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The cold has seeped into Shane’s bones in a way that makes him feel brittle - ready to crack.
It’s more than just the cold that has him on the verge of splintering, though. More than the brutal Montreal winter that’s clinging to his skin as he stands outside of a hotel at one o’clock in the morning. It’s the ache right behind his ribcage, growing so hot that his insides feel blistered. And it’s the shaking in his hands - not from the icy chill, but from clenching his fists. From holding back, not reaching out to touch what he so desperately longs for.
Shane is too much of a coward to enter, but he’s too afraid to walk away.
He wouldn’t even know where to find him.
For the first time in years, Ilya had no reason to text him before or after the game with a room number. And he didn’t look at Shane during the game, either - not on the bench, or during the face off, or even when he slammed him into the boards. What used to feel like flirtation, like foreplay, suddenly seemed so impersonal.
Shane had felt completely invisible to him for the first time since they’ve known each other, and it made something settle in his stomach, heavy and bitter.
He couldn’t look away, though, when their eyes locked in that crowded room. Through the haze of darkness and body heat and drunken partygoers, all Shane could see was Ilya. His eyes were fixed on Shane and Rose: the way she touched him, the way she kissed him, the way they moved together. And the look on Ilya’s face - the agony in his eyes - pierced Shane like a blade through his heart.
It made him want to peel his skin off; made him feel ashamed for having a body that had been touched by someone other than Ilya.
Because Shane had done that to him. He’d been the one to crack him open.
The infamous Ilya Rozanov watched Shane - completely uninterested in the woman who was grinding on him - with heartbreak woven into every line on his face. All because Shane had walked away from Ilya right at the moment he’d offered his heart to him, right at the moment everything was starting to change for them.
This is all his fault, and he isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to fix it.
But he knows he has to try.
The frigid January wind whips around Shane and he braces against it. He tucks his face into the collar of his coat, sucks in a too-cold breath that paralyses his lungs, and walks through the double doors into the Raider’s hotel.
If it was any other day then Shane would be concerned by how lax the security is, but today he’s just relieved. He merely asks the desk clerk for Rozanov’s room number, offers to sign a couple of autographs for his troubles, and then hops in the elevator a few minutes later with a number. A destination. And he knows it’s risky to ask someone - knows that kind of thing could spread like wildfire, Shane Hollander asking for Ilya Rozanov’s room number - but Shane doesn’t have any other option.
He’d seen Rose back to the hotel she’s staying at while filming, ever the gentleman his mom raised him to be. He’d politely and apologetically ended their brief relationship, and - much to his relief - Rose had agreed with the decision, even going as far as to make Shane promise to stay in touch.
And then he’d immediately shown up at the hotel, as close to Ilya’s doorstep as he could manage.
Because the need to fix things, to rid Ilya of that devastated expression, was so visceral that Shane couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t kiss Rose, couldn’t even touch her. If he’d taken her back to his place like she’d wanted, he might have just died then and there. The only thing he could think of, the only thing he could focus on, was getting to Ilya. Was fixing this mess he’d created.
His hand shakes as he raises it to knock on the door. A gold-plated 4112 stares back at him - another room number to add to their growing collection of memories. He briefly considers covering the peephole so Ilya can’t see him and choose not to answer, but he resists the urge. He doesn’t want to take that choice away from him.
He holds his breath, waits for five, ten, fifteen seconds. And then the door swings open.
Shane hadn’t even considered the possibility that Ilya might not be alone. It didn’t cross his mind once on the way over here, or in all the time that he hovered outside like some kind of stalker. The thought only occurs at the very moment his gaze latches onto Ilya’s bare chest. His eyes follow the drop of water that sluices down the centre of his abs and soaks into the band of his underwear that’s peeking out above his sweats.
Shane swallows.
“Hollander?”
Ilya’s accent curls familiarly around the syllables. It instantly makes Shane miss the way he once said his first name, all soft and reverent and disbelieving.
He desperately wishes he hadn’t ran from it; he’d do anything to hear it again.
“Uh, hi,” Shane replies, stunned into stupidity by just the sight of Ilya. “Sorry, do you - are you-“
Shane trails off, not finishing his sentence because he’s scared to hear the answer. He suddenly doesn’t want to know if Ilya is alone or not. He’s not sure he could bear it. Yet he can’t stop his eyes from flickering away from Ilya and into his hotel room, searching for a sign that someone is in there, waiting for him. For a sign that he found comfort in somebody else tonight.
“No one is here, Hollander,” Ilya says, reading Shane like the open book he always seems to be when it comes to Ilya.
“Oh, right. Well. Can I - is it okay-“
“-you can come in.”
He steps back, albeit reluctantly, and holds the door open so Shane can slip inside. His shoulder almost brushes Ilya’s chest as he passes him, but Ilya takes an obvious step backwards to avoid the contact. A line drawn in the sand. A boundary he’s not allowed to cross.
Shane feels a little bit like he’s dying.
Ilya is tidy. Not in the neurotic, borderline compulsive way that Shane is, but he’s much neater than most of the hockey players Shane has met or played with. The only sign that anyone is staying in the room at all is the duffel tucked into the corner, the t-shirt on the edge of the bed, and the phone face-down on the nightstand. And the bed, of course, with the cover pulled back and the sheets all wrinkled like Ilya had been lying there recently.
Shane kind of wants to touch the mattress to see if it’s still warm, to see if the heat of Ilya’s body lingers on it. He wonders if it already smells like him - warm and clean and earthy.
He misses having Ilya in a space that means something. A space that is allowed to remember them. Ilya’s house in Boston, Shane’s apartment here in Montreal - he doesn’t care, he’s just tired of nondescript hotel rooms. Of hollow places holding memories that shouldn’t belong to them.
He turns away from the bed and forces himself to look at Ilya.
His hair is damp, curling around his ears and falling slightly over his forehead, like he’s not long since gotten out of the shower. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his sweats, and his legs are crossed at the ankles as he leans back against the wall, looking like he’s got all the time in the world. The waistband of his underwear is visible over his low-slung sweats.
Shane considers taking the t-shirt off the end of the bed and throwing it to him because his body is so distracting, but he quickly decides against it.
He’s never seen Ilya like this before: soft, wound-down and ready for sleep. They’ve never had the chance. Never lingered long enough to be together in those still, quiet hours, just before sleep or just after waking. The closest was Boston, when they’d woken after a brief nap, with their legs tangled and bodies pressed together. When Shane had gotten a brief glimpse of what a life with Ilya would look like, and selfishly - dangerously - wanted more.
The memory of it aches like pressing on a bruise.
Ilya is looking at Shane like he’s bored. Like he doesn’t care that Shane is here and he wouldn’t care if he left, either. Shane can see right through his mask. He can see the frustration, the anger, the pain, that Ilya is trying his hardest to hide behind a wall of indifference.
Shane knows him. He sees the truth.
“I still have your clothes,” he says, pointing vaguely at Ilya’s bare chest.
It’s not what he meant to say at all. Didn’t intend to start with something so cutting, especially after Shane had fled Ilya’s house while wearing his clothes. Clothes that still smell of Ilya, even now, because Shane hasn’t been able to bring himself to wash them yet.
He watches Ilya’s eyes harden. Notices the way he clenches his jaw.
“What do you want, Hollander?” Ilya asks. It sounds like he’s spitting the words out, like they leave a bad taste in his mouth.
Shane winces.
He feels suddenly, painfully aware of his own body. Of the space he is taking up in Ilya’s room. Of the fact that he isn’t welcome here.
That’s entirely new territory when it comes to them. They’ve always fallen into each other so easily, with grasping hands and clashing teeth and heaving breaths. The shared language of their bodies has always been a simple one, even when words failed them in English or Russian or French. But they feel a million miles apart now, like there’s so much distance hidden in the few feet of space that separates them.
“I just…needed to see you. Talk to you,” Shane says, almost whispering.
“You have girlfriend for that now, yes?”
It feels like being checked into the boards, the way Ilya asks it. Hurt disguised as vitriol, though Shane can see straight through to the centre of it. To the aching, bitter core.
He’s jealous. That much was clear earlier tonight in the club, when he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from the way Rose was touching him. But it’s so much deeper than just jealousy - than wanting something he can’t have.
Ilya is hurt in that cracked open, hollowed out kind of way.
He’d asked Shane to stay, and then held him while he slept. He made tuna melts for them. They talked in an easy, unhurried way that they had never been allowed before because they always had such little time. He’d told Shane he liked him, and then kissed him like he meant it. Like it was a fact. He’d whispered Shane with a kind of adoration that Shane hadn’t even known was possible.
Ilya had peeled back his layers, pried open his ribs, and shown Shane his beating heart. Then Shane left him like it was nothing. Like he was nothing.
And then he went and got himself a girlfriend to prove it.
Fuck.
“No,” Shane tells him. “No, I - that. It’s over.”
“Over?”
“Me and Rose. We’re not - we’re not together.”
Ilya scoffs, shaking his head in disbelief as he grins at Shane. But it’s twisted and mean, not at all like the soft smiles Shane has become accustomed to. The ones that Ilya saves just for him, in those quiet moments when they almost allow what they have to mean something more than what it is. What it can be.
“You looked pretty together tonight,” Ilya remarks.
“Yeah, well. Things change.”
“What?” Ilya asks, throwing his arms out to the sides. “What has changed, Hollander?”
He’s angry. Sad. Missing Shane, probably. At least Shane - selfishly and egotistically - hopes he is. Because he misses Ilya, so much that it feels like he’s breathing through broken glass. So much that he’d checked his phone dozens of times today, still hoping to see a message from Ilya even as his girlfriend’s name popped up on his screen. He would have ended things with her first, of course, but. That’s all it would have taken. One text from Ilya, and Shane would have come running.
Even without the text, Shane still ended up here anyway. In Ilya’s room, in a hotel full of Raider’s, caring less about the consequences of his recklessness than he does about the possibility of losing Ilya forever.
“I have,” Shane says, his voice quiet but steady. “I’ve changed.”
“Really? What happened between two hours ago and now, that suddenly changed you? Your movie star is that bad in bed?”
Ilya sounds sarcastic and mean, like he’s trying to hurt Shane. Trying to push him away. Shane won’t rise to it. He is done running from Ilya, from this: this thing that has grown between them despite all rhyme and reason, and despite all the time they have spent trying to deny it to themselves and to each other.
“I saw the way you looked at me tonight,” Shane confesses.
Ilya’s face goes blank in an instant. All his aching has been laid bare and now he’s trying to cover the tracks, trying to bury it beneath anger because that is easier to feel than pain…than loss.
“Don’t,” he warns. “Don’t pretend-“
“-I’m not pretending!” Shane interrupts, loud and explosive. “God, it’s never been pretend, Ilya. And I think we both know that.”
Ilya rolls off his tongue like a secret he’s been desperate to spill. It makes Ilya flinch, makes his eyes soften even though the rest of his body is tense like he’s bracing for impact.
God, Shane wants to touch him. He wants to close the distance between them and fall into Ilya’s arms like his life depends on it. It kind of feels like it does. Like maybe he will spend the rest of his life bleeding, silently and secretly, if Ilya sends him away now. Because this is the turning point, the most pivotal moment in their relationship, and everything that comes after will solely depend on how Shane navigates this one precious moment.
The air is thick and heavy, charged with the weight of all the things they shouldn’t say. Neither of them move. Neither of them even breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice gunshot loud in the silence that’s descended upon them.
And suddenly, it’s like all of the tension evaporates from Ilya’s body. His shoulders drop, and his hands unclench, and he sighs like he’s got the weight of the world bearing down on him.
Shane wants to help him carry it. Wants to take some of the burden off Ilya’s hands if it will make it easier for him to breathe.
“What happened in Boston - what I did, what I said. God, Ilya. I’m so fucking sorry.”
It feels like the floodgates have opened. Suddenly, after years of harbouring secrets - of hiding things, keeping all he’s too scared to say trapped between his teeth - Shane finds that he doesn’t want to stop now. He has too much to say, to explain, to apologise for, and he needs to say it all as quickly as possible before Ilya decides that he doesn’t want to hear it.
“I didn’t mean it. I just - I was so fucking scared, Ilya. I still am, of course I am, but. But I’m more scared of losing this. Losing you.”
“Hollander…”
Ilya’s voice cracks and Shane scrunches his eyes closed, shaking his head.
“No. Say my name,” he begs. “Please.”
He’s met with silence.
Then, almost inaudibly, the sound of footsteps on the carpeted floor.
Shane is too scared to open his eyes in case Ilya is walking away from him, instead of towards him. He’s not sure he could bear it if he saw Ilya’s back turned to him.
But then he feels a shift in the atmosphere, like the very particles in the air move aside to make room for all that Ilya is. Shane can feel him moving in, closer and closer, until he knows - without even opening his eyes - that Ilya is right in front of him. Because even now, after over a month of radio silence, Shane is still attuned to Ilya. His body knows him.
“Shane,” Ilya says, so carefully that it sounds like worship.
He finally opens his eyes and is met with the most beautiful, most devastating sight: Ilya, his eyes glassy and wide, looking at Shane like he’d carve out his beating heart and hand it over to him if he so much as asked for it.
Still willing to risk it all for Shane, even now. Even after Shane already broke his heart once before.
Because regardless of how the world sees Ilya - regardless of how Ilya tries to present himself - Shane knows that he is soft. He knows that he is sweet, and kind, and good, almost to his own detriment. He is patient, and selfless, and he feels everything so very deeply. And, above everything else, Ilya is a person who is desperate to love and be loved, even though he thinks he doesn’t deserve it.
He does, though.
He deserves everything - the whole world - more than anyone Shane has ever met. And maybe, in time, Shane could give it to him.
“Ilya,” Shane whispers back. “I’m sorry. So sorry that I hurt you.”
Ilya sighs. “I am sorry, too. I pushed too hard, too fast. Was more than you were ready for.”
“I shouldn’t have left you, though. Not like that. You deserved better - more.”
Ilya shakes his head, a line appearing between his brows as he frowns. He takes another step forward, his hands hovering, outstretched, like he’s still not sure if he’s allowed to touch.
“I don’t want more. I only want you.”
It’s so honest, and raw, and achingly vulnerable, that it makes Shane want to weep.
“Then have me.” It’s a plea, a promise, a prayer.
Ilya looks away, his expression torn. Hands clenched into fists by his side.
“Rose?”
“It’s done, it’s over. I promise you, Ilya. I wouldn’t have come here tonight without being able to offer all of myself to you.”
He didn’t want the ghost of someone else haunting a moment that’s supposed to be just theirs.
“No more running?” Ilya asks.
He sounds so much like the eighteen year old kid he’d been when they first met all those years ago, and Shane can’t help but smile. He thinks of Saskatchewan, and cigarette smoke, and clumsy English with a Russian accent; he thinks of a hotel gym, and a racing heart, and a bottle of water passed between two boys who were so desperate to become men.
It seems like an entire lifetime ago, and somehow only yesterday.
If someone had told that version of himself that one day he’d be standing in Ilya Rozanov’s hotel room confessing his feelings, he would have thought it impossible. He would have laughed in their faces.
How wonderful it is that he’s come so far. That through knowing Ilya, Shane has also come to know himself.
“No more running, Ilya. I want you,” Shane promises. Then he takes a deep breath, looks into Ilya’s eyes, and bares his soul: “I love you.”
The sound that claws its way out of Ilya’s chest is half whine, half moan. A feral, untamed thing that burrows beneath Shane’s skin and sinks into his bones, reverberating around his body like a second heartbeat. And then Ilya is reaching out, one hand in Shane’s hair and the other around his waist, and Shane is being dragged into the most spine-tingling kiss he has ever experienced.
It’s hungry and biting and frantic, like Ilya is trying to swallow him whole. Like he’s afraid that if they stop, Shane will disappear like a phantom. Like he had that night in Boston.
It feels a little bit like those first few kisses they ever shared: ravenous, desperate, like they were trying to get as much of each other as they could. Like it was a thing they never expected to be able to keep. A little bit like those, but not quite. Because beneath the surface this kiss is steady, certain, not afraid that time is about to run out on them. It’s a kiss between two people who know each other better than anyone else in the world.
Familiar and comforting and home.
“Ya lyublyu tebya,” Ilya murmurs into Shane’s mouth. Then, “I love you.”
It starts out small, like a little pocket of sunlight tucked beneath Shane’s ribs. But then it grows, blooms, spreads through him until he can’t contain it anymore. He laughs, the sound spilling out of him hot and open-mouthed, right against Ilya’s lips. It’s all shocked disbelief and unrestrained love; a secret spoken out loud, finally, after years of keeping it locked inside.
Ilya’s hand moves up from Shane’s waist, joining his other to cradle his face. He’s so gentle, tender, holding Shane like he is something precious. Something to be treasured.
He presses his fingers into the bare skin of Ilya’s waist. Hard, insistent, wanting to leave his mark on Ilya - wanting proof that he has been there.
Ilya’s eyes follow his thumb as he traces it over Shane’s lips, and Shane kisses the tip of it. He watches as the corners of Ilya’s mouth curl upwards, a breathtaking smile taking over his face as their gazes lock. Ilya leans in close, brushing their noses together until Shane is - god - giggling at the sweetness of it all. He feels eighteen years old again, like even the slightest touch will light his body on fire.
Somehow, even after all the years and the hiding and the pain, Ilya’s touch still brings him to life.
“We will be okay,” Ilya says, not a question but a statement.
“Yes,” Shane agrees. “We’ll be okay.”
No uncertainty, no doubt, just the quiet confidence that this will work because they want it to. Because they won’t let it fail.