Chapter Text
It starts, like so many things in their lives do, with hockey. Or, more accurately, with a big hockey headline.
Montreal Metros: Shane Hollander set to miss the next two games over illness.
Ilya frowns down at his phone, chewing the inside of his cheek. He can’t remember the last time Hollander missed a game over some sickness.
(He once confessed, years ago, to playing with a fever and a stomach flu, puking his guts out in between periods. Ilya’d been torn between the utmost respect —no one loves the game more than Hollander, and he apparently loves the game more than he does his own health— and anger —at Hollander, mostly, for being so stupidly reckless but at his coaches too for allowing it. Of course, he’d told him about neither feeling.
He’d said, “I would’ve thrown up too if I’d played that way against fucking Florida.”
“We won!” Shane had complained.
“Barely. You should’ve destroyed them.”
He hadn’t said, you shouldn’t have played sick, you idiot.)
Ilya hums, looking at the headline again. Whatever Hollander caught must be bad if they are benching him. If he’s letting them bench him.
The last time they’d met, a month and a half ago, he hadn’t been sick. At least, Ilya doesn’t think so. He’d been… off, maybe. Too hungry, at first, even more than usual. He’d always been a bit desperate, hungry for Ilya’s cock like a good little slut, but even by Hollander standards that day had been different. Messier. The kind of heat behind his kisses that only ignites when one wants to forget something else. Of course, Boston had just beaten Montreal that night and perhaps Hollander just wanted to take his mind off of it. Ilya was more than happy to comply.
After, though, Hollander had been quiet. Distant. Not a cold silence, the way he got when he wanted Ilya to get a hint and leave his hotel or his house already. This was a particular silence Ilya had quickly come to know as his ‘thinking silence’, like he had retreated deep down inside himself where his brain was quietly ticking away with anxious destructive thoughts, trying to unravel them like a tangled web of painful ‘what ifs’.
“Seriously?” Ilya had finally asked, impatient. “I make you come twice. You still mopping?”
“What?” Hollander had blinked back at him, dazed.
Like he’d forgotten where he was. Ilya had hated it. He wanted Hollander to be present when he was here in his arms, to remember this was Ilya Rozanov’s bed where he got all the pleasure and fun no one else could come close to give. Whatever was troubling Hollander could wait for the world outside.
“You lost, so what? Hollander, c’mon, it’s no big deal. You should be used to it by now.”
“Oh, fuck off!” Shane had laughed, taking the pillow from under his own head to slam it against Ilya’s chest. “It’s not- it’s nothing, alright? I’m just distracted.”
“Then maybe I should capture your attention again,” Ilya had hummed, kissing down Hollander’s stomach until his mouth found his cock.
After that, there’d been no more talking.
In that same bed, now Ilya sighs and throws his head back. Maybe he was already feeling sick back then. Hopefully. It should mean Hollander will be back in full form by the time they play each other in Montreal in a couple of weeks. When he beats him, he wants him to be at his best.
Lily: you finally sick of losing? 😘
Hollander still out for the next game. No word from coaches.
Lily: incredibly, your team is even more boring to watch without you
Montreal vs Bears: Shane Hollander unlikely to play against rival Rozanov while still recovering from illness.
Lily: what? Too sick to write back?
Lily: if this is an excuse to avoid the embarrassment of me beating you it’s a poor one
Lily: how are you still sick anyway?
Lily: don’t worry, you just need some vitamin D 😉 I can give it to you.
Lily: I know you like chocking on it
Ilya is in a mood by the time he lands in Montreal. Three weeks of radio silence from Hollander is getting on his nerves. It’s stupid because they’ve gone much longer periods without speaking, mostly just texting when their schedules finally align, and even at the beginning Hollander didn’t always acknowledge his text, let alone sext him back… but back then at least he could still see the man play on tv, or give his post game interviews. Right now, with Hollander completely gone from the public eye for some reason, he feels like he’s going insane, looking for someone who doesn’t even exist. This is a whole new level of ghosting.
The worst part isn’t even the absence but the wrongness of it all. It sits deep in his gut like a stone. Shane Hollander is nothing if not dependable, comfortably boring in how predictable he is. Him taking two weeks out, missing nearly five games, including three home ones he hasn’t even shown up for, is too wildly out of character for him. If Ilya knows him, and he likes to believe he does, he must be fighting his coaches like hell to be let back on the ice.
Whatever is happening feels off, and Ilya intends to figure out why.
Lily: I hope you’re watching the game tonight, wouldn’t want you to miss how we destroy your team
Still no answer.
Ilya is tempted to ask if he did something wrong, if the silence is Hollander’s way to punish him beyond his absence in the ice, but he holds back. He’s probably just pissy. A Shane Hollander that hasn’t been allowed in the ice for this long must be a fucking nightmare.
He steps on the ice, prepares for the first face off. And then Hayden Pike joins him at center ice. Of course, he’s alternate captain, it makes sense. It still annoys Ilya.
They bend down, ready for the puck to drop.
“What? Hollander too scared to face me?” Ilya chirps, because if he goes another minute without at least mentioning the man that has been consuming his every thought for two weeks he might go insane. He needs someone else to acknowledge his existence, his absence, to fucking tell him what’s going on so he can finally get it off his mind. It’s just a stupid mystery. That’s why it bugs him.
And then Hayden Pike looks up. Dark bruised circles under his eyes, face pale like a sheet, eyes red rimmed and puffy like he has been crying all day. The face of a man mourning.
Ilya feels like the ice might crack under him. Something’s wrong with Shane.
“Not tonight, Rozanov.”
Before he can ask what that fucking means, what’s going on, what the hell is happening, the puck drops. Pike wins the face off.
By the third period, the wrongness has sipped into everything. The Metros have never quite been at Hollander’s level, without him they are an average team, still good but nothing to write home about. Tonight, they are a mess, disorganized, distracted, hypereactive. Meanwhile, he’d be lying if he said he’s giving a good game. He tries to rally his team, to keep his head in the game, to give it his all but without Hollander here to challenge him it feels pointless. His heart isn’t in it.
Something’s wrong, his head insists. Something has happened. Something is off.
It’s a bad feeling, deep in his gut, one he last felt when he was twelve.
When he can’t take it anymore, he forces an offside just to meet Pike back in center ice for the face-off. What is happening? He wants to ask. Where is Hollander? Why isn’t he here? Why won’t he reply to my messages? Is he okay? Just tell me he is okay, dammit.
That won’t take him anywhere. There’s only one way he knows how to push:
“You think Hollander is disappointed? Watching you lose tonight?”
Pike doesn’t reply. Pike always replies, always bites back when he baits him. The silence throws Ilya off, he loses a second face-off to Hayden fucking Pike and he knows Hollander will never let him live it down.
He tries to fix it, but it’s suddenly like Pike has been possessed. He speeds across the court, shakes off Marleau with a shove, without stopping, and gives an assist to a very confused Comeau who looks unprepared for it but miraculously shoots just in time to score before anyone’s had time to react in the rink.
Hayden doesn’t join his team’s celly. Ilya skates by him, keeping his shoulders carefully relaxed despite the growing unease in his chest. He needs to push more. He needs an answer. Any answer. Time to change strategies.
“Okay, I was wrong,” he forces a grin. “Maybe you don’t need Hollander after all, yes?”
It’s barely a chirp. Hell, it’s almost a compliment. He half expects for Pike to boast, to fire back with the heat of the goal, to let his guard down and give Ilya a morsel of information without meaning to. What he doesn’t expect is for Pike to drop his gloves.
A fist crosses his jaw, another hand grips his jersey. Past the daze of the pain, Ilya has time to think what the fuck before his body reacts on its own, fighting back. He gets half a punch in before they are being pulled apart by the referees. Pike looks like he’s crying.
Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is definitely wrong.
They both get put in the penalty box. Ilya’s ears are ringing. He turns to Pike, to see if he can gauge anything else, if he will start screaming and yelling at him, if there might be information in his anger. Hayden is doubled over, head nearly between his knees, hands laced over the back of his head, legs bouncing anxiously.
Fuck.
Boston wins. 2-1. It’s a bad game for both teams. If Hollander is watching, he probably hated it.
Ilya tries and fails not to rush to his locker. His team celebrates around him. He grins, pats backs, pretends his heart isn’t hammering against his ribs as he reaches for his phone. He walks out of the dressing room, where he can write to Hollander without prying eyes. He usually wouldn’t bother but he’s feeling on edge. He can’t do this around the boys.
Behind him, the Bears laughter and celebration is just slightly muffled. Across the hallway, the Montreal dressing room is far more quiet, filled with hushed voices, angry and disappointed. He would usually relish it. But there’s a voice missing tonight. The only one he wanted to beat out there.
A noise to his left startles him. He catches the back door closing behind the unmistakeable silhouette of Hayden Pike leaving the arena alone.
He expects a text. There should be a text. Something bitchy about not getting too cocky. Something properly angry over the fight with Pike. A time and place to meet. Something. Anything.
Dammit.
“Hey, Rozi!” Cliff Marleau claps him by the shoulder, joining him in the hallway. “Ready to party?”
“Got plans. Maybe I catch you later,” Ilya makes sure to grin, to make it fun, to make it clear he’s about to go celebrate too.
Cliff laughs. “Say hi to your Montreal chick from me.”
“Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Marly.”
“Sure,” Cliff rolls his eyes and lets him be.
Ilya frowns back down at his phone.
Lily: what? No answer?
Lily: I can still come over.
Lily: Russians don’t get sick.
Lily: if you say nothing, I take your silence as an invitation
He expects that last one to at least get him a reply. If Hollander truly doesn’t want to see him, now is the time to let him know.
This is a terrible idea.
The taxi leaves him two blocks away from Hollander’s building. Just as he approaches, he catches sight of red and blue lights by the front of the building. A grim reminder of exactly why this is a terrible idea.
They don’t do this. They don’t show up unannounced. Uninvited. Probably unwanted. They don’t drive all the way to the other because they have some stupid probably baseless gut feeling that something might be wrong.
(Except Hollander did, once, during the Olympics. And Ilya, scared out of his mind by how much he wanted him to, had closed that door on his face. Maybe tonight was his turn to have Hollander push him away, remind him they are nothing. That they don’t do this).
Ilya pulls out his key to the back entrance of Hollander’s building. He’d received it almost a year and a half ago, after Hollander got all worked up because Ilya had been standing on the street almost fifteen minutes waiting for him to open it after a game.
“It’s not my fault you’re so slow coming down the stairs,” Ilya had complained.
“What if someone had seen you?” He’d snapped back.
“There’s a snow storm coming. It’s fucking cold outside. Only idiots would be walking the streets at night. No one saw me. Fucking relax, Hollander!”
Finally, the golden boy had gotten a funny look on his face and stopped arguing. Ilya’s thought that was the end of it. But then he’d gotten a keychain with two keys before leaving for his hotel. And an extra hoodie.
They did not do this.
“Just come in the next time and don’t be so fucking obvious,” Hollander had rolled his eyes.
As Ilya reaches Hollander’s floor, he pauses and leans his forehead against the stairwell door. He breathes slowly and takes in his last moment of not knowing before he has to face the thought that’s been biting at his heels since he saw Hayden Pike’s wrecked face in the ice tonight. A single terrifying word: terminal.
He learnt it three years ago, after googling his father’s symptoms. An ugly, definitive, inescapable word, that’s been haunting his thoughts tonight.
But it can’t be. Because Shane Hollander is a world class athlete, so fucking obsessed with his health and his performance, so soft spoken and sweet and polite and caring. So he has to be okay, he has to be safe. Ilya closes his eyes, counts three seconds in, four seconds out, and steps into the hallway.
His stomach drops.
There’s yellow police tape across Hollander’s door, which probably does little to keep anyone out of it since the lock is quite obviously busted. Ilya approaches the half shattered piece of wood like it’s a wild animal that could bite him or run away any second.
Something deep in his brain, either the result of watching too many movies or something his brother and father have said, reminds him not to use his hand to push the door open. He pushes carefully with his elbow and steps over the yellow tape without disturbing it.
Inside, at first, the apartment looks normal. But Ilya has been here too many times, and has committed every single one of them to memory, dissected every corner of this place in his lonely nights, remembering Shane’s naked trembling body against nearly every surface of it.
The couch looks disturbed, like someone just took a nap on it. One of the cushions is still pressed by the weight of a head that no longer rests on it, a knitted blanket bunched on the opposite armrest. Then, the coffee table is pushed way too far from the couch, like someone shoved it aside in a rush. Ilya’s heart speeds up as his eyes notice the framed photographs and paintings on the walls, all slightly tilted to odd sides. He’s watched Shane straighten them without his lips ever leaving Ilya’s, like it’s second nature. He’d found it equally endearing and infuriating. No one has straightened these frames.
Ilya’s eyes follow the trail of disruption up the stairs. Stairs he has climbed kissing Hollander, distracted by his body’s heat. They feel cold and impersonal now as he climbs to the room level.
“Hollander?” He calls. He doesn’t expect an answer. He doesn’t get one. “Shane.”
There’s further disruption in the bedroom. The carpet Hollander has on his side of the bed so that his feet don’t land on the cold floor first thing in the morning is wrinkled. There’s a phone charger still connected to the wall behind the night table. No phone. A damming yellow cone, not bigger than a beer can, sits by the corner. Ilya bends closer, realizes why it’s marking: evidence. Blood on the table’s corner. Another cone on the floor points to a collection of droplets that once must have been bright red, before turning and ugly dry brown.
Blood.
Ilya feels his own drain off his face. The world spins around him and he has to fight the urge to sit down. He can’t risk ruining the room. The crime scene.
Fuck.
Breathing becomes hard. He stumbles sideways until his shoulder is pressed to the wall.
Breathe. Breathe, dammit. You can’t be weak. Not right now. Not until you know-
He needs answers. One name comes to mind. Someone knows. He knows.
Ilya doesn’t have Hayden Pike’s phone number but Shane- fuck. Hollander writes everything down. Everything but Ilya. In his bedside table’s drawer there’s a phone book. And there, on neat and careful handwriting that makes Ilya’s heart twist, a phone number.
His trembling fingers fuck up twice until he gets it right.
It rings once.
“Hello?” The voice on the other side cracks, anxious and eager.
“Pike?”
“Rozanov?”
“Yes.”
The call goes dead.
Fuck. Fucking Pike. But his voice, the anxiousness, it confirms that he knows something. He must. He has to. Ilya takes a picture of his address and carefully puts the notebook back where it was. He focuses on action, movement, purpose. Like he’s in the ice chasing the puck. Like a shark. So long as he doesn’t stop moving, he will survive.
He knocks. Insistently. Hard. Until the door swings open.
Pike is annoyed even before he registers it’s him.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” He yells, taking a step forward, blocking the entrance “What the fuck do you want, Rozanov?!”
He looks even worse than he did on the rink. He’s been crying again.
“Actually,” he jumps before Ilya can even reply, “better question: how the fuck do you know where I live? How did you get here? Why did you- why are you here? If this is some kind of sick victory lap I really, truly, honestly, couldn’t fucking care less.”
The man is on the edge of breaking and Ilya hasn’t even said a word. He would make some cutting remark about it, tell him to pull himself together, if he didn’t feel close to unraveling himself. It takes all of his self control to remain somewhat composed as he says:
“Hollander. What happened to him?”
Pike’s face twists, like it did in the ice. He steps forward and grab him by the jacket.
“What the fuck do you want? What do you fucking know?”
Ilya’s first instinct is to fight back. Instead, he raises his hands.
“I don’t know! That’s why I am asking you, Pike! This is how it works, yes? I ask because I don’t have the fucking answers.”
Pike narrows his eyes at him, jaw tense, before he lets go.
“Why should I- What do you even care?”
“Something has happened and no one is saying it. Tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because I fucking care, Pike! Because I’m here at fucking one in the morning asking because I obviously care. Is that so hard to believe?!”
“Yes!” Pike snaps. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. Why should I believe you care about Shane? You hate him.”
“Fucking think for once in your life, Pike. If I don’t care, then why am I fucking here?”
“Hell if I know! To gloat?!”
“Gloat about what?!” Ilya promised himself he would not yell, that he would keep his cool so that Pike would trust him, but the man is infuriating beyond a saint’s patience. “I don’t even know what happened! Just fucking tell me, or tell me how I can talk to him and I will ask him myself!”
Pike’s mouth twists, but it looks less like anger and more like pain. Like Ilya just punched him.
“Is he-“
“I don’t know!” Pike runs his hands over his hair and walks inside the house. He doesn’t slam the door shut, which Ilya takes as an invitation (as he tries not to think too hard of the implications of that admission). “No one- wait. You haven’t explained. Why do you care?”
Ilya closes the door behind himself and takes a deep breath. Half truths. He can do this.
“Pike, I have known Hollander since we were both seventeen, yes? We were drafted at the same time, spent our whole careers facing each other, have played at the same all-stars, attended the same events… is it really that hard to believe we are friends? That I care about him?”
“Friends?” Pike sneers. “You hate him.”
“I don’t.”
The truth. Simple. Complicated.
“Pike, listen to me, I am here, yes? I am here at your house, when I know that you do hate me, and I am asking. Why else would I be asking? I just- please.”
And it’s that word, more than any other, that finally seems to get through. Hayden Pike swears loudly, pacing still by his house’s entrance, runs his fingers through his sandy blond hair like he wants to pull it out and take a good portion of his idiotic brain with it. Finally, he turns to Ilya and says gravely:
“Shane is missing.”
“Missing?” Ilya repeats. The word feels wrong. It’s the wrong word for sure. He is no expert in English, even after five years speaking it, but he knows this word can’t be right.
Missing is for socks stuck in the dryer, for children lost in the supermarket, for puppies that escaped their backyard, for passports that slipped behind a couch when you were packing. Not for people. Not for Canada’s golden boy. Not for the best hockey player in the league. Not for nice polite men who laugh when Ilya teases them behind closed doors. Not for Shane Hollander.
“What do you mean missing?”
“Taken. Someone took him.”
As if it was that easy. As if someone could just reach between Ilya’s ribs and take his still beating heart away.
“What?”
“Someone took Shane. No one knows where he is, or if he’s-“
And that’s as far as Ilya gets before he forgets how to breathe.