Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, a study on ilya's relationship with international hockey, Supportive Ilya Rozanov, Supportive Shane Hollander, Communication, Healthy Relationships, took them a minute but they got there, Post-Canon

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-08 Words: 6,119 Chapters: 1/1

you've got a gold-plated heart, i've got kintsugi-lined veins

Summary

Shane is called up to play for the Canadian national team at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. Ilya will not be going with him.

Hockey means everything to Shane, in a way that it doesn’t mean everything to Ilya. For Shane, hockey is the lens through which he understands himself and the world around him; hockey is the pulse that beats just underneath his skin. Ilya, on the other hand, finds a kind of escape and an adrenaline rush in the sport, finds a kind of camaraderie and energy in it that he doesn’t get anywhere else.

But ultimately, Ilya can live without it. He has other things now, other dreams and loves and wants. He’s not sure that Shane can honestly say the same thing. Shane has other loves and wants, of course, but they’re different—not lesser, no, but still, the difference is there—and nothing gives him what hockey does.

It would probably kill Shane to have to stop playing hockey. Getting ousted from the Metros fractured something in him that Ilya sometimes worries still hasn’t healed. Playing together instead of against each other has been a fucking dream, but that doesn’t mean the fracture lines aren’t still there, deep and agonizing and lingering.

So if Shane were to get passed over by the national team when NHL players are finally allowed back in the Olympics, Ilya thinks it would shatter him. He would lose something that he earned, something he knows he earned. Something he deserves. There’s not a pain quite like that.

In the end, it’s not luck—Shane Hollander makes his own luck, and he earns every ounce of it; Ilya knows this well—but Ilya is still impossibly grateful that the Canadian national team isn’t nearly as homophobic as the Metros are. The other players might end up being hesitant about sharing a locker room, might end up being annoyed or rude, but that doesn’t matter, because the coaches are giving him a chance anyway.

So Shane gets the call, and just like that, he’s on the Olympic ice hockey team.

And it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t, because Ilya loves his husband and he’s so fucking proud of him every moment of every day, especially this moment of this day. He’s absolutely endlessly proud. His love for Shane fills every part of him, and it overflows in abundance.

And it doesn’t hurt.

When Shane hangs up the phone call with the national team’s coach, Ilya is the first person to know what was said. They had been watching a game—St. Louis versus Jersey—when the coach called, cuddling on the coach and analyzing the play. Ilya muted the commentary when Shane tensed and picked up the phone, sending him a questioning look.

Shane didn’t meet his eyes, instead avoiding his gaze entirely. Ilya could still hear his end of the phone call, though, and he caught on easily as to what it’s about. He felt as tense as Shane looked, all his muscles suddenly drawn taut by the potential of making it or not making it onto the team. He knew how badly Shane wanted it. He knew, too, how very possible it is that Shane wouldn’t get it through no fault of his own.

But maybe he was catastrophizing for no reason, because the phone call ends and Shane looks at him and then he breaks into a smile. It’s hesitant, like he’s unsure if he’s allowed to celebrate before he’s won gold—and he will win gold, Ilya guesses, because he has never believed in anything more than he believes in Shane Hollander—and then it widens and widens until it takes over his whole face, brightening every inch of his expression.

“I made it,” Shane says, and he sounds almost disbelieving, which Ilya cannot let stand.

Ilya tackles him into a hug, Shane falling backwards onto the couch, and kisses him. Kisses the side of his neck, his freckles, his exposed collarbone, just underneath his eye. Shane laughs, and it’s so fucking rare that Ilya gets to see him so unguarded and vulnerable and joyful like he is now. It’s so rare that Shane laughs like this, and so Ilya kisses his smile and then laughs with him. 

“I knew you would,” Ilya tells him, when they’ve both quieted a little. He’s still grinning, and Shane cups his face in his hands like he’s holding the entire universe in his palms. Ilya leans into his hand. “So proud of you. So, so, so proud.”

Shane smiles again and surges upwards to kiss him again. Kissing him back, Ilya feels a hot curl of arousal pulse through him. He’s straddling Shane’s waist, leaning on his own elbows on either side of him, and the position is very familiar. Shane is kissing him like they’re teenagers—wet and messy and desperate with want. Ilya feels young all over again, in a way that he hasn’t in a while. He loves this man so deeply, this man who’s twice an Olympian, who’s so skilled that it leaves the rest of the world in the dust, this man who has chosen him. 

And it doesn’t hurt. He feels too much love and pride for it to hurt, right now.

No—the hurt comes later.

Here’s the thing: Ilya is still not a Canadian citizen. Technically, his international ties are still with Russia. If he were to play internationally, it’d be representing the Russian Olympic Committee. According to official Olympic rules, he has no right to play for Canada and no right to play for the USA; and according to the ROC hockey team’s head coach, he has no right to play for Russia either. His failure of a captaincy in 2014, his transfer to the shit team that used to be Ottawa, the reveal of his sexuality, his relationship with Shane—the coach could name any number of reasons to ignore Ilya.

And it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt, because Ilya knew that this would be amongst the consequences of coming out. If anything, the coach is doing him a favor by not putting his name in contention for the roster. Being on the roster would probably only put him at unnecessary risk.

He knew that this would happen. He knew that this would be his reality: coming out meant not playing internationally ever again. He’s lucky enough to get Ottawa; he has no right to ask for anything more. He knew this would be how it went, when the Winter Olympics came around.

He didn’t predict how much it would feel like failure.

It doesn’t help that Shane keeps tip-toeing around the subject. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it with Ilya, and Ilya isn’t stupid enough to not realize that.

Back in their rookie days, back when the rivalry was at its height, people used to call Hollander the analytical one and Rozanov the one with the brute force. Ilya remembers vividly how much those comments would hurt, because he knew why they were being made.

He knew the stereotypes and expectations and pressure that followed Shane around as a physical and mental weight. He knew, too, that—at the start, anyway—he often sounded like just another dumb and cocky jock. He knew that the mask of arrogance he wore was to mask his lack of English language comprehension, but no one else seemed to know that.

Shane knew. Shane clocked that about him almost immediately. It made him feel seen, understood, despite the language barrier and despite the masks.

It was in the moments when Shane would, casually and subtly, note that his English had gotten better; and it was in the moments when Shane would explain things to him without making him feel stupid; and it was in the moments when Shane would take the complicated questions first in joint interviews; and it was in the moments when Shane would let out the slightest of whines and then moan Rozanov like a prayer beyond language rather than a dirty Russian word. Shane knew. 

But commentators and analysts didn’t get it. Shane plays analytically, yes; he loves thinking about the strategy of the game, loves thinking about how his opponents play and how to break them down into just strengths and weaknesses, one by one by one. He loves the game, and part of the game is thinking.

It’s not that Ilya is the opposite of that, though—it’s not that Ilya plays only with brute force, it’s not that Ilya plays like he’s fighting, it’s not that Ilya doesn’t care about strategy or doesn’t think about it. Ilya is thinking too, when he’s out there on the ice.

There are a million things that you have to be keeping track of, a million things you have to be conscious of, at all times. The puck, the positioning of players around you, the positioning of players at the opposite end of the rink, the goal, the goalie, the zones you’re in and approaching. Ilya is a good fucking player, and so he’s thinking about all of that. He’s considering every factor of the game and then some: the states of each of the players on his team, the states of the players on the opposing team, the energy in the stadium, the energy on the ice.

He plays with force and with strength, yes—but so does Shane. It’s just that Shane doesn’t get called brutal, he gets called things like strong. Ilya, meanwhile, gets things like instinctual, and Shane gets things like strategist.

It’s stupid, really, because Shane is analytical but he still plays hockey like it’s an art. Ilya is powerful, but he plays hockey like it’s a game. They’re two sides of the same coin, not diametrically opposed opponents. They’re complimentary magnets, not ones that repel.

All of which is to say that Ilya isn’t stupid—and when it comes to reading people, when it comes to reading his husband, he’s smarter than Shane is; he’s smarter than most people. He’s perceptive. And Shane is being fucking obvious in his avoidance.

Every time the Olympics come up around Ilya, Shane starts skirting around the subject. He starts brushing off the accomplishment, even though Ilya was there when he got the call and he knows how absolutely proud Shane is to be representing his country.

Early in their careers—Shane’s first Olympics; Ilya’s only—Shane had told him that playing for Canada was a dream come true. Fuck, they had even met for the first time because they were playing for their national teams. So Ilya knows that Shane is proud and excited and honored and just looking forward to the entire experience. He knows Shane, and so he knows that Shane is going to do his best and he’s going to bring home that gold medal for Canada.

So it’s ridiculous, really, that Shane won’t fucking talk about it with him. Especially because Ilya knows that he’s not like this with anyone else but Ilya. He’s overheard conversations with other teammates: talk about things he’s looking forward to, talk about what the Olympics had been like in 2014, talk about the groups that had been revealed recently, talk about what it’s like to play internationally. He knows Shane isn’t avoiding the topic with anyone but him.

There’s really only so many reasons that he wouldn’t want to talk about it to Ilya. The first possibility is that he still, naively, thinks that Ilya is going to get a call to play for the ROC team. But Shane isn’t dumb either, and he knows just as well as Ilya what the consequences of coming out are, and so he must know that Ilya isn’t going to ever get that call.

The second possibility is that he knows Ilya isn’t going to get that call and he doesn’t want to rub it in. He doesn’t want Ilya to feel bad about this terrible fault of Ilya’s, this terrible failure. Which is an unfair way to think about it, because this isn’t his fucking fault, but in the days after Shane gets that call, all Ilya can hear is his father’s voice: Who did you lose to? You’re the captain, shouldn’t you have done better? Aren’t you ashamed?

He is, is the worst part. It doesn’t matter that, in the same season as that shitshow of a loss against Latvia, he won the Cup. It doesn’t matter that he’s well on the way to winning another one with Ottawa this season. It doesn’t matter that he’s so fucking in love with Shane Hollander that it feels like being alive, as easy as breathing, and if it feels like that, how could there ever be anything shameful about it?

But still—his father’s voice is echoing in his head. He can’t get it out, can’t seem to escape it. He doesn’t know how to. Not when he’s never going to play on the international stage again. Not when he’s never going to redeem that loss from so many years ago. Not when he’s never going to be a good enough player to deserve Shane Hollander’s attention.

Ilya knows that he’s spiraling a little. More than a little. But he doesn’t know how to stop it. He doesn’t know how to put any of these feelings into simple, easy, palatable words. He doesn’t know how to explain this in a way that’s going to make sense to someone outside of his head and his reality. So he’s just kind of…letting it happen.

Meanwhile, Shane has bigger things to be concerned about. He’s going to be playing at the goddamned Olympics. And Ilya will support him unconditionally—he’ll cheer for Canada in every game except for the one against Russia, when he’ll take off the Hollander jersey but he’ll still grin when Shane inevitably scores. Ilya will sit with Yuna and David and watch games at some fuckass hour of the night, running on several cups of coffee and whatever David cooks up for 3am breakfast, because the games are in Beijing and they’re in Canada. Ilya will under no conditions make Shane worry about him right now.

But he remembers so clearly the 2014 Olympics. He remembers how horribly Ilya’s own team played, himself not excluded. He remembers the failure feeling so massive and so terrible, too big for his body to hold in, and so he ignored Shane’s text lest he say something awful, and then he said something awful anyway. He remembers every second of every game feeling like it was going to kill him; every loss on home soil so embarrassing that it made him want to crawl out of his skin and shrivel up and fucking die.

Oh, how great the wanting was: the desire to win, the desire to prove himself, the desire to earn his father’s respect, the desire to have Shane fucking Hollander. All things that he wanted so badly that they threatened to overwhelm him, threatened to choke him with barbed wire, threatened to ruin him; all things that he could never have.

The wanting hasn’t changed, not really. It hasn’t gotten any better. He still wants to win, he still wants to prove himself, he still wants respect, he still wants to be good enough for Shane. Some things have changed, he’ll admit, but it also seems that enough is the same now as it was then that Ilya feels a little like he’s drowning in memory.

The only other possibility for why Shane won’t talk to him about the Olympics that Ilya can come up with is the worst one. It’s unlikely, probably, but something in his head is slipping out of his control, out of the realm of logic and reality, and he doesn’t know how to push the thought away. He doesn’t know how to get it out now that it’s taken root in the crevices of his chest where his love lives.

The thought is this: maybe Shane won’t talk to him about the Olympics because he’s disappointed in Ilya, too. Maybe now that he’s been forced to reckon with how Ilya’s international career is over, how any standing he had on the world stage has lost its foundations, how any dream Ilya had of actually being the best in the world, maybe now that he’s realized that all of that is done, he’s lost interest.

It’s not actually Ilya’s fault that he won’t be representing the ROC on the Olympic stage. It’s not actually Ilya’s fault that his international career ended with commentators asking him how it went so wrong, and with his father saying, Aren’t you ashamed? and that it’ll never grow from there. It’s not actually Ilya’s fault that Russia has no desire for a bisexual man to represent their country at the biggest, highest profile sports tournament in the world.

But it being his fault or not his fault doesn’t actually change the fact that Shane is going to the Olympics, and Ilya is not. They’ve been pushing each other in the NHL rankings, fighting for top scorer and highest points, neck and neck the whole time. They’ve stood next to each other at the top of the league for over a decade now, always at first and second, though the order is different every season.

But in this, Shane moves ahead. Shane goes forward, and Ilya stays at home. Shane takes the next step, and it’s a step that Ilya will never be able to follow.

It’s this that he’s thinking about—how Shane is going to lose interest, now that Ilya can’t keep up with him—with one hand clenching the hem of a blanket and staring at the blank television when Shane finds him. It’s early; the sun hasn’t even started to rise yet. His knees are pulled up to his chest and his eyes are unfocused.

“Ilya?”

Shane sounds sleepy, like he’s just rolled out of bed but not entirely woken up yet. He walks over to the couch slowly, like he’s approaching a wild dog. Ilya doesn’t look over at him, just stares at the black screen. He doesn’t really know what he’s seeing, but he thinks he’s hearing his father still.

Sitting down next to him and pulling the blanket over his own legs, Shane touches a hand to Ilya’s cheek, gently guiding him to look over. It’s not often that Shane willingly makes eye contact, and when he does, Ilya tends to get a little lost in his eyes, and in the trust that Shane is showing him. It’s no different now: Shane looks him in the eye, and everything in Ilya softens a little bit. All his sharp, angry edges weaken, and all the hurt he’s carrying right now seems to be a little lighter. Still there, but lighter; like Shane is sharing some of it.

“What are you doing up?” Shane asks. He’s frowning a little, and Ilya looks away from him. Shane drops his hand to Ilya’s knee and his gaze away from Ilya’s eyes.

Ilya shrugs. “Practicing. For the Olympics. You have games at one in the morning, Hollander, and I want to watch them.”

“So you’re practicing…being awake?”

Ilya shrugs again. It’s a stupid excuse, and he knows that Shane doesn’t believe a word that he’s saying. It’s not really worth keeping up the lie.

In the corner of his eye from where his gaze is focused hard on Shane’s hand on his knee, Ilya can see Shane’s frown deepen. His brow is furrowed, mouth in a thin line as he studies Ilya carefully. He looks a little like he’s trying to read Ilya’s mind, and Ilya tenses under his gaze.

Shane clearly feels it, that tension in his muscles. He withdraws his hand and it makes Ilya feels even more like shit—a terrible husband so caught up in his own head that he can’t just support the love of his life when he qualifies for the fucking Olympics. Ilya glares at his knees, trying to keep it all in, trying to keep it locked in his chest where Shane can’t see it, trying to put up walls around his head that Shane hasn’t been on the other side of in years.

“What’s going on?” Shane asks quietly. His voice is still layered over with sleep, and fuck, Shane needs his rest right now, not to be up with Ilya talking about this pain he’s carrying that he won’t ever be able to let go of.

Ilya swallows hard. He always caves so easily when it’s Shane who’s asking. He refuses to cave now. He will not distract Shane from his dreams with his own insecurities.

Instead of saying anything, Ilya shifts to the side so that he can lie down. He rests his head in Shane’s lap, the blanket twisting strangely around them both. Shane’s hands immediately go to his hair, tangling in the curls and twirling them around his fingers. He hums a little, just acknowledging the shift, as Ilya exhales deeply. Ilya could probably finally fall asleep like this, here, with Shane holding him close as if he could ward off every bad thought just by keeping his hands on Ilya’s head.

“You’ve been acting…off,” Shane murmurs. “For a while now. Will you just talk to me?”

Ilya squeezes his eyes shut, twisting so that his face is buried against Shane’s thighs, invisible and unreadable. He wants to tell Shane, so badly. He wants Shane to know what to say to make it all feel better, even if he knows that there’s nothing anyone could say to make it feel better. He wants Shane to reassure him that he’s loved, that he’s wanted, that hockey is secondary to who he is.

He knows that Shane would choose him, at the end of the day. Shane made that much clear when they were outed. Ilya trusts him, and his heart, and his love. He does.

But there are moments—the darkest of moments, the quietest ones, the most private and vulnerable—when Ilya doubts that it’s him that Shane loves, but rather the Ilya that gives him his best hockey. If Ilya can’t provide that for him—for anyone—anymore, what’s left in him to be worth anything?

Shane presses his palm against the back of Ilya’s neck, warm and gentle, and Ilya lets out a truly pathetic little noise. He’s not crying, not exactly. His eyes are dry, but fuck, he feels wrecked. He feels like he’s been turned inside out, like all his guts have spilled out around them and they’re just sitting amongst the remains of what he once had been.

Exhaling a little shakily, hand curled around the nape of his neck, Shane asks, “Is it getting bad again? The depression, I mean. Do we, um—need to call your doctor?”

A beat. Ilya keeps his eyes closed as the moment tenses. Finally, he says, “No. This is…not that.”

It’s not that, honestly. He loves Shane for asking, for being concerned. He loves Shane for being open enough to that being that problem that he’d ask about it, even if it was stumbling, and to immediately try to work with him to find a solution.

He loves Shane, too, for trusting Ilya enough to believe him, and for just saying, “Okay.” Then, “What is it, then?”

Ilya opens his eyes, sighing. He rolls over so that he’s on his back and looking up at Shane, his knees still folded up on the couch. The blanket is twisted around him tighter now, enough to have pulled it off of Shane’s lap entirely.

“You ask so many questions,” Ilya says, a small smile teasing at his lips. It doesn’t feel genuine, but it’s a start.

Shane rolls his eyes, not taking the bait. “Yeah. And you answer none of them.”

Huffing a laugh that’s more just a breath of air, Ilya closes his eyes again. Maybe it’ll be easier to say if he can’t see Shane when he says it.

“I…” Ilya trails off. He takes a steadying breath that doesn’t really steady him at all. Shane sets a hand on his chest, just over his heart, and that weight is much more grounding. “I knew you would make it onto the team.”

“The Olympic team?”

Ilya nods shortly. Takes another breath. Focuses on Shane’s hand over his heart. “Yes. I knew you would make it. And I knew that I would not.”

At his words, Shane’s whole body tenses so hard and so immediately that it’s practically a flinch. Ilya can’t look at him now. Can’t bear to see his reaction on his face—the disappointment, the pain, the frustration. Whatever it may be, Ilya doesn’t want to see it.

“I am so proud of you, Shane.” Ilya feels a little like, with every word, he’s unspooling himself a little further. He feels like he’s spilling open, his entire heart breaking and then flooding out.

Somehow, for some reason, Shane is there, hand on his chest, catching every falling drop of him. He’s there, his breath catching in his throat and no words on his tongue, but even with eyes closed, Ilya can tell he has Shane’s full attention. He can tell that Shane isn’t going to run from this. From him.

“I am so proud of you,” Ilya says again, trying to emphasize it. He doesn’t want Shane to ever think that, just because Ilya is having this crisis, he isn’t full of a pride for Shane that runs deeper than national pride ever touch. “But I am also—worried.”

He goes quiet then, unsure how to put any of this into words. He opens his eyes, looking up at Shane as if that will maybe just communicate everything he wants to say without him having to say it. Shane is looking back at him, his own worry written into the lines at his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to fill in the blanks for Ilya. He probably doesn’t know how.

“I don’t want you to be disappointed in me,” Ilya murmurs. “Or—or not want me. When you realize that I cannot keep up with you anymore.”

Shane’s lips part wordlessly. He stares down at Ilya, some unreadable expression on his face. Ilya doesn’t know what it means, and it terrifies him. His heart is in his throat, or maybe it’s bared naked in the open cavern of his chest for Shane to pull out and break. He feels stupid, suddenly, partly for his fears and partly for daring to say them aloud.

“Can’t keep up with me,” Shane repeats distantly.

Ilya sits up, untangling the blanket from himself. It suddenly feels suffocating. Shane lets him move, not trying to hold him down, and Ilya can’t decide if he wants him to or not. He moves so that he’s sitting a few inches away from Shane, his knees pulled up to his chest again. Shane is sitting so still next to him.

“Russia will never take me again. And Canadian citizenship is—a very long work in progress.”

Next to him, Shane swallows visibly. “Ilya…”

Ilya shrugs stiffly. He wants to tell Shane it’s not a big deal, that this is all some stupid nightmare he had, that this doesn’t matter, that none of this hurts. He wants to tell Shane that he’s not actually concerned about this, and Shane shouldn’t be either.

But none of that would be true. At the end of the day, while Ilya does not love hockey in the way Shane does, Ilya still fucking wants it. He wants it, and a whole world of hockey being a closed and locked door to him is frustrating and painful and downright insulting. Especially when he gets the privilege of watching his husband walk through the door as if they haven’t both been putting in the work for a decade. 

“I could never be disappointed in you,” Shane says, words somewhat stilted but no less genuine. Ilya looks at him in his peripheral vision and winces when he sees the hurt on Shane’s face. “And I spent years trying not to want you, and it never once worked then, and nothing you do could make it happen now.”

Ilya blinks hard, looking away from Shane. “The thing about being rivals is that it is only fun when your rival is on the same level as you. And now you are a two-time Olympian. And I am never going to—”

“Well,” Shane cuts in, voice fierce, “it’s a good thing we’re not rivals anymore, isn’t it? We’re on the same team, Ilya. Not—not just in the league, but in this.”

Finally, Ilya looks over at him, surprised by the ferocity in his words. “This?”

Shane waves a hand vaguely. “In life, Ilya. We’re fucking married, you idiot.”

“I am baring my heart to you and you are calling me an idiot,” Ilya says dryly, trying and failing to keep the affection out of his voice. He loves Shane so much—and it doesn’t hurt anymore, not really, not in any substantial way, but it does still feel to be too big a feeling for him to hold in just two hands.

“Sorry,” Shane says, not sounding particularly sorry. “But—you know I don’t love you because you’re good at hockey, right?”

A moment. Ilya looks away from him, his face going uncharacteristically expressionless.

“Ilya,” Shane starts again, sounding horrified. “You know that I love you because of you, right? And that you’re more than a hockey player to me?”

Finally, “Yes,” Ilya manages to choke out. He does. He does know. It’s just—hard, sometimes. “I know. I know, Shane. Am just—in my head right now.”

Shane relaxes, but only marginally. He presses his forehead against Ilya’s shoulder, as if he can’t bear not to be touching him anymore but he doesn’t want to push at Ilya’s physical boundaries right now. They sit in silence for a long moment, until Ilya finally moves his hand to Shane, toying with the strands of hair at the nape of his neck. Shane lets out a soft breath, and Ilya can feel himself warm and relax, just enough.

Just enough to add, quietly, “You would not talk to me about it. You talk to everyone else about it. Everyone but me.”

Shane sighs again, his breath warm against Ilya’s arm. He’s quiet for a moment, while Ilya can only hear his heart pulsing in his ears.

“I should have,” Shane finally says. “I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t want to…you know.”

He waves a hand vaguely, not moving his head from Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya rolls his eyes, the touch of a smile at his lips now a little more genuine. “No, Shane, I don’t know. That is why I am asking.”

“Fair enough,” Shane mutters. “I think I didn’t want to hurt you. Make you feel left out, because I knew you weren’t going to be able to come, and that you should have been able to. You earned it just as much as I did.”

Ilya swallows, letting that information wash over him, blinking hard once again. He shifts his body to lean back against the couch and pulls Shane’s head against his chest. He presses a kiss to the crown of his head, petting his hair with one hand.

“You can talk to me about it,” Ilya tells him, keeping his voice even and steady as best as he can. “I can be sad for me and excited for you at the same time. I’m good at multitasking.”

Shane snorts, which was most of the point of that comment, but it doesn’t make it any less true. He is sad for himself, but he’s simultaneously so excited for Shane that it’s practically bubbling out of him at every moment. Tonight is just a bad night.

“Okay.” Shane lifts his head, his hand going to Ilya’s cheek and turning his head again. “Maybe we both do better about talking to each other.”

“Maybe,” is all Ilya says, but he’s smiling just a little. He leans forward to kiss Shane and that’s a better answer.

When Shane pulls back, Ilya tries to chase after his lips again, but Shane puts a hand on his chest to lightly push him back and stop him. Ilya frowns, not sure what changed.

Shane studies his face for a moment. Then, “Do you ever think about what it’ll be like after hockey? When we’re both retired?”

The truth, which Ilya isn’t sure yet if he wants to share or not, is that he thinks about it constantly. He thinks about that future all the time. The great wide world that they’ll be able to explore and be a part of. The pieces of themselves that they’ll discover and share and love—the pieces of themselves that they’ve cut off or shaved down or broken into pieces for the sake of playing hockey.

He thinks about getting another dog, a friend for Anya. He thinks about children—maybe adoption. Teaching their children how to skate, getting to watch them grow up. He thinks about renewing their vows, this time with vows actually written by themselves. He thinks about growing old. He thinks about sitting on the porch at the cottage and watching the sunset, holding hands, reminiscing about the good old days all while knowing that they’re still kind of living the best of lives.

The moment has gone silent for too long, and Ilya can feel Shane start to tense. He blurts out, “Yes. More than you know.”

“I do, too,” Shane confesses. “And when I think about that time when I can’t play anymore, when I can’t even skate, when there’s no hockey to be played, you’re still with me and I’m still with you. Same team, remember? I don’t care how many Olympics you do or don’t go to. I don’t care that you only have one—soon to be two, maybe—Cups in this league. I care that you’re going to be the best father to our children and write the worst vows when we do them again.”

Ilya stares at him, lips parting. But no words are coming to mind. There is only the great, beautiful, all-encompassing love he holds for this man. How could he have ever, even for a moment, doubted any of what he’s saying? How could he have ever worried that love was about their competition and not about their teamwork?

He says, instead of any of that, the first thing he can gather the words for: “I’m going to write better vows than you.”

Looking at him, Shane’s cheeks flush the prettiest pink as he rolls his eyes. “It was just an example.”

“I stand by what I said.” Ilya is grinning now. He leans forward to press a lingering kiss to Shane’s lips. “You’re going to regret that challenge when you’re crying at the altar in front of everyone over how beautiful my words are.”

“It wasn’t a challenge,” Shane tries, but it’s a weak protest. He doesn’t sound all that upset, especially not when he leans forward to press Ilya further against the couch and kiss him hard. Between kissing at Ilya’s neck and his lips, he says, breathlessly, “When I win gold this year, I’ll be in love with you. When I lose to you at Uno again, I’ll be in love with you. And when we get the Cup later, I’ll be in love with you. And when we’re both washed up and can’t play anymore, I’ll still be in love with you. Ilya. Ilya.”

Ilya’s breath is caught in his throat, not a single word coming to mind. He can’t focus on anything but Shane’s lips on his neck and his whispered ministrations of love and devotion. He can’t feel anything but Shane, Shane, Shane.

Shane, who loves him, who is endlessly devoted to him, who never wants to leave him, who loves gold medals and trophies and winning, and who loves Ilya both with and without all that. Who loves Ilya more than any of it.

There are no guarantees that Ilya won’t spiral again; he’s making no promises to himself or Shane that he won’t feel this same hurt and dark when he’s alone in Ottawa while watching Shane make a name for himself internationally. In all likeliness, this feeling will return.

But he knows, too, that Shane will also return. Shane will also come to him, settle in his arms, and kiss him like this—like he’s never wanted to do anything else; like he’s never needed anything else. Shane will come home to him, and remind him of all this and more.