SHANE HOLLANDER, MLH STAR, DIES FROM ACCIDENTAL OVERDOSE (click to read more)
That’s the headline Ilya reads on his Google alerts when he’s home alone. More and more articles start coming out, his phone pinging with different versions of the same sentence over and over. Every website claiming this horrible, twisted lie that Shane Hollander is dead.
It has to be a lie after all. This must be wrong. They’re all surely misreporting things and it’ll turn out that Hollander is alive, safe in his boring home in Montreal. Ilya’s confident there will be a statement made soon but he’s too impatient to wait for that.
Sure, they haven’t spoken since the day Shane fled from his home, leaving Ilya to clean up half-eaten tuna melts and their mixed come off his chest.
And Ilya didn’t reach out after Shane got a nasty hit in San Jose a few weeks ago— one that left Shane with a fractured collarbone and concussion. He tortured himself with the footage and drafted an “are you okay?” text but he never sent it. He had been a coward.
He wishes more than anything that he sent it now.
He calls Shane. It’s 8PM in Boston, which means it’s 8PM in Montreal and even Shane isn’t lame enough to be in bed so early.
No answer to his call. No answer to his texts. Nothing.
He calls and calls and calls and fucking calls but there’s nothing. No response, no answer. Not even a ‘read’ receipt. Shane isn’t cruel. He would call him. Even with this fractured something that they are (or were), he would have reached out. He would have heard about the news by now and called Ilya back or texted to say it was fake. That he was fine. That it was idiots being idiots and talking about something they knew nothing of.
So why the fuck is Shane not answering? The only reason he wouldn’t is if… is if…
Ilya doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s in his car and headed to Montreal. His phone dies halfway through the trip from attempts to get in contact with Shane. Still nothing. He’s in a state of delirium when he crosses the border into Canada, with no plan other than making it to Shane’s house.
If Shane’s alive, he’ll be in his home and he’ll answer the door. And if not… Ilya doesn’t want to think that far.
Shane’s lounging on his couch, half asleep and frustrated at the world. He’s still reeling from getting the worst, most frantic phone call from his parents earlier that day.
And all because he’d gone to the hospital earlier. There had been unforeseen conflicts with his medication and some supplements he’s taking, something that risked leading to an overdose if not caught as early as it was.
Somehow that afternoon trip led to someone violating HIPPA and even more confusingly, led to quite a bit of the population mistaking him for being dead.
For once Shane’s thankful his mom talked him into keeping a landline when buying a home. “You never know what may happen Shane,” she had said.
Wasn’t that the truth? The whole reason for the urgent visit was because he got dizzy that morning, his vision and balance going off kilter, and he had dropped his phone, breaking it beyond repair. It was added to his list of annoyances with today. If not for his parents and Hayden having his home phone number… they might have believed the news for much longer than they had to.
It’s 1AM when furious knocking wakes him up. He must have fallen asleep down stairs. Shane’s groggy before it really hits him that someone is at his front door. No one in their right mind visits at one a.m.
He gets up and peeks through the peep hole and swings the door open before he even knows he’s going to do it because it’s—
Ilya.
He looks like shit. Eyes red-rimmed, hair like he went through a wind tunnel. He’s wearing flannel pajama pants, slides, and a sweatshirt. He looks like he just rolled out of bed.
He doesn’t get any words out before Ilya knocks the breath out of him by collapsing into him. It’s a hug but feels a bit like a tackle too. If Shane weren’t as athletic or as on guard at seeing Ilya, he may have fallen backwards.
It takes several moments to register Ilya is shaking in his arms.
No. Ilya is crying in his arms.
Shane’s brain searches for anything that would make this confusing thing make sense. He begins to think it may be a dream he has yet to wake up from but then it hits him.
The article. His phone being broken. His parents had called everyone they thought was important.
No one knew to tell Ilya it wasn’t real.
