Work Text:
Three Rooms
The Hospital Room
Ilya stands outside the hospital room. He feels uncomfortably raw, open. Like he will bleed if anyone speaks to him. The brisk nurse had mostly ignored him since his manager had taken over the conversation. Explaining how this works – not a PR stunt, no Media please, on a charm offensive so Ilya has some time alone with…he does not know what he will see when he goes in.
He has not slept, obviously. His eyes are scratching against the harsh hospital lights. It has been years and only moments since he was on the ice. He can’t picture Shane there. He knows it is how his mind works, protecting him. In his memory of it, there is a blur on the floor, motionless, but it’s not Shane. Except it is. It will return and haunt his dreams at some point.
The changing room afterwards had been a blur. The atmosphere a tense soup of frustration and guilt. Marleau had been quiet. Someone had clapped him on the back at one point to congratulate him on a job well done, for stopping Hollander and Cliff had almost broken his arm.
‘Was not your fault,’ Ilya told him as he’d pulled him away.
‘It’s my job, man. Just wanna know he’s…’
‘Yes.’ Me too, he needs to say. The words are cutting him open from the inside. Someone let me know. He’s everything to me. Someone must let me know.
No news leaks through to the changing rooms though. Nothing other than what the news outlets are spouting. Hospital. Parents with him. No confirmation of injuries.
An official interviews Cliff once they are dressed and Ilya stays with him. Taps him on the back when he sees Cliff starting to zone out. He checks his phone every few seconds. No-one notices. He needs to be sick. To empty everything out.
‘What if he…can’t walk?’ Cliff utters the words Ilya dare not think into existence. ‘Did you see him move, Roz? You were right there. Did he move his feet?’
The words scrape him open. Cliff isn’t to know. How could he? That Ilya had hovered as close as he dared when Shane had dropped to the ice, watching. Is he breathing? Why is he so still? Is that a breath? A breath? Yes. His eyes are closed. Open your eyes, Shane. There’s no blood. Blood would be better than this stillness. How Ilya had watched his feet as they’d removed his skates, his legs limp, lifeless. He had felt his eyes ache then, tears building fast and he had left the ice at speed, once they had lifted Shane away. He’d wanted to follow. To be there.
But how could he? No-one knew.
He shakes away his dread before reaching for the handle. He takes a quick look around but no-one is watching him.
Plausible deniability – it was not unusual for a Captain to check on anyone taken out by one of his team. It rarely ended up in hospital. Also rare for said Captain to have found himself screaming into his empty house in the early hours of the morning in rage and terror.
It was his fault, of course. He’d wound Shane up from the face-off. Shane had been flying from him, teasing him with a knowing glance backwards and hadn’t even…Shane, with his laser-like focus had been looking at Ilya and had not seen Cliff…
He has to end this. Soon. It had been the plan, after the game. Not that it would have changed anything that happened on the ice. Except he’s a curse. Ilya knows it deep in his bones. Shane deserves better.
When he opens the hospital room door, Ilya cannot breathe. Only when he sees Shane move his head a little, and a faint smile light up his face when he sees Ilya, does he drag deep on the stale air. A beat passes then he hears Shane say his name and knows immediately he is off his tits on some great pain meds and is a fucking nuclear bomb poised to go off.
‘Ilyiiiiaaa! Hey!’
Ilya shuts the door, fast, and leans against it.
It’s the most relaxed he’s ever seen Hollander – his eyes, always so dark and intense are totally blown, all black pupil - from concussion? Morphine? Either way Ilya could do with a shot of whatever he’s on because it’s like walking a cliff edge in a hurricane. Shane, soft, open, calling his name like they are long lost lovers, nurses outside, his manager a few steps away from the door. He needs to swallow his heart which has somehow nudged its way up into his throat when he touches Shane and hear him hiss, ‘Yesss! Bet-ter…’ and then none of it matters.
Hollander. He needs to keep calling him Hollander because if he doesn’t he will crack open and everything he feels will spill out and suffocate them both. The long night still sits heavy on him, because if Shane - Hollander - had been…if anything happened…he would have no-one to talk to. No-one to grieve with. No-one left at all.
Staring that in the face, cold and shaky in the early hours had brought him to his knees. The stark truth of knowing that for the last nine years Hollander had been a constant source of comfort – vague and infuriating at first, but an anchor, holding him still, tethering him to another person in a way he had never…not since..
He lets go of Hollander’s hand and schools his face.
Shane’s eyes are wandering around Ilya, not fully focused, and because apparently Ilya cannot go nanoseconds without touching him, he reaches out to trace the bruises on his face with a delicate touch. Hollander smiles and leans into his hand. Adrenaline pumps through Ilya and he breathes it out, lets out some of the fear and loneliness.
‘You scared me,’ he says and it’s too much. Too close to what he’s thinking. What if you were gone? How would I live? I had to stand metres away from you on the ice and it felt like I was a world apart.
He keeps himself very still and waits.
Hollander is so out of it, surfing some A-grade pain meds and nodding, eyes closed and then there’s a sudden wince, as if closing his eyes has brought back an insistent pain and fuck it because Ilya will not leave his side until he’s back to his normal infuriating self.
‘I was wanting to ask you something.’
Ilya silences every neuron in his body: this could be going anywhere, and he cannot predict a spaced-out Hollander like he can the neurotic, cautious one. He can hear the beep of the heart monitor and zones into that. Shane’s heartbeat is pattering a little higher when he starts to speak. The words rattle out of his mouth so fast, Ilya cannot parse them at first, and when he does, each translated word in his brain drops like neat vodka, ice on fire, and he swallows hard.
‘Will. You. Cometomycottagethissummer.’
Ilya maps each contour of Hollander’s face. He wants to kiss him, to shut him up, to show him what this means. He does none of these things, because Hollander is listing all the ‘fun’ things they could do there in a sing-song voice. Ilya switches back to ‘Rozanov’ in lightning speed before he lets himself freefall.
‘You know I can’t do that, Hollander.’
Shane half-smiles, and sort of gently shakes his head, refusing to accept those words and asking for different ones instead. His lashes brush against the bruises as his eyes close.
‘Come. We could do anything. You could do anything. To me.’
‘Anything?’
‘Haven’t you always wanted more…’
‘More?’ Ilya knows he should stop, knows Hollander is free of his filter, knows this could go so badly wrong. The nurse said she was due to bring meds in 15 minutes. The door could open now, in a second, 5 minutes but he needs this. It’s familiar territory. It’s them.
‘There’s an island in the lake, opposite. We could swim there.’
‘Sounds boring. I can swim in Boston. At my gym. Heated.’
‘No…come on. It’s private, we could…you know…you could…outside.’
‘You want me to fuck you outside?’
‘Ilya…not fuck…’
Oh. Oh. Ilya scrabbles to find purchase backwards, because Hollander is taking them forwards too fast, skidding on very thin ice. Luckily he is still too stressed to feel this in his dick, but it’s not long before the stress will go and then where will he be?
‘There will be midges. They will bite your ass.’
‘You can kiss it better?’
‘Uncomfortable. Rocks, insects…sounds terrible.’
‘You could have me up against a tree…’
Ilya has to take a deep, long, steadying breath. Shane’s words tap deep into something he has tried to tamp down. Being outside, with Hollander, pinning him against a tree, hands above his head, kissing his throat, drinking in his moans and the soft whisper of leaves above them…
‘Maybe.’
When Shane pouts, joy soars through Ilya and it is like the first hit of a cigarette, like their first kiss back in that hotel room. It makes him feral, he needs to climb into the bed, to hell with the wires and sling, and cover him with the weight of everything he feels before he explodes with it. Instead, he traces the pout and the plush lips and waits.
‘Or in the water. So buoyant.’
‘Buoyant? Fuck, Hollander, what the fuck does that even mean?’
‘You could…throw me around, in the water.’
‘I can throw you around anywhere. You are tiny. Five-ten featherweight.’
‘No, but in the water you can…move me up and down on you so easily that…’
‘Stop,’ Ilya hisses. ‘Sh.’ He hears a trolley outside the door, but it passes by. He gets it now, buoyancy, and feels it in his cock. Outside, in a still lake, he could seat Hollander on him and move him in shallow water like a doll. He would be pliant, face hot and panting against his neck. Ilya would make him wait, knows how quickly Shane would fly like this, soft and desperate, and Ilya could make him stop, make him look at him as he pulled out then thrust in so deep, the cold water calming them down only momentary before he would fill him again, hear him shout out, their echoing voices not having to be quiet, not needing to hide.
He adjusts himself and Shane is watching, entranced. ‘Ah…good. Now we’re…’
‘It would be ice-fucking-cold, Hollander. My balls would be somewhere behind my tonsils.’
‘I would suck them out for you.’
‘Fuck, Shane. You need to…’
‘Shall I tell you what I really want to do there?’
‘Whatever. It can’t happen.’
‘Just…have you in my mouth? Like, we would be on the sofa, in front of the fire and I could have you in my mouth and at first you will be soft.’
‘Hollander.’
‘But I know you like my mouth because it’s out there now you said it and I would feel you grow hard inside me aaaand I love the taste of you as you start to get wet and I know you like it when I dip my tongue into you and I would do this for hours and hours, feeling you get harder and deeper and not letting you…’
‘I would not last long, you would be disappointed.’
‘We would have word? Something to keep you soft.’
‘Like a cock block?’
‘Yeah. A word that makes you soft.’
‘Pike.’
‘What?’
‘The word. Pike.’
‘That would tickle Hayden.’
‘Go on.’
‘So yeah…hours on my knees and just feeling your hands in my hair, no flights to get, no hotel room cleaner to worry about. Just you, me…’
‘And Hayden Pike.’
‘You brought him into this, Ilya. He was happy at home with his four kids but you brought him to the cottage and…’
‘Enough.’ Ilya is smiling now, a grotesque, wide, face-splitting smile and he knows he is starting to hope. Knows he is dangerously picturing himself there, now, at the cottage. Endless days of having Hollander filling all the broken parts of himself.
‘Ilya. What would you want? I know you do want. Tell me.’
Ilya runs his fingers over the back of Shane’s arms, traces the fine hairs there. What would he want? What, if given time, and privacy, and free reign to let loose everything he feels, what would he want?
Skin. He would want to map every inch of Shane’s skin with his hands, his tongue, wants to feel the heat of him pressed tight against him as they laze in bed for hours. Wants to keep him soft and warm in a bed, under the covers, on them, feeling the motion of his muscles in every flex, turn, contraction. He wants to trace his eyelids with his tongue and feel the quivering eyelashes as his breath ghosts his face. He wants to count his eyelashes as he sleeps. He wants to kiss him…honestly…kiss him slowly, yes it would be desperate at first, biting and teeth clashing but that would subside and move into a slower dance, of tongues connecting in slow, undulating rhythms, of sucking and biting lips and soft lapping at the bottom lip that drives him wild. He wants to keep Shane on the brink of coming for hours, wants him to utter every filthy desire into his mouth, wants so much to tell him how much he loves him. How he is now so much part of his soul he forgets where he ends and Hollander begins. Wants to make him cry with tears of joy, and wants him to beg him to never leave.
Ilya swallows this down, and when he speaks, it is in a dead tone, the life gone, the effervescent images in his mind drowned by the reality. ‘I would fuck you until you passed out. There.’
Hollander’s eyes are closed again – but there is a wince of pain and Ilya hopes it is the collar bone, not his stupid dismissal. He traces the freckles under the bruises and can’t breathe.
‘Hollander? Are you…’
‘That’s it? All you want is that?’
‘Of course. I’m a simple person. Simple needs.’
‘You are…a bad liar.’ Shane looks so happy with that reply and Ilya can’t help but laugh, almost a giggle and he feels so embarrassed and seen. God, he loves him. He could cancel his team flight. Stay here. Nuzzle into Shane’s neck and whisper everything he longs for, every terrifying need he has to be with Shane.
The door to the hospital room starts to creak open and he is luckily just letting go of Hollander’s hand. He sees Shane reach out to re-find the heat of him and he clears his throat in warning.
Shane is in pain – he can see the stab of pain come and the difficulty in opening his eyes to the sharp scrape of daylight. He can see the moment Shane notices the nurse and sighs, ‘Oh no.’ He knows it’s because this means Ilya has to go.
‘I was just leaving,’ he offers the nurse as she advances towards the bed. ‘Rest up, Hollander.’
‘Ok.’ Shane’s voice is high, needy, and Ilya feels a creeping fear return. He shoots a warning glance back as he moves to open the door, and Shane manages to clear his own throat and pull himself back. ‘See you next season.’
And that’s it. His world tilted again by this stupidly pretty, boring, annoying little Canadian. Who has somehow become his everything.
But Ilya is an expert in leaving things behind. Cutting things off. Steeling himself for loneliness and pain.
This has to end.
He’ll finish the play offs. Let Shane recover and then…
Then…