Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Troy Barrett/Harris Drover, David Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, David Hollander & Yuna Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Brandon Wiebe, Harris Drover, Zane Boodram, Troy Barrett, Evan Dykstra, Luca Haas, Dallas Kent, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Wiebe

Additional Tags:

Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Role Model, Accidental Outing, secret relationship reveal, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending...?, Protective Shane Hollander, Coming Out Not By Choice, Live Interview Gone Wrong, Depression, Pride night, Homophobic Language, Phone Calls, sad boys on the phone, Angst, Couch Cuddles, Sleepy Boys, David comforts Ilya, david is the best dad, Supportive Ottawa Centaurs (Game Changers), ottawa centaurs are family, Bring him to the farm, Shane is a pro gamer, Deep and meaningful convos, Haas has a cat?, too much cider, Lily/Jane reference, Slow dancing in a barn, I hate Wonderwall, Kissing in the farmhouse, The feels, Realisations, canon divergence - the long game, Nutella, The Voyageurs suck except for Hayden and J.J, Drunk Centaurs, Slightly Smutty

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-30 Completed: 2026-05-12 Words: 38,786 Chapters: 4/4

Ours To Tell

Summary

Pride Night was supposed to be the easy part.

Then Dallas Kent showed up, Troy Barrett threw the first punch, Ilya Rozanov stopped the fight, and Ottawa won a game nobody felt much like celebrating.

By morning, Dallas was in custody, Ilya was in hospital, and the internet had decided everyone knew exactly what had happened.

A week later, injured, furious, and barely holding himself together, Ilya tries to get back to hockey.

Instead, he gets a camera.

One soft question.

One honest answer.

“My boyfriend.”

It is the truth.

It is also the one thing he and Shane were supposed to choose together.

Based on a Reddit fic prompt by u/backtothefuture2028.

Notes

Chapter 1

Pride Night Marred by Violence as Ottawa Defeats Toronto

By Russell John Andrews
The Hockey Ledger
Published: Friday, February 19, 2021, 11:48 p.m. ET
Updated: Saturday, February 20, 2021, 12:17 a.m. ET

OTTAWA. Pride Night at the Centaurs’ home ground was meant to be a celebration of hockey’s progressive, albeit sometimes rocky, efforts to become a more accepting place for all. Instead, Ottawa’s 3–1 win over Toronto will be remembered for the fight, which broke out midway through the second period.

Centaurs forward Troy Barrett and Toronto forward Dallas Kent dropped gloves in a confrontation that turned one of the league’s most visible Pride events into another argument about who hockey is willing to protect, what the future of hockey holds for all, and who it asks to stay quiet to uphold traditional values.

The tension was apparent before puck drop. Kent’s presence in Ottawa had already drawn criticism from fans, advocates, and several former players after an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct was closed without charges earlier this month. Kent has denied wrongdoing. His representatives have repeatedly stated that he has been “cleared of all formal complaints.”

For many in attendance, that distinction did little to soften the optics of Kent taking the ice on Pride Night opposite Barrett, his former Toronto teammate, who was traded to Ottawa earlier this season after publicly criticizing Kent.

The game itself began with the usual Pride Night ceremony: rainbow tape on sticks, community groups recognized at centre ice, and a video package featuring Centaurs staff, players, and fans speaking about inclusion. Barrett, who has been the focus of recent attention after publicly coming out, received a long ovation when shown on the arena screen.

Less than half an hour later, that atmosphere had changed.

The altercation began after a stoppage near the Toronto bench. Cameras caught Barrett and Kent exchanging words before Barrett shoved Kent hard in the chest. Kent responded, gloves came off, and both benches rose as officials moved in. The fight appeared close to escalating further before Ottawa captain Ilya Rozanov stepped between the players and helped separate Barrett from Kent.

Rozanov, who has become one of the stabilizing figures in Ottawa’s late-season turnaround after their near ill-fated  appeared visibly angry as he pulled Barrett away from the scrum. He remained between Barrett and Kent until officials restored order.

Both Barrett and Kent received fighting majors. Barrett also received an additional minor for roughing.

After the game, Ottawa head coach Brendan Wiebe declined to comment directly on what was said on the ice, but defended his team’s broader conduct. Wiebe stated:

“Tonight was supposed to be about our fans, our community, and the fans and players who deserve to feel safe and welcome in this building. I’m disappointed that part of the night became something else. I’m proud of how our players responded after that.”

Barrett did not speak to reporters after the game.
He was named first star after scoring three times in the win.
Kent also did not address media. However, he did repost a now deleted 'Instagram Story' that supported his actions on the ice after both teams had reportedly left the stadium. 

Rozanov, who recorded two assists, kept his post-game comments brief:

“We won the game. That is what we came to do. Pride Night is important. Hockey should be for everyone. I hope that is what people remember. I am proud of Barrett and hope his bravery inspires future players to live their truth.”

It may not be.

For all the progress the league has tried to highlight through theme nights, community campaigns, and player-led initiatives, Friday’s game made something painfully clear: Pride Nights do not exist because hockey has already become safe. They exist because, for too many people, it still is not.
Ottawa won on the scoreboard.
But the image, which will linger in fans minds is not Barrett’s third goal, or Rozanov’s assists, the fantastic saves from both Hayes and Nilsson, or even the rainbow-taped sticks lined along the bench.
It is the sight of two players fighting under a Pride Night banner while thousands of fans watched a celebration turned violent because both sides did not commit to the ethos of Pride Night: Safety.

That should trouble everyone who loves this sport.

Selected reader responses:

rozanovfan1: Rozanov remains the only adult on the ice these days. Barrett had every right to be angry, but Ilya kept that from becoming worse than it already was. So proud of my daddy.

magafan1987: It’s fucking hockey. Guys fight. Keep the fucking faggots off the ice and maybe people won't be pissed.

ottawalgbt: Pride Night is supposed to show queer fans they belong. Dallas Kent being there at all sent the opposite message. I hope his past and future victims find peace.

blue-line-truther: Kent was investigated and cleared. Maybe Ottawa should focus on playing and not scrapping with a man that's already been through it. 

censfanbutmakeitgay: Troy scoring three times after that fight is the most Ottawa thing I’ve ever seen. Congrats on coming out and kicking ass!

tradhockeyfan: Pride Night caused this circus. Nobody asked for politics with their hockey. If Pride Night is to continue, these libs need to stfu and cheer for their team. 

centaurs92: “Politics” is apparently when gay people exist and hockey players don’t pretend otherwise.

Dallas Kent Arrested After Alleged Assault on Ottawa Captain Ilya Rozanov

By Russell John Andrews
The Hockey Ledger
Published: Saturday, February 20, 2021, 2:34 a.m. ET
Updated: Saturday, February 20, 2021, 8:09 a.m. ET

OTTAWA. Toronto forward Dallas Kent was arrested early Saturday morning after an alleged assault involving Ottawa Centaurs captain Ilya Rozanov, according to Ottawa police and multiple sources including media teams from both the Ottawa Centaurs and Toronto Guardians.

The incident occurred only hours after Ottawa defeated Toronto 3–1 in a Pride Night game already overshadowed by an on-ice fight between Kent and Centaurs forward Troy Barrett.

Rozanov was taken to hospital for evaluation and treatment. The Centaurs confirmed he remained under medical care as of Saturday morning but did not provide specific details about his condition.

“Ilya Rozanov is receiving medical attention following an incident that occurred after tonight’s game. He is alert and in communication with medical staff. We ask that his privacy be respected at this time.”

Ottawa police confirmed that a man was arrested shortly after 1:00 a.m. in connection with an alleged assault outside a downtown club. Police did not initially name the individuals involved, but multiple sources with knowledge of the incident confirmed Kent and Rozanov were the players in question.

According to two witnesses who wish to remain anonymous, Rozanov was leaving the venue when Kent approached him. One witness described the exchange as “heated and irate” before Kent allegedly struck Rozanov across the head without warning.

“It wasn’t a fight,” one witness said. “The tall one wasn’t squared up. He wasn’t ready. He just got sucker punched.”

Security intervened immediately, and police were called to the scene. Kent was taken into custody shortly afterward.

The Toronto Guardians released a short statement Saturday morning:

“We are aware of an incident involving Dallas Kent following tonight’s game in Ottawa. We are gathering information and will cooperate fully with the appropriate authorities. We will have no further comment at this time.”

The league has not yet announced whether Kent will face supplementary discipline.

Friday night’s events mark a dramatic escalation in an already volatile situation. Kent’s appearance at Ottawa’s Pride Night drew criticism before the game began, given the recently closed investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. Kent has denied all wrongdoing. No charges were filed in that matter.

Barrett, Kent’s former teammate in Toronto, was traded to Ottawa earlier this season. Barrett has since come out and has become an increasingly visible figure in conversations regarding accountability and inclusion in hockey. Rozanov, by contrast, had largely avoided direct public comment on Kent beyond standard team remarks. On Friday night, he appeared to work repeatedly to de-escalate tension, including stepping between Barrett and Kent during the second-period fight.

That is what makes the alleged assault after the game feel especially grim.

Pride Night was supposed to be a place where hockey made room. Room for queer fans. Room for queer players. Room for families, partners, staff, and kids in rainbow jerseys who deserved one night where the message from the league was clear: you belong here.

Instead, the night ended with one player in police custody and another in hospital.

There will be questions in the coming days about Kent’s future, Toronto’s response, league discipline, and whether Ottawa can maintain its unlikely late-season push if Rozanov is unavailable.

Those questions matter. But they should not obscure the simpler truth.
A night built around acceptance ended in violence.
Hockey should be ashamed that such a sentence still feels unsurprising.
We all need to do better.

Editor’s note: Comments on this article have been temporarily closed due to the ongoing legal matter and moderation concerns.

One week later.


Ilya felt like shit.

The clock Yuna and David had bought him ticked noisily in the living room. They had given it to him so he could not use I didn't know I was running late as an excuse for their dinner catch-ups.

It was doing its job.

Constantly reminding him that he needed to get up. Move. Do something. Fucking anything that wasn't sitting under the blanket that had offered him the only real support he'd felt since leaving hospital.

He glanced over at the discharge papers on the coffee table. According to them, Ilya had been cleared to return to the Centaurs' facility. Apparently, sitting upright without wanting to throw up counted as progress now.

But fuck, everything still hurt.

Not just his body. Everywhere. His heart, his head, his mind. It all felt like lead weight pressing down on his chest.

He'd been hit before. His brother. His coach in Russia. His father, more times than he could count.

But he had never thought he'd be hit off the ice by a player. Especially by someone as pathetic as Dallas Kent. He remembered hitting the concrete, being unable to move. Hopeless. Chaos erupting around him before everything tunnelled to black.

The hospital stay had come and gone without anything important sticking in his memory. He'd had visitors. Well-wishes. Hugs. None of it had mattered because he hadn't really been there.

Because Shane hadn't been there.

It had all been one blur of grey.

When he was discharged, the doctor had told him to write down a list of things he thought he needed to do when he got home, then look at it the next day and decide if any of it was actually important or if rest was more important.

Ilya thought it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

Like he hadn't had a concussion before.

Getting home had immediately proved the doctor's point though.

When he had opened the door and stepped over the threshold proper, the tears had hit him all at once. It was worse than the time Shane had left him alone after his Halloween party.

The darkness had closed in and pushed him down.

It was only when his phone had buzzed against his leg for long enough that it became unbearable that he managed to jerk himself back into motion.

Shane had tried to call him five times.

Ilya had called him back and choked out some words before he heard Shane cry. That had given him enough strength to pull himself together. To properly talk to him. To push himself back onto his feet.

The doctor had been right.

He needed to get his priorities in order.

He cast his eyes over to the coffee table where he had put the list before telling himself he needed five minutes to lie down and collect his thoughts.

That had been over an hour ago.

The list was scratched hastily in Russian because English felt like too much for him at the moment.

Tell Shane you love him.

Text Wiebe.

Go to the stadium.

Discuss return-to-play.

Get back to hockey.

Text Shane.

Book appointment with Galina.

Stop being a fucking headline.

Stop being a fucking headline. Ilya shook his head.

As if that was something he could control.

That was why he had put it at the bottom.

With a heavy sigh and strength from somewhere he had no idea he still had, Ilya forced himself to his feet and grabbed his phone.

He scanned the last few messages from Shane, trying to remind himself why he had to be strong.

Shane: I wish I could hold you and make all the pain go away.

Then one had arrived early in the morning.

Shane: I slept through the night. First time all week. I know you're going to be okay now. I'm sorry I cried when I needed to be strong for you.

Then one had arrived later.

Shane: Call me later tonight?

Shane. Terrified. Still playing. Still being strong on the ice. Still dragging Hayden and the rest of the Voyageurs to the finals. Shane wanting to be here and not being able to wake up next to him.

Ilya had seen Shane in a hospital before. He remembered how terrified he himself had been then. So afraid of losing Shane that he had considered ending things before his heart could be crushed any further.

But he hadn't.

He had stayed, and it was the best decision he had ever made.

He needed Shane to know that right now.

Ilya: Of course. I love you.

One down.

The most important one down. Too many fucking more to go.

He needed to tell Wiebe that he was coming in to talk about getting back on the ice. Back to the family he loved so much. He picked up the list from the coffee table, crossed off the top item, and set the phone down on his lap.

Surprisingly, it made him feel slightly better.

He turned his attention back to his phone.

Ilya: Coach, I've been cleared to return by the docs. Can I come in today and talk?

The three dots appeared almost immediately.

Wiebe: Come in around eleven. We'll talk before skate and everyone else gets here.

Then another, straight after he had finished reading the first.

Wiebe: Ilya, I'm glad you're feeling better.

Another item crossed off. His eyes felt slightly less heavy.

Harris had also sent a text at seven-thirty asking if the team could post the short statement confirming Ilya had been cleared to return to the facility for non-contact work.

Ilya stared at non-contact work.

He fucking hated it.

The Centaurs group chat, which he had muted in the hospital, had eighty-five unread messages. His thumb paused over it. He knew he needed to see the love his family had given him before he saw them in person, unless he wanted to dissolve into a bigger puddle of mess than he already felt like.

The group chat had been renamed All My Homies Hate Fucking Kent and had been unsurprisingly active in his absence. It was mostly Bood, who had apparently decided the best way to handle trauma was to send threats disguised as motivational content to keep the team united. Harris and Dykstra had sent memes and dog photos the entire time Ilya had been hospitalised. Troy had sent more messages in the past week than he had in the entire time he had been a Centaur.

Ilya unmuted the chat and, with tears brimming in his eyes, replied to his team. His friends.

Ilya: I love my team. I am looking forward to seeing you all today. Thank you for staying strong. You make me strong.

Heart reacts appeared on his message almost immediately. That gave him enough energy to get up and move to the shower.

By the time Ilya got out, the water had been running hot for ten minutes.

It had pounded down over his shoulders until his skin went pink. He had hoped it would wash some of the heavy feeling off him.

It had only worked a little.

He stood on the bathmat, dripping. Breathing. Trying to feel like a person with somewhere to be.

Then his phone lit up again.

More notifications.

At the top was a push notification from The Hockey Ledger.

He knew he shouldn't read it. But he couldn't help it.

It wasn't written by the same person who had written the last two articles about him.

This one was written by someone who was clearly an arsehole.

Even the title was fucking ridiculous.

Opinion: Why Pride Nights Will Keep Starting Fights in Hockey

Ilya's eyes scanned down the article. He didn't take much of it in. After the first few lines, he already knew the author had nothing worth saying to him, or to anyone who actually played the game.

The usual garbage about who had the right to play. How progressive ideals were taking the spotlight away from the thing that mattered.

The actual game.

He sounded like he had stolen Crowell's diary and slapped it together to waste everyone's time.

Ilya skimmed lower.

Then he slowed down near the end.

His blood turned cold when he read the final paragraph.

A source close to Kent described last week's events as "an unfortunate but predictable escalation" and suggested Ottawa players had "used Pride Night to relitigate a matter that had already been investigated and closed by authorities. Their actions were inviting conflict, not Kent's presence; nor did it require the input of those who didn't respect the law."

He read the sentence once. Then again.

Inviting conflict.

Ilya looked at the words until they stopped being words and became a hand around his throat.

The phone was out of his hand before he had decided to throw it. It flew through the open bathroom door and across the bedroom, hitting the wall beside his bed. Right beside the framed photo of the Centaurs' first win with him as captain.

The phone came apart with a sound so small it was almost insulting. Then he realised what that moment of anger had cost him.

A guttural sob tore out of him.

The photos.
The videos.
The messages from Shane.

All of the last frayed fragments of happiness he had left in his life were on that phone.

His eyes prickled. He didn't fight it.

He was standing naked in his bathroom, crying.

Fucking ridiculous.

He let it carry on for another few minutes.
Then he dragged in a breath. Then another. Oxygen first into his lungs, then his brain.

Fuck it. Whatever was clawing at his throat would have to wait.

He would buy a new phone after he saw Wiebe. He needed to get to the stadium.

Ilya drove to the stadium in silence, missing his phone and his Spotify playlists more and more with every stop sign and red light.

Fuck that article. Fuck Kent.

Fuck everything.

By the time he pulled into the carpark, his hands were still tight around the steering wheel. He saw two men leaning against a van near the entrance. One had a clipboard propped against his leg. The other was scrolling on his phone.

When Ilya pulled into a bay, both of them snapped to attention.

He heard their feet on the gravel as he shut the door.

"Ilya. Russell Andrews. I wrote the..."

Ilya turned to the man walking towards him. Thick-rimmed black glasses framed his face but didn't hide the fact that he was nervous.

"Yes?"

The man paused in front of him, startled by something.

Maybe by how flat Ilya sounded. Ilya didn't know.

He didn't care.

Ilya fixed his gaze directly at him. Russell thumbed the pride flag on his blazer lapel before apparently making up his mind about whatever he had chosen to annoy Ilya with.

"Do you have a moment for a comment regarding the las..."

"Not right now."

Russell swallowed. Then a very media-trained smile fixed itself across his face.

"Understood. I'm glad you're back on your feet."

Ilya nodded at them and made his way into the stadium.

He had always liked the stadium quiet. Before the crowd. Before the cameras. Before the building filled with noise and sweat and someone's terrible music from a speaker in the locker room.

Quiet meant something exciting was going to happen in these walls.
Today, the quiet just pressed against him. Quiet meant he could still maybe be a person who did things instead of a person things kept happening to.

The familiar smell of the rink settled around him as he made his way down the corridor. Cold air. Rubber mats. Old coffee. Tape. Sweat cleaned badly from places no one could ever reach.

His chest eased for one stupid second.

He was here. He had made it here.

That had to mean something.

Wiebe's office door was open. Coach was behind his desk with a folder in front of him, glasses low on his nose and a coffee mug in one hand. He looked up as soon as Ilya reached the door.

"Rozanov."

"Coach."

Wiebe's eyes moved over him. Face. Shoulders. The way Ilya was standing. The way he was probably holding himself like one wrong breath might split him open.

"You look like hell."

"I am very handsome hell."

Wiebe smiled, but it did not last long enough to feel real.

"Sit down."

Ilya sat. That felt like winning too. Walking in. Sitting down. Not throwing up. Not lying on his bathroom floor. Not reading another article written by an idiot with access to a keyboard and no access to shame.

Progress.Terrible progress.

Wiebe set his coffee down and opened the folder.

"I got the report from medical."

"I am cleared," Ilya stated. 

That was the truth that Ilya needed to believe.

"You're cleared to return to the facility," Wiebe corrected.

Ilya waited.

Wiebe looked up from the papers.

"That's not the same thing as being cleared to play."

Something in Ilya's chest shifted. Small. Ugly.

"I know."

"I don't think you do."

Ilya stared at him. Wiebe fixed him with a look of concern.

"You're cleared for controlled activity. Light work with training staff. No contact. No team drills. No game clearance."

The last words landed one by one.

No game clearance.

Ilya swallowed. "How long?"

"We will reassess in a few days."

"That's not a good answer."

"That is the only answer I can give you right now," Wiebe sighed.

Maybe Wiebe wanted more too. 

Ilya looked past him, to the framed team photo on the wall. He was in the middle of it. Smiling like an idiot. Arms around teammates. Captain of the worst team in the league, and somehow the best thing that had happened to him in years.

"I can skate," Ilya said. 

"I know."

"I can play."

"No," Wiebe replied.

Ilya's eyes moved back to him.

"You can push through pain," Wiebe said. "Everyone in this building knows that. But right now, pushing through it does not help you. It hurts you."

Ilya said nothing.

His pain had weight now. It pressed in on him all the time. In his ribs. His skull. His throat. The middle of his chest, where everything kept getting heavier and heavier no matter how still he stayed. At least in a game, he could give that pain somewhere to go that was not just inside him.

"I need to play," he said.

"I know."

"No. I need it."

Wiebe sat back.

For one second, the room was too quiet again. Then Wiebe nodded.

"I know."

That was worse than arguing.

Ilya could have done something with arguing. He could have pushed against it. Turned it into heat. Turned it into a joke. Turned it into anything with edges.

This just sat between them. Heavy. Final.

"When?"

Ilya saw Wiebe's eyes drop to his desk before he turned them back to him. His expression had shifted. There was just too much concern in it for Ilya to handle right now.

"When medical clears contact, and when I believe putting you in a game won't set you back."

Ilya let out a breath through his nose.

"So never."

"Ilya. You're being dramatic."

"I am injured. I get to be dramatic."

"I'll give you ten percent dramatic. Not one hundred."

Ilya almost smiled.

Almost.

It died before it became anything useful.

He looked at the list in his head.

Tell Shane you love him.

Text Wiebe.

Go to the stadium.

Discuss return-to-play.

Get back to hockey.

He could cross off the first four.

The fifth one had moved away from him. Not gone. Not forever. Just far enough that he could not reach it.

"Okay," he said.

Wiebe watched him for a moment. "That's it?"

"For now."

Ilya looked toward the door. The hall beyond it. The stadium beyond that. The reporter outside. The whole stupid world waiting to make him say something useful.

"There is reporter outside."

Wiebe's expression changed.

"Russell Andrews?"

"I don't know. Glasses. Clipboard. Pudgy. Sorry little pride flag."

"That's Andrews," Wiebe said, a faint smile tugged at his lips.

"He wants me to tell him..." Ilya trailed off. He didn't know what Russell wanted from him, but he didn't want to give it to him.

"I figured he might. He's alright."

"He wrote the other articles?"

"Yes."

"They were not terrible," Ilya said.

"No," Wiebe agreed. "They weren't."

"This is very low bar."

Ilya rubbed a hand over his face, then stopped when it pulled at something sore near his cheek.

Wiebe noticed. Of course he did. "I can have security walk him off."

"No."

"Ilya."

"No," he repeated. "If he writes that I hide, this is worse."

"He won't write that."

"You know this?"

"No," Wiebe admitted. "But he's been fair. And he's someone who has always been sympathetic to the underdog."

"Fair is not safe," Ilya scoffed.

"No," Wiebe said. "It isn't."

The room felt smaller than it had when Ilya came in. He had walked in thinking hockey was on the other side of the conversation. The return plan. The ice. The work. The only thing that still made sense.

Instead, there were medical words. Days with no dates. Reporters by vans. Statements.

He was so tired.

Wiebe looked back at his computer, then back to Ilya.

"I think we should control this, Ilya."

The laugh left Ilya before he could stop it. "Good luck."

"Thirty seconds," Wiebe said as he stood up from his desk. "You say you're grateful for the support, you're following medical advice, and you hope Pride Nights continue because one violent incident doesn't get to define the whole night."

Ilya curled his toes in his shoes. He flexed his fingers. He knew Wiebe was right.

He just hated the fact that he was right.

He felt Wiebe next to him.

"Harris has prepared a statement for you too."

Ilya nodded.

Wiebe's hand landed on his back.

Once.

Twice.

"Okay," Ilya said.

One more thump on his back.

"Coach, if you do that one more time, you'll owe me a puppy."

"Maybe after playoffs," Wiebe said, laughing as he took a step back.

Ilya felt Wiebe's eyes still fixed on him as he left the room.

Harris engulfed him in a hug as soon as he entered his office.

Ilya didn't even try to fight it.

He just folded Harris into his own arms and stood there.

"Oh, Ilya," Harris started, his voice already quivering before he looked up at him.

His usual happy expression had been replaced by something that made Ilya's heart feel heavier.

Teary-eyed. Lip trembling.

"You smell like apple," Ilya said, smiling gently at him. He couldn't stand making another person cry because he was in pain.

Harris laughed and pulled him back in for another hug.

"Enough, Harris. I cannot do this interview if I am crying too."

Ilya felt Harris pull in a sharp breath before he untangled himself from him.

"Sorry. It's just..." Harris shook his head and wiped quickly at his eyes. "Okay. No. We can talk about it later."

He picked up a piece of paper from his desk. All the edges had been folded and refolded.

Ilya looked at it. Then at Harris. Harris was scared too.

Of course he was.

"It's just a live hit for their site," Harris said, slipping back into his work voice. Not fully, but just enough. For him and for Ilya. "Thirty seconds, max. One statement. Maybe one follow-up if you're comfortable. I'll tell them thirty minutes for prep. Then it's just thirty seconds. Then all done."

He handed Ilya the paper.

"It's not long, and it's not you. But it's what needs to be done."

Ilya looked down at the statement. The words were definitely not him.

He read them anyway.

Grateful for the support.

Following medical advice.

Pride Nights matter.

Violence does not get to define the night.

They were words that belonged to someone who had slept properly and had not cried naked in his bathroom because he broke his phone like an idiot.

Ilya folded the paper once and held it loosely in his hand.

"Thank you, Harris."

Harris's face crumpled again for half a second before he caught it.

"Nope," he said, pointing at Ilya. "Do not be nice to me right now. I am very fragile."

"You are always fragile."

"Correct, and yet somehow everyone keeps giving me responsibilities."

That almost made Ilya smile.

Almost.

Harris seemed to notice. He took it as a victory anyway.

"Russell's been good," Harris said. "As good as they get, anyway. He wrote the two pieces last week. He's not the guy who wrote that opinion garbage this morning."

Ilya looked at him.

Harris winced.

"You saw it?"

"My phone saw wall after."

Harris let out a gasp. "Oh my god."

"It deserved it."

"Did the wall?"

"No. Wall was innocent."

Harris stared at him for one long second, then pressed his lips together like he was physically holding back several different reactions.

"Okay," he said carefully. "We'll deal with that after."

"I will buy new one."

"I meant emotionally, but sure. Also that."

Ilya looked back down at the paper.

His name was at the top. Typed in bold.

ILYA ROZANOV: RETURN TO FACILITY STATEMENT

He hated it. Not because Harris had done anything wrong. Harris had done everything right. That was the problem. Everyone kept doing everything right, and Ilya still felt like something had been scraped out of him and left on the floor.

Harris moved around his desk and opened the office door.

"They're setting up in the media room. Wiebe thought the locker room might feel too much."

Ilya gave him a look.

"What?" Harris asked, thumbing his palm.

"You think media room is less terrible?"

"No," Harris said. "I think every option is terrible, but this one has better lighting and fewer bad smells."

"Good. I am too good looking to have anything less."

Harris chuckled, then released his palm. "I know. That's why I chose the flattering wall."

Ilya followed him into the corridor.

The stadium still felt too quiet. The kind of quiet that made every footstep sound like an announcement. Harris walked beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost brushed but not close enough to make Ilya feel crowded.

"Thirty seconds," Harris said again, like he was trying to reassure both of them. "You read the statement. Russell asks about return-to-play. You say you're following medical advice. If he asks anything else and you don't like it, look at me."

"I look at you?"

"Yes."

"And then what?"

"I knock him out then show you pictures of Chiron above Andrews' head. Your smile should at least make for quality viewing."

They turned the corner.

The media room door was open. Inside, the cameraman was adjusting a tripod. Russell Andrews stood beside him, speaking quietly with Wiebe. He looked over as soon as Ilya stepped into the doorway.

The room was small despite how little was in there. A table. Three chairs. A team backdrop against the far wall. A Centaurs logo behind the seat where Ilya was clearly supposed to sit. The whole thing looked controlled and clean and completely unbearable.

Harris touched his elbow.

Once.

"You can still say no," he said.

Twice.

"Harris."

"Sorry," Harris said before he moved across the room to straighten the already straight poster.

Ilya looked at the chair. The camera. The red light that was not on yet.

Then he looked at the paper in his hand.

Then back to the list in his head.

Tell Shane you love him.

Text Wiebe.

Go to the stadium.

Discuss return-to-play.

Get back to hockey.

Stop being a fucking headline.

He could not get back to hockey. Not yet. But maybe he could do this.

"Okay," Ilya said.

Harris nodded, then he left, thumb back in his palm.

Ilya sat.

The chair was cold.

Wiebe stayed near the door, arms crossed, eyes fixed on him in a way that tried to look casual and failed.

Russell adjusted his blazer. His fingers brushed the small pride flag on his lapel again.

Then he pulled out the chair opposite Ilya as Harris positioned himself behind him. His eyes were full of pity.

"Hey, we don't have to do this," Russell started.

Ilya looked at him. He already regretted agreeing with Wiebe, and he didn't need pity from a stranger.

"You are bad at your job?"

Russell blinked. "No?"

"Then ask your questions, then we go home."

Russell looked at the cameraman, who just nodded.

"Okay, counting it in."

The red light blinked on.

Small. Stupid. Hungry.

Ilya felt every hockey fan who had been talking about Pride Night boring into his skin through that light. He fought the urge to stand up and walk away.

He just needed to get through this.

Then he could get back to the list.

No one was talking.

Russell was leaning in and looking at him, which probably meant he had asked a question that needed an answer.

"Sorry, my English was turned off," Ilya managed, and the little media training he actually had kicked in and made him flash a smile.

The room filled with laughter. Everyone's except Ilya's.

He caught sight of Harris in the background, holding up the paper with the statement.

"Is it on now, Ilya?" Russell asked, smiling almost too much at him.

"Yes, English is on. Beep boop," Ilya deadpanned.

That earned him another laugh, but he didn't feel the usual joy he did when he made people laugh.

"So, I won't ask how you're feeling, because I already feel like we all know the answer to that. Instead, let's focus on the positives. You're here, and we're all grateful that you are. When will we see you back on the ice?"

Ilya inhaled and fixed his eyes on the camera, determined to show everyone that he hadn't been defeated. Determined to show Harris that his efforts hadn't been wasted.

"I am cleared to return to the facility and begin working with medical staff. I am grateful to doctors, trainers, teammates, and fans. What happened last week was not what Pride Night is about. Pride Night is for people to feel welcome in hockey. I hope these nights continue. One man's actions should not take that away."

He still felt defeated.

Russell said something else that Ilya didn't quite catch. He nodded anyway, as though it had made sense. Russell and Harris both laughed, and Ilya realised his nod must have landed as deadpan agreement to something ridiculous.

He forced himself to engage.

"One last thing before we wrap this up," Russell started again. "You've had a difficult week physically and emotionally. Recovery is usually easier when people have their loved ones close. If you could have anyone with you right now, who would it be?"

The question hit him harder than Dallas's fist had.

Ilya's heart pushed all logic out of his brain.

He was so sick of feeling so fucking ruined because of Dallas fucking Kent. All the therapy with Galina. All the tears. None of it was working. Nothing was making him feel better.

He just needed the one person who could hold him.

That would be the only thing that could make it stop for a little while.

"My boyfriend."

He didn't realise what he had said until he saw everyone's eyes.

Then he knew.

He couldn't take it back.

He couldn't pass it off as a joke.

He couldn't do anything.

It wasn't a secret sentence. Not in their houses. Not in their beds. Not whispered into Ilya's neck at three in the morning. Not when he was inside Shane.
But here, it was a secret sentence.
Here, where they had worked so hard to protect it.
Here, where they had made so many painful decisions to keep their timing.
Their choice.

The silence finally gave way, and the voices came all at once.

"Holy shit," Wiebe said.

"Wait, what?" Harris whispered.

Russell stared at Ilya for one suspended second. Whatever careful, professional version of himself he had brought into the room vanished.

"Cut the camera, deadass," Russell blurted.

Then silence swept over the room.

The red light dimmed.

"Fuck," Ilya muttered.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Thanks for all the love with Chapter 1!
I was beyond shocked when I checked it the next morning. All your kind words mean so much.

Here's Chapter 2.

edit: Chapter 3 is on the way!
I'm back in the Australian outback again for work this week too -- so I'm able to do a lot of writing in my downtime... and at work because it's quiet af out here, but don't tell my boss. ;)

Ilya couldn't move.

He just sat there, unable to process what he had done. He had fucked everything because everything in his head had been fucked by everything else.
A second stretched into something that felt like an hour.
Then the room rushed back in.
Russell moved first. He already had his phone in his hand.

"Cohen, did you cut?"

The cameraman stayed still for a moment. Russell nudged him and he jerked out of his shock.

"Yes," Cohen muttered, still staring at Ilya.

"Thank fuck," Russell muttered.

He stood and turned to face Wiebe and Harris. "No article. No clip. I'm calling head office."

He was answering the question that hung in the air.
That seemed to snap Harris into motion.
It did not shift Ilya at all.

"Russell," Harris said.

"I know. I know. I'm on it."

Urgency had snapped back into Russell's voice like a commentator calling high stakes play on the ice.

"Brendan, get Ilya water," Harris called, already following Russell toward the hallway.

Ilya stayed frozen.

The room kept moving without him.
Someone's voice.
He couldn't tell whose.
A chair scraping back.
Then.
Footsteps.
Harris in the doorway, one hand pressed to his ear, speaking too fast to someone on the other end of a call.
Ilya slumped forward and tried to catch his breath.
It caught in his throat instead.
He knew he couldn't break here.
But fuck, he was close.
Too close.

He tried to regain sense of his surroundings.
The fluorescent light above him buzzed.
The Centaurs logo on the backdrop behind his chair stared at nothing.
The room smelled like coffee and carpet cleaner and the his sweat from a conversation that had gone wrong.

Fuck.

Wiebe stepped directly in front of him, blocking the room from view.

"Ilya. Look at me."

He took too long.

"Ily..."

"I need to call Shane," Ilya said.

His hand went to his pocket.
Nothing.
His phone was still in pieces beside his bed.
Fuck.

Cohen paused near the tripod, still dismantling it with shaking hands. "Shane?"

"Out," Wiebe barked.

The door closed behind him.
Wiebe crouched in front of Ilya and put one hand on his shoulder.
Not hard.
Just enough.

"Ilya, we need to move."

Ilya lifted his head.

He didn't have any tears left.
His eyes just burned.
He still couldn't catch his breath.

"I need my phone."

"Where is it?"

Ilya felt his face crumple. "I broke it."

Wiebe's mouth tightened into a grimace. "Okay. We'll get you a phone after we get out of here."

"No. I need my phone," Ilya choked out.

Because it was not about a phone.
It was Shane's messages.
Shane's voice.
Shane's face lighting up the screen from the hidden album Ilya had scrolled through in a hospital room when he hadn't known if anything except pain was ever going to stay inside his body again.
He needed to see Shane.
He needed to warn Shane about what he had done.
He needed to breathe properly again.

Wiebe's hand tightened once on his shoulder. "I know," he said. "But first we move. Then you call whoever you need to."

Ilya looked at him.
The room was too bright.
Too small.
It was all too fucking late.

"Stand up," Wiebe said. "Slow."

"I can stand."

"I know you can."

Ilya hated that. He hated how careful everyone sounded.
He bit back the anger forming in his throat and pushed himself up anyway.
His legs held.
Barely.

"Good," Wiebe said.

The anger forced its way out.

"Fuck, Wiebe. I am not a child."

"No," Wiebe replied, his voice still level. "Because a child would actually listen."

It should have been funny.
Maybe later it would be.

"Sorry," Ilya muttered.

His body finally dragged in a breath without it getting stuck.
It still scraped all the way down.

"Where are we going?"

"Locker room."

Ilya's stomach dropped.

"No. It's nearly trai..."

"Ilya," Wiebe cut in.

"They might know."

Wiebe looked at him.
Calm. Kind.
Too fucking kind for right now.

"They're going to know, one way or another."

That was the worst part. Of course they would, if they didn't already.

The room had not even finished falling apart and the world had already started putting itself together around what he had said.

A true thing.
A private thing.
Their private thing.

"It'll just be us," Wiebe said, keeping his hand close.

Ilya nodded because nodding was easier than believing him.

They moved toward the door.

The corridor was brighter.
It was longer.
Emptier.
So much emptier.

Ilya's sneakers squeaked against the rubber matting and the sound bounced off the roof, walls and lights until it all came back to him like something he didn't want to hear.

Harris was leaning against the wall a few feet from the door, phone still pressed to his ear. His face was pale, but his voice had hardened into something stronger than the version of himself Ilya had hugged.

"Yes, now. I don't care if it's already been clipped. Pull ours. Thank you."

Harris ended the call and turned to them. "Okay?" he asked.

There was no pity in his eyes. He was working to protect him.

"Great," Ilya said.

Russell stood further down the corridor, phone pressed to his ear, one hand shoved into his hair.
He looked sick.
When he saw Ilya, his face crumpled.

"Ilya, I'm so sorry."

Harris turned on him instantly. "Russell. Stop saying you're fucking sorry and just talk to your fucking boss."

Russell swallowed.
Then nodded.
He turned away and kept talking, voice low and fast.
Wiebe shifted, putting himself between the corridor and Ilya.

"Keep walking," he said quietly.

Ilya kept walking.

One foot.
Then the other.
The corridor stretched ahead of them.
Past the medical room.
Past the coaches' offices.
Past the framed photos on the wall that Ilya did not look at because he knew his face was in half of them and he couldn't stand to see himself smiling right now.
Toward the locker room.
Toward whatever was going to happen with him and his team.
Toward the people who loved him enough to make this hurt worse.

Wiebe stopped at the locker room door and held it open.

Ilya stepped through. The locker room was empty.
He was grateful. Just for a second.
Then the room settled around him and he felt everything it was and everything it wasn't.
It smelled the same as it always did.
That somehow brought him comfort.
It made him feel more capable.
It was familiar.
The rubber. The sweat.
The faint chemical bite of whatever the equipment staff used to clean the padding.
The lights were on but dimmed. The room was dim enough to blur the edges of the room without making it feel like a stage.
It made it easier to adjust.
His stall was where it always was. Third from the left.
His nameplate above the hook, white letters on black. A sticker from Hayden's kids.
His stick was leaning against the partition where he always left it.
Of course it was.
The whole world could fall apart, and he would still put his stick in the same place.
Then he noticed.
Someone had taped it for him.
Fresh white tape, wound in clean, even edges. Better than Ilya usually bothered with.
He didn't know who had done it.
He didn't need to know. He just needed to look at it for a second and let it mean what it meant.
Someone had come in here, knowing that he was hurt, knowing that he was coming back, and prepared his stick like he was already part of the next game.
It helped. It helped more than it should have.

"I'm going to talk to them first," Wiebe said behind him.

Ilya turned.

"They need to know. No questions," Wiebe said. "Not until you're ready."

Ilya nodded.

Wiebe held his gaze for one more second, then left.

The door closed. The silence came back.

Ilya stood in the middle of the room, and it began to wrap around him.

His eyes moved across the stalls.
The hooks. The benches scarred with skate marks and tape residue.
The whiteboard on the far wall where Wiebe drew plays that half the team pretended to understand.
All of it familiar. All of it his.
All of it exactly the same as it had been before Pride Night, but also completely different because of it.
He looked across the room to the shelf above the equipment cage where the rainbow tape had been stacked before the game.
Not all of it had been used. A few rolls still sat there. Bright against the grey shelf. Untouched.
He stared at them.

Pride Night should have ended here. In this room. With his team.
With Barrett pretending he didn't like the attention after scoring three times, failing to hide the grin that split his face every time someone mentioned the hat trick.
With Bood starting the goal song and tapping his stick against the bench until everyone joined in.
With Harris taking photos, getting in everyone's way, getting shoved gently out of frame and coming back for more, a wider smile every single time.
With a win.
With hockey.
With the room loud and full and smelling like sweat and victory and something good.

Ilya had stood in the middle of this room and done everything right.
He had done captain things with captain hands and a captain face and a head full of rage that he had swallowed because swallowing it was his job.
He had thought they had survived the worst of it. That was why he had told them to take their victory to the streets of Canada.
That's why all of this had happened.

Outside the door, someone shouted. Then someone else.
Then he heard Wiebe, loud enough to cut through both of them.

"Back up."

Ilya closed his eyes.

Too late.
The walls of the locker room were too thin.
He could hear sneakers on the corridor floor.
Too many of them. Bodies jostling. Someone's shoulder hitting a wall.

"Coach. We need to see him."

"Wait, Dyks..."

"He needs to see us."

Ilya's stomach dropped.
They had seen it. Of course they had seen it.

Every one of their phones would have lit up the second the clip hit the internet and now his team was standing on the other side of a door that suddenly felt like the only thing between him and something he could not take back, even if had tried. But he hadn't even tried. He couldn't. He shouldn't.

"Okay, enough, Barrett."

Bood's voice cut across all the clamouring. "Enough. Listen to Coach. He's seen Roz, we haven't. We've only seen the interview."

Ilya pressed his palms flat against his knees. He could feel his pulse in his fingers.

"Does he even want to see us?" Haas asked, barely above a murmur.

The silence that followed that question was too much.

"Yes," Ilya said from behind the door.

More silence. But at least this time, it wasn't about something he hadn't meant to say.

"Ilya? Is that you? Fuck, Coach, come on. You heard him."

"Yes, Barrett. I have ears. Christ. Okay. Also, don't fucking swear at me."

Wiebe paused. "Wyatt, guard the door for a second."

Wiebe pushed into the room, more flustered than Ilya had ever seen him.
His hair was pushed back at an angle, as if he had been physically blocking the hallway.
He looked like he had just played a full period.

Ilya felt the faintest grin tug at his mouth.

"Ilya, are you sure?"

"They will murder you if I say no and you try to stop them."

"We fucking will," Troy's voice called from behind the door.

Wiebe's hands briefly balled into fists before he shook his head and smiled.

"Barrett, laps on the ice until I say. After this."

He stepped aside and opened the door.

"Don't crowd him," Wiebe warned.

Not the whole team.
Some. The ones Ilya had known would come. But still.
Right now, it was a lot.
Too many faces.
Too many expressions.
Too many sets of eyes that knew something about him that he hadn't chosen to give them.
They filed in and spread around the room. He watched them move, keeping their eyes on him until they settled.

Troy hung back near the doorway, arms crossed, watching. Dykstra hovered beside him.
Haas stood near the far wall, hands in the pockets of his joggers, looking at Ilya like he wanted to hug him.
Wyatt leaned against the bench a few feet away, close but not pushing.

Ilya looked down. He tried to steady his breathing before whatever was going to happen, happened.

"More people wanted to come, but we thought maybe just us to start," Wyatt said.

Every pair of eyes in the room was fixed on him.
Ilya could feel them.
On his face.
On his hands.
On the way he was sitting.
He was sure he looked exactly like what he was; someone who had been scraped hollow by the world and propped upright on a bench.

"Okay," Ilya managed.

"Ilya." Bood's voice was closer than everyone else's. "Can I sit next to you?"

"Yes."

The bench sagged slightly beside him as Bood dropped into it.
Still warm. Still steady. Still the heart of the team, even in a room that felt like it was holding its breath.
Ilya wondered if this was still his team.
If they would still want him after this.

"So," Bood started.

"So?" Ilya replied.

He felt time stretch before it snapped back again.

"Boyfriend, hey?" Bood said, like he was asking about the weather.

"Yes."

"Is he hot?"

"Very," Ilya shot back without thinking.

The room cracked open and the tension Ilya felt dissolved. Or maybe it was never there.

The laughter came from everywhere at once.
Troy's low bark from the doorway.
Dykstra's startled snort.
Wyatt's booming chuckle.
Even Haas, pressed against the far wall, covered his mouth with his hand but couldn't hold it.
The sound filled the room and pushed against the walls.
And for one second, one stupid second, the dread lifted just enough for Ilya to breathe underneath it.
It felt like it always had. Nothing had changed.
Yet.

He looked up and saw something that made him blink. The room was full of concerned faces.
But they were smiling. No disgust. No shame. No turning away.
Just family.

"Can I ask how long?" Wyatt leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"Too long."

That earned another laugh from the room.

"Where did you meet?" Haas asked, still half-hiding behind his hand.

"Outside."

The laughter came back louder.

Dykstra shoved Troy, who shoved him back without uncrossing his arms.

Something shifted in Ilya's chest.
Not breaking. Not healing. Just something between the two.
Like a wall that had been holding back water, and the water had found a crack, and instead of flooding through it was just leaking.
Slow. Warm. Bearable. He could feel it pressing against the surface he had been holding together all day. The surface that was going to give eventually.
He knew that. But not here. Not yet.
Here, his team had found the first crack, and what was coming through it wasn't pain.
It was something he wasn't ready to name.
But it was good.

"Did you know?" Dykstra turned to Troy, eyebrows raised.

Troy glanced over at Ilya. Ilya looked back at him.

Troy gave him a flash of a smile before he turned to Dykstra. "Totally, Dykstra. I read about it in our secret newsletter called Gay Stick Handlers."

Troy didn't blink as Dykstra looked him up and down before the room erupted in laughter again.

"I'm bisexual," Ilya said, before he had time to realise what he had admitted over the top of the laughter.

"I didn't think all those stories about you were lies," Bood said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"He could have paid them off?" Dykstra nudged Troy.

"Nah, he couldn't let me just have one thing though, could you?" Troy laughed, nodding back toward Ilya.

The room broke again. Louder this time. Messier.
Even Wiebe, still standing by the door with his arms crossed, pressed his lips together hard enough that the corners of his mouth gave him away.
Ilya found himself laughing.
It didn't feel like his laugh.
It felt borrowed.
Like something the room had made and handed to him and he was just holding it for them.
But he was holding it. That had to count.

"Can we meet him?" Wyatt asked, settling next to him on the bench.

The question sat in Ilya's chest and pressed against the wall.

He thought about Boxing Day. The fight. The question that had caused the fight.
Whether Ilya was worthy of a love that came with so many challenges.
Whether the challenges would eventually crush them both.

"He is private person," Ilya said.

"That's not a no." Wyatt squeezed his shoulder.

"Big question to ask him."

"Do you want us to meet him?" Troy asked.

Ilya still wanted nothing more than for them to meet Shane that way.
Not just as someone who played for the Voyageurs, but as the person who loved him.
But he couldn't take something else away from Shane.
Not today. He didn't know if Shane was ready.
He only knew that would never be ready to have another fight like the one they had on Boxing Day.

"I don't know. Maybe after playoffs."

"You could always bring him to my folks' place," Harris said from the doorway.

Ilya looked up.

Harris was leaning against the frame, arms folded.

He had been there long enough to hear. His eyes were still red from earlier, but his voice was steady.

"It's in the middle of nowhere. It's quiet. My parents already love you."

"Party at the farm?" Troy asked, straightening up.

"Party at the fucking farm," Bood said.

"Only if this boyfriend wants to come," Harris said.

"Even if he doesn't, Roz, come to a party at the farm," Troy added.

Ilya looked at Harris. Then at Troy beside him. Then at the rest of them.

These people who had just learned something enormous about him and had responded by inviting his boyfriend to a party.

"Too right," Bood said. "But first, you're going to need to put all your focus on getting us to the finals, Captain."

The word Captain warmed somewhere he hadn't felt in over a week.

"Are you going to invite him to the finals?" Haas asked.

"Don't do a Hunter and kiss him on the ice," Troy scoffed.

Ilya let himself imagine it for half a second.
Shane's face if he tried. The horror. The absolute refusal.
Then the way Shane would look at him after, when no one else was watching, and the look would say I would have let you.

"Maybe I kiss you instead, Troy," Ilya said.

"Fuck off, Roz."

"Your loss."

The laughter carried them through the last of it.
Ilya felt the air shift from something careful and held to something closer to normal.

"Are you joining us for practice?" Wyatt asked, standing and squeezing his shoulder.

Ilya looked at him.
He wanted to say yes.
He wanted it so badly that the word almost came out on its own. But Wiebe's voice was still in his head.
No contact. No team drills. No game clearance.

"I am not cleared."

"No one's going to hit you at practice, Roz," Dykstra said.

"Not on purpose," Troy added.

"I mean for contact." Ilya paused. "I can skate. Maybe I watch."

"You should watch," Bood said, and his voice carried something heavier than the jokes that had come before it. "You should see your team play for you."

The room went quiet, but the good kind of quiet.
The kind where everyone agreed with what was said, but no one needed to add to.

"Maybe stay off the internet for a little while, yeah?" Wyatt said, squeezing his shoulder one more time before stepping back.

"Anything else you need to tell us, Captain, before practice?" Bood asked.

Ilya looked around the room.
His team.
His family.

"No. Just keep winning," Ilya said. He looked at each of them. "Thank you. All of you."

Then they all continued with their day.

Bood stood and moved to his stall and pulled his jersey off the hook and laid it across the bench.
Dykstra sat down at his own spot and started unlacing his sneakers.
Haas opened his locker and pulled out his under-armour.
Troy sunk into his stall beside Harris, who perched on the edge of the bench next to him and started scrolling through his phone while Troy taped a stick, humming something tuneless.
No one asked Ilya to leave. No one asked him to stay, either.
They just started getting ready around him, the way they always had.
Like he had always been here.
Like nothing had changed and everything had changed and the only thing that mattered was that he was still sitting in his stall when they came back to theirs.Ilya watched them.
The familiar rhythms.
Tape unwinding. Skate guards clicking. Someone's phone playing something terrible from a speaker balanced on a shelf.
Dykstra arguing with Haas about whose turn it was to choose the music. Bood telling both of them to shut up.
It was normal and ordinary, but the most extraordinary kindness anyone had shown him all day.
He leaned back in his stall and let it happen around him. His hand drifted to the freshly taped stick beside him and he ran his thumb along the edge.
It wasn't hockey. It wasn't being cleared to play. But it was close.
Troy paused as he stood, already half-dressed, and clapped Ilya on the back.
One hit. Hard enough to feel. Soft enough to mean something.

"See you out there, Captain."

Then they filtered out, one by one, sticks over shoulders, skates in hand. The noise trailed behind them down the corridor. Ilya sat in it for a moment longer.
The laughter was still in the walls. He could feel it, fading but warm, like sunlight leaving a room.

He looked at the list in his head.

Hold Shane.

Still there.
Still far away.
Still the one he couldn't reach yet.

The door opened again.

"Ready to go?" Harris asked, leaning against the frame.

"What?"

"I'm driving you home, or wherever you want to go."

Ilya looked at him.

Harris was smiling. Not the work smile. The real one. The one that crumpled too easily.

"Harris, I do..."

"Don't argue with him, Ilya." Troy reappeared behind Harris, arm draped over his shoulder. No shirt on, just pads and pants.
Whatever the sight of him was doing to Harris, it was written all over his face.

"See what you're dragging me away from," Harris sighed, leaning into Troy for half a second before straightening up. "So, it's settled. Let's go."

"But my c..."

"Don't stress, I'll drive it to your place," Wyatt called from somewhere down the corridor.

"And I'll drive his car," Troy said, grinning at Wyatt.

"No, you fuckin' won't."

Ilya almost fought it. He almost said he was fine, that he could drive, that he didn't need to be handled. But, even despite the warmth his team had given, he felt it.
His hands were still shaking. He could feel the tremor in his fingers when he pressed them against his knees.
And the idea of sitting in his car alone, with no phone and no music and nothing between him and the silence except whatever was waiting for him on the other side of it, made his chest tighten in a way he couldn't argue with.

"Ilya, I am being serious," Harris said, stepping closer. "You've had a shit day. We don't know if there's other reporters around. Just let me drive you where you need to go. Okay?"

Ilya looked at him.
At Harris, who had written the statement and stood behind the camera and hugged him too hard and held himself together all day so that Ilya could fall apart in the right rooms at the right times.

"Okay."

They walked to the car in silence.
The corridor.
The carpark.
The cold air.
Harris beside him. The same kindness he had shown on the walk to the media room.
Consistent. Unbearable. Necessary.

Ilya got into the passenger seat and closed his eyes.

"Okay, where to?" Harris asked as he pulled out of the carpark.

Ilya didn't think. He said the address and then leaned his head against the window.
In the quiet of the car, he added to the list.

Hold Shane.

Tell them together.

He wasn't sure how long the ride was, but he felt Harris glancing over at him occasionally.
As if he was making sure he was still breathing. He felt the car slow. Harris's hands shifted on the wheel.

"Ilya." Harris paused. Swallowed. "I just need to know one thing. Will you be safe here?"

"Very."

The word came out steady. It was the only thing he had been certain about all day.
That he would be loved here.
That this somewhere he could call home.
He heard Harris's car leave the driveway behind him as he stood at the front door.
Ilya knocked.
The door opened and there she was.

"Oh, Ilya."

He crumpled into Yuna, whose arms were already wrapping around him.
No words. Just a hug that felt like it had been waiting for him all day.

One hour earlier.

"Fuck, Hayden," Shane groaned.

"Fucking take it, Hollander," Hayden grunted.

Shane watched him finish hammering the buttons on the controller before shoving the joypad up in a flourish and that fucking wink of his.

"Booyah, motherfucker," Hayden laughed as they both watched Kitana's head come clean off.

"This is why I don't like video games. They bring out the worst in you," Shane said, shaking his head as Hayden broke into a victory lap around the Pikes' living room.

"Buddy, you'd like them if you were better at them. Besides, I barely get to play fighting games anymore. Kids and all."

"You know we could be doing something useful for the game tonight against Tampa?" Shane said, still chuckling as Hayden took a second lap, arms outstretched like an airplane. "Like going for a jog?"

"Yeah, man, because going for a jog at subzero temperatures is like the best idea ever."

"You have a gym."

"Yeah, no can do, man. Jackie's converted the gym into a yoga studio for the girls tomorrow."

Shane shook his head, beyond grateful that he and Ilya didn't live together yet.
One day though. Definitely.

Hayden dropped back onto the couch beside him and nudged his ribs.

"Is it working?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you thinking about Ilya still?"

Shane blinked.

He realised that the entire time they had been playing Mortal Kombat, he hadn't thought about Ilya once. Not that there was anything he could do. Even back in Montreal, coach had them on such a tight leash in the lead-up to playoffs that he couldn't get away until the weekend. And even then, Shane knew he'd be pushing it.

"Actually, yeah. It is working. Another round?"

"Fuck yeah, man."

Shane stood and stretched. His back cracked twice.

The Pikes' living room was warm and cluttered in the way houses with young kids always were; toys pushed into corners, a little blanket draped over the arm of the couch, crayon drawings taped to the wall behind the TV. It was the kind of house Shane would never admit to but really wanted someday. Loud and full and a loved one's chaos.

"I'm going to grab another water. Do you want anything?"

"Shane," Hayden said, rolling his eyes. "Please. Live a little. Have a ginger ale or something."

Shane paused. He thought about the fight he'd had with Ilya late last year, when the diet had become such an overwhelming presence in his life that it had started turning him insufferable. He had allowed himself a cheat day every fortnight since then. It had brought back some sanity, and so far, it had made dealing with stress on and off the ice easier. Especially after everything Ilya had gone through. He might have had two cheat nights last week, but they were training harder, so he didn't feel guilty about the Snickers bars.

"You're a bad influence," Shane said.

"And don't I fuckin' know it."

Shane walked to the kitchen. The hallway was lined with framed photos of the Pike kids, and at the end, one of the whole Voyageurs team from two seasons ago. Shane was front and centre. He looked younger than he felt now. He thought about the summer ahead. How it was going to change everything, if they let it. He hoped, with a knot of unease that never quite loosened, that there would be a way for them to see each other more. He missed Ilya constantly. It was a slow and steady ache that sat behind everything else he did. They hadn't even FaceTimed the entire time Ilya was in hospital. Ilya had told him he didn't want Shane to see him bruised, but Shane had wanted to see him the most then. He desperately had wanted to be there, taking care of him. Instead, he had cried down the phone at three in the morning in a hotel room in Florida while Ilya lay in a hospital bed in Ottawa. That had been one of the worst nights of his life. And he'd had a few.

Hayden's voice cut through his train of thought from the living room.

"Holy shit. Shane. Shane. Shane."

"What?"

"Shane, holy shit."

Shane rolled his eyes and walked back in, expecting Hayden to be showing him something stupid on his phone.

Hayden was standing. His face was white.

"It's Ilya. Holy fuck."

The kitchen tile was still cold under Shane's bare feet.

He registered that.

The cold.

The hum of the fridge behind him.

The fact that Hayden was worried about Ilya.
Hayden would never do that unless something was actually wrong.

"Ilya?"

Shane felt his knees soften.

He crossed the room on legs that didn't feel entirely his and picked up his phone from where he'd left it on the couch.
The Voyageurs group chat was lighting up. New messages rolling in faster than he could read them.

Patrice: Did you guys see this? Rozanov is gay? | Video Link [x.com]: Rozanov Comes Out?

Gilbert: lmao what?

Patrice: He just admitted it.

Gilbert: Well he's fucked his career. Thought he was a womaniser?

J.J: Holy shit. Wonder who he is?

Patrice: Nah, look at Hunter. He's still doing shit. No one respects him as much anymore.

J.J: Hunter's fine man. He isn't a dick like Rozanov.

Shane's thumb hovered over the link.

He didn't want to press it.
He already knew what he was going to see.
He pressed it.
The video loaded in a small, shaky frame.
Someone had screen-recorded the live feed before it was pulled.
The quality was poor.
But Ilya was clear.
He looked exhausted.
Like a shell of his former self.
He was sitting in front of a camera.
In no condition to be sitting in front of a camera.
Reading.
Some media statement.
In a voice that sounded like his, but through a closed window.
Like someone had taken all the warmth out of it and it was just a muffled mess.
Shane watched him answer a question he couldn't quite hear.
Then Ilya's face changed.
Something shifted behind his eyes.
Something cracked.

"My boyfriend."

Shane's breath left him.

He watched Ilya's face drain white.
Watched the room behind him fracture.
Someone saying holy shit.
Someone saying cut the camera, deadass.
Then the video cut to black.

Shane played it again.
He didn't mean to.
His thumb just moved.

"My boyfriend."

The same crack.
The same white face.
The same deadass.
The same cut to black.

Boyfriend.
Not fiancé.
At least that was still theirs.
At least they didn't know who.

"Shane."

Hayden's voice sounded distant.

"Shane."

Hayden pushed his shoulder.

"Buddy. Talk to me."

"I've got to call him."

Shane dialled Ilya's number. It went straight to voicemail.

"Fuck," Shane muttered.

"Hello, this is Ilya. I'll never listen to your voicemail."

The tone beeped.

"Ilya, are you okay? Fuck. Call me back, okay?"

He dialled again.

"Hello, this is Il..."

He hung up.

"Fuck, why won't he pick up the fucking phone?"

Shane's voice cracked on the last word.
His heart was racing.
His vision tunnelled.
The words from the group chat circled through his head.

Fucked his career. No one respects him.

He felt Hayden's hand settle on his leg.

"Shane. You gotta talk to me, man."

"I can't get through to him. I don't know what to do."

"Buddy, you gotta breathe."

Shane dragged in a long breath.
The exhale shattered on the way out, shaky and broken.
His hands were trembling.

"I'm ringing my dad. Maybe he can go round to his house. Or the stadium." Shane stopped. His voice was quivering. "Fuck, he can't do that. It'll look weird."

Hayden took the controller out of Shane's other hand. Shane hadn't realised he was still holding it. His knuckles were white around the grip.

"Okay," Hayden said. "Ring your dad. He'll know what to do."

Shane looked at his phone.
He wished he had the last photo of Ilya that he took before he deleted it.
It was a photo Shane had taken on a morning when Ilya was half-asleep and smiling at nothing.
Before any of this. Before Pride Night. Before the hospital.
Before the whole world decided it was allowed had an unwarranted opinion about the person Shane loved.

He pressed call.

Later that evening.

David's phone rang in the kitchen.
Ilya was sitting at their table with the pasta Yuna had made him going cold.
He heard David answer. Then he heard the shift in his voice. The careful, soft way David said, "Yeah, he's here. Hold on."

David came into the dining room and held the phone out to him.

"It's Shane."

The name landed in Ilya's chest like a puck to the shins. He took the phone.
David left the room and pulled the door shut behind him. Ilya heard his footsteps retreat down the hall.
Then he heard Yuna's voice, low, asking something. Then nothing.
He put the phone to his ear.

"Shane."

Silence on the other end. Then a breath.
Then Shane's voice. It sounded so tight and it was barely held together.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Say yes like that. Like you don't trust me to deal with this."

Ilya pressed his thumb into the bridge of his nose.

"But I am okay."

"You're not fine. You outed yourself. You were in hospital. Fuck, Ilya. That's not fine."

Ilya said nothing.

He could hear Shane breathing.
He could hear the sounds of traffic around him.
It sounded like Shane was in his car, on the side of the road.
Air conditioning. That particular silence of someone sitting alone somewhere they didn't want to be.

"Where are you?" Ilya asked.

"I'm in my car. I had to stop driving. I couldn't not ring you once I knew where you were."

"Do you want to wa..."

"Ilya, please. Just. I'm safe here. Okay? We need to talk."

"Okay."

"I saw the clip," Shane said.

There it was.

"Okay," Ilya said.

"Okay? Is that it?"

They were already on edge of a fight, and it hadn't even been a minute.

"What do you want from me?"

"I don't know. Something. Anything that isn't okay or yes. Nothing about this is okay."

Ilya leaned back in the chair. The legs scraped against the floor and the sound was too loud. "It is out. I cannot take it back. What is there to say?"

"There's too much to say."

"Then say it."

Shane went quiet. Ilya could feel him choosing. He knew what that silence sounded like.
Shane picking through everything he wanted to say and trying to find the right thing.

"Why did you do the interview?"

He picked the wrong thing.
Ilya's jaw tightened.

"Wiebe thought th..."

"I don't care what fucking Wiebe thought. Why did you do it?"

Shane took another steadying breath and continued.

"You nearly died earlier this year. You were assaulted and had a concussion a week ago. So why did you think it was okay to sit in front of a camera?"

Ilya swallowed.

"Because if I hide, it is worse."

"Worse for who?"

"For me. For my team."

"Ilya. What about us?"

The word sat between them. Ilya heard the weight of it through the phone.
He heard what Shane was really asking.

You were falling apart.

Why did you let them put you in front of a camera when you were falling apart?

"I did not plan to say it," Ilya said.

"I know you didn't. That's the problem."

"What is the problem, Shane?" Ilya said, feeling the anger clawing back up his throat. "That I said it, or that you think I was not well enough to not say it?"

"Both," Shane said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "That's exactly the fucking point. It's both."

Ilya closed his eyes.

"You should not have been in that room," Shane said. His voice was shaking now. Not with anger. With the thing underneath anger. The thing that looked like anger from the outside but was just fear wearing a harder face. "You should not have been in that room without seeing me first."

"You were not here. For anything."

It came out harsher than Ilya meant it to.

The silence that followed was the worst kind.
The kind where both of them knew something had landed wrong and neither of them knew how to pick it up.
Because it needed to be said. But it should have been said differently.
The silence gave Ilya time to push the anger down.
It didn't belong here.
Not for this.

"I know I wasn't there," Shane said.

He heard Shane trying to control his voice. The sharper breaths through the nose. The second of counting before he spoke.

"You think I don't know that?" His words came faster, louder, but not with anger. With pain. "I've been sitting in hotel rooms in cities I don't care about, playing games I can barely focus on. Then I'm about to leave for practice and I read comments calling you a faggot. Saying you've come out. Then I'm calling a phone that doesn't pick up. I know I wasn't there, Ilya."

Shane's voice broke on his name.

Ilya's throat closed. He had done that.
He hadn't meant to, but he had put the knife right where it would cut deepest.
Shane's guilt about not being there.
Shane's helplessness.
The thing that had been eating Shane alive all week while Ilya lay in a hospital, then on his couch and then on his bathroom floor.

"That is not what I meant," Ilya said.

"Then what did you mean?"

"I meant... you were not here. So, when it couldn’t stay inside, I could not wait for you to do it for me."

"I'm not asking you to wait for me to do it for you. I'm asking you to wait for me to be beside you when you do it."

Ilya opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.
That was the thing. That was the whole thing.
Shane didn't want to do it for him. Shane wanted to stand next to him while he did it.
And Ilya hadn't let him.
Not on purpose. Not out of cruelty.
Just because he had been so focused on getting through the list.
On doing the next thing. On not being still.
On not letting the weight pin him down again.
He had forgotten that some things on the list were not his alone.

"I am sorry," Ilya said.

Shane didn't answer right away.

"I'm coming to Ottawa."

"You have a game tonight."

"I don't fucking care."

"Shane."

"Ilya. I. Do not. Fucking care. About the game."

"You care about the game. Don't say stupid things."

"It's not stupid."

"It is stupid. Your team is close to playoffs. You cannot leave. I am safe now."

"Ilya. You can't stop me."

"Shane. Stop. Please."

Ilya's voice caught on the last word.

Shane's breathing changed.
Faster. Ragged. He was losing the fight with whatever he had been holding in since he saw the clip.

"I can't do this," Shane said.

Ilya felt his heart plummet before Shane inhaled and continued.

"I can't sit here and know that you're hurt and alone and that everyone in the world is talking about us." Shane's voice cracked. "And I'm so close. But I'm also so fucking far away. Hours away, doing nothing."

Ilya took a steadying breath.
He wanted Shane here. But he didn't want Shane to give anything else up for him.

"You are not doing nothing. You are playing."

"Playing doesn't matter right now."

"It does matter. It matters to your team. It matters to you. Do not throw it away. I was stupid."

"Stop fucking calling yourself stupid," Shane snapped.

"Then stop trying to throw your fucking season," Ilya snapped back.

They were both breathing hard now. Ilya could feel heat behind his ribs.
His heart hammering harder than he could ever remember.
The familiar shape of a fight they had had before in different words.
Shane wanting to save him. Ilya refusing to be saved.
Both of them too proud and too scared and too in love to find the middle ground.
He didn't want to fight with the one person who could fix what was broken.

"Play your game," Ilya said. "Win your game. Then come."

"And if I lose?"

"Then you come faster."

Shane let out a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost.

"That's not funny."

"Is a little funny."

"It's not."

Silence again. But different now.
The anger was still there, but it wasn't a fight anymore.
It was just the embers of two people who had run out of steam and still had too much to say.
At least not without seeing each other.

"How long has it been?" Ilya asked.

"Eleven days. Tampa took everything, Ilya."

"I know."

"I hate this," Shane said.

"I know."

"I hate that everyone knows and we didn't get to choose. That was what we fought to protect. Our choice."

Ilya turned the ring on his chain. He did it without thinking. A habit he had picked up the day Shane had put it on him.

"They don't know everything," Ilya said.

Shane paused.

"No," he said. Softer now. "I guess they don't."

The ring pressed against Ilya's fingers as he turned it again. The band was warm. It was always warm.

"Play your game," Ilya said again. "Then come to me."

"Tonight."

"Tonight."

"Are you staying with my parents?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Neither of them hung up.
Ilya listened to Shane breathe. He closed his eyes and let the sound fill the room.
It wasn't enough. It was never enough.
But it was Shane, and Shane was the only thing that had made any of this bearable since the moment Ilya had hit the concrete.

"Ilya?"

"Yes."

"I love you."

Something cracked inside his chest. Around the place he had been holding everything together.

"I know."

"Say it back."

Ilya huffed.

"I love you."

"Are we okay?"

"Of course."

"Leave the door unlocked."

"Yuna would throw me out if I did that."

Shane laughed. A real one. Small, but real.

"I'll see you soon."

"Not soon enough."

The line went dead.

Ilya held the phone against his chest for a moment.
Then he set it down on the table next to the cold pasta.
He pulled the chain out from under his shirt and held the ring in his palm.
They didn't know everything. Not yet. But they would.
When he and Shane were ready. When they chose it.
Together.
The cracks in his chest gave way before he could stop them. He felt the tears on his cheeks before he realised he was crying.

"Ilya, can I come in?"

"Yes," Ilya said, his voice barely held itself together.

David entered the room and sat beside him.

"Can I say something?"

Ilya nodded and turned in his chair to face him.

"You boys have never had it easy in this relationship of yours." David's arm settled on his back. Soft and warm. Ilya could feel the love through it. A touch he had never had from his own father. "But I'm so proud of how you never give up on each other."

David's arm moved around his shoulder.

"Yuna and I have always wanted the best for Shane because we love him," he continued. His voice was too even. It would have sounded rehearsed to anyone who didn't know him. But Ilya knew David. He knew this was just how David sounded when he meant every word. "And now we want the best for you too. Because we love you too."

David paused and Ilya saw his eyes look right through all the pain he was holding.

"Being loved will give you strength when things are hard. And we'll always love you."

His father's voice filled his head.

Weak.

He had nothing left to give.
The fight left his body and whatever was left of the surface he had been holding together finally shattered.
His body crumpled with it.

"Oh, son," David muttered as he pulled him into a hug.

Ilya finally let go. He wasn't sure how much time had passed, how many tears he shed, how many ragged breaths he dragged in, but David never moved.
Never let him go. He just held him.
Let him be raw.
Let him be vulnerable.
Let him finally feel loved when he needed it most.
When he had finally gone still, David pulled him in closer.

"Do you want me to get you anything?"

Ilya knew exactly what he needed.

"I need sleep."

"Okay. Yuna has set up the living room for you."

"Thank you, David."

The sound of a familiar ticking clock woke Ilya.
Of course, Yuna owned the same clock she had bought for him.
He opened his eyes and somehow, some way, some strength had returned to his body.
He sat up and ran a hand through his hair. He looked at the list in his head.

Hold Shane.

Tell them together.

Get back to hockey.

Stop being a fucking headline.

Then Ilya heard the front door open.

He didn't move.

He heard the lock turn, then the soft sound of the door being closed by someone trying not to wake the house.

Footsteps in the hallway.
They were careful, quiet and so familar.

Shane appeared in the doorway of the living room.

He was still in his suit from the stadium. His long hair that Ilya loved so much was pushed back into a messy bun, loose like he had been running his hands through it for hours.
His eyes found Ilya in the dark almost immediately, like he had known exactly where he would be.
Ilya looked at him. Shane dropped his bag by the wall.
Neither of them said anything.
Shane crossed the room and Ilya watched him come.
Every step. He counted them because it gave him something to do that wasn't falling apart.
Shane stopped in front of the couch. He looked down at Ilya for a long second.
Then he climbed onto him. One knee on either side of Ilya's hips, settling into his lap, arms around his neck, forehead pressed against his.
The weight of him felt beautiful.

Ilya closed his eyes. His hands found Shane's back. He pulled him closer until there was nothing between them.
Shane's breath against his mouth.
Shane's heartbeat against his chest.
Shane's fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, holding him like he was afraid someone would take him away again.

Ilya exhaled.

It came out broken. Something between a breath and a sound he didn't want to name.

Shane's arms tightened.
They stayed like that.
Ilya didn't know how long.
Long enough that Shane's breathing slowed.
Long enough that the weight on his chest shifted from crushing to bearable.
Long enough that Ilya could feel his own pulse again.
Shane pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes were wet. Just like Ilya knew his own were.

"Hi," Shane said.

"Hi."

"You look terrible."

"I am a very handsome terrible though, no?"

Shane's mouth trembled once before he caught it. Ilya reached for his face. He held Shane's jaw in one hand and ran his thumb under his eye where it was damp.

"Don't," Ilya said. Quiet. Not a command. A request. "If you cry, I will cry, and Yuna will hear, and she will come down, and she will also cry, and David will not know what to do."

Shane laughed. Small and wet and barely there.
But it was enough.
Shane's hand moved from the back of Ilya's neck down to his chest.
His fingers found the chain. Ilya felt him trace it down, slow, until his fingertips reached the ring where it sat warm against his skin.
Shane's breath caught.
His fingers closed around the band.

"Eleven days," Shane whispered.

He covered Shane's hand with his own, pressing the ring between Shane's palm and his chest. He could feel Shane's fingers wrapped around it.
The band warm from sitting against his skin all day. All week.
All eleven days. Simple. Tungsten.
Shane had chosen it because he had shown Ilya that he had chosen him.
Shane's thumb moved against his chest.
Small circles over his heartbeat, the chain shifting under his fingers.

"You said boyfriend," Shane said.

It came out barely above a whisper.
Ilya looked up at him.
Shane wasn't angry. That would have been easier.
He just looked like he was holding something so carefully it might break if he gripped it any tighter.

"I know," Ilya said.

"You said boyfriend."

"I know."

Shane's eyes dropped to where their hands were layered over the ring on Ilya's chest. Over the truth the world didn't have.

"Why?"

Ilya didn't have a good answer. He had gone over it a hundred times before he passed out on the couch.
Whether it was instinct. Whether it was protection.
Whether the concussion had blurred the word.
Whether some part of him had chosen the smaller truth because the bigger one was theirs and he wasn't ready to give it away.
He didn't know. He didn't think he'd ever know.
He only knew that the word he had said was wrong, and the word he hadn't said was right, and both of those things hurt because nothing about any of it felt right.

"Because I am stupid," Ilya said.

"You're not stupid."

Shane pressed his forehead back against Ilya's.

"You're not stupid," he said again. "You were tired and hurt and they asked you a question they shouldn't have asked."

Ilya said nothing.

"I don't care that they know about us anymore," Shane said. "I care that we didn't get to choose."

There it was.
The thing sitting in the middle of everything.
Ilya pressed Shane's hand harder against the ring.
He could feel the band through Shane's fingers, warm against his own heartbeat.

"We will choose the rest," Ilya said.

Shane looked at him.

"When?"

"When we are ready. Summer, or sooner. But with you. I need it to be with you."

Shane held his gaze for a long time. Then he opened his hand and pressed his palm flat against Ilya's chest, the ring caught between skin and skin.
Ilya laced his fingers through Shane's and held them there.

"I need everything to be with you," Ilya said.

"Okay," Shane said.

Ilya pulled him back in.
Shane's face pressed into his neck. Ilya's arms wrapped around him.
The couch was too small and the borrowed sweatpants were also too small.
And somewhere upstairs Yuna and David were sleeping in a house that smelled like vanilla and felt like home.
A home that made no sense for the two people in its living room who were about to walk into a war.
But Shane was here.
And the ring was warm between them.

"Are we okay?" Shane asked, and Ilya felt a tear land against his collarbone.

For the first time all day, all week, since before Pride Night, Ilya's chest didn't feel like it was caving in.
He closed his eyes.

"Of course."

He crossed one more thing off the list.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

So, we're not at the farm yet.
I saw the funniest thing at the pub this week and it literally just screamed Ilya and Shane.
So I had to include it in the fic.
And then when I got to drafting it and thought about posting it, this chapter was 20k+ words long and yeah, it was just a bit too long.
So, the farm chapter will come very soon. (It's coming in about 8 hours - 12/05)
This fic has taken all my one-shots that have been sitting in the drafts too, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Ilya didn't remember what time he had finally fallen asleep.
He did remember the important things though.

He remembered Shane's mouth on his.
The taste of toothpaste and something underneath it that was just Shane, and it had always been there, ever since their first kiss.
He remembered thinking, for the first time since Pride Night, that his body finally felt like it belonged to him again.
Then there was nothing.
Just sleep.
Deep and black and empty.
A sleep so deep that he didn't dream of his mother.
He let out a soft sigh and opened his eyes.

The morning light was slipping through the curtains in long, pale bands.
It striped the wall, the rug, the coffee table beneath them. Everything it touched broke into patterns by the folds in the fabric, making everything feel soft and new.
Ilya lay there, letting the light warm his skin.
One line of sun rested on his shoulder, his chest, and the side of his face.
The rest of him was warmed by Shane, who was pressed against his side.
Shane was on his stomach, half on the couch and half on Ilya.
One leg was hooked over Ilya's thigh like sleep had arranged them back together.
He had one arm across Ilya's stomach and his face was buried in the nape of Ilya's neck and the pillow.
His hair had come loose from the bun sometime in the night and it fanned across his neck and Ilya's shoulder in dark tangles.

He looked nothing like Shane Hollander.
He looked like a man who had been unable to hold his fiancé in his arms for eleven days.
He looked like a man who had fought and cried for their love over the phone.
He looked like a man who had driven over two hours to hold someone on a couch until neither of them could stay awake.
He looked exhausted.
He looked beautiful.

He looked like the best thing Ilya had ever seen.

Ilya turned his head and pressed his lips into Shane's hair.
It smelled like Yuna's shampoo because Shane had used whatever was in the shower last night.
Underneath it, the scent of the cologne Ilya had bought him for his last birthday.
Shane always put it on when they were at the cottage during their summers, when it was just the two of them and the days rolled into nights filled with sex, love, and laughter.

He had put it on yesterday.
Before the game.
Before the drive.

Ilya's chest tightened.

Shane groaned and shifted, and the movement brought his face level with Ilya's.
They were close enough now that Ilya could see the exhaustion all over his face and behind his closed eyes.
Shane let out another groan, softer this time, and Ilya, deciding that he needed Shane in his arms again, shifted him slightly so more of his body was across his bare chest.

Shane's mouth found his jaw before his brain caught up.
Warm. Automatic.
The kind of kiss that happened before thinking, the body reaching for what it always reached for.
Then his lips moved to the corner of Ilya's mouth.
Slow. Still half-asleep.

Shane stopped.

His lips stayed where they were, pressed against the edge of Ilya's mouth, and Ilya could feel him deciding whether to care.
He pulled back. Just enough.
His eyes were open now. Both of them. Focused enough to see Ilya clearly.
Shane looked at him the way he did when he thought Ilya wasn't paying attention.
Except Ilya was always paying attention when Shane looked at him that way.
He had been paying attention since the first time Shane had looked at him like this, years ago, at his house in Boston.
The look had said something that neither of them had been brave enough to say but had wanted to so much that they were afraid of what was going to happen next.
The look was different now. Not because the feeling had changed. Because the cost of the feeling was different. Because the whole world knew some version of it, and Shane was here anyway, tangled in a blanket on his parents' couch, with his hair in his face and their bare chests pressing together.
Ilya reached up and pushed a strand of hair away from Shane's eyes.

Shane's throat moved.

His hand drifted over Ilya's chest and his fingers lightly combed through the dark hair before catching on the chain. Then he traced it down, slow and careful, until the ring rested beneath his fingertips.
Ilya felt Shane's fingers curl around it.
He slowly wrapped his own hand around Shane's.
The world was still there.
Still all wrong.
Still too loud.
Still full of articles and comments and people that Ilya couldn't face right now.
People who thought they had the right to an opinion about who Ilya loved.
But right now, the world could wait.

It needed to wait because Shane's hand was in his, wrapped around the ring, the only piece of Shane he'd had with him while his world was falling apart.

Or at least it could have, if not for the noises from the kitchen.
Quiet ones.
A kettle being filled. A cupboard opening and closing. Bare feet on tile. The rustle of a plastic lining against bread.
The kitchen noises pulled his attention, and then Shane's hand was suddenly somewhere it shouldn't be and Ilya didn't know how long it had been there.

"Shane."

"Hmm."

"Your parents are awake."

"So?"

"If Yuna sees you touching my dick, it will give her nightmares."

Shane huffed and moved over him slowly, one knee settling on either side of Ilya's hips. Then he lowered himself down until they were bare chest to chest, warm and solid together.
Ilya chuckled and pulled the blanket higher, covering Shane's back and tucking them both underneath it.

"I didn't want to fall asleep last night. I missed your lips." Shane murmured, his voice rumbling against Ilya's chest. He paused. "And this too."

Shane let out a soft laugh and sat up, pressing himself into Ilya's groin.

"Shane."

"I know, I know. I'm getting up."

"Go shower. Wash your hair again," Ilya said. "The shampoo smells pretty."

"I wish we could shower together," Shane said quietly.

Ilya knew it wasn't really about the shower.

"I know," Ilya said, taking his hand and stroking his finger over Shane's knuckles.

"I've missed you."

"You are sitting on me."

"I've missed you for the longest eleven days of my life, Ilya. I'm going to need more than one night of sleeping on top of you on my parents' couch to fix that."

Ilya felt his mouth curve.
Not a joke. Not a deflection. Just a smile.
Because the person he loved was saying something he was already thinking.

Then Shane pulled the blanket around his shoulders and carefully untangled himself from Ilya.
He shuffled toward the hallway, still half-asleep, trailing the blanket behind him like a cape.

Ilya watched him go.

He wanted to follow him down the hall and lock the bathroom door behind them and not come out until the hot water ran cold.
Instead, he stood up, threw on David's old and ill-fitting sweats, and went to find some breakfast.

The kitchen smelled like every morning Ilya had spent in it.
Coffee and butter and Yuna's favourite brand of fruit toast.
Shane told him once that she only served it on special occasions. But every time Ilya had stayed at their house, it had been on the table.
Yuna was standing at the counter with her back to him, pouring water into the coffee maker.
Despite the fact that she had retired over three years ago, she was always dressed like she had a boardroom full of people to scold.
She turned and glanced him over before turning back to the toaster.

"Good morning, Ilya," she said.

"Good morning, Yuna."

"Breakfast?"

"Please."

Ilya sat.

He had sat at this table dozens of times since their relationship had been unexpectedly exposed to Shane's parents all those summers ago.
This morning felt different.
Not because the table had changed.
Because Ilya had changed.
Something had shifted overnight.
Not healed. Not fixed. Just moved.
Like a bone that had been set from an injury on the ice.
It was in the right place now. It still hurt.
But the pain had direction.

Yuna set a mug in front of him.
Cream. Sugar. His favourite mug, with the cartoon loon and the words "Certified Loon-a-tick" printed across it.

She remembered.

"You look exhausted," she said.

She looked at him. The look lasted longer than it needed to.
Like David, she looked past his hurt.

"How are you feeling?"

Ilya paused, mug midway to his mouth, and considered lying.
He considered the deflection he had used on every other person who had asked him that question in the past two weeks. Including David and Yuna when they had visited him in hospital.

A joke.
A shrug.
A smile.
A "fine" that meant nothing and everyone knew it.

He didn't.
Lying to the people who loved him the most didn't feel right, given what had happened yesterday.

"I don't know," he said.

Yuna nodded. She poured her own coffee and sat down across from him.

"Ilya..." she started, then seemed to decide against it.

"It is okay, Yuna. I know you have opinions."

"I have concerns, Ilya. Not opinions."

They sat with that for a moment. The coffee maker hissed and dripped behind them. The house was quiet except for the faint sound of water running somewhere.

"Shane's here," Ilya said.

Yuna's expression softened. Not into pity, but into something fiercer. Like she had spent the last eleven days holding Shane together from a distance and still somehow had room to hold Ilya too.

"I know," she said.

"He's been so strong for me."

Yuna took a sip of her coffee. Then she set the mug down and folded her hands around it.

"Ilya. Do you know how many times he called us?"

Ilya looked at her.

"Yesterday. Before you arrived."

He shook his head.

"Six times."

Ilya said nothing.

Her voice was level.
No hint of anger.

Ilya's fingers curled around the mug.

"I couldn't get through to you. David couldn't get through to you. Your phone was off. And Shane was calling here every twenty minutes, and each time..."

She paused.

"The last time he called, he was crying so hard David almost drove to Montreal to console him. Shane was... We all were so convinced you were hurt. Worse than hurt. But Shane... He was saying things that... he was not thinking clearly."

Ilya's throat tightened.

"He was..." Yuna continued, quieter now. "Saying that your career was over. Saying that he had ruined everything. Saying he should have been here since the beginning. Saying that you..."

She looked at him.

"He was already in his car driving to Ottawa, ready to potentially lose his entire career, when David finally saw your car at the stadium. By that time, you were here."

Ilya stared at the coffee in his mug.

Shane had driven two hours after a game.
In his suit.
Without stopping. Without changing. Without calling first, because by then he knew Ilya was here and that was enough.
He had walked through the door looking like someone who had been holding himself together for as long as it took to get here.
It was only after he had seen Ilya and climbed into his lap that he had finally allowed himself to let go.
All the pain and hurt he had endured for the longest eleven days of his life.
Ilya had known all of that.

He hadn't known about the six phone calls.
The crying.
The thinking that was all wrong.
The version that pulled himself together after thinking the worst.
The version of Shane that existed in the hours before the version Ilya saw.
The version that nearly broke apart before it reached him.

The edges of Ilya's vision blurred.

"I never want this to happen again," Ilya said.

He swallowed and looked up, determined to show Yuna that he meant it.

Yuna held his gaze.
Her eyes were steady.
She had Shane's eyes.
The same colour. The same intensity when they looked at someone they loved. The same way of looking at someone that made you feel like you were the only thing in the room.

"You can't promise that," she said evenly. "And you shouldn't."

"But..."

"Ilya," she said. She took a breath and leaned forward slightly. "You are and always have been a good captain. Your actions on and off the ice that night proved that. One man's disgusting behaviour does not undo that."

She paused.
She tapped her fingers on the outside of the mug.
Her brow furrowed.

"The things that led to what has happened. Standing up for your team, protecting Pride Night, being the person your players look to when things go wrong... those are the same things that make people love you." She shook her head slightly. "Don't lose those. Don't shrink yourself because someone tried to hurt you for being who you are. They're important."

The words sat in Ilya's chest.

It wasn't a feeling he had felt in a long time.
Pride.
From a parent.
From both his parents.

A warmth he had forgotten existed.

"Just keep doing your best," Yuna continued, quieter, as she placed her hand on Ilya's arm. "That's all any of us can do."

She held him there for a moment, then her voice shifted.
Still soft, but with an edge of instruction that Ilya recognised from every time she had decided something needed to happen for Shane. And now that voice was for him.

"I can't have both of my sons in pain and not help, Ilya. If you need anything in the days to come, you need to tell us. If things get more difficult, you can't just smile and nod at us anymore when we ask you how you're doing."

Ilya nodded.

He didn't trust himself to speak. He lifted the mug to his lips and drank coffee he couldn't taste because his throat was too tight to register anything except the effort of not crying in front of Shane's mother at seven in the morning.
Yuna seemed to understand. She stood, squeezed his shoulder once, and moved back to the counter.

"Fruit toast? It's our favourite."

He smiled into his cup, already feeling his throat relaxing.

"Please."

"There's Nutella too. But it's for the toast and not for a spoon this time."

Ilya almost laughed. It came out as a breath.

"Thank you, Yuna."

She didn't turn around. She just put bread in the toaster and said, "You're family, Ilya. You don't have to thank me for toast."

They both knew it wasn't about the toast.

David joined them ten minutes later.

He came into the kitchen wearing a Voyageurs shirt so old that Ilya had no doubt he had bought it when Shane was first signed, and he was carrying a copy of The New Yorker.

Ilya took a sip of his coffee to hide his grin.

David glanced at Ilya, then at the coffee maker, then at Yuna.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning," Ilya replied.

David poured himself coffee. Opened the fridge. Closed the fridge. Opened it again. Then looked back at Ilya.

"Nice shirt," David said with a quick wink.

Ilya looked down and realised his shirt had a McGill logo on it.

"I heard it is a very good school," Ilya said, smiling back at him.

"The best. Eggs?"

"Please," Yuna said.

"Ilya?"

"Yes."

David got the eggs out of the fridge and made his way over to the cabinet. He did not mention yesterday. He did not mention the couch or the crying or the fact that he had held Ilya in this kitchen while Ilya fell apart in his arms. He did not talk about what needed to happen today. He just cracked eggs into a pan and started cooking with a faint smile tugging at his lips.

That was David.

The world could be on fire and David Hollander would still make eggs and read The New Yorker and ask you how your day was going.

Ilya loved him for it.
David had called him son last night.
Neither of them mentioned it.
Neither of them needed to.
Neither of them had any doubts that the eggs were going to be good.

Shane came into the kitchen twenty minutes later with his damp hair pulled back into a bun and a look that told Ilya he had been thinking too hard in the shower.
He sat down next to Ilya, still wearing that same look.
Ilya braced himself as Shane turned toward him.

"We need to ring Farah."

The kitchen shifted. Not a lot. Just enough that everyone noticed.

Yuna stopped cutting fruit.
David turned a page of The New Yorker.
Ilya nodded.

"I know," he said, taking Shane's hand.

"Not now," Shane said, squeezing his hand softly. "But soon. This morning. She's been texting."

"What does she want?" Ilya asked.

"She wants to know what you want to do."

Ilya looked at his plate.
The fruit toast was half-eaten.
The Nutella he and Yuna sometimes ate by the spoonful late at night when David and Shane were asleep had barely been tasted.
The coffee was gone, but he didn't feel any more awake.
The eggs were also gone, but they didn't feel like they would sustain him through the call.

Ilya didn't know what he wanted to do about anything.

He wanted to stay in this kitchen for the rest of his life. He wanted fruit toast and Nutella and David's eggs and Yuna's coffee and Shane's wet hair that smelled like mango and none of the things that were waiting outside this house.
He wanted the things outside this house to wait.
But they were not going to wait.
They probably weren't waiting even now.
He tightened his grip on Shane's hand.

"Okay," Ilya said.

He looked at Yuna and David.

"Together, if that is okay?"

David smiled and nodded once before turning his attention back to The New Yorker.

"After breakfast," Yuna said, looking back at the recipe for Shane's breakfast smoothie. Her brow furrowed slightly as her eyes glanced at the ingredients. "You boys might need your strength."

Shane gave Ilya's hand one final squeeze. He then stood and walked over to Yuna.
Ilya heard him insisting that the spinach and kale and protein powder did need to be blended for the base before she added the apple and carrot.

Ilya allowed himself the slightest smile.

They called Farah from the living room after Shane had finished his smoothie, which he insisted was good four times even though no one asked.

Ilya and Shane were on the couch where they had slept. Yuna was in the good armchair, pad and pen on her lap. David was on the end of the chaise. He was still reading The New Yorker, but Ilya knew he was listening.
Farah picked up after one ring and Ilya tapped the speaker button and put the phone on the coffee table.

"Ilya," Farah said. Her voice, as always, was calm, despite the fact that Ilya knew he had made her job much harder than it had been the day before. "How are you?"

"Alive."

"Good. Shane?"

"The same."

"Well, that's a good start," she said. "So, Ilya. I'm going to ask you a question, and I need you to think about it before you answer."

Shane and Yuna looked at him.
David quietly turned a page.

"What do you want to do?"

The question hung in the air. Ilya could feel the weight of it pressing against his head. It was the same question everyone had been asking him for two weeks, but this time it was because of something he had done, not something that was done to him.
Farah needed an answer. She was the only one who could start the healing. She was the only person who could turn the jumble of English and Russian words in his head into something that made sense.
But Ilya didn't know what to say.

"I'm not sure," Ilya said.

Farah paused. It was a professional pause.
The kind that meant she didn't get the answer she wanted.

Ilya winced.

"Okay. That's fine. We don't have to decide today."

Ilya felt Shane shift beside him. His hand moved to Ilya's knee.
Ilya realised that he was breathing faster than normal.

"Farah," Ilya started. "My team has... they want to do... Harris is organising it. They are thinking..."

He stopped because he felt Shane move again.
Not away. Just a shift.
He glanced over.
Shane's face had changed.
Not a lot. But it was something Ilya recognised.
The expression that meant Shane was processing something he hadn't expected and was thinking about too many things at once.

Ilya hesitated.

Yuna slid a piece of paper across the coffee table. She had written two words on it.

Not yet.

Ilya looked at the note.
Then at Yuna. Then at Shane.
Shane hadn't seen the note.
His eyes were on the phone.
His jaw was set the way it got when his mind was four steps ahead of the thing in front of him.

"Ilya?" Farah prompted.

"Actually," Ilya said, "I want to talk to Shane about some things first. Before we decide anything."

"That's smart," Farah said, and Ilya could hear her relax, grateful that he had given her something to work with. "In the meantime, I'll advise the league office that you're focused on medical recovery and will provide a statement when you're cleared to return. Your personal life is not their concern until you decide it is."

"Thank you, Farah."

"You can thank me by looking after yourself, Ilya."

He felt his breathing slow.

"Okay," he said, smiling at the phone.

"Call me if anything changes."

The call ended.
The room was quiet again.
Shane looked at Ilya. His mind was still going too fast for Ilya to slow it down.

Not yet.

"What do the Centaurs want to do?" Shane asked.

Ilya opened his mouth. Then he closed it.
He thought about the group chat.
The messages of love and chaos and concern about him. He thought about the locker room.
The confirmations that his sexuality didn't change those feelings of love and support.
He thought about Bood saying bring him.
About Harris offering the farm.
About Troy saying party at the farm.
He thought about Shane's face.
The Boxing Day fight.
The conversation that needed to happen, but differently this time.

"We can talk later," Ilya said. "When we are home."

Shane looked at him for a moment, jaw still tight, then nodded.

"Okay."

Yuna picked up the note from the coffee table and put it in her pocket. She caught Ilya's eye as she stood and smiled.

Ilya took a breath.

He didn't know what came next. Not exactly. But for the first time in weeks, the not-knowing didn't feel like falling. It felt like standing at the edge of something and being able to see the ground.

Shane was here.
The Centaurs loved him.
Yuna was helping him. David was listening.
Farah was handling the world.

The list in his head was different this morning. Shorter. The items that were crossed off stayed crossed off, and the ones that remained had softened overnight. They were still there. Still heavy. But they felt like things that could be carried, not things that were carrying him under.

Get back to hockey.

Stop being a fucking headline.

Talk to Shane about the farm.

He added the last one quietly.
It sat at the bottom of the list.
The way the hard things always did.
He would get to it.
Later.
When they were home.
For now, there were more important things.

Like Nutella.

Yuna and David had hugged and kissed Ilya and Shane goodbye in the foyer.
Then they drove back to Ilya's house in the early afternoon.
Shane drove. Ilya sat in the passenger seat with his head against the window, watching Ottawa pass by.

It was a normal Ottawa day in March.
Cold and flat and indifferent.
The world outside these windows didn't seem to care that Ilya's life had changed. It didn't seem to care that there were so many questions he still had to answer.
But for now, at least Shane was here.
Shane's hand was on his thigh. It had been there since they pulled out of his parents' driveway.
Not gripping. Not stroking. Just resting.
The way someone touched a thing they had been missing.
They didn't talk. They didn't need to. The morning had used up most of the words, and the ones that were left could wait until they were inside and the door was closed.

Ilya's house was cold when they walked in.
But Shane looked good in his house. He always had.
Something about the feel of him in Ilya's space.
Shane had always made rooms feel smaller. Not because he took up too much space, but because Ilya could never seem to look anywhere else. Shane filled his rooms. Not with noise, but with presence. The kind of presence that made Ilya aware of the exact number of steps between where he was standing and where Shane was standing. And how many he would have to cross to have him in his arms.

Four steps.
He had counted.

Shane was reading something on his phone. His eyes moved slowly across the screen. His expression didn't change. His thumb dragged once, then again. He locked the phone and put it away. Ilya stayed where he was in the middle of the living room, looking at Shane the way he had been looking at him all morning. Only now there was no Yuna in the kitchen, no David behind a newspaper, no Farah on speaker, and no reason in the world to stop.

"Hollander."

Shane raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

Ilya didn't answer immediately.
He just looked at him. Shane. In a shirt that hugged his chest.
In his house. In his kitchen, leaning against his counter with his arms crossed, biceps pulling at the sleeves. His hair tied up into a bun that showed off his jawline.
The freckles that Ilya had noticed all those years ago and had never stopped noticing.
Shane's arms uncrossed.
Slowly.
Not because Ilya had said anything.
Because the way Ilya was looking at him had said it instead.

"What?" Shane said again. Quieter.

After eleven days, he felt it twitch again.
Ilya crossed two of the four steps.
Then the other two.
He stopped in front of Shane.
Close enough that he could smell the mango shampoo in Shane's hair and feel the warmth coming off his body and see the exact place where Shane's pulse was beating in his neck, just above the collar of his shirt.

"Hollander," Ilya said again. Quieter too.

Shane's eyes were on his.
Brown. Intense and focused and completely unguarded.
Something in Shane had slowly come undone since he put his phone away.
Whatever he had been holding through Farah's call, through every discussion about statements and playoffs and what came next, through the eleven days, it had loosened its grip.

Now there was no one else in the room.

No phone in Shane's hand.
No future asking to be solved.
No outside world pushing in.
Just Shane.
Ilya held his gaze and felt the air between them change.
Warm. Charged. Inevitable.
He put one hand on Shane's waist and the other at the back of Shane's head, pulling him close.
Shane's breath caught.
Just slightly.
It was the smallest interruption.
But it made something in him twitch again.
Shane's hands came up to Ilya's waist.
Not pulling. Not pushing.
Just holding on.
His thumbs traced circles against Ilya's sides through the fabric.

"I missed you," Shane said.

Again. The same words from the couch at three in the morning. But they were different here.

On the couch, in the dark, they had been desperate.
Here, in daylight, in the kitchen, they were just true.

Ilya felt the corners of his mouth twitch. "You keep saying this." 

"Because it keeps being true."

"Then kiss me and stop missing me."

Ilya leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Shane's.
He felt Shane exhale.
Felt Shane's hands slide from his waist to his back.
Felt the whole stupid, complicated, impossible weight of the past two weeks settle between them and become, for one moment, bearable.
Then, finally, they kissed.
Slow and passionate and hungry.
And the eleven days that had put them through so much, that had made everything feel so raw, that had changed so much, felt suddenly so small.
Now that he had Shane in his arms.

And soon, in his bed.

"Come," Ilya said.

He took Shane's hand and led him up the stairs.

The bedroom door was open.
Ilya saw it before he reached the threshold.
He had known it would be there. Of course he had.
He had known since the moment he threw it and left it where it fell. But knowing something was waiting for him and seeing it in pieces on the floor were different kinds of pain.

The phone was still on the floor.

Right where it had landed.
Right where he had thrown it.
Right there because someone had written that his existence was an invitation to violence.
It hit him harder than he expected.
Beside it was the photo. The framed photo of the Centaurs' first win with Ilya as captain. The photo behind the glass was bent where it had hit the floor.
He was smiling in the photo.
Arms around his Bood and Dykstra.
He was their captain.

The glass had cracked across his face.

The physical memory surged through him.
The rage that had put the phone there.
The sound it had made when it hit the wall. The smallness of that sound compared to the enormity of what it had cost him.
The glass from the broken frame caught the light and forced it back in his face.
He couldn’t hide from what he had done.

He had thrown all of that at a wall because an article made him angry.
So fucking stupid.

Shane's arms slid around his waist.
Not uncertain. Not careful. Not charged. Just there.
The way Shane's hands always found Ilya's body when he needed them most.

"Hey," Shane said, pressing into him.

Ilya didn't move.

Shane gave him a quick squeeze. Then he stepped around him and into the room.
He looked at the remains of the phone.
The frame.
The glass. Then he looked back at Ilya, and his expression changed.
Into something warmer.
Something softer.
Something Ilya had not seen from anyone else in the week people had been trying to hold him together.

Recognition.

Ilya felt his stomach turn over.
He didn't ask if Ilya was okay.
He didn't ask what happened.
But he now knew the reason.
The reason why Ilya didn't pick up the phone.
Why he didn't call back.
Why the voicemail had been the last thing Shane heard from him before he called David.

Shane crouched down.

"I've got this," Shane said.

He wasn't talking about the phone or the frame.

Ilya watched Shane gather the pieces.
The case.
The phone.
The frame.
He collected them the way a man raised by Yuna and David collected things.
Carefully, without fuss, because he understood that the action needed to be done but it needed to be done with love.

Ilya saw Shane's list.

Fix the phone.
Save the photo.
Take care of your fiancé.

The other things, the reasons the phone was on the floor in the first place, those were harder. That would be something they would have to talk about later.

But Shane was here. And he was picking up the pieces.
And that had to count for something because Ilya couldn't find the strength to do it himself right now.

Shane stood.
He had the broken phone in one hand and the frame tucked under his arm.

"I'll be back."

"Shane..."

"I'm going to get you a new phone and we can fix this later," Shane said.

"Shane, I can..."

"And I'm going to set it up. Properly."

"I can do th..."

"Ilya." Shane looked at him. Steady. Certain. Affection. "I'm here now. Please, let me help."

"I don't need..."

"Yes, you do."

Ilya's chest tightened. Not with pain. With the specific, terrible relief of being seen by someone who refused to look away. David's words filled his head. He needed this and Shane wanted to help him.

"Okay," Ilya said.

Shane kissed him.
Slow and on the cheek. With the broken phone in his hand and frame tucked under his arm.

"I love you," Shane whispered.
One more kiss, on the other cheek.

"I love you," Ilya replied.

He had told Shane he wasn't here when Shane had needed him to be.
And now Shane was here. Standing in the wreckage. Wanting to help.
Shane walked past him, down the hall and down the stairs.
Ilya heard him pick up his jacket. Heard the keys. Heard the door.
Then it was quiet.
Just Ilya and the house and the bad memories and the empty space on the floor where the phone had been.

He heard the ticking of the clock from the living room.

He sat on his couch for a while.
Not the paralysed, weighted, unable-to-move feeling from before.
He was just sitting.
Shane was coming back. Shane was always coming back now.
He knew that now.

His tablet was on the coffee table.
He picked it up.
It still had charge, but it was running on empty.
He let out a small huff.
He was grateful that he had disabled push notifications on his tablet.
That the first thing he saw on the screen was something that made him smile.
That reminded him he was loved.

The Centaurs group chat sat at the top of his notifications.
Eighty-seven new messages since he had last checked.
He opened it.

The chat had been renamed again. It was now called Rate Ilya's Orgasm Face, and the group chat photo had been changed to a photo Harris had taken of him mid-cheer in the locker room after a game. Harris had refused to delete it, no matter how many times Ilya threatened him.

Ilya scrolled.

The first messages had come through right after he said my boyfriend.
Most of the team had immediately announced they were coming to the stadium.
Harris told them to wait for Wiebe.
Wyatt said he didn't care what Wiebe said. Ilya needed them.
Then Barrett, Dykstra, Haas, and Bood all said they were going with Wyatt, and everyone else could wait.
Ilya's face softened into a smile.
There were no questions about what he had said. Not then. They had just wanted to be there because they knew he needed family around him. Because they knew he would have told them before he told the world, if the choice had still been his.
After that, most of the chat was Bood.
Bood sending updates about the team.
Photos from practice. Suggestions for new goal songs.
Bood telling Barrett to stop posting thirst traps in the team chat.
Barrett responding with another thirst trap.
Dykstra weighing in with a take so bad that three people replied with the same skull emoji.
Normal. Stupid. Loving.
Exactly what Ilya needed.

Then he hit Harris's messages.

Harris had been busy. Harris had taken bring him and run with it.
The plan, as Harris had laid it out over seventeen messages and four voice notes that Ilya listened to twice to make sure he had heard correctly, was very Harris.

The Drover farm.
A full team event.
Partners invited.
Kids welcome.
Food catered.
Decorations.
A playlist curated by Harris personally.
A photographer for the team account.
A surprise guest appearance from someone Harris refused to name but had described as "a really big deal, trust me."

Ilya stared at the screen.

He loved Harris.
He loved Harris's enormous, fragile, over-caffeinated heart and the way Harris threw himself at every problem with the energy of a golden retriever who had been given a command and would be rewarded with treats if he did the trick.
But this Harris-shaped party, full of love for Ilya and his "hot boyfriend", was not going to work.

Not for Shane.

Shane would walk into a full team event with WAGs and kids and a photographer and a surprise guest and he would do what Shane always did when there were too many people and too many cameras and too much noise.

He would hate it.

It would be a miracle if he even managed to get out of the car.
Then even if he did, everyone would be able to see that every muscle in his body was locked, and every smile was fake and the only real thought in Shane's head would be how long until I can fucking leave?

And Ilya would watch him do it because Shane had said he wanted to go.
And it would kill him.
And then they would come home.
And then they would fight.
And Ilya would be entirely to blame because he didn't try to make Shane comfortable.

He opened a new message to Harris.
Then he stopped.
He closed the chat.

Opened the list in his head.

Get back to hockey.

Stop being a fucking headline.

Talk to Shane about the farm.

He looked at the third item.
Then he added one above it.

Make the farm safe for Shane.

Then one below it.

Invite Shane properly once the farm is safe for Shane.

He needed to do it right this time.
He needed to make sure that Shane had time to prepare.
He needed to make sure that it was somewhere Shane would be safe.
He needed to make sure that Shane could say no, and that it would be okay.

He picked up the tablet again and started typing.

Ilya: Harris. I love this farm party idea, but my boyfriend won't. We need to make it smaller.

The three dots appeared almost immediately. Of course they did.

Harris: How much smaller?

Ilya: A lot.

Harris: Give me metrics, Ilya.

Ilya closed his eyes and tried to imagine what Shane would like.
Then what the Centaurs would like.
Then what a happy medium would be.

He bit his bottom lip as he typed his reply.

Ilya: The guys from the room. That's it. No partners. No kids. No photographer. No surprise guest.

The dots appeared and disappeared three times. Ilya could feel Harris's flustering through the screen.

Harris: But I already asked Jennifer "Jenny" Innis and she was thinking about it.

Ilya: Who is that?

Harris: She's a really big deal Ilya. She nearly won Masterchef. She was going to make pork belly.

Ilya: Harris.

Harris: Fine. Just the guys. What about food?

Ilya: You can cook.

Harris: Yeah. No.

Ilya: Troy can cook.

Harris sent back a sequence of emojis that clearly meant that if Troy cooked, they would all die.

Ilya smiled.
A real one. At his tablet. On his couch.
In his house that still smelled slightly of stale air and the laundry he had left for too long. But was starting to smell like something else.
Like the beginning of a plan that might actually work.

Ilya: Just the guys, Harris. Please. We can order pizza?

A pause.
Longer this time.

Harris: Okay. I can do small. I can do so small you won't even know it's a party. But we're buying Beavertails.

Ilya: That is the goal.

Harris: Does he know yet?

Ilya looked at the message.
Then at the door.
Then at the empty space on the couch beside him where Shane usually sat.

Ilya: Not yet. I am asking him soon.

Harris: Good. That's important. I'm going to mourn Jenny's pork belly.

He set the tablet down.

He thought about the smaller version of the party at the farm that Shane might say yes to.
Eight men in a barn on a cold night in March. Beer and cider and pizza and whatever terrible music Dykstra was going to insist on playing.
The important things had been taken care of.
No cameras. No partners. No showing off.
Just the guys who had sat with him in that locker room and said boyfriend, hey? and is he hot? and party at the fucking farm and meant every stupid word of it.

That was the goal.

Not a statement.
Not a coming out party.
Just an ordinary night in the life of a man who happened to love another man and wanted his friends to see it.

He crossed one more thing off the list. He had tried his best. That was enough for now.

The door opened.

Shane came in carrying a bag and wearing the expression that Ilya only saw on his face when he missed a shot on the ice.

"Your carrier is the fucking worst."

"I know."

"Then why do you stay with them?"

"Because they have a good data plan for video calls."

Shane huffed as he set the bag on the counter and pulled out a box.
New phone. Same model. He had already taken it out of the packaging and there was a screen protector half-applied, which meant he had started setting it up in the car.
Shane came around the counter and sat on the couch beside him.
Close. Their legs touching.
He held Ilya's new phone in one hand and his own phone in the other.

"I've got something to send you when it finally finishes setting up," Shane said as he finished applying the screen protector.

Ilya went still.

Shane was scrolling through his own phone. "It's a surprise, Ilya. I'm not telling you what it is."

The new phone buzzed as Shane gave it to Ilya.

One New Message.

The photo loaded slowly.
Ilya watched it fill the screen from the top down.
It looked so familiar.

Ilya had his arm around Shane. He was grinning for the audience. Shane looked annoyed and impatient.

The photo from the hidden Boring album.
Ilya felt his eyes prickle.

"You saved the photo."

Shane smiled.

"Yeah. I broke our rule too."

His thumb paused on his own screen. He still didn't look up.

"I talked about my hair when you sent it to me. It wasn't until I was lacing up later that night that I realised you had transferred this photo onto every new phone you'd ever had."

He looked up at Ilya, and his eyes were glassy.

"I wish we were at the place we are now back then. There was so much wasted time because..."

"Shane."

Shane was being open.
Unguarded.
The version of himself that only existed in rooms where Ilya was the only other person.
Shane had broken their rule.
The rule he had made. The rule that said no photos, no evidence, nothing that could be found. And he had broken it for this.
One photo from a set that Ilya had carried across years and phones and cities, transferred onto every new device without thinking, because deleting it had never been an option.
Shane had seen that. Had understood what it meant that Ilya kept it.
And somewhere in the three months since Ilya had sent it to him, Shane had quietly done the same thing.
He had saved it. Kept it.
Carried it the way Ilya carried the ring.
As proof that what they had was real even when the world couldn't see it.

Ilya leaned forward and kissed him.
Not on the cheek. On the mouth.
Slow and firm and deliberate.
He had to do it while Shane was still mid-thought, the words dying between their lips.
Shane made a soft sound against him. Surprised. Then not surprised.
Ilya pulled back. Just enough to see Shane's face.
The glassy eyes. The flush. The expression of someone who had just handed over something fragile and been met with love instead of weight.

"Thank you," Ilya said. "For keeping it."

Shane nodded.
His jaw tightened the way it did when he was trying not to feel something too hard.
He looked back at Ilya's phone.

"There's one more thing."

Shane took the phone from his hands.
Then he leaned in and kissed him on the tip of the nose and Ilya heard the shutter sound from the phone.

"We should start taking more photos together," Shane said.

Ilya looked at the new photo on the screen of his phone.
The two of them, slightly blurred, Shane's hand at the side of his face.
It was terrible quality.

It was the most important photo on the phone.

He set it on the coffee table.
Then he turned to face Shane fully.

"I need to ask you something," Ilya said, trying to keep his voice even.

Shane's posture shifted. Not dramatically. Just the way a body reorganised itself when it sensed a conversation was about to change direction.
His hand moved to his own phone in his pocket, touched it, then came back to his lap.

"Okay,” Shane replied, voice also even.

Ilya inhaled.

"The Centaurs want to meet you."

Shane froze.
The Shane that had been there during the photo, during the kiss, during the shutter sound, began to close.
Not all the way.
But enough for Ilya to notice.
The way Shane's shoulders drew up half an inch.
The way his jaw set. The way his fingers pressed flat against his thighs.

"Ilya," Shane started. "I don..." He swallowed and looked at the floor before he looked back at him. "Is this what you wanted to ask me at my parents' house?"

"Yes. I nearly told Farah before I asked you, and that was wrong."

Shane looked at him.
Something shifted.
Surprise, maybe.
That Ilya had noticed. That Ilya had named it.

"It's fine, you didn't say much," Shane said.

"No. It is wrong. I know that. I should talk to you first."

Shane's mouth opened, then closed.
His hand went to his phone again.
Touched it. Came back.
Ilya's heart was beating harder than he wanted it to.
He could feel it in his throat.

"Harris planned something," Ilya continued. "Big. In the future. Full team. Partners. Kids. A photographer." He paused. "A Jenny who is apparently big deal."

Shane's knuckles went white around his phone before his face scrunched.

"Who is Jenny?"

"I have no idea. But I told Harris no."

Shane released his grip on his phone and turned to look at him.
He still didn't say anything.
But his face was doing something Ilya hadn't seen before.

"I'm not asking you to walk into a room full of strangers where we smile and hold hands and talk about how in love we are," Ilya said. He heard himself already close to rambling. He took a breath. He needed Shane to hear this the way he meant it, not the way his nerves were delivering it. "I'm asking you to walk into a room full of people who already love me. And I want them to see the reason why I am the man I am today."

He reached over and took Shane's hand.
Shane's fingers were cold from outside.
Ilya held them between both of his.

"Okay?" Ilya asked.

Shane looked at the floor.
Ilya felt his stomach drop.

The silence stretched. He could hear the clock.
Shane didn't say no. Ilya kept going.
He needed Shane to know that he was trying to make this right.

"I told him smaller. Just the guys from the locker room. The ones who came to see me. Bood. Wyatt. Haas. Dykstra. Troy. Harris. You and me. The people who told me they wanted to meet you."

Shane's eyes were still on the floor.

"No cameras. No partners. No speeches. No kids. No Jenny." Ilya paused. "Just cider and beer and pizza and whatever a beavertail is. I do not think it is real beavertail."

The corner of Shane's mouth twitched.

Barely.

But Ilya saw it and his chest loosened half a fraction.

"You can say no," Ilya said.

He braced himself for the worst, but Shane shook his head.

"What would make you come?" Ilya asked.

Shane looked at their hands.
His thumb moved against Ilya's palm. Slow. Thinking.

"Do you trust these guys as much as Svetlana?"

Ilya paused.
Wondering why Shane had asked him that. Then it made sense.
Shane still wanted their decision to be theirs.
And he needed to know that Ilya's team would respect that.

"Yes," Ilya said.

He meant it.
They were family. They had shown that.
Shane took a breath and fidgeted slightly.

"Then yeah. Way smaller," he said, then let out a short laugh. "This Jenny woman needs to fuck off."

"Done."

"And just the guys from the locker room. No one else."

"Done."

"No cameras. No photos where I have to step out of frame."

The words landed somewhere behind Ilya's ribs. Because that sentence contained everything. The years of existing just outside the edge of Ilya's public life.

"Done," Ilya said.
His voice was steady. His chest was not.

Shane looked up at him.

No excitement.
But no concern either.

"When?" Shane asked.

"Two weeks. Harris's family's farm. You have a bye and we are versing North Carolina, so we still win if we are still hungover later in week."

Shane let out a soft gasp. "Two weeks?"

"Is that enough time?"

"For what?"

"For you to get used to the idea."

Shane's mouth twitched.
Not a smile. The ghost of one.

"I don't think any amount of time would get me used to the idea of drinking beer in a barn with the Ottawa Centaurs."

"They are very nice," Ilya insisted, the same ghost of a smile flickering across his face.

"They are very loud."

"This is the same thing."

Shane almost laughed. Almost.
The air that left his lips and sat between them had turned into something different.
Something honest.

"Okay," Shane said.

"Okay?"

"Two weeks. The guys from the room. No cameras. Beer. Cider. Pizza and beavertails."

They looked at each other.
Ilya felt the list in his head rearrange itself.

Talk to Shane about the farm.

Invite Shane properly once the farm is safe for Shane.

Two crossed off.
Now there was just the farm itself.
And whatever came after it.
But there was nothing new to add to the list.
Shane's hand was still in his.
Ilya turned it over and pressed his thumb into Shane's palm.
Shane's fingers curled around it.

"Thank you," Shane said.

"For what?"

"For asking me. Instead of telling me. For giving me time to prepare. For changing the party for me."

The words settled in the room like a puck walking into the goal.
Ilya understood the weight of them. The difference between asking and telling.
The thing he had learned from Boxing Day and had nearly forgotten on the phone with Farah.
Asking was harder when you hadn't tried to make things easy for the other person.
And asking meant the other person could say no.
But Shane hadn't said no.
Shane had said okay.

Shane pushed his back into Ilya's chest and Ilya wrapped his arms around him. He pressed his mouth into Shane's hair. It still smelled like mango.
From Shane, after everything, an okay was the bravest thing Ilya had heard all week.
He didn't say that.
He just held him.
On the couch.
In the quiet house.
With the clock he couldn't hear anymore because Shane was here and Shane's heartbeat was louder.
They sat like that for a while.
Not talking. Not planning. Not listing.
There were questions about their future that still needed answering.
Questions that were going to demand more courage than either of them had today.
But those questions could wait, because Shane had said okay to the one that mattered.
And that meant he was going to be there.
With Ilya.
With his team.
With his other family.
And right now, with Shane's weight against his chest and the mango in his hair and the new phone on the coffee table with two photos on it that proved they existed, everything else could wait.

Through the pocket of Shane's joggers, his phone buzzed.

Once.
Then again.
Shane didn't reach for it.
But later, when Ilya was in the kitchen, he saw Shane pull the phone out and look at the screen.
His expression didn't change.
He read whatever was there, locked the phone, and put it back.

Ilya didn't ask.
He should have.

Two weeks later.

Centaurs Confirm Rozanov Remains Captain as Return-to-Play Timeline Nears End of Month

By Russell John Andrews
The Hockey Ledger
Published: Friday, March 12, 2021, 9:42 a.m. ET

OTTAWA. The Ottawa Centaurs have confirmed that Ilya Rozanov remains team captain as he continues his recovery following the alleged assault that left him hospitalised after last month’s Pride Night game against Toronto.

In a media release issued Thursday evening, the Centaurs stated that Rozanov is continuing to work with medical and training staff and remains actively involved with the team while he progresses through the league’s return-to-play protocols.

“Ilya Rozanov is our captain,” the statement read. “He remains an important part of this organisation, both on and off the ice. He will speak publicly when he is ready. Until then, we ask that his privacy and recovery be respected.”

Rozanov also spoke briefly with The Hockey Ledger by phone Thursday afternoon. He declined to discuss the personal circumstances surrounding a brief media appearance at the Centaurs’ facility earlier late last month, but confirmed he is currently tracking toward a potential return near the end of March, pending medical clearance.

“I am doing what doctors and trainers tell me,” Rozanov said. “I hate this very much, so probably [that] means it is good for me.”

Rozanov said he has been cheering for Ottawa from the sidelines and was particularly proud of the Centaurs’ 2–0 win over Detroit on Thursday night.

“They played hard. They played smart. They did not need me to yell at them, which is disappointing for me but good for them,” Rozanov said. “I am proud.”

The Hockey Ledger regrets requesting an interview with Rozanov so soon after the incident and acknowledges that the circumstances surrounding the live segment should have been handled with greater care. As readers may be aware, we removed its footage from circulation immediately after the broadcast and have not and will not publish the clip.

In the two weeks since the segment aired, Rozanov has received public support from fans, teammates, and several players across the league. The Centaurs have declined to comment further on his private life. The Hockey Ledger also will not be pressing Rozanov further regarding this matter.

Toronto Guardians player Dallas Kent remains on bail and is suspended without pay pending the outcome of a criminal investigation. His legal representation declined to comment. A court date has not yet been confirmed.

Selected reader responses

@ChrisP_Hockey: Respect to Rozanov. Takes guts. Hope he’s back on the ice soon.

@TrueHockeyFan99: Another Homo Night circus. Play the game or get off the ice. No one cares who you’re fucking.

@somebodytoldme: I support Rozanov’s right to privacy, but this is why players should keep personal matters away from the rink. It just creates distractions for everyone.

@Ilyasbabymommy: The real scandal here is that Ottawa won 2–0 and Rozanov still hasn't posted a shirtless selfie to celebrate. We're waiting captain. 

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

At long last, we have made it to the farm.

Thank you so much for all the love with this fic.
This is the final chapter.

Shane arrived at Ilya's house.

He didn't take his shoes off when he came through the door.

Shoes on meant he was ready. Shoes on meant they were going. Shane had said "smaller" and "just the guys" and "okay" two weeks ago. The plans hadn't changed. Harris confirmed it last night.

But Shane's jaw was tight.
His expression was lost in thought.
And his phone was in his hand.

Ilya noticed all of these things in the time it took Shane to hang his jacket on the hook and stand in the hallway looking at nothing.

Ilya felt his heart beating.

"Shane," Ilya said.

"Hey."

"You came."

"I said I would."

"You did."

Shane gently touched his arm as he walked past him into the living room and slumped into his spot on the couch.

Ilya followed him but leaned against the doorframe.

He watched him.

Shane was scrolling with purpose now.
His thumb moved in short, sharp flicks.
Stop. Read. Scroll. Stop again.
His face gave nothing away, but his shoulders had crept higher, and the room had gone quiet around him in a way Ilya did not like.
Ilya knew Shane was on edge. But Shane hadn't put words to it.
Not yet.

"We should leave soon," Ilya said, keeping his voice level.

"I know."

"Harris says the barn is ready."

"I know."

Shane looked back at him. His eyes weren't focused on Ilya.
Not entirely.

"You are going to say 'I know' to everything?" Ilya asked, trying to smile but feeling the anger scratching at his throat.

Shane locked his phone.

Ilya took a breath.

"I get what they've done," Shane said.

Ilya felt the sentence land the way a puck landed against the goal post.
Hard. Angled. All wrong.

"But?"

"There's no but."

"There is a but. I can hear it."

"I said I get it."

"What do you get, Shane?"

Shane's jaw tightened. He looked away. Then back.

"This might make things worse."

There it was.

The sentence Shane had been wanting to say for two weeks.
He had agreed to come.
He had helped make the plans.
He had said okay.
And then he had spent fourteen days thinking about something that had slowly and quietly and annoyingly made the okay feel impossible.
He didn't talk to Ilya about it. He just decided things were going to be worse and let that decision harden inside him without ever giving Ilya the chance to talk about it with him.

Ilya crossed his arms.

"Worse for who?"

"For you."

"How does meeting my team make things worse for me?"

"Ilya."

"They said bring him. I am bringing you."

"I know what they said."

Ilya took a breath, trying to calm the anger that was still scratching.

"Then what is the problem?"

Shane picked up his phone. Put it down again. Picked it up.

"What is on the phone, Shane?"

"It's nothing."

"It is not nothing. You keep touching it."

"I'm fine."

Ilya took another breath. "Tell me."

"I just..." Shane started. He went to touch his phone again. He winced and put his hands back on his lap. "What if me being there makes everything about us instead of about you?"

Ilya breathed in again.
Slow and deliberate.

"Shane. All of this is about us."

Shane shook his head.

Ilya wasn't understanding.
He needed to.
He needed to listen and not fight.

"No, Ilya, it's about you. Your team. Your recovery. Your return. And if I walk into that barn, suddenly it's the Hollander-Rozanov show. It's the heated rivalry. It's the history of us being rewritten. It's two captains from two teams and…"

"Shane. They are my friends."

"I know they're your friends. But do you know what people say about you? About us?"

The room shifted.
Ilya uncrossed his arms.

"What people?"

Shane's hand was on his phone again.
Gripping it this time.
Not scrolling. Just holding.

"What people?" Ilya repeated.

"Hockey people, Ilya."

Shane's voice caught at the edge.
Not breaking. Holding.
Holding so hard it made Ilya's own chest hurt.

"Players. Analysts. Guys in locker rooms. Guys who talk the way hockey players talk when they think no one who matters is listening."

"I know what hockey players say. I have heard it my whole..."

"You haven't heard what they've been saying about you."

The sentence stopped Ilya like a hand on his chest.

Shane's eyes were bright. Not with tears. With the thing that came before tears, when the body was still trying to hold them back because you couldn't break. Not yet.

"What have they been saying?"

Shane shook his head.

"Shane."

"You don't need to hear it."

"But you sit here and hold it on your own." Ilya clenched his hands into fists. He counted to two. Released. "Please. Tell me."

Shane stared at him. The phone was shaking in his hand. Ilya could see the tremor from across the room.

"I never told you how I found out, Ilya." Shane's voice was quiet now. Controlled in the way that meant it was about to stop being controlled. "I found out from my own teammates."

Shane put the phone down.

"In the group chat," he continued. "The day it happened. Before I even saw the clip. They were already talking about you."

Ilya said nothing.

"They said you'd fucked your career." Shane swallowed. "They said no one respects you anymore. They compared you to Hunter and decided you were worse because at least Hunter isn't..."

He stopped.

"Isn't what?" Ilya asked.

The anger was still there.
But he needed to not direct it at Shane.
Shane loved him.
Shane was acting this way for a reason.
Shane closed his eyes.

"Isn't a dick like Rozanov."

The words landed in the room and stayed there.

"Then they've been making comments nearly every day about you. Over and over. Not homophobic. But close to it."

Shane opened his eyes and looked back at Ilya.

"They have already made their mind up. This is how they see you now."

Ilya felt them in his chest.
He had heard worse.
He had heard worse from his father, from coaches, from opponents who leaned in during face-offs and said things designed to make him swing.
He had been called every word in every language that he knew for men who loved men.
The words themselves were not new.

What was new was seeing Shane's face while he said them.

Shane, who had gone back to that locker room.
Played beside those men. Won games with them.
Driven two hours in a suit to hold Ilya on a couch and said nothing about what he had been carrying.

Two weeks.

Ilya's anger came in hot.
Not at the words.
The words were nothing.
Those men were nothing.
They did not know his life.
They did not matter.

His team mattered. Shane's parents mattered.
Shane mattered.

And Shane had been sitting with all of it alone, reading those messages like every one of them was a bruise he had earned.
That was what made Ilya angry. Not that they had said it.
That Shane had believed, even for a second, that he had to keep it from him.

Then the anger cracked, and what was underneath it was something worse.

Recognition.

He knew this. He had been this way. Carrying it alone because carrying it together felt like burdening the person you loved.
Making decisions about what the other person could handle without asking if they wanted to handle it.
Ilya had done this. For weeks. He had done exactly what Shane was doing now.

And it had nearly cost them everything.

"And you didn't tell me," Ilya said.

It came out stronger than he meant it to. He saw Shane wince.
Ilya’s chest tightened.
He clenched his fists again, trying to stop the anger before it got too big.

"I didn't want to make it worse," Shane said.

"Make what worse? You think I care what your teammates think of me?"

"I think you should care."

"Why?" Ilya scoffed.

"Because they're hockey players, Ilya. They're not internet trolls. They're not comment sections. And they said these things. Casually. Like it was obvious."

Shane's voice had risen.
Not shouting. But the restraint was gone.
The controlled version of Shane, the one who managed every word, had left the building.

"And you want me to walk into a barn full of more hockey players and pretend that's not what they're all thinking?"

Ilya shook his head.

"My team is not your team."

"They're all the same, Ilya."

"They are not," Ilya said, his voice rising to match Shane's.

"You don't know that."

"I was in that locker room. I told them and they laughed and asked if my boyfriend was hot and invited you to a farm. So, I do know that, Shane."

Shane slumped forward and put his hand over his face.

"That's what they said to your face," he muttered.

The sentence hit differently.
Not because Ilya believed it. Because Shane believed it.
Shane, who had spent two weeks living in a world where hockey players said things when they thought it was safe, genuinely believed that what people said to your face and what they said behind your back were two different things.
And Ilya couldn't prove him wrong.
Not with words. Not from this living room.

The only thing that could prove him wrong was the barn.

"I need you to listen to me," Ilya said.

Shane looked back at him. His eyes were red. His phone was still shaking in his hand.

He took a step closer, making sure the anger in his voice was pointed past Shane, not at him.

"I know what people say about me. My father said worse things before breakfast than your teammates have ever thought of."

Shane flinched.

"I am not asking you to come to the barn because it will be easy. I am asking you because the people in that room are the other reasons I can go back to the ice. They told me to bring the person I love and they meant it."

Ilya crossed the rest of the living room and sat next to Shane.

"If you had told me two weeks ago what your teammates said, I would have been angry. I am angry now. But I am not angry at you. I am angry that you carried it alone because you thought giving it to me would break me."

Shane's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.

"I am not going to break, Shane. I have been broken already. Several times. I am still here."

The room was quiet. The clock ticked. Ilya still couldn't hear it.

Ilya gently took the phone from Shane's hands and placed it on the coffee table.

"I need you at that barn," Ilya said, softer now. As soft as what he felt for Shane in this moment. Shane, who was trying so hard. "Not because I need you to be brave. Because I need you to see what I see. I need you to see my team. My family. I need you to see the people who love me because you love me."

Shane stared at him. His chest was moving fast. His eyes were wet. His hands had stopped shaking because they were pressed flat against his thighs, anchoring himself to the couch.

"And if they…"

"Then we leave," Ilya said, before Shane could finish. "Together. And we know."

Shane's jaw worked.
He looked at the floor.
Then the ceiling.
Then at Ilya.
Ilya saw Shane’s brain still going too fast.
Ilya needed to throw himself in front of it to slow it down.

Ilya pulled Shane's head against his chest.

They both needed to calm down. Ilya knew this. But Shane needed to be held more than he needed to be right. Needed to be loved more than he needed to be argued with. Ilya needed Shane to know that he didn't want to fight. He just wanted Shane to see the love he knew was waiting for them.

"You should have told me," Ilya said. Quieter now.

"I know."

"I would have helped."

"I'm sorry."

"We talk about things together now. Especially the ugly things."

Shane's breath came out in a shudder. Not a cry. The exhale of someone who had been holding something for weeks and was finally letting go.

They sat.
Ilya's hand moved to the back of Shane's head, fingers combing slowly through his hair.
He felt Shane's breathing steady against his chest. Felt the tension leaving Shane's shoulders in stages, like ice melting. Shane's hand found the chain at Ilya's collar and held it loosely, not gripping, just touching, the way he did when he needed to remember what was real.

Ilya pressed his mouth to the top of Shane's head and kept it there.

The room settled. The fight was still in the walls, but it had lost its claws. What was left wasn't anger. It was just two people who loved each other and had scared each other and were now sitting with the cost of it, waiting for their heartbeats to match.

After a while, Shane didn't say anything. He just stood up.

He picked up his jacket from the hook.
Checked his pockets. Keys. Phone.
He took the phone out of his jacket and put it in his jeans instead.

He looked at Ilya.

"If anyone says anything…"

"They won't."

Shane held his gaze. Something moved behind his eyes. The last piece of resistance, not dissolving, but choosing to step aside.

"Are we okay?" Shane asked.

Ilya crossed the room and kissed him. Once.
Hard. Not tender. Not careful.
The kind of kiss that said I see you and I'm not afraid of what I see.

Shane kissed him back.

"Of course," Ilya said as they broke apart.

Then they left.

The drive to the farm was mostly Ilya's playlist and silence, broken only by Ilya humming under his breath to songs that he wanted to dance to with Shane.

Ilya drove. Shane sat beside him but did not take his phone out of his pocket once. He held Ilya's hand as the paved roads turned to gravel and the gravel turned to dirt and the houses thinned out and the fields opened up around them.

The anger from earlier was still there somewhere. Low. Cooling. Simmering.
Not gone, but no longer hot enough to spark a fire. Ilya knew it was not worth bringing it up again.
Shane had come. That was all that mattered right now.

As they rounded the corner toward the Drover family farm, Shane let out a soft huff of air.

"It's huge," Shane said.

"I know I am, but what about the farm?"

Shane squeezed Ilya's hand, and the smallest laugh slipped out of him.
Quiet. Almost involuntary.
The sound of someone who had been holding their breath for two weeks and was just now starting to let it go.

Ilya saw the familiar cars first. He did not say anything. He parked, got out, and waited.
After a brief pause, the passenger door opened. Shane stepped out too and stood beside him.

"If you don't like it, we go," Ilya said, pulling him in for a brief hug.

"I'll try, Ilya. Promise."

"I know."

Ilya took Shane's hand, and they walked toward the barn.

The barn door had been left open and Ilya could already feel warmth spilling out into the cold where they stood. Firelight moved over the wooden walls inside. Bottles clinked. Someone laughed too loudly at something that was probably a joke from this week’s training.

Shane's hand stayed firm in his.

Quiet. Present. Definitely nervous.

Ilya's chest was doing something it had not done around his team before. Tightening. Not from pain. From the unique and daunting fear of wanting two parts of your life to meet and not knowing what would happen.
These were his people. They were stupid and loud and incapable of processing anything with dignity, but they were happy to see him. He knew that.

He just needed Shane to know it too.

They stepped inside.

The barn was bigger than Ilya expected. High beams. A stone floor partially covered by a rug that looked older than Harris. Hay bales arranged in a rough semicircle around a firepit near the back wall. Fairy lights strung above them in loops that sagged in the middle. An old table tennis table set up for beer pong. A folding table against one wall covered in bottles, napkins, and what appeared to be an unreasonable amount of chips. The old TV was set up in the far corner, its wires trailing across the floor like someone had assembled it in a hurry and hoped for the best. An old but large speaker, the kind that looked like a childhood birthday present, sat against a wall.

It smelled like woodsmoke and cold stone and the apples that Ilya had smelled when Harris had given him a hug at the stadium.

“Centaurs,” Ilya called out as he entered through the door, Shane in hand.

"Hey Roz and... holy shit," Dykstra said.

Ilya felt six sets of eyes snap toward him and Shane.

"Hollan..." Bood started, a question already in his voice before he caught himself. "Hollander."

He tilted his head at Ilya.

Ilya nodded back.

Yes. This was him.

Shane tensed beside him.
Ilya felt it through their joined hands.
The fingers tightening. The pulse quickening against his palm.
Ilya stroked the inside of Shane’s palm with his thumb.

Across the barn, Troy leaned toward Harris and murmured something too low for Ilya to catch. Harris's face broke into a grin.

A friendly grin.
The only kind Harris seemed capable of making.

Troy smiled and wrapped his arm around Harris's shoulders.
He caught Ilya's eye and gave him one short nod, like Ilya had walked in by himself instead of with the person everyone had spent two weeks pretending they were not desperate to meet.

"Oh wow," Haas said, looking back and forth between Shane and Ilya with the expression of someone who had just solved a puzzle he hadn't known he was working on.

The silence opened up after that, waiting for someone to do something with it.

Ilya said nothing.
He was not going to introduce Shane before Shane was ready to be introduced.

Shane said nothing either.

Of course.

Ilya's stomach turned over.
Not the sick, heavy turning from the bedroom two weeks ago.
It was the kind that came from standing in a room full of people you loved while they looked at the person you loved most and you couldn't control what happened next.

All he could think about was Shane.

Wyatt looked around at his teammates and shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Shane," Wyatt said, walking toward them. "You'll have to forgive them. Ilya said his boyfriend was hot, and now they're all trying to process how Ilya managed to pull you."

Shane spluttered beside him.
Not a laugh. Not quite.
But close enough that Ilya felt something in his chest loosen.

"Yeah, why'd you settle for Roz, Hollander?" Dykstra called from near the fire. "Weren't you dating Rose Landry?"

"I am hotter than Rose Landry," Ilya said, flipping Dykstra off.

Dykstra laughed into his bottle.

"Eh, you're taller than Rose Landry," Troy said.

"This is same thing."

"It is absolutely not," Harris said.

Wyatt reached them and held out his hand to Shane. "Nice to see you off the ice, Shane."

Shane still wasn't moving. Ilya could feel the rigid stillness of him through their hands. The way Shane held himself when he was calculating whether to turn his interview personality on or off.

Ilya nudged him gently with his shoulder.
Shane tensed for half a second. Then Ilya heard him inhale.

He let go of Ilya’s hand and took Wyatt's hand instead.

"Good to see you too, Wyatt," Shane said.

Boring. A little stiff. Very polite.
Very Shane.

Ilya watched Wyatt's face for anything other than warmth, but there was nothing else.
Just Wyatt being Wyatt. The guy who always made the rookies feel welcome. The guy who cheered loudest for the rest of the team.

"Do you not think I'm pretty enough for Shane?" Ilya asked Wyatt as he finished shaking Shane's hand.

Wyatt flashed him a grin and pulled him into a hug. "Roz, you're not even hot enough for Dykstra," he said, loud enough for Dykstra to hear.

"Fuck off," Dykstra laughed.

Ilya saw him tap Haas on the back before the two of them started over.
Dykstra moved easily, grinning like this was any other night. Haas kept half a step behind him, trying very hard not to stare and failing badly.

The barn began moving again around them. Not fully normal.
Not yet. But close.
The fire cracked. Someone shifted a chair across the floor. Harris started fussing with a stack of paper plates as Troy rubbed his back. Bood stood by the cooler, watching Ilya with the kind of grin that meant he had decided not to make the moment too serious unless Ilya forced him to.

He gestured to the open cooler.
Ilya nodded.
Cider first. Feelings later.

"Haasy's a bit starstruck," Dykstra said to Shane.

"I am not," Haas said immediately.

"You absolutely are."

"It's just..." Haas looked at Shane, then visibly gave up on pretending. "Those goals you scored in 2015 against Chicag..."

Dykstra clapped Shane on the back before Haas could finish.

"See? Starstruck."

Shane blinked once, then seemed to remember how to be a person.

"Thanks," he said. His voice came out rough but steady enough. "It’s Luca, isn't it?"

Haas nodded too fast.

Dykstra pointed at him. "Oh, he knows your name. Haasy's done. Someone better get him a chair."

Ilya looked at Shane.
Shane was not smiling yet. But he was still standing there. Still holding Ilya's hand.
Still here.
That had to count.

It had to.

“Hollander, you made it,” Bood said, clapping Haas on the shoulder with one hand while somehow balancing two open bottles of cider in the other.

He stepped around Haas, shifted one bottle into his free hand, and held it out to Shane.

"Oh, I don't really drink..."

"Come on, Hollander. It's the best cider around," Troy said, joining them with Harris tucked under one arm again. He gave Harris an affectionate look that Harris pretended not to notice.
He absolutely did notice it though.

"It's our new range," Harris said, beaming at Shane. "You guys are the first to try it."

Shane blinked at both of them.

Ilya nudged him again, softer this time.

"I, uh, might have one later?" Shane said. "But I’ll just start with a water for now."

Ilya heard Shane swallow as Troy fixed him with a look.
Not hostile. Not questioning. Not suspicious.
Just Troy, taking the measure of the man who had been making Ilya smile at his phone for years. Ilya stepped in before Shane’s brain started telling him he had failed some test that no one had explained.

"I will have both," Ilya announced, taking both bottles of cider from Bood.

He looked down at the label.

Then paused.

Jane Doe Cider.

Jane.

The name sat in his chest. The name that had lived in his phone for years. The name Shane had been, back when loving Shane was a secret so new that Ilya hadn't even had a word for it yet. Just a name. Just Jane. Just the person who texted him and made his heart do things he couldn't explain to anyone.

Not even himself.

Ilya looked at Shane and turned the bottle so he could see the label.

Shane's eyes landed on it. For one second, something cracked through the walls Shane had up.
Not a smile. The memory of one.
The ghost of a version of them that had existed before all of this, when the biggest risk was a name in a phone and the biggest reward was a text that danced around what both of them wanted to say.

"Jane, huh?" Shane said, barely above a murmur. Then he shook his head and looked away, but Ilya caught the corner of his mouth moving.

Good.
That one had landed. Even here. Even through the nerves.

Ilya took a drink and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the free alcohol he now intended to take full advantage of tonight was actually delicious.

"This is good stuff, Harris."

Harris beamed at him. “Yeah, we named it Jane Doe because you’ll drink it so much that you’ll forget your name,” he laughed. Then he turned back to Shane. "I'll get you a water, Shane. Come on."

He gestured toward the folding table near the wall, where the bottles and napkins and aggressively labelled dips had been arranged with the kind of care only Harris could bring to a barn.

Shane glanced at Ilya.
Ilya nodded.
Go.

Shane followed Harris across the barn, shoulders still a little high, hands pushed into his pockets. Harris talked the whole way, pointing out the beer pong table, the coolers full of cider and what was definitely more chips than anyone needed.
Ilya watched him go. Watched the way Shane held himself as he moved through the space.
Careful. Measured. Watching.
The way he moved through hotel lobbies and airport terminals and every public space where he wasn't sure if someone was watching. Except someone was always watching here, and they were all watching because they wanted him to be comfortable.
And Ilya knew that Shane couldn't tell the difference yet.

"He’s a lot quieter than I expected him to be," Wyatt muttered beside Ilya.

"He's boring. But I like boring," Ilya said.

Across the barn, Harris flourished a water bottle like he had personally sourced it from a spring. Shane took it and gave him an awkward smile.

Ilya took another drink.

"So, Harris," he called, trying to push the barn into motion before it got stuck again. "What are we doing tonight?"

"I don't know?" Harris said brightly, turning back toward them. "I’m open to suggestions."

He stopped.
Looked at Ilya. Then back Shane. Then smiled and shrugged.
The silence filled the barn quicker than a cold gust of wind.

Bood saved them.

"Does that TV work?" he called out to Harris. "I want to show everyone this Haasy compilation clip I saw on YouTube a few days ago."

He slung an arm around Haas, who immediately looked embarrassed.

"Can't you just watch it on your phone?" Troy asked.

"Nope. Bigger screen. More Haasy action."

"Oh, that TV is older than me," Harris said, already moving toward the ancient television in the corner. "Uh, there's a PlayStation attached to it though. I think it has YouTube on it."

He looked back at Shane. "We've still got pizza if you're hungry too."

"Oh, no thank you," Shane said too quickly. "I… uh, we ate before we came."

"Well, aren't you an easy guest to cater for," Harris said, smiling back at him. "Water and no food. Dream guest, honestly."

That almost worked.
Almost.

Harris turned to the TV and started pressing buttons with increasing concern. "Okay. I'll turn this on for you guys, and the PlayStation too, if it still works. God, I had this before I went to college."

Troy looked over Harris's shoulder and raised an eyebrow at Ilya. Ilya smiled back.

He could see what they were trying to do. Make Shane welcome. Give him food. Give him drinks. Give him space. Make the barn feel safe by sheer force of everyone being aggressively normal.

It was kind.
It was also not quite working.

Ilya knew that Shane needed something between him and the Centaurs. A game. A task. Something with rules. Something that did not require him to stand there while everyone politely pretended they were not trying too hard around him.

Ilya took a long drink of cider and hoped the universe had one more favour left.

"Oh hey, it still works," Harris called out. The old TV flickered blue, then brightened. The PlayStation home screen whirred into focus. "Pull up a bale, guys. We can play a drinking game for every time Haas does an amazing play."

"We're gonna be drunk in no time," Wyatt laughed, dragging a chair closer.

As the screen loaded, Troy sat beside Harris on one of the hay bales and took the controller from him. He looked it over like he was recalling his entire childhood.

Ilya moved to Shane's side and put a hand on his back.

"Okay?"

"Yep," Shane muttered.

Then the PlayStation menu shifted.
A disc already in the drive.
Waiting for them.

"Mortal Kombat? The fighting game, yeah?” Troy asked Harris.

Ilya felt Shane twitch beside him.

Ilya looked at him. Shane's eyes were fixed on the screen, and the corner of his mouth had lifted. Just barely. The ghost of something private. Something that belonged to Shane and only to him.

"Oh, wow," Harris said, perking up as he picked up the other controller. "I used to be the best at this back in the day. Mind if we take a quick detour from watching Haasy kick ass on the ice so I can kick Troy's?"

"New drinking game," Bood said, pulling a chair up. "You lose, you down your drink."

Ilya turned to face Shane properly and was surprised to see a familiar look pulling at the corner of his mouth.
The look Ilya only ever saw on the ice. Right before Shane did something worth watching.

"Do you want to play?" Ilya asked.

Shane looked at the screen.
Then at Harris, who was already button-mashing through the menu.
Then back at Ilya.

"I'll watch for now," Shane said.

He sat down on a hay bale near the TV, water bottle in hand, and crossed his arms.
Still guarded. Still managing. Still nervous.
But his eyes were on the screen with a focus that had nothing to do with politeness.

Troy muttered something to Harris before squaring up to the TV.
Ilya settled onto the bale beside Shane, close enough that their legs touched. He kept his hand on Shane's back. A quiet anchor. Not pulling. Just present.

They watched as Harris dismantled Troy in two rounds. Then Wyatt. Then Dykstra, who lasted slightly longer, but only because he discovered the throw button by accident.

Drinks were downed as quickly as possible before a decision was made for everyone to slow down. Otherwise, they would all pass out within an hour.

Shane watched all of it without blinking. After Wyatt's second loss, Shane shifted beside Ilya.

"They're not blocking," Shane muttered, low enough that only Ilya could hear.

"Wait, you can block?" Wyatt asked, apparently hearing anyway.

"Hollander's clearly an expert," Troy quipped from the hay bale, arms crossed, pride clearly wounded.

Shane sighed and put the cap on his water bottle. Something changed in his posture. The way a person's body shifted when a decision had been made. He turned to face Troy.

"Okay, Barrett. Tell you what." Shane said. The glint was there. The one Ilya only saw when Shane was on the ice and about to do something no one could stop. "If you or anyone in this barn beats me, I'll down a cider. Deal?"

Catcalls went around the circle. The last bit of tension between Shane and the Centaurs fractured like ice under a skate blade.

"Hollander came to play," Wyatt laughed as he handed the controller over.

Shane took it, sat forward, and went straight to Kitana.

"You picked the woman with the fans?" Ilya asked as he put his hand on Shane’s knee.

"Sure did."

"She is pretty. Like you."

Shane picked up Ilya's hand and placed it back on his lap without looking at him. "Ilya, don't distract me. I’m about to fucking destroy Barrett."

"You fuckin' wish, Hollander," Troy said, selecting Johnny Cage.

"The man with the glasses is pretty too," Ilya mused.

"Oh yeah, he is. Me and Johnny go wayyy back," Harris laughed.

The announcer counted in the round.
Shane's body shifted. His shoulders dropped. His thumbs settled onto the buttons with the muscle memory of a man who had spent years learning this exact game and every new release of it on every new console.

Troy lasted forty-five seconds.

One minute, Troy's character was attempting a kick.
The next, the announcer was declaring 'FINISH HIM!' and Kitana's fans cut Johnny Cage in half.

"Ohhh, shit! Hollander's got game!" Bood shouted.

Dykstra doubled over from laughter.

"He beat Troy quicker than Harris," Haas said, looking genuinely awed.

"Who's next?" Shane said, flashing a grin at Troy, who was shaking his head but laughing.

Ilya watched the grin happen on Shane's face and felt something shift in the barn that had nothing to do with the game. Shane was not performing now. He was competing. And competing was the language Shane spoke more fluently than English or French or Russian or any of the careful, measured words he used to survive public spaces.
This was the Shane that Ilya had fallen in love with.
The cocky one. The one who backed himself with an arrogance that should have been insufferable but wasn't because he could always, always deliver on it.

Bood took the controller next. He lasted longer than Troy. Not by much. Shane found the combo pattern in thirty seconds and executed it with precision.
Then Dykstra lasted longer than Troy too, but he swore the entire time before he was uppercut off of the stage.
Then Haas tried, but he was so nervous that his hands were shaking, Shane beat him so gently it almost looked like kindness.
Then Ilya tried, getting three clean hits in before Shane dismantled him with fans.
Then Harris again, who was the only one who made Shane work. Harris had clearly played this game on this console for hours when he was younger.
Shane won anyway.

Nobody had come close.

"Nah, fuck this. Handicap him!" Dykstra called from his hay bale as he took the controller from Harris. "Play with one hand."

Shane looked at Ilya. Ilya shrugged. Shane switched the controller to his left hand.

He beat Dykstra again.

"Blindfold!" Bood suggested.

"I'm not blindfolding myself in a barn full of hockey players," Shane said.

"Smart man," Troy muttered.

"Upside down?" Wyatt suggested.

Shane declined, but he accepted playing with the controller behind his back. He still won the next two. Everyone was getting louder with each match. The disbelief had slowly started to turn into something that sounded a lot like respect. Then Harris, who had been watching with the patience of a man who was planning a glorious comeback, put his cider down.

"I know what the next handicap should be," he declared.

He looked at Ilya. Ilya looked at Harris. Harris grinned.

"Boyfriend," Harris said. "Get in there."

The barn went up.

Ilya laughed then set his cider down and moved behind Shane on the hay bale. He settled his legs on either side of Shane's hips and wrapped his arms around Shane's stomach. His chin found Shane's shoulder. He could feel Shane's breath change under his hands.
Not alarm. Not discomfort. Just awareness.
The sudden, full-body awareness of being held by someone in front of other people.

"This is cheating," Shane said.

"This is science," Harris replied, picking up the controller.

“This is hot,” Ilya whispered in Shane’s ear.

The round started.
Shane's thumbs moved.
Kitana launched into a combo. Mileena, played by a very animated Harris, dodged and countered. The Centaurs cheered. Ilya ran his hands slowly up Shane's abs through his shirt. He felt the muscles tighten under his palms. Felt Shane's breathing catch.
Shane missed a block.
Harris landed a kick. The barn roared.
Ilya pressed his mouth to the side of Shane's neck. A kiss. Brief. Warm. Right where Shane's pulse was hammering. Shane's character took a full combo. Harris was grinning like a man who had finally had his theory proven true.

"Get him, Harris!" Dykstra yelled.

“Fuck him up!” Troy cheered.

Shane's health bar was dropping. For the first time all night, he was losing.
Then Shane exhaled. His shoulders settled. His thumbs found the rhythm again. Ilya felt it happen through his hands. The exact moment the competitive brain overrode everything else. Shane blocked Harris's next attack, then countered with a combo that came from pure muscle memory and finished Harris off with a fatality that made everyone go silent for one full second before they exploded.

"ARE YOU FUCKIN’ KIDDING ME?" Bood shouted.

“Holy… What can’t he do?” Haas muttered.

"He had a whole person on him!" Dykstra yelled, gesturing at Ilya.

Harris dropped the controller onto the hay bale.
He was laughing. Not upset. Not even close. He reached into the cooler beside him and pulled out two ciders then opened one and held it out to Shane.

"Hollander," Harris said, still grinning. "You earned it."

Shane looked at the cider. Then at Harris. Then at Ilya's arms still wrapped around his stomach.
He took it. He drank. Then, laughing, he tipped some into Ilya’s open mouth beside him. They all cheered. Not for the game. For the drink. For Shane Hollander, sitting in a barn with his fiancé's arms around him, drinking a cider he had earned by beating every hockey player in the barn at a game they had no idea he could play.

Harris clinked his bottle against Shane's.

"Welcome to the team, Hollander."

Shane's mouth twitched.
Then it moved.
Then it became something Ilya hadn't seen all night.
A real smile.

Ilya squeezed him from behind one last time and untangled himself from Shane.

“Okay, I’ve had enough of losing this game,” Dykstra said. “Beer pong time, boys!”

The rest of the Centaurs moved to the beer pong table, still laughing at the results of the Mortal Kombat tournament, but Ilya stayed beside Shane.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” Ilya asked.

Shane laughed. “Hayden and I play every chance we get when no one else is around.”

“And you beat Hayden too?”

“Barely. He’s way better than me.”

“Nice to know Pike is good at something.”

Shane shook his head as he took another sip of cider.

Someone turned the music up. Someone threw another log on the fire. Someone scored in beer pong.

The night had slowly begun to feel like a party.

Ilya was gazing into the fire with a piece of cold pizza hanging out of his mouth. It had settled into a steady crackle. Low and warm and throwing shadows up the barn walls that swayed when the wind pushed against the door.

He was on a hay bale opposite Bood and Wyatt, his fourth cider cooling in his hand. Shane was across the barn with Haas, the two of them sitting near the TV, hunched over something on Haas's phone. From here, Ilya couldn't see what they were looking at, but Haas was talking with the kind of hand gestures that usually meant hockey, and Shane was nodding along with the enthusiasm he usually reserved for hockey. Or for him.
Dykstra was at the speaker.
He had not been stopped from choosing songs.
Ilya was beginning to suspect that no one had ever really stopped Dykstra from choosing songs and that this was simply a condition of knowing him.
Harris and Troy had gone outside about ten minutes ago. Ilya knew they would be outside for at least another twenty. The look Troy had given Harris on the way out had not been subtle.

Bood passed Wyatt another cider.

"Remember your first game with us against Buffalo?" Bood asked.

Wyatt groaned. "Don't."

"Three penalties in two periods."

"I was so nervous, man."

Bood laughed and raised his open bottle to Wyatt. "You saved them all though, even against that dick Cho."

"He was making jabs at me all night about transferring to the Centaurs. I'm glad we fucked him up."

"I'm glad you got traded, man. You were wasting away in Toronto."

"You know what? So am I," Wyatt said. He took a long sip of his cider before his gaze settled back on the fire. "I don't miss the Guardians. They... really fucking sucked."

Bood leaned forward. "That bad, huh?"

"The Guardians were classic hockey bros, man. They'd do and say shit that used to make my skin crawl. Like we all know Kent is a piece of shit, but most of them were just like him. Even Troy was a piece of shit back then. They'd say things in the locker room and laugh about it after, and I'd just... sit there,” Wyatt let out a sigh. “I felt bad leaving Pricey,” he continued, “but I needed to get out. It was a big change, but I’m glad it happened."

"What was it like?" Ilya asked. "Leaving Toronto?"

Wyatt thought about it. He turned the cider in his hands.

"It was a lot, really. I thought I was going to be Nilsson's second forever. You grow up in Ontario, you get drafted by a Toronto team, you think that's the story. And then it isn't." He shrugged. "Meeting Lisa kinda made me feel like I needed to stay too. But then she saw something in me I didn't and told me to find a team that appreciated me." He paused and took a sip. "Lisa moved her whole life for me. She had a residency in Toronto. Good hospital. Good friends. Good paycheque. She gave it all up and came to Ottawa because I asked her to. She didn't even blink."

He said it so simply that Ilya paused mid-sip.
He felt the words settle in his chest.
He knew what it meant to ask someone to rearrange their life for love.
He knew what it cost.

"That's..." Ilya started, then stopped. He took a swig. "She is a good woman."

"She's the best," Wyatt said. "Better than I deserve, probably."

Bood clapped him on the back. "Definitely better than you deserve."

They sat with that for a moment. The fire crackled. Dykstra laughed at something from across the barn.

"What about you, Roz?" Wyatt asked. He said it gently. The way Wyatt always said things when he knew he was about to ask something hard to answer. "Boston to Ottawa. That's a big move."

Ilya looked at his cider. Then at Shane across the barn.

"Yes."

"You moved because of Shane, didn't you?"

The question hung in the warm air between them. Bood didn't look at Ilya. He looked at the fire. Giving him space. Ilya thought about deflecting. He could feel the shape of the joke in his mouth. Something about Ottawa having a better nightlife. Something about being sick of Americans. Something easy and meaningless that would let the moment pass.

He let it pass on its own.

"Yes," Ilya said. "I moved because of him."

It was the first time he had said it out loud to anyone other than Shane or Shane's parents. The first time the reason had existed in a room with other people in it.

"I was not really happy in Boston after… after a while when I… well, when Shane and I became us," Ilya continued. He turned the bottle in his hands. "The Bears were good. City, good. Everything, good. But Shane was here and I was there and the distance was..." He searched for the word. "Annoying."

Wyatt nodded.

"The Centaurs needed a centre and I thought it was a bad move for my career. But Ottawa is closer to Montreal. And Montreal is where Shane was." He paused and looked up at them. "But then I got here. And the team was... this."

He gestured vaguely at the barn.
At Bood. At Wyatt.
At Dykstra and Haas.
He nodded his head toward the barn door, though he truly didn't know where Harris and Troy were.
They were definitely together though.

"This was better than anything I thought," Ilya said. His eyes prickled. The happy prickle he usually only felt around Shane. "I came here for Shane. But I stayed because this became my family."

Bood let out a huff of air. He stood and moved to sit beside Ilya. His hand landed on Ilya's shoulder.
Once. Firm. Loving.

"Man, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Roz."

Ilya chuckled into his bottle. "Do not get used to it."

"Too late."

Wyatt smiled. "Lisa says the same thing. She came for me. She stayed because Ottawa surprised her." He took a drink. "I think that's how it works. You go somewhere for one person and then the place gives you more people. More reasons."

Ilya looked at Shane again. Shane had looked up from Haas's phone and was watching the fire. Watching Ilya. Their eyes met across the barn and Shane's expression softened.
Ilya raised his cider slightly. Shane raised his water.
There it was. Across a barn. Through firelight and fairy lights and bad music. The small gesture between two people who had spent years communicating in silent looks in public spaces.
Dykstra appeared next to Ilya, dragging a crate behind him. He dropped it near the fire and sat down with a satisfied grin.

"Haas is going to steal Shane away from you," Dykstra said as he passed Ilya another cider.

"I would just steal Haas back," Ilya said.

"Probably," Dykstra laughed. "Liking the curated playlist of bangers, guys?"

"They're all sad bangers, Dykstra," Bood said.

"Exactly. You're welcome." He looked around the fire, then at Ilya. "Can I say something?"

Ilya braced himself. Dykstra saying something could mean anything from a bad joke to a take so terrible it would take four ciders to forget it.

"I know we… well, I don't really do the serious thing," Dykstra said. He picked at the label on his bottle. "But I just want to say that I'm glad you trusted us with this. I know that sounds stupid, but..." He shrugged. "It means a lot. That you brought him here. That you let us in."

Ilya blinked. Then smiled.

Bood nodded slowly.

Wyatt tapped his bottle against Dykstra's.

"That was almost poetic," Wyatt said.

"Fuck off."

"No, really. Means you haven't been getting hit enough on the ice though."

"I will end you."

The moment folded back into playful jabs, which was where all moments with the Centaurs eventually went. Ilya let it carry him. Haas and Shane appeared at the fire a minute later. Shane settled onto the hay bale beside Ilya, close enough that their shoulders touched. He didn't take Ilya's hand, but his knee pressed against Ilya's thigh.

A quiet point of contact.
Enough. For now.

Ilya could feel the cider working through Shane's body. The slight looseness in his shoulders. The way he leaned into Ilya instead of holding himself separate. Not drunk. Just warm.
Then Haas, who had been quiet since he sat down, turned to Shane.

"Hey, Shane. What's been the thing that has shocked you the most since you’ve started playing?"

The question was genuine. Haas asked everything genuinely. It was one of the things Ilya liked most about him. He had no filter because he had no agenda.

"Shocked?" Shane asked.

"Yeah, like... the thing you were like 'shit, that happened,' and you walked away from it," Haas clarified.

Shane took a breath. His knee pressed harder against Ilya's thigh.

"I had a different answer until this year, and to be honest, it's not really something I remember happening," Shane said. He was speaking slowly. Choosing the words. Not for effect. Just being careful about letting them in. "It's more like... I only remember it since watching it back."

The fire crackled. Everyone had gone quiet without deciding to.

"I got taken out on the ice against Boston. Marleau." Shane paused. "I don't remember the hit. I remember the sound though. And then I remember waking up in hospital."

Ilya's hand found Shane's knee. He didn't think about it. It just happened.

"But the shock wasn't the hit," Shane continued. "It came when I was watching the footage later. You know the doc that came out about Ilya and me? That was the first time I actually saw it. I was so lucky it didn't mess me up worse and I'm shocked that it... well, it was the start of so much change."

Ilya felt Shane's hand resting on top of his.

"I mean, that ended my season," he continued, then let out a small chuckle. "That year was a lot. Seeing Hunter kiss his boyfriend on the ice. Right there. In front of everyone. I remember watching that at my parents' and thinking..."

He trailed off.
The barn waited.

Shane looked at the fire.

"I was thinking about the summer," he said quietly. Shane gently squeezed Ilya’s hand. "About going to my cottage that summer. About whether..."

He didn't finish.

Ilya knew what came next.
He had lived what came next.
The cottage. The summer. The first time they had existed in the same space for days. The first time the thing between them had room to become something other than hookups and stolen looks and texts and the ache of wanting someone you weren't supposed to want.

"I stayed with Shane for the first time that summer," Ilya said. "It was nice."

He said it simply. The way Wyatt had talked about Lisa.
Shane looked at him. The firelight caught the gloss in his eyes.

"Aww," Haas said, smiling so softly that Ilya could have pinched his cheeks.

"Shut up, Haasy," Dykstra said, but his voice was soft.

"That's..." Bood started, then shook his head. "Yeah. That's something."

The circle was quiet again. The good quiet.

Dykstra looked around.

"You know what I think?" he said.

"I am terrified to find out," Ilya deadpanned.

He felt Shane's knee nudge against his thigh.

"I think the bravest thing in hockey isn't the hit or the fight or whatever. It's coming back after. It's showing up the next day when everyone saw what happened and you know they're all thinking about it and then you lace up anyway."

He took another sip of cider and looked around the circle.

"Both of you do that. I mean, we all do that. Every day. That's..." He shrugged. "I don't know. That's more than most people could handle. And I know it's what you're going to do again, Roz. When you're fully recovered."

Dykstra was two for two on heartfelt moments and Ilya didn't know how to handle that.

The whole room apparently felt the same, because they were all quiet. The fire popped. Someone's bottle clinked against the stone floor.
Ilya felt Shane's hand find his. Not a squeeze. Just fingers lacing together, resting on the hay bale between them. In front of everyone. In the firelight. Ilya didn't look down at their hands. He didn't need to. He could feel Shane's pulse through his fingers.

The barn door scraped open.

Harris and Troy stumbled through it, laughing at something, Harris's hair distinctly more dishevelled than it had been when they left. Troy had his arm around Harris's waist and a look on his face that suggested whatever had happened outside had been very good and also none of anyone's business.

"Oh, fuckin’ finally!" Dykstra called. "Where in the fuck have you two been?"

"Securing the perimeter," Troy said.

"Nice and thoroughly?" Bood laughed.

"Security is serious business," Harris said, straightening his jacket with as much dignity as a man who had absolutely just been making out against the side of a barn could muster.

"Shots!" Wyatt announced. "Harris and Troy owe us shots for abandoning us."

"We were gone for twenty minutes," Troy sighed as he pulled Harris closer.

They erupted. The seriousness dissolved into noise and laughter and someone finding a bottle of something that was definitely not cider.
Harris protested. Troy groaned.
Ilya felt it before he saw it.
Shane was laughing.
The vibration of it against his shoulder where Shane had leaned into him. Low and genuine and so unexpected that Ilya's breath caught.

Shane was laughing at his team.

And then, without warning, Shane curled into Ilya's shoulder.
His head finding the space between Ilya's neck and his collarbone.
The space that belonged to him. The space that had been empty for eleven days and every public moment of their entire relationship until tonight.
Ilya pressed his mouth into Shane's hair.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't want to. He didn't need to.
This was the happiest he had been in a long time.

And Shane's hair still had the faintest smell of mango.

It was late. Past everyone's bedtime. Definitely past Shane's.

Ilya watched Shane from across the barn, leaning against a hay bale with a cider balanced on his knee and Luca Haas passed out beside him. He had stopped keeping track after his eleventh bottle.

Shane was sitting by the fire with Harris and Troy, legs stretched out, cider in hand, talking about something Ilya couldn't hear but could see in the way Shane's hands moved when he spoke. Loose. Open. Warm. The hands of a man who felt welcome.

Everyone was drunk. That was very obvious.

But they were all different drunks.

Luca was dead-to-the-world drunk. Poor kid.
Bood was loud-drunk, which was only slightly louder than regular Bood.
Dykstra was argument-drunk, which was his default state with or without alcohol.
Wyatt was happy-drunk, leaning against a post near the speaker with a cider and a grin that hadn't left his face in an hour.
Troy was sneaky-drunk, which meant he was exactly the same as sober Troy except his arm had been around Harris for the past thirty minutes without him seeming to notice it was there.
Harris was also drunk, but he was still Harris. So he was Harris-drunk.
Shane was warm-drunk. Which was Ilya's favourite version of Shane because it was the closest to the version only Ilya usually got to see.
And Ilya was I-want-Shane's-mouth-and-butt-drunk. Which was his default.

Another song was in its outro. The barn settled into the lull between tracks, just guitar chords fading and the fire crackling and someone shifting on a hay bale and the wind pressing against the walls outside.

Dykstra pushed himself up from the crate he had been sitting on.

"Alright. It's my turn to pick a fucking song."

The boos came from everywhere at once.

"Oh, fuck off, all y'all."

"Oh, so he's American now," Troy said, loud enough so someone outside could hear him.

"Dykstra, I swear to God," Bood started.

"Fuck you guys. I've been waiting."

Ilya watched Shane lean toward Harris and whisper something. Troy, who had spent his entire career listening for the opportunity to talk shit through helmets, answered before Harris could. Loudly.

"Because his music taste fucking sucks, Hollander."

Laughter bounced off the walls of the barn.

Dykstra's middle finger went up at the firepit without him turning around. He was already at the speaker, scrolling through his phone with the focus of a man defusing a bomb.

"Fuck you guys," Dykstra said. "This song fucking rules."

The opening chord rang out across the barn.

Ilya recognised it before the first line started. It was the song that existed at every party in every country where someone had access to alcohol and a speaker. It had been played badly at every bar by amateur singers Ilya had been to since he had arrived in North America.

Wonderwall.

Wyatt's reaction was immediate and violent.

"Fucking TUNE, bro!" He threw his head back and raised his cider toward the rafters like he was toasting the music gods.

The first verse started and Wyatt started singing along.

He was horrendously off-key. Not even close to the right key. Not down the street from where the right key lived. Not even in the same zip code. But to his credit, he was singing with the absolute conviction of a man who believed he was Liam Gallagher. The fact that he sounded like five cats in a dryer did not diminish this belief. Laughter bounced off the barn walls. Bood clapped once. Troy dropped his head into his hand. Harris was grinning so wide it looked painful.

Wyatt didn't care.

Wyatt was living his rock star fantasy in a barn in March, and nothing could stop him. As the song rolled into the second verse, Wyatt started pretending to lasso Dykstra and pull him over. Dykstra laughed and shook his head.

But Harris didn't.

Harris jumped up from beside Troy, crossed the barn, and joined Wyatt. He threw his arm around Wyatt's waist, and they launched into the chorus together. Harris's voice was marginally better than Wyatt's, which was like saying there were only three cats in Harris's dryer instead of five.
Troy looked like he was in pain.
He pressed his palms over his eyes and shook his head slowly, but his shoulders were shaking.

Ilya watched all of it.
The noise causing dust to fall from the ceiling.
The light from the fire catching the dust in the air.
The fairy lights flickering softly.
Harris and Wyatt butchering the chorus with total commitment.
Dykstra regretting his song choice.
 Troy pretending not to laugh.
Bood conducting an invisible orchestra from his hay bale.

Shane existing in the middle of his chaotic family.

Harris and Wyatt swayed together, waiting for the chorus to come back so they could destroy it again.

Ilya listened to the words.

His English was worse when he was drunk. The edges of sentences blurred. But the lyrics came through clearly enough because they were simple and he had heard them a hundred times and never once paid attention to what they actually said.
Something about roads. Something about being the one to save me. 

He knew it was the alcohol. But this song was about him and Shane.
He didn't care.
He looked across the barn at Shane. The firelight was on his face and his hair was falling out of whatever he had tied it into and he was watching Harris and Wyatt with an expression of pure bewilderment.
Like he was from Humane Canada and needed to save the cats from the dryer.
Ilya thumped Haas lightly on the back. Haas didn't move. He got up from the hay bale.
The chorus was ending. The next verse was coming. Harris, Wyatt, and now Dykstra, who had abandoned the speaker and was cutting across the barn to join them were pointing at each other.
Ilya crossed the barn. The fire got warmer as he drew closer. He could make out Shane's face more clearly now. The flush on his cheeks from the alcohol and the heat. The freckles. The look of someone who had willingly entered chaos and was now questioning every decision that had led him here.

Ilya stopped in front of him.

Shane looked up.

"Hollander. We dance."

Shane blinked. "Ilya, what? No."

Ilya grabbed his arm. Firm. Not hard. A statement, not a question. Shane's cider sloshed as he came off the bench and Troy started laughing so hard that he bent.
Not at them, not exactly, but at the sheer absurdity of it.
The big, broad Russian who could barely stand pulling his petite five-foot-eleven, two-hundred-pound, cute Canadian secret fiancé to his feet to dance to Oasis in a barn.

"Ilya..."

But Ilya was already pulling him.
The chorus hit.

Harris, Wyatt, and Dykstra stumbled into it. Three men who could not sing, singing like their lives depended on it. Harris had his eyes closed. Wyatt had one foot on a hay bale. Dykstra was pointing at them while he sang, air drumming and performing simultaneously.

Ilya pulled Shane against him.

Their arms were a mess. Ilya's hand found Shane's waist but couldn't decide if it belonged there or on his back. Shane's hand landed on Ilya's shoulder, then his arm, then gave up and just held on to the front of his shirt. They were not dancing. They were swaying in the general direction of each other with a severe lack of rhythm and the coordination of two men who had spent their lives training their bodies for everything except this.

It was perfect.

Shane's head settled under Ilya's chin. His hair smelled like woodsmoke and cider and the cold March air that had seeped into everything. Ilya's hand found the back of Shane's head and stayed there. The fire warmed their bodies as they held each other. Shane's mouth was against Ilya's chest. He felt the words through the fabric before he heard them.

"This is so embarrassing."

"Shut up."

"We're dancing in a barn."

"Yes."

"To Wonderwall."

"Yes."

"In front of your team."

"Shut up and enjoy our first dance in public together."

Shane went still against him. Shane's shoulders tightening for one second, then another. His brain catching up with where he was and what he was doing and who was watching. He must have finally realised. That he was dancing. In front of hockey players. With a man. With his fiancé. With Ilya. And no one had stopped laughing or talking or singing. No one had gone quiet. No one had looked away.

No one cared.
No one fucking cared.

Bood's voice joined the choir from somewhere behind them and Ilya nearly pulled away in surprise because Bood could actually sing. A rich, low voice that found the harmony that Wyatt had been looking for all night and never found.

But it all faded.
None of it mattered.

The voices blurred into one warm noise and the fire softened into light and the barn walls disappeared and Ilya pulled back just enough to look at Shane's face. The firelight danced off his skin. The fairy lights Harris had strung around the beams caught the edges of his hair and made it glow at the ends. His cheeks were flushed. Pink across the freckles. His eyes were glassy from the cider and the heat and something else that wasn't either of those things.

He was grinning.

A drunken, dopey, beautiful grin that Ilya had only seen in the moments when Shane forgot to be anyone except the person who loved him.

Ilya couldn't help it.

He kissed him.

Shane's mouth was warm and tasted like cider and his lips were chapped and he made a small surprised sound against Ilya's mouth that turned into something softer, something that was just yes, and Ilya's hand tightened in his hair as he felt Shane's tongue slide into his mouth and the barn was still singing and the fire was still burning and…

"WOOOOO!"

The sound came from somewhere behind them. Ilya didn't know who. He didn't care. The barn exploded around the kiss, and then Troy was beside them, laughing, grabbing fistfuls of hay from the bale and sprinkling it over both of them like the world's worst confetti.
Shane pulled back.
Hay in his hair. Hay on his shoulders.
His mouth was open and his eyes were wide and Ilya watched the realisation hit him in real time.

They had just kissed.
Better.
They had just made out.
In front of people.

Not Yuna and David. Not in a dark living room at midnight. In a lit barn full of hockey players who were now applauding and throwing hay and singing the wrong words to a song that was already over.

Holy shit.

Ilya saw the same thought cross Shane's face. The mirror of it. The same holy shit. Shane pulled Ilya into a hug. Tight. Both arms. His face pressed into Ilya's neck the way it always did, but this time there were seven other people there, and he didn't turn away from any of them.

"I fucking hate that song," Shane muttered against his skin.

"It is my new favourite."

Shane pulled back. His eyes were bright. Hay was stuck to his cheek.

Ilya reached up and brushed it off with his thumb. The same gesture. The same motion he had used on the couch at his parent’s house, wiping tears from under Shane's eyes. Same hand. Same cheek. But this time, it was for happy things now.

"Mine too now," Shane said.

They kissed again.
Softer. Shorter. Sweeter.

The next song started.

Harris called across the barn. "Ilya, do you want another cider?"

He was wiping his eyes from laughing so hard he had broken something behind his face.
Just like that. As if nothing had happened. As if two men kissing in the middle of a barn was as unremarkable as asking someone if they wanted a drink. As if the most terrifying thing Shane and Ilya had ever done in public was already just another moment in a night full of beautiful moments that had absorbed into the noise and the warmth and the hay on the floor.
Ilya looked at Shane.
Shane looked back at him.
There was hay in his hair and cider on his lips and firelight on his face and he was the most beautiful thing Ilya had ever seen and he was standing right here, in front of everyone, not hiding, not stepping out of frame, not performing anything except the simple fact of loving someone in a room that let him.

"Yes," Ilya called back. "Two."

He gave Shane's ass a quick squeeze.

The barn was quieter now.

The fire had burned low. The fairy lights still flickered, and the air had cooled enough that Ilya could see his breath when he moved away from the heat. Empty bottles lined the edge of the firepit. Haas was awake again, barely, propped against a hay bale with the unfocused eyes of a man who had been resurrected against his will.

Shane was still beside him.
Still leaning into his shoulder.
Still there.

He wanted to hold this moment. Of Shane, by his side. With his teammates, by the fire.
Freeze it. Keep it in a place where the morning couldn't reach it. But the morning always reached everything. The conversation had drifted back to hockey. It was drifting around the topic Ilya wanted to avoid before Wyatt asked the question.

"So… what happens now with you guys and the rivalry?" Wyatt asked, poking the fire with a stick he had found somewhere.

"I do not know. I guess I keep beating Shane," Ilya said.

"Fuck off you will," Shane laughed. "Nothing needs to change," he continued, his voice levelling out. "We still play for opposite teams. We go home to the same house. It’s not complicated."

"Hollander," Dykstra said, staring into his cider like it contained answers. "Everything's going to change. You're basically Buffy and Spike but on ice."

The barn went quiet for half a second.

"Did you just say Buffy and Spike?" Troy said.

"It's a valid comparison." Dykstra said.

"You watch Buffy?" Harris asked, lifting his head off Troy's shoulder.

"I mean, it's a good show, Harris." Troy said.

"It's a show for teenage girls." Wyatt chuckled.

"It's a show for everyone. Spike had layers." Dykstra insisted.

"Spike. Had. Layers," Troy repeated, looking at Dykstra like he was speaking a foreign language.

"He did! He had a fuckin’ whole redemption arc."

"Dykstra watches Buffy," Haas giggled to no one in particular.

"Can we get back to the…" Wyatt started.

"No," Troy said. "We absolutely cannot get back to anything. You said Spike had layers. I need a minute."

The barn dissolved into chaos. Dykstra defending Buffy with increasing passion. Harris questioning every life choice Dykstra had ever made. Troy shaking his head slowly. Bood wheezing.

But Ilya wasn't listening anymore.
His eyes found Shane.

Shane's face had scrunched.
The particular scrunch that meant his brain was nine thoughts and two scenarios ahead of the conversation and none of the outcomes he was imagining were good.
His cider was still in his hand. but he had stopped drinking.
His eyes were on the fire, but they were looking past it.

Everything's going to change.

Ilya could hear it in bouncing around Shane’s head. Dykstra had said it between a cider and a Buffy reference, and it had landed in Shane like a puck to the groin.

Ilya leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
Shane blinked then turned to look at him.

"Tomorrow. We can talk about it then," Ilya said quietly.

Shane looked at him for a second.
Then the scrunch softened. Not gone. Just eased.

"Yeah," Shane said. "We can."

Ilya kissed him again.
Quick. On the cheek this time.

Shane stood up and stretched. "Anyone want another drink?"

"Always," Dykstra said, still mid-argument about whether Spike deserved better.

Shane walked to the cooler. Ilya watched him go.

The conversation about the future was somewhere in Shane's head now, sitting next to whatever was on his phone, and Shane was choosing to leave both of them alone for the rest of the night.

That was enough.

Ilya took a drink and let Dykstra rank the seasons of Buffy with far too much enthusiasm to a room that had not asked.

Later.

Wyatt's phone buzzed. He checked it, smiled, then stood.

"Lisa's outside," he said.

He crossed to Ilya first and pulled him into a hug.

"I'm glad you brought him," Wyatt said, low enough that only Ilya heard.

"Thank you for tonight. It was needed."

"Don't thank me. Thank Harris."

Wyatt turned to Shane as he let go of Ilya and held out his hand.
Shane took it, and Wyatt held it for a beat longer than necessary.

"Come hang out with us again soon, Shane."

Shane nodded. His jaw was tight, but his eyes were warm. Glassy, but warm.

"Thank you, Wyatt."

Then Wyatt left. The barn door opened and the cold slipped in for a second, sharp around their faces, before the door closed and the fire gathered them all back in.

Bood pulled out his phone and squinted at it before his face cracked into a smile.

"Righto," he said. "Uber's three minutes out. Dyks, Haasy, you're coming with me."

"Since when are you paying for an Uber?" Dykstra asked.

"Since I want to get home to Cassie before she falls asleep and I wake her and the little man up," Bood replied as he walked over to Haas.

"Fair." Dykstra stood and stretched. "Same, actually. If I wake Caitlin up, I'll be on the couch. But if I get home first... well." He waggled his eyebrows at Bood.

"Gross," Haas muttered.

"At least I have someone to go home to," Dykstra said, grinning at Haas.

"Why are you smiling at me?" Haas said, propped up against Bood, who was also grinning at him.

"Because you're going home alone, Haasy," Dykstra said, clapping him on the back.

"I have a cat," Haas muttered.

"You have a cat?" Harris asked.

"A cat is not a wife," Bood laughed.

"My cat is better than your wife."

The circle erupted. Bood wheezed, one arm still hooked securely around Haas to keep him upright. Dykstra pointed at Haas with his bottle.

"Haasy. That's the funniest thing you've said all year."

"I'm being serious. I love my cat."

"I know. That's why it's funny."

Ilya watched Shane watching them. The corner of Shane's mouth was up. Not the careful version. Just amusement at Haas being so defensive over his cat.

"Someone will make an honest man out of you, Haasy," Troy said. He came over and scruffed Haas's hair before nodding at Bood and fist-bumping Dykstra.

"I don't want an honest man. I want a cat," Haas said, before Bood steered him toward the entrance.

Bood paused near Ilya and pulled him into a one-armed hug, still keeping Haas tucked against his side. It was still the Bood kind. Full-body. Longer than necessary. The kind that said everything Bood wasn't going to put into words.

Then he turned to Shane and held out his hand.

Shane shook it.

Bood held on and looked Shane dead in the eyes.

"You hurt him," Bood said, very quietly, "and I will find you."

"Understood," Shane said.

"Good man."

Bood let go, grinned, and clapped Shane on the back hard enough to make him stumble forward.
Then he followed Dykstra out, somehow still supporting Haas against his body. From outside, Ilya barely made out Haas saying, "My cat really is better than your wife," followed by Dykstra's muffled howl of laughter.
Then car doors. Then quiet.
The barn was empty except for the four of them.
Troy and Harris. Shane and Ilya.
The fire had burned down to embers, and the fairy lights were the only real light left. They turned everything amber and warm. Bottles were everywhere. Hay was everywhere. The barn smelled like woodsmoke and spilled cider and air that had held too many feelings for too many hours.

The night was over.

"We should go inside," Harris said. He was tucked tight under Troy's arm, a warm grin still plastered on his face.

"Yep," Troy said.

Ilya looked at Shane. Shane looked back.

"I think I've had too much to drive," Shane said, wincing slightly.

"Then stay the night, silly," Harris said, his voice slightly slurred.

Ilya turned to Shane and smiled. There was something in Shane's eyes that Ilya hadn't seen all night. Not the walls. Not the competitive glint. Not the warm-drunk softness.

Just relief.
Pure and blissful and soft.

The barn had answered Shane's question. Not perfectly. Not completely. But enough. These men had played video games with him and told him stories and thrown hay at him and said "of course it's going to change," and they had meant it as love and not as threat.

That's what they said to your face.

Shane had said that in Ilya's living room. And here, what they had said to his face and what they had said behind his back were the same thing. The Centaurs had been honest in both directions.

Ilya walked over to Shane and kissed him softly on the lips.

"Come to bed," Ilya murmured as he pulled Shane into his arms.

They walked to the farmhouse in the cold.

Troy and Harris walked ahead. Harris was leaning into Troy, telling a story he couldn't seem to remember the ending of. His voice carried in the still air. Troy's arm was slung low around him, steering him toward the house, squeezing every so often, torch on his phone as their guiding light.

Shane's hand found Ilya's in the dark.

They walked behind them. Close. Shoulders almost touching. The gravel crunching under their feet. Four queer people walking across a farm in the dark. Two couples. Nobody watching except the stars. Ilya looked at Troy and Harris ahead of them. At the ease of them. The way they moved together without thinking about it.
He wondered if he and Shane looked like that from the outside.
He remembered what he had once told Shane: "We are very good at pretending to not be in love. Maybe we are bad at showing it when we are allowed."
Ilya felt himself smile, knowing that tonight had proven him wrong.
He wondered if someone watching them now, from a distance, would see the same thing he saw in Harris and Troy. The same ease. The same gravity. The same two bodies that had learned each other's shape so well it looked like dancing.
He knew they could not pretend much longer. And he knew that was okay.

The farmhouse was dark except for the kitchen light. Harris unlocked the door and the warmth hit them like a wall.

"There's a roll-out mattress in the dining room," Harris said, shrugging off his jacket. "Troy set it up earlier. Just in case someone needed to stay."

He looked at Ilya and Shane, and his face did the thing Harris's face always did when he was experiencing an emotion he was not equipped to manage.

"This is so not a big deal or anything," Harris said, his voice going soft.

"Harris," Troy warned.

"I'm fine. I'm just... it's nice. Having everyone here. That's all."

Troy steered Harris toward the hallway. "Bed. Now."

"I'm very fragile," Harris said over his shoulder.

"You're very drunk. Move."

Harris turned back to Shane. His eyes were glassy.

"Goodnight, Shane."

"Goodnight, Harris."

“Goodnight, Ilya.”

“Goodnight, Harris.”

"I'm really glad you both came."

"Same," Shane said.

"There's toothbrushes and toothpaste on your pillows."

"Harris," Troy repeated.

"I'm going, I'm going."

Troy looked at Shane. Shane held out his hand.

Troy took it. The handshake held for a second longer than it needed to. Then Troy pulled Shane into a hug. Brief. One hand on Shane's back. It was the hug of a man who did not hug easily but understood when it mattered. When they separated, Troy nodded once at Ilya. Then he disappeared down the hallway after Harris.
Ilya heard a door close. Then the muffled sound of Harris's bed protesting the weight of two grown men. A laugh came through the wall after that.
Then quiet.
Shane pressed into him from behind and Ilya felt Shane's hand run low until it was rubbing slowly up and down the front of his jeans.

"Shane."

"Harris got us toothbrushes and toothpaste."

"And this makes you horny?"

"Yes."

Ilya laughed as he relaxed back into Shane. He could feel Shane grinning against the back of his neck. It was the grin of a man who had been holding himself together all evening and it was now finally safe to come undone because they were finally alone.

"You are a very strange man, Hollander."

"You love it."

He did.

The dining room was dark except for the light from the kitchen bleeding through the doorway. The roll-out mattress was on the floor between the dining table and the wall. It was thin and the sheets looked old, but it was the most comfortable thing Ilya had seen all night.

Shane looked at it.

"It's terrible," Shane said.

"It is nice."

"The floor is going to destroy my back."

"You will survive."

"I'm a professional athlete with a very specific mattress at home. You know this."

"You are also a princess."

Shane fixed Ilya with a look.

"You are also my princess," Ilya chuckled.

"Fuck off."

Shane kicked off his shoes. Then wiggled out of his jeans. Then he stood in the dining room in his boxer briefs and messy hair and the shirt that still smelled like woodsmoke and cider. Ilya pulled his own shirt over his head and dropped onto the mattress. The cold floor pressed through the padding that was barely there.

He didn't care.

Shane lowered himself down beside him. Carefully, like the mattress might somehow break.

It didn't.

They lay on their sides facing each other. The kitchen light threw a stripe across the floor between them. The farmhouse was quiet except for Shane's breathing and the distant sound of Harris giggling at something Troy was doing through the wall.

Shane's face was close. The firelight from the barn was gone, but the kitchen light caught the edges of his jaw and the bridge of his nose and the hay that was still in his hair.

Ilya reached over and pulled a small piece of hay from behind Shane's ear.

"What?" Shane groaned.

"You have a barn in your hair."

"And whose fault is that?"

"Troy. He threw it."

Shane let out a breath that was almost a laugh. His hand found Ilya's chest. His fingers traced the chain, found the ring, and held it loosely as his palm pressed into Ilya's chest hair.

"You started it. You kissed me," Shane said, running his thumb over the ring.

"You kissed me back."

"You grabbed my ass."

Ilya moved closer. Close enough that their noses were almost touching.

"It is a good ass," Ilya murmured, grabbing it again for good measure.

"I'm cold," Shane muttered.

Ilya kissed him. Slow. Tender. Tasting toothpaste on his lips. Woodsmoke in his hair. The cold March night still on his skin.

"Better?" Ilya asked as he pulled back slowly.

Shane answered by kissing him back. Harder. His hand slid down Ilya's chest to the button on his jeans, and Ilya felt Shane's fingers work it open without breaking the kiss. Then his hand moved further, pressing down inside the waistband, and Ilya's breath hitched against Shane's mouth. Ilya pulled at his jeans, kicking them off with as much grace as twelve ciders would allow him.
Shane's tongue pressed against his and the kiss deepened. Shane pulled back just enough to hook his leg over Ilya's hip, his thigh tightening against Ilya's waist, before he shifted his weight and swung over so he was straddling him. Ilya felt the thin mattress shift underneath them.
Shane leaned forward and lowered himself down. Chest to chest. Their mouths finding each other again, hungry and unhurried at the same time, and Shane let out soft sounds against Ilya's lips that Ilya felt in his whole body.
Ilya's hands explored the back of Shane's head, his neck, his shoulders. Mapping familiar ground with the reverence of a man who had been missing this for too long. His fingers moved through Shane's hair, down the line of his spine, settling at the base of his back.
Shane arched into him.
His hips pressing down. His control thinning beneath Ilya's touch.
Ilya sat up, one arm bracing behind him, the other cupping Shane's ass and pulling him closer. Centering him. Grounding him exactly where he wanted him. Shane settled into his lap, thighs tight around Ilya's hips, the heat of him pressing down through the thin fabric between them.
Ilya's hand ran up Shane's side under his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin, the ridges of his ribs, the way Shane's stomach tightened under his fingers.
Shane made a sound against his mouth. Low. Hungry. The sound he made when he wanted more and was deciding how much more was appropriate on a dining room floor in someone else's house.

Ilya pulled back just enough to breathe.

"We should stop," Ilya whispered.

"Then stop touching me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like that," Shane said, rolling his hips down slowly.

"I do not know what you mean," Ilya said, pressing up against him.

"Ilya. Don't say stop and do that."

Ilya grinned.

He couldn't help it. It spread across his face before he could stop it, wide and stupid and completely unguarded. It was the grin of a man who was half-sitting on a mattress on a dining room floor in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, with his fiancé in his lap and hay in their hair and cider and toothpaste on his fiancé's lips and a ring on a chain between them and a night behind him that had been everything he had been afraid to want.

Shane looked at him.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing is funny."

"Then why are you grinning like an idiot?"

"How can you see in the dark, Hollander?"

"I know you're grinning."

Ilya pulled Shane down by his shoulders and kissed him gently, then wrapped his arms around Shane's back and rolled them both so his body was covering Shane's. The mattress protested. Neither of them cared.

Ilya shifted back slightly and looked down at him.

His lips were swollen from kissing.
His eyes were dark and open and looking up at Ilya without a single wall between them.
At the freckles he could barely make out.

"I love you so much, Shane."

No joke. No deflection. No armour. Just the sentence that he loved saying.

Shane smiled. His perfect fucking smile.
Real and soft and too beautiful for a man as strong as him, and it was exactly the smile Ilya had fallen in love with years ago in his old living room in Boston when neither of them had known what was about to happen to their lives.

"I love you too," Shane said.

He said it simply. The way you said things that were so true they didn't need explaining.

Ilya lowered himself down, covering Shane with his body, and pressed his mouth to Shane's neck. Then his jaw. Then he found his mouth and felt Shane kiss him back. Slow now. The hunger still there but settled into something deeper. Something patient. Shane's hands in his hair. Shane's legs around his hips. The whole length of them pressed together on a terrible mattress that neither of them would have traded for anything.

"What happened to stopping?" Shane murmured against his lips.

Ilya let out a sigh. "Fine."

He shifted to the side and pulled the blanket over both of them. Shane pressed his back against Ilya's chest, and Ilya wrapped an arm around him, his hand settling over Shane's heart. The farmhouse ticked around them. Old pipes. Old wood. The sound of a house that had been standing for a long time and would keep standing. Through the wall, Harris said something. Troy laughed. Then silence.
Shane's breathing slowed against him. The rise and fall of his chest under Ilya's hand.
Ilya lay there and let himself feel it.
The night had warmed him, but he knew the cold still existed. Dykstra had said the true thing and Shane had carried it silently and the world outside this farm had not changed. The articles still existed. Kent was still on bail. The playoffs were coming. The media would be waiting.
Everything was going to change. He knew that now. And for the first time since he had said my boyfriend, it didn't scare him, because he knew he was not alone on or off the ice.

The list in his head was shorter than it had ever been.

Get back to hockey.

Stop being a fucking headline.

Two items. Both still there. Both less heavy than they were this morning.
He would get to them, but not tonight.
He pulled Shane closer and kissed the back of his head.

Tonight had made him realise that the list could wait for the ones he loved.