Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories:

F/M, M/M, Multi

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Rose Landry, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, David Hollander/Yuna Hollander

Characters:

Rose Landry, Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, David Hollander, Yuna Hollander, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Missing Scene, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Shane Hollander Character Study, Ilya Rozanov Character Study, POV Outsider, Unsatisfying Sex, Age of Consent, Navigating Sexual Relationships, Explicit Sexual Content, Song Lyrics, Past Drug Use, Underage Drug Use, Underage Drinking, Religious Discussion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-09 Words: 6,186 Chapters: 3/3

Only Ordinary Shit

Summary

She hauls him back to his place – a gorgeous condo that overlooks Montreal and is 70% glass. All the reflecting, soft light makes her dress look like liquid silver. She lets it drop onto the stairs behind her.

As she turns—

She sees his reflection. She sees the face she knows she was never, ever meant to see. His heart isn’t in this. But then he’s glancing up at her, some stranger to a smile on his face, and she knows something she was never, ever meant to know: he will make himself go through with this. He’s going to come up the stairs—he’s already coming up the stairs.

Fuck. She misread this entirely.

-x-

Rose, Sveta, and David on Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. All set to Noah Kahan's "The Great Divide."

Notes

anotha one !! on a more serious note, i finally got around to listening to "The Great Divide" and you know what they say -- anything is Hollanov if you're crazy enough! (really, i was imagining a gut-punching video edit to the song, but alas. i have no capacity for video editing. so i had to write a fic about it instead.)

for clarificaion: the ROSE section is set during rose & shane's relationship. the SVETA section is set between the end of episode 5 and the beginning of episode 6. the DAVID section is set after the end of episode 6.

Chapter 1: ROSE

Chapter Summary

Rose tells Shane about her brothers that still play and does not mention that her youngest sabotaged his own career.

Her baby brother is a brilliant winger. He could have been among the strongest players in the NHL. He’s also very queer. And he could not imagine a world where he could be out and play professionally. So, when he fractured his shin playing pond hockey over winter break one year, he didn’t do any PT. He didn’t stop playing. He didn’t even tell the coach he was injured. He just let the fracture fester until he was told by a sports med specialist that the bone wouldn’t stand up to professional play.

That was that. He transitioned careers, met a nice guy, fell in love.

ROSE

The world is scared of hesitating things.

Rose is hiding from the noise of the bar and her shitty, petty co-stars when a wall of man slips into the booth across from her.

She blinks in silence. He’s… huge. He’s Shane Hollander. He does not seem to realize the booth is occupied.

His attention is entirely on his phone. The brightness is all the way up, which she definitely should not find as charming as she does. He’s texting someone but she can’t see who. She can only watch him type out a message. Delete it. Text another, longer message. Delete that too. Swipe down to reveal a sea of texts between himself and whoever it is before swiping up to reach the bottom. He swipes up and up and up at the end, like he’s hoping the thread will refresh with a text from that person.

Ouch. She knows the feeling. So, she speaks.

He freezes and looks up—deer in a headlight. God, he’s cute up close. His teeth are freakishly good for a hockey player: either stunning veneers or he’s never lost a tooth, and she doesn’t know which option she prefers. Slowly, he settles into the conversation. It hits Rose like an acorn to the noggin on a windy fall day: Shane Hollander has no idea she’s flirting. None whatsoever.

And that’s… really cute. Like, really, really fucking cute.

She turns up the heat. Orders another round of fries for them, another beer for him. His cheeks are prettily flushed. He’s got a striking, boyish beauty to him. So many hockey players are rugged, domineering. Shane Hollander is not that.

And fuck her, Rose is charmed again. It’s so rare she gets to be the aggressor. Usually, men see her big eyes and soft lips (dick sucking lips, she was told too young) and assume the ingenues Rose Landry plays have anything to do with who Rose is as a person. But she likes the man in front of her, the one whose golden skin gives to freckles and a shy smile as he agrees to a third round of drinks. The one who looks with his whole attention. The one who hesitates. He waits. He lets her lead the way.

Sure, maybe she’ll be a rebound; clearly, he’s got someone he wants. But what’s one fun night with a hockey player? Anticipation and something… playful flutter in her stomach. For one night, she gets to go back to being a girl from Michigan propositioning a big, shy hockey player. She can work with that. She can definitely work with that.

Yeah, they only shoot the birds who cannot sing.

Rose tells Shane about her brothers that still play and does not mention that her youngest sabotaged his own career.

Her baby brother is a brilliant winger. He could have been among the strongest players in the NHL. He’s also very queer. And he could not imagine a world where he could be out and play professionally. So, when he felt a twinge in his shin playing pond hockey over winter break one year, he didn’t do any PT. He didn’t stop playing. He didn’t even tell the coach he was hurt. He just let the pain fester until he was told by a sports med specialist that the twinge was actually the start of a fracture. Maybe if her brother said something when the pain began he could have salvaged his career. But at that point, the damage was done: the bone wouldn’t stand up to professional play.

That was that. He transitioned careers, met a nice guy, fell in love.

Rose only knows because she and her brother got stupid high years after the fact and he confessed it all. Her parents don’t even know. They think he just toughed it out, put on a brave face for love of the game.

But once Rose knew, she couldn’t un-know it. She couldn’t look back on her past with her baby brother without seeing him in a new light: one that shone harshly on how hard he tried to fit in, how hard he tried to love the revolving door of girls and young women he brought for family dinners.

She sees… some of that in Shane. Or something like it, maybe. He hesitates to touch her even when they’ve abandoned the booth for a game of poker. Rose wants to think it’s gentlemanly. Maybe it seems like that from the outside. Maybe it seemed like that to her at first. But the longer she makes advances, the more she thinks he might be frightened.

Someone on the other side of the bar shouts. It takes Rose a long minute to realize they’d said Rozanov. Rose only really noticed the shout above any others because Shane stiffened. His eyes, surprisingly expressive, darted toward the shout like he expected Rozanov to appear miraculously. Right. Rose doesn’t follow pro hockey too closely, but she knows about the Hollander-Rozanov rivalry.

Slowly, the electric energy fades from Shane’s shoulders. He seems to settle back into his body. Rose sets her hand on his thigh. He doesn’t hesitate before setting his atop hers. But she notices when he leaves space—like he was expecting thicker knuckles between his own.  

And I’m finally aware of how shitty and unfair

It must have been the alcohol.

The longer she knows Shane, the more she appreciates that he was in rare form that night. He doesn’t drink during the season, usually. Without alcohol, he hesitates less. He’s more gentlemanly. He kisses well but he doesn’t seem to notice when she’s putting the moves on him any more than he noticed when she was flirting.

When he agrees to go out to the club with her, she decides to make herself abundantly clear. She wears a dress that’s more sparkle than fabric. Braless, of course. He’s stubborn though—doesn’t even peek down. That’s fine. She loves to break a man’s control.

She coaxes him onto the dance floor, tucks her hands up the back of his shirt. His muscles are… Jesus. He’s a brick shithouse. He’s nursing the ginger beer, bouncing to the beat but not really dancing. She dances against him, tries to get him to follow her, but he’s not quite getting it.

Okay. Clearly she’s being too subtle.

She hauls him back to his place – a gorgeous condo that overlooks Montreal and is 70% glass. All the reflecting, soft light makes her dress look like liquid silver. She lets it drop onto the stairs behind her.

As she turns—

She sees his reflection. She sees the face she knows she was never, ever meant to see. His heart isn’t in this. But then he’s glancing up at her, some stranger to a smile on his face, and she knows something she was never, ever meant to know: he will make himself go through with this. He’s going to come up the stairs—he’s already coming up the stairs.

Fuck. She misread this entirely.

Rose tries to make it good for him. He’s touching her. He’s… maybe not fully hard, but hard enough to get inside her. Clearly, he knows his way around a condom. Maybe he just needs a second to warm up?

But no.

She’s looking up and him and he’s looking blankly at the wall and there is no chemistry between them. These are the motions. They are going through them. He’s gorgeous. She’s gorgeous. They do not want each other. She doesn’t want this any more than he does. But she can’t bring herself to say stop. Apparently, neither can he.

It doesn't even look like he enjoys the orgasm. 

She didn’t finish and can’t bring herself to pretend she did. She doesn’t want to lie to him. She doesn’t want him to lie to her. Rose doesn’t even know if he knows that this is not what sex is supposed to feel like. When he asks if she’s good, charmingly shy, she gives a version of the truth: I just wasn’t really feeling it tonight.

Except this is obviously the worst thing she could have possibly said. He pushes himself away like he’s been scalded and starts… apologizing? He’s apologizing over and over, trying to explain himself. He must have misread the situation. He feels so bad. He thought she wanted to have sex. He feels awful. If he’d known, he would never have forced her. He hopes she believes him. Does she—is there anything he can do? Does he want her to call a car? A friend, maybe?

Oh. This sweet boy.

She kisses him. It shuts him up, at least. It feels like every other kiss they’ve shared: like he’s waiting for her to take charge. Usually, she would. She likes to lead kisses, likes positioning her partner’s head, likes stopping their tongue from flopping around like a dead thing in her mouth.

But when she does not take charge this time, Shane just… waits for the kiss to end. Rose ends it. Then she takes responsibility – You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you, and that’s on me. I’m sorry I put you in that position.

She takes it on herself because it is abundantly clear to her that Shane Hollander doesn’t know he doesn’t want her. He was staring at the fucking wall, holding his huge body so tense above her, going through the motions like he had to. It killed Rose. But she doesn’t know if she can be the one to tell him.

She rolls over and pretends to go to sleep.

She listens to Shane pretend to sleep on the other side of the bed.

it was to stare ahead like everything was fine.

They slide into that awful stage of dating: the one where a relationship is dead-on-arrival but neither party wants to be the one to call it quits. They’re great on paper. He’s a pro athlete. She’s a movie star. He’s gorgeous. She’s gorgeous. These are the motions.

She lets their sham go on another month because she can’t figure Shane out. Is he gay? Does he know if he’s gay? Does he know that it’s okay for him to be gay, if he is? Does he know he’s accidentally conscripted her into play his beard? Fuck if Rose knows. Shane is very sweet and startlingly obtuse at times. He also falls into press cadence the moment she asks anything remotely emotional. It hurts her, mostly for how much it must be hurting him.

Of course, Rose can’t ask her baby brother about it—there’s been too much press coverage for her to ask and maintain Shane’s anonymity. That’s her priority, at this point: to protect the privacy Shane clearly needs to figure himself out and then, hopefully, help Rose end this.

It’s a long, painful month of watching Shane go through the motions: picking her up from shoots, taking her bags when they shop, organizing a fun birthday party, doing all the prescribed Boyfriend Tasks. Rose watches him pretend everything is fine and watches herself do the same. She goes to his home games, watches his away’s on the hotel’s huge TV, wears his jersey even though it’s scratchy and does jack shit to keep her warm.

The problem, Rose thinks, is she really likes him as a person. He clearly really likes her as a person. As long as they’re just hanging out, everything is great. She finds herself tipping perilously close to falling in love with him. But then she kisses him and doesn’t take charge and he waits for it to end. She initiates sex, makes clear she wants it, but can’t quite figure out how to tell him he can say if he doesn’t want it. Then she feels awful because… fuck. Has this man ever been told he can not want something? Has she ever told any of her ex-boyfriends they can say no to her?

So when he initiates for the sixth time since the club and he can’t finish for the sixth time since the club, she gives up sleeping on the cold side of his bed. She gets up early; claims there’s an early shuttle to take her to the site.

Rose decides: the next time she sees him, she’ll free them both.

Chapter 2: SVETA

Chapter Summary

Sveta’s mind wanders to the long years they did not speak before happenstance threw them back together in Boston. One day she was eleven, skating on the pond between their houses with a fat-cheeked Ilyusha. The next, she was seventeen, in her mother’s country but not her mother country, looking up in surprise to see a hulking man with Ilya’s eyes. Nothing of the boy or teenager in the middle.

He was not Ilyusha any longer. She knew that immediately. But she could not have fathomed how much there was to relearn. Ilya is not Ilyusha and can never be Ilyusha again—at least, not to her.

Sveta made her peace with that long ago.

SVETA

You know I think about you all the time,

Sveta lets herself back into the apartment Ilya rented for them. The cool, wet air of the city clings to her hair and skin. Summer mornings in Moscow are beautiful; this is when she loves the city best. She’s got pastries and coffee from the little faux-French café that opened down the block for tourists—overpriced, but paid for by Ilya’s black Amex, so what does it matter to her? Besides, she knows it gives him a quiet thrill to care for people with money, to shower them in treats and small delights that cost too much. His Jane will be very lucky if he lets himself be treated by Ilya.

Ilya’s sitting at the kitchen island. He’s still in sleep clothes: a familiar set of ratty sweatpants and a shirt that Sveta doesn’t recognize at all – one that hangs looser on Ilya’s frame than anything he’d buy on purpose. He smiles absently when she enters the main living space, waves her in, kisses her on the cheek good morning, all without ending the call he’s on. The call he disappears into his bedroom to finish, clicking the door quietly behind him. She notices. Of course she notices. She couldn’t help noticing that the apartment he arranged for them has two bedrooms when they’ve always gone for one-bedrooms before.

The apartment is quite nice. The doors are thick. Sveta can only hear the soft edges of English and Ilya’s laughter curling under the door.

She sets her goods on the coffee table with his card neatly to the side. She’s… hurt? Yes. She’s hurt he would not stay in the room. Hurt he would not let her sprawl herself across his lap, would not end the call immediately so she could kiss at him with lazy sweetness.

She tucks herself onto the couch. The pastries are suddenly uninteresting, but Ilya is always interesting. She guesses that’s how they’ve stayed friends for so long. It’s funny. She noticed the two-bedrooms, but she didn’t quite notice when they settled into being strictly friends. The last time she slept with him was…

It was a while ago. This makes sense.

She’d guessed while it was happening that it would be the last time. He’d hovered over her, met her eye, looked away. She knew he did not really want her. No, that’s not it. He wanted her physically, distantly, in the way that she might want any faceless fantasy body. There was none of the affection and playfulness that characterized their sex before that. It occurred to her as he buried his face in her shoulder that he was thinking of someone else. Jane. Sveta knew sleeping with her that night was a favor. Or, more likely, sleeping with her was a gesture to protect her from the maybe-mafioso who was eyeing her across the club.

This guess—the guess that they were having sex for the last time—was only confirmed when he did not linger in the afterglow. He was not puppyish, did not suck sweetly aching bruises into the skin high behind her ear. He pulled out, tied off his condom, and walked it all the way to the trash in their bathroom without having to be asked. Then he tossed himself back onto the bed and left space between them. They slept in the same bed the rest of that summer. Never once did Ilya cross the gap.

In the present, Ilya comes out of his bedroom with a smile Sveta knows is not really for her. As he tucks the Amex back into his wallet and tucks into the pastries, she asks for a cigarette.

Ah. He does not have any. He shrugs, like this is casual—like he has not smoked for years and years. He offers weird herbal cigarettes that someone on his team got him into. His nose twitches. She says no, thank you, and sips at her cappuccino.

and my deep misunderstanding of your life,

As it happens, he wants one of his weird fake cigarettes. He takes them out to the balcony to smoke and look pensively over the Moskva. Another absurd thing: they’re home and he smokes inside when he is home. He complains endlessly about hotels in America and how hard it is to find rooms where he can smoke from the comfort of his bed.

Except—it has been some time since he complained about this to her. Months, perhaps. Sveta tells herself it’s fine she didn’t notice. She was busy pulling Sasha from another heroin spiral, busy making commissions on luxury cars, busy toying with a sweet college girl who lived in the North End and liked asking Sveta to speak Russian while Sveta ate her out.

Maybe Jane, whoever he is, is not a smoker and is unused to having a smoker do their business indoors. That is not necessarily surprising. What is surprising is that, even in Moscow (even in Sveta’s presence alone), Ilya keeps up the habit of smoking outside.

Sveta knows Ilya is returning to North America in a few days. She also knows, from glimpsing an unfamiliar three-letter airport code, that he will not be flying into Boston. She sips at the foam, which is really all that’s left of her cappuccino. She doesn’t know when Ilya will finally admit that this thing with Jane is serious. She doesn’t know if he won’t admit it because of Jane, or because of Sveta.

On the balcony, he fiddles with his mother’s crucifix.

Sveta’s mind wanders to the long years they did not speak before happenstance threw them back together in Boston. One day she was eleven, skating on the pond between their houses with a fat-cheeked Ilyusha. The next, she was seventeen, in her mother’s country but not her mother country, looking up in surprise to see a hulking man with Ilya’s eyes. Nothing of the boy or teenager in the middle.

He was not Ilyusha any longer. She knew that immediately. But she could not have fathomed how much there was to relearn. Ilya is not Ilyusha and can never be Ilyusha again—at least, not to her.

Sveta made her peace with that long ago.

and how bad it must have been for you back then,

He savors one herbal cigarette longer than Sveta knew was possible to savor a single smoke. The scent of it, minty and sweet, wafts in warm waves through the cracked balcony door. Sveta would bet a lot of money that the truth of who introduced him to herbal cigarettes will be another thing they do not talk about.

It’s a long list.

Occasionally, in the long afterglow of delicious, athletic sex, he would give her some small piece of his six-year absence from her life. She knows most of what she knows about Ilya from these puzzle pieces.

She knows Ilyusha was severed by his mother’s death and swallowed up by the big house on the other side of the pond. She knows he languished until, finally, he learned to molt: Ilyusha was shed, left to rot like wool left in an attic, and Ilya broke forth to break free.

She knows Alexei started drinking first and Ilya followed but was saved because in the early days he could not hold his liquor and he does not like to vomit. She knows Alexei turned swiftly to drugs when drinking did not sufficiently numb him. She knows Ilya did coke once and loved it. But that love frightened him. He wanted to be free of Russia; cocaine, while beautiful and buzzy, was incompatible with his ticket out. He could not be addicted to drugs and an international hockey prodigy. He had to choose.

Sveta knows Ilya ran laps around his father’s country seat – through the lapsed wheat fields, up the massive hill, around the pond, back down the far hill, around the stables, to the packed-dirt front – for hours and hours in the middle of the night, all because he did not want to die like his Mama.

Sveta never believed Ilya’s precious Mamochka did coke. But… she never knew what to believe about her in the absence of any other information. Sveta doesn’t have any first-hand memory of her; the woman was always tucked away inside General Rozanov’s house. There is too much Ilya will not say about his mother to fill in Sveta’s lack. At the time, Sveta heard it was an accident, which was a euphemism that could mean anything from she had a botched abortion to her husband bludgeoned her to death.

She knows Ilya knows exactly how his mother died. She knows that knowledge is white mold feasting on his heart. She knows he never, ever speaks of it.

Ilya’s phone, face down on the other side of the couch, makes a noise. He looks through the glass, crushes his cigarette into the balcony’s little glass table, and comes inside like a dog on a leash.

and how hard it was to keep it all inside.

Ilya responds to the message like Sveta isn’t on the couch beside him. His attention is blazing and it is entirely focused on the phone in his hands. When he looks up, he glances at her, and she watches the adoration in his eyes dim.

It startles her. Before—in that split second before Ilya processed that it was Sveta sitting beside him and not Jane—he’d been Ilyusha. Just for a heartbeat.

A heartbeat is apparently all it takes.

She leans in to kiss him. Not because she loves him. Not even because she’s jealous. She isn’t and she’s a bit startled by that realization. But there is some sad and small part of her that is still eleven with her mother’s neat cornrows tucked beneath her hat, skating with a boy who makes her feel warm inside. And also, because there has always been an easy physicality between them. She was always welcome to drape herself across his shoulders, tuck a kiss to the strong corner of his jaw, throw herself into his massive chest. What they could not speak about – and there was always so much they could not speak about – they could say through touch.

She means, by the kiss, to tell him she forgives him for all he will not tell her about Jane. That she forgives him for no longer being twelve and fat-cheeked and tender. That she will never ask for this version of him back, but she will hold the memory gently in her heart.

But he turns his face away. Her lips land on his cheekbone – not even the one with his mole. His hands are as huge and familiar as ever when they push her gently to the other side of the couch. His eyes are more green than blue today. They are soft as he tells her he cannot. He will not. Then he smiles a bit. Is she ready to get the day going?

She nods because there is nothing else that can be said.

They both have things to do. Ilya will spend most of his day in conference rooms, arranging taxes, trust funds, estate sales, all sorts of end-of-your-father’s-life tasks Sveta only knows about because she saw Ilya’s list in his notes app. The list written in English, not Russian. He does not offer a puzzle piece about how he knows what to do. She fills it in herself: Jane.

Sveta has to visit her father’s family. They will be racist. She will have to laugh like they are not scum. Her mother will drink and be silent. Her father will drink and be loud. It will all be lovely.

And in four days, Ilya will fly to that three-letter airport that is not Boston. Sveta will stay in the two-bedroom unit Ilya has already paid for until the summer runs muggy.

He disappears into his bedroom and returns, texting, in a suit more beautiful than anything Sveta has ever seen him wear. He smiles, preens, tells her it was a bespoke gift from his most recent sponsor. She asks when the hell he got real brand deals. He acts affronted and evades the question, turning her attention instead to which mirror selfie he should post to his Instagram story. She answers it for herself: Jane.

They step onto the street. Ilya pauses to don his sunglasses. Sveta looks up at him and pretends she does not know this is the last time she will ever see him under a blue-grey Moscow sky.

It kills her.

She is so, so happy for him.

Chapter 3: DAVID

Chapter Summary

In the quiet, Ilya folds back into himself. He sits upright on the couch, knees and feet close together, hands folded in his lap. He doesn’t look at either Yuna or David. It hurts to look at. David isn’t even sure what to say. Yuna must be nervous too; she defaults to asking Ilya about his deal with Anderson & Sheppard. Ilya engages with carefully chosen English – different from the soft-edged banter he uses with Shane – and flicks his eyes back and forth between them.

When Shane returns, he sits next to Ilya and slings his arm over the back of the couch. After a moment, he trades his beer to the other hand and gently corrals Ilya into his chest. David watches something… melt. Ilya tucks himself against Shane’s chest and rests his hand against Shane’s thigh like he can’t imagine doing anything else.

Chapter Notes

this chapter is set after episode six ! hopefully that's clear contextually :)

DAVID

I hope you threw a brick right into that stained glass.

David’s trying to figure out what he’s feeling. It’s almost vertigo; the same dizziness and shock. Only, he’s not staring up or down at any great height. He’s sitting on the dock of the home he’s owned for nearly twenty years, watching his grown son play in the water with his partner.

Shane and… Ilya, not Rozanov, but Ilya, splash, race, and use their arms to throw huge waves of water at one another. They tread water side by side, staring out at the lake in silence. They swim in powerful, confident strokes to the middle—farther than David ever would have let Shane go as a child. For all the shock of seeing Rozanov feeling up his son several days ago – and the shock was considerable, let it be known – David thinks he likes the kid. He likes… Ilya, if only because he’s never seen his son so happy.

That hurts. David can admit it. It hurts but it feels good too, like stretching after a hard run or like running frozen fingers under warm water. The ache that fills him is the feeling of right being restored long after you got used to wrong.

Yuna pokes her head from the house behind David and whistles for the boys to come in. She’s been arranging a lunch of snacks: pigs in blankets, low-brow charcuterie, onigiri, chips, frozen grapes, carefully diced melon and cucumber. David appreciates it. Yuna isn’t one for cooking, really, but she’ll do what she can to give him a bit of a break.

David walks up to the back door of the house and waits to make sure the boys don’t get caught in any weird currents. The lake can be funny this time of year. But they’re fine. They haul themselves out and shake off the worst of the water like dogs. It’s astonishing to him, how these two machines of men can be so soft in each other’s orbit.

It’s astonishing to him, too, to watch Shane be physical. Shane has always been… shy. Awkward. He stands off to the side. He keeps his limbs close to his center. He doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t open himself to hugs. As a kid, he could play hockey with prodigious skill, but he was never a brawler. Shane basically had to be a center because there was no way in hell he would ever be aggressive enough to be anything else.

But maybe David got it wrong. Here his son is: slapping away Ilya’s playful hands, grabbing Ilya’s waist and hauling him into the air when Ilya fakes like he’s going to dive back into the water, throwing a towel at him. He’s smiling, yelling, laughing, running with his whole body.

The ache fills David up to his throat. His beautiful boy.

Yuna opens the door and leans against the jamb. David reaches out and grabs her fingers. He squeezes once. You see that?

She squeezes back. Yeah. I see it.

I hope you’re with someone who isn’t scared to ask.

Lunch meanders into quiet time in the living room then tips into dinner ordered in because nobody feels like cooking or parting ways. Still, they make a decent showing of putting the Polish food on real plates and sitting at the kitchen table.

The boys – and wow, David never thought he’d get used to thinking that – offer to clean. Really, Shane begins cleaning the minute he’s eaten his fill and Ilya picks up swiftly after, like he knows he’s going to get roped in anyway. Smart man.

Yuna has already made her way back to the den. David grabs up the salt and pepper shakers and starts toward the doorway to the kitchen. He finds himself voyeur for a second time in a week.

But this time, Shane wraps his arms around Ilya and Ilya collapses into him. David’s surprised. He doesn’t think of his son as a big guy—not for a hockey player, anyway. He certainly does not think of Ilya Rozanov as small. It’s not that their sizes have changed, really. It’s just that Shane is cradling Ilya. He’s holding his partner more gently and more closely than Shane has maybe ever held anyone or anything except babies.

Shane must feel how heavy Ilya is. Still, his son never flinches.

Pride wells in David’s throat. He was never much fussed about raising a strong man; not more than the usual wish for his son to stand up against bullies and put his foot down for what’s right. But he knows he somehow has a strong son, and this is something he didn’t teach Shane at all.

David isn’t a guy to show his love physically. He still remembers the first time he let Yuna hold him rather than the other way around. It was terrifying. He had to discover, to his own shock, that he’d believed men couldn’t be held. It was so hard to relax. But Yuna was made of stronger stuff than he’d realized then, and taught David he could do the difficult work of being loved. This lesson wasn’t something he felt like he could pass on to his son. Casual physical affection doesn’t come easily to David, and Shane hadn’t wanted to be held past his toddler years anyway.

But here Shane has figured out touch all by himself. He’s learned to hold and be held. The two of them stand in the kitchen of Shane’s childhood, communicating through warmth and skin what might still be too big for them to say.

David shifts back a bit as Ilya stands, asks whether Shane is okay. And Shane—

I’m nervous, he admits with a small shake of his head. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Ilya nods. Says only, You are brave. Mm? We are brave.

They rest their foreheads together. David wishes he had his phone so he could take a photo of them: bathed in the soft kitchen light, two men madly in love.

I hope that you’re not losing sleep about what’s next,

David lets the boys keep their moment. He retreats, leaves the salt and pepper on the table and pretends to be absorbed by his phone. Ilya strides in and collects them up with surprising deference.

Yuna’d mentioned it: the way Ilya’s eyes were always darting toward David, like he was expecting … something. David didn’t know what. Well, that’s not true—he knew Ilya was expecting violence from his quarter. David isn’t one to speculate or pry. Who is he to say where the line is between a strict paternal culture generally and a violent childhood for this man, specifically? That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he could just ask Rozanov. Ilya.

He racks his mind and tries to remember Ilya’s father. David’s certain they crossed paths at least once or twice. But all he can remember is a bald man with watery eyes who stood shorter than Ilya.

David tries to be relaxed, nonjudgemental. He doesn’t know how well that’s going, though. Especially if Shane kept his situation with Ilya a secret for almost a decade. David spends a good hour chewing on the inside of his lip, watching Yuna and Ilya play cards and realize they’ve met their matches in each other.

The sun has long set over the water when they meander out to the fire pit. Shane helps him start the fire with Yuna’s smile playing on his lips. David ruffles his hair. Shane groans and pulls away and nearly falls on his ass. Ilya laughs at him. Shane sends back a middle finger. Yuna huffs at them to be careful.

They settle around the warmth, one couple on each side. Ilya and Shane claim the couch and sit a polite distance away from one another. It’s a sweet and totally unnecessary gesture. David has already caught them canoodling, for Christ’s sake.

The distance doesn’t last long. With every laugh, smile, and chirp passed between them, they move closer together. It’s like the divide between them is impossible to maintain. Eventually Shane leaves to toss his beer bottle into the recycling and get himself another. Ilya teases him about going wild. Shane tells him to you’re such an asshole. Ilya and Shane grin at each other like these are love words.

In the quiet, Ilya folds back into himself. He sits upright on the couch, knees and feet close together, hands folded in his lap. He doesn’t look at either Yuna or David. It hurts to look at. David isn’t even sure what to say. Yuna must be nervous too; she defaults to asking Ilya about his deal with Anderson & Sheppard. Ilya engages with carefully chosen English – different from the soft-edged banter he uses with Shane – and flicks his eyes back and forth between them.

When Shane returns, he sits next to Ilya and slings his arm over the back of the couch. After a moment, he trades his beer to the other hand and gently corrals Ilya into his chest. David watches something… melt. Ilya tucks himself against Shane’s chest and rests his hand against Shane’s thigh like he can’t imagine doing anything else.

With a heavy heart, David catches the assessing look both boys give him. He tips his own beer in gentle assurance.

Ilya keeps talking about the suits with Yuna from his place against Shane. He’s much more… demonstrative? flamboyant? than Shane. He gestures loosely from his place and speaks knowledgeably about the brand, their history, where he fits into the lineage. While Shane knuckles his way through fashion shoots, David sees a real love of style and clothing in Ilya. Shane joins the conversation slowly, noting he really likes a particular jacket Ilya has. David lets their voices wash over him.

As the fire burns on Ilya’s eyes drift shut. For the second time in a night, Shane takes Ilya’s weight like Rozanov is not a professional rival hockey player. Like he’s just Ilya.

or about your soul, and what He might do with it.

Shane begins to drift off as well. It doesn’t take long. David knows the feeling. Yuna falling asleep feels like a sedative sometimes. Ilya’s necklace – a golden, Russian cross David’s never seen him without – catches the firelight and bounces it against Shane’s freckles.

In the quiet, David admits to himself he was worried about Shane. For so many years, Shane kept to himself. He buried himself in hockey, ads and brand deals. His whole world was work. David worried Shane would never find a nice girl, settle down, build a beautiful life away from the ice.

Generally speaking, David was not a praying man. He’d mostly given up his parents’ strict Dutch Protestantism, especially after their relationship soured over Yuna.  But he has always prayed where his son is concerned. He prayed that Shane would hold on in Yuna’s belly after two miscarriages. He prayed his son would pull through when he was born premature. He prayed about birthdays, injuries, emotional hurts David felt painfully unprepared to manage.

He knows now that his mostly-unconscious prayer – that Shane would be loved, fully and unconditionally – has been answered. Completely, generously, miraculously answered by a loud-laughing Russian haunted by pains and wrongs David can hardly guess at.

David watches them across the fire. Yuna’s fingers tangle gently with his. He feels his heart pump a bit harder. It’s tough. He knows there are many, many pains and wrongs Shane carries that David can’t guess at either.

Some of it is that Shane keeps everything close to the chest. He never complains. He never says he needs a break. He puts his head down and plows through. Some of it is that David is not Asian. He is not gay. Those are ways of being in the world David can’t anticipate for his son, can’t guide him through.

But David knows this: he loves his wife. He loves his son. And he will learn to love the man who has taught his son to rest.