Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Original Children of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Future Fic, Amnesia, Canon - TV, Alternate Universe - Future, Domestic Fluff, No Smut, Family, Spoilers for Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Post-Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), Children of Characters, LGBTQ Themes, Parent Shane Hollander, Parent Ilya Rozanov, Anne of Green Gables References, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of All the Smallest Things

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-28 Words: 7,378 Chapters: 1/1

Octobers

Summary

Ilya leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a silhouette painted in moonlight and shadow. And Shane thought, as he often had, that he might explode from loving this man so much. That thank god they’d had a kid because now Shane had someone else important and hallowed to pour this love into, or else it might be too much to bear.

--

Six Octobers in the lives of Shane & llya's family, and a beloved book that is woven into their past, present, and future. Companion piece to The Importance of Strawberries.

Notes

(Contains spoilers for The Importance of Strawberries)

I hope this is a cozy and enjoyable follow-up! As before, this is TV canon, not book canon. A few characters from TLG are mentioned but I am purely vibing and know it is not compliant.

I am so blown away by the kindness and support. You guys have truly motivated and inspired me. THANK YOU for reading, I'm so grateful!!

---------------

“Anne reveled in the world of colour about her. ‘Oh, Marilla,’ she exclaimed, ‘I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?’”

—L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

---------------

OCTOBER 1999

OTTAWA

Shane Hollander hand-wrote his book report. His class was allowed to use the computer lab at school to type, if they wanted, but Shane wasn’t very good at typing. He still didn’t totally understand how to place his hands, and it was slow-going to meticulously poke each letter on the keyboard with his pointer fingers like playing chopsticks on the piano at his grandma’s house in Mississauga. So he unhooked a sheaf of loose-leaf paper from his three-ring binder, sharpened a No. 2 pencil, and sat at the kitchen table writing paragraphs as if they were sandwiches, the way Mrs. Gagnon had described: a topic sentence for the first slice of bread, details for the meat and lettuce and cheese, and a concluding slice of bread on the bottom.

Shane liked the paragraph sandwich. He liked rules and he liked when things had a certain order that he could follow. The same way he liked hockey, which he was good at. There were rules about where to be on the ice when, and a singular, straightforward aim: puck in net. He had been moved up to U10s this year even though he was only eight, and he was a little nervous about it, but his team seemed mostly nice or at least, unbothered by his presence, and his parents were really proud of him, which was most important.

Anne of Green Gables had several main characters, which Shane took to describing in carefully constructed sandwiches of supporting evidence. First, of course, was Anne. She was talkative and brave in a way Shane couldn’t relate to. In general, Shane preferred not to talk too much. It was easier to listen to the other kids, to observe their animated faces and absorb their conversations, and take his findings home to replay in his mind like the way goals and penalties were replayed in slow-motion on TV, unpacking pieces of the puzzle until he felt like he could replicate it himself.

There were Marilla and Matthew, who were patient and kind, like his own parents. Well, his mom wasn’t always patient, maybe; but she was kind, he knew that, even when her voice was pinched and her face was all sharp angles after a long day at work. His dad really was much like Matthew, a bit soft-spoken, and always ready to listen to Shane when something was bothering him, no matter how small. The chapter where Matthew died had given Shane a panic attack, all fast thin breaths and bright lights and shut eyes, because he loved his dad so much, and if the same thing ever happened to him, he really wasn’t sure what he would do.

There was Diana, who was Anne’s kindred spirit, which Shane also couldn’t relate to. He’d never had one of those.

And there was Gilbert Blythe.

“He was a tall boy, with curly hair, roguish hazel eyes, and a mouth twisted into a teasing smile.”

Gilbert Blythe was smart and competitive and handsome and nice. Well, he started out mean but then he ended up being nice to Anne in a way Shane hoped someone might be nice to him one day; and competitive with Anne in a way that Shane found thrilling. Shane thought, as he concluded his paragraph sandwich, that he would rather like to be friends with Gilbert Blythe.

He turned in his book report and got an A with a few spelling errors circled in red. He kept his copy of the book with him in his backpack, though, instead of returning it to the little bookshelf in Mrs. Gagnon’s classroom where everyone else’s identical copies were lined up. This was an uncharacteristic and quiet rebellion, but if Mrs. Gagnon noticed his book was missing, she didn’t say so. He read the book again, and then again – skipping the chapter where Matthew died. He read it every time he found himself sitting alone, which was often: in the back of the school bus, in the corner of the cafeteria, in the locker room because he always begged his mom to get him to practice early, so early that he wasn’t even allowed on the ice yet because the U6s were still playing.

He imagined being friends with Gilbert Blythe. Kindred spirits, maybe. They could skate together and compete over the puck, and maybe if Shane ever found himself falling out of a rowboat in a river, Gilbert would rescue him.

He knew it was weird to be so fascinated with someone entirely imaginary. He also knew, without understanding quite why, that it was weirder still for his thoughts to circle around a boy like this, a boy with a teasing smile.

Eventually, the self-aware weirdness of it all stressed him out too much, weighing on his brain in a headachy way, and he found that he couldn’t lose himself in the book anymore, couldn’t conjure Avonlea or enjoy its adventures without feeling like he was doing something wrong. So when the bell rang for dismissal, he went to return the book to the little bookshelf by Mrs. Gagnon’s desk. Gary the owl, their class pet from the local conservation centre, peered at him from his enclosure with round, piercing eyes that sort of freaked Shane out. The Citizen had done an article about Gary and the centre’s educational outreach initiatives, and there was a photo of Shane’s grade two class and Mrs. Gagnon posed with the bird, and his mom had clipped it out of the newspaper and saved it in a binder.

“Désolé,” he said to Mrs. Gagnon, staring at the ground to avoid Gary’s accusing gaze. “J'ai volé le livre.”

Mrs. Gagnon held up her hand at Shane and shook her head kindly. “Keep it, Shane,” she said. And he really was someone who liked to do as he was told. So he took the book home and slotted it onto the shelf in his own room, in between books about hockey, which he was good at. He didn’t think again about Gilbert Blythe for a long, long time.

---------------

OCTOBER 2041

CALGARY

“He is nervous,” Gerda observes bluntly. She’s Dutch, straightforward and serious in a way that is foreign even to Ilya, whose Slavic sensibilities have softened from his decades in Canada.

He likes Gerda. She’s funny, a dry and straight-faced humour. Whip-smart; fluent in Dutch and English and Malay. Fiercely competitive. Politically outspoken, flags and badges and pins on her team-issued puffer jacket always getting her in trouble with the Dutch press. And she’s very pretty, with long dark hair pulled into a severe ponytail and intense, lit-up eyes that now track Niko where he adjusts his goggles at the starting line.

He especially likes that Gerda and Lidiya have become fast friends despite the three years and continents between them. Gerda sends Lidiya postcards from international competition and one time, when they took Niko to compete in Amsterdam, she whisked Lidiya away to see a cello concerto at the Concertgebouw, the two of them giggling over shared secrets when they returned to the hotel. The way Gerda has slotted herself into their family comfortably, across geography and a rigourous schedule, is what reassures Ilya in his son’s choice, but is also what makes him realize, in a paternally panicked way, that this really is quite serious.

They’re so young to be so serious. Not that Ilya is one to talk.

Shane has come to the same realization, though they haven’t discussed it. Ilya can tell because his husband, who also likes Gerda even if he won’t admit it out loud, speaks to her with this fond, familial grouchiness that Ilya is one-hundred percent confident Shane doesn’t even notice he’s conveying. Their son’s dating life is a touchy subject. Shane is dubious, irritated, protective, and – Ilya thinks, maybe, likely – betrayed by the passage of time, by Niko’s eighteen years having come and gone in the blink of an eye, by the fractured, jumbled chronology of Shane’s life that still festers like a wound in the soft bruised parts of his past.

“He’s not nervous,” Shane counters.

“He’s not,” Lidiya seconds. “He’s doing his ritual. Look.”

They watch as Niko straightens his goggles, touches the maple leaf insignia on his shoulder, then leans down to tap the toes of his clap skates with the gloved knuckles of his fist. Left then right. A familiar choreography.

Gerda shakes her head. “He is nervous,” she repeats insistently, and Ilya thinks, maybe, she can see things about her boyfriend that his own parents and sister can’t. That she knows him in a different and deeper way. Ilya doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Niko has already qualified for the national team at this stage, Olympics-bound come February – a fact which has Ilya’s heart swelling fiercely, thunderously. But on this final afternoon of the national championships, in Calgary’s near-ancient Olympic Oval, air crisply cold and ice blinding white, a fraction of a fraction of a second will decide if Niko Ilyich Hollander or Léo Pelletier cinches Canadian gold in the 1500 metres. Niko wants it, desperately, hungrily; Ilya knows, feels it for his son, with his son; and Niko just might do it.

A phenom, the CBC called him once, but Ilya and Shane know better than most that their son is not some prodigy born from a medal-winning lineage and destined for glory. No; their Niko has fallen and failed and struggled. Has come home from competition bruised and teary-eyed, angry, self-deprecating, wrapped between his fathers in a hug that could never heal the sting of defeat. But they’ve watched this boy grow up on the ice, transmute every fall into a lesson, recalibrate and recalculate and try again and again and again. A resilience and relentless, single-minded determination that wasn’t inherited but learned, fueled by an unadulterated passion for the most basic thrill of speed, of soaring faster than everyone else around the track, which he had fallen in love with at eight years old, never looking back.

When it’s over, whether gold or silver around Niko’s neck, they’ll go out for ramen at the spot Shane and Ilya used to seek out when the Centaurs played the Infernos on the road. They’ll gather around a small square table in the cozy rear of the familiar restaurant, and sip hot salty broth from too-big bowls – Niko and his dads, and his sister, and his girlfriend who flew ten hours to see him achieve what he set his mind to – Niko’s village. And Ilya feels so, so grateful to know that his son has a village like this, entirely his, entirely unwavering.

“Are you reading that?” Lidiya asks Gerda, pointing at the edge of a book which peeks out of the satchel at her feet.

Gerda nods. “Niko gave it to me to read. Said it is his favourite.” She narrows her eyes without smiling, which is basically the Gerda equivalent of a joking grin, Ilya has learned. “I could sell it, you know. Probably worth a lot, since it is signed by Canada’s Shane Hollander.”

“Hah,” Shane laughs in objection. “‘Signed’ is a strong word. I was eight when I wrote my name in there.”

“Maybe makes it even more valuable,” Gerda muses.

“Don’t sell this,” Ilya says seriously – too seriously. He knows they’re all joking here. But still. “Is family heirloom.”

“I was kidding,” Gerda says plainly.

“I know.” Ilya smiles to soften the moment. “I’m glad he shares this book with you. Was special to him, growing up.”

“It is a sweet story. I can understand why.” Gerda rolls her eyes. “He is such an Anne. Never shuts up talking.”

Lidiya cackles at this, doubling over. “I’m telling him you said that.”

The crowd stills as an announcement bellows overhead, first English, then French. Ilya shifts closer to Shane, shoulders touching, sides of their shoes meeting with a silent, reassuring tap. Shane grabs his hand, threading their fingers together, squeezing tight.

“Наш сын,” Ilya says into the curve of Shane’s neck, and he doesn’t mean it to come out as a whisper, but it does. Wonderous and reverent.

Ready, echoes through the chill air.

The sharp, sudden pop of the starting gun.

They have watched their boy fail and struggle and fall. Now, they watch him fly.

---------------

OCTOBER 2017

MONTREAL

A featherweight breeze, all dry chill air and crisp, rustling leaves, swept across the overlook where Shane stood, inhaling slow, deep breaths to still his lungs after the steep climb. His legs ached in that rewarding, spiriting way they always did after a run, a symphony of sinew and lactic acid. The top of Mont Royal wasn’t exactly bustling at seven on a cold Tuesday morning; there were a few people clustered in the distance – a woman with an Australian shepherd, a pair of tourists in wide-brimmed hats, a student doing yoga. They were all too far away to see or hear anything. Shane glanced around cautiously, found that his heart wasn’t leaping out of his chest in fear, and took his phone out of the case strapped to his arm to Facetime Ilya.

“What? What is it? Something is wrong?”

“What? No, Ilya, I’m fine.” Shane squinted. Ilya was in the dark of his bedroom. “Were you still asleep?”

“Of course I was still asleep. It is seven AM.”

“It’s a perfectly normal hour,” Shane objected. “Don’t you have a game today? When’s morning skate?”

“Not until ten.” Ilya sat up, holding the phone at a distance to offer Shane a generous view of dimly lit muscles and a rumple of bedsheets gathered at the V of his hips. “Where are you?”

“On a run. It’s just, really beautiful here. I called because I wanted to show you.” He clicked to flip the camera around, to the view of dense trees crowned in fiery crimson and gold, a vivid sprawl swallowing the city skyline which glinted in thin white sun.

It was stupid, maybe. There was fall foliage in Boston, too.

“You saw pretty view and thought of me? Because I also am pretty view?”

“Something like that,” Shane conceded. He flipped the camera back. “That’s all. Good luck against Nashville.”

“That’s all?”

“Good luck against Nashville, and I miss you, and I love you.” I love you, I love you. Words he had mastered by now, since first uttering them in awe and terror that summer, the weight of Ilya in his arms, the weight of Ilya’s words in the air. Ilya was the braver of the two of them, always had been; the first to leap; the first to knock.

Now, those words weren’t so frightening. They were a comfort, a ritual, a blessing spoken on the phone over morning coffee and whispered into the shell of Ilya’s ear after their pre-season game weeks earlier.

“Я тоже тебя люблю,” Ilya said. “I will score hat trick just for you.”

“You’d be more likely to if you woke up before seven.”

“I am hanging up now, Hollander. Going back to sleep just because you said that.” And before Shane could object, the screen went dark.

“Asshole,” he muttered to himself, but he knew he was smiling. Grinning like an idiot, really.

Shane took the longer, less steep trail down the mountain, skirted the verdant park along Avenue des Pins, and turned onto Peel, ducking into a dépanneur for a sports drink and a protein bar. He worked on those for a few blocks until he found himself on Sainte-Catherine, busy even at the early hour, shops with sleek glass windows and brightly lit logos on metallic facades intermixed with old, worn brick and stone. He resumed a light jog, passing an Oakley, an H&M, a jewelry store – and stopped the fuck short, breathless, when he realized the blisteringly insane thought that had just barreled through his mind:

I should buy a ring.

That was. Well. Crazy, right? A thought that had no business sauntering around in his brain in such a natural, instinctual way, when they had only just barely figured out their shit, like, a few months ago.

All at once, he was reminded of a deeply irritating phone call with his parents last week. “We’re death cleaning,” his dad had announced. “Can we throw away your grade two book report?”

“Sorry—you’re what?”

“Swedish death cleaning,” his mom had repeated, as if it was obvious. “So that you don’t inherit a cluttered house when we die.”

Panic had gripped Shane’s throat then. “What? Is someone sick? Are you dying?”

“No, no,” his dad had reassured. “We just got to thinking about the future. What with you and Ilya planning the way you are.”

“I mean, we’re not, like, planning that far ahead.”

“You sort of are, Shane,” his mom had intoned. “You’re talking about changing the narrative so you can come out when you retire. That’s at least another ten years. Maybe fifteen.” A sudden intake of breath. “We shouldn’t throw out that book report. You might want to show it to your kids one day.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Then, what his mom had said actually hit him, square in the chest. “What kids? No one’s having kids.”

His mom had sighed impatiently. “Oh, it’s 2017, Shane. Gay people can have kids.” As if that’s what Shane was questioning. “You know, this book report was one of the things that had me and your dad thinking, you know, maybe, you might be gay. When you were young.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, you wrote three paragraphs about Gilbert Blythe and how handsome he is.”

“Oh my god.”

“Don’t be embarrassed! Having a crush on Gilbert Blythe is basically a Canadian rite of passage.”

Shane groaned. “I didn’t have a crush on Gilbert Blythe.”

“Sure, sure.” His mom must have turned away from the phone to talk to his dad over her shoulder, because her voice was quieter. “Put it in the save pile, David.”

“Look. Don’t throw away my stuff.” Shane had shut his eyes tightly then, taking a breath. “If you really want to clean, put it in a box and I’ll look at it next time I’m in Ottawa.”

“Okay, kiddo, will do,” his dad had agreed dutifully.

He had looked up Swedish death cleaning after that call, relieved to discover that it was a real thing from some recently published book, and not a strange, inexplicably Scandinavian psychosis that had overtaken his parents. And then he had wondered, fleetingly, whether Ilya would want kids someday.

Now, Shane stood panting in the cold autumn air, hands on his knees, in front of a jewelry store, and the thought that had stopped him in his tracks from its brazen absurdity, seemed, bafflingly, a bit less absurd.

He didn’t go in the store. He jogged onward, borne through the artery of this city, its soundtrack of quick, nasal French and screeching buses and wind in trees. And he let himself think about it – about rings, about marriage. A future that was tangible and committed in a way that he hadn’t thought he was allowed to envision. But then, really, what was a move to Ottawa, if not Ilya’s way of saying yes to it all?

It scared him a little.

But, he had learned, in his seven years and one lakeside summer of loving Ilya Rozanov, that being scared was maybe, probably, definitely, worth it.

---------------

OCTOBER 2036

OTTAWA

On Thanksgiving – the Canadian one – Colin Yamamura knocks on their door holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a bouquet of something yellow and cheerful in the other. Lidiya beats Ilya to the door and opens it formally, grabbing onto Deke’s collar to keep him from jumping up in excitement.

It was one of those scheduling synchronicities that always excites Shane to no end, a celestial alignment of dates and times and places coalescing in a colour-coded spreadsheet. Shane proudly presented his findings to Ilya when the season schedule was released that summer. “It’s perfect, right?”

“Yes,” Ilya had said, delighted in Shane’s delight. “Perfect.”

Seattle was on an east coast roadie that ended in Ottawa the day before the holiday. They went to the game, Ilya and Shane and the kids, a quartet clad in matching Cens jerseys that reminded Ilya lovingly, achingly, of when they were younger, so little, so proud to wear their parents’ names on their backs – tiny jerseys now folded in a box in the attic alongside long-abandoned toys and stacks of abstract artworks painted by impossibly small fingers.

Seattle won, barely cracking a 1-1 stalemate that lasted for two periods, Colin landing a second goal with his famously snappy backhand in the final four minutes.

As a gesture, Ilya paid for Colin to fly back a day later than his team, even though the guy could certainly afford it himself on his new contract.

“Please come in,” Lidiya greets, all serious business. She’s sprouted up tall for her ten years, almost as tall as her brother – who is officially a teenager, a fact which Ilya does not like one bit – aided by her pristine cellist’s posture, spine straight, shoulders squared. She braids her own hair now.

“Thank you,” Colin says respectfully, and steps inside, shifting the flowers under his arm so he can offer a hand for Deke to sniff.

Colin wears crisp khaki pants and a Seattle Legends polo shirt with a small, embroidered sea-serpent logo and the buttons undone. Ilya has come to know him as a bit serious and a bit awkward, but not in a Shane way, shaped by lovable loops of overthinking. No, for Colin it’s more a polite thing, just stiff and formal, a well-mannered boy from a rural-ish place with rugged mountains and taciturn neighbours. Ilya wonders how much of that is truly his personality, and how much has to do with the fact that he has been disbelievingly adopted by Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.

It’s early afternoon; dinner won’t be for a while yet. Shane has a turkey in the oven, which Ilya had insisted really wasn’t necessary for the casual occasion, but Shane has since spent hours poring over recipes and instructional videos, so there’s no stopping him now. Sage and thyme and a buttery smell waft warmly from the kitchen. In the living room, the white-noise roar of the Vancouver-St. Louis game, where Shane and Niko watch together, exchanging quiet analysis; Shane getting up every time his phone alarm sounds to baste on a meticulous schedule.

“Welcome,” Ilya says, grinning, holding out a hand to collect the wine and flowers. He leads Colin through to the kitchen and opens a cabinet to procure a vase. “How’s Aaron?”

“Booked and busy,” Colin quips. “High-demand for wedding photographers in Seattle these days. Love is in the air.”

“Hm. Must be.” Ilya trims the flower stems and sets them into the vase, a starburst of colour. “They’re lovely. Thank you.”

“Of course.” Colin looks nervous, eyes darting, biting his lip, despite being twenty-seven and six-foot-four and one of the league’s highest-paid captains. And Ilya feels a little thrill of pride that his husband is still idolized in this way, that today’s elite players are still nervous to be in Shane Hollander’s gleaming presence. As they should be.

“Shane,” Ilya calls, boastful and teasing, “your pen pal is here!” He grabs Colin’s wrist and drags him into the living room, where Shane is rising hastily from the sofa. Niko doesn’t glance up from his phone, which is bad manners, but they’ll talk about that later.

“Colin. Good to see you.” Shane holds out a hand and pulls him into a sideways hug. “Great game yesterday.”

“Thanks.”

There’s a beat of silence. Ilya looks fondly between them. “Good lord, you two are the most boring people in the entire world.” He rolls his eyes. “Kolya, for the love of god, help your dad brainstorm better dinner conversation while we are upstairs, yes?” And he grabs Colin’s wrist again and pulls him to the stairwell.

They step into the study and Ilya closes the door softly behind them, the noise of the TV muffled to a quiet hum. “Thank you for doing this,” Ilya says, gesturing for Colin to take a seat on the broad-armed chair in the corner. Ilya sits across from him in the desk chair, spun around to face each other. He picks up his composition notebook, which he still prefers over typing most days, and opens to a blank page.

“Yeah, no problem.” Colin looks around the room. It’s lit warmly from a floor lamp with an oldish bulb. Hockey books and Russian literature line a wall of shelves, MVP awards nestled like the most casual and unassuming things alongside framed photos of Timbits teams and one of Yuna and David on an Alaskan cruise. A bulletin board pinned with orchestra schedules hangs above the computer monitor. Framed on the wall beside the door is Shane’s grade two book report; Ilya had rescued it years ago from David and Yuna’s place, giddy to have this evidence of Shane’s Canadian gay awakening, his husband’s handwriting describing, even then, a preference for handsome boys with teasing smiles and curly hair.

Discovering the book report, picturing tiny baby Shane death-gripping a pencil so that it pressed indents into the page, had stirred something in Ilya’s heart. A reassurance – like all of this, their impossible happiness, the way they had found each other and chosen each other again and again, had been predestined by some oracle that lived in an Ottawa classroom in the nineties. Maybe it was the owl.

“Absolutely not,” Shane had said when the framed relic first appeared. This was when they had only just bought the house, its walls mostly empty but for wedding pictures and Shane’s silver medal, bereft of the prior decade’s worth of memories that lived only in their minds, never photographed, never shared. They would spend the rest of their lives fixing that, Ilya knew. “How did you even find this?”

“I have my ways.” Ilya had looked slyly at him. “Please please please can we keep it?” As if it were a stray kitten and not a school assignment composed in Shane’s childish chicken scratch, graphite smudged and fading.

And, well. Shane had never been one to say no when Ilya said please.

“Do you mind if I record?” Ilya sets his phone face-up on the desk, opened to the audio app.

“No, it’s good.” Colin sits pin-straight in the chair, like Lidiya’s cello posture, and Ilya has to laugh.

“For fuck’s sake, Colin, I was at your wedding. I’ve seen you drunk. I’ve met your mother.” Colin cracks a small smile at this, and Ilya continues, “You can make yourself comfortable here, I promise.”

“You’re right. Sorry, I guess I’m just—I don’t know. Surprised you want to interview me for this.”

Ilya blinks at him. “You are 2027,” he says simply. “Of course I interview you.”

The book’s working title right now is Of Ice and Men: Essays on Hockey’s Queer Renaissance, 2017-2027: An Anthology. There are far too many colons, in Ilya’s opinion, but his co-author Dr. Rosalie Asante-Yonge, Ph.D., uOttawa Gender Studies faculty chair, seems to really enjoy putting colons in the titles of things. Last year, she invited Ilya, in his capacity as bestselling memoir author, to be keynote speaker at a conference called Queering the Game: 2SLGBTQIA+ Phenomenologies in Canadian Sport.

2017-2027, because ten years after Scott Hunter won the Stanley Cup and kissed the man he loved while the world watched, Colin Yamamura would become the first rookie drafted into the league while openly gay.

Ilya has already interviewed Scott – interviewed him twice, actually, because the first session devolved into a chirping competition and they had to reschedule. Troy Barrett, Ryan Price, and Max Riley have each submitted sincerely introspective and poignant guest essays, which Dr. Rosalie is currently editing.

And Ilya has been writing daily, something which he has found he enjoys in a genuine and quietly passionate way that snuck up on him at odd hours in a hospital one devastating year and stayed with him ever since. He lingers on campus late after Gee-Gees practice to research at the library for the book. He’s working on a piece juxtaposing the Soviet-era defectors with transforming views on queerness in modern Russia. He’s already completed a personal essay about the 2022 Centaurs Stanley Cup and his and Shane’s famous kiss, the photograph of which had won a Pulitzer.

Shockingly, he’s convinced Shane to contribute a short reflection on Hobey Baker’s legacy. What a nerd.

2017-2027. So much happened in those years – seismic things, and small, sacred things. Stanley Cups and cottage summers, Olympic medals and first words and first steps and first holding Niko’s hands on the Rideau Canal and watching him fall and scrabble back up again like he never even fell at all.

Ilya clears his throat and glances down at his notebook, touching his pen to the page. He looks up at Colin, at this awkward and skillful and deserving inheritor of those ten years of triumph and struggle.

“What made you feel safe to come out before the draft?”

Colin meets Ilya’s eyes with this unquestioning look, like the answer is the most obvious thing in the world.

“Shane Hollander told me I could.”

---------------

OCTOBER 2023

OTTAWA

Shane loved the stillness of their house at night. The quiet thrum of Ilya’s breathing; the barely-there hum of the baby monitor. Outside, a gentle breeze through tall private hedges.

They had demolished Philadelphia at home 5-2 that afternoon. Two goals were Shane’s; he’d assisted Ilya on another; and Haas had been on fire, landing the other two back-to-back in the third period.

Shane should have felt damn good about it. But something was unsettled, a foreign, clawing worry gripping his chest. He couldn’t sleep.

Neither, apparently, could Niko. The stirring sound was so small, imperceptible almost, but Shane heard. He always heard. He carefully unfurled from the bed and shuffled down the hall and lifted his son from the crib.

Such a strange thing. Sometimes, he wanted to say to Ilya, We made a human being, on purpose. Why on earth did we do that? Because really, why had they? It defied logic, dodged the persistent, curious corners of his brain that itched for an explanation grounded beyond the ephemeral.

Niko was three months old, a milestone which seemed both miniscule and monumental. “Happy First Fiscal Quarter,” read a card delivered by his dad – Dedushka; because Ilya would never see his own parents become grandparents, would never hear Irina dubbed Babushka in a tiny voice one day, in the Russian their son was already picking up with wide-eyed recognition.

Shane selected a board book from the display on the wall and sat in the broad cushioned chair by the window, Niko tucked close to his chest, the round shape of him nestled in the crook of his elbow. He wasn’t fussy, just restless, wide brown eyes meeting Shane’s in this way that felt urgent and trusting and bright. Moonlight from the window cast slats of soft silver across his son’s forehead and nascent ripples of curls.

He recited The Very Hungry Caterpillar from memory, letting Niko’s small grippy hands help turn the pages and explore the cutout shapes and rounded edges. Eventually the wide brown eyes blinked heavily and Niko was asleep on his chest, fragile breaths, a warm thing.

“None of this is in your diet,” came a whisper from the doorway. “Maybe the four strawberries.”

“Shut up,” Shane whispered back. “I’ve seen you eat five apples in one sitting.”

Ilya leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a silhouette painted in moonlight and shadow. And Shane thought, as he often had, that he might explode from loving this man so much. That thank god they’d had a kid because now Shane had someone else important and hallowed to pour this love into, or else it might be too much to bear.

And wasn’t that the answer, then. The why of it all.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, no.” Ilya shook his head. “I have a superpower. I can sense whenever Shane Hollander is not right next to me at all times.” He strode into the room and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the chair, gazing up at Shane.

“There’s another chair,” Shane reminded.

He shook his head again. “I want to look at you.”

Shane shifted his left hand gently where it supported Niko, and clutched The Very Hungry Caterpillar in his right, tightening his fingers around the cover. One day, Niko would be able to read on his own, would have a grasp of two languages, his own taste in literature, likes and dislikes. Shane wondered if his copy of Anne of Green Gables was still at his parents’ house.

He remembered the chapter where Matthew died. He remembered being a kid, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, breathing shallow panicked breaths and thinking he could never imagine a world without his own father in it.

And Shane watched Ilya’s face, the soft, steady stillness in their still, quiet house at night, and finally, he found voice for the unsettled feeling in his chest.

“Ilya.” Quieter than a whisper. “Am I playing scared?”

“What do you mean?” Ilya asked in a kind and curious way, so generous in leaving a path for Shane to say exactly what he intended, that Shane realized, relieved and horrified at once: of course his husband had come to this realization much sooner than he had himself.

“I’m taking fewer risks,” Shane admitted. “I’m worried about getting hurt. I’ve never—Not even when things were bad in Montreal. It’s the first time I’ve been worried like this.”

“It’s the first time you’ve had a child to protect.”

“It’s your first time, too.” Shane tilted his head down, pressing his nose to the top of Niko’s hair. “You don’t feel scared?”

“I do. I am.” Ilya nodded seriously, biting his lip, and Shane knew he was searching for the words in English. “I think, though, I became more—how to say it. Risk-adverse. A while ago, before this.”

“When?”

He exhaled a small laugh, glancing down at his hands. “Your concussion, Shane. I was so scared then. I never wanted you to feel that way if I ever got hurt like this.”

“Oh.” Shane’s heart twisted. How had he not known? Ilya’s playing hadn’t changed, not on the surface, still ferocious and flamboyant and mind-bogglingly pristine in its accuracy. But maybe – well. Shane knew Ilya had been thinking more. A greater balance of instinct with strategy. Shane had thought, maybe, that was his own hockey IQ finally rubbing off on Ilya, or something. Not fear.

“There are other reasons, too, I think,” Ilya said, interrupting Shane’s spiral. “Is different for me on wing. You are more vulnerable as centre. Dykstra and Chouie, they’re good, but they can’t be everywhere at once. Sometimes you are out on the ice alone. We play a dangerous sport. It is scary.”

Shane looked down at Niko, and considered how wholly and irrevocably his entire sense of self had become so – heliocentric. Everything revolved around this, now. Everything.

“Yeah,” Shane agreed. “It is scary.”

“You should talk to Bood.” Ilya shifted, stretching one long leg out in front of him, resting an elbow on his knee. “Same thing happened when his son was born. His shots on goal went down. Was my first season in Ottawa.”

“Okay. You’re right. I’ll talk to Bood.” Shane nodded, thinking. “Maybe Elise, too.” The team psychologist.

“Good, yes.” Something lit up in Ilya’s eyes then, and he chuckled softly.

“What’s so funny?”

“Not funny—just. If two goals and one assist is Shane Hollander playing scared, then, I think, we will be okay.”

Shane stood oh-so-carefully, and Ilya rose, too, and took Niko from his arms in a practiced and familiar transfer. Ilya pressed a kiss to his son’s forehead and settled him into the crib with the unconscious reluctance of a sailor setting foot on land after years and years at sea.

They stood there a moment. Just, watching.

“Yeah,” Shane echoed finally. He took Ilya’s wrist and pulled him close, foreheads touching. “We’ll be okay.”

---------------

OCTOBER 2032

OTTAWA

The day is mostly ordinary. Shane drops the kids off at school and swings by Loblaws for carrot sticks and frozen waffles and a few other things running low. Only one person seems to recognize him and stops him for an autograph, which isn’t so bad.

He signs her coupon for buy-one-get-one oatmeal because it’s all the woman has on hand as far as signable surfaces seem to go, and she is profusely thankful and says her son is going to love it, and, well, who can argue with that? But then she ahem’s as he’s about to turn back down the dairy aisle, and offers a half-shrug, half-wave. “They said on the radio this morning that it’s been a year since. Well.”

She doesn’t fill in the blank, doesn’t ask a question, just kind of looks at him pityingly, and Shane blinks back at her, trying to stay stoic. “Yeah,” he says simply, and walks away.

He knows. Of course he knows. He counts days in a tally in his planner the way he imagines a dragon counts golden coins, greedily, fastidiously, because every twenty-four-hour cycle of moon and sun is a precious thing that, like gold, can be stolen.

He knows the media are doing their thing. It’s not that big a deal, the one-year anniversary of a major injury, except that this year Shane and Ilya will likely get joint Hall of Fame inductions, so their names are floating around hockey circles again, and it’s reminded everyone that, yeah. A year ago, Shane Hollander was thrown onto the ice, injured vaguely but seriously enough to end his career, and subsequently retired quietly to a life of picket-fence fatherhood in suburban Ottawa.

On a whim, he doubles back to the produce section and picks out some beets and fresh dill.

He comes home, met by Deke's lopsided ears and wagging tail at the door, and finds Ilya on the sofa in the living room. This he expected, because it’s reading week at uOttawa so practice is cancelled; but he did not expect to find Ilya crumpled in the fetal position, crying, greeting Shane who stands in the entryway with his bags of carrots and waffles and beets, with a withering, choked proclamation: “He’s dead.”

Shane drops the bag, heart in his throat, and rushes to Ilya’s side. “Who’s dead, Ilya? What happened?”

“Matthew.” And as Shane’s brain races through the index of Matthew’s and Matthieu’s he and Ilya might know, his husband sits up slowly, revealing the book clutched to his chest.

“Jesus Christ, Ilya, you scared me. What the fuck?”

Ilya wipes his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Sorry. I just—It shocked me. Anne saw him dead on the ground like this. It reminded me, I think—” He laughs, blinking away tears. “Is silly. I can’t believe you let our children read this traumatic book.”

“No, it’s not silly.” Shane settles on the couch beside him, taking the book gently from Ilya’s tense grip. “I was traumatized, too, when I first read it.” Shane thinks of something, then. “Why are you reading it? Or, I mean, you didn’t read it before? I guess I just assumed you had, since you’re so obsessed with my stupid book report.”

Ilya shakes his head. “I never read it.” He gestures at the book weakly. “It’s on Lidiya’s class list this year, for advanced reading group. So I thought. I will read it now, so I’m not the only one, and maybe will understand why you and Kolya like it.”

Shane wraps his arms around Ilya’s shoulders tightly, kissing his temple. “And do you understand now?”

He feels Ilya’s smile pressed against his face, damp with tears. “I do.”

They stay enmeshed, Shane breathing deeply against Ilya’s neck, the warmth of him, the steady rise and fall of his chest in his arms, and he feels tears stinging his own eyes. Who was he kidding? Today isn’t ordinary. No day is ordinary. Each day, the easy ones, the hard ones, the anniversaries, the tragedies, the upheavals – all of them are gold coins to him. Entirely invaluable. He will hoard every last one.

“Oh fuck,” Shane says suddenly, pulling away. “The waffles need to go in the freezer.”

Ilya helps put away the groceries, gathering the beets into a bowl on the counter. “Is good you bought. Like you read my mind, like you knew I was thinking about her.”

“You’ll make it then, tonight?”

“Of course.” Ilya smiles and remembers his mother in their little Moscow kitchen, hands stained red, the sweet-earthy smell of beets roasting in the oven. “Maybe will teach them this time. Or Lidochka at least. Niko will not want to.”

“He’ll want to,” Shane assures.

They sweep through the kitchen in quiet choreography, cans finding their home in careful stacks on shelves, carrot sticks in the crisper drawer. Ilya looks over his shoulder to where Shane washes blackberries in a colander. “Do you want orchestra today, or speed skating?”

“I’ll take skating,” Shane says. “I made a reservation for myself at the practice rink.”

“Good.” Ilya is glad. Shane has found a new pattern in retirement, solitary skating like a meditation, just for the feeling of the burn in his legs and the rush of cold air.

Ilya takes orchestra. Today is a big day because Lidiya is getting a new cello. It turns out, cellos at this age, much like clothing and shoes and needing your dad to cut your chicken nuggets for you, can be outgrown.

“You are like hermit crab, Lidochka,” he tells her in the car ride home. “Every time you get bigger, a new cello for you to carry around on your back. So stop growing so much, yes?”

“I’ll try,” she promises earnestly, and it’s a promise she can’t keep, of course, but still, he loves that she makes it.

In the kitchen, they scrub the dirt from the beets and Ilya carefully guides Niko’s hands around the handle of a big sharp knife, which his son seems to recognize as an act of trust, and behaves accordingly. They stir onions and celery in a wide silver pot and peel the beets while they’re still hot from the oven, fingers staining pink and red, an inheritance. Lidiya samples a sprig of raw dill, immediately spits it out, and proclaims it tastes like if toothpaste grew in a forest. This punches a laugh out of Ilya so forceful he doubles over with it, wiping tears from his eyes, which might also partially be from the onions.

Shane observes all this from across the counter, like a dragon watches over its hoard of riches, Ilya thinks. Protective, vigilant, contented.

They eat the borscht with slices of brown bread and Niko’s face is magenta-pink by the end. He’ll go to school tomorrow with faint traces of the soup still stained around his lips, despite Shane’s best efforts with soap, elbow grease, and force of will.

In bed that night, they find the shape of each other, as they always do and have always done.

“We are this thing, I think,” Ilya whispers into Shane’s neck, and kisses the warm spot where his breath lands. “From the book.”

“What thing?”

Ilya buries his nose in his hair and smiles against his forehead. “Kindred spirits.”

Shane’s lips find Ilya’s, and the kiss is whisper-soft like the memory of a kiss, an echo, a prophecy. He takes Ilya’s face in his hands, thumb tracing the shape of him, solid and real and his.

“Yeah,” Shane breathes. “We really are.”