Chapter Text
Ilya was determined to sleep in his own solitary bed. He was so determined that, as he sat on the edge of the mattress, he’d taken out a single pill to ensure he did, in fact, sleep.
But those numbers had become a compulsion. Seeing them drop, even by one, without a guarantee of righting them back up was too much for Ilya right now. So he lay back against the pillow for a long time, thinking instead about the weight of Shane—heavy and grounding in his lap.
He tapped his fingers absently against his stomach as he layed there, feeling a knot of something beneath his own touch, beneath his skin. He craved him so severely that he couldn’t quite fool himself anymore.
In the end, he crept through the dark and right back into Shane’s welcome touch, letting the guitar music from the wall over sink into his skin.
It was a repeat of the same routine for the next four nights before he gave up all pretence. He simply followed Shane right into his room after they had both brushed their teeth in companionable silence, their eyes constantly drifting back to one another in the wide mirror.
Across those four days, Ilya tried hard to act naturally around the apartment. He knew he was jumpy every time Mr Hollander’s strong voice carried through the room, or each time Mrs Hollander called his name. He watched Shane’s easy shoulders and tried to force his own down, trying to shake the stiff defensive clench loose from his fists.
When he’d sat at the dining table on that fifth night, next to Shane—Mrs Hollander finishing up on her laptop across from them—Mr Hollander had set down a large tray of small pillowy baked buns, and a stewpot just to the right. Ilya blinked.
“We’re trying something new today,” Mr. Hollander said to the table at large, settling in across from Ilya.
Shutting her laptop, Mrs Hollander looked over the table, touching a hand to her husband's back. “Smells delicious, honey.”
Shane leaned closer, curious. “What is it?”
“Thought I’d try out some Russian recipes I’ve always been eyeing,” Mr Hollander said casually, reaching across the table as he started to pour each of them a bowl of soup. “Remind me of the name, Ilya?”
Ilya startled out of his trance, clearing his throat aggressively. “P—Pirozhki?”
“Pirozhki,” Mr Hollander agreed, placing three small buns on Shane’s plate. “There’s minced meat, potatoes, and chicken. Give all three a go, Shane.”
Shane nodded, still mostly distracted by the texture of the soup. “Thanks, dad.”
“And cabbage soup,” Mr Hollander tapped on his bowl. “I hear it's very popular in Russia for warming you up on a winter day like this.”
Pirozhki and Shchi. Mr Hollander had made him Russian comfort food. Ilya looked up at the man, but he was already talking about something—an accident on the highway, a bad one—with Mrs Hollander. He looked at Shane instead, searching for some reaction, any reaction that reflected the way Ilya’s heart was trying to squeeze its way up his throat.
Shane was only biting into his food hesitantly, and then more intently, allowing his tastebuds to explore. Entirely unphased.
Why would he do that?
The question pulsed behind Ilya’s eyes, entirely disorienting. Yet there was no edge to Mr Hollander’s face, no trap waiting to be shown.
Ilya started to eat. And though the food still tasted dull on his tongue, he found himself finishing two whole pirozhki and almost his entire bowl of Shchi, simply because Mr Hollander had gone out of his way to make it. When he sat back, his stomach turning with how much he’d eaten, Mr Hollander spoke again.
“So, what do we think? ‘Yes dad, make it again.’ Or ‘No, thank you, let's try something different next time.’”
Shane snorted and said, "It was okay, I only liked the one with the chicken.”
Ilya held his breath at the honest review, only then Mr Hollander smiled, reaching to take the half-eaten buns off Shane’s plate and replacing them with more chicken, incase he wanted more.
“But the soup was nice. Again, please,” Shane continued.
“Ilya?”
“It was really great. Thank you, Mr Hollander. Really.”
Mrs Hollander laughed brightly, getting up to stack a few empty dishes and lifting them toward the kitchen. “I say you’re good to make it again, darling. The soup was especially wonderful.”
Ilya nodded again, standing too quickly and getting to work on bringing the rest of the dishes to the kitchen sink.
“Ilya,” Mrs Hollander said, taking some off his hands, stacking them neatly down. “I booked Shane in with one of the trainers at the rink tomorrow. Want me to book you in for your own one-on-one?”
Ilya felt his shoulders stiffen all the way back up. He hadn’t really thought about hockey in a few days, and having Shane’s mom—who was arguably almost just as serious about her son’s hockey as his own father—bring it up made him feel slightly cornered.
“No, ma’am,” he tried. “If that’s okay.”
But of course, Shane’s mom was entirely free of rot, unlike his father. She only set a free hand on Ilya’s elbow, offering a kind, “Of course that’s okay. You just let me know when you’re ready to train. We want you two to keep your strength straight and your skills sharp, even through the break.”
It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear, but he nodded, hoping she would drop it altogether. After a useless moment of just standing there, Ilya turned back, looking for more dishes, but Shane was already finishing wiping the table down.
They bounded over to Shane’s room early then. Ilya tried not to watch as Shane worked through four sets of push-ups on the carpet, moving into sit-ups right after, squinting his eyes shut when Shane's shirt rose against his lower abdomen. Searching the room for a distraction, Ilya reached quickly, mindlessly, for the guitar.
He tried a lazy note, not really knowing how any of it worked, twisting the gears and reckoning that changed something.
Shane glanced up. “There’s a Guitar for Dummies on my bookshelf,” he grunted between sit-ups.
“Did you just call me a dummy?” He said, and Shane groaned.
He almost set the guitar back in its spot, just to spite him some more, but found himself actually searching the bookshelf instead, purely for something to do. Looking through the book there, Ilya scoffed. It was filled with clichés, songs popular enough to reach Moscow, but he tried to pick something easy and repetitive.
Trying to make sense of the chords and translating it into practice took him a while. He kept trying a note, then trying it again slightly different until he got it, and then he would move onto the next. Again and again, until he had the first ten seconds of the song down.
It was gruelling, and yet he couldn’t stop. The sharp sting of the strings digging into his fingertips gave him something physical to anchor onto. Unlike the endless loops of his own head, the guitar followed strict rules. The more he learned, he understood that if he placed his finger precisely here, it produced exactly this sound. It was predictable. It was a closed system.
The task transformed things enough that the suffocating weight of the pressure, the ice, and his father’s voice finally receded into a dull static as he forgot himself.
After a while, he looked up, only to find Shane dozing right on the floor. He wasn’t kidding.
Settling the guitar back against the wall, he crawled over to him, leaning in close enough to whisper.
“Hollander.”
Shane sighed, clearly just on the cusp of sleep. “Yeah.”
“Hollander, get up,” Ilya said, pinching his cheeks together with a hand.
“Are you coming to the rink tomorrow?” he mumbled blearily through his pinched lips, his eyes dragging heavily to Ilya’s.
“Not this time.” Ilya let go.
Shane blinked up at him for a moment, a shadow moving over his face, then he moved to sit up, slowly rising and heading to brush his teeth. Ilya followed him through the whole routine until they were safely in bed. The girl next door was clearly ready to sleep too, the guitar music starting up through the wall. Shane was already halfway gone, but Ilya just needed to feel him, to be able to sink himself. He twisted over, hooking his chin over Shane’s shoulder.
Shane was gone when Ilya woke back up. It was past 11:00, and Ilya had slept beyond the point of feeling energised; his body now dragged with sleep-fatigue.
He lay in the room for a few minutes, staring at the pale yellow walls, but the buzzing inside his own head quickly grew too loud without Shane here. He got up and stepped out into the hallway, expecting the usual domestic hum, but the apartment was entirely empty.
Shane was at the rink. Mrs Hollander was probably at work. Mr Hollander too, though he sometimes worked from home. Ilya listened out, making sure.
For the first time since arriving in Ottawa, Ilya was completely alone in the apartment. He walked into the living room, his bare feet making no sound on the hardwood. The morning sun cut through the large windows, warming the fabric of the sofa, as Ilya dragged a hand across it on his way.
He didn’t snoop, but he found himself wandering. His eyes caught that cluster of framed photographs—the ones he’d spotted that first night—resting on a sideboard near the hallway, and scattered across the wall above it too. He stepped closer, his chest tightening as he studied them.
very few of them were posed. In one, Shane was about ten years old, drowning in oversized hockey gear, laughing so hard despite his two missing front teeth. In another, Shane's mom was fast asleep, her head slumping heavily onto her husband's shoulder in a crowded airport terminal. There was another where the three of them were completely covered in dirt after a camping trip, their faces split on a near-maniacal grin.
He paused over one, on the far corner of the wall. Shane, with a broken arm, showing off his bright-red cast like it was something he was utterly, childishly proud of. Ilya shut his eyes tight, his throat dry, and tried to suppress the memories of his own broken arm at thirteen—the consequences he’d had to face for it.
But these pictures... these were flaws. They were messy, imperfect, and completely unpolished. And yet, the Hollanders had voluntarily framed them. They kept physical evidence of their umasked joy, displayed openly on a wall, as if happiness was something you were allowed to feel even in hardship or discomfort.
He touched the edge of the frame with Shane's crooked smile, his finger leaving a small smudge on the glass. He felt like an intruder looking at a language he couldn't read, a burning pang of envy mixing with a deep ache in his gut.
He stepped back, unable to look at them anymore.
Turning, he ran into Mr Hollander just coming through the front door from the stairwell.
“Ilya, good morning. Looks like you had a good sleep,” he chuckled, eyes tracking his wild hair. Ilya quickly smoothed his hand over the sides, his defensive posture instantly snapping back into place.
“Good morning.”
“I’m headed back out to the garage to do some work, in case you want to give me some company. Could use an extra pair of hands.”
Ilya nodded quickly, grasping at the task to stop his brain from spinning. “Of course.”
“Great,” Mr Hollander boomed. "Grab your coat and meet me down there."
Ilya nodded absently. He moved quickly and grabbed his coat, walking down, still in his black and grey pyjama trousers. When he turned into the garage, Mr Hollander was already kneeled under the side of his wife’s car.
The garage didn't smell like the rest of the apartment. It smelled of engine oil, cold concrete, and metallic dust. It was a space where things could be taken apart and put back together, and as Ilya stepped onto the oil-stained floor, he felt a strange pull.
Ilya shuffled closer, careful not to impose his presence. Mr Hollander noticed him and glanced up from the floor.
“Ilya, hey. Grab me that wrench over there. The smaller one.”
Ilya passed it over quickly. He couldn’t help leaning over, his natural curiosity taking over. MrHollander was struggling, fiddling blindly with a rusted bolt near the front wheel. “Can I help?”
Mr Hollander grunted, his back creaking as he shifted weight. “Yuna’s been saying the engine pops after a while of driving it. She’s already looking to buy a new car, but" he said, patting the car on its side like an old friend. “there’s still some life in her yet…”
Ilya didn't hesitate. He dropped straight down to the cold ground, sliding himself under the edge for a better look. He reached out an assessing hand, his fingers tracing the cold metal line, feeling for the mechanical layout.
“I don't think is the engine. Something is frozen in the…” he tried to explain, failing. “I think it gets blocked when the car stays here overnight, and then pops when…” he mimed, forgetting the words fluid and pressure.
Mr Hollander raised his brows, adjusting his position and grabbing a small hand-torch to see what Ilya was pointing at. “Huh. Son, I think you’re right.”
Each time Mr Hollander called him ‘son’ like that, Ilya couldn’t help feel himself retreat into something quieter, something small and profoundly unsure. He shook the feeling free, frantically.
Over the next hour and a half, the garage became a quiet rhythm of working hands. Ilya found himself taking the lead on the tight intricate bits that Mr Hollander’s larger hands couldn't easily reach. Every few minutes, Ilya would catch himself glancing over at the older man, his shoulders bracing for the inevitable criticism, the sharp bark of correction.
But it never came. Instead, when the line finally cleared with a satisfying click, Mr Hollander let out a booming laugh and clapped Ilya firmly on the shoulder.
“Brilliant, Ilya. You’ve got a real knack for this.”
The praise made Ilya instantly weary, though he smiled. He wiped his hands nervously against his trousers, mumbling a tight, "It was nothing."
He jumped at the sudden heavy groan of the garage door lifting.
“Papa?”
“In here, Shane.”
Ilya popped up from behind the car, coming into Shane’s view. He grabbed a rag, wetting it under the stinging cold stream of the utility sink in the corner. Shane walked in, his cheeks flushed bright red from the cold air outside, his hockey bag slung over his shoulder.
He stopped then, his eyes tracking the grease on Ilya's forearms and the way they still gleamed, wet over his fingers. Shane watched him closely, his gaze wide and fixed as Ilya moved the rag over his fingers, getting the black grime off his skin.
“How was your session, mon chou?” His dad asked, checking his watch.
Shane hummed absentmindedly, his eyes never leaving Ilya. Ilya shuffled closer, a small knot of concern tightening in his chest.
Had something gone wrong at the rink? Shane seemed entirely distracted, distant, rather than re-energised from being on the ice. He wondered if the bullying from Montana wasn't just an isolated thing. if it had started here, at his hometown rink.
“Let's go up?” Ilya said quietly, trying to drag Shane’s eyes back to his own.
Shane nodded mutely. He stepped back out into the cold, waiting while Ilya meticulously put every tool back into its exact place, wiping down the counter until it was immaculate. Then they moved quietly back to the certainty of Shane’s bedroom, leaving the door open behind them.
“It went okay?” Ilya asked again, because Shane was twisting around aimlessly in his desk chair now, his eyes darting everywhere but at Ilya.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t it?” Shane said, still spinning the chair on the spot.
Ilya stepped closer, slightly annoyed by the evasion. He stopped the spinning by planting both hands firmly on the armrests, bracketing Shane’s body in, leaning down just a little into his space.
Shane shrunk slightly lower in his seat under the sudden proximity. Unable to handle the intense focus of Ilya’s eyes, he covered his face quickly with both hands.
“Hollander, what—!” Ilya startled out a rough laugh. He grabbed firmly at Shane’s wrists, dragging his hands away from his face. Shane tugged lightly against his hold, his cheeks flushing a furious, deep red.
Furrowing his brows, Ilya realised then that it wasn't anything at the rink. This was something else entirely.
Shane glanced quickly away, staring out at the open door—looking for an escape, maybe. Ilya let go, dropping his hands away instantly, a burning shock of heat hitting him low in his stomach.
“It was good, really,” Shane muttered, rocking the chair side to side nervously now instead. “I’m going again tomorrow. If you... er, if you wanted to come.”
“Ah. No. That’s okay,” Ilya said, his walls clicking right back into place. He shifted his weight back to avoid crowding him, trying to get his own body back to normal.
The corners of Shane’s mouth tipped just slightly down at his refusal though. He shuffled to sit up a little higher in his chair. “Okay,” he said quietly, his voice dropping into a low register. “That’s okay.”
The interaction was giving Ilya whiplash. He walked over to settle himself cross-legged on the edge of the bed, grabbing the guitar purely for a distraction, hoping the unpracticed chords would settle the sudden tension in the room.
Almost reluctantly, he spent a lot of time cringing over that guitar over the next few days, trying to get the finger placement perfect. He had already looked up the song online. He sang the lyrics of the song in his head without really paying them any mind, repeating the first two lines over and over as he practiced the opening.
This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
Each time he played, Shane would settle himself onto the bed with a book—or once, with the manual to the god-damn new toast machine—but within ten minutes, like clockwork, he would end up napping the afternoon away, doing very little actual reading.
But mainly, Ilya loved the sharp focus of it. His hands got to work keeping busy, and his mind welcomed the distraction too easily. The constant, irritating screeching inside his head levelled down to a more tolerable, questioning buzz.
Sometimes at dinner, Mr Hollander casually offered them a new Russian dish, presenting it without any grand gestures.
One night it was Pelmeni, filled with lamb, covered in melted butter and a heavy dollop of sour cream, which Shane absolutely ravished. Another night, it was a slice each of honey-sweet Medovik for dessert, which Shane passed on, not liking the condensed milk. For breakfast one slow morning, Mr Hollander set down a steaming pot of Kasha, and Ilya had leaned in to savour the smell of the buttery porridge, a sudden, vivid memory of his mother hitting him so hard he had to blink it back into place.
The Hollanders never made a big deal out of any of it, acting as though the offering wasn’t completely rearranging Ilya’s entire internal nervous system.
Watching Mr Hollander set the food down reminded him so much of Shane; how Shane had done the exact same thing over the course of the programme, quietly switching out whatever uneaten food he’d left on Ilya’s bedside table for something different, just in case he might like it more.
And the strangest thing was happening: the more Ilya forced Mr Hollander’s cooking down purely out of a desperate gratitude, the more his appetite returned in small, shocking ways. His stomach began groaning in protest if he went too long between meals. More annoyingly, hunger began finding him late at night when the apartment had quieted down and he couldnt do much about it, and by morning, he was actually hungry enough to work through an entire bowl of whatever Shane pushed across the counter.
Mr Hollander sought his help out in the garage again, too. He would throw out a quick, casual, “Thought you could help me out today with the heating system,” or “The tyres could do with an upgrade.” And Ilya would jump at the offer, welcoming the cold concrete and the smell of oil into his daily routine while Shane went off to train.
It wasn’t that he particularly enjoyed the mechanical work itself. It was more about working alongside Shane’s dad, whose steady praises and gentle guidance felt like a strange drug. It felt like something he might actually deserve, and not just if he worked hard enough for it, or if he stayed useful enough. He was good with his hands, for once feeling like he was fixing things instead of breaking them.
The man always seemed to find some new, invented problem for Ilya to work over, some new reason to keep him downstairs, some new thing to praise him for, and the praise would come easily like it didn't take much at all to earn it.
Far into the second week of being in Ottawa, as he and Shane lay on their backs in the dark of Shane's room, letting the faint guitar music wash over them through the wall, Shane asked again.
“Do you want to come to the rink tomorrow?”
And like always, Ilya said, “No, sorry.”
Shane shuffled over, his mattress creaking as he looked at Ilya sleepily in the dark. “You don't have to train, you know. It's an open rink tomorrow. Loads of people will be there, not just for hockey. You could just skate.”
Ilya smiled faintly at the ceiling. It was so sweet, the way Shane’s brain couldn't comprehend someone simply not wanting to be on the ice. He seemed to be desperately searching for reasons why Ilya kept refusing.
“Or,” Shane continued, his voice lowering, turning self-conscious and hesitant. “We don't have to... like... interact, or anything. We can just drive there together, and then I’ll get you when it’s time to go.”
Ilya shifted his head on the pillow, squinting through the gloom, not understanding the shift in tone. “What do you mean?”
“That way you can come skate. If you want, we can just meet back by the car after, when we’re done.” Shane yawned, the heavy rhythm of his breathing indicating the neighbour's music was doing its job too well.
Except Ilya never felt more awake. Anxiety started a low, tight knot in his stomach, though he couldn’t quite pin down why. “Hollander, what are you talking about?”
“I just mean... people won’t have to know you came with me,” Shane said, his tone completely natural, entirely devoid of malice or accusation. His voice was only dipping quickly into the heavy slurs of sleep.
That knot in Ilya's stomach tangled bigger, wrapping tightly around his lungs, growing black over his heart until he couldn't drag in a proper breath. “What?”
“It’s okay if you don't want people to know we’re.." Shane’s eyes were shut now, a small, troubled furrow appearing between his brows as his half-lucid thoughts processed out loud. “Or, it’s okay if you’re not my...”
Ilya shot up onto his elbow, his entire body locking into a terrifying, rigid wire. He twisted to look down over Shane’s face, his heart hammering violently against his ribs. But Shane kept his eyes softly shut, letting the initial warmth of sleep wash over him, unaware of the devastation he had just dropped into the room.
“You’re still kind of my best friend,” he managed as a final, hazy murmur.
Ilya was completely frozen, his arm starting to ache with the brutal force of holding his own weight up. He repeated Shane’s words over and over in his head, trying to make them make sense, trying to reorganise them into something that wouldn't make his chest feel like it was collapsing.
“Hollander,” he whispered, urgently.
He wanted Shane to wake up and take the words back. He wanted him to say them again. He wanted to run away and never look at this family again.
Had Shane believed, ever since Ilya’s stupid, defensive rejection back at the camp, and all the way up until this exact moment, that Ilya didn't want him? Had he just quietly accepted that Ilya would never claim him in the open? Like it was completely natural for someone to refuse friendship with him? Like he didn't deserve it any other way?
He couldn't understand how Shane had come to accept that narrative. Shane, who was surrounded by unconditional love, who had photos of his toothless smile on a wall, thought it was normal to be hidden. To pour into a friendship without expecting friendship back.
Then, the thought returned to him as a secondary thing, like he’d almost forgotten the bigger complication. Ilya almost had to remind himself that he wanted to die.
He sat up sharply on the bed, staring into the dark, empty corners of the room, his eyes wild. Deeper down, the panic was mutating into something entirely unmanageable. He had to face the reality of it now—the ugly truth he had been running from. His death wasn’t harmless anymore. It wasn't the neat, quiet, uncomplicated exit he had planned back in Montana.
Because now... when he died, someone would lose their best friend.
He ripped himself free from the sheets as he rushed blindly into the shared bathroom, shutting the door hard behind him. He turned the shower dial all the way up, stumbling into the stream before it could even warm up.
And that night, as the scalding water ripped at his skin, Ilya finally cried.