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“And who is the patient you would like to visit?” The lady at the front desk asks calmly, nails typing away at the computer in front of her.
Ilya clears his throat, nerves settling underneath his skin like pin pricks through the membrane.
“Shane Hollander,” He finally forces out, the name coming out of his throat like a fork on a chalkboard. Not exactly the casual tone he had wanted.
The woman’s head snaps up for the first time since Ilya arrived and she takes a good long look at him before she responds. Recognition, Ilya has seen it dozens of times before. On kids, on parents, at the grocery store, at coffee shops. Everywhere. It comes with living in a hockey obsessed city, Ilya has grown accustomed to the stares by now.
But this time it feels…different. Like the woman’s eyes are seeing right through him. As if—even if it’s illogical—she knows. The real reason why he’s here, not the bullshit one he’d given the rest of his teammates, his coach, management (“Must complete my captain duty Connors,” He’d said). Ilya swallowed, urging his foot to stop the insistent tapping it had been doing for several minutes now. He needed a cigarette again, or three.
The woman eventually nods, checks a couple more things on her computer before calling over a nurse to escort him away.
Each step Ilya takes towards the hospital room feels heavier than the last. This had decidedly not been how today was supposed to have gone. After the game he was supposed to have finally met Shane in his personal Montreal apartment for the first time since they started this. He was supposed to soak in Shane’s presence one last time before Ilya made the right decision for the both of them and broke things off. He was supposed to be sulking in his hotel room right now for reasons that he had only himself to blame for, with Shane safe and sound in his own home.
Not—this. Fucking Marlow.
“However, there is something you need to know before we let you in, Mr Rozanov.” The nurse stopped in front of Shane’s room, turning around to look Ilya in the eyes. Her face had set into a more serious expression.
Ilya paused, tilting his head to fix his gaze onto the nurse.
She grabbed a hold of the clipboard in her hands more firmly as she glanced to look at the door where her patient lied.
“Mr Hollander has been diagnosed with retrograde amnesia.” She says.
Ilya blinks at her. A faint ringing slowly starts to build itself around his ears.
What?
“He and his parents have agreed to allow visitation but protocol has it that visitors understand the fragility of the situation.”
Ilya continues to stare blankly at her as she explains what he is and is not recommended to say, as to not ‘cause distress to the patient.’ The ringing in his ears grows louder and all Ilya can do is nod along to words he isn’t entirely processing.
He blinks periodically, mind flashing forward and behind to calls with a Russian specialist on the line, calls with Alexei, with his father.
Where is your mother, Ilya?
“…be fine Mr Rozanov?” The nurse finishes, looking at him expectantly.
Ilya opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He tries again.
“..I am sorry?” It comes out wobbly, unsure. He shakes his head and squints, trying to make himself say all the right words in a language that he can’t grasp all too well at the moment.
The nurse looks at him with slightly furrowed brows, concerned. Ilya doesn’t like it.
“Will you be fine with following all the precautions, Mr Rozanov?” She repeats, tone careful.
Ilya looks at her, glances towards the door that seems to loom at him forebodingly now.
“…Yes.” He knows his voice comes out rougher than intended, thick with his accent and something else that’s choking at him.
The nurse nods at him, giving him an uncertain smile. She turns and she motions towards the door before leaving him standing in the hallway.
Ilya’s hand closes around the doorknob. He stops, staring at the way his hand grasped at the metal in a vice grip.
Amnesia.
What did Shane remember? Ilya swears, wishing he had asked the nurse before she had left him. She hadn’t said, why would she? What history could they possibly have that she would think it necessary to tell him. Not for the first time, Ilya curses the isolation of their well kept secret. Where did they stand now, him and Shane?
Amnesia.
Ilya’s mind runs with questions he has no answers to. What if it’s before the All Stars game? Before Shane had come in with his stupidly form fitting outfit chosen by his stupidly new stylist, and laid himself bare in that stupid hotel and then let Ilya cry as he held him in his arms.
Amnesia.
What if it’s before Rose Landry? Before they’d said their names, before Shane ran out? Back in that confusing, push and pull, where Shane had spooked so easily.
Amnesia.
Ilya gasps, hand clenching onto the knob with all his strength.
He can’t do this. It hits Ilya like a heavy handed brick through a glass window. He can’t go in there. He can’t. Because if he goes in and all that’s left of them is a half eaten tuna melt and a ginger ale that’s no longer cold—Ilya doesn’t know how he'd be able to handle it. If all that’s left between them is bitten off curses of last names.
But you were going to end it anyways though, weren’t you?
Ilya swallows dryly. A chill in the air that hadn’t been there before the nurse spoke, starts to nip at his skin in an unfriendly, scratching way. The bright unflinching lights of the hospital buzz above him, flickering every so often.
Ilya inhales as much oxygen as he can deep into his lungs. Holds, then exhales out, shaking out his shoulders. He could do this. He had to do this. Ilya could be exaggerating for all he knows, Shane could have forgotten a month, maybe two at the most and Ilya can—he can say goodbye one more time. One last time.
He can do this. It’ll be easier even, that horrible part whispers.
He turns the knob.
His eyes immediately meet a pair of dark brown ones, iris’ blown wide and unfocused. They must have him on a fuck ton of pain medicine. Ilya closes the door behind him, eyes flicking up and down to stare at the cast, the bruises, all over the man who’s utterly taken over Ilya’s entire life. Ilya’s heart aches to look at him hurting, but there’s a small solace in the fact that he’s still here to breathe at all.
Ilya fixes his gaze back up onto those unseeing, perfect chestnut eyes.
“Hi, Hollander.” Ilya internally chides himself as soon as the words come out, voice too soft, too gentle.
Shane squints at him, head tilting and the movement causes a ray of sun to land on his face. It highlights his freckles, brings out the deep honey sheen of his eyes. He looks beautiful.
“Hellooooo Rozanov” Shane says, recognition sparking in his eyes as a dopey smile starts to break out on his face. Ilya feels a small part of him break in relief, a part he hadn’t realized had been fearing it at all, at that recognition. At the very least Shane knew who he was. He hadn’t forgotten Ilya entirely.
Ilya tries for a smile as well, but it twists into a grimace on his face. There’s a tangled knot lodged deep in his stomach that hasn’t righted itself yet, not even while knowing Shane was going to be okay. He takes a step forward, then another, until he’s by Shane’s bedside.
“You scared everyone on the ice.” Ilya says, fighting the urge to brush Shane’s messy dark strands off his forehead. You scared me. Is what he really means.
“I knowww,” Shane draws the last word out like he can’t help himself. He looks relaxed, at least. He’s too tense all the time.
“Hollander,” Ilya starts. Stops. He flicks his eyes between Shane’s.
“Rozanov,” Shane chirps back, tone light. Easy. Ilya can’t…tell. What does he know?
“The nurses, they told me..” Ilya trails off, staring at Shane’s expression intently. Shane’s brows furrow unhappily.
“Yeah, my memory’s fucked.” Shane glances out towards the window, bottom lip wedged between teeth. He doesn’t explain further, only gazing out with a faraway look in his eyes. Ilya wants to ask him, wants to know.
The nurse told him not to test if Shane remembered him, or ask what he remembered. Keep conversation short. Calm. No room for panic or agitation.
So Ilya stomps down on the urge to ask, no matter how badly his mind is screaming at him to do.
“Marlow is…sorry. He did not mean for, any of this.” He figures that’s easy enough.
Shane’s eyes snap back to him.
“Marlow…” Shane’s voice lilts out. He screws his face up, the way he does when he thinks hard. Ilya feels himself freeze. The tangle in his stomach constricts.
“…Cliff Marlow?” Shane murmurs it uncertainly. Shane Hollander, the same man who rewatches games mere hours after he’s played, who knows Boston’s plays almost as well as Ilya does, says their winger’s name with a question attached. Ilya’s pulse starts to beat a little faster.
Shane continues, almost absentmindedly.
“So he was drafted to Boston then?” It’s said in the murmur, question rhetorical, but the implication behind it stops Ilya’s world.
And Ilya’s heart drops.
No. He feels the denial already start to climb its way up his throat, out of his skull. Marly had been drafted a year after their rookie season, a smidge younger and a promising choice for Boston’s wing. If Shane was asking this…
Ilya’s body takes over for himself as his mind runs in unending circles, head nodding vigorously.
“Da, yes.” He confirms.
“Who won?” An almost frantic laugh bubbles up out of Ilya’s chest before he can stifle it. Shane eyes him oddly at the reaction, but he offers a hesitant smile anyways. The hitches of Ilya’s breaths jump in tandem with the solid breaking of his heart. A wetness begins to blur his vision, and Ilya rapidly blinks to make sure not a single tear falls out.
Because he can’t show that to Shane.
Ilya’s head shakes for him.
“Not Montreal.” He says. Ilya’s surprised at how steady his voice comes out, his grief undetectable.
Shane pouts. He’s lying in the hospital, brain scrambled, and collarbone broken. Pouting over a lost game.
The urge to cry surges back up, all of a sudden.
“And we are…?”
Ilya swallows. He could say a hundred things right now. Two guys that fuck. The best players in the league. A pair of idiots who got in way too deep with one another.
Lovers.
“Rivals.” The word is ripped out before he can think, and it is the final nail in the coffin for Ilya.
Shane nods as if it’s the clearest thing.
“Guess we did end up seeing each other a lot.”
Montreal is nice right? Boston is nice too. They play against each other often.
Fuck Six years.
Ilya nods again, something his body had decided to fall back on whenever his voice failed him. Ilya’s eyes rove over Shane’s face, taking in every detail of his handsome face like it would be the last time he ever saw him. It wouldn’t be. But Ilya’s heart seemed to disagree at the moment.
“I have to—my flight—“ Ilya’s words rush out of him in a jumble as he takes a step back. Shane makes a hum of acknowledgement, because it’s reasonable. He makes no move to stop Ilya. He didn’t forget Ilya entirely, what a stupid notion that was now. Shane might as well have.
Ilya’s by the door faster than he can blink, and he stops as he opens the door halfway. His heart's hanging on by a thread at this point but he can’t leave without—
He turns his head one more time to look at Shane. His tousled hair, his eyes, his lips, his freckles. Breaks him more and more. I love you. The words get stuck in his throat.
“See you next season, Hollander.” Is what he says instead.
“See you next season, Rozanov.” Shane parrots.
Ilya closes the door behind him.
A creeping, hysterical, and more than anything bitter thought, plagues Ilya’s head as he walks down the hall, away from the room.
Guess you didn’t have to be the one to end it after all.
Ilya orders a bottle of vodka on the plane back to Boston and he drinks until he can’t remember his own name.
The ‘Jane’ chat box in Ilya’s messages stays silent for the next three weeks.
Which, to be completely fair, wasn’t out of the ordinary during playoff season. The two of them were usually so engrossed in hockey at this time of the year that texts were few and far between. But Hollander was out of the playoffs already, so normally, nothing would stop him from sending a chirp or two to Ilya.
Normally.
Ilya assumes Hollander’s banned from screens for quite a bit after he’s been discharged. He spends a lot of time wondering what Shane will do when he sees the long winded chats sent back and forth from ‘Lily.’
Knowing Hollander, he’s deleted every incriminating text between the two, especially anything that could even hint at Ilya’s identity.
Ilya wonders what Hollander will think, reading back gaps between messages. Not knowing the context that laid thick over every single interaction.
Ilya scrolls through the last string of texts between them frequently during those three weeks. Ilya can’t bring himself to block his number.
Can’t shut Shane out completely.
There's been a pit in his chest that hasn’t gone away since he visited Shane in the hospital. Every day that passed, the cave within his ribs simply grew deeper, and more profound.
The headlines had posted about Hollander’s prognosis. A squeaky clean statement from his agent and himself about his recovery and that it ‘will not affect next year's season.’ Ilya didn’t doubt it. There weren’t many things Shane Hollander could not do if he put his mind to it.
Svetlana called him hours after the articles and statements had been released. He didn’t answer until two days later. He had tried to sound casual, but Svetlana knew him better than almost anyone—possibly more than Ilya himself at times. She heard the oddness in his voice.
Ilya could only be glad that she hadn’t brought it up other than the gentleness in her tone when she said goodnight.
‘Hi Lily?’
The text buzzes at him at seven fucking am in the morning. Ilya opens it as soon as it’s sent.
He had thought it over and over what to do, what to send. And yet here, Ilya’s thumbs hovering over the keyboard, still and unmoving. He didn’t know what to say.
It’s over.
I found someone else.
I’m not interested.
Lies. Lies. Lies. All of them.
In the end, Ilya is a coward. And he cannot bear the thought of saying any of these things that would feel so wrong.
And so he says nothing instead.
His phone rings with another text from Jane three days later.
‘I know you’ve probably heard I have amnesia. But I would still like to get to know you again, Lily.’
It’s so honest, and careful and so Shane.
Ilya fights with himself for a long time before he decides to simply ignore that text too.
It feels like he’s dug an even deeper hole in his chest, in the space where his heart should be.
Boston loses to the Admirals. Ilya doesn’t necessarily care, at least not when he has other things to feel infinitely worse about, but it pisses him off nonetheless that Scott Hunter would be making his way to the finals.
Svetlana comes to visit him after he’s landed back in Boston. They sit on his couch, and shit talk Scott Hunter and his terrible old age while eating takeout and watching the game on tonight. Sveta offers to fuck and simply strokes Ilya’s hair when he says no despondently.
There hasn’t been another text from Jane.
Ilya spends the next month keeping up with Shane from the side lines.
It’s impossible really, because he’s still injured and recovering but Ilya finds things. Small tidbits, anything that let him know how Shane’s doing, how he’s recovering.
Has he remembered anything? Is usually the first thing Ilya looks for.
There’s small sightings from nosy paparazzi. There’s posts from Shane’s very impersonal instagram most definitely run by his agent on brand deals. Ilya stalks Shane’s parents' social media accounts, Hayden Pike’s, the official Voyagers account, some of the other hockey players Shane had been seen closer to. Hell, Ilya even stalks Rose Landry’s account.
It’s not enough. And Ilya knows he can simply text. He knows he can call Shane’s number and Shane will pick up because he rarely ever misses a call, and he will answer with a hesitant ‘Hello?’ in a cadence that is engraved into Ilya’s heart. And Ilya will say nothing but hear Shane’s soft breathing on the other line or he will do something worse like say ‘I miss you’ or ‘I love you.’
He can ruin the vision that he had imprinted on Shane’s mind of what they are to each other, and he can drag that perfect, beautiful boy back into Ilya’s flawed, horrible world.
But Ilya can’t do that to him.
So he watches.
Ilya watches the Stanley Cup final with Sveta’s feet in his lap and his phone in one hand, scrolling on Shane’s instagram feed for the fifth time that day.
Scott Hunter wins and Sveta and him do a reasonable amount of booing from the television screen. Ilya flicks his gaze between watching the Admirals enjoy their victory and looking at Shane’s latest sponsorship collaboration about medical services within sports industries.
“Ilya,” Sveta nudges him a little too firmly with her socked foot. Ilya pinches the skin near the ankle in retaliation, eyes still locked onto the caption on Shane’s most recent post.
He hears Sveta huff and a sharp kick in the thigh has him yelping and looking up to glare at her.
“Sveta!” She merely glares back before motioning towards the screen.
Ilya turns to where she’s pointing, and looks at Scott Hunter beckoning a man onto the ice. He glances back at Sveta with furrowed brows but she’s staring at the screen as well.
Scott Hunter pulls the man onto the ice. He skates them closer to the center and he grabs at the man’s face in a way that Ilya is very familiar with.
And then he kisses him.
Right there, on the ice, in front of hundreds of people.
Ilya goes stock still, staring at the picture in front of him as crumpled up hope and loss pour through him. Sveta does not say anything, but Ilya feels a warm pair of arms wrap around him.
He closes his eyes as he leans into the embrace, ignoring the gathering wetness near his eyelashes, and he decidedly wonders what Shane is thinking as he watches the same thing miles and miles away in Canada.
The summer holds nothing for Ilya Rozanov.
He does not go back to Russia. He stays in Boston and he goes to the gym, and he goes out with his team mates, and he hangs out with Svetlana.
Ilya tries to bring home a girl one night out with Marlow and the other boys. She’s brunette with long curls, a nice chest and full lips. In the everchanging lights of the club, Ilya can’t see the color of her eyes very well and as he kisses her, he imagines she’s a few inches taller and her waist a few inches thicker with muscle.
They go outside to the back alley and when she opens her eyes, a stray street lamp shows Ilya a vivid green instead of brown.
Ilya does not bring her home, and he does not try to bring another person home again.
Ilya continues to stalk Shane’s socials an embarrassing number of times a day, and they do not lessen in frequency until Sveta has to smack him over the head too many times to pay attention to their conversation.
Shane has healed well physically since the hit, but he hasn’t recovered his memories yet. Shane has said on record that they’ve been trying different techniques to recover it, but nothing concrete yet. He’s back to modeling with his enormous array of sponsorships and Ilya tries incredibly hard not to stare at his advertisement with an interactive fitness equipment company. (Ilya’s a dirty liar and he gets himself off to the video of Shane’s sweaty body more times than he’s ever willing to admit).
He’s still friends with Pike according to the latter’s posts—it only makes Ilya mildly annoyed that Shane would still find Hayden Pike to be acceptable company a second time around.
He’s spotted once out with Rose Landry and the media goes crazy to discuss rumors of them getting back together. Ilya tells himself he’s not jealous (Shane is gay he had said as much and even if he doesn’t remember, Rose does) but when he says a photo of them laughing he clenches down on his jaw so hard it pops a vein in his forehead.
Shane is happy. He’s healed. He’s okay.
Ilya may miss him desperately but at least he has that knowledge.
The start of the season gets Ilya anxious. He’s not playing against Montreal until a month in but he’s still keyed up during the games that lead up to it.
“Shit, when’s the last time you got laid Roz?” Marly grumbles at him when Ilya barks at them during practice to stop fucking around.
Ilya makes the team do bag skates until they drop as punishment.
He watched Montreal’s first games of the season when Boston wasn’t playing. Shane had, unsurprisingly, been playing well. Slightly uneasy in his first game against Tampa but he fell right into the swing of things by the next game against Vancouver. Muscle memory and what not. Ilya didn’t doubt that Shane had probably replayed and rewatched his own games a dozen times over during summer so he wouldn’t fall behind.
“Ready to lose Hollander?” Ilya slides into the act he’s been putting up on the ice for the last eight years easily, like a key to a lock.
Shane looks up at him and Ilya feels slightly infuriated as his breath involuntarily catches at the sight of those vivid brown eyes.
They sparkle with no real animosity and Shane’s smile twitches as he chirps back.
“Not a chance, Rozanov.”
Ilya loses the face off.
Ilya gives over his entire being to the game. He knew if Shane did remember him, he’d be incredibly pissed if Ilya had decided to go easy on him in his first game back, and so Ilya held back absolutely nothing.
He tries to simply enjoy the feeling of playing against Shane for the first time in months, and he soaks in every second on the ice he has with him. Because they will not meet up after this match, and Ilya will not be able to touch and taste and feel him like he wants to.
So Ilya tries his very best during the game so he can at least get the glorious feeling of beating Shane Hollander under his skin again.
Montréal wins, by one goal.
When Shane takes off his helmet, his hair is plastered to his sweaty forehead, skin flush and alight with a sheen. He’s smiling, breathing hard and he doesn’t even complain when Pike jostles him around the shoulders.
He looks lovely, and Ilya can’t bring himself to be upset at the loss at that moment.
Ilya almost throws himself out the window of the bar he and some of the other Bears on the team are in to lick their wounds when he sees who is also there.
Pike, Boiziau. Fucking Montreal.
Ilya valiantly attempts to make all six foot and one inches of himself appear smaller on the other side of the bar, hoping that the bartender will place him out of his misery and quickly give him his drink before he spots the one person he does not—can not—see.
The bartender gives him a strange look when Ilya practically barks out his order, eyes flitting around the bar much too anxiously to be considered normal behavior. The bartender obliges him however, at the expense of making Ilya his drink at the pace of a fucking snail.
And as Ilya awaits for his long needed glass, the second worst thing happens to him that day after Boston’s loss.
“Hey Rozanov!” Ilya goes stock still. The lighthearted, sportsmanlike tone too much for his state of mind. His eyes close for a second and he prays to whatever deity there is out there that they are seriously not about to do this to him.
But of course they are, he’s Ilya fucking Rozanov.
He turns his head to see a delightful head of dark hair, with the freckles and eyes to match and a pink to his cheeks that is really not helping Ilya’s sanity at this point in time.
The bartender needs to hurry the fuck up.
“Hollander,” Ilya acknowledges, dipping his head down. “Here to gloat?” It’s what Ilya would do typically.
But Shane is not Ilya and so he rolls his eyes as soon as Ilya asks this, “No!”
“You guys played well today,” Shane concedes instead with a little half jerk of a nod. Ilya can see a ginger ale clasped in his hand. He’s wearing a black button up that is way too nice—I hired a stylist—that fits him in all the right places.
Ilya wants to eat him alive.
“Must not have if we let Montreal beat us,” Ilya says to be an asshole. It works and Shane’s face flushes a deeper and very biteable shade of crimson. An angry little kitten.
“Fuck off! My second Stanley cup says otherwise!” Ilya wouldn’t be surprised if Shane had a spreadsheet that listed every game won and by how many goals. It must have come insanely handy now that Shane’s lost over six years of his memory.
“Was pity reward,” Ilya can’t help but tease. It was always so incredibly easy to get under Shane’s skin.
“Ah so that’s why they gave you MVP?” Shane shoots back, arching a perfectly shaped brow.
Ilya refrains from licking his lip. Thankfully, the bartender finally gets around to finishing up his drink which gives Ilya the perfect excuse to not have to look at a cocky Shane Hollander for fear of accidentally popping a boner right in the middle of the bar.
And as Shane is immediately whisked away by a Pike that glares daggers at Ilya as he wraps an arm around his friend, Ilya comes to a rather begrudging, and unfortunate, conclusion. Marlow had been right, he needed to get laid.
That night, Ilya takes a girl with sleek black hair, dark eyes, and an athletic figure back to his hotel room.
He doesn’t manage to keep his eyes open as he fucks her.
It was like a seam broke, after the first Boston v. Montreal game of the season. Without fail, almost every night since then, Ilya had taken home a different woman.
The boys on the team had noticed; St-Simon had whistled at him in the lockers after they saw the marks Ilya’s latest lay had given him. Ilya gave him a wolfish grin and shrugged it off as the guys clapped at his foray back into the game.
Then Connors made a comment about Montreal Jane having competition, and Ilya’s brief lift in mood plummeted faster than one could blink.
Svetlana had been hovering around, more so than usual. She never pressed, whenever she and Ilya were at his place, but she was concerned at Ilya’s sudden switch in resuming his man whore ways after his intentional bout of celibacy all throughout summer. Ilya merely waved her off, whenever she expressed her worry.
This was something he needed. It would be impossible to move on if Shane was the last person he had ever slept with. This would, slowly but surely, help those memories fade away.
It would.
Hopefully.
The season is a little rough for the Bears, despite how Ilya practically throws himself into hockey if he isn’t finding a girl to fuck, or hanging out with Sveta.
It makes things worse, and better, in some ways. It allows Ilya to focus on the negative aspects of something that had nothing to do with Shane Hollander, even if every loss was objectively awful for him.
Ilya knows they probably aren’t cup contenders this season, even if they do manage to get into the first round of playoffs. It makes him dread the idea of ending the season shortly, not having hockey to fall back on and lose himself in.
Which is why, when they play against Montreal again–this time on the Bears home turf, the win feels especially good.
Marlow and St-Simon barrel into him after the sound of the buzzer, signaling the end of the final period. Ilya is fucking ecstatic as the hats fly onto the ice and his team crowds around him. Out of the corner of his vision, he sees the jersey with the number twenty four making its way off the ice.
Smoking a cigarette in his bed later that night, two brunettes sleeping soundly on either side of him, Ilya replays the pissed off look on Hollander’s face when the puck had been snatched from under him during the face off.
Christmas was not very important to Russians. Ilya had grown up watching American films where families would gather around large decorated trees, surrounded by piles and piles of garishly wrapped presents. That was never the case in his home, not before his mother had been with them, and certainly not after she had left.
So, when all of his teammates chatted about Christmas plans and dinners and last minute gift ideas, Ilya, and the handful of other Russian players, never contributed much to the conversation. And Ilya had always been okay with that, usually sleeping in and bullshitting the time with Svetlana.
But this year Sveta was in France, and so Ilya was alone with his thoughts on Christmas day.
Canadian’s celebrated Christmas as well, Ilya knew that. He wondered how Hollander was spending the day, probably with his parents, maybe a couple distant relatives. Maybe the Pikes celebrated with them. Maybe Shane had decided to bring over a partner this year.
He would be able to. Ilya wasn’t sure if Shane’s family was aware of Shane’s sexuality, but they seemed to be nice people. If Shane decided to bring home a kind, well mannered man, they would probably accept him as if he was their own. They would have a picture perfect Christmas dinner, maybe have matching sweaters, exchange sweet and personal gifts. They would show easy affection, hugs, and small kisses. Holding hands.
None of which would be possible if it was Ilya instead. Not with who he was.
It was difficult to admit that—–in all likelihood Ilya had made the best choice possible for them.
This way, Shane would be free to love someone who was worthy of him. He could have a family, a good one, and not have to worry about distance, or hiding, or–
And Ilya could live with that. As long as Shane was happy, and safe, Ilya could deal with keeping this rotten secret inside of him. He could waste away, satisfied that his misery wasn’t in vain.
Shane Hollander would just be another thing that Ilya wanted, but could never have.