Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Irina Rozanova, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Anya | Ilya Rozanov's Dog, Troy Barrett, Wyatt Hayes

Additional Tags:

Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Near Death Experiences, Good Friend Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Good Friend Svetlana Vetrova, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Irina Rozanova Haunts the Narrative, Car Accidents, Happily Ever After, Romantic Fluff

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-23 Words: 24,296 Chapters: 1/1

heat seeker (the many names of ilya rozanov)

Summary

Ilya Rozanov has always understood the power of a name.

On the ice, it’s a threat.
In headlines, it’s a brand.
In Boston, it’s a chant.

But in Moscow, it was once a lullaby.
And in Shane Hollander’s voice, it becomes something softer. Something dangerous. Something that makes Ilya want more than he was ever meant to have.

From a golden kitchen in Moscow to the roar of Boston crowds, from hotel rooms and tuna melts to hospital monitors and wedding vows, this is the story of how a boy who learned what silence feels like finds someone who refuses to stop saying his name.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s what saves him.

Notes

hello, and welcome to my second if you saw my other upload, no you didn't (i decided to make some changes first) heated rivalry fic. it's a little bit of a look into all the ways a name shapes a person, and the person in question is ilya rozanov. and was absolutely inspired by hozier's first time ("Remember once I told you 'bout
How before I heard it from your mouth
My name would always hit my ears
As such an awful sound" PLEASE??)

this got way out of hand while i was writing, but i couldn't really sacrifice too many scenes, so it's a chunky one shot. i tried my best with the time line, but if some ages/years don't add up, let me know, and i'll fix it!! (or suspend your belief if you prefer ahahah)

just a quick note, some scenes are canon scenes (and a mix of show and book), but reimagined a little, just because it might be a little dull if everything remained the same, no?

thanks for clicking on this, and thanks for reading!! hope you enjoy 💖

1999

The kitchen was already awake when Ilya wandered into it.

It was not the loud kind of awake, not clattering or bustling, but humming. The kind of quiet, golden aliveness that settles into the corners of a room before the sun claims it. The small window above the sink had begun to glow pale with winter morning light, turning the frost at its edges into delicate lace. The old wooden clock on the wall kept time in patient, sleepy beats.

And over it all is his mother's voice.

The radio on the counter wheezed beside her, its speaker wrapped in electrical tape, the signal crackling in and out like breath caught in a throat. A ballad drifted through in fractured pieces, some violin, then static, then a warbled line of lyrics, but Irina did not falter when the sound dissolved. She sang anyway, voice clear, rich—certain.

Her voice filled the kitchen where the radio could not.

Ilya paused in the doorway, small bare feet curling against the cool floor. He leaned his head against the frame and simply watched.

She was wearing the blue sweater he liked best, the soft one with sleeves she always pushed up to her elbows when she cooked. Flour dusted her hands. Her golden hair was pulled back in a loose braid that had begun to unravel, coiled strands escaping around her face. At the base of her throat, the gold cross she wore every day caught the morning light and flashed when she moved.

She swayed as she stirred something in the pan, her hip bumping lightly against the counter in time with the melody only she seemed to hear.

Ilya loved her most like this: not tired, not quiet, not pressed thin and brittle by this house. His father and Alexei had left two days ago for some trip he did not fully understand, something to do with business and Moscow and meetings that meant nothing to him except absence.

And absence, he had learned, sometimes meant his mother could breathe.

She turned just as he took a step forward.

Her face lit.

"Good morning, my little Ilyushechka."

She said it like she had been waiting only for him.

He barely had time to smile before she crossed the kitchen in two quick steps and scooped all eight years of him into her arms. Flour puffed against his pajama shirt. He buried his face into the soft wool of her sweater, breathing in soap and butter and something warm and entirely hers.

She pressed a kiss into his curls.

"You slept well?" she asked, pulling back just enough to cup his face in her hands.

He nodded, already grinning.

"Good," she said solemnly, as if this were the best news she had received all morning. Then she gave him a playful little shake. "Because I made blini, and if you are too sleepy to eat them, I will have to eat them myself."

His gasp was immediate and scandalized.

"Mama!"

She laughed, bright, surprised, delighted by him, and returned to the stove, her song picking up again as she flipped the thin pancakes with easy flicks of her wrist.

He climbed onto his chair at the small wooden table, chin barely clearing its surface, and watched her as though she were performing on a stage built only for him. The golden cross swung as she moved. The weak winter sun climbed higher, catching in her blue eyes when she glanced back at him. There was something sparkling there—something alive.

The radio gave a final pathetic crackle and fell silent altogether.

Irina did not notice. Or perhaps she did and chose not to care.

She carried a plate to the table and set it in front of him with ceremony. Steam rose in soft white ribbons. She brushed back his wild curls from his forehead with her flour-dusted fingers, smoothing them as if they might behave under her touch.

He began eating immediately, enthusiastic and unapologetic, syrup sticky at the corners of his mouth.

She rested her chin in her hand and watched him the way mothers sometimes do, as though she was trying to memorize the shape of him.

"Ilyusha," she said gently, her thumb catching a streak of syrup and wiping it away. "Why don't we go to the lake today?"

He froze mid-bite.

"The lake?" he breathed.

Her smile tilted conspiratorial.

"Yes. Before the snow comes again. It will be frozen enough now."

The lake was not truly a lake. It was a wide, quiet pond tucked behind a sparse line of trees, hidden from the road and from neighbors and from everything that made the world too heavy. In winter it froze thick and smooth, the surface turning into a pale sheet of possibility.

It was theirs.

He slid off his chair so quickly it scraped loudly against the floor.

"Now?" he demanded.

She laughed again, reaching for him, pulling him close so she could press her forehead briefly to his.

"After breakfast, impatient boy."

He returned to the table, vibrating with excitement, and she resumed her soft singing, quieter now, more to herself than to the room.

Outside, the world was white and still, but inside, the kitchen glowed.

Later, bundled in scarves and hats, he would wobble on skates, his arms windmilling as he tried to keep upright. She would glide past him with exaggerated grace, teasing, then circle back to steady him with warm hands at his elbows.

"Careful, Ilyusha," she would murmur, laughter echoing across the frozen water.

The sky would stretch endlessly above them. Their breath would cloud in front of their faces. There would be no shouting or sharp voices. No tension curling in the air.

Only them, and the sound of blades slicing clean lines into ice.

That night, after dinner and baths and the slow descent of darkness against the windows, she would climb into his narrow bed and pull the blanket up beneath their chins. The room would smell faintly of cold air and soap.

"Which one?" she asked, smoothing his hair back.

"The brave knight," he said immediately.

"Again?" she teased.

"Yes."

So she told it again; with voices, with dramatics, with whispered suspense and booming villainy. She widened her eyes and deepened her voice and gasped at the proper moments, and he laughed into her shoulder, clutching the fabric of her sleeve.

When the story ended, she did not leave right away.

Her hand carded slowly through his curls. Her breathing evened. The gold cross rested cool against his temple.

"Sleep, Ilyushechka," she whispered.

He closed his eyes obediently.

If days could be saved like coins in a jar, he would have kept this one. He would have hidden it somewhere secret, safe from time and from change and from the quiet that always returned.

It was probably the best day of his life.

And when sleep came for him, it came warm.

2003

By the time Ilya got home, the light had already begun to fade.

Winter did that. It stole the day early, tucked the sun behind the trees and left the world washed in pale blue shadow. His breath smoked in front of his face as he trudged up the front steps, hockey bag thumping against his hip, skates clinking faintly inside like teeth. The cold had bitten clean through his gloves by the end of practice. His fingers ached in that dull, stubborn way that always made him think of warm kitchens, of tea, of hands rubbed briskly between someone else's palms.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder.

The house swallowed him.

No smell of dinner. No clatter of dishes. The air inside was too still, too flat, holding its breath.

"Mama?" he called, dropping his bag with a soft, heavy thud onto the entryway rug.

His voice bounced off walls that did not answer.

He waited anyway, as if she might appear around the corner with that familiar scolding smile—Ilyusha, take off your boots, you'll ruin the floor—and the silence were only a trick of timing.

Nothing.

He kicked his boots off and padded farther in, the soles of his socks whispering over the wood.

"Mama?" he tried again, louder this time, more certain that she had simply not heard him the first time. She was in the kitchen, maybe. Maybe she was on the phone. Maybe she was in the bathroom. Maybe—

The house offered him the same quiet.

He walked to the kitchen first, because that was where she belonged. Because the kitchen was where she came back to life when she could.

The counters were clean. The stove was off. A single cup sat in the sink, rinsed but not put away.

"Mama?" he whispered this time, to keep the wrongness from noticing him.

He swallowed, throat suddenly tight. He turned down the hallway, passing the sitting room, the study, the small guest bathroom. He paused at the door to Alexei's room, the one that still smelled faintly of cologne and cold resentment, even when empty.

Nothing.

He went upstairs two steps at a time, the familiar creak of the stairs suddenly too loud in the silence. At the top, he stopped, listening hard. He could hear the house's bones settling. His own heartbeat.

"Mama?"

He told himself she had to be in bed.

She had been in bed so often lately that it had become normal in the way bad things always did—slowly, and then all at once. She was tired, she said. She was just tired. She would smile at him from her pillows, eyes glassy with exhaustion, and say, Later, Illyusha. We'll do something together later. Or, I'm tired, Illyusha, maybe after I sleep.

Sometimes she did get up later.

Sometimes she didn't.

He walked down the hallway toward his parents' room. The door was mostly closed. A sliver of darkness showed through. He hesitated there, fingers hovering near the wood, as though the door might burn him if he touched it but then knocked lightly anyway.

"Mama?"

No answer.

He knocked again, a little harder. "Mama?"

Still no answer.

The unease in his chest sharpened. He pushed the door open a few inches and peered into the dim room.

The curtains were drawn, blocking the winter light. The air inside felt colder than the rest of the house, stale and heavy. His eyes adjusted slowly.

He saw the bed first, rumpled sheets, blankets thrown back. Her shape beneath them.

Relief flickered through him for half a second. There. She's asleep. She's just sleeping.

He stepped inside quietly, because he had learned how to move around her tiredness like it was something fragile that could break if he startled it. The floorboards creaked under his weight. He winced, as if the sound might wake her and make her angry, make her sigh and say, Illyusha, please.

But she didn't stir.

He moved closer.

Her hand hung off the edge of the mattress, fingers slack, pale against the dark bedframe.

He stood beside her and stared at that hand. It looked wrong. Not just still, but wrong in a way he couldn't name without naming it.

"Mama?" he tried again, softer, now, almost pleading. "Mama, I'm home."

No answer.

He reached out slowly, as if he were approaching something wild, something that might bolt away from him if he moved too fast. His fingertips brushed her knuckles.

Cold.

So cold that his skin recoiled instinctively, a sharp jolt like touching metal outside in winter. He froze, then pressed his fingers against her again, harder this time, as if he could will warmth into her by force.

"Mama?" His voice came out thin. "Wake up."

He slid his small hand into hers and lifted it gently. Her fingers did not curl around him. They didn't squeeze. They didn't do anything.

He brought her hand to his cheek.

Cold. Too cold. It drew the heat out of him like a thief.

"No," he whispered, the word escaping without permission. "No, no—"

He pressed her hand there anyway, stubborn, desperate, as if his skin might lend her warmth if he held her close enough. As if warmth were transferable. As if this were a problem he could solve by trying hard, by being good, by doing the right thing.

He turned her hand so her fingertips brushed his hair, because that was what she did. That was what she always did when she wanted him calm. When she wanted him to sleep. When she wanted to remind him he was safe.

He moved her fingers through his curls with trembling care.

"Mama," he said again, swallowing around the thick lump in his throat. "It's me. It's your Ilyushechka." His voice broke on the nickname, the way it always did now, because lately she didn't say it as often. Lately she said later. Lately she said tired. "Wake up, please."

He noticed the pills then, half-hidden on the nightstand like a secret too obvious to ignore. The bottle tipped on its side. A few white tablets scattered like teeth.

He stared at them, and a part of him understood—quietly, instantly, with sick clarity.

He did not move.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and kept her hand against his face. He held it there as if he could keep her from slipping farther away. As if he could anchor her to the world by sheer will.

Time passed in strange, uneven pieces.

He listened for her breath.

He waited for her fingers to twitch.

He waited for her eyelids to flutter.

Nothing happened.

When the front door finally opened downstairs, the sound was loud enough to make him flinch. Heavy footsteps. The scrape of boots. The low, irritated mutter of his father's voice, the way it sounded when everything offended him simply by existing.

"Ilya?" his father called.

Ilya did not answer. His mouth wouldn't work.

The footsteps came up the stairs, sharp and impatient. The bedroom door swung wider, and his father filled the doorway like a storm cloud, his shoulders broad, his presence immediate and heavy.

Then he saw the bed.

He saw Irina.

His face changed.

For a moment, there was something like shock there, raw, unguarded. A crack in the stone. It lasted the length of a heartbeat, perhaps two.

And then it hardened into something else.

Cold fury. The kind of anger that didn't burn bright but sank deep.

"What is this," his father said, and his voice was not a question so much as an accusation flung at the room.

Ilya looked up at him, still holding his mother's hand to his cheek like a child refusing to let go of a toy.

"Papa," he whispered, as if his father could fix it. As if his father could turn back time. "She—she won't—"

His father crossed the room in two strides and grabbed Ilya by the arm.

The grip was bruising, fingers clamping down hard enough that pain shot up Ilya's shoulder. He yelped, startled, but his other hand clung to Irina's until his father's yank tore him away.

"No," Ilya cried, reaching back instinctively, panic flooding him in a sudden, violent wave. "No—Papa, wait—"

"Get out of here," his father snapped, dragging him toward the door.

Ilya's feet stumbled on the rug. He twisted, trying to look back, trying to see her, trying to keep her in his sight because sight itself were a tether.

His father's voice slammed into him again.

"It's an accident," he said, too loudly, too sharply, like volume could make it true. "Do you hear me? Your mother had an accident. You will not—" His voice cracked on something, whether rage or fear Ilya could not tell. "You will not stand there like this. Get out."

Everything after that felt like drowning.

The hallway. The stairs. His father's grip. The sound of his own sobs, swallowed down because he didn't know if he was allowed to make noise. The house turning into a tunnel full of echoes.

He remembered, later, the way his father's hand had felt on his arm: not warm nor steady. Only bruising.

That night, when Ilya climbed into bed, his room felt too big. The sheets were cold. The air was cold. The house was cold, and whatever warmth had lived inside it had been carried away.

He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling until his eyes burned.

When he closed them, he saw her hand again—hanging off the edge of the bed, fingers slack and pale. He felt that terrible cold seeping into his skin. He felt himself pressing her fingertips into his hair, trying to pretend.

His hands were small. His hands were warm.

Hers had been warm, too, always.

He brought his own hands up and pressed them to his cheeks, as if he could erase the sensation. As if he could replace it with memory, with the echo of her touch on a frozen lake, with flour-dusted fingers tucking curls behind his ear.

But the cold stayed, and somewhere deep inside him, something learned a new name for silence.

2008

Canada was colder than he expected, and that annoyed him, because he was from Russia and he refused to be impressed by Canadian winter.

The air bit clean through wool. The sky sat low and pale, like it had been rubbed thin by the wind. Everything felt flat and wide and exposed in a way Moscow never did. Even indoors, even under the bright lights of the arena, there was a sense of openness that made him feel watched.

And he was being watched.

Not by scouts. Not by journalists. Not even by the teams they were about to play.

By a name.

Shane Hollander.

He was sick of hearing it.

It had been everywhere for months, whispered in rink corridors, murmured by trainers, snuck into the mouths of reporters like it belonged there. Seventeen-year-old Canadian phenom. Once-in-a-generation. Future captain. It had caused such a stir that even Moscow hadn't been far enough to escape it. The name crossed oceans easier than people did.

Both of them were eligible for the NHL entry draft that coming June. Both of them were already expected to go first and second overall, depending on who you asked.

Ilya knew his answer.

He had never met Shane Hollander. Never played against him.

But he was already determined to destroy him.

He stood with his team near the bench as the arena filled, the noise rising in waves: English words he didn't bother translating, laughter too loud, applause that sounded like hail. He should have been paying attention to his coach. He should have been listening to the plan. He should have been in his body, in his skates, in the sharp familiar focus hockey demanded.

Instead, his attention snagged on the stands like a hook in cloth.

At first, he only noticed the shape of a boy there—tall, bundled in a thick winter coat, posture oddly still among the shifting crowd. Then the light shifted and Ilya saw his face.

Freckles.

Not faint, either. Proper freckles, scattered across the bridge of his nose and the tops of his cheeks as though someone had flicked paint at him. His mouth was pink from the cold, lips chapped just a little, soft-looking in a way that didn't fit with the name that had become a menace. His cheeks were rosy, the kind of natural flush that made him look alive and unreal at the same time.

Hollander wasn't smiling.

He was watching.

It should have felt ordinary, players watched other players all the time; it was how the world worked, how competition sharpened itself, but there was something unsettling about seeing the Shane Hollander sitting quietly in the stands like a normal person, like a boy, like he wasn't a headline in sports article.

Ilya stared too long.

He could feel the pull of it, the strange gravity of being looked at by someone he'd never spoken to. He imagined, with sudden vicious pleasure, what it would feel like to wipe that calm off Hollander's face. To beat him so publicly that no one could say his name without remembering the loss. He imagined him angry, breathless, lips parted not with quiet concentration but with frustration, with disbelief.

He imagined—

"Care to join us, Rozanov?"

The words cracked through his thoughts like a stick across ice.

Heat shot up Ilya's neck. He jerked his gaze away so fast it almost hurt, blinking hard as if he could blink the daydream off his face.

His coach was looking at him, expression flat with irritation. A couple of his teammates smirked. Someone snickered, quickly muffled into a cough.

Ilya's embarrassment curdled into something sharp, defensive.

"I am here," he snapped, though everyone could see he hadn't been.

His coach's mouth tightened. "Then act like it."

It was always Rozanov in moments like this, thrown at him like a collar being yanked. Like a reminder of what he was for.

He stepped into the huddle, shoulders squaring, face rearranging itself into blank focus. He nodded along, his mind dutifully taking in strategy, assignments, pressure points on the other team.

But the image of freckles kept rising behind his eyes like a stubborn ghost.

Later, when he finally escaped outside, it was less to smoke than to breathe in air that wasn't full of people and noise and expectation. The cold slapped him awake the second he stepped out, biting his cheeks, stinging his lungs. He exhaled hard, watching his breath bloom and vanish.

The cigarette tasted like rebellion and stupidity. He liked both.

He wasn't alone for long.

Footsteps crunched in the snow behind him. Ilya didn't turn right away. He watched the ember flare at the end of his cigarette, watched ash gather and tremble.

When he finally glanced back, Shane Hollander was standing a few feet away.

Up close, the freckles were worse. More detailed, like someone had mapped constellations across his skin. His eyelashes were dark with meltwater. His cheeks were red from the cold, and his mouth was still that soft, ridiculous pink.

He looked… healthy. Like he slept at night. Like he didn't live with hunger gnawing at the back of his ribs, the kind you fed with goals and victories and violence and drinking until you couldn't tell if it was ever satisfied.

Hollander's eyes flicked to the cigarette. His expression tightened.

"You shouldn't smoke here," he said.

His voice was exactly what Ilya expected it to be and also not. Calm. Canadian. A little roughened by cold air. It was sure, in a way that made Ilya want to push him.

Ilya took another drag, slow on purpose. "What?"

Hollander's mouth twitched, almost a smile, then didn't commit. "The smoking area is over there."

"Okay," Ilya said, tilting his head.

Hollander's eyes narrowed slightly, as if he couldn't decide whether Ilya was joking or being an asshole. Ilya hoped for both.

"I wanted to meet you," Hollander said, extending his hand. "Shane Hollander."

"Yes." Ilya watched him, then shook his hand.

"You're an awesome player to watch."

"I know," Ilya replied, and flicked ash into the snow like punctuation.

Hollander didn't leave. He stayed, hands shoved into his coat pockets, standing with a kind of quiet stubbornness that irritated Ilya immediately. The cold made Hollander's nose pink at the tip. The wind lifted his hair, and it fell back into place like it had been trained.

Ilya wondered, absurdly, what it would feel like to mess it up.

To put his hands in it.

To make Hollander's mouth open for a reason other than speaking.

His thoughts slid sideways, treacherous and bright.

Hollander's gaze met his again, steady and unreadable.

The silence between them was thick with everything they hadn't done yet.

Ilya took one last drag and crushed the cigarette out under his boot. He didn't know why his hands were suddenly restless. He didn't know why his heartbeat had picked up. He didn't know why it mattered that Hollander hadn't said his name.

2010

It should have felt like nothing.

A day of cameras, of bright lights that made everyone's skin look too smooth and too glossy, of a smiling photographer asking them to angle their shoulders like they weren't built to collide. A day of being told to laugh, to look intense, to look like rivals without looking like you wanted to kill each other.

It should have ended the way days like that always ended: Ilya returning to his room alone, taking a long shower, scrubbing the smell of other people's expectations off his skin.

Instead, he found himself outside Hollander's door.

He wasn't sure when the decision had been made. He could pinpoint the moment the question had flickered between them: a glance too long in the showers, Hollander's eyes flicking to him over and over, Ilya's own pulse answering in a way that made him want to throw something.

Maybe it was simpler than all that.

Maybe it was just the fact that they were eighteen now, old enough that the world stopped pretending it could keep them in glass cases. Old enough to be treated like men in public and boys in private. Old enough, finally, to take what they wanted and call it a choice. Not that Ilya hadn't been doing that all along anyway.

The hallway carpet swallowed the sound of Ilya's footsteps. The hotel's air-conditioning hummed faintly behind closed doors. Somewhere down the hall a television murmured, distant laughter like a ghost.

He knocked once.

There was a pause—long enough for his brain to spit out a sudden, furious what are you doing—and then the door opened.

Shane Hollander stood there, and the warm yellow light from the room behind him softened everything, made the freckles across his nose look like a constellation someone had traced with care.

He looked startled for half a second, and then his face rearranged itself into something deliberately neutral.

"You—" Shane began.

Ilya didn't let him finish.

He stepped forward, crowding Shane back over the threshold the way he always crowded him on the ice, shoulder to shoulder, blade to blade. Shane's hands came up automatically, bracing against Ilya's chest as if to stop him, as if he could.

As if he wanted to.

The door clicked shut behind them with a quiet finality.

For one breath they stood too close, Shane's palms flat against Ilya's sternum. Through the thin fabric of the shirt Ilya could feel the heat of him. The slight tremor in Shane's fingers.

Shane's eyes lifted to his.

"Is this…" Shane started again, voice rougher than before. He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing. "Is this a good idea?"

Ilya's laugh came out soft.

"You care about that?" he murmured.

That made something shift in Shane's expression, annoyance, maybe, or pride. He dropped his hands.

"I care," Shane said, and it came out clipped like he was angry at himself for admitting it.

Ilya watched him for a second, the way he watched him on the ice: for openings, for tells, for the exact moment Shane's control might slip.

Then he leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn't gentle. It wasn't brutal, either. It was really just inevitable. A collision that had been waiting months, maybe years, to happen somewhere that wasn't a rink, somewhere that wasn't under cameras and other people's eyes.

Shane made a sound, surprised and involuntary, and then his hands were in Ilya's shirt, bunching the fabric like he needed something to hold onto. Like he needed proof Ilya was real.

Ilya kissed him harder.

Shane's mouth was warm and soft and stubborn. He tasted faintly of toothpaste and something else. His lips moved against Ilya's like he was trying to make sense of a language he hadn't been taught.

Ilya understood it anyway.

He understood Shane, even when he hated him.

Shane stumbled back, and Ilya went with him, pushing him until his knees hit the edge of the bed. Shane sat down heavily, still kissing him, still gripping his shirt. The mattress dipped. The room tilted.

Ilya stood between Shane's knees, feeling the heat radiating off him like a hearth.

Shane broke the kiss, breathing hard. His cheeks were flushed, freckles bright against pink skin. His eyes were glassy with adrenaline.

For a second, he just stared up at Ilya like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to punch him or pull him closer.

"Fuck," Shane whispered.

Ilya's mouth curved. "Yes, maybe."

Shane huffed a startled laugh, and then he surged forward again, kissing him like he'd made up his mind.

Ilya let him, indulgent for one beat.

Then he moved his hands to Shane's waist, guided him back, and leaned down, mouth trailing along Shane's jaw.

Shane's skin was warm. He smelled clean, like shampoo and soap, a faint spice from deodorant. Nothing like locker rooms, nothing like sweat and leather and ice.

He kissed the corner of Shane's mouth again, then the soft skin under his ear.

Shane shivered.

"Fuck," Shane breathed, the word half a complaint.

Ilya's lips brushed Shane's throat, tasting the jump of his pulse.

"Quiet," Ilya murmured, and it came out like a joke and a command at once.

Shane's hand slid into Ilya's hair, fingers tight, as if he needed to anchor him.

Ilya closed his eyes briefly.

This hold didn't have softness built into it.

But it had want.

And want could be its own kind of devotion.

He kissed lower, letting Shane feel every decision. Letting Shane anticipate. Letting the silence between breaths become its own pressure.

Shane's breathing went uneven.

"Okay," Shane said suddenly, too fast, like he was talking himself through it. Like he was afraid of losing control. "Okay. I—"

Ilya lifted his head and met Shane's eyes. "Okay?"

Shane's gaze flicked over his face like he was taking inventory: cheekbone, mouth, the scar at the edge of Ilya's eyebrow. His pupils were blown wide, dark with a kind of hunger that made Ilya feel triumphant and unsteady at the same time.

Shane swallowed then nodded.

Then, as if it cost him something, he said, "Rozanov."

Ilya went perfectly still.

The name dropped into him like a match. Not shouted across a rink. Not barked by a coach. Not printed in block letters above his number. Not chanted by strangers who didn't know him, who didn't care if he lived or died as long as he scored.

Here, in the hush of a hotel room, it sounded different.

"Rozanov," Shane repeated, voice breaking slightly on the last syllable.

Heat flooded Ilya's body so fast it almost made him dizzy.

He'd thought he wanted this: Shane Hollander, the golden boy, the myth. He'd thought he wanted the satisfaction of watching him fall apart.

He hadn't expected the way his own name could be reshaped by Shane's mouth into something that felt like longing.

Ilya's pulse thudded hard. He stared at Shane as if trying to catch him in a lie.

Shane's expression was rawer now, stripped of performance. His brows were drawn like he was bracing for impact. Like he was afraid Ilya would laugh, or leave, or do something cruel.

Ilya didn't do any of those things.

He leaned in again and pressed a kiss to Shane's mouth—gentler this time, almost reverent.

Shane exhaled shakily into the kiss, hands tightening on him.

There was a moment, a single, sharp moment, where Ilya saw a future like a flare: years of rivalry turned into a different kind of obsession, a different kind of fight. A future where Shane's voice could do this to him anytime it wanted.

He hated the thought.

He wanted it so badly it made him furious.

He pulled back just enough to speak.

"Say it again," Ilya murmured.

Shane blinked. "What?"

"My name." Ilya's smile was small, wicked. "The way you just said it."

Color flared on Shane's cheeks. His mouth opened, then closed. He looked like he didn't understand why this felt like stepping onto thin ice.

Then he tried, cautious. "Rozanov."

Ilya's breath caught.

Not because Shane said it perfectly; he didn't, not quite, his Canadian tongue rounding the edges wrong. Not because it sounded pretty.

Because it sounded wanted.

Ilya leaned down again, mouth at Shane's ear.

"Good," he whispered. "I will make you say it again."

Shane shivered like the words had touched his skin.

Ilya kissed the shell of his ear, then the freckled slope of his cheekbone, then the corner of his mouth.

He took his time, letting the room narrow to warmth and breath and the faint scent of hotel detergent in the sheets. Letting Shane's hands tell the truth: gripping, searching, sliding over his back like he needed to be certain Ilya wouldn't disappear.

Shane made another breathless sound, and Ilya lifted his head to look at him again.

Shane's eyes were bright, almost frantic. Ilya felt the name settle into him. He smiled slowly.

He decided, right then, with a clarity that startled him, that he was going to hear it again.

Over and over, if he could.

He didn't know yet what it would cost.

He only knew he liked the way it tasted, and the way it sounded in Shane Hollander's voice, dragged rough and reverent from his throat.

He leaned in, kissing him until Shane's fingers tangled in his hair like prayer.

And in the quiet space between breaths, Ilya held the name close, turning it over and over inside his mind like a stolen thing.

Rozanov.

2014

Boston didn't cheer the way Moscow did.

Moscow was disciplined about it, almost, with rhythmic clapping, chants that rose and fell, a patriotism wrapped tight around the throat. Boston was chaos. Boston was a living thing. Boston didn't watch hockey so much as it devoured it, swallowed it whole, and screamed back what it wanted.

The first time Ilya heard them change his name in their mouths, it startled him so badly he almost missed the play.

It was late in the second period, his lungs burning, sweat cooling at his spine beneath his pads. The puck popped loose in front of the net like a mistake, a gift, and he took it on instinct: blade catching, wrists snapping, the shot clean and fast.

The red light flashed.

For one bright second the arena went silent, as if the world had stopped to take a breath.

Then the arena exploded.

The roar hit him from all sides, a physical thing that shook his bones. People leapt to their feet like they'd been yanked by strings. Beer sloshed. Hands pounded glass. The sound was not applause; it was thunder. It pressed against his chest and made his heart stutter.

His teammates crashed into him in a tangle of bodies and shouts. Someone slammed a glove against his helmet hard enough to ring his ears.

And through it all, through the sheer wall of noise, he heard it, his name, warped by accents and joy and hunger.

"RO-ZY! RO-ZY! RO-ZY!"

It wasn't Rozanov. Not the full weight of it, not the sharp consonants, not the syllables that belonged to his father's mouth.

A nickname, made easy. Made friendly.

It rolled through the crowd like a wave, simple and bright. A name you could shout without thinking. A name that sounded like it belonged to them and, horrifyingly, like it might belong to him too.

He lifted his head, breathing hard, and looked up at the stands.

Faces blurred together: black and gold jerseys, flushed cheeks, mouths open mid-chant. Strangers. Hundreds of them. Thousands. People who didn't know him, who didn't know anything about the pond in winter or his mother's singing or the way his hands had once tried to warm a dead one.

People who just knew what he was on the ice: fast, vicious, beautiful.

People who loved him for it.

"RO-ZY! RO-ZY! RO-ZY!"

The chant rattled the rafters.

Ilya swallowed, something tight in his throat that had nothing to do with exhaustion. He felt the grin pull at his mouth before he could stop it, sharp, disbelieving, and a little wild.

He raised his glove in the smallest gesture toward the crowd, an acknowledgement he hadn't planned.

The noise doubled.

His teammate (Cliff, maybe, or some other body pressed into him) yelled something jubilant in his ear. Ilya didn't catch the words.

He didn't need to. All he could hear was the arena chanting him into existence, over and over.

It was not gentle, but it wasn't cold.

And for a breathless moment, skating back to center ice with the arena chanting a name that wasn't quite his, Ilya felt something unsteady and bright in his chest, like the first crack of sunlight through winter clouds.

2016

Boston and Montreal were playing the next night.

Ilya checked twice. There was no morning practice, no mandatory meetings, no early obligations that would force Shane back across town before sunrise.

He confirmed it casually, like it didn't matter and he hadn't memorized the schedule the second it was released.

Then he prepared.

It wasn't obvious preparation. Not anything that could be mistaken for romance. He wasn't stupid.

He bought tuna on his way home, and fresh bread, cheese.

He set the ginger ale in the back of the fridge, where it would get properly cold. He knew Shane liked it. He had noticed once, somewhere, the way Shane had reached for it instead of beer. Ilya noticed things. He hoarded details the way other people hoarded trophies.

He prepped everything hours before Shane arrived. Chopped. Mixed. Wrapped. Set aside.

He told himself it was practical, and it meant nothing, really.

When Shane showed up at his apartment later, it was like every other time: tense, electric, both of them pretending this was about rivalry bleeding sideways instead of something far more dangerous.

Ilya didn't waste time.

He took Shane apart the way he always did, methodically, attentively, until that stubborn composure cracked and Shane was gasping into his shoulder, fingers digging into his back like he needed something solid to anchor to.

Ilya liked him best like that, unmade.

Afterward, when they lay tangled in his sheets, Shane's breath still uneven against his chest, Ilya traced a lazy line down his spine and kept his voice deliberately light.

"Or you could stay," he said, as if it had just occurred to him. "I'm not done with you yet."

Simple. So casual. He didn't look at him when he said it. He didn't let it sound like a plea.

There was a pause.

"I told Hayden I'd be back—"

"Is Hayden your mother?"

"No, but he's expecting me. I told him I was meeting a friend."

Ilya rolled his eyes. "Stay."

Then Shane said, "Yeah. Okay."

The word hit Ilya like a goal light.

He swallowed his grin and rolled away instead, tossing one of his t-shirts at Shane's face.

"You're going to need that," he said dryly. "I'm hungry. Come on."

Shane laughed, muffled in cotton, and pulled the shirt over his head. It swallowed him slightly at the shoulders. Ilya pretended not to notice how good he looked in it.

In the kitchen, Ilya moved like this was routine, and he always had someone sitting at his counter in nothing but his clothes.

He slid a cold ginger ale across the marble.

"Cold enough?" he asked, deliberately neutral.

Shane blinked at the can, then at him. "You… have ginger ale?"

"I have many layers," Ilya replied.

Shane huffed a small laugh, but there was something uncertain in his expression. Something searching.

Ilya opened the fridge and pulled out the bowl he'd prepped earlier.

"Want a tuna melt?"

Shane stared at him.

"Are you going to make me a sandwich?" he asked, incredulous, like Ilya had just suggested knitting him a sweater.

Ilya shrugged, refusing to look at him directly. "I was going to make one anyway. I can make two."

It sounded effortless.

He cooked carefully, not because he didn't know how to make a sandwich, but because he was aware of being watched. Aware of the quiet in the room. The way this didn't feel like hotel rooms and stolen time. It felt… domestic—dangerously so.

Shane didn't talk much while they ate. He watched Ilya like he was trying to figure out what game this was.

Ilya pretended there wasn't one.

Later, they drifted back to the couch, and Shane leaned into him first.

That was new. It wasn't their usual lunging and grabbing. He was pressing his side against Ilya's like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Ilya's arm came up automatically, settling around his shoulders.

They sat like that for a while.

It felt… easy.

Shane's fingers began tracing idle lines across Ilya's chest, slow and distracted. Then slower. Then not distracted at all.

He leaned in, pressing a kiss beneath Ilya's collarbone.

Ilya inhaled sharply.

Shane moved lower, mouth warm against his skin, deliberate now, full of intent.

The shift was gradual but undeniable.

Shane's leg slid over his thigh. His weight shifted. He climbed into Ilya's lap like it was something he'd been considering for minutes, maybe longer.

The friction was slow at first, exploratory. Heat building between them without urgency. Without the frantic edge that usually colored their encounters. It was almost tender.

Ilya's hands settled at Shane's hips, steadying him, guiding but not pushing. Shane's mouth found his again, open, warm, unguarded.

The world narrowed, and there was only breath and skin and the steady rhythm of movement that became something more deliberate, more consuming. Their foreheads knocked together once and Shane laughed softly into his mouth, and that small sound undid something in Ilya's chest.

He didn't even realize he'd spoken until he felt it leave him.

"Shane," he breathed, the syllable dissolving against Shane's lips.

Shane stilled for half a second. Then, soft and wrecked and unguarded, he whispered back:

"Ilya."

Ilya's pulse roared in his ears.

He had heard his name shouted across arenas. Chanted by crowds. Barked by coaches. Spat by rivals.

He had never heard it like that, like something held carefully between teeth, something precious like it belonged there.

For one dizzy, suspended moment, he felt triumphant. Elated. Certain. He could win this.

Then Shane's body went tense.

It was subtle at first. A hitch in movement, a shift in breath.

Then he pulled back.

"I—" Shane's hands fell away. He was breathing too fast now, but not from want. "I forgot. There's… there's a team thing. Early. I—shit."

Ilya blinked up at him, still half-dazed.

"What?"

"I'm sorry." Shane was already sliding off his lap, running a hand through his hair like he could smooth the moment back into something manageable. "I can't. I— I shouldn't."

The words landed like cold water.

"You… you forgot a team thing," Ilya said, and hated how flat his voice sounded.

Shane grabbed his clothes from the floor, movements jerky, avoiding eye contact.

"I just— I can't do this." He gestured vaguely between them, like this was an abstract concept instead of something that had just been warm and alive.

Can't do what? Stay? Want? Say his name?

"I'm sorry," Shane said again, softer this time. Almost helpless.

Then he left, and the door clicked shut behind him with a quiet, final sound that echoed too loudly in the sudden stillness.

Ilya sat there for a long time.

The apartment felt cavernous.

The couch was still warm where Shane had been. His shirt—Shane's shirt now—lay abandoned on the floor.

On the table, two empty plates sat side by side. The ginger ale can sweated quietly.

He replayed it in his mind against his will.

Shane.

Ilya.

The way it had sounded. The way it had felt.

The way it had almost meant something.

He leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling.

He wasn't sure what stung more: the rejection, or the fact that for a split second he had believed. Believed he could be kept. Believed that his name, spoken like that, might mean he was wanted.

He swallowed hard and pressed the heel of his hand to his chest, as if he could steady whatever had just fractured inside him.

He didn't know if he hated himself more—
or the way his name had sounded in Shane's mouth.

2016

He didn't remember inviting her.

He remembered, vaguely, that she didn't knock. She didn't text I'm outside. She didn't ask permission from the door, from the hallway, from Ilya's pride. The lock clicked and then she was already inside like she belonged there, coat draped over the back of a chair, boots lined up neatly by the mat. He remembered blinking at the sight of her and feeling something inside him flinch the way a bruised thing flinches from touch.

He was on the couch in sweatpants he'd worn too many days in a row, the blinds half-drawn against a Boston afternoon. His phone lay face-down on the coffee table like a dead thing. The television was on with the sound muted, some mindless sports panel gesturing furiously into silence.

It had been like this for days, maybe. It was hard to track time when you weren't using it.

He smelled cold air following her in, the faint sting of snow and city wind.

Then she appeared in the doorway to the living room.

Svetlana Vetrova looked like a bright, impossible thing against the dimness of his apartment—dark skin kissed warm by the light that managed to leak through the blinds, curly red hair pulled up in a messy puff that still insisted on being exuberant. Her eyes were the same shade of blue as a glacier, startling against the rest of her, sharp and clear and too perceptive for Ilya's liking.

She took one look at him and stopped.

"You look like shit," she said, conversationally.

"Hello to you also," Ilya replied, because sarcasm was muscle memory.

He stared at the blank television screen, not really seeing it.

"I am fine," he said, because that was the only sentence that ever came easily.

Svetlana hummed, unconvinced. She crossed to the couch and sat down at the far end, leaving a careful span of space between them. She didn't crowd. She never crowded.

"You look like you have been in a fight," she said.

Ilya's mouth twitched with something that might have been a laugh if it hadn't been so empty. "I have."

"With who?" she asked lightly, like it was a joke and she didn't already know the answer was himself.

Ilya shrugged, too tired for performance. "Everyone."

Svetlana sighed—long and slow, like she was smoothing out patience inside herself. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped. Her nails were painted a deep glossy red, the color of fresh blood and movie-star lips.

"You are not at practice," she said.

He said nothing.

"You are not answering your phone," she continued. "I thought maybe you were sick."

Ilya closed his eyes briefly. His head ached. His chest ached worse.

Sick.

He was sick, in a way, just not the kind that came with fevers.

Somewhere across the city, Shane Hollander was probably laughing at something Rose Landry said. Shane was probably holding her hand. Shane was probably doing the things Ilya had imagined—soft mornings, staying the night, being kept—except he was doing them with someone else.

Because that was what normal people did. They chose the easy, public thing. They chose the thing that didn't require lying.

Ilya had tried to tell himself he didn't care. That it was inevitable. That Shane had always been going to pick someone else eventually, because that was the story the world accepted without argument.

But his body hadn't gotten the message.

His body had known Shane's mouth and Shane's breath and Shane's voice saying Ilya like it meant stay, and then—

And then nothing, door closed.

Svetlana looked at him for a long moment, her blue eyes steady.

"What happened?" she asked quietly. Not what did you do, which is what she should have said. Not why are you like this, which is what he was thinking.

He shrugged again, but it didn't work this time. The motion felt too small to contain what was inside him.

"Nothing," he said. "I am just… tired."

Svetlana made a sound in the back of her throat. The kind of sound that meant she was letting him lie because she understood he needed to, but she wasn't going to accept it as the whole truth.

"Mm," she said. Then, as if changing the subject, she pointed at the coffee table. "May I?"

He followed her gesture, confused, until he realized she meant the phone.

He didn't stop her.

She picked it up, turned it over, glanced at the screen. No missed calls in the last hour. Plenty before that. The latest text thread open on his lockscreen was from Cliff—You alive? Call me back, Rozy.

Svetlana's brows lifted slightly at the nickname. Then she set the phone back down carefully, like it was something fragile.

"You know," she said, voice conversational, "when people are heartbroken, they become very boring."

Ilya stared at her.

Svetlana's mouth curved, but her eyes stayed serious. "It is true. They stop eating. They stop sleeping. They stare at walls. They think they are the first person in the world to feel pain." She clicked her tongue. "So dramatic."

A laugh clawed at Ilya's throat, thin and unwilling. It almost made it out.

"Heartbroken," he repeated, like the word was foreign.

Svetlana's gaze softened. She reached out, not touching him yet, just letting her hand rest on the cushion between them. An offer.

"You are not subtle, Ilya."

He swallowed.

He had spent his whole life being subtle. He had spent years making himself into something sharp enough that no one looked too close. He had built an entire persona out of swagger and noise and provocation, because if he filled the room with himself, no one could hear the quiet ugly things underneath.

But depression did not care about personas. Heartbreak didn't either.

It came anyway. It sat on his ribs like a weight. It made getting up feel like skating uphill with someone holding your jersey from behind.

He looked down at his hands. They were steady. They always looked steady. That was the problem with him, everything looked fine until it wasn't.

"I am not heartbroken," he said, because saying yes felt like giving away something he couldn't afford.

Svetlana tilted her head.

"Okay," she said simply.

The lack of argument made his throat tighten.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a container of food, setting it on the table with a firm little thump. "I brought food."

"I didn't ask—"

"I know," she cut in, not unkind. "That is why I brought it."

She stood and went into his kitchen without invitation, because she didn't need it. Cabinets opened. Water ran. A pot clanged. She moved through his space like she'd been there a hundred times.

Maybe she had.

While she worked, she talked, because Svetlana always talked. About her day, some colleague who had called her the wrong name in some document and how she'd emailed him back to correct it.

Names mattered to her. They mattered to him too, though he rarely admitted it.

He listened without responding much, letting her voice fill the apartment the way his mother's had once filled a kitchen, warm sound pushing back the cold.

When she came back with two bowls, steam curling upward, she set one in front of him and sat beside him, closer now.

"Eat," she said.

Ilya looked at the bowl. The smell made his stomach twist, not with hunger but with the sudden realization of how little he'd eaten.

He lifted the spoon, hand steady, and took a mouthful. It was warm and salty.

His eyes stung unexpectedly, so he blinked hard, angry at himself for it.

Svetlana watched him, saying nothing. She did not point it out. She did not make a joke.

After a few minutes, when he'd eaten enough that the worst of the hollow feeling in his body eased, Svetlana set her bowl down and leaned back.

"You want to know what I think?" she asked.

Ilya hesitated. "You will tell me anyway."

She smiled. "Yes."

Then she sobered, looking straight at him.

"I think someone hurt you," she said. "And I think you are trying to pretend it does not matter." She tapped her own chest lightly. "But it matters here."

He stared at her, jaw tight.

Svetlana's voice gentled. "You do not have to tell me who."

The relief that washed through him was immediate and humiliating. He hadn't been able to say Shane's name out loud in days without feeling like it would split him open. He couldn't say Rose without tasting bitterness.

So he said nothing.

Svetlana reached over then and touched his hand. Her palm was warm. Her fingers curled around his lightly.

"Ilya," she said.

"I'm alone," he said suddenly, and the words came out flat with truth. Like a statement of fact. Like a thing he'd been sitting with for years and had finally gotten tired of carrying alone.

Svetlana's thumb stroked once across the back of his hand.

"Liar," she said, affection and steel braided together. Then, softer, in Russian the way it belonged: "Illyusha."

Illyusha. In Svetlana's voice it was gentle.

"You are not alone," she said quietly.

Ilya's eyes burned. He looked away, furious at the weakness in his chest, at the tremor in his throat.

Svetlana didn't let him escape.

She squeezed his hand, firm now, and leaned in until her shoulder bumped his.

"You have me," she said, simple as breath. "Always. Even when you are stupid."

A sound escaped him, a half laugh, half choke.

Svetlana's smile softened. "Especially then."

Ilya swallowed hard, blinking fast. He didn't cry, but he stayed very still, letting her warmth soak into him, letting the syllables of his name settle into a place that had been aching for something gentle.

And for the first time in days, Ilya let himself believe, just a little, that survival could be something other than brute force.

That sometimes it could be as simple as this:

Someone sitting beside you, saying your name.
Like it meant you were worth keeping around.

2016

Cliff Marleau didn't text like a normal person.

Normal people sent words. Cliff sent threats disguised as affection.

Marly: u alive??
Marly: answer or im telling coach u got kidnapped by russian mafia
Marly: which is like… probably true?? it can happen, right??
Marly: ROZY ANSWER ME

Ilya stared at the screen until the letters blurred slightly.

Rozy. It should've irritated him. It usually did, the way the nickname made him sound smaller, rounder, easier, like something you could chant while spilling beer on your jersey.

Today it didn't irritate him.

He didn't reply. He set the phone down.

Two minutes later, it rang.

Ilya let it ring three times just to prove he could.

Then he answered. "What."

Cliff's voice flooded his ear like sunlight through curtains. "He lives! I was about to call the police."

"You would not," Ilya muttered, but his throat tightened anyway.

"I would," Cliff said cheerfully. "I would be like, hello officer, my best friend is missing and also he's dramatic and probably brooding somewhere because he's been dumped or whatever."

Ilya closed his eyes. "I am not missing."

"You were missing from practice," Cliff corrected, as if this was the same thing. "And you were missing from, like, life. I tried to come by yesterday, and your doorman looked at me like I was a stray dog."

"You are a stray dog," Ilya said.

"True," Cliff agreed immediately. "My sister likes to say golden retriever, specifically."

Ilya's mouth twitched, the closest thing to a smile he'd managed in days.

Cliff plowed on. "Anyway. Get dressed."

Ilya opened his eyes. "What?"

"I'm picking you up."

"No."

"Yes."

"I am not going anywhere."

Cliff made a long suffering noise into the phone. "Okay, listen. You can either come willingly, or I can come up there and drag you out in sweatpants, and then the doorman will know you're a drama queen."

"I am not a—"

"Drama queen," Cliff repeated, bright and merciless. "Also, I'm pretty sure you look like shit."

"I am fine."

"You sound like you got hit by a Zamboni."

Cliff didn't buy it. Cliff never bought it. Cliff had the emotional intelligence of a labrador and yet somehow still knew when Ilya was bleeding.

"That is impossible. Zamboni is slow."

Cliff laughed. "Okay, hockey nerd. You're still getting dressed."

Ilya leaned his head back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. The room felt too quiet. It had felt too quiet for days. The silence was starting to feel like something that lived here now, like it paid rent.

"I do not want to go to bars," Ilya said, because he could already predict the next part. "Or club. Or anywhere with music. Or people."

"No bars," Cliff said immediately.

Ilya narrowed his eyes. "No club?"

"No club."

Ilya waited. "No… tequila?"

Cliff scoffed. "Okay, first of all, rude. Second of all, no tequila."

Suspicion flared. "Then where are you taking me?"

Cliff's tone turned faux-offended. "My man, don't you trust me?"

"No," Ilya said instantly, because being annoying was easier than being honest.

Cliff barked a laugh. "That was fast."

"You are reckless. You once tried to microwave foil."

"That was one time," Cliff protested. "And I learned. Now I'm an adult who makes good decisions, like forcing my emotionally constipated best friend to leave his apartment."

"I am not emotionally—"

"Constipated," Cliff finished, satisfied. "Get dressed. Something warm. We're not going far."

Ilya hesitated.

There was a version of him that wanted to say no until Cliff got tired and went away.

There was another version—smaller, meaner, more scared—that didn't want to be alone with his own brain for one more night.

He exhaled sharply. "Fine."

"YES," Cliff crowed. "Okay. Ten minutes."

"I cannot be ready in ten."

"You can if you stop being dramatic."

"I am not—"

Cliff hung up.

Ilya stared at the dark screen of his phone like it had betrayed him.

Then, with the kind of resigned irritation that was only half real, he hauled himself up.

The mirror in his bathroom confirmed what Cliff had said, which was deeply rude of the universe. Stubble, shadows under his eyes. Hair doing whatever it wanted. His shoulders looked too broad under the hoodie like he'd been built for violence and had instead been using it to lie very still.

He showered quickly, more out of spite than hygiene, and dragged on jeans and a sweater. He stood at the door with his keys in his hand and stared at the knob for a long moment.

Leaving felt like stepping outside without pads. He did it anyway.

Cliff's car pulled up like a rescue mission.

Cliff leaned across the passenger seat to shove the door open for him, grinning. "Look at you! A person! With pants!"

"I always wear pants," Ilya snapped, sliding in.

Cliff's grin widened. "Debatable."

Ilya buckled his seatbelt with exaggerated force. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

"I will jump out."

"You won't," Cliff said serenely, pulling away from the curb. "Your ankles are too expensive."

Ilya glared out the window, watching the city slide past in gray streaks. He expected them to head toward downtown. Toward noise. Toward lights and crowds. Toward places where he'd have to pretend he was fine.

Instead, Cliff turned in the opposite direction.

Ilya frowned. "This is… not bar."

"Nope."

"This is not club."

"Nope."

"This is not—"

"My place," Cliff said, too casual.

Ilya's head snapped toward him. "What?"

Cliff shrugged, eyes on the road. "You haven't been hanging with the boys. You've been avoiding team dinners, skipping everything that isn't mandatory. You're doing that thing where you withdraw and act like no one can tell."

Ilya's throat tightened.

He tried to scoff it off. "I like being alone."

"Sure," Cliff said easily. "Sometimes. But not like this."

The bluntness hit harder because it wasn't accusatory. It was observational, like Cliff had simply noticed Ilya was bleeding and decided to apply pressure.

Ilya looked away.

Cliff kept driving.

When they got to Cliff's building, Ilya followed him up the stairs with the tense posture of someone walking into an ambush. Cliff unlocked his door and threw it open with flourish.

"Welcome to Chateau Marleau," he announced, like he was hosting a charity gala.

Ilya stepped inside and immediately noticed two things:

One, Cliff's place was clean in that aggressively bachelor way—like he'd panic-cleaned once and then lived carefully inside the clean.

Two, the couch was covered in blankets like someone had planned this.

Ilya turned slowly. "You planned."

Cliff blinked innocently. "Planned what?"

"This," Ilya said, gesturing at the blankets, the two glasses already set on the coffee table, the stack of movies like Cliff was a suburban dad about to teach his son about masculinity.

Cliff grinned. "Okay, yeah, I planned. Sue me. It's movie night."

Ilya's suspicion narrowed. "Movie night is… trap."

"It's not a trap," Cliff protested. "It's bro bonding."

"I do not bond," Ilya said.

Cliff made a face. "You bond. You just do it in Russian psychopath ways, like buying someone their favorite drink."

Ilya's pulse jumped, irrationally, and he shoved it down. "Shut up."

Cliff pointed at him triumphantly. "See? Bonding."

Ilya dropped onto the couch like it might bite him. "If this is romantic comedy, I leave."

Cliff gasped. "First of all, rude. Second of all, I am not trying to make you watch Love Actually."

"Good," Ilya muttered.

Cliff grabbed the remote. "We're watching something stupid. Like an action movie. Explosions. No feelings."

Ilya eyed him. "You will talk through it."

"Obviously."

The movie started.

It was loud and ridiculous. Men punched each other and cars flipped in ways that defied physics. Cliff narrated half of it like a sports commentator. Ilya found himself answering his dumb questions, rolling his eyes, making cutting remarks that made Cliff howl with laughter.

Halfway through, Cliff tossed a blanket at him.

Ilya caught it automatically, then glared. "I am not cold."

"Okay, Rozy," Cliff said.

Ilya stared at him, thrown off balance.

Cliff didn't look smug. He didn't look like he was winning. He looked earnest in that impossible way he sometimes managed, like a golden retriever who had, against all odds, learned to read the room.

"Rozanov," Cliff said again, softer, "you don't have to talk about it. But you can't just disappear, okay?"

Ilya's throat worked.

He looked back at the screen because it was easier than looking at Cliff.

The hero on-screen was bleeding dramatically and refusing help. Cliff made a snort. "Wow, that guy is you."

"I hate you," Ilya said automatically, because it was safer than saying thank you.

Cliff's laughter was warm. "I know."

Time passed. The movie ended. Another started without discussion. Somewhere along the way, Cliff's shoulder bumped Ilya's. Their knees pressed together on the couch. Normal friend things. Human things.

Ilya didn't realize how tired he was until Cliff yawned hugely and said, "Okay, don't judge me, but I'm falling asleep."

"Good," Ilya said. "Finally, silence."

Cliff blinked at him. "You're staying. It's late."

"No," Ilya said immediately.

Cliff pointed at the couch. "You're literally already horizontal."

Ilya looked down.

At some point he had leaned back and slid lower, the blanket half over his legs. His body had accepted the softness without consulting his pride.

He sat up sharply, affronted. "I am going home."

Cliff's expression turned sly. "Aw. Sleepover."

"It is not sleepover," Ilya said, voice sharp with indignation. "I am adult."

"Adults can have sleepovers," Cliff argued. "It's called… staying over."

Ilya glared. "I am not going to braid your hair, Marly."

Cliff's eyes went wide. "Oh my god. You'd braid my hair?"

"No," Ilya snapped. "Never."

Cliff laughed so hard he wheezed. "You're so mad. That's the most alive you've been all week."

Ilya's irritation flared, and then, to his own surprise, fizzled out into something exhausted and almost relieved.

Cliff patted the couch beside him. "Come on, Rozanov. Stay. No pressure. Don't be alone tonight."

Ilya stared at Cliff for a long moment. He felt something shift inside him—small and begrudging and real. Then, finally, he sighed like it cost him everything.

"Fine," he said. "But if you snore, I will kill you."

Cliff beamed. "Deal."

He stood up, stretching, and pointed down the hallway. "Guest room's there. Or you can take the couch. I'll grab you a pillow."

"I will take bed," Ilya said immediately, because if he was conceding, he was conceding with maximal arrogance.

Cliff barked a laugh. "Oh my god. Of course you will."

As Cliff disappeared down the hall, still chuckling, Ilya settled back against the couch for a moment, staring at the dark TV screen.

The apartment was quiet, but not empty.

Somewhere, Cliff hummed to himself while he rummaged for a pillow like this was normal, like this was nothing, like this wasn't a small act of loyalty that made Ilya's chest ache. When Cliff returned and tossed a pillow at his face, Ilya caught it, then looked up at him.

"…Thank you," he said, so quiet it almost didn't count.

Cliff's expression softened instantly, like the world had tilted into place. He didn't make a joke. He just nodded once.

"Anytime, Ilya," Cliff said.

2017

There was sand in the sheets.

Ilya hadn't noticed when they stumbled into the bed, half-dizzy with sun and salt and the reckless relief of being somewhere that didn't belong to either of them. But now, in the aftermath, he could feel it, the fine grit against his thigh, caught in the crease of the white bedsheet, a reminder that the outside world still existed.

Shane was standing near the edge of the bed, pulling his shirt over his head.

Sand spilled from the cuffs of his pants onto the carpet when he stepped back into them. It made a soft, dry sound, like something fragile breaking.

Ilya stayed where he was.

Propped against the headboard, bare, the sheet pooled low around his hips. He let himself watch.

He always watched.

Shane's shoulders were tense. Not ashamed, but braced, like he was already preparing for departure. For distance. For the sharp correction back into reality.

The room was too quiet.

Earlier, it had the rush of mouths and hands and the kind of closeness that made Ilya forget, for a dangerous stretch of minutes, that this had edges.

Now there was only the hum of the air conditioner.

Shane buttoned his pants carefully. Didn't look at him.

Ilya's chest tightened in a way that was almost familiar. The old instinct flared: say something clever. Something cutting. Something that turned this into a joke so it wouldn't turn into something else.

He chewed his lip instead.

There was a long, suspended silence.

Shane reached for his shoes. Slipped them on. Ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back into something that resembled composure.

Their eyes met.

Shane looked wrecked. Not physically—though his lips were swollen and his freckles stood out stark against flushed skin—but emotionally. Like he was balancing on something narrow and wasn't sure he trusted his footing.

Ilya sat up a little straighter without meaning to.

The sheet slipped, baring more of his chest. There was another silence.

Then Ilya did the bravest thing he was capable of in that moment.

"Goodnight, Shane," he said.

He let it hang there.

Shane's throat worked.

The air between them felt electric, like the moment before a storm breaks.

"Goodnight, Ilya."

Ilya's entire body reacted before his brain could catch up. A jolt of heat zipped down his spine, bloomed low in his stomach, tightened his chest until he had to inhale carefully to avoid giving himself away.

Ilya.

Ilya forced himself not to smile too widely. He let just the faintest curve touch his mouth, because too much would scare it away.

Then Shane opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, smiling too.

The click of it closing was quieter than it had any right to be.

Ilya stayed exactly where he was.

He stared at the door for a long moment, waiting for the familiar drop in his stomach. The hollowing out. The creeping certainty that he had just lost something.

It didn't come.

Instead, something else settled in him, dangerously warm.

He leaned back against the headboard slowly, pressing his palm over his own chest like he could feel the echo there.

Goodnight, Ilya.

It replayed in his mind, softer each time.

He let himself smile fully now, alone in the room. He felt absurdly, irrationally happy.

He knew better than to trust it completely. He knew how easily things could fracture.

But as he lay back against the pillow, sand scratching faintly against his skin, he allowed himself one treacherous thought:

If Shane could say his name like that then maybe one day, goodnight wouldn't mean goodbye.

Ilya closed his eyes, and the quiet didn't feel like something waiting to swallow him.

2017

The goal went in clean.

Top shelf. Bar down. The sound it made, sharp, metallic, decisive, rang through the arena like a struck bell.

Ilya barely registered the red light before he was swallowed whole.

Cliff hit him first, nearly knocking him off his skates. Someone else crashed in from the side. Gloves pounded against his helmet. Arms locked around his shoulders. The ice became a riot of bodies and laughter and shouted disbelief.

"LET'S GO, CAP!"

"ROZY!"

"ROZA-NOV!"

He was laughing before he knew he was laughing, breath coming in ragged bursts as he shoved at Cliff's face.

"Get off me," he barked, but there was no heat in it.

The noise rolled over them in waves, relentless and adoring. His name—every version of it—ricocheted through the arena. The jumbotron replayed the shot from three different angles, each one cleaner than the last. His face flashed overhead, flushed and grinning, eyes bright with the electric high of it.

He raised his glove once, brief acknowledgment.

The roar swelled.

Later, in the locker room, it was worse.

Music blasted from a portable speaker. Someone had already popped a bottle of something they were technically not supposed to have. Tape stuck to the floor. Towels flew. The air smelled like sweat and victory and adrenaline burning off in waves.

Cliff slung an arm around his neck, dragging him into the center of the room.

"Speech!" someone yelled.

"No speech!" someone else countered.

"CAP! CAP! CAP!"

Ilya shoved Cliff away and rolled his eyes with theatrical disdain, but he didn't fight the grin threatening to split his face.

"Shut up," he said, which only made them louder.

He looked around at them, his team. Sweat-slick hair. Red cheeks. Open smiles. Men who trusted him with their backs on the ice. Men who chanted his name like it meant something.

"Good job," he said finally, simple and steady. "We do it again tomorrow."

They groaned dramatically.

Cliff clutched his chest. "He's so inspiring."

"Rozanov, you kill joy," someone called.

He smirked. "Yes."

They descended on him again, another half-playful dogpile against the lockers this time, laughter bouncing off metal and tile.

It was loud.

It was warm.

It was everything he had built for himself.

When he finally peeled away to his stall, still smiling, his phone was vibrating in the pocket of his suit jacket where he'd shoved it before warmups.

He almost ignored it.

It buzzed again.

And again.

Persistent.

He frowned slightly and pulled it out.

Alexei.

Missed call.

Another missed call.

Three. Four. Five.

A thin thread of irritation wound through him first.

The music was still pounding. Cliff was arguing with someone about who'd screened the goalie. Laughter cracked like fireworks.

His phone buzzed again in his hand.

Alexei.

Ilya hesitated.

His brother did not call repeatedly. His brother did not call at all unless there was something to say, and even then he usually found a way to make someone else deliver it.

The vibration stopped.

Started again.

Something cold slipped into his gut.

He stepped away from the noise without thinking, slipping out of the locker room into the quieter hallway beyond. The door thudded shut behind him, muting the music into a dull thrum.

The corridor was empty. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead.

His phone vibrated again.

He stared at Alexei's name on the screen.

For a split second, he considered letting it go to voicemail.

He didn't want whatever it was.

He didn't want anything that could puncture the bright, hard-won glow still humming in his chest.

The buzzing continued.

He swiped to answer.

"Yes?" he said, sharper than he intended.

There was no greeting, just Alexei's voice, flat and unfamiliar in its lack of edge.

"Ilya."

The way he said it made something in Ilya's spine go rigid.

"What," Ilya said, impatience curdling into something else.

Then:

"Papa is dead."

The hallway blurred at the edges like someone had pulled the focus tight around him and left everything else indistinct. The hum of the lights grew louder. The distant locker room noise faded into something underwater and unreachable.

His heart didn't race.

It stalled.

He leaned back against the cold cinderblock wall without meaning to. The chill seeped through the thin fabric of his undershirt, grounding and unreal all at once.

Behind the door, someone shouted his name—"CAP!"—followed by laughter.

It sounded impossibly far away.

"Ilya?" Alexei prompted.

He realized, distantly, that he hadn't responded.

His mouth felt dry.

"Okay," he said finally.

Okay.

The most useless word in any language.

There was more logistics, probably. Flights. Funeral arrangements. Expectations.

Ilya didn't absorb it.

All he could hear was the echo of it:

Papa is dead.

He thought he would feel something immediate and violent. Anger. Relief. Grief.

Instead, there was just a strange, hollow quiet.

He had spent his life bracing for his father's voice. For his criticism. For his cold assessments. For the sharp edge of his disappointment.

And now—

Silence.

"I will come," Ilya heard himself say.

He didn't remember deciding to.

The call ended.

The hallway was silent again.

Behind him, life carried on—music, laughter, celebration. His name bouncing off tile in a hundred different tones.

He stood there for a long moment, phone still in his hand, heart beating slow and heavy in his chest.

Then he straightened.

The locker room door opened, and noise rushed out to meet him.

"Rozanov!" someone yelled. "Where you been?"

He looked up.

He forced his mouth into something that resembled a smile.

"Coming," he said.

And stepped back into the light.

2017

The phone rang on the third day.

Or maybe it was the fourth. Time in Moscow did strange things to him. It stretched and warped until hours felt like minutes and minutes felt like an eternity he had to survive one breath at a time.

He hadn't gone outside. He'd stood at the window once and watched snow drift down like ash, slow and indifferent. He'd watched cars move through slush on the street below, people bundled against cold, all of them continuing to exist as if his world hadn't just split clean in two.

His father's house smelled like expensive cologne and old money and a lifetime of power that had never once been warm.

His phone had been buzzing for days.

Team staff. Agent. Messages he didn't read. Missed calls he let die because he didn't want anyone's voice in his ear telling him how to behave in grief. The media was quiet, too quiet, which meant someone had decided privacy was the correct story to tell, which meant someone powerful had requested it.

He didn't care.

He cared about exactly one thing, and it was the one thing he was not allowed to want right now.

The screen lit up again.

Jane.

For a second, he just stared at it.

He felt a stupid, sharp jolt in his chest, the first crack of ice under a skate blade. An instinctive flinch toward warmth.

He shouldn't answer.

If he answered, he would hear Shane's voice, and his body would react like it always did, as if it belonged there, like it was safe to lean into it.

And then he would have to hang up.

He'd have to end the call and live with the silence after.

The phone buzzed again, impatient.

Ilya swallowed.

His thumb moved before his brain could stop it.

He answered. "Hollander?"

"Yeah. Hi."

Two words and Shane Hollander's voice in his ear like someone had opened a window in a room he'd been suffocating in.

Ilya didn't speak. He couldn't. He sat very still on the edge of a chair that wasn't his, in a room that wasn't his, in a city that had never truly been his either, not the way people meant it when they said home.

On the other end of the line, Shane breathed.

He sounded careful. Like he'd expected Ilya not to pick up, like he was bracing for the possibility of being shut out.

A long silence stretched between them.

"Are you okay?" Shane asked finally.

The question was almost laughable.

Ilya huffed once, a sound with no humor in it. "I don't know."

He heard Shane inhale, sharp and quiet, as if that answer had been worse than no answer at all.

"Where are you?" Shane asked.

Ilya stared at the dark window. His reflection stared back at him: eyes too bright, face too pale, jaw tight like he'd been holding his teeth together for days.

"Home," he said.

"In Boston?" Shane asked immediately. "Are you sick?"

"No." Ilya's voice went colder without permission. He hated that it did that, hated the reflex to armor himself the second Shane got close. "Home. In Moscow."

There was a beat of silence so clean he could almost see it.

"Moscow?" Shane repeated, stunned. "Did something happen? Oh, shit. Your father?"

Ilya closed his eyes.

His father, even now the word tasted bitter.

"Yes," he said. Then, because he couldn't stand the pity that always crept in after, he added flatly, "Dead."

On the line, Shane made a small sound, a half breath, half curse swallowed back.

"Ilya, I—"

"What are people saying about me?" Ilya cut in.

He didn't know why that mattered. He didn't know why his brain clung to it like a life raft. But it did. It latched onto control wherever it could find it, because grief was a thing that ripped control out of your hands and laughed.

"What?" Shane sounded startled, then quickly composed himself. "Nothing. The media has been very secretive about it. The Raiders must have—"

"Good," Ilya said sharply, like this was all he needed. "I will be back by end of week."

There was a pause, and then Shane's voice firmed.

"You should take more time."

The words hit something raw.

Ilya snorted. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Stop." Shane's voice snapped, unexpectedly hard. "I'm being serious."

Ilya went quiet.

He stared at the phone like it might hurt him. He didn't know how to hold this: Shane being gentle, Shane being angry, Shane being here. He didn't know which version to brace for. He didn't know which version would hurt less.

Another long silence.

Shane didn't hang up.

Ilya didn't, either.

Somewhere in the apartment, a clock ticked. The sound was too loud. Too measured. Like time itself was insisting on moving forward.

"I'm so sorry, Ilya," Shane said finally.

He didn't say it like a line. He didn't say it like a courtesy. He didn't say it the way reporters did, like grief was an event you acknowledged before changing the subject.

He meant it.

Ilya's throat tightened so suddenly it felt like a hand closing around it.

For a second, all he could think about was his mother's kitchen, her voice filling the spaces where the radio failed, her hands warm against his hair. Then he thought about the way Shane said his name in hotel rooms.

The way it could be a weapon, or a prayer.

Ilya.

Stripped down to something human.

He wanted—stupidly, violently—to tell Shane everything. That he was sitting in a room that felt haunted. That the silence here was different from Boston's. That his father's death didn't feel like grief so much as release, and that release made him feel guilty, and guilt made him furious, and fury made him feel like a monster.

He wanted to ask Shane to stay on the phone until he fell asleep.
He wanted to say, Say my name again.
He wanted to say, I don't know how to do this.

Instead, he said nothing.

Because needing Shane was the most dangerous thing he had ever wanted.

Shane's voice softened again, as if he could sense the fracture.

"I wasn't sure if I should call," Shane admitted quietly. "But I… I didn't like not knowing."

Ilya's grip tightened on the phone.

He wondered what it would be like, to have someone who didn't like not knowing where you were. Someone who noticed your absence as more than an inconvenience.

He let out a breath through his nose, careful. Controlled.

"So you called," he said.

"Yeah," Shane replied. Then, hesitantly: "Do you have— is anyone with you?"

Ilya's laugh this time was smaller, uglier. "No."

On the other end of the line, Shane was quiet for a long moment.

Then he said, very softly, "Okay."

He forced his voice into something steadier.

"I will be back by end of week," he repeated, because repetition was a form of control.

"Okay," Shane said again. Then, more quietly, "Text me when you land."

Ilya blinked, thrown.

"That is not necessary," he said automatically.

"It is," Shane replied, simple and stubborn.

Ilya's throat tightened again.

He looked at the window, at the snow, at the city that had shaped him into something sharp and lonely. He pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth, holding himself together by force.

"…Fine," he said, as if he was conceding a minor inconvenience.

Shane exhaled, like relief.

Neither of them hung up.

Ilya listened to Shane breathe for a few seconds longer than he should have. He let the sound settle in him, proof of life. Proof of something warm existing somewhere in the world.

Finally, Shane spoke again, voice low.

"Seriously," he said. "I'm sorry."

There it was again this softness.

He didn't trust himself to answer properly.

"Goodnight, Shane," he said, voice rough.

There was a pause, and then Shane's voice came back even softer.

"Goodnight, Ilya."

He ended the call before he could do something stupid, like cry.

The screen went dark, and reality rushed back in: silence, cold, the faint smell of his father's life.

But for a few seconds, the echo of Shane's voice stayed in his ear like warmth lingering on skin, and Ilya sat very still, holding the phone in his hand like it was the only living thing in the room.

2017

On the ice, it was noise and lights and blur.

A whistle screaming.

Bodies converging.

A shape on the boards that did not move.

Ilya's skates cut a brutal arc and he was there before anyone could stop him, dropping to a knee so hard it stung through his pads. He saw Shane's mouth parted, his lashes still, his face turned wrong against the ice.

For one awful second, he thought of cold hands, a bed in Moscow.

"Shane?" he heard himself say, and his own voice sounded unfamiliar. Unsteady, belonging to someone else.

"Don't move, all right?" a trainer said, brisk and practiced. "Just stay still. We're going to take you off the ice."

"Hollander?" another voice said, louder, cutting through the panic.

Ilya leaned closer, as if proximity could change the outcome, and being near Shane would keep him tethered to his body.

"Ilya?"

Shane's voice—slurred, confused—scraped across Ilya's skin like a match.

It was wrong, hearing it here. Hearing his name in front of everyone, under lights, under cameras, under thousands of eyes. It made something in Ilya's chest lurch, violently alive.

"Is he all right?" Ilya demanded.

He tried to keep the sharpness. He tried to make it sound like captain-business, like sportsmanship, like any opposing captain would do.

It came out panicked anyway.

"Mmokay," Shane murmured.

A lie. A kindness. Ilya could hear it.

"We're going to move you onto the spinal board, Shane," the authoritative voice said. "Keep your head still, please."

Spinal board.

The words iced his veins.

"Rozanov, please stand back," the voice continued.

Ilya didn't move.

A hand pressed into his chest, firm. A barrier. A boundary.

The dark blur of Shane—of Shane—was pulled away from him as if someone had reached into Ilya's ribs and pried his fingers open.

"We're not alone," Shane slurred, whispered, and even half-conscious, he sounded like himself. Like he'd remembered the rules. "Ilya. They can see us."

Ilya's throat tightened.

He wanted to say I don't care.

He wanted to say let them.

Instead, he stood there like a statue, helpless, while hands secured Shane to the board with straps.

"Is he all right?" Ilya asked again.

No one answered.

Ilya watched them lift Shane up. The lights overhead and banners and rafters slid past Shane's unfocused eyes as he was carried away.

The arena applauded—applauded!—as if this was entertainment.

Ilya's stomach turned.

He stood at the edge of the tunnel until the last of them disappeared, until the last flicker of Shane's pale face vanished into the back corridors, until the ice in front of him looked suddenly enormous and meaningless.

Someone tugged at his sleeve.

"Cap," a teammate said, trying to pull him back into the game, back into the world. "We have to—"

Ilya didn't remember what he replied.

He didn't remember the last minutes of hockey. He didn't remember the handshake line. He didn't remember the locker room.

He remembered the night.

The night was sick.

The night was refreshing sports sites until his eyes burned, until words stopped making sense. The night was imagining Shane's body over and over, unmoving, and feeling the old, familiar terror: what if someone you love goes still and you cannot stop it.

He could not close his eyes without seeing it.

He was the captain. His team was leaving for the airport in two hours.

He told himself it wasn't unheard of—an opposing captain checking on an injured player.

Fucking Marleau.

Cliff hadn't meant it. Ilya knew that. Cliff was a himbo in skates, a golden retriever with elbows, all heart and momentum and bad timing.

Ilya still wanted to kill him.

In the morning, the hospital smelled like disinfectant and stale coffee and fear.

The woman at the front desk looked at Ilya like she'd spotted a celebrity in the wild. Her gaze snagged on his face, his height, the cut of his jaw, his name on whatever list she had in her head.

She lowered her voice, delighted. "That was… very sportsmanlike of you."

Ilya didn't answer.

"Room 613," she said, like she was giving him a gift.

The walk down the corridor felt endless.

He stopped outside the door, hand hovering. He didn't know why he was nervous. He had been in far more dangerous rooms. He had stood in front of cameras and crowds and pressure that could crush a person.

This was worse.

He pushed the door open gently.

Shane was propped up in the hospital bed, elevated into an almost-sitting position. His left arm sat trapped in a sling. His hair was flattened. His freckles looked too sharp against pallor. There was a bandage at his temple.

The room was otherwise empty.

Relief hit Ilya so hard it made him lightheaded.

Shane's face lit up immediately.

"Ilyaaaaa," he exclaimed, like Ilya was something good.

Ilya's throat closed.

He managed, awkwardly, "Hi." Then, because the words in his mouth were all wrong and too many, he blurted, "I just needed—are you—?"

"I'm okay," Shane said quickly. He smiled shyly, and it struck Ilya like a sucker punch: Shane was happy to see him. "I mean, I have a concussion, and a fractured collarbone. I'm out for the playoffs. But…"

"Could have been worse," Ilya said.

"Yeah."

Ilya nodded too much, as if nodding could keep Shane upright.

"Marleau is…" he began stupidly. "He feels bad. He was very… angry at himself. And I am mad at him as well."

Shane snorted. "It's part of the game. I know he's not a vicious player. We all get our bell rung eventually, right?"

He must have been on good drugs. He was actually grinning.

"He probably doesn't want to meet my mom in a dark alley, though," Shane joked. "She's out for blood."

"I will warn him," Ilya said automatically.

Shane's smile softened.

Ilya stood there like an idiot, hands at his sides, wanting, desperately, violently, to touch him. To put his fingers on Shane's skin and confirm this wasn't a nightmare his brain had invented.

It must have shown in his eyes.

Because Shane extended his good hand and said, in a soft voice, "Hey. Heeeeey."

Ilya nudged the door closed behind him and crossed the room until he was right beside the bed.

He lifted his hand and brushed his fingertips over Shane's face, over the freckles that ensnared him the first moment he saw them.

Shane gazed up at him, smile small and bright, like he'd been waiting for this.

"You scared me," Ilya admitted.

"Scared myself," Shane murmured.

"But you will be okay?"

"Yeah," Shane said. "I'll be okay. I wanted to tell you last night. I wish I could have texted you. I was—"

"Shhh," Ilya whispered.

His fingers trailed into Shane's hair, slow, grounding. Shane's eyelids fluttered closed.

"I had been looking forward to last night," Shane murmured, voice soft with regret.

"Yes," Ilya said, and the word felt like a bruise.

"I'm mostly mad at Marleau for fucking that up."

A laugh slipped out of Ilya, startled and broken.

Shane's eyes opened again, searching him.

"When will we get a chance again?" Shane asked quietly.

And, so help him, Ilya almost did it.
He almost said: Stay with me.
He almost said: I'll bring you home.
He almost said: I'll make you sandwiches and watch the playoffs with you and read your boring hockey book and hold your hand until you forget what it felt like to go down like that.
He almost said: Say my name again and don't leave.

But of course he couldn't.

He couldn't offer Shane anything except the thing he was best at: distance dressed up as charm.

"I will be busy," Ilya said, forcing a smirk into place like armor. "Winning the Stanley Cup."

Shane grimaced.

"I'm sorry," Ilya said, and he meant it more than he'd meant anything in weeks.

Shane closed his eyes again. "It sucks."

"I know."

"I wanted to talk to you last night," Shane said, voice smaller now. "Before this happened."

Ilya had wanted to talk too.

He had convinced himself he had to end it. That his heart had entered into it and ruined the fun, and now it was torture. He had been ready to say it last night, ready to cut the cord before it strangled him.

But now Shane was here, broken and bright-eyed and asking for more, and the thought of ending it felt impossible.

"Shane," Ilya sighed, helpless.

Shane reached up and took Ilya's hand, tangling their fingers together and holding tight.

Warm. Shane's hand was warm.

"Will you come to the cottage?" Shane asked.

"I—" Ilya swallowed. "I don't know."

No. No, there was no way. Not if he ever wanted to be free.

"We can have a week or two, Ilya," Shane said. "It's so private. We can be alone, together. Haven't you ever wanted more time?"

Ilya's stomach clenched.

He should say no. He should let Shane believe this was only ever about stolen hours and private rivalry.

But instead, his thumb brushed over the back of Shane's hand, soft and traitorous.

"Of course," he said, and felt his own heart betray him.

Shane's eyes lit like someone had turned on a light.

"Then come to the cottage," Shane said, urgent now.

How perfect. Howterrifying.

Shane looked at him like his heart would shatter if Ilya said no, so Ilya took the coward's way out.

"Maybe," he said.

Shane beamed anyway, drugged and delighted, like maybe was yes.

The door handle turned.

Shane released Ilya's hand instantly. Ilya jumped back a step, too fast, too guilty, and faced the nurse who entered with a smile already on her mouth.

"Uh-oh," she said brightly. "You're not trying to smother him with a pillow, are you, Mr. Rozanov?"

Ilya forced his mouth into something that resembled a smile. "Ah, no," he said, shaky. "But good looking out. I was just… leaving, actually."

Shane's entire expression reset.

"Thank you for coming," Shane said evenly. "I appreciate it."

Ilya nodded once.

"Get well soon, Hollander," he said, and it felt like swallowing glass.

He left the hospital room of the man he loved.

In the corridor, the fluorescent lights hummed. The world smelled like disinfectant and distance. He walked faster, like speed could keep him from turning around.

Like leaving could save him.

Like the echo of Shane saying Ilya on the ice, slurred, terrified, intimate, would fade if he just kept moving forward.

It didn't.

It stayed, warm and stubborn, under his skin.

2017

Summer at the cottage didn't feel real.

It was too bright, too open, too quiet in a way that wasn't absence. The air smelled like pine and sun-warmed wood and lake water drying on skin. Even the silence here had texture, birds in the trees, wind sweeping through the dock, the soft creak of the house settling around them like it was breathing.

Ilya sat at the kitchen table with a cold Coke sweating under his palm, watching Shane move around the room as if he belonged to this life.

Which made sense because he did.

Shane's hair was still damp from the lake. He wore an old t-shirt with a faded logo and shorts that had seen better days. Barefoot, grounded, easy. The boy who'd once carried a whole country's expectations on his shoulders now looked like someone's son again.

It made Ilya's chest hurt in a way he liked.

They had said it.
They had both said it.

Not in a way that belonged to movies. Instead, it had come out messy and frightened and honest in the bedroom upstairs: Shane's voice shaking, Ilya's hands clenching like he needed something to hold onto so he wouldn't float away.

I love you.

The words still rang inside him like a bell.

He had spent years convinced love was a thing that happened to other people. A thing that belonged to safe boys with warm kitchens and fathers who smiled in photographs. A thing Ilya was built to ruin.

And yet, here he was, alive with it.

Shane opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of some kind of green smoothie, then hesitated and looked at Ilya like he was deciding something.

"Do you want some?" Shane asked.

Ilya blinked. "Smoothie?"

Shane's mouth twitched. "Yeah. Try to keep up."

Ilya snorted, but there was no sting in it. "I have my Coke."

"Okay," Shane said, unbothered, and poured himself a glass anyway.

He leaned back against the counter, sipping slowly, eyes on Ilya.

Ilya's pulse tripped.

He still wasn't used to being looked at like that. Shane could see him. All of him. The ugly pieces. The lonely pieces. The pieces that wanted too much.

And stayed anyway.

Ilya set his Coke down carefully.

"Stop staring," he said.

Shane lifted his brows. "No."

Ilya's mouth curved despite himself. "Why?"

Shane's eyes softened. "Because you're here."

Ilya's chest tightened. A stupid, tender ache.

He looked away toward the window, toward the slice of lake visible through the trees. He swallowed. He forced himself to look back.

Shane was still leaning against the counter, drink in hand, face open in a way that made him look younger.

Ilya stood.

He crossed the room and stopped in front of him, close enough to feel his heat.

Shane's gaze flicked to Ilya's mouth.

Ilya lifted a hand and hooked a finger lightly in the collar of Shane's t-shirt, tugging him forward.

"You have me," he said, the words rough around the edges, as if they weren't practiced on his tongue.

Shane's mouth twisted into a smile that didn't hide the feeling behind it.

"I have you," Shane repeated, like he was testing the phrase for weaknesses.

Ilya leaned in and kissed him.

Shane sighed into his mouth, hands coming up automatically, one at Ilya's waist, one at his shoulder, holding him like he belonged there.

Ilya's name wasn't said. It didn't need to be. It was there anyway, in the way Shane kissed him like he had time. Like he wasn't counting minutes until the world intruded. Like he wasn't trying to keep his heart separate from his body.

When they broke apart, Shane's forehead rested against Ilya's for a moment.

"You're thinking too hard," Shane murmured.

"I am too smart," Ilya said.

Shane huffed a quiet laugh. "Yeah, okay."

Ilya's thumb brushed Shane's cheekbone.

He wanted, briefly, intensely, to freeze this moment in amber. To keep it the way he'd wanted to keep the day at the lake with his mother. To hoard it against the future.

But summer didn't allow hoarding. Summer insisted on moving.

"Come outside," Shane said, tugging gently at his hand.

Ilya let himself be led, because that was new too: letting Shane pull him somewhere. They stepped out onto the back porch.

The sunlight hit them full in the face. The yard sloped down toward the lake, all green and gold. Somewhere nearby, a bird called. The air tasted faintly of sap and water.

Shane leaned into him, shoulder bumping his lightly, and smiled—small, private.

Then he said it, quietly, like he was tasting it.

"Ilya."

The syllables slid into the warm air between them, simple and sure.

Ilya's heart kicked.

He leaned down, pressing a kiss to the corner of Shane's mouth.

"Yes," he murmured, because he didn't have better words.

And Shane stayed close, hand clasped in his, as if it was the easiest thing in the world to hold him there in the sun.

2017

He had been called many things in his life.

Rozanov.
Rozy.
Captain.
Illyusha.

He had never been called into a living room like this.

They were all sitting down now—David and Yuna together on the couch, Shane and Ilya in separate chairs facing them like they were being interviewed. It should have made Ilya laugh, the absurdity of it. Two NHL superstars, two grown men, and he felt like he was sixteen again, waiting to be judged by adults who held his future between their hands.

Shane's knee bounced.

Ilya's hands stayed very still in his lap.

He could feel Shane's eyes on him now and then, quick glances like checks: you okay? you still here?

Ilya was here. As long as he was allowed to be.

Yuna had moved first, as she always did. Shock, then practicality, then that sharp, bright intelligence turning their disaster into a problem to solve.

David, though… David was quieter. Watching. Processing.

Ilya didn't mind being watched on the ice. He understood that kind of gaze.

This was different. This was a father looking at the man his son loved.

It made Ilya's skin feel too tight.

David took a breath, like he was choosing his words carefully.

"I have to say," he began, and his tone was almost thoughtful, "I'm surprised about you, Mr. Rozanov. You've always had such a reputation as a—" his mouth twitched faintly, as if he wasn't sure he should say it— "you know. A ladies' man."

It was a small, cold thing between Ilya's ribs. Rozanov.

A name for press conferences. A name with distance built into it. A name that belonged to contracts and headlines and the part of him that smiled for cameras and didn't let anyone get close enough to see the cracks.

He could've let it pass. He usually did. But something in him moved anyway, quiet, stubborn, almost startled by itself.

"Ilya," he said.

David blinked, then nodded once, accepting it immediately. "Ilya, then."

And it was such a small thing, really—two syllables dropped into the space between them, but Ilya felt it like a door clicking open.

David continued, voice even, "I'm just… surprised, that's all."

Ilya swallowed. He could feel his pulse in his throat.

"It is not untrue," he said carefully, because it wasn't. He'd been with women. He'd been with so many women it had stopped feeling like anything but motion, noise, proof. Performance. A way to keep the world from suspecting the truth that lived under his skin.

Before Shane.

During Shane, too, sometimes—when he was at his worst, when he was trying to outrun the hunger with anything that could fill a room for a night.

Shane's voice cut in, quick and a little flustered. "Ilya likes both."

"Oh," Yuna said, and the syllable held a universe.

David's brows rose slightly.

Ilya's throat tightened, and he did the terrifying thing: he spoke into the quiet.

"I have been with lots of women," he said, steady now, because if he started he couldn't stop. "That was not… fake." He glanced at Shane, because he had to, because Shane was the only reason any of this was happening. Shane was watching him like he couldn't breathe. "But…" Ilya held Shane's eyes and felt the room tilt. "I have only been in love with one person."

Yuna covered her mouth with her hand, eyes shining in a way that made her look as if she might bolt up and start organizing their entire future with a clipboard.

David stared at Ilya for a long moment.

Then Shane, voice rough and small, said, "Me too. Just one."

Ilya's chest ached so sharply it almost knocked air from his lungs.

David exhaled slowly. "All right," he said, and the words were simple, but they were solid. "All right."

Yuna clapped her hands once, decisive. "Okay. What's the plan?"

Shane blinked like he'd forgotten that plans existed.

Ilya sat back in his chair, still too aware of his own heartbeat, still too aware of how much he'd just revealed.

They make them stay over for dinner, and the pasta was too hot.

Steam curled up from the bowl in front of him, carrying garlic and basil and something rich and homemade that feels aggressively wholesome.

Shane was sitting beside him this time, their knees brush under the table, tentative at first, then deliberately not moving away.

Ilya twirled spaghetti around his fork like he has been doing this his entire life.

Yuna was talking about something—Scott Hunter, maybe, or playoff schedules—but Ilya's brain was still catching up to the fact that no one has asked him to leave. No one has gone quiet in that brittle, disapproving way he knows too well.

Shane bumped his knee again. Ilya glances sideways.

Shane looked flushed—whether from embarrassment or happiness, it's hard to tell. Probably both.

David cleared his throat, and the sound makes Ilya's spine straighten automatically, preparing for the judgment incoming.

Instead, David held out his hand across the table toward the bread basket and says, matter-of-factly:

"Ilya, could you pass the parmesan?"

It tool Ilya half a second to process it. He picked up the small ceramic bowl of grated cheese and handed it over.

"Yes," he said, because apparently that is the only word he knows how to produce tonight.

David nodded, sprinkles parmesan over his pasta, then passed the bowl back without ceremony.

"Thank you."

It was the kind of exchange that happens in a thousand families every night without anyone thinking about it, but Ilya felt it like a seismic shift.

He thought of all the versions of his name that have shaped him.

Rozanov—barked across ice, stitched onto jerseys, printed on contracts.

Rozy—chanted by a city that loves him for what he does, not who he is.

Illyusha—soft in his mother's mouth, sharp in his brother's.

And now—

Ilya.

Shane's hand landed on his thigh under the table, squeezing once.

Ilya didn't look at him. If he did, he might break.

Yuna took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, then gestured lightly with her fork.

"So," she said, eyes moving between them, not unkind. "How exactly did this happen?"

Shane groaned. Ilya stifled a laugh.

And for the first time in his life, sitting at a family dinner table with pasta cooling in front of him and someone's father using his name like it's unremarkable—

Ilya doesn't feel like an intruder.

2021

The Centaurs' locker room smelled like sweat and eucalyptus and the sharp bite of tape adhesive.

It was a good smell.

It meant they'd worked. It meant they'd won. It meant the noise outside, the media, standings, pressure, couldn't reach them in here, not the same way. In here, it was just gear scattered on the floor, half-empty water bottles, and men who trusted each other enough to look ugly in victory.

Ilya sat on the bench with his elbows on his knees, gloves still on, shin pads unstrapped, breathing like he'd earned it. His jersey clung to him damp and heavy. Someone, Dykstra probably, had turned the music up loud, something with a beat that made the whole room feel like it was vibrating.

Across from him, Shane was peeling his shoulder pads off, face flushed, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He looked happy.

Not the careful, tight-happy Shane used to wear, the guarded version of himself that always seemed one bad headline away from folding inward.

This Shane was loose around the edges, laughed easier, smiled without checking who was watching.

Married Shane.

Centaurs Shane.

Ilya's Shane.

Troy Barrett, still built like a brick wall and still somehow the most quietly decent person in the room, threw a towel at Wyatt Hayes's head.

"Quit chirping," Troy said, tone fond even when he pretended it wasn't.

Wyatt yelped and lobbed the towel back. It missed Troy completely and smacked into the open stall next to Shane's.

"Nice aim," Ilya called out.

Wyatt pointed at him. "You're one to talk, Rozy."

"Game-winning goal," Bood went on, voice loud over the music. "And he's still in a mood."

"It was not game-winning," Ilya said, deadpan. "We were already winning."

"Yeah, but yours made it insulting," Luca argued, delighted.

Troy snorted. "It did. It really did."

Ilya spread his hands. "I am generous."

Shane made a soft sound that might've been a laugh. He didn't look up yet, focused on unclipping something stubborn, jaw working. Concentration face. The freckles on his cheeks stood out more when he was flushed like this.

Ilya watched him anyway.

Troy's gaze flicked between them, quick, assessing, amused in that way Troy did when he pretended he wasn't amused.

"You two done flirting?" Troy asked.

Shane's head snapped up, mortified. "We're not—"

Ilya cut in smoothly. "We are married."

Bood barked a laugh. "Best answer possible."

Shane's ears went pink. "That's not— that's not what he meant."

"It is what I mean," Troy said, grinning now, not bothering to hide it. "It's just—save it for literally anywhere else."

Ilya leaned back, smug. "No."

Shane threw a rolled-up sock at Ilya's chest. It bounced off harmlessly.

"Stop," Shane muttered, but his mouth was twitching.

There it was—the familiar dynamic, the private language they'd refined over years: Ilya provoking, Shane trying not to smile, everyone around them pretending to be exasperated while secretly loving it.

Good people.

Good room.

A safe place to be ridiculous.

Wyatt started rummaging in his stall. "Okay, okay. Serious question. Who's getting the belt tonight?" (The stupid little post-win award Wyatt had started on a whim and the entire team had decided was sacred.)

Luca pointed his chin at Ilya. "Give it to him."

Wyatt gasped theatrically. "Captain favoritism."

Troy shrugged. "It's merit."

Ilya lifted his brows. "Yes."

Shane, still pink, shook his head. "It should go to Troy."

"It should not," Troy said immediately. "I didn't score. I only glowered."

"You glowered effectively," Shane said, earnest.

Ilya laughed under his breath. "This is why you are my husband. You say nice things."

Shane's eyes flicked to him, fond, quick, a look like a hand on the back of Ilya's neck. "Shut up," he said, but the words were soft.

And then like he couldn't help it, like it was the simplest truth in the world, Shane added, quieter, "Nice goal, Ilya."

Ilya felt the familiar jolt, even after all this time. Even married, even years into Ilya being his truest name in Shane's mouth, it still hit him like a small miracle.

He looked at Shane, letting the silence stretch for half a beat too long.

Shane's mouth tightened, like he knew what Ilya was doing. "Don't," he warned.

Ilya's smile turned slow and wicked. "Say it again."

Bood made a gagging noise. "Oh my god. Get a room."

Troy threw a towel at him without looking. "You're the one listening."

"I can't not," Bood complained, even though he was laughing. "They're disgusting."

Shane stared at Ilya, jaw working, like he was trying to hold onto dignity by sheer force.

Then, because Shane Hollander had never been good at refusing Ilya when Ilya asked for something with that look—

"Ilya," Shane said again.

Firm this time. Almost annoyed, like he was trying to reclaim control of the moment.

It still sounded like love.

Ilya's chest went warm and stupid.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees again, and lowered his voice just enough that it threaded under the music.

"Better," he murmured.

Shane's eyes narrowed. "You're insufferable."

Ilya's grin sharpened. "Yes."

Wyatt clapped his hands loudly. "Okay! Belt ceremony! Before these two start making out."

"We are not—" Shane started, horrified again.

Ilya cut in, calm as ever. "We might."

Troy groaned. "Jesus Christ."

But he was smiling when he said it.

Wyatt looped the ridiculous belt over Ilya's shoulders with exaggerated reverence. "All hail," he announced. "Our captain."

Ilya stood, letting them make noise, letting them jostle him, letting the room be loud and alive around him.

Then Shane rose too, stepping in close like it was accidental, like their shoulders weren't brushing on purpose.

Shane's voice dropped low, private inside the chaos.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go home."

Ilya turned his head slightly, catching Shane's gaze.

There was sweat on Shane's temples. There was pride in his eyes. There was that soft steadiness that had taken them years to earn.

And there was his name again, unspoken but present in the way Shane looked at him like Ilya was not a secret, not a risk, not a storm waiting to break, Shane's.

Ilya nodded once.

"Okay," he said.

And as they walked out together—belt slung over his shoulder, teammates yelling after them—Shane bumped his hand against Ilya's, brief and sure.

Ilya threaded their fingers together.

2019

Their house in Ottawa had a particular kind of peace.

Snow pressed softly against the windows, muting the street into a watercolor blur. The heat kicked on in gentle waves. Somewhere down the hall, the dryer thumped like a lazy heartbeat. In the living room, Anya lay in her bed like a queen who had declared the day beneath her notice, one ear flicking every time a cabinet door shut.

In the kitchen, Shane was cooking.

There were onions sweating in a pan. Garlic. The rich, comforting smell of something tomato-based simmering into correctness. Shane moved around the stove with that steady competence that still made Ilya feel, ridiculously, fondly provoked. It wasn't flashy. Shane didn't perform domesticity. He just did it, like it was another kind of care he'd always known how to give.

Ilya sat on a stool at the island, elbows on the counter, chin in his hand, talking.

He'd been talking since Shane had walked in the door from errands. Since he had helped Shane take his coat off. Since Shane had kissed him once—quick, absent-minded, the kind of kiss that still managed to knock the air out of Ilya's lungs because it was so easy now.

"…and then," Ilya was saying, "Wiebe tried to explain the new power play to Troy, and Troy just stared at him like Wiebe was speaking Martian language. Which, okay, maybe he was. Wiebe was using hands too much. Like this." Ilya waved both hands, dramatic. "Very expressive. Jazz hands coaching."

Shane made a small sound that could have been a laugh if he'd allowed it to fully become one. He didn't turn around. He stirred the sauce with stubborn focus.

Ilya leaned forward anyway, relentless. "And then Cliff texted me—yes, he still calls me Cap sometimes, no, I do not know why, yes, I told him to stop—"

"Mm," Shane said, neutral.

Ilya narrowed his eyes. "Are you listening?"

Shane kept stirring. "I am."

"You are lying."

"I'm not lying," Shane said, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

Anya huffed in her bed like she was embarrassed for both of them.

Ilya pointed at her. "Even Anya thinks you are lying."

"She thinks you're annoying," Shane corrected, still not looking at him.

Ilya gasped. "Anya loves me."

Anya didn't move.

Shane finally glanced over his shoulder, eyes warm and unrepentant. "She loves whoever has food."

Ilya lifted his brows. "That is slander."

Shane turned fully now, wooden spoon in hand like a weapon. He gave Ilya a long, measuring look, one of those looks that used to belong to the ice, sharpened with rivalry, now softened by living together and knowing exactly where the other person kept their softest parts.

"You know what you are?" Shane asked.

Ilya perked up, delighted. "Handsome?"

Shane's eyes narrowed. "No."

"Devastatingly charming?"

"No."

"Your favorite person?"

Shane rolled his eyes so hard it was practically affectionate. "You're like a radio," he said, switching to Russian with precise, weaponized fluency. "Ty kak radio. Nonstop."

Ilya froze, then broke into a grin so bright it felt illegal.

"Oh," he said, voice syrupy. "My husband. You are insulting me in Russian now."

"It's not an insult," Shane said, turning back to the stove, as if he hadn't just tossed a match into gasoline. "It's an observation."

Ilya slid off the stool and padded across the kitchen in socks, silent the way Shane would never expect him to be silent. He came up behind Shane and leaned in close, pressing his chest to Shane's back.

Shane tensed automatically for half a second, reflex, then softened, shoulders dropping.

Ilya rested his chin on Shane's shoulder, breathed in the scent of him: dish soap, shampoo, garlic, home.

"A radio," Ilya murmured, lips near Shane's ear. "Do you mean I am always broadcasting important information?"

"I mean," Shane said, voice steady but a little strained, "that you never stop talking."

Ilya hummed thoughtfully. "That is not true."

Shane didn't answer. He just stirred.

Ilya kissed the edge of Shane's jaw, slow enough to make it count. Then another kiss, just under Shane's ear.

Shane's stirring faltered. He cleared his throat. "Don't— I'm cooking."

"You can cook later," Ilya said reasonably.

"It's literally on the stove."

"It will be fine," Ilya assured him. "You are very talented. The food respects you."

Shane let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. "The food does not—"

Ilya nipped lightly at his jaw, not hard, just enough to make Shane's voice hitch.

Shane froze, spoon suspended over the pan. "Ilya."

There it was.

His name, said like a warning. Said like a plea.

Ilya smiled against Shane's skin.

"Yes," he murmured. "That's better."

Shane's ears went pink in that familiar way that never stopped being addictive. He tried, very poorly, to regain composure.

"I'm serious," Shane said. "Dinner—"

Ilya slid his hands around Shane's waist, fingers slipping beneath the hem of Shane's shirt to touch warm skin. Shane inhaled sharply, spine going rigid.

"You called me a radio," Ilya reminded him, sweet as poison. "Now I must… retaliate."

Shane shut his eyes briefly like he was praying for strength.

"This is not how retaliation works," he muttered.

"It is exactly how it works," Ilya said. "In Russia, we punish with kisses."

Shane made a small, helpless sound.

Ilya kissed him again, just below the ear, and then whispered, "Say it again."

Shane's head tipped back a fraction, giving him more throat without meaning to.

"What?" Shane asked, though they both knew.

"My name," Ilya said, voice soft now, less teasing. "Say it like you mean it."

Shane swallowed.

He opened his eyes and stared at the simmering sauce like it had personally betrayed him.

Then, quieter, with that stubborn sincerity he always had when it mattered:

"Ilya."

The name slid into the space between them, warm and solid as the house itself.

Ilya felt it settle low in his chest, that familiar spark that never dulled. Married didn't change it. Years didn't change it. Shane saying his name still made something in Ilya go soft and sharp at the same time.

He kissed Shane's cheek, gentler now. "Good," he whispered.

Shane exhaled slowly, finally setting the spoon down. He turned in Ilya's arms, careful not to bump the pan, and looked at him with exasperation so fond it was basically surrender.

"You're going to make me burn dinner," Shane said.

Ilya's smile turned wicked again. "I will order pizza."

"We have food."

"Pizza is also food."

Shane shook his head, but his hands came up, one settling at Ilya's waist, the other catching the back of his neck. He pulled Ilya in and kissed him, slow and firm, like punctuation.

Ilya melted into it immediately, because of course he did.

Somewhere behind them, Anya sighed loudly, as if she'd been forced to witness something deeply unprofessional.

Shane broke the kiss just enough to murmur, lips brushing Ilya's: "Radio."

Ilya grinned. "Yes?"

Shane's mouth twitched. "Quiet for two minutes."

Ilya pretended to consider. "No."

Shane groaned, but he was smiling.

Ilya kissed the corner of his mouth again, soft as a promise. "Okay," he said, conceding, barely. "One minute."

Shane's eyes narrowed, amused. "One minute."

Ilya leaned back against the counter, hands still resting lightly at Shane's hips, and watched him return to the stove like a man trying to pretend he still had control over anything.

Anya thumped her tail once in her bed, satisfied.

And Ilya, for once, let the quiet stretch, full of warmth and garlic and the echo of his name in Shane's voice.

2022

The highway out of Toronto always felt like a long exhale.

Downtown fell away in layers, glass, noise, billboards, the tight press of people, and then there was only sky and lanes and the thin, gray ribbon of road unspooling ahead of him. Late afternoon light bled through clouds in pale sheets, turning everything the color of steel. The trees on either side stood stripped and dark, winter-branched, patient.

His GPS said 58 minutes.

It was lying. GPS always lied.

But Ilya liked seeing the number count down anyway. He liked the illusion of certainty, the neat promise of arrival.

He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the console where his phone sat in its mount, speaker on.

Shane's voice filled the car like heat.

"You're not stopping for coffee," Shane was saying, and it wasn't a question. It was that particular tone Shane used when he'd already decided the correct answer and was now waiting for Ilya to comply.

Ilya smiled to himself, eyes on the road. "I am fine."

"That means you're not," Shane replied immediately.

"I am driving," Ilya said, as if this explained everything.

"You can drive and still be tired," Shane said. "You've been up since, what, five?"

"Five-thirty," Ilya corrected.

On the other end of the line, Shane made a long sound of disbelief. "That's… not better."

Ilya's grin widened. He adjusted his grip on the wheel and passed a slow-moving truck, careful, controlled.

"It was brand deal," he said, because Shane always called them brand deals with faint contempt, like Ilya had agreed to sell his soul for a protein bar, despite having more deals than Ilya. "You want me to say no to money?"

"I want you to get home safe," Shane said, flat.

The words landed warm and sharp at once.

Ilya's throat tightened. He glanced at the dashboard clock out of habit, then back to the windshield. The sky ahead looked heavier, clouds layered like bruises.

"I will be home soon," he said lightly. "You will survive without me one more hour."

"I'm surviving," Shane muttered. "I'm just annoyed."

"You are always annoyed," Ilya said fondly.

"Because you make it easy."

Ilya laughed quietly, the sound fogging the inside of his chest. "You miss me."

There was a pause, tiny, but Ilya caught it, the way he always caught it when Shane was deciding whether to deny something out of stubbornness.

Then Shane sighed, defeated. "Yeah. I miss you."

Ilya's fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

Even now, after years, after rings, after Ottawa and the dog and the shared grocery lists and the stupid domestic arguments about whose turn it was to buy dishwasher tablets, Shane saying it still did something to him. It still felt like a door opening.

"I miss you more," Ilya said, because it was true and because Shane hated when he got dramatic about it.

"You don't," Shane replied automatically.

"I dooooo," Ilya insisted. "I miss your annoying face. I miss your boring Canadian voice."

"My boring—" Shane sputtered. "Your voice is the one that never stops. You're literally a—"

"A radio, yes, yes," Ilya finished smugly, because he could hear Shane rolling his eyes through the phone.

"Yeah," Shane said, exasperated. "Exactly."

Ilya's smile softened. He checked his mirrors again, out of habit, out of training. Empty lane behind him, a car far back, another truck to the right.

"Tell Anya I miss her more," he said.

"You miss Anya more than me?" Shane's voice went suspicious.

"I miss everyone," Ilya said with exaggerated seriousness. "Even you."

"Wow. Thanks."

Anya, as if summoned by her own name, barked distantly through the phone, one sharp sound, then a low whine, like she'd heard his voice and was offended he wasn't physically present.

Shane laughed, and it loosened something in Ilya's chest.

"She's mad," Shane said. "She's been laying by the front window like a tiny sentry."

"She loves me," Ilya declared.

"I'm telling you, she loves whoever feeds her."

"I feed her love," Ilya said.

"Sure," Shane replied dryly. "Which is why she's obsessed with my dad when he comes over with the treats."

Ilya hummed, amused, and the road kept sliding beneath him, lane markers flashing past like the ticking of time.

He could picture Shane at the stove, shoulders slightly hunched, stirring something that would be done precisely when Ilya got home. Shane liked timing. Shane liked the quiet rituals that proved life could be simple.

Ilya had once thought simplicity was impossible.

Now it lived in every corner of his life.

"I will be home for dinner," Ilya said, and his voice came out softer than he intended.

"I know," Shane said, equally soft. Then, a beat later: "Drive safe."

"I always drive safe."

Shane made a skeptical noise. "That's not—you know what I mean."

Ilya's eyes flicked again to the GPS. 47 minutes.

He could do forty-seven minutes in his sleep. He'd driven longer on worse roads in worse weather with a worse mood.

But something about the way Shane said it—drive safe—settled on him with weight.

He swallowed and kept his voice light anyway. "Yes, boss."

"I'm serious," Shane said.

Ilya's grip tightened.

"Me too."

"Good" Shane replied. "Focus on the road."

"I am focused."

"Okay," Shane said, and there was a small pause, like he'd leaned closer to the phone. "Tell me what you see."

Ilya blinked, startled. "What?"

"What's around you," Shane said. "Just—tell me. I read it helps you pay attention."

Ilya exhaled a short laugh. "Are you my coach?"

"I'm your very worried husband," Shane corrected. "And you're tired."

Ilya glanced at the road ahead, amused, indulging him. "Trees."

"Helpful," Shane said dryly.

"Gray sky. Ugly."

"Mm-hmm."

"Two lanes. A truck beside me. Another ahead."

"Good," Shane murmured. "Keep going."

Ilya frowned, but there was something grounding in it, the way Shane's voice pinned him to the present. The way Shane made him describe reality as if reality were a thing you could hold in your hands.

"Road is wet," Ilya added, because it was. Not rain exactly, just that slick winter sheen that made asphalt look darker and meaner.

Shane went quiet for a beat. "Okay. Don't speed."

"I do not speed."

"You do."

Ilya scoffed. "I go with traffic."

"You go with the fastest traffic," Shane said.

Ilya smiled despite himself. "You know me so well."

Shane's voice softened. "Yeah."

The car hummed around him, tires whispering over the damp road. His hands felt steady. His breath felt steady. The world felt, if not safe, then manageable.

Then the truck in the lane ahead drifted. Not in the normal, careless wander of someone checking their mirrors. It jerked.

A sudden swerve left, the trailer's bulk swinging like a door blown by wind.

Ilya's brain registered it in a flash of cold clarity.

Too close.

His body reacted before thought fully formed.

He hit the brakes lightly, just enough to slow without losing control, and steered right to create space, eyes snapping to his mirror to make sure the lane was clear.

It should have been.
It would have been.

Except the truck kept coming.

A bigger swerve this time, a violent correction like the driver had overcompensated, the trailer fishtailing.

The world narrowed: lane markers, metal, motion.

Shane's voice rose suddenly through the speaker, sharp with alarm. "Ilya—?"

Ilya's mouth went dry.

"Shane," he said automatically, not answering, just saying it, like a reflex.

The truck's trailer swung again.

Too far. Too fast.

It clipped into Ilya's lane, stealing the space he'd counted on.

There wasn't time to think. Only to move.

Ilya yanked the wheel. The car lurched. Tires screamed.

For one nauseating second the world became pure physics: momentum, traction, angle. The steering wheel fought him. The road slicked under his tires like ice.

His stomach dropped.

He saw, in a blink of terrible clarity, the line of trees on the shoulder.
He saw the ditch beyond.
He saw the solid, unforgiving trunk waiting like a verdict.

"No," he breathed.

The car hit the shoulder.

Gravel spat up.

The wheel jerked.

He tried to correct—too sharp, too late.

The impact came like the sky falling.

A sound that was not just sound but force, metal folding, glass exploding outward, his body thrown forward against the belt, ribs compressing, head snapping back.

White flashed behind his eyes.

The phone flew in its mount and clattered somewhere, the speaker still on.

He could hear Shane yelling, distant and warped, as if from underwater.

"Ilya? Ilya! Hey—hey—talk to me!"

Ilya blinked, trying to clear his vision. The windshield was a spiderweb of cracks. Airbags stank of chemicals. The engine made an ugly choking sound, then fell silent.

His hands were still on the wheel.

He couldn't feel them properly.

He tried to breathe and pain lanced through his chest like a knife.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, absurdly, he thought:

Warm hands. Warm hands. Warm hands.

Not cold. Not again.

He fumbled blindly for the phone, fingers clumsy, numb. His palm brushed it on the floor near the pedals.

Shane's voice spilled out, raw now, stripped of all composure.

"Ilya—please—say something. Please."

Ilya opened his mouth. His tongue felt heavy. His throat tasted like pennies.

He tried again. "Sh—"

A cough tore out of him, sharp and wet.

Shane made a sound that cracked in half on the other end. "Oh my god. Oh my god, stay with me. Stay with me. I'm calling— I'm calling 911. Ilya, look at me— I know you can't—just—just stay on the line."

Ilya's eyelids fluttered.

The edges of his vision grayed, tunneling in.

He fought it, because he was good at fighting. Because his whole life had been survival in different costumes.

But the dark kept pushing in like water.

Shane's voice kept saying his name. "Ilya. Ilya. Ilya."

Each syllable landed like a hand on his face, like a palm against his cheek, like someone trying to warm him back to life.

Ilya's breath stuttered.

He thought, stupidly, of his mother singing in the kitchen.
He thought of the frozen pond.
He thought of Shane at the stove, stirring sauce, calling him a radio.
He thought: If this is how I go, at least it's warm. At least it's him.

His fingers tightened weakly around the phone.

"Shane," he managed, barely a sound.

"I'm here," Shane choked. "I'm here. Ilya, I'm here."

Ilya tried to smile. He wasn't sure if his face moved.

The darkness surged.

The last thing he heard—clearer than everything else—was Shane's voice breaking over his name like prayer.

"Ilya—don't—please—"

And then the world went quiet.

2022

Sound came back first.

Not the world, but pieces of it. A thin, rhythmic beeping. Air moving in and out of somewhere close. The faint squeak of shoes on linoleum. A murmur of voices blurred together like a radio tuned between stations.

Then pain.

It arrived without ceremony, blooming through his chest and shoulder with each breath, sharp enough to make his body try to curl in on itself and fail. Something tugged at his arm. Something pinched at his face. His throat was dry in a way that felt ancient.

He tried to open his eyes.

Light knifed through him.

He flinched and a sound escaped his mouth, small and involuntary.

"Hey," someone said immediately, close. "Hey—no, no. Easy."

Shane's voice.

Ilya knew it the way he knew his own heartbeat.

But it wasn't the Shane voice from kitchens and quiet mornings. This Shane voice was wrecked and raw around the edges, scraped down to bone.

Ilya blinked again, slower, trying to make his eyes cooperate.

Shapes swam into focus: white ceiling, pale walls, the vague outline of medical equipment. A curtain. A chair.

And then Shane, leaning forward so hard his posture looked like he'd been holding himself up with pure will. His hair was a mess. There were dark shadows under his eyes that made him look younger and so much older at once. His mouth was pressed into a line like he didn't trust it not to break.

Ilya tried to speak.

His throat refused at first.

He swallowed and it hurt.

"Sh—" he rasped.

Shane surged closer, one hand grabbing the side rail of the bed like it was an anchor. His other hand hovered over Ilya's, not touching yet, like he was afraid that contact might make this vanish.

"I'm here," Shane said, too quickly. "I'm right here. You're— you're okay. You're—"

He stopped, because lying felt impossible.

Ilya's gaze drifted past Shane's shoulder.

Yuna was on the other side of the room, standing with her arms folded tight across her chest like she was holding herself together. Her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying now. She looked furious in a quiet, surgical way that made Ilya briefly pity whatever had taken her son's husband off the road and into a tree.

David sat beside her, one hand resting on her knee, grounding her. He looked calm the way David always looked calm, but his face had gone drawn at the edges. His jaw was set. His eyes were locked on Ilya with the focus of a man who had decided, once, that this person mattered.

For a moment, Ilya's brain skidded. He tried to lift his head and immediately regretted it. Stars flashed behind his eyes. Shane's hand came down on his shoulder, gentle but firm.

"Don't," Shane said, voice breaking. "Don't move."

"Wh—" Ilya tried again. His tongue felt too heavy for his mouth. "Where…"

"Hospital," Shane answered, like Ilya was a child. Like he needed the simple words. "Ottawa General. You—" Shane's breath hitched. "You got hit. You crashed."

Ilya's eyes fluttered closed for half a second. Shane's voice shouting his name through the speaker like he could pull Ilya back from the dark by force. He opened his eyes again, slower.

"Phone," he whispered, hoarse. "You…"

Shane's laugh came out jagged. "Yeah, I was on the phone. You just—" He swallowed hard. "You just stopped answering."

Ilya's fingers twitched, searching.

Shane grabbed his hand immediately, both of his hands wrapping around it like he'd been waiting for permission.

Warm. Shane's hands were warm.

Ilya's chest tightened around it, an ache so deep it wasn't pain, not exactly, more like the release of something he'd been holding too long.

"Hi," Ilya managed.

Shane's eyes filled instantly. "Hi," he said back, like it was the only safe word in the world.

Yuna took a step forward.

"Hi, Ilya," she said, voice steady but soft.

Ilya blinked at her, disoriented in a different way now. "Yuna."

"You scared the hell out of us," she said, and the words should've sounded like a scolding but didn't.

David stood.

He didn't come closer right away. He waited, reading Shane's posture, reading Ilya's face, as if assessing what Ilya could handle.

Then he stepped to the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets, shoulders squared.

"Ilya," David said.

"Yes," he rasped.

David nodded once, a small movement that carried a lot.

"Good," David said simply. Then his voice softened, just a fraction. "We're glad you're awake."

Ilya's eyes stung. He looked away toward the ceiling because he didn't trust his face.

Shane tightened his grip, thumb rubbing slow circles over Ilya's knuckles like a tether.

"What's… wrong?" Ilya whispered. "What… injuries?"

Shane let out a breath that sounded like he'd been holding it for hours.

"Broken ribs," Shane said. "A fracture in your wrist. Concussion. Bruising. They said you're… lucky."

Ilya almost laughed. It came out as a small exhale instead, painful.

"Stupid tree," he murmured.

"Yeah," Shane said. "Stupid tree."

Yuna's mouth tightened. "The truck driver was pulled over. Police are investigating. Don't even try to stress about it."

Ilya blinked. "Okay."

Then his gaze snapped back to Shane, because that was the only thing that truly mattered.

"You—" His voice broke. He cleared his throat carefully. "You… okay?"

Shane's laugh was wet. "Me? I'm—" He stopped, eyes crumpling. "I thought you died."

David shifted closer to Yuna again, his hand returning to her knee. Yuna's eyes glistened, but she didn't look away. She listened like she was part of this, because she was.

Ilya's throat tightened.

He lifted his hand a fraction, his uninjured one, fingers barely obeying, and brushed his thumb clumsily across Shane's knuckles.

"I did not," he said, hoarse. "Obviously."

Shane made a strangled sound that was half laugh, half sob.

"Don't," Shane whispered. "Don't—don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Act like this is—" Shane's voice broke. He pressed his forehead briefly to Ilya's hand, eyes squeezed shut. "I couldn't breathe, Ilya. I heard you cough and then you went quiet and I—"

"I know," Ilya murmured.

He remembered drifting, the dark pushing in. He remembered thinking: If this is how I go, at least it's him.

"You said my name," Ilya whispered.

Shane's eyes opened, glossy and confused. "What?"

"In car," Ilya said, voice rough. "You… kept saying."

Shane's expression cracked wider, like grief and love were the same thing inside him right now. "Yeah," he whispered. "I just… I just wanted to reach you."

Ilya swallowed. Pain lanced. He winced and Shane immediately straightened, alarm flaring.

"Are you hurting? I'll get the nurse—"

"No," Ilya said quickly, tightening his fingers around Shane's. "Stay."

Shane froze. Then he nodded once, sharp and obedient. "Okay."

Yuna sniffed softly, turning her face away for a moment like she needed one private second to feel whatever she was feeling. David's hand squeezed her shoulder.

Ilya looked at them again, this strange, impossible sight: Shane's parents in a hospital room, present and steady, like this was not an intrusion but a right.

He had once believed family was a thing you survived. He was learning it could also be a thing you were held by.

"Sorry," he said, voice rasping out the word like it cost him.

Yuna turned back, eyes fierce. "Don't apologize for getting hit by a truck."

"Tree," Ilya corrected faintly.

Yuna's mouth twitched despite herself. "Don't apologize for getting hit by a tree either."

Shane let out something close to a laugh, then leaned down like he couldn't help it and pressed his mouth to Ilya's knuckles, careful, reverent, the kind of kiss that belonged to quiet mornings and vows.

Ilya's chest went tight and warm.

Shane lifted his head, eyes shining.

"I'm not leaving," Shane said, voice low and absolute.

Ilya blinked. "You will sleep."

"In that chair," Shane said immediately, as if the chair were a prize. "If they let me."

"They will," Yuna said, already decisive. "And we'll rotate. Dad and I aren't going anywhere."

David nodded. "We'll be here."

Ilya stared at them.

A word surfaced in his mind, dangerous and tender: Home.

He looked back at Shane. Shane was watching him like the world began and ended in this bed.

"Ilya," Shane whispered, softer now. "Can you say something for me?"

Ilya frowned slightly. "What?"

Shane swallowed hard. "Tell me you're staying."

It should have made Ilya flinch, the vulnerability, the need, the naked request. Instead, it steadied him.

Because he finally understood what names were for.

Not for headlines; not for armor.

They were for calling someone back; for keeping them.

Ilya squeezed Shane's hand, small, painful, deliberate.

"I am staying, Shane," he whispered.

Shane's face crumpled with relief so intense it looked like pain.

He leaned down and pressed his forehead to Ilya's, careful of tubes and monitors, careful of everything except the truth between them.

"Good," Shane breathed. "Good. Okay."

And in the space between their breaths, with Yuna and David holding the edges of the room steady, Ilya let his eyes close again.

Because for once, he trusted that when he opened them—

they would still be there.

2022

Shane wakes up because Anya's tail thumps once against the bed frame in firm little hello, I am awake and this is relevant to you.

He blinks into the dim bedroom and immediately regrets opening his eyes, because the air is warm and the blankets are heavy and Ilya is pressed against him like gravity with a pulse.

The house is quiet. Early-quiet. Ottawa is still sleeping under a soft layer of snow.

Ilya is not. Not fully, anyway.

Shane can tell because Ilya's hand is already on him, spread over Shane's stomach, possessive in that lazy way that used to make Shane nervous and now mostly just makes him feel claimed. Kept.

Anya huffs from her spot at the foot of the bed, offended that no one has gotten up to worship her yet.

"Traitor," Shane whispers at her.

Anya's ears twitch. She does not care.

Shane turns his head slightly and looks at Ilya.

Ilya is warm and rumpled and unfairly beautiful, hair a mess, mouth parted a little, lashes light against his cheeks. He's on his side, facing Shane, like he turned in his sleep and decided this is where he belongs.

Shane's chest does that thing it always does. The soft drop. The tiny ache. The embarrassing amount of fondness.

He reaches up carefully, slow so he won't wake him, and brushes his knuckles along Ilya's cheek.

Ilya doesn't stir. He just makes a small sound, content, and presses closer.

Shane smiles into the pillow.

He's still not used to it, how easy it is now. How Ilya takes up space in his life in the way that was always meant to be.

Shane leans in and kisses the bridge of Ilya's nose.

Then, because he can't help himself, he whispers, "Ilya."

Ilya's eyelids flutter but don't open. His hand shifts, fingers flexing slightly against Shane's stomach, and Shane feels it like a quiet promise: I heard you. I'm here.

Shane tries again, softer. "Ilya."

This time Ilya exhales a little laugh, muffled and sleepy.

"You say my name too much," Ilya murmurs without opening his eyes.

Shane's heart kicks.

"I don't," Shane lies.

"You do," Ilya says, voice thick with sleep. "You are obsessed."

Shane huffs a laugh. "You're the one who's obsessed."

Ilya's mouth curves, slow, smug, before his eyes even open. Then he blinks at Shane like he's taking inventory of the world.

"Hello," Ilya says.

It's so gentle it makes Shane's throat go tight.

"Hi," Shane replies, and then because he can't resist, he adds, "Good morning, Rozanov."

Ilya squints. "Excuse me?"

Shane's smile goes innocent. "What? That's your name."

Ilya's eyes narrow, suspicious and amused. "Say it properly."

Shane pretends to think. "Mr. Rozanov."

Ilya makes a wounded sound and rolls closer, nosing into Shane's neck like a cat with a grudge.

"You are cruel," Ilya mutters into Shane's skin. "Very mean husband."

Shane laughs, because it tickles, because it's ridiculous, because it's his favorite thing in the world.

Anya thumps her tail again like she's applauding.

Shane strokes Ilya's hair, gentle. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry."

"You should be," Ilya says, still dramatic, still pleased with himself.

Shane kisses the top of his head. "Ilya."

The name lands differently when he says it like that, simple, domestic, no edge. Like a hand tucked into a pocket. Like walking into the kitchen barefoot.

Ilya goes still for half a second, then hums, satisfied.

"Yes," he murmurs. "That is better."

Shane rolls his eyes. "You're impossible."

"And yet," Ilya says, lifting his head just enough to look at him, eyes bright with sleep and mischief, "you love me."

Shane's mouth softens. "Yeah."

Ilya studies him like he's making sure. Like he's still collecting proof, even after all these years.

Shane reaches up and cups Ilya's face.

"I love hearing it," Ilya says quietly, as if it's a confession.

Shane's heart does a stupid little flip.

"You love hearing your name?" Shane asks, teasing to cover how tender he suddenly feels.

Ilya's smile turns softer. "No. I love hearing yours."

Shane blinks.

"What," he says, because his brain always short-circuits when Ilya is unexpectedly sincere.

Ilya's thumb brushes Shane's cheekbone, light as breath. "Yours," he says. "Shane."

It's slow and intentional, and so, so warm.

Shane feels it everywhere.

It shouldn't matter—he's heard his name a million times, shouted and announced and chanted—but when Ilya says it, it sounds like it belongs to a person, to a life.

Shane swallows, suddenly shy.

"You say it like…" he starts, then stops, because he doesn't know how to explain without sounding like a sap.

Ilya's eyes soften. "Like what?"

Shane exhales. "Like you mean it."

Ilya's smile is so gentle it almost hurts.

"I always mean it," he says.

Then he leans in and kisses Shane, unhurried and sweet, the kind of kiss that makes the world feel soft around the edges.

When they break apart, Shane rests his forehead against Ilya's.

"Shane," Ilya murmurs again, quieter this time, and Shane can't help it—he smiles so hard his cheeks hurt.

Anya lets out an exaggerated sigh from the foot of the bed.

Shane laughs and calls down to her, "We heard you."

Anya's tail thumps.

Ilya, still pressed close, whispers against Shane's mouth, "Our daughter is jealous."

"She's not our daughter," Shane says, though he's smiling.

Ilya kisses him again anyway. "Yes she is."

Shane sighs, happy and defeated. "You're ridiculous."

Ilya's grin turns bright, boyish for a second. "And you love me."

Shane kisses the corner of his mouth, soft.

"Yeah," he says. "I love you very much."

And then, because he wants to hear it one more time, because he always wants to hear it, Shane whispers, "Say it again."

Ilya's eyes flicker with amusement.

"You want radio?" he murmurs. "Okay."

He settles in closer like he's getting comfortable for a long broadcast, then says, perfectly content, perfectly fond:

"Shane. Shane. Shane."

Shane laughs into his shoulder, warm and helpless, and thinks: Yeah. That one. That's my favorite sound in the world.