Chapter Text
This is the anatomy of a secret.
At its core, a seed. A truth. On its own, it's nothing—until it’s withheld. Time sweeps new layers over the core, sheets of refusal and shame and caution and fear stacking against each other, like the calcified growth of stalagmites deep in the earth, trapping a storm of history within.
Yet when it’s disclosed to someone who matters, a secret is power; it’s the stored potential energy of tension wound tighter and tighter until it releases. Light revelations can fuel a simple parlor trick, but the worst of them can do so much more. There are those secrets that are gnarled and painful, unknown to all but the bearer, overgrown from years of neglect, and so fundamental to the self that they are wound deeply into the soul.
The disclosure of such a secret can be so catastrophic, it reminds a person that this is magic, a primordial force so heavy and destructive it will remind someone that they are nothing but an arrangement of cells, something that can be unmade as easily as it was created.
Hold a truth like this, and the universe will hold its breath.
-Archivist Josephine Blackwood, Disclosure: The Definitive Guide, published by Arcane Society Quarterly in 1995
Part I: Equilibrium
Can I tell you a secret?
That’s the polite thing to say, which is probably why Rozanov never bothers with the words. It’s what Shane was raised to say before he shares any secret with anyone—get permission, because neither of you can know for certain what will happen next. No one is sure of the limits when it comes to the magic of unspoken things.
You can try to control it. Before the secret leaves your mouth, you can center yourself and focus, concentrating on where the energy will go—but it doesn’t always work. There is some kind of current, some natural flow of the universe that dictates the result, and it takes over completely when a person doesn’t try to control it, and sometimes it takes over even when they do. The whims of the universe are strange and clumsy on their own, producing an unpredictable cocktail of need and desire and fate that Shane has always feared before any minor revelation. And then there are those people more gifted at control than others, who just seem more in tune with the tide, whose lightest secrets reshape the space around them with all the ease of a slackening rope.
Unfortunately, Rozanov is one of them.
It was one of the things Shane couldn’t stop thinking about after their first night together, when he heard the very first secret that Rozanov ever told him.
Have you been with a guy before? Shane had asked him, hands settled awkwardly at Rozanov’s waist.
A nod. Fingers brushing along the back of Shane’s neck. My coach’s son. Back in Russia.
And as the words had left his lips, Shane’s skin had gone warm all over, the suddenness of it freezing a choked gasp in his throat. He’d frozen as Rozanov had planted a finger on his sternum and dragged it lower, and watched the buttons on his own shirt slide through their buttonholes one by one until the fabric had parted. Shane’s head had hit the wall as Rozanov’s hands had roved over his skin, heat on heat, the sensation impossibly heightened.
Shane had never felt so fucking turned on in his entire life, all his previous hesitation replaced with a heat that seared through him, a fire roaring up his insides to consume all of the oxygen his body could hold. He had sealed their lips together and inhaled Rozanov’s breath like it could smother whatever raged in his chest.
It was more than the heated touch, more than the danger, the burning envy, more than Rozanov’s beauty—it was the way that magic had thrummed all the way through him, down to his fingertips, perfectly controlled. Shane can count on one hand the number of times he’s pulled that off; he’s never been a natural at disclosure. Maybe he’s never had enough secrets, or anyone to tell them to, or maybe his ability to reign over his own body when he plays his sport is so singular that he can’t understand a different restraint that is so much more abstract, so much less grounded than the clean edges of his own frame.
When Rozanov discloses, he does it so easily Shane can hardly see him focusing. Shane finds it arousing and horrifying in equal measure, the sheer skill and competence an impressive feat that made Shane both deeply envious and extremely conscious of what Rozanov could do to him, if he so chose.
It’s never enough to drive Shane away. Instead, he trusts and he trusts, bound to Rozanov by a shared secret, each of them lessening each other’s burden of hiding their relationship. A secret, even a dangerous one like theirs, is significantly less toxic when multiple people shoulder it together.
The real problem is the secret that Shane bears alone.
Shane is aware, so painfully aware of the thought, every time he watches Rozanov sprint past the bench, jaw clenched in concentration, or gazes up at him transfixed, legs wrapped around his waist, or laughs at another one of his deadpan jokes. These are the times he thinks I love you.
Each time, it’s a spark of brightness immediately swallowed by fear, the feeling the way veins of conflicted agony spiral through him like slow-acting poison. He’s heard of toxins like this, the ones with no cure, that take months and months to work through the system, even the smallest exposure making death inevitable. And maybe being in love with Ilya won’t kill him, but losing him might feel indistinguishable from it.
There’s no stopping it. The fumbling attempts with other people made that clear enough. The worst one was when a guy had asked him if he liked sucking dick, and Shane had mumbled his assent, barely able to look at him—and suddenly found himself shoved ten feet away by an invisible force, unable to get any closer.
Even the smallest secrets are suddenly so volatile when he’s with anyone he trusts less than Ilya, someone who never seemed to judge him, someone to whom such confessions felt like a pleasantly lightened burden rather than a painful exercise in vulnerability.
No one really knows how to predict the magical consequences of all secrets accurately, but Shane can attest from experience that it gets more unstable the more ashamed he is, the less he trusts someone, the longer he’s been keeping it to himself, and the more he fears someone’s reaction. That seems more or less consistent with the theory he’s read, although Shane’s sudden need to start keeping secrets in his teen years may have made disclosure particularly difficult for him.
Sometimes he thinks maybe that’s why Rozanov has always been so much better at it. The man so rarely talks about himself, but clearly he has a past. Maybe he has so many secrets that he’s always been able to practice, and by the time Shane met him, had already honed the skill to perfection. Or maybe it’s just another way Shane’s brain doesn’t seem to be on the same wavelength as other people’s, and this is just one of those skills that comes easily to Rozanov that Shane will always struggle with. Like charm, swagger, and seduction.
At least now, he’s resigned to the reality that it’s only Rozanov for him right now. There’s something freeing in that, he thinks—now he doesn’t need to waste time telling himself he’ll put an end to things, that he’ll move on, only to stew in self-pity when he inevitably doesn’t. If it’s not possible, he might as well take what he can get while he can.
Sometimes he can feel the secret inside himself, a writhing, restless thing. It had grown so steadily with his feelings, just another beam in his architecture, but now it aches, it bleeds, it begs for release. And when Rozanov knows, Shane won’t be what he wants anymore, he won’t be easy or uncomplicated. Shane has no idea what would happen if the secret hit Rozanov’s ears, because he’s never been able to control the force of a disclosure that destructive.
And that realization only makes the thing inside him thrash and scream, because he’s running out of time.
In every other aspect of his life, Shane’s decisions are careful and calculated, researched and logical. Except for now, knocking on a nondescript hotel door hours after his game against the Raiders. The wooden sound echoes in his own chest, heart pounding in his ears even now, even after doing this so many times that he can’t even count them all.
There’s so much anticipation that he jitters with it—it’s been two months since he’s touched Rozanov. At a certain point, thoughts of Rozanov had stopped dulling between meetings, instead they existed as a constant buzz that spiked into elation when Shane saw him again. He spent their time apart resigned to it, the way that every moment that his mind had time to wander inevitably drifted to him.
To the addicting way he whispered into Shane’s ear, to the way he laughed, warm and disbelieving. He thinks about his nails scratching down Rozanov’s back, and Rozanov turning to look at the marks in the mirror afterwards, something unreadable in his eyes. He imagines that mouth, the perfect shape of Rozanov’s lips, the way the corner lifts into a smirk that sets his heart pounding.
The door swings open, and Shane is immediately being pulled inside, Rozanov’s fingers twisted into his shirt.
Their mouths are pressed together, and they’re locked into a heated kiss. Shane’s hands can’t decide where to be, gripping Rozanov’s shoulders and waist, fingers raking through his curls and wrapping around the nape of his neck. He feels the dimensions, the shape of him, the space he takes up against Shane that has been so achingly empty for months. His lips are so warm, and Shane can’t help but slide his tongue into Rozanov’s mouth and taste him, and then they’re clutching each other, groaning in unison.
Shane’s back hits the wall, Rozanov’s palms on his shoulders shoving him back against it. His head tips back, his neck a new canvas for Rozanov’s lips, which mouth fiercely at the underside of his jaw. It forces Shane’s mouth open in a shocked gasp, and Rozanov’s thick fingers are quickly pressed into his mouth, thrusting in and out as he sucks helplessly, moaning around the intrusion, flicking his tongue up against Rozanov’s skin.
Rozanov’s fingers taste like him, like the tang of sweat and the bitterness of musk. It’s a taste that’s not enough, that opens a bottomless pit of wanting, because Shane needs more after so long alone with only his barely suppressed fantasies.
Each new day has wound his muscles tighter and tighter under his skin, the burdensome weight of expectations that only rise impossibly higher with his accomplishments, because however close to perfection he molds himself, it never satisfies, and he’s never enough. And now, now it all just snaps, the coil of tension bursting in the desperate way Shane grinds against Rozanov’s hip, how he scrabbles for the button on Rozanov’s jeans, ripping the zipper open and shoving his hand inside, palming clumsily at the hardening length through his briefs.
Rozanov growls against his neck, dragging his mouth up to tug at Shane’s earlobe with his teeth, tonguing at the spot behind his ear, the one Rozanov knows is sensitive—
He whines loudly around Rozanov’s fingers, hips rolling mindlessly against his firm body.
“Is this what you want?” Rozanov murmurs, pressing his cock into Shane’s hand. “Missed it?”
Shane can only nod, looking up at Rozanov with helpless eyes, a choked sound escaping his throat as Rozanov slides his fingers out to thumb at his lip, dragging it down. Rozanov’s eyes are so bright and focused, fixed on Shane with a hunger so primal that it pins him to the wall, making him feel completely at Rozanov’s disposal. The entire world is suspended in this moment, what must be a single second stretched painfully to the limit, the charge of their locked gazes so electric that Shane’s chest ripples with the strain of staying in place, torn between conflicting images of everything that he wants.
He’s frozen, trapped under Rozanov’s hands, Shane’s eyes wet and wide and pleading.
And then there’s a hand on his shoulder shoving him down, and Shane goes to his knees eagerly, tugging Rozanov’s cock out. He pushes the head into his mouth, moaning when he tastes him. His eyes flutter closed as he gets lost in the sensation, hands curled tight around Rozanov’s hips, the obscene stretch of his lips around Rozanov’s cock, the way it fills him up.
It’s so fucking good. Kneeling in front of Rozanov feels like sliding into place. If his mouth wasn’t full of Rozanov’s cock, he would be spilling secrets that might rend the room apart. Things like I’ve been thinking about this every single day for the past week. When you opened the door, I think I forgot to breathe, looking at your face again. The only time I’m not picking apart my body is when you’re using it. This is all I want to do. God, I’m already ruined, so ruin me again and again.
He lives for the low sounds Rozanov makes, for the way his muscles tense. Shane hums with the simple pleasure of having Rozanov’s cock in his mouth, bobbing his head and letting the length of it drag deliciously over his tongue.
Rozanov’s hips stutter into his mouth, the tip of his cock forced into the back of his throat, making him gag around it.
And Rozanov tries to pull back, muttering a breathless apology, but Shane makes a noise of protest, squeezing Rozanov’s hips tight, keeping them close.
“Fuck, Hollander,” he says, the breath of his name hushed like a prayer, shaped so perfectly by Rozanov’s lips. “You want more? Want me to fuck your face?”
Shane looks up at him, the sight hazy. Rozanov looks at him with an awe sharpened by crushing desire, and Shane feels dizzyingly like he could ask Ilya to do anything to him, and he would oblige.
It would be impossible to say the words at the best of times, but right now, his thoughts are just wordless want, already aching to feel Rozanov spill down his throat.
He pulls back until only the tip of Rozanov’s cock sits between his lips, his own hands falling to his sides. Shane looks straight into his eyes, face burning hot, his mind a storm of tangled pleas, and lets his mouth fall open in invitation.
There’s the sound of his breath, short and shocked, a second before Rozanov thrusts into his mouth. Gentle, languid strokes at first, probing him, testing, letting Shane settle into it.
Shane breathes through his nose, lets his jaw and throat relax as Rozanov’s thrusts go deeper and deeper, pace picking up to something faster and harsher. And fuck, he’s just here on his knees letting Rozanov use his throat, choking on his cock. The flutter of Shane’s lashes sends tears tracking down his face, completely uncontrollable. The entire world is a tide of sensation, the hammering of Rozanov’s hips, the way being used so thoroughly makes his mind go quiet, the zone of everything important shrunk down to encompass only the two of them.
“Can’t—get enough, can you, Hollander?” Rozanov groaned, voice low and strained as he fucks Shane’s throat. “So good for me. I know what you want, hmm? You want me to come down your throat.”
And Shane moans around him, completely fucking helpless, barely able to nod as Rozanov’s fingers wind into his hair and pull it tight, holding his head perfectly in place for him to use. But Shane looks up, his lashes wet, his gaze pleading. If he could speak, if he could form the mass of want into the shape of sentences, he would beg for it without an ounce of pride left, wanting nothing more than the knowledge that he could do this to Rozanov.
The head of Rozanov’s cock is suddenly forced deep, his hips jerking. Rozanov releases the grip on his hair, cupping the back of Shane’s head and pulling it close as he comes.
“There you go,” Rozanov croons sweetly, hold firm, pushing down just a little harder. “All for you, malysh.” Shane sobs around his cock, feeling so held and taken, so perfectly surrounded. It’s so much, so intense, but his cock only gets harder, spitting precome as his hips stutter into empty air.
Shane’s blissful as he comes down from it, Rozanov collapsing to sit on the bed, allowing him to continue to kneel between his legs, suckling his softening cock, licking up what’s left of his release. It helps, to stay here for a little longer after Rozanov finishes, to linger in the feeling instead of having it suddenly ripped away from him, making him feel distressingly unmoored. The steady brush of Rozanov’s fingers through his hair is a hypnotizing rhythm, a tethering lifeline.
Time is a meaningless thing, a loose string unraveling. Any amount of time could have passed by the time that Rozanov taps his cheek, prompting Shane to pry his eyes open.
“Come up, Hollander?”
Shane pulls off of him, nodding slowly. He wobbles as he stands, so loose he’s unstable. The floor feels uneven where his feet touch it, but he manages to crawl on top of Rozanov despite the notches of his spine feeling fused together.
He falls onto him, groaning at the feeling of his hard cock fitting over Rozanov’s firm thigh. Rozanov reaches for him immediately, hand gripping his jaw, pressing their lips together. Rozanov kisses him like he’s trying to devour him, lips hungry and searching, Shane feels woozy, lost in the warm drag of their lips. He doesn’t need to think, not when Rozanov turns his head to get better access, licking the inside of his mouth.
He’s adrift in it, inhaling sharply when Rozanov bites his lip, tugging on it lightly with his teeth. Shane’s grinding against him now, impatient rolls of his hips, keeping his arousal at a simmer. Rozanov is so beautiful. It’s shocking, the way the meaning of his body transforms as he goes from the rink to Shane’s bed, every inch of Rozanov densely packed with muscle, optimized for performance, for strength, for explosive power. This is the league’s fastest skater with these thighs to propel him, and here Shane lies, humping one of them, wanting nothing more than to use it to get himself off.
And maybe after, Rozanov can use his stamina, something he used to win a championship and break records, to carry him through multiple grueling playoff runs—to ruin Shane instead, to fuck him as hard as he begs for, to fuck him through two orgasms until Shane is so oversensitive that he trembles through the rest until Rozanov comes buried deep inside him. When that happens, Shane whimpers and cries, but rarely tells him to stop—it’s so much, but it’s perfect, it’s exactly what he wants.
“Eager?” Rozanov grins against his mouth. He reaches a hand down to palm his ass, pressing Shane more firmly against his thigh. “Go on, kotik. Take what you need. God, you’re pretty like this.”
His fingers brush Shane’s hair back where it sticks to his forehead, ghosting down his cheek. “So pretty when you get on your knees for me. No one loves sucking cock like you.” And when Rozanov says it, he says it with reverence, looking at Shane riding his leg in earnest like he’s trying to burn the image into his brain.
Shane stares back at him, enchanted, so close that he can see every fleck of color in his eyes, a hypnotic swirl. Rozanov’s eyelashes, honeytoned, casting shadows across his cheekbones in the lamplight. So beautiful, Shane thinks, gliding his fingers into Rozanov’s curls. Shane kisses him again, long and searing, tugging Rozanov’s curls at the root to swallow his low moans, rutting faster against his body.
The contact is rough, electric, Shane’s cock dripping over Rozanov’s thigh, the rocking of his hips rubbing it into his skin. His breathing picks up until he’s all but panting into Rozanov’s mouth, not able to isolate the brain power even to kiss him anymore, just whining against his lips. Rozanov holds him, steady and solid, letting Shane use him in turn.
“Oh,” Shane whispers, lips brushing Rozanov’s. He wishes this could be every night. He wants Rozanov to live for him, too, to sleep in his bed. Shane wants to fall asleep against him sated and wake up the next morning to suck him off while he’s still asleep. Tonight, he could take every last thing Rozanov had to give, and it wouldn’t fucking be enough. “Oh, fuck, please, I need, I need you—”
His skin prickles all over, and the dimmed lights in the room begin to flicker. They swing wildly between blinding, bleaching the room white, to pitch dark that swallows them up and turns Ilya into only a shape that cradles him. Then they’re back to warm yellow, then bright, then off again, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s so close—
Rozanov steadies him, tucks Shane’s face into his neck, letting him focus every bit of energy on rocking against him. Shane feels like an animal, like everything else in his mind has been burned away to make room for the force of his desire. Rozanov’s body is so firm, so unyielding and powerful, and it’s all Shane’s in this moment.
He presses his fingers back into Shane’s mouth, and yes, fuck, it’s something to suck on. He hollows his cheeks, closes his eyes, and thrusts against Rozanov, completely held by him. His other hand is at Shane’s lower back, pulling him just a bit closer—
It rips through him so suddenly it’s almost vicious. Shane buries his teeth in the meat of Rozanov’s shoulder and screams, his come slicking their stomachs, the release wave after never-ending wave. The pleasure is searing and mindless, claiming him entirely. His hips move in slow circles through the aftershocks, breathing hard into the soft curve of Rozanov’s neck.
Rozanov’s hand strokes reassuringly down his spine as Shane jerks and strains in his hold, drowning in the static that fills his ears.
“Beautiful,” Rozanov whispers, just a breath into his hair, so soft and filtered through such a haze that Shane is half-convinced that it’s a hallucination sculpted from his own fantasies.
He’s boneless against Rozanov, face mashed against his chest, when he feels Rozanov shift. Rozanov reaches out to the bedside table, doing his best not to disturb Shane. He hears the clicking sound of a switch flicked on and off, on and off.
“Hollander,” he says carefully, wrapping his arm tighter around Shane’s shoulders. “Don’t freak out, but… I think you caused a blackout.”
Shane stirs. “Wait, what?”
“The lights,” Rozanov hums, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “You saw the lights flicker, yes?”
Shane frowns, considering. It’s a bit of a blur, but he remembers being so close, saying the first things that came to mind, completely secure in Rozanov’s hold, the light through his eyelids shifting unpredictably like something out of a dream.
“Yeah?”
“That was you disclosing.”
“Oh my god,” Shane groans. Rozanov has been treated to many a disclosure from him over the years, and is probably in a better position than anyone else in his life to know just how inept he is at it. “Just this room, right? Fuck, what if it was the entire hotel?”
Rozanov shrugs. “Probably not. Long time ago, hotel engineer explained this to Marly after he plugged in a million devices and blew the circuit. Each room is on its own circuit, usually. The whole hotel only goes down if the power grid goes, and trust me, I did not feel that level of power.” He pats Shane’s cheek, smiling almost indulgently.
“Ugh. I’m sorry.” Shane buries his face in Rozanov’s neck, wanting to burrow into it and never reemerge. “What did I even say?”
Rozanov kisses him just behind his ear, and his voice is deep and rumbling as he recalls it: “I need you.” Shane can hear the smirk in it, the smugness, but somehow, it doesn’t sound mocking at all. And even though all Rozanov has done is repeat Shane’s words, they ring with something when he says them, vibrating deep in Shane’s skull.
He can feel his own face flush, an embarrassed heat that sweeps across his skin, swift as a searching gaze raking over something quivering and vulnerable. He remembers, now, Rozanov’s words pulling the memory back to him, something that would ordinarily have been his usual mindless babbling during a time that Rozanov had forced any sophisticated thoughts from his brain.
But no, Shane had been thinking of more than wanting Rozanov in the way he’s always had him. I need you, he’d gasped, chest to chest with Rozanov, pressing as much of their skin together as he could. And he’d meant: I need you every day, all the time. Every moment you’re not with me, I miss you so much that people ask me if I’m okay. Of all the secrets I keep, most of them are from you, because every time I turn up to see you, I’m lying about why.
And clearly, the universe had sensed it, the way that the innocuous mumble was a confession, if only a shard of it, essentially meaningless without the rest of the intricate stained glass panel it was snapped from.
“Ah, don’t overreact. It is very funny, how sensitive you are. You are always telling me, but I haven’t seen it myself in… a while.”
Sensitive. That’s what it’s called when someone is the way Shane is, a person who can’t reveal even seemingly innocent truths without triggering a burst of uncontrollable energy. A lot of the time, it’s linked with anxiety, amplifying the fear of the reveal and making the disclosure clang like a discordant bell, refusing to harmonize with the environment around it. All the practice he could manage hadn’t made it any easier for him, so he’d come to accept that the problem was something within himself that it was beyond his ability to fix.
“It is not much of a secret that you need me, Hollander,” Rozanov drawls, making Shane shiver as he sucks lightly at a sensitive spot on his neck. “Not when you are rubbing yourself off on me and begging for it. You are nervous about me knowing?”
Shane tries to relax. Of course there’s no reason for Rozanov to suspect him yet, not when he actually didn’t say anything incriminating. This is the one occasion he is grateful for his reputation for volatile disclosure, because at least he can eke out more time with Ilya before he catches on.
In the dark, Rozanov is more sensation than anything else, a warm mouth that kisses down Shane’s neck and over his chest, a mixture of pecks and lingering presses. He makes a questioning noise when Shane doesn’t respond.
“Not… not really,” he manages, breath coming faster as Rozanov pushes at his shoulder to put him on his back. “You know I’m just, just, ah—“
Shane’s back arches as Rozanov licks a stripe up his neck, one hand kneading at his chest, catching a nipple between his fingertips and rolling it hard.
“Just what?”
“Sensitive,” Shane rasps, throat still raw from the way Rozanov fucked it. He can barely get the word out, because Rozanov chooses that exact moment to wrap his lips around Shane’s nipple and suck, hard and insistent.
Rozanov releases him, blowing softly over the area, watching the way Shane quivers at the sensation with an expression that hungers. “Yes, Hollander,” he smirks, reaching for the lube on the bedside table. “I think you are right.”
And Shane’s getting hard again, splayed across Rozanov’s sheets. The look in Rozanov’s eyes makes him feel like a feast spread sumptuously over a banquet table, and he’s already spreading his legs to let Rozanov kneel between them, choking on a startled gasp as Rozanov fingers him open, rolling his hips unthinkingly back into the touch.
By the time they’re done, Shane’s curled into Rozanov’s side kissing him sleepily, so fucked out he doesn’t even think about when he has to get up in the morning. The darkness in the room feels so fitting for the middle of the night, for his exhausted haze, that all thoughts of blackouts and disclosure slip away.
It’s getting worse.
Unspoken things grow in the cave of Shane’s chest, lapping over with new mineral layers the way a cluster of particles swells into crystal over eons. He knows that’s where the power comes from, from the relentless tug of the secret between hope and fear, evolving, expanding, fueled by the stewing uncertainty.
Every time Shane fantasizes about saying the words—when he’s on his back and looking into Rozanov’s eyes, transfixed by the ways the colors in the irises shift. When he types out the words in a text message, just to feel his heart pound when he looks at them and wonders what would happen if he just, just pressed send and sent his future spinning off into the unknown.
When Shane lies awake at night thinking about each worst case scenario, not only about public backlash and parental disappointment and getting traded to the worst team in the league, but rejection, a worry that should be nothing compared to the others, but somehow feels the least survivable.
Each time he does these things, the energy builds, and builds, and builds. Shane feels like he’s only held together by surface tension, water risen convex over the edge of a glass, one more drop from overflowing.
It breaks him down in countless small ways, because his love for Ilya is not something that isolates itself to their brief encounters and conversations. No, it bleeds into everything, it’s in the way he thinks about hockey, always striving to be the best, a trajectory that would have changed shape entirely had Rozanov not existed. It’s in the way he holds himself when someone propositions him directly, no longer shrinking or suspicious, because if Rozanov thinks he’s something worth looking at, then surely there are others who feel the same. It’s in how it’s impossible to imagine his future retirement these days, even though he built a home for it years ago, because it would mean never seeing Rozanov again. Instead he sees a road of emptiness, days rolling by unfulfilled.
People are starting to notice.
A couple weeks after his encounter with Rozanov, the one that cut the power in the room even into the next morning, he goes over to Hayden’s place for the evening. Shane eats dinner with his family, sitting at the table with a smile pasted on, and the looks of concern from Jackie and Hayden are so pronounced that even he catches them.
Ruby and Emma confess to the table that there’s a new girl at school that they’ve befriended, and that they’ve been invited to her birthday party at an arcade next week. The disclosure is so even handed, the knowledge so light and innocent and shared between them, that Shane can’t help but smile at the way their glasses of apple juice refill.
Shane loves Hayden’s kids, he’s always genuinely enjoyed spending time with them. Hayden got married and started a family so young, something Shane never would’ve thought about doing, even if he was straight. So there was something about having Hayden’s family to fill that gap for him, a hollow of domesticity where everything was cozy and loved and picture perfect, all the problems limited to the simple, everyday drama of a close family.
He’s sitting on the couch afterwards, holding sleeping baby Arthur close to his chest after Jackie had thrust him into his arms to put the twins to bed.
Shane looks at the baby, feeling some deep ache that he struggles to name. Foolishly, children make him a little jealous, sometimes. They’re so… unburdened. Secrets don’t grow in their hearts the same way. Kids like Hayden’s have so few things to hide, petty misbehavior or innocent mistakes, or pleasant things they’ve merely kept to themselves. It’s been a long time since Shane was like this, a blank slate with a world of possibility in front of him.
If he could turn things back and undo what’s twined itself into him, he’s not sure he’d be the same person anymore. He thinks about Rozanov so much that he thinks he might be hollowed out without the spectre of him, so appallingly lonely that he’d collapse inward from sheer lack.
“Shane? Shane.” Someone shakes his shoulder.
He jerks, blinking in surprise. “I—hey guys.” Jackie and Hayden are in the living room, looking at him with twin expressions of consternation. “Sorry, didn’t see you there,” he adds, a few seconds too late.
“Oh, you probably want to take Arthur upstairs too?” he asks.
“It’s alright for now,” Jackie says softly. “Moving him might just wake him up again.”
“Alright.”
“Shane,” says Hayden, his voice low with trepidation. “We just wanted to talk to you.”
He nods, holding the baby like a lifeline, focusing on being gentle, on supporting the head. He’s known this was coming since Hayden invited him. Shane hasn’t had the same energy lately, not to laugh at his teammate’s jokes or contribute to any good natured atmosphere. He hasn’t been reacting the way he should, he’s missing cue after cue in the invisible script everyone has come to expect from him. He’s falling behind.
“Is everything good with you?” Jackie asks. “You’ve seemed a little down lately. More than usual.”
“Guys, I’ll be—everything’s gonna be fine, alright?” he tries to reassure them. “It’s just a temporary thing.”
Which is true, in a way. The growing power of his unspoken confession can only be a problem until it’s released, and then he’ll be gifted with a new host of unknowns to deal with.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Hayden huffs, shaking his head. “You always have been.”
It’s deeply ironic, Shane knows. He has so much to hide from so many people, yet when it comes time to lie to their faces about it, his entire fucking mind just goes blank. He thinks ahead of time about excuses and stories to try and get ahead of it, yet in the moment, it all flies away.
“What Hayden is trying to say,” Jackie tries, with a sidelong glare at her husband, “is that we’re just worried about a friend. Hayden is pretty sensitive too! I have a ton of funny stories about him trying to disclose. And it can help to ease things a bit by telling someone.”
Shane slumps, shoulders curling forward. He is so tired, he is worn so thin from everything he’s been trying not to say. And he could never tell Hayden and Jackie everything, but even telling them something, a fragment, even just revealing that there’s something to know, could take some of the pressure out of him.
“You’d really let me disclose something?” Shane chuckles, unsmiling. “Sitting right here in your living room with your baby in my arms?”
“Disclosure can’t hurt someone that you would never hurt,” Jackie insists. “You’re like family to us.”
She’s right, but it can hurt people. When he was young, Shane and his family had once sat open-mouthed in front of the evening news, watching a story about a man who had gotten blind drunk at his wife’s birthday party and confronted her in front of all the guests. Sometimes, I wish you were fucking dead, he’d disclosed. And the woman had gasped, completely shocked. Dead before she hit the ground. And her husband had gone to prison for murder, because it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t meant it.
Shane’s disclosures have never hurt someone. He doesn’t often have wishes for violence in his heart. But the volatility of his secrets and the anxiety that clings to him still often leaves him with the irrational worry that it might. It might.
“Can I tell you a secret?” he whispers, leaning back into the couch cushions, eyes closed in defeat. He takes some small amount of comfort in the familiar ritual, something Rozanov has always felt was beneath him.
“Yeah, buddy.” Hayden shifts beside him, slinging his arm over the back of the couch.
Shane thinks about his words very carefully, turning them over slowly in his mind. He focuses the way that his mother taught him, trying to feel the way the thing he wants to reveal thrums inside of him, and wrapping it up, constricting it, forcing it into a rigid shape. “I think I want more with Lily,” he tries, each word shaped with surgical precision. “And I don’t think that she’ll feel the same.”
At the same moment, Jackie and Hayden immediately stiffen, as if the same invisible force has crawled inside of them and hardened. Hayden winces, head dipping into his hands, and Jackie gasps, muffled in her hand.
Panicked, Shane immediately checks Arthur—but the baby is still sound asleep, chubby cheek pressed flat against Shane’s chest, breathing softly.
“What’s wrong?” Shane asks, low and urgent. “Are you guys alright?”
“We’re fine,” Hayden says, a little dazed. He straightens up, now, blinking fast, still looking a little far away. “It was only a second. Gone now.”
“I think we felt you, actually.” Jackie rests her chin in her palm, thoughtful. “Very briefly. It’s like you unconsciously pushed some of your emotions into our heads.”
“I don’t even know how to describe it,” Hayden tells him, shaking his head. “God, Shane. Like getting hit by a truck.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Shane mumbles. “That’s never happened before. Was it that bad?”
It’s been a long time since he didn’t feel this way in any capacity. It’s probably the contrast that hurt them more than anything. It’s been so many years of this that Shane has grown used to carrying it, panic that morphed into resignation the way a tendon calcifies after repeated injury, a deep ache that never heals because there’s never time.
“No, you don’t have to apologize. I think maybe you wanted us to understand, when you said it, and that’s why it happened. That’s good.” Jackie scrunches her brows, fixing him with a searching gaze. “I just didn’t know things were so rough for you, Shane. You’re… it feels like you’re grieving.” She breathes the last word, and Shane swears her eyes are shining.
He shrugs helplessly. “Things with us haven’t ended yet, but they will. It’s not sustainable. It’s never had a future. And hiding from her that I want more is getting to the point that I’m accidentally disclosing when I say stuff that’s… not even supposed to be any kind of confession. I guess part of me is already processing the future.”
“That sucks, Shane.” Hayden frowns. “Look, if you want my advice? If you think this girl is immediately dumping you after you say you wanna get serious, you might as well just tell her anyway. There’s a chance that you’re wrong. I mean… dude. You’re a catch. What girl is turning you down after seeing you for years?”
Shane sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “She’s not just any girl, alright? She doesn’t need me. She’s successful on her own, she has a ton of other options, and she’s never been in any kind of serious relationship. She’s never mentioned wanting anything like that with anyone, let alone me.”
“Is that the only reason you don’t want to tell her?” Jackie probes. “You think she’ll break things off?”
“Well…” Shane might still hold a small core of hope, somewhere inside him. Sometimes Rozanov looks at him, holds his gaze so tenderly, cups his face so gently and just takes him in. And Shane dares to wonder if they’re thinking the same thing, if this means something more for each of them, if their twin longing could swell and synthesise into something infinite and beautiful. “The other problem is that I have no idea what will happen. I’ve told you guys some things, but… the real extent of it only I know. I’ve never revealed something like this. I can feel it getting so powerful, so much more than I could control. I think…”
He takes a deep breath, conscious of the way their eyes linger on him, the way their bodies are angled towards him, waiting, open. “I think something really terrible could happen. Sometimes even I don’t understand the way that I feel, about—her, and the whole thing we have. Maybe disclosing could injure one of us, or wreck the building, or… something so awful I haven’t even thought of it.”
“Things like that are pretty rare,” Jackie notes.
Shane snorts. “How sensitive I am is rare. How invested I am in something that was never going to work is rare. Forgive me if I’m still worried.”
“You told us,” Hayden points out. “Part of it, you said. That should make it less powerful.”
“Yeah.” Shane does feel it now, a small recession of the pressure. When he breathes, it’s a little more bearable, each inhale fueling him better than it did. “It’s a start.”
“You know, my mom never wanted me to get married young,” says Jackie. She leans towards him, settling a hand on the armrest next to him. “She got married young, and then there was a messy divorce. When I found out I was pregnant and Hayden proposed, I was so happy—but I didn’t know how I was going to tell her. I’m alright at disclosing, but it was the biggest secret I’d ever held at the time. I was terrified.”
“What did you do?” He asks the question a little too fast, a little too pleading.
“I started small,” she recalls. “I built up to it. When I called her, I started to talk more about Hayden, how good he was to me, how hopeful I was. I brought up how much I wanted kids, how we were looking at houses. And it was all true—that was important.”
“And that worked?”
Jackie grins, patting the back of his hand. “It worked. We visited her together to tell her in person, and… it just felt really amazing to be free of the dread. Nothing bad happened. I was so happy that telling her popped the cork on the champagne on her counter, and she just rolled her eyes and said we might as well drink it.”
”I guess—“ he sighs, dragging a hand over his face. “I guess that sounds like something I could do.”
“Let us know how it goes, okay?” Jackie smiles, something delicate and shaky. “Whatever happens, you can always talk to us.”
“Yeah,” Shane agrees, stomach sinking at the way it feels like a lie.
Shane’s tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. Usually, it’s something he has no trouble with—getting enough rest is paramount for any athlete, especially when his schedule is packed so tightly. But he can’t stop thinking about small truths, and building up to something, and what that would even look like.
At one point he gets out of bed, bleary eyed and slumping, to splash water on his face and and lean over the counter, looking at himself in the mirror.
He looks absolutely fucking terrible. There are bags under his eyes, his shoulders curved inwards, his skin pale and his gaze pained. He’s so tired of this, and he’s never been the kind of person to simply allow disaster to beat him down, not without a plan, a fight.
What is he, a coward? He’s just going to lie down and let this happen? Sometimes, the only way to get through a play is by taking a hit, sometimes a bad one. It can be the best move. Shane’s never had a problem hesitating before. It’s a tiny thing, in the grand scheme. Ilya already thinks he’s strange anyway, never as adept at pretending not to be completely swept up in him as Ilya would probably like him to be.
He’s always been the one clinging, the one dying inside when Rozanov moves to leave, always too early. He telegraphs it, he knows. Rozanov loves to show off the way he can see through him. Maybe he doesn’t even have much to tell Rozanov that he doesn’t already know.
He pads to the kitchen to fill a glass with freezing water, gulping it all down until his headache screams in answer.
Tongue bitten so hard between his teeth that it draws blood, he fumbles for his phone, pulling up his messages with Rozanov.
When he’s on the ice, he often moves without thinking, everything about his position and the twist of his wrist pure instinct that draws from the slivers of information he zeroes in on. In the same way, his thumb moves without thinking, pressing the send button before he has the chance to doubt himself.
Can’t wait to see you next week. You’ll be the best part of my month.
Sent 12:36 AM
In his hand, the phone crackles. The screen streaks with static, buzzing and popping—and goes black.