Chapter Text
Shane rarely just laid on the couch. He was always doing something. Running. Working out. Practicing. Reading hockey books. Anything to keep his mind focused.
It should have worked, but it didn’t.
Weirdly, Shane wondered if spacing out and watching ESPN would help. If nothing ever helped, maybe it wouldn’t hurt.
The host of whatever show he was watching kept giving a rundown of different sports. Shane was barely even paying attention.
“And now, we switch over to hockey where we have some breaking news that is sure to rock the MLH.”
That got Shane’s attention well enough. He wasn’t aware of anything big or scandalous. Leaning forward, he turned up the volume on his television.
“This afternoon, Ilya Rozanov, center for the Ottawa Centaurs, announced that this upcoming season will be his last. He will be retiring at the end of the season.”
Shane gasped, clutching his chest. His mouth hung open, air barely filling his lungs. There were more words filtering out of the TV, but few were making it past the ringing in his ears.
“…Rozanov’s statement was short and to the point…”
Shane tried the breathing methods a therapist back in Montreal had given him. They’d rarely worked before, and they certainly weren’t now. What the fuck? He couldn’t retire. He was only 34. There was still so much time for him. So much left of his career. What was he doing?
“When asked, Rozanov merely said he was looking forward to a life on the other side of hockey.”
Life on the other side of hockey? But that… That…
That was supposed to be Shane.
A horrible rattling gasp filled his ears. It took a minute for Shane to realize it was him.
Words that hurt to remember flitted back into his brain. Why are you pushing me on this? You know I’m not ready. The door hadn’t even slammed in response. Somehow the quiet, resigned clicking shut hurt worse.
Fuck. Shane needed to talk to someone about this. He thought about calling Hayden, but he never really understood why Shane loved him. He wouldn’t be helpful. It had strained their relationship before Shane had been traded. Even when they talk, which wasn’t often, it was hard to avoid all the conversational landmines.
No one on his team in Vancouver even knew he was gay. It had been a calculated choice after things had fallen apart so spectacularly in Montreal.
There was one person Shane needed to talk about this with. It was the one person he couldn’t call.
His mom answered on the first ring. He hated how shocked she sounded that he’d called. “Hi, honey. Are you okay?”
“Did you see the news?”
If his mom was put off by his bluntness, she didn’t show it. “What news? Is this hockey related?”
“Isn’t everything we talk about?” It was an unfortunate truth. After it all went down, Shane watched his parents struggle not to bring it up, not to bring him up. He’d basically been a part of their family, their second son. They’d all been preparing for a future as a family. So afterward, Shane didn’t know how to talk about anything with his parents that wasn’t directly related to hockey.
There was a noise on the other end of the line. His mom was typing something on her phone, looking it up, surely.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. Clearly she found it. “Why is he retiring?”
That was the question that kept rattling around relentlessly in Shane’s head. Why?
“I don’t know.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“What the fuck do you think, Mom?”
“Whoa. Hey.”
Shane hung his head in shame. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I…” He trailed off, trying to talk around the lump in his throat. “I’m kinda panicking.”
A small noise of understanding filtered through the phone. “Sweetheart, should we maybe talk about it? You know… everything. We never have.”
Just the thought of it made Shane’s chest tighten even more. “I can’t.”
A long pause followed. “Why?”
Tears welled in Shane’s eyes. She knew. Didn’t she? There was no way she couldn’t know. It had been five fucking years. Surely she knew. They still lived in the same town. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d secretly claimed him in the separation. He was always easier to love and accept. Clearly.
If Shane had been easier to love and accept, they’d still be together.
“You never talked about it,” his mother said, jumping on his long silence. “You said he left and it was over and you never told us why.”
“Mom.”
“Maybe it will help. I know there’s no way you told the therapist the team ordered you to see in Montreal,” she continued. “Maybe you need to tell me.”
Shane shook his head. Tears fell silently down his cheeks. “Tell you what?” he asked miserably. “That I fucked up and it’s ruined every bit of my life. That I’ve spent the last five years miserable and it’s all my own fault?”
“Shane—”
“What’s the point in dredging it all up?”
His mom sighed. He could picture the conflicted, exhausted look on her face. The same one she’d worn every time he’d seen them in the last 5 years. It was why he didn’t go home much anymore. “Because it’s coming up anyway.”
Looking up at the TV, Shane saw Ilya Rozanov holding the Cup above his head at age 23. And then the picture changed and it was nearly the same, but it was Ilya at 31, once again victorious. His heart broke just seeing his face. Shane had messed up everything. It was why he needed all his distractions. Staring up at Ilya’s face, at the person he used to know better than anyone, it made Shane want to tear everything down: the MLH, hockey, his own life. He wanted to move heaven and earth to fix things. But there was no way Ilya would ever even hear him out.
“The plan was to retire together,” Shane finally said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “That we’d be together for real once we retired.”
“And?”
“And I couldn’t think of another way to do it. But he needed more. And I couldn’t give it to him. So he left,” he said, choking on the last word. Shane swallowed past the lump in his throat, tears burning in his eyes. “Now he’s retiring and I can’t stop thinking of the fucking plan. I can’t stop thinking that his next part should include me, but it can’t because I ruined the best thing in my life, and now he gets to live out the rest of his life and I’m just here feeling like I’m dying.”
Tears streamed down Shane’s cheeks as heaving sobs wracked his body. He could hear his mother’s helpless words on the line, but he couldn’t do anything to respond. Everything was falling apart. Everything was wrong. Shane felt like he was crying five years worth of tears he’d shoved down and repressed.
Whether he liked it or not, he was feeling everything he’d tried to avoid.
His mother stayed on the phone with him all evening. She didn’t pry, though Shane could tell she wanted to know every detail to every question she’d politely held back in the last five years. Only once Shane was exhausted enough to fall asleep without thinking of Ilya did he let his mom hang up.
He’d missed her. And maybe a part of him didn’t realize how much he’d missed her until he was talking to her again. With the shame of how he’d blown up everything in his life, he didn’t know how to face his parents. Or Hayden. Or Rose. Losing Ilya had been hard enough —the hardest thing he’d ever been through— but watching his performance on the ice fall apart without any successful efforts to fix it… well, that had been the last straw. Shane had almost quit then.
He hadn’t even been surprised when it was announced that he was traded to Vancouver.
No one knew what to do with him. He’d been captain, fresh off his third Cup win, when all the sudden before the All-Star break even happened, he couldn’t shoot a puck for shit. The only person who knew anything was going on in Shane’s personal life was Hayden. And Shane wouldn’t talk to Hayden about anything that had happened. He’d given him a brief statement when Hayden had to drag him out of his house because Shane had missed two practices and Theriault was furious.
It had been poetic, in a tragic sort of way. By being frozen in his fear to risk his hockey career and give Ilya what he needed, Shane lost Ilya and then, nearly directly after, lost his ability to play good hockey.
As he laid in bed that night, trying to get comfortable, the inevitable happened: Shane thought of Ilya, remembered the phantom feeling of his arm slung across Shane’s hips. Sometimes, it would happen in a dream. He would wake up and he’d swear he could still feel Ilya’s touch on his skin. The first night after moving to Vancouver, Shane had had a dream so vivid, that he woke up and was confused where he was, thinking he was supposed to be at his home in Montreal with Ilya next to him. Getting back to sleep hadn’t happened. Shane had tried to work off the empty feeling that had lingered with bag skates, running, and meditation, but nothing had really worked. For the first week, he’d felt, emotionally, like his sock had slipped off his foot and was under his heel as he walked a marathon.
Maybe he would feel that way again tomorrow. Emotionally wrong.
A small voice in his head whispered loudly that he should text Ilya. That most friends around the league would probably reach out to see how he was feeling about this huge decision or check in. He wanted to. Desperately. Shane grabbed his phone, scrolling all the way to the bottom of his messages list. It had been so long since they’d texted, but Shane could never, would never delete them. The last one was a punch to the gut.
Shane: On the road!
Ilya: Drive safe. Love you.
Tears flooded Shane’s eyes again as he stared at the simple interaction. It’s what it should have been —simple. It shouldn’t have been the beginning of the end.
But maybe that wasn’t really the beginning of the end. Maybe the beginning of the end had been when Ilya had reached for Shane during the Fabian Salah concert and he’d flinched away from his touch. Maybe the beginning of the end had been when Ilya signed for a shitty team just to be near Shane. Maybe the beginning of the end had been the day at the cottage when Shane had said the words “And someday, when we retire…”
Maybe they were always doomed to fail.
Or maybe, probably, Shane was a coward who should have risked more to be with the person he loved. The person he’d gone from seeing every few weeks to a couple of times a year. The person he’d gone from falling asleep next to, feeling perfectly at home to a stranger on the ice who didn’t even look up at him during a face off, who didn’t even bother chirping at him to get under his skin.
At the end of this season, he wouldn’t even have that.
At the end of this season, Ilya Rozanov would just be some person he used to know. His former rival. His former fellow rookie. His former secret hook up. His former boyfriend. Now, just a stranger.
Shane knew with a deep seeded certainty that haunted him that one title would never change. Ilya would always, always be the love of his life.
Even if Shane could never tell him again.
That night, unsurprisingly, Shane dreamed of Ilya. They were at the cottage, out in the water together. It was nighttime, the stars and moon bright overhead. Ilya had one arm around Shane, the other was extended toward the sky, pointing out the constellations. He told Shane the Russian stories behind each constellation they could see. As he told one story in Russian, Shane couldn’t understand. Ilya moved his arm to gesture as he talked. Shane looked up at the stars, hoping to somehow glean what Ilya was saying. When he focused back on Ilya, he was further away. Shane was floating out into the lake slowly, slowly, slowly.
“Ilya!” he called.
But Ilya couldn’t hear him. He was too far away, still telling his story in Russian.
“Ilya!” he begged. “Save me!”
Ilya was still focused up above, at the dreamy scene laid out in the sky.
Shane cried his name as the water dragged him under, as everything went dark.
When Shane woke up screaming, Ilya’s name was still on his lips.