Work Text:
Ilya shatters at eleven years old.
When he sees his mother’s body lying on the floor, his soul fractures along the fault lines and the pieces fall in a heap beside her.
He tries not to mention it. He’s not the only one who’s lost someone, after all.
With time, he manages to lift the pieces and put them back in their proper place. Svetlana helps, and then he gets together with Sasha, and, if he doesn’t think too hard, he can pretend it’s almost okay again.
But the broken pieces of his soul never knit. There are gaps, and rough places where they rub together.
Until he meets Shane Hollander.
Shane Hollander, who drops his shoe and folds his clothes before sex and has way too many fucking pillows on his bed. Shane Hollander, who says his name like a prayer and a blasphemy and smiles like the sun.
The cracks start to fill with golden light, and Ilya thinks, just for a moment, that he might be allowed to have this.
But it’s too good to be true of course, it always is, and he does something, or doesn’t do something, and screws it up and drives Shane away.
When he sees the article about Shane and Rose Landry, all the golden light in his soul dissolves to dust.
But somehow, impossibly, some god, maybe one with freckles, decides to smile on him and they reconcile.
And then Scott Hunter kisses a man on the ice, in full view of God and the NHL, and he’s swept away somewhere he doesn’t really know how to deal with, but it’s better than he could ever have hoped for.
And then it all comes crashing down again, when Shane’s father sees them, and Ilya realizes he was stupid to hope.
But Shane is the one falling apart now, so he manages, barely, to hold it together for his sake.
And Shane’s parents are, against everything Ilya knows about the way the world works, accepting. Puzzled, but accepting. And so Ilya eats spaghetti that David Hollander serves him, while Yuna rattles on about sponsors and potential leaks.
And Shane buries his face in his hands, and Ilya knows how he feels. This might be Shane’s nightmare, but Ilya’s faced his own over and over and, it seems, he might finally be starting to wake up.
And as they drive Shane’s ridiculous boring truck back to the cottage, Shane takes his hand and Ilya’s world fills with golden light.