"Why are you not scared?" "I am scared," Ilya admits. "I just am tired. Of hiding me. Of hiding you. Of hiding how much I love you. I want to go to the rink— how do you say it? Authenti." "Authentically," Shane supplies, automatically. "Yes. Authentically. I want to go to the rink authentically, as me," Ilya confirms. Ilya looks at Shane, pauses until Shane meets his eyes. "I want to say: I, Ilya Rozanov love a man, and that man's name is Shane Hollander."
Well, here we go. Final chapter of this, up on this sad day in hockey history. I’ve loved writing this, I’ve really enjoyed the response.
Oh man, this pulled on all of my heartstrings. Def one of those fics that’s now permanently catalogued in my brain. I’ll miss it, but I’m also so glad it exists..💌
two upcoming actors struggling with their newfound fame in their own ways, seeking comfort in what got them there in the first place: each other.
Hudson thinks he’ll go home and write about this night. He’ll fill in the blanks with private touches, maybe even a kiss. Maybe he’ll make them secret lovers. Maybe he’ll make their love for each other the central theme. Maybe he’ll make them fall in love on set, reading through lines where they fall in love, crossing lines on what it means to be just friends. Maybe they realize it at the start. Or maybe they don’t realize it until it’s too late and all the lines have already been blurred.
Hudson doesn’t know when he’d started associating the taste of smoke with the taste of Connor Storrie.
When Viktor’s health finally begins to dwindle in the world of “it’s the good, defining itself”—years past how long he lived in their first life together—he will glow brighter in the shared dream space between himself and his husband. Jayce will notice it, because he’s a scientist and a trained observer, but it will only worry him more.
Candles burn brightest before they go out.
But Jayce is missing something, in his fears. That shared space is formed by their soul, singular, split messily between them and never fully separate.
Through Viktor’s death(s), canon has already distinguished the soul as independent of the body. A body is just a shell—we have seen that the soul can survive its destruction.
When Viktor dies, he’ll leave behind two cities that he fundamentally changed again. Spray painted murals and a cobbled together statue of him in the mask will survive him, as he said they would. But so will a nation that he helped to free, and a college that will continue to push boundaries that Piltover would balk at, and young scientists that he gave a future outside of mines and factories, and children who loved him as family.
And a husband who will be devastated.
At first, Jayce will be inconsolable.
Until he falls asleep and sees Viktor there. Glowing brightly, made of stars and galaxies and nebulas, with gentle words but strong opinions about Jayce blaming himself as if he was supposed to cure mortality. As if Viktor would have let him try that again.
Their souls are bound together. Inextricable. Viktor told him that he was not willing to let Jayce go so easily, did he think that was meant lightly?
Jayce never needs to ask himself what Viktor would think or do, because Viktor’s right there the moment he closes his eyes. Jayce is the steward of their goals and dreams in the waking world, but Viktor waits for him in their own dream.
No longer able to pull Jayce in, unable to impact him when he’s conscious. But also no longer muffling his feelings to protect Jayce from experiencing his pain.
So even awake, Jayce will know that he’s loved. Wholly and completely, irrationally and obstinately.
He always feared outliving Viktor. But he won’t, and he can’t, because as long as he lives so will Viktor.
And perhaps even longer.
Time and space are human constructs, imposed by simple mortals to make sense of the endless dream they’re all merely players within.
But that dream itself is endless.
Perhaps as years march on they’ll fade in the annals of ‘great’ men. But this time, they were able to do good.
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