Chapter Text
Ilya knew, almost immediately, that university was not for him. Possibly all of Canada, in fact. He refused to check the temperature, but he knew it was hotter than it had any right to be, definitely hotter than Russia would ever dare to be in August.
He stood in the large university arena that was decorated offensively for freshman orientation and sweated through his shirt and waved the welcome packet at his face to try and cool down. The thin, glossy paper hardly did its job, but he had few other options. He nodded uninterestedly at the poor guide that was assigned to his group, some poor RA that was bravely trying to translate the speakers remarks into Russian in real time for him. He didn’t know what language, exactly, this girl was speaking but it was a far cry from Russian. It was a good thing he was just about fluent in English or he’d be fucked, like all the other confused Russian exchange students standing in their group.
His eyes scanned across the arena, taking in the throngs of young students filtering in and chattering excitedly. How long until I can ditch this lady? He wondered idly. His eyes caught on a booth near the center of the arena, with rainbows littered across the table and the letters LGBT ALLIANCE strewn across the table cloth. More specifically, his eyes caught on the most beautiful man he’d ever seen in his life smiling at the person behind that booth. The man was Ilya’s age, with freckles that Ilya could see from this distance, a lean, semi-muscular build. A weirdly tense way of moving that charmed Ilya immediately.
“What is this?” He asked the guide, interrupting her mid speech. His tone strategically feigning indifference. “LGBT alliance?”
“Oh! That’s like, the gay alliance. We really emphasize inclusivity here, the alliance provides resources and just, like, connection and networking for people who-” The guide continued on, but Ilya stopped listening. The gay alliance, huh? They definitely didn’t have one of those in Russia.
The man at the booth turned around, seemingly supernaturally sensing Ilya’s gaze on him, and locked eyes with Ilya from across the room. Ilya felt his heart stop beating as time paused, and all the overexcited freshman seemed to freeze in time. The excruciatingly loud crowd noise faded away, and all that was there was the man and Ilya, the rest of the world encased in ice.
He ripped his gaze away a moment later, and the day continued on, but Ilya didn’t (couldn’t) forget the man at the booth.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Shane tried his resolute hardest, but there wasn’t much he could do to prevent Yuna Hollander and David Hollander from moving him into his dorm the minute the doors opened for new students. His cheeks flushed red in embarrassment as they swarmed Shane’s randomly assigned roommate, a genuinely polite, easy going guy named Hayden Pike.
When he was finally able to shoo them away, he apologized profusely to Hayden, who just laughed and said it was sweet and he was excited to room with him. Shane exhaled a breath of pure relief and settled in, and their friendship was born.
At orientation, Shane nervously wandered away from Hayden, and towards the brightly colored LGBT alliance booth. He had half a mind to hide his face, in case he ran into any issues as a result of visiting but- no. That wasn’t College Shane. College Shane was himself and wasn’t afraid or ashamed of that. And if people had an issue, it was their issue, not Shane’s issue.
“Hey, I’m uh- I’m going to go check that out.” Shane said, nudging his head towards the booth. Hayden looked between Shane and the booth for a beat, and then two, and then went, “Ohhhh, are you?”
Shane’s heart picked up a pace. College Shane, College Shane, College Shane. It’s his problem if that’s a problem, not mine.
“Yeah, I am”
Hayden clapped him on the back, “Alright, hell yeah man! I’m going to go do my own thing for a minute, I’ll see you later?” Shane barely responded before Hayden wandered off in the direction of their orientation leader, a pretty, petite, detail orientated type-A powerhouse of a woman named Jackie. Shane had been pretending not to notice Hayden’s sudden lovestruck turn in orientation so far, but it was probably for the best that Hayden get some alone time with her sooner than later.
He chatted with the booth attendant at the alliance table, feeling looser than he has in years. The attendant is a lesbian a few years older than him, and is excitedly telling him about drag shows at the college pub, and study groups for like minded individuals, and Shane felt like a new chapter of his life is starting, this brave new Shane.
He felt a prickle on the back of his neck and turned around.
____________________________________________________________________
The thing that had drawn Shane to this particular university in the first place was the beautiful brochures. All the red brick, and old trees, and the quad, which, what is a quad anyway? It was great. He loved it endlessly.
He loved the fact that it had the social structure of a high school stuck in the 80s a lot less. Almost immediately, Shane had found he’d earned his ‘loser nerd’ status due to his terrible habits of actually giving a fuck about his studies and never getting scooped up by campus patrol for blacking out in the woods. People made weird, off the wall comments to him about it but since becoming College Shane, he found he cared much less. Hayden didn’t have it as bad, but they were both a pretty far cry away from being a ‘cool kid’.
On the opposite side of that ridiculously outdated spectrum was the ‘jocks’. The guys in on sports scholarships who looked at Shane like he was shit on the bottom of their shoe, and partied every Friday and Saturday night (and all the other nights for that matter) and generally went out of their way to make Shane’s life more difficult.
It was ridiculous. Why did he wait to come out of the closet anyway? He’d been worried about this kind of shit in high school and (stupidly) thought college might be different. If it was just going to be like this no matter what, it was pretty ridiculous to wait so long. How many years had he wasted until he thought he’d found a “safe” environment, just for it all to happen anyway? There’s no undoing the past, but there is an everpresent annoyance at it.
At the very least, Shane was happy. Mostly. He was cautious in the way that being openly gay on a campus with a well documented problem made a person cautious, but he was happy. Which, yeah, the campus sure did have a documented problem.
He'd read about it in the student newspaper - a string of sexual assault cases that had started in late September and continued into October. Victims all younger guys with dark hair and slight builds, taken advantage of at various parties. All of the victims had been too intoxicated to remember clearly who’d attacked them, which meant there could be several rapists prowling around the campus. Or one, serial rapist with the libido of a rabid animal. It gave Shane the heebie jeebies to even think about.
He watched the men come to the LGBT support groups with their shoulders hunched inward, the look of shame and insecurity in their eyes. He participated in the support groups whenever he had time, happy to have found his people at long last. Less happy that sometimes the support groups looked less like studying or talking about movies, and more like huddling around one guy that recounted a chilling story about waking up without their clothes, bloodied, covered in bruises. Jesus, what a nightmare. He resolved himself to never drink at any parties (he was never invited to any parties to drink at, but nonetheless).
One day, walking out of a support group and across the campus, he thought he’d take a shortcut through the park area. He had headphones in, and hadn’t noticed anyone coming up on him until -
There was someone walking right beside him, and he jumped before taking his headphones out. The guy looked at him with an exaggerated, What, are you a moron look on his face.
“Did you hear me, fag?” The guy said, and Shane was taken aback.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard him” A voice said behind him, and he noticed a beat too late that there were three guys, all surrounding him in a triangle.
“Ah, fuck” He said under his breath, and felt ice cold adrenaline flood his veins.
He made to sprint away, getting one, two rapid steps in before something collided with him, sending him careening to the ground.
“Get off!” He yelled, as hands started to grapple at his wrists and he bucked, trying to get away.
“Jesus christ, is it that easy? Do you have, like, any muscles?” One of the guys joked to the other, and Shane yelled out, “Help! Someone help!” before a hand was slapped over his mouth. He bit down harshly, tasting the sweat on the man’s hand, tasting red copper-y blood spill into his mouth. He spat it out, up at the guy’s face, with the hope of somehow - he doesn’t know - blinding him? Momentarily? The blood comes flying out of his mouth and arcs into the air before falling back down on Shane’s face.
“Fuck, jesus-” The guy said, and Shane started to scream again before he heard a voice in the distance.
“What the fuck are you doing?” A thick Russian accent called out. The guys scrambled away, footsteps pounding into the distance, and Shane sat up dazedly as the figure in the distance drew closer. The man from orientation. He quickly brought up his sleeve and wiped off his face, the feeling of fresh blood splattered across his skin itching.
The man from orientation jogged up to Shane, out of breath, and bent down, breathing heavily from the exertion. When he looked at Shane, Shane nearly forgot about the horrifying situation from moments ago. Jesus, he’s pretty.
His eyes bore holes into Shane’s head, he could’ve sworn. Curly hair bouncing in the moonlight, like an action hero. Ah, fuck Shane thought for the second time tonight, albeit for a different reason.
“Are you ok?” The man asked, his eyes scanning Shane up and down.
“Yeah, I’m good.” Shane responded breathlessly. The man stood up, and offered Shane a hand, which Shane took. Touching him made his skin tingle where it had contact, and he dropped the hand as soon as he was standing again. He wondered if the man noticed how nervous Shane was in his presence, the way he was staring at Shane so intensely.
“I’m Ilya.” He said.
“Shane.”
The man nodded.
“Did they hurt you?” Ilya asked, and Shane shook his head, lost for words. A big strong hero an unhelpful voice in the back of his head sang.
“Are you sure?” The man said, and Shane shook his head again. Ilya brought up his sleeve and swiped it across Shane’s cheek, and Shane looked down a moment too late, clocking the red-rusty smudge on Ilya’s sleeve.
“Not my blood.” He said, and Ilya nodded in a way that seemed to mean hell fucking yeah. His eyes sparkled.
“Let me walk you back to your dorm.” Ilya said, and Shane agreed, wishing suddenly he lived farther away. At the dorm, Ilya scanned Shane once more, and then gently picked a leaf off his shoulder.
“Have a good night, Shane Hollander. Be safe.” Shane nodded mutely again, and went into the dorm to debrief Hayden on the nights’ events.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ilya Rozanov was, much to his chagrin, involuntarily, constantly, aware of Shane Hollander. Despite his absolute best efforts, he was aware every time he was in the same room as Shane Hollander. He knew Shane liked to hang out in the cafe under the cafeteria, and that he used wired headphones, and that he never seemed to have less than 2 textbooks on him at any given time. He knew that Shane never showed up at the campus pub, and that he had a hard time with some of the sports guys’, who would push him around at any opportunity. He unfortunately knew that Shane walked from the library to the humanities building at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was convenient for Ilya because he had a view of that walk from the sports complex. It was torture, being so aware of Shane Hollander.
He had no other choice but to watch Shane walk around with all of his books and sometimes his fucking glasses, and he was cursed with the feeling of his heart beating a different, stuttering pace everytime they locked eyes, which seemed to be both more and less often than Ilya wanted.
Life in Canada was fucking hard.
Hockey was going great, though. The game itself was easy as pie, seeing as no Canadians ever had to endure the training of a highly disciplinary Russian sports culture. Being captain of the team was also easy as pie, as corralling all these sweet little Canadians with all their manners was much simpler than the bunch of chain-smoking alleyway bastards he was used to at home.
Sure, some of the guys were dumbasses, a concussion-heavy sport would do that to any group of early 20s men. Even with that, though, one player in particular, Dallas Kent, was a constant thorn in Ilya’s side, and by far and away the worst of them all.
In the second week of October, Dallas came up with the idea at a team dinner.
"Okay," Dallas said. He had that look on his face that Ilya couldn’t stand - the bright, rotten look that meant he'd thought of something he found hilarious, something that would piss of Ilya to no end. "I want to do a thing for the Halloween party."
"The Halloween party is a thing," someone said, and the rest of the team guffawed.
"Shut the fuck up and listen you wiener" Dallas spread his hands. "Everyone find the biggest loser you can on campus and bring them as your date. The weirder the costume you can get ‘em to wear the better, then at the end of the night we do a fashion show."
There was a beat of silence. Then stupid laughter, Ilya’s stupid half-drunk hockey team so liberated from their brain cells Ilya couldn’t be certain they even knew what Dallas was talking about. Ilya said nothing. Ilya said nothing, focusing on cutting up his chicken. This would go how it always went - Dallas had these stupid, cruel ideas, and the more people pushed back the more he’d double down. The best was through was to let it pass.
"Come on," Dallas said. "It'll be hilarious. Roz, you in?" His eyes held a sharpness in them when he fixed Ilya with a look. Ilya squinted back at him.
"No," Ilya said.
"Why not?"
"Because. Is stupid and mean." So much for letting it pass.
Dallas grinned, receiving just the reaction he was looking for. He dropped it that night, but not the next night. Or the next. Days later, they were crossing the quad when Dallas stopped and pointed.
Shane Hollander was crossing the other end of the quad, his stupid nerdy backpack slung over one shoulder, walking with his stupid annoying roommate Hayden. They were having an animated discussion about something or other, and Shane was laughing brightly, the air he exhaled turning into white steam in the crisp Autumn air. The leaves were all falling, and winter was on it’s way soon (thank god), and as a result Shane was also blessed with a red blush across his cheeks. It was irresistible. Ilya had to resist.
"There," Dallas said. "That's your loser."
Ilya looked at him. He didn't know why he looked, exactly. He already knew what he'd see. But he looked anyway, only to see Dallas watching Shane with something that Ilya couldn't quite identify, but didn’t care for.
"He's not a loser," Ilya said blankly.
"That guy? Dude’s a total fucking shut in, and I heard he’s a fag too." Dallas said. "Roz, Come on. It'll be funny."
Ilya watched Shane cross the quad. Him and Hayden were approaching the building they were headed into. His heart stuttered a beat again - it was Wednesday, so he’d probably not get to see Shane again today. Shane looked up suddenly, and locked eyes with Ilya. Then immediately tripped over a curb and was caught by Hayden before he would’ve faceplanted into the ground.
Ilya’s heart ached.
"Fine," he said. He didn't know why he said it.
That’s not true. He knew exactly why he said it. Ilya Rozanov was a fucking coward.
________________________________________________________________________
He texted the number he got from someone who knew someone who once bought a textbook from Shane.
Hey. This is Ilya (from the other night). I'm having a Halloween party Saturday. You should come.
The reply came forty minutes later.
Hi Ilya. Is this a party party or a small gathering.
Ilya smiled at his phone.
It's a party party. But there's a quieter area in the back. Wear a costume.
Okay. What time.
Shane told Hayden about it on movie night, halfway through a film Hayden picked out. Shane didn’t think he cared much for Interstellar, to be honest.
"Ilya Rozanov," Hayden said.
"Yeah."
"The hockey captain."
"I guess."
Hayden looked at him with careful, sideways scrutiny.
"What?" Shane said.
"Nothing. He's not your usual type of person to hang out with."
"I don't have a type of person." Shane said petulantly.
"Oh yeah? A party, Shane? You?"
Shane thought about the text. There's a quieter area in the back.
"I'll see how it goes," he said, and fixed his eyes back on Interstellar. Hayden laughed a little and they continued watching the movie and Shane didn’t think at all about the fact that he does have a type of person and it’s usually not a partying person. Why did he agree to this? The party wasn’t for a few days still - maybe he could back out?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
He went. He put on a full-body skeleton suit a la Donnie Darko, complete with a hoodie on top. No one would get it, other than him and Hayden, and Hayden wasn’t even coming to this party, but it was the only thing he felt good about so here he was. He texted Ilya from outside what was pretty clearly a frat house, packed tight with Halloween revellers. All kinds of sexy cats, nurses, firefighters, and curiously enough a few sexy Loraxes all jumping around while Avicii blared.
I'm outside. He texted. The last thing he wanted was to have to try and find Ilya in that throng of people. A sexy Pitbull vomited on the front lawn, yelled “Dale!” at the sky, and went careening back into the party. Shane stood awkwardly, feeling the ground under his feet, self conscious and uncomfortable and why did he come to this?
And then Ilya cut through the masses. It wasn’t the first sexy firefighter costume Shane had seen tonight, but god damn, it was the best. His mouth dried out immediately. Fuck, this really was a bad idea. Fuck, fuck fuck.
Ilya grinned broadly at the sight of Shane, and grabbed him by the arm, dragging him into the fray, past the heaving throngs of bumping and grinding college students and into the kitchen area, which seemed to be mission central for beverages. Ilya was yelling something at Shane that he couldn’t make out over the bass of the music, a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead as he fixed a drink for Shane in a red solo cup and shoved it into his hands. Shane couldn’t hear him over the party, but he nodded and smiled in response.
“Oh, uh, I don’t drink” He yelled, looking between the cup and Ilya.
“What?” Ilya yelled back, then leaned over so his ear was right next to Shane’s mouth. Shane grabbed his shoulder to steady his swaying, and yelled, “I don’t drink!” at the other man.
Ilya nodded sagely, and then brought Shane’s head to his mouth, and Shane struggled not to shiver at the feeling of Ilya’s lips so close to him. “Don’t be boring, Hollander, you are guest at my house. I am good host, yes?” Shane smiled faintly and took an accommodating sip of the drink. Ilya beamed at that, and clapped Shane so hard on the back he nearly toppled over.
“Good boy!” Ilya belted out, and Shane could hear it over the crowd, his cheeks turning a bright pink. It’s just the heat of the house, just the heat. He told himself.
Ilya dragged him into the dance floor, and Shane, for the first time in his stupid life, danced to pop music. The drink seemed to go right to his head and he felt his muscles loosen in a new, fresh way, the other college student bodies bumping into him, all of them moving not exactly in time with the music, but definitely adjacent to the music. And, most importantly, the sight of Ilya in front of him, bouncing around to the beat and looking straight into Shane’s soul, was perhaps the most incredible thing Shane had ever seen.
The night passed in a haze of red solo cups and songs until they both collapsed bonelessly in some cheap plastic chairs behind the house, a string of twinkle lights causing Ilya’s eyes to glitter in the night.
Ilya handed him a bottled water and they both watched each other, for a moment, but Shane felt like they were talking anyway. Ilya broke the eye contact and cleared his throat, then cracked open his own water bottle and looked up at the sky as if praying for help, before looking back at Shane.
Shane, who was still halfway drunk, woozy, and had no way to stop his too-heavy head from adoringly, embarrassingly staring at Ilya.
"So," Ilya said. "Biochem."
"Biochem," Shane agreed.
"You like it?"
"Yeah. I like that it’s, like, impossible." He paused. "That sounds worse than I meant it." He slurred out.
"What made you want to play hockey?" he asked.
"My father," Ilya said. He said it simply. "I am good at it, so I will be best." He turned his cup in his hands. "What about you? With the biochem."
"Same kind of thing, sort of. I always knew I needed to go into STEM, for my family." He considered. "I don't mind. I like it. But it's, like, just assumed."
"Yeah."
They looked at each other across the porch. Something sat in the air between them that Shane didn't have words for, which seemed to be happening every time he looked at Ilya.
Inside, he could hear the party. Outside it, on the porch, there was just this.
"We should get out of here," Ilya said abruptly.
Shane blinked. "What?"
"The party. It's going to get weird in about twenty minutes, I can always tell." He stood up. He was already looking toward the door, like the decision had already been made. "There's a place down the street. Pizza. Is necessary."
Shane thought about it for approximately two seconds.
"Okay," he said.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The restaurant was small and warm and had checkered tablecloths and candles that were probably a fire code violation and they stayed for what felt like hours.
They talked about Russia, which Ilya talked about with a forlorn look to him. It wasn’t homesick exactly, but it was something, something Shane couldn’t hope to understand but wanted to hear about. Ilya missed particular things about his home - the way the roads were built differently, the brutal, crisp bite to the air, the woman down the street that always invited Ilya in for dinner, her own son having passed away a long time ago.
Shane talked about home, and his mother's expectations, which were extensive and well-meaning and suffocating, and how he'd gotten very good at doing what was expected of him and still feeling like he wasn’t quite enough, which Ilya had laughed at.
"You're more interesting than you look," Ilya said, and then immediately: "That is not what I meant"
"Oh really?," Shane said, a smile quirking at his lips.
"I meant- you seem like you're not going to be interesting, from the outside- "
"Because, what? I know how to read, unlike half your team?" Ilya began to grin.
"Yes, you are always reading, and studying. And you walk fast, like you are being chased by tiger."
Shane looked at him. "You've noticed how I walk?"
Ilya picked up his water glass and didn't say anything for a moment. "Campus is small," he said finally, and avoided Shane’s gaze by taking a long pull of water.
Shane let it sit, that now unavoidable thing. It sat between them warm, like another candle on the table. Ilya looked uneasy.
"I've noticed you too," Shane said, his voice shaking slightly. "Since orientation."
"Yeah?" he said quietly.
"Yeah. You were- leaning against the bleachers," Shane said. "You were sweating a lot, honestly. I was worried." Ilya smiles at that, the tension melting out of his eyes.
"Really? In truth, Shane Hollander, I was maybe, nervous," Ilya said earnestly.
"Nervous.” Shane echoed. Ilya smiled at him. It was different from the party smile, from that easy public charm. It was smaller, realer somehow.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
They texted every day.
Ilya hadn't intended for it to become a habit. He was extremely grateful he’d gotten Shane out of the party before Dallas Kent had been able to do whatever cruel fucking talent show he wanted to do with all the ‘losers’. He was so grateful to not have objected Shane to that.
It earned him a great deal of flack from Dallas, who was enraged that Ilya was gone for the big reveal. Dallas had been looking at him sideways ever since, and it didn’t sit right in Ilya’s gut. But that night had been, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best night of his life, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Texting Shane had started as simple, polite, logistics. Ilya had texted him that night, innocently, to make sure Shane had gotten to his dorm safely (as if he hadn’t dropped him off at the building, but whatever). Shane texted back, Ilya replied, and somehow it was just easy, like talking to someone he’d known all his life.
Shane was funnier in text than Ilya had expected. Dry, specific, sarcastic. He sent Ilya pictures sometimes- a badly spelled sign outside a dining hall, a bird on campus that had stolen someone's lunch, a student article about the hockey team winning a game with a confetti graphic.
After a standard you up? text, Shane sent him pictures of his notes, which were extensive and color-coded. Ilya felt not un-like a zoologist, spotting a species of rare mammal in the jungle for the first time. He was bewildered, and charmed, and had so many questions.
do you use a ruler for the underlines
Yes.
that is not a normal amount of underlines
The organization helps me retain information.
okay but there are SEVENTEEN COLORS
Five colors, Ilya.
Shane grinned at his phone like a moron until Hayden threw a pillow at his head and made him shut off the lights for the night.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
At some point, Shane started going to practices. It was Ilya’s favorite thing in the world, maybe. When they made plans to get dinner together, so Shane would head to the rink after classes and set up his books in the stands, and sit there with his handsome little glasses frowning at his stupid little books while Ilya skated. Occasionally he’d skate by the stands and wave at Shane, and Shane would wave back, and Ilya thought Canada was the best place in the world.
you look very sexy my little bookworm. Ilya texted on a water break. Shane’s head shot up and shot him a panicked look, cheeks already blushing. Ilya laughed openly and took to the ice, skating towards Shane to score a peck on his cheek.
“You're going to crash into someone again if you don't pay attention” Shane said smittenly, and obediently stood up and crowded to the rink barrier. Ilya hummed in satisfaction and planted a kiss on him before turning back to practice. And - what was that look on Dallas’ face? It was gone in a millisecond, but Ilya had surely seen something there.
The weeks arranged themselves around this. Around texts and practices and the Tuesday nights when Ilya would sometimes show up at the dorm to watch a terrible movie with him and Hayden, because Shane had mentioned it once and Ilya had said that sounds better than what I was going to do.
Hayden received Ilya with nothing short of distaste. When Ilya had left, he looked at Shane with that fucking mother-hen look again.
"What are you doing, Shane?" Hayden said.
"We're- we’re friends."
"Do you think I’m stupid?" Shane blushed.
"Okay, yeah, I think we’re, like, more than friends.”
"Fucking, dude."
"What." Shane responded, semi annoyed.
Hayden looked at him for a long moment. "I'm just going to be honest with you," he said. "That guy is not looking out for your best interests. I know guys like that, we know guys like that."
“He’s not-” Shane interrupted,
“He is, Shane. You know, men only want one thing and it’s-”
“Fucking disgusting” They said in unison. Hayden fixed him with another careful look.
“I’m just saying, dude. Protect yourself, you know?”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ilya, for his part, had stopped pretending to himself.
He was completely, unhelpfully gone for that stupid fucking nerd, Shane Hollander.
It was all of it - the way his cheeks were always so pink after he walked for even a minute outside, or the way his brow scrunched when he couldn’t figure out a problem on his homework. The way he picked through the stupid cafeteria salad to try and find lettuce that wasn’t pathetically limp. How he looked up at Ilya through his eyelashes in bed.
It was overwhelming, and Ilya gave up on fighting it.
He told none of this to his teammates, obviously. He especially told none of it to Dallas, who had asked twice how the thing with the nerd was going and who Ilya had told both times that it was none of his business.
He held it carefully, this thing. Like a baby bird in his hands. This precious, beautiful love he felt for Shane Hollander.
December settled in cold and grey and Shane noticed that Ilya texted later and replied slower and had weird, new tension around his jaw. One night he found the bravery to ask about it, while they walked back from the rink, white snow twinkling down around them and catching in their eyelashes.
"You okay?"
Ilya glanced at him. "Yeah. Why?"
"You've seemed- off this week."
Ilya didn’t look at him, but Shane could see his gait pausing for a moment.
"Winter break is coming soon," he said, after a moment.
"What about it?"
Another pause. Longer. Shane waited, at Ilya’s jaw clenched and un-clenched.
"I am going home to Russia," Ilya said finally. "Is complicated."
"Your father?"
"My father.” Ilya said, resigned. He hadn’t told Shane much about his relationship with his father.
"Okay," Shane said.
They walked.
"You don't have to go," Shane said, when they'd gone another half block.
Ilya looked at him.
"You can come to my parents' place," Shane said. "Over break. We're outside Ottawa. My mom would probably make you talk about hockey all the time, and my dad would definitely make you try his bread, he goes through phases, right now it's sourdough." He kept his eyes on the sidewalk as he rambled. "It's an option. If you wanted."
Ilya was quiet for a long time.
"Sourdough?" he said finally.
"Yeah, asshole, sourdough.” He laughed, and they bumped each other lightly as they walked.
“Really, though, they’d be thrilled. They- they know all about you, actually."
"And, you’d- you'd want me there."
Shane looked at him. "Why else would I say it?"
Something crossed Ilya's face, something unguarded and cracked and devastating. Shane’s heart lurched.
"I'll think about it," Ilya ground out.
____________________________________________________________________
The party was unavoidable, considering it was at Ilya’s fucking house. And, yeah, Ilya rented a house out with a bunch of the other players, which seemed like such a brilliant idea 3 months ago when the alternative was constant supervision in the dorms, but at this point he wished he’d just stayed in the dorms and been closer to Shane.
Because now there was a stupid loud rager in his house and all he wanted to do was hang out with Shane. It was terribly inconvenient.
He was on his way to find his rookie who’d texted him incoherently about a pong tournament he just had to come help with, when he went down the wrong hallway. It wasn't even a decision - he was looking at his phone, he took the turn toward the back of the house instead of the stairs, and then he stopped.
There was a guy lying prone on the floor of the bedroom, weakly crawling towards the door. In any typical scenario, this would crack Ilya up because of course some dumbass would drink past their limits and turn into a glorified toddler. But this felt different, something about the tears down the man’s cheeks, maybe? The way his… boxers… were halfway down his ass. The way he looked, if you squinted, a little like Shane.
The man was shaking, and whimpering slightly. Ilya looked up and down the hallway. Empty. The party roared on twenty feet away, completely indifferent.
He put his phone in his pocket and walked toward him slowly, uncertain he wanted to see whatever he was going to see.
"Hello," he said. He crouched down a few feet away, getting himself level, out of the looming range. "Are you okay?"
“N-no” The man cried, like a kid needing help. “I n-need help” The man’s breath was hitching, distraught.
“Okay, is okay. I will help you. What- what do you need?”
The man’s lower lip wobbled, and Ilya scanned the room. The bed sheets mussed, the heavy scent of sex.
“You’re okay. Is okay” He said, more to himself than the man on the floor. He called for a rookie to come help him, and a moment later a bright eyed hockey prospect appeared to help him out. Before he let the man in the room he fixed him with a sharp look.
“You tell no one what you see. Yes?” The boy nodded, confused. He was the teams’ designated driver, and in this scenario, Ilya’s designated right hand. “Something bad has happened here. You do nothing without me saying.” The boy nodded, and Ilya ushered him into the room.
He’d already helped the man - George, his name is George - get reclothed. Asked him if he wanted the police to come, and he’d declined. The rookies job was to help Ilya usher George outside, to the SUV, so they could get him home safely. They made a weird shape, Ilya, the rookie, and the victim - George - shuffling out of the house, across the dew-soaked lawn, and then gingerly into the SUV. Ilya sends the rookie off with strict instructions for where to take George and tells the rookie to call him when he gets there.
He stood on the sidewalk outside the house for a while after they drove away. The party went on behind him, oblivious. He thought about the shaking in George’s entire body, the way he’d flinched away from Ilya’s help at first. Considered the campus safety emails and the way George looked eerily similar to Shane. He looked just like Shane.
The image overwhelmed him immediately - his Shane, his nerdy little academic boyfriend, with puffy cheeks and warbling breaths, trying to crawl to safety on the floor of some grubby frat house. His Shane, lost and alone and scared.
Where r u he texted to Shane.
Watching movies with Hayden, what’s up?
He didn’t answer, overwhelmed with the direction the night had gone. Shane is fine. He’s okay. He shut down the party.