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Shane Hollander hates this minute. And he knows he will hate the next. And the one after that. And the infinite seconds, minutes, hours that separate him from hockey, and replaces it with unsteadiness, headaches, and the itchy agony of a healing bone.
He’d never really given much thought to a collarbone, not even when he traced Ilya’s with his tongue. He had learned basic anatomy in high school, and knew its proper name was a clavicle, but that was the extent of his knowledge. Until he got cocky and Marlow got lucky, and Shane got clobbered.
Now he knows that the clavicle is pretty fucking important. It’s part of the foundational structure for his shoulder and his neck, and without the potent, euphoria-inducing hospital drugs, it aches all the fucking time.
Shane perches on the edge of his bed, curling his toes in the plush rug of his childhood bedroom. Trying and failing to gather the strength to stand up or find the humility to call his mother because he wants to put on socks, but four days after being released from the hospital, kneeling and bending is still a small, dizzying torture.
Stubborn and needing to piss, he stuffs his feet into his slides and slowly stands, using the nightstand for balance and leverage. He manages to wash his face and brush his teeth one-handed. Except he dribbles toothpaste on his shirt. The frothy speckles on the plaid button-down chafe that part of his brain that needs order and cleanliness. And that’s how he’s reminded for the umpteenth time how crucial collarbones are to performing basic tasks; the pain that had been nearly tolerable with his last dose of Tylenol is now pulsing down his arm, up his neck, and sparks in his front teeth and fingertips after wrangling off his sling and shirt.
Shane had done nothing but make pathetic compromises since leaving the hospital, so why should today be any different? He gingerly puts his sling back on without a shirt, and wanders into the living room bare-chested.
His mother is there, of course, making him yet another bone-fortifying broth. This is the one thing that doesn’t make him feel babied or pitiful, just intensely loved. As she slides on her glasses to consult her grandmother’s laminated recipe and adds another knob of fresh ginger to the simmering pot.
“How was your nap?” Yuna says, her eyes narrowing at seeing Shane slinged and shirtless in her kitchen.
“Short,” Shane says miserably sitting at the kitchen island.
She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes travel down his chest. It’s only been a few days, and the bruises have only darkened and spread. Beyond his broken collarbone, his ribs are cracked, dark bands of blue arcing around his ribs and under his arm. She wipes her hands on the dishcloth to inspect his arm, the pulse in his wrist, the swelling of the fracture. As usual, she’d taken the discharge instructions and the research on the complications of a broken clavicle far too seriously.
“I wish I could have five minutes alone with Marleau,” she growls.
“He didn’t mean it,” Shane intones. As he had for the past three days. “You know it’s a dangerous sport — which you signed me up for by the way.”
“Canadian peer pressure,” she explains.
“That’s not a thing.”
Yuna returns to the kitchen, “It absolutely is. And besides, you kept playing hockey with anything ball-shaped and stick-sized. Umbrellas and socks, sticks and rocks, the broom and your toys,” she reminds him with a proud smile. Her eyes cut to the window he broke twice working on his slapshot at four years old. Yuna takes one of the mason jars of broth out of the fridge, and pours some into a mug to heat up in the microwave. “And you know I hate every one of those motherfuckers who hurt my son, accidentally or not.”
“Do you have a list?”
“Yes. It starts with Michel Javon when you were 7.”
Shane knows better than to roll his eyes, so he groans instead.
Yuna sets the steaming mug in front of him. “You up for something solid?”
Assessing his nausea, Shane nods. Smiling, she makes him a slice of dry toast and scoops some white rice into his cup of broth.
The concussion has completely obliterated Shane’s carefully crafted diet, and he swore he could feel his muscle mass dwindling, his fitness deteriorating. But the nausea from his concussion and the pain of his injuries had conspired to make eating a study in masochism. Dreaded carbs and his mother’s broths were the only foods he could keep down without worsening his nausea. Yet another compromise.
Yuna dried her hands on the dish cloth, and eyed him seriously. “I had planned to meet your dad in the city for some treasury event tonight. I don’t have to go…”
Shane rushes to swallow a crust of toast and tries to sit up straighter without wincing. “Mom, I’m—”
“Don’t say fine, Shane.”
He pivots. “Getting better. I can be alone for a few hours. The circulation isn’t going to magically stop. My head hurts, but it’s more annoying than anything. I’m okay.”
She crosses her arms and gazes at him skeptically. “And you won’t leap on your phone the second I leave?” Yuna hedges.
“Considering you yelled at everyone who’s called me, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue,” Shane sighs.
A knowing suspicion still gleams in her eyes, and Shane does his best to look innocent. After a few tense seconds of a stare-down, Yuna relents. “I’m going to go get ready. I expect that to be gone when I’m done.”
Shane’s mother isn’t vain in the way that naturally beautiful women never have to be. She efficiently tidies the kitchen, leaving the broth to simmer on a timer, and strict instructions to turn it off and not touch it when it’s done. And then she heads upstairs, returning 25 minutes and a nearly completed jar of broth later in a long-sleeved royal purple wrap dress, a statement necklace and boots. “Scarf or no scarf?” She asks, awkwardly wrapping and rearranging an eggplant and tan scarf with long decorative fringe around her neck and the collar of her coat.
“Without,” Shane decides, chewing the last bite of soupy rice from his mug.
Yuna tosses it aside. She then indulges in a long, affectionate goodbye, caressing his bruised face and kissing his forehead as if she’s leaving for a month-long voyage instead of a few hours in the city. Shane lets her because he’d been laid out unconscious on the ice, and she’d careened into his hospital room, thunderous, terrified, and unable to stop crying. Shane can’t remember the last time he’d seen his mother even shed a tear, let alone choke back sobs as she talked to his doctors.
He nibbles on the crust of his toast and listens as for her car door to open and close, the ignition to start, and the snap and pop of it reversing down the drive. He waits another three minutes before shuffling to the living room. He snags a pair of his dad’s sunglasses off the counter. The shaded lenses mute the glare from the television just enough that he could tolerate queuing up the Raids vs. Maple Leafs game from two days ago.
Shane misses Ilya like a phantom limb. He half-believes he’ll heal faster if there’s a calloused but soft Russian hand stroking his cheek, holding his hand, and calling him boring.
He sits with the sadness that the only way he can see the person he adores is by watching him on television or a few stolen moments of FaceTime. And even now, more than moderate concussion, he can’t even do that.
Biting the inside of his cheek, Shane eases himself down on the couch, bracing his tender shoulder with two well-placed throw pillows and manages to find a fairly comfortable position to listen to the game.
And unfortunately, it’s like listening to a frenetically narrated nightmare in which Ilya is missing easy shots, skating wildly, and taking vicious hits without fighting back.
Announcer Denis: …Rosanov takes a stinger into the boards, but manages to pass the buck to Marlow before it’s intercepted…
Dread floods his nervous system like a poison as he listens. His mind’s eye painting a gruesome picture for him of Ilya facing a battalion of absolute titanous defensemen, wielding bayonets instead of hockey sticks. The announcers’ words fade to the background as he hears the crunch of pads and bodies colliding with the boards.
Announcer Denis: It’s been a rough stretch of games for Rosanov who recently returned after the death of his father. It’s understandable that he would be off his game, but he seems to really be struggling.
Shane’s head falls back against the cushions, pounding in time with his cantering heart.
Announcer Wilkins: It’s a tough reality for professional athletes, especially with a sport as mentally and physically tough as hockey. Sometimes, hardships cause you to lock in and really focus, and others it can completely destroy your rhythm. For Rosanov, it seems like the latter.
By the end of the game, the Raiders managed to scrape out an ugly 3-2 win, Shane is queasy, head aching, but his collarbone is still the brightest agony. Even worse, the thought of Ilya battling grief so powerful it derails his game hurts as much as the physical pain. He’d wished they’d had more time together in the hospital and that he hadn’t been drugged to his eyeballs, so he could have asked how he was handling everything. Or given him a hug.
He didn’t lie when he promised his mother he wouldn’t snatch his phone the second she left, mainly because it was in his pants pocket. And he’d waited two hours. So he feels no remorse when he fishes it out and texts Ilya: You alone?
The response comes quickly as if Ilya is holding his phone: Gimme two minutes.
Now a little nervous and a lot self-conscious, Shane scoots himself upright on the sofa and checks his appearance in his camera app. The sunglasses conceal most of the dark bruising on his face that made his dad joke that he looks like a masked cat burglar. His hair is too short to be messy, but he finger-combs it anyway.
The biggest problem is his bare chest, awash in contusions, and the dark, mountainous lump of his where his clavicle is cleaved.
Unwilling to get up, Shane snags his mother’s discarded scarf and loops it around his neck, arranging the wide, cotton tails to cover most of his injuries on his shoulder and chest.
When the FaceTime call comes in, Shane stamps the button, barely taking in Ilya’s wet hair, and the bright crimson of his lips because he’s unleashing without control or thought. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
-HR-
Ilya Rosanov protectively cups his cock as he climbs into his bathtub churning with jagged shards of ice. He sits without hesitation, his butt thumping against the porcelain. The flash of blue cold mutes the agony in his ribs and pushes the air out of his lungs in a rapid, involuntary exhale.
His teeth chatter as the arctic cold crescendos to its worst and then levels off as his body acclimates. A few moments later, Ilya sits back, arm reaching over the edge of the tub to lift his glass of vodka. He sips, idly staring at the light in the bathroom hitting the ice, and throwing prisms around the tub like a frosty disco ball.
Thoughts, memories, and emotions so potent they produce a tangible weight invade within, leaving him distracted, disoriented, and so achingly tired.
He gulps the vodka, its burning feeling like home, and tries successfully not to think about the first time his father had given him a drink. He’d just gotten his first hat trick and broken an opponent’s nose. Ilya wasn’t sure which accomplishment they were celebrating, but Grigori had smiled at him, shaking his shoulder as he herded him into the kitchen and poured him a belt from the frosted silver bottle he always pulled reverently from the freezer after a long shift. Ilya had been thrilled to drink it (even if it tasted like kerosene, and smoldered in his chest like poison). His mother had been horrified. Alexei had been jealous. It was possibly the only time he remembered his father being proud of him or showing any interest in hockey besides the pride it brought their family.
At least he isn’t alive to see how atrociously Ilya was playing now. He’d lost his hockey, and isn’t sure how to regain it. Something that came as naturally as breathing is now foreign. Like brushing your teeth with the wrong hand; he understands the mechanics and yet it’s impossible to do as smoothly or naturally as before.
In practice today, his skating is graceless and slow, internal rhythms out of sync. His innate strength is suddenly unreliable. His ability to anticipate moves and analyze the gameplay has disappeared, leaving him limping around on the ice, blind and dumb.
He gets concerned, pitying looks from his teammates. Marleau even tried to hug him when he returned from Moscow, and it was all Ilya could do not to slap him.
“You are weak, lazy boy.”
Ilya drains his glass, dipping his hand into the water to press on his sore ribs. Even half-numbed by ice, the pain flares enough to bring tears to his eyes, but the berating voice is drowned out by discomfort. It’s a dirty, desperate trick he hadn’t used since Sochi, capitalizing on pain as an outlet, but grants him a reprieve.
Ilya runs a soggy hand through his curls, and wonders what he what he needs: a good fuck? A shameful cry?
Of course, his traitorous mind’s eye conjures up an image of rich brown doe eyes and a dusting of enchanting freckles. A solid, cut set of shoulders and strong hands folding his clothes before they collide together.
Shane’s injury was less than a week ago, and Ilya’s unsure if he’s gotten more than five hours of sleep a night since. The memory of Shane collapsed motionless on the ice had unearthed a shallowly buried trauma. Ilya logically knows he will be okay. A broken collarbone and a moderate concussion aren't minor injuries, but as hockey players, both had endured and inflicted worse.
But it’s all too much. A week after his father’s death. The confusing grief has resurrected that of his mother’s passing. And then there was the hit that still echoes in his ears, the crack of pads, a body hitting the ice, and the suffocating silence that followed. It wasn’t remotely the same, but Ilya couldn’t be transported to the day everything changed, the day his world, full of hockey and color, morning hugs and hidden cuddles, became colorless and bereft. The first time he saw an unmoving body with cold skin and dusky blue lips–
“Enough,” Ilya snaps in Russian, slapping at the water so hard it crests over the side of soaker tub, an intimate tsunami of anguish.
He pours himself another belt of vodka and makes a plan. No more thinking of Shane. No more feeling. He’s going to start hungry and aggressive tomorrow: 4am workout and an early skate before practice, and getting laid at least once that night by freckle-free women.
His phone vibrates across the tile, like a loud electronic bee. The lock screen reveals a text message from Shane. Of course. You alone?
Their code for wanting to call or FaceTime.
He swipes it off the marble and responds quickly, selfishly.
Ilya all but flings himself out his ice bath and bundles up in a fluffy robe. He ventures into his bedroom and wills his teeth to stop chattering before he makes the call.
The last thing Ilya expects is for the screen to fill up with a bare-chested Shane Hollander donning Ray Bands, haphazardly wrapped in a woman’s purple and gold scarf, complete with knotted fringe, his eyebrows scrunched up with concussed anger, yelling, “What the hell is wrong with you?!” he squawks.
Long gone is the adorable, euphoric patient he left in the hospital, humming as Ilya held his hand. And he’s been replaced with a grumpy, bizarrely dressed baby bird.
“Hello to you, too.”
Shane’s eyebrows unbunch and he sighs, remembering his good Canadian manners. “Hi, Ilya. How are you?”
“I’m getting yelled at by a fugitive, so not so good. Are you in disguise, Shane? Did you rob a bank?”
“I didn’t feel like putting on a shirt.”
“I’d never complain about that,” Ilya teases. But he sees it now, the dark bruises leeching out in the negative spaces of the fringe and the corners of his Ray Bands. Shane had tried to cover it up.
For him.
“You okay?” He asks, tone abruptly serious.
“No, my season’s over, my shoulder is killing me, and you’re playing like shit. I’m calling to check on you.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “Even the best hockey player in the league has an off game.”
“Yeah, that was me last week,” Shane chirps back. “I know what your off-games look like. The last time you had an off-game, you rallied and won the damn cup. If I can’t win the championship, you getting it is the next best thing, so what the fuck?”
“I think I like cranky Shane.”
Shame huffs. “Well, I don’t like a passive Ilya.”
“So what is it, Dr. Hollander? What’s wrong with me?”
Shane shrugs with one shoulder. “I was hoping you would tell me. You can do it in Russian again, if you want.”
Shane switches from anger to his special brand of boring softness, and it's all Ilya’s craved. Ilya flops back on the bed, and brings the phone with him. He assesses within himself and tries to tease out one strand of emotion from the confusing, depressive knot. But when he answers, it’s in English. “I am relieved, I think, not to have to worry. Not to have to take Alexei’s calls. But then I am guilty because I am relieved. I am a mess, Shane. And I am terrible son.” At least when he’s lying down, Shane can’t see the tears.
Shane makes a soft, wounded sound and is silent for a moment. He then lifts his left hand to remove his sunglasses, revealing his eyes that are masked in a berry blue. Ilya gasps; his freckles are barely visible. Fucking Marleau.
“There’s nothing about you that I know of that is terrible,” Shane announces. It would be easy to lighten the seriousness of his tone with a joke (“...except your wardrobe…”) but he does not. Shane, the man who can barely make eye contact in a normal conversation, gazes at him with unshielded eyes and a newfound conviction. “You were a good son to probably a not-so-good father. And that is fucking complicated. It’s okay if you’re glad a shitty situation is over, or that your dad isn’t suffering anymore.”
Ilya’s chest constricts and his throat aches as he chokes back tears he has no business shedding. “Maybe you are therapist,” Ilya whispers.
“Nah, I googled,” Shane’s lips turn up in a slight smile. “If you’re punishing yourself because of that, Ilya, it’s time to stop. You did nothing wrong. Life is just hard sometimes and you have a right to be angry. Take that onto the ice and knock some motherfuckers out.”
“Such naughty language, Hollander.” Shane laughs and then body tenses, neck cording, his eyes squinting. Ilya remembers that he’s only been out of the hospital for a few days. “I should let you rest.”
“Probably,” Shane sighs. “I miss you though.”
“Me too. Just focus on getting better.”
Shane closes his eyes against the glare of the screen, apparently too tired to put his sunglasses back on. “Then don’t make me worry about you.”
“I won’t. I’m going to hang up now, Hollander, okay? Sleep.”
“Okay. Bye Ilya.”
Ilya hangs up, still shivering, heart still broken, but the load feels incrementally lighter. He heads to the bathroom and turns on the shower. Changing his plan to something less masochistic. He fires off a text to Marleau, accepting his invitation to go out for steaks in honor of his dad, and then he steps into the spray of the shower and the warmth he deserves.
-Two Weeks Later-
Shane squeezes the stress ball in his injured hand, grunting as the muscles flex and pain ignites. It’s different, duller and healing, but still uncomfortable. Hayden had kidnapped him for the day. While he relishes in not being under his mother’s hawkish supervision, he realizes Jackie, Hayden’s wife, is just as diligent of a caretaker, even setting a timer when they’d sit down to watch the Raiders game to monitor his screen time.
Ilya skates with a recaptured dynamism, all speed and precision. Shane doesn’t envy the Flyers center who Ilya is chasing down. Ilya anticipates his return panicked pass, smashes the defensemen into the boards and flees with the puck, shooting down the ice towards the opposing goal. With a delicious display of puck-handling and trickery, he juggles and shoots the puck past their enormous goalie into the upper right corner of the goal. GOAL! His first since his dad’s passing.
Shane, momentarily forgetting where he is, cheers. “Heck yes!”
Hayden glares him. “Just how concussed are you? We hate them.”
Shane covers quickly. “Marleau…uh…got checked on that play.”
“Oh...” Hayden’s hackles drop. “That’s good. I hope there was blood.”
On screen, Ilya finds a camera and looks directly at it and winks, patting his gloved hand to his chest, where his mother’s necklace resides. Shane grins, not caring if Hayden notices, because Ilya is finding his joy again, and, he’s certain, that goal was just for him.