Chapter Text
"We men are wretched things, and the gods, who have no cares themselves, have woven sorrow into the very pattern of our lives. Zeus the Thunderer has two jars standing on the floor of his palace, in which he keeps his gifts, the evils in one and the blessings in the other.”
— The Iliad
"I want to leave the team,"
The coach looks at him and laughs.
"Don't bullshit me, Rozanov," he says, but Ilya has made up his mind. Boston took him from Moscow and gave him everything, but Ilya has never known how to be grateful for the right things.
So he shakes his hand and tells him they’ll manage without him.
“I’ve practically watched you grow up,” the coach says — it's true, he’s been with the Raiders since before Ilya was drafted.
Ilya nods, smiles politely, and walks out of the room.
The decision has been made. Even if he wanted to, he can't go back.
There's a universe where he turns around. In this one, he slides into the driver’s seat of his red Ferrari — its listing already up, he turns on the radio.
He's going to Ottawa.
The first thing he does is look up “things to do in Ottawa,” and the list that comes up is neither particularly exciting nor especially disappointing. A decent middle ground, just right for someone like him, he supposes—someone who has always lived on the edge of things. As he stares at the screen, scrolling through dozens of travel pages—“top ten things to do in Ottawa,” “what to see in Ottawa in three days”—he finds himself thinking that maybe it’s time for a life somewhere in between.
And Ottawa is perfect, because it's a small, self-contained kind of sophisticated city; there are no Soviet high-rises in the photos he scrolls through online, and so it isn’t like Moscow, which is already something—something that steadies him a little, and that surprises him too, because he has never really thought of Moscow as a way of measuring other places. It’s just that it’s hard to judge your own home. Moscow has always been something else entirely, always an impossible kind of task, and it has never felt necessary to him, to sort it into categories—by the colors of the buildings, or the churches and historic landmarks, or the transport system, or how clean the streets are, or whether it’s better to visit Moscow or Saint Petersburg, or how many days you need to see everything.
When he thinks of it, he thinks of Sveta when she was still a girl, still taller than him and always talking back, of Sasha, and realizes he has never seen him smile; he thinks of his father and his brother, and of his mother’s grave, in a part of the city no tourist would ever go to.
Ottawa is cold, though, as cold as Boston, maybe, cold like Moscow, and Ilya would have sworn that if he ever moved again it would be somewhere bright and warm, somewhere fun and full of sun.
He and Sveta used to talk about it sometimes—before or after they slept together—even in the middle of it, when they were tired, words slipping out along Ilya's coke-limp dick—they talked about leaving Boston behind, about Florida or California, or somewhere so far away that no one would ever find them again. They would have gone together, and they would've bought a big house with a garden for Sveta's dog, and they would never have loved each other in a way that could make them happy; back then it had seemed more important to Ilya to have lived the same life than to imagine the same future.
Ottawa isn’t California, or Florida, not the kind of place Sveta would ever have moved to.
It's a quiet place where, someday far in the future—after retirement, as Shane had said without batting an eye—it might be nice to raise a family.
The thought chills him, and he turns off his phone, because here he is thinking about a family, and it’s the first time he truly realizes that he and his boyfriend aren't moving toward the same thing at all. Shane wants someone closer, an easier kind of relationship. Ilya wants everything—and it’s the first time in his life he’s ever wanted something this important, felt it in his soul—and he can’t have it.
It makes him feel like a spoiled child, the way he wants Shane. He wants him the way he wanted Lego at ten years old, and he can still hear his father voice when he told him they were a waste of money, an American gimmick. Only later did Ilya find out they were born in Denmark, so close to Russia, so far from America.
His father had always seen things differently, had his own rigid way of measuring what mattered, and what didn't. He never really cared about reality, because he lived in one of his own. Maybe that’s why, with the illness, Ilya didn't think he'd changed that much: he’d never been clear-headed, never quite honest, never really able to see what was in front of him for what it was.
He didn’t like things that were fun, or easy. Easy is the worst fucking nightmare for a Soviet man.
You work, you endure, you don't ask for more than what is reasonable, and then maybe you can consider yourself a man—wanting too much is a kind of weakness, and Ilya has always been the type to want everything—the best drugs and the fastest cars and the hottest women.
He grew up hearing that it made him weak, and maybe it did.
He'd made his peace with it, at one point, and spent the rest of his life trying not to become like him. More Western and less Soviet, maybe. More stars-and-stripes, the American dream, burgers and fries and fast food and the Fourth of July. And in time, he’d managed it—he’d learned to feel at home in that slightly over-the-top version of Americanness, the one his first teammates had worn so easily, the one that had always, in spite of everything, made him feel young.
Shane says Ottawa is a beautiful place. Of course he does, he was born and raised there, and the love you feel for your hometown is something Ilya understands well, though not in the same easy, untroubled way Shane does.
Moscow is a place you survive, and then forgive, if you can. You know it won’t change. You know that it has nothing left to give you—and still.
Ilya’s life is a long, unbroken list of and still. It always has been. Since the day he was born: a hot summer afternoon, a father with an important job, a beautiful mother, money, a nice house, a brother just a little older. And still.
Ilya loves Shane. He knows he’s loved in return. He even thinks Ottawa is nice enough.
And still.
“Gonna miss you, buddy,” Marleau says, running a hand through his hair, smiling the way he always does. Sometimes Ilya thinks he smiles that much because he paid a ridiculous amount of money to get his teeth whitened—got completely scammed, probably. They’re all pretty irresponsible with money. The day they went out to celebrate the Cup, they dropped a few thousand dollars without blinking, on drinks, on private booths in an exclusive club, in an exclusive part of the city. Ilya paid more than double what his Boston house was worth. Marleau spent thousands on fake stuff. The money they’ve both spent to keep rumors quiet, to pay off people trying to blackmail them, the money they’ve spent on drugs—he could probably buy Ottawa with it, all of it.
That’s how it goes when you’re rich and famous and everyone’s at your feet: people reach for your ankles, trying to pull you down. Sometimes you’re sharp enough to fight them off. Sometimes you want it more than they do, to fall.
“Gonna miss you too,” Ilya replies. It’s so true he can’t even feel emotional about it, just aware that this might be the first time in his life he’s said it and actually meant it. Maybe the only other time was at his mother’s grave; he can’t quite remember if he said it out loud, or if, like most things he wanted to tell her, he only ever thought it.
Ryan pulls out a bottle of vodka—the good, expensive kind, the same one Shane’s dad had brought out—and Ilya smiles, taking a swig straight from the bottle. They all drink, one after the other, passing it around, toasting to him. Chris, a rookie who's just arrived, looks a little glassy-eyed as he tells Ilya he really wishes they’d had more time to play together, that he has so much to learn. Ilya makes a stupid joke that gets him to smile. Even in Ottawa he’ll be a star—rookies looking at him the same way, maybe even the guys who’ve been there for years without ever winning a damn thing. Ilya has felt like a god since the day he started playing hockey, and he doesn’t want to stop; it’s a high that he's been riding since the first win on the ice, it's something that keeps giving.
He takes a shot straight down, feels how much it burns. He wonders what a fall might cost, when you’ve been that high for so long.
“Why the hell did you pick Ottawa?” Marleau asks, a few bottles later.
It makes Ilya shrug, not knowing what the hell to say, because the truth is there’s only one reason, even if he pretends otherwise when he talks to Shane.
“Is there a girl? Your Montreal chick?”
“Don’t call her that,” Ilya says. He’s a man, he wants to add. It feels so stupid, not being able to. It’s one of Shane’s many rules, the way he sorts out the world, and himself, and what to do, and how, and when, and whether to do it at all. Ilya never had the balls to tell him it sounded stupid, and now it’s a little too late, he’d unsettle Shane in a way he doesn’t want to deal with.
Maybe it’s the alcohol in his veins, reminding him of Moscow and summers spent with Sasha and Sveta, and a few with his brother, before he learned how to be so much like their father. Maybe it’s the moment and thinking about Shane's rules. But Ilya feels like crying, and Marleau notices, squeezing his shoulder—the closest thing to affection they’ve ever really allowed themselves out of the rink or the locker room.
“She’ll be happy you’re doing this for her,” he says with a crooked smile. “She better appreciate it. Fuck, man, Ottawa is fucking shit.”
Ilya laughs. “I hope she’ll be grateful, yes.”
He stands, claps his hands a couple of times, and tells everyone they’re going out to a club together. No one complains.
It’s their captain’s last night in Boston, after all.
The first week in Ottawa is sunny enough to make him almost believe it might actually have been a decent idea to leave Boston behind.
Shane acts like the perfect boyfriend, gentle and attentive and constantly telling him he loves him, that he’d take him everywhere if he could. But he can’t, and he asks Ilya if he really understands that he can't, if he’s actually okay with it. Ilya says yes every time, with a smile, and the decency of not looking too enthusiastic, not looking like it means anything too big.
They go out only once in public, because Shane says once is enough for two people who are starting to figure out how to look like friends, how to start a charity together. They actually have to learn how to be friends, too, because for years they’ve been nothing more than companions for a few hours at a time in hotel rooms. Maybe it never was enough for a relationship that’s asking this much of him. He thinks it while looking around the streets of Ottawa, while watching Shane’s arms swing back and forth as he walks, and that hand of his, always soft and warm, that he can’t hold in his own.
They go to a restaurant that is very unromantic and very cheap. Ilya tells him it’s ridiculous that two people with their money would be there, but Shane looks at him a little sadly, and Ilya doesn’t care enough to push it.
They go to Shane’s parents’ house, of course, and they’re as warm and accommodating as always. They ask Ilya how he’s liking Ottawa, and Ilya smiles again and says it’s a really nice city—because it is, he doesn’t even have to lie. Yuna is very interested and deeply involved in building the charity; she has a lot of opinions and a lot to say. Ilya tries to listen, to give her words weight, but sometimes his gaze drifts and he loses the thread of the conversation anyway. Because at first he had loved the idea that Shane had such an elaborate plan for them to be together, now it feels like a maze that won't lead anyone anywhere.
When they leave Shane’s parents’ place, Ilya’s head is pounding, and he can’t wait to go home—for a moment, he thinks the home he’ll be going back to is the one in Boston. It’s a fleeting thought, gone as quickly as it comes. He doesn’t even waste time trying to figure out whether it disappoints him, knowing that instead he’s going back to his home in Ottawa.
The apartment he got is nice anyway, and bright. They clean it together, even if Ilya would have rather just called someone to do it. Shane says it’s good for them, doing things like this together. Ilya thinks Shane probably doesn’t know what else to suggest, what else they’re supposed to do together. It’s not like they can only have sex.
They still do, a lot.
Slowly in bed the first night, with Shane on top of him, telling him he loves him, that he’s beautiful, that he missed him. In the kitchen, where Ilya bents him over the counter. In the bathroom, on the couch, on the floor of the living room. Shane is too pliant and too quiet, never really laughing, never really smiling, just closing his eyes like he’s enduring something. Ilya keeps asking him if it’s okay, if he wants to stop, and Shane always shakes his head.
His mind is a minefield Ilya hasn’t learned to navigate yet; he's still stepping carefully, still trying to understand where the edges are so he doesn’t hurt either of them.
The first person he meets on the team is Wyatt, who is ridiculously likeable. He’s married to a woman named Lisa, and that’s the first thing he tells him, proudly: he’s married to Lisa. She’s a doctor, and she’s never wanted kids, and Wyatt is happy about that because he’s never wanted them either, and her favourite colour is orange. He says it like it’s something special.
Ilya realizes he doesn’t know what Shane’s favourite colour is, but he finds himself smiling at his teammate’s words more than he expects to. He wants to say something about his boyfriend, but he can’t, so he does the next best thing instead: he invites Wyatt over to his place, just to have someone around. Being alone weighs on him more than he expected. There’s no beautiful girl keeping him company when the loneliness gets too loud. There isn’t even much of a chance to find one—and he wouldn’t, wouldn’t want to anyway, but Ottawa’s nightlife is practically nonexistent, and he doesn’t have anyone to go out with even if it weren’t.
They talk about nothing and everything, small things, hockey things, how to turn this team into something better.
Ilya sees potential, in Wyatt, in the team. In a lot of things, still.
When he leaves, Ilya calls Shane and he picks up right away. Ilya tells him what he’s done, who he’s been with, and Shane sounds irritated. Kind of unfair, isn’t it. It feels unfair. He has no one here, and Shane is jealous of the first person who takes up a space that should be his—and isn’t only because of a choice he made himself.
At another time, it would have almost turned him on.
They stay on the couch for a while, cuddling. It took them almost ten years to start being affectionate with each other. Ilya wonders how long the fuck it will take them to figure out everything else.
Then Shane gets up and moves through the apartment like it isn’t his too, asking where he can put his things, where the soap is, which shampoo to use, which towel is his. Ilya answers every time.
Alexei only texts him to ask for money, and only rarely, for something else.
Fucking shitty team for faggots, he texts at four in the morning.
Ilya has his screen brightness all the way up, has been in bed for hours now, just watching pointless videos, scrolling through social media.
Fuck you, he sends back, then opens his bank account and makes another transfer.
3-0
The referee blows the final whistle, and the Centaurs are already collapsing into each other, hugging, some of them falling to the ice, some of them just standing there with their heads down, ugly crying.
Ilya stands there for a second and realizes he had almost forgotten how much he actually loves playing hockey, how much it still means to him when it’s real like this, when it’s fun.
“I love you guys,” he says with a big grin, and skates over to the bench to give the coach a high five.
“I knew you were going to wake up Rozanov,” Wiebe says, with a small wink. Wiebe is a good coach, he knows what his players need. And sometimes that’s what Ilya needs, someone to push him back into himself.
The day before the game, Ilya goes to dinner at Yuna and David’s. They make spaghetti with tomato sauce and burgers.
“Don’t tell Shane, but we’re rooting for you,” David says, winking at him. Ilya smiles with his mouth full, and he knows it isn’t true.
Yuna and David care a lot about this idea of stepping in a little where his parents aren’t. The thing is, you either have parents or you don’t, and the ones you have are the ones you keep. Shane’s family is kind, polite, very Canadian. They don’t believe in educational smacks or in having to earn your dinner. They can’t be his family, because they never have been. It’s not something they can really understand.
Some things you only get if you’ve lived them—or if you’ve never had them at all.
Pike scores, and it's rare enough that Ilya’s more surprised than anything else.
“You remember how to hold a stick, nice,” he sneers, spitting onto the ice near his skates.
“Fuck off,” Pike shoots back without even looking at him, already skating toward Shane, who just glances at Ilya and rolls his eyes.
“Cut it out,” he mutters under his breath as he passes, pushing off and gliding away.
He’s beautiful—flushed, sweating, chasing every puck like the Stanley Cup depends on it. Ilya’s mind drifts, unhelpfully, to the thought of dragging him to bed later, maybe before he even takes the jersey off. Or convincing him to wear Ilya’s instead. The desire he feels for Shane is a well with no bottom. It keeps growing inside him, constant, relentless, so consuming that even giving in to it doesn’t make it fade. If anything, it only sharpens, spreads, takes up more space. He wants closer than close, wants under his skin, in his bones—wants to live somewhere inside Shane’s soul, only that might finally be enough.
He shakes it off and refocuses. That's what he loves, adrenaline and sweating and scoring—doing it all with his boyfriend there.
The game is good, fast, sharp, fun. Ilya’s playing well. He scores. Troy scores too, taps gloves with him, grinning. Even Shane lets a smile slip, small and reluctant.
Ilya feels like he’s flying. Shane challenges him on every puck, and it’s good—it’s so fun, the kind of fun they used to have when he was back in Boston. The air is electric.
The clock’s winding down. The Centaurs are up by one.
Hayden’s got the puck, and Ilya closes in on him, almost colliding on purpose. He’s still riding the high, still thinking about later—about Shane, about going home together, with his boyfriend.
He thinks that maybe things are actually going to be okay.
That’s why he doesn’t see Comeau coming in from the left.
Comeau—average at best, Ilya’s never been able to stand him. He must’ve misjudged the speed, or the angle. Nobody does this kind of thing on purpose. Most of the time, it’s nothing—guys go down, get back up, shake it off. Maybe they miss a few days, a week. Months, if they're really unlucky.
Comeau slams into him hard shoulder first, and clips Hayden too. The three of them go down. For a split second, it looks clumsy and ridiculous; someone in the stands even lets out a laugh.
It’s just bad luck that Ilya’s helmet gives way. Unfortunate statistics.
It shears loose under the impact, skidding across the ice. He’s face-down before he can react, trapped beneath two full-grown bodies scrambling for balance. There’s the scrape of steel, the shift of weight. His helmet catches under Comeau’s skate, throwing him off balance again just as he’s trying to get up.
It makes him stumble.
And in a split second, his blade comes down the wrong way.
It catches Ilya in the back of the leg—low, just above the heel.
The whistle blows, and Troy is hovering over him. There’s a doctor saying something he doesn’t catch. Shane is there, somewhere, asking what happened—his voice frantic and distant, but Ilya would recognise it anywhere.
He is confused, and tired, but he already knows.
He’ll never play again.
It’s a certainty he feels deep in his chest, buried somewhere near his heart.
There’s this thing Americans say that’s always made him laugh. Marleau said it to him once, when they suspended him for a few days after he couldn’t pay enough to keep a small scandal from coming out: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
He played a stupid game—too long on borrowed luck, Boston, two Stanley Cups, being loved by everyone. Leaving it all behind; a stupid game. And now he's getting a fucking stupid prize.
He can’t breathe. He just wants to scream something, tell Shane he's okay, but he isn't, and he can’t talk.
He can’t feel anything anymore. For a brief moment, he wonders if he's going to see his mum.
He wakes up because there’s a heat in his leg that makes him almost lose his mind, something sudden and wrong that spreads under the skin.
He jerks awake, screaming, and the sound is enough to make Shane shoot up from the chair beside him, already calling for help, pressing the button, grabbing his hand and kissing it.
The doctor rushes in fast; Ilya feels his leg on fire even though no one is touching it.
They stabilize him, they inject something into his veins, and slowly, the pain starts to give him mercy. He can breathe again without feeling like he’s splitting apart.
Shane's eyes are red and heavy and Ilya looks at him and already knows before anyone says anything.
Still, he asks anyway.
“What happened?”
His voice is small and he doesn't recognise it. It could be a dream, a nightmare. He tries to close his eyes, to fall asleep and wake up again, in his bed, next to his boyfriend hugging him sweetly.
Shane squeezes his hand, “I love you,” he says first. He has to say it before everything else or he won’t be able to say the rest at all, and then he exhales and shakes his head, “Don’t worry about it right now.”
“Please,” Ilya says, pleads, because he already knows but he needs it spoken anyway.
Shane closes his eyes for a second—he looks like they'll hurt him, the words that he's going to say.
“A concussion,” he says, “you’ve got a concussion.”
Ilya nods without meaning to, it's not that bad, everyone gets their bell rang eventually, that's what Shane had said too. But it's not all, because it's not his head that's killing him, that's throbbing under his skin.
Shane swallows, and his grip tightens again.
“And your leg,” his voice cracks, “the Achilles tendon is torn, and there’s nerve damage. I’m so sorry, Ilya.”
Ilya doesn’t speak because there’s nothing that can come out anymore.
An Achilles rupture is not something that comes back the same at this level, even if it heals, even if it’s perfect, even if everything goes right, because it changes everything. It takes months, to recover. And you can, most people can get back on the ice. But it's never exactly the same.
And the nerves—he wants to ask how many, how badly, but it doesn't matter.
He's exhausted, and Shane is still holding his hand, a lifeline.
“Ilya,”
Ilya doesn’t answer.
When he wakes up again, Shane is asleep in the chair, folded into a position that looks painfully uncomfortable, his neck bent wrong and one hand still half-anchored to the edge of the bed.
Ilya turns his head slowly. Everything is thick and fogged. They must've increased the medication, but he still manages to reach out anyway, moving a hand toward Shane, and he strokes him gently, without waking him, just to feel something else.
I love you, he thinks, or he whispers.
And then another thought slips in, that if he'd stayed in Boston. If he'd stayed.
It doesn’t have time to turn into anything more than that, because Yuna and David walk into the room.
“Darling,” Yuna sighs immediately, and she comes to him with that familiar worried expression, eyes heavy, and David stays near the door, leaning there, looking worried sick.
“How are you?” she asks, moving his hair from his forehead.
Ilya realizes he wants to cry, and he can’t hold it back. “I’m sorry,” he says through tears, trying to wipe them away, but Yuna shushes him, stroking him like he’s a child, like he’s her son.
Ilya is confused and tired and he will never play hockey again. “Mama,” he cries, and closes his eyes, letting Yuna’s touch carry him back into sleep. Her hug is warm, the sounds of the hospital sound almost like a lullaby.
“You’re going to need surgery,” the doctor explains, eyes fixed on the chart in his hands. “And then rehab long-term.”
He flips a page. “The nerves are damaged—two of them. And the Achilles rupture is fairly severe.”
He clears his throat, takes a breath, David's hand is on Ilya's shoulder, Yuna is sitting next to Shane, they're all focused on the doctor, looking up.
“You might be able to return to playing,” he continues, “but it would be very difficult to get back to your previous level. Especially explosiveness, acceleration, that kind of load on the tendon.”
He looks up, finally meeting Ilya’s eyes, then back down again.
“For the concussion, you’ll need strict rest. Medication for the symptoms.”
The doctor smiles and lets out a small sigh, pity clear and obvious in the way he looks at him, so evident that Ilya has to look away.
“You shouldn’t think about when, or if, you'll get back the performance you've had until now. You’ve got a difficult few months ahead.”
“It wasn’t exactly easy before,” Ilya answers, and David moves his hand slightly.
Ilya looks at Shane and sees it—he notices it immediately, the way the words hit him, the way they sink in and change something deep inside him in a way Ilya might never be able to fix again.
He strokes his arm, leans on it, and Ilya can feel it’s getting damp. “Shh, it’s okay,” he says, placing a hand on his head. He realizes he has no idea what Shane must have told the doctors to justify being there, and he doesn’t care. He still wants to tell him to move, to get out—they might notice, they might figure them out.
The doctor says goodbye without really paying attention to what he’s doing, and leaves the room in a hurry, looking relieved to get out. He can. Ilya would do the same, if only he could.
He runs his fingers through Shane’s hair, comforting him like it’s the other way around.
He thinks it’s even right like this, that if it had to happen to one of them, it’s better that it happened to him. Shane could never survive something like this. Not being able to play hockey would be worse than death for him. Shane would never have left Montréal for Ilya.
“It’s okay,” he says again. "It didn't happen to you," it's bitter and ugly, and nothing but the truth.