Chapter Text
Ilya didn’t want to fight.
He was exhausted, and miserable, and his boyfriend was breaking his fucking heart.
Quietly, in a voice that couldn’t disguise his pain, he said, “I already chose you, Hollander.”
He stepped back, and watched Shane’s eyes widen. After a moment, Shane’s lips parted as if he had something to say, but Ilya didn’t want to hear it.
“Go home,” Ilya said. “Please.”
Then he turned and walked quickly upstairs. (TEXT FROM CH.22 - THE LONG GAME)
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Shane stood there watching Ilya walk away from him, his body frozen and heart racing, before Shane whirled and blindly slammed his way out of the house. The house he’d come to think of this past year and a half as their home.
Go home. Please.
Apparently the Ottawa house was only Ilya’s, not Shane’s. According to Ilya, Shane’s home was in Montreal, not here.
Go home. Please.
It was the please that got to Shane. Ilya hadn’t yelled it. Hadn’t been mean. It rattled him how calmly, how politely sincere the request was and how utterly direct.
Ilya usually didn’t say things directly.
Throwing himself into his car, Shane turned it on and pulled out of the drive. He didn’t know how he made it out of the neighbourhood, only finding himself blinking to acute awareness from numb autopilot on the main road that ran through Ottawa towards Montreal.
Shane didn’t want to leave; didn’t want to go back to his cold, empty place in Montreal. He considered going to his parent’s house, but decided against it as he didn’t want to see their faces.
Their judgement.
Not right now. He needed to sort things out first, before he involved them.
Shane was vibrating with anger, with hurt, with confusion; he didn’t want to be managed by his mom at the moment. Or to be told to chill out. To be cool.
To be minimized.
Shane also didn’t feel he deserved his dad’s quiet way of offering comfort and support. Not with how his gut was churning and his heart ached.
As he drove, Shane’s thoughts whirled.
He’d obviously fucked up.
He thought he’d been honouring Ilya over the past months by giving him space when he seemed off. Ilya always said he was fine, never offering up anything else or distracting Shane with sex, and Shane hadn’t wanted to push.
Hadn’t wanted to be too needy, too much. Hadn’t wanted to waste what little time Ilya and he had together by fighting.
But he hadn’t paid enough attention to his boyfriend. That was obvious now.
And now they’d had their biggest fight since becoming official.
Ilya’s words rang in Shane’s ears.
I already chose you, Hollander.
Ilya had given up his whole world for Shane, and for what?
For Shane to remain professionally comfortable and successful? All while becoming frustrated and disappointed in Ilya’s apparent lack of drive for the same? He remembered so many times feeling resentful that Ilya seemed ok to coast, not fired up like he’d been in Boston.
Shane knew that wasn’t fair and super shitty of him to think that of Ilya. It had been a low blow of Shane’s to throw the Centaur’s lack of winning in Ilya’s face tonight.
Fuck, no wonder Ilya thought Shane wouldn’t choose him.
Ilya had left everything behind, without even being able to publicly say why, instead putting up with shitty rumors and industry gossip that made him out to be either a washout or fuckup with his head held high.
Ilya had given up Boston, his first team, his friends, his first real adult home.
He’d given up Russia, and any chance of connection with his niece, his mother’s grave, or his homeland.
Ilya’s career had taken a hit moving to the worst team in the league, regardless that Ilya himself was still playing incredible hockey and was doing his best to build up the team like he’d done in Boston all those years before.
How had Shane never realized that Ilya had changed fucking everything.
All to be with Shane. To follow Shane’s plan.
Meanwhile Shane’s life had remained exactly as it’d been before they’d become boyfriends. Other than coming out to his team—which hadn’t gone great, but hadn’t gone horribly either—nothing in Shane’s life had changed except that he’d led his team in winning their third Stanley Cup.
A cup win no longer on the horizon for Ilya.
And what Ilya had mentioned… being lonely in the secret.
It hurt Shane to admit he was right.
Shane’s two closest friends—Rose and Hayden—knew about him and Ilya. Fuck, even his parents, who loved his boyfriend like a second son, were ultimately Shane’s first. But no one on Ilya’s side knew he was in a relationship, let alone in a relationship with a man, let alone that the man was Shane.
And when Ilya had mentioned coming out to one person—Troy—Shane had all but shut Ilya down in a jealous fit.
Shane’s eyes filled, blurring the road ahead of him, and his hands shook on the wheel.
Knowing it was unsafe to keep driving in his condition, he took the next off ramp, pulling into a deserted parking lot of a commercial building. Slamming the car into park, Shane rubbed at his face to attempt to stem his tears, his thoughts spiralling.
One thing had become perfectly clear to him.
Shane’s plan, the one where they’d hide until they retired to keep them safe, had reduced the once loud, vibrant, and larger-than-life Ilya Rozanov to a muted, pale, and diminished version of the original.
Ilya was still the same man Shane had fallen for all those years ago, but until now, Shane hadn’t truly realized how small the box that held Ilya had become.
How much of Ilya’s current existence within their relationship was set up to allow him to fit neatly into Shane’s world. Not a balanced offering between them.
Shane hadn’t realized how much their secret was apparently killing Ilya.
I already chose you Hollander.
Despite the waves of guilt that threatened to overwhelm Shane, anger rose within him as he thought about Ilya and how not once had he given Shane an inkling of what he’d been feeling or dealing with. He was always saying he was fine, never expanding or pulling back the curtain he’d apparently kept drawn over his true feelings.
How long had Ilya been struggling? How long had he and Shane not been on the same page when it came to their life together?
Shane knew Ilya loved Shane’s parents. Ilya loved the cottage, claiming it was his oasis from life’s chaos. His boring refuge; his favourite place.
Ilya had said over and over again how much he liked his teammates in Ottawa. That the organization as a whole was a better fit for him than Boston had been, both from a coaching perspective and the team’s overall culture.
He was happy in Ottawa.
And fuck it. Ilya had been the one to originally bring up wanting to become a Canadian citizen, before stupidly mentioning the option of marrying Svetlana as they’d sat facing another on the couch in the cottage that first summer together. It wasn’t like Shane was forcing him to make this change.
Ilya had agreed without reservation that Ottawa was the city, was the team even knowing how shitty they were, that made sense when Shane had stayed up all night that original summer planning how they’d make things work.
A plan that, until today, had definitely chafed at both of them, but Shane hadn’t considered that it wasn’t working.
And that was the problem.
Shane hadn’t considered. Hadn’t been paying enough attention, stuck in his own ways because the plan made Shane feel safe.
As fast as Shane’s anger had risen, it disappeared just as sharply to sink below the guilt once more.
He raked his hands down his face, thinking about how he’d messed everything up.
By not fucking paying attention.
By being selfish.
By being afraid.
I already chose you Hollander.
Ilya’s heartbreak was echoing within Shane’s mind, loud and vicious, despite the actual quietness of the words Ilya had spoken before he’d turned away.
Shane didn’t know how to begin fixing what he’d broken. They’d never fought like this and it terrified him. He couldn’t lose Ilya because of his own ignorance.
He was more afraid than he’d even been of losing Ilya.
Shane rubbed at the centre of his chest as it tightened and his breaths came faster. He recognized the beginnings of a panic attack. He couldn’t call Ilya as he usually would as Ilya’d asked him to leave, couldn’t call Hayden because he didn’t trust his friend to be impartial… so Shane reached for the next best lifeline to stem the panic.
The ringing went on for two beats before a cheery voice came through the car’s speakers.