Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Carter Vaughn, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hockey Player Shane Hollander, New York Admirals Player Shane Hollander, Model Ilya Rozanov, POV Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Good Friend Carter Vaughn, Good Parents David Hollander/Yuna Hollander, New York City

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of in new york, you can try things

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-10 Completed: 2026-10-08 Words: 20,148 Chapters: 3/3

Three Meals in New York City

Summary

Now an official couple, Shane and Ilya have three meals together and with others.

Set in the middle of, immediately after, and some time after the epilogue of Into the Blue.

Notes

This continues the events of Into the Blue.

Chapter 1: blt on sourdough & grilled chicken in a whole wheat wrap

Chapter Summary

Shane and Ilya have lunch with Carter Vaughn.

Chapter Notes

This takes place during the epilogue of Into the Blue.

September 2017, New York City

Shane rubbed his palms over his face, squeezing his eyes shut underneath his fingers. Even without actually seeing it, the mess in the room felt like it was pressing in on him. 

He had spent so much time trying to get organized before they moved out of their apartments. The movers had been the ones to actually pack and unpack everything. It should have been all finished after that, except for the closets, which they were hiring people to come and help them organize, and the interior decorator who was helping them with the extra bedrooms. But the main stuff—especially the kitchen—should have been taken care of. 

How the fuck was there still so much unpacking and organizing left for them to do now that they were actually here? And how the fuck were they supposed to get it done before the season started?

“What is bothering you most right now?” Ilya’s voice came at him calmly from the other side of the kitchen. 

When Shane pulled his hands away, he saw him still sitting on the floor, where he had been reorganizing the pots and pans to bring the ones they used most often to the front of the cabinet. They both cooked rarely, so it made sense for things like the egg pan to be easiest to reach if they were going to, instead of the giant soup pot that Shane was pretty sure he’d never used a single time in his life. 

“Why the fuck is this so hard? We have more space than we did before, and we got rid of so much shit before we got here. Like, where the fuck did all of this come from?” 

Shane gestured to the two full sets of plates that had ended up coming with them, because apparently they’d forgotten that they’d both be bringing plates to the new apartment. 

When Ilya didn’t answer right away, Shane looked back at him—and found that he was examining two identical pans, which they each apparently used to cook eggs. Shane groaned, collapsing his arms down onto the countertop and letting his forehead rest against the cool marble. 

“Sorry, sorry, okay.” 

Shane heard the sound of both pans being put into the cabinet—which was not his preferred course of action on that, but, well, fucking whatever—and Ilya pulling himself up from the floor. 

“I just want to get this shit figured out,” Shane groaned, his head still pressed against the counter. “And we have to leave in like 30 minutes to have lunch with Vaughn.” 

They’d had it planned all week—Shane and Ilya finally getting together with Carter. Any nerves he felt about it, especially after the fucking club outing last year, had mostly been tamped down by how obviously excited Vaughn was. And while Ilya hadn’t explicitly said anything about the plan, he had marked off the time on the calendar on his phone, and had immediately made the new time work when they’d needed to reschedule. 

(Because, yeah. Ilya apparently kept his appointments all up to date in a calendar on his phone. And Shane now had access to it. Of all the insane things that had happened in the past year, that somehow felt like the craziest.)

“Mmm.” Ilya placed his hand on Shane’s back. 

It was pathetic, probably, how he immediately relaxed under the touch. But the solidity of the big, warm palm and outstretched fingers seemed to pull in some of his anxiety, like it was being sucked back into a box, closed up, and taken away. Calmer now, Shane exhaled and slowly stood up straight. 

Ilya was surveying the kitchen. After a moment, he looked back at Shane. 

“We should tell Carter to come here for lunch. I know,” he nodded his head, already anticipating Shane’s immediate objection. “It’s not as clean as you would like. But do you think he’ll care? He has already seen you at your most disgusting. He is in the locker room with you, I know how you must smell after you play.” 

Shane opened his mouth, slightly thrown off by this absolutely uncalled for remark, which was probably exactly the reason Ilya had dropped it in there. 

But he took a moment to think it through. It was true, Vaughn probably wouldn’t care about the change in plans, because he knew they had just moved. He also knew Shane well enough to understand the time pressure he was feeling to get everything settled and organized before they had to travel for preseason games at the end of the month, and before the regular season started after that. 

Vaughn also knew that Shane’s anxiety was at an all-time high, given the conversations he’d been having lately and his plan to fucking publicly come out of the closet a few days from now. If there was ever a time to ask for a little grace and a last minute change of plans, it was probably now. 

And, well—there was something kind of nice about the idea of Carter coming over and seeing Ilya already here, getting settled into the place alongside Shane. Like his first real introduction to Ilya would be seeing him already well-entrenched into Shane’s life. 

“Yeah, okay,” Shane said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll text him and see if he cares.” 

The return message came back almost immediately. 

Carter Vaughn
No worries man!!!!!!! 
I’ll bring food
Txt me your orders
Gonna go to deli g 💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾
That steak and cheese 🤤

Thanks. Really appreciate it. 
Could you get a BLT on sourdough (fries) and the grilled chicken on a whole wheat wrap? No mayo, with the potato salad (with no mayo) (if they don’t have it without mayo, then the pasta salad with pesto)

Carter Vaughn
U got it 
🫡

They kept going in the kitchen for the next 45 minutes. They figured out which set of plates to keep—Ilya’s were nicer, Shane admitted—but they couldn’t figure out which pan to keep for eggs. So both went back into the cabinet, at least for now. 

They looked up at the sound of the buzzer when it went off in the entryway. It was the first time they’d heard it since moving in, and signaled Vaughn’s arrival to the lobby of the building. 

“Fuck, I was at least going to change.” Shane lifted his arm to smell himself, grimacing slightly. 

Ilya just raised his eyebrows, graciously holding himself back from the obvious callback to locker room smells. Shane just sighed, dragging himself out of the kitchen and to the callbox next to the door, so he could tell the doorman to let Vaughn up. 

It only took another couple of minutes for the doorbell of the apartment to sound. Shane answered, standing back to let his friend inside. 

“Hey,” he said in greeting. “I should have just told the doorman you were coming, you could have come right up. Sorry, I lost track of time.” 

“Dude, no need to apologize. You’ve got a lot on your plate, it’s no biggie.” Vaughn entered with his usual broad smile and carrying a takeout bag. He paused in the doorway to kick the shoes off his feet, already looking around behind Shane at the rest of the apartment. “Shit, dude, this building is sick. I’m actually really glad you suggested this, I’m dying to see this fucking place.” 

Before Shane could respond, Carter cut him a sly look and added, “And your guy, obviously.” 

Shane made a non-committal noise at that—as distracted as he was by other things, his nerves about this particular meeting were suddenly creeping in. And where the fuck was Ilya? He had assumed he would follow him to greet Vaughn. 

He gestured for Carter to come further into the apartment, leading him back to the kitchen. It wasn’t the optimal place to start with a guest, but they’d just spent the last few hours in there making sure that it was decent, so it was the best Shane could do at the moment. 

Vaughn looked around with interest at the high ceilings and spacious kitchen as Shane took the bag from him, opening it up to place the deli cartons onto the clean kitchen island. Ilya had put the plates back into the cabinet—and placed Shane’s now superfluous set on a discreet corner of the counter—before he had disappeared to… wherever he’d gone. 

“The lighting in here is awesome, man. I liked the windows in your old place, but this is great,” Vaughn said approvingly. 

“Thanks—” Shane was distracted before he could give a real answer, as Ilya came back into the kitchen. 

His hair was freshly styled, and he was smoothing his hands down the front of a clean fucking shirt. 

Shane put the last takeout container on the counter and deadpanned at Ilya, who simply smiled at him. He looked fresh-faced, handsome, and clean, while Shane felt grimy and kind of itchy. But he couldn’t be too mad about it, because it was obvious that Ilya was trying to make a good impression on Shane’s friend. Even if he’d essentially told Shane that he stank, and left him to sit in it anyway. 

“Oh, hey!” Vaughn also perked up when he noticed that Ilya had entered the room. “How’s it going? Nice to meet you, Ilya.” 

He pronounced it something like Ill-i-ya. Shane corrected him automatically, “It’s Ilya.” 

Out of his peripheral vision, Shane caught the corners of Ilya’s mouth go up, and saw him glance at Vaughn. Vaughn was smiling back at Ilya, too. Some kind of look passed between them, but Shane couldn’t really understand what it was supposed to signify. 

“Ilya,” Vaughn tried again, this time much closer to the right way. 

“Nice to meet you too, Carter,” Ilya replied smoothly, stepping forward and leaning over the counter to grasp his hand in a brief shake. “Properly this time. Though, maybe it was better for you that we didn’t talk much last time? You were a bit busy, I think.” 

Ilya winked at Shane, who couldn’t help but snort at the memory of the disastrous night that Vaughn had also met Gloria Grey. 

“Yeah, like you weren’t,” he said before he could help himself. He was thinking about how Ilya had been all over the club that night in his anger at Shane—flirting with a girl in the VIP area, going downstairs multiple times and returning with a wrinkled shirt and rumpled hair that Shane had always assumed meant that he had been making out with someone on the dancefloor. 

The narrowed eyes that turned towards him signalled that a cutting remark was on its way, but before Ilya could say anything, Vaughny had already jumped in. 

“Uh, excuse me, flirted so hard with fuckin’ Rose Landry that she gave you her number and then you ghosted her,” Vaughn said, holding out his hand in Shane’s direction to emphasize the apparent seriousness of the offense. 

Shane opened his mouth to defend himself, but Ilya was standing across from him, hands flat on the countertop, looking like the fucking cat that got the canary. Vaughn was already laughing, either at the look on Ilya’s face, or maybe the one on Shane’s. 

All Shane could do was look between the two of them and wonder why the fuck he had wanted to do this in the first place. 

“Carter, may I offer you a drink? Can we give you a tour?” Ilya asked politely, smiling pleasantly at Shane as he pulled himself away from the counter. 

“It’s messy,” Shane added. Neither of them were listening to him. 

“I’ll take whatever you’ve got in the fridge. Extra points if it’s not ginger ale,” Vaughny clapped Shane on the back roughly as he walked around the counter to head to the fridge. 

“Well, you know there is ginger ale,” Ilya agreed, walking in the same direction. “But let us see your other options.”  

Vaughny held his beer carefully as they walked through the apartment. 

Shane had started in the living room, which was sparsely decorated but ready for use, with Shane’s couch, Ilya’s armchairs and throw pillows, and a brand new television mounted on the wall. The rest of the room was bare, waiting for further decisionmaking. Shane had been inclined to just ask his usual interior decorator for help, but Ilya had insisted they could figure it out themselves from the things they’d brought from their own apartments. Several framed options were still wrapped in bubble wrap, leaning against the wall, waiting to be displayed in the right spots. 

There was a large balcony accessible from the living room, and a second, smaller one from the primary bedroom. Shane started the next part of the tour there, in his bedroom—their bedroom, the one that he now shared with Ilya. 

But he took Vaughn through quickly, since the walk-in closet was still a mess—they were still waiting to work with the professional organizers who were going to help them make sense of combining their wardrobes and making the best use of the enormous space attached to the bedroom. 

More importantly than the closet, though, Shane wasn’t actually convinced they’d remembered to put the lube back in the drawer this morning. He rushed them past the king-sized bed, with the dark orange rug from Ilya’s old room underneath it, and the large houseplant from Shane’s old room in the corner by the entrance to the balcony. 

Ilya hung back while Shane showed Vaughn the big en-suite bathroom, complete with a standalone tub right next to the massive window that looked out over a view of the city. When they came out again, Ilya was standing next to the closed drawer of the nightstand. He winked at Shane when they made eye contact. 

They made quicker work of the other three bedrooms, because there wasn’t much to see in them yet. Shane showed him the actual guest room, first, and then the one that would be the office, next—not that either of them really knew what they would be using an office for. Meetings over phone or video, probably. 

“Damn, Holly,” Vaughn said approvingly as they made their way through the hallway. “This is nice. Y’all did great work putting this place together so far.” 

“Holly, is this what the boys call you?” Ilya asked with interest. 

Shane blinked at him, realizing for the first time that Ilya might not have actually known this, since he had never met anyone from the team before—except at the club, when he hadn’t stayed around long enough to hear Vaughn and Wagner call Shane much of anything. 

“Oh, yeah. I guess you must just call him Shane. That’s kinda funny,” Vaughn mused. “I honestly forget that’s his actual name half the time.”  

Ilya and Shane spoke at the same time. 

“Well, I have never called him Holly.” 

“He calls me Hollander all the fucking time.” 

Shane cut a look at Ilya, who smirked. Vaughn looked between the two of them, clearly not understanding the joke, but smiling a little anyway. 

“...Huh,” he said after a moment. “...that’s kinda hot, actually. I should get Glo to call me Vaughn.” 

Shane was still looking at Ilya, and knew they were both thinking about their fight, the moment that Ilya had thrown this whole thing about their names back in his face—Rozanov, Hollander, I am what, your fucking bro? 

It was hard to believe that agonizing moment had almost been six months ago, and that they’d come this far from it already. Now, still, his mind went there when he thought of Ilya calling him Hollander—but it also went to the way he’d sounded the last time they’d had sex in Shane’s old apartment, just to say goodbye. The name had popped out in a long, low groan as Ilya had buried himself inside of Shane as he was bent over the marble countertop of the kitchen island. Oh fucking Christ, Hollander, you feel so fucking good.

It was weird to hear Vaughn call it hot now. It was weirder still to feel like… yeah, it definitely was. 

Ilya was still smirking at him, which meant that he thought so, too. Shane was pretty sure that if Vaughn wasn’t here right now, he’d be pushing him into one of the bedrooms they’d just toured and finding a new part of the apartment to break in together. 

But Ilya was on his best behavior in front of Shane’s friend, so he simply averted his eyes and smiled at the wall. Honestly, the good behavior itself was kind of doing it for Shane, too. 

The last stop on the tour was the smallest bedroom, which was, as he explained to Vaughn, going to be Shane’s trophy room.

“It’s not set up yet, though,” Shane said, stating the obvious, gesturing at the empty shelving and the many boxes cluttering the floor. 

“Good lord, dude.” Vaughn whistled, maybe at the special lighting Shane had gotten installed, or at the sheer number of boxes waiting to be unpacked. 

Behind him, Ilya laughed quietly. Shane, who had already heard enough about the Shane Shrine, turned around to glare at him, ready to defend himself. But Ilya was smiling at him so fondly that the expression immediately dropped from Shane’s face. With Vaughn’s focus on the room in front of them, Ilya reached out to briefly pinch his cheek. 

Shane batted him away as Vaughn turned back to them.

“How many units are in the building?” 

“Uh, about 30 units in the place, I think? There’s a fitness center downstairs, and a good courtyard. Oh, there’s also a good rooftop space. It’s pretty big. You can rent it out for parties, and stuff.” Shane was rambling, and he could tell Ilya was already filing this away to make fun of him later, probably to tease him about preparing for a post-hockey career as a real estate agent. It wasn’t Shane’s fault he had looked into the building before he’d actually bought a fucking place in it. 

But Vaughn took it in an entirely different direction. “So what I’m hearing is… you’re hosting the holiday party.” 

He turned to Ilya to explain, ignoring Shane’s immediate visceral reaction. “The team does a swank Christmas party every year. It used to be at our old captain’s place, Farraday—he had a nice place in the Upper West Side. Huff’s done it the last few years, since he has a lot of space out at his spot, and mine and Hollander’s apartments weren’t ideal for it before. But now… I think it’s all Holly!” 

Shane was wincing, but unfortunately, there was some sense to it—especially with Huff retiring at the end of the season, someone would have to take it over from him. The space on the roof was big enough for the party, which was typically just the team and spouses. And since it was covered, it would be good for a winter party, too. 

The holidays were months away, and Vaughn had just suggested it offhand, but Shane already felt a prickle of anxiety at the back of his neck at the idea. He would have hated hosting at any moment in time. But this year was going to be a totally different question, given what he had shared with the locker room the other day. Sure, it had seemed to go well, but Shane had no fucking clue how it would actually turn out, how the guys would actually feel about him—or act around him—by December. 

He felt a light hand on his back, a thumb sliding briefly along the nape of his neck before the touch was gone altogether. 

“You are asking too much, Vaughn,” Ilya said, his tone light and joking. “December party assumes we will have finished unpacking by then, and you know Shane. Everything will need to be in exactly the right place, then double-checked, and probably done again. So it will take us until the end of your season.” 

Ilya brushed past him, nodding at Vaughn as they started down the hallway again. “Next year is better, I think.” 

“Yeah, you know, fair enough,” Vaughn agreed, walking side-by-side with Ilya. “We can let Huff do it one last time before he moves back to Canada.” 

Shane exhaled, a few steps behind them, relieved at how quickly the problem had been diffused—and that Ilya had done it for him with such ease. 

“Should we eat?” He asked. 

They ate at the big kitchen island, because the dining room seemed too formal for just the three of them and some food from the deli. 

Shane ate his wrap first, already concerned that letting it sit for any longer would make it soggy. He looked at Vaughn’s plate, with its steak sandwich and fries, and then at the BLT and fries on Ilya’s plate. 

“Aren’t your fries cold?” 

Vaughn shrugged, and Ilya chose not to answer at all. Instead, he took one off his plate, keeping eye contact with Shane as he ate it. 

Shane watched him. He couldn’t help but imagine what the texture of it must have been like—limp, starchy, and kind of mealy on the inside. “Cold fries seem like they’d be even worse than hot ones.” 

Even mid-bite of his steak and cheese sandwich, Vaughn groaned at the reminder of their years-long argument over the fact that Shane didn’t like french fries. 

“Good thing no one is holding you down and forcing you to eat one, then,” Ilya said, looking at Shane like they both knew that if Vaughn wasn’t here, he might try to do exactly that. 

Vaughn laughed, and Shane rolled his eyes. 

“How is Gloria?” Ilya asked, thankfully changing the subject. “She is filming a big series now, isn’t she?” 

Vaughn was thrilled about the change to his favorite subject. Shane had already heard about this when he’d seen Vaughn for lunch at his own place a few weeks ago, but he listened again as Vaughn told Ilya about the sci-fi show that Gloria was currently filming. It was based on a popular video game that Shane had heard of, but had never actually played.  

Ilya was nodding along. “I know Jeremy Kobayashi, he is also in it, with a smaller part, I think.” 

“Yeah! Glo mentioned him, she said that he’s weird as hell.” 

“Yes, he is very weird, but nice guy. He dated my friend for some time, but she thought he had bad taste.” 

“Oh, word? Like in movies or something?” 

“Mm, no, she said that his shoes were trying too hard.” 

“Huh. I’m gonna ask Gloria what she thinks about that, she always has opinions about mine.” 

Shane finished his food, mostly listening as this went on, since he didn’t have much to add about the TV series, Svetlana’s ex-boyfriend, or shoes, generally. He took his plate to the sink, brushing lightly against Ilya in the process. He smiled when he felt a hand reach out to grab his waist as he passed. 

“Okay, so,” Vaughn said as Shane came back to the kitchen island. He was smiling again, too, looking between them. “Let’s get into it. I want to hear all about you two.” 

Shane slid back onto the stool next to Ilya. They exchanged a quick look, Ilya’s eyes telling him that he was leading on this one. 

“What do you want to know?” Shane asked. 

“Well, I know it took you almost a decade to get your shit together, so let’s start there.” Vaughn was shaking his head in disbelief, the same way he had the first time Shane had talked to him about this. “The fuck was that about?” 

“That’s…” Shane looked at Ilya again, who was smiling when he looked back this time. He didn’t know how to continue the sentence. 

“That is a conversation probably best had over drinks,” Ilya said, covering his smile as he wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Not during a nice lunch while Shane is worrying about the two French presses.” 

“We have two French presses?” Shane turned around to look at the counter where they’d left the coffee-related kitchen stuff next to Ilya’s espressomaker. How the fuck had he missed that they’d each brought a French press with them? 

“You know what, you’re right,” Vaughn agreed, closing the top of his takeout container with a snap. He got up to throw it away, and to wash his hands at the sink. “Also, Gloria’s going to want to hear about it, if you’re up for that.” 

“I will take as big an audience as possible for everyone to hear about the torture that Shane put me through.” Ilya patted Shane’s back as he said it. 

“Me?! You—” Shane pulled himself away to frown at Ilya, who was still smirking around the last few fries going into his mouth. 

“I got bad news for you, brother,” Vaughn shook his head as he came back to the kitchen island, cutting in over Shane. “Gloria is obsessed with Holls. She’s gonna be on his side just for the principle of it.” 

Shane was surprised at this, but kind of touched to hear it. He had only met Gloria a couple of times since she and Vaughn had started dating—a few small dinners, and one time she’d met up with them after a game for a drink. But he liked her, too. She seemed thoughtful, with a dry kind of humor. It was a good contrast to Vaughn’s loud, gregarious personality. And Vaughn was clearly serious about her—it was the most enthusiastic Shane had ever seen him about a relationship in the seven years they’d known each other. 

It made him realize, too, how much he had denied himself by never letting Vaughny and Ilya meet before this. Even if it had just been a few small dinners and drinks one time after a game, they might have had the chance to leave the same kind of impression on each other. 

And Vaughn had been with Gloria for a fraction of the time that Ilya and Shane had been doing this thing together—though maybe that was the point. Maybe the definition of the relationship was the crucial part, and Gloria and Vaughn had months on Shane and Ilya in that department. 

“You will be on my side though, right, Vaughn?” Ilya asked, pulling Shane’s attention back to the conversation. 

“I mean, obviously. I know how cranky Holly gets after 9pm. Or if his fiber content is off. Or if someone else scores first before him in a game.” Vaughn looked like he could come up with these examples all day. “Imagine trying to date the guy. You’ve gotta have the patience of a saint, bro.” 

A wide grin split Ilya’s face, which he slowly turned in Shane’s direction, grabbing him by the shoulder to shake him back and forth. “I have literally said this!” 

Shane tilted his head back, shaking his head at the ceiling for a brief moment as Ilya jostled him. “I don’t like this. Go back to not knowing each other.” 

But he didn’t mean it. This was fucking great, actually. 

“Hey, have you heard of that thing, ‘black cat girlfriend, golden retriever boyfriend?’” Vaughn asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after gulping down a large sip of water. 

Ilya nodded, while Shane said, “No.”

“Basically, it means a couple where they’re kind of opposite, like one is kind of moody and mysterious, like a black cat. And the other one is goofy and shit, like a golden retriever,” Vaughn explained. 

Shane nodded, but shrugged at the same time. It sounded kind of dumb, though he got the gist. 

“Glo and I were laughing about it, because it’s one hundred percent us,” Vaughn continued. “She is most definitely a little black cat, and I’d like to think I’m a black lab, not a golden retriever, but it still fits.” 

“And I feel like it fits you guys, too,” he said, gesturing at Shane and Ilya, one-by-one. “You’ve got the dumb puppy playing sports over here, and the fuckin’ black cat model over here.” 

Before Shane could object to how insane it was to be called a dumb puppy, Ilya was already shaking his head. But apparently not in defense of his fucking boyfriend. 

“No, no, Carter,” Ilya said seriously. “I am the good natured dog between us. Shane is pissy like a cat.” 

“Oh, you’re good natured?” Shane scoffed incredulously. 

Ilya turned on him with narrowed eyes. “Hiss, kitty cat.” 

“You know what? I can see it.” Vaughn was actually nodding his head in agreement with this, which Shane considered grounds for stripping him of his alternate captaincy, to be honest. “Shane definitely has black cat energy. He gets so fuckin’ mad if you splash him with water.” 

“And is very fussy about washing himself,” Ilya added, causing Shane to turn and stare at him to make sure he didn’t say another fucking word about whatever was going through his mind as he let that out. 

“It’s kinda subversive, actually. Because, you know, it’s literally called a catwalk.” Vaughn continued, moving his arms and shoulders back and forth in a slinky way, apparently imitating a cat walking down a fucking runway. “But you don’t actually think of a cat playing sports, you know?” 

“But,” Ilya countered, lifting a hand to gesture at Vaughn in agreement. “Dog could be a good model. They are very photogenic.” 

“What the fuck are we even talking about?” asked Shane. 

“But Carter, you must know,” Ilya broke in again, reaching over to pat Shane’s hand lightly, which was how he knew something fucking crazy was about to come out of his mouth. 

“In a relationship with two men, there are no pussies.” 

“Oh my god.” Shane groaned, leaning his head into his hands as he stared at the countertop. Carter cracked up, loudly, his strongest laugh echoing through the high ceilings and wide-open space of the new apartment. 

“You dogs,” he crowed, slapping his hand on the surface of the kitchen island. 

Shane didn’t even have to look at Ilya to know how fucking pleased he probably was.

They went out to the balcony afterwards. There wasn’t any furniture yet—the chairs, tables, and couch they’d ordered as patio furniture had yet to arrive. So the three of them leaned on the railing together, surveying the view.  

“This is great, dudes.” Vaughn said approvingly, watching the people walk on the High Line below. Shane tried not to fixate on how easily he had added an ‘s’ to the end of the word. 

“Oh,” he said suddenly, remembering something he’d meant to bring up with Vaughn. “Hey, are we still on for dinner at the end of the month? My parents are trying to plan a trip here, and I want to figure out the dates with them.” 

Vaughn looked excited, and Shane wasn’t surprised to receive a hearty back pat at just the reminder about the dinner they’d discussed having when Gloria was in the city in a few weeks. 

“Fuck yeah, dude, we definitely are. Gloria says Rose is really excited about it, too, now that she knows you didn’t actually ghost her.” 

On Shane’s other side, Ilya suddenly looked sullen. He leaned onto his arms on the railing, rolling his eyes. “Oh, yes, have fun on your double date.” 

Shane exhaled as he looked at him, barely suppressing an exasperated glare. As if it was his fucking fault that Ilya was going to be in LA for the same week they were talking about. “Come on.” 

“What?” Ilya shrugged at him, still curling his body over the railing like he was somehow being wounded. “She gave you her number, no? Really excited about it, he just said.” 

“Ilya.” Shane barely held himself back from saying I’m gay, asshole. “She’s only coming because Carter told her that I didn’t text her in the first place because I was figuring something out with someone else. And that I felt bad about it and wanted to be friends with her.” 

“Mmm.” Ilya tilted his head away, squinting at the sun like a sulky dick. “Big hockey fan, just making friends with big hockey star. I know that story.” 

“That’s—you know what, shut up.” Shane decided to just leave it alone and not go back and forth on this absolutely insane topic for any longer. He turned to Carter, apologetic. “Sorry.” 

But Vaughny was grinning like this was the best interaction he’d seen all day. 

“Oh no, dude. I mean, yeah, that’s low-key toxic, but it is kinda what you want to see someone feeling about your boy. He knows you’re a catch.” 

And this, insanely, got Ilya to smile. He fixed the expression on Vaughn first, and then on Shane. As fucking stupid as the last two minutes had been, Shane smiled back at him, and he knew that his expression was probably unbelievably fond. 

“I like this guy for you,” Vaughn declared, clapping Shane on the shoulder again. 

“Thank you, Vaughn,” Ilya replied politely, still holding Shane’s eyes. After a moment, he reached out to pat his cheek. “I like you for Shane, too.” 

Between the solid hand on his shoulder and the one on his face, Shane felt a warmth flowing all the way through him. It may have taken him too long to get to this point, but now that he was here, it was hard to believe how fucking great it was. All he wanted to do was laugh at the two idiots on either side of him. He couldn’t wait to keep hanging out with both of them. 

Later, Ilya cleaned up the dishes in the sink while Shane walked Vaughny to the door. They’d all agreed to hang out again before the season started, maybe even with Gloria if she could get to the city for a day or two. 

“Dude,” Vaughn said as he knelt on the ground, tying his sneakers back on his feet. “What a fucking pull. He’s fuckin’ awesome, man.” 

Shane smiled, leaning against the wall. He shrugged, like it was no big deal—like the last two months hadn’t been fucking perfect, like he wasn’t happy beyond belief to have made it to this point at all. “Yeah.” 

“The way he says my name?” Shoes tied, Vaughny stood up again, pressing his hand against his heart. “Fucking dreamy. Cart-ter.” 

It was a poor imitation of Ilya’s accent, but Shane laughed anyway. He shook his head, straightening up from the wall. 

“Thanks for coming over. The moving shit has been exhausting, it was a huge help to just be able to stay here and keep organizing.” 

“No worries,” Vaughny said good naturedly. “It was awesome to see you in your space together. I’m coming back when it’s all set up to see what it looks like.” 

“Of course,” Shane agreed. 

Vaughn stood in front of him for a moment, regarding him with obvious affection. Shane could feel himself starting to get slightly uncomfortable in the face of such open warmth, but Vaughn broke the moment soon enough by ruffling his hair. 

“I’m excited to get to know him better, Holly. It’s really cool to meet someone who’s important to you like this.” 

Shane was already reaching up, running his hand through his hair to try and undo whatever damage Vaughn had done. But his response was genuine. “I’m really excited for that, too.” 

Once Vaughn had left, Shane went back towards the kitchen, expecting to find Ilya still cleaning up. Instead, he found him in the living room, looking at the large picture frames that they’d each brought from their respective apartments, still encased in bubble wrap and waiting to be hung on the walls. 

He looked up when he saw Shane enter. “Was fun.” 

“Yeah?” Shane came over to stand by him, touching the picture frames to try and discern what each of them were. 

Ilya reached up, flicking his fingers through Shane’s hair to get the part to sit correctly. “Yes. He is very funny. Definitely much cooler than you, you should feel lucky he wants to be your friend.” 

Shane rolled his eyes, but tilted his head down to let Ilya finish fixing his hair. “He liked you too.” 

“This makes sense. He has good taste.” Ilya turned his attention back to the frames, clearly looking for something specific. Shane stepped back to give him more room, even though he had no idea how he could tell what anything was, with how well-wrapped the frames were. 

After a moment, Shane couldn’t help himself. “You’re so weird about Rose Landry.” 

“Mmm,” Ilya dropped to kneel on the ground, apparently finding what he was looking for. He carefully pulled the large frame out from towards the back of the stack. 

“Yes, because I assumed you were going to stop all of this to be with a woman eventually, and after seeing you talk together, thought it could be her.” He said it absently, as he rested the frame against his leg and stood up from the ground. 

He said it like it cost nothing for him to say, but Shane knew him well enough to understand that this was the kind of thought that came from deep inside of Ilya. 

He knew, too, that Ilya was only saying it to him now because they had crossed over into a new place, together. Six months ago, he would have never gotten an answer like that. Shane felt absurdly grateful to be here, now, with him. 

He didn’t say that, though. Instead he watched Ilya start to unwrap the painting now leaning against his legs, and spoke only after a long pause. 

“Wait, so… that’s why you were withholding your dick from me? After LA?” 

Ilya paused with his task, dragging his eyes up to glare at Shane. “And still, there you were, begging for it with your… eyes.” 

Shane’s eyebrows immediately went up. “My eyes.” 

“Yes, those fucking eyes.” 

“My fucking eyes.” 

“Yes!” Ilya burst out, irritated, abandoning the bubble wrap to glower at him. 

Shane rolled his lips together to cover the smile that was threatening to break over his face. “Glad it worked, then.”

“It will always work,” Ilya grunted, returning to his task. “Those fucking eyes. They get to me. Every time.”

Shane wanted to go to him and kiss him, like, right now, but with the large painting emerging from the padding that had been covering it, it didn’t seem like the right moment. 

And then, as it came into view, he was distracted by the thing Ilya was actually holding. 

It was the weird painting with multi-colored geometric shapes that had been on the wall of Ilya’s apartment. Shane had spent years staring at it and trying to decide if he even liked it, and had ultimately determined, no, probably not… actually, definitely not. 

“Wait, I thought you weren’t bringing that,” Shane said, coming over to look at it more closely. 

“Never said that.” Ilya straightened up, turning the painting around to look at it. 

“It doesn’t even go with anything,” Shane insisted, looking around at the living room. It was hard to make this case, given that the walls were all bare and the room itself looked pretty sparse, other than the boxes still cluttering one side. 

“There is nothing for it to go with! The couch is fucking grey!” Ilya gestured with his free hand. 

Shane exhaled, waiting until Ilya had set the painting aside, resting it against the wall again. He allowed himself to go over to him then, slipping his arms around him. 

“You have bad taste.” Shane finally leaned in to kiss him. 

“My taste is fucking great,” Ilya insisted, winding his arms around Shane in turn. “Just like Vaughny.” 

“Both like cold fries,” Ilya continued, pulling another laugh from Shane as he leaned his head against him. “And angry little black kitty cats.”

Chapter End Notes

I know that the “golden retriever boyfriend/black cat girlfriend” meme wasn’t around in 2017, but let’s allow it to exist early in this AU—I needed a way to bring Carter “cats and dogs! fuckin’ beauties” Vaughn into the world.

Also!! Ilya makes a silly joke about a relationship with two men not having any pussy in it. This author believes that gender is a construct and some men have pussies. In 2026, this version of Ilya Rozanov thinks the same thing, too.

Chapter 2: spaghetti pomodoro & pappardelle with wild boar ragu

Chapter Summary

Shane and Ilya have dinner with the Hollanders.

Chapter Notes

This takes place 10 minutes after the epilogue of Into the Blue.

DECEMBER 2017, NEW YORK CITY

It felt silly, taking a car for a 20 minute walk—maybe 30, at most. The idea had been to pick up Shane’s parents first, but the Hollanders had opted to meet them at the restaurant. So now he and Shane were crawling down towards Hudson Street when they should have been outside in the chilly December air. 

Walking, also, might have extinguished some of their nervous energy. Shane was doing his best to hide his, but Ilya could tell from the anxious motion of his fingers clenching around the hem of his jacket. His knee wasn’t jogging up and down, but Ilya could see the ghost of the movement even in the dark car. He was glancing out of the window of the black SUV every few moments, checking its progress downtown. 

When he felt Ilya’s eyes on the side of his face, though, he smiled. 

“You good?” 

Ilya paused to consider the question. If he was going to expect a truthful answer from Shane, he had to give one himself. 

Yes, he was nervous, probably. Though he wasn’t entirely sure what nerves felt like for him these days. 

Being in front of a camera hadn’t come naturally to him, at first, and he had put a lot of time and energy into overcoming his nerves when a lens pointed at him. It had resurged, a bit, a few months ago when he’d been on set in front of a film camera. That had been different—he’d spent a few minutes at the beginning wondering if the lines he’d memorized might fall out of his head, or if he’d suddenly lose the ability to speak English entirely. But it had only taken a second to unfreeze, for his mind to unstick itself, and everything had moved on as normal. 

Before that, though, it had been a long time since he’d been nervous on a runway, or during a photo shoot, or any of the other situations where all of the eyes were on him. He was numb to all of that by now. That wasn't where nerves appeared for him, anymore.

When he thought of nerves, he thought of the drive from the Ottawa airport in July. He thought of the walk to Shane’s apartment in April, before their disastrous fight. Two different outcomes, and neither applicable here; because this time, Shane was with him, next to him, and this was something they were doing together. There were nerves, but they could be overcome.

“Yes, I’m good,” Ilya answered, with that settled. “You?” 

Shane exhaled, and Ilya was glad, because that meant he wasn’t going to pretend he was fine. 

“I mean…” Shane started, glancing out the window again. “I’m not nervous for them to meet you. But what if you think they’re… I don’t know, weird?” 

“I already think you’re weird,” Ilya answered helpfully. “So it will make sense, with genetics.” 

Even in the dark, Ilya could see Shane roll his eyes, mouthing to himself, wow, genetics.

“We should have just walked,” he mumbled out loud. 

“It is fine, we’re almost there.” Ilya shrugged. Shane was right, of course, but telling him that when they were already committed to the drive wouldn’t help matters. 

But he reached out across the space between them, taking one of the hands away from Shane’s jacket hem and holding it securely. Shane adjusted his grip, squeezing back. 

They had chosen to meet at a nice Italian restaurant in the West Village. Ilya had been there a few times, enough to feel confident to reach out when getting the reservation to ask for a quiet table in the back. It was a small but lively place, with dim lighting and a menu that Shane could feel comfortable eating the night before a game. 

They arrived five minutes before the time they had said they would meet the Hollanders. But still, when they gave Ilya’s name at the host stand, they were told that the rest of their party had already arrived. 

As they made their way to the back of the restaurant, Ilya reflected that there may have been more than a little bit of nervous energy permeating through all of them. In the elder Hollanders, it may have manifested as eagerness. 

The table was in a quiet corner, as he’d hoped, where they could have some privacy. Still, as he caught sight of two uncannily familiar faces that he had never seen in person before, he could feel himself tensing. A hand touched his back, solid even through his wool coat, and he didn’t have to look at Shane to feel his reassurance. 

He had seen the Hollanders’ faces many times before, of course: for years in pictures in Shane’s apartment, occasionally on the television screen in the crowd at his games, and most recently, through the phone screen. 

He generally tried to give Shane space to speak with his parents privately, not least because it felt strange to talk to them on FaceTime before they met in person. But the seal had been broken, accidentally, not long after they moved in together. Ilya had been on his way to the shower—still fully clothed, thank God—when he’d passed by Shane on the phone. Ilya hadn’t realized it was a video call until he’d already swooped down over the back of the sofa, leaning in to kiss his cheek. 

It had been very quick, but long enough to catch sight of Mrs. Hollander, eyebrows raised as she clearly paused in the middle of a sentence. Shane’s face had been red in the tiny screen of his phone, but he had been smiling. Ilya had quickly continued on to the shower. 

Since then, if Ilya passed by while Shane was speaking to his parents—video call or not—he would at least politely give his regards, and always received the same in return. 

Now, though, the moment had finally arrived. 

The Hollanders stood up to greet them as they approached the table. Ilya tried not to stand stiffly as Shane removed his hand from his back. He kept walking, past Ilya, to hug them both in greeting. 

“Hey,” he said, embracing his mother first, then his father. “Really glad you guys could come.” 

“Um.” The pause gave away Shane’s nervous energy, and Ilya could feel it radiating in the air between all four of them. Shane took a step back, so that he was standing next to Ilya again, hands shoved into his pockets. 

“This is Ilya. Rozanov. I mean… I guess you knew that.” 

“Hello,” he said, as if he hadn’t met thousands of people in his life—hundreds of thousands, for all he knew—and greeted them normally. He swallowed slowly, hoping it would take the sticky feeling out of his throat, as he stepped forward in front of Shane, holding his hand out to shake each of their hands in turn. 

“Ilya,” Yuna Hollander said, with perfect pronunciation. “It’s so nice to meet you.” 

“I’m pleased to meet you too, Mr. and Mrs. Hollander.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could tell that Shane was looking at him but refused to look back. He thought any kind of reassuring smile at this point might only further impact his ability to speak. 

“Please, call us Yuna and David,” David Hollander said. He gestured towards their seats. “We’re glad you boys could come out for a meal. This place looks great.” 

It took them a moment to get situated. Once seated, Ilya pressed his hands to his knees to stop himself from fidgeting. Shane immediately reached for his glass of water, mere seconds after the server had poured it. So, both still nervous. 

Yuna Hollander didn’t allow the awkwardness to settle. As the sommelier came with the bottle of wine they’d chosen, she immediately turned the conversation to tomorrow night’s game against Boston. Shane visibly loosened at the discussion, which gave Ilya time to prepare himself for the inevitable getting-to-know-you question-and-answer that he knew was coming.

The Hollanders were still talking about hockey when the server came to take their orders. Shane had carefully looked at the menu ahead of time to figure out a meal that would fit into his pre-game regimen. As planned, he ordered the spaghetti pomodoro as his first course. Ilya, who has no requirements except for his own palate, chose the pappardelle with wild boar ragu. The Hollander parents ordered a pasta to share, and then a whole branzino for the table, along with nearly every side dish on the menu, for a family-style second course. 

“So,” Yuna said, and Ilya pressed his palms down onto the tops of his knees again in preparation. “Ilya, are you looking forward to the game tomorrow?” 

“Yes, I am,” he said, wondering why his accent suddenly sounded like he had arrived from Russia yesterday, instead of nearly a decade ago. “I have been to Admirals games before, but I know this will be very different.” 

It was the same kind of logic they’d used with Shane’s coming out post and Ilya’s follow-on announcing himself as his boyfriend—just rip the bandage off. All of the attention was going to be on Shane and Scott Hunter as they played their first game of the season against each other, why not also have Ilya join the Hollanders in Shane’s friends and family seats? 

He wasn’t sure who was more nervous about it, him or Shane—but he knew who was doing a better job at hiding their nerves. 

Shane’s leg was already jumping up and down, and he reached for his water glass for another long sip. It was nearly empty already. Ilya slid his leg out a few inches, tapping his foot against Shane’s. The leg settled. 

“No kidding,” David mused, shaking his head. “Big game like that, between the 2016 and 2017 champs? Gonna be huge. Oh, is that not what we’re talking about here?” 

He winked at Ilya, who laughed more out of surprise than anything. But the joke seemed to effectively pull Shane out of his head a bit, as he exhaled a laugh, and Yuna smiled fondly. 

She opened her mouth again as she picked up her wine glass—to ask him another question, Ilya assumed—but Shane spoke first. 

“How’s the hotel?” 

It was apparently one they hadn’t tried before. They each answered—David liked the location, Yuna didn’t like the layout of the bed vis-a-vis the closet door. Shane kept them on the subject of their New York trip for a little while longer, until Yuna won out and managed to draw Ilya into the small talk. 

She asked him about some of the recent work he’d done lately, eventually leading to a series of questions to reiterate the basic information they’d learned about him from Shane, which he answered dutifully: moved from Russia in 2010; originally from Moscow; 26 years old; started modeling when he was a teenager; got into it because of a friend who started shortly before him and introduced him to her agent; had lived in New York since coming to the United States, except for very a brief period of time in Boston with his friend; lived not very far from Shane before they both moved; yes, he had been to the restaurant before; yes, he liked Italian food very much. 

He only faltered when David asked him what he did for fun. He caught Shane staring at the side of his face, and quickly turned to meet his eye.

Shane was giving him the kind of warning look that suggested he thought he was going to say something absurd. Ilya shook his head in return, slightly offended—because, what, did he expect him to say, your son? 

“The last few months have been very busy,” he said honestly, turning back to the Hollanders. “With moving and traveling for work, I think most fun time has been seeing friends or just being able to relax a bit.” 

“He reads a lot, too,” Shane offered. Ilya smiled a bit. 

“Maybe not a lot, but sometimes.” He shrugged. Shane nudged his knee under the table. 

“We’re going to have to pick your brain about books,” Yuna said, sitting back to make room as the starters arrived at the table. “Since I bet you don’t only read ones about hockey.” 

Ilya smiled as Shane immediately protested. “You gave me the book that I’m reading right now!” 

“Ilya, do you like Broadway shows?” David asked, picking up his fork for his salad. 

“Ah, I don’t know very much about them,” he said apologetically, also reaching for his fork. 

He listened, eating his salad, while David and Yuna explained the premise of the show they were planning to see later in their trip. Under the table, Shane’s knee rested comfortably against his.

It gave him a chance to watch the Hollanders together. 

He could see Shane in both of them: in Yuna’s focus, but also in David’s quiet assessment of his surroundings, how he blinked around the room a bit when he wasn’t directly involved in conversation. In Yuna’s face and mannerisms, but also in David’s body language. 

There was a rhythm between them, too. Yuna was more outwardly vocal, perhaps, but David didn’t seem held back by any particular reticence, just a preference for listening, perhaps. Even from the short conversation, their reliance on each other was clear. They weren’t passive with each other: the relationship was symbiotic, each of them drawing from the other—fragments of sentences, short nods in agreement. Leaning on each other. 

Ilya wasn’t sure he had ever seen a relationship like this, with its visible solidity. It was evident even in the way Yuna reached to pick up the napkin when David dropped it on the floor between them, how David had let Yuna taste the wine they’d ordered to decide if she liked it. 

It was an adult relationship out of a book or a movie, the way he had always heard it was supposed to be. He couldn’t say he had ever seen one like this before—a machine oiled with love and mutual respect for each other. 

It was strange to realize that a relationship could actually look like this. It was equally strange to realize that this was what Shane had grown up with; that he had spent his childhood with a relationship like this at the helm of the household. 

Ilya suddenly had the sense that if he had seen this a year ago—let alone two years ago—he would have easily used it as an explanation for why nothing could ever truly move forward between the two of them. He might have used it as a reason to bolt from Shane Hollander entirely, or at least to try. He wouldn’t have gotten very far. 

But there was simply no world where Ilya would have thought, in 2015 or 2016, that he’d be able to replicate this kind of relationship dynamic with Shane, or ever be this kind of presence for him. 

Now, though, he wondered what he and Shane looked like together when other people saw them. What invisible languages flowed between them? 

And, he couldn’t stop his greedy mind from wondering, what languages would build over time? He scarcely dared to think about it—the silent rhythms that could exist ten, twenty years from now. It was an absurd thought, fanciful now, with how recently things had come together. 

But it was hard not to want to think about it, with the weight of Shane’s strong leg resting against his under the table. 

The conversation had shifted by the time the second wine had been selected and they were digging into their pasta course. 

“So,” Yuna said again, carefully sipping from her wine before setting the glass on the table. 

It was only the second time he had heard it, but Ilya was already beginning to recognize the particular note in her voice. Next to him, he could feel that Shane had tensed again, too. 

“I hear you two met on the night of the NHL draft,” she continued. “Shane insists he won’t tell the story right.” 

Ilya had no doubt about that. Shane couldn’t talk about the night they met in the gym without turning red and looking at the opposite wall, radiating a perfect depiction of the word horny. He could only imagine what impression he’d given his parents when that had come up before. 

“So…” she shrugged. “Between the two of you, I’m sure you can get it right.” 

“Jesus, Mom.” Shane was rubbing his face. He abandoned his fork in his pasta, reaching for another gulp of water. Ilya didn’t even have to look at him in the low light of the restaurant to know that his cheeks had flushed at the memory of those first few sexually charged meetings between them. 

So, then. Ilya would pick up his part of the symbiosis. 

“Ah…” Admittedly, it was difficult to know where to begin. But he tried anyway. 

“I was in LA. For a modeling job for a commercial clothing store. I usually didn’t stay in very nice hotels for trips back then, most jobs didn’t pay enough for it. But I did that time.” 

He kept his forearms resting against the table, carefully placing his fork down as he continued. 

“I realized that it was the place where the NHL prospects were staying. I heard some of them talking, and I could tell a little bit from the way that they looked, I think. And I knew the draft was in Los Angeles.” He paused, glancing between Yuna and David before adding a key part of his explanation. “I used to play when I was younger.” 

He had started speaking for Shane’s sake, to spare him from stumbling through this story himself. But he realized now that Shane was watching him, listening with interest—because they had never talked about this part of everything before. 

Ilya met his eyes for a moment before continuing on with the story. A true version of it, even if he left out certain details not suited for parents. 

“I watched a little bit of the draft. Not very much, but enough to see Shane. And then later, I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to go to the gym in the hotel to work out a little bit, to get properly tired to fall asleep. It seemed Shane had the same idea. I recognized him there, since I had just seen him on TV holding up a jersey. So, I struck up a conversation.” He looked at Shane again, who was staring at him, lips slightly parted with an intense expression on his face. 

Ilya shrugged in response to the question he thought he saw there. “Wanted to talk to best player.” 

Shane looked away then, grabbing his glass for a long drink of water. 

“Wow,” David said after a moment. When Ilya turned to him, he saw that his eyebrows were raised, and he was smiling fondly. “That’s a remarkable coincidence.” 

Yuna, however, looked like she wanted nothing more than to probe into every detail of this anecdote. Ilya shifted in his seat, reaching for his fork again as the laser of her attention slowly fixed on him. 

“You used to play?” 

“Yes. Center.” He added the position before she could ask—because he knew it was going to be her next question. He was instantly reminded of the first conversation he’d had with Shane about this, more than six years ago. 

But this time it was different, because Shane was on the same side of the table as him, instead of across the couch. And Shane knew how to cut in for him, and to pause lines of questioning before they treaded into uncomfortable subjects, like why he had stopped playing. 

“He’s a great skater,” Shane said. “And his shot is insane. He gets a ton of power behind it.” 

Ilya was the one looking at him fondly now, as he lifted his fork to his mouth again. As if these were pronouncements that Shane could really make, after only one time at a real rink together. 

Yuna clearly wanted to ask more questions, but Shane continued speaking. 

“He used to play with Zakharov,” he said, naming the defenseman for the Montreal Voyageurs. 

“Oh!” The discerning curiosity on Yuna’s face dropped for a moment, giving way to simply interest. 

“Yes, when we were younger, in Russia,” Ilya supplied, putting his glass of wine back on the table after a sip. “He was very good. Nice guy, also, though I haven’t talked with him for a few years now.” 

“Do you watch a lot of hockey?” David asked. 

“Mm,” Ilya tilted his head to one side, considering the question as he ate another bite of pasta. “Mostly just one team.” 

He cut a look at Shane, who was smiling down at his spaghetti as he twirled it onto his fork. 

“But I follow the league, too, to keep up,” Ilya added. “And now I am finding that I’m watching every game.” 

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” David said sardonically. Ilya didn’t know if he was referring to Shane or Yuna, but both looked utterly unapologetic. 

“Okay, but, when you played,” Yuna cut in again. 

From next to him, Shane exhaled in quiet irritation that she had picked up the thread of this conversation once more. Ilya nudged his knee lightly, signalling that he was perfectly fine. 

“What was that like for you? Did you just play while you were in school, or were you…?” 

“He was really good. He could have gone pro.” Shane spoke succinctly, definitively, and when Yuna glanced at him, Ilya could tell that she took this pronouncement seriously. 

“That was what I thought I wanted to do,” Ilya agreed. “But some things happened in my life and circumstances changed.” 

Yuna nodded slowly, and next to her, David looked sympathetic. The soft expressions—and the fact that they hadn’t asked anything about his family—made him wonder if Shane had given them enough information, or enough warning, for them to know to avoid asking for details. Ilya appreciated that, but also did not want the tone of their evening to shift because of the unspoken subjects. 

“I was a much rougher player than Shane, though,” he smirked over his shoulder at him, dabbing his mouth lightly with his napkin. 

“You don’t think Shane has it in him to play tough?” The gentle expression was gone, and now Yuna Hollander, mother, hockey fan, was smiling at him like a bird of prey from across the table. Ilya was well aware of the undercurrent of challenge in her voice, and he was not going to meet it with a joke. 

“I know that he does,” Ilya said seriously. “Because this season has already been harder on Shane than any other, and they have already all seen the mettle he has shown.” 

Shane wasn’t looking at him, but Ilya could see him taking this in. Under the table, where it couldn’t be seen, Ilya let his hand find Shane’s knee, gently squeezing. Immediately, Shane shifted his hand over, touching his fingers to Ilya’s. 

“...but I would kick his ass, yes,” Ilya added, smiling up at Yuna. He heard Shane exhale, a scoff and a laugh together. 

But he could see it in Yuna’s eyes—the glint. Approval, he thought, of recognizing what Shane was facing this year, yes; but of more than that. Ilya’s confidence in himself, his spirit of competition. The same one that burned inside of Shane. 

The conversation lightened after that, as they finished their pasta and settled between courses. 

“I hear that you went to Italy in September?” Ilya asked, finally using the topic he had readied in preparation for dinner. 

“Oh, yeah, it was great,” David said enthusiastically, while Yuna nodded in agreement. 

“You must be familiar with it,” she added. “Do you travel there often?” 

“Just Milan,” Ilya shook his head. “I have been to Rome a few times. Florence once. I have always wanted to go to Venice, or also to the coast.” 

“It’s beautiful. You two will have to go sometime,” Yuna said innocently, hiding her smile behind her wine glass. 

Her subtle nudge worked, though. He hadn’t thought about it before, not in a serious way—traveling with Shane. There had been many times, in many places, that he had looked at the sky or rested on a hotel bed and wondered what it would have been like if he had been there, or wished that he was. But they had never really talked about it, other than a joke in London, or idle talk about different places they had been. 

“Maybe Paris first,” Shane suggested. Ilya was surprised; he had never mentioned an interest in going before. When Shane noticed Ilya looking, he shrugged. “I mean, I speak French.” 

“Not the kind French people like. And not as well as you used to,” Yuna pointed out. With Ilya’s eyes still on Shane, he could see him trying not to roll his eyes. 

“I’m surprised you don’t,” Shane said, inclining his head towards him slightly. “You go there so much. And you’re really good with languages.” 

“Am I?” Ilya asked, a half-smile on his face. Shane had never said this to him before, but his expression was earnest. 

It was true—he’d been to Paris many times over the last several years. But he’d never really felt a need to learn the language. His trips had always been brief, and his time had always been guided, either by work constraints or from other people to lead him through the experience. He had only ever picked up a few French expressions, and they were all very… specific. 

“Tu n’as pas une clope?” Ilya tested out. The Hollanders across from him laughed, while the one next to him rolled his eyes, leaning back as the branzino finally arrived at the table. 

The conversation went back to hockey as they ate, with all four of them digging into the Admirals’ current season and the expectations for tomorrow’s game. Ilya liked hearing Shane talk about the sport with two people who knew and understood him to this level—there was a fluency in the conversation that Ilya had not even heard him reach with Svetlana. 

But at some point, the familiarity between the three Hollanders surprised even Ilya. 

“—and that’s what I was trying to say. The Scouts have no fucking clue what the fuck to do to balance out Kowalski on Hansen’s right, and so they keep shoving in these shitty options, like—”

Ilya’s eyes slid over to him, staring in shock as Shane spoke to his parents with the same kind of language that he would have used with Ilya, or Vaughny, or Svetlana. But Shane was moving with full steam into his monologue, and hadn’t even noticed the disbelief Ilya was sending in his direction. 

Yuna had, though. “I know, the swearing, right?” 

“No idea where he gets it from,” David looked pointedly at her. 

“Probably the locker room,” Yuna replied smoothly. “But yeah, it’s not great.” 

Shane was frowning, and if Ilya had to guess, he was most annoyed to have been taken off track from his analysis of Brooklyn’s current roster. His irritation seemed to be directed at Ilya, though. “You literally never complain about it.” 

“Uh, I do,” Ilya countered. “I am always saying you have a…” 

He paused around the phrase dirty mouth, and from the way Shane’s eyebrows pinched even further together, he thought they both knew what he was hesitating over. 

“...problem with bad language,” Ilya finished. “Have some respect in front of your parents, you know?” 

“Who the fuck do you think taught me to talk like this?” Shane retorted, pulling laughs out of all three of them. 

Ilya squeezed his knee under the table again. This time, he noticed, both Hollanders across the table caught onto the motion. Yuna was smiling as she helped herself to more broccolini. 

They ordered tiramisu and carrot cake for dessert. Shane held off from the tiramisu, but ate some of the carrot cake before putting his fork down on the table while Ilya shared the rest with Yuna and David. The conversation had drifted again, this time to the Hollanders’ apparently recurring discussion about whether to consider getting a pet. 

“The thing is, we can’t even decide on whether to get a cat or a dog,” Yuna said, digging her spoon into a corner of the tiramisu. “I mean, I know it should be an obvious answer…” 

David gave her a look out of the corner of his eye, smiling as he helped himself to a forkful of cake. “So then the question becomes, if we can’t even decide on which kind of animal, how are we ever going to decide on a name?” 

“Honestly, I don’t even know how we decided on Shane,” Yuna agreed. 

Shane was fiddling with the handle of his fork as he listened to the back and forth. After a moment, he shrugged.  

“Sergei,” he suggested.

Ilya, thankfully, had his lips pressed together over the sip of wine he had just taken, which prevented him from spitting it out onto the table. He quickly lifted his napkin to his mouth as he started laughing. Miraculously, he managed not to choke. 

When he looked at Shane, he was also already covering his mouth, his shoulders shaking from laughter. Seeing Shane laugh only made Ilya laugh harder, and he shook his head in apology at the bemused faces staring across the table at them. 

“Sorry,” he managed. Shane nodded along with his apology, laughing too hard to make one for himself. 

Thankfully, neither looked put off by what was obviously an inside joke. David was still eating dessert, while Yuna’s eyebrows were just slightly raised. 

“You know, something tells me, no, we won’t be naming our dog Sergei,” she said, helping herself to the last of the tiramisu. 

“Or our cat,” David supplied. 

Yuna just shook her head. 

The dessert plates had just been taken away when Shane stood to go to the restroom. Yuna waited until she’d seen him walk towards the hallway with the men’s room before quickly standing up and dropping her napkin onto her empty chair. 

“I’m going to pay before he can.” 

She caught sight of Ilya’s expression and shook her head, squeezing his shoulder briefly as she passed. “Nope. Our treat this time, you two can get the next one.” 

David shrugged at him as they were left alone at the table. “Not worth fighting it.” 

Ilya nodded. He was still surprised by the sudden contact of the shoulder squeeze, a gesture so reflexively maternal that it had momentarily stunned him into silence. He quickly drank the last of the wine in his glass, eyes fixed on the table. 

“You’re doing great, kid.” 

Ilya lifted his head to look at David. 

“Oh, yeah.” David nodded firmly. “The way to her heart is definitely talking about her favorite person on the planet, especially if it’s about how good he is at hockey.” 

Ilya swiped his hand over his mouth, hiding the brief smile that came to his face—not simply from the words or the meaning behind them, but the affectionate way in which they were delivered. He watched David for another moment, intrigued by the pieces of Shane he could see in his face, the brows and the way he held his jaw. 

“And what about you?” He asked carefully. 

“Me?” David smiled, as if touched to have been asked. He gently knocked his fist against the table as he looked around the room, considering the question. “Well. I’m a simple guy, pretty boring. I read a lot. Do a lot of crossword puzzles.” 

Ilya nodded, letting his fingers trace around the bottom of his water glass. “I started reading more to improve my English.” 

“Well, it’s very good, so I think you’ve been doing it right.” David assured him. 

“I like puzzles,” Ilya said after another pause. “In Russia, I would do puzzles with… I guess maybe you would call them riddles? Sometimes now I will do the ones with numbers. I tried doing crossword puzzles, too, but I’m not very good. I think they are maybe too confusing for me, still, with the idioms.” 

“Oh yeah, that would do it. Some of those crossword puzzles are so specific, it’s a whole different thing to be doing it in a second language.” David agreed. He was doing the same thing as Ilya, he noticed—running his hand around the bottom of his water glass, leaned onto the table with his other arm. 

After a moment, he spoke again. “You know, the New York Times does crossword puzzles that get harder as you go through the week. So, they start out on Monday and get progressively harder until Saturday. Sunday’s at about a Wednesday level.” 

“It took me years to be able to get past Wednesday. Now I can reliably do a Friday, but Saturdays get me.” David sighed and shook his head, like he was thinking about a Saturday puzzle that had bested him recently. Ilya smiled at the familiar knot of frustration in the expression. 

“Anyway. Maybe you could start out with Mondays, see how those go. Work your way on from there.” 

“Okay,” Ilya agreed. “Maybe I will try that.” 

Shane announced his presence back at the table with a light hand briefly touching Ilya’s back. He smiled up at him as he took his seat again. 

“Hey. Where’s Mom? Wait.” Shane quickly spun around, scanning the restaurant. “Is she paying?!”

“You should forfeit this one, Hollan—ah, Shane.” Ilya winced slightly at the slip. It was one thing to call him Hollander in private, as part of their usual parlance with each other. It was another thing to do it in front of his father, whose name was also Hollander, and with whom Ilya had a vested interest in appearing serious about his son. 

“Forfeit what?” Yuna said, reappearing at the table. 

Before Ilya could answer, David smiled up at his wife. “Rozanov here was just telling Shane that he should give it up and let you win the battle for the check.” 

“Oh, well, I already won.” Yuna gave Shane an apologetic kind of look that didn’t actually look apologetic at all. “Shane should focus on beating the shit out of Scott Hunter tomorrow.” 

“Okay, Mom, you’re making it sound like a hate crime.” Shane was smirking, though. Ilya had to smile back at the happy expression on his face. 

“Oh stop,” Yuna scoffed. “I didn’t mean it that way.” 

It was colder outside when they left the restaurant, but Ilya took in a deep breath, letting the air run through him as they stood on the curb. The Hollanders had agreed to take the car back to their hotel, while Shane and Ilya had decided to walk. 

He thought that it would still do him some good—the nervous energy was gone, but something restless remained. Shane seemed to feel the same, judging from how quickly he’d agreed to walk. 

Ilya stood to the side as Shane said goodbye to his parents at the curb. Yuna squeezed him around the shoulders, drawing him in close against her camel coat. 

“Bye, honey. We’ll text you tomorrow. Oh, Ilya. Give us your number so that we can coordinate with you.” She had barely pulled away from Shane before ushering Ilya in towards them. 

He found himself carefully speaking the digits of his phone number to her, watching as she methodically plugged them into her phone. Shane stood next to her, also looking on in silence. 

Yuna hugged Ilya first—and then David did—before they got into the car. 

He didn’t know how to put words to the feelings it gave him, the easy affection, the immediate way he had been enfolded into something. It was making him feel dizzy. 

Neither he nor Shane spoke as they turned in the opposite direction of the car, starting the walk up Bleecker Street towards Chelsea. It wasn’t late, but the streets were quiet at this time on a weeknight. It was late for Shane, too—Ilya knew that he would start getting ready for bed as soon as they got back to the apartment, so that he could sleep a full night before waking up for his gameday routine. 

They had walked about a block before Ilya’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out to check the screen, and smiled when he saw the message from an unknown number. Hi Ilya, this is Yuna. The other number here is David.

“I am in a group chat with your parents,” he told Shane, amused. 

“Well, that’s not surprising. They loved you, I could tell.” Shane exhaled, his breath creating a small cloud in the cold December air. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know they can be a lot.” 

Ilya’s smile had nothing but affection in it, because he had seen them in action now and understood how they would push all of Shane’s very particular buttons. “Better a lot than not enough.” 

It came out differently than he meant, and Shane looked at him very quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

Ilya was already shaking his head, because he hadn’t intended for it to sound like that. He reached for Shane’s hand, squeezing his wrist reassuringly over his winter coat before letting it drop. “No, I am sorry. I didn’t mean it that way either. I know that a lot is not always good.” 

“You think it was good tonight, though?” He asked, looking at Shane under a passing streetlight. 

Shane smiled, nodding as he met Ilya’s eye. “Yeah. I thought it was really good. Did you?”

“Yes. I thought it was really good too. I like them a lot.” Ilya paused, thinking of the Hollanders again, the signs of Shane he had seen in them both. “They reminded me of you.” 

They continued uptown, weaving through the quiet streets of the West Village. Many of the brownstones were decorated for the holidays, railings covered in fairy lights or elaborate wreaths on the door. There were few businesses in this stretch of the neighborhood, save for a few small, cozy restaurants. Ilya glanced in one as they passed, looking at the couples crowded over small wooden tables, candles blinking between them. 

“I wish I could have met your mom.” 

Shane spoke quietly, tentatively. Ilya heard the worry in his voice—like he was concerned that he shouldn’t say this out loud. Ilya didn’t know how to tell him how glad he was that he had said it. 

He reached out again for his wrist, but this time Shane’s fingers were ready for him, grabbing him back. Ilya threaded their hands together, exhaling slowly at the solid grip around him. 

“I wish that too.” 

“What do you think she would have thought about… this?” 

They had come to the intersection of Eighth Avenue. Shane gestured ahead of them with his free hand, sweeping it across the busy street, the bright lights of the passing cabs, the steady chaos of a weeknight in Manhattan. Ilya knew that he was referring to New York, but also to this—this whole thing, their whole lives. 

“I don’t know,” he said with honesty. “Sometimes I… sometimes I am not really sure what she would have thought about my life now.” 

He knew what he wanted her to have said, and what his memories supplied as answers. But increasingly, he understood that he didn’t know what she would have thought about his life today—and sometimes it was hard to imagine. He had known her as a child, had only known her as his mother. As he had grown into a man, the more he realized he hadn’t known Irina Rozanova as a person. The picture from his childhood could only tell him so much. 

In his deepest thoughts, the parts where the doubt and self-loathing lived, he had sometimes wondered if she would have had trouble with it: his career, such that it was. The towering underwear ads. The photo in TMZ. Building a life with a man. 

Despite wearing her cross around his neck, he didn’t know if he remembered her as religious. They had gone to church together, yes, and she had spoken to him about God throughout his childhood. But now that he was older, he saw it differently. He didn’t know if it had been driven by faith, or out of a desire to seek a connection outside of herself—an attempt to reach a hand out and grasp at what she could find. He wished he could have reached back. 

“She would have loved you,” he said to Shane on the cold street.  

Because religion aside, Russia aside, he was certain of this. He knew that she would have seen Shane’s essential goodness, his hard work and commitment to the things and people he cared about. She would have seen his generosity, the open, full-hearted way that he loved when he allowed his walls to come down. She would have seen his beautiful eyes and understood exactly how much Ilya loved him, too. He had to believe that she would. 

Without turning his head, he saw Shane looking at him. The fingers laced around his hand tightened, and he felt Shane’s thumb gently moving over the his knuckles. 

Ilya had been right about getting home just in time for Shane’s nighttime routine to begin. They parted ways after hanging their coats in the closet, Shane heading for the bedroom to start winding down. Ilya went to the kitchen first, pouring himself a glass of water. He drank it slowly, placing the glass inside the dishwasher before he, too, made his way to their room. 

Somehow, he wasn’t ready to be inside yet. Instead, he went out to the balcony attached to their room, making sure the door was unlocked before carefully closing it behind him to keep the cold from getting in. 

The air cut through him, now that he was outside without his coat. But he took a deep breath, letting himself settle into it as he stood at the railing and surveyed the glittering lights of the buildings ahead and the cars on the streets below. He desperately wanted a cigarette, but he was not going to start a fight tonight. 

Because it really had been a good night. He was glad that Shane said his parents had liked him—he had sensed it already, could feel that the warm embrace of the Hollanders had opened up to make room for him. That was a relief, of course. He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on how it could have gone differently, though the possibility had lurked, unspoken, in the back of his mind. 

And now that the embrace had been offered to him, he wouldn’t take it for granted, either. He knew too well what it was like to go without. 

That was where the melancholy had come from, after all. A wonderful evening, with wonderful people, all brought together out of shared love for Ilya’s favorite person. And still, now, at the end of the night, the ghosts of the Rozanovs drifted around the edge. 

After a few minutes, the door behind him opened. Shane came out to meet him, clean and soft in sweatpants and a cotton shirt. 

He smelled like toothpaste as he slipped his arms around Ilya, hugging him from behind. Ilya responded by moving his arms, still protected by his long sleeves, over Shane’s bare ones, pulling him in tighter to keep him warm. 

“Hey,” Shane said into his ear, chin resting on his shoulder. Ilya smiled in response, already warmer from the close embrace. 

They stood like that for a few moments, slowly breathing together, until Shane began to speak against Ilya’s neck. 

“I know I never met your mom, and… I’m really sorry that I’m never going to be able to. But I know she would have been happy about your life, Ilya.” 

Ilya tried to keep his breathing steady as Shane moved one hand out of his grip, sliding it up his chest and pressing his palm to the center. He inhaled slowly, breathing out as he listened to Shane continue, quietly speaking into his ear. 

“You are such a caring person. Doing the right thing is important to you. Having integrity is important to you. Standing up for people, being honest. Letting people be who they are and accepting them.” 

Shane adjusted his grip, holding Ilya’s hand tightly while rubbing his chest lightly with the other one. “You’ve told me enough about your family that I know you don’t get those things from your dad and brother. And sure, maybe you just had it in you the whole time, maybe you just came into the world like that. I could see it, you’re pretty fucking great.” 

“But I don’t know.” He paused, and Ilya felt his nose resting lightly against his neck. “I think if I had to guess, I’d say someone made you understand that those things are important. And I think she’d see all of them in you today, too.” 

“Fuck, Shane,” he stuttered into the cold winter air, finally blinking out the tears that had been threatening to fall since he’d joined him out on the balcony. Shane kissed him lightly, once behind the ear, and once again on his neck. 

He continued holding him, waiting until Ilya’s breathing had evened again. Shane squeezed him then, two arms tight around his torso.

“Come on, let’s go to bed, I’m getting cold.” 

Ilya lifted his hand to wipe his face, nodding as he turned around. He had kept him out here for too long, and Shane wasn’t even wearing sleeves. 

“Yes, and you need your rest so you can kill Scott Hunter tomorrow.” 

“I really need you guys to stop making it sound like a crime,” Shane huffed, tugging Ilya towards the door. “And stop bringing up Hunter, I’m trying to have sex with you.” 

“What? What the fuck, Shane,” Ilya pushed harder against his back, urging him forward faster. “I thought you were going to sleep! Get in the bed!” 

“That’s what I was trying to say to you!” Shane insisted, quickly opening the door to the bedroom. “Get in!” 

Ilya followed him in, closing the balcony door firmly and locking it behind him. 

It was much warmer inside.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you to the fine folks in 1410 for sourcing Parent Small Talk and casual French phrasing for asking for a cigarette (hon hon hon).

Hope you enjoyed your pasta, with a little side of Ilya Rozanov Gets Loved. 🍝

 

One note: I think I have accidentally hinted that the next chapter is Scott Hunter. It is not Scott Hunter. Scott, Kip, and the Kingfisher will indeed be coming in this series—but not in this installment.

The next one is my favorite, though. I hope you like it too.

Chapter 3: a green smoothie with so much extra protein & a normal peanut butter and banana

Chapter Summary

Shane and Ilya drink some post-run smoothies.

Chapter Notes

Dialogue using « » as quotation marks indicates that the character is speaking Russian.

This takes place one year and eight months after the epilogue of Into the Blue.

--

I have been holding this one in the chamber for awhile, but I have been very sick this week and need to release something good into the world. I really hope you enjoy it.

AUGUST 2019, NEW YORK CITY

It was one of his favorite times of the year. The second week of August: the thick of their summer, with weeks before the real commitments started in the fall. Some people found the weather too hot, maybe, but he didn’t think it was bad, especially early in the day like this. 

The city felt different, too. A city full of people finally felt full of people, with bodies packing the parks and sidewalks, stretching themselves up towards the sun. At the same time, there were other places, quiet streets in certain neighborhoods—including their own—that seemed empty, all the space left vacant by people still on vacation or who had escaped to their summer homes. Walking through a busy street downtown, restaurant patios flush with happy, loud conversation, and then suddenly swinging into a silent side street was like blinking and finding himself in a new place altogether. 

There was a buzz in the air in August, a vibrancy that felt ripe with anticipation. It was more than the weather and the atmosphere of the city, though. For many years, August had meant one very important, specific thing for him: Shane. 

Shane, back from his off-season. Shane, back in New York, back in his bed, back in his life. Ilya remembered those Augusts three, four, five years ago: never wanting to show his cards by asking when he would be home, but always waiting for the text to arrive: Hey, I’m back in the city. Are you free? 

He didn’t need to wait for the texts to arrive in August anymore. This August, like last year, they came back to the city from Canada together. 

They had just returned from nearly seven weeks at Shane’s cottage—Ilya was not ready to call it theirs, and might never be. He had spent time at the cottage for three summers, now, and had shared a home with Shane for all of the months in between. There was very little in his life that didn’t feel like it was theirs, and he knew that Shane felt the same. 

But the cottage was different—perhaps because it was so quintessentially Shane, or perhaps because Ilya still treasured the idea that he alone had been invited into its secret wonder. He was content to be an observer rather than an owner, to feel as if he were getting a private view of this special person in this special place. That was more than enough for him.

Shane was still relaxed from the long weeks of leisurely fucking, swimming, hiking, cooking, and spending time with Yuna and David. The stress of the season, of the relentless pace of his schedule and the physical and mental exertion it took from him every year, hadn’t yet settled onto him. It would happen throughout the fall, the strain seeping in at the corners of his face, creating a rigid tension in his shoulders. 

For now, Ilya enjoyed seeing him happy in the summer sun, his black hair sweaty under a baseball cap, as he chewed on the straw of his smoothie. 

“I just really don’t think there’s enough protein content in that to offset all the sugar.” 

It took Ilya a moment to understand, but it shouldn’t have. Being carefree, he knew, also gave Shane plenty of time to find new ways to give him shit about his diet. 

“I don’t get it for the protein, I get it for the taste.” Ilya sniffed, eying the thick green smoothie that Shane was holding. 

He drank from his own cup—peanut butter and banana—to emphasize the point. Truthfully, it was too chalky to be properly labeled as tasting like either ingredient, but it was still better than whatever Shane was currently ingesting. 

Miraculously, Shane left off at that. He paused at the intersection, looking both ways on the one way street for cars and bicyclists. Ilya thought that it was endearing, in an entirely idiotic way, that he still insisted on waiting for the light to change before walking across the street even after a decade of living in New York. 

Still, Ilya didn’t mind the opportunity to look at him for 29 more seconds. 

His skin was golden brown from the many hours spent outside at the cottage wearing less clothing than usual, though often more than Ilya would have liked. Today, his sleeveless shirt, transparent with sweat at the back from their long run, let the world see his strong biceps, starting to thicken again as he got back to the gym with more purpose in anticipation of the upcoming season. 

And no matter what Shane said, the slate blue shorts he was wearing were, in fact, tiny. 

Ilya had spent many years doing early morning runs with Shane by now, and had watched as the hem of his shorts had crept up bit by bit, without any acknowledgement from the wearer. 

Ilya loved those shorts. He loved how high they sat on Shane’s powerfully built thighs, the hem reaching just underneath the softest skin that was one of his favorite places to put his mouth. He loved how they cupped Shane’s round, tight ass, which he secretly knew had also gotten several shades darker from the time spent bare in the sun at the cottage. He loved how tight the material was, especially when Shane knelt on the ground to tie his shoe and they molded to his body in a way that made Ilya practically salivate with the need to get home and get them off. 

Shane was, as usual, unaware of the careful attention he and his shorts were being paid. He chewed on his straw, taking a few sips of smoothie in between, as the light changed and they finally crossed the street. 

“I feel bad about Bennett and Holly,” he said as they entered the park together. 

“They will be fine. Both very good looking, very smart. Will be fucking their way around New York in probably a few weeks.” 

Shane frowned, looking somewhat perturbed by this. “Yeah, but… 20 years is a long time. It’s sad for it to just… end.” 

Ah. Ilya caught the quick sidelong glance Shane sent his way, and realized what he had actually been trying to say. It wasn’t Eric and Holly Bennett’s recent divorce that was causing the deep frown and uneasy way he chewed on his straw, but perhaps a general kind of anxiety about the end of any long relationship. 

They were a long way away from 20 years, but two years—or nearly nine, depending on how one counted—was a long time, too. 

Ilya lifted his hand, briefly rubbing it across Shane’s sweaty back, and squeezed his shoulder before dropping it to his side again. Shane still got tense from too much public affection, and going too far would only counteract any reassurance Ilya was actually trying to give. 

“Every relationship is different,” Ilya said, like he was an expert, like he didn’t wake up every day thanking everything he believed in, and many things he didn’t, that this man had chosen to open his life to him. 

The quick moment of tenderness had the impact he had hoped for, as Shane exhaled a quiet sigh and smiled at Ilya over the chewed straw of his smoothie. Best of all, Ilya watched his shoulders relax. 

But Ilya was greedy, and he wanted to see Shane more than just okay again. Okay was only the best option when a little fussy and red-cheeked wasn’t also a possibility. 

“And,” Ilya added. “Now Bennett will be able to fuck all of the pretty men he wants.” 

As he had hoped, Shane rolled his eyes, pulling the straw away from his mouth in disgust. “Oh my God, this again. Bennett isn’t even into men, Ilya!” 

“I am telling you, I have known this,” Ilya insisted, shaking his head. He had met Eric Bennett probably a dozen times by now, and it was more than enough. He had only needed the first time, actually, to understand everything he needed to know about the handsome older goalie. 

“That is just bullshit, Ilya,” Shane said as they passed a couple with a stroller. “You can’t just tell all the time.” 

“I know what I see,” Ilya shrugged. 

And he had seen exactly how Eric Bennett had looked at Shane at the Admirals’ winter party last year. He couldn’t blame him either; Shane had looked incredible even in the dark jeans and plain charcoal cashmere sweater he had insisted on dressing himself in, the soft material making him look warm and sexy. His face had been flushed and happy, maybe from the wine, maybe from Ilya’s presence at an official Admirals team event for the very first time. 

So yes, Ilya had noticed Bennett’s goalie eyes sliding over Shane more than a few times at the party, both over his stunning face, and also over his ass when Shane turned around. Ilya was familiar with both halves of the expression, the giving and receiving; he knew what it looked like when people saw something they liked. And yes, many people looked at Shane that way, because Shane Hollander was fucking beautiful. 

But it hadn’t been just that. He’d seen the expression on Bennett’s face a few times since then, most recently at the event Kip Grady had thrown at the Kingfisher earlier in the summer. 

“Okay, so this is just you thinking that you see people flirting with me,” Shane said disdainfully, and Ilya saw exactly how to get him. “That’s just you being fucking jea—”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Ilya cut him off triumphantly. “I never said he was flirting with you. Wow, Shane Hollander’s ego knows no bounds, does it?” 

He smirked at Shane’s face, confused and open-mouthed. His cheeks were turning the very shade of red that Ilya had hoped for, his very favorite color, as he scowled. 

“That’s—but you said before—” Shane sputtered. 

Here it was, his very favorite thing in the world: Shane Hollander riled up and ready to drag Ilya into it. There was only one thing that could have possibly ripped his attention away from it, and Ilya saw it then. 

Ilya gasped, turning to greet the small dogs suddenly coming towards him. There were three of them, two black and one dappled white, struggling against their harnesses as they crowded around his legs. They barreled into him with tongues hanging out of their tiny furry faces, small yips drowning out whatever protests Shane might have been mounting. 

Without being asked, Shane took the smoothie cup from Ilya’s hand, giving him the space to kneel down and greet the puppies suddenly calling for his attention. 

«Hello, little ones,» he cooed. «Are you enjoying the nice summer morning?»

The handler attached to the three leashes stood over him, laughing as they crowded onto his legs, squirming too much for his two hands to cover them all. She was wearing a red t-shirt advertising the name of the organization holding, it seemed, an adoption event in the park. 

“Sorry!” 

“Oh, this is not any kind of problem.” He should have been embarrassed, maybe, by the soft sounds coming out of him. But it was a natural response, he thought, when seeing creatures this small and guileless and loving. 

He tried to pet each of them, stroking down their soft heads and scratching behind their ears and under their chins. Sweet little dogs; it made sense to have them out front and center at an event like this, especially with how hungry they were for affection. He had his hands on the ribcage of the littlest one, who was wiggling the hardest, when he heard the soft voice from just behind him. 

“Ilya.” 

He turned at the sound, and thought, perhaps that the sun had exploded or that maybe he had been transported to some improbable version of paradise. 

Shane was kneeling on the ground, watching as a small dog, with a brown, grey, and white coat, carefully nosed at him. Ilya was so taken by the tableau—the cautious look on both of their faces—that he barely paid attention to the way Shane’s beautiful legs and perfect ass were straining against his tiny shorts from the position. 

Shane’s hands were lifted, keeping both smoothies in the air, so he couldn’t reach down to touch the perfect creature trying to greet him. He simply watched the dog gently tug against its lead, sniffing towards him with interest. 

Gently patting the puppy in his hands one more time, Ilya pulled himself away and stood. He walked over slowly, so as not to spook either the dog or the man with his approach. When he was close enough, he took both drinks out of Shane’s hands. 

Shane wiped his palms, wet from condensation from the cups, down the front of his shirt. After a moment he reached out, holding one hand close enough to the dog to let it smell him before he attempted to move any closer. 

Ilya was rapt. He had never seen Shane look at anything with this particular expression before, a combination of confusion, curiosity, and tenderness that could have only been mixed together by Shane Hollander—an expression which made Ilya want to fall to his knees. 

He watched as Shane tentatively stretched his long fingers over the dog’s small head, and as the puppy pushed into the contact and took two hesitant steps closer. Shane curled his hand, lightly petting over the dog’s face and ears. The gentle movement was, Ilya knew, a direct result of the look of intense concentration on his face, all of his focus on keeping the pace and tenor of contact right for the dog. 

Ilya had never even been sure that Shane liked animals—he hadn’t had any pets while growing up, and he always stood off to the side whenever Ilya greeted any dog on their runs. Ilya had always wondered if it was simply a matter of comfort or exposure, but Shane had never shown any interest in actually spending time with any animal. Carter Vaughn’s cat was a notable exception, though even there Shane did little more than simply accept her presence on his lap without complaint. 

Perhaps it was being sought out, then, that had cracked the door open to Shane’s interest. Perhaps this small, perfect creature had sensed everything that brewed underneath his surface, and had leaned in to get a closer look—and had been rewarded for its curiosity with the sharp intensity of Shane’s full attention. If that was the case, Ilya had never related to any being on Earth more than that. 

“Oh, she’s so precious, isn’t she?” 

Another handler had noticed the vision of heaven in front of him. She came to stand next to him, wearing a red t-shirt like her fellow volunteers. Her hair was red, too, as was her face, from the exertion of setting up the event and the growing heat of the August day. 

“Yes, she is very sweet,” Ilya agreed, smiling briefly but politely, still watching Shane’s careful attempts to stroke down the dog’s neck and back. 

“She was actually found in a dumpster around Times Square, can you believe that? Thank God somebody found her before the trash was taken out. It’s so sad.” 

It was sad. Ilya looked at the dog, imagining the circumstances that could have taken her to a dumpster in the middle of the city, and the terror she must have felt inside the cavernous structure all by herself. Ilya had heard the crashing sound of a dumpster’s contents falling into the back of a garbage truck thousands of times over his years in New York. The idea of her little body caught amongst the flood of trash made him sick. 

The woman’s tone had become brighter again, like she hadn’t dropped this nightmarish visual directly into Ilya’s mind only seconds ago. “We think she’s a puppy, and then with the whole Broadway thing, we’ve been calling her Little Orphan Annie!” 

Little Orphan Ilya wasn’t sure what he thought of this name—he thought a bit more dignity might befit this angel of a dog, who was now cautiously placing its head fully in Shane’s hands. 

He smiled politely at the volunteer. “Could we meet her over there?” 

He gestured to the area that the organization had barricaded off, a little section of the park where people could sit one-on-one with the dogs. 

Shane looked up in surprise when he heard the question, and Ilya saw the flash of panic and doubt cross his face as he looked back down at the dog. 

Ilya knew he reflexively wanted to say no, but Anya—because she was an Anya, and would probably not be a little orphan for very much longer—had already placed her paws on his knee, bringing her nose up so that she could sniff her way along Shane’s face. 

“We can’t get a dog,” Shane said forty minutes later, cross-legged on the grass next to Ilya, with Anya still on his lap. Ilya was stroking her ears, which were soft, though he thought she could still have used a better wash and some pampering. “Right? Our schedules. And the apartment. Is it too small?” 

“She is not a big dog.” Ilya made his voice sound like he was just musing aloud, just considering the issue for the first time. “There is space. The courtyard. Easy access to walks from the building. The place on the roof for pets when we can’t go all the way down.” 

He had kept these reasons in his arsenal for a long time, waiting for the right moment. You’re welcome, he told Anya silently, fingers running over the silky fur on her ears as she nosed into the air towards his face. 

“Yeah, but what about when we’re both gone? We travel so much. Especially in January and February.” Shane was frowning, but he was still gently rubbing down Anya’s back. Ilya wasn’t sure which of them was finding the action more soothing—his boyfriend or their soon-to-be dog. 

Ilya shrugged one shoulder up, tilting his head towards Shane. “Some of your teammates have dogs, no? Do they send them to hotels?” 

“I think they’re called kennels.” 

“Fancy ones are called dog hotels.” 

Ilya was sure of this because he had sometimes walked past them, on the Upper East Side or downtown in SoHo and Tribeca, and wondered what they looked like inside. Plush sheets and big beds, he hoped. Maybe another dog stopping by and knocking on the door and saying, what, you thought I wouldn’t come, after it had been invited inside. 

Shane was still frowning. Ilya watched as he switched the hand touching Anya, using his left to gently cradle around her body. With the right, he pulled his phone out of the tight pocket of his tiny shorts and flicked his thumb up the screen. 

He kept his arm around the dog as he moved the phone down so he could use both thumbs. Ilya was certain that he was texting the Admirals group chat. 

Ilya said nothing, but gave Anya a tiny wink. She responded by licking the sweat on his wrist—and, maybe, a little bit of the peanut butter smoothie that had dripped onto his hand. 

Another forty minutes later, they were signing the papers. Not formal adoption papers, not yet; but they’d put a marker down to make sure they were the first in line for bringing Anya home. 

Ilya had promised Shane that they could think about it longer and take more time to come to a conscious decision on whether or not they should adopt a dog now. And he meant it—he wouldn’t want him to regret the decision, and he wouldn’t push him into it. But he had a little intuition, maybe, that this was the right time, and the right dog. 

“Can I put two names down?” Shane asked, squinting down at the form on the clipboard the volunteer had handed him. He scrawled the date at the top. 

Ilya used the excuse of Shane’s poor eyesight to take the clipboard and pen from him, to spare the organization the agony of needing to parse through his terrible handwriting. 

On the blank space next to “NAME,” he carefully wrote Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov. 

It was the first official paperwork they had ever completed together, both names on the same line like this. Their home—and the cottage—were officially Shane’s, which never bothered Ilya. He had more money in his bank account than he ever could have dreamed of, at least since he had left the prospect of a professional career in hockey. And the real meaning came from sharing the spaces, not the ownership of them. 

But this was different. This was called ownership, too, but it didn’t feel that way—this was the construction of a family unit. In blue ink on a worn, wooden clipboard, Ilya had neatly written the words to shape a new kind of future for them. 

There was a small lump in his throat that Shane, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice. 

They said goodbye to Anya, who tugged against her lead towards them again. 

“Awww,” the volunteer said, gently holding her back. “It’s okay, sweetie, you’ll see them soon, I think!” 

«Goodbye, little one,» Ilya said to her, so she could get used to the sound of the words. She wagged her tail in response, her smallish, fluffy body moving back and forth with the effort. From next to him, Shane laughed quietly, the sound obscured by the chewed up straw back in his mouth. 

“Wait,” Shane said, after they had left the park again, Ilya glancing over his shoulder back at the adoption event only a couple of times. “I didn’t even get her name. Did you hear what her name is?” 

“Little Orphan Annie,” Ilya replied, enunciating each word. 

“Little Orphan Annie?!” Shane paused on the sidewalk, staring at Ilya, horrified. “That’s fucking terrible! Not just—I mean, that’s just a terrible name.” 

“I know,” Ilya agreed, chewing on his tongue to stop from smiling too broadly. “I was thinking Anya instead.” 

“Anya is way better.” Shane tossed his empty smoothie cup into a trash can as they started walking again, holding his hand out for Ilya’s to do the same. He checked his Apple watch as they continued towards 27th Street. “Shit, it got really late.” 

“I know,” Ilya said, somewhat apologetically, since the hour and a half they’d spent at the park with the dogs had cut into their morning and made them late for breakfast. He knew that Shane was probably as hungry as he was. “What do you think about bagels?” 

“Fuck, okay, yeah, that sounds good.” Shane usually didn’t agree so readily when Ilya suggested bagels after a run—which he did, often. 

So Ilya was happy to take his second win of the morning: bagels, and a new dog on her way. 

_____

Anya came home in September, with enough time before the preseason to let Shane adjust to the new routines before the practices and travel started in earnest. Ilya’s own schedule had been relatively relaxed, aside from a weeklong trip to Los Angeles in October and a quick turnaround to London in November. They hadn’t even needed to use a dog hotel, yet, with one of them always being home as Anya adjusted to her new surroundings. 

They’d bought a dog bed, which Shane had first wanted to keep in the hallway, but had eventually agreed to keep in their bedroom. Ilya had agreed to keep her out of the bed for now, but he couldn’t promise what might happen during road trips when Shane was gone for multiple nights in a row—the sheets would get changed before he returned, anyway. 

They divided up times for walks. Shane usually took the first one of the morning, while Ilya was still in bed or barely rolling out to get himself dressed for a run. They split the ones in the middle of the day or went together, finding new routes they liked with interesting things for Anya to examine. Ilya went for the last one before bed, sometimes talking to Svetlana on the phone, or occasionally playing Words with Friends with David, as they circled the block. 

Out of the three dog parks they had tried, Anya was most partial to the small dog run in Washington Square Park, which was Shane’s least favorite because it left her filthy with sandy dirt by the time she was finished running around. 

“Do you think she has a hard time making friends with other dogs?” Shane asked, watching her run to the other end of the space all alone, chasing or being chased by something imaginary. 

“Do you think that’s what Mama Yuna said about you as a little boy?” Ilya mused. 

“Well, yeah, and I didn’t have any friends,” Shane retorted. Ilya laughed. 

“That’s because you were better than all of them,” he said confidently. “Anya is just a baby, she will get more comfortable with them over time.” 

He waited until she’d run back over to them before he threw the ball for her to chase. She whipped around, her tiny legs kicking up the dusty sand as she raced after it. Shane grimaced. 

For all of Shane’s insistence that she stay off the bed, he didn’t seem to have any qualms about her being on the couch. Their naps had become a constant thing—whether in the afternoon, after he’d come back from practice, or in the late evening on the rare night he didn’t have a game. 

Ilya had taken so many photos of them curled up and sleeping together that he was close to needing more storage space on his phone. He’d already made one—Shane in an Admirals sweatshirt, hood pulled up around his face and Anya tucked into the crook of his elbow—into the background of his phone. He was constantly tempted to post others online, but they’d agreed two years ago to keep their private moments private as much as possible. It was going to become impossible to hold back, though, once the holidays approached and the prospect of Anya in a Christmas sweater was upon them. 

It was exactly that time of year, a cold night in late December, the Boston-Montreal game on the TV with Anya chewing on a dog treat in front of them, when Shane decided to cleave Ilya’s heart open with a knife. 

“Do you think she’s kind of ugly?”

Ilya, whose attention had been on a Montreal player being mowed down by Cliff Marleau, needed a moment to catch up. He tore his eyes away from PIKE 35 flailing on the ice, and looked at Shane. “Hmm?”

He followed his boyfriend’s line of sight. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Ilya burst out, when he realized what—who—he was referring to. He immediately pulled away from Shane, who somehow looked startled by the strength of this reaction. 

He dropped onto the floor, pushing himself towards Anya. “What kind of father are you??” 

“Okay, don’t be dramatic.” Shane had the audacity to roll his eyes, though he was lightly smiling as he looked between Ilya and the fight between the Boston and Montreal players that had broken out on the screen. 

“How could you say that about our precious, beautiful girl?” Ilya scooped Anya up, bone and all, and into his lap. 

He held her up so that her face was level with his own, so that if Shane was going to insult her again, he would need to look them both in the eye to do it. 

“I’m just saying. The way her fur gets bushy around the eyes,” Shane gestured at his own face. “And… her teeth…” 

“Shane!”

But the treat dropped out of Anya’s mouth as Ilya chided him. She drooled, a combination of spit and bone marrow dripping onto Ilya’s arm—admittedly not the most compelling evidence for his point. 

“Oh gross, Ilya.” 

Anya squirmed out of his grip, seeking the treat again. He let her go, sitting back as she grabbed the bone in her teeth again and took it to her dog bed in the corner of the living room to chew in peace. 

Ilya picked himself up from the floor. Shane was already bracing himself on the sofa, clearly wary of Ilya trying to wipe his dirty hands on him. Instead, he simply wiggled his fingers as he passed, already on his way to the bathroom to wash his hands. 

When he came back to the living room, the television was muted over the ads running between the second and third period. Shane had slumped down on the sofa, stretching himself out more comfortably, his shirt riding up to a few inches above his waistband. 

Ilya kept his eyes on the strip of bare skin as he sat down beside him again, immediately reaching out to pinch the visible flesh with his thumb and forefinger. Shane pushed him away, so Ilya contented himself with settling on the other side of the same couch cushion, knee crooked up on the sofa to rest against Shane’s thigh. 

A moment of silence passed between them before Shane spoke, quietly. 

“Have you ever thought about having kids?” 

Ilya felt like his vision flickered, his eyes caught on the State Farm advertisement on the television—suddenly giving him double Jakes. He paused, taking a moment to process the question, the hesitant way it had been asked. 

It was a different kind of conversation, he thought. Not idle curiosity. Not like their first time at the cottage, when Ilya—drunk on the sun and a week of uninterrupted time touching Shane’s bare skin—had blurted out a half joke about getting married there. It hadn’t been a joke at all, really; but it hadn’t been a serious plan. More accurately, maybe, it had been a way of saying, I want this with you one day. Take your time getting used to the idea, because I will be back for you, and this, another time.

This question had not been spoken in this same kind of way. This was Shane, shy, not meeting his eyes, peering into their future and wondering if Ilya saw it, too. This was his Shane, asking him to look. 

“Yes,” Ilya answered honestly. “I have thought about having kids, and dogs, and maybe a house outside of the city, with space for them to run around and play. With you.” 

He added those two words separately at the end, but they were the most important. He emphasized them, turning his head to look at Shane—not shy, because he wanted him to understand that this was the essential part of the equation. 

Shane was quiet, considering, looking at the muted McDonald’s commercial now on the TV. 

“More than one dog?” 

Ilya smiled, reaching for the strip of bare skin again, this time winding his arm around his boyfriend to pull him in closer. Shane allowed himself to be tugged, though there was little space left between them on the couch by now anyway. 

“I had always kind of seen us getting a cat before a dog, actually.” Shane looked at Anya as he said this. She had grown tired of the bone, abandoning it for later consumption. Ilya watched as she yawned wide, settling her little head on the side of the big dog bed. 

He was still smiling. “We can have a cat, too.” 

“I don’t know. That seems like a lot of animals.” Shane rested his head on Ilya’s shoulder. He needed a hair cut, Ilya thought as he brought his hand up to run through Shane’s hair. But he liked it this way, too. 

“Mmm,” Ilya hummed. “Okay. But Shane, you can never call our children ugly.” 

“I would never do that!” 

“You just did it!!” 

“That’s not— just look at her face, Ilya.” Shane didn’t pick his head up even as he gestured out with his hand. 

This was never something Ilya was going to be able to agree with, so he simply grabbed the hand out of midair, lacing their fingers together and bringing it up to his mouth for a soft kiss. 

“We will have beautiful children.” He let both of their hands drop into Shane’s lap. Shane didn’t say anything, but Ilya could tell that he was smiling. 

The game had started again and Montreal had scored, tying the game at 1-1, before Shane spoke again. 

“You want to move out of the city? Like… Westchester?” 

“I mean, that would be convenient for you, but yes, is a little lame.” Ilya shrugged, jostling Shane’s head slightly between his shoulder and the hand still running through his hair. “I am open to other ideas.” 

“...I just thought… you wouldn’t want to move out of the city.” Shane paused to watch Hunter take a shot, and miss. “And… we could get a place with space to run around uptown, maybe. Or, you know… maybe Canada…?” 

“Do you need to critique every part of the vision?” Ilya rolled his eyes, but he was sure Shane could feel him smiling against the top of his head. 

“Is it not supposed to be a shared vision?” Shane shot back. 

“You’re so fucking annoying.” Ilya tried to tug his hand away from Shane’s grip, but he held fast, keeping a tight grasp around his fingers. 

“Yeah, well, you love it.” He pulled Ilya’s hand up to his mouth this time, kissing over his knuckles lightly. 

“Yes,” Ilya agreed. Because he did. 

And he would continue to, uptown or in Westchester or in Canada, with two dogs or a cat, whether Boston or Montreal eventually won the game. He would, no matter what the vision of their future looked like. 

Chapter End Notes

For anyone concerned about the Bennett Marriage Timeline: Eric and Holly announced their separation in late 2018 (prior to the Admirals' holiday party) and finalized their divorce in the first half of 2019. No cheating bisexual stereotypes over here. (But Ilya will clock one of these men in every universe.)

I desperately wanted to make the "meal" bagels because it's NYC FFS, but I am genuinely stumped about what Shane Hollander's bagel order would be. Please leave any ideas in the comments, I am dying to know your thoughts.

--

This is as good a place as any to reveal my grand plan: that this little series was a little warm up for Part 4 of the series, a true sequel to Into the Blue, which will cover Shane and Ilya's first official year together as a couple. I'm very excited to have Admirals Shane + Model Ilya solidly and happily together against the world, with their best people making many appearances.

Feel free to subscribe to the series or my user updates if you are interested. If you need some librarytiger to tide you over in the meantime, check out In Pursuit of a God. Little Orphan Ilya is doing really well over there right now, and I'm not even being sarcastic.