Staring at the Sun (45020 words) by Nerve_Itch
Chapters: 7/?
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa Centaurs - Character, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble (Game Changers)
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst, Hockey Injuries, hypoxia, Hospitalisation, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Being Assholes (Game Changers), Shane Hollander's feral revenge spree, Breathplay, both the fun and and unfun kinds, Homophobia, Supportive Ottawa Centaurs (Game Changers), Racism (Implied), Medical Trauma, Face-Fucking, Unreliable Narrator, Whump, Hurt Ilya Rozanov, Trauma, it's brutal but they still get to be soft, Memory Issues, taps roof of this fic: this bad boy can fit so much medical trauma in it, Post-Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Panic Attacks
Summary:
The first sound Ilya hears is a thin, discordant symphony of beeps and whirs. Something vibrating.
The next thing he hears is…wet. A sort of shaking, gargling sound, that feels like the ugliest crying he’s ever heard. And through it, Shane’s voice.
“I’m with him now, mom. He’s— he’s not fine. He’s not. I know—”
Ilya wants to ask who's not fine, but he can’t feel his own body, his mouth, enough to ask.
“Yeah,” Shane is saying, only slightly calmer. “I know. He wasn’t breathing—"
Ilya knows there's a link, between the clinical musicality of medical settings, Shane’s audible, awful distress, and his own physical incapacity. It’s just, it’s so tenuous, and the air around him is so thick, so heavy. It would be easy, to sleep, a little.
-
Footage of the last game between Ottawa and Montreal is everywhere; it’s breached containment from the sports world, and now it seems like everyone is baying for Montreal’s blood. Except, Ilya is oblivious. Not exactly blissfully so, but as the fight for accountability within the league rages on without him, Ilya just wants someone, anyone, to tell him what happened.