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English
Series:
Part 3 of the system breaking beneath us
Collections:
Brain Twin Collabs, StormVandal's Heated Rivalry works & reclist
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Published:
2026-04-29
Words:
1,330
Chapters:
1/1
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18
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677
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33
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4,894

absolutely certain

,

Summary:

“Hollander, you’re thinking too loud. Is keeping me awake.”

Shane and Ilya have sorted out most of their misunderstandings, but that doesn't stop Shane spiralling just a little.

Notes:

we briefly considered titling this one "[justin bieber voice] is it too late now to say sorry" before we decided that it was too unserious to go from naming the fics in this series after a beautiful poem by CA Conrad to naming one... that. but we still want you all to know that we did consider it. the actual title is taken from the poem just like previously!

a huge shoutout to wilmvandrr for inspiring us with this comment. here is the "ilya has to stop shane from giving SHANE too much shit part" that you suggested! we tried to gift the work to you but you don't accept gifts, so if you change that setting on your account let us know!!

p.s. we should mention that we wrote this thing over a month ago and have just been waffling about whether or not to post it ever since 😭 but ultimately we decided we like it, so here it is! we hope you like it too!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“Hollander, you’re thinking too loud. Is keeping me awake.”

Shane’s bed in his old room at his parents’ house is not very big. Ilya and Shane are pressed right up against each other, which means that Ilya can feel the way Shane’s whole body is tense, despite the fact that it’s surely past midnight now. They’ve never slept in the same bed before — unless you count that time they dozed for a bit at Ilya’s place — but Ilya’s pretty sure even someone wound as tightly as Shane must relax in their sleep.

Shane flinches, tensing even more, which is the opposite of what Ilya wants. “Jesus Christ, how long have you been awake?” he says, sounding very much like he just got caught doing something against the rules. It’s kind of cute. Ilya finally opens his eyes and rolls over onto Shane, bracketing himself with his elbows on either side of his head and carefully avoiding putting any weight on Shane’s collarbone.

“The whole time,” Ilya says. He had such an early morning, and he’s exhausted by everything that’s happened in the last… too long, but he’s been lying here with his eyes closed for at least forty-five minutes, and he hasn’t even started dozing off. When Shane doesn’t say anything for a long moment, Ilya says, “What are you thinking too loud about?”

“What you must have been going through,” Shane says, looking resolutely at the ceiling instead of at Ilya. “What a huge dick I’ve been.”

That catches Ilya entirely off-guard. He’s not sure what he was expecting to hear — maybe that Shane’s been trying to think of a new plan for how they’re going to handle Ilya’s fuck ups, or that his head hurts too much to sleep, or there’s not enough room in the bed. He’s not even sure how to respond, because he’s not that sure what Shane’s talking about.

“What?” he says eventually. That’s probably as good a place as any to start. “What are you talking about?”

“What—” Shane says, clearly confused. “Ilya, your team has been horrible to you, and it’s my fault.”

This is surely the concussion talking, because Ilya doesn’t understand how he got from point A to point B. Yes, his teammates and his management have been awful, but that’s not Shane’s fault. How the fuck would it be? LeClaire had threatened him with waivers while Shane was still barely conscious. Unless he’s blaming himself for getting boarded, which… doesn’t seem implausible, suddenly. It would be very Canadian of him. Sometimes you just get smashed against the boards wrong, even if your head’s up. It’s not like Shane was looking behind him or something stupid.

“You didn’t choose to get hit by Marly,” Ilya says. “It was just an accident. They happen in hockey. And I was the one who outed us.”

“That was just an accident,” Shane argues. “And I’m not saying that it’s my fault I got hit. But I should’ve told you that I was fine, instead of that shit I said about people being able to see us.”

“You weren’t fine, you were barely awake,” Ilya says, a bit impatiently. Is Shane saying that he thinks all of this mess is his fault because he said the wrong thing while half-conscious on the ice? “You passed out thirty seconds after. And that had nothing to do with me outing us to your parents or LeClaire hearing it.”

“I was horrible to you at the hospital, too,” Shane says, as though that’s a rebuttal to what Ilya had just said, even though it’s literally completely unrelated. He’s still staring at the ceiling, but even through the darkness, Ilya can see that his eyes are glittering.

“You had a concussion,” Ilya says. “And very good drugs.”

“I told you that you should have thought about Russia before you told my parents you love me!” Shane says, covering his face with his hands. “That’s fucked up, Ilya.”

“Ah, of course, I forgot — head injury makes you very good at controlling emotions and thinking before speaking. And the drugs help with this.”

“I was—”

“Hollander. If you try to blame yourself one more time, I am going to sleep on the couch.”

Behind his hands, Shane lets out a startled laugh. When he finally pulls his hands away and looks at Ilya again, his cheeks are a little wet. “I just — I’m really sorry,” he says.

Ilya rolls his eyes, but leans down to press a soft kiss to Shane’s cheek. “I do not accept your apology,” he says. “There is nothing to apologize for. You’re not responsible for my asshole team. And I made my own choices.”

Shane still looks unconvinced. “At the hospital—”

Unable to help himself, Ilya heaves a heavy sigh. “Fine, okay, yes, I forgive you for being rude when you were badly injured in hospital and up to your hair on drugs. Okay?”

“I at least should have called you sooner—”

Ilya makes like he’s going to stand up. He has no real intention of sleeping on Shane’s parents’ couch, because he still can’t fucking believe he’s allowed to sleep next to Shane, as if they’re normal people in a normal relationship. He’s just trying to snap Shane out of his strange obsession with the idea that he has things to apologize to Ilya for that are worth losing sleep over. He gets all the way to having his feet on the floor, about to stand up, when Shane grabs his hand.

“Don’t go,” Shane says, and he sounds like he’s worried Ilya will really do it. Ilya loves him so much he feels he could burst with it, but Shane is very stupid sometimes.

“Then repeat after me,” Ilya says, trying to look very serious even though he’s at risk of bursting out laughing. “‘I, Shane Hollander, do not have to apologize.’”

“Ilya—”

Ilya stands up, and Shane makes a panicked sound, sitting up straight like he’s planning to grab Ilya, broken collarbone be damned. “Okay! I don’t have to apologize! Just get back in bed, okay?”

Ilya makes an exaggerated thinking face, but then (very carefully) straddles Shane’s lap. “Good. Now, ‘it’s not my fault Ilya had stupid plan’.”

“It’s not my fault you had a stupid plan,” Shane repeats dutifully. “But you weren’t—”

“No. No commentary. ‘And it’s not my fault that Ilya didn’t tell me things were very bad.’”

“But I should have—”

“Do you want that I sleep on the couch? The bed is too small for you?”

“It’s not my fault that you didn’t tell me things were bad,” Shane says in a rush, his hands coming up to grip Ilya’s hips like that will keep him in place.

“‘It’s also not my fault that Ilya is best player in MLH.’”

“It’s also not m— hey!”

Well, it was worth a shot.

“Now go to sleep. Or do you want me to suck your cock so you can fall asleep better?”

“We are not having sex while my parents are in the next room,” Shane says.

“Why not? They have sex in there while you sleep over here, no?”

“No, they don’t,” Shane says after a horrified silence.

“You think that after they had sex to make you, they never had sex again? Ever?”

“Please don’t talk about my parents having sex,” Shane says as he covers his face again. “I should’ve let you go sleep on the couch.”

“I still can,” Ilya says, although he doesn’t move. “Go back to apologizing, I will leave right away.”

“You’re the worst,” Shane says without feeling, but he lies back down and brings Ilya with him.

“Yes, okay,” Ilya replies with an eyeroll. He presses a kiss to Shane’s cheek, right over his favourite cluster of freckles. “Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

“Okay, okay,” Shane huffs, but he does close his eyes. Ilya waits until his breathing evens out and he finally relaxes against him before he allows himself to follow.

Notes:

we were so confident that we wouldn't write more in this series but we do have something we have called "the forbidden third fic" (even though it will be the fourth in the series, because this little one doesn't really count). sure, do we open it every so often and go "ah i remember why we said we wouldn't write another fic"? yes. but we have a different outline now so it will happen!!! spoiler alert: we are putting shane in the torment nexus

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