Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

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

Additional Tags:

Location: The Cottage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Girl Dads Shane and Ilya, Kid Fic, Past Trans Mpreg | Trans Male Pregnancy, (only referenced) - Freeform, Trans Shane Hollander, Autistic Shane Hollander, Autistic Characters, Family Dynamics, Comfort, Family Bonding, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, mentions of past medical procedures/hysterectomy, Non-Explicit Sex, (and everyone loves Emi), Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), mentions of Ilya's depression, Grief, Parenthood, Allusions to dysphoria

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of mélange

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-19 Words: 8,344 Chapters: 1/1

sonatina

Summary

“No, malyshka. Not sad.” Ilya turns and kisses her palm. “I am happy.” 

Ilya stills after the words leave his mouth, skin prickling with warmth. He means it, he realizes. 

He’s spent so much of the last decade convincing himself that he was not sad. But being happy, being happy like this—effortlessly, accidentally, on purpose—is different. Ilya can’t remember the last time he’d thought it and meant it. I am happy.  

“Ilya?” Shane asks softly. 

“I’m okay. I—” Ilya sniffs, wipes at his cheeks. It’s all useless when he looks down at Emi again, when he sees himself staring back. His lip trembles. “My mama would have loved her.” 

Notes

i wasn't going to finish this for another little while but i've just been having so much fun with this 'verse lately i couldn't stay away. soft hollanov will save me i think.

has not been read for mistakes but hopefully soon! as of right now this is the only other part i had planned, but i'm definitely not saying never, so if you're interested in more from this be sure to subscribe to the series x

translations:
papochka -- dad / daddy
lapochka -- ‘little foot’, sweetheart, etc.
solnyshko -- my sunshine / little sun
Lyubimiy moy / lyubimyy -- my love, beloved
Moya dusha -- my soul
Moya radost’ -- my joy
moya dochka -- my daughter

It’s bright outside when Ilya rolls his suitcase out of the airport toward the pickup bay. With his hood up and his sunglasses on, he’s felt like a shadow since the moment he left his apartment early this morning in the dark. 

When he opens the door to Shane’s car and gets inside, the darkness doesn’t follow. He turns to look as Shane gets out of the line and toward the exit, but the backseat is empty. 

“Emi did not come?” he asks. 

He relaxes more once they’ve pulled onto the road, shoulders dropping and one hand releasing his white knuckled grip on the wheel. Ilya wishes he could see his eyes, but his own shades are dark enough to be nearly black. 

“No. Sorry. My parents have her, they’re meeting us there. I just. I wanted a little time with you first. If that’s okay.” 

When the light traffic is a blur outside the windows, Ilya reaches over and takes Shane’s free hand in his own. Shane squeezes back. 

The tension lingers, but Ilya isn’t sure what to ask. He’s better at reading body language but that’s more difficult in a moving vehicle, and even if he could, he can’t do much more than he’s doing now anyway. He’s been waiting for this for weeks, and the anticipation sits between them like a bridge, heavy and hard to cross. But Shane’s palm is clammy in his, grip tight, just as determined as Ilya is. 

Eventually the traffic thins further, the road narrowing to two lines lined with tall trees while the radio plays lightly in the background. When they haven’t passed anyone in another handful of minutes, the blinker starts to click, and Ilya looks over just as Shane starts to pull off to the gravel on side of the road. 

“We are stopping?” Ilya asks as he shifts the car into park. “Shane?” 

He’s most worried about Shane having second thoughts, maybe deciding that he doesn’t want this—this possibly being a multitude of things; Ilya properly meeting his parents, Ilya spending the most time he ever has alone with Shane and Emi over the next two weeks, or maybe. Maybe he’s decided that he doesn’t want Ilya at all anymore. 

But Shane doesn’t drop his head into his hands, doesn’t tug at his hair or tell Ilya that he can’t do it. As soon as the car’s in park he pulls his knees up and swings one over the center console, neck bent awkwardly up against the roof of the car. His shoes thud against the car door as Ilya sits back to make room, their bodies too big for the small space. 

They make it work anyway. Shane settles on his lap, his arms reaching down to slip around Ilya’s waist. With his head leaned down toward Ilya’s neck, the outside fades for a moment and there is only this; only warmth and steady weight, only Ilya’s forehead pressed to the thud of his heart. 

“Oh,” he sighs, moving his own arms to wrap around Shane’s hips. “Hi, moy lyubimyy.” 

“Just—just for a minute,” Shane mutters. 

Ilya runs a hand up his back and says, “We have time.” 

+

The brief detour means that Shane’s parents are already there when they arrive, Emi’s eyes heavy but happy to see them. 

Shane crouches to hug her first while Ilya lingers just behind for his turn, and Yuna catches his eye over the tops of their heads and gives him a small smile. “It’s nap time, but she wanted to see you guys before she went down.” 

He swaps places with Shane while he and David go to get the rest of the luggage, kneeling in front of her in the foyer. 

“Hug today?” Ilya asks, trying to hide his smile. He has a good feeling. Seconds later she’s finally back in his arms again, small and sleepy against his chest. 

“Hi,” she murmurs into his shirt. 

“Hello, malyshka,” he says. He presses a kiss to her forehead. “I have missed you.” 

Yuna is still looking at them when Ilya stands with her in his arms, her face soft but searching. She looks down at Emi, quickly dropping into sleep against his shoulder, and nods toward the hallway. 

“You can tuck her in, if you want,” she says quietly. “I’ll show you to her room.” 

Ilya nods and follows her, sparing a glance at Shane outside the front windows as the glass gives way to light brown walls toward the bedroom. He buries a smile into Emi’s hair, relieved to finally be here and cautiously excited for the days to come. 

Emi’s room is bathed in more of the neutral, warm-toned colors from Shane’s home in Montreal, and Yuna adjusts the wooden blinds on the far window to limit the light as Ilya puts her down on the bed and tucks her in. He allows himself one last brush of his lips to her temple before he goes, the monitor set up on the side table, and when he stands, Yuna is already gone. Ilya takes a final glance at her cheek smushed by the pillow and her fist curled against her mouth, and leaves the door cracked on his way back to the living room. 

They make lunch, David pulling out several tupperware containers from the fridge that they’d brought over from home while Yuna sets the table. He listens idly to the way Shane is with them, unused to being around parents in this way. He still cannot believe he is one now. 

He wonders what his would say. If they could know. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Shane whispers as he passes by on his way to the dining room. 

Ilya squeezes his hip. “I am too.” 

He sits beside Shane on one of the long benches on either side of the table, there to support Shane just as much as for his own comfort. Yuna is kind, has the same lines beside her eyes as Shane does when he smiles, but every pass of her eyes makes Ilya feel inadequate, even if she doesn’t mean it that way. Makes him hyper aware of what he’s doing, what he isn’t doing, trying to master being a good father and a good—partner, maybe, Ilya thinks, all at the same time. 

They do get to know him while they eat, and he enjoys David’s light, easy questions, and how quickly Ilya’s able to make him laugh. It makes Shane’s eyes shimmer when he glances over, when their knees touch underneath the table. 

As soon as the plates have been cleared, though, Ilya senses the shift between Shane and Yuna. A flattening of Shane’s mouth, Yuna’s fingers laced together on top of the table. Ilya braces himself. David cracks open another can of Coke and pushes it in Ilya’s direction, something knowing in his smile. 

“So. Have you given any thought about how this is going to work?” Yuna asks them. “Managing your schedule is one thing, Shane. But two of you, full time, in your positions… it might be more difficult to plan around.” 

“We’ve been managing it fine for the last seven months,” Shane returns. 

“When you’re in Ottawa or when Ilya flies out in between to see you.” When Shane says nothing, Yuna softens a little, laying a palm down between them as she leans in. “You’ve done amazing with the circumstances, honey. We’re not saying you haven’t. But what happens when Ilya wants to see her but can’t take the time off? What if there’s an emergency and you can’t get here and Ilya isn’t listed as a contact?” 

His mouth twists. “You two are listed as emergency contacts.” 

“Shane—” she starts. 

“I don’t know, mom. I haven’t—this is all new for us still. It’s not like we’ve had a lot of time to sit and talk about it just the two of us.” He glances sideways at Ilya, and Ilya tries to look reassuring. “I was hoping we could do that over the next couple of weeks. Take a break. Make a plan.” 

Underneath the table, Ilya nudges their knees together again. Barely, some of his tension chips. 

The rest of the table stays silent, David sipping his drink while Yuna’s eyes scan Shane’s face, brows slightly furrowed like she’s trying to solve something. Ilya wants to step in, would like to defend Shane, but he’s not sure how it would be received. If Yuna and David would be offended, if Shane would be annoyed if he said the wrong thing. 

After another minute, Shane exhales. “I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like yet. But eventually I want her with me full time, if possible,” he says. “Or, with us, I mean, I guess. I worked so hard to come back, but I don’t want her to feel like we’re not around either.” 

“And if that meant having to compromise?” Yuna asks carefully. 

Ilya knows how important Emi is to Shane. That he would give up everything—that he has, already, once—for her. But he also knows why Shane hesitates at the question. How much he loves his sport in a different way, but just as all consuming. 

The pressure mounts, Shane’s mouth wavering. He wipes his hands on his pants, swallows, licks his lips, though the words never come. This time, Ilya can’t hold his tongue. 

“I would take a step back to be there for her, if we needed to,” he says. He turns to Shane. “You have only been back for one season. You shouldn't have to give it up again until you want to.” 

It would be difficult for him, too. To relearn a different schedule. To stray from what he’s known for the last decade of his life. But he’s done this already, in some ways; the passing of his father, finding out about Emi, deciding he wanted to be with Shane. Things have changed, and hockey was still there, humming in the background, waiting until Ilya needed it again. He would still have it if he changed things now, free agency nearly close enough to touch. 

Shane gets overwhelmed sometimes when there are too many options, too many ways to pick the wrong thing. But Ilya—Ilya only sees freedom. Sees, for once, that his choice will be his own and not an obligation, a duty, a pressure hanging between his shoulder blades. 

When he looks away from Shane again, he realizes that every eye in the room is on him. Yuna’s slack jaw, the approving tilt of David’s mouth. Shane’s hand reaching out to tangle their fingers together, his eyes wet when he blinks. 

“You would do that?” Yuna asks after a moment. “For Shane?” 

Ilya is suddenly very aware of the fact that family is something the people in this room have always had. Something they have chosen time and time again over other things. A sure thing, even if they were not perfect. If they hadn't earned it. 

He does not owe anything to Russia, though he sometimes still aches for the good parts. He does not owe anything to hockey, really, except for his own love of it. He owes nothing to his brother anymore, nothing to the greedy corporations that would have him bleed out on the ice so long as he was making them money while he did so. 

Shane’s family thinks that he is giving things up for this, making sacrifices. Compromising. There is no way to make them understand how lucky he feels to be here, to have this, so Ilya nods instead. 

“They are my family now.” 

Beside him, Shane grins. They are not asked any more questions. 

+

Emi wakes in the afternoon, much more rested and happy to be the center of attention once more. 

Yuna and David brought photo albums, another thing Ilya marvels at. He thinks his mother likely took photographs of him and his brother, but his father was not sentimental, and even if they had survived somehow, his stepmother would have disposed of them. Ilya had looked, once, and come up empty. 

But Shane has many albums of photos of Emi, labeled by the year and the age, and even one that has all of her milestones marked down with dates and descriptions. There aren’t too many at this point but three years fills up at least two pages, spanning from birth to just a few weeks ago. Ilya touches a fingertip to the dried ink just for them, a simple All-Stars, Tampa. 2017. 

His parents sit with Emi on the floor as Ilya picks up the earliest album he can find, Shane beside him when he flips open the cover. He’s momentarily breathless at a photograph of Emi in a little pink blanket, her body no bigger than Ilya’s hand, the bow on her head comically large in comparison. Ilya swallows and tries to think about all he has now instead of what he’s missed. 

He taps a thumb against the page. “This is where it starts?” 

“I didn’t want any pictures of the before,” Shane murmurs in response to his unasked question, low enough for only him. His chin presses into Ilya’s shoulder. “I didn’t really feel like myself. I think I avoided mirrors for months.” 

Ilya makes a sympathetic noise and turns to kiss his cheek, then looks back to the page. 

They flip through them slowly, Shane pointing out details or giving him context for the memory. Around Emi’s first birthday Shane is visible in some of the pictures again, and by the most current album, he’s in almost all of them. He wants to ask if Shane had thought of him in any of these, if he’d wished Ilya were there or had known at all. As if hearing his thoughts, Shane folds an arm behind him, fingers scratching idly at Ilya’s curls. 

“We’ll take more,” he tells Ilya. “We have time.” 

Mostly, Ilya is just relieved that Shane hadn’t been alone. He’d had his parents, and Emi, and now hockey again, too. 

And his chest could burst thinking about her—about how much love she must’ve been surrounded by since the moment she arrived. Ilya had thought it already but now he’s seen it, a familiar hand reaching in from the corner of a shot, Emi’s tiny fingers wrapped around one of Shane’s. Yuna squatted down onto a plastic chair for a tea party in which most of the guests had been stuffed animals. David looking down at her with a fond smile while she stands on a step stool beside him, helping her wash her hands for dinner. 

Dozens of others just like the one he’s looking at now, a close up shot of Shane and Emi cheek to cheek at her last birthday, looking so much alike save for Ilya’s grin on her face, the shape of his brow. I will be there soon, Ilya thinks as if he can talk to the version of them frozen in time. He traces a thumb over Shane’s hair in the photograph. Please make room for me. 

The Shane sitting beside him now is already looking at him when Ilya raises his head, and the words tumble out before Ilya can stop them, earnest and suddenly worried that he hasn’t said them enough. 

“You are such a good papa,” he says. 

He could say other things. That Shane is brave and strong and Ilya feels, in some ways, that he won’t be able to measure up. But this is Shane, his Shane, and Ilya knows him. Knows that the praise of a job well done will settle more than a compliment he won’t believe no matter how much Ilya does. 

“So are you,” Shane gives him a watery grin, nudging their shoulders together, “papochka.” 

Unable to resist, Ilya turns and kisses him once, chaste, easier than trying to find the words that he needs. Yuna is looking at them again, the same way she had in the foyer, but Ilya thinks there’s something more solid about it this time. She clears her throat. 

“We should get one of all of you,” she gestures to the photo albums. “For the next one.” 

David helps him re-stack the albums while Yuna lifts Emi onto the couch between them, Shane fussing with the little fly-away hairs at her forehead until she grunts and he relents with a chuckled okay, okay. Ilya grins watching them, reaching up to fix one of Shane’s own hairs that’s fallen onto his brow, and he hears the capture on David’s camera go off in Yuna’s hands. Shane kisses his knuckles in thanks as he pulls back. Ilya flushes, but the excitement at having the memory preserved outweighs any of his embarrassment. 

They both turn to face the lens, his temple knocking against Shane’s when they meet in the middle over Emi’s head. It feels like what he does with his team just without the helmet, and Ilya wishes he could take it one step further, could tack on I love you I love you I love you until the lights go off and the ice is empty again. 

But here his heart is full and Shane’s hand is warm on the back of his neck, Emi an anchor between them, and Ilya grins so wide that his cheeks ache when Yuna takes the photo. For remembering this time, not evidence. 

As they’re leaving, she puts the camera down on the table in the entryway and says, “We’ll leave this here. Feel free to take as many as you want.” 

Ilya smiles at her. Yuna smiles back. 

+

When Ilya leaves Emi’s room for a second time, it’s with Shane, right after they’ve both said goodnight. It’s the first time they’ve ever been able to do that like this, where Ilya wasn’t leaving to catch a flight after or Emi wasn’t falling asleep in the back of a car headed toward Ottawa. He and Shane are exhausted but also wired, crying and also laughing as they grab at each other’s fingers down the hallway, shoulders bumping the whole way. 

Ilya feels sick with how much he wants it more than just two weeks. 

They slip into Shane’s bedroom and toward the en suite, drifting into a nighttime routine of their own. The bathroom is big and spacious but neither of them can seem to stray too far, elbows knocking as Shane combs his hair and Ilya shakes out his curls, hips touching while they brush their teeth. Ilya winks at him with a foamy grin in the reflection of the mirror before he spits, and Shane’s face heats as he glances down at the sink. Ilya’s missed this. Missed him. 

“She sleeps so easily,” he comments as they leave the bathroom. 

“Not always,” Shane says wryly. “I think she likes having both of us here. The car and my parents probably tired her out, too. But she seems happy.” 

Ilya smiles to himself as he rounds the bed, stripping off his shirt and working the band of his pants over his hips and thighs. He’s just finished laying them across the small, flat seat at the end of the mattress when he realizes maybe he should have asked first, Shane’s face burning an even darker red when Ilya glances over at him again. 

“Is this… okay?” he asks, gesturing to himself. 

There are none of the nerves Ilya had expected when Shane says, “Yes.” 

Relaxing slightly, Ilya lifts the sheets and slides into his side, fiddles with the cord charging his phone to give Shane some privacy. It’s instinct—they don’t usually tend to shy away from each other. If this were before, Ilya would have lazily strewn an arm behind his head and another toward his boxers and stared openly. 

But this is now, and since Tampa, the closest they’ve been is sleeping together. Just sleeping. They’d showered together and Ilya had seen him then, but it hadn’t been sex, even if their bodies hadn’t completely understood. 

He misses having Shane that way. Touch has always been Ilya’s preferred method of communication, and sex only heightens it, deepens it more. It’s why he’d loved it so much even back then, because Hollander, Shane, could never seem to hide anything from him when Ilya was in his arms, between his thighs, panting and sweaty and catching his breath on his chest. Ilya has always been greedy, and the space Shane had left behind was one he couldn’t fill with more bodies, drinks, fast cars. He’d tried. 

Tentatively, Shane strips to the same level, leaving his clothes folded beside Ilya’s on the bench. He adjusts something with the blinds at the windows, fiddles with the monitor at the side table for a moment, then finally slides into bed beside Ilya. 

On his own side, Ilya lays his phone down and turns off his lamp, the one at Shane’s bedside the only light remaining in the room. It’s reflex now, the urge to make things softer, more palatable. A safe place to land, even if Ilya has no idea what’s coming. 

He sinks down and turns onto his side to face Shane on the pillow, and Shane shifts a moment later to mirror him. Their fingers touch first, tangled in between them on the mattress, and then their feet, legs, thighs, lips. Ilya kisses him with the carefulness of being ready to pull away at any moment, but Shane only ever pulls him closer, his own kisses a little more biting, a little more needy, a lot like relief. 

“Touch me?” he sighs against Ilya’s mouth, grip tight on Ilya’s bicep. 

Ilya kisses him again. “Anything you want, solnyshko.” 

He tries not to let his own eagerness show when he slips a hand around Shane’s waist and tugs him close enough to dissolve the space between them, one hand in his hair, the other slipping down over his back, under his thigh, pulling it up so that Ilya can press one of his in between. He’s already breathless at this and Shane is hardly better, gasping and pushing into the touch, dragging his teeth along the line of Ilya’s jaw. 

“You will tell me if anything is bad, yes?” he manages before he slips his fingers beneath Shane’s boxers. 

“I’ll tell you,” Shane nods. 

It’s not as intimidating as Ilya thought it would be. Shane’s body is a third language Ilya was fluent in once, and just because he hasn’t spoken it in a while doesn’t mean that it isn’t still there. That it doesn’t come back to him with every pass of fingertips over shivering skin, each swipe of his tongue across hard muscle. He lets himself sink into it this time, puts enough trust in himself and in Shane to know if something isn’t right anymore. 

The rush of desperation fades but still simmers between them, kisses turning long and lax as Ilya presses him into the mattress. Shane’s hands won’t stop moving, sliding along the planes of Ilya’s back, his arms, holding the back of his head and his hips. His fingers push until he can grab at the skin beneath Ilya’s boxers, pressing him more firmly between his legs, asking without words. 

It isn’t until Ilya pushes up to find protection that he speaks again, voice shot from all the kissing, from the restless repetitions of his name. 

“We don’t need one,” he tells Ilya as he catches his breath, rubbing at his forearm to keep it close. He glows pink in the lamplight, flushed from his cheeks down to his chest. “I mean, usually still, yeah, because of the cleanup and stuff. But we don’t have to have one now, and tonight I—I just want it like this. If that’s okay,” he says, the same way he had earlier in the car. “We do need lube, probably, though.” 

Ilya settles his weight back on top of him but hesitates, glancing briefly toward the monitor. Thinks of the tremor in Shane’s voice when he’d said it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault. But you weren’t the one who had to face the consequences. 

“We should be careful, yes?” Ilya asks. 

Shane chews at his lip, looks at Ilya’s mouth instead of his eyes. “I can explain it better later, if you want. But after Emi, I knew I couldn’t go through all of that again. It’s a relatively common procedure. And it helped a lot, you know. Being sure that there wouldn’t be any more surprises.” He shifts, fingers sweeping low at Ilya’s waist again. “And I haven’t been with anyone else. Not since. So.” 

The confession makes Ilya warm all over, but he has no time to enjoy it before Shane’s eyes widen and flick back up to his, his fingers slipping out of Ilya’s boxers. 

“Unless you have, I mean, which—you probably have, so we can—I’ll find the condoms, it’s—” he starts to reach for the nightstand, and Ilya gently catches his wrist. 

“Shane,” he says. “I have been with others, yes. When you were gone and I did not know if you would come back.” Trying to get over you, even though it never worked, Ilya doesn’t add. Shane relaxes just slightly under him where Ilya strokes over his pulse. “But the last physical was fine and I have not—there has been no one since you have been back in the league.” 

Slowly, in patient increments, Shane faces him again. “Yeah?” 

“Yes. Is only you for me, now.” 

His hand comes up to press against the side of Ilya’s face, steady there for a moment until he pulls Ilya back down to his mouth. He kisses Ilya twice, shorter, sweeter, and then presses their foreheads together. 

“You told my parents you would give up hockey for us, if you had to,” he says, his voice thick. 

“Da,” Ilya confirms. 

He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to have to do that. I want us to have everything we want. And I don’t know if it’s even possible but I want—I want to try. Together.”

Against his jaw, Ilya smiles. “Okay.” 

Their mouths slant toward each other again, magnets, gravity, as the desperation from earlier finds its way back in. 

“Ilya,” he breathes. “I want you.”

“You have me,” Ilya tells him. 

They fumble for the lube and out of their boxers, sharing air as Ilya remembers and remembers and remembers. The flex of Shane’s thighs around him, the arch of his back, the places he’s most sensitive when Ilya’s fingers work him open. 

He holds Shane’s legs open and pushes inside, their collective groans like the first full breath Ilya has taken since the last time he was here, since he had this. 

Since they’d made Emi, he realizes. 

“I missed you,” Shane says, and asks him to move. 

Helpless as always when it comes to him, Ilya presses forward and obeys. 

+

Afterward, with no condom to dispose of and both of them too clingy to go for a shower yet, Ilya lies with his head on Shane’s chest, Shane’s fingers sifting idly through his hair. 

Some things have changed. Little behaviors. Shane doesn’t flinch at certain touches anymore, moves a little differently, takes up space just a touch more confidently than he had before. But he’s still a paradox, still flushes when Ilya calls him nice things, still begs so prettily, still needs just as fiercely as Ilya remembers. As fiercely as he does for Shane in return. Ilya traces over the line of his bicep with his finger, presses his mouth to salty skin on his chest. 

“You’re so good to me,” Shane mentions. 

Ilya makes a noise. “You are not hard to be good to.” 

“No, you’re just—even with all the time in between, you remember things. Where it’s okay to touch, what to say. Even if things are different now, you just. You just know.” 

“These are not hard things, Shane.” Ilya tilts his cheek against his chest, looks up at him. “I am lucky to know them. I remember.” 

Shane smiles at him, but the longer Ilya looks the more it wobbles. His lashes are wet when Ilya sits up, his cheek warm against Ilya’s palm when he reaches out to wipe the tears with his thumb. 

“Lyubimiy moy,” he murmurs, “what is wrong?” 

He lifts a shoulder. “Since Emi, I’ve just—I’ve been more aware of some things. Things in me, too, that maybe I didn’t notice as much before her. And I spend so much time feeling like I have to explain why she does certain things or needs things to be a specific way and answering so many questions, and I just—“ his mouth pulls up at one corner again, shaking his head. “You’ve never been like that. You ask if you’re unsure, and I tell you, and that’s it. You’re not confused, or irritated, or just tolerating it. It's just nice, is all.” 

Finally, he looks Ilya in the eye. 

“I just really fucking missed you,” he admits, hoarse and honest. 

It had been a lot too, earlier, when he’d said it. But now, when they’re not so desperate for each other and everything is glowing and Ilya feels maybe safer than he ever has before, it’s too much in the best possible way. 

He turns his face into Shane’s chest and takes a breath. The next one comes out hitching. 

“Hey,” Shane soothes, slipping a hand into his hair. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset.” 

Ilya lifts his head, shakes it once, faces his trembling chin toward Shane’s. 

“I just…” he rasps, helpless. “I love you.” 

Shane’s hand freezes, and Ilya worries for a moment that he’s asked for too much too quickly. But then he melts against him again, dropping his forehead to Ilya’s with a thick laugh of his own. 

“Fuck,” he says. “I love you too. So much.” 

It takes them a while to make it to the shower. Ilya says it all out loud this time: I love you I love you I love you. 

+ 

The second day is a little more of a challenge. Emi wakes early and is unhappy; with the early hour, with the blankets, with her clothes, with the sunlight and the breakfast Shane makes. Ilya trails a couple of steps behind, waiting for opportunities to be helpful without making it worse. 

Shane says it’s because of the change in location, being in a new bed with new scenery and a new landscape to navigate. He’d raised her here for the first months of her life and they visit in the summers, but she had been small, of course, and even if it’s a familiar place, he says sometimes the shift between one house to another is difficult, especially after the excitement of the day before. 

Ilya goes shirtless, because she does not like the material of that either. Touch is okay today, in fact, she very clearly searches for it, but it has to be very specific and can change often. They have not gotten many words out of her since she’d woken up, and Ilya has to have Shane translate many of her non-verbal needs when he can’t parse them quick enough to avoid making her more upset. 

In the afternoon, she naps across his chest, small fingers spread out against his throat where she’d been listening to him talk. For a little while, he and Shane sleep too, slumped into a heap but careful not to jostle her in the process. 

By dinnertime she’s calmer and communicating with them a bit more, but when the food comes, their progress declines. It ends with Shane begging her to eat, Emi crying and making a mess which only seems to irritate her even more, and Ilya looking frantically between them, trying to come up with a way to fix when he knows there probably isn’t one. He is no stranger to having to go through, not around. All he has to do is not block the road. 

They decide against bathtime, opting to do it in the morning instead. Ilya cleans the food off of her cheeks with a damp cloth while Shane scrubs it off of the dining room floor, his chest tight as she cries quietly, all of her energy burned with the effort. 

She wants Shane to stay with her at bedtime, so Ilya kisses them both and leaves the hall light on, and he stays up waiting in the bedroom, listening to the low rumble of Shane’s voice through the monitor until it eventually fades. 

“Sleep, Ilya,” he hears crackle through it minutes later. “We’re okay.” 

Against the burn of tears, Ilya closes his eyes and pulls the sheet up over himself. On Shane’s side, he leaves the lamp on. 

+

Hours later, he blinks at the clock on the nightstand, and there’s a warm body pressed against him, lips at his shoulder, fingers stroking dazedly back and forth across his wrist. 

Ilya hums, turning slightly so he can look at Shane. “You are still awake?” 

He nods. “Yeah. Sorry. Did I wake you?” 

“Mm, no.” Ilya works a hand under Shane's head, rubs at the back of his neck. Shane tilts his face toward him. 

“You did good today.” 

“I had no idea what I was doing,” Ilya admits.

Shane gives a sleepy, amused huff. “It’s been three years and honestly I still don’t either.” 

Ilya waits for a while, until the tension in his shoulders doesn’t seem so ready to snap, and then asks. 

“Tell me what is wrong?” 

Sliding down off his elbow, Shane settles his face against Ilya’s chest, and Ilya touches a thumb to the bags underneath his eyes, the downward tug of his mouth. 

“I just worry about her,” he whispers shakily, exhausted. “I can’t say that to anybody else.” 

Ilya smooths out a wrinkle in his brow. “Why do you worry?” 

“She’s—God. I didn’t even know at first how much I would want her the way I do now. I didn’t know anything. How happy I would be to have her. And I couldn’t—I wouldn’t ever want her any differently. She’s perfect.” 

“She is,” Ilya agrees. 

“And she’s so fucking smart. But socially, she’s not—she’s not hitting a lot of the milestones they think she should at this age. And sometimes I think, alright, well. Is that because she’s like me, or is it because my fear keeps her so sheltered that she can’t build them?” 

“Shane,” he says. 

“No, listen, I—I get so fucking paranoid, Ilya,” he confesses like a secret, words rushing together now. “Not only because I care about her and I don’t want her to get hurt but because it’s—we’re still in a world where I had to hide myself my entire life just to play fucking hockey,” he spits, and it’s the first time Ilya’s ever heard him say it that way. “We’re still in a world where no one can know that we’re together. That we—that we made her. Because they wouldn’t fucking get it. And it’s one thing, for us to hear that. To know what it means. It’s another if she’d—I don’t want her to grow up hearing that stuff. Believing it.” 

It would be very easy for Ilya to feel the opposite. Since the moment he’s had Emi in his life he’s wished, in so many ways, that they could have something normal. For the first time in a long time hockey has felt stifling again instead of freeing, the constant reminder of his profession, his reputation, and his livelihood solidifying the fact that, regardless of Shane, it would not be smart to expose her to that kind of attention. Ilya has spent a lot of time wishing things could be different. Wishing that he could show her off, talk about her, have photos, take her outside and hold her hand without worrying so much. If he could, he’d thought, he would go into the middle of the street, lift her above his head and exclaim just how much of his life she has suddenly taken up; how loudly he would like his love for her to be. 

He has not had to sit with this the way that Shane has, though. Has not been forced to consider the deeper, more intimidating parts of what it would mean if everyone knew. There are parts of it that, even if they continue like this, as a family, Ilya still won’t know completely how it feels for him. But he can be here. He can listen. 

“The thought of her growing up in that world,” Shane whispers. “It fucking kills me, Ilya. But I can’t keep her a secret forever either. I won’t.” 

Just because Ilya doesn’t worry for the exact same things doesn’t mean he hasn’t had the time to worry about others. Several months—closer to a year, almost, now—is both a lot of time and not very much time at all. The time he’s been able to spend with her over the phone less, and in person is even less than that. And there is so much to learn, so many things he wants to know. She is a person just like he and Shane are, with just as many quirks and idiosyncrasies, just as many behaviors that Ilya has not come to fully understand yet. 

He does not tell Shane what he worries for most of all, because there is no use in it yet. But sometimes, though he’s learning that her outward quietness and occasionally blank expressions do not necessarily match her inside feelings, Ilya’s mind drifts toward something else. Toward the pieces of himself he recognizes in her amongst the ones of Shane; his own blank stare, the tug of his apathetic frown, the meticulous tracking of noises and surroundings to better assess where a threat might lie. 

He has always been most afraid of becoming his father, both in mind and in body. But Ilya is scared, terrified, sometimes, on the nights that he lets himself think about it, that Emi will end up like him. 

But these are things they get to carry together now. Shane had said he can’t talk about it with anyone else. Ilya can be that for him. Can, maybe someday soon, confess his own fears too. 

“Maybe we change it, then,” he says. 

Shane sniffs. “How?” 

“We will come up with a plan together. Like you said.” 

He shudders around an exhale, and Ilya feels like he’s done at least one thing right today. He turns his face up into Ilya’s neck, breath warm against his collarbone. 

“I had this idea,” he admits quietly. “When I was gone, when I was here, taking care of her, I had a lot of time to think. At first it was all hypothetical, but now… I think, even if we can’t change the whole world, maybe we could make hers better. Kinder.” He raises his head, looks between Ilya’s eyes and his mouth with something so fragile Ilya is afraid of breaking it. “Maybe ours, too.” 

“Tell me.” 

Shane talks, and Ilya listens. 

+

By the halfway point of their first week, they’ve solidified enough of a routine that things go much more smoothly. 

It’s a good balance. He and Shane have time together in the early morning before Emi wakes up, the afternoon when she naps, and at night after she goes to sleep. They make use of the fancy home gym, relax with midday television or one of Shane’s books, and they’ve had sex twice more since the first time, eager to soak up as much of each other as possible, but not so desperate anymore that they can’t take their time. 

All of the in betweens are about Emi. The FaceTime calls and weekend visits, sometimes even only hours, had been enough to familiarize her with him, and Shane’s accident had confirmed that she thought of him as papochka even if she seldom says it aloud. But if there’s anything Ilya has learned on this trip it’s that time makes a difference, that the more he solidifies himself into her patterns and routines, the more she feels comfortable opening up to him. 

She talks more, sometimes babbling about random trails of thought that have he and Shane passing fond looks over the top of her head while she’s distracted. Other times she’ll repeat a word or a phrase she’s heard somewhere with perfect pronunciation and effortless wit, and Shane will just look at him with wide eyes and lift a shoulder while Ilya croons about how smart she is. 

She has just almost mastered ya tebya lyublyu. Shane tells him it’s from watching his mouth and mimicking the noises and shapes, but Ilya thinks that much is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter to him how she knows it, only that she does. 

He makes her laugh, which makes him laugh, which makes her laugh even harder. He wants her to smile so much and so often that she gets lines in her cheeks the way he and Shane have, so that even when she’s upset she has a reminder. 

They make use of the camera in the foyer, collecting enough photos to probably have an entire small album for this trip alone. The next lunch with Shane’s parents goes much easier, no meltdowns or interrogations, and when they leave, David swaps out the memory card on the camera for another so they can fill that one up, too. 

Yesterday they’d spent nearly the whole day outside but today they’re in the living room, Ilya sprawled on the rug with Emi to keep her distracted while Shane finishes cleaning up from lunch. 

He’s on his back, one hand propped behind his head and the other holding Emi’s ankle as she sits on his stomach and watches the television, running the ear of her stuffed toy through her fingers in her lap. 

“Hey,” Shane says as he crosses into the living room. 

Ilya rolls his head backward to look up at him. “Hey.”

“I’ve been thinking. I know it’s too risky right now to make it, like, official-official, but. I want her to have your last name, too. If you want, I mean.” 

“Yes,” Ilya agrees immediately. “Yes. I want.” 

He turns his attention back to Emi then, shifting her to his lap as he sits up and leans against the couch. 

“What do you think of this, lapochka?” he asks. “Moya Emiko Rozanova-Hollander.” 

She smiles at him in a way that probably means she doesn’t understand but can see that he’s happy, and Ilya will take it. 

“Hollander goes first,” Shane says flatly. 

Ilya scoffs. “You give me privileges and then you take them away.” 

With a roll of his eyes, Shane drops onto the couch behind him and flicks him in the back of the neck. “H comes before R alphabetically. It’s the way you’re supposed to do it.” 

“Unfair,” Ilya grumbles. Emi pokes him in the cheek, and he pretends to chomp on her finger. She is not amused, but Ilya is. 

“How's this for unfair?” 

Shane drops a small gift bag on the rug beside his hip, and Ilya pulls Emi back into his chest so that he can hold it in front of them both and peer into the paper. He gives it a small shake. 

“What is this?” 

Previous bravado fading, Shane shrugs, a not-quite-smile on his lips. “Just… something. From us. Open it.” 

Carefully removing the paper, Ilya pulls open one side of the bag. It’s fabric, black and soft looking. A shirt, maybe. But when he reaches in to grab it, he realizes how small it is. 

He pulls it out and sets the bag aside, and the material billows out from his fist. His own name stares back at him in familiar, capitalized white letters, his number right underneath, only tiny compared to the one that he wears on the ice. When he turns it around, a Boston logo is there on the chest, just like his. 

“It’s like the one she has of mine,” Shane explains gently from behind him. “Specially made, with all the good fabrics and stuff. She can’t wear it out, obviously, but. She likes to sleep in mine. I thought she should have one of yours too.” 

As if realizing it’s for her, Emi reaches for it, and Ilya lets her bring it to her chest, rubbing her fingers over the material. When Ilya blinks, everything is blurry. 

“I love you,” Ilya says in Russian, then again in English. He reaches back to pull Shane in over the top of him, bends to kiss Emi’s head in his lap. “Both of you. Moya dusha. Moya radost’.” 

He wants a tattoo for them, he thinks suddenly. Something only he and them will understand. Something permanent. Unchanging. 

But he will think about it later, when Shane is not rubbing at his shoulders and Emi is not touching the tears on his cheeks with curious fingers. 

“Sad?” she asks. 

“No, malyshka.” Ilya turns and kisses her palm. “I am happy.” 

Ilya stills after the words leave his mouth, skin prickling with warmth. He means it, he realizes. 

He’s spent so much of the last decade convincing himself that he was not sad. But being happy, being happy like this—effortlessly, accidentally, on purpose—is different. Ilya can’t remember the last time he’d thought it and meant it. I am happy. 

“Ilya?” Shane asks softly. 

“I’m okay. I—” Ilya sniffs, wipes at his cheeks. It’s all useless when he looks down at Emi again, when he sees himself staring back. His lip trembles. “My mama would have loved her.” 

Bending a leg so he can sit directly behind him on the couch, Shane leans down and wraps an arm around his shoulders, and Emi follows suit and leans into his chest. Ilya holds them both, her stuffed animal and the jersey still rumpled between them, and tilts his head back to get to Shane’s mouth. 

“She would have loved you too.” 

Shane’s own eyes are wet when he smiles. “I wish we could have met her.” 

“Yes,” Ilya says, heart full nonetheless as he smiles back. “Me too.” 

+

They are nearing the last days the next time Emi has a hard time sleeping, and Ilya hears the monitor first. 

He turns down the volume a little as he slips from the bed, leaves Shane splayed on his stomach under the blanket where he’d fallen asleep only a couple of hours before, showered and satisfied against Ilya’s side. 

Emi isn’t upset when Ilya finds her, but she is restless. He has no idea how long she’s been struggling to sleep before he heard it on the monitor, only that his own long nights without rest are enough to make him frustrated too. He can sympathize. 

“Why are you awake, moya dochka?” he asks quietly, leaning over the side of her safety guards to pick her up. “You could not sleep?” 

She goes easily, her warm cheek rubbing against his chest as he sits down in the rocking chair in the corner. He quickly scans through the things he’s learned from Shane, checking for fever or sickness, if she’d had an accident or maybe a nightmare. But nothing seems urgent, the furrow of her brow annoyed but not upset. Ilya strokes over it with his thumb until it softens, her long lashes brushing her cheeks as she stares up at him. 

Uncurling her fist from her chest, she reaches up to his mouth and taps twice, already mouthing along. 

“Ya-tebya-lyublyu,” Ilya breaks down for her slowly, his chest achingly full. 

She repeats it back to him, almost perfectly now after having practiced with him so much in person. Ilya smiles wide, and she gives him a smaller one back, tired but pleased with the accomplishment. 

“You are so smart, sweetheart,” he tells her. “Your papa and I will teach you everything you should know. I promise. Even if we are still learning too.” 

She yawns, big, dark eyes closing, and tucks her fist underneath her chin again. “Okay, papochka.” 

Ilya stays for a long time, even after she’s fallen asleep. He memorizes each part of her face, different even now from when they’d met for the first time, sure to be different again the next. He rocks and rocks in the chair, counting her breaths, refusing to think about when he won’t get to have this under the same roof every night. 

“Baby,” the monitor crackles softly from beside her bed. “Come back to bed, please.”  

He smiles at the sound of Shane’s voice. He’s not sure he wouldn’t have spent the whole night here if he hadn’t been told otherwise. 

Standing slowly from the chair, Ilya walks back over to her bed and lays her back underneath the blankets, tucking them just the way she likes and slipping her toy in alongside her arm. He leans down to kiss her forehead and leaves the door half open when he slips out again on his way back to Shane. 

We have time, Ilya thinks, a determined set to it now. They have a plan. Soon, maybe in just a year or so, Ilya will be closer to them and things won’t feel so few and far between, and they can have this. They can have this and more. 

And one day, Ilya resolves to himself as he steps back into the bedroom, the world will know how he feels. How he burns even here in the dark, how he glows with it. 

“You okay?” Shane asks when he’s back under the sheets, fingers dancing along Ilya’s shoulder. 

Ilya nods. “Just thinking.” 

“Tell me?” 

Ilya smiles and starts talking. Shane falls asleep somewhere in the middle, the back of his knuckles against Ilya’s throat to feel the hum.