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The lake was frozen solid by January, a white expanse stretching past the cottage windows to the dark line of trees on the far shore. Snow had blown smooth across the surface, erasing footprints, erasing texture. It looked engineered—flat and sealed and capable of bearing weight without complaint.
Shane liked it like that.
He liked surfaces that didn’t hint at what moved underneath.
Before dawn, the cottage reduced itself to small, manageable sounds. The baseboard heater ticking in precise intervals. The faint creak of beams adjusting to the cold. Wind brushing once against the glass and then receding. Shane lay on his side facing the window and counted the gaps between each noise. Six seconds. Four. Eight. He tracked Ilya’s breathing behind him—slow inhale, pause, steady exhale—matching it against his own pulse.
He mapped it the way he mapped neutral-zone coverage. Identify the lanes. Anticipate the pressure. Control the variables.
Discipline, he told himself.
He had always been this way. Structured. Vigilant. Ready before anyone else realized something was coming.
But lately the dark felt altered. Not empty. Not restful. When he closed his eyes, it didn’t dissolve—it gathered. Thickened at the edges of his vision. As if something patient had been waiting for him to notice it.
The first night it happened, there was no jolt of terror. No gasp that tore him awake.
He simply became aware that he was sitting up.
Spine ramrod straight. Shoulders tight. Hands twisted deep into the duvet, fabric biting into his palms. His jaw ached from clenching. His lungs were dragging in shallow, controlled breaths like he was trying not to be heard.
The clock on the nightstand glowed 3:17 a.m.
He didn’t remember waking.
He didn’t remember lying down.
Behind him, the mattress shifted.
Ilya didn’t reach immediately. He’d learned that the hard way—touching Shane too fast in the dark could turn instinct into panic.
“Shane,” he said quietly, voice rough with sleep but steady.
No answer.
Shane was staring at the wall across the room. Not focusing. Not blinking. Just fixed.
Ilya pushed himself up on one elbow and placed a flat palm between Shane’s shoulder blades. Not pushing. Just grounding.
“Solnyshko.”
The name seemed to travel slowly through whatever space Shane was suspended in. He inhaled sharply, the breath scraping out of him like he’d been underwater too long.
“I’m fine,” he said.
It came out too quick. Too practiced.
Ilya exhaled softly through his nose and shifted closer, pressing his chest carefully to Shane’s back. He slid one arm around his waist, then the other, deliberate and unhurried, leaving space for Shane to recoil if he needed to.
He didn’t.
But he felt wrong.
His skin was warm, almost fevered, yet there was a chill threaded through him. Ilya could feel it in the tight tremor under his hands, the way Shane’s muscles refused to release fully, like he was bracing for something that hadn’t happened yet.
“Bad dream?” Ilya asked.
Silence stretched.
“I don’t remember.”
The words were quiet. Uncertain.
Ilya stilled.
Shane remembered everything. The score of his first World Juniors game. The exact wording of interviews from his rookie season. The pattern of scuff marks in old arenas. His mind hoarded detail like insurance.
“I don’t remember,” Shane repeated, softer now. There was something unsettled in it. Not denial. Confusion.
Ilya lowered his mouth to the freckled slope of Shane’s shoulder, pressing a slow, steady kiss there.
“Okay,” he murmured against his skin. “You don’t have to.”
After a moment, Shane shifted backward. Not collapsing into him—Shane rarely collapsed—but allowing his weight to rest, just slightly, against Ilya’s chest.
It was enough.
They stayed like that, Ilya counting breaths now, feeling for the moment Shane’s body stopped vibrating with held tension. Eventually the rigidity eased by degrees. Shane’s fingers loosened from the duvet.
Neither of them closed their eyes again.
Morning felt wrong.
Not catastrophic. Nothing dramatic enough to name. Just—misaligned. Like a picture frame hung a few millimeters crooked. Like a clock ticking half a beat off.
Shane moved through his routine the way he always did. Coffee grounds weighed to the gram on the small digital scale. Water heated to exactly 200 degrees. Protein portioned and logged. Supplements lined up in a straight row on the counter before he swallowed them one by one. The yoga mat unrolled along the seam in the hardwood floor so it sat perfectly parallel to the cabinets.
But the edges were off.
He checked the time on the microwave. Then on his phone. Then back to the microwave, as if one of them might have shifted while he wasn’t looking.
He poured kibble into the dog’s bowl, paused, and frowned.
Had he already done that?
He crouched to touch the bowl, as if weight would confirm memory. The kibble was fresh. Uneaten. He tried to picture himself scooping it. Couldn’t.
They were good now. He and Ilya.
Not volatile. Not something whispered about in hallways. No more headlines dissecting their body language. The league had found a newer storyline to chew on. The Centaurs locker room had settled around them the way rooms do when something stops being novel.
Married. Teammates. Functional.
Predictable.
Shane loved predictable.
He loved his stall arranged identically every game day—left skate blade angled inward, right slightly out. Socks folded into tight pairs, elastic aligned. Tape pre-cut and stacked in descending length. His protein shake blended at 1:15 p.m. sharp, not 1:14, not 1:16. Ginger ale always stocked on the second shelf of the fridge, front left corner.
He loved knowing that at 6:40 p.m., Ilya would be in the kitchen tying his skates, laces pulled through with the same slow, methodical rhythm before they left for the arena.
He liked knowing where Ilya was.
Ilya liked being known like that—tracked not out of suspicion, but out of certainty.
On the ice, they moved like a closed circuit. Shane would cut into open space and Ilya would arrive without needing the cue. Ilya would deke wide along the boards and Shane would instinctively seal the slot, stick down, body angled. No glances. No shouted calls.
What had once been rivalry had refined into precision. Edges honed against each other until they fit.
It felt earned.
Which was why the small fractures scared him.
He missed a morning skate because he’d “misread” the email.
Shane did not misread emails.
He reread messages three times. Flagged them. Archived them in folders labeled by month and opponent.
He had stared at the schedule the night before. He remembered doing that.
But somehow he’d woken up an hour late, phone buzzing with a text from Boodram: you good?
He sat in his stall afterward, already dressed for practice that had ended without him, and told himself it was a glitch. A one-time lapse.
After a game, he found himself staring at his phone in the locker room. Helmet off. Gloves still on. The screen dark.
Troy nudged him with the toe of his skate. “You waiting for it to answer you?”
Shane blinked. He didn’t remember unlocking it.
In a video meeting the next day, Coach Tremblay paused mid-sentence.
“Shane?” Wiebe asked.
Shane’s head lifted.
Every square on the screen was looking at him.
“Yeah,” he said quickly.
Silence.
He realized he had no idea what the question had been. He tried to reconstruct the last thirty seconds and found nothing there. Just static.
Across the room, Ilya’s gaze sharpened—not alarmed. Assessing.
On the bus later, as the city blurred past in gray streaks, Ilya bumped his knee lightly against Shane’s.
“Where you go, hm?”
Shane frowned, pulling his attention back from the window. “What?”
“You leave.”
“I don’t.”
Ilya’s voice stayed neutral, almost conversational. “You do.”
Shane’s jaw tightened. “I’m tired.”
That part was true. It was mid-season. Bodies were layered in bruises that never fully faded. Sleep came in shallow cycles between travel and adrenaline.
It was believable.
Even to himself.
—
The second week, it escalated.
There was no warning this time. No restless turn, no tightening breath to signal it was coming.
He woke with a sound ripped out of him.
Not a word. Not even a name.
Just a raw, tearing noise—low and jagged, like metal dragged across pavement. It split the dark open and shot straight through Ilya’s nervous system.
Ilya was upright before he was fully conscious, heart already hammering.
“Shane—Shane!”
Shane wasn’t frozen like before. He was fighting.
His hands shoved at the air in front of him, palms wide, fingers locked and straining as if something was inches from his face. His shoulders rounded inward, spine bowed defensively. Every muscle in his arms stood out in sharp lines. His breathing came in fractured pulls that stalled halfway down, catching in his throat like he couldn’t get enough air past whatever he was seeing.
His heels ground into the mattress, legs tense, body angled as though bracing for collision.
“Ilya!” he forced out.
But it wasn’t relief. It wasn’t recognition.
It was the sound someone makes when they think they’re about to be hit.
“I’m here,” Ilya said immediately, moving into his space with care but without hesitation. He caught Shane’s wrists—not to restrain, not to overpower, just wrapping his hands firmly around the jut of bone to give him something real. “You’re home. Cottage. Look at me.”
Shane’s skin was slick with sweat, pulse racing violently beneath Ilya’s thumbs. His eyes were stretched too wide, pupils blown so large the brown had nearly vanished. He stared directly at Ilya.
And there was nothing there.
No focus. No recognition.
That—more than the thrashing—made Ilya’s chest seize.
“Shane.” Firmer now. Grounded. “It’s me.”
Shane’s gaze jerked past him, over his shoulder, locking on the dark corner near the dresser. His breath hitched again, sharp and incomplete, like he couldn’t finish it.
It took time.
Ilya forced himself to slow down, to become deliberate. No sudden movements for Shane to misinterpret. He eased his grip from Shane’s wrists and slid one hand up along his arm to the side of his neck, the other to his jaw. He guided carefully—never forcing—until their foreheads pressed together.
Skin to skin. Warm. Real.
“Listen to me,” Ilya said, dropping his voice to something even and low. He shifted into Russian, the syllables softer, rounded. The language he used when Shane was concussed. When he’d come off the ice shaking after a brutal loss. When English felt too sharp.
“You’re thirty-four,” he murmured, steady as a metronome. “You’re safe. You’re with me. This is our bed. Our room. Nothing is here.”
He didn’t know why he chose to say those things, why he anchored it there—but he felt the smallest change under his hands when he said it. A flicker of awareness. A thread catching.
He repeated the words. Same cadence. Same tone. No urgency. No panic.
Gradually, the force in Shane’s arms faltered. The pushing weakened, turned uncoordinated. His fingers curled inward, trembling as if they’d forgotten what they were resisting.
Then the shaking began.
Not small tremors—full-body, uncontrollable. His teeth knocked faintly. His shoulders jerked once, twice, like his system was discharging something it couldn’t contain.
Ilya tightened his hold but kept his voice level, forehead still pressed close, breath steady on Shane’s cheek.
And then, just as suddenly, it drained out of him.
All the rigidity vanished. His weight tipped forward, heavy and unguarded, collapsing into Ilya’s chest like a structure with its supports cut.
Ilya caught him fully this time, arms locking around his back, one hand sliding into his hair to cradle the base of his skull.
Shane’s voice, when it came, was scraped raw.
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
It was barely louder than breath. Not defensive. Not controlled.
Just lost.
Ilya swallowed, throat tight, and pressed his mouth into Shane’s damp hair. He held him there, counting the seconds between inhales the way Shane used to count the heater ticks, feeling each breath lengthen by degrees.
He kept speaking softly in Russian until the trembling eased.
He didn’t have an answer.
He only had his arms around him.
—
They lasted three more days before it detonated.
It was about practice.
Optional skate.
Which meant Shane had already decided he was going long before the conversation started.
“I’m going,” he said, dragging a hoodie over his head, voice flattened into something immovable.
The kitchen still carried the bitter trace of coffee and protein powder. Dawn hadn’t fully broken; the windows were gray, the lake beyond them a pale blur. Ilya stood at the counter with his arms crossed, watching the tension telegraph through Shane’s body—the clipped efficiency of his movements, the way he shoved his phone into his pocket without checking it, the tight flex of his jaw like he was bracing for contact.
“You barely slept,” Ilya said.
Shane crouched to tie his shoes. He yanked the laces tight enough that the eyelets strained. “I’ll be fine.”
“You are not fine.”
Shane stopped.
It wasn’t gradual. It was absolute—like someone had hit pause.
“Stop saying that.”
Ilya pushed off the counter, boots quiet against the hardwood. “Then stop acting like you are.”
“I am.”
“You scream in your sleep.”
“That was one night.”
“It was three.”
Shane’s head snapped up. “You’re counting?”
“Yes,” Ilya shot back, accent sharpening, vowels cutting harder. “Because I am awake for all of them.”
The air shifted.
Something flickered across Shane’s face—guilt first, quick and unguarded. Then it sealed over with irritation, brittle and defensive.
“Don’t,” he said, voice edged now. “Don’t make this about you.”
Ilya flinched as if the words had weight. He straightened almost immediately, shoulders squaring, chin lifting.
“I am not making it about me,” he said, quieter but tighter. “I am scared.”
The word didn’t shout. It didn’t accuse.
It landed.
Shane’s breathing stuttered for half a beat. A small hitch he tried to swallow. His throat worked. His eyes hardened.
“I don’t need you monitoring me.”
“I am not monitoring,” Ilya said, restraint fraying at the edges. “I am married to you.”
“Then trust me.”
“I do trust you!” Ilya’s voice cracked through the room before he could rein it in. “I do not trust whatever is taking you away from me in the middle of the night.”
The silence that followed was dense.
The refrigerator hummed steadily. Pipes ticked in the walls. A truck rolled past outside, tires grinding over packed snow. The ordinary sounds felt intrusive against the stillness between them.
Shane’s eyes were too bright in the dim light, glassy with something he refused to let surface. His hands flexed at his sides, opening and closing like he didn’t know where to put them.
“Maybe I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
Not shouting now. Guarded. Backed into a corner he couldn’t see.
“Then what do you want?” Ilya asked.
Shane opened his mouth.
Nothing came.
He closed it again, jaw tightening so hard a muscle jumped near his temple. His gaze dropped to the floorboards, tracing the seam between two planks as if an answer might be hidden there.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
It came out smaller than he intended. Stripped of defiance. Bare.
The anger drained out of Ilya in an instant, leaving something heavier behind.
He stepped forward without thinking, hand lifting in reflex, wanting to close the space, to anchor him physically if nothing else.
Shane stepped back.
Just half a step.
But it was deliberate.
That hurt more than the raised voices. More than the accusations.
The distance between them felt chosen now. Measured.
Shane grabbed his keys from the hook by the door. The metal clinked too loudly in the quiet.
Ilya didn’t reach for him again.
The door shut with a firm, controlled click—not a slam, not careless.
Controlled.
They didn’t touch for the rest of the day.
—
The team noticed.
Not in a way that boxed him in. Not in hushed whispers that stopped when he walked by.
Just in small recalibrations.
“Y’good, Holz?” Dykstra would ask after drills, eyes gentle, voice casual but tuned.
“Need anything, man?” Luca tossed over his shoulder in the hallway, not insistent — just attentive.
A delayed tap on the back after a heavy shift, a quieter-than-usual chuckle when Shane walked in — little pulses of awareness that didn’t scream concern but didn’t ignore him either.
One afternoon after practice, Troy offered him a ride home, keys already in hand before anyone even asked. “I’m heading your way anyway,” he said, voice easy like it was normal — except Shane had been driving himself and Ilya together every day since the trade. It had become routine: Shane behind the wheel, Ilya in the passenger seat with his coffee and the morning radio on quiet shuffle, same route, same arrival estimate, same comfortable silence.
The offer wasn’t pity.
It was careful.
And that almost made it worse.
“I’ve got it,” Shane replied, tone sharper than necessary.
Troy just gave a soft nod, neutral and easy, no offense taken. “Yeah. Of course.”
That was the problem. No one hovered. No one teased him about being dramatic. No playful ribbing about needing extra rest. Just this thoughtful, soft spotlight—not intrusive, not oblivious—situated around him the way teams do when something unseen is in play.
Shane bristled under it.
He hated the idea of being seen as fragile. Hated the subtle shift in how conversations paused just a half-second longer when he entered the room. Hated the unspoken suggestion that he was slipping… or that someone else might have to catch him.
He was not slipping.
He was tired. That was all.
Ilya absorbed the rest.
The glances that lingered half a beat too long in the tunnel. The assistant coach asking if Shane wanted reduced reps “just for maintenance” with a light shrug. The trainer drifting by their stall after practice, pretending to reorganize tape but watching Shane’s shoulders tighten.
“Mid-season fatigue,” Ilya would say smoothly, grin wide and bright, one arm casually slung over Shane’s shoulders like it was nothing at all. “We are old now, da?”
It deflected every time. It always did.
But behind that grin, Ilya was tracking everything.
The fraction-of-a-second delay before Shane responded to a question. The way Shane’s focus would quietly drift in video sessions, eyes distant and locked on some point no one else could see. The tiny freeze when someone touched his back unexpectedly, like he wasn’t braced for contact.
Ilya watched all of it.
Not suffocatingly.
Not glaringly.
Just present.
Like a man standing on a frozen lake, weight distributed carefully, listening for the faint, invisible crack beneath his feet. Every step measured before commitment.
And Shane could feel it — the attention. The vigilance.
It pressed against his skin.
Which made the ice feel thinner still.
—
Shane had stopped answering questions altogether.
It didn’t start in a flash, not with shouting or tears or anything that could be put into a soundbite. It started with silence that packed weight.
In postgame interviews, the reporters called his name — light, professional, curious — but Shane just stared ahead, gaze fixed on something no one else could see, jaw locked, lips sealed. Ilya stood beside him with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, hands clasped behind his back, waiting but saying nothing — because that pointed out the quiet too clearly.
In the locker room, after wins and losses, someone would try asking him about his shift or the play or the next opponent, and he’d respond with clipped, single-word replies so abrupt even Troy blinked at him:
“Good.”
“Fine.”
“Yeah.”
That was it.
He wasn’t sleeping anymore.
Then Shane stopped meeting his eyes at night. Stopped coming to bed on his own. Stopped eating whole meals. Sat at the table with a plate half cold and untouched.
It was becoming worse. Way worse.
“I’m okay,” he’d say, like a ritual, every time Ilya reached toward him — touching his forearm, brushing his hair back, trying to ease an extra pillow under his knees.
But Shane wasn’t okay.
And the more Ilya reached for him, the further Shane drifted.
One night, after a home loss they absolutely should have closed out, Ilya crept out of bed and found Shane sitting in the living room in the dark — eyes open, unmoving, like he was watching the shadows on the wall instead of the actual room.
“Come to bed,” Ilya said gently, voice low.
Shane didn’t turn.
“I’m coming too,” Ilya tried again softer. “C’mon, Shane.”
Shane moved then — not toward the bed — but past it. He stopped at the footboard, turned his back to Ilya, shoulders stiff, lips pressed together like he was sealing the words in. He didn’t sit. He just stood there, gaze blank, distant.
Ilya just watched him, heart tightening in that hollow way it did when he couldn’t reach him.
“It’s late,” Ilya said quietly.
Nothing.
So Ilya lowered himself to the edge of the mattress and waited — the same way he once waited for Shane as a kid after rough nights at tournaments where nothing felt easy.
Eventually, Shane slid onto the mattress beside him.
Not close. Not near.
Just beside him.
He didn’t lean in.
He didn’t speak.
He just was there.
And that became their routine for half a month.
Ilya fell asleep first — shoulders heavy, eyes burned soft with exhaustion.
Shane stayed awake longer and longer, sitting beside him, staring at whatever shape lived just beyond where sight could go, like he was trying to decode it.
Meanwhile… something else was breaking open.
Ilya’s depression — long beneath the surface but no longer containable — finally started showing itself.
It began in small ways: breakfasts where no one said a word, chairs left unpulled at dinner, his eyes glazed and distant when he thought Shane wasn’t looking. Weeks blurred into gray mornings and nights he couldn’t articulate.
Eventually, Ilya confided in Troy — not about Shane’s silence, but about how he was holding up: emptied, worn thin, drifting under a weight he couldn’t name.
Suddenly, Ilya needed care too.
And for the first time in weeks, Shane had something else to focus on besides his own rising panic.
He started driving Ilya to practices again—because at some point that had stopped too. He set coffee cups on the nightstand. He asked him about his night once in the half-light of morning, voice unfamiliar in its softness. He even—almost without realizing—pulled the blankets up over Ilya’s shoulders before leaving the bed.
But Shane wasn’t good at pretending.
Not really.
Not when his own safety net was already frayed.
So the team noticed again.
Not loudly.
Not intrusively.
Sort of like before, like cautious ripples rather than splashes.
But this time they didn’t ask if he was “fine.”
They asked if he was alright.
“Need anything?”
Shane bristled anyway.
He hated being watched. Hated the idea that someone thought something might be unraveling.
The implication that Ilya needed help — and that he himself might be unraveling too, even a little bit — made the ice beneath his feet feel even more impossibly thin.
Ilya absorbed it all.
The way Troy would rest a hand on his lower back a second longer than necessary.
The way Boodram asked in a gentle, unpressured voice:
“You okay today?”
Not probing. Not insistent.
Just noticing.
Ilya deflected each time with a practiced grin. As though tiredness—nothing more—could explain everything.
Shane could feel it — the vigilance.
It pressed over his skin.
—
The cottage was silent in a way that felt deliberate — as though the walls were holding their breath.
Outside, the lake lay black and sealed under the moon, a hard, lightless sheet. The world looked preserved. Contained. Nothing moving. Nothing breaking.
Ilya had fallen asleep first, turned toward the wall, one arm bent beneath his pillow, breathing slow and even — the kind of sleep that came only from exhaustion, not peace.
Shane was still sitting up.
He hadn’t meant to be. He didn’t remember deciding to. One moment he had been lying down; the next he was upright, spine locked straight, hands resting on his knees like he was waiting for instructions.
The room felt… wrong.
Not darker. Not colder.
Just unfamiliar.
The dresser looked too far away. The door too narrow. The ceiling slanted at an angle he didn’t recognize. His mind tried to correct it — to map the geometry back into something stable — but the lines wouldn’t settle.
He blinked.
The air tasted metallic.
There was no sound. Not even the heater this time. The quiet pressed inward, thick and padded, as if the cottage had been dropped underwater.
Something was about to happen.
He knew it the way you know a hit is coming before it lands — that split-second shift in air pressure, that warning in the bones.
And then it did.
Not as a scream.
Not as an image.
As absence.
The floor of his body simply vanished.
His stomach dropped as if gravity had been switched off. His skin prickled with a cold that didn’t belong to the room. The edges of the world softened, blurred, like wet paint dragged sideways.
He wasn’t in the bed.
He wasn’t anywhere.
His heartbeat didn’t feel like his own — too distant, too loud, echoing from somewhere outside his ribs.
“Shane?”
The name arrived distorted, stretched thin, like it had to travel miles to reach him.
He tried to turn toward it.
His neck didn’t respond.
He tried to answer.
His mouth felt packed with cotton.
Ilya’s voice again, closer now. Urgent but controlled. “Shane.”
The sound scraped along the inside of his skull.
Shane’s gaze fixed on the corner near the window.
The shadows were wrong.
They were moving — not physically, not in any way he could prove — but pulsing faintly, like something just beneath the surface of vision. If he looked directly at them they dissolved. If he didn’t, they crept closer.
His chest tightened — not fast, not explosive — just steadily, like a strap being pulled one notch tighter every second.
He couldn’t feel his hands.
He looked down.
They were there.
But they didn’t belong to him.
They were too far away.
“Look at me,” Ilya said.
The words were firm now.
Shane forced his eyes away from the corner.
Ilya’s face swam into view, familiar and not. The planes of it seemed sharpened, the shadows under his eyes too deep, his pupils too dark.
For a flicker of a second, Shane didn’t recognize him.
And that was worse than any nightmare.
The panic surged, but not outward.
Inward.
A collapsing star.
His vision tunneled. The room tilted. His thoughts fragmented into blunt pieces:
I am not here.
This isn’t real.
I’m disappearing.
Something is wrong.
Something is wrong.
Ilya switched to Russian.
“Ты здесь. Ты дома. Ты со мной.”
The words hit Shane like cold water.
Not soothing.
Wrong.
The language slid under his skin and scraped at something old and buried — the echo of locker rooms, the snap of consonants shouted down hallways, the sound of authority too close to his ear.
He flinched.
His breath stuttered, then splintered entirely.
The room folded in on itself.
“I—” he managed, but the word fractured before it finished.
He couldn’t locate his body. Couldn’t locate the bed. Couldn’t locate time.
He felt fourteen.
Small. Frozen. Waiting for instructions.
Ilya’s hands closed around his wrists.
Warm.
Solid.
That sensation cut through.
Not completely. Not cleanly.
But enough.
“Shane,” Ilya said, abandoning the script now. No repetition. No metronome calm. Just him. “Look at me. We argued about nothing. You’re mad at me. Remember?”
The specificity snagged something.
It felt absurdly concrete.
His lungs convulsed and dragged in air too fast. His heart slammed painfully against bone. Pins and needles raced down his arms as sensation returned all at once, too much, overwhelming.
He gasped, folding forward as if he’d been punched.
“I can’t,” he whispered, voice stripped thin. “I can’t feel—”
“You can,” Ilya said immediately. “You are shaking. I’m holding you. That’s feeling.”
Shane focused on that.
Shaking.
Yes.
That was real.
The room still felt tilted. The walls still seemed slightly off-angle. But Ilya’s grip was constant, thumbs pressed to the inside of his wrists, pulse to pulse.
“Do we need to go to the ER?” Ilya asked quietly.
The word ER detonated like a flare.
Bright lights. Strangers. Questions. Loss of control. Paper bracelets. Being observed. Being contained.
No.
“No,” Shane breathed immediately, panic flaring hotter at the thought than at the attack itself. “No, I can’t— I don’t want—”
“Okay,” Ilya said at once. No argument. No push. “Okay.”
That steadiness landed.
Shane’s vision flickered again, then steadied by degrees. The shadows retreated into ordinary corners. The dresser returned to its proper distance. The ceiling flattened.
He was still trembling, but the free-fall sensation eased into something survivable.
“I thought I was gone,” he whispered.
Ilya didn’t ask gone where.
He just pulled him closer, one hand sliding up to the back of his neck, pressing firmly there — grounding, deliberate.
“You’re here,” Ilya said. Not a mantra. Not repeated. Just once. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Shane swallowed hard.
“It feels real,” he said, voice breaking in a way that had nothing to do with oxygen anymore. “When it happens. It feels like I’m not in my own body.”
Ilya pressed his forehead to Shane’s temple.
“I know.”
They stayed like that while Shane’s nervous system slowly burned through the remaining voltage. Each breath came easier than the last, though still fragile, like glass cooling after heat.
“I don’t want to be alone,” Shane admitted finally, small and stripped of all control.
“You’re not,” Ilya said.
No promises about forever.
No dramatic declarations.
Just the fact of his hands.
The fact of his voice.
The fact that the room had stopped bending.
Outside, the lake remained sealed and silent.
Inside, the ice had thinned again.
“We'll get help. Go to a therapist or to someone safe.”
—
They had never gone.
Not the next morning.
Not the morning after that.
Not the one after that.
The promise dissolved quietly — not with a fight, not with a declaration. Just with postponement. A shift of tone. A change of subject over coffee.
In the cottage, in the dark, Shane had said Okay with tears balancing on his lashes. He had meant it in the way drowning people mean anything that sounds like air.
But daylight made him smaller.
“We can wait,” he’d said, eyes fixed on the window instead of Ilya. His voice had the flat texture of someone discussing groceries.
“You said we’d call,” Ilya had answered — not sharp, not accusing. Just tired.
“I didn’t say today.”
That was how it lived between them after that. Not explosive. Just suspended.
The arguments didn’t flare. They thinned. They frayed.
“You’re avoiding it.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not sleeping.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re barely functioning.”
“I am functioning.”
No raised voices. Just quiet erosion.
And something about the word surviving — when Ilya said it — lodged like a splinter neither of them pulled out.
Months stretched.
Shane’s sleep wasn’t sleep so much as collapse. His body would give out before his mind did. Sometimes he’d press himself into Ilya’s shoulder like gravity was stronger there. Sometimes he would go rigid and stay that way for hours.
But at least he wasn’t waking screaming anymore.
At least, Ilya told himself, it was steadier.
—
The hotel room felt anonymous in a way that should have been comforting. Beige carpet. Too-warm lamp light. Curtains drawn tight against a city neither of them cared about.
Ilya fell asleep first.
Shane curled behind him, knees tucked, one hand half-fisted in the sheet. For once his face smoothed into something almost boyish. Unburdened.
It lasted maybe twenty minutes.
There was no cry.
Just a subtle wrongness.
A strain in the silence.
His breathing changed first — not louder, just uneven, like a skipped beat repeating. His fingers flexed once against the mattress. His jaw tightened. A small sound caught low in his throat and died there.
Ilya felt it without waking fully — the shift in air, the tension in the bed.
He drifted closer instead of turning on a light.
“Moya lyubov’,” he murmured into the dark. “I’m here.”
Shane didn’t answer.
His breath stuttered again — shallow, then held too long.
And then — warmth.
Spreading. Quiet. Unmistakable.
The mattress darkened beneath him, slow and silent. No drama. No sound but fabric taking on weight.
Ilya knew before he fully understood.
His stomach dropped — not in disgust, not even in shock. Just in that helpless recognition of something crossing a line you can’t uncross.
Shane woke at the exact wrong second.
His eyes snapped open — confused first.
Then aware.
Then frozen.
There was a pause — a tiny, suspended second where he didn’t move at all. As if stillness might undo it.
It didn’t.
He felt it. The heat cooling against his thighs. The damp fabric clinging wrong. The smell beginning to bloom in the trapped air between blankets.
His face drained of color.
“Oh,” he breathed.
Not loud. Not panicked.
Just ruined.
His gaze dropped. Stayed there. His hand hovered like he might check, but he already knew. His fingers curled back instead.
“I—”
Nothing came after it.
He swallowed once. Hard. His throat worked like he was trying to force something down that wouldn’t go.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally — but it was barely sound. More exhale than voice.
He didn’t look at Ilya.
Didn’t reach for him.
He shifted backward an inch — then another — like distance could make him less visible. The blanket tangled at his waist. He didn’t fix it. He just sat there, rigid, staring at the spreading dark patch like it belonged to someone else.
Shame doesn’t shout. It calcifies.
“I didn’t—” He stopped. Tried again. “I wasn’t—”
The words dissolved.
He pressed the heel of his hand briefly against his forehead, eyes squeezing shut. Not crying. Just bracing. Like impact was still coming.
Ilya didn’t rush.
Didn’t say it was okay three times.
Didn’t explain it away.
He shifted upright slowly, careful with the sheets, careful with the air itself. He reached for the lamp but stopped halfway, leaving the room dim. Mercy in half-light.
“Shane.”
Soft. Level.
Shane flinched at his own name.
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. The humiliation in it was almost clinical — stripped of anger, stripped of defense. Just exposure. “I’m not— I don’t—”
He cut himself off before the word child could form.
His breathing started to thin again — not a panic spike, just that tight, high edge of someone trying not to unravel.
“I know,” Ilya said.
That was all.
Not it’s fine.
Not it happens.
Just: I know.
Shane’s mouth trembled once — furious at itself — and he looked away toward the wall like it had offered him a verdict.
The wet fabric cooled quickly. Reality settling in.
“I can’t believe—” His voice cracked, but he swallowed it down. “I can’t.”
His shoulders folded inward. Smaller. Contained.
Ilya moved then — slow enough to be predictable. He peeled the blanket back with steady hands, not commenting on the weight of it, not reacting to the scent, not hesitating.
Shane couldn’t watch.
He stared at the ceiling instead, jaw locked so tight it hurt.
The sheets came away quietly. Folded inward on themselves. Hidden.
There was no lecture about stress.
No clinical breakdown of trauma responses.
No attempt to intellectualize it into safety.
Just action.
When Ilya came back from the bathroom with towels, Shane was still sitting in the same position — like he’d been paused.
“Hey,” Ilya said again.
This time Shane looked at him.
And there it was — not hysteria. Not even tears yet.
Just devastation.
“I don’t want you to see me like this,” he said. Barely audible.
It wasn’t about the bed.
It was about erosion. About control slipping in places that felt unforgivable.
Ilya crouched in front of him instead of standing over him.
“I see you,” he said quietly.
Shane’s breath hitched — sharp, involuntary — and then the tears finally came. Not loud. Not messy. They slid down without expression, like his body had given up censoring itself.
He covered his face with one hand, ashamed of that too.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated — smaller each time.
Ilya rested a hand against the back of his neck. Not gripping. Just there.
They would deal with the staff. With fresh sheets. With logistics.
Right now there was just this:
A grown man sitting in dim hotel light, soaked in something he could not control, trying to hold onto whatever dignity he had left.
And the quiet fact that promises made in the dark are fragile things — especially when the dark keeps winning.
—
The plate shattered on a Thursday — a year and a half after all this started.
It wasn’t even a bad day. They’d won the night before. Shane had two assists. Ilya had scored on the power play and kissed the gold cross at his throat before pointing at Shane with that ridiculous grin, and the guys had hooted about it in the tunnel afterward.
It should have been easy.
Dinner was simple — salmon, rice, roasted vegetables. Shane had measured the rice on the scale like he always did before catching himself and pretending he hadn’t. He nudged the vegetables outward to make the plate look fuller. He chewed slowly, deliberately.
Ilya watched him the way he watched tape — quiet, analytical.
“You’re not hungry?” Ilya asked.
“I ate at the rink.”
“You had half a protein bar.”
“I had a shake.”
“Coffee is not a shake.”
Shane exhaled. “Ilya.”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re counting now?”
“I always count. You think I don’t notice when you stop finishing your food?”
Shane’s fork struck porcelain too hard. The sound rang in the kitchen. “I’m fine.”
“You look exhausted.”
“It’s mid-season.”
“You are shrinking.”
That one landed.
Shane went rigid. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Care?”
“Don’t make this a thing.”
“I am not making it a thing. It already is a thing.”
“I am not your project.”
“I am not your enemy,” Ilya said, voice lifting despite himself.
“Stop controlling me!”
The word detonated.
Ilya’s hand moved — sharp, dismissive, frustrated.
The plate slipped.
It hit tile.
It exploded.
The crack was violent, echoing off the cabinets. Ceramic fractured into bright, jagged pieces that skidded across the floor.
Silence dropped hard.
Shane went white.
Not angry. Not startled.
Gone.
“Jesus,” Ilya muttered automatically, glancing down. “It’s just a plate.”
No response.
“Did it hit you?” Ilya asked, stepping forward instinctively. “Are you cut?”
Shane didn’t blink.
His chest stopped halfway through an inhale and stayed there.
“Shane?”
The shards on the floor gleamed like broken teeth.
Shane wasn’t looking at them.
He was somewhere else entirely.
The kitchen dissolved. The air shifted. Bleach. Sweat. Damp concrete. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. A metal bench cold against the backs of his thighs. Laughter echoing down a hallway. A door clicking shut.
A hand at the back of his neck.
Too heavy.
Too sure.
You wanted this.
You’re lucky.
Don’t tell anyone.
His stomach rolled.
“Hey,” Ilya said again, closer now. “Talk to me.”
Shane flinched violently when Ilya reached out — like the movement itself was a threat. His hip slammed into the counter. His fingers slipped against smooth stone.
A sound tore out of him — thin, high, nothing like anger.
“I can’t—” Shane choked. “I can’t—”
“Can’t what?” Ilya asked, still scrambling for footing. “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean—”
Shane shook his head frantically, but he wasn’t seeing Ilya.
His hands went to his hair, gripping hard. He slid down the cabinets until he was on the floor, knees pulled up, rocking once, twice.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no—”
Ilya’s pulse spiked.
He crouched slowly, palms open. “Okay. Okay. I’m here.”
The broken plate glittered between them.
“Look at me,” Ilya tried, softer now.
Shane’s eyes were wide and unfocused.
“I’m here,” Ilya said again. “You’re home. It’s Thursday. We were fighting about rice.”
Shane’s gaze flickered — not to Ilya, but through him.
“It’s my fault,” he gasped suddenly, the words ripped out of him. “I didn’t— I didn’t stop it.”
Ilya froze.
“Stop what?” he asked — and this time the question wasn’t confused. It was afraid.
“I didn’t say no.” Shane’s voice broke apart. “I didn’t fight. I just— I froze.”
The kitchen felt too small.
Ilya’s mind scrambled, trying to slot the pieces together. A fight. Control. Shrinking. A word that detonated. A look on Shane’s face that didn’t belong to tonight.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, quieter now.
Shane’s breathing hitched hard. His eyes finally found Ilya’s.
“I was fourteen.”
Everything inside Ilya went cold.
Fourteen.
Not a bad decision.
Not a misunderstanding.
Fourteen.
“I didn’t know what it was,” Shane whispered. His voice had gone thin with humiliation. “He said it was normal. That this is how older guys… show you things. That it meant I was ready.”
The implication settled heavy and undeniable.
A locker room. An older—player, couch? A door closed.
“I thought if I didn’t move,” Shane continued, shame pooling in every syllable, “it would be over faster.”
Ilya’s breath left him.
“He—” Shane’s mouth trembled. “He touched me. He—” The word wouldn’t form, but it didn’t have to. “I didn’t stop him.”
It wasn’t confusion anymore.
It was rape.
Fourteen.
Ilya felt the understanding arrive in stages — sickening, irreversible. All the small things over the years rearranged themselves at once. The need for control. The food. The silence in certain locker rooms. The flinch when boxed in.
“Shane,” he said, but his voice failed him halfway through the name.
“I went back the next day,” Shane said, like it was evidence against himself. “I practiced like nothing happened. I said thank you.”
The shame in that sentence was unbearable.
Ilya moved forward fully now, glass crunching under his knee. He didn’t care.
“Who?” he started — and stopped when Shane recoiled.
“Don’t,” Shane whispered immediately. Not protective. Just shattered.
Ilya swallowed the question.
“You were fourteen,” he said instead — and the words came out rough.
Shane’s composure broke.
He folded forward, hands clutching at Ilya’s shirt like he might fall apart if he didn’t anchor himself. His body shook so hard his teeth clicked.
“I let him,” Shane sobbed against his chest. “I didn’t scream. I didn’t run.”
Ilya wrapped himself around him instinctively, one hand firm at the back of his neck, the other between his shoulder blades, holding him steady.
“He was my mentor. I looked up to him so much. Every move, every play. I was so excited when I heard he got a summer job at the rink.”
“You were fourteen,” he repeated, and this time there was steel in it.
“I should have known,” Shane whispered.
“You were fourteen,” Ilya said again, louder now, almost furious at the idea itself. “That is not choice. That is not consent. That is a kid in a locker room with someone older and stronger.”
Shane shook his head, but he didn’t pull away.
“I thought it was my fault,” he choked. “If I hadn’t been there. If I hadn’t—”
“No.” The word came out sharp. Final.
Shane’s fingers dug into his back, desperate.
“I built everything around not being that stupid again,” he said, voice cracking. “If I controlled my body. My weight. My schedule. If I was perfect.”
Ilya pressed his forehead briefly against Shane’s temple, breathing hard, trying to keep his own rage from spilling over.
“You survived,” he said, voice low and shaking. “That is what you did.”
Shane’s breathing fractured into uneven pulls. His whole body tremored in waves.
At one point he whispered, so small it barely existed, “Don’t let me go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ilya said immediately.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
Eventually the shaking dulled into tremors. Exhaustion took over where terror had been.
Shane sagged against him, heavy and limp, all fight drained.
Ilya brushed damp hair off his forehead. His own hands were trembling now.
“I’ve got you,” he said quietly — more to steady himself than anything else.
He stood carefully, lifting Shane into his arms. Shane didn’t protest. Didn’t apologize. He just rested his cheek against Ilya’s shoulder, eyes half-closed, pride too exhausted to defend itself.
Ilya stepped over the broken porcelain and carried him to bed.
The plate could wait.
—
Morning came soft and gray, the light outside too quiet for how loud everything felt inside.
Shane woke slowly, like he was surfacing from deep water. His head throbbed where all the tension had collected overnight. His eyes felt swollen and heavy. For a heartbeat, he considered pretending he didn’t remember — it would have been easier, cleaner, like brushing shoulders off his uniform.
But he did remember.
All of it.
Not fragmented. Not murky.
Clear.
The locker room. The smell of sweat and old wood and cleaning chemicals. The hand on his shoulder. The way he’d gone perfectly still and told himself that was how older players treated younger ones — rough, competitive, intense, normal. How he’d swallowed it down and kept playing. Kept controlling his body, his schedule, his image, as though that could protect him from anything.
Ilya was propped on one elbow beside him, watching him with an expression so open it almost hurt to see — vulnerable, attentive, afraid to misread a nuance.
“Hi,” Ilya said quietly.
Shane swallowed. “Hi.”
They lay there without touching for a long moment — not cold, not tense, just a heavy silence balanced between them.
“I didn’t remember,” Shane said finally, voice rough. “Not like that. I knew something… happened. I just filed it away.”
“Filed it away,” Ilya echoed, soft.
Shane gave a humorless, hollow huff. “I’m good at that.”
Ilya’s thumb brushed under his eye, gentle. “Your brain was trying to protect you.”
“It doesn’t feel protective,” Shane admitted, gaze drifting up to the ceiling.
“No,” Ilya said. “It feels like betrayal.”
Shane’s throat tightened.
Because it wasn’t just betrayal from what had happened. It was betrayal from forgetting — from burying something that had quietly shaped every single choice he’d ever made.
There was another memory that had come back too — softer, older, more humiliating in a way he’d shoved deeper even than the assault itself: nights as a kid when he used to wake soaked, ashamed and confused, his parents worried, trying to help him, trying to figure out why it was happening, and him not knowing. Not understanding. And instead of letting it touch his hockey, his identity, his habits, he had buried it under rituals and control and perfectionism, convinced that if he just held it all together nothing could get into him again.
“I thought if I controlled everything,” he went on slowly, staring at that ceiling crack, “my schedule, my body, my reputation — if I was perfect — nothing could catch me off guard again.”
Ilya’s jaw flexed with pain.
“You were a kid,” he said simply.
Shane’s composure cracked, just slightly. Not a sob. Not dramatic. Just a tiny tremor in his mouth he couldn’t quite hide.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” he whispered. “Not my parents. Not my coaches. Not you.”
“You are telling me now.”
Shane turned his head and looked at him fully, really looked. “I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Weak.”
Ilya’s expression sharpened, not in anger — in disbelief. “You think surviving that makes you weak?”
Shane’s eyes shimmered with something raw, something he’d spent so long shoving down. “I froze.”
“I freeze sometimes too,” Ilya said quietly. “Different reasons. Same feeling. That doesn’t mean we wanted it.”
It was truth without padding.
The words settled between them, steady and soft.
Shane’s fingers twitched against the sheets before reaching for Ilya’s shirt — gripping. Not out of panic, just need.
“I’m scared,” he admitted, voice thin and real.
“I know.”
“I don’t want this to mess up hockey.”
It was so Shane, Ilya almost laughed — because even now, that was still where he guarded himself first.
“Shane,” Ilya said, voice thick, “you could tell the entire league tomorrow and you would still be the best centre on the ice.”
Shane searched Ilya’s face like he needed proof.
“There is none,” Ilya added firmly.
A faint, fragile smile appeared — brittle but real.
“And you,” Shane murmured, “are still dramatic.”
“Always,” Ilya agreed with a slow grin.
The smile faded gently, down into something quieter.
“I’m so tired,” Shane whispered.
“I know,” Ilya said.
“I don’t know how to… not hold it all the time.”
Ilya shifted closer, pulling him gently into his chest. Shane didn’t resist now — not fully, not reflexively — and fitted himself there the way he used to when everything was secret and fragile and layered in fear.
“Then you let me hold it for a while,” Ilya said quietly, one hand cradling his back, the other steady at his waist. “And then we find professionals to help us with it.”
Shane’s hand curled in the fabric of Ilya’s shirt — a small anchor.
“Stay?” he asked, voice barely there.
Ilya wrapped one arm around his shoulders, the other cradling the back of his head.
“Always,” he said.
Outside, the lake was still frozen, deceptively solid.
Inside, something had cracked open.
It hurt.
But it was finally visible.