll never find who did this.”

It was a painful thing, to think that whoever had done all this to Shane was likely never going to be reprimanded or given the due amount of punishment fit to their crime. But like Shane had stated before, even if they did cuff and book the person behind all this, it wouldn’t undo much. They could pay out a hefty fine in compensation, they could plead their apologies to the world and beg for forgiveness all that they wanted.

Shane had still been outed. He’d still suffered the unfair circumstances of it all. He’d still been benched, been ostracised by his team and still was now having to answer to the likes of stupid, fucking idiots like Crowell who cared for nothing more than the numbers that each player pulled to line his velvety pockets. 

There was little justice to this case and that made Ilya unbelievably angry. It was something he and Shane would just have to work through, eventually. But for now, he could hold some faith that finding the person responsible would bring just a smidge of relief to it all. A win was a win.

“I will find them myself if not,” Ilya says, brushing his knuckles over Shane’s cheek, thumbing over the cluster of freckles he’d let pop after likely spending most days in his parents garden. “I can be very insistent.”

Shane snorts, brows twitching. “Oh I know. It’s very, uh, what’s that movie, John Wick of you.”

Ilya hums and smiles, letting his arms fasten around Shane’s waist. “Ah, you like that movie because he is hot, hm?”

Shane goes a little pink in the cheeks at that comment. It was very cute.

“I do not! You're the one with a crush — you said I looked just like him, how could I find myself hot?”

Ilya smiles and with that, lands a kiss right on his boyfriend's mouth. “Very conceited. Is this what going viral does to a person? Goes right to their head?” Then. “Pun not intended, by the way.”

Shane breaks away, now totally flushed a deep red. He squeaks and bats Ilya away, but it’s all very playful. “Oh. Oh that is so mean, Ilya. Asshole.”

Ilya chuckles and drops his head to Shane’s shoulder, kissing his neck once and then pulling away.

“Hi.” He says, a rumble in his voice. 

Shane looks at him, breathless, eyes round and sparkling.

“Hi.” He says back.

“I missed you.” Ilya tells him.

“You say that a lot,” Shane retorts, scrunching his face up a little. It doesn’t help ease the ache in Ilya’s chest even when he’s standing right in front of him here.

“That is because it’s very true. I’ve been missing you. Not just these last few days. For long time. I miss you all the time even when you are here.”

Shane’s face drops, and Ilya immediately wishes he hadn’t said it like that.

“Oh,” Shane croaks, eyes flickering fast back and forth over Ilya’s face. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” Ilya cuts in, holding his jaw again, brushing over the faintest signs of stubble that poked through his skin. “Not your fault. Never your fault.”

Shane hums and leans into the touch. His eyes flutter shut, lashes fanning over his cheeks as his breath jumps in his chest. “I’m here now,” he says, voice small and quiet. “You have me.”

Ilya moves their heads closer together, lips brushing as he speaks.

“We don’t have to…”

“I want to.” Shane interjects, eyes opening to meet Ilya. He was breathing a little heavier now, hands curled around Ilya’s wrists. His eyes dark, lips heavy where they remained parted and his face was yet to shake the flush that had crept over the bridge of his nose. 

“Yeah?” Ilya makes sure, brows lifting. 

“Yes.” Shane says before he kisses him slow and takes him to the bedroom.

It’s not at all hurried like it often would be when they would be apart for this long. It’s slow and it’s tender and Ilya is ready to give Shane whatever he wants in this moment, whether it’s sex or just nothing more — he’s his and only his.

They spent the evening taking each other apart slowly. Shane nudges Ilya down on the bed and crawls over his lap to pepper him in kisses.

“I thought it was hot, actually,” he says between each one, a little breathless and heavy in the way he says it. 

Ilya grips his hips and waits for him to explain further: he had a tendency to just start voicing an opinion or thought somewhere in the middle without much context, and Ilya trusted him to work his way back eventually on it.

“You smacking the Metros around like that,” Shane then says, burying his face in Ilya’s neck to suck at his earlobe.

Ilya blinks and then laughs, holding onto Shane a little tighter as he rolls his hips slowly against him.

“Knew it.” Ilya sighs, and tips his head to kiss him back.

Shane insists on taking Ilya apart with his mouth, like he’d done a thousand times before. 

“Shane, we really don’t have to…”

But Shane had already worked Ilya out of his jeans and out of his boxers. He was already lying there on his tummy between Ilya’s legs. 

His eyes were large and his hair hung over his forehead, yet not obstructing the lustful look that flashed across his face as he etched closer towards where Ilya lay starfished against the bed.

“Please let me,” Shane says quietly. “I can’t… I can’t let them ruin this. I still want this. Please.”

Ilya’s throat bobs, his mouth having run dry. He was already painfully hard after not having touched his dick in weeks, and with the way Shane was glancing up at him through his lashes, he’s sure that he wasn’t going to last very long. 

“It’s not ruined,” Ilya tells him, reaching down to fumble his shaking hands over his chin, his cheek and then to brush through his hair. His mind flashes unfairly to the video — unfamiliar hands having ran through the same way in these locks of hair.

He squeezes his eyes shut briefly and exiles the thought, focusing only on the Shane now that was waiting between his open legs.

“I love you.” Ilya rasps, cradling his head. “I fucking love you so much.”

Shane shudders and drops his head forehead to nuzzle against him. He’s sure he whines before murmuring. “I love you. I love you too.”

When it’s over, the end up curled at the end of the bed in each others arms, stated and sleepy, they know that the rest of their day together is written off and Ilya wouldn’t change that for the world. 

He’s asked him many times already but just to be sure, he asks him again:

“Are you okay?”

Shane, tucked up at his side, one arm curled against his chest, the other up under Ilya’s head, fingering loose damp curls lazily, nods and hums, his eyes having slipped shut a little while ago now.

“Thank you.” He says, voice thick with exhaustion as well as from other things. “That helped.”

Ilya holds him close, blindly pressing a kiss to his closed eye, the best he could reach at his angle without disturbing them both too much. 

“I will make joke about dick doctor later. Now I am too tired.”

Shane huffs like it’s supposed to be a laugh. It rings right though Ilya in the best way. 

They lay like that for a little bit, breathing having slowed, the room having settled. 

Then,

“I think… I think I’m going to leave the Metros.”

If there were perhaps a list of things that Ilya had suspected Shane to tell him after the first sex they’d had in weeks after the biggest scandal of all of their careers so far, that wouldn’t have even made bottom ranking.

But a list of things that Ilya had perhaps wanted to hear? Well it was definitely up there gracing the very top.

“It’s not one hundred percent just yet,” Shane then adds in a rush, eyes opening now like he’d suddenly woken himself up at the thought. “But I’m a free agent next season and, well. I don’t know. A lot of things have changed recently. What’s a little more change?”

Ilya hums and draws him in for a proper kiss this time. “Brave,” he says, holding him close still.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” Shane goes on to say. His fingers finger the chain of Ilya’s necklace, twisted up around his shoulder, he starts to undo it absentmindedly as he talks. “There’s some options for me out there. Maybe not as good as Montreal but…”

“Options.” Ilya says firmly, eyes meeting Shane’s.

“Yeah.” Shane says quietly, face breaking into a grin.

“I love you.” Ilya says and Shane huffs a laugh, his breath warm against Ilya’s mouth. 

“I know. You say that a lot. I love you too.”

“I will keep saying it,” Ilya tells him, voice fighting against sleep where it rumbles and roughens out. “Even when maybe I can’t say it out loud in front of world, I will still love you.”

Shane fixes Ilya’s necklace and sets it carefully in the middle of his chest, brushing his fingers over the cool golden metal.

“Maybe…” he says slowly, eyes fixated on the crucifix as he speaks. “Maybe… that could be one of the options, one day? Saying that. Out loud. In front of people.”

Ilya’s heart he’s sure skips a beat in his chest. And he’s certain Shane feels it where his fingers are still sprawled over his sternum. 

“Yeah?” He croaks, feeling a sudden warmth rush up behind his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Shane smiles and leans in and kisses him sweetly on the mouth. “I think that would be okay. I’ve gone viral once before, I could handle doing it again.”

Ilya laughs and then kisses him back.