Chapter Text
“I can see what I hated in dreams
Come on, give me a hand if you can help
Jesus, it’s time to be real
Spin wheels, Kyrie Eleison
I can see what I hated in dreams
Help me not hate myself, help me love other people
I’ll wear the beads, I’ll read Kyrie Eleison”
– When a Good Man Cries, CMAT
364 Days After
On day 364 since the accident, Shane woke up to something new for the first time in what felt like years.
The days passed by in a blur, almost like watching the fall of snow from the warm passenger seat of a garishly colored sports car. Nothing distinguished one snowflake from the rest; they just became a carpet of white, laying out the path before and behind him. Sometimes, when you’d been driving for long enough, it almost felt like you were standing in place.
What launched him from that passenger seat and out into the cold today was a good-intentioned message from his mom. It was a series of pictures of him and Ilya from two Christmases ago. That was all that Shane collected from the pictures before he immediately turned off his phone.
He knew his mom didn’t mean harm by sending them to him. He didn't blame her for not knowing what to do with him anymore. How to make him happy, how to be there for him. In all honesty, he thought it was pretty much an impossible task.
It had been almost a year since Ilya died, and Shane had given up on thinking that the Universe would be on his side. There would be no light at the end of a tunnel, or breath of air after months of drowning in sorrow. There would only be days that blended into one as the world sped on around him.
Shane welcomed this stationary lifestyle, long since accepting that two lives ended that day. He’d deleted social media. He’d gone on long-term injury reserve for the Metros. He had shut out anything that might pose a threat to keeping his life exactly how it was 365 days ago. Anything new would change him from the last version of Shane Ilya had seen. Anything new would mean that he was no longer the same version of himself that had seen Ilya alive and breathing.
So seeing pictures of them that Ilya had never seen before felt sacrilegious. But he didn’t expect his mom to understand that.
Shane started his day like he’d started all 363 others: by rolling over and pulling the sheet over his head again.
___________
The late afternoon was when Shane finally emerged from the bedroom. He was dead set on going about this day as if it were any other, but he felt like it was the eve of his own death as he walked through an empty house aimlessly. His mom had called earlier when he had not responded to her texts. He answered because he knew the alternative was her coming to his cottage and knocking on the door until he worried his neighbors all the way across the lake would be able to hear.
Shane had started staying at the cottage more and more until eventually everyone just expected him to be there rather than at his apartment in Montreal. In Montreal, his shelves held the memories of his championships, and his linen closet had the nice sheets with the high thread count. But the walls denied any proof of Ilya and Shane and their collided lives.
His place in Montreal was just his. The cottage was theirs.
The TV had the DVD of the last movie they watched still inserted. The closet had an equal combination of their clothes. The bathroom had two toothbrushes in the cup by the sink. The garage had one car in it, boring and unbroken.
His mom had apologized for sending the pictures. He didn’t tell her it was alright.
“Would you like us to bring dinner over tonight?”
“No, you shouldn’t drive back when it’s dark and snowing,” Shane had reasoned.
“If it would make you feel better, we could stay the night and be with you tomorrow?”
Shane knew what his mom was getting at. But tomorrow was no different than any other day, really. Not when they all homogenized into one forward-facing catapult. Blurring like snowfall through the window of a speeding sports car. He hated that his brain always chose that image.
If he could wake up to yesterday, that might get his attention. He could figure out how to wake up to enough yesterday’s that he could finally get back to a life he cared to participate in. Until then, nothing distinguished one tomorrow from the next other than the fact that they carried him further and further away from Ilya.
“No, I don’t want you driving,” Shane had said, feeling the air grow thicker and thicker as it worked its way down his throat and into his lungs.
“Shane, we don’t want you to be alone tomorrow.”
And there it was, ‘tomorrow’. As though naming it would somehow change it.
Shane stared at a stain on the counter. He thought it was from dinner last week.
“I’m always alone,” Shane said.
___________
Shane had dragged himself through the rest of the day slowly and unceremoniously. After a pre-packaged dinner and a marathon of whatever show was on TV, he decided he wasn’t doing a very good job at pretending like tomorrow was any other day. It felt like a shadow looming over him. Or maybe he was the shadow, creeping up behind but never quite there.
The truth was that Shane wanted nothing less than to wake up to the one-year mark of Ilya’s death. The one-year mark since he had laughed and meant it. The one-year mark since he had done anything and meant it.
He wished, not for the first time, that the roles were reversed. He knew that was selfish. To wish that he were in the numb nothingness and Ilya was instead the one left behind to suffer. But he figured that wasn’t the most selfish thing he had done to Ilya.
He knew all the logical reasons like the back of his hand why he shouldn’t blame himself for Ilya’s death. He had been told them by family and friends and therapists, and had repeated them back dutifully to get people to stop looking at him with pity welling over in their eyes. But he didn’t care about any of those reasons when every time he looked at his hands, he saw someone else's blood on them.
And that was how he found himself with Ilya’s most expensive bottle of vodka down at the shore of the lake. Ilya never liked the dock. He preferred to be close to the water so that Shane could sit with his feet in, while Ilya dove in headfirst.
Shane took a long swig and then another as he waited for the alcohol to warm his shivering body. This was the bottle of vodka Ilya had been saving for a “special occasion”.
“What kind of occasion requires an entire bottle of vodka for two people?” Shane had asked when Ilya had brought it home that day.
“Hmmm, maybe it’s not just a two-person celebration then,” Ilya had countered. “Maybe it is for everyone.”
“I hate to break it to you, Rozanov, but only one of us can win the cup next year, and I’m liking my odds,” Shane had laughed. “Also, forgive me, but I can’t imagine a world where you let Hayden drink your two-thousand-dollar vodka.”
“No, you are right. This is not for Pike,” Ilya had smiled. “This is for everyone except Pike.”
“What kind of celebration involves everyone but Hayden?”
“Maybe one where everyone finds out a big secret,” Ilya had said. The smile was still there, but it grew a little more hesitant. “Maybe they are very surprised. And then they look at us, and they think, Ah. Of course. This makes sense.”
Shane had looked away first that time.
“I think maybe we should save it for when you win your first cup with the Centaurs,” he’d said instead.
The easy way out. And Ilya let him do it. He always did.
There was never an occasion big enough to open the bottle. Or maybe there was. It was more about the hope of it all. How it would always be there, waiting for the next big achievement. A cup. A retirement. A breaking story.
Now, Shane took another drink and celebrated the occasion of never having to look at it sitting on the shelf again, reminding him of everything he hadn't done.
The vodka burned less and less the more that went down. He had forgotten to bring a jacket outside, or maybe he just didn’t care enough to remember. Either way, the alcohol did a good job of helping him forget slowly just how cold a Canadian winter could be.
His phone sat face down in the snow. If it weren't for the thin layer of ice coating the ground, Shane would worry that water would seep into the port and ruin the mechanics. But even if his phone started sparking and caught on fire, he probably wouldn’t care.
But Shane remembered the last text he had received this morning, sitting open and ignored. Holding memories that Shane would care to lose.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he picked up his phone and opened the thread sent by his mom.
We’ve been thinking about him, too, and we thought you might like these. Love you.
Shane opened the first picture. It had been taken in his parents' kitchen two Christmases ago. Ilya had been caught, mid-exasperated expression, looking at Shane like he was trying to convince him that the sky was purple. Shane was looking down, frustrated and amused at the same time. Shane didn't remember what they were arguing about, probably about how disgustingly sweet to make the cookies that year. Shane would have argued that they were adding way too much butter, and Ilya would have insisted that calories didn’t count on holidays.
They were standing hip to hip. Shoulder to shoulder. He thought he remembered the way Ilya had laughed when he had tried to sneak a few more tablespoons of butter into the bowl, and Shane had grabbed a block and pushed it onto his face. He thought he remembered the pimple he had on his cheek the next week when Ilya retaliated immediately.
The next photo was from the afternoon hike Shane had made everyone take the day after Christmas to help them metabolize the feast they had eaten the day before.
It had ended up not being a fan favorite, mostly due to how much they all had to bundle up just to step outside. Ilya had, of course, overestimated his tolerance for the cold and had nothing but a thin sweatshirt to keep him warm. He had always said that Russians do not get cold as easily, but Shane always suspected that he would underdress as an excuse to steal warmth away from him halfway through the walk.
In this picture, he and Ilya were walking up ahead of his parents, Ilya with his hood pulled up and his curls peeking out around the edges. Shane had on a much more insulated puffer jacket, with his hands tucked warmly in the pockets. Ilya’s right hand reached in between them to find shelter in Shane’s left pocket, in Shane’s left hand.
Shane moved to the next photo, and then the next, watching as they became less and less familiar with each swipe. He finally landed on one that he had no memory of.
Ilya was sitting on the floor before the coffee table in the living room, while Shane’s dad was leaning forward on the couch. They were hunched over a puzzle, half-solved and indistinguishable still at this point in their progress. Their heads hovered over the puzzle together, almost meeting in the middle, as if they were subconsciously trying to combine their brain powers into one.
Where was Shane when this picture was taken? Why can’t he remember if they finished it or not? Why can’t he remember what the puzzle revealed itself to be?
His grip tightened on the phone as he narrowed his eyes on the image. He felt the cold chain shift where it sat, hidden under his shirt. Shane closed his eyes and reached up to brush his fingers against the yellow cross, an entirely different memory playing through his head.
When he opened his eyes again, he swiped away from the last picture and back to the hiking one.
The one where Shane was looking down at where he should place his next step. Ilya was looking at Shane.
Shane didn’t know what hurt more. That he had lost Ilya. Or the fact that when he still had him, Ilya had to freeze his fingers just to get Shane to hold them.
Shane put his phone down and leaned back until his shoulders hit the ground with a soft thud.
As he looked up at the sky, he watched the snow fall around him, creating a curtain of white. If he unfocused his eyes, it looked like they all blended into one giant streak of bright white against the dark background of the sky. It felt as if the sky was propelling down to him faster and faster, but never reaching him. Or maybe he was floating up to wherever the snow was falling from. Shane hoped that was the case. He hoped that for the exact coordinates on Earth where he was lying down, gravity had reversed, and he was falling to the sky.
He’d never presumed to know where you go when you die. But maybe if he fell far enough up, he’d reach him, wherever he was.
At 11:59 PM, Shane closed his eyes and imagined breaking the surface of the clouds.
Below him, the cottage would shrink into nothing. The lake would become a dark smudge amidst the snow. The world that kept moving without Ilya would become minuscule beneath him.
His nose, fingers, and toes had been numb for a while. He could feel the cold spreading further through his body. Yet his chest felt warm. Warm like the passenger seat of an ugly orange sports car, watching the world freeze and fall around him in a blur.
For a moment, Shane hoped that he would never open his eyes again. Or maybe he hoped that when he opened them next, he would be met with bright blue staring back at him. He hoped, just once, that the Universe would be on his side.
At 12:00 AM, Shane let the snow stitch his eyelashes shut.