just some guy

Shane ran his thumb back and forth across the bottom of his phone, staring at Ilya's contact, debating calling. He had only a few minutes before he'd need to head into the arena for the game and he would really like his anxiety level by then to be about half of what it was now.

When they'd spoken last night, Ilya had mentioned having a pretty bad headache, half his face scrunched up against the dim light of the lamp he seemed to have turned on only to talk to Shane, two fingers rubbing incessantly at his temples. He'd been sniffly too, although he was almost always at least a little sniffly, and it hadn't taken either of them very long to connect the dots to a flu that was making the rounds in their conference, principally because of the fact that a good quarter of the Centaurs were currently out with it.

So the fact that Shane couldn't get him to reply to a text currently was more than a little worrying. The last three texts he'd sent- “Ilya. Ilyaa. ILYA.”- had been more than 30 minutes ago, and the blond hadn't so much as read them.

Shane glanced over his shoulder into the back of the car, checking he had everything he'd need this evening. Nope, clearly he didn't because there wasn't a gorgeous blond Russian man curled up asleep there. Not that he’d feel particularly good about leaving his probably sick boyfriend in the fucking car while he amused himself on the ice for a few hours. Which is what this game would be, amus-

The phone buzzing in his hand came as such a shock that he almost dropped it, head whipping back to the device to read the notification.

LILY: whatttttt

LILY: I am alive

He sighed in relief, double checking the time before typing out a quick response.

YOU: Ok good. Stay that way. I love you. Keep me updated on how you’re doing, please.

And then with a click, the phone was off, and he was hopping out of the car to grab his bags, the pre-game adrenaline already starting to flood into his system. Kit? Check. Boyfriend? Alive. Win? Incoming.

…

He didn’t get a chance to check his phone again until after warm-ups, having been the mostly unwilling mediator in a stupidly heated debate about if it would be better to be reincarnated as a hockey puck or a stick. These guys seriously had too many concussions under their belts.

Despite the extended departure from his phone, it hadn’t been that long, and Shane was borderline alarmed to find he had more text messages than his lock screen would provide a specific number for, having resorted to a simple “10+”.

He unlocked the device, scrolling through to see a plethora of short messages from Ilya.

LILY: i love you toooo

LILY: update- doing ok

LILY: update- still doing ok

LILY: update- drinking water

LILY: update-lost fucking tv remotw

LILY: update- found

And so on. For over 30 messages. Some of them Shane couldn’t decipher however, either due to misspellings or Romanized versions of Russian words that he couldn’t quite translate. One however, appeared many times over.

LILY: update- chikh

LILY: update- stolko chikhhhh

Shane frowned.

YOU: I’m glad you’re okay. What is ‘chikh’?

Ilya read the text immediately.

LILY: timing is crazy. you are psychic?

LILY: is like spxhhi

What the fuck did that mean?

“Hollander! He’s making the stupid tape point again, you gotta come tell him he’s wrong!” Fuck.

With an anxious glance back to the still bouncing ‘typing’ bubbles, Shane tossed his phone back into his stall and returned to his captain duties.

…

He hadn’t had a spare second to consider what the last messages had meant in the whole of the first period, their opponents coming out strong and not letting up the entire time. A stupid fight had left them shorthanded, and Shane was so focused on not letting the disadvantage tip the score, that he’d forgotten all about his boyfriend’s ‘condition’ until he was lining up for a face off, flying high off the relief of a goal.

His stick clicked against the ice, and he kept his eyes down, uninterested in meeting the opposing center’s fiery hot gaze. Before the puck could drop, he heard Hayden, off to his left, say, “The fuck are you doing, dude?”, and then a sound that snapped his attention across to the wing.

“hEh…Kkf- hUhTNGKk! hhUh…hHTNGXhoo!”

It seemed that the illness that had the Centaurs flat on their backs was also running rife through the Raiders. So it would have gotten Ilya even if he hadn’t move- Oh, fuck, Ilya! He was watching, probably, although how much of the actual game he was taking in with the distraction of his symptoms was anyone’s guess. And the symptoms themselves, echoing through his empty house, no one to acknowledge them, acknowledge him… it was a tragic mental image. Or at least that was what he was forcing himself to think. Because he’d give anything to be a fly on the wall in that house right about-

Head still tilted to the left, eyes distant, stick hovering nowhere particularly useful, Shane, unsurprisingly lost the face-off. Fucking-

He turned fast, sharp, anger and embarrassment creating a flush high on his cheeks, ready to give chase. Thankfully, the defense had closed ranks behind him, and, with their right winger still flagging, Boston had lost possession.

After thirty seconds of what was essentially just keep-away, and Shane glaring hard at the puck, and the players around him, and trying to stay focused, he was heading back to the bench, turning to Hayden as they sat down, seeing the frown on the winger’s face.

“Sorry.” He muttered.

“Huh?” Pike looked like he’d been pulled from deep thought, “For what?”

“I fucked up the puck drop.” He confessed, shocked that the alternate captain hadn’t already picked him up on it.

Hayden reached for the nearest bottle, skying the liquid into his mouth as he stared absently at the jumbotron, swallowing before responding, “It’s no big deal, we can’t win ‘em all, right?”

“…right.” He doubted that he’d take the same attitude to the game itself, so he needed to get it together. They all did. For the love of fuck, Coach had better yell some sense into them at intermission, or they’d be losing to a team of invalids who would probably pass along this flu for their trouble.

…

Trudging into the locker room at what barely remained a 1-1 draw, Shane felt his heart rate pick up, knowing he’d get to answer those questions that had been building up in his mind ever since he’d lost half his focus to his boyfriend just over halfway through the period. Nowhere near the ice and still stealing his attention. Remind him not to tell Ilya that when he saw him.

“He literally sneezed like, right in my face, I mean, can you believe that?” Hayden was still complaining as they made it to their stalls.

“Yeah- or, no, that’s wild.” The captain was more focused on retrieving his phone and checking for updates, stripping off the unnecessary layers one handed as he unlocked it.

“I think that counts as biological warfare, for real. I hate that dude. I think I’m starting to get the way you feel about Rozanov.”

“What?” He looked up, having been just about to click on the aforementioned player’s contact when his name was voiced.

Pike looked slightly taken aback by the speed with which he’d met his eyes. Well, he wasn’t exactly known for his love of eye contact at the best of times. He actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked into Hayden’s. “I’m just saying, who does that? Like yeah, he looked really pathetic about it afterwards, but like, cover your face, man. I almost feel sorry for him, but instead it’s just like pure…hatred.”

“Yeah.” You keep telling yourself that, buddy.

As Hayden considered his ‘hate’ for the opposing winger more quietly, Shane finally opened the message thread, and started back up where he’d left off.

LILY: I type wrong

LILY: still chikh

LILY: can not see

LILY: *apchhi

LILY: apchhi! apchhi! you know?

LILY: you know bc I do all fucking summer

Shane’s eyes went wide.

“You okay, man?” Hayden nudged him, lightly, but Shane almost dropped his phone all the same.

“Yeah, I- sorry, I have to take a call.” He headed out into the hallway, eyes skimming back over the messages. No way Ilya was…live texting him his fucking sneezes?

…

It had taken him a good minute to get his breathing under control enough to hit call on the contact and even as it rang, he found himself leaning back against the wall of the corridor to try and stop his head from spinning.

“Hello?” Ilya’s voice was destroyed, so muffled and broken that it sounded like the phone line was bad. Which it wasn’t because he could hear the TV playing commercials in perfect clarity in the background.

“Hi. I uh, just finished the first period.” He knows that, dumbass, he’s watching the game.

“I know.”

“Some of the stuff you were saying, I couldn’t understand it, so I just wanted to call and check you’re okay.”

“I am good. What couldn’t you understand?” He broke off to cough throatily away from the receiver.

“The um-” It was slightly easier, saying it in a different language, if he was saying what he thought he was saying, that was. “-the ‘chick’ thing?”

“Oh, chikh. I explain already, Shane, is like- wait. I will do for you.”

He would fucking WHAT?

There was a snorting sound on the other end of the line, and then some kind of soft tapping noise. Shane waited silently, breath baited.

“hH-here I go-hKk! Kkh! hHKSH! KKh! hKSHuH! hrRSH! HRSHH! hhAHSHhOo!”

“Bless you.” He whispered, pressing his back against the wall in the corridor as though he could disappear into it, stomach flipping so intensely he worried it would get caught in his ribs somehow. Why did the idea of Ilya doing…that… on purpose make him feel like he was about to pass out?

“Thank you. How you not understand, though? I spell it out and everything.”

“You said ‘apchi’. That’s not a sneeze.” He hissed. If he framed it like an argument, he could ignore the words coming out of his mouth, right?

“What is it in English then?” Ilya sounded less than bothered, vaguely interested but also like his real focus was elsewhere.

Shane clenched his jaw, heartbeat thudding in his ears at the thought of having to verbalise the stupid sound, “It’s like… it’s like ‘achoo’.” He wished for the ground to open up and swallow him.

“What? Who the fuck says ‘a-choo’? That’s stupid.”

“You literally did five seconds ago.”

“No, I didn’t.” He paused, evidently playing back the sounds he’d just made, in his head before conceding. “Is because I spend so long listening to idiot Americans and Canadians doing this, now I sound like idiot too.”

“Fuck off.” Shane pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to get his thoughts and his heartbeat and his dick under control. The idea of the sound of a sneeze being contagious… he could only hope Ilya hadn’t caught that strangled sounding thing that he’d just heard from their winger. “I have to go now.”

“Okay, I keep you updated.” There was a clear smile in his tone, and it did nothing to help the snowballing panic that was overwhelming the Canadian. Ilya was taking over his fucking brain, and he needed that to play. Not everyone did, clearly, but for him hockey was a mind game, which kind of necessitated showing up with your mind there in your skull and not over a hundred kilometres away with its metaphorical dick out, laser focused on your secret, sickly, so so sexy, boyfriend.

He’d walked about five steps down the corridor when his ringtone rang out again.

LILY: update- finish tissue box

Oh, god, this was actually going to be the death of him.

…

During one of the previous flu outbreaks in the league, the Metros had started a policy where they’d take all the players temperatures before they hit the ice; warmup, first period, second, third, like clockwork, and Shane was exceedingly glad that they weren’t doing that now- not that they’d ever actually scratched anyone based on the results- because he was full of a fire that was part anger part lust, and that had beads of sweat rolling down his face before he even had his gear all the way back on.

He considered the feeling while benched between shifts, the furnace-like heat in his chest, making every breath feel hot enough to start melting the ice- he was almost sure he could feel his mouthguard turning soft and pliable between his teeth- and then that tightening feeling slightly higher up than the fire, like a rope being pulled taught, like at the slightest slash of a blade, it would snap. And he wasn’t sure what snapping would involve, but it would almost definitely end with him in the penalty box or back in the dressing room, regretting the entire night.

On autopilot, he stood as the receding line approached the bench, vaulting the boards and hunting down the puck, focused, ruthless, ready. He took possession, finding Pike and passing to free himself of the three Raiders who’d immediately descended upon him the second his skates hit the ice- clearly their intermission speech had involved the instruction ‘stay on Hollander’- trying to find space to receive it back.

Before he could make the pass, Hayden disappeared into a sea of white and gold as the puck got trapped against the boards. Shane joined the mass of players, trying to get eyes on the puck, and his winger, whom he couldn’t actually see among the taller Raider players.

Normally he’d leave this stupidity to happen on the other side of the ice, while he found a nice open area, ready to receive or intercept depending on who came out in possession, but right now he could not be left alone with his thoughts for the amount of time that that might take. So here he was.

His thoughts, as he realised belatedly, one weak swipe in the puck’s direction in, did not wait politely outside of the huddle, they clung to him with sharp, spiteful grips, and at the slightest invitation, would most certainly be taking back over his mind. He was surrounded by Raiders, and, right as the group shifted, and his balance was thrown, pressing him against the player to his left, said player sniffled pretty urgently and muttered a curse word in what definitely sounded like Russian. And even though he knew it wasn’t Ilya, and he could have turned to stare into the idiot’s face to confirm that, had he so wished, he froze, a shiver running down his spine, mouth going dry and gaze going distant as his mind ran away with him for a moment- Ilya draped over his back like a blanket, sniffling in his ear while he made lunch for the two of them, Ilya trying to speak through his typical early morning fit and cursing his nose out as it interrupted him, Ilya pressed against him in a hotel elevator, heat radiating off of him as he breathed noisily through his mouth, accent tinting each exhale-

The puck was freed. The puck had been freed somewhere close to four full seconds ago, and here Shane still was, staring at his own reflection in the glass, seeing someone entirely different. Once again cursing his own imagination, and his lack of concept of time passing, he spun, barely a millisecond behind the player ahead of him, but several crucial seconds behind the one in possession, opting to sprint rather than bother to push off and try to pick up speed, making it out to center ice just in time to see the flash of a stick and the crack of impact and then be promptly deafened by the goal horn. Fucking great work.

Shane never noticed it before, but the sound effect that played in the Metro’s arena when the opposing team scored had this ‘ding’ to it that kind of sounded like a phone notification. Like his phone notification. And as he was skating back to the bench, face blank, head down, all he was thinking about was his phone lighting up over and over in his bag in the locker room with notifications of every single development in his boyfriend’s illness. Every cough, every noseblow, every sneeze. He felt like he was visibly flinching every time the sound repeated, because it was definitely making his heart skip a beat each time. How quickly was it possible to become conditioned by a noise? He was pretty sure he had either just broken a record or at the very least tied that dog with the fucking bell. At least the dog actually got its food, while he was just imagining the reward- there was definitely something seriously wrong with getting gratification from your boyfriend’s flu symptoms right?

“Hey, game’s not over yet.” JJ clapped him on the back as he passed by.

In lieu of responding ‘get your fucking hands off me, I’m too fucking riled up to deal with this shit’. Shane nodded silently, following him through the door and slumping down on the bench, pretending not to notice how that impact felt as it jarred through him.

The jumbotron, which he’d glanced up at as a distraction, kindly displayed a shot of the opposing bench, players grinning and banging their sticks against the boards, and on the edge of frame, a player with his head down, apparently emptying his sinuses into a towel, glancing up, massaging his nose, and flushing when he saw himself on the screen.

Shane swallowed dryly, gratefully accepting the water bottle as it came his way and taking several gulps as though it would cleanse him of the endless temptation towards distraction that this game had apparently decided to present.

…

Period two had stayed 2-1, both teams starting to flag slightly, the Raiders, it seemed, out of pure exhaustion, and the Metros falling apart as their first line went to pieces for no apparent reason. Shane had made his way back to the locker room with his head down, not even attempting to offer the rest of the team any words of encouragement, because deep down, he knew he was the problem. Or, one of them at least. Pike was inexplicably all over the place, too, missing passes, and almost falling face first over the boards as he hopped over for one shift, not to mention the attempt to pull Drapeau that had seen the goaltender head halfway to the bench and then immediately have to sprint- or as close as he could get to it- back to the crease to field away a shot.

Shane, against his better instincts, dropped down into his stall and unlocked his phone. Maybe if he could just check what Ilya had said, he wouldn’t spend the entire time thinking about it, right? He’d know for sure, and then he could stop imagining things.

The latest two (or really three) messages, though, stopped him in his tracks.

LILY: Voice message. 00:41

LILY: did not mean send that 🫵

LILY: *👍

What the fuck could be in this voice note? Oh, this was a hundred times worse than just not knowing what the texts said. He wasn’t about to pull out his headphones and listen to what very well might be actual fucking audio porn in the middle of the damn locker room. But there was… another option…

Unconsciously gritting his teeth as though the button had a fifty-fifty chance of exploding the entire planet, Shane clicked ‘view transcription’.

0:05 stop

0:08 [Music]

0:13 harsh

0:14 [Music]

0:15 fight it

0:16 his shoe

0:22 oh wait

0:24 Shane

0:25 I do not mean to do this

0:27 what the fuck is

0:32 okay I don’t know what it is doing

0:34 how do I delete

0:36 ha I send you this as update

0:39 so you know what I am doing

0:41 okay love you miss you bye

An accidental voice note, then, so it wouldn’t necessarily be too…salacious. But his eyes were drawn to the notation at 16 seconds, reading it over and over in his mind, considering how it sounded…

“Hollz.” The voice in his ear was unexpectedly quiet, and he looked up into Hayden’s wide, focused eyes. “Is everything alright?”

“Uh-” Shane struggled to adjust to the conversation, feeling like the untoward thoughts in his brain were visible in his eyes, audible at the close distance, obvious to anyone who even glanced his way. But no one knew. No one knew what this was. What he was. “-yeah.”

“You sure, bud? You look pretty stricken there, and you have every time you’ve touched your phone tonight. Is someone in your family sick or something?”

What a fucking question Hay’. Yeah, he considered Ilya a part of his family now, even if it wasn’t something that he could really declare to anyone beyond the man himself, and his own parents, and yes he was sick, but… “It’s kinda complicated.”

“Okay, well you know, if there’s anything you need, or you wanna talk about it…”

“Thanks.” He was standing before he’d even really processed the desire to leave. “I’ll be back.”

Hayden nodded, with this disquieting look of ‘understanding’ on his face. Shane grabbed his headphones from his bag and walked quickly towards the door. He’d made it a single step into the corridor when he heard JJ’s voice from behind him,

“Where the fuck is the capitaine running off to again? We are falling apart here, people!”

And Pike’s response, “Shut the fuck up Boiziau.”

…

Shane was fumbling the earbuds into his ears before he’d even shut the door of the bathroom stall, fingers hovering over the play button the moment he’d realised he was alone, breath coming in embarrassingly urgent little puffs as the various combatant feelings within him swelled to a crescendo, heart thumping so loudly in his ears he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear whatever this turned out to be.

He slammed the bolt across, leaning against the wall and not even bothering to try and calm himself down this time- he had like no time at all before he’d have to be back out there, and he needed every single second of that time for calming himself down AFTER he’d listened to it.

With a final strangled-sounding attempt at a deep breath, his thumb came down on the screen and his ears were filled with static. And then-

“hKk! Kkh! KSH!” Oh this was exactly what he’d hoped and dreaded it would be.

“Stop.” Ilya pleaded with, apparently himself, in the recording, to no avail, “hKSH! KSHH! hhih… hKSH! hh… hhAHSHh! KSH! KXSH! hRSHH! Khvatit. Ple-hihh… hhIHSHOo!”

Shane shuddered, the sweat-drenched material of his compression shirt sticking to the tiled wall he was leaning against, almost holding him up. Ilya panted, loud and unrestrained in his ears, catching his breath. The Canadian shut his eyes, imagined the blond’s head pressed against his chest as he recovered, pressed his hand there just to make it feel a tiny bit more real.

“Oh, wait.”

He let his hand drop again, pressing his damp palm against the cool tile, trying to regulate his body temperature a little.

“Shane?”

The brunet pretended that his heart hadn’t just ejected itself from his chest to sit disobediently in his mouth, leaving an aching, unappeasable pit of desire in its place, at the sound of his name. God, he couldn’t last another second without him, right now. He couldn’t play without him, couldn’t live without him, couldn’t- apparently he couldn’t stand without him either, as his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell to his knees on the floor, eyes opening to stare up into that unyielding gaze, that stony expression that so poorly hid his boyfriend’s adoration for him now that he’d seen it fall so many times, that face, of the man he loved. And he saw only ceiling tiles, harsh lighting, the cold empty walls of the room he’d locked himself in to let down walls of his own. The prison of his own making.

“I do not mean to do this.” Ilya inadvertently apologised for the false hope the audio had given his boyfriend, brow somehow audibly furrowed as his voice got closer to the phone.

“What the fuck is-?” He was silent for a moment and then, “Okay, I don’t know what it is doing. How do I delete?”

More silence, and then, in stark contrast, giggling. “I send you this as update-” He broke off laughing again, the sound wheezing faintly in his chest as he struggled for breath, “-so you know what I am doing.” His voice was playful, but there was nothing lucid about it.

“Okayyy.” Ilya stretched the word out long, like they were on the phone and he didn’t want to be the one to hang up. Shane told himself that the sheen over his eyes was from staring into the ceiling lights, and blinked it away. “Loveyoumissyoubye!” He half-yelled, all as one word, and then there was a slight popping sound and the audio came to an end.

Shane took a shaky breath in, checked how much time he had left, and started to respond.

YOU: Bless you. The voice note was cute, even if it was an accident.

YOU: Do you know if you have a fever?

And then he typed, and promptly deleted, ‘I want to leave the arena right now and drive straight to Ottawa. I want to fucking hold you, I want to fucking fuck you, I want to devour you.’ He swallowed, watching the letters disappear again. No, there was definitely a less aggressive way to say that.

YOU: I love and miss you too.

…

The next hour had passed so quickly, he wasn’t sure it had happened at all, a blur of adrenaline and ice and yelling, and drinking unthinkable amounts of electrolytes as though that would help the time pass quicker, and staring at the clock, and scoring- nice- and then back to a blur again.

Shane took his post game interview- shot from the collarbones up essentially- rhythmically clenching his gloved hands into fists and then flexing them all the way out again, out of sight of the camera, while he gave some pointless answers that really could have been supplied by any of the other players’ kids just as well as they were by the captain.

“What the fuck did he ask you?” Pike had called after him as he’d walked in, already half stripped down, sorted his gear from his jersey and his compression clothes at an eyebrow raising speed- or so he gathered from the look on the winger’s face as he turned- and headed straight for the showers.

“The usual shit!” He’d yelled back, clearly not answering the underlying question- ‘why are you so pissed off?’ and throwing himself under the nearest free jet of water.

Having deftly dodged all other responsibilities for the night, he was now speedwalking out of the building, and navigating to Ilya’s contact, heart rate picking up again at the realisation that he’d made it, he was free from the purgatory of a game that he really should have been enjoying, and now he was-

“H’lo?”

“I’m coming to see you.” He delivered the words forcefully, no room for argument.

“Ok-ehhKk! KKh! hKSH! KSH! KSHUh! hAHKSHh! WhoahH…hKSH! hrRSH! hRRSHHOo!”

“Bless you.” This response was softer, spoken more closely to the receiver, and his fast pace across the parking lot faltered too, mental resolve weakened by the audio display of weakened physical resolve he’d been presented with.

“Thank you.” A thud.

“Are you okay?”

Ilya moaned. “Remote fell. I think I sleep through end of game.”

“Did I wake you?” He was fumbling for his keys, trying to force himself to visualise the inside of his bag pockets rather than the sweet, sleepy expression that was probably gracing his boyfriend’s face right now.

“Yeah.” The Russian’s voice broke on the single word, and he broke off coughing, not moving away from the phone, though Shane could hear him shifting his position on the couch.

He finally managed to find his keys and unlocked the car, jogging the final few steps, opening the back passenger side door and shoving his bag in before slamming it shut again and rounding the vehicle towards the driver’s side like he was trying to outrun a hoard of zombies. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to let you know I was on my way.”

“’S good.” The blond was whispering now, whether because his throat hurt, his voice was gone entirely, or he was simply too tired to make any effort to speak louder, Shane couldn’t discern. “I look forward to meeting you.”

“What?” When he was really out of it, but still coherent enough to retain some English, he’d noticed that his boyfriend seemed to revert to textbook phrasing, sentences he’d probably had drilled in before anything else, and they’d stuck. That was his theory for the overly formal blessing habit, too. And he wouldn’t change that for the world, no matter what it did to him.

“Love you.” Ilya continued, “Have a driving license.” From the tone he could only assume he meant something along the lines of ‘have a safe drive’ , but the first collocation that had come to mind for ‘driving’ was ‘license’. The man really was full of linguistic phenomena.

“L-” He began to reply, only to be abruptly cut off.

“hKk! KKh! hKSH! Kkh! hKSHUh! hKSHooh!” Cutee, why was there no ‘record’ button on phone calls for moments like this? He could have gotten weeks of teasing out of this clip, and months of… other amusement. “hhiHKSHh! KSHUh! huAHSXHh-ugh.”

“Bless you.” He winced slightly at the sound of that last one, “Love you. See you later.”

“Loooove you.” Ilya coughed, what sounded like the start of a whole fit, but put the phone down before he could hear it get to that point.