Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Rose Landry, Original Characters, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pining, Pining Ilya Rozanov, like no joke so much pining, lethal levels of it, author accepts no liability for pining-related reader death, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, ilya just doesn't know that yet, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, everybody wants Shane hollander, There Was Only One Bed, Jealous Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-19 Completed: 2026-06-29 Words: 33,800 Chapters: 4/4

keep rolling under the stars

Summary

June 2010. Ilya Rozanov is delayed after the CCM shoot. By the time he gets to the locker room, Shane Hollander is out of the showers and Ilya’s entire plan is ruined.
Only not quite fully ruined. Hollander invites him to dinner with his parents as a thank you for arranging the shoot and Ilya, in a burst of insanity, agrees. He hits it off with Yuna and David. They all exchange numbers. He and Hollander become friends.
At no point does Ilya stop wanting more from him.

June 2016. Ilya Rozanov is a superstar. A Cup winner. An MVP. Women want him, men want to be him. He’s fucking miserable.
He’s in love with his best friend. He can’t deny it anymore. Only now Shane is dating a movie star and happier than Ilya’s ever seen him. Ilya can’t ruin that for him, can’t ruin their friendship by asking for what he knows Shane can’t give. No matter how much it kills him.

A charity event in San Francisco. A catastrophic computer failure. A fateful decision to drive, not fly. Two days in a car, just the two of them. Alone. Together.
Ilya’s sick with excitement and with dread, because how can he keep his secrets with Shane so close for so long?

What he doesn’t know is that Shane has secrets too.

Notes

i love a road trip fic. There's nothing like hours in a car with someone to either bond you for life or tear you right apart. Some of my best friends i've made on road trips. More road trips for all the blorbos, say i

this particular road trip fic is dedicated to another tumblr post i have lost, this one positing ilya as bisexual but homoromantic. i love this interpretation. i’d go further even and say that he is pansexual but homoromantic, shaneromantic specifically. He likes sex and likes fucking anyone hot but when he thinks about quiet intimacy and domestic life it’s shane he wants that with, every time. This fic takes that premise and runs with it, imagines what might happen if ilya develops romantic feelings for shane before he’s ready for them, at a time when he’s completely unable not just to express them but to even fully understand them or separate them from the sexual attraction he also feels for shane. In short: he’s a beautiful mess, but he will learn. Please give him grace.

gratitude for beta services to muddledinthebog and Sunless_Garden

Chapter 1

San Francisco, June 2016

“I’m sorry, Mr Hollander, but we have no booking in your name.” 

The woman at the check-in desk is the politest shade of rude Ilya has ever seen. A quality many airline employees seem to share, in his experience. He wonders vaguely if they train for it or if the profession just attracts people with the knack. 

To be fair, it is late on a Sunday night and Ilya himself isn’t in the best of moods. He and Shane have just come from a charity gala where they shook many hands and smiled with visible teeth and answered tiresome questions about how they could be such fierce competitors on the ice while remaining friends off it. No one ever seems to understand that the competitiveness is what they like best about each other. 

Well. Competitiveness is one of the things he likes about Shane. There are others. 

The airport is busy despite the late hour, churning with loud and tired people. The lights are stark and glaring and there’s a headache brewing behind Ilya’s eyes. 

Beside him, Shane seethes in Canadian. Ilya can see the strain beneath his politeness, the sort that usually only comes out when reporters ask him ham-fisted questions about representation. There’s none of that here, though. Shane’s just pissed. 

“I booked the seats three weeks ago,” he says, tightly. You incompetent fucking moron, he does not say, though his tone heavily implies it. Ilya is impressed. “I have the booking confirmation number. I have a boarding pass. What is the problem? 

“The problem, sir, is that neither your name nor Mr Rozanov’s are listed on the manifest for this flight. In fact, I have—” She pauses, frowning. “I have… oh. Um. One moment, please.” She picks up a telephone from next to her monitor and begins to mutter into it. Ilya stops listening. He leans on the check-in desk and looks at Shane. 

He looks like shit. For him, that is. Which means that he looks fucking devastating, beautiful in the way that still lights Ilya up inside, even now, more than seven years after they first met. Still ignites that itch beneath his skin and in his fingers that long to touch, especially when Shane is this tense and this tired. Ilya wants to soothe him. His shoulders are high and tight, his eyes red-rimmed; they’re here in the San Francisco airport to catch a red-eye to Vegas but—

“Hey,” Ilya says. He gives in to the urges of his itchy fingers and swipes a gentle thumb across Shane’s cheekbone, over the freckles that can still, if he lets them, take him back to a frigid Saskatchewan parking lot and a pretty Canadian boy who turned his world on its head just by shaking his hand. “Flight is called red-eye but you are not supposed to take this literally, yes?” 

“Fuck off,” Shane mutters, but there’s no heat behind it. “I’m fucking tired is all. Tonight was exhausting. I’ll sleep on the plane.” 

Ilya isn’t so sure about that. If the frantic nature of the check-in woman’s whispering is anything to go by, nobody will be getting on any planes anytime soon. He lets his fingers trail down Shane’s cheek as he moves his hand away, a small touch to ease the ever-present hunger within him. 

It doesn’t ease. It never does. 

On a hunch, he takes out his phone, finds an airport hotel with vacancies and books a room for each of them. Ilya is a creature of intuition. He trusts his gut, on-ice and off, and right now his gut is telling him something is very not right at this airport. If he’s wrong he’ll eat the cost of the rooms, no big deal.

He slips his phone back in his pocket just as the check-in woman hangs up hers and looks at them with the classic airline-employee rude-as-fuck polite smile. “I’m so sorry,” she lies, “there seems to have been a glitch in our system. Just let me—” Her fingers hover over her keyboard and then the whole airport goes dark. 

Not just dark but dark. Dark as in all the screens blink off, all the lights go out. Dark and silent, as the ambient buzz of electricity audible only in its absence, vanishes. Then people start to yell. 

The check-in woman’s desk phone rings. A grounded landline, Ilya thinks, a good thing to have in an emergency. The woman answers, voice tight, then listens for a minute. By now, people are crowding in around them, pushing and shouting. Shane looks ready to combust. Ilya angles his body to keep the worst of the crowd off him but short of actually wrapping Shane in his arms—if fucking only—there’s not much he can do. 

The woman hangs up the phone then holds up her hands. “Everyone, please,” she says, “please listen. Please. Everyone—” 

“Everyone quiet!” Ilya bellows, in the voice he only uses when one of his teammates does something grievously stupid. “Stop talking and listen.” 

A brief, shocked silence falls, during which the woman manages to say, “There’s been a catastrophic failure of the airport’s computer system. All flights are grounded until further notice.” 

The crowd erupts in fury. Ilya grabs Shane by the arm and pulls him away, out of the mass of people and towards the exit for the taxi queue. “We should get a taxi now,” he says, “before everyone else realises they are not going anywhere tonight.” 

Shane is plainly too tired to argue. “Where are we going?” he asks. 

“Airport Hyatt. I have booked us rooms.” 

“Already?” 

“I had a hunch.” 

Shane says nothing more. He trusts Ilya’s hunches. 

They are silent in the cab and then at the hotel check-in, which goes much more smoothly than its airport counterpart. Hard to go less smoothly of course, but they actually get checked in this time and soon are standing in front of their rooms, across the hallway from each other. 

“Get some sleep,” Ilya tells Shane as he hands him his key. “In the morning we will figure out what to do.” 

“Thanks, Ilya,” Shane says, with that smile that wrecks him, every fucking time. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

Ilya watches him unlock his door and go inside. Watches the door close behind him, hears the click of its latch. 

Thinks, You will never have to find out. 

Toronto, June 2010

“When they tell you you do commercial with me and not just alone?” 

Ilya kept his face carefully neutral but his eyes on Hollander were intent. 

“I don’t know, like, uh, two days ago.” Hollander didn’t look at him. Not fully. He looked in glances, quick and covert. Not like earlier, fake facing off with him and laughing. Not like the surprise, the flare of something in his eyes when Ilya had called him pretty. 

Not like the hotel gym on draft night. The intensity of Hollander’s gaze on him as they’d sat sweating at each other still lived in Ilya’s chest. He wanted to feel that intensity again. He wanted to fucking taste it. 

“Why,” Hollander continued. “When did they tell you?” 

Ilya produced his best casual nonchalance, his finest careless shrug. “No, they tell me nothing,” he said, watching Hollander closely. “Was my idea.” 

There was the intensity. Hollander looked up sharply, his pretty eyes wide and his pretty mouth open, a faint flush beneath his pretty, pretty freckles. Ilya’s heartbeat sped up. That was interest there, he was sure of it. 

“Shane!” the director called, before Ilya could say anything more, and Hollander skated away. 

Half an hour later, his eager, hopeful anticipation was gone, replaced by an antsy frustration. Hollander had left the ice twenty minutes ago and Ilya itched to follow him. He wanted to get back to the locker room while Hollander was still there. Ideally, he wanted to catch Hollander in the showers and just—push him a little. See if the interest Ilya was now all but certain Hollander shared could be fanned into something more. Then maybe the itch that had sat under Ilya’s skin for a year and a half now could finally be scratched. 

“Okay, Ilya, let’s try that one more time,” the director said.  

Ilya gritted his teeth.  

When at last he was released, he hurried to the locker room as fast as he was able. He shed his gear in record time, grabbed a towel then opened the door that led to the showers—and nearly collided with Hollander on the other side. He had a towel wrapped around his hips but his hair was still wet and so was his skin, little droplets clinging to the muscular curves of his chest and shoulders. Ilya’s breath caught. 

“Oh, hey.” Hollander smiled a bit awkwardly and eased himself around Ilya. He went over to his locker and opened it. “You all finished?” 

“Yes,” Ilya said. 

“Cool.” Hollander unhooked the towel from his waist and rubbed his hair with it, then ran it down his body. Ilya watched helplessly. “So this was fun,” Hollander said. “Thanks for arranging it.” 

“Sure.” 

Hollander tossed the towel aside and pulled on a pair of boxers. Ilya caught sight of his dick, just a glimpse before it was covered up again, and he mourned.

“You here with your parents?” Hollander asked him, as he reached for a pair of pants. 

What? “No.” 

“Oh, really? You’re by yourself?” 

“Yes.” 

“Oh wow, um. Okay. I didn’t—huh.” Ilya waited. He assumed a point was coming eventually. “Listen.” Hollander seemed to be concentrating very hard on his clothes. “If you were, I don’t know. Looking for some company tonight, my parents and I are having dinner in the hotel later. You could join us if you want.” 

Ilya stared at him. This was so unexpected he almost forgot Hollander was still shirtless. Almost. “You are asking me to dinner with your parents?” 

“Kind of? I guess?” Hollander shrugged, then pulled on a shirt. “Only if you don’t have plans.” 

“What plans would I have?” 

“I don’t know, dude. That’s why I asked.”

He’d had plans, or hopes for plans at least, but that was fucked now that Hollander was fully clothed. Ilya’s plans at present were to go back to his room and hope something good was on TV, and that his father or Alexei wouldn’t call him. Both long shots, if he was honest. 

“Okay,” he said. Fuck it. More time with Hollander meant there might still be an opportunity to make something happen with him. “Why the fuck not.” 

“Cool.” Hollander smiled at him, bright and genuine. Ilya’s knees went weak. “Meet us at the restaurant at seven.” 

Ilya arrived at the entrance to the hotel restaurant at the appointed time, to find Hollander and the Hollander Parents awaiting him. He approached them with caution and a quick, careful assessment of their demeanour. Hollander himself was looking mildly exasperated, his mother wary. His father however smiled warmly at Ilya and Ilya, in relief, smiled back. 

“Hello,” he said. “I, um.” He held out a bouquet of flowers. They weren’t much, just from a little shop down the street, but at least he wasn’t empty-handed. “Please,” he said. 

Hollander’s mother blinked at him. “You brought us flowers?”

Chrysanthemums, so Ilya’s Russian-English dictionary informed him. Similar to the Russian word but different enough that he had no intention of attempting to pronounce it. 

“Brought for you, yes,” he told Hollander’s mother. “Is polite. But they came only in six and twelve. In Russia these numbers are for funerals. So—” He plucked one of the flowers from the bouquet, a deep orange one, and offered it to Hollander’s father. “One for you.” 

“Oh!” Hollander Father looked surprised, then pleased. “Thank you.” 

“Yes, um. Thank you,” said Hollander Mother as she accepted the bunch of eleven chrysanthemums. “That’s very kind.” 

“I don’t think anyone’s ever given me a flower before,” Hollander Father remarked. 

“Father’s Day 1991,” Hollander Mother said drily, and he laughed. 

“Of course. But Shane was what, a month old then? That time was a bit of a blur. I’m surprised you remember.” 

“I gave them to you!” she retorted, just as the restaurant’s host called their name.

“Of course, but—” 

“Your table is ready,” the host said, and the Hollander Parents’ voices faded as they followed him into the restaurant. Ilya looked at Hollander, who shrugged. 

“They’re like that,” he said. “Come on, we’d better sit.” 

When they arrived at the table, Hollander Mother had moved past the topic of Father’s Day flowers. 

“So,” she said, eyes narrowing on Ilya as he sat down. “Tell me, um. Ilya? Is it?”

“Ilya,” Ilya pronounced. 

“Ill-ya,” she repeated carefully. “Right. Well, Ilya, are you looking forward to Boston?” 

Something about the question, the way she asked it, felt like a test. Of what, Ilya did not know. “Yes, I think,” he said, which was the truth. “Hollander says is nice place.” 

Hollander Mother smiled. Almost involuntarily, Ilya thought. “You should really call him Shane, at least at dinner,” she said. “We’re all Hollanders here. I’m Yuna.”

“Oh,” said Ilya. “Um.” He wasn’t sure he was ready for first names with Hollander’s mother. 

“And I’m David,” said Hollander Father. 

“Okay,” Ilya said. They were obviously trying, the least he could do was try too. “Um, Shane said that Boston is nice place. So yes. Looking forward.” 

“Shane’s so excited about Montreal, aren’t you, Shane? They’ve been his favourite team since he was little, and—” 

“No, they’re your favourite team,” Holl-Shane interrupted, a bit sharply. Ilya looked over at him in surprise. “Mine is Ottawa.” 

“Ottawa, Shane, really.” Yuna looked at Ilya like she expected him to share her disbelief. “They’ve never won anything.” 

Shane’s expression was stubborn and a bit sullen. “They don’t invest enough in their coaching,” he said, “and—” 

“Montreal is Original Six.” Yuna interrupted in her turn. Her voice was firm. Ilya got the sense that this was a well-trodden argument. “They’re a storied franchise. You’ll do amazing there, sweetie.” 

“Of course.” Shane glared at the menu. “I’d do amazing anywhere.” 

Flat silence met this declaration, as no one seemed to know how to respond to it. Ilya wasn’t sure why. It was the simple truth. Shane was fast, smart, an intricate playmaker. Poetry in motion on the ice. The best player Ilya had ever seen, besides himself. They were both going to do amazingly. 

“I think I will score fifty goals this season,” he declared loudly, to break the stretching tension. 

It broke. All three Hollanders turned to stare at him. Ilya treated them to his most obnoxious grin. 

“Well!” Yuna declared. “That’s, ah. A lot.” 

“Yes,” Ilya agreed. “You think I cannot do it?” 

“Well, as a rookie, Ilya—” 

Ilya waved this away. “Boston is old team with old players, yes? Some maybe original from Original Six.” 

David choked on his water and from the corner of his eye, Ilya could see Shane grin. 

“So I will have plenty of ice time, I think. Plenty of time to score many goals. Fifty. At least.” 

“Oh, at least,” said Yuna. 

“Yes.” Ilya leaned in closer, holding her gaze. “How many you think Shane will score?” 

“Sixty,” Yuna shot back. “At least.” 

“Mom!” 

“What? You think you can’t?” 

“I—that’s not—stop making promises I have to keep!” 

“I will make you bet,” Ilya said, to draw attention back to himself and away from any further argument between Shane and his mother. “All of you. I score fifty goals this season, I buy you all dinner. I score more than Shane even if not fifty, I buy you all dinner. Shane scores more than me then he buys everyone dinner and goes on television to say I am best rookie league has ever seen and he only won scoring race by luck.” 

“Oh fuck you, Rozanov!” 

“Ah, ah!” Ilya held up a finger. “Ilya.” 

Shane was flushed again. His freckles stood out like little stars across his cheeks. “Fine,” he said. “Fuck you, Ilya.” 

Oh, how Ilya wished he would. 

“If you score fifty, or more than Shane, you buy dinner,” Yuna counter-offered. “But if Shane beats you by even one goal, I will buy dinner and you go on television to say he is the best rookie the league has ever seen and you never stood a chance of beating him.” 

Ilya grinned at her. “Deal.” 

“Shane,” said Yuna, eyes lit with the same competitive fever Ilya had already grown so fond of in her son, “you had better not lose.” 

“Mom, no, don’t shake his—hand,” Shane finished with a sigh as his mother did just that. 

“A deal it is,” Yuna said. Her handshake was firm, her hand slender but strong. “I look forward to dinner at your expense.” 

“So do I,” Ilya returned. “At yours.” 

Yuna held his hand for a beat, watching him closely. Then she laughed. “Where’s that waiter?” she demanded. “I’m hungry.” 

And Ilya knew that, somehow, Shane Hollander’s mother had just become his friend. 

“That was a cute trick, giving my dad the flower,” Shane said later in the hotel bar, after dinner was over and his parents had gone to their room. He had hung back, claiming he wasn’t tired yet, and so, of course, had Ilya. “Mom really liked it.” 

“What can I say, Shane?” Ilya was really enjoying saying his name. “I know what women like.” 

“I’ll bet you do.” 

Something in his tone Ilya couldn’t quite interpret. It sounded—wry? Almost a little bit scornful? For a minute he hesitated, wondering if he really had read Shane’s interest correctly. There wasn’t any trace now of what he thought he’d seen before. But they were alone-ish at last and wouldn’t be for much longer, and images of Shane bare and dripping were still fresh in his mind, so Ilya pushed any nagging doubts aside and plunged ahead. 

A little bit too quickly. 

“What is your room number?” he asked. 

Shane blinked at him. “Fourteen ten.” He frowned. “Why? What’s yours?” 

Ilya could almost hear the screech in his brain as he pivoted from trying to come up with the right words to get both of them up to fourteen ten and scrambled for some that would sound clever in response to this unexpected volley. He failed. “Eleven nineteen,” he heard himself say, then cursed his idiocy. 

“I think Mom and Dad are on twelve.” Shane seemed to see nothing odd in this random exchange of room numbers. Ilya groped for a way to try again, to make his intentions clearer, as Shane looked at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I have an early flight tomorrow.” 

“Me too. But—” 

“We should get some sleep then.” Shane finished the last of his drink—ginger ale—and got to his feet. “Come on, let’s grab the elevator.” 

In the elevator, Shane pressed the button for fourteen and for eleven, and Ilya’s hopes for the evening sank down deep into the pit of his stomach. He watched from the corner of his eye as Shane leaned back against the wall, eyes drifting shut, and stifled a sigh. He was so fucking pretty, in makeup or without it. Ilya wanted to stroke his cheek. More than his cheek. Fuck, he just wanted to touch him. 

He wanted that far too much to give up on it now.

“We should go out,” he said. 

Shane opened his eyes. “What?” 

“When Montreal plays Boston. In November. We should go out, after the game.” 

“Oh. Okay. Um. Sure. But like, we’ll be playing on different teams.” 

Ilya rolled his eyes. “Oh thank you for explaining this, Hollander, I did not understand how hockey works. Give me your phone.” 

“What?” 

“You have phone?” 

“Yeah.” 

Ilya held out his hand. “Give.” 

Shane reached into his pocket and produced his phone. Ilya took it, entered his number into the contacts. Then he sent himself a text. 

“Now you have my number,” he said. “When we play in November I will text you. We will go out. Get drunk, maybe.” 

“I don’t really drink.” 

Ilya reached up and patted his cheek, just as the elevator arrived on floor eleven. “We will see,” he said. He let his thumb brush over Shane’s freckles, just lightly, as he took his hand away. 

“See you in November.” 

San Francisco, June 2016

The next morning brings the news that San Francisco International Airport will be out of commission for at least the next three days. Catastrophic system failure, just as the rude-polite check-in woman said. Flights are being re-routed to and from Oakland, but that’s way more volume than the smaller airport is equipped to handle so delays are piling up and travellers advised not to fly if they can avoid it. 

Ilya can avoid it. 

“You should see about a flight,” he tells Shane as they have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. “Maybe you can charter one?” 

“For such a short flight, seems like a waste,” Shane says. “Besides, I doubt there are any charter planes in Oakland. We’ll just have to—wait. What do you mean ‘you’?” 

“What?” 

“You said just now, ‘you’ should see about a flight. Meaning me, not us. What are you going to do?” 

Ilya shrugs. “I thought I might drive.” 

“Drive? Drive what?” 

“I can rent a car. Or better, buy one. California coastal road is supposed to be one of the best in the world. I will buy a car, drive down it. Then to Vegas.” 

“Won’t that take a long time?” 

“Two days, probably. But I do not have to be in Vegas until the awards. I have time.” 

“Don’t you want to be in Vegas before the awards?” Shane inquires of the rubbery pile of eggs on his plate. He doesn’t look at Ilya. “You usually do.” 

Usually, Ilya parties it up in Vegas before the awards, one final hurrah before he has to go spend his summer in Moscow. Lately, though, a lot of the bloom has gone off that particular rose. Ilya’s tired, not in his body so much but in his soul. Tired of the clubs and the parties and the meaningless hookups that have defined his life outside hockey up until now. Tired of chasing highs that take longer to reach and fade away quicker, leaving him feeling hollow, nothing inside him but the hopeless yearning that lives in his chest and has for years. 

“This year I don’t,” he says. “This year I want to drive down California then through the desert. In a convertible, I think. Mustang, traditional American car. I will be sad cliche of Kerouac-reading college boy, as Sveta called her last boyfriend.” 

Shane frowns. “Wasn’t her last boyfriend a hedge-fund manager?” 

“That was one before last. Last one was cold brew and rock climbing enthusiast who read her poetry in bed. His own.” 

“Oof.” Shane winces. “And you want to be like this guy?” 

“Only in that I want to drive along western American roads in Mustang convertible.” 

Shane considers this for a minute, then he says, “Can I come?” 

Ilya looks at him with a surprise that manages to mask the way his heart leaps then races, like it’s trying to escape the prison of his ribs. “Don’t you have an ad to shoot in Vegas?” He knows Shane does, it was the reason for the red-eye.

Shane executes quite a convincing approximation of Ilya’s careless Slavic shrug. “That’s fucked now, obviously,” he says. “It was supposed to start this morning but even if I caught the first available flight I wouldn’t make it there till late afternoon. And that’s at the earliest. I’ll just ask Mom to reschedule. Which means I don’t have to be in Vegas until the awards either.” 

Ilya and his racing heart grapple for a minute with the notion of days in a car just him and Shane, the sun on their faces and the wind in their hair, gorgeous vistas of surging seas and rocky coasts spread out before them. It’s the worst idea ever, latest in the very long line of terrible, Shane-centric ideas that have been making Ilya suffer for years now. Just like always, he wants it far too badly to care. “Yes,” he says. “Of course you can come. If you want.” 

Shane hesitates for a beat, prodding at his beleaguered rubber eggs. Then he nods. “I want.” 

Nashville, All-Stars 2011

Ilya left the press conference feeling frustrated. 

He’d been working so fucking hard on his English and he knew it had gotten better, much better now than even a few months ago. But there were so many things he still struggled with, like unfamiliar accents or situations when he couldn’t see the speaker’s mouth. Or questions like whatever the fuck that one had been. 

He didn’t like that he’d needed Shane to rescue him. He loved that Shane had done it. But he hated that he’d had to. 

“Hey.” Ilya heard the voice behind him and turned to find Shane frowning and concerned. “You okay?” 

No, not really. “Yes,” Ilya said. 

“Those were some dumb fucking questions.” Shane actually looked angry.  

“You answered them.” In English and in French. Ilya scowled at the memory. 

“Dude, you know how much media training my mom makes me do.” He hesitated and Ilya braced himself. He knew what was coming. “You also know she’d arrange some for you if you wanted.” 

“I do not want.” 

Shane threw up his hands. “Then what are you bitching about?” 

“Nothing. Fuck.” 

Shane sighed. Ilya sulked. They stared at each other for a bit, then Shane said, “Look, why don’t you come to my room after the team dinners tonight? We can watch a movie or something, catch up.” 

Catch up made it sound like they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Which they hadn’t. But that didn’t mean there had been no contact. Long gone were the days immediately following the CCM shoot, when Ilya had stared at Shane’s number in his phone and wondered if it would be weird to text him before the season even started. These days they texted regularly, even talked on the phone sometimes. And after both their games this season, they’d hung out together. It was pretty well established now that they were friends. 

Friends who hadn’t actually been alone with each other since Toronto, more than six months earlier. 

“Yes.” Ilya said. He tried to sound coolly detached but knew he didn’t. He also knew that Shane would not notice. “Okay. Sounds good.” 

“Cool.” Shane smiled that fucking smile of his that sent Ilya’s heartbeat into overdrive. “Thirteen fifty two. Nine o’clock?” 

Ilya nodded. 

By ten past nine, Ilya was stretched out on the bed in Shane’s room. His feet were bare, close enough to Shane’s white-socked ones to see that they were the same size. Perfectly matched, like nearly every other thing about them. Ilya both loved and hated thinking about that. 

Shane was fiddling with the TV remote. “Svetlana get settled into her new place okay?” he asked. 

“Yeah, good. She says you must come over when you are in Boston next.” He glanced over with a little smile. “She will throw you a party.” 

“No, no more parties,” Shane said immediately. “The one you threw was bad enough.” 

Ilya feigned deep offence. “Was not bad,” he protested. 

“Me, Hayden, Svetlana, half of the Raiders and like three hundred models plus a shit ton of vodka and no food does not equal good, Ilya.” 

“This is matter of opinion.” 

“Hayd puked three times on the way back to the hotel.” 

Ilya grinned at him. “Party definitely was a success, then.” 

Shane sighed and rolled his eyes. “I would like to see Sveta’s new place, though. Is it nice?” 

“That you will have to tell me, Mr Real Estate.” 

Shane smirked. “Can’t be worse than yours.” 

“There is nothing wrong with my apartment.” 

“You’ve got a funny definition of the word ‘nothing’,” retorted Shane. “Maybe look that one up again.” 

From anyone else, a remark like that would drag Ilya deep into his own head, right down into the dark well of his insecurities. But he knew Shane didn’t mean it the way it sounded. “Picking on my English is dirty fucking move, Hollander.” 

Shane turned to him, genuinely contrite. “Sorry. You’re right, that was so shitty of me.” 

“Is okay.” Ilya bumped their shoulders together, to reassure him. “And you are right about my apartment. Team chose it for me. I am looking for a better one.” 

“Maybe put Sveta on the case.” 

“Maybe.” Ilya was silent as the question he wanted to ask pressed insistently on his mind. He tried not to ask it. He failed. 

“How is what’s-her-name?” 

“Who?” Shane set the remote aside. Ilya glanced at the screen to see a movie playing. An old one, it looked like. He didn’t recognise it. 

“Your girlfriend,” he clarified. 

Shane blinked at the emphasis he put on the word. “Um, she’s fine, probably. I don’t know. We broke up.” 

“You did?” 

“Yeah, a few weeks ago.” He shrugged. “Just didn’t work out.” 

That was fast, Ilya thought. Shane had been spotted out with this woman a few times, had reluctantly admitted when pressed that they’d met at a photo shoot. That had been December. It was now February. 

The news that Shane was single now made him feel feather-light, almost fizzy. “What is there to work out? You like someone you fuck them, you don’t you don’t.” Emphasis on like, he willed Shane to understand. The way I like you. Emphasis on someone. Gender-neutral. “You make things so complicated, Shane.” 

Shane elbowed him. “I’m not like you, asshole. I respect women.” 

“I respect them too.” Ilya caught his eye and grinned. “I respect them very, very much.” 

Shane looked away. 

"Also very often." 

“All right, okay.” 

“With my dick, Hollander. I respect them with my dick.”

“Yeah, I got it.” 

They watched the movie in silence for a while, then Shane said, “You ever think about respecting anyone on a more permanent basis?” 

You flashed through Ilya’s mind, but he shook that thought away immediately. “No. Why would I?” 

“No reason.” That odd note had crept into his voice again, the one last heard in the hotel bar in Toronto. “I suppose when you’re nineteen years old and drowning in pussy there’s no reason to limit yourself.” 

Exactly, Ilya thought. He didn’t limit himself at all. Aloud, he said, “So are you looking for another girlfriend?” 

“No. I don’t like the distraction.” Shane frowned, his gaze turned inward. When he spoke again his voice was low, like a confession. “Sometimes I wish I could be more like you, but. I don’t think that’s for me. Just, picking up girls, you know. I don’t really like it.” 

“Different people are different,” said Ilya softly. “You do not have to be like me. Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing you need to change.” 

I like you so much, exactly as you are. This he did not say. He barely registered thinking it.  

“I think you’re the only one who’d say that,” Shane said wryly. “The guys definitely don’t understand.” 

“Fuck them.” 

“Yeah, I don’t think so. They’re not really my type.” 

What is your type? Ilya wished he could ask. Women? Men? People dressed as animals? Or maybe Shane didn’t have a type at all. Maybe he would marry hockey one day and they would be very happy together. 

He couldn’t ask this, though, so Ilya laughed at Shane’s joke and let the subject drop. 

Shane settled back against the pillows, close enough to Ilya that they were pressed together from shoulder to elbow. Ilya was half-hard, his heart pounding, the itch beneath his skin near intolerable. He didn’t move away. 

“This is nice,” Shane said. “When it’s quiet and just us. I know you like parties and going out, but—” 

“I like staying in too. Sometimes.” With you. 

Shane smiled. 

They watched the movie, though Ilya paid very little attention. He thought there were cops of some sort involved, and also surfing. It looked kind of cool actually but less than halfway through Shane fell asleep. His head dropped down to rest on Ilya’s shoulder and from that point on, Ilya had no thoughts remaining for anything else. 

Carefully, he shuffled down and turned his body, shifted them both so Shane could rest more fully against him. Then, half-holding his breath, he laid his cheek on Shane’s head, against the softness of his hair. 

Which was a bad idea. A terrible idea. One of the worst ideas he’d ever had.  

He didn’t care. 

San Francisco, June 2016

Buying a car would normally take longer than one morning, but Ilya has cash money he’s not afraid to spend and contacts in the sports car world and so by noon he’s the proud new owner of quite an old car. A ’67 Mustang convertible which the previous owner is happy to drive up from Palo Alto to deliver, for an extra 5k above his asking price. It’s gunmetal grey rather than the red Ilya was hoping for, but he hasn’t really got time to shop around and more than that, Shane loves it. Ilya can see it in his eyes as the car pulls up in front of the hotel. 

“Wow,” he says. “I thought it’d be more orange.” 

“These do not come in orange,” Ilya tells him loftily. 

“Thank goodness.” 

Ilya transfers the cash and signs the title then he and Shane load their suitcases in the trunk and settle in. Shane runs his hands over the car’s tan leather interior with that happy smile he gets when something feels good to his touch. “This is nice,” he says. “I really like it.” 

He will never, ever sell this car, Ilya thinks. This car is a part of him now. 

He fiddles with his phone for a bit, takes his time working out a route as Shane hums and strokes the leather. Finally, he sets the phone aside and puts on his sunglasses. 

“Ready?” he asks, and Shane nods. 

“Ready.” 

Shane is wearing sunglasses of his own, and a t-shirt in a shade of dark green that recalls the beanie he was wearing on the day they met. It clings to his shoulders and arms more tightly than Shane’s t-shirts tend to. He’s been dressing better since he started seeing her, Ilya thinks. Nothing too out there, nothing that would make him uncomfortable. Just better fits and more stylish cuts and colours that suit him. At least, Ilya thinks grimly, she understands that Shane, gorgeous as he is, will never be a fashion plate. At least the clothes she chooses for him are ones he feels comfortable wearing. At least she knows him well enough for that. 

It’s not much as consolation goes, but Ilya will take it. 

Shane settles back into the soft leather seat. On his thigh, his fingers tap out the rhythm of whatever is going through his head. Ilya turns away before the rhythm distracts him and focuses his attention on the road.

“Will the radio bother you?” he asks. 

Shane shakes his head. “Nope.” 

Ilya fiddles with the dials until he finds some classic rock. Not his favourite genre but it seems appropriate to the car and their journey, and Shane hates it less than the rap and EDM that Ilya prefers. It reminds him of his dad. David is strictly a 60s to 80s music guy and that’s what Shane grew up with. He’s more familiar with the Rolling Stones than anything recorded in this century, which is far more adorable than it has any right to be. Particularly when Shane, who has less than zero interest in music, randomly knows lyrics or facts about bands from decades ago and doesn’t really understand when no one else knows them too. 

Of course, everything Shane does is adorable to Ilya, but that is neither here nor there. 

“Proud Mary” starts to play and Ilya lets himself drift on the music for a bit. Tina Turner at least he can get into. Shane says nothing, just reclines and taps as they cruise along the freeway. Ilya has decided to go north on the 280 nearly as far as Daly City then from there get onto California Highway 1, heading south. 

Once they’re on the state highway and out of the heavy San Francisco traffic, Shane relaxes. Ilya can almost see the tension drain from him, the tiredness and frustration still clinging to him from the night before dissolve away. He stops tapping on his thigh and sinks deeper into his seat, face tilted up to the sun. Soft golden rays highlight the sharp lines of his nose and jaw and cheekbones and Ilya just yearns. 

Shane is so fucking beautiful. He always has been, even as a tightly-wound teenager in a frosty parking lot. Ilya remembers that day well, or parts of it at least. Remembers Shane’s smile and his freckles, the warmth of his hand, the delight in his eyes when Ilya chirped him. He’s only grown more beautiful since and never more so than when he’s relaxed like he is now. An evil voice in Ilya’s mind whispers that he would look much like this in bed, after he came. More flushed, probably. Sweaty, breathing hard. Soft—his eyes, his smile. His voice, moaning Ilya’s name. 

“Fuck.” 

Ilya drags his mind away from thoughts of soft and sated Shane and back to the car, which helps only a little. Shane turns his head and looks over with a little smile. 

“What?” he says. 

“Nothing,” Ilya replies. “Mind was wandering.” 

“Don’t get in a crash and kill us.” 

“I am a good driver.” 

“You’re reckless.” 

Sometimes, Ilya concedes. Sometimes he gets urges, to drive as fast as his fast cars will go, see how much speed he can handle before he loses control. He’d never actually push it too far—he wouldn’t, it’s not like that—but the urge is there. 

It’s not there now, though. Not with Shane in the car. Ilya is sometimes careless with himself but never, never with Shane. 

“Look, I am below speed limit.” He gestures at the speedometer. “Boring driving to keep boring passenger off my fucking back.” 

Shane just shakes his head. The wind catches in his hair as he does and blows it across his face. It’s longer now than it used to be—before her—long enough to brush past the collar of his shirt and sweep across his forehead, thick and dark and so fucking soft. How many times has Ilya rested his cheek against it when Shane fell asleep on his shoulder? Too many to count. He knows the feel of that hair. 

Shane runs his fingers through it now to brush it back, tucks it behind his ear. Ilya grips the steering wheel hard, to numb the itch in his own fingers. His fingers always want to touch Shane, to sink into his hair and stroke down his cheekbone, trace the contours of his muscles as they clench beneath his skin. 

Ilya bites back the curse word this time, swallows it down deep into the place where he locks away all his feelings for Shane, the best he can. His best it seems is not very good today. It’s rare that they have more than a few hours together and almost never completely alone; already Ilya feels strung out and threadbare and their road trip has barely begun. 

He needs, he tells himself firmly, to get a fucking grip. 

Las Vegas, MLH Awards 2011

“There you are.” 

Ilya turned to see Shane coming up the steps to stand beside him on the balcony. 

“Here I am,” he agreed. Shane stumbled on the last step and collapsed against the railing. Despite his grim mood, Ilya had to smile. 

“You are drunk,” he said. 

“I’m not.” 

“I have seen you drunk before, Hollander, I know what it looks like. Looks like this.” 

Shane contemplated visibly for a moment, then seemed to accept the justice in this statement. “I did shots with Scott Hunter,” he said.  

“Oh? Was this before or after his nightly fibre pills and cup of cocoa?” 

“You’re such a dick,” Shane said. “He’s not that old.” 

Ilya shrugged and took a drag from his cigarette. 

“Hunter wanted to buy you drinks too,” Shane informed him. “But we couldn’t find you.” He paused, then, “Are you okay?” 

“I go home in three days.” Which wasn’t an answer to the question, but also was. 

“Oh.” Ilya watched from the corner of his eye as Shane processed this. “Do you have to?” 

“What?” 

“Do you have to go to Russia? Can’t you just stay here? Or like, not here here but in Boston?” 

“My father expects me home.” 

The look on Shane’s face said he knew he was navigating dangerous waters. “Because he wants to see you or because he wants to control you?” 

That was both infuriatingly perceptive and really fucking rich coming from him, Ilya thought. As fond as he was of Yuna—who had bought them all dinner the night before, despite himself and Shane finishing the season with an exactly equal number of goals—she was as controlling in her way as Grigori was in his. But he didn’t want to fight about this. He didn’t want to fight with Shane at all. 

“Does not matter,” he said. “I will go. Flight is booked. Sveta will come with.” He attempted a smile. “Will be fine, Shane. I will see you next season, yes?” 

“What if you saw me before that?” 

Ilya turned to look at him. “How?” For a moment he feared Shane might offer to come to Moscow too. 

“What if you came to Canada instead?” Shane asked, and briefly Ilya felt relieved. Then he yearned. “Come stay with my parents and me. At our cottage on the lake. I know they’d love to have you and—and I would too. We could hang out all summer. It’d be fun.” 

Fuck, but Ilya wanted to. He wanted to say yes so badly he had to grind his teeth together to hold the word in. “Cannot,” he gritted out instead. “Impossible.” 

Shane was exasperated now. “Your father doesn’t own you, Ilya.” 

He certainly didn’t now that Ilya had money, an American visa, and a long contract with a venerated hockey team. No, Ilya was his own man, even if he had only just turned twenty. But he would rather have Shane believe he was being forced home by his father than know the truth. Which was that he would never survive a summer hanging out together at a terrible boring wonderful Canadian lake cottage. No way would he get through that without saying something he shouldn’t, or revealing things he needed to keep hidden. Like how badly he still wanted Shane, though he understood now that whatever interest he thought he’d detected last year had been an illusion. Wishful thinking on his part. 

He blamed the freckles. 

“I am grateful,” he said. “For invitation. But is impossible.” He inhaled the last of his cigarette, then stubbed the butt out on the railing. “Maybe next year.” 

“Sure.” Shane turned away from him to stare out at the glittering Vegas skyline. “Next year.” 

Monterey, June 2016

At Monterey, they temporarily abandon the 1 in favour of the series of roads that trace its coastline. From Ocean View Boulevard to Sunset Drive, then 17 Mile Drive down to Carmel. The roads hug the peninsula’s edge and Ilya enjoys navigating the car around their sinuous curves. A vista point called The Restless Sea catches his attention and he pulls the car over. 

It’s one of many similar outlooks along this stretch of coastline: rugged piles of grey rock and surging azure sea beyond, white froth where earth and water meet. One of the most turbulent sections of coastline, the sign for it informs them, and this Ilya can well believe. There’s a wild energy here that makes his blood hum and feeds his reckless urges. 

One of those urges grips him now, tugs him towards the ocean as far as he can go. He’s over the low wooden fence and out onto the rocks before Shane has a chance to finish saying, “Ilya, what the fuck are you doing?” 

What Ilya’s doing is clambering out to the brink of the land and staring at the sea as it froths and seethes far below his feet. The wind is fierce here, exhilarating, the ocean wild and vast, calling to its counterpart in Ilya’s restless soul. 

Shane comes to stand beside him at the rocky edge. He stands close, body tilted slightly towards Ilya, gazing off into the same distance he is. Does it call to him, too? Ilya wonders. Almost certainly not. Shane is a creature of routine and discipline; even coming on this drive with him is out of character. If Ilya dove into the sea, Shane would not follow him. 

Good, he thinks. 

“I have to tell you something,” Shane says, close enough to Ilya’s ear that even this wind can’t whip his words away. “Something I learned from Rose. I’m—” 

Rose fucking Landry. “I do not want to talk about Rose,” Ilya snaps, interrupting. 

“It’s not about her, it’s what she—” 

“No.” These words are too revealing, they feel like a confession. He can’t stop himself from saying them. “No girlfriends on this trip. Just us, okay?” 

“Okay, but Rose isn’t—” 

“Shane.” Ilya interrupts again, glares at him before he can say once more how Rose isn’t like his other girlfriends. She knows hockey and swears like a sailor. So the fuck what? Ilya has known many women just like this, Rose Landry isn’t special. It’s only that Shane has limited experience. “No. Not here.” 

“Okay,” Shane says. “But later. Please. It’s important and I want you to know first.” 

He’s engaged, is all Ilya can think. He’s fucking engaged and he’s going to be married and he wants Ilya to be his best man. Ilya will have to stand there and smile and watch the love of his life promise to love someone else for the rest of his life, and not scream or cry or fucking die about it. He’ll do it, of course. He’ll fucking do it because it’s Shane and there’s nothing Ilya won’t do for him. But he doesn’t want to think about it now. Not here. 

He closes his eyes and breathes in deep, fills his lungs with salty sea air. He exhales slowly. “Let’s get back on the road,” he says. “I want to get to San Luis Obispo by tonight.” 

They make a pit stop in Carmel-by-the-Sea, though, at a cafe where they get lunch to go and eat it on a small beach further down the road, at the foot of a scrubby tree that looks like driftwood already, tangled roots exposed and clinging in the sand. 

Shane takes off his shoes and socks and like the tree, sinks his feet into that silky sand. It’s bleached-white and fine as dust and Shane hums as he wiggles his toes in it. Such a strange intimacy there can be to bare feet, Ilya thinks. He’s known Shane now for more than seven years, they’ve hung out in hotel rooms and fallen asleep together but this is the first time he’s seen Shane’s feet bare. He always wears socks. 

Ilya rarely does. 

He wonders if a metaphor might lurk in there somewhere. 

“I want to swim,” Shane says. 

“What?” 

“In the ocean,” he clarifies, as though Ilya may have concluded he’d like to swim in some other local body of water. “I’ve never been in the Pacific.” 

“You don’t have trunks,” Ilya says stupidly. 

“I have boxers.” 

“They’ll arrest you for indecency.” 

“Who will?” Shane looks around them at the empty beach. “Come on, Ilya. Have you ever been in the Pacific?” 

He hasn’t. He wants to go, but fuck. Like this? Desire wars with self-preservation as Shane stands up and strips off his shirt, exposing the skin Ilya wants to lick and kiss and bite, the lean muscle he longs to feel flexing beneath him. Shane wet and all but naked would kill him if he had a year to prepare for it, as it is he has to close his eyes and dig his fingernails into his thigh to get himself under something almost like control. 

By the time he opens his eyes again, Shane’s jeans and t-shirt are neatly folded and draped over a branch of the driftwood tree; the man himself is heading for the water’s edge dressed only in a pair of navy boxer briefs. His ass is—fuck. Ilya drags his eyes away and scrambles to his feet, cursing under his breath. He throws his own clothes off as fast as he can and takes off at a run after Shane. He hopes to fuck the Pacific is cold. 

It is. Not Russian-lake cold like he remembers from his childhood but cold enough to keep his dick down, even when Shane dives into the surf then emerges with a happy whoop. Water runs down his body in rivulets, over the dips and bulges of his chest and abs to the waistband of his boxers which, thankfully, is all the farther Ilya can see. 

He tries not to look at all but his eyes won’t obey. Greedily, they follow the drops that fall from the heavy strands of Shane’s longer hair and those that cling to his smooth skin like prisms catching on the warm afternoon light. He can’t look away. When it comes to Shane, he’s so fucking weak. 

What if, he wonders sometimes, he hadn’t volunteered Shane’s name to CCM all those years ago? If he’d been stronger then, less desperate to see Shane again, maybe now things would be different. Maybe they would only have been rivals on the ice and known nothing of each other off it. Maybe. 

Probably not. Ilya can’t imagine a world in which he caught even a glimpse of  Shane Hollander’s fucking freckles and didn’t lose his mind about them. 

He’s so, so fucking weak. 

A wave of water crashes over him and he splutters as his mouth and nose and eyes fill up with salty, stinging brine. He hears Shane’s laughter and glowers in its direction. 

“Hollander, the fuck?” 

Shane tries to splash him again, but Ilya dives clear of it. He recovers quickly and sends a wave of his own surging back at Shane, who lets its momentum carry him backwards and down under the water. He doesn’t surface immediately and Ilya frowns, rubs his eyes and blinks hard, searching for a glimpse of him. 

That’s when Ilya’s legs go out from under him. Are yanked out from under him, by a pair of muscular arms powered by a level of evil of which Ilya would not have thought Shane capable. He goes under hard then surfaces awkwardly, spluttering again, wipes the water from his eyes and blinks them open to see Shane standing with his arms crossed, looking smug. 

“You’re a lot better with water when it’s frozen,” he observes. 

Ilya is outraged. “You ambushed me!” he protests. 

“I outplayed you.” 

“I did not know there was a game!” 

“There’s always a game, Rozanov. This one is Canada Lake Rules.” 

Ilya pouts. “You just made that up.” 

“Nope. It’s a long-standing tradition. Every summer of my life I’ve spent on a lake.” 

Ilya is of course fully aware of this. Every single year every single Hollander tries to get him to stay with them on this lake of theirs and every year Ilya refuses. He has to go back to Russia, he says, which is still only sort of true. His father and Alexei would be angry if he didn’t go home, but they are angry when he does as well so it hardly matters. Ilya is aware there’s nothing he can do to make his father or brother happy with him but he can’t stop trying. And he definitely can’t spend a whole summer with Shane, no more now than he could have five years ago. He’d break within a week and tell Shane everything, beg him for what Ilya knows he can’t give. And then he would lose his best friend. 

No. It’s safe to say that Ilya will never spend a summer on a Canadian lake. 

He launches himself at Shane now, catches him around the waist and takes them both under. He’s ready for it this time, takes a deep breath before he’s submerged, lets it out slowly as they wrestle beneath the waves. Shane gets him in a headlock and hooks a leg around his to keep him unbalanced. Ilya retaliates with an elbow to his ribs that shows no mercy or any consideration of the fact that he’s just come off a six-game Cup championship final against a hard-playing LA team that pushed him to his limits. A healed and rested Shane would barely even feel that elbow, this June-weary one grunts and releases Ilya as he surfaces and heaves in a breath. 

“Dirty,” he says. 

Ilya shrugs. “Russian rules.” 

“Figures,” Shane snorts. 

Ilya knows Shane’s opinion of Russia is coloured by Sochi and by his disdain for Ilya’s father and brother. His own feelings about the country of his birth are complicated at best, but it still hurts every time Shane is scornful or dismissive of it. He says nothing, though. Just dives under the water and takes Shane out at the knees. 

They roughhouse like this a bit longer, then they swim, out as far as they dare then back again. Halfway between the beach and the horizon they float on their backs with their heads close together, toes pointing in opposite directions. 

“So,” Ilya says. “How does it feel to be a dynasty?” 

“Shut up,” Shane scoffs mildly. 

“No, I am serious. Two Cups in a row is huge. You will not make it to three of course, but—” 

“We’ll fucking see about that.” 

They float in silence for a minute, then Shane says, “It feels fucking great. Better than the first one.” 

“You worked your ass off for it.” 

“Fuck yeah, I did. Carried all those fuckers the last half of the season.” 

The last two-thirds, more like. The Metros really would be nothing without Shane. It infuriates Ilya every time he hears Shane make one of his perfectly crafted, media-trained statements that credit his team for things they absolutely did not fucking do. He knows Shane has to give those answers, that deep down he hates them too. But Ilya loves, he fucking loves being the one person Shane can be honest with. Shane trusts him with the arrogant asshole side of himself because he knows Ilya won’t spill his secret. Knows that Ilya likes him all the more because he has this side to him. 

“When Drapeau let that goal in late in the second I thought you would murder him.” 

“I still might. That asshole is too weak on his left side to run his mouth as much as he does. You can talk shit only as long as you don’t play like it.” 

Ilya grins, wide and fond because Shane can’t see. “Tell me more.” 

Shane does. 

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

though california is (largely) non-fictional, most places in this fic i have invented. Including the quiet beach near carmel, the inn and the bar and grill from this chapter. Next chapter will feature a real place but i will give you plenty of warning. The boys are on a little fantasy adventure, just roll with it.

February 2014, Sochi 

By the time Shane appeared at his side in that stupid Canada fleece, like the cuddliest, most concerned little lamb a six-foot, 200 pound, top-tier professional athlete could possibly be, Ilya was almost ready for him. He’d been aware Shane was there, of course—he was always aware of Shane no matter where he was, even down in the stands below watching fucking figure skating with Hunter and Vaughn, of all people. Ilya was aware when Shane arrived and he was aware when Shane left, and he knew Shane well enough to be certain where he was headed so when he heard the voice that still—fucking always—made his belly clench and his heart leap, he knew without looking who it was. 

“Hey,” Shane said. “I—” 

“Do not mention the game.” 

Ilya didn’t look at him because he didn’t need to. He knew what Shane’s face would be doing. And he knew what Shane would say. 

“I wasn’t going to.” 

Even before he’d finished the sentence, Ilya was shaking his head. “You have always been a terrible liar.” 

“Okay, I was,” Shane conceded, “but I won’t if you don’t want to talk about it.” 

“I do not want to talk about it.” 

“We won’t talk about it, then.” 

Ilya risked a glance at him, just a brief one. More than long enough to fucking want. Shane had never looked more holdable and everything in Ilya was screaming to hold him. Just slip himself inside that stupid soft fuzzy fleece and let Shane’s presence fill the emptiness that Russia hollowed out within him, every fucking time he came back. 

“You shouldn’t be up here,” he said.  

“Why?” 

Ilya looked at him again. He couldn't help it. “Is probably not good idea to be seen with me.” 

Shane's frown was confused. “Why not? You’re not fucking, contaminated or something.” 

Ilya felt contaminated. His failure clung to him with a cloying, unfamiliar stench. He hated it. He hated himself, for allowing it. He didn’t want it anywhere near Shane. But that was not the reason he had to keep Shane far away. Being close to him was dangerous in ways he wouldn’t understand and Ilya couldn’t explain. Best to push him away, as far as possible. 

“My father is very angry with me.” 

Not the words he had intended to say. Definitely not the words to make Shane fucking go. “That loss wasn’t your fault,” Shane said. “Your goalie—” 

“I know.” Ilya forced himself to turn away. “I said I do not want to talk about it.” 

“You’re the one who brought up your father, Ilya.” 

“I should not have. Forget I said it.” 

And oh, he could hear Shane’s jaw set into stubborn lines. “No. I’m concerned about you.” 

“Do not be.” 

“Don’t fucking tell me what to feel.” 

“Shane—fuck!” The word burst from Ilya. He spun around to face Shane, foolish as he knew that was. “You do not understand—” 

“Then tell me. Ilya.” Shane took a step closer, then another. Ilya did not move back. “I know you hate it here. I know your dad is shitty to you. And don’t even get me started on your fucking brother. I’ve heard that asshole on the phone to you.” 

“Oh, you speak Russian now?” 

“I don’t need to know what the words mean to understand when someone’s being a dick. And the look on your face—” 

Ilya scoffed. Shane scowled. 

“Why do you keep acting like I can’t know about this stuff?” 

“Is not your problem.” 

“Of course it is. You’re my best friend.” 

“So I am your problem, that is what you are saying.” 

Shane declined to take this very obvious bait. “Yeah. I guess that’s what I’m saying. I’d appreciate if you could be less of a fucking problem right now though and just tell me what the fuck is bothering you.” 

Ilya didn’t want to tell him. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. 

He did. 

“There is a gala tonight,” he said roughly. “Very important people. Ministers, businessmen. All of them angry about the loss. My father has said I must go.” 

“Shit.” 

“Yes. Shit. Will be shit.” Everything was shit. Ilya wished desperately for a cigarette. 

The silence stretched. Ilya waited for Shane to make some excuse then leave. He did neither. “What if I went with you?” he said instead, and Ilya reeled. 

“What? No. You cannot.” 

“Why not?” 

“You hate events. Also it is all Russians.” 

“You could translate.” 

Ilya couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You are serious?” he asked, though it was obvious Shane was. He would never offer something like this unless he meant it. 

“Listen,” Shane said, carefully, like he was gathering his thoughts as he spoke. “I know you think I don’t notice what you do with my mom, but I do. And I appreciate it. I love her but sometimes she’s just a lot to deal with. When you’re there drawing the focus off me it’s easier. Let me do that for you, with your dad. Let him pick on me for once and leave you the fuck alone.” 

Ilya stared at him, hand clenched hard on the railing, heart clenched in his chest. “You do not have to—” 

“I know I don’t.” Shane’s face was so solemn, his eyes imploring. Ilya knew he could never refuse those eyes a single fucking thing. “I want to. Please let me.” 

“Okay.” Ilya swallowed hard. Then he nodded. “Okay.” 

Shane smiled. “Okay.” 

Of all the many things Ilya had done in his life to piss off his father, showing up at the Minster’s gala with Shane Hollander may be the worst of them. And he wasn’t even trying to piss off his father. Not this time. 

Grigori’s eyes were furious, sharp with the old, familiar focus notably absent from them earlier, when Ilya appeared with Shane at his side. 

“What is he doing here?” he hissed. “What are you thinking, Ilya?” 

Shane had clearly been expecting just this sort of warm and effusive welcome because he squared his shoulders, held out his hand, and said, “Mr Rozanov, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” in a tone that made it clear that a pleasure to meet him it absolutely was not. 

Grigori stared at Shane’s hand as he might at a venomous snake, before ingrained manners and the awareness that every eye in the vicinity was on them, took over and he shook it. 

“Shane Hollander, yes?” he said. “My son’s rival.” 

“And his friend,” Shane replied. “Which I’m sure you know. I know you take such an active interest in all the details of Ilya’s life.” 

Ilya barely managed not to turn and stare at him, slack-jawed. He was well acquainted of course with Shane’s bitchy side but where had this stiletto-sharp passive-aggression come from? Shane’s jaw was set, his eyes hard. He looked like he did just before he annihilated his opponents on the ice and fuck, it was one of the hottest things Ilya had ever seen.  

“If you are his friend,” said Grigori, “maybe you teach him to play better hockey?” 

“Impossible,” Shane returned coolly. “Ilya’s already the best.” 

Grigori scoffed. “The best would not have lost. You did not lose.” 

“I’ve got a good team behind me.” A sentiment he parroted often, in accordance with the diktats of his media training. For the first time, Ilya felt like he actually meant it. “Your goalie is hurt,” Shane went on. “Even the best captain is going to struggle if his goalie can’t stop the other team scoring. And just to be clear, Mr Rozanov, Ilya is the best captain. The Raiders love him. Boston has a real chance this year and that’s all down to him. Nobody who actually knows hockey would make the mistake of blaming him for Russia’s loss. Not when it’s so obvious that’s not the case.” 

Ilya doubted his father’s English was good enough to pick up on the deft way Shane had just called him an idiot who knew nothing about hockey. Some things transcended language, though, and Grigori was unquestionably aware that he had been insulted. 

Ilya’s body tensed as his father’s face reddened and a vein in his forehead began to pulse, and as Shane continued to stare him down, apparently unbothered by either development. Shane stood with his shoulders back and his chin up, body language that taunted, dared Grigori to do his fucking worst. Ilya wanted to kiss him, fall at his feet, drag him far away from this ugliness that had no right to touch him. He knew, though, that Shane would never go.

It was in that moment that Svetlana, angel that she was, appeared as if from nowhere and greeted Shane effusively. 

“Shane, darling, I’m so glad you could make it,” she said, kissing both his cheeks then pulling him into a hug. The look she shot Ilya over Shane’s shoulder told him she had taken his slightly panicked text plea not to let Shane be left alone with his father deeply to heart. “Come, let me introduce you to my father. He is a huge fan and dying to meet you.” 

“Of course,” Shane replied. “I’m always happy to talk hockey with people who really understand it.” He gave a curt nod to Ilya’s father, who was still looking as though the tuxedo he wore and the intensity of the public gaze on them was all that held him back from making an example of Shane. “Mr Rozanov.” 

Fuck, but Ilya wanted him. He always wanted Shane, obviously, the desire had lived beneath his skin for years and tormented him daily, but this—somehow this wanting felt new. He watched as Shane walked away, Svetlana on his arm, and wished the world were different.  

“Fraternising with the enemy, Ilya,” Grigori began, but Ilya couldn’t, he couldn’t stand there and listen to whatever terrible things his father had to say about Shane. Not about Shane. 

“I don’t want to hear it, Father,” he said, so sharply that Grigori actually recoiled. “I am going to see to my guest.” 

He walked away, leaving his father spluttering behind him. 

He found Shane already deep in conversation with Sergei Vetrov, Svetlana watching them both with an expression of quiet satisfaction. Her smile widened when she caught sight of Ilya and she came over to him, threaded her arm through his. 

“Your kitten has claws,” she said in Russian. 

“Not my kitten.” 

“Hmm,” she replied. “He defended you, though.” 

“He was fucking magnificent.” Ilya still couldn’t believe it. The new ache of yearning in his chest pulsed in time with the beat of his heart. “I did not know he had that in him.” 

“Didn’t you?” Svetlana murmured. “I did.” 

Many hours later Ilya, Shane, and Svetlana had decamped to the garden and now lay sprawled out on the ledge of a fountain, looking up at the stars. Svetlana was relaying a story her father had told her about one of the government officials they had spoken to that evening as Shane, tipsy on the three vodkas he had managed to imbibe despite his attention being demanded by nearly every one of the gala’s attendees, laughed and egged her on. Ilya did not contribute. He was still attempting to process the evening. 

Sveta’s phone buzzed and she retrieved it from her bag. “Sasha is leaving,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want to see him?” 

“Very sure,” Ilya replied. No way was he allowing Sasha’s big mouth and grabby hands anywhere near Shane. 

“It’s not nice to speak Russian when you know I can’t,” Shane informed them. “Rude.” 

“I am sorry, Shanya,” Sveta leaned over and planted a smacking kiss on his cheek. He smiled hazily as Ilya bristled at her easy affection and that fucking nickname only she used. “It’s time I went to bed, anyway.” She smiled at Shane and batted her eyelashes, just a little. “I need my beauty sleep.” 

“Mmm, yeah,” Shane said. Sveta fondly rolled her eyes. She stood, kissed Ilya’s cheek as well, then took her leave. 

“You are supposed to tell her she is beautiful already,” Ilya said. 

Shane’s hazy eyes found him. “What?” 

“When a woman says she needs her beauty sleep that is a cue. For you to say no, she is already so beautiful she does not need it.” 

Shane frowned. “But sleep is important,” he said. “And Sveta knows she’s beautiful. Right?” He paused, then in a hesitant voice said, “She is beautiful, right?” 

Poor Sveta, Ilya thought. She flirted mercilessly at Shane every time she saw him and he didn’t have a clue. Ilya knew too well what that felt like. 

“She is very beautiful,” Ilya said. “But even beautiful women like to be told that they are beautiful.” 

“Huh. That sounds like a lot of work.” 

If Shane were his, Ilya thought, he would hear that he was beautiful every fucking day. Ten times a day. A hundred. It would be no work at all and he would never grow tired of saying it. He wanted to say it now, so badly the words burned on his tongue. He wanted to tell Shane how much it had meant to see him stand up to Ilya’s father and hear him speak in Ilya’s defence. 

Not all the words he wished to say could be said. But some could. 

“Thank you for coming tonight,” he said. “You were big hit with everyone.” Even Russia's dour ministers and rabid national hockey faithful couldn’t resist Shane when he stood up straight and remembered he was Shane Fucking Hollander, apparently. Unsurprisingly. “I think it would have been much more terrible for me without you.” 

“I’m glad it made a difference.” 

“Mmm, yes. Good difference.” Ilya paused, then continued in a softer tone. “What you said to my father. I have never heard you talk like that before. I did not think you could.” 

“I can if I prepare for it,” Shane said. “It’s like media training.” 

Ilya paused, incredulously, as he absorbed this. “You are saying you practiced shit-talking my father?” 

“Yeah.” Shane grinned at the memory. “In the mirror in my room. JJ thought I was going crazy.” He started laughing and Ilya had to join him. 

“Why would you do this?” 

“There were things I wanted to say to him. I wanted to be sure I could.” 

“But why would you do this?” 

“Because he fucking needed to hear it. Ilya.” Shane leaned closer, looked at him with those big brown eyes all caring and sincere. “He’s such a dick to you. I think maybe you’re so used to it you don’t even see it anymore but I do. He treats you like you’re worthless when you are the least worthless person I know. It makes me fucking furious.”

Why did he have to be so earnest, Ilya thought. So fucking beautiful in his defence. You’re soo fucked, a voice in his head sang at him, completely and totally and utterly fucking fucked and though Ilya knew full well how true this was he banished the voice at once from his mind. Maybe because he knew it was true. 

“Come on,” he said. “Is time you went back to the village. I will find car for you.” 

Shane allowed himself to be hauled to his feet but once there he swayed and ended up leaning against Ilya, head on his shoulder. Ilya led him around to the front of the house and the front of a line of waiting cars, gave the driver the destination then gently deposited Shane inside. 

“Heyyy,” Shane protested. “You’re not coming?” 

“No.” 

Shane blinked up at him. “I’ll see you soon, though, right? Talk to you soon.” 

“Maybe.” Ilya ensured the seat belt was buckled then forced himself to stand up, step away. “Maybe.” 

He shut the door then stood watching as the car rounded the drive and headed off, watching its taillights until they vanished into the night. 

June 2016, somewhere south of Monterey

They spend so long at the beach that it’s early evening by the time they get on the road again and darkness falls before they reach San Luis Obispo. Ilya doesn’t mind driving in the dark but there’s no point in taking the scenic route when you can’t see anything, and also the car is nearly out of gas. So when a tiny town—a settlement, really—comes into view with a sign for a gas station, he pulls into it. 

It’s closed. 

Ilya checks his phone—just past ten p.m. The lights inside the station turn off and then its door opens and a man walks out. He stops when he spots them. 

“Nice car,” he says. 

“Thanks,” Ilya replies. “I was hoping to fill her up.” 

“Sorry,” the man says. “Pumps are already turned off. Come back tomorrow morning at six and I can help you then.” 

Ilya turns to Shane. “There’s probably enough to get us to a bigger town but I can’t be sure.” 

“Better not risk it.” Shane addresses the man. “Is there anywhere nearby we could get rooms for the night?” 

“Sure, yeah. Beachside Inn is just down the road. Ask for Hannah, tell her Jamie sent you.” 

“Thanks,” Shane says, and Ilya nods. He heads back out of the gas station and down the road and sure enough, a sprawling clapboard house painted in shades of blue and cream with a sign reading Beachside Inn soon comes into view. Ilya pulls into a vacant space in the small parking area in front of it and they go inside. 

There’s a reception desk in the foyer but no one is behind it, so Shane dings the little bell next to a sign that reads Ring For Service! and a moment later a little woman appears, smiling a big smile. 

“Hello!” she greets them brightly. She’s compact and wiry with skin that’s the sort of tan that makes her ageless, in the sense that she could be anywhere from twenty-five to seventy. Her hair is dirty blonde and styled in two braids wound around her head. Ilya’s queerdar dings like mad. He likes her immediately. “Looking for a room?” she asks them. 

“Yeah.” Shane doesn’t seem to notice the singular noun. “We were just at the gas station and Jamie sent us here. Are you Hannah?” 

“I am. Are you stranded with no gas?” 

“Sort of. Though I think we were ready to take a break anyway. We drove down from San Francisco.” 

“Where you headed?” Hannah taps on her computer keyboard as she speaks. 

“Vegas, eventually. We’re taking the scenic route.” 

“I’ll say.” She looks up from her monitor with another warm smile. “Well, you’re in luck, gents. We’ve got one room left, top floor with a sea view. How does that sound?” 

Ilya waits for Shane to protest that they need separate rooms, that they’re not together in the way Hannah seems to have assumed, that he has a girlfriend. A beautiful, famous, hot girlfriend who loves hockey and may be a fiancée now. But Shane says none of those things. He just smiles his best Canadian good-boy smile and says, “Sounds perfect. Thank you, Hannah.” 

Hannah flushes slightly beneath the sexuality-defying force of Shane Hollander’s beauty—Ilya sympathises—and taps a bit more on her keyboard. A printer whirrs to life then spits out a sheet of paper Shane won’t let Ilya near. 

“You took care of the car,” he says firmly. “This is on me.” 

Ilya tries not to think about how it makes him feel, when Shane takes charge like this. When Shane takes care of him. It’s embarrassing, how much he likes it. How fucking badly he wants it. 

Shane fills in their details and hands over his credit card. A few more taps of Hannah’s keyboard later and they have keys and directions to their room. 

“Will you want dinner?” Hannah asks. 

“I think so,” Shane replies. “I’m hungry, and Ilya can always eat.” 

“Well, there’s a bar and grill just over the rise, about a five minute walk from here. Or I could do you something if you’d rather stay in.” 

Shane’s Canadian kicks in hard. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to be any trouble if you’ve closed your kitchen,” he says.  

“I have, but it’s no problem.” 

“No, we’ll go to the bar and grill. Five minutes, you said?” 

“Yep. Take a left out the door and you should see it once you’re up the little hill. Rocky’s is the name.” 

April 2014, Boston

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

He shouldn’t have come to this bar, was Ilya’s first thought. He should have known that Shane would know he’d be here. Maybe he had known, and that was why he’d come.

 He sensed rather than saw Shane sit down on the barstool next to him. Ilya kept his eyes down, fixed on the vodka that had sat near-untouched in its glass for the last hour. Lonely vodka he’d been too busy brooding to drink. He should drink it now, he thought, all of it down in one, then another, then another until he had achieved some sort of oblivion. He would, except he knew from experience that it wouldn’t work. Nothing ever fucking worked. 

As if pulled by a puppetmaster’s string, his head turned and his eyes found Shane. He looked stiff and slightly uncomfortable, as he always did in places like this. Well, in place like this. They didn’t really go anywhere else. In Montreal they hung out at quiet, late-night restaurants or in Shane’s apartment and in Boston they came here, for one, two drinks at most before Shane’s clear discomfort had Ilya taking him away, off for a walk through the city or a ride in one of his cars. Many times he had attempted to coax Shane into livelier bars or even nightclubs, without success. Always their post-game nights ended with the two of them alone together and Ilya cursing the fates that made that both wonderful and terrible for him. 

Something he had been trying to avoid on this night. For the past two months of nights. 

Shane nodded to the bartender. “Steve,” he said. “No alcohol tonight, please.” 

“Sure thing,” the bartender replied. Steve, apparently. Which Ilya himself had not known despite being fairly regular here. A moment later, a lowball glass appeared at Shane’s elbow. Ginger ale with a twist of lime, which Ilya knew without asking because it was what Shane always ordered when he didn’t want to drink. He picked up the glass and took a sip. 

“You haven’t answered my question,” he said.  

“Nothing is wrong with me.” 

“Don’t fucking lie, Ilya!” Shane set the glass down on the bar with tightly restrained frustration and a heavy clink. “You haven’t answered a text from me in weeks. You wouldn’t even look at me on the ice tonight. Something’s obviously wrong. Did your dad—” 

“No.” Ilya looked away, back at his vodka again. “I have not spoken to him since Sochi.” 

“You haven’t spoken to me since Sochi either.” Shane’s voice dropped low and an uncertainty crept into it that twisted Ilya’s heart. “I thought we were good that night. Did I do something, or say—” 

“No. Is not you.” 

It was him, though, Ilya knew. His problem was Shane and his beautiful face and his fucking freckles and the way Ilya could not stop wanting him. It was the way Ilya had fucked a swath through every city he’d played in since February and still every night fell asleep with Shane the last thought on his mind. The way he knew that this was no longer just about sex or even friendship. What he wanted from Shane now was so terrifying he couldn’t bear to hold it in his head for longer than a second. Couldn’t look at him for fear it would be written all over his face, in language so plain that even Shane couldn’t fail to see it. 

“What is it, then?” 

“Hey handsome.” 

Ilya looked up automatically but the tired old line was not for him. A woman slid into the space between him and Shane, her back to Ilya, her generous breasts in her low-cut top tilted up invitingly. 

“Shane Hollander, isn’t it?” she purred. 

“Oh, um.” Shane’s hand clenched on his glass. “Yeah.” 

“Wanna buy me a drink, Shane Hollander?" The woman trailed her fingertips up Shane’s arm. "Or maybe just get out of here, find someplace quiet we could have some real fun?” 

The flush that rose on Shane’s face wasn’t the sweet, pretty one Ilya was far too attached to seeing. This one was blotchy, embarrassed. Shane’s eyes dropped to the woman’s chest then darted away again. When they found Ilya’s, the plea in them was one he couldn’t ignore, even if fury didn’t already have him tightly in its grip. He was not in the mood to deal with this shit tonight. 

“Excuse me,” he said loudly, elbowing the woman aside as he stood up. 

She stumbled back then looked up at him and her eyes lit like a child’s at Christmas. “Rozanov,” she said. “You can come too.”

“No,” he snarled, “I will come only.” He wished to fuck that was an innuendo. “My friend and I were just leaving.” 

“I’d heard you two were friends.” The woman laughed. Ilya was pretty sure he recognised her from other bars on other nights, on the arms of a generous assortment of his teammates. A puck bunny of the type he knew all too well. The aggressive type, pushy in a way that went far beyond the hopeful flirting women always tried on Shane. This one wasn’t the sort to take no for an answer.

Her eyes darted from him to Shane then back to him. Her smile was pure delight. “I can’t believe it’s true.” 

“Believe it.” Ilya took Shane’s arm and urged him up off the barstool. “Put his on my tab,” he told Steve the Bartender, then headed for the door, hand firmly curled around Shane’s bicep. The woman darted in front of them. 

“If you want to make it fun—” she began. 

“We don’t.” 

“You sure?” 

She stepped closer, close enough for her breasts to press against Shane’s chest. Shane was all but vibrating, discomfort rolling off of him in waves. His face was coolly expressionless though, starkly handsome in a way that must be irresistible to women who enjoyed a challenge. Who didn’t know him as Ilya did. This woman saw it and she did her best to pounce. 

Ilya wanted to snarl at her, shove her bodily away. Instead, he deftly sidestepped her while pushing Shane ahead of him and out the door. Once through it he kept walking, down the misty April street until he was sure no one was following them; only then he stopped and turned to Shane. Who was breathing unevenly, clinging to Ilya’s arm. 

“Are you okay?” Ilya asked him. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, I just—I don’t like it when they come on so hard.” 

“I know.” 

“I’d rather just talk to someone first, you know? Get to know them.” 

“Yes.” 

“Thank you.” Shane’s darting eyes found Ilya’s face and settled there. They were still too wide, his own face too flushed. Ilya wished he could hug him. He felt Shane attempt to release his arm, slowly, like his fingers didn’t want to let go and he thought, Fuck this. 

He turned, wrapped his free arm around Shane’s shoulders and pulled him close. Shane huffed out a surprised breath then he leaned into Ilya’s body, gripped the back of his jacket as his forehead came to rest on Ilya’s cheek. 

“Is okay,” Ilya told him. “You are okay.” 

He felt Shane nod. “I’m okay.” 

He stayed in Ilya’s arms a breath longer then pulled back. The soft pink on his face was familiar now, faint but beautiful in the glow of the streetlights. 

“Was she one you’ve been with? That woman?” 

“No,” Ilya spat. And tonight she had guaranteed she never would be.

“She knew you, though.” 

“Is Boston, Shane. Everyone knows me here.” 

Shane snorted. 

“Also,” Ilya felt compelled to point out, “she knew you too.” 

“It’s Boston,” Shane retorted. “Everyone knows me here. Even if they’re mostly burning me in effigy.” 

Ilya laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I will drive you back to your hotel.” 

“You can’t drive, you’ve been drinking.” 

“Not really.” Ilya spared a final thought for his poor, abandoned vodka. “Anyway, I cannot leave car here, she is new.” 

“Not that fucking orange Ferrari you just bought,” Shane groaned, and Ilya’s heart leapt because if Shane knew about the Ferrari then that meant he had been on Ilya’s Instagram recently. Shane was almost never on Instagram. 

“Yes,” he said, smirking to keep his face from going soft. “New baby. Tangerine. You cannot miss her.” 

“Jesus,” Shane muttered. “You really are the fucking worst.” 

Still, five minutes later he was sliding into Tangerine’s passenger seat with a sigh that sounded like relief. Ilya held the steering wheel firmly in both hands, his gaze fixed ahead of him, but didn’t turn the engine on. “I am sorry,” he said. 

“For what?" Shane’s voice was tired, threaded with a touch of bitterness. “Not texting me? Not answering my calls? Fucking ignoring me on the ice?” 

“Yes. All of this.” 

Silence fell then stretched, then, “I was scared,” Shane said quietly. “I thought you didn’t want to be friends anymore.” 

I don’t, whispered a voice in Ilya’s head. He pushed it ruthlessly away. 

“If that’s what you want, then I’ll say it’s fine,” Shane went on. “I’ll say it’s your choice and I respect it. But honestly, Ilya, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

“Shane.” 

“These last two months have really sucked. So just—fucking tell me. If you don’t want to be friends anymore have the fucking balls to tell me.” 

“Of course I still want to be friends,” Ilya lied. “I felt really fucking shitty after Sochi, that is all. I have been bad friend to everyone. Marly will tell you.” 

“He kind of did. After the game. It’s why I came to find you. I thought maybe your dad was being a dick again.” 

“No. Is not that. I get inside my head sometimes. I am sorry.” 

He could feel Shane’s eyes on him, knew without looking how warm and kind they would be. “Don’t be sorry for getting in your head, dude,” Shane said. “We all do that. Be sorry for not fucking telling me about it. You know I’ll always listen, right?” 

“Yes.” Of course he did. There were simply some things Shane could never hear. “Next time, I will.” 

“Good.” The smile in Shane’s voice was one he couldn’t resist. He turned to look, smiled back because he couldn’t fucking not. “Why don’t you come up to my room at the hotel,” offered Shane. “You can empty the minibar and make fun of Hayden. Would that make you feel better?” 

“Yes,” Ilya said. “It really would.” 

“Okay, then. Don’t fucking kill me in your stupid car on the way there.” 

“Just for that we are taking long way,” retorted Ilya. “I will show you what she can do.” He turned the engine on and gunned it. Shane groaned. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said. 

Rocky’s Bar and Grill is loud and crowded, even at ten-thirty on a Monday. The lights are low, the music blaring, the people drunk as fuck. Kitsch Americana with a biker feel adorns the walls but the floor is just sticky enough to give it character. It’s the sort of place Ilya loves and Shane would normally need to be dragged into, if he went at all. Tonight he’s first through the door. 

“You are sure about this?” Ilya says—shouts, really—into his ear. 

“Yeah.” Shane shoots him a grin. “I’m feeling a bit wild tonight.” 

At the bar he orders a beer and a burger and Ilya, slightly concerned now, requests the same. They hover for a minute, beers in hand, until a corner booth opens up and then they nab it before anyone else gets the chance. Shane takes a minute to collect all the plates and silverware and greasy fry baskets left by the previous occupants into a tidy stack at the edge of the table because he is the sort of millionaire who tips 200% and does everything he can to make servers’ lives easier. Ilya lusts about it as Shane completes his tidying, then when Shane slides into the booth beside him, so close that the hairs on their arms mingle, he has to remind himself to breathe. 

“Sweet Home Alabama” comes on the jukebox because of course it does, Ilya thinks. The ideal song for this sort of place. Shane hums along and taps his fingers on his glass in time to the beat. There’s a small smile on his face, like he’s happy. 

“Okay, what is with you?” Ilya demands. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I don’t know.” Ilya sips his beer. “Something is different about you.” 

“It’s what I was trying to tell you earlier,” Shane says. “But this isn’t the place. Remind me when we get back to the room.” 

That is something Ilya absolutely will not do. If Shane’s happy enough about his engagement that he’s sitting in dive bars eating burgers and drinking beer, humming along to Lynyrd Skynyrd then Ilya is of course happy that he’s happy but he doesn’t want to hear about it. He’ll listen eventually. He’ll have to. But not here. Not when he has Shane all to himself for probably the last time. 

“Maybe,” he says. 

A young waitress appears with their food. Shane smiles and thanks her and she flutters at him. Somehow she manages to pick up the stack of plates and baskets in a flirtatious way, something Ilya would not have thought possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. For a moment he thinks Shane is going to offer to help her carry them so he steps hard on his foot. 

“Ow!” Shane yelps and scowls at him, and by the time he turns back the waitress is gone. 

“Eat your burger,” Ilya tells him. He picks up his own, to demonstrate the technique. 

Shane rolls his eyes but picks up his burger and digs into it with gusto. Gusto is a word Ilya has always liked but never once applied to Shane, except possibly on the ice. Shane plays hockey with gusto maybe, but he doesn’t eat with it. He eats mechanically, to fuel his body, he doesn’t take huge bites of stacked burgers with little hums of enjoyment, and if drips of juice and condiments roll down his chin he doesn’t laugh and wipe them away as he chews. Or at least, he didn’t. Now, apparently, he does. 

Fucking Rose Landry. Ilya has never hated anyone more. 

The thing is, Ilya loves Shane’s fussy eating habits. Loves his unstylish clothes. Loves his boring haircut and his early bedtime and his lack of interest in music or clubbing or sleeping around. Loves all his little facts he randomly knows and his sly wit and his foul fucking mouth and the way he never notices when people flirt with him. Now Rose fucking Landry has him eating burgers and dressing well and growing his hair out. She’ll be taking his freckles away next, Ilya thinks darkly. He wouldn’t fucking put it past her. 

He bites into his burger with enough force that his teeth clack when they meet in the middle of it, then chews it loudly because he knows Shane hates that. Shane glances over as he wipes his chin and rolls his eyes again. 

“You’re such a child,” he says. 

Ilya chomps the burger with his mouth open just for the pleasure of seeing Shane scrunch up his face in disgust. He shoves Ilya’s shoulder. 

“Behave yourself,” he says. “We’re in fucking public.” 

As if to emphasise this point, two members of the public choose that moment to come over and crowd into their booth alongside them. Two women about their age, tanned and beachy blonde and pretty. Surfers, Ilya would stake his reputation on it. Also, they are very drunk. 

“Heyyyy,” the one next to Shane coos. “I’m Ellie.” 

This is the point at which Shane, the real Shane, the pre-Rose fucking Landry Shane, would blush and stutter and look over to Ilya with a plea for help in his beautiful brown eyes. This Shane, the gorgeous-movie-star-girlfriend-having Shane, does not. Instead, he smiles. 

“Hey, Ellie,” he says. “Having fun?” 

Drunk as she is, Ellie doesn’t miss the irony in his tone. “Ooh, Shel,” she says, “this one’s mean.” 

“Oh, I want the mean one.” The woman next to Ilya reaches across him to hold her hand out to Shane. “I’m Shelly.” 

Ilya snorts. Shane smirks. 

“Ellie and Shelly, huh?” he says. “Cute.” 

“Oh yeah, jackass, and what are your names?” Ellie has a mouth on her and no tolerance for bullshit. Under different circumstances Ilya would be very into that. Now he just wants her and her stupid rhyming-name friend to leave them the fuck alone. 

“I’m Mario and this is Wario,” says Shane, deadpan. “We’re from Ontario.” He pronounces the place to rhyme with their ‘names’ and Ellie scoffs. 

“That’s not how you say it, dipshit.” 

“Oh, isn’t it?” enquires Ottawa-born-and-raised, legendary Canadian hockey superstar Shane Hollander. “Sorry, I’ve never been there.” 

Ellie looks at him through narrowed eyes. “You’re shitting us. Are you shitting us? I feel like you’re shitting us.” 

“I’m shitting you,” Shane says. 

Shelly slaps the table so hard Ilya’s beer leaps off it and nearly tips over. He manages to catch it, but not before Shelly crows in his ear, “He was shitting us, El!” and waves a pointy finger at Shane. “I knew it!” 

“How could you possibly have guessed?” Shane’s tone is so dry the air of the Sahara would be a sauna by comparison. “Was it the names?” 

Ellie is studying him closely. Very closely. Far too closely for Ilya’s comfort. He grips his beer hard to stop from reaching over and shoving her the fuck away. 

“You look familiar,” Ellie informs Shane. “Are you famous?” 

“Nope.” 

“I’m sure I recognise you from somewhere.” 

“You don’t.” 

She does. She recognises him from one of his many, many ad campaigns maybe, or more likely the in-fucking-escapable tabloid news reports about him and Rose fucking Landry. They’ve been all over the internet for weeks now. Months. The worst months of Ilya’s life, and that includes the ones after his mother died. He does not want to think about them. 

“We are trying to eat here,” he snaps. Ellie and Shelly stare at him, hazy eyed, clearly trying to decide just how much of a jerk he is and whether it’s still worth trying to fuck him knowing he’s any kind of a jerk at all. They’re really too drunk for such advanced calculation so they mostly look like fish, gaping unblinkingly, mouths hanging open. 

“You’ll have to excuse Wario,” Shane says, “he’s my evil counterpart, that’s why he’s such a dick. He has a point, though. We were trying to eat.” 

Ellie is evidently the more sober of the two, or at least the less wasted, since she finally picks up on the vibes in the booth. “Fine,” she snips, “we know when we’re not welcome.” 

“We do?” Shelly says. 

“We were going to show you boys a good time but I guess you don’t like fun.” 

“I’m very boring, as Wario will tell you,” Shane says. “Fun doesn’t like me.” 

Shane makes him laugh more than any other person ever has. He is a little bit boring yes, with his strict routines and his reading glasses that make Ilya weak in the knees. But he is fun. He was fun before Rose fucking Landry. He’s always been fun. Ilya hates that he ever said otherwise. 

The rhyming girls take themselves away in a huff and Shane returns his attention to his burger. He should leave the subject alone, Ilya knows. They’re gone. It’s done. But he can’t stop his stupid mouth from opening. 

“You are different.” It sounds like an accusation. 

“I’m not,” Shane says. “I’m just finally me.” 

“And ‘you’ are someone who makes not so nice comments to women, huh?” 

“Apparently so. In some cases I guess.” 

“Is this better than blushing and trying to get away from them?” Ilya knows he’s being a dick but he can’t stop himself. 

“I think so. It accomplished the same goal, didn’t it?” Shane picks up a fry and eats it almost angrily. “Unless you wanted to fuck one of them. Or both?” 

Once, he would have done. Both. He wouldn’t have abandoned Shane to do so, though, and from the look on his face, Shane knows this. Always when they’ve been together it’s been them only. From the very start. Ilya barely remembers other people exist when Shane’s around.

He wonders sometimes how he ever managed to convince himself he wasn’t in love with this man. 

“Finish your burger,” Shane says. “It’s late and I’m tired. It’s been a long fucking day.” 

It’s nearly midnight when they get back to the inn. Hannah has gone to bed, but she gave them the code to unlock the main door along with their room key, so they retrieve their luggage from the car, haul it in, and head up to the top floor. There, Shane unlocks the door to a beautiful room with a seaside theme that has—one fucking bed. 

Shane doesn’t seem to notice. He drags his suitcase over to the side nearest the window and sits down on this bed. On the bed, definite article, because there is, once again, only one. Ilya looks around frantically for a sofa, an armchair, a cot, anything, but other than a round wicker chair that doesn’t look capable of holding his weight, there is nothing. There is only The Bed. 

He’ll have to sleep on the floor, Ilya thinks. Or maybe in the bathtub. Maybe hanging out the window upside down like a bat, because there is no fucking way he’s getting in that bed with Shane. He will not survive the night. 

Shane removes his shoes and socks then stands to undo his jeans, which is when he notices Ilya frozen in the doorway and frowns at him. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks. 

Ilya gestures at The Bed. “You are okay with this?” 

“With what?” 

Ilya gestures again. “With this?” 

“What this? The bed? What’s the matter with it?” 

“There is only one of it.” 

Shane’s eyes flit away from him. “So?” he challenges. His voice sounds oddly tight. “We’ve been in the same bed before.” 

No, Ilya thinks. They’ve been on the same bed before. He is a master of English fucking prepositions now, he knows the difference between in bed and on it. They’ve fallen asleep together many times, Shane’s head on his shoulder, Ilya’s cheek pillowed on his hair. But that was decidedly on the bed. On top of the blankets, fully clothed. Not in bed, tucked up under cosy covers wearing who knows what—Ilya doesn’t know, even after years, what Shane wears to bed. He doesn’t want to know. He could happily go the rest of his life without ever obtaining that cursed knowledge. 

“Don’t be an asshole,” Shane says. “It’ll be fine. I don’t snore or kick in my sleep. If you do either, I’m shoving your ass onto the floor, fair warning.” 

He takes off his jeans and folds them, puts them on the chair, then does the same with his shirt. From his suitcase he grabs some clothes and a washbag and heads for the bathroom. “I’m going to shower,” he says. “Don’t get under the blanket until you do the same. We’re covered in salt and sand, I don’t want to sleep in either.” 

The bathroom door shuts behind him and soon Ilya can hear the sound of the water running. He sinks down onto his side—his fucking side—of The Bed and drops his head into his hands. Fuck, he thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What has he done to make the universe hate him like this? Sure, he’s an asshole. He plays rough on the ice. His chirps can be downright mean. But this—this is far worse, surely, than even he deserves. This is torment on a cosmic scale hitherto undreamt of. If he’d been asked to design his own personal hell, it would be this. 

Shane is naked in the shower right now. Soon he’ll be out, still damp, dressed for bed. He’ll slide beneath the crisp sheets and soft blanket and fall asleep there, right there within cuddling distance and Ilya is expected to, what? Not fucking cuddle him? Not curl around him and hold him all night? 

Ilya has accepted—well, almost accepted, he has very nearly almost successfully accepted that he’ll never get to fuck Shane but this not being allowed to hold him either is a bridge too fucking far. He hates it. He hates absolutely every fucking thing about this situation except being in it with Shane. 

He hears the shower turn off and leaps to his feet, opens his suitcase and rifles through it until he finds something he can sleep in. Normally he sleeps naked or in underwear only but that’s obviously not going to fly here. 

By the time the bathroom door opens, he’s ready. He manages not to look at Shane as he manoeuvres around him and into the bathroom, shuts the door behind him and leans back against it, breathing hard. He bangs his head on the solid wood a few times, just enough to hopefully knock some sense into him, then sighs and heads for the shower. 

When he emerges, washed and dried and pre-emptively jerked off, dressed in boxers and an old Raiders tee, Shane is tucked up in bed in the soft glow of a table lamp, a book in his lap and his glasses on. Ilya manages, barely, not to stumble over his own feet. Those fucking glasses make him feel feral. Shane looks like every sexy schoolteacher/librarian/strict personal trainer fantasy he’s ever had. Ilya wants to fuck him so badly he feels dizzy with it. 

He manages to get into bed while his dick is still in recovery from the shower, pulls the blankets up over his shoulders and turns his back to Shane. He lies there unmoving; though he can feel Shane’s eyes on him he doesn’t turn around. 

“You good?” Shane asks. 

“Fine. Just tired.” 

“Okay. Um. I’d kind of like to read for a bit. Does the light bother you?” 

“No.” 

“Okay,” Shane says again. “Well, goodnight Ilya.” 

“Goodnight, Shane.” 

Ilya doesn’t sleep, though. He pretends to, but he can’t. Instead he listens to the pages of Shane’s book as they turn and the even rhythm of his breathing. After approximately ten thousand years of this—about thirty minutes in actual chronological time—Shane closes his book and sets it aside. The light goes out. There’s a rustling noise and the mattress shifts, and then Shane is fully under the covers beside him. He turns to his side so his back is to Ilya, then a few minutes later his breathing deepens into sleep. 

Carefully, so the bed moves as little as possible, Ilya rolls over. Pearly moonlight through the curtains illuminates the back of Shane’s head and the shape of him beneath the blankets. Ilya’s chest is tight, his breathing shallow. He eases closer, as close as he can allow himself to go. Close enough to catch the familiar scent of Shane’s shampoo and the body wash perfuming his warm skin. 

He doesn’t touch. 

Ilya swallows, squeezes his eyes shut, breathes in deeply and releases it slowly, deliberately, repeatedly, over and over until the pressure in his chest eases and his mind releases him, and then he too is fast asleep. 

Chapter End Notes

THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED. i can't believe i forgot to put that in the tags. we honour our tropes in this house and that one is god-tier, of course there was only going to be one bed.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

real place warning!!! La Playa Azul exists. i haven't been there since 2011 but it was amazing then so i choose to believe it is still amazing now. If you ever find yourself in santa barbara, you should go.
(also the tables are metal not wood but for some reason my brain insists on making them wood, so in this fic they are)

all other locations remain fictional.

June 2016, the California coast 

Ilya wakes to an empty bed and for a minute terror grips him. He’s done something, he thinks, talked in his sleep or reached for Shane in the night and now Shane’s gone. Fled. Run away. Left him. 

Then he wakes fully and sees that Shane’s suitcase is still here, the clothes he wore the day before still folded and on the wicker chair. He’s probably gone for a run, Ilya thinks as he rolls over onto the pillow that still smells like Shane, buries his face in it and wills his heartbeat to resume its normal rhythm. It’s okay, he tells himself. Everything’s okay. Shane’s still here and Ilya has made it through a night in bed with him without doing anything he can’t take back. 

He drags himself from The Bed and throws on some pants, then heads downstairs. The smell of coffee draws him into a bright and brightly painted dining room, where a long table set against the far wall displays a selection of cereals, yogurts, fruit, and pastries while several smaller, round tables laid with place settings and each flanked by a pair of wicker chairs, sturdier-looking than the one in their room, are scattered throughout. A middle-aged couple is conversing quietly at one of these tables and there are signs of previous occupancy at a few others but aside from this the room is empty. 

A door in the corner of the room swings open and Hannah appears, carrying a carafe. “Hey,” she greets him, smiling her wide smile. “Good morning. Want some breakfast?” 

“Yes, please,” Ilya says. 

“Take a seat.” Hannah indicates one of the unused tables. “Help yourself to anything from the buffet and if you want hot food I can cook you some. Coffee?” 

Ilya sits at the table and holds up a cup. As Hannah fills it, he says, “Have you seen my friend this morning?” 

“Yeah, he went out early,” Hannah replies. “For a run, I think?” 

“Probably.” 

“Do you think he’ll want cooked breakfast?” 

“Yes.” This Ilya can say with certainty. “He likes eggs poached and whole wheat toast with honey. Can he have three eggs?” 

“Of course.” 

“And poached so that white part is fully cooked not slimy, but yolk is not too done?” 

Hannah pulls a notepad from her apron pocket and scribbles on it. “Got it,” she says. “What about for you?” 

“I will have scrambled please and bacon if you have some.” 

“I do.” Hannah hesitates with her pen poised above her notepad and gives him a strange look, sort of carefully intent. “I actually do a mean breakfast burrito, with scrambled eggs and bacon and hash browns with cheese and homemade salsa,” she says. “If that sounds like something you’d enjoy.”  

It really does. “Oh!” Ilya replies. “Yes, that please.” 

Hannah’s smile is satisfied as she jots down his order. “Coming right up. Should I make your friend’s now too? I don’t want it to get cold waiting for him.” 

Ilya glances at the time on his phone. Just past eight a.m. “What time did he leave?” 

“Oh, probably about an hour ago.” 

“He should be back soon, then. He never runs for more than an hour.” 

Hannah tucks her pad back into her apron pocket then hesitates. The intent look is back on her face. She glances over at the middle-aged couple across the room, who are still talking quietly together. Then she sits in the chair opposite Ilya. 

“Tell him,” she says, in a voice that matches the look on her face. “I know it’s none of my business—” 

“You are right about that,” Ilya retorts.  

“But you should tell him.” 

Ilya doesn’t bother to play dumb. He knows his feelings for Shane must be written all over his face, plain to see for anyone who knows how to look. “I can’t,” he says. “He has a girlfriend.” 

“Does he?” 

“Yes. Hot one. Perfect for him. Makes him happy.” He takes a gulp of coffee. “I think they might be engaged.” 

“Well, if that’s the case then you’ve really got to tell him. That boy cannot marry a woman. It’d be a huge mistake.” 

“Maybe,” Ilya says. 

Hannah eyes him shrewdly. “I’m bisexual myself,” she tells him, “I get it. But if he”—she gestures out at the beach where Shane presumably is—“is not fully gay then I will give up sex entirely. And I really like sex.” 

Ilya shrugs. “Maybe,” he says again. 

There was a time when he'd believed the same. That Shane was, if not gay per se at least into men enough that he’d entertain something with Ilya. But in those first few encounters of theirs, Ilya had not been subtle. Short of actually stripping down and jerking off right at him there’s not much more he thinks he could have done to let Shane know that he was interested. If Shane likes men then that means it’s Ilya he doesn’t want and Ilya gets that, he does. He just can’t face it. It hurts too much. 

Hannah sighs. “It’s scary,” she says. “Feelings suck. I still think you should tell him.” 

“Maybe,” Ilya says, for the third time. 

Hannah sighs again and looks up at the ceiling. “Boys,” Ilya hears her mutter, then she stands up and stalks back to the kitchen to make their breakfast. 

Ilya is just finishing his coffee when Shane returns from his run. He’s dressed in a compression top and running shorts, glistening with sweat and flushed from the fresh sea air. Ilya wants to lick him. 

Shane looks at first like he might head straight upstairs, but then he glances into the dining room, catches sight of Ilya and hesitates. Ilya gestures for him to come closer. “I have ordered you breakfast,” he says, as Shane approaches the table. “Eat now, then shower and put on clean clothes before the road.” 

“Okay.” Shane sits in the chair recently vacated by Hannah. “What did you order me?” 

“Poached eggs and wheat toast with honey. Also there is fruit and yogurt on buffet table if you want it.” 

The look on Shane’s face says he’s trying hard not to be an asshole. Ilya smirks at him. “I gave clear instructions for how to cook the eggs,” he says. “If she gets it wrong you can send them back.” 

“I wouldn’t do that.” 

He really wouldn’t. “I will do it for you, then.” 

Shane’s face relaxes. 

To be known is to be loved, so Ilya has heard it said. He knows Shane’s breakfast order down to the cooking of the eggs. Knows that he would never send food back even if it was wrong, but that he would hate every second of eating it and be in a bad mood for hours after. Ilya knows these things because he has devoted years to the study of Shane Hollander. He knows also that the reverse is not true. He keeps himself too closely guarded to ever be really known. 

“Did you get the burrito?” Shane asks. 

“What?” 

“I looked at the breakfast menu before I left. I mentioned to Hannah that you’d probably want the burrito.” 

Ilya stares wordlessly for a beat. “Yes,” he says. “I got the burrito.” 

Shane looks pleased with himself. “Thought so.” He stands up. “I’m going to the buffet, do you want anything?” 

Ilya shakes his head. 

Shane returns with a tub of Greek yogurt and a bowl with strawberries and what looks like sliced mango, just as Hannah appears again with her carafe. She refills Ilya’s coffee cup and smiles at Shane. 

“Good run?” 

Shane smiles back. “Great, yeah. I went on the beach, it was amazing.” 

“It’s insanely beautiful here.” Hannah looks out through the window and her smile softens. “I’m from LA originally, moved up here about five years ago. Never going back.” 

“Ilya and I work in LA sometimes,” Shane tells her. “He likes it better than I do.” 

LA has great clubs it’s true. Beautiful women, obviously. But the traffic is a nightmare and it’s so expensive even Ilya balks at the prices sometimes, and he’s a multi-millionaire. He shrugs. 

“Good for young people, maybe,” he says. 

Hannah laughs outright at this. “You can’t be more than what, twenty-five?” 

“Yes,” says Shane. 

“Just,” says Ilya. 

“Babies,” Hannah declares them both. “If you’re tired of LA you’re tired of life.” 

“You just said you were tired of LA!” 

“I’m thirty-seven,” Hannah informs them with a little smirk. “I’ve earned the right.” 

Shane grins at this but the words cling like creeping ivy in Ilya’s mind. Tired of life. Is he? No. He’s not. He can’t be. He’s a Cup winner. Superstar. Loved or hated everywhere he goes, which is two versions of the same thing. People either want him or they want to be him. His life is amazing. He’s not tired of his life. 

Ilya has everything he’s ever wanted, save for one. That’s a pretty fucking great percentage. He would give up all the rest of it to have that single, unobtainable thing. 

That’s what he’s tired of. 

In a flash of bittersweet revelation he understands that he cannot go on like this. Wanting Shane, loving him. Not having him. Knowing that there’s nothing he can do about any of it. Now Shane is going to be married. Ilya needs to figure out how the fuck he’s going to cope with that and he needs to do it soon.  

“Your food will be up in a minute,” Hannah tells them. “I’m being very careful with the eggs.” 

“I appreciate it,” Shane says. 

“No problem. Do you want anything to drink?” She holds up her carafe. “Coffee?” 

“No thanks. Do you have any herbal tea?” 

“Sure do. There’s chamomile, peppermint, lemon, hibiscus—” 

“Hibiscus!” Shane beams. “Perfect.” 

“I’ll bring it with your food.” 

She disappears into the kitchen again, but Shane’s happy smile lingers as he scoops yogurt over his fruit. “This place is great,” he says. “I can’t believe we just stumbled on it. Life’s funny sometimes, huh?” 

It surely is, Ilya thinks. 

After breakfast they go back to their room to shower, dress, and pack. Then Shane gets them checked out while Ilya takes the car over to Jamie at the gas station. As he heads out the door with both suitcases in hand, Hannah catches his eye. 

Tell him, she mouths. 

Ilya nods. 

It’s acknowledgement, not a promise. But also, it might be a promise. Ilya is going to have to change something if he wants to stay Shane’s friend once he’s married. It isn’t like Shane will be any more out of his reach but having to watch him be all loved-up with fucking Rose Landry… the thought of that twists in Ilya’s stomach like snakes, slithery and venomous. He’d never manage it in his current state. 

He can’t just ghost, though. He could never hurt Shane like that. It’s disrespectful and it’s cowardly and he tried it once before. Didn’t work. Shane is too earnest, too stalwart as a friend. He’d chase after Ilya and demand explanations until he’s given one that satisfies him. If Ilya needs to distance himself from their friendship for a while, he’s going to have to tell Shane why. 

Tell him. 

Fuck. Hannah’s right. He has to tell Shane how he feels, if only to explain why he’ll need space after Shane’s wedding. It might even be a relief to do so. Ilya can feel the stress fractures on his heart, from the strain of holding all his love inside. There’s just so fucking much of it. He needs a pressure valve and then he needs some solitude, to let the love out. Let it go somewhere, even if that can never be where he longs for it to go. 

Maybe he should get a dog. 

He chats with Jamie about classic cars as he fills up his tank. The conversation has vibes beneath it, which Ilya acknowledges with a smile and refuses with a small shake of his head. Jamie answers with a wry smile of his own and a shrug. He’s cute and built and knows a lot about cars. Ilya likes him. If things were different he’d be more than happy to let the vibes play out. He could see it even, living here in the off-season, a nice, low-pressure relationship with a hot guy who shares one of his passions. The what-if of it all, the injustice of how impossible such a simple thing is for him, grips him by the chest with claw-like fingers as he pulls out of the gas station. It’s not fucking fair. 

Shane is waiting by the door when he returns to the inn. Ilya watches him wave goodbye to Hannah then jog over to the car. He’s wearing shorts today, natural linen ones. His t-shirt is well-fitted and teal. Fucking teal. 

Fucking Rose Landry. 

He looks so good Ilya has to force himself to turn away as Shane slides into the passenger seat, buckles his seat belt and puts on his sunglasses. “Where to now?” he asks. 

“Santa Barbara,” Ilya says. “In time for lunch. Sveta was there two years ago and she has not stopped talking about this Mexican place she went to.” 

“Haven’t you had your Mexican food for today?” 

“No. Burrito was good but very American.” 

“And this place isn’t?” 

“Sveta says no. We will see.” 

Shane looks doubtful about Svetlana’s ability to gauge the authenticity of Mexican food, but then he’s Canadian, thinks Ilya, so what does he know?

“I guess we will,” Shane says. 

They cruise down the 1 with sun on their faces and wind in their hair, along the coast to Morro Bay where the highway turns inland to San Luis Obispo. From there they have a brief stint on the 101 then back to the 1 again, as it meanders through Pismo Beach and Lompoc, to Las Cruces where it becomes the 101 once more and then to Gaviota where they are met by the ocean. Coming around the curve of the highway to see it there, shining blue in the distance, feels like reuniting with an old friend. 

Ilya says as much to Shane, who nods agreement. “The inland part was cool but I really like the ocean.” 

Ilya really likes him. The ocean too. But mostly him. 

Santa Barbara is a town of white walls and Spanish tiles, charming streets lined with palm trees and bougainvillea. Ilya finds a place to park and they walk to Sveta’s restaurant. La Playa Azul it’s called, the blue beach. Appropriate, Ilya thinks. There’s bougainvillea here too, alongside palm and olive trees surrounding a classic Santa Barbara white building that looks like it was once a house. Now it’s a restaurant done in a tasteful California-Mexican style with a sunny terrace at the front, dark wood tables under bright red umbrellas. This is where Shane and Ilya decide to sit. The day is warm but there’s a breeze outside, through some of the softest air Ilya thinks he’s ever felt. It feels like a caress. 

The restaurant specialises in seafood so he has crab enchiladas, while Shane opts for a steak quesadilla. This comes loaded both with seared steak and with vegetables. Shane looks pleased with his choice. Ilya is too. His crab is lightly sweet, the enchilada sauce creamy and rich with cheese, all of it wrapped in what he’s prepared to swear are house-made tortillas. The perfect authenticity of the food Ilya can’t honestly speak to any more than Shane or Sveta can, but it’s fucking delicious. 

“Sveta wins this one, I guess,” Shane concedes. “Nice for her. Sounds like she needs it after that last boyfriend.” 

Ilya snorts. 

After lunch they walk through the town for a while, poking into shops whenever they get the urge. Shane buys a bottle of locally produced olive oil which the shop assistant assures him is perfect for dressing grilled vegetables and Ilya buys a shirt woven out of hemp, because he thinks that’s funny. 

Shane rolls his eyes as Ilya grins at him. “I will buy you one too,” he offers, and Shane pauses to reflect. 

“Okay,” he says. “Why the fuck not.” 

Ilya chooses him a shirt made of hemp/silk blend in a dark, jewel-toned blue and lets himself feel smug about it. Rose Landry is not the only one who can choose nice clothes for Shane, he thinks. The fabric has a subtle sheen to it, and though its weave is rough the touch is soft. Shane rubs it between his thumb and forefingers and hums. 

“Nice,” he says. 

Ilya feels like he could fly. 

It’s midafternoon when they get back on the road. Ilya has decided to give the LA coast a miss and instead head inland from Ventura. His goal is Palm Springs before dark.

“So we’ll stay in Palm Springs overnight?” Shane asks. 

“Yes,” Ilya replies. Ideally in separate fucking beds. 

“Okay.” Shane pauses for a bit, then says, “Did you know that Palm Springs is named for the date palms that were imported from Africa to grow there?” 

“No.” 

“Yep. They farm them there, because the Coachella Valley is basically the perfect habitat for them. But then so many people moved to Palm Springs and planted grass that needs daily watering, that inside the city the humidity level has risen so much the palms can’t produce dates anymore. Because they need really dry air but people want green lawns in a desert. I read an article about it.” 

Of course he did, Ilya thinks, with a pulse of intense fondness. 

“People, huh?” he says. 

“Right?” Shane grins at him. “All of them but me and my friends are the fucking worst.” 

Ilya laughs. 

They get to Palm Springs in the early hours of evening and the light there is extraordinary. There’s a softness but also clarity in the way the desert air shimmers as the sun descends to the horizon. It feels vaguely wrong, too. This is June, the month of long and lingering summer days, but the sun sets noticeably earlier this far south than in Boston, Moscow, or Montreal. Ilya points this out to Shane. 

“Yeah, I was just thinking that,” he replies. “Why does it feel so weird?” 

Ilya can’t explain it. Shane thinks for a bit, then says, “Winter days up north are super short so it kind of evens out the long ones.” 

“Yes, this,” Ilya agrees. “Even. But for us we had the short winter days and now we want long summer ones for balance. Then we come here and summer days are not long enough. No balance.” 

Shane nods. “That makes sense.” 

They drive into the town along wide, palm-lined streets under a sky that’s blazing blue, with craggy piles of mountains in the distance, drawing nearer. The palm trees are tall in the outer residential areas, with slender trunks, then shorter and more sturdy as they get closer to the centre. Shane claims to remember reading somewhere that palm trees aren’t really trees, they’re more related to grass and corn. This seems impossible yet here where slim palms scrape the sky, Ilya can believe it. 

Low, sprawling Spanish Colonial and Art Deco houses pass by as they go, then Ilya’s eye is caught by a hacienda-style building, crisp white and terracotta with the now-familiar bright pink bougainvillea nearly obscuring a sign that proclaims it the Oliveira Hotel. His phone informed him just that morning that Palm Springs has many well-known hotel chains to choose from; he pulls into a parking spot in front of this one. 

It’s foolish, he knows. He should go somewhere bigger, more corporate, where there are sure to be enough rooms for them each to have their own. That was his plan, as recently as a few hours ago. Now, though, something within him rebels, fiercely, at the idea. If this is the last time he’ll have alone with Shane before he’s married, before the confession of Ilya’s feelings drives them apart, then Ilya wants to feel close to him while he still can. Even if it’s an illusion, he wants to feel at least a little bit, for a little while, like Shane is his. 

So when the desk clerk at the Oliveira takes one look at them and assumes that they’re a couple, Ilya does not disabuse him. Neither does Shane, but there’s no significance to that. After years of watching Shane be assertively flirted at by literal parades of beautiful people and not notice, Ilya is accustomed to it. If Shane doesn’t get it when a woman is all but sitting in his lap and purring, he’s not going to pick up on the subtle assumptions made by this very professional hotel employee. 

Ilya wonders sometimes how Rose fucking Landry managed to clue him in. Dazzled him with her Hollywood glamour, presumably. Or, and this is the thought that torments Ilya more than any other, maybe Shane came on to her. 

He banishes this heresy from his mind as Shane elbows him aside to complete the check-in process. The desk clerk asks if they would like to make a reservation for dinner at the hotel’s restaurant and they say yes. The clerk arranges them a table for two at eight, gives Shane the keys and directions to their room. Shane thanks him with a smile. The man blinks and then he flushes—Ilya is far too used to such reactions to Shane’s smiles by now to take much notice, but then the clerk looks at him with a palpable envy and Ilya almost wants to shake his hand. No, you won’t ever fuck him, he’s tempted to say, and neither will I. Let us mourn together, brother. 

Their room faces the courtyard, a stone-paved space lined with potted palms and flowers, with a central water feature that adds a pleasant burble to the ambient noise of the evening. The rooms all have arched wooden doors and two brick steps that lead up to them, like they are rows of little houses. Ilya takes it all in as Shane unlocks their door. The effect is charming. 

They go inside to a cool and airy room with pale walls and terracotta floors and, of course, only one bed. This one has crisp linen sheets and a blanket woven in stripes of sunset colours. Ilya looks at it and thinks about how in just a few hours he and Shane will be under that blanket, between those sheets, just the two of them. Together.  

There’s such intimacy to just sleeping in the same bed with another person. To being vulnerable right next to them, sharing the warmth of a small space, breathing with them as they’re vulnerable too. Ilya craves that kind of intimacy with Shane, so much he’s prepared to suffer agonies to get it. 

Rose fucking Landry will have him all to herself once they’re married. Tonight, Ilya will allow himself to feel all of his feelings for Shane. Tonight, he’ll let himself pretend Shane feels them too 

Shane kicks off his shoes and sits down on the bed, his back on the carved wood of the headboard and his legs stretched out, flexing as he works the stiffness from his muscles. “Why is it so hard to sit in a car?” he asks. 

For this, Ilya has no answer. He sits next to Shane and stretches out his legs as well. Shane shifts closer, tucks his arm under Ilya’s and lays his head on Ilya’s shoulder. This is familiar territory for them, reminiscent of All-Star Games and MLH Awards nights past. His chest aches, but Ilya smiles as he rests his cheek against Shane’s hair. 

“You want to see what’s on TV?” he asks. 

“Our reservation’s in an hour. I think I want a shower first.” 

“Okay. Me too.” He pauses, then, “Will you go now?” 

“In a minute,” Shane says, and silence falls. 

Ilya examines the silence and finds that it’s a good one. He often feels the urge to fill silences with loud talk, chirps or challenges or boasts most commonly. He’s aware, vaguely, that the source of this urge is likely his childhood and the horrible silences that ruled it, particularly after his mother died. Heavy, oppressive silences weaponised by his father. Silences that tried to stifle him, that would have crushed him to nothing beneath their weight had he not found the strength to push back. 

This is not that kind of silence. This one is warm, companionable. The sort of silence that falls between people who have already said many things to each other and will have more to say again, just not right now. He feels warm in it. Happy, almost. As close to happy as he is able to get. 

Then Shane says, “Ilya. About that thing I mentioned—” 

“Lyubimyy, no.” 

The endearment slips out before Ilya can stop it and he curses himself for carelessness. He meant to let his guard down, but this is down too fucking far. As he scrambles to put it up again, Shane lifts his head and looks over in confusion. 

“What did you say?” 

“Is, um. Swear word. I remembered I forgot my sunglasses in the car.” Ilya nudges him aside, gets up and grabs the car keys. “I will get them now.” 

“You don’t need them tonight.” 

Ilya ignores this. “You have a shower now,” he says, “I will when I get back.” Then he’s out the door and through the lobby, into the parking lot where he leans heavily against the hood of his car and only then is able to breathe again. 

That was way too fucking close. From himself and from Shane.

Rose fucking Landry is not ruining this night, Ilya vows grimly. Shane can tell him they’re engaged tomorrow. Once they get to Vegas. He’ll listen then. He’ll be ready for it then. 

Not tonight. 

January 2016, Boston to Ottawa

Ilya had the phone pressed so hard to his ear, clenched so tightly in his fist that it was in real danger of overheating. He could feel it burning its imprint into the side of his face but that was so very far from the worst thing he was feeling in that moment that they may as well have been located in different galaxies. 

“She’s just so fun,” Shane was saying, on the other side of their phone call. “We can hang out and talk for hours. She’s really cool too, like down to earth. You’d think she wouldn’t be because she’s such a big star but she really is.” He sighed, a soft, happy sound. “I don’t know, I just feel hopeful about this. Like this one might work out.” 

“That’s great,” Ilya said, because he had to say something. Something that was recognisable as language, preferably, unlike the incoherent screaming going on inside his head. 

For three weeks now he’d been hearing, seeing, fucking breathing nothing but Shane and fucking Rose Landry. His teammates talked about nothing else. The internet talked about nothing else. Shane talked about nothing else. Ilya was so fucking sick of it he was ready to chew glass. 

The attendant for the Raiders’ private jet appeared in their lounge, and Ilya huffed a small sigh of relief. “I have to go now,” he said. “Plane is boarding.” 

“Oh, okay. Have a shitty game, hope you lose.” 

“Yes, yes, fuck you too.” 

Shane chuckled. “Will my parents be there?” 

“Mmm, they said they would.” 

“Okay. Give them my love.” 

“I will.” 

“Talk to you later.” 

“Yes. Bye.” 

Ilya had never been so happy to turn off his fucking phone. 

The Raiders’ game against Ottawa was the following afternoon, so they had a night off and no morning practice. Ilya had just settled into his hotel room when his phone buzzed with a notification and he cringed reflexively. 

Fortunately, it was Yuna. 

You free? she texted. 

yes, Ilya replied, and a moment later his phone buzzed again, this time with an incoming call. 

“Hello, Best Hollander,” he said, when he answered it. 

“Flatterer,” Yuna replied. “What are you doing tonight?” 

Ilya genuinely didn’t know. He should go out probably, he thought. Get drunk, get laid, get whatever he had to get to forget for at least one night about Shane and his new fucking girlfriend. 

He didn’t want to. Not any of it. The magnitude of his not-wanting-to was worrying, actually. 

“No plans,” he said. 

“Good.” Yuna’s voice was pleased. “Come to my wine club with me.” 

“Your what?” 

“Wine club. It’s a bunch of couples who get together once a month to try different wines and talk shit. Only David’s not feeling well and if I go alone this bitch Melodie will spend the whole night giving me passive-aggressive advice about how to keep a marriage healthy while hinting very unsubtly that mixed-race couples rarely survive and frankly Ilya, I cannot be dealing with that shit tonight. Be my handsome Russian boy toy arm candy and help me really piss her off. Please?” 

Ilya laughed. “When you offer me entertainment like this how can I refuse?” 

Melodie was in fact a first-class bitch. Brassy blonde and snooty and visibly annoyed when Yuna showed up with Ilya, who was both extremely attentive to her and an absolute smash hit with the other members of the club. He listened carefully as they taught him about wine, cracked jokes and plied them all with his very finest charm, and when Melodie attempted, just once, to condescend to Yuna, he demonstrated precisely why he was the deadliest ragebaiter in all of Major League Hockey. 

It was the best night he’d had in ages. 

“You must come back again,” said Pippa, a woman in her sixties with a sharp, greying bob and even sharper tongue, as the evening was winding down. She was, so she had informed Ilya, a terrible slut for a good Burgundy and by the end of the evening had consumed quite a lot of one. 

Ilya had drunk no small amount himself, if not quite as much as Pippa. Enough to make him soft and a bit delicate, his emotions closer to the surface than he normally allowed them. “I cannot,” he said mournfully, and he actually felt sad about it. “I do not live in Ottawa. Here only for one night.” 

“Where do you live?” 

“Boston.” 

“Oh dear. Oh yes, that is a bit too far to come.” 

“A bit too, yes.” 

Pippa patted his hand and refilled his glass. “Never mind, dear,” she said. “We’ll just make the most of this one.” 

Ilya made so much of the most of it that when it was over and Yuna suggested he stay the night at her house just down the road instead of going back to his hotel on the other side of the city, he agreed. Because he was just that little bit softer, more delicate, more emotional, and of course when you are trying to forget about someone, spending the night in their childhood home with their very affectionate and also lightly intoxicated mother is an extremely solid strategy.

The house was an absolute shrine to Shane. Ilya had never been in it before, had very deliberately avoided being in it in fact, for the very reason that was facing him now. Pictures of Shane adorned every wall, alongside framed jerseys and shelves full of his youth hockey trophies. Ilya took it all in with mild awe and a fierce tightness in his chest as he made his way through this chronicle of Shane’s early life. His attention snagged on one picture in particular, of a tiny Shane in full hockey gear, glowering at the camera with a baby version of the game face that Ilya had seen on him now more times than he could count. 

“He was five in that,” Yuna said as she came up behind him. “He’d be so mad at me for saying it, but wasn’t he the cutest thing?” 

“Yes.” Ilya could barely get the word past the lump in his throat. “He was the cutest.” 

He still was. So cute Ilya wanted to squeeze him as hard as he could, bite his little cheeks and make him laugh. 

“There’s more pictures in albums, if you want to see?” Yuna offered. Ilya shook his head. 

“No, thank you.” His body simply would not survive it. “Maybe another time. I am very tired.” 

“Of course, honey.” Yuna squeezed his hand. “It was quite a night and you were a star. I owe you.” 

Ilya waved this away. “Was nothing. I had fun.” 

“Oh, I’m so glad.” She tucked her arm through his and began to lead him towards the stairs. “I’ve made up the guest room for you and laid out some old clothes of Shane’s. Do you need me to wake you up early?” 

“Yes, please. Six a.m.” 

“No problem.” 

He followed her upstairs then to a room where the bed was turned down and an old t-shirt and sweatpants folded neatly at the foot of it. Yuna leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Sleep well,” she said.  

Ilya didn’t sleep well. For hours he didn’t sleep at all. He lay awake staring at the ceiling of a room that was just down a short hallway from the one that Shane had spent his childhood in. He felt surrounded by Shane, engulfed by him though he wasn’t even there, so desperately sad and just drunk enough that he couldn’t lie to himself anymore. 

He was in love with Shane. 

He had been for a long time, so long, at least since Sochi. Possibly before that, even. For years he’d tamped the feeling down and pushed it away, ignored it or tried to give it another name but he couldn’t do that anymore. He was tired of doing that. Tired of pretending. Tired of denying. 

He was just so, so fucking tired. 

Eventually, he was tired enough to sleep. 

June 2016, Palm Springs

Shane wears the shirt Ilya bought him to dinner. 

When he comes out of the shower to see Shane slipping it on, the deep sapphire against his skin, Ilya nearly falls to his knees. It takes everything he has to smirk and say, “Looking good, Hollander. I have excellent taste.” 

Shane flushes. “Fuck off,” he says. 

“I mean it.” Ilya can’t stop himself from moving closer, or from reaching up to adjust the sit of the collar and placket. As his fingers brush along the silky fabric, Shane’s breath catches and his eyes flutter shut. 

Ilya, for once, fails to notice. His attention is all on the shirt. 

“You look good,” he says again. His voice is lower even than usual, just that little bit more rough. “Shirt suits you. Good fit.” 

“It feels good too,” Shane says. His voice is soft. “I like this material.” 

“Just don’t smoke it.” Ilya attempts a joke to ease the tension that suddenly feels molasses-thick between them. “Is not that kind of hemp.” 

“I know, asshole.” Shane shoves lightly at his shoulder and Ilya allows himself to be pushed away. 

Shane’s eyes linger on him as he goes. 

He puts his own clothes on then they head out to the restaurant, which is just at the far end of the courtyard. The sun is setting as they arrive; the sky beyond the arches of the courtyard’s arcade is painted in broad brushstrokes of orange, pink, and purple. The restaurant itself is casual but elegant; soft music, low lighting, tables at sufficient distance to keep conversation intimate. It’s almost ostentatiously romantic. 

Ilya lets himself pretend. 

They are ushered to a corner table with a view of the sunset and moments later a waiter appears. He pours them water, hands them menus, then vanishes as they peruse. Everything sounds delicious. Ilya considers his options carefully, then reaches for the wine list. Shane looks at him in surprise. 

“You’re having wine?” he asks. 

Ilya shrugs. “Maybe. I will see what they have.” Shane continues to stare and Ilya begins to feel a bit defensive. “What?” he demands. “I went to wine club with Yuna and I learned some things.” 

“You went to my mom’s wine club?” 

“Yes, in January. She didn’t tell you?” 

“No she fucking didn’t.” Neither did you, his eyes accuse. Ilya’s second shrug is decidedly defensive. 

“David was sick and she didn’t want to go alone,” he says. And you had just started dating Rose fucking Landry. “I had a game in Ottawa so she asked me.” You were so fucking happy and I was such a mess. “Was fun. Maybe I will go again sometime.” 

Preferably without the baby pictures and life-altering revelations. But then, he can only realise he’s in love with Shane once and the pictures are ridiculously cute. Maybe he will look at them again. 

He wonders if Rose Landry has seen them. 

Shane stares for another beat, then he looks down at his menu. “I don’t know anything about wine. What do you think is good?” 

“Ah. Well. It depends on what you eat.” 

“I was thinking maybe the steak salad.” 

“Hmm.” The steak salad has corn and tomatoes and chiles. Ilya looks at the wine list and tries to remember what he learned from Yuna and her friends. “Maybe this pinot noir. It is from near Santa Barbara. They make good pinot noir there.” 

Shane is looking at him again, with a strange expression on his face. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll try it. What are you going to have?” 

“Maybe I will have steak salad too.” Ilya doesn’t care if he eats sawdust, so long as he shares it with Shane. “Then we can both try it.” 

Shane smiles. “Okay.” 

The waiter shimmers back into view the moment they lay their menus down. He’s good, Ilya thinks. Worth the insane tip Shane will leave him. They place their orders, he shimmers away again, and another of their comfortable silences takes his place.

Ilya makes use of the opportunity to study Shane, lit by sunset and the tea lights on the table, dressed in the shirt Ilya chose for him, smiling softly at whatever is currently occupying his beautiful mind. A ferocious pulse of love seizes him, so intense he’s not sure how he manages to contain it. It fills his chest and presses against the back of his throat and turns the itch beneath his skin to fire. He swallows hard and clenches his fists in his lap. 

Only until after he’s married, he thinks. Then you can tell him. And then you can let it go. 

“So we’ll get to Vegas sometime tomorrow?” Shane says. 

“Yes.” Ilya scrambles to refocus. “Depending how early we leave, from here is only a few hours.” 

“Is there anything to see on the way?” 

“Mmm, yes, a national park is very close. Joshua Tree.” 

Shane’s face lights up. “Did you know that Joshua trees are so old that the megafauna they evolved to feed have been extinct for thousands of years? They’re living fossils. Like sharks.” 

Ilya blinks at the leap from trees to sharks. “All this tree knowledge,” he says. “You have a new interest?” 

“Not new. The palm tree stuff I just learned this morning but the Joshua trees I heard about a long time ago. I’d love to see one.” 

“Then we will go,” Ilya says. “Of course.” 

Shane beams at him and Ilya basks in it, as the waiter re-materialises with their wine. He thinks he makes a decently convincing show of tasting it the way he learned from the wine club. The waiter pours a glass for Shane and then for him, then dissipates. 

“That’s just how Mom does it,” Shane says, with the tiniest smirk at the corners of his mouth that tell Ilya Shane is aware he’s mostly bullshitting. He grins. 

“She was a very strict teacher.” 

“Sounds like her.” Shane picks up his wine and gives it a sniff. “It just smells like wine,” he says. “What am I supposed to be tasting for?” 

Ilya consults the wine list. “Notes say this one has black cherry and spice and herbs.” 

“Herbs?” Shane sniffs the wine again. “What herbs?” 

“Does not say.” Ilya takes a drink. A real one, not the little sip he took to ’taste’. He can’t detect any herbs, or cherries, though there is a bit of spice. Despite this, it’s good. He likes it. 

Shane is frowning as he takes his own drink. His face changes as the flavour registers. “This is nice,” he says. “I don’t taste cherry.” 

“No.” 

“But I think I might like it?” 

“You sound surprised.” 

Shane shrugs. “Wine mostly just tastes harsh to me. Or sour. Mom keeps trying to get me to try different ones but—” he shakes his head. “I never like them. I like this one.” 

“Maybe this is the right one for you.” 

“Maybe.” Shane takes another drink. “Like people, I guess.” 

“Hmm?” 

“You’ll know when you meet the right one.” Shane’s voice is strange. “Isn’t that what they say?” 

“I have heard this, yes.” Ilya’s not sure whether he believes it. He knew from the beginning that Shane fascinated him, made him curious. He did not know that the beautiful, awkward boy who was poetry on the ice would become his person, though. Not back then. 

Shane stares at his own hand, as he toys with the stem of his wine glass. “Ilya, I wish you’d let me tell you—” 

“Food is here,” Ilya says. It’s not, but he thinks surely it’s due any minute now and sure enough a moment later the waiter manifests with their plates. He refills their water, checks that everything is satisfactory, then vanishes. 

Ilya thinks he might actually double the tip Shane will leave.

“Eat,” he tells Shane now. “We will talk tomorrow, I promise.” 

Shane hesitates, then nods. “Okay.” 

March 2016, Montreal 

When Shane opened his door and his bright smile of greeting faded instantly, Ilya felt that like a blow. The latest in a series of blows. These days, it felt like every time Ilya opened his phone or even his eyes he was hit in the face by more evidence that the man he had finally accepted he loved didn’t love him back. And he was trying to push through that, he was, driving himself harder than he ever had on the ice and off, but no matter how much he pushed, how fast he went, he couldn’t escape it. 

And now here was Shane looking at him with his sweet, concerned little frown as Ilya took off his shoes and came into the apartment. He said nothing, though, as Ilya went into the kitchen, as he took out the bottle of vodka he kept in Shane’s freezer and poured himself a glass. Said nothing as he downed the glass in one and poured another. 

Finally, Shane spoke. “Are you okay?” 

“Of course I am okay.” 

“Jesus Christ, Ilya, you’re obviously fucking not.” 

“Why did you ask me then?” 

Shane’s frown became a scowl. “Okay, fine. I’ll ask a different question. What the fuck is going on with you?” 

Ilya took a deep drink of his second vodka. “Season is long, I am feeling it.” 

Shane seemed relieved to hear that his problem was hockey-related. “Yeah, it must be rough with Marly out. How long will it be?” 

“Two weeks, minimum.” 

“Ugh.” Shane’s face was sympathetic now. “Worst time for it too, right when it looked like you guys were hitting your stride.” 

“Yes.” 

“That sucks, Ilya. I’m sorry.” 

“Yes. Thank you.” 

Shane hesitated as Ilya finished his second vodka and poured a third. “You want to go out or something?” 

Ilya shot him a skeptical look. “Do you want to go out?” 

“No. But I will if it’ll make you feel better.” 

“Won’t. I am tired.” 

“Okay, um. You want to watch a movie, then?” 

Did he want to curl up on Shane’s sofa, too close to him but not nearly close enough, with the lights dimmed and a gentle, quiet intimacy between them? Fuck no, he didn’t. But also—“Yes, okay,” he said, then a thought occurred. “What was that one we watched at All-Stars, the first time?” 

“Oh, um.” Shane paused for a beat to find the memory but he didn’t have to think too long. “Point Break?” 

“Yes,” Ilya said, though he had no fucking idea if that was its name. “Can we watch that again?” 

“Sure, yeah.” 

Shared memories, Ilya thought as he finished his second vodka and poured a third. Inside jokes. Things he and Shane had between them that no one else was part of. They’d been close for so long now, since they were barely more than children. In many ways they had grown up together. At least he had that with Shane and always would. No one could take it away. 

He took his third vodka over to the sofa where Shane was curled with his legs tucked beneath him, messing with the remote. He looked up as Ilya sat down.

“Hey, before we start, I wanted to ask you something,” he said. 

“What?” 

Shane made firm eye contact with the bridge of Ilya’s nose for a beat, then he looked away. He was nervous about something, Ilya deduced. “So remember I told you I was thinking of getting more involved with charity work?” he asked. 

“Yes. You said about starting your own.” 

“Yeah that’s the end goal. Not sure I’m ready for it yet though, so I reached out to a few organisations and there’s one who got back to me that I really like.” He glanced sideways at Ilya, then back to the TV screen. “It’s a mental health charity. Suicide prevention.” 

“Oh.” 

MLH Awards 2014, Ilya remembered. Himself still fragile from Sochi and from making up with Shane after the rift he’d caused between them. The award they’d presented together, awkward, scripted banter about their on-ice rivalry and off-ice friendship. Dinner with Yuna and David, the annual All-Hollander Invite-Ilya-to-the-Lake extravaganza. Ilya’s quiet longing and determined refusal. The looming prospect of Russia and his father. His sudden, fierce wish to see his mother again, just one more time. 

Trying unsuccessfully to hold that feeling in. Shane noticing, Shane taking him away, back up to his suite where Ilya broke down. Where he’d told Shane about his mother, his father, his brother, his childhood. Everything. Shane cradling Ilya’s head on his shoulder as he cried. 

“Don’t go back,” he’d said then, pleadingly. “Please, Ilya. You hate it so much. Stay here with us. You know my cottage is built now, I really want you to see it. Please.” 

The pulse of emotion in Ilya’s chest which he had refused then to acknowledge as love. “I can’t,” he’d whispered. “I can’t.” 

Shane hadn’t brought it up again. Until now. 

“I know how important that is to you,” Shane said softly. “I thought maybe you’d like to work with them too. We could do it together.” 

“Yes,” Ilya said. “I would like that.” 

Shane smiled. “I’ll put you in touch with the people in charge. There’s an event in June in San Francisco, just before the awards. We could go there first then fly straight to Vegas.” He made real eye contact with Ilya then, his eyes warm and eager. “Sound like a plan?” 

“Mmm. Good plan.” 

“Cool.” Shane had the movie ready to go, but before he pressed play, he said, “I know you’ve been feeling a bit off lately and not just because Marly’s hurt. I hope this gives you something positive you can focus on. Maybe that’ll help you feel a bit better.” 

“Maybe,” Ilya said. 

It did. 

They drink the whole bottle of wine and the best part of a second. It’s more wine than either of them have ever had in one sitting, even Ilya on the wine club night. Wine-drunk, they both discover, is a different species of drunk to beer-drunk or vodka-drunk. Beer drunk feels sloppy to Ilya, which is one reason he usually sticks to vodka when he’s aiming for intoxication. Beer is for burgers and barbecues, not bars. 

Wine drunk is better but also worse. Wine drunk is softer, hazier. His mind feels fuzzy and his body heavy. He’s not really impaired; his tolerance is too high for that. He’s buzzed, comfortably so. He feels heavy-light and happy as they make their way out of the restaurant, across the courtyard to their room. 

Shane is another story. He’s not a drinker and the wine has hit him hard. He’s so loose he’s almost pourable and he leans into Ilya as they walk. Ilya lets him, wraps an arm securely around his waist and lets Shane sink into his side, rest his head in the crook where Ilya’s neck meets his shoulder. Shane hums as he settles into a position he likes and then he sighs. 

It only takes a minute to get back to their room. Ilya deposits Shane on the bed, where he obediently sits, then looks up at Ilya with a wide smile and drooping eyes. Ilya laughs and crouches down to take off Shane’s shoes. Shane, perhaps inspired by this, attempts to pull his shirt over his head but is defeated by the buttons and the way the fabric doesn’t stretch. He huffs. 

Ilya sets the shoes aside and draws Shane’s attention to the buttons on his shirt. “You must undo these first,” he says, and Shane giggles. 

“Oh, yeah.” He fumbles with the buttons for a minute without managing to undo a single one, so with a sigh Ilya bats his hands away. 

“It will be morning before you are done,” he says, unbuttoning the shirt himself. Shane shrugs out of it and Ilya takes it from him, folds it and drapes it carefully over the arm of a chair because he knows Shane would not want it lying in a crumpled pile on the floor, or even stuffed into his suitcase. When he turns back around Shane has wrestled himself free of his trousers, though they remain gathered around his ankles. Ilya pulls them off and folds them as well, as Shane falls backwards, spread-eagled on the bed. 

“Stay on your side,” Ilya tells him sternly. 

Shane grins. “Make me.” 

Ilya shakes his head as he undresses. Briefly, he considers retrieving the t-shirt he slept in last night but decides he can’t be bothered to dig it out of his suitcase. Shane seems happy to sleep in just his underwear tonight and so that is what they both will do. 

He pulls up the blanket on Shane’s side of the bed and attempts to manoeuvre him under it. Shane keeps moving the wrong parts of his body, though, then giggling as he gets tangled up. By the time Ilya has gotten him tucked beneath the covers and then crawled in himself, he’s laughing too. 

Shane sighs when his laughter fades, a sigh that sounds contented. He rolls over, takes Ilya’s arm and lifts it, tucks himself against Ilya’s side and lays his head on Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya’s arm he then wraps around himself, hand draped over his hip. 

“I sleep best on your shoulder, did you know?” he says. 

“No.” Ilya can barely force the word out. 

“Yeah. Those times at All-Stars and the awards, I slept so well. Woke up with a stiff neck but it was worth it. Can I sleep like this tonight?” 

“Yes.” Ilya fights to keep his breathing steady, his body loose. He wants to pull Shane closer, hold him tighter. Kiss him everywhere, fuck him until neither of them can move. 

He does none of those things, of course. His fingers flex on Shane’s hip but he does nothing more than turn his head so his cheek is on Shane’s hair and whisper softly, “Sleep now, lyubov moya. Sleep.” 

Shane does. 

Ilya does not, not for a long while. He stays awake, savouring the feel of Shane’s body pressed to his, the even rhythm of his breathing, the softness of his hair. He lets his fingertips trace the edge of Shane’s boxers, along the line where fabric meets smooth skin. He doesn’t touch more than that. He knows he wouldn’t be able to stop if he did.

When sleep finally claims him, he dreams of Shane. 

Chapter End Notes

SORRY for edging you i say, lying. There will be sex next chapter, that is not a lie. There may also be an honest exchange of feelings (talking dirty to you now). We can but hope.

the wine the boys drink here is the cheval sauvage from wild horse winery and vineyards in paso robles

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

there's some disbelief i'm going to need you all to suspend when the boys are in joshua tree. You'll know what it is when you get there.

June 2016, Palm Springs 

Ilya wakes up in the particular silence of just-before-dawn. It takes him a bit of time to realise why. 

He’s in Palm Springs, he recalls. In a nice hotel there. In bed. With Shane. 

Shane, who fell asleep on his shoulder, tucked into his side. Who is now almost fully on top of him, soft lips on his collarbone, one thickly muscled thigh between Ilya’s legs.  

Ilya is hard in an instant. He was hard already but the full understanding of what is actually happening here sends every millilitre of blood his body doesn’t immediately require to keep him alive, straight to his dick. It makes him dizzy and weak, so weak he tightens the arm that’s slung around Shane’s waist and pulls him closer, lets his eyes fall shut, breathes in the scent of Shane’s hair and his skin then presses his lips to that hair, just for the space of a heartbeat. 

Then he gets a fucking grip on himself. He’s got to detangle them, now, before Shane wakes up. Above all else, Shane cannot ever know the way he cuddled Ilya when he was wine-drunk. He’d be so embarrassed and guilty he’d probably  get on the phone to tell Rose fucking Landry immediately, and then where would they be? Someplace Ilya decidedly does not want to go. 

Slowly, carefully, he lifts his arm and starts to ease out from beneath Shane’s body. He achieves possibly ten millimetres or so of movement before Shane shifts, makes a small sound of protest, and snuggles closer. His hold on Ilya tightens. 

And then—fuck—his eyes flutter open. 

He blinks sleepily. “Wha—” he begins, and Ilya scrambles to come up with something, anything to say to defuse this situation, to brush it off with a joke or a chirp. He cannot. He speaks two languages fluently and both of them fail him. 

He watches helplessly as Shane blinks again and the grogginess vanishes from his eyes. Watches as he realises, as Ilya did, what is happening here. Where he is and who he’s with and what they are doing together. Waits, for the rejection. For Shane to push him away and say what the fuck, Rozanov? What do you think you’re doing? I have a girlfriend/fiancée/whatever the fuck. Someone in my life I want. I don’t want you. 

But Shane does none of those things. He just looks at Ilya with those devastating eyes, a faint flush beneath the freckles on his cheeks. He licks his lips and Ilya swallows a moan as his dick leaps up, trying to reach Shane at any cost. 

Shane feels it. There’s no way he can’t with the way they’re pressed together, but the leap makes him realise. Ilya can see in his eyes that moment of realisation. 

Those eyes go wide and Shane shifts again, pressing his thigh harder against Ilya’s poor, suffering cock. His eyes search Ilya’s face. “Ilya?” he says. “Are you—?” 

I’m sorry, Ilya wants to say. I’m sorry I’m so fucking sorry I tried to keep this from you but my body just won’t obey when you’re near it won’t happen again I promise please don’t hate me please don’t go don’t leave—

“I—” he croaks, but he gets no further than that single, ragged syllable because Shane kisses him. 

For a brief, shocked beat, Ilya freezes. Then his mind goes white. 

He rolls Shane over onto the bed and kisses him back. Kisses him with fierce intensity and a desperation he can barely control. All his years of loving and longing and holding back, beating himself up because he wants Shane so deeply and he can’t fucking stop—all of it distils into this single, fiery moment of Shane’s lips on his.  

And the miracle of it, the absolute transcendent fucking glory of it is that Shane is kissing him too. In exactly the same way. 

Ilya devours him with his lips and his tongue, nips his lower lip and swallows his moan. Shane’s dick is hard, flush against Ilya’s own, Shane’s fingers are fisted in Ilya’s hair. 

“Shane,” Ilya gasps, then kisses him again. “Shane, what the fuck?” 

Shane laughs, a choked, manic sound. “I was going to ask you that.” 

Ilya kisses him some more before he can, deep kisses edging into filthy. Shane arches into him, moans when Ilya’s lips move to his neck. 

“Fuck,” he gasps, “I can’t think.” 

Ilya can’t either but there’s nothing to think about here, surely. Surely there’s nothing they need to think of or talk about or—

“I’m gay.” 

“What?” Ilya pulls back to look down at him, at his flushed cheeks and swollen lips and the soft, strangely shy look in his eyes. Shane has never once been shy with him. A brave, enterprising synapse in Ilya’s lust-soaked brain catches on to that, seizes control of the situation and snaps him back into something like focus. “You are what?” 

“Gay,” Shane says again. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He speaks quickly, like he means to get the words out before Ilya has a chance to stop him again, which, Ilya supposes, is fair. “I realised it a while ago and I’ve been coming to terms with it. But I haven’t told anyone and I wanted you to be the first. I didn’t expect… well…” 

“I am bisexual,” Ilya says. 

“Oh.” He watches Shane digest this. “That makes sense, I guess. But I thought you were. Um.” 

In a flash, Ilya understands. “You thought I was straight,” he says. Accusingly, though he doesn’t mean to be, except maybe of himself. He knows Shane doesn’t always pick up on subtle things and it’s not like he ever actually said the words I like you or I am very attracted to you or I really, really want to have sex with you. It’s not like he ever told Shane that he’s bi. 

“Ilya,” Shane protests, earnestly. “You are always with a woman.” 

So yeah, Ilya may actually be a bit of an idiot. 

“I like you,” he says now, to be very, very fucking clear. “I am very attracted to you.” Understatement of the fucking century. “I really, really want to have sex with you.”

“Okay,” Shane says. “I want that too.” 

Ilya moans then kisses him. All of him—his mouth, his neck, his pecs, his abs. He kisses elaborate, byzantine patterns across Shane’s body; no inch of the skin that has tortured his imagination escapes the press of his lips. He kisses over muscles that quiver and leap beneath his touch, kisses along the thin strip of skin that was all the touch he allowed himself the night before, then he tugs Shane’s boxers down and off and finally gets his eyes on Shane’s cock. 

He’s so far gone he nearly comes from the sight alone. It’s as beautiful as the rest of him, thick and with a slight, perfect curve. He glances up to find Shane watching him with hazy, hungry eyes. He nods.

“You are beautiful,” Ilya tells him as he wraps one arm around Shane’s thick thigh while the other reaches up to grope his chest. “Fucking perfect. I am going to make you come so fucking hard.” 

Shane’s hand covers Ilya’s where it lays on his chest. Their fingers lock. “Yes,” he gasps, “please.” Ilya’s mind whitens, his hand clenches; he swallows Shane’s cock all the way to the back of his throat. 

Shane moans so deep Ilya can feel it against his tongue. His fingers grip and tug in Ilya’s hair. “Fuck, Ilya,” he groans. “I can’t—I’m going to—” 

Ilya sucks up his shaft, presses his tongue against the sensitive vein, licks over the head where salty precum is oozing. Shane bucks beneath him and Ilya takes him down, up and down once and again until Shane, with another full-body moan, comes in his mouth. 

“I—” he gasps, “I—” 

“Mmm.” Ilya swallows his cum, licks up every trace of it. “Yes, you did.” He can hear the smug in his own voice. “And you will again. I want to take much, much more time with you.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Shane just has time to mutter before Ilya is kissing him again, licking into his mouth to taste his moans. “Ilya,” Shane pulls away enough to say, “Can I just—I want—” 

“What?” 

Shane pushes him onto his back, kisses his lips and his jaw and his neck. Kisses down his chest and over his abs, into the V of his obliques and then to his crotch where he nuzzles, breathing deeply. Ilya is gasping, so hard he fears he may explode. His hands flex convulsively on the blanket as Shane strokes up his dick then kisses the tip of it. 

“I have wanted to do this for so fucking long,” he says, then his mouth is on Ilya’s cock, around it, taking all of it. Ilya bites his fist to hold himself off as Shane’s mouth works him over with all the care and attention to detail that is characteristic of him and the privilege of a man who’s already fucking come. He hums around Ilya’s dick the way he did stroking the leather of the car and the hemp/silk fabric. The way he does every time he’s touching something that makes him feel good. Ilya thinks he might die. 

Instead he comes—the little death—hard and onto the back of Shane’s throat, without so much as a tap on the shoulder to warn him. He’d feel bad about it except Shane just hums somehow even more contentedly and swallows his cum,  licks the tip of his dick then returns to his side, where he collapses into the pillows, panting and delighted with himself.

 Ilya turns to stare at him and he grins. “Better than I imagined,” he says, as Ilya reaches for him. “So fucking hot.” 

February 2016, Montreal

“Have you ever been with another guy?” 

The words echoed in Shane’s head as his mind spun around them. His field of vision narrowed and blurred so he focused on Rose’s face—beautiful, familiar. Nothing but compassion and understanding in her eyes, even as she gave voice to his absolute nightmare. 

Have you ever been with another guy? 

No, of course he fucking hadn’t. He was a hockey player. If he fucked a man and anyone found out, his career would be over. Everything he’d worked for his whole fucking life gone in an instant, just because he wasn’t able to be normal about this one very simple thing. 

He’d thought Rose was his chance at that normalcy. A woman he really, genuinely liked and enjoyed being with. One he could even, almost, in a sort of vague, sometime-in-the-future kind of way, imagine himself marrying. But now Rose was telling him that he had failed again, and Shane knew that he would never have another opportunity to try. 

If he couldn’t be in love with Rose Landry, he couldn’t be in love with anyone. 

There is one person—but no. That was impossible. Shane shook the thought from his mind. He shook his head, both to rid himself of this reminder of all he couldn’t have and to answer Rose’s question.  

She nodded, like she had expected as much. “Do you want to be?” 

Shane swallowed. He’d hidden this so long, buried it so deep. Yet still, Rose had seen it. Which meant maybe he wasn’t as good at hiding as he’d thought. Or maybe it just meant it was time to be honest, with himself and with at least one person he knew he could trust. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.” 

Rose reached across the table and took his hand. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “It’s really brave of you.” 

“It’s not.” 

“It is. Shane. You are so brave.” 

Shane shook his head again. “You basically dragged it out of me.” 

“I asked a few gentle questions.” 

“You knew to ask them, though. Did you see—I mean, did I act like—” 

Rose’s face did something complicated that he couldn’t quite interpret. “No, sweetie,” she said gently. “It’s nothing you did. More like what you didn’t do.” 

“Right.” He wouldn’t be ashamed about this, Shane told himself. He was—he let the word with all its implications develop slowly in his mind—he was gay. Of course he didn’t want to have sex with a woman. Of course that felt like forcing himself to act in a way that wasn’t natural for him. It wasn’t natural. Not for him. 

Square peg, round hole, as Rose had so eloquently phrased it. 

Shane strongly suspected he might actually prefer to be the hole.

“There is this one guy,” he heard himself say. The deepest, darkest secret he possessed, but then Rose knew every fucking other secret thing about him so why not this too? “I think about him. Kind of all the time. Whenever I need to…” He gave her a Look and waved his fingers. 

“Get it up,” Rose said. 

“Yeah.” Shane breathed in deeply, let it out. “But it’s impossible with him, he’s my best friend and he’s kind of—” He grimaced as he recalled the term he heard so often applied to Ilya “—the biggest pussy hound in the league.” 

“Wait…” Rose blinked at him. “Ilya Rozanov? He’s your guy?” 

“Not my guy.” 

Rose looked astounded and no small amount delighted by this news. “I thought you two were rivals!” she exclaimed. 

“Well, yeah, but only on the ice. That’s mostly the league’s narrative, not ours. We’re friends. We always have been.” 

“And how long have you had… more than friendly feelings about him?” 

Post-game hangouts, Shane thought. All-Star games, MLH Awards nights. Late-night restaurants, their Boston sports bar, city walks. Joy rides in Ilya’s stupid fast cars, movies on Shane’s sofa. Laughing together at the CCM shoot, dinner after. The parking lot in Saskatchewan, shaking Ilya’s hand. 

“Oh, you know,” he said. “Since always.” 

“Oh, Shane.” 

“I know, it’s fucking stupid. I know he’s straight and there’s no chance but he’s the only person I have ever looked at and just immediately wanted to touch. The first time we met I shook his hand twice.” 

Rose snorted. Shane’s lips twitched.

“In the space of like, twenty seconds. I couldn’t help myself.” 

“I mean, I get it,” Rose mused. “I see the vision. He’s fucking hot.” 

“You don’t need to tell me that,” Shane said wryly. “I fucking know.” 

“Does he know you’re gay?” 

“Rose. I didn’t know I was gay until like, three minutes ago.” 

“Okay, fair.” She hesitated, then said cautiously, like Shane was a baby deer she didn’t want to startle, “Do you want Miles’s number? I promise he’s a great guy, absolutely trustworthy and really into you.” 

“Maybe.” Shane’s voice was quiet. “Yeah. I think so.” He turned his hand, which was still under Rose’s, to link them and squeeze. She squeezed back. “I’d like to know for sure that it’s different, with a guy. Even if it’s not Ilya. I’d like to try.”

Ilya reaches for Shane, pulls him in close. Leans in to kiss him. Shane leans back. “Would it be really unsexy if I said I wanted to brush my teeth first?” he says.

Ilya bursts into laughter. 

“It’s just I can still taste the wine and it’s a lot less good than it was last night.” 

“No,” Ilya manages. “This is not unsexy, especially not from you.” He smiles at Shane so fondly, so widely he feels like his cheeks might crack. “Impossible for you not to be sexy.” He gives Shane’s arm a tug. “Come, I will brush mine too.” 

They stand side by side at the sink as they brush. Ilya is so caught up in ogling Shane in the mirror that he almost doesn’t notice Shane is ogling him too. Their eyes meet and they grin around mouthfuls of toothpaste foam and when they’ve finished brushing and rinsed their mouths, Ilya backs Shane up against the bathroom wall and kisses him. Shane does not resist this time. 

“Better?” Ilya murmurs against his lips. 

“Yeah.” Shane kisses him then, and they stumble together out of the bathroom and back to the bed, as best they can while attached at the face. They tumble onto it and roll over until Shane is sprawled on top of Ilya, who grabs his ass to keep him close. With greedy hands he traces the firm, round shape of it then lets his fingers slip between the cheeks. 

“Fuck, I want to fuck you,” he says. 

“Okay.” Shane’s mouth is on his neck; his words are muffled. “Yes. Please.”  

“Shane,” Ilya groans. “It is not—there is preparation involved—” 

“I know.” He nuzzles beneath Ilya’s ear. “I’ve ah. Done it before.” 

“What?” Ilya pushes him up to get a look at his face. “With who?” 

“A friend of Rose’s. Miles.” 

“Miles?” Ilya’s mind shuffles through his memories until he locates a face to go with that name. “That actor? With the fucking cheekbones?” 

“Everyone has cheekbones, Ilya.” 

“Yes but his are—” Ilya makes a sharp gesture with his hand. “Like knives.” 

“You say that like yours couldn’t slice through steel at twenty paces,” Shane scoffs, and Ilya is mildly placated. Mildly. 

“Hmph,” he says. 

Shane scowls at him. “I slept with one guy half a dozen times,” he says. “How many people have you been with?” 

“Is not the same.” 

“Tell me how it’s different.” 

Ilya glowers. “Okay, fine. Is the same.” 

He concedes the point, though he’s not certain it’s precisely true. Sex for him isn’t serious. It’s just something that feels good, that if done right makes another person feel good too. It’s fun and it’s hot and it’s satisfying, and it gets him out of his head for a little while. Shane doesn’t approach things the same way he does, though. Everything Shane does is done so deliberately that for him sex couldn’t help but be important. Sleeping with a man would be a big deal for him, it would almost have to be. 

Ilya is so annoyed with himself for not realising this sooner that he pouts and says, “I still don’t like it,” though he knows that isn’t fair.  

“No one’s asking you to,” Shane says. “But I’m glad it happened. I needed to be with a man to know for sure that I’m gay.” 

Ilya’s voice is smaller than he’d like, more pathetic than he wishes it would be when he says, “I wish it had been me.” 

Shane softens. He kisses Ilya gently and murmurs, “So do I. But it wasn’t, and I’m not sorry about that.” 

“I know,” Ilya says. “You shouldn’t be.” 

“I won’t.” 

“Was it good, at least?” There’s such a strange feeling in Ilya’s chest. Jealousy mixed with the fierce need for the infuriatingly beautiful man who had Shane first to have done a good job with him. If he didn’t, Ilya might have to kill him. 

“Yeah, it was. Miles was great, really patient. I liked being with him. But he wasn’t you.” He brushes his fingers down Ilya’s cheek, strokes a thumb over his lower lip. “I’ve wanted you since before I understood what I was feeling,” he says. “The way I feel now—no one else could do this to me. I can’t even imagine it.” 

“Is the same for me,” Ilya tells him. “I fucked many people but was only fucking. You are only one who makes me want more.” 

Shane goes very still. “You—want more? What more?” 

“Everything.” 

The stress fractures on Ilya’s heart make one final, valiant attempt to hold then they rend open; what spills forth he cannot control. “You are my best friend,” he says. “The only person who really understands me. And I—” fuck it, he can’t stop it “—love you.” 

Shane’s fingers clench on his jaw. “Like, romantically?” he says, with that earnest need for very specific clarity that Ilya adores about him. “Not as a friend?” 

Ilya swallows hard, then nods. “Romantically,” he says. “Not as friends.” 

“Holy shit.” 

“I—” Ilya begins, though he knows there’s nothing he can say to walk this back. He’s moved too fast, pushed too hard—

“I love you too.” 

Ilya blinks. “You do?” 

“Oh my God, Ilya. So fucking much.” Shane kisses him, his lips, his forehead, all over his face. “This trip was supposed to help me get over you,” he says. There’s humour in his voice but also an ache that Ilya wishes he could soothe. He wishes he could go back in time and prevent the ache from ever forming. For both of them. “I thought if I could spend this much time with you, this close to you, and not go crazy then I would eventually be able to move on.” 

“Was it working?” 

“No. I was going crazy.” 

“Me too.” 

“Fuck. We wasted so much fucking time.” Shane’s voice hardens. “I don’t want to waste any more. I want you to fuck me.” 

“Shane—” 

Shane wiggles over to the side of the bed, rummages in his suitcase for a minute, then emerges with a strip of condoms and some packets of lube. Ilya stares at them, mouth slightly open. 

“What were you planning for?” he demands. 

“Nothing! I just thought, maybe. Vegas, you know.” Shane’s cheeks are pink with his adorable, familiar flush, his freckles standing out like stars. Ilya wants to kiss him. 

He does. Because he can. “You are so fucking sweet,” he says. “I love you so fucking much. I am going to fuck you so fucking good.” 

He kisses Shane deep and filthy until he’s gasping, tugging so hard at Ilya’s hair that it feels like the pain is all that’s tethering him to Earth. Shane arches as Ilya slides down his body, pushes his legs up and lays his tongue flat over his asshole. 

“Oh my God,” Shane groans. “Fuck. Fuck. Ilya. Jesus.” 

Ilya allows this golden opportunity to pass him by, in favour of tracing his tongue around the tight ring of muscle then dipping inside, around then in, over and again until Shane moans the one word he cannot ignore. 

“Please,” he says. “Ilya. Please fuck me.” 

Ilya reaches blindly for the stash of lube and condoms. His hands are shaking but he gets his fingers slick and kisses Shane some more as he coaxes him open. 

Shane’s eyes are so soft; they light on Ilya’s face like he’s seeing God already. Ilya feels like a deity. Not the first person to fuck this beautiful man, maybe, but the best. And the last. He intends to make certain of both. 

When at last he pushes in, deep inside the body he worships, the man he loves, it’s almost more than he can bear. He closes his eyes and inhales Shane’s gasp, opens them again to watch as Shane’s eyes flutter shut and his mouth falls open. He’s perfect, Ilya thinks. Perfect and beautiful and his. His in the way Shane’s body reacts to Ilya’s touch, the way it squeezes his cock, the way his hips rise to meet Ilya’s thrusts. The way they fall together into a rhythm that’s only theirs, two peak performing athletes and two men in love. It’s all his wildest fantasies come to life and better in reality. Unbelievable as that may be, it’s true. 

Shane comes with Ilya’s name on his lips, moaned into his skin, and it’s everything. It’s too much, far more than he can handle. He comes instantly in response to hearing it, gasping his own pleasure into Shane’s sweaty hair. 

“Fuck,” Shane says, and Ilya can only agree. Or he would, had he any voice to do so. He kisses Shane instead, settles into his embrace as Shane’s arms wrap firmly around him. 

There is no place else, on this road or any other, that either of them would prefer to be. 

Later in February 2016, Montreal 

“So?” Rose said eagerly as Shane sat down next to her at the small, round table she’d chosen in front of a café near where she was filming. Almost no one else was sitting outside, likely due to it being Montreal in February, leaving them unavoidably chilled but effectively alone. Above their heads, a patio heater was doing its utmost but Rose’s hands were still pink with cold as she clapped them together in anticipation of his answer. “Different?” 

Shane grinned at her. “Yeah.” 

“Better?” 

“Way better. I am definitely, 100% certified gay.” 

Rose laughed. “Well at least you’re certified.” 

“The certification is important,” Shane informed her, and they laughed together.

A café employee appeared with a tray of drinks, a cloud of breath-vapour around her head and an incredulous expression on her face, due either to their fame or their choice to sit outside, or possibly both. She set their drinks down, stuttered, “Anything else you need?” then took herself away.  

Rose curled cold fingers around the enormous mug that held her latte and took a sip. “So, are you going to see Miles again?” 

“Yeah, maybe.” Shane sipped his own drink, a green juice that was tasty but did nothing to warm him. “I think so. But not, like, as a relationship. I’m not—I think I need some time before I try that. To get over Ilya. Having a guy I can try stuff with will help but I’ve been hung up on Ilya for years. That won’t go away overnight and it’s not fair to date anyone else until it does.” 

Rose’s face did another of those things, where complex emotions layered over each other in ways he couldn’t parse. “Shane, honey,” she said. “Sweetie.” 

Over-the-top endearments, which Rose only used to soften verbal blows. “Oh fuck,” Shane said, instantly alert. “What is it? What do you want?” 

“I need you to listen.”

“To what?” 

She didn’t meet his eyes. “Last night I kind of… did a deep dive into the internet. Specifically, the Hollanov internet.” 

“The what?” 

Rose’s eyes darted to his, then away again. “There are people in the internet who think you and Ilya Rozanov are in love. Hollanov. That’s your ship name.” 

Shane only even knew what a ship name was from what little she had told him about her movie fans but it was far more than enough. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered.  

“Yes, exactly. Normally that would be my reaction too. I mean, normally I wouldn’t even go there but knowing what I now know about you two—” 

“About me, you mean.” 

“No,” said Rose firmly. “I don’t mean. I mean both of you.” 

“Don’t—” 

“Shane. Babe.” She was earnest now, reaching out to take his hand. “I genuinely think he might be into you, too. That’s not just crazy shipper speculation. I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve seen them zoomed in farther than any zoom should ever zoom. I’ve seen the video compilations, set to some genuinely terrible music. I’ve seen it all, honey. Ilya Rozanov for real looks like he wants to eat you, every fucking time he looks at you.” 

“He fucking doesn’t,” Shane said flatly. “He looks at me all the time, I’ve seen him do it. I told you, we’re friends.” 

“Yes but Shane. Pookie.” 

“Oh no, not pookie.” 

“Sweetums. Sugar bear. Poopsie pie.” 

“God, what is happening?” 

“You are not the best at noticing things about other people. I need you to consider the possibility that Ilya Rozanov has been giving you heart eyes for the past seven years and you just haven’t seen them. Acknowledge for me that this is very much something you might do.”

“I mean, I don’t always get people—” 

“Yes! Very true.” 

“—but I do get Ilya. I think I do. We talk all the time.” 

“Oh?” Rose leaned back and batted her eyelashes at him. “About your feelings?” 

“Well, no.” 

“About anything other than hockey?” 

“Yes.” Shane was beginning to feel a bit indignant. “We talk about a lot of things. But it’s not like I can just. Tell him how I feel about him.” 

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you can. I think he would love that, actually.” 

“He wouldn’t. You don’t know him the way I do.” 

“Which is probably why I can see what you don’t.” She watched him silently for a moment, then sighed. “At least feel him out,” she said, “which unfortunately I do not mean literally. Just drop a few hints, see how he reacts.” 

“Yeah, because dropping hints is something I’m so fucking good at.”  

“Okay, that’s fair.” Rose frowned as she thought. “Is there something you could do together maybe, that’s different to what you usually do? Something that may help shake you out of your old patterns of behaviour and communication?” 

Shane wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but—“There is this charity I’ve been thinking of partnering with,” he said slowly. “One that Ilya would care about too. I could invite him to partner with me. It’d actually be a lot more impactful if it were both of us.” The more he thought about it, the better that idea seemed. “Even if it just gave us more time together, I might be able to move past this. Like, what’s it called? Exposure therapy?” 

Rose stared at him, then shook her head and smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go with that.” 

“Get over Ilya, get experience with Miles. Get on with my life,” Shane said. “Yeah. I can do that.” 

“Of course you can,” Rose said, staunchly, whether she believed her own words or not.  

They sipped in silence for a bit, then, “Would you mind, um.” Shane wasn’t sure how to ask this. “It’s not fair to ask you this and I’m sorry, but. Do you think we could keep dating for a bit? Pretending to, I mean? To give me cover with Miles?” 

Rose didn’t hesitate. “Of course we can.” 

“Really? You’re sure you don’t mind? It kind of sucks for you.” 

“Are you kidding? I get a hot hockey boyfriend everyone wants which means sleazy assholes stay off my back and other women hate me.” She grinned at him and wiggled her eyebrows. “Just how I like it.” 

Shane laughed. “Only if you’re sure. I’d really appreciate it.” 

“Of course, babe. For as long as you need.” Her smile softened and she shook her head. “Gay for five minutes and arranging a beard already. You really are speedrunning this thing.” 

The paparazzi who had been trailing them everywhere for weeks had found them again. Shane was vaguely aware of the camera flashes from across the street, and that pictures of their coffee date would be everywhere within hours. They were too far away to hear anything though, so he didn’t care. He squeezed Rose’s hand. 

“I really love you, you know,” he said. 

Her answering smile was deeply fond. “I know. I love you too.” 

 June 2016, Joshua Tree National Park

The same desk clerk who checked them in the night before checks them out when they leave. Ilya watches him watch Shane as Shane completes the checkout form and thinks about how less than twenty-four hours ago he’d felt such a kinship with the man, convinced that like this stranger he would never know the feel of Shane’s body beneath his, the touch of his hands, the taste of his mouth. And now—well. Now there’s still a lot they need to talk about but Ilya feels happier than he can ever remember being. They will talk about it. They’ll work out what needs working out between them. He knows they will because they both want to. Shane’s in this just as deep as he is, and fuck but that feels good to know. 

Shane loves him. Ilya thinks about that and his heart tries to soar clean out of his chest. He keeps his eyes on Shane as they leave the hotel and get into the car. Shane catches him looking and smiles at him, with the same happiness Ilya feels. His shirt is indigo today, tight enough to bulge over his flexing arms as he buckles his seat belt. He’s so beautiful Ilya wants to weep even as he thinks mine mine mine like the beat of a heart.  

They have breakfast at a diner on their way out of town and by mid-morning they are on the narrow, dusty road through Joshua Tree National Park. It’s full desert here, tan-toned sand and scrubby bushes, low, distant mountains and random rock piles that look like they were dropped there and left by giant children playing games. And of course the Joshua trees themselves, their slim and shaggy trunks and many branches raised like arms with sharp, green needle fingers pointing at the sky. 

Shane is instantly in love. 

“They’re so cool,” he says wonderingly, when Ilya pulls the car over and they get out to take a closer look. “They’re a kind of yucca, you know.” 

Ilya doesn’t even know what a yucca is or what other kinds of one there may be. He nods anyway as Shane monologues, happy with the sound of his voice and how happy he is and that they’re here together. Another memory for them to share, just them and no one else. 

“Why are so many things called trees that aren’t really trees?” he asks. “Palms are grass, this is yucca. Is just because English is such a stupid language, or?”

“I think it’s because classifying things is hard.” Shane is so used to his bitching about English that he doesn’t even blink. “That’s a science thing, not a language one.” 

“Whatever,” Ilya says. 

When Shane has looked his fill of the not-trees they get back in the car and continue on their way. They’ve gone southwest from Palm Springs to get into Joshua Tree from the south, now they’re headed north towards Twentynine Palms where they’ll get on the 62 and then the 95 to take them the rest of the way to Vegas. There by early evening, even if they take their time. 

Their journey is almost over and yet Ilya feels, he knows, that in reality it’s only just begun. 

As they approach the turnoff to the start of a hiking trail, a small, paved space tucked behind a giant-toy rock pile where hikers can leave their cars before they set out, Shane inquires, casually, “Have you ever had sex in a car?” 

“Yes,” Ilya replies, too startled by the question to attempt to evade it. Shane gives him a sideways glance that has his dick hard so fast his head spins. 

“Want to show me how it’s done?” he asks. 

Ilya pulls the car around the turnoff with a squeal of tires then slams on the brakes, heedless of the white lines around the parking spots. Shane’s out of his seatbelt and vaulting into the back before the car has finished juddering from its unexpected stop and Ilya is right behind him. He falls back onto the leather seat and Shane straddles him there, strips off his shirt as Ilya does the same, then they are skin-to-skin and kissing like they’re trying to inhale each other. 

Maybe they are, Ilya thinks. He’d absorb Shane into his body, imprint him on his soul if he could, so they could never be apart. He feels crazy thinking that, but then he’s been crazy about Shane for years now, what else is new? He’s an athlete, he takes things to the next level. It’s part of the job. 

Shane slips his hand into Ilya’s pants and strokes his dick while Ilya wrestles with the button and zipper on Shane’s shorts. When he gets them undone he plunges his hand inside; Shane moans into his mouth as Ilya takes hold of him. 

This is reckless, they both know it is. Anyone could come along and catch them in this very public sex act, police could be called, they could be arrested. That’s worst-case scenario, though. They’ve yet to be recognised even once on this trip; if anyone does come along they’ll apologise for getting carried away and drive off before a bigger deal can be made of anything. That’s Ilya’s plan anyway, such as it is. He hopes he doesn’t have to use it.

Shane slides his hips in closer so their dicks are pressed together and Ilya spits, first in Shane’s hand then his own. They take hold both of themselves and each other, big hands gripping, overlapping. It’s clumsy and it’s messy but it feels so fucking good. It’s good because it’s them, Ilya knows, as they were always meant to be. 

Shane’s skin glows golden in the desert sun. His hair is mussed, his lips kissed-pink and soft, his whole face alight with pleasure. Ilya loves him so much he doesn’t know what to do with it all and so he lets it go. Lets it flow from him and into Shane, where it belongs. He can feel it settling there, inside Shane’s ribs, linking them forever. He can feel Shane’s love flowing into him in turn. 

It’s such a relief not to have to hold it all inside any longer. 

Shane comes with a gasp and a moan and Ilya follows him, spills with him over their joined hands as Shane’s forehead comes to rest against his and they breathe together through the aftermath. 

After a minute or several or maybe an hour, Shane pulls a folded stack of napkins he’d taken from the diner out of his pocket—so that’s why he took those, Ilya thinks fondly, he’s such a planner—and cleans them up. They settle down together on the soft leather, wrapped up in and around each other. Content. 

“I knew it would be like this, with us,” Ilya says presently. His hand strokes up and down Shane’s spine. “I tried not to think about it but always I knew. That night after the draft—” 

“Yeah,” Shane says into his neck. “I felt it too. After the CCM shoot I was in the showers thinking about what would happen if you came in.” 

“Fuck,” Ilya groans. “I tried to. The director kept me back and I was too late. I am sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just shit luck.” He lifts his head to look at Ilya’s face. “Is that why you asked for my room number?” 

“Yes.” 

“Fuck.” Shane looks half embarrassed, half appalled. “I’m an idiot.” 

“No, lyubimyy, you are you. I am an idiot.” 

“Well, I can’t argue with that.” Ilya pinches his side and he giggles. Then he settles back down with his head on Ilya’s shoulder. “That thing you just called me, you called me it last night.” 

“Lyubimyy?” 

“Yeah. Sveta calls me that sometimes.” 

“Fucking does she?” 

“Mmm. She said it means darling.” 

“Eh, maybe. More like sweetheart.” 

“Sweetheart.” Ilya can hear the smile in his voice. “I like that.” His fingertips trail down Ilya’s side, trace the shape of his abs. “I think hearing it was why I was able to kiss you. I thought, if he calls me that then maybe Rose was right.” 

Rose fucking Landry. 

“What’s the deal with you and Rose Landry anyway?” Ilya grumbles. “You are gay but still dating her?” 

“Yeah, um. Kind of.” Shane nuzzles deeper into his shoulder. “It’s kind of a beard scenario.” 

A startled beat passes, then Ilya starts to laugh. 

“Which she agreed to!” Shane pokes him in the ribs. “Don’t laugh. I really do like her. Love her, actually, and you should too. Without her, we wouldn’t be here.” 

Even through his fading laughter Ilya still feels the old jealousy, not quite fully extinguished. “What the fuck does that mean?” he demands. 

“She figured out I was gay when I was still deep in denial about it,” Shane says. “She helped me admit it.” 

“Then set you up to fuck her friend.” 

“That too.” And the tone of Shane’s voice says he’s fully done with talking about it. “Also she clocked your ass, so. There’s that.” 

“What? Clocked me how?” 

“Apparently you make heart eyes at me whenever you look at me.” 

“The fuck I do,” mutters Ilya, who knows perfectly well that he does. He can feel them, every time. 

“Rose helped me face who I am and what I want,” Shane says softly. “I don’t know if I could have done either, without her. Then she agreed to pretend to still be my girlfriend while I figured myself out. We’ve just been hanging out as friends since February.” 

Ilya reflects on this for a minute. “If you and Rose Landry are not really together then your new clothes and your hair and eating burgers, drinking wine, that is all—” 

“Oh, um, yeah. I’m just. Feeling myself a bit, I guess. Part of figuring it all out.” 

“So is all what you want. Only you.” 

Shane nods. “This is who I am, I think. Without all the denying and the hiding and the guilt. I finally feel like me.” 

Ilya no longer hates Rose Landry. Rose Landry is a queen, a goddess among mortals. Ilya wants to shower her with rose petals and worship at her feet.  Shane looks up at his face as this realisation hits, and he laughs. 

“Rose is really cool. You’re going to love her.” His eyes narrow. “Or else.” 

“Hmph,” says Ilya. 

“We should call her later,” Shane continues. “You two can finally meet.” 

“Why the fuck would we do that?” 

Shane smirks at him but there’s heat behind his eyes. “It’s about time I broke up with her. Don’t you think?” 

Yes. Ilya does think. He really fucking does. 

It’s not until they’re in the penthouse suite in Vegas, sore and spent and curled up together in the absolute disaster they’ve made of the bed, the glittering lights of the city twinkling outside their windows, that Shane does finally call Rose. 

“Hey,” he says when she answers. “We need to break up.” He listens for a moment, then grins. “No, nothing like that. It’s just I may have, um. Worked things out with Ilya.” 

His phone emits a series of loud shrieks and he winces as he moves it away from his ear. “Jesus, Rose, fucking chill. I think I was less excited about it.” 

“You were very excited, lyubimyy,” Ilya says. 

“Is that him?” he can hear Rose Landry shout. “Is he there?” 

“Yeah, he’s here.” Shane attempts to glower at Ilya but his face is far too fond. “We’re in Vegas. Um. In bed.” 

The shrieking starts again and he holds his phone at arm’s length, laughing. “Rose, I’m putting you on speaker,” he says, then does. “Behave yourself or I’m hanging up.” 

“Oh my God,” says Rose Landry’s voice, tinny through the speaker but very, very loud. “Shane, babe, I’m so fucking happy for you. And Ilya, I’m calling you Ilya even though we haven’t met because you’re fucking one of my best friends now and that’s just how these things work. Ilya, you are the luckiest motherfucker alive. You realise, that, right?” 

“Well. Shane is very lucky too, of course,” Ilya says. 

“Bitch, you will appreciate that man or you’ll be hearing from me,” Rose tells him sternly. 

“I appreciate him,” Ilya assures her. “I love him too much not to.” 

There’s a pause, then, “That’s very fucking sweet,” Rose says. “Shane, you never said he was sweet. Has he always been sweet?” 

“I never really thought about it but yeah, he is pretty sweet. He’s always been sweet.” 

“Please stop saying ‘sweet’,” Ilya says. “Is beginning to sound like meaningless noise.” 

“Semantic satiation,” Shane says, as Rose barks a laugh. 

“He’s funny too,” she says. “Shane, you may also be a lucky motherfucker.” 

“Conceded,” Shane agrees, without hesitation. “No argument.” 

They chat for a bit, about Rose’s scenes she’s been filming and Shane and Ilya’s plans for the rest of their time in Vegas. They make vague plans of their own, to meet up when the three of them are somewhere near the same vicinity again—probably the Raiders’ first game in Montreal, as Rose will be done with her filming by September—then with copious goodbyes and expressions of devotion, she and Shane hang up. Shane sets his phone aside and looks at Ilya. 

“Well?” 

“Fine,” Ilya concedes with a bit of a huff. “Rose Landry is very fucking cool. Are you happy?” 

“Yeah.” Shane slips into Ilya’s arms, tucks himself against his side as he did the night before and a lifetime ago, in Palm Springs. “I’m very happy.” 

“I am very happy too.”

They lie like that in silence for a little while, then Shane says, “Ilya.” 

“Yes?” 

“You know how every year I ask you to stay with me for the summer.” 

“Yes.” 

“And you know how every fucking year you say no.” 

“Yes.” 

“If I asked you to stay this summer, would you?” 

Ilya’s heart is pounding. “I don’t know. Ask me and see.” 

There’s still so much that stands between them. Their different teams, the fucking MLH, hockey itself, with its deeply ingrained homophobia. Russia, which Ilya still has ties to and will so long as his father lives. They can’t be public with their love. They can’t be out. 

They can have this, though. 

Shane looks at him, wide-eyed and earnest. “Please stay with me this summer, Ilya. Please come to my cottage and don’t go back to Russia. You know how miserable it makes you. Stay with me. The whole summer. Just us. We’ll figure the rest out later, just. This summer, you and me. Please?” 

“Yes,” Ilya says. He’s tired of denying himself what he wants so fucking much. “All summer. Just us.” 

A broad, brilliant, happy grin spreads across Shane’s face, the mirror and equal of Ilya’s. “I have an idea,” he says. “What if we drove there? After the awards. We can drive across the USA then up into Canada. We can have a sad cliché of Kerouac-reading college boy road trip that would make Svetlana’s ex weep into his cold brew.” 

Ilya starts to laugh. “He will write sad and terrible poetry about it.” 

“Which he can read to his next poor girlfriend in bed,” Shane says, and the pair of them collapse into each other, weak with laughter. 

“This sounds perfect,” Ilya says. “Let’s do it.” 

So they do. 

Chapter End Notes

something about the month of june just overwhelms me with the need to write violet-tinged prose about people falling in love on summer roads. Thank you for coming on this particular road trip with me, especially those of you who are actually on this road trip. The way fanfic spans the globe to reach people everywhere is astounding and beautiful ❤️