Rating:

Explicit

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

Additional Tags:

Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, Major Character Injury, POV Alternating, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Homophobic Language, Autistic Shane Hollander, ADHD Ilya Rozanov, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, A Mix of Book and TV canon, Xenophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Miscommunication, Childhood Trauma, Under-negotiated Kink, POV Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, Angst, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Dom/sub Play

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Alligator Bites Verse

Stats:

Published: 2025-12-14 Completed: 2026-03-15 Words: 72,072 Chapters: 9/9

Alligator Bites Never Heal

Summary

His outstretched glove hangs there, frozen, as the noise of the arena mutates into a ringing buzz. Then he’s moving, pushed away by Marlow, and then Boston’s goalie. There’s a flurry of movement, a trainer with a towel, more blood dripping onto the ice, and he just. Stands there. Staring.

Ilya is helped off the ice. Shane doesn’t even tap his stick.

Remember when Sidney Crosby caught a puck with his jaw? That doesn't happen to Shane. That happens to Ilya.

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

me reading heated rivalry: ilya would not be that literate.

They’re not even two minutes into the game when Ilya goes down in front of Montreal’s goal.

It happens so quickly that Shane initially thinks it’s a trip. He exhales a breathless laugh as he circles the net before coming to a stop in front of Ilya and the refs, a chirp about him being too light on his feet ready to go.

Then he sees the puddle of blood beneath Ilya’s face. He heaves and spits out a few teeth. He looks up at Shane.

His mouth and chin are covered in blood. Too much blood. Way more than blood than just a few broken teeth.

There are tears in his eyes.

His outstretched glove hangs there, frozen, as the noise of the arena mutates into a ringing buzz. Then he’s moving, pushed away by Marlow, and then Boston’s goalie. There’s a flurry of movement, a trainer with a towel, more blood dripping onto the ice, and he just. Stands there. Staring.

Ilya is helped off the ice. Shane doesn’t even tap his stick.

The image stays with him for the rest of the game. Ilya goes down over and over again in his mind and keeps playing through every shift, every intermission, every single second of a game that somehow seemed much longer than any other he’s played before.

It’s a small mercy, he thinks as he waits outside the visitor’s locker room, that the camera wasn’t on Ilya when it happened. That it only caught the turn of his head, his fall to the ice.

It did, however, show who was at fault.

“Where’s Rozanov?” He’s on his feet before the locker room door even closes behind Marlow. He shoves his hands in his pockets because if he didn’t, he might shove Marlow into a wall. The asshole couldn’t even deflect a puck correctly.

“Jesus Christ, the fuck?” Marlow has his hands up. “What the fuck do you want?”

“Is he okay? Did he go to MGH? Royal Vic? What did he—”

“Hollander. Hollander!”

Shane shuts his mouth and looks up at Marlow.

“Why,” Marlow says, his eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline, “the fuck do you care?”

Ah, shit.

It’s not unheard of for captains to visit guys injured badly by their teams. But this was Marlow’s fault. It had nothing to do with Shane’s team. Or Shane.

Except it had everything to do with Shane.

Fuck. Think.

“I do this whenever another captain gets injured here,” he says after a second. “Because. They. May not speak French.”

Marlow is still staring.

“So it could be hard to understand the doctors if they’re injured, uh. Here.” Shane finishes.

“You’re going to go to the hospital to translate?” Marlow finally asks. It doesn’t sound like an actual question.

“We have a…deal, also. An old joke. Between the top three in our draft class. If we got injured in the other’s city, you’d bring the guy. A…” Shane wracks his brain trying to think of something. “…Beer.”

“A beer. You’re going to bring a guy who just got out of surgery a beer.”

Surgery? Fuck. “Not, like. Tonight?”

Marlow shakes his head. “You know what? You both are freaks. He’s at General, I think. I don’t know if he’ll be out of surgery for a while, though.”

Shane nods. “Okay. Thanks.”

Marlow looks. Thoughtful, maybe. “Didn’t Korogyi fuck his knee up here last season?”

Oh, shit, he did. “Yeah, uh, he likes this weird beer. From Hungary. It took forever to find.”

“Sure.”

Okay. Shane needs this interaction to be over. “Right. Yeah, thanks. Again.”

He turns and starts walking down the long hallway back towards their locker room. When he looks behind him, Marlow is shaking his head and muttering something to himself.

Shane doesn’t sleep well that night, lying awake with his hands interlaced on his chest. He thinks about Ilya, whether he’s out of surgery or not. His chest aches at the thought and from a late, dirty hit from Marlow that could’ve taken him out just as easily as Ilya.

Maybe he gets a few hours. Maybe he doesn’t. He’s up at dawn. Sick of waiting and sick of himself, he forces himself into the gym and pushes himself way too hard.

Around 11 his impatience wins out. It has to be a reasonable enough time to go to the hospital.

He gets most of the way to MGH before he remembers last night. He groans and doubles back down Chem. de la Côtes-des-Neiges to the nearest dep and buys a can of beer. Just in case Marlow is there.

Paper bag in hand, he starts driving back up the hill, slowed to a crawl behind…a bus. Of course.

“Come on,” he mutters, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

The drive feels like an hour even though he knows it can’t be more than, like, ten minutes.

He’s given directions to Ilya’s room by the woman behind the visitor desk, who seems to be tripping over herself to help him.

He needs to be cool. He can’t sprint down the hallway like he wants to. So he plasters his stupid visitor sticker to the front of his shirt and forces himself to walk at an only slightly abnormal pace through the maze of hallways until he gets to the room Géraldine insisted on writing down on a scrap of paper.

He takes a deep breath and pushes the door open and—

“Holy shit,” he exhales, his heart sinking. “Ilya, fuck.”

Ilya eyes him from his bed. He doesn’t say anything. He can’t, his—his teeth are wired together, and the entire right side of his face is a bruise, angry purple and red fading into sickly green and yellow the further it stretches beyond his jaw.

Ilya tries to say—something. Whatever it was is lost to a groan and a wince.

“Don’t, shit, don’t—do anything.” Shane crosses the room to the side of Ilya’s bed. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t even know what to say. “Jesus fucking Christ, Ilya.”

Ilya rolls his eyes.

“What?”

He lifts his hand, the one without the IV, and points at Shane’s dick.

Shane’s brow furrows. He doesn’t understand. He opens his mouth to ask again when Ilya shakes his hand, still pointing.

He looks to his left and then fully turns around. Ah. There’s a whiteboard and marker next to a teddy bear wearing a Boston sweater.

He picks up the whiteboard and marker and hands them to Ilya. Ilya starts writing. After a few labored scribbles, he turns the whiteboard to Shane.

? Bag?

Shane looks down at the paper bag in his hand. “Oh. It’s, uh. Beer. For you, I guess. It’s a long story.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows. Like he’s not impressed by that answer.

“Okay, I made up a story because Marlow wouldn’t tell me where you were, so I said I was coming to help you translate what the doctors say, and he still wasn’t buying it, so I said that you, me, and fucking Gábor Korogyi made a deal during the draft that if one of us got injured in the other’s city we’d bring a beer to the hospital.”

Ilya exhales what could maybe be a laugh and starts writing again.

Stupid story, the board reads. Then below it, dr english.

Shane realizes that he’s never seen Ilya’s handwriting before. It’s big and blocky, and it doesn’t look like he does uppercase and lowercase letters, just…smaller uppercase ones.

He’s about to ask another question when a woman in scrubs enters the room and seems to pause at the sight of Shane. “Ah. Mr. Rozanov. I was just coming over to discuss your vitals, but I’ll come back.”

“No, no, I’ll go,” Shane says, dumb and out of place. He sets the bag down on the table beside Ilya and turns to leave when Ilya grabs his wrist with a grunting noise that could maybe be understood as stay.

“Oh.” Shane stops and looks at Ilya, his hazel eyes wide and desperate like they were last night. Then he looks back to the doctor.

“…Okay,” the doctor says. “Mr. Rozanov, lift your right hand if you’re okay with Mr. Uh. Hollander. Hearing about your health and care plan.”

He watches as the hand with Ilya’s IV lifts. Damn. That’s a good system.

“Okay then. Well, Mr. Hollander, I’m Melanie Dupuis, and I’m the attending maxillofacial surgeon on Mr. Rozanov’s care team.”

“Oh,” Shane says. He extends his hand, and she shakes it. “I don’t really know what all that means.”

Dr. Dupuis smiles. “It means I helped reconstruct Mr. Rozanov’s jaw.”

Ilya taps the whiteboard with his marker, and Shane looks down to see that he’s written ILYA and underlined it twice.

“Right, he wants me to call him Ilya,” Dr. Dupuis says. “Old habits. Anyway, Ilya, I came to say that your vitals are looking good. Your temperature did elevate slightly overnight, but it’s down again. Just to be safe, we’re going to start you on some antibiotics to get in front of any infection.”

“When will he be able to play again?” Shane asks. He probably shouldn’t interrupt, but apparently, it was the right question because Ilya nods.

“Ah, try not to nod so much. We want to allow your jaw as much time to heal without jostling anything.” Dr. Dupuis turns to Shane. “I’d say six to eight weeks, depending on how much additional oral surgery he wants to get done before returning to the ice.”

“Oral surgery?”

“The damage to Mr. Rozanov’s lower teeth is…extensive.” She gestures to her jaw. “The puck hit his mandible, fracturing at the body and symphysis, and many lower teeth were chipped as well, in addition to losing his lower right lateral and cuspid.”

He turns to Ilya, his eyes wide with disbelief. Ilya shrugs. Jesus Christ.

“This is why you’re not supposed to catch pucks with your mouth, Rozanov,” Shane says. He can’t think of anything else to say, but he’s sure that behind whatever nonchalance Ilya thinks he’s displaying, he’s just as freaked out as Shane feels.

He thinks he’s right because Ilya just shrugs, avoiding Shane’s eyes.

“I did mean to ask…” Dr. Dupuis says, and Shane turns back to face her, trying to school his face into something normal. “Ilya, do you have any family coming?”

Fuck.

Ilya makes an expression as if to say, go ahead, and Shane wonders when he became so good at reading expressions. He’s usually terrible at it.

“I don’t think he does,” Shane starts, his words careful. “His father passed away a few weeks ago.”

“Ah. A…partner, maybe?”

He can see the frustration written on Ilya’s face. He still won’t make eye contact.

“He has a girlfriend here,” Shane invents quickly. Didn’t Ilya once say that Marlow already thinks that? “Um. Jane, right?”

Ilya’s eyes move back towards Dr. Dupuis, and he nods.

Dr. Dupuis looks between them. Opens her mouth and then maybe decides against whatever she was going to say. “Well,” she says, bright and belated. “That could make things easier! If you could stay with Jane, you could continue your care here. Of course, it wouldn’t be too much trouble to transfer your care back to Boston, but you won’t be able to fly for at least a week, and by that time we could potentially start looking at dental reconstruction plans.”

“I can call Jane for you,” Shane says. “I’m sure she’ll be able to have you once she gets back from. Um. Halifax?”

“Great. Well, I believe your next dose of morphine should be pretty soon, so I’ll leave you, um. Two.” Dr. Dupuis smiles and shakes Shane’s hand again before leaving and shutting the door behind her.

Shane finds the seat behind him and slumps into it, rubbing his hands over his face. When he looks back at Ilya, a smile slides off his face with a wince.

“Stop smiling, idiot.”

Ilya taps at the board. Halfax?

“You’re missing an I in there. And if you have a girlfriend, why isn’t she here?” Shane crosses his arms. “I’d like to see you try to make all this shit up.”

Ilya tilts his head, like, fair point. At least, that’s what Shane’s going to go with. He doesn’t get to win arguments with Ilya very often.

Something dings on the chair beside him. Ilya’s phone. He holds it out for Ilya to take, but he starts writing instead.

Concosion

Then:

8114

Shane looks down at the lockscreen. It looks like a photo of Boston during their cup parade, except Ilya has zoomed in on a sign covered in pink and gold glitter that says THANK YOU MR. ILYA in a child’s handwriting next to a very inaccurate drawing of the cup.

It’s cute as fuck. Shane’s is just a picture of the lake at his cottage.

He types in the password and pulls up his texts. “I think it’s from Marlow,” he says. “Is his contact Daddy tongue emoji tongue emoji 7 dollar sign eggplant emoji?”

Ilya nods.

Shane shakes his head a little. “Uh, he says that if you’re up for visitors he can come by with the medical staff before they head to the airport.”

Ilya hesitates and then shakes his head.

“Okay, how would you write back no?”

Ilya stares at him and then writes.

No.

“Okay, well. I don’t know!” Shane carefully types it and then reads it twice to make sure he hasn’t accidentally written: this is Shane Hollander who has been sleeping with Ilya for years. No he’s not up for company right now. Instead of no.

He’s being stupid. He hits send, and before he locks the phone, he realizes that—

He could read every message in Ilya’s phone right now. He won’t, he wouldn’t, but that didn’t even seem to cross Ilya’s mind.

It’s probably just the morphine.

He should say something. It’s so quiet, quiet in a way things never are with Ilya. And, and of course, it’s quiet; his fucking mouth is wired shut. And what would Shane even say? That he was—

Ilya’s phone starts vibrating in his hand—a call from Jake - Med Staff.

“I think it’s someone from the med staff. Want me to…?”

Ilya shakes his head and starts writing.

Jake is back 12

Time??

Shane checks his watch. “11:45. I should go then, eh?”

Ilya almost looks—disappointed.

Shane stands, and before he can think better of it, he brushes a kiss against Ilya’s head. His curls don’t smell like they usually do. He smells. Sterile. Wrong.

“Have someone text Jane when she can come back to see you, okay?” he says. Ilya nods, his curls tickling Shane’s nose. He presses another kiss to his hair and turns to go.

Ilya grabs Shane’s hand. His eyes look. He looks.

“I’ll be back,” Shane says, squeezing Ilya’s hand gently. “I promise.”

He’s halfway down the hall when he hears something clatter to the ground.

It’s a hospital. It’s probably not—

He forces himself to keep walking.

—

He feels like an idiot when Jake stops in the doorway and then stoops to pick up the whiteboard and marker.

Now the whiteboard has two long cracks in the plastic. Ha ha, just like Ilya.

“I’ll…” Jake hands over the whiteboard and marker. “Ask the nurses if they have another one, I guess.”

“Are any of them in love with you yet?” Marly booms, too fucking loud as he pushes his way into the room. He stops at the sight of Ilya. He sees that glimpse of Marly he gets every eighteen months or so—the real, serious Marly. Then it looks like he forces a smile to his face. “Aw shit, not so pretty anymore, huh?”

Ilya wonders if it’s too late to pretend he’s asleep. He must be on some pretty fucking good drugs if his pain isn’t increasing. Marly is headache-inducing on the best of days.

“Christ, Marlow, you’re worse than my kindergartner. Did we or did we not talk about inside voices?” Jake says. “He’s concussed.”

Concussed and increasingly annoyed that, apparently, Marly can’t read.

Jake rounds his bed, probably to check Ilya’s swelling for the four hundredth time since Ilya woke up two hours ago, but he stops short.

“Is that a…can of beer?”

“Oh shit, so Hollander did come.” Marly’s across the room and picking up the beer can too quickly for Ilya’s tired eyes to track. He examines the label in the light. Like he’s a fucking appraiser of beer instead of a moron. “Ugh, Molson. The kid is, like, fucking in love with you or something, and he can’t even find you Sam Adams?”

Ilya fucking hates Sam Adams. He fucking hates beer.

Marly pops the tab and takes a swig.

He fucking hates Marly.

Marly wipes his mouth with his hand and says, “So, get this, last night? I’m ready to get the fuck out of dodge, and then all of a sudden, Hollander’s on me, wicked whiny and bitchy asking where you are, and I was like, Jesus, why’s he all up on my dick and yours?”

Isn’t Ilya’s next dose of morphine supposed to be here by now.

“Marly, what the actual hell are you talking about?”

“Shh, Doubting Jake, I’m spinning a tale. So then he makes up this story about giving you and that Korogyi kid beer if you get injured, and I’m like, sure, that’s a funny Valentine, but whatever. He’s all neurotic anyway.”

Ilya’s halfway through writing fuck off when he adds, deal real.

He turns the board around. He’s exhausted. He doesn’t want to write anymore. He sure as fuck doesn’t want Marly in here.

Jake must see that somewhere on Ilya’s face. Or he’s a mindreader because he says, “Marlow, the plane is going to leave without you. I said ten minutes. Time’s up, dude.”

“Alright, Christ, fine.” Marly puts the beer down, and he looks—sincere. Again.

Jesus Christ, here we fucking go.

“I did want to say, like, sorry,” Marly says, finally. “I know we wanted to get the cup, and now you’re like, fucking brace-faced and shit, and I know it was my fault. I mean. It was an accident, but it was still my fucking shot and—”

Ilya shakes his head and starts writing. He thrusts the board at Marly.

Is fucking fine. Sorry is weird on you. Stop pls.

Marly reads it. It takes forever because he’s a fucking idiot, but he finally nods. “You rest easy, Roz,” he says, handing the whiteboard back to Ilya. “I hope your Montreal girl gets here soon. You should get her a costume so she, like, looks extra hot nursing you better.”

Ilya flips Marly off, and he finally leaves with a wave, but Jake doesn’t go with him.

His brow furrows. He starts writing, this time in Russian. You’re not going with him?

He doesn’t know if the front office hired Jake because his parents immigrated from Georgia after the republic dissolved, but it’s always a relief when he doesn’t have to deal with fucking English when he’s injured.

Slowly, and with the weirdest fucking Georgian-Bostonian accent, Jake responds, «No, I’m staying with you until you can get on a plane.»

Fuck, he fucking forgot how much frowning hurts. He writes, the doctor said it could be a week or more. Are you staying all that time?

«God, your handwriting is terrible,» Jake says. «It’s a week. It’s fine.»

What about Maria? And your kid.

Jake squints at the board. «You’re really testing the limits of my literacy with your cursive.»

Ilya rolls his eyes and writes in big, blocky, obnoxious Cyrillic:

CAN YOU READ THIS YASHA?

MARIA. ANNA. REMEMBER THEM?

«I could smother you with a pillow right now, and nobody would know,» Jake says. «The team isn’t going to leave you alone to recover in Canada.»

He gets halfway through writing, I’m not, when he erases it and starts over. Starts writing My and erases that too. The tip of the marker is still hovering there when a nurse knocks on the door.

Her name is Kate, and she helped Ilya piss earlier, so they’re bonded for life now.

“I’m here to check on your next dose of morphine,” she says, and Jake nods, moving away from Ilya’s IV drip. Ilya can’t turn his head in that direction right now, so he just waits until Kate starts writing something on the board on the wall that lists Ilya’s medical team and dosage times.

“Okay, you should start feeling that in a couple of minutes. Do you need anything else?”

Yeah. To go back to yesterday morning and never get on the stupid flight here.

Ilya shakes his head. He doesn’t know if the morphine is hitting him, or he’s just exhausted, but everything’s starting to feel slow and sluggish and helpless.

Jake looms overhead. «What were you going to write?»

Ilya tries to say something, and it doesn’t even hurt when his jaw goes nowhere. His eyes close, and the last thing he hears is Jake sitting back down and saying, «Sleep. I’ll be here.»

He always has the weirdest fucking dreams when he’s on drugs. He’s a pretty lucid dreamer regardless, but this is another level. He’s in the showers at some hockey rink, and he can tell instantly that he’s younger. The scar on his hand from breaking a glass last summer isn’t there, and neither is the weird mole below his belly button that Svetlana’s always on him about getting checked.

And he’s—smaller. He can tell, somehow, that he’s not as bulky. There’s an ache that he remembers from being seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; an oppressive combination of growing pains, hunger pangs, and homesickness that he doesn’t miss.

He knows where he is. He doesn’t even have to look to his right to know that Shane is beside him, pretending not to look at him.

But it’s not nineteen-year-old Shane. It’s his—this Shane, the one that was at his bedside this morning, the one he stared up at from the ice, helpless and mute in his desperation.

This Shane is watching him. This Shane is stroking himself. This Shane knows.

Shane nods, his free hand gesturing to himself, then back to Ilya. Ilya doesn’t feel lucid anymore; he can’t be with the way he’s drawn toward Shane, helpless to resist.

They’re the same height now. Ilya hasn’t hit his second growth spurt. Shane has.

Shane presses his free hand against Ilya’s face. Pinches at the last of the roundness there that he’ll lose in the upcoming season. Then he slides that hand down Ilya’s neck, tracing his collarbone, the line of his trap, until his palm is heavy against his shoulder.

He pushes. Ilya goes.

From his knees, Shane looks like a god, smug and haloed in the fluorescent lights. Nothing about him is awkward or hesitant. Maybe this isn’t—this Shane. Maybe this is the Shane he’ll never see—Shane at thirty, maybe. At ease with himself and his sexuality and his desire.

Shane traces his cock over Ilya’s lips. His free hand tangles in Ilya’s wet hair.

The trace turns to a slap. The hand turns to a fist.

Ilya is burning with it, virginal and seconds away from shooting off at the barest hint of degradation, at what he’s never told Shane.

The glint in Shane’s eye changes from smug and settled to something sharper. «You’re useless,» Shane says in Russian. «Now you can’t even suck cock. That was all you were good for.»

The hand pulling his hair hurts, and tears prick in the corner of Ilya’s eyes. He hated this about himself at nineteen—that his emotions were always too close to the surface. He noses at Shane’s cock, tries to be good, tries to open his mouth, but he can’t. It’s wired shut.

«Useless,» Shane says again, and Ilya doesn’t know if it’s the shower water or precome or his tears on his cheeks, but he just wants to be good. He just wants to be good for—

«Ilya? Are you awake again?»

Ilya blinks awake, his eyes gritty and crusted with sleep. Jake is looking up from his phone, and the room is darker now, the sun almost fully set beyond the curtains. He doesn’t remember being awake before.

He fumbles around the thin hospital bedding, trying to see if he’s hard, or if he had a wet dream, to cover if he did.

In his periphery, Jake reaches for something, and then the whiteboard and marker appear in the corner of his eye. Ilya’s confused at its appearance, and then he realizes that Jake probably thought he was looking for it.

Bleary, he writes, time?

«Just after five,» Jake says.

Have you been sitting here the whole time?

«No, strangely, you sleeping isn’t that interesting. I got food and some work done. Called Maria.»

Right, that’s what they were talking about.

«And someone named Jane texted you.»

Ilya exhales and waves his hand.

Jake hesitates. «You’re not supposed to be looking at screens.»

Well, he sure as fuck isn’t letting Jake look at his texts with Shane. He writes, I’m not going to get less concussed from not looking at screens. Is there any actual evidence behind that?

«Boy, you’re a fucking novelist in Russian, aren’t you,» Jake says, squinting again. «Fine. Just a few minutes, though, I don’t want that nurse yelling at me. She’s little, but she looks scary as hell.»

Kate is scary. Ilya said he could piss on his own, and she threatened to reinsert his catheter if he didn’t let her help.

There are a few texts from Shane.

Jane:
Did you ask when you’ll get out

Jane:
Also, can you ask what your diet is going to look like?

Jane:
You’ll probably need to combat weight loss, so I should stock up on protein, right? Do you have a preferred

Ilya puts the phone down. It’s too much English, and his head is starting to ache. But there’s also nothing scandalous or incriminating, so he doesn’t lock the phone before he hands it back to Jake.

Jake looks surprised. «You want me to respond to her?»

Ilya nods. As Jake starts typing, Ilya looks down at the whiteboard. In the glint of the bedside lamp, he can see the grease marks of what he’s written today and erased. Just beside one of the cracks is the outline of what he wanted to tell Shane before he pussied out.

Three words. He’s such chickenshit.

«So, uh.» Jake clears his throat. «Things are serious with this girl?»

Ilya doesn’t react, wary as he watches Jake.

«It just—it seems like she expects that you’ll recuperate here in Montreal. With her.»

He could say no. Jake would wait here for a week. They’d transfer his care back to Boston. Dr. Dupuis said it wouldn’t be difficult.

He hesitates, then starts writing, I’m out for the playoffs.

«Yeah, but you don’t want to be around the guys? Our team at Mass Gen is great.»

Does it make him a bad captain if he says no?

The next few weeks are all West Coast trips. I can’t fly. Maybe it makes sense to stay here for the worst of it.

Then, he adds, you’re not a babysitter. You’ve got a family in Boston.

He erases where he wrote I don’t before turning the whiteboard back around. This is fucking exhausting.

Jake must sense his exhaustion again because he doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. «Look, I’m not going anywhere until you’re cleared to leave, so we don’t have to figure this out tonight. And they’re bringing you dinner.»

He wonders what dinner entails. He’s not enthusiastic about the idea.

But he doesn’t want to go back to sleep, either.

What he really wants is a cigarette. Jake’s just as bad as Shane about his smoking, though. And he doesn’t even know how that would work with half of his jaw wired shut.

I’m not hungry, he writes eventually. I do need to piss. Where’s Kate?

Jake’s watching him. Too closely. Ilya itches under the focus. He hates when people are careful with him. Ever since he was twelve people have been careful with him.

Maybe Jake relents at the way Ilya closes his fist around the marker. Or how it doesn’t match the exhaustion he’s sure is clear as day in his eyes.

«Alright, I’ll hit the call button,» Jake says.

Ilya closes his eyes and nods, and before anything else happens, he slips back into sleep.

Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone! My name is Zoe Flawlessassholes and Heated Rivalry is consuming me and I like making pretty boys hurt and talk about their feelings.

The title is from the song Alligator Bites Never Heal by Doechii. What a devastating song that she wrote directly about Hollanov! Any and every kudo, comment, bookmark, anything is cherished and adored, even if it's just an emoji. Thank you to Zoë for enthusiastically reading and encouraging this from the beginning, and Lena for answering all my Russian questions, Gail for following my fics across THREE fandoms now, Chelsea for being so enthusiastic about this, and everyone who reblogged the initial snippet, which truly kept me churning on this.

Come hang out with me on Tumblr and reblog the fic art! See you soon for Chapter 2. :)

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Shane likes routine. Shane likes rules. Shane likes regimens. Ilya has always been a disruptor to that. He delighted in that at first, to challenge Perfect Shane Hollander on and off the ice. Now, he hates it. His disruptions. He feels so protective of Shane, and he’s endlessly aware of when he causes Shane discomfort, like his behavior is kindling for an inevitable end.

But fuck, Shane can be so fucking annoying.

Ilya is in love with a man who is physically incapable of being chill, and he failed to consider how that would only get worse if he suddenly moved in with a major injury.

Chapter Notes

New tags! Also, this chapter contains a very brief mention of past suicidal thoughts, nothing that isn't seen in the series, but take care if needed.

It’s a constant thing, now. Thinking of Ilya.

Driving to morning skate. Taping his stick. Taping his socks. Untaping his socks. Driving home from morning skate.

He’s not used to this. Having Ilya in the same city but still impossible to see is—odd. Before, Ilya was a stray thought that occurred in the odd, interstitial moments. Like the cross atop Mont Royal, a constant, but one that fades into the horizon after enough time.

It’s not like that anymore. And, if Shane were brave enough—or perhaps drunk enough—to admit it to himself, it hadn’t been that way for a long time.

It takes three days, but eventually, Ilya is able to leave the hospital. His texts are few and far between and mostly from that guy from his medical team. It just seemed like a bad idea to go back to the hospital. He does want to pick Ilya up, but Ilya says it’s fine.

It must be a coincidence that the guy driving his Uber is wearing a Boston hoodie.

It. It can’t be a coincidence, but whatever spiral looms after that realization is lost to seeing Ilya’s bruised face and frown as he gets out of the car. Shane was planning to buzz Ilya in, but seeing how slow Ilya is actually moving spurs him into action. It’s a cold morning, and Shane’s already wearing a toque, but he still puts on the black, logoless ballcap and sunglasses that he keeps by the door for deliveries and quick errands. He jogs down the stairs and prays that the Uber driver doesn’t recognize him as he holds the door open for Ilya.

He tries to take Ilya’s bag from him, but Ilya bats his hand away and grits out, “Naw. Bwowken.”

…And Shane doesn’t understand what that means, exactly, but the look on Ilya’s face says back off, so he does. Once the door is closed behind them, he says, “Do you, like. Need help getting upstairs?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “No,” he starts. The rest of it is garbled and then stops with a groan that’s either frustration or pain or maybe both. He drops his bags to the floor and pulls out his phone.

He types. Shane waits. Then, Shane’s phone vibrates.

jaw is broke not legs

also u look spy

“Fuck off, I’m just trying to be helpful.”

Ilya types something else out.

sexy spy

Shane doesn’t deign to respond. But he does make Ilya give him the plastic hospital bag of papers and make Ilya walk up the stairs first.

It’s only after the door of his apartment has shut behind him, and Ilya has collapsed on his couch, that he starts to panic about what the fuck he’s actually doing.

And, like. What the fuck is he actually doing. He’s in season. Montreal is looking at a deep playoff run, if not—

And he’s. What? Playing nurse for his fuck buddy? Maybe Shane was the one who got hit on the ice, and this is. Like. A highly realistic dream while he’s in a coma. Do they put people in comas for concussions?

As he watches Ilya make himself comfortable, stretching out across the leather, his mind drifts back to that night in Ilya’s house, and then, inevitably, Tampa, and Ilya asking, When will I have you for as long as I want?

His phone vibrates.

r u broken

Then,

sick?

Shane’s brow furrows, and he looks over at Ilya, making eye contact when Ilya looks up. “What?”

u not sucking my dick yet

new record yes?

“Fuck off,” he says. “Could you even get hard with all the meds you’re on?”

Ilya seems to consider this.

maybe side affect is horny

“I’ve taken codeine before, and it’s definitely not.”

maybe is for me

“Sure.” Shane rolls his eyes and fishes the home care papers out of the plastic hospital bag. He scans over it. “It says here that being an asshole is also a side effect, but sadly, that’s incurable.”

Ilya grins and then immediately groans. He picks his phone off his chest.

dont make me laugh

should not be hard

“You’re such an asshole,” Shane mutters. “Did you ask your staff those questions about calorie intake?” That Jake guy had been vague every time Shane asked.

yes hollander i ask ur boring questions

Shane waits, staring at Ilya. He waves the papers a little. “And?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. Shane knows that look. He can so clearly imagine him saying Oh my god, Hollander, you are so boring because that’s his Hollander, you are so boring look.

jake say 1 protein 1 fat shake every 2 hour

“One protein shake and one…whole fat milkshake?”

“Yeah.”

Well, at least that came through clearly.

“Alright.” Shane puts Ilya’s bag and paper down on the island and walks over to the section of the counter that his mom calls Shane’s Smoothie Shop. “Did he specify whey protein? ‘Cause I’ve got pea protein too.”

“Yeah.”

Shane turns. “That’s not an answer.”

Ilya’s already typing.

way

not pussy

“Having a diversified protein intake doesn’t make you a—whatever. Just. Sit.” Shane throws a banana and some mixed berries into the blender, and then adds 42 grams of protein, which is the optimal amount for his weight, but Ilya weighs a little bit more, and he’ll need to combat weight loss, so Shane bumps it up to 50 grams, even though that will probably make it all gritty. Shane hates when protein shakes are gritty.

He reaches into his fridge and grabs the last two bottles of Yakult. He’ll have to run out and get some more. He didn’t buy his place solely for its proximity to his favorite Japanese market, but that was definitely a factor.

Once both bottles are emptied, Shane starts blending. He hates the noise, always has, but he makes sure that everything is really, really well blended and all the powder dissolves.

Everything goes into a glass with a bendy straw from the pack that he got yesterday, just in case his usual metal ones weren’t good for Ilya’s teeth.

He feels—stupid. As he brings over the smoothie. He hands it to Ilya and just stands there.

Ilya stares at him. Then he looks at the couch like. Shane should get over himself and sit down.

So Shane gets over himself and sits down.

Ilya takes a sip and hums.

“Good?”

Ilya nods. He goes to set the cup down on the coffee table, but Shane lurches toward Ilya with one hand out to stop him. “Woah, wait, waitwaitwait—”

Ilya stops. He looks at Shane like he already knows what he’s going to say, and like he’s already disappointed in the response.

“Can you just. Like. Use a coaster?”

Ilya rolls his eyes, but he does. Shane will take his wins where he can get them.

“So…”

Ilya stares at him.

“I thought we could, uh. Make a game plan for the next few weeks. We’re in a string of home games, Minnesota, Buffalo, Detroit, down to Ottawa and back, and then we head to Boston, and then Carolina, and then Tampa before we’re back here for Pittsburgh. So I’ll be home a lot, except for, you know, practice and morning skate and workouts, and I think we have a visit at Children’s somewhere in there, and—”

His phone vibrates, interrupting him.

hollander u are having panic attack

Shane smiles at that. He glances over to Ilya to see that he’s almost smiling, too. He keeps reading.

breathe

i am big boy i dont need babysit

or whole schedule of games u lose

“Hey,” Shane protests, looking back at Ilya. “If we beat Tampa, then your first round is against Detroit. That’s not exactly a difficult series.”

Ilya seems to consider this and then nods.

“And I’m not sure you can be considered a big boy. Can you make anything that isn’t a tuna melt?”

Ilya leans backward, and the hand that isn’t holding his phone palms his crotch. The back of Shane’s neck prickles. Ilya types something out one-handed and then winks.

u like big boy

“Okay. Well.” Shane doesn’t even know why Ilya is flirting if it’s clearly not going to lead to anything. “What do the next few weeks look like for you?”

Ilya exhales and starts typing. And then keeps typing. A couple of minutes later, a whole paragraph of text arrives.

dr say 3 week b4 wires off jake say 2 so we see but hope 2 so can talk better eat soft food and do surgery on teeth but say also i have to get зуб мудрости removed don’t know english but in back of mouth smart tooth?

Smart tooth? “Oh, uh, wisdom teeth?”

yes ok is same as russian

There’s a swell of fondness pressing against his sternum. “You still have your wisdom teeth?”

Ilya nods and texts back, only two not issue until now.

“Yeesh.” Shane grimaces. “It’s like my mom says, when it rains, it pours.”

Ilya snorts. He doesn’t look so animated anymore, and Shane realizes that between this and his dad…

God.

“You should, um. Drink your smoothie,” Shane says, because he has no idea how to follow that thought further. “Do you have to check in with your…trainer? Jake?”

Ilya nods and puts down the smoothie after a long sip.

yes by video he will say when he get back to boston

“Oh? When did he leave?”

Ilya’s forehead wrinkles.

when he took me here

“…That was Jake? The Uber driver?”

Ilya squints. “Yeah?”

That quiet comfort that Shane was beginning to settle into dissipates as a familiar, emetic anxiety rises in its place. He turns away from Ilya, staring at the blank television. “You brought someone from your team to my apartment.”

His phone vibrates.

tecnicly he brought me

“This isn’t funny,” Shane snaps, standing. Ilya’s staring at him. He looks exhausted, and Shane should just stop, but he can’t push the spiral away this time, panic perspiring on the palms of his neck and under his arms because. He was. He was right to be paranoid, he was right to notice, and. And. “What did you tell him? Did he see me? I can’t believe you, that, that you would do this, that you would—”

He cuts himself off when Ilya stands, too close to Shane. So close that he takes a step back, but Ilya steps forward so they’re eye-to-eye once more. “Stop,” he grits out, and then exhales, short and sharp out of his nostrils. Like that night in Vegas, with angry smoke curling out of his lungs and into the air.

Shane stops.

Ilya looks down at his phone. His fingers might, like, break the screen with the force of his typing. Then he looks up and jabs his forefinger at Shane’s phone hanging in the hand by his side.

It vibrates. Shane doesn’t want to read whatever Ilya has sent, but Ilya won’t stop looking at him with that frustrated, determined glare, the same one he sees across the dot right before the puck drops. Except without the. Light. The joy.

Ilya’s fingers wrap around his wrist, and he tugs upward. Shane—nods. And starts to read.

how long we have been doing this 7 yrs? have i told 1 person no and u still think i just random tell jake thanks for ride to shane hollander stupid apartment we been fucking since 19 congrats u lucky person to tell today u think this??

Shane’s heart sinks as a second message comes through.

u didnt even come outside so how he see he thinks this is stupid canadian gf house but no i tell him this is stupid shane hollander house he going to kiss my bobo make it all better

Ilya’s fingers leave Shane’s wrist for his chin, his thumb resting in the cleft. A gentle nudge upward.

Shane looks up. The determination is still there, still written in the set of his shoulders, but there’s a softness in his eyes. In the way he’s looking at Shane.

Shane feels like shit.

He tries to clear the embarrassment lodged in his throat. “You’re right,” he says, and he thinks that he might—

Ilya pockets his phone so he can press his palm to the back of Shane’s head, to pull him the last few centimeters forward so Shane can rest his forehead on Ilya’s shoulder.

Shane doesn’t know how to say it. That he was scared. That he still is.

Maybe he’ll find the words before Ilya goes back to Boston in a few weeks, but Shane’s almost as unfamiliar with optimism as he is with everything else about—this. About them.

But.

“You know, last night I was going to ask you about my cottage. But now I don’t have to,” Shane tries to joke to the two moles beneath Ilya’s ear.

Ilya wanted time, and now he has it.

Ilya exhales, and nods.

—

Three days into playing house, Jake clears Ilya to look at screens and to try talking a little more.

Ilya clears himself for a long-overdue cigarette.

Shane’s penthouse has roof access, though Ilya doubts that he ever comes up here. It’s a shame. There’s a lovely view of the city, and he’s enjoying watching the sun set behind that hill they call a mountain. It’s not easy to smoke with half of his mouth wired shut, but Ilya will bravely rise to the occasion.

Ilya looked at a place in Boston with roof access. It wasn’t a major sell. He’s an asshole, not an idiot. At a certain altitude, his darker, uncontrollable thoughts begin to creep in. So he avoids them. He and fate aren’t friends, and he doesn’t enjoy flirting with her. He always assumed they would meet someday, inevitably, between the cigarettes and cars and whoring his body out professionally and personally.

Shane probably has no issue with rooftops.

Ilya snuffs his cigarette and pockets the butt. The sun has fully set, and he’s bored. Ilya does stupid shit when he’s bored. Fate tends to circle overhead.

Even after smoking, his stomach aches with hunger. He feels like he’s a kid again, starving after practice, wanting to eat everything in sight. He finds a protein shake and a straw and brings them over to the couch so he can watch Shane lose to Minnesota.

There are other things he could be doing. He’s never been this injured before. It’s a lot more work than he anticipated. This morning, he suffered through drafting a statement with Dana, their legitimately terrifying PR director, and Kelly, their much less scary but still intimidating social media director. He understands that he’s the captain, he understands that he’s a business—and more than that, he’s a franchise—but he’ll never understand why he needs a minimum of three people to make an Instagram post about why he’s still in Montreal.

Ilya didn’t even contribute much to the final statement, which basically just said that his recovery was too complicated to transfer care at this time, and that he won’t be speaking to the press because it’s pretty hard to understand a guy with a Russian accent and a swollen tongue that was apparently punctured by his fucking teeth.

Shane will be pleased; he didn’t even suggest they add a line about how they’re fucking.

He puts his protein shake down on the coffee table. Sits back against the couch. Turns on the game.

He sighs and sits back up to move his shake to a coaster.

He isn’t being fair.

He suspects—and has suspected for a long time—that Shane’s particularities are probably more than just particularities, in the same way he’s suspected that his impulse control is a little more than just nonexistent. Shane likes routine. Shane likes rules. Shane likes regimens. Ilya has always been a disruptor to that. He delighted in that at first, to challenge Perfect Shane Hollander on and off the ice.

Now, he hates it. His disruptions. He feels so protective of Shane, and he’s endlessly aware of when he causes Shane discomfort. Like his behavior is kindling for an inevitable end.

But fuck, Shane can be so fucking annoying.

Ilya is in love with a man who is physically incapable of being chill, and he failed to consider how that would only get worse if he suddenly moved in with a major injury.

Ilya fears for Shane’s future and whatever partner or kids are forced to endure his incessant, insufferable, inescapable mothering.

He doesn’t need Shane to time his pain meds. He doesn’t need Shane to create endless batches of healthy smoothies instead of the milkshakes he had been looking forward to. He doesn’t need Shane to sleep in the fucking guest room because he’s afraid he’ll accidentally nudge Ilya’s jaw during the night.

He’s been thinking of that night in Tampa. How Shane just—

But he can’t ask for that. He can’t even speak coherently.

And what the fuck did Shane mean about the cottage?

When he was younger, he was sure that he understood everything about Shane. One look in a Regina parking lot and he knew it all: that Shane liked men, that he was boring and polite and blandly handsome in a way that would make his life and career a breeze, that he also knew the unrelenting pressure of a demanding nation.

That he was lonely.

All of that was true. Is true, he thinks. But Shane has only become more complicated, more confusing the longer Ilya has known him.

The game returns from intermission. Shane loses the face-off and loses momentum in the neutral zone. Before he can dump the puck, he’s picked off by Vanya Zimensky, who Ilya knows from the national team; a dinosaur of a defenseman, old and slow and probably retiring at the end of the season if he isn’t put on waivers before that. When Shane comes back on the ice for his next shift, he’s seemingly gotten over that and buries a wicked snipe, but Pike was offsides on the pass, and the refs are going to call it in—

Yep. There it is.

He can see the frustration Shane’s carrying as he skates back to the bench, watching the replay on the Jumbotron as he chews on his mouthguard. Right before they cut to a commercial, he can see Shane say something to Pike. He looks very understanding and patient and captainly.

Ilya would be chewing his line out if they took a dumbass penalty like that.

He wanders over to the kitchen to take his next pain pill with the last few sips of his protein shake. He rinses it out and puts it in the correct recycling bin, unlike two days ago when he put it in with the paper recycling, and Shane got all snippy.

His stomach grumbles. He misses real food. He would give up his entire hockey career and every car in his collection for a McGriddle right now, and he isn’t even exaggerating.

He pisses for the five hundredth time that day, and by the time he wanders back to the couch, Shane has scored. From the replay, it looks like it was despite his team trying their hardest to fuck him over. He’s magnificent to watch, always has been, but even more so when he’s frustrated and playing like this is game seven with the cup on the line and not a regular season game against a non-conference opponent.

He falls asleep during the second intermission. He has that same dream that he had in the hospital, and he wakes up with a start as Shane closes the door.

He looks upset. Ilya glances at the scores crawling across the bottom of the screen, which has switched to Dallas and Calgary. Minnesota won 3-2 in a shootout. Both of Montreal’s goals came from Shane.

No wonder he’s upset.

Shane has yet to say anything. He walks over to the sink to wash his hands and retrieve a Gatorade from the fridge.

He fidgets with the label, picking at it. Finally, he asks, “Can you turn that off?”

Ilya looks back at the television. “I’m watching.”

“You were sleeping.”

“Not anymore.” He leans back against the couch. “Rough night?”

“Fuck you.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows.

Shane puts the Gatorade down. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m not Pike.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

Ilya tilts his head toward the game. “You’re not my captain.”

“Look, can you just.” Shane crosses his arms. “Turn the fucking TV off. I’m exhausted, and I just played a game.”

That’s not the reason. Ilya knows picking a fight when he sees it in the mirror, and it pisses him off that Shane wants to do this now. “Lost.”

“What?”

“You lost a game.”

“Oh fuck off,” Shane says. “I actually had to work tonight, so can you cut me some slack if I want to come home and relax and not listen to fucking Hockey Night in Canada?”

“You want to relax?” Ilya asks. “Me too.” He picks a pillow up from the couch and throws it on the floor at his feet.

It gets the reaction he wanted, which is Shane storming over from the kitchen. “Can you not treat my stuff like shit?”

Ilya grabs Shane before he can pick the pillow up off the ground. “No. That’s for you.”

That seems to stop Shane in his tracks. “What?”

“I make you a deal,” Ilya says. “You kneel, I hit mute. Okay?”

Shane stares down at Ilya, his cheeks flushed. He nods once, jerked and almost reluctant. He lowers himself to one knee and then the next, stiff and straight-backed like he’s in a pew.

Ilya’s still holding his wrist. Ever so gently he pulls and Shane ragdolls into his lap, his head resting on Ilya’s thigh. He cards a hand through Shane’s hair, and he makes the same soft sound he made in Boston on Ilya’s couch.

A man did this for him once, maybe five or so summers ago. He still thinks about it. Does so most times Shane gets on his knees for him.

Ilya mutes the television. He sets the remote next to him. He starts to untie his joggers, pulling them halfway down his thighs. Shane looks up, disgruntled at the jostling.

Sometimes, Ilya loves him so much he thinks he might be sick with some brain-eating parasite, incurable and deadly.

“You keep me warm, okay?” Ilya presses his thumb against Shane’s lower lip, and he nods again, his eyes already half-lidded.

And then Shane opens his mouth.

He feeds Shane his soft cock, resting on his tongue. Shane hums around him, his mouth infernal and perfect, and closes his eyes, his head coming to rest against Ilya’s thigh once more.

Ilya won’t get hard. He never does on painkillers. But it’s—comfortable. A kindness. He hopes it’s the same for Shane.

He thinks so. Shane looks blissful. His face is still flushed, but his breath has evened into almost meditative inhales and exhales; he can feel each one against the hair on his thighs and at the base of his dick.

He remembers from that night how his world narrowed. How his thoughts slowed, for once meandering instead of racing until he wasn’t thinking at all. How his tenuous grasp on passing time disappeared altogether.

He didn’t expect that to happen from this position, too.

Ilya is not a person who has small emotions. He knows this. There are very few times he feels content. Walking around the pond at the very edge of his property. Alone on the ice after practice, breaking in new skates. When his pass connected to Shane so effortlessly on that terrible Florida ice.

Now.

His world narrows to Shane, the same way it does when he’s staring at him before the puck drops, the way it does when he pushes the first finger in to open him, the way it did when Shane let him ramble to him in Russian, his world narrowing to the sound of Shane’s quiet breathing even as they were a world apart.

All he can feel is the warmth of Shane’s mouth. All he can hear are those quiet, soft noises. All he can see is the peace on his face and his freckles and his long eyelashes. All he can do is continue to trace patterns through his hair.

As much as he wants to stay in this moment forever, Shane has games to play this week. He can’t keep him on his knees too long, even with a pillow underneath him.

It can’t be more than twenty minutes because the Dallas/Calgary game hasn’t gone to intermission yet. He rubs his thumb against the grain of Shane’s eyebrow. His voice soft, he says, “Shane?”

Shane nods, his eyes still closed.

“You carry team on your back and still get hat trick,” Ilya says. He wishes he didn’t sound so fucking garbled. He searches his brain for that word they used to put in every article about him and Shane. “You are, are generational talent, not fucking miracle worker.”

Shane lets Ilya’s cock fall from his lips. “It wasn’t a hat trick.”

“Three goals is hat trick. Even if Pike fucks up.”

Shane finally opens his eyes, looking up at Ilya through his eyelashes. “That was…nice.”

He huffs. “Yes.”

Shane lies down on the floor, stretching his back before settling with his hands on his stomach. “It’s weird, I’m not even hard.”

“Is not about that. Is…meditating.”

“I know, but.” Shane meets his eyes. “I think that’s my first time doing something sexual and not coming.”

Ilya would tease him for that, except he realizes that it’s the same for him.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so…” Shane purses his lips. “Much. These past few days.”

Ilya can’t say you aren’t. Instead, he says, “I think you are allowed this. With me.”

That earns him a soft smile, and Shane closes his eyes once more.

“You cannot sleep on the floor, Hollander. We cannot both be fucked up.”

Shane curls onto his right side and kisses his ankle, just above where the hair tapers off. “You’re right. Help me up?”

Ilya makes a show of grumbling about him being the injured one and doing all the work, but when they’re both standing, Ilya brushes a careful kiss to Shane’s lips with the side of his mouth that isn’t bruised and swollen.

“Will you sleep with me tonight?” Ilya asks. “It’s weird, me in your bed and you not.”

“Only if we put a pillow between us,” he says. Ilya opens his mouth to protest, but Shane preempts it by saying, “That’s what it says to do on the home care instructions.”

“Fine,” he relents.

They get ready for bed together, and Shane reads for a bit while Ilya dicks around on his phone. He takes his final pill of the night, and he drowsily watches Shane put his book down, resting his glasses on top of it. He kisses Ilya’s forehead and erects his pillow barrier, and Ilya drifts off.

The dream has changed slightly. He’s on his knees for Shane, his jaw is still wired shut, and Shane looms over him with a pair of wire cutters, the ones he was sent home with from the hospital. «Suck my dick, Ilya,» he says in Russian.

That’s odd. He usually calls him Rozanov, and with the proper pronunciation, too.

«Ilya,» Shane repeats, and then, in English, he says, “Jesus Christ, Ilya, wake up.”

He opens his eyes. Shane has his hand on Ilya’s injured cheek, and when he pulls it away, it’s covered in blood.

Ilya sits up, the sheets pooling around his waist, and he tries to see if Shane is hurt, if Shane is bleeding. He twists behind him, and he sees—

It’s not Shane’s hand. It’s his pillow. He tries to say Shane’s name, but all he can taste is copper, the copper flooding his mouth.

Shane is standing now, his eyes wide and frantic, as he says something, but Ilya can’t hear over the dizzying sound of his heartbeat racing in his ears. Everything narrows again, to the spots popping across his vision and the slick, sickly coating of metallic acid in his throat.

Shane stops and takes his hand, squeezing tightly as his lips move around Ilya’s name over and over again.

Ilya leans over the bed’s edge and vomits, watching helpless and disgusted as whatever blood and bile can escape his wired jaw drips onto Shane’s plush, carpeted floor.

Chapter End Notes

Wow, the response to this has been IN CRE DI BLE so far. I don't think I've ever written a second chapter faster, but all your comments and bookmarks and kudos were like a Super Mario star boost. Each one makes me glow and levitate.

You'll notice that the chapter count has increased from three to six. I... don't know who I was kidding when I put three.

Truly, the greatest surprise and gift is seeing my beloved past beta, Marivan, appear in the comments of this, and she agreed to beta this as well, and I'm so excited. She makes everything I write a million times better. If you're a fan of The Old Guard, PLEASE go read her incredible fics. If you're not, watch the old guard, and then go read them.

Thank you again to Zoë for hyping me up and Lena for answering Russian questions. Come hang out with me on Tumblr, and I'll be back soon for chapter three! <3

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

As the thudding in his ears ebbs, the sound of Ilya’s voice flows in. He’s. He’s repeating, shh, Shane, shh, over and over again.

“I’m sorry,” Ilya says, his voice low and hurt in Shane’s ear. Maybe he’s been saying it. Shane shakes his head against the black fabric. Now that his pulse is slowing, the mortification sets in. He itches to run off, to cover his ears, to hide.

“I just. I need to know,” he says, eventually. “I hate not knowing.”

Chapter Notes

Post op jaw surgery complications

Oral surgery complications

Blood puke mouth surgery

Normal bleeding after jaw surgery

Mouth bleeding excessively sur—

His googling is interrupted by a text message from J.J. asking where he is. A knot of dread tangles in his stomach as Shane wracks his brain. Did Coach call a practice after the game, and he somehow missed it? Was the schedule changed? Was morning skate made mandatory? Was—

Shane thunks his head against the steering wheel and groans. They were supposed to go on a run around the circuit on Île Notre-Dame this morning. Shit.

He texts back, still feeling that Wersall hit, meant to text. Inevitably, it’ll lead to more questions from J.J., or even worse, J.J. will get Hayden involved, but he can just tell both of them to fuck off.

He swipes back to his search results when he sees the door of Montreal Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Group open. It’s been almost two hours. Ilya looks exhausted. His toque is pulled low on his head, and his mouth is tucked into the collar of his coat. He looks so, so exhausted.

He fumbles with his phone in his rush to unlock the car. There’s a gust of cold air as Ilya opens the door.

“Are you—”

“Not here,” Ilya says, closing the door. He—his wires are gone.

“Ilya,” Shane tries again, but he’s already shaking his head.

“We—” Ilya starts, and then looks out the window. “Just. Not here.”

Shane wants to protest, but it’s almost nine in the morning. The only two cars in the parking lot are his and Dr. Dupuis’, and they shouldn’t stick around for the arrival of everyone else starting their workday.

His knuckles still ache from the drive over, paling as he grips the steering wheel, pulling through the empty parking lot and into the long snaking queue of commuters clogging the streets. Sherbrooke is at a total standstill, and neither he nor Ilya talks as they crawl toward Westmount. The only sound in the car is the quiet thrum of heat coming from the vents, and the occasional disruption of an angry horn or his turn signal.

They finally get back to Shane’s apartment, and Ilya drags his feet from the car to the door up the stairs until he collapses onto the couch, and Shane shuts and locks the door behind them.

“Ilya.”

“Hollander, I spend two hours being yelled at by doctor and Jake,” Ilya says. He’s still lisping, like he did when his mouth was wired shut. Shane will never admit that he’s missed hearing Ilya talk, even when he’s being an asshole.

Shane clears his throat, pushing that away. “Yelling at you?”

“I say I don’t want to talk, so I don’t want to talk.”

Ilya didn’t say that, actually, and Shane opens his mouth to push further when Ilya finally meets his eyes, then darts away just as quick. Shane watches him make—make a fucking meal out of reaching for the remote and turning on the TV. This—Ilya ignoring him—it’s. Purposeful. It’s the same way Ilya brushed him off in Sochi, in Vegas, in. In.

Fuck this.

Shane’s at the couch before he can think or calm down or breathe. He rips the remote out of Ilya’s hand and turns the TV off.

Ilya’s eyes narrow.

“I’m not fucking doing. Doing—” Shane waves the remote in Ilya’s direction. “This!”

Ilya is watching him now, but he looks cold. Detached. “What is this.”

“You’re—this is unbelievable. I woke up this morning to my bed covered in blood. I think I deserve an explanation.”

“So you only care about bed?” Ilya scoffs. Now he’s looking. Through Shane. Like Shane isn’t there. Like Shane doesn’t matter. Like Shane doesn’t care.

“Ilya, come on.” This is infuriating. And embarrassing. He shouldn’t have to—he thought they were past this. He thought Ilya wanted to be past this. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Do I?”

A dread begins to grow, somewhere between his sternum and spine, simultaneously with a red, heated desperation crawling up the back of his neck. He wants this to stop. Wants Ilya to stop. Wants the tears pricking in the corner of his eyes to stop. It’s like. It’s like he’s eight years old, and he’s trying to insist to his mom that the boys weren’t being mean at practice.

It. It doesn’t work.

Whatever he was going to say dies with a hoarse, helpless croak. He covers both his eyes with his hands, trying to scrub away the welling in his eyes, a dam seconds away from breaking. He’s never hated Ilya, not really, but this—

Maybe this is what hating Ilya feels like.

“Do. Do you know how, how terrifying it was? This morning?” he asks, still hidden behind his hands, his voice harsh and raw and pathetic in his own ears. “I mean, why are—what. What are we even doing here?”

He can hear Ilya swear under his breath, and every inch of Shane’s being cringes. This is. It. It’s happening. The moment he always knew would come, when Ilya—

There’s a hand on his shoulder. “Shane.”

“I thought you were dying,” he says, still hidden, “I thought—”

He’s pulled into Ilya’s arms, and Shane chokes on the words in his throat, his breathing stuttering into his stupid fucking Boston hoodie. Ilya holds him, one hand in his hair, the other pressed between his scapulae, his thumb soothing back and forth.

He’s. He’s supposed to be. Better than—than this. He’s supposed to have more control.

And yet, right now, Shane feels just as small, just as humiliated, as he did the day he sat with his shoulders hunched to his ears, trying to shrink as his kindergarten teacher told his mom and dad, You know, it’s odd, with Shane. When he gets overwhelmed, he shuts down. We’d like him to work with our counselor during lunchtime to learn how to…

He tries to slow the panic constricting his lungs, tries to let more than the shallow gasps. In, out, in, out. Like. Like he’s gasping after suicides at practice. Like he’s regulating his breath at the end of a double shift. In, out, in, out. Get a hold of yourself. Get yourself under control.

As the thudding in his ears ebbs, the sound of Ilya’s voice flows in. He’s. He’s repeating, shh, Shane, shh, over and over again.

“I’m sorry,” Ilya says, his voice low and hurt in Shane’s ear. Maybe he’s been saying it. Shane shakes his head against the black fabric. Now that his pulse is slowing, the mortification sets in. He itches to run off, to cover his ears, to hide.

“I just. I need to know,” he says, eventually. “I hate not knowing.”

Another swipe of Ilya’s thumb, now at the nape of his neck. “I know.”

“I tried to Google it, but…” he trails off.

Ilya pulls back, his eyes searching Shane’s. They seem to have softened. The back of his knuckle brushes against the corner of his eye. “You Google?”

“Not successfully.” He’s a smart guy, but his eyes swam reading words like malocclusion and osteomy, and then he saw things like hemorrhage and necrosis and— “It kind of freaked me out,” he says, quieter.

Ilya looks. Considering, maybe. There’s a softness in his eyes now, one that wasn’t there before. “I think you will be mad at me. Doctor, Jake, they already mad enough.”

“Why?” His eyes search Ilya’s. His bruising is turning yellow and green, save for the dark circles underneath his eyes, a ghost of purple from the injury or the exhaustion, or maybe both. “It’s not like it’s your fault.”

Ilya sighs, his arms falling away from Shane as he sits down on the couch. He wipes his mouth and then scratches his temple. He starts to say something, once, twice, and then presses his lips together. The right side is still so mottled and swollen, and it looks like it’s creeping toward his unmarred left.

Shane doesn’t know how to move forward, except to quietly ask, “Was it your fault?”

Ilya wipes his palms over his joggers and looks toward the big window. “Maybe a little bit.” His voice is quiet, like he doesn’t want Shane to hear, but Shane does hear, and he still doesn’t understand.

He sits, putting himself between Ilya and the window. “I won’t get mad,” he says after a minute. He tries to think back to his googling, if there was anything about, like, intentionally ripping out stitches, or not taking meds correctly, or—

“Doctor say some of it my fault, Jake say all of it my fault, but Jake is jackass,” Ilya says. He’s become very interested in a loose thread on his shirt. “Is…mouth. Gums? Is not strong enough to hold stitch. The wound opened again. Because of smoking.”

“Okay…” Shane says slowly, turning that over in his head. “But when was the last time you smoked? I mean, it’s got to be, like, over a week ago at this point.”

“Yes,” Ilya says, then he tilts his head from side to side like he’s debating something. Then he shakes his head a little. “Except.”

Shane stares at him. He knows the answer already; there’s no point in asking, but he has to know. “Except?”

“Last night I smoke, and, wait, wait—” Ilya reaches for him, his fingers falling away from Shane’s arm as he stands, storming across the apartment.

“It was one,” Ilya says from behind him. “And doctor say it’s maybe more from before, and—”

Shane has reached the fridge. He yanks Ilya’s home care instructions from the fridge, sending his St. Viateur and Oshawa Generals magnets clattering to the floor. He turns it over and reads, “DO NOT SMOKE for a minimum of four weeks following surgery. Toxic chemicals and heat in cigarettes increase the likelihood of surgical site infection and are harmful to healing wounds. Smoking following jaw surgery can result in catastrophic complications, including the loss of teeth and large bone and soft tissue segments of the jaw. These complications are permanent and frequently irreparable—I mean, what the actual fuck, Rozanov? Do you want to die?”

He lowers the paper to see Ilya rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’m actually asking,” Shane says. If he thought he hated Ilya before, it pales in comparison to the anger and frustration he feels now. “Do you want to die?”

Ilya mutters something in Russian, and then, low and dark, he says, “Not something to joke about.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Shane says, throwing the paper, which is stupid and unsatisfying, and it feels dumb to watch it float to the floor between him and Ilya. “You think I’m joking? Do you think this is fun? Easy?”

“Easy?” Ilya scoffs. “All morning, I sit, have metal taken out, have my mouth cauterized, say no wires in case this happen again, in case I need cauterized again.” He says it carefully but forcefully, like he memorized the pronunciation. “But no, is easy. No food still, no skate, no nothing, but yes, fun. Easy. You, you are so—” Ilya throws a hand up as he trails off in Russian, turning his back to Shane until he sits down on the couch, heavy and obstinate.

So he just gets to walk away. Frustration flares in his stomach. “Well, it’s not easy for me.”

“No?” Ilya jabs his hand at the TV. “You have hockey, you have season, you have team. Even I take care of you last night.”

He punctuates that with another jab to the floor. Shane’s ears, cheeks, neck, stomach all burn. “Do you know how hard it is to—” He cuts himself off before he says love someone who doesn’t love himself. He can’t say that, and the realization that he almost did, that it’s how he. What he.

It’s sobering, and all at once, Shane can feel the fight drain out of him, freezing there as he watches Ilya fume, as a memory drifts to the surface. His mom and dad were arguing, no, fighting, while Shane sat in the back seat of their beat-up car. It was the same thing they always fought about; if he was too young to make the jump to Bantam, if it was too soon for him to meet with the scouts and agents who kept sending letters and emails. And then it turned into his dad saying his mom was pushing too hard, and then it turned into money. His parents didn’t fight much, but when they did, it was with teeth and fury. His mom always said it was because they loved each other and loved him. And Shane believed—believes—her.

That’s how he feels. About Ilya. But this isn’t a dark car on the highway after a tournament in Bancroft or Laval or Kingston. This isn’t him lying awake, listening to an argument in the kitchen echo up to his room. And he doesn’t know if Ilya. If Ilya—

He runs his hands over his head, his cheeks puffing before he blows out, a balloon full of air deflating. Ilya’s staring straight ahead, turning his phone over and over in his hand.

If Ilya can’t love himself, Shane. Shane has to. Enough for both of them. He doesn’t know how it got to this, how it got to him caring so much about Ilya Rozanov, but the alternative of not caring, of just letting this go, letting Ilya go, seems so unimaginable that it would be like cutting his legs off.

No, he’d still be able to play sledge hockey if that happened. It would be like cutting his legs off and his arms off. And maybe his balls, too.

Shane’s not dragging his feet as he makes his way to the couch, but he’s not exactly sprinting into the fray. He sits, and he knocks his knee into Ilya’s. After a moment, Ilya sighs and knocks back.

“I—I need to say this once,” Shane starts after another minute of quiet. “’Cause I have to. And then I won’t say it again.”

He watches Ilya, how his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and nods once, curt.

“I will never fucking forgive you if you get lung cancer and die,” Shane says. “Or if you fuck yourself up permanently because of this shit.”

He studies Ilya’s face, waiting for the reaction, the inevitable explosion, bracing for the incoming check.

Ilya nods once more. His eyes cast downward, and he takes Shane’s hand, lacing their fingers together. His thumb brushes across the soft underside of Shane’s wrist.

“I know, sweetheart,” he says. “I know.”

“Okay, well.” A sickly sense of relief washes over him, churning in his stomach, water and oil with everything else, his anger and anxiety and adrenaline, a burning reflux he tries to swallow down. Shane turns their intertwined hands over, tracing a scar on Ilya’s hand that extends from the divot between his fore and middle finger to a mole that sits just off-center. The rest of his sentence doesn’t exist; he doesn’t know where they go from here, except.

Shane kisses the mole, his eyes not leaving Ilya’s. Ilya nods, his free hand cupping Shane’s cheek, brushing against the modicum of stubble he’s accumulated.

His thumb replaces his hand, tracing the line of Shane’s jaw until it rests on his lower lip. Shane takes it into his mouth, and Ilya strokes the length of his tongue until he pulls his thumb free, only to fuck two fingers into his mouth in its place. His stomach turns again, and the embarrassment remains, but it’s accompanied by a spark of heat, the stir of his dick.

“Let me take care of you,” Ilya says into the quiet, shrinking space between them. Shane nods, and Ilya’s fingers slip from his mouth. He stands, tugging Shane upward. He doesn’t drop his hand, either, until—

“We can’t do it in there,” Shane says, looking from the closed bedroom door to Ilya. “The cleaners can’t come for the carpet until tomorrow.”

Ilya winces. “Is bad?”

“It’s not, like, good.” Shane isn’t great with puke. He hasn’t been since he was little.

“Ah.” Ilya places his hands where Shane’s hips get a bit more fleshy and squeezes. “I get lube then. You go lay in other bed.”

Shane’s pulse quickens. He’s not sure what Ilya is planning. He was expecting a handjob, maybe, since Ilya’s still on painkillers. Ilya pats his hips, pushing a little, and Shane goes, walking down the hall to the guest room, a little smaller than the main bedroom.

He wonders if he should get undressed. He doesn’t know what Ilya’s planning, but he also doesn’t like getting into bed in his outside clothes. He strips down to his underwear and sits on the edge of the bed, his hands folded in his lap.

Ilya comes into the room, carrying something wrapped in a towel. He stops in the doorway. “What is it with you and all the fucking pillows.”

“It’s less than in my room,” Shane protests, his cheeks heating. “They’re—it’s good hospitality.”

Ilya looks too fucking amused. Shane reaches behind him and lobs a pillow at him, carefully aiming below the belt. To avoid his jaw.

“Hey, hey.” Ilya places the towel down on the ottoman chest at the end of the bed. “Yes, good idea, throw shit at the guy with broken jaw.”

“I was aiming for your balls.”

“Wow, so you admit it?” The corners of Ilya’s mouth twitch. “We call CBC? Tell everyone, Shane Hollander re-injures Ilya Rozanov, still can’t catch up in scoring race. Full report tonight at five.”

Shane picks up another pillow, holding it above his head and trying to look menacing. “So that’s your career after retirement? Broadcaster?”

Ilya rounds the bed, pushing at Shane’s chest until he lies down. He hands running up the sides of Shane’s torso until they reach his wrists, encircling and pinning them to the bed.

Shane licks his lips and tries not to give in to the shiver that follows the same path Ilya’s hands took. Ilya squeezes his right hand, and Shane releases the pillow.

His nose traces the curve of Shane’s ear. His breath is hot and humid when he says, “Get on your front and put stupid pillow under your hips.”

He misses the weight of Ilya’s body the second he pulls away, but he’s already more than halfway hard, so he follows instructions. He’s still curious about what Ilya has in mind. Almost ten years and he’s been more than satisfied by getting fucked or blowing each other or handjobs. They haven’t had time together to explore much…more.

But that’s what Ilya said he wanted. Time.

Ilya’s big hands land on Shane’s ass, one on each cheek. He gropes, and he doesn’t have to imagine what Ilya looks like; he knows the exact shameless, smug, hungry look that’s definitely on his face.

Ilya tugs on Shane’s underwear, and he lifts his hips to let Ilya pull them down to his knees, but not all the way off. Ilya’s hands return, warm against his naked skin. He traces one finger up the left cheek to his lower back, and then back down until it rests just above the cleft of his ass.

“I see lonely dildo next to the lube,” Ilya says, easy and conversational like he’s talking about the weather.

“Yeah?” Shane pushes backward into Ilya’s touch. “You gonna fuck me with it?”

“No,” Ilya says. “I think you too familiar. Old friends. Spend all this time together without me, I get jealous.”

Shane’s brow wrinkles. He lifts up, looking over his shoulder. “So what—”

He cuts off when he sees the long string of drool hanging from Ilya’s parted lips. The home care instructions said no spitting, and. And he isn’t—he spreads Shane’s ass cheeks and drools onto his hole.

“Jesus Christ, Rozanov,” Shane groans. His face must be on fire, and when Ilya presses his hand between Shane’s shoulders, he relishes in the cool, dark space created by resting his forehead on his crossed arms.

“You know,” Ilya continues, as if he didn’t just drool all over Shane’s asshole, “you not the only one with toys.”

Ilya’s finger rubs the drool over the tight furl of his asshole. He misses it a few seconds later, but Ilya returns, lube-slick as he fucks two fingers into Shane.

“Fuck,” Shane mutters. It’s dark in his little cavern, but his eyes still shut. The stretch isn’t unwelcome, but he’s surprised Ilya went straight to two. He breathes into it, an exhale turning into a groan when Ilya crooks his fingers against Shane’s prostate. He fucks in and out a few times, and then removes his fingers, much to Shane’s consternation.

They’re replaced by something small and made of silicone rests against his hole. “Ilya?”

“You are not the only one with toys,” Ilya repeats, and he pushes the tip in. It’s—small, and Shane’s about to chirp Ilya about not being willing to take anything bigger when he pushes in again, his hole flaring and closing around, around a bead.

The third bead is even bigger, and the first two press into his prostate, and Shane gasps because—it’s so good.

“You, you take this on road trips?” Shane says. He’s impressed by how coherent he manages to sound.

“Sure,” Ilya says, pulling the third bead out and fucking it back in. “All in one, don’t need to bring different sizes.”

“Oh,” Shane says, breathless as Ilya keeps fucking the third one in and out, just toying with his rim. He has a million questions he wants to ask, like how long Ilya’s been taking anal beads on road trips, or if he has other toys at home, but they all leave his mind when Ilya pushes in a fourth, a chain reaction leading to the third right against his prostate. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “Feel good?”

It feels—maddening. He’s no stranger to prostate stimulation, but he can’t think of anything like this—like Ilya massaging him.

He nods, feverish, turning his head to try and get some air, his whole body a live wire. “Yeah, fuck, Ilya.”

Curls brush against his skin, and Shane’s eyes slit open to see Ilya rest his forehead against his ass, watching Shane with a hunger in his eyes as they rake down his body, his free hand kneading where Shane’s ass curves into his thigh.

Shane can see the ends of Ilya’s hair clumped and coiling, damp with sweat at his temples and behind his ear. His mouth is still parted, his jaw dropped open so Shane can see his chipped and missing teeth.

Shane isn’t proud of how that goes straight to his dick, but he’s a hockey player, and right now, Ilya looks like every bruiser he’s ever fantasized about, cornering him in the locker room and asking Shane to thank him for protecting him on the ice.

Fuck, this pillow underneath him is so ruined.

“You need more?” Ilya asks, and Shane grips the bedding, his eyes closing again as he nods, frenetic, the moans falling from his mouth turning into embarrassing uh, uh, uhs, whining like he’s Ilya’s personal porn. He tries to open his legs wider, to give Ilya more room, but his underwear is still around his knees, and he realizes Ilya intended this, to keep him. Restrained.

“You take care of me,” Ilya continues, “so I take care of you.”

“Yes, yeah,” Shane says. The pressure against his prostate is unrelenting, and Ilya is relentless. “Please, Ilya, I, I do, I need—”

Ilya stops thrusting the toy, and Shane makes a pathetic, bereft noise. He’s about to open his eyes when Ilya gets his hands under Shane’s hip flexors, pulling him backward until he’s on his hands and knees, his cock off the pillow and swinging, heavy and leaking.

“One more,” Ilya says, resuming his thrusts. “I think you come from this, yes? Hands free?”

“Fuck, maybe.” Shane sucks in a breath, hissing between his teeth as Ilya rests the fifth bead against his hole. It feels big. Shane wants it so bad.

“Maybe?” Ilya teases. “Shane Hollander, so competitive, so dedicated, and you say maybe?”

Shane pushes his ass back further, trying to spur Ilya into action. Panting, he stammers, “Fuck, fuck off, can you just, just give it—”

He cuts off with a loud, shameless moan, the kind he’s only ever made in bed with Ilya, as Ilya pushes the fifth bead in so his hole is stretched around the broadest part. He does that again, and again, and fuck, he’s getting Shane so fucking good, everything feels so fucking good that he’s out of his mind with it, writhing and rocking into the overwhelming waves, the salt of sweat and tears on his lips and tongue. He sucks his thumb into his mouth, desperate to have something, something to ground him because he’s positive that any second he’s going to—

Ilya finally, finally fucks the last bead in, and Shane comes in long, shuddering ropes all over the pillow, his hole fluttering around the base of the toy as his orgasm milked out of him. His panting turns to shaking sobs as he tries to catch his breath, as he tries to come down, the weight of Ilya and his pleasure and the morning and fucking everything engulfing him as he collapses into the bed, hiding his face in the cool, silky fabric of the pillow, a respite against his burning skin.

Distantly, he registers Ilya’s thumb smoothing over the valley of his lower back, whispering something hushed and soothing and lost to the ringing in Shane’s ears. He feels the gentle tug of the toy as Ilya removes it, groaning over every bead, with half a mind to tell Ilya to leave it, to keep him open. Maybe some time passes, maybe it doesn’t, Shane can’t tell as he drifts as the all-encompassing toomuchtoomuchnotenoughtoomuch mellows into a pleasant, golden fuzz.

There’s a gentle wipe of a damp washcloth between his ass, and then Ilya carefully adjusts Shane’s pliant body, malleable and ragdolled as his head comes to rest in Ilya’s lap, as Ilya traces one hand in a pattern over his pec, his trap, his collarbone; the other mussing the hair just behind his ear.

He blinks once, twice, as a blurry Ilya clears into a concerned Ilya, his hair haloed in the mid-morning light.

It takes a second to find his words, but Shane unsticks his tongue to ask, “What’s wrong?”

Ilya smiles, a half-hearted press of his mouth into a thin line. “Nothing, nothing.”

Shane hums. “‘M sorry you’re not hard. I’ll get you back, promise.” His eyes drift shut once more as he adds, “We have time.”

Ilya’s thumb pauses its sweeping, resting against Shane’s hairline. After a moment, it returns, now featherlight against his freckles.

“Yes,” Ilya says, finally. “Time.”

—

Every minute they spend together in the quiet anonymity of this apartment is like a minute that Ilya is borrowing from an impossible future.

He’s testing his luck, being here, being with Shane, and only pain can come from it. But if the bone-crush is inevitable, why not revel in the freefall?

Ilya is, perhaps, enjoying this too much, this domesticity he didn’t realize he craved until Shane was scrambling off his couch in Boston. He’s a glutton for it now, soaking in Shane when he’s home from practice or games, laughing and teasing Shane as he tries borscht for the first time, watching Shane obsess over perfecting mashed potatoes for Ilya to consume by the sack.

Tonight is—nothing. Shane had a morning skate, and Ilya Skyped with Jake; they fooled around a little now that Ilya’s begun to taper off the codeine. And now, he’s in Shane’s bed, half-heartedly criticizing his tie options as Shane packs for his road trip, the Boston/Chicago game playing on TV.

“Which one?” Shane returns from his closet, holding two hideous paisley…scraps of fabric. Ilya’s not even going to deign to call them ties.

“Both,” Ilya says, relishing in the way Shane’s face lights up. He forces the smile off his face to say, “Burn both. Is good, that we do this now. What do you call it, spring cleaning?”

Shane’s eyes narrow, and he balls the ties up, throwing them at Ilya. “Fuck you.”

Ilya grins, delighted. He holds both ties up. “No, yes, this is a better use for them, I fuck you, and keep you nice and still, hm?”

Shane flushes a delightful shade of scarlet that matches the Montreal t-shirt he’s wearing. “You’re not funny.”

“And I’m not joking.”

Shane rolls his eyes. He pulls the ties from Ilya’s hands. “I have good taste, you know,” he says as he disappears into the closet.

“Sure.” Ilya swipes away from the game of solitaire he’s been playing on his phone to a text from Svetlana that says, $500 that Ushakov gets pulled for the rest of the season.

He snorts and texts back, You forget that I have eyes and a brain. Shulya is 5,000 years old.

Shane returns, a stack of neatly folded undershirts in hand. “What’s so funny?”

“Svetlana thinks I’m stupid,” he says, turning his phone off and tossing it to the side. He nods at the TV, now showing a replay of Ushakov floundering in goal, and Connie scoring against him. “Shulya is gonna get pulled in the third period, she says he won’t be back in net for the rest of the season. I say no shit.”

“Oh.” Shane turns his attention to the TV. “Shulya is Alex? I thought Alex was Sasha?”

“Mm, it is,” Ilya says, scratching his ear. “Shulya is not so common, but already there were like fifty other Sashas in national program. And he’s goalie, goalies are freaks.”

Shane huffs out a laugh. He’s rummaging in his bag, probably making sure each sock is perfectly organized. Ilya turns his attention back to the game. Tambo dekes one of Chicago’s goons and sends a clean pass up the ice to Handsy.

“Connie’s gonna score, watch,” he says, nodding his chin toward the screen. Sure enough, Handsy sends a no-look pass straight to Connie’s tape, and Connie scores five-hole before Shulya can slam his glove down.

“Christ, Connors and Johansson have been on a tear,” Shane says. “Maybe you should get injured more often.”

“Ha ha,” Ilya says. He reaches behind himself to toss one of Shane’s stupid pillows at him. Shane catches it and lobs it back at Ilya’s stomach.

“Do you have a nickname?” Shane asks after another minute.

His brow wrinkles, not taking his eyes off the TV. “Yeah, Roz, Rozy, Rozy Posy, Rudolph…” He trails off, raising his eyebrows at Shane, who is trying his hardest to look casual. His nicknames are pretty well known, especially the stupid deer one he was given after the 2012 Winter Classic. “You know these.”

Shane seems to be immune to nicknames, as far as Ilya can tell. Boston fans will sometimes make signs that change his name to Shana or Shania. He’s heard Dutchy and Holly thrown around, but it doesn’t seem like they’ve stuck beyond a Tim Horton’s ad two years ago that proclaimed him Holly Jolly Hollander, dressed him up as Santa, and followed him as he delivered those little doughnuts Ilya loves at a children’s hospital. Ilya watched it too many times.

Shane’s ears pink a little, and Ilya has the strangest desire to squeeze him. “No, um. Like a Russian nickname.”

“Oh.” Ilya pauses his ear scratching. “Not so much. Ilya is already short, you know?”

Shane nods, his dark eyes always so serious. “Gotcha.”

He falls quiet again, and Ilya sighs, pulling his other hand from his pants to rest both behind his head. “When I was young, my mom called me Ilyusha.”

He regrets saying it the minute it leaves his mouth. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Shane says it. Break down in tears, probably, the same crybaby he was when he was called that. He tries to think of a joke, a redirection, when Shane smiles.

“That’s sweet,” Shane says. “My mom, uh, sometimes she calls me Shaneshine. Like sunshine?”

Ilya barks out a delighted laugh. Shaneshine. “Oh, Hollander, that’s perfect. I really needed that, thank you.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Shaneshine! Tell your mother she is brilliant.”

That gets him a lap full of Shane, pinning Ilya’s wrists to the bed. “You’re such an asshole.”

“That is not very Shaneshine of you,” Ilya says. “What is opposite, Shaneshadow?”

“Please, my mom is much more sophisticated than that,” Shane says. “It’s Shaneshower.”

“Shaneshower. Wow.”

Shane noses at Ilya’s ear. “Are you ever going to let me live this down?”

Ilya pulls Shane down to his chest, and Shane rolls off him, but rests his head on Ilya’s chest. “No, never. Now shh. I want to hear the nice things they say about my team.”

He grabs the remote and raises the volume, his other hand drifting to play with Shane’s hair. On screen, they show a replay of Connie’s goal.

“Now that’s what I like to see,” Ron MacLean says. “Johansson and Connors are just as productive with Tamborelli centering them as they are with Rozanov.”

“Agree, Ron,” the other one, whose name Ilya always forgets, says. “It speaks to a consistency in the room that even without Rozanov, they’re continuing to put up points.”

“Now, I want to talk about Rozanov,” Don Cherry chimes in. This should be good. “It’s been almost three weeks since his injury, and he hasn’t been seen at a game once. Now, I know they put out this statement, but to me, it’s bad, lazy leadership, and the same old story with Rozanov. You look at guys like Crosby, Hollander, McDavid, these guys will do anything to make it to a game and continue to lead through adversity, and that’s what you—”

Shane hits mute. Ilya hadn’t even realized he had taken the remote.

“I hate that asshole,” he mutters, and Ilya almost laughs.

“Why? He loves you.”

“He loves me when I’m white,” Shane says, rolling his eyes. “Do you remember him saying I’m disloyal because I said I thought Japan should host another winter Olympics? Plus, all the shit he says about you and all the other Russian players? He’s a xenophobic asshole.”

Ilya is—touched, frankly. He’s spent his entire career trying to ignore Cherry, and every coach he’s played for in Boston can barely speak around his dick in their throats.

“Maybe he dies soon,” Ilya says, finally. “He’s one billion years old.”

He’s expecting Shane to reprimand him, always the polite, respectful Canadian, but he says, “From your mouth to God’s ears.”

Ilya tugs at Shane’s hair, tilting his head upward. “You are full of surprises tonight.”

That earns him a smile, and Ilya carefully kisses him. His bruising is better, and it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. Even if it did hurt, he’d push through it to kiss Shane.

Then, against Shane’s lips, he adds, “Shaneshine.”

Shane elbows him in the stomach and rolls off him. “Shut up. You’re distracting me from packing.”

“Mm, I know,” Ilya stretches, and then clenches his stomach so his abs are a little more defined. “Sexy Ilya Rozanov, so distracting.”

Another eye roll. Another flush of his cheeks. God, Ilya wants to stay in this moment forever, watching Shane finish packing, chirping his taste in suits. This is easy, in a way that scares the shit out of Ilya. His life isn’t supposed to be easy. Easy is when bad things happen. He shouldn’t be here, in Shane’s bed, presenting himself on a silver platter to fate and karma and the will of the universe. A world of hurt awaits him the longer he stays, the more he feels—safe. Happy.

They get ready for bed together, and Ilya wants to laugh aloud as he climbs into bed next to Shane. It’s too good. It’s a ticking time bomb. It has to be.

“You know,” Shane says, his voice drowsy and warm from across what Ilya has been privately calling the Great Pillow Barrier Reef. “You shouldn’t listen to assholes like Cherry.”

He can hear the steady rise and fall of Shane’s breathing. “I don’t.”

The bed dips, and Shane lifts up the pillow between them. “I’m just saying, what does he know about you and your hockey? He made it to the show for what, all of one game? He’s hated you since we were rookies.”

Ilya turns his head, looking at Shane’s freckles in the pale moonlight. “He coached Boston for five years. Two cup finals.”

“Yeah, that he lost to Montreal, right?”

Ilya doesn’t answer that. Shane doesn’t know what it’s like in Boston. The expectations. He knew Boston was intense when he was drafted. He wasn’t expecting that intensity to come from every coach, everyone in the front office, every fan—or for it to be the same unrelenting intensity almost ten years into his career. He’s never had a clear identity as a center, not like Shane, a playmaker with an insane hockey intelligence and eyes like Crosby and Lemieux and Gretzky. Ilya is a sniper, but physical. Skilled but aggressive. They call him a power forward, but even that doesn’t fit sometimes. He’s in the middle, somewhere in the gray in between, and it’s working well enough for now in Boston, but that’s no guarantee for the future, especially with free agency looming next year.

“Plus,” Shane continues, “he doesn’t like your cellies, and those are objectively awesome. So. Ignore him.”

Why are they still talking about this. Ilya shifts, a little annoyed. “I said already I don’t listen. Go to sleep.”

“Ilya.”

Ilya takes the pillow and puts it back down, like he’s closing a window. “Shane. I don’t. Go to sleep.”

He can hear Shane open his mouth, like he’s going to say something else, but he must decide against it because he mercifully keeps quiet. Ilya lets his eyes slip closed.

Then, the pillow lifts again. “You know—”

Ilya groans, rolling onto his back. “Jesus Christ, Hollander, what?”

“I was just, y’know, thinking more. About the cottage.”

For fuck’s sake. He stares up at Shane’s ceiling and imagines fate staring back down. “Whatever it is, say it in the morning. You have a game tomorrow.”

That will get him to shut up. It’s the singular thing he cares about at the end of the day, the one thing that will stop Shane from thinking about—Ilya, or anything that isn’t hockey. A useful trick.

Shane shifts, rolling into Ilya, his forehead resting against his shoulder. His lips brush over Ilya’s bare skin as he says, “Okay. Night, Ilya.”

His lips press against Ilya’s shoulder before he rolls back over, rebuilding the pillow barrier.

Ilya hums and waits. He listens as Shane’s breathing evens out, until he’s snoring, each soft puff raising goosebumps along his arms.

When he’s sure Shane won’t wake, he sits up, his legs hanging off the edge of the bed. He won’t sleep tonight, he can already tell. It’s fine by him; he won’t meet that dream that won’t leave his subconscious.

He slips out of bed, and as he leaves, he pauses in the doorway, watching the rise and fall of Shane’s sleeping body in the moonlight of the windows.

He has to be careful around dreams, he thinks. It can’t be painful to wake up if you never fall asleep.

Chapter End Notes

The response to this fic continues to blow me away, and I truly truly cherish every single comment, you have no idea!!!

Please let it be known that I did write the entirety of the first section before that incredible finale, and I am VERY smug about nailing the characterization. 😎

This chapter was once again beta'd by the incredible Marivan! PLEASE go read her fic Not a Strip of Paper Merely it is SO SO good.

Reblog the fic art on tumblr and come hang out with me to scream about the finale or anything else really, and I'll see y'all soon for chapter 4!!!!

ETA: my dreams have come true. Please watch Don Cherry in the Heated Rivalry universe.

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

“Good morning, Shaneshine,” Ilya coos. Shane smiles against his neck, his breath coming in humid puffs that seem to linger.

“And here I was, about to touch your dick,” Shane says, his voice still rough with sleep.

“Were you?” Ilya finds his hand and drags it down toward his crotch. “Doesn’t seem like something Shane Hollander would do. He is too boring for morning sex.”

“Oh is he.”

Ilya would bite his cheek to stop his smile, but he’s not supposed to do that, according to the home care instructions. “Yes, but I could be wrong, no? Maybe this is something Shane Hollander does. Is part of his routine.”

Chapter Notes

When he’s asked—usually by little kids—where he likes playing best, Shane has his answer down pat.

First, he always says it’s a good question, and then he demurs and says that he’s dreamed of playing in Montreal since he was in Timbits, so of course that’s his favorite, but he also likes playing in Ottawa because he gets to see his parents. In the past few years, he’s started adding, and I like playing in Boston. Can you tell I like rivalries? Because it makes people laugh.

And all of that is true, but Shane is fibbing a little about Ottawa. Yes, it’s great to see his parents, but it’s really because Ottawa is the shortest distance away, so he doesn’t have time to sit on a plane and think.

Sometimes they take the train, which Shane loves, but most of the time they’re in the air for all of half an hour. And that means he can get right to his pregame prep without having to shake off a transcontinental flight’s worth of overthinking.

He never joins in the card games in the back of the plane. He always sits next to Hayden, and Hayden knows to leave him alone once Shane’s noise-canceling headphones go on. Most of the time, Shane uses travel to catch up on the monotonous nightmare that comes with being Shane Hollander: Captain, Superstar, Corporation; dutifully reading every email and proposal and request that his mom sends his way; agreeing to let his scant summer break be sliced into ever-shrinking slivers for shoots and deals and endorsements; arbitrating his team’s convoluted fine system. Or he reads. Or he promises himself he’ll read, but usually he watches an unending mountain of shitty movies on his laptop instead.

Or, his laptop stays in his backpack, and the pages in his book stay unturned, and he stews.

There’s been a lot more of the latter lately.

This morning was weird.

He woke up unsettled and with a start on the heels of a dream he couldn’t remember, and he realized that Ilya wasn’t in bed next to him. He searched the apartment for him, but he was nowhere to be found, and Shane wanted to keep looking, was worried that Ilya had—left, or was smoking somewhere, or something, but. He also had to get ready to go.

It wasn’t until he was out of the shower and finishing his usual pregame breakfast—egg whites scrambled with turkey sausage and whole wheat toast with almond butter—that Ilya came through the front door, dropping Shane’s keys in the bowl by the mail and toeing his sneakers off, talking in Russian to whoever was on the other end of the phone nestled in the crook of his neck, a shopping bag swinging as he closed the door behind him.

He didn’t stop the—argument or conversation or maybe both—as he took two packages of Yakult out of the bag and loaded them into the fridge, and it kept going as he put the bag into the box where Shane was collecting plastic bags for Jade and Ruby’s Girl Guides troop.

Then Ilya disappeared and returned with his laptop, still on the phone, and Shane sat there, waiting for his call to end, but it didn’t. So, he finished getting ready for the game and made sure his suit and luggage were ready in his closet for tomorrow and the start of a longer road trip. And by the time he was tying his tie and shrugging his backpack on, Ilya was still on the phone.

He stood by the door, trying to catch Ilya’s eye. He thought he would have to go without saying goodbye when Ilya finally seemed to notice that Shane was waiting. He lowered the phone and asked, “You going?”

Shane nodded. “Yeah, Ottawa, I’ll be back late tonight?”

It was stupid to remind Ilya of a schedule they already discussed, and one Ilya said he didn’t care about, but Ilya smiled and said, “Gimme kiss.”

And Shane’s ears burned when Ilya pursed his lips in an exaggerated pucker, but it was also—a relief, because his bruising was almost entirely yellow and green and fading fast, and he seemed so much more—like Ilya. So Shane crossed over to where Ilya was camped out on the couch and kissed him, quick and barely anything.

He’s still turning that over as they begin their descent into Ottawa. How, that close to Ilya, he could hear someone on the phone say Ilya’s name. But before he could start to panic, Ilya waved him off, adjusted the phone, and said, “Yeah, yeah, my girlfriend,” in English, before he switched back to Russian.

And Shane left, awkward and off-footed and uneasy. He still can’t shake it off, even though departing the plane is usually an easy demarcation for him, when he tells his brain, okay, you got to ruminate for your allotted half-hour, it’s time for hockey now.

So. Shane does his best to get ready.

Much has been mythologized about his pregame routine, but he thinks it’s pretty normal compared to some of the other guys in the league. He starts with yoga, rolling out a mat in some hidden hallway, not the gym. Never the gym. As he moves through the vinyasa his physio designed for him, he practices the visualizations that he learned from a sports psychologist his mom got him, the same one he’s been working with on and off since juniors.

He listens to white noise, well, brown noise actually, because he doesn’t like white noise, and pictures the ice, the game, every detail down to the way the steel beneath his feet carve up the ice, the exact weight and pressure of a puck cupped in the curve of his stick’s blade, how to slow his breath and calm his heart rate as he approaches the net, the chain reaction of each muscle in his body from his quads and glutes tensing to his core and obliques twisting to his traps and lats flexing, a perfect machine combining to slap a puck at 150 kilometers per hour until it sails past the goalie’s blocker, the swish of the twine, the roar of the crowd.

He steps from downward dog into a high lunge and imagines the face-off circle. Warrior two into triangle, his faceless opponent. He exhales into chair pose, and in his mind, he bends, stick at the ready. Chair to standing pigeon, and it’s Ilya across the dot, now.

Shane nearly falls on his ass. Fuck. That’s not. He’s not—

He shakes his head and resets into downward dog, then plank, but no matter what, Ilya keeps appearing.

He tries to keep his focus as he finishes his yoga. He doesn’t usually let himself look at his phone before games, really; it was immature, to do that for so long, especially with Ilya being so—Ilya. But he steals a quick glance as he gets his sticks sawed.

He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for, but he does have a text from his dad that says, Keep your eyes up and play tough tonight! See you after. He makes himself his usual pregame almond butter and honey sandwich, and changes the brown noise to the binaural flow-state music he read about in a book about high performance athletes as he hops on the bike to get his heart rate up.

He doesn’t know why his head is all over the place tonight. Ilya’s not usually a distraction, or, at least, not a distraction that Shane can’t shake off. If he was, Shane would’ve ended this a long time ago.

He wanders over to his bench to tape his sticks. He hates Ottawa’s visitors’ room, it’s all corners and cramped cubbies, and everyone’s on top of each other. He loves being around his team, loves the energy before a game, but tonight, the closeness itches at him, verging on claustrophobic. He escapes under the guise of taking his sticks out to the bench. Usually, he doesn’t stay too long, but the cold air of the rink has always helped him breathe easier. And it’s not like Ottawa has the most dedicated fanbase, so he isn’t bothered when he sits to watch the Zamboni pass back and forth over the ice.

Fuck it. He’s already screwed so much of his routine, all of his carefully crafted rules, for Ilya. What should it matter if he texts him? They used to text all the time before games. It’s fine. It never messed Shane up before. If it did, he wouldn’t.

He flounders over what to say, typing out, everything okay? and then deleting it. He starts another half-dozen sentences before he finally sends, did you drink your shake?

After a few moments, Ilya responds:

Lily:
yes nurse i drink shake

Shane huffs out a laugh.

Jane:
Who were you calling today? It seemed serious

Lily:
jake from team

Oh. Shane didn’t know that Jake was Russian.

Jane:
Is everything ok?

Lily:
yes fine will tell u tonite

Shane’s about to press further when another text comes through.

Lily:
arent u pregame? u not eat sad sandwich and visulize losing?

A huff of laughter escapes him, accompanied by a fond, uncontrollable smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Shane tells Ilya to fuck off, and then he heads back to the locker room to finish getting ready. He feels centered. Good. Ready to go.

So it makes no sense that he plays like shit the entire night.

He loses face-offs, can’t generate on the power play, can’t make his passes connect, can’t do anything. He’s playing like ass, and it’s. Bewildering. He can tell that his coaches are confused, that his line is confused. For fuck’s sake, Shane is confused. They shouldn’t barely scrape out a win over Ottawa. He’s expecting them to get to the ECF, if not beyond, and Shane played like a joke.

Theriault chews them out, and Shane forces himself to listen, to set a good example, but his mind keeps wandering off. He goes through the motions with the press, answering their questions in English and French, the same dozen questions he gets after every game. As he strips out of his gear down to his sweaty base layers, he tries to figure out if he’s sick, maybe, or if he ate too much or too quickly, or—

Of course, his mom and dad are waiting in the hall between the locker room and gym.

“Honey, is everything alright?” Mom brushes a sweaty hair away from his face and then presses the back of her hand to his forehead. “It looked like you were all over the place tonight.”

“Just. I don’t know. The bounces didn’t go our way.” He just spent fifteen minutes answering the exact same questions. He doesn’t want to have to do it again.

Her hand does feel nice and cool, though.

She presses her lips together. “No fever.”

“Mom, I’m fine,” Shane says. “It was just a bad night.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have bad nights, sweetie.”

“Yuna,” his dad interjects, placing a hand on her shoulder. “It’s 82 games. And it was a win.”

Shane rubs his face with his sweat-soaked sleeve. This is a conversation that they’ve had over and over again since he was a kid. He could repeat it word for word, and for some reason, continuing it seems more exhausting than usual.

“Do you need to schedule a session with Peter? Maybe you two can work on some more visualizations. I know it’s a lot of pressure, with the playoffs coming up, but—”

“Mom,” Shane interrupts. “I’m good, I promise. I don’t need a session with Peter. It was one game. It’s a long season.”

“Alright, alright,” she relents, holding her hands up in acquiescence. “Coach Mom is hanging up her whistle. Are you going to stay with us tonight? I have a commercial proposal that CCM sent over for you to look at. And your dad is making that yuzu spaghetti you love.”

“No, I gotta get back,” Shane says, and Ilya floats to the forefront of his mind again. Jesus Christ. He shakes his head, trying to get rid of the thought. It doesn’t work. “We’ve got a longer road trip coming up, I’ve got some stuff to take care of.”

“Right,” Dad says. “Boston and then Carolina, right?”

“And then Tampa.” Mom brushes another sweaty hair away from Shane’s forehead. “You know, we sat next to the loveliest girl tonight. She said she was Drapeau’s sister? She’s a resident at Riverside.”

Oh, great. Here they go again. “Let me guess,” Shane says, flat and annoyed. “She’s single?”

“And she understands how time consuming hockey can be, especially as a resident, they work them so hard, you know. Such a lovely girl. And she gave me her number to pass—”

“Mom, weren’t you literally just on me about playing a bad game? You think I really want to add another distraction right now?”

She frowns. “Honey, maybe a good distraction is okay sometimes.”

Dad must see the frustration on Shane’s face, because he says, “Yuna,” in his leave Shane be voice.

“Alright, we’ll let you cool down.” Mom smiles, and fixes the hem of his shirt so the Bauer logo is visible. “Don’t forget to wear the Rolex tomorrow, okay? You weren’t wearing it in the photos on Instagram. That’s a big contract, remember? Anything we can do to make them happy is—”

“Worth it, yes, Mom, I know.” He loves his mom, he really does, but he also really wants this conversation to be over.

“Okay. Love you.” She kisses his cheek, and Dad claps him on the shoulder, and he’s finally left alone to cool down.

He gets back on the exercise bike. Usually Hayden or J.J. will come cool down with him, but everyone’s giving him a wide berth, it seems. He doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t want to do a post-mortem, either, because he has no idea what he would say or what’s been off since he fucking woke up this morning.

He can feel his mood get worse as he stretches and rolls out, as he showers, as he puts his suit back on. Everyone’s eager to get home. He’s one of the only guys on the team without a wife and kids, and he used to never understand why they’d head back to Montreal just to leave again the next day, but he knows it’s because they all want time with their families before a road trip, and Shane. Shane doesn’t know what he wants.

For once, he has something—someone—waiting for him in his apartment, but Shane doesn’t know if that’s a good thing. After the Detroit game—well, that was an easy win. 5-1. He went out for steaks with the guys after the game, because that’s what they do after big home wins, and he brought home some chocolate mousse for Ilya, because he thought that would be soft enough for him to eat. And then he and Ilya talked about the win, and Shane made Ilya mashed potatoes, and it was a good night. And he was upset after the Minnesota game, but Ilya took care of him in a way that makes him flush even thinking about it. Shane had never experienced something like that, holding Ilya’s soft cock in his mouth, his brain going absolutely silent for once, floating but anchored at the same time.

It’s good. With Ilya. But there’s something about it, something beyond the injury, that sticks to him like a burr. But what does Shane know? He can barely put a name to his own emotions, let alone Ilya’s, who always seems fine until he isn’t, like that night in Tampa or on the phone all the way in Russia.

It’s fine, probably. There’s no reason to think otherwise.

Except—

Hayden nudges him, and Shane startles, pulling down his headphones.

“Seatbelts, bud.”

Oh. He looks out the window at the lights of Montreal nestled between the rivers. He didn’t realize they were landing already.

He tries to shake it off as he tells the guys goodbye, that he’ll see them tomorrow, but whatever the fuck this is follows him the entire drive back to his apartment. He tosses his keys in the bowl by the door, toeing off his shoes next to Ilya’s. He calls his name, but the apartment is still. Quiet.

He’s probably asleep. Shane doesn’t want to wake him. He needs to rest.

He heats up one of his pre-made post-game meals, watching it turn in the microwave. He’s not hungry, except he is. He just played a game. He has to eat, no matter how much it feels like he’s choking down the chicken and broccoli. He gets through half of it before putting it back in the Tupperware and sticking it back in the fridge.

He drinks a bottle of Yakult and stares out the window at his backlit reflection. He’s not tired, but he’s exhausted, the kind of exhaustion that aches behind his eyes and deep in his bones.

He blinks once, twice, and realizes that there’s some dampness clinging to his eyelashes.

He tries to shake it off, and just like every other time tonight, it doesn’t work. Whatever this is, it follows him up the stairs to his bedroom, hanging a half-meter behind him as he passes Ilya’s sleeping body, shrouded in blankets, to get ready for bed. He stares at himself in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, as he splashes some water on his face, as he lingers with his head buried in his bath towel.

Hidden in the cotton, he tries to picture the stupid feelings wheel he had to work on with a counselor at lunch time when he was younger. Is he…frustrated? Maybe, but that’s not exactly right. And he’s not anxious, he doesn’t think.

Tired isn’t an emotion, he knows. But that’s all that comes to mind.

He exhales, short and sharp, and wipes his face. He’s being dumb.

He climbs into bed next to Ilya. He doesn’t often get to see this—they don’t sleep together, really, and he’s been hidden behind a pillow barrier. He’s curled in on himself, and Shane just. Watches. For a minute. The slow rise and fall of his chest. The way his hair gets extra curly at the nape of his neck. The constellation of moles across his back. He stops himself from reaching out and tracing them. He should put the pillow between them, but as he curves himself around Ilya’s body, like a blade cupping a puck, he buries his nose in Ilya’s curls, and for the first time all day, he feels—

Ilya stirs, lifting his head slightly. “Mm, Shane?”

Shane nods, his nose pressed to the nape of Ilya’s neck.

“Good game?”

He doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he says, “My mom wants me to date my goalie’s sister.”

Ilya doesn’t respond, but after another quiet moment, his hand finds Shane’s, and he wraps Shane’s arm around his body. He squeezes Shane’s hand, and Shane squeezes back.

“Maybe it’s okay to tell them,” Ilya says, his voice hoarse and sleepy. “Or at least that you only fuck centers.”

Shane huffs a laugh into the back of Ilya’s neck, and Ilya squeezes his hand again. Maybe Ilya says something else, but it’s lost to the steady inhale and exhale against his front, and the soft smacking noises Ilya makes as he falls back to sleep, and Shane follows, just like he always does.

—

He’s in the dream again. This is getting fucking annoying.

«Rozanov,» Shane says in eerily perfect Russian. «Finally.»

He opens his mouth for Shane, relieved that he’s no longer wired, but his teeth are still sharp. He doesn’t want to hurt Shane.

«What? Did you forget how to do this?» Shane laughs, but it sounds cold and harsh, echoing against the shower tiles. His smile isn’t real. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

Ilya wants to protest, wants to be good, wants to take care of Shane, but Shane turns away, stroking his cock under the shower head. «It’s sad,» he says, «that you’re such a disappointment.»

Tears well in his eyes, threatening to fall, and he tries to stand, but he can’t get up, he can’t get off his knees–

“Ilya?”

He blinks awake, the bright morning sunlight blinding even through Shane’s nice curtains.

Shane is plastered against his back, one arm draped over Ilya’s midsection. He shifts and realizes that Shane is hard, his dick nestled in the cleft of his ass. And, he realizes as Shane’s hand brushes against the trail of hair below Ilya’s belly button, that he is, too.

Thank fucking God.

“Good morning, Shaneshine,” Ilya coos. Shane smiles against his neck, his breath coming in humid puffs that seem to linger.

“And here I was, about to touch your dick,” Shane says, his voice still rough with sleep.

“Were you?” Ilya finds his hand and drags it down toward his crotch. “Doesn’t seem like something Shane Hollander would do. He is too boring for morning sex.”

“Oh is he.”

Ilya would bite his cheek to stop his smile, but he’s not supposed to do that, according to the home care instructions. “Yes, but I could be wrong, no? Maybe this is something Shane Hollander does. Is part of his routine.”

Shane’s fingertips dip beneath the elastic of his boxers, scratching where the hair beneath his navel grows thicker and curlier. “Maybe it is.”

Ilya is glad Shane is behind him, pressing a kiss underneath his ear. He’s sure his face is doing something very stupid. “Maybe he should prove me wrong?”

Shane’s hand finally curls around his dick. “Maybe he should.”

Shane jacks him once, twice, his thumb swiping at the wetness where Ilya’s foreskin is beginning to pull back. Ilya tries to keep still, but Shane is starting to rub his cock against his ass, and he wants to feel it, feel Shane get wet against him. Ilya gets his hands on either side of his boxers, pushing them down, and Shane takes his hand off his dick to help. He’s expecting Shane to keep grinding against him, but he kisses down Ilya’s back instead. Ilya finishes kicking his boxers off underneath the covers at the same time Shane presses a kiss just above the cleft of his ass before he drags his tongue down his crack.

Ilya groans, taking his dick in his hand. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t this.

Shane spreads Ilya’s ass cheeks and noses over Ilya’s hole. “This okay?” he asks, each word damp against the sensitive skin and hair there.

“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” Ilya says, reaching back to tangle his hand in Shane’s hair.

He can feel Shane smile, and he can imagine the determined look on his face when he licks into Ilya, his tongue lapping against his hole. He loves doing this for Shane, but he never expected it in return. He thought Shane would be too—particular about it, maybe, but clearly he was wrong.

He kisses and sucks against his hole, dirty and desperate, the same way he sucks Ilya’s dick. He spears his tongue into Ilya’s hole, and a groan tumbles from Ilya’s lips. Shane is making these hungry little noises as he licks and fucks his tongue into him, and it’s driving Ilya fucking insane.

“Shit, Hollander,” he groans, his hand turning to a fist in Shane’s hair and pulling his face closer. “Such a slut for it, yes? So hungry. Want to be put to work.”

That earns him a moan from Shane, his hair ticklish as he nods against Ilya’s goosepimpled skin. A trickle of sweat rolls down his spine, and he arches as Shane licks it up before it can continue between his cheeks. One hand leaves Ilya’s ass cheek to fondle his balls, to scrape a fingernail the length of his taint, and to finally bat Ilya’s hand out of the way to wrap around his cock.

«What has gotten into you this morning?» Ilya asks in Russian. In English, he says, “Shane, fuck, so dirty.”

Shane doesn’t respond, his tongue doing fucking acrobatics in his asshole.

“You want me to tell you what to do?” Ilya asks, grinding backward into Shane’s mouth.

Shane’s hand tightens around Ilya’s cock as he pauses to say, “God, fuck, Ilya, please.”

“Well, don’t stop,” Ilya drawls, smug as Shane dives back in, his mouth so slick and eager. “You keep eating me, yes? God. Who teach you how to do this?”

“You did,” Shane says, muffled, another moan escaping him as Ilya twists his fist in his hair.

“Don’t stop,” Ilya says, his eyes closing. God, he wishes he could see this—Shane so needy and eager, his face buried in Ilya’s ass. He wishes there were a mirror on the ceiling. Or a camera. Now that’s a thought for another time. “Let me fuck your hand, tighten up.”

They fall into a rhythm, Shane fucking his tongue into Ilya and Ilya thrusting into the tight grip of Shane’s hand. He’s closing in on an orgasm when he says, “Fuck, Shane, so good for me, give me a finger, can you do that? You’re fucking me so good—”

He cuts off as Shane pushes a finger into Ilya’s hole alongside his tongue, groaning as he comes all over Shane’s hand. “So good, baby,” he pants. “So, so good.”

Shane kisses up his back until his cock is nestled in the slick valley of his ass.

“You got me so wet,” Ilya says. “Want to rub off on me?”

“Fuck, Ilya.”

That’s a yes, his hands gripping Ilya’s waist, his hips snapping in quick, dirty thrusts. “God, you’re so desperate you can’t even wait for me to fuck you,” Ilya muses. “You wake up so horny, you love getting fucked so much, but you can’t even wait, you need to get off so bad.”

“Ilya,” Shane whines, burying his face in Ilya’s hair. “Fuck, keep talking, please.”

“Why? You want to come?” Ilya asks. “You want to hump me until you come? Like a fucking dog?”

Shane’s whine is a constant, high-pitched thing. Ilya can’t help but smile.

“You want to come?”

“Yeah, fuck, Ilya, yes.”

“Okay,” he says, light and casual like he’s ordering room service. “Come.”

Shane bites his shoulder, his hips stuttering as he comes, adding to the wet mess of Ilya’s ass. He’s breathing like he’s just finished a double shift, and Ilya turns in his arms, his soft dick flopping against his thigh as he kisses Shane, his tongue slipping into his mouth. Shane kisses back, and God, he wishes he could take him into his mouth, suck him until he’s hard again, until he comes down Ilya’s throat.

The kiss slows into something sleepy and sweet, until Shane pulls back. Ilya barely opens his eyes halfway to see a concerned look on Shane’s face. Ilya braces for it. And wonders how many orgasms it would take for Shane to not ruin the mood immediately for once.

“Is your jaw okay?” he asks, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, as if he can see a lie or pain on Ilya’s face.

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Yes, is fine.”

“Did you clench your jaw when you came?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? You’re not supposed to clench your jaw.”

“Yes, I know,” Ilya says, rolling out of Shane’s arms and onto his back. “I didn’t clench my jaw.”

Shane climbs on top of him, his thick thighs straddling Ilya’s lap. “You promise?”

“Yes, fuck, God. Have you ever heard of afterglow?” Ilya tucks his fingers under Shane’s warm, hairy thighs. “You are very bad at it.”

“Oh am I?” Shane asks. “How about in the shower? Am I bad at afterglow in the shower?”

Ilya pretends to consider it. “Maybe. We should find out.” He squeezes the thick flesh on Shane’s hips and then smacks his flank. Shane’s heated skin seems to flush even more, but he rolls off Ilya and follows him into the bathroom.

They don’t talk much as they clean up, steam curling around them. Ilya scrubs shampoo through Shane’s hair until he makes more of those soft, quiet sounds that Ilya loves so much. He’s expecting Shane’s loose-limbed quiet joy to continue as they shave side-by-side, as they dress in soft clothing, but by the time they’re in the kitchen, all of that ease is seemingly gone, an intractable stiffness straightening Shane’s posture, a solemn expression sobering his smile.

It catches Ilya off guard, how quickly Shane’s mood has changed.

He doesn’t say anything as he scrambles milk and egg yolks together, pouring them into the hissing pan and reaching for a spatula. He casts a sideways glance at Shane, sitting at the counter, staring into his smoothie.

“Is everything okay?” Ilya asks. For whatever reason, Shane likes his eggs atrociously hard, so he leaves them, turning to face Shane as he wipes his hands on the dishtowel hanging from the stove.

Shane hasn’t responded.

“Was game okay?” Ilya tries. “I watch a little bit, but then I sleep.”

Shane huffs, his mouth twisting into what could maybe be a wry smile if he didn’t look so fucking haunted. “Wasn’t much to watch.”

Ilya’s brow wrinkles. “You won, yes?”

Shane nods, taking a sip of his smoothie. He folds his hands around the glass. “Yeah, but I played like shit.”

Ilya tilts his head, considering. “Can’t be too shit if you win,” he says, as he turns back around to poke at the eggs.

“Against Ottawa?”

He hums. “82 games. Not every win is pretty.”

“Something was off in my routine, it fucked me up all day. But I can’t figure it out.”

Ilya reaches for the salt and pepper, adding a pinch of each. “First game on the road after a lot of home games. Maybe you are rusty.”

“Yeah, but I don’t get rusty.”

Ilya’s hand stills on the burner’s knob. He shakes his head and turns burner down to medium. “Everyone gets rusty.”

“What—” Shane clears his throat. “What were you talking about yesterday? On the phone? It seemed serious.”

Ilya pushes the eggs around a few more times and then turns off the stove, pushing half onto Shane’s plate and half onto his. He slides Shane’s plate across the marble island, sending a fork in its wake. Ilya reaches for the sriracha in the fridge and douses his plate, anything to make these stupid, crunchy eggs edible. If Shane wants to change the subject, Ilya will let it go.

“Just visa issues,” Ilya says, scooping a forkful of eggs off his plate and into his mouth. Ah, fuck, too hot. He tries to cool his mouth with a few awkward inhales before reaching for Shane’s smoothie and downing half of it.

Shane watches him. He looks—weary. Or wary, maybe. “Visa issues?”

“Yeah,” Ilya says. He moves over to Shane’s extremely complicated and mostly ignored coffee machine to brew a pot that he’ll drink once it goes stone cold. “Is easier when I travel with team. Alone is more…complicated. Team is trying to figure it out.”

“But…” Ilya turns to see Shane’s adorable, scrunchy confusion. “Why are they doing this now?”

“To go back to Boston?” Ilya says, scratching at his bare chest.

“Yeah, but aren’t you out for the playoffs?”

Ilya turns back to the beeping coffee machine. “They want me to come back to Boston, see Boston doctors. They think doctor here is too, ah. Careful? What’s the word. Slow and careful?”

“Conservative?”

Ilya nods. “Yes, conservative. So they want me to go home, see doctors, no contact skate. Maybe back for playoffs, or maybe sooner with cage.” It’s a welcomed reminder, that the team needs him, even if they’ve been playing decently without him.

Behind him, Shane is quiet. Finally, he says, “Is that a good idea?”

Ilya pauses his messing with the coffee machine. Is it a good idea. Ilya wants to ask, does it matter? When his team wants him to play, he plays. That’s how it is for all of them. That’s what it means, to sacrifice for your team. It’s what’s been drilled in their heads since they were little boys. It’s what he hears at every practice.

He exhales, setting his shoulders, and turns around. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, is that good for you? Aren’t you being a little…reckless?”

He raises an eyebrow. Of course he’s reckless. What a silly thing to say. He’s Ilya Rozanov.

“No, not like.” He can see the muscle of Shane’s jaw twitch. “Like, isn’t your jaw too fragile? What happens if you get hit again, or catch another puck?”

“I wear cage,” Ilya says, annoyance sparking sharp and sudden in his stomach. “Look stupid, but if I can play, then I want to play.”

“But, like, is that in your best interest, or—”

“Best interest?” Ilya interrupts. “What is best interest?”

“Like, I don’t think your team is doing this because you’re actually healed enough to play, I think they’re doing this because they lost to the Admirals last night.”

“Okay? And?” Ilya crosses his arms. What does that matter. “I’m the captain. They say I can play, I play. It’s not like I’m on ice tonight, but I should be there.” That’s what his coach, his GM, they all said, and Ilya agrees. This, playing house is nice, but he thought Shane would—

“Yeah, but—”

“Are you not—I thought you would get it,” Ilya interrupts, feeling stupid as he says it, but—he did. He thought Shane would understand. “We’re hockey players,” he says, gesturing between them. “We hate not playing.”

“Yeah, with a sprain, not a fucking broken jaw.” The blunt, cutting tone of Shane’s voice catches Ilya off guard.

“Remember when you say to reporters you don’t have mumps?” Ilya asks, his words turning snide. He knows Shane has played through illness, and the hypocrisy stokes the hot coals of anger in his stomach. “Cheek the size of a puck, and you say, no, I can play, I’m not sick. With mumps you out for what, one game? You say you play through sick, big hits all the time.”

“It’s not the same,” Shane says, his hands curling into fists where they rest on the countertop.

“And, and Pike, he had broken foot during finals last year, you yell at him like this?” He scoffs. They both know the answer to that. Ilya knows he’s got Shane with the way his eyes narrow. He should let it lay, but the coals are reigniting, catching on the, the mothering, the shameless meddling, the—

“But you don’t know,” Ilya says, the words sent like darts across the kitchen. “Shane Hollander, never injured, too precious to block shots, his team defends him so well. Just once you should think of how I feel.”

Shane sits a little straighter, his brow furrowing. He opens his mouth to say something, and closes it. Finally, he asks, “Are you saying you want me to get injured?”

Ilya throws a hand up. Of course that’s what he would take away from Ilya’s words. How does this affect Shane Hollander. It’s like it’s the only thing he cares about. He bites that back, and instead says, “I’m saying I want you to say you understand, you, you support me.”

“Well, I don’t.” Shane stands, the stool scratching against the floor. “I think this is stupid, and impulsive, and there’s no reason to rush to get back on the ice.”

Ilya wants to laugh. “No reason. Really. Playoffs not a reason? Cup not a reason?”

“Ilya, you had jaw surgery less than three weeks ago. You woke up with blood gushing from your mouth a few days ago. Sorry if I think it’s a bad idea to get back on the ice.”

Ilya turns back to the coffee machine, and tries to swallow around the shards of glass in his throat, everything he wants to say and can’t because there’s no point. Shane won’t understand. And what it comes down to, at it’s core, what it always is, is: “You don’t want me to beat you.”

Shane’s hand is on his shoulder, turning Ilya around, and he looks pissed. “No, I don’t want you to fucking die. Did I not say that I won’t forgive you if you permanently fuck yourself up from this?”

Fucking—

“And didn’t you say you wouldn’t say again?” Ilya’s eyes narrow, and he aches to‚ to defend himself, to fight back. “I know everyone say Shane Hollander is God’s gift to hockey, but you’re not my God. I don’t need forgiveness.”

Shane’s face goes slack, like Ilya’s words landed like a slap. The cold, frustrated laugh almost escapes his tight, aching chest. Shane, the perfect only child in his perfect family, of course he would think that a single, nasty sentence was equivalent to an open-palm smack.

If only Ilya had that kind of comfort, if only he didn’t know what an actual slap feels like, maybe he would be more sympathetic. As it stands, the same repulsive, awful anger that rose so readily to the surface during his father’s funeral is back, lying in wait just under Ilya’s skin, hot and too tight as he pushes past Shane. He’s not one to run from a fight, but this—this is more than that, he needs to—

“Ilya.”

“What?” Ilya says, turning on a heel. “What do you want, Shane?”

“Can you just—calm down?” Shane looks like he’s trying to be patient. Like Ilya is an ungrateful child. “Let’s just, stop, and, and take a deep breath, and when I get back from the road trip we can talk about this.”

The cold laugh does escape then, disbelieving and echoing across the apartment. “You think I’m here when you get back from road trip? The minute team fixes my visa, I’m going home.”

“Ilya—”

Ilya turns on his heels, his arms spreading wide. “What do you care? All you care about is hockey. I do the same. Everyone’s happy.”

“You think this makes me happy?”

Ilya won’t say yes, but some cruel, annoying voice creeps up his spine, curling like a snake around his brain, a vice that whispers, yes. No more disruptions. Just Perfect Shane Hollander, playing his perfect hockey.

“I don’t know what makes you happy,” Ilya says, finally. “Good luck against Boston. Should be easy win without me playing.”

With that, he storms up the stairs, bypassing Shane’s room in favor of the guest room. He locks the door behind him and sits down against it, covering his face in his hands. He stays there until the drumming of his pulse slows, until the pounding of his blood calms.

He stands, falling onto the bed, blowing a curl out of his hair. He can hear Shane moving around the apartment, and he looks at the clock on the bedside table. Shane will be late for his plane at this point. He can hear Shane’s footsteps pause outside the guest room door, and he can imagine Shane standing there, his fist raised to knock, trying to decide whether or not it’s a good idea.

No satisfaction comes when Shane’s footsteps continue down the hall, heavy against the stairs, the wheel of a suitcase following, thud, thud, thud, until its rolling echoes throughout the apartment, everything falling still and silent with the close of Shane’s heavy front door. Outside, he can hear the grumble of Shane’s engine, the wheels turning over cracked and pebbling pavement.

Ilya reaches behind him and throws a pillow against the wall, knocking some sensible, boring, abstract canvas to the floor.

He doesn’t like taking pills unless he really has to, and he justifies that his anger and the empty afternoon stretching out before him count as necessary. He falls into an uneasy sleep, for once dreamless, and by the time he wakes up, disoriented with a headache thudding against his temples, the last of the daylight is giving way to inky night. Fuck, he napped for—hours. At least five.

He hesitates before opening the door when he remembers that Shane is in Boston now. A glance at his phone reveals no texts from him, fucking typical, and that he’s probably just starting his pregame routine.

Ilya considers leaving and getting a hotel, but that sounds like a lot of English and a lot of explanations. He discovers that Shane made a new batch of mashed potatoes before he left, and the hard shell of anger caging his heart cracks ever so slightly. God. How can he be so fucking infuriating, and then do things like this?

He feels guilty as he reheats the potatoes. He’s an ass. An immature ass. But Shane isn’t the angel he pretends to be.

Is it a good idea. Ha! He still wants to laugh at Shane’s question.

Nothing in Ilya’s life is a good idea, so why would he start now? He’s a hockey player. He’s going to play hockey. If Shane doesn’t understand that, then—what do they have to understand about each other? He thought that Shane would get it, but of course, he didn’t. He’s suspected ever since that morning he woke up bleeding that Shane only really cares about Ilya’s wellbeing when the alternative fucks up his routine.

That’s not fair.

But if Ilya died, would Shane miss him? Really miss him? Or would he move on? Find a wife that understood his particularities, was okay with him fucking men on the side, have a few kids. Have a perfect life with Ilya as a small footnote, a record that gets broken so many times until he’s erased from the narrative altogether.

God, he’s so fucking maudlin on pain medication. He needs to flush the rest, if this is what comes of it.

The microwave beeps, his potatoes steaming behind the glass. He ignores it and collapses on the couch. He half-heartedly watches the end of an afternoon Pittsburgh/New Jersey game, where Pittsburgh seems to make light work of New Jersey’s defense.

His stomach aches with hunger and regret as the camera shows Shane warming up in TD Garden, swooping around the ice. His hand reaches for his phone to tell Shane that he’s sorry or to make a joke about how Ilya is in Montreal and Shane’s in Boston, but he forces himself to stop. He’s hurt. Emotionally, not just his jaw. And he’s allowed to be hurt; he’s allowed to be upset at Shane. He’s allowed to sit in it, to sit in the raw rash of anger and frustration and annoyance and sadness. He’s been pushing it aside in favor of not upsetting Shane. He did it the other day, with his mouth still aching from being poked and prodded and sewn up all morning.

He’s pathetic. He has no resolve when it comes to Shane. He can’t hold onto his anger, no matter how much he wants to.

Shane leaves the ice, and after the commercial break, he skates back out for the anthems. He won’t see it until after the game at this point, but Ilya gives in to his stupid, tender heart, and texts him, i’m sorry. call me after?

He doesn’t particularly want to watch Shane skate circles around his team, so he starts a game of solitaire on his phone, glancing up every now and then as they get some gray-haired man to do a ceremonial puck drop, Shane’s smile fake and forced as he shakes hands with Marly.

He looks away from the real puck drop, tapping through his virtual deck, so he doesn’t see it when Shane—

It’s the announcers going quiet, that catches his attention.

Ilya stands, his phone falling from his hand. His heart lands in his ass as he watches the replay, as he watches—

Oh, God, no.

Chapter End Notes

GOD. Y'ALL. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERY SINGLE COMMENT, BOOKMARK, KUDOS, EVERYTHING. You have no idea how much they mean to me. Every single time I got stuck writing this chapter (and it was a lot of times!!!) I would come back and reread them and they would propel me to write!!!

This chapter WOULD NOT EXIST without my incredible beta, Marivan, who always pushes me to be better and listens to me waffle on about plot and canon and balance and all that.

I can't believe we're approaching the penultimate chapter!!!!! Reblog the fic art and come hang out with me on tumblr and scream with me about the finale, I still can't stop thinking about it!!!! I hope you had a very happy new year, and I'll see you soon for chapter FIVE!!!!!

Edit: I FORGOT. If you’ve never seen Sidney Crosby lying to reporters that he totally didn’t have the mumps during mumpgate, please treat yourself to my favorite image of all time right now. I am begging anyone with artistic talent to draw Shane Hollander definitely not having the mumps.

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

“We need you to stay awake, Shane, alright?”

He can’t nod. He can’t move his head at all now. But this isn’t real. Ilya said this isn’t real. He wants Ilya.

“He keeps saying Ilya. Hey, Guillaume, is that—does he think Rozanov is playing?”

“Fuck, that’s not good. Run ahead and tell the paramedics that he’s hallucinating.”

Chapter Notes

He’s in the showers at the rink, soaping his torso, under his arms, behind his neck. He twists in an attempt to wash his back, and the strangest sensation curls around him like steam. He’s being watched.

He remembers where he is now. If he looks to his left, he knows who he’ll find. Who will be watching.

Seeing Ilya at nineteen steals the air from his lungs.

Shane chokes on a desperate inhale, too shallow from the humidity hanging dense between them to leave him anything but breathless. It’s Ilya in the way that’s forever seared in his memory; his long hair curled into a duck tail at the nape of his neck, the scant pimples dotted alongside his moles, his pubic hair trimmed in a way that he began to forgo a few years ago. His necklace resting between still-broadening shoulders, set with bravado, not confidence.

He thought it was confidence. But it’s not. He can see now that it’s not.

When Shane looks down at himself, he’s surprised that he’s not fully hard yet. That his dick is only beginning to fill. He takes stock of the stretch marks striped across his hips, the slight paunch of his gut, the hair on his toes that he’s been told all Hollander men grow as they age.

He’s not nineteen, but Ilya is.

He’s fully hard, now.

The heat is dizzying, and any inhibition that was present seven years ago is long gone, washed away under the shower head and swirling down the drain. He strokes himself, long, even, purposeful. He doesn’t beckon Ilya closer; some inexorable force moves his free hand to gesture between them the same way Ilya did all those years ago, a sign language that Shane instinctively knew, unconscious and unlearned but understood all the same to mean: You. Me. Us.

There’s no hesitation. Ilya moves toward Shane as if any other choice were inconceivable. As if his feet followed fate and fate alone.

Shane’s hand is governed by that same fate. A wheel turns, ice thaws, and Shane traces the line of Ilya’s jaw. Here, now, it’s unmarred. Shane wants nothing more than to keep it that way.

They’re the same height. Shane has hit his second growth spurt. Ilya hasn’t.

His hand presses against Ilya’s face, gently pinching the last vestiges of baby fat clinging to his cheeks. Shane watches his palm on its path along Ilya’s neck, his collarbone, until it rests on his shoulder.

He pushes. Ilya goes.

On his knees, Ilya looks so young. He isn’t awkward or hesitant. He never was. But this Ilya couldn’t be further from the tight, tense man on a rooftop, or rigid under pressure in Sochi, or kicking him out of bed after an award show. This is an Ilya who was curious and bright and brave. At ease with himself in a way that seemed impossible to Shane then. Who Shane marvels at now, knowing just the glimpses of the way life has held Ilya down and bitten at him over and over again in the years to come.

Shane watches his hand tangle in Ilya’s hair. He wants to kiss the flush of his cheeks. He wants to say, there you are, I’ve missed you, but this isn’t an Ilya he knows; not really. Not yet. This is the Ilya he saw a glimpse of when he lifted the cup. When they were on the ice together in Tampa. This is the Ilya he imagines at his cottage, eager and joyful and relieved, the pressure and pain melting underneath the summer sun until they return to the boys they were in this shower, fumbling toward each other and a future because they were too young and dumb to resist.

He sinks to his knees so they’re eye to eye once more.

They kiss once, twice; chaste and then less so. The air that passes between them is the lungful he’s been aching for this entire time. Grateful, he licks into Ilya’s mouth, his tongue running across the bottom row of crooked but unbroken teeth.

He wants what he didn’t know he wanted, then. What Ilya showed him. What Ilya gave to him. His hand reaches for Ilya’s wet curls again, pulling him closer. His other hand finds Ilya’s, tangling their fingers together. He directs Ilya to his cock, to take Shane in hand, and when Ilya does, Shane takes his.

Kneeling together, breathing into the other’s mouth, they stroke each other. Water sluices down their noses, and they’re so close together that it forms a single drip, two lines of raindrops racing until they combine on a car window.

He can’t stop staring at Ilya’s eyes. It’s like he’s seeing them for the first time, every fleck of green, every fleck of brown, the way both are rapidly disappearing, ceding to pupils blown wide.

Shane moves the hand that was in Ilya’s hair to cup his jaw, to run his thumb over Ilya’s bottom lip, where the only bruising is in the small indentations from his teeth. He fucks his thumb into Ilya’s mouth, and he wishes Ilya would do the same when he does, pushing his forefinger between Shane’s parted lips. He moans, grateful as Ilya presses down on his tongue. His eyes close as his hips begin twitching upward into the tight curl of Ilya’s fist, as their half-exhaled moans echo off the shower tiles, as the warm water and steam envelop their bodies in a feedback loop of sensation.

They come together, spilling into the other’s hand, their release washed down the drain. But they don’t part.

Ilya’s fingers slip from his lips, and Shane hears, «Is this real?» and he realizes that it’s himself, speaking Russian.

「It can’t be,」Ilya responds in impossible, perfect Japanese, the kind Shane doesn’t even speak or understand. 「Reality isn’t this kind.」

«I want this to be real,» Shane says. «I want us to be real.»

»It’s impossible,« Ilya says, now in fluent, accentless French. »This is impossible. We’re impossible.«

«Ilya,» he begs, still in Russian. He’s beginning to blur through the tears, joining the steam in clouding his vision.

“Shane,” Ilya says in English. “Shane!”

Shane opens his eyes.

He blinks into blinding, blurry lights. Everything is so bright. All he hears is ringing. Like the bells of St. Joseph’s Oratory. Like all the church bells that ring across Montreal.

“Shane?” A painful voice scratches across his ears. Oh. That’s Gilly leaning over him. Gilly’s one of their trainers. Someone must be hurt if Gilly’s on the ice. “Shane, are you okay?”

Another voice says, “Hey Shane? My name is Jake. I’m on Boston’s medical staff. We’re going to move you onto the spinal board, okay? Keep your head nice and still for me.”

He can do that. He did that for Ilya, on his knees.

He closes his eyes, but the lights continue to dance in pops and stutters. “Is this real?” He slurs, trying to bring Ilya back. It’s too much, but Ilya said he could be too much with him. Ilya makes everything go quiet, but he won’t come back. The lights won’t go away.

He’s lifted into the air. He tries to turn his head, to get away from the movement, the vertigo, but he can’t. He opens his eyes as the lights begin to clap, joining the piercing cacophony of ringing. The clapping becomes distant and scattered as the lights bleed and roll, passing overhead one after the other, like the lights on the highway late at night, driving back from a tournament as a kid.

“What happened?” he hears himself ask, hoarse and slurred and soft, like it’s floating from the radio to the back seat.

“You took a hit to the head. We’re gonna take you to the hospital.”

He closes his eyes again. A distant thought surfaces. He should be scared. But Ilya said this wasn’t real.

“We need you to stay awake, Shane, alright?”

He can’t nod. He can’t move his head at all now. But this isn’t real. Ilya said this isn’t real. He wants Ilya.

“He keeps saying Ilya. Hey, Guillaume, is that—does he think Rozanov is playing?”

“Fuck, that’s not good. Run ahead and tell the paramedics that he’s hallucinating.”

“‘M not,” he hears himself say. “My parents…”

“We’ll call your parents, okay? These guys just want to ask you some questions.”

He can’t nod. They said to stay awake, so he tries to open his eyes. A metallic ceiling stares back at him, until a blurry woman leans into his vision. “Hi Shane, I’m Ashley, and I’m going to ask you some questions while Brian takes off your skates, okay?”

His toes are cold. Is he not wearing socks anymore? He’s in Boston. Bobby Orr didn’t wear socks in Boston.

“Shane, can you wiggle your toes?” Ashley asks.

He must because Ashley says, “Good, good, that’s good. We’re going for a ride. You ever ridden in an ambulance before?”

Shane can’t shake his head, so he says, “I don’t like the noise.”

“Well the good news is, we’re gonna go wicked fast, so it shouldn’t be too loud for too long, okay?”

Everything is too loud. He wants his mom. He wants Ilya. He’s scared, and this seems real, even though Ilya said it wasn’t.

“I’m gonna close my eyes,” he says. Somebody’s shining a flashlight back and forth. “The light is too loud.”

“Can’t let you do that, okay? Can you tell me where you are?”

“Boston,” he says. “Like Bobby Orr. And Ilya.”

“Eyes open, Shane.”

He doesn’t want to keep his eyes open. He wants to go back to the showers. He wants to go back to Ilya.

Heavy doors slam behind him. The entire world lurches forward. The sirens start, and they’re so loud. Somebody is cutting through his sweater. Even that’s loud. He can hear each snip.

He’s scared. This is real, and he’s scared.

“Okay, sorry,” he hears himself say, but it’s quiet compared to everything else. Everything is so loud. He can’t help it. He needs it to stop. He needs it to not be real.

He closes his eyes again.

—

Marlow slams into Shane over and over again, first in the replays, and then on the back of Ilya’s eyelids every fucking time he blinks as he frantically begins to pack.

He doesn’t know how the fuck he’s going to get back to Boston, but he’ll figure it out. He’s always been able to figure it out. He’s Russian. Bribery is in his blood. He brought a Rolex and a Richard Mille on this trip because he’s materialistic and prideful. He’s got Boston shit he can sign. He’ll suck every dick at the border if necessary.

He fucking hates playing for an American team. He hates being held to the whim of every self-righteous customs or TSA agent who wants to taunt him because they get hard on the one shrewd opportunity to exert power over someone far richer and more successful and more powerful than they’ll ever be.

This is why he needs to marry Svetlana. He needs to be able to get to Canada and back, God forbid something happens like this again. Tfu, tfu, tfu.

Ah, fuck, he’s an idiot. Svetlana.

He rounds the corner of the stairs and tries to figure out what he’ll say to her once he finds his fucking phone. Sveta, you remember Jane? Well, he’s crumpled on the ice in Boston, and I’m in Montreal, will you smuggle me out of this godforsaken—

He stops.

Yuna Hollander stares at Ilya.

Ilya stares at Yuna Hollander.

Yuna Hollander stares at him and says, “David, honey, I’m going to have to call you back.”

From halfway up the stairs, he watches her lower the phone from her ear and carefully press the red circle to hang up. She pockets the phone into her nice tailored pants, and doesn’t, for one second, take her eyes off of Ilya.

He stands there, caught; brake pads smoking, front bumper crumpled, and Yuna, the all-seeing judge and jury of the dashboard camera.

He didn’t turn off the TV. Boston and Montreal are still playing, now in the final minutes of the game. It’s the only noise in the entire apartment. There’s a turnover. The announcers bemoan Shane Hollander’s absence as the clock ticks toward a Montreal loss.

And in front of him, Shane Hollander’s mother says, “Am I hallucinating.”

It’s not a question.

Ilya becomes painfully aware that he is not wearing a shirt.

“Ah,” Ilya manages. “No.”

She’s still staring. Then, she says, “Ilya Rozanov.”

He shifts under the attention, one foot to the other. “Yes.”

“You’re in Shane’s apartment.”

“Yes.”

“My son, Shane.”

“Yes.”

God, she looks so much like Shane when he’s processing something. Like he fundamentally mistrusts any information until he’s had 3-5 days to mull it over.

Except Ilya is getting the distinct impression that she needs a lot less time to arrive at a conclusion.

“What are…you doing here?” he ventures. Each word carefully steps out of his mouth, hesitant in a way he’s never heard himself before.

She laughs, sharp and disbelieving and immediate. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

“Uh.” Ilya’s eyes search the apartment, trying to think of an answer. He spots his phone on the floor of the couch. Where he dropped it. Stupid fucking phone.

Yuna steps into his line of sight. She raises an expectant eyebrow.

“Is a very…long story?” Ilya tries. Her other eyebrow gets in on the raising. “And I think we are both in a rush.”

“I’m in a rush,” Yuna says, like she’s agreeing with him. Or correcting him. “I need to pack clothing and toiletries to take to my son in Boston because your goon of a teammate just laid him flat like a pancake.”

Ilya’s throat clicks as he swallows.

“But,” she continues, “I’m not sure why you’re in a rush.”

Because your son and I have been fucking for seven years and I love him with all my heart and I was going to break up with him when he returned from this trip because all I do is cause him pain and he deserves so much better and now he’s injured and it’s because of me and I don’t know if he even wants to see me and I don’t really want to see him, either, but if I don’t see him and if I don’t make sure he’s okay with my own two eyes then I might actually die because this pain in my chest can’t be anything but a heart attack.

Ilya doesn’t say that.

“Mrs. Hollander,” he starts again. Don’t her eyebrows hurt from staying up like that. “I think…we are both in the same rush?”

He meets her eye. Please. Please understand without me having to say more.

The goal horn sounds. Handsy with an empty-netter.

Yuna’s eyebrows lower. Finally. Her arms stay crossed, but he can see the thumb and forefinger of her left hand rubbing together, massaging a pinch of her sleeve. Shane does that, too. When he’s thinking.

“I help pack?” Ilya jabs a thumb behind him, as if Yuna doesn’t know where the bedroom is. “Goes faster, with two people.”

Yuna’s lips press together, a thin, unconvinced line. But she finally, finally nods.

“Okay.” He takes a backwards step up the stairs. “Just, ah, give me a second to put shirt on?”

He doesn’t wait for her to nod this time. He keeps backing up the stairs until his feet find the landing, and he darts down the hall. Inside Shane’s room, he opens the bottom drawer of his nightstand and finds the lonely dildo and Ilya’s gifted beads—both oh so well disguised in a fucking towel, Ilya would laugh if his heart hadn’t taken up permanent residence in his ass—plus the lube and the condoms, and shoves it all into his bag, wrapping them in a pair of dirty boxers just in case.

He scans the room to see if there’s any evidence of this morning, or any other fucking, but Shane changed the sheets before he left. Ilya would tease him about that, the fact that he’s a freak who can’t handle dirty sheets, but right now he wants to kiss his stupid neurotic face in relief.

He’s hastily pulling a shirt on over his head when he hears, “Your shirt is on inside out.”

“Jesus fuck!” He jerks around to see Yuna in the doorway. Some idiot part of his brain that never shuts up mourns Shane’s teenage years if she doesn’t fucking knock before opening doors.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Yuna says, bustling into the room as Ilya rights his shirt. She places an old hockey duffel on the bed. Ilya recognizes the logo from some of Shane’s shirts and the photos of him in juniors. “You left the door open.”

Oh. He starts to apologize, but Yuna just shakes her head.

“Save it.” Her hands on her hips, Ilya watches as she surveys the room. “Okay. Divide and conquer. He needs sweats, pajamas, maybe a…”

She trails off, but Ilya is already in motion, standing in front of Shane’s dresser, pulling out the soft, threadbare shirts he prefers for lounging around, the exact same joggers in navy, black, and gray, a navy hoodie with drawstrings gnawed beyond recognition, a few pairs of boxer briefs.

He hip checks the drawers shut and places his selections on the bed. Yuna’s looking at him again.

“He already have clothes for road trip, too, so.” He shrugs. “A lot of his travel stuff is already there. Toiletries.”

Yuna’s face falls. She looks—regretful, and Ilya doesn’t understand why.

“I forgot he had things with him,” she says. She shakes her head and reaches for the pile of clothing. “I could’ve…no, I’m being silly.”

Ilya frowns. He picks up one of the boring books that Shane has been reading but left behind. He’s listened to Shane say more than once that physical books are better, but Kindles are more efficient and lightweight for travel, so he has a Kindle that stays in his suitcase, and then, usually by that point, Ilya would kiss him to shut him up.

“What is silly?” he asks, handing the book to Yuna. She takes it, reading the cover with a soft smile.

“Nothing. I was just in such a rush getting here, and I could be on my way to Boston already.”

God. She’s so motherly. He’s forgotten what it’s like to talk to a mother.

“Is hard,” he says after a moment. “When someone is hurt far away. When it is your—”

He cuts himself off. There’s a lump in his throat, now, and he doesn’t want to hear his voice if he tries to talk through it, how small and sad and pathetic he’ll sound. And he can’t stand there anymore, so he turns back to the dresser. Maybe Shane needs an extra pair of sweatpants.

“I think that is it,” he says after another moment, when he’s sure his voice won’t waiver. “I need to pack a few more things. For me.”

“Oh, you’re—”

God. The things he’ll do for Shane.

He runs a hand over the hot skin on the back of his neck. He starts looking for his slides. “I was going back to Boston anyway.”

He gets down on his knees to look under the bed. There’s not a single dust bunny or stray sock there, but his slides are. On the opposite side of the bed. The side he’s been sleeping on.

He pops his head up. “Uh, my slides are on that side.”

Yuna looks confused, so he points down.

“Under the bed,” he says. “By your feet.”

“No, not…” Yuna shakes her head. She bends to retrieve the slides and passes them over once they’re both standing again. “Were you really going back to Boston?”

He fidgets. Rubs his nose. “Yes? Jaw is a little better. See doctors. No contact skate, maybe.”

Yuna tilts her head. “How long have you—”

Her phone rings, and Ilya exhales, relieved. It’s Shane’s dad, he’s pretty sure, and he disappears into the bathroom to make sure he has everything. He hesitates, his hand hanging in front of him halfway to his toothbrush. Maybe he should—

He stops that thought immediately and packs it away. He’s not coming back here. He shouldn’t leave anything behind.

Ilya zips everything into his stupid little toiletry bag, and when he comes back out of the bathroom, Yuna has the phone nestled in the crook of her neck as she refolds Shane’s already folded shirts.

“Yes, getting on the road in a minute,” she says, packing the stack neatly into his bag. Then, she moves to start folding Ilya’s shit, and he’s never moved faster in his life to zip the bag and throw it over his shoulder.

Yuna is taken aback, but she seems to shake it off at whatever Shane’s dad says through the phone.

“David,” Yuna says, short. “No, I want you to get on the phone with the people at Mass Gen, don’t just talk to the trainers. He needs to be in a private room, and it needs to be as far away from the nurses’ station and anything else that makes noise. Okay? Yes. And—yes, I’ll call you once I get to Vermont.”

She makes eye contact with Ilya and rolls her eyes, like they’re in on some kind of joke together.

“Yes, Google has me taking the A-35 to I-89. Is there any other way to get to Boston from Montreal?” She pauses. “You know I don’t mean literally.”

If Shane is anything like his father, Ilya is not so sure.

“And you switched your flight to Logan? No, where?” She looks amused. “Well of course you have a connection through Atlanta, honey, you’re flying Delta. Yes, you’ve told me the joke. David. Yes, okay. Love you. Yes, from Vermont. Okay, bye.”

She hangs up, shaking her head. She looks so fond that Ilya’s chest aches.

She pockets her phone and clasps her hands together. “So! Roadtripping with Ilya Rozanov. Not something I thought I’d ever say or do. Now, have you heard of Lilith Fair?”

Ilya has not.

But by the time they’ve made it into Vermont—they were waved through at the border with no issues—he knows probably more about it than he ever needed to know, and they’re two hours into a playlist that he saw was five hours long, and he’s already gotten in trouble for trying to talk through a song called Fast Car, which he thought he’d like because he likes fast cars. He tried to tell Yuna about the Alfa Romeo he had his eyes on, but Yuna shushed him and restarted the song, and it wasn’t a song about fast cars at all; it just made his heart hurt and tears well up in his eyes.

He scrubs them away with his sleeve and stares out the window at the lights illuminating the interstate and how they run together into one flickering blur.

“So…” Yuna starts. The stupid car song is over, and apparently, this one about open spaces is okay to talk over. “How long has this been going on?”

He turns to look at her. The dashboard lights reflect oddly across the sharp planes of her face. Her eyes look so much like Shane’s. “Has what been going on?”

“Whatever it is that led you to be alone in my son’s apartment.”

Oh.

“Mrs. Hollander…”

She snorts. “Yuna. I think we’re a little past Mrs. Hollander.”

Fine. “My English, is not so good?”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Yeah, I’m not falling for that one. English isn’t my first language, either.”

Goddamn it.

“Look,” Ilya starts, scratching his temple. “Is not my story to tell, I think. Is something that, that Sh—Hollander should tell you.” He trips over Shane’s name like an idiot. Would he call him that? If they were friends? If they weren’t—

“Hollander, sure.” She shakes her head, her eyes trained on the road. “You know, when he was little, he had trouble making friends.”

Ilya wants to say Shane has trouble making friends now, but he’s stupid, not suicidal.

“But whenever he did get invited to sleepovers, I’d always get a call around midnight that his stomach hurt and he needed to come home. And he never invited anyone over, either. I was so worried when he went to Oshawa for juniors. His billet family was lovely, and we were luckier than most, with him only three and a half hours away, but…” Yuna trails off as she starts her turn signal and passes a truck. “I guess I’m trying to say that I don’t know why you were in his apartment, but you must be important to him.”

Important to him. Important to Shane.

“We’re…” Ilya searches for the word. He doesn’t really want to lie to Yuna, not when she’s been so nice to him, but what is he supposed to say? That he took her son’s virginity and they’ve been fucking for seven years? “Friends, maybe. You know, they make us against each other, big rivalry. We see each other at prospect cup, draft, media weekends, all-star weekends…he’s the one who knows what is like, for me. Russia, Canada. Boston, Montreal. Is different languages, but same people. Same…pressure.”

He steals a glance at Yuna. Her finger is tapping against the steering wheel to the beat of a new song, something slower, just a guitar and a woman’s voice. She tilts her head to one side.

“The shoot. The summer before rookie season. You were in the elevator going up. Shane was on the fourteenth floor.”

Fucking. Why do they both have such good memories. “He was?”

She looks at him again. “Hm.”

This seems like a good time to look at his phone. He’s just started a game of solitaire when Yuna asks, “Is he lonely?”

Is Shane lonely. Yes, is Ilya’s first thought. But.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I do not think he would tell me. If he is.”

That answer seems to satisfy her. It’s probably because her answer would be the same if he were the one asking that question. The thought turns over in his stomach. She must worry about Shane. She must be so worried right now.

“Is he…”

He knows where this sentence ends. He knows where Yuna’s logic has gone. Where it’s probably been all night. And he thinks, begs, don’t. Please don’t ask me if your son is gay.

Maybe she can sense his pleading. Or maybe there is a god, because the end of that sentence never comes.

“Is long drive,” Ilya says after another quiet moment. “I could, for a bit?”

“What cars did you say you owned?”

“Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Bugatti. I had a Ferrari in Moscow.” It’s one of the few things he wishes he could have taken.

Yuna exhales a massive sigh. “If you get us arrested…”

Ilya grins, his first real smile of the night. “We back in New England. Nobody arrests Ilya Rozanov in New England.” He eyes her. “Shane Hollander’s mom? Maybe. We hide you in the back.”

She laughs at that, a real laugh.

They pull over at a rest stop. Finally, back in the land of Dunkin. Ilya buys a medium iced coffee with cream, sugar, and enough pumps of caramel that the guy asks him if he's sure for himself and a small decaf coffee for Yuna. He wonders if Munchkins count as solid food. He decides they don’t, and gets a box of 50 for the road. He wanders into the gas station area, appraising the selection of junk food while Yuna’s in the restroom. He purchases Yuna some trail mix because she’s probably just as boring and sensible about snack food as her son. And they get back on the highway.

Yuna falls asleep just past Montpelier. Ilya turns off the woman singing about a deeper well and stares ahead at the expanse of interstate.

He drives the rest of the way in silence. He doesn’t eat a single Munchkin. And he tries very, very hard not to think about the woman next to him or her son in a hospital bed, and how if his heart aches this much now, when they’re—this. How much will it ache when he.

When he.

They make good time. Ilya pulls into the parking lot of Mass Gen just after 1:30 am. He thanks Yuna, handing off what he brought for Shane, and orders an Uber to take him back to his house.

It’s too big. Too quiet. Too still, after almost four weeks away.

He strips. He climbs into his bed. He doesn’t sleep.

He tries not to cry.

Chapter End Notes

YALL. OH MY GOD. My heart is so so so full at the response to this fic. I'm still combing through comments and responding, but please know that every single one makes my life.

You will notice that the chapter count has gone up by one (1) more chapter. I am but a humble chef, and these boys need time to stew. Also, the songs that Lilith Fair stan Yuna Hollander plays are Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, Wide Open Spaces by the Chicks, and Deeper Well by Emmylou Harris.

This was beta'd by the incomparable Marivan and if you haven't read her fic Not a Strip of Paper Merely you are MISSING. OUT.

Reblog the fic art and come hang out with me on tumblr @flawlessassholes, I love you all, and chapter 6 out of 7 is coming SOON!

P.S.: the Delta joke David tells is “I don’t know where I’ll go when I die, but I know I’ll connect through Atlanta.”

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

But his brain is still working, gnawing at his rubbery thoughts like a newly-boiled mouthguard.

Shane is injured.

Ilya is injured.

That means Ilya can come to the cottage to recover with him. Ilya wanted time with him! Or at least he did before their fight. But he probably still does? He has nothing else to do. And Shane doesn’t either! Except each other. Hopefully, they do each other a lot.

Chapter Notes

There's a thick blanket of snow over Shane’s consciousness. Time and people flurry around him, but it’s all muffled by whatever’s between his ears and his brain. Stuffing pulled out of his snow pants and packed in his skull instead.

A snowball of lucidity begins to roll downhill.

There’s a nurse and doctors and his mom. But he rolls right past their presence. His snowball picks up the oddest things. Chanting over and over again that he has to pee as nurses remind him he has a catheter in. Taking the catheter out. His mom seeing the whole catheter business.

Apparently, the only things that cluster in the oily dish soap bubbles of his thoughts are about his dick.

But after one minute or maybe one billion years, Shane blinks awake. And he immediately knows two things: he was really high all morning, and he’s not so high right now.

“I’m not high anymore,” he announces to his feet at the end of the hospital bed. There’s a beam of sunlight across his shins. It feels nice. Like sitting on the dock at the cottage. Toasty.

“Hang on, Judy,” his mom’s familiar voice drifts over him. “He’s up again. I think he might be a little less loopy.”

When was he up? Was it during the catheter shit? Piss? Heh. It doesn’t feel like it. His eyes are all crusty and gross. He wants to wipe them, but somebody’s hand stops his right arm from lifting. His head lolls to the right to see his mother’s worried face.

“Honey?” Mom asks. “How are you feeling?”

He tries to think through that. How is he feeling. He’s not high, maybe, but his head is all cottony and swirly. There’s a big window behind his mom. It looks nice outside. Big fluffy white clouds against a big blue sky. He tries to grab at a thought as it floats by, but he can’t seem to reach it.

“We’re at the hospital in Boston,” she says. Her thumb wipes something from his cheek. “You took a pretty bad hit last night during the game. Rung your bell pretty hard.”

Oh. That’s not good.

“I did?” He blinks a few times. He thinks it helps. With clearing the fuzz. “How bad was it?”

“You have a pretty bad concussion,” Mom says. Her hand is stroking his hair now. Like he’s a cat basking in the sun. They had a cat when he was little. “The doctors are going to come back to talk about it, but you also fractured your collarbone.”

He looks down at himself. He’s wearing a hospital gown, and his arm is in a sling. That’s really not good. You don’t get to play hockey if your arm is in a sling. It makes all the stick stuff difficult, probably. “How long am I gonna be out?”

“The doctors said a minimum of six weeks. No playoffs.”

The doctors also said Ilya was out for six weeks. Is it the same doctor? Probably not. That’s a long commute. And his face isn’t all smashed up. He didn’t have surgery like Ilya. Did he? He looks around himself. He’s wearing a hospital gown. He doesn’t have any big gaping bleeding wounds or stitches. There’s a bracelet on his left wrist that says FALL RISK.

That’s not nice. Shane is a good skater. He doesn’t fall.

Could he be more hurt than Ilya? Ilya was really hurt. No playoffs. Shane should be more upset about that, maybe, but he can’t find upset among the fluff right now.

“I was on drugs this morning,” he says. Is it morning still? “My tongue is too big.”

The corner of Mom’s lips twitches upward. “You’re on some serious pain meds, yeah. You should have seen yourself earlier.”

Earlier? “With the piss?”

“Yeah, that was an adventure,” Mom says. “You’ve been pretty out of it. You keep asking where your dad is.”

Where is his dad? Shane scans the room. North south east west. Never eat soggy waffles. But not south. That’s behind him. Maybe if he looks hard enough his father will pop out of thin air.

“He had a conference in the States. He’s flying here now.”

Wait. Shane turns his head back to his mother and tries to focus. “How did you get here?”

“I drove, sweetie.” She opens her mouth to say something else, but then she stops.

“That’s a long drive.” Ottawa to Boston. He’s thought about driving it before. Has looked up the route. When he missed Ilya.

His mom smiles, and she looks a little sad? “It wasn’t too bad.”

That’s good. That it wasn’t too bad. But now he’s thinking about Ilya. He should—he wonders if Ilya has texted him. “Can I see my phone?”

“Not for too long,” she says, handing it over. “You shouldn’t be looking at screens.”

He has a lot of texts. The team wishing him well, mostly. Rose, too. He scrolls through them until he gets far enough that he reaches his conversation with Ilya. There’s just one new message; him apologizing and asking to talk that evening. Yesterday evening.

He doesn’t know how to respond to that. Ilya’s in Montreal, and Shane’s in Boston, and they’re both hurt, and for whatever reason, that thought makes giggles hiccup out of him.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Shane says, handing his phone back over, but his brain is still working, gnawing at his rubbery thoughts like a newly-boiled mouthguard.

Shane is injured.

Ilya is injured.

That means Ilya can come to the cottage to recover with him. Ilya wanted time with him! Or at least he did before their fight. But he probably still does? He has nothing else to do. And Shane doesn’t either! Except each other. Hopefully, they do each other a lot.

But now he’s in the hospital in Boston, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to relay all this information back to Ilya.

It was a big fight. Shane hated every second of it. And now he’s so far away.

“Honey, are you okay?” Mom leans forward again. “Where’d you go?”

“Nothing!” Wait, no. “Nowhere.”

Mom smiles a little. “You’ve got so many more playoffs in your career, sweetie. I know it’s disappointing, but you’ve been so lucky with injury, knock on wood.” She does the thing she always does when she says that and gently raps her knuckles against his head.

“‘M not made of wood, I’m a real boy,” he mumbles, but he leans into the palm of her hand. It feels nice. He probably shouldn’t say it’s not about missing the playoffs. What could he say instead? That he had to piss? Could he go back to piss?

Mom leaves her hand on the top of his hair. She does look sad. “Shaneshine, you know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

Ilya called him Shaneshine before their fight. It sounded sweet and syrupy in his mouth. Canadian maple syrup. But Russian. Do Russians have maple syrup?

“And I mean anything,” she continues. “I love you, and I’ll always support you.”

His brow wrinkles as he works through that. Yeah, of course she supports him? She’s his manager? Is she talking about the playoffs? And he tells her about most things. The only thing he doesn’t tell her about is—

No. There’s no way that—no. He’s being silly. He’s all loopy still.

“Yeah?” he says slowly. “I know that?”

“Okay, well.” Mom presses her lips together.

He waits for the rest of whatever she’s saying to come. When it doesn’t, he says, “Mom, I do have to tell you something.”

She sits up a little straighter. “Yeah, hon?”

The door opens a crack, and the brain bubbles return, and they’re in Shane’s lungs and tummy, too. “Ilya!”

Ilya’s stuck in the doorway, looking to the right of Shane. Confused, Shane turns his head back. Oh, fuck. His mom.

“…Rozanov?” He tacks on. He clears his throat. Sound normal, Shane. “Ahem. Rozanov. Hi. Hello.”

Ilya steps in and closes the door. “Hi. And, ah, hello,” he says to Mom. “Hollander, I did not know you had a sister. I am Ilya Rozanov.”

Ilya’s carrying a plastic bag in one hand, and he stretches out the other for his mom to shake. And his mom does shake it. Shane watches it all like a bad airplane movie. Befuddled. What is happening.

“Okay, sure,” Mom says. “Yuna.”

“Is nice to meet you. I came to check on Hollander. Apologize for my teammate.”

“Oh, really? That’s nice.” She sounds suspicious, but nice. She should be suspicious. She hates Ilya. But why is she also being nice?

“Yes, well, it is the least I can do.”

“You know,” Mom turns back to Shane. “Your dad’s plane should be landing pretty soon. I’ll go check on that.”

“‘Kay.” This is weird. His mom is patting Ilya on his shoulder. Like they’re chums. Chummy chum chums. For Christmas one year, his dad gave his mom a dartboard and stuck Ilya’s picture on it. And now she’s patting him on the shoulder.

Maybe he is high.

Once the door closes, he says, “Why is my mom patting you on the shoulder.”

“She is huge Rozanov fan,” Ilya says. “She writes me fan letters. Asks me to sign all this stuff when Boston plays Montreal.”

“You’re being funny.” Shane’s eyes narrow. “Right?”

“Yes,” Ilya says. He looks very serious. And manly. And handsome. “Sorry. I just wanted to…are you okay?”

Why is he so hesitant? He doesn’t like Ilya hesitant. Shane should make him smile. “Concussion and a fractured collarbone, out for the playoffs, but…”

“Could have been worse.”

“Could’ve been worse.” That’s exactly what Shane was going to say. Wow. “You’re here! How are you here?” He was so far away in Montreal. And now he’s here.

“I spoke to Marlow this morning,” Ilya continues. “He feels terrible. He did not mean to hurt you.”

Why are they talking about Marlow? Shane doesn’t want to talk about Marlow. Ilya looks so serious. “I know. We all get our bell rung eventually. You got your bell rung, too. Ding dong.”

That doesn’t make Ilya smile. He’s not in Montreal anymore, but he’s still so far away. Shane waves his free hand. “Hey. Heyyyyyyyy.”

“Okay, okay, shh.” That finally gets Ilya to walk over and take his hand, and Shane feels all warm and satisfied like he did when he won the cup.

“Yes,” he exhales, his eyes closing. “Better.”

There's a rustling of plastic, and Shane’s left eye peeks open. “What’s that?”

Ilya shakes his head. “Is stupid, just…” he pulls a can of Molson’s out of a black plastic bag, and places both on the table beside his bed. “A deal is a deal.”

Oh. The silly story he told Marlow. Ilya did that, too. He hiccups another giggle, just one. It’s quiet and peaceful, and Shane doesn’t want to make so much noise. Ilya’s being very quiet; Shane loves him for it. He loves him so much. That’s all he can think as Ilya begins to stroke his face, soft and easy.

“You scared me,” Ilya says, finally.

Ilya was scared. Now they’re even. On being scared. “‘M sorry I didn’t text you last night.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Ilya brushes the back of his knuckle under Shane’s eye.

“I was gonna say sorry. For our fight. In Montreal,” Shane says. Oh right. Ilya. Montreal. Boston. He opens his eyes again. Ilya still looks so sad. “How’d you get here?”

“I drove,” Ilya says.

Shane waits for him to continue.

But…he doesn’t. He should tell Ilya that his mom drove, too. Maybe they passed each other on the highway. That’s a funny thought, but it floats away before he can grab onto its balloon string. Another balloon floats in its place, a warm, sunshine-yellow balloon. “Well, now that you’re here, I was gonna ask you…”

“Maybe it’s better if you just rest now.”

“Will you…”

“Hollander.”

“Come to my cottage? You’re out of the playoffs. I’m out of the playoffs. You can come to my house.”

“Hollander.”

“We’ll have so much fun. It’s so private. No one will know.”

“Hollander, you know I can’t do that.”

Shane groans, frustrated. Why not! “I’ve been wanting to ask you for so long. We could recover together, and we’d be completely alone…no games or practices to interrupt us…”

Ilya doesn’t look happy with his plan. It’s such a good plan. Shane doesn’t understand why he looks so serious. “I have to be here in Boston.”

Ugh. “Whyyy.”

“I’m still going to try and get back on the ice,” Ilya says. “I have after this appointment with surgeon, team doctor.”

His brow wrinkles. “Here?”

“Today and tomorrow, yes. Somewhere in the building. I have to look.”

Shane swims through his jelly brain, trying to figure out what that means. “So…you only came here for the doctor?”

“No, no,” Ilya says quickly. “I came to see you. Is…accident. Coincidence?”

Shane isn’t convinced. “I don't think you should play,” he says. It’s the first thing that comes to mind. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Ilya’s hand stills. Shane tries to lean into it, to make him start again. “I won’t get hurt.”

It doesn’t matter. Shane makes a frustrated noise because he has no idea how to say everything he wants to say, so he just says, “You’re hurting my feelings.”

“Shane.”

“You’re more than just a, a sack of meat that skates,” he says, the words spilling out of him now before he can stop them. “You’re—a real boy. I don’t think your team thinks you’re a real boy.”

Ilya smiles a little, but Shane’s not being funny. He’s being serious. “You need to get better, and you can’t rush that kind of stuff.”

“I think in a few weeks you’ll understand,” Ilya says, “why I have to do this.” He’s started stroking Shane’s cheek again. Shane wants to look stern, but it feels so nice. He leans into Ilya’s hand again.

“‘Mkay,” Shane mumbles after another minute. “But when you get knocked out of the playoffs, will you come to my cottage?”

Ilya huffs out a laugh. “I see. When?”

“Well, yeah,” Shane says. “‘Cause Boston sucks.”

Ilya boops his knuckle to the tip of Shane’s nose. “Maybe. Maybe.”

Shane can do maybe. Ilya’s other hand is still running his thumb back and forth over the heel of his palm. He’s so pretty. His eyes are so pretty. His hair is so curly, and it looks so soft. Shane wants to kiss him. Shane wants to tell him he loves him. All that love rises in his throat and behind his nose, tingly and bubbly like when he drinks beer or champagne. Fuck. He’s gonna burp out that he loves Ilya. He can’t stop, he—

The door opens. It’s the nurse who was doing the whole catheter business. He thinks her name is Isa.

“Oh, no,” Shane says, sad and just to himself. Ilya’s dropped his hand. Isa is the worst human being alive, probably.

“Uh oh,” she says, closing the door. “You’re not going to smother him with a pillow, are you, Mr. Rozanov?”

“Ah, no, no, no.” Ilya’s so far away from him again. “But good thinking. No, I was just leaving.”

He is? Oh. “Okay,” Shane says. His voice still sounds small and sad. “Bye-bye.”

Ilya looks so funny and stiff when he says goodbye, and Shane realizes it’s because they’re in front of people again, and for the first time ever, he’s disappointed that they have to pretend.

He clears his throat. “See you next season.”

It’s not real, he tells himself. He’ll see Ilya before then. He has to. But it still makes him sad to say it.

“Get well soon, Hollander.”

He has a well at his cottage. Maybe Ilya will come and see it. “Thank you,” Shane says, normal and manly. “I appreciate it.”

He opens his mouth to say, I love you, but Ilya’s shushing him as he leaves. So Shane doesn’t. And that makes him sad, too.

Ilya closes the door, and Shane looks up at Isa.

“That was Ilya Rozanov,” he says. Shane misses him already. Isa should know how happy Ilya makes him. “He brought me a beer.”

—

A dozen different X-rays, three different consulting surgeons, one no-contact skate, and two full-contact practices later, Ilya is finally, finally, finally activated from injured reserve and back in the lineup.

When their announcer says, “And your captain, the lean, mean Russian machine, Ilyaaaaa Rozanov!” and Ilya skates out under flashing yellow lights, he hears the whole of TD Garden yell back in a way that he hasn’t heard since they won the cup. The fans missed him, and fuck, Ilya missed them, too.

He’s still wearing a stupid fucking cage on his helmet, but he’s ready, he’s fit, and he’s been crawling out of his skin for over a month because he hasn’t been doing what he was born to do. He nets an assist, then a goal, and the arena erupts again. He tries to get in a fight for a Gordie Howe, he’s been itching for one, and even drops his gloves, but Marlow gets between him and Tampa’s dumbass winger that’s been wanting to start shit all night.

He ends the night with two goals and an assist, and he feels strong and invincible, and he goes out with the guys afterward to one of their usual places for steaks and shots. God, Ilya’s missed steak. And fries. Especially fries. They migrate from the private room upstairs to the bar downstairs, and the bartender is laying it on thick with him. He turns her down and tries not to examine it too closely.

He gets home at three, still wired on adrenaline and out-of-his-mind horny.

He takes his time taking himself apart in bed, thumbing his nipples, groping his balls and ass, fucking up into his favorite toy to one of his favorite pornos. It’s a dark-haired woman with huge tits ruthlessly pegging a muscled, hairy jock with a dildo that Ilya is frankly terrified by, while another man fucks his throat until the jock is reduced to snot and tears and spit. Ilya is red hot, worked up as he abandons the toy for his hand, gripping himself so tight it’s starting to hurt. The video ends with the three of them passing come between their mouths, which Ilya thinks is the hottest fucking thing he’s never gotten to do.

After that, Ilya’s mind goes where it always goes. Tears prick in his eyes as he spills to the same half-dozen fantasies featuring Shane. Shane begging for his cock, Shane coming untouched, smothering himself in Shane’s ass while Shane rides his face.

He hates himself for it, in his post-nut clarity. And he hates the deafening, silent indifference that surrounds him in his stupid fucking empty bed in his stupid fucking big, ugly, empty house in the stupid fucking suburbs of this stupid fucking city.

Nothing fills the void of noise. It’s nearly four in the morning, and Ilya wishes he were sober so he could go for a drive, maybe down to the cape, or westward along 95. Instead, he sits in his Bugatti with the engine off, staring at his garage door, and the speakers blasting Timati.

He wakes up in the driver’s seat, with his car battery dead and a horrible crick in his neck.

It’s embarrassing. Everything is embarrassing in the early morning light, but there’s no one in his stupid fucking house to see it. The knot in his stomach has to be homesickness, but for where, he isn’t sure.

His vast, architectural, minimalist mansion isn’t home. Ilya bought it because it was impressive, expensive, and had a four-car garage and a pool, but Ilya hates it now. Hates the sharp corners, the imposing concrete, the cool palette. Boston isn’t home, but nowhere else is. When he tries to picture it, the only place he can think of is a blurry, warm kitchen in the apartment they lived in before his father was promoted, and how his mother sang as she cooked, and how it gets harder and harder to remember every time he tries. And then he inevitably thinks of—

That’s stupid. Ilya won’t think of that. Can’t. He throws himself into the end of the season, into making up for lost time, into getting the fucking cup. It’s exhausting, he’s too thin from his time off, and the expected weight loss from the grueling pace of the playoffs, but Ilya is fucking determined.

It doesn’t matter how determined he is, in the end. It rarely does.

They claw their way to the second round and force a game seven, but it’s not enough. Scott fucking Hunter and his Admirals are on the kind of tear that he remembers so clearly from his own cup run in 2014. Ilya sees something in Hunter’s eyes that he hasn’t before, an unyielding mandate; a forgone conclusion.

There’s an alchemy to hockey. To all sports, but hockey has a special kind of magic about it that even the most rational players agree on. You never want to face off against a team whose stars and hunger align. Hunter will win the cup, Ilya’s sure of it, even if he doesn’t want it to happen because Scott Hunter is so fucking boring and irritating.

But by the time he’s shaking Hunter’s hand and circling the spokes at center ice to salute the fans with the rest of his team, he’s not too upset. It’s been a long season. An even longer year. His ribs ache. His jaw aches.

His heart aches.

With the season done, the dam holding back everything he’s tried to ignore breaks, and threatens to drown Ilya in the flood.

It’s Shane. It’s always Shane.

It’s Shane’s apartment. It’s Shane’s tender forehead kisses before bed. It’s Shane crumpled on the ice.

Shane saying, willyoucometomycottage, all one word aimed directly at him, still ricochets through Ilya’s body, intent on destroying as much bone and muscle and fascia and resolve it can.

He entered that hospital ready to say, enough. This has to stop. I can't live my life with half of my heart outside of my body, walking around and getting hurt when the other half is already dead and gone and buried six feet under a headstone I’ll never see again.

But Shane disarmed him. He has a habit of doing that.

Painfully earnest eyes and an equally earnest hand in a Regina parking lot, a bloom of freckles, a windchill flush, the first hopeful flower extending out of the snow, and the sentinel of Ilya’s willpower was shot through the heart and left for dead by the very first bullet.

There were bruises staining his freckles. Ilya brushed a knuckle over them and wished he could wipe them away. And Shane blinked up at him with an unearned benevolence, asked him to come to his cottage, and Ilya was disarmed once more.

And Ilya wanted nothing more than to say yes. But what was beyond that? A happily ever after? Riding off into the sunset? Shane saying fuck it, let’s come out, and Ilya agreeing, and them having a baby to put in the cup that they won together?

It was absurd. It wasn’t possible. The responsible thing to do would be to end it outright. Ilya would be miserable, yes, but Shane would be free of him. And if he could give that to Shane as a parting gift, then maybe the pain could mean something.

And maybe, he lied to his stupid, tender heart, breaking up didn’t have to be permanent. They would take a break from each other. Shane would realize Ilya was damaged goods, and Ilya would give his heart time to calm down and move on, and they could then return to what they were in the beginning. Getting together and fucking. Simple. A release.

Ilya wanted so much more, but if that’s all he could have, he would take it. There was no use in getting his hopes up for more. More wasn’t realistic.

His stomach continues to ache, even after they were knocked out. He couldn’t place why it was lingering until he remembered that it would be the time of year he would be preparing to fly to Russia. But he wasn’t. He meant what he said to Shane on the phone after the funeral; he never wanted to go back. But it left him with this jittery reverberation in his core, the one that made him chain smoke and drink too much until he had to stop doing that because he wasn’t finished with all his jaw shit.

He didn’t expect the email from Yuna.

He was in the dentist’s parking lot when it came; he was always at the fucking dentist these days. He doesn’t know how she got his email, but he’s not surprised she did.

Ilya,

I don’t know what you are to Shane, but I respect your wish to let him tell me of his volition.

Ilya had to swipe away to look up volition. Annoyed that she didn’t just use the word choice, he continued to read:

That has yet to happen. Which leads me to two possible conclusions — either this isn’t what I think it is, or it’s so much more. As much as I’d like to believe the former, I think we both know it’s the latter. I spent the long drive back to Montreal trying to think of how I could fix this, but I don’t think I can, and that was difficult to come to terms with — that there is something in Shane’s life that I cannot fix.

Shane has never wanted to be tokenized, and it’s my fault for the ways that he is. I can’t protect him from the visible, but I can from the invisible. If he won’t tell me, it’s because he doesn’t want to be the first. So, I’ll do everything in my power to protect that wish. Maybe, one day, if that changes, Shane will tell me, and we can figure it out together.

I wish you all the best, except in hockey. I’m glad Boston lost, and I hope that team never wins a single cup ever again. (I think it’s Scott Hunter’s year, anyway.)

Yuna

To see it laid out like that, plain and incriminating in black and white. Shane won’t come out, and like hell does Ilya want to, either. There’s no future for him and Shane, he’s known that since this whole thing started, but for her to know it, for her to—

He’s spent nearly a decade admiring Yuna Hollander from afar; her fierce determination to manage her son into the life she knows he deserves is intimidating and evident. If she couldn’t think of something, then there was nothing to think of.

With that knowledge, he tried to get on with his life and his summer.

He had to submit himself to every doctor and dentist and their poking and prodding before they cleared him, and now, poking and prodding is all he gets. He goes to the dentist, they fix a tooth or two, and he leaves with his face swollen and numb and tries not to think about how he feels swollen and numb everywhere.

He has his wisdom teeth removed because they say he does really have to. Ha ha, now he has an excuse for his stupidity. For not going to Shane’s cottage, or for entertaining the idea, he doesn’t know. But he is stupid.

Shane won’t stop texting him. Ilya, with his aforementioned stupidity, won’t stop texting him back.

It’s the smallest things. A photo of a lake. What his dad made for dinner. How annoying his mom can be. Asking how his ribs are faring and if his jaw is giving him any issues.

And Ilya, stupidly charmed and heartsick, responds to them all. Mocking how the Mission barely scraped through the WCF. Asking about his concussion. Sending stupid quotes from the bodice rippers he reads to improve his English.

His summer stretches before him, cold and lonely, like he’s going back to Russia anyway. He makes half-hearted plans with Svetlana to go to Miami. She has a brother who lives down there, and it doesn’t sound too bad, to eat Cubans and go clubbing and shopping and deep-sea fishing. He tries to get her to go to the Grand Prix in Monaco, but she said it was boring, to which he asked how on Earth could Kimi Räikkönen driving a Ferrari be boring, but he let it go.

He hosts a cup watch party at his house, if Hunter and his Admirals get it done tonight, and if you can call seven people a party.

It’s Sveta and her eldest brother Misha, Jake and his cousin Simon, and this kid Zhenya, who is the prodigious nephew of a friend of a friend of his father’s or something, and is getting his master’s in something Slavic and complicated at Harvard, and whom Ilya has begrudgingly become quite fond of. Zhenya brings along some guy named Colin, who speaks better Russian than Ilya. When Ilya asks where he’s from, Colin says Georgia, and Jake gets all excited, but no, he meant the Georgia in America.

So. It’s Ilya, Sveta, Misha, Yasha, Sema, Zhenya, and Colin.

It becomes clear to Ilya in about five seconds that Colin and Zhenya are together-together, and he’s ashamed that they’re keeping a wide berth around each other; that they choose to sit on opposite ends of his couch.

During the first intermission, he takes stock of their little Russian knitting circle. Sveta would be fine with it, Misha definitely wouldn’t, Jake is a maybe, Simon seems a little light blue himself, and Ilya is, well, Ilya.

Ilya decides to leave well enough alone during the game. Then, after the third time Zhenya stops himself from saying ‘we,’ Ilya decides that he’ll take Zhenya aside after the game and tell him that he and Colin are welcome in his home anytime, and that includes as partners. And then he thinks, fuck, when did I get so old and mature?

He’s not really paying attention to the game. Somewhere near a lake in Canada, Shane is watching with his parents. They’re texting like they’ve been texting, but it becomes pretty clear that Scott fucking Hunter has it in the bag, so he begins multitasking and packing gifts to send back with Sveta for his niece, the little things he’s picked up here and there, a gift for her birthday, and for finishing the school year. He had already passed on playing at Worlds, citing his injuries, but it’s mostly because Worlds is no fun if he doesn’t get to face off against Shane.

Scott fucking Hunter lifts the cup, and Ilya is annoyed, but after he passes the cup off to Vaughn, Ilya can’t help but feel—something. Hunter is standing alone. The WAGs and families begin to spill onto the ice, and Ilya knows Hunter has no one coming.

Ilya didn’t have anyone after he lifted the cup, either, and once the overwhelming relief passed, it was perhaps the loneliest moment of his entire life.

Everyone else has stopped paying attention, but before Ilya can turn away, something on camera catches his eye. He pauses, watching carefully as the camera tracks from Hunter waving up toward the stands to someone in the crowd.

Ilya sits back down on the couch. No one else is watching now, Sveta laughing at something Jake has said. A man is making his way to the ice. Barely taking his eyes off the screen, he texts Shane.

Lily:
What is he doing?

Jane:
I don’t know…?

The man is hopping the boards. His hand is in Hunter’s.

This can’t be happening.

Hunter—sure, maybe; Ilya always thought he probably was, but he would never do this. This isn’t going to happen. It’s never going to happen, not until Ilya is long retired. Probably not even then.

It’s happening.

He never thought he would see it. But—it’s happening.

Ilya realizes, distantly, every muscle taut with disbelief, that he has never seen a man kiss another man while wearing skates. Pads. A sweater with an original six logo and a C on his chest.

He’s dialing even before he’s fully off the couch.

He should go further away, to his room, to close a door or something, but the phone doesn’t ring more than once when Shane picks up, breathless. Ilya has no idea what Shane says, if he says anything at all, because Ilya can’t stop to think or rationalize anything beyond it happened, it finally happened, when he says:

“I’m coming to the cottage.”

Chapter End Notes

I want to take a moment to express my absolute joy and appreciation for every single comment, kudo, bookmark, reblog. I don't think I've ever written a fic this fast, and every single comment truly does make me write faster. It makes me so so so happy and I love getting to talk about my work with y'all. ❤️❤️❤️

You will notice! The chapter count is now eight. Idk what to tell y'all. I checked the temperature on these boys, and they needed two chapters more.

This chapter would not have been possible without Marivan, who continues to make my writing shine and better than I ever thought it could be.

I cannot take credit for the concept of Ilya reading bodice rippers to improve his English. This is a characterization I read in a Sid/Geno fic once and now, for the life of me, cannot find. If this fic is yours or you know which one I'm talking about, please let me know. It's probably one of my favorite things I've ever read.

Come hang out with me on tumblr @flawlessassholes and reblog the fic art! I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!

Chapter 7... SOON. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Chapter 7

Chapter Summary

“She would have loved you,” Ilya says, his voice no more than a whisper, because you’re supposed to whisper in holy moments. “Like I love you.”

Shane’s hand cups his jaw, the side that was injured, and Ilya wants to cry at the delicate touch. “Say it again in Russian, please.”

Chapter Notes

It’s been two months since Shane last saw Ilya in person, and somehow, he’s become even more devastatingly handsome in that time apart.

Shane’s been a little stiff in his shorts since he drove across the Maple Street bridge into Ontario in anticipation of seeing Ilya, of the two weeks ahead of them, of everything, and now he’s idling in the airport arrivals lane and pinching his upper thigh as Ilya approaches the car.

His jaw is crooked now, for Christ’s sake. What powers at be looked at Ilya Rozanov and thought that giving him a crooked fucking jaw was a necessary or good idea?

His arms are bigger, too, maybe. And did he have to wear his cap backwards? It’s not exactly discrete, and it isn’t covering his face, so it’s probably for the express purpose of driving Shane insane.

He regrets suggesting Ilya fly into Ottawa. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Yes, Montreal-Trudeau is only an hour and a half away from the cottage, but it’s so much bigger and busier, and it didn’t seem worth the risk.

But now a three-hour drive stands between him and Ilya’s dick.

Pinching his thigh doesn’t help.

Ilya’s seemingly packed light; he’s got a backpack and a small roll-aboard. Shane would think it wasn’t enough for two weeks, but it’s not like they’ll be doing much that doesn’t require a swimsuit or…well.

He puts his roll-aboard in the backseat and climbs into the passenger seat, and Shane doesn’t know what to say. Where to begin.

Ilya pulls his seatbelt across his broad chest. Buckles. Then says, “Is this a Jeep?”

Shane is offended on his car’s behalf.

“It’s a Range Rover,” Shane says. Ilya’s expression is imperceptible. “Practical. Good in the snow.”

“Okay.”

Ilya is chirping him. It’s so familiar. Uncomplicated. Their first language together.

Shane missed him so much that he feels stupid.

“Are you hungry? It’s about a two and a half hour drive, but we can stop for something if you want.”

“No,” Ilya says. “I’m okay.”

“I think you’re gonna like the cottage,” Shane says as he pulls out of the arrivals lane and navigates back to the highway. He doesn’t know why he feels like he still needs to sell Ilya on the idea, but he can’t stop. “It’s, uh, relaxing.”

Ilya grins, and God, now his grin is crooked, too. Christ. “Ah, is that what we are going to do? Relax?”

Shane could play it off, but. He doesn’t want to. “I hope so. I would like to relax with you. For once.”

Ilya tilts his head. “Hm. What do you call Montreal?”

Shane snorts. “That was not relaxing.”

“No,” Ilya agrees.

He doesn’t continue after that, so Shane switches back to his cottage pitch, all the anxiety-riddled bullet points he’s had in his head, every way he’s tried to make this as seamless and as close to perfect as possible. “I bought groceries, so we don’t need to leave. Or not leave much. If we don’t want to.”

Ilya nods, looking out the window.

“No potatoes though,” Shane adds. “I thought you might be sick of them.”

He worries it’s the wrong thing to say, that Ilya doesn’t want the reminder of his injury, but Ilya huffs out a laugh. “Too bad. You were getting so good at mashing them.”

“It’s all in the forearm,” Shane says, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “It requires serious practice.”

Ilya’s smile widens in Shane’s periphery. He rests his hand atop Shane’s on the gear stick. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too, but also, like, terrified, yeah?” Ilya’s smile fades into something more thoughtful. “I don’t know why this feels…”

“Different than before?”

“Yes.” Out of the corner of his eye, Shane can see Ilya squint behind his sunglasses. “It does. I’m not sure why.”

“Well, that was recovery,” Shane says, but then he falters. “It’s…”

“Different than relaxing?”

“I think so? Maybe? I don’t know.”

“I don’t either.” Ilya kisses the back of Shane’s hand and tangles their fingers together. “When you think of why, let me know?”

Shane nods. His cheeks hurt, and he realizes he hasn’t stopped smiling since Ilya got in the car. Well, post-Jeep quip.

It’s easy to chat for the rest of the drive. About Ilya’s flight, and if anyone recognized him, and Ilya making fun of Shane for telling his parents he was on a silent retreat. Ilya fiddles with the radio until he finds a station that must satisfy him because he starts humming along, the fuzz of his arm hair golden where it rests against the window.

And it’s easy not to talk, too. When they come to a natural lull, Ilya seems just as content as Shane to watch the treeline stretch and blur into the same green, brown, hazel mix that Shane thinks might be the only thing that matches the color of Ilya’s eyes.

Even the urgency he felt before, the anticipatory arousal, has waned; banked embers of a past night’s campfire lying in wait. It’s like his body knows that they have time, and that this time isn’t anything like those fraught few weeks in Shane’s apartment.

But as the pavement becomes patchy and the forest grows thicker, his arousal sparks again, and it’s accompanied by the same queasy nerves that sat like a brick in Shane’s stomach the entire drive down.

The sound of tires turning stones fills the car as he turns off the main roads and into the long pebbled drive that leads to the cottage. Ilya’s leg is bouncing now, jittery like he’s nervous, too. This feels important. So important. Like a test, almost. If things can go better than before, and if they can be. Real.

Shane doesn’t know the answers, but he parks, and Ilya grins at him, and he wants nothing more than to do his best and find out.

He grabs Ilya’s roll-aboard out of the backseat and takes his backpack from him, too.

“I can carry my own bag,” Ilya protests as Shane locks the car with a beep.

There’s no way Shane is going to let Ilya carry his own bags. It’s impolite, first of all, and he’s still injured. “How are your ribs?”

“Fine. I can take my bag.”

He dodges Ilya’s grab for the bags. “I can’t believe you played with those bruised ribs.”

Shane can picture Ilya’s eye roll as he says, “Oh, you can’t?”

Something turns over in his stomach. It wasn’t just the ribs that Ilya played through, and this is too close to their fight in Montreal.

“Okay, maybe I can,” he allows. He sets the bags down by Ilya’s sneakers and toes off his boat shoes in a neat row. “You were right, by the way.”

“I know,” Ilya says, as Shane watches as he takes in the cottage, the windows, the view. Then he pauses. “What was I right about?”

“In the hospital, you said I would understand why you needed to play.” Shane hooks his thumbs into his pockets and tries to fight the urge to scrunch his shoulders up to his ears. “I do. Now.”

Ilya turns to Shane, and he looks so. Fond. There’s something about the way he’s looking at Shane. Something that aches in Shane’s heart and beats against his ribs. He clears his throat.

“I can give you a tour, if you’d like,” he says, tentative and then too quick, nervousness seeping back into every word as they stumble out of his mouth. He forces his thumbs out of his pockets. “Or I could make us some lunch. There’s plenty of food. Also, I bought you Cokes.”

His brain is cringing and screaming, Shane, you idiot, you’ve already talked about the groceries. He’s never been less sexy, he’s sure. And then, because he’s an unsexy idiot, he walks over to the window and says, “Though the water here is really good. I have my own well. You can see it. In case you’re thirsty.”

His thumbs are back in his pockets. He can’t help it. Shane should say something else, and he starts to formulate something about the water tables of the Lanaudière region, but the look on Ilya’s face has changed, and Shane watches, helpless and rooted where he stands as Ilya walks toward him, steady and sure. His hand is on Shane’s jaw, and then his other hand is too, cradling Shane’s face.

Under the weight of Ilya’s gaze, Shane’s nerves. Evaporate. He’s smiling again, but Ilya isn’t. Ilya has never looked more serious. Like kissing Shane is his one mission. Like being here, holding Shane in his hands was inevitable. And then Shane can’t see anything but Ilya’s eyelashes, and he closes his eyes, and welcomes Ilya’s lips.

This kiss is. Is.

Ilya has kissed him a hundred ways, but Shane knows, immediately, that this is different. This is beyond any other kiss. That Ilya is trying to say something with his lips, and God, Shane wants to know what, and if it’s the same thing Shane is trying to say as he kisses back.

All Shane can think as Ilya kisses him again, his hands anchoring Shane, is: this is where I’m supposed to be. And this is who is supposed to be here. With me.

They haven’t kissed like this since before Ilya was injured, and when Ilya licks into Shane’s mouth, that’s somehow different, too. Shane grins, parting but not letting go as they fumble backward, nearly knocking the lamp over until they collapse on the couch, laughing and breathless as they kiss again, again, again. Shane’s hard, and Ilya is too, a thick line against Shane’s hip. Ilya’s hand roams over his ass, squeezing shamelessly, urging Shane to move against him.

Ilya’s kisses are even messier than usual, and he bites Shane’s lip, and Shane never thought he’d miss that; even after Ilya’s wires came off and they began to trade a few, cautious kisses here and there, biting was firmly off limits until the sharp, jagged bottom row of Ilya’s teeth were fixed.

God, Shane’s so far gone already, just from kissing and grinding like they’re teenagers. But Shane never got to do this as a teenager, so. Maybe it’s allowed.

Ilya’s fingers tuck underneath the band of Shane’s shorts, and Shane pulls away, just to try and breathe for a second.

“Wait, um, it’s been a while,” Shane says, positive that every inch of his skin is flushed red. “So I might not last long.”

Ilya doesn’t seem bothered by this. He seems more concerned with trying to kiss Shane again, and he rolls his hips like a reminder. “Yes, same, but we have two weeks.”

Shane nods and says something inane, like cool, but right before Ilya kisses him again, his brain catches up. “Wait,” Shane says, pulling back slightly. “Same?”

Ilya hums, kissing in the hollow below Shane’s ear. Shane wants to close his eyes, to give in and let it go, but…

“You said ‘same,’” Shane says. “You haven’t been with anyone lately?”

He can tell Ilya’s trying to move things along when he rolls his hips again, and says, impatiently, “No.”

Pressed together like this, Shane wonders if Ilya can feel his racing heart. “Not since…?”

He trails off, unsure if he should bring up eating Ilya’s ass and then fighting with him in Shane’s kitchen.

“No, not since.” Ilya lifts his head to chase Shane’s lips. “So can we—”

“Really?” Shane interrupts. Not since Montreal. It bounces around in his head, not since, not since, not since. He can’t keep the smile off his face. He searches Ilya’s face, his eyes, one hand cupping Ilya’s jaw. There’s no bruise there anymore. There were still the faintest traces in the hospital.

“Hollander, it’s not a big deal,” Ilya says. “Okay?”

He’s trying to look nonchalant, but Shane thinks that maybe he’s a little chalant. Not since.

He presses his forehead to Ilya’s, nosing at the mole just above his jaw, the arc of three small freckles by his chin. He has a very small pimple near the corner of his mouth, and Shane has the strangest urge to kiss it. He knows he sounds like an overly fond, love-struck dork when he says, “Yeah, but it’s been—”

“Months, yes, I know.” Ilya shifts underneath him. “So can we fuck now, please?”

They can. Shane wants it so bad. But— “I have an idea.”

Ilya’s head thunks back against the pillow, groaning, but maybe it’s just for show because he still looks happy. “What?”

“For the next two weeks, let’s just be honest with each other,” Shane says, thumbing over some incongruous stubble. Maybe Ilya missed it when he shaved this morning. “About what we actually think and, and maybe how we really feel? No…talking past each other, like we did in Montreal.”

Ilya’s jaw ticks, like he’s biting his cheek, and Shane almost tells him not to do that, an instinct from Ilya’s recovery, but Ilya’s jaw is fixed. So he doesn’t have to anymore. It’s silly, but Shane almost. Misses it.

After another moment, Ilya nods. “I will try.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, taking Shane’s hand and pressing it to his crotch. “I will do anything if it will make you touch my dick right now.”

Shane ducks into Ilya’s shoulder. God. God!

Failing to keep the besotted joy out of his voice, he tells Ilya’s neck, “Sounds like a plan.”

“Do you want to hear my plan?” Ilya’s hand is running up and down Shane’s back. Shane nods. “My teeth were so fucked, you know, and now they are fixed. I would like to celebrate by kissing you to make up for every time I couldn’t before.”

Shane’s sure Ilya can feel his stupid smile against his neck.

“And then,” Ilya continues, “you’re going to fuck my face.”

Shane pulls back at that. “Yeah?”

Ilya looks so fucking smug at Shane’s excitement. “Yes.”

And then, with the hand behind Shane’s neck, Ilya pulls Shane back down, kissing him open-mouthed and sloppy, coaxing Shane’s tongue into his mouth and sucking on it, which is such an insane sensation that Shane can’t help but gasp and buck up against Ilya.

He doesn’t know how long they lay there kissing, over and over and over again, the repeated smack and slip of their lips so loud to Shane’s ears, rhythmic and driving, matching his pulse beat-for-beat against his eardrums. He’s dizzy with how good it is, the steady heat passing and thrumming between them, and he wants more. He needs more.

His shirt is damp with sweat, now, and clinging to his lower back. He tries to take it off, but Ilya pulls him back in, sucking a hickey into his neck. Shane should protest, and then he remembers he doesn’t have to.

“Please,” Shane says. He sounds a little whiny, even to his own ears. “I want to see it later.”

Ilya squeezes his ass and nips below his ear, soothing it with his tongue and then sucking hard as Shane grinds against him. It’s odd how kissing seems so…novel. The last time they made out like this was last fall in Boston, and that doesn’t even come close to this. Shane didn’t realize how much he had missed it. Or how much he craved it.

He pulls back, Ilya chasing after his mouth, but he really needs to take his shirt off; he needs to feel Ilya’s skin, that he’s real and just as sweaty and desperate beneath him. Ilya follows, his tank top landing in a pile with Shane’s sweat-soaked linen button-down.

Ilya runs one hand over Shane’s bare back, the other squeezes Shane’s pec, then worrying his nipple. Somewhere along the way, Shane’s shorts got unzipped, and now the head of his dick is poking out of the waistband of his briefs.

“Take your pants off,” Ilya says, his voice husky, and his eyes not looking away from Shane’s dick.

Shane stands to shuck off his pants, and he watches Ilya palm his erection, a thick line straining against his joggers. Shane moves to lie atop Ilya, but Ilya shakes his head.

“No, “ he says. “On your knees. Over me.”

Shane exhales a punch of air and straddles Ilya’s waist. Ilya’s hands find Shane’s hips, and he nudges him forward, Shane knee-walking until his thighs are bracketing Ilya’s head.

“Fuck my face,” Ilya says, looking up, his big hands gripping Shane’s thighs and his thumbs massaging circles in Shane’s leg hair. “Can you do that for me? Nice and hard, yes? I’ve missed it.”

Ilya licks his lips, not suggestive, but like he actually. Wants. Needs this. Shane nods, dumb with how turned on he is. He feeds his dick into Ilya’s mouth, infernally hot and humid. Ilya groans, trying to pull Shane forward, his hands sliding from Shane’s thighs to the meat of his ass until Ilya’s nose is pressing against the hair at the base of Shane’s cock, and Shane can feel Ilya’s throat work as he swallows around him.

Shane pulls back and thrusts in experimentally, and Ilya’s eyes close as he nods, and just. Takes it.

Ilya is great at sucking dick. Shane is always a little surprised that he likes it so much, just like Shane likes it. He was shocked that very first time, at how smooth and effortlessly Ilya took him in his mouth, sucking him until Shane came down his throat embarrassingly fast. Usually, Ilya blowing Shane feels like an extension of Ilya fucking Shane, Ilya taking control and taking Shane apart. And usually, Shane just fists his curls and holds on for dear life.

Ilya urges him on with his hands again, a reminder, squeezing Shane’s ass and tugging him forward, and Shane exhales, letting the last of his hesitation go as he starts fucking in and out of Ilya’s mouth. Ilya looks like he’s in heaven, his mouth and chin and cheeks shiny with spit, his eyes lidded and pupils big. Ilya wipes a finger under his chin—to clear the spit, Shane thinks—but then he presses the spit-soaked finger against Shane’s hole. Shane jolts forward with a surprised moan, and Ilya gags and tightens his grip on Shane’s ass with his other hand, holding him there, swallowing.

Shane wants this moment to last forever, but he’s so worked up he might die.

He pulls out, his cockhead resting on Ilya’s lower lip as Ilya kisses and licks at it. His eyes meet Shane’s, looking so fucking smug, and he says, a little hoarse, “Good?”

Mute with want, Shane nods, fervent and so close. “Fuck me,” he begs, thrusting back into Ilya’s willing and waiting mouth. “Please, please fuck me.”

Ilya rests two fingers on his hole, and Shane shakes his head. “No, no,” he babbles. “I need more, I need—”

Something guttural and animalistic reverberates in Ilya’s throat, and it feels so fucking good. Indescribably good. Contracting around his cock. Ilya looks up at him like he’s starving, and fucks three fingers into Shane all at once.

It’s so much. Too much. The stretch hurts and stings, slicked only by spit, but Shane is wild for it, rutting up against Ilya’s face, his balls hitting Ilya’s chin, the hands tangled in his curls twisting and rending as Shane curls in on himself, thighs squeezing Ilya’s head as he thrusts in one final time and comes down Ilya’s throat.

Distantly, Ilya pulls off Shane’s cock, but Shane’s ears are ringing, and his eyes are damp, and he feels like he was the one who was just choking on cock as his face was fucked, not Ilya.

“Oh my god,” Shane says, dazed and out of breath. “Holy shit, Rozanov.”

“Yes, yes,” Ilya says. He gently pulls his fingers from Shane’s ass, petting his hands along Shane’s thighs. “I come on your face?”

Shane nods, the fire roaring back and licking up his neck, his torso, his cheeks, his ears; a rash of desire burned red across his whole body as he awkwardly gets off Ilya and kneels on the floor.

“God,” Ilya says, his mouth hanging open as he fishes his cock out of his pants. He doesn’t even take them off, just tucks the waistband under his balls and starts to fist himself in short, rough pulls. “Fuck, you’re so easy, so good for me.”

Shane’s face is too hot. He rests it against the cool nylon of Ilya’s joggers and looks up at Ilya, at how Ilya stares back, open-mouthed and hungry as he jerks himself off.

“Please,” Shane says, quiet and overwhelmed with need. “I want it. Want you. To come on me.”

Ilya groans, his eyes briefly closing as he holds out his hand. Shane spits in it, and he thinks that Ilya will wrap his hand around his cock again, and he does, but first he. He spits in his hand, too, so his spit and Shane’s mingle in his palm before he slicks himself with it.

He fucks up into his fist, and Shane wants more, wants to make him come so badly. He leans forward and takes one of Ilya’s balls into his mouth, sucking it while he reaches up to hold the other. Ilya makes a filthy, pained sound, panting as he says, “Fuck, yes, I’m so close, I’m—”

Shane pulls away, sticking his tongue out. He feels so slutty like this, but Ilya likes it, likes it when Shane is slutty. “Please, Ilya. Please come for me.”

“God, fuck,” Ilya says, as Shane rolls his balls in his hand. They’re full and heavy, but they begin to tighten as Ilya strips his dick, his knuckles nearly white at how hard he’s gripping himself. “I’m gonna come on your face and tits, yes? You want it?”

Shane nods, fervent, and maybe it’s stupid, but he sits up a little straighter, like he’s presenting his, fuck, his tits to Ilya. The sound of Ilya fisting his cock is so loud as he speeds up, his chest heaving and shiny with sweat, his pecs bouncing with each stroke, the veins in his arm and neck prominent. “I want it so bad, please, please—”

“Oh, fuck, Shane—” Ilya cuts off, his lips pursing and chin twisting as he hunches forward, ropes of come painting Shane’s face and chest, his chest rising and falling like he just did a double shift on ice as he collapses back against the couch.

“Fuck,” Ilya says, finally, still out of breath. “Jesus Christ, Hollander.”

“That was…” Shane presses his face against Ilya’s knee, getting come all over his joggers. He laughs, breathless and giddy, and Ilya’s laughing too, and he’s never felt so light.

That light stays with them after they quickly rinse off, and Shane gives Ilya an actual tour of the cottage, starting with the en-suite bathroom with its massive tub and double-headed shower, the rink in the basement, the boathouse, and the Sea-Doos and fishing gear, which Ilya actually seems interested in.

“You want to go fishing?” Shane asks, disbelieving. There’s no way. “Isn’t that boring?”

“I grew up going to the lake in Russia,” Ilya says. “What’s not to like. You drink, you tan, you swim, you look at nice nature, you fuck on the boat—”

Shane raises his eyebrows. “Oh, you do, do you?”

“—and then you grill fish. Great time.” Ilya presses a kiss below Shane’s ear. “Would you like to go fishing with me?”

The puff of his breath tickles, and Shane scrunches into it, but not in a bad way. He turns, kissing him, just because he can. “Okay, we’ll go fishing. You want to see the grill?”

On the way to the grill, he shows Ilya his favorite rock to read on right by the lake under a scraggly birch tree, and then the well. Shane tells Ilya that wells are more advanced now, and you don’t need the whole stone-structure, classic build thing, but his grandparents on his dad’s side had one, so he asked for a vintage well in addition to the pump system, and then they get sidetracked kissing against the well.

By the time they actually make it to the grill, they’re both hungry, so Shane gets started on the burgers while Ilya goes for a swim. Shane doesn’t know how he can stand the water; it’s still so cold, but he knows Ilya is a bit of a fish.

And it’s nice. To look over through the windows or from the deck and see Ilya’s shoulders and arms cutting through the water. He knows Ilya trains with swimming in the summer; he’s sent enough pictures of himself with goofy goggles, and seeing him splash around with the kids in Tampa did things to Shane. But he didn’t know Ilya went to a lake growing up, too. It’s another nice thought—that they spent their summers the same way as kids, long before they ever knew each other.

The burgers turn out great, and Ilya eats two, so Shane doesn’t know why he felt the need to make fun of Shane grilling all eight patties. He’s not surprised that it’s easy to talk and laugh through dinner, or to fuck again before they fall asleep, or to train together in the morning and spend the day on the Sea-Doos.

In the afternoon, Shane gets a bit of a headache, and he’s not sure if it’s concussion-related or maybe from being out in the sun, but Ilya insists they nap. He wakes up alone in his bed near dusk, and he walks through the cottage until he finds Ilya with a pile of pucks in the artificial rink, soft music playing from his phone as he slaps shot after shot into the net.

“Go bar-down,” Shane calls out after watching him for a minute. Ilya startles a little, but he throws Shane a sly grin and a wink, and Shane watches Ilya’s shoulders and back muscles work as he snipes the puck to the top bar of the net, the steel dinging as the puck falls past the goal line.

“Did I wake you?” Ilya asks, grabbing another puck and tossing it up and down on his stick. If he’s trying to turn Shane on, it’s working.

“Nah, I was up.” He watches as Ilya rotates his stick under the airborne puck and then smacks it into the net without it ever touching the artificial ice. “You hungry? I was thinking we could have those kebabs I prepped; it shouldn’t take too long to grill them.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. He walks over to where Shane is leaning against the boards and gives him a quick kiss. “Good sleep?”

“Good sleep,” Shane says. “It’s a nice night for a bonfire, too.”

“Really?” Ilya looks surprised and—hesitant for some reason. “You want to have a bonfire?”

He learns why Ilya is hesitant after Ilya tells him about his mom, when Shane asks Ilya to tell him some memories, if that’s okay. With his head still in Shane’s lap, Ilya tells him about going to bonfires in Russia when he was younger, and how Shane’s idea of a bonfire is emphatically not Ilya’s idea of a bonfire.

“They get that big, and then people jump over them?” Shane asks, dubious, as Ilya lowers his phone. “That can’t be safe.”

“No.” Ilya snorts, and Shane can feel it against the hair on his knees. “No one said it was safe.”

Shane is kind of afraid of what Ilya’s answer will be, but he hesitantly asks, “...Did you ever jump over it?”

“Relax,” Ilya says. “I haven’t been to one since I was a kid. Too little to do it. And Mama would have killed me. It was her family that was more…I don’t know. Not religious, but not not religious.”

Shane’s been running his hand through Ilya’s curls. “Is that why you wear your necklace?” Shane had long ago looked up the Orthodox cross and why it was different from a regular cross, but he wasn’t religious, and he didn’t think Ilya was, either.

“Yes,” Ilya says as Shane’s thumb runs over the chain at the base of his neck. “She gave it to me.”

They fall quiet again, listening to the crickets hum and the fire crackle and the soft sound of Ilya’s breathing. If he tries hard enough, he can hear water lapping against his boat and the dock. He doesn’t like noise, usually, but this—this is the kind he does like. Loves.

“I’m sorry,” Ilya says, barely more than a whisper.

Shane looks down at him, confused. His curls look orange in the firelight, the flames hiding and revealing the stillness of Ilya’s face as they flicker and dance their shadows across it. “For what?”

“What I said in the kitchen. I got mean, and it was not fair.”

He thinks back to prepping dinner. “About…how long we should grill the kebabs?”

Ilya shakes a little in his lap, and Shane realizes he’s laughing. “Oh my god, Hollander. Your kitchen in Montreal.”

Oh. Shane is. Dumb.

He doesn’t like thinking about their fight before Shane left for Boston. About Ilya saying, I know everyone says Shane Hollander is God’s gift to hockey, but you’re not my god. I don’t need forgiveness.

It was mean. And it caught Shane completely off guard when he said it. Over the past couple of months, he’s tried to figure out why it hurt so much to hear. He’s not religious; his parents aren’t, either. And he doesn’t think he’s God’s gift to hockey. Maybe other people do, but that’s—silly.

“I wasn’t being fair, either,” Shane says slowly. “You were right. I should’ve supported you. I didn’t understand, but now I do, and I feel like shit about it.” He was losing his mind while his team was still playing, and he felt mostly fine. If Montreal hadn’t been knocked out in the first round, he probably would’ve tried to get back on the ice for the playoffs.

Ilya shifts in Shane’s lap so he’s lying on his back. His eyes study Shane’s face. “I did not want you to get injured. You know this, right?”

Shane brushes his thumb under Ilya’s eye, over his mole, then across his chin. “I do,” he says. “I know.”

“My team cares about me,” Ilya says, still watching Shane carefully. “They say they do, and I have to believe them. I don’t know if they care the same way Montreal cares about you, but they would not want me to play if I wasn’t ready. The doctors agreed that six weeks was too long.”

The thing is, Shane’s heard about some teams and their doctors. About how easy it is to get cleared under concussion protocol after a big hit, or letting guys play through injuries they really shouldn’t be playing through toward the end of the season. He hesitates and then says, “You’re a free agent next year, though, right? Are you going to re-sign?”

“Mm. Maybe.”

Maybe is…not what Shane was expecting. He’s about to ask another question, press further, when Ilya takes Shane’s hand and kisses it.

“I didn’t think I would like your little fire, but it’s nice,” Ilya says, his lips brushing against Shane’s hand. “But you know what would be nicer?”

“What?”

“The ice cream I saw in your basement freezer.”

Shane huffs out a laugh. That’s his secret stash. “Were you snooping?”

Ilya rolls over and presses a kiss to Shane’s knee before he stands up. “Depends if you were hiding.”

“I don’t think I can hide much from you here,” Shane says. In the glow of the fire, he can see Ilya’s gaze soften.

He tugs Shane upward with a hand. Ilya wraps his arms around Shane’s waist, and Shane encircles Ilya’s neck with his. Ilya kisses him, gentle and sweet, and they stay there like that for a moment.

“Are we going to dance?” Shane steps closer, pressing his cheek to Ilya’s.

Ilya sways them back and forth, and Shane can feel Ilya’s smile and how his jaw moves to say, “You want to dance with me, Hollander?”

Shane tilts his head to brush a kiss against Ilya’s temple, then another where his ear meets his jaw. It’s better now, he knows, but he still tries to be careful. Gentle. Ilya’s heart is beating against Shane’s chest, and he’s holding Shane so tightly, and Shane never thought he would feel like this, that his heart would ever be so painfully full of love.

“I want to do everything with you,” Shane says, barely more than a hoarse whisper into Ilya’s neck. Ilya smells like Shane’s body wash and the basil he helped chop for dinner, and woodsmoke, and the forest, and home.

Ilya kisses his shoulder and pulls him in tighter, and Shane wants him to never let go.

—

Ilya doesn’t know how long he lies on Shane’s chest, how long he cries as he turns it over and over in his head: Shane loves him. Shane loves him. Shane loves him, wants a future with him, and loves him.

He falls asleep like that, resting on Shane’s chest, and doesn’t dream of anything. He wakes before dawn and doesn’t want to disturb Shane, so he creeps out to the lake and the big boulder he saw in that documentary to smoke a cigarette and watch the sun rise.

Shane loves him. Ilya loves him, of course, but he’s known that for so long. And now, it seems like they’ve had every big important moment, each one on an impossible checklist that he never thought he’d complete: telling someone about his mother, telling someone he loves them, and that someone saying they love him in return, and that they want a future with him. Tick, tick, tick, tick, just as loud and in time with Ilya’s heartbeat.

And maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll add more to the list. Proposing on the dock here at the lake. Marriage. A child, maybe, hopefully. Growing old together.

Ilya loves every single one, and those yet to come. He’s always been a romantic, sentimental kind of man. But what he’s realizing is that he’s just as content in the quiet in between. If he looks in the spaces between the revelations and tears and kisses and promises, he sees his future. What he’s always wanted, and never had.

The everyday.

He’s lifted the cup and been booed out of arenas and won awards and had some truly obscene sex. He’s bought fancy cars and designer drugs, and he was chosen first out of hundreds of desperate, talented rookies. He’s won for his country and lost for his country, and felt every kind of victory and disappointment in between. But the mundane, the ordinary…

Maybe he had it once as a child. If he did, it left a gaping maw in his heart when he lost it.

Because of those revelations and tears and kisses and promises, they’ll have a million quiet moments in the in between. Each time Ilya realizes that there’s no end date, that this is his next year, decade, eternity, he feels an illicit thrill, as if he’s been caught counting the stitches that knot together the fabric of the universe.

It isn’t just Shane loving him. It’s cooking together in Shane’s kitchen and lazy handjobs before napping together in a patch of sun. It’s the quiet intimacy of sitting together on the couch, their feet tangled together with no urgency, content to just be.

Ilya has never been allowed to just be. This, this cottage, Shane’s heart and home, is the closest he’s ever been.

Daybreak burns across the sky, and gold dapples in its wake across the water.

He has big emotions. He always has. Here, they seem so close to the surface. Even if his body is still, his mind is always working overtime. He’s learned to deal with it as he’s gotten older; he made peace with being a terrible student and a great hockey player, able to think through a million shifting options at once. Sometimes he wonders if Mama was like this, too. His memories of her smell like the Parliments she smoked, always a flurry of movement around the apartment. It was only lying in her lap on the couch, one of her hands in his hair, that it seemed like Ilya was ever still.

But she’s the one who took Ilya to the lake. Who taught him how to swim when his father thought it best just to throw him in. She taught him how to hold his breath for handstands and when to let go of the rope as he swung into the water. They stopped going when his grandparents passed, long before Mama died. He thinks that here, with Shane, he feels—at once more grown up than he ever thought he could be, and younger than he’s ever been before.

He hears footsteps behind him, and he welcomes the blanket Shane wraps around his shoulders. Ilya accepts the coffee Shane brings, and Shane sits close so he can wrap the blanket around his shoulders, too. They sit there, quiet. Ilya finishes his cigarette, tucking it away in his pocket, and takes a sip of his coffee—not too hot, and perfectly sweet and milky.

His emotions are close to the surface. They have been since Shane left the apartment. Since Ilya left his bedside in the hospital. Since they left the airport. Since the little bonfire. Since Ilya told Shane he loves him, and Shane said he loves him, too.

Shane doesn’t say a word as tears track down Ilya’s cheeks. He’s not ashamed to cry, not here. Not with Shane, who has seen him cry before, and—in a thought that makes the tears come anew—will again. Because they have a future, now. It still seems impossible, but Ilya is going to try to let himself believe. It would hurt too much not to, and he’s been hurting enough these past few months.

When the sun is almost fully risen, and his tears have finally stopped, Ilya quietly asks, careful not to disturb their little blanket of peace, “Why did you let me stay with you?”

Against his shoulder, Shane startles a little with a hm? Like he was maybe dozing.

He should let it lie, but he remembers months ago when Shane buried his head in Ilya’s shoulder and said, I have to know, and Ilya relented because he was the same way.

“I could have gone back to Boston,” Ilya says. “But you said I could stay with you.”

“Oh,” Shane says. Ilya turns to look at him, blinking into the sunlight. “I think it was just…logical.”

“But it wasn’t,” Ilya says. “It was going to mess up your routine. The doctor said it was easy to transfer my care.”

Shane is quiet, and Ilya lets him think. Then, he says, “You would have been alone. I didn’t want you to be alone. And I needed to know that you would be okay. I thought if I let you out of my sight, you would say everything was fine, even if it wasn’t.”

Ilya nods. Shane isn’t wrong.

“And,” Shane continues, “you said you wanted more time. And I wanted more time with you. I think—I think I play better when I come home to you. Well, not against Minnesota or Ottawa. But I think those were flukes, and I don’t think they had to do with you.”

He huffs out a laugh and turns to press a kiss to Shane’s head. “I would like to play and come home to you, too. And beat you.”

“Oh, beat me?”

“Yes, very badly.”

Shane laughs, once, short. More seriously, he asks, “You think you’ll beat me in Ottawa?”

Ilya tilts his head. “I will have to get my fill this year in Boston,” he says. “But clearly it’s possible if you almost lose without me.”

Shane nudges his shoulder. “Asshole.”

“Yes, but you love it.”

“I do,” Shane says, and tears threaten to fall again. “Are you sure about this? About…the plan? I know I kind of…threw it all at you. And it was late. We can talk about it more.”

Ilya hums. “I think if anyone is going to figure this out, it’s you. It sounds like it will work. It won’t be easy but…” Ilya turns his head and kisses Shane’s cheek, and then whispers in his ear, “I like trouble.”

Shane turns his head, and they kiss, easy, simple. Domestic. “Will you come back to bed?”

Ilya kisses him again and follows Shane back to the house.

They do fall back asleep, curled into each other, and by the time Ilya’s blinking awake, it’s midmorning. He’s so warm, and Shane fits so nicely against him like he was born to be two places—on the ice and in Ilya’s arms.

Shane shifts, mumbling something, and Ilya kisses the back of his neck. “Good morning,” he says, still a whisper. “I didn’t say it outside.”

He can see the pull of Shane’s cheek and knows he’s smiling. “Good morning.”

Ilya noses along the shell of Shane’s ear, and Shane pulls Ilya’s hand from where it rests on Shane’s stomach to his half-hard cock. Ilya groans and kisses a line down his neck. He would kiss him, but he doesn’t want Shane to leave his arms. He doesn’t want to leave this moment, ever.

They fall into it like there was no other option, like speed isn’t necessary, like they want to become one.

Ilya wishes he could, that he could climb inside Shane and never leave. He can’t stop murmuring into the crook of Shane’s neck that he loves him, that he’s so beautiful, a million other sweet nothings that he can’t hold back any longer.

He runs a reverent hand along Shane’s torso, feeling the rise and fall of his chest as Ilya works him open, maddeningly slow, but he can’t bring himself to move any faster, to be anything but careful not to break this—this heady, quiet halo they’re in. His hands slip on the sweat perspiring under Shane’s arms, his chest. Ilya is burning with it, too; whatever timeless, amorphous cocoon enveloping them must be on the surface of the sun, blinding bright and a billion degrees.

Shane is pushing back against him; he has been for some time now, and Ilya licks and sucks at the fading bruise he left on Shane’s neck that first day.

It feels impossible to be anywhere but wrapped around Shane, but he somehow pulls himself away to reach for a condom. Shane makes a soft noise, protesting the lack of contact.

“Shh, sweetheart,” Ilya says, but he can’t bear it, either. “Just getting a condom.”

“Can we—” Shane lifts his head, looking over his shoulder. “Do we need one?”

Ilya hesitates, his hand halfway to the drawer. He wasn’t expecting…

It wasn’t as if they had ever been particularly careful with their mouths. They were idiot teenagers when they first began sucking each other bare, and Ilya used a condom every time they fucked because that was what you’re supposed to do. His end-of-season health panel came back clean, which was what he expected. He hadn’t been with anyone but Shane since—well, it was getting harder to remember, and he didn’t particularly want to.

“I don’t,” Ilya says, slowly. “If you don’t, then…”

“I don’t,” Shane says. He holds a hand out toward Ilya, and Ilya allows himself to be pulled back around Shane’s body. Shane cranes his neck to kiss him, and Ilya kisses back, trying to say everything and more as his fingers find Shane’s hole once more. He’s so open and relaxed for Ilya, boneless and eager.

“You want me bare?” Ilya asks, muffled as he kisses Shane’s jaw, neck, shoulder, whatever he can reach. “You want me to come inside you?”

“Yes, fuck,” Shane says as Ilya brushes crooked fingers over his prostate. “Been wanting it.”

“Shane—” Ilya’s too tender-hearted for this. He isn’t going to survive. He’s been fucked without a condom once before, stupid and barely legal, and willing to try it with an older man from a club in Moscow, the one he’d heard about from Sasha, his coach’s son. It was good, but not particularly meaningful for him, then, but now—

“I love you,” he whispers. If he were any louder, he might wake up from this dream, and he doesn’t want to. This dream is a good one. This isn’t like the showers; his subconscious hasn’t gone there in months, but he feels just as hazy and overcome, sweat stinging the corners of his eyes as he rests the head of his cock to Shane’s hole.

“How did we let this happen?” Shane asks, and Ilya wants to laugh, delirious with joy because he doesn’t know, either, but goddamn it, the best thing he ever did was be an idiot in those showers eight years ago.

“We were both very stupid and irresponsible,” Ilya says, his hand grasping the meat of Shane’s thigh. He presses in, every inch a searing, torturous crawl, and he can’t stop watching Shane, his freckles, the way his eyelashes flutter closed and his lips part on a breathless moan as Ilya takes him with nothing between them, not even air.

“This is real, though, right?” Shane says as Ilya buries himself, hips flush with Shane’s ass. Ilya feels drunk, on Shane’s eyes and the infernal vice of his body, and the sheen of sweat making him look like a holy mirage.

As he begins to move, slowly, so slowly, he thinks, for the first time, yes. Yes, this is real.

He nods, his eyes stuck on Shane’s, a breathless yes falling from his lips as they rock together.

“Please fuck me,” Shane says, and Ilya could never deny him. Will never until the day he dies, if he gets a say.

Shane’s hand tangles in Ilya’s hair as he rocks them together, every thrust an aching, steady grind. He doesn’t know where to kiss Shane first, wants to swallow him whole, put his mouth on him, and never take it off. He kisses Shane’s chest, sealing his mouth around Shane’s nipple, and never once takes his eyes away from the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He’s grateful when Shane slides his thumb into his mouth, to have a reprieve from choking on the love that’s been lodged in his throat for—ever.

He laves his tongue around Shane’s thumb, relishing the way Shane throws his head back with every push and pull of their bodies. He needs to know. He needs to know that Shane feels it, too.

“Is good?” Ilya asks, muffled around Shane’s thumb. “Tell me it’s good, baby, please, sweetheart—”

“It’s good, fuck, it’s so good,” Shane says, pulling his thumb from his mouth to caress Ilya’s jaw, his thumb still wet with spit. “Thank you, it’s so, so, Ilya—”

Tears escape Shane’s eyes, and Ilya grinds deeper. “I love you, fuck, I love you so much.”

“I’m, I’m not going to last,” Shane gasps. “God, you’re so—deep. Fuck, Ilya, I need you, I love you.”

“You want me to come?” Ilya tries to pick up speed, snapping his hips, the sound of their flesh slapping together getting louder. “I want you to come, you want me to fill you up?”

“Yes,” Shane sobs, “god, yes, you feel so good, I need you to come in me, I need it, please—”

He cuts off on a dirty thrust, his moans and babbling urging Ilya on.

“Can you come hands-free?” Ilya asks.

“Yes, but—”

“But what?” Ilya snaps his hips again, squeezing Shane’s thigh so hard his skin dimples white under Ilya’s hand. “Tell me.”

“I need you, I need your hand,” Shane says, and Ilya obliges, wrapping his hand around Shane’s cock, so wet with precome, white-hot and scalding Ilya inside and out. “Oh fuck, I’m going to come.”

Ilya tries to go impossibly faster, impossibly deeper, impossibly harder, to say the impossible with every touch, every thrust, every stroke as Shane fucks into Ilya’s fist. “Fuck, sweetheart, Shane, come for me, come for me, please—”

Shane arches in Ilya’s arms, crying out as he comes, spilling into Ilya’s hand. Ilya grips Shane’s thigh again, uncaring of the mess he makes as he watches Shane shake through the waves of his orgasm, open-mouthed and awestruck as he falls into his own orgasm, holding Shane tight to his body as he comes inside him.

“Oh my god, fuck, Ilya.” Shane opens his eyes, his face flushed as he tries to pull Ilya even closer still. “Ilya, I’m gonna—your hand—”

Holy fuck. Is he—

Ilya obeys, wrapping his hand around Shane’s dick as he—comes more, or again, and Ilya can’t stop saying, chanting, that he loves Shane, over and over as he coaxes the last of Shane’s orgasm out, collapsing into him, Shane’s sweat-soaked back clinging to Ilya’s sweat-soaked front, still inside of Shane because he can’t bear to pull out.

For once, contrary to every other time they’ve ever slept together, ever, Shane lets the afterglow mellow around them.

Ilya lies beside him, stroking his hair, in awe of what he’s managed to stumble into. He remembers holding Shane like this and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He remembers thinking he was taunting ill will and karmic retribution and a million other miserable endings. Or back in Boston in the fall, holding Shane and thinking, I need to trick him. I need to trick him to stay.

And he does still believe that; that this isn’t supposed to be his life. There must be another shoe hanging above him. He’s gotten lucky, or stepped into a timeline that isn’t his own. But if Shane is willing to do this with him, if Shane is brave enough to try, then Ilya can try, too. It won’t kill him anymore if they’re in this together.

“What was your mother’s name?”

Ilya shifts his head, his lips brushing over Shane’s hair. He’s a warm and solid weight resting on his chest, just skin and muscle away from where he’s taken up permanent residence in Ilya’s heart.

“Irina,” he says, soft, reverent. He doesn’t say her name often, but sometimes, when he’s walking around the pond on his property, or eats good Russian food, or can’t fall asleep, he’ll say it to himself, just to remember the shape of it on his tongue. “Why?”

Shane props himself up on his elbow. His finger is tracing a feather-light line between a triangle of moles on Ilya’s chest. “I was thinking we could start a hockey school. Like a summer camp for kids. And give the money away to mental health organizations. Like suicide prevention. For our foundation? We could name it after her.”

What is he supposed to say to that? Does Shane know how destructive his words are? Does he know that his simple, practical devotion is ordnance intent on destroying every wall Ilya built, on destroying the cold, cowardly pretender of a man he once was? This was never supposed to happen. He doesn’t know who Ilya Rozanov is when loved by Shane Hollander. He needs to relearn to speak around the love choked in his throat.

“It was just an idea,” Shane says, tentative, as if he’s made a misstep when he’s just altered the course of Ilya’s life completely. As if Ilya isn’t silent because he’s going to break down the second he speaks.

“She would have loved you,” Ilya says, his voice no more than a whisper, because you’re supposed to whisper in holy moments. “Like I love you.”

Shane’s hand cups his jaw, the side that was injured, and Ilya wants to cry at the delicate touch. “Say it again in Russian, please.”

Ilya will learn how to say it in every language that Shane understands, and more, but he can start here:

«I love you,» he says, looking into the bulwark brown eyes of the only person he’s ever loved. Shane kisses his chin, and Ilya kisses his forehead as Shane rests against his chest again, and the tears fall from Ilya’s eyes once more.

He wishes they could stay in bed, wrapped up in each other and the golden sunlight filtering through the trees, but they’re both starving and covered in tacky, drying sweat and come.

Shane runs the bath, and Ilya makes a plate of chopped and dried fruit, cheese, and nuts, and they pick at it together, soaking together in the tub, Ilya’s back against Shane’s chest, bracketed by his legs. Before all the revelations and tears, they were in a days-long argument about Vegas getting an expansion team and which cities deserved one more, with Ilya adamant that Vegas was a good choice, and Shane disappointed that Quebec City wasn’t getting a team, and then that devolved into critiquing who was taken from what teams in the expansion draft.

They both seem to be in an unspoken agreement to take it easy for the rest of the day.

They lie out on the dock, Shane reading and Ilya working on his tan, and in the evening they make some pasta recipe Shane’s been wanting to try, drinking a bottle of wine between them and nearly ruining the sauce when they get distracted kissing by the stove. They eat together at Shane’s table, their feet intertwined, not saying much, but Ilya watches their faces in the reflection of the window. They both look—happy. So happy.

They collapse into bed that evening, and Ilya falls asleep quickly, worn out in an aching, satisfied way, the way he felt when he finally slept after winning the cup, but somehow even better. There’s lazy kissing when they wake, and then they work out together and go swimming.

Well, Ilya swims. Shane still thinks the water is too cold, which is a tick in Ilya’s column for their other ongoing argument about whether Russians or Canadians are better adapted to the cold. Clearly, it’s Russians.

Ilya swims up to Shane, kissing his ankle and wrapping his wet hands when he purses his lips and says, “Gimme kiss.”

“You’re cold,” Shane complains. Vindicated, Ilya grins when he falls back into the water, kicking some more in Shane’s direction.

“Watch me do another handstand,” Ilya says, and makes sure Shane is watching before he dives down again. The lake bottom is squelchy under his hands. Shane won’t let him go swimming without water shoes, which Ilya thinks is silly. He likes the way the ice-cold, shifting silt feels between his toes. He used to swim to the bottom of the lake and grab fistfuls of it to throw at his brother.

Eventually, long after his fingers have wrinkled, Shane says he’s hungry, and Ilya could eat, so they wrap themselves in sun-warmed towels and make their way back up to the house.

“Do you want pasta from last night or hot dogs?”

Ilya considers this. Shane’s ass looks good in his swim trunks, and that’s mostly what’s been occupying his brain on the walk up the sloping lawn. “Hot dogs.”

“Okay,” Shane says, toeing his water shoes off on the deck. “They’re gonna have to defrost a bit.”

Excellent.

“So we have a little time,” Ilya says, his eyes back on Shane’s ass as he toes off his own shoes.

“Maybe,” Shane says, and Ilya crowds him against the window. Against Ilya’s lips, he says, “What do you have in mind?”

“Nothing that’ll take too long.” Ilya kisses him, his hands dropping to get a handful of Shane’s ass. He thinks it would be nice to fuck Shane from behind up against the windows. He kisses down Shane’s neck and shoulder, ready to turn him around when he sees Shane’s dad in the kitchen. Staring at them.

Fuck.

Shane turns his head to see where Ilya’s looking, and he stiffens in Ilya’s arms as they both watch David startle into awkward, stilted motion.

“Oh, fuck,” Shane says, and Ilya can practically feel the panic emanating from Shane’s skin.

He doesn’t know what to say, but Shane can’t just stand here, panicked and beginning to tremble in Ilya’s arms, so Ilya says, “Maybe you should…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Shane says, though he still doesn’t move.

They watch as David turns and leaves the kitchen. Does Ilya need to...what, catch David? Stop him? “Do you want me to…”

That gets Shane to move, shaking his head as he slides open the door. “No, no—”

Ilya follows him inside just in time to hear a car door close, and an engine ignite. A step behind Shane, they make it to the front door to see David’s car disappear down the drive. Fuck. Fuck.

Shane is in agreement, swearing over and over as Ilya follows him back inside. “Fuck. Fuck, this is. Fuck. A fucking nightmare.”

Ilya holds his hands out, to do what he isn’t sure, but Shane is panicking now like Ilya’s never seen before, not even when he was bleeding in Shane’s bed. “Shane—”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Shane asks, hiding behind his hands.

“We should go talk to him,” Ilya says. He’s never been in this situation before, but that has to be the answer.

“Yeah, what if he doesn’t want to talk to me?” Shane says, working himself up even further, the panic evident across every muscle, every inch of skin. “What if...fuck, my mom.”

Oh, fuck.

He was hoping there would be a better time to do this, to tell Shane about Yuna finding Ilya. Or, if he’s being honest with himself, foolishly hoped that it would never come up. God, he’s fucking this up so badly. He’s supposed to take care of Shane now; it’s his turn, and all he’s going to do is fuck it up even more. He needs to tell Shane about his mom, but that can’t happen if Shane gets himself in such a state that he pukes, which is where Ilya is afraid he’s heading.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, taking a step forward like Shane is a wild animal loosed and scared. “They will talk to you.”

“How do you know?” Shane asks, and he sounds so desperate and distraught, and, well.

Shane’s love was nice and all for the two days that he had it, but fate is catching up now, and the shoe is slamming to the ground and smacking Ilya on the way down. He knew it would.

Ilya takes a deep breath and says, “I know.”

Shane looks so suspicious, and Ilya hates himself. He’ll never forgive himself for ruining this. But he has to tell him. He owes Shane that, at least. He wonders if this will hurt more or less than his jaw.

More, he decides. With Shane, it’s always more.

Ilya braces himself and says, “I need to tell you how I got to Boston.”

Chapter End Notes

Y'all. I can't believe we're here in the penultimate chapter (or that it's 10k words long!!!). The response around this fic has genuinely been the greatest, kindest thing in my life in a time where I've really needed a lot of kindness. Thank you thank you thank you.

This chapter would not have been possible without Marivan. She's the best, I'm running out of ways to say it, go read her fic Not a Strip of Paper Merely because it is ruinous and incredible.

Come hang out with me on tumblr at @flawlessassholes and reblog the fic art! I've been having a lot of fun doing some director's cuts and meta and deleted scenes. I looooove sharing that kind of stuff!!!

Back soon with the final chapter. Love you all.

ETA 01/29/26: LOL I lied again. two more chapters.

Chapter 8

Chapter Summary

“But I think she knew that you and I are—”

“Of course she fucking knew!” Shane says, wheeling on Ilya, his eyes wide in disbelief. He throws an arm in the vague direction of his parents’ cottage. “She’s a fucking genius! She speaks three languages! She graduated from McGill!”

Ilya throws his hands up, too, like Shane is somehow the unreasonable one. “Oh my god, Hollander, what is it with you and fucking McGill! Is McGill supposed to mean something to me?”

“It means she’s a fucking genius, I just said that!”

Chapter Notes

This chapter contains one anti-Asian slur. For more detail, please expand the toggle.

In the paragraph following "Shane remembers the first lie he ever told his mom." Shane reflects on a childhood neighbor calling his eyes 'chinky'. If you feel the need to skip over that, it is only in that one paragraph. However, I do feel it is critical to the story, and, while I'm not Asian, very similar to and inline with my experiences of othering and slurs as a minority.

If Ilya wanted to stop Shane’s panicking, he succeeded. Because Shane isn’t panicking. The panicking has paused. The panic goalie has been pulled, and confusion is sliding across the crease in a flailing attempt to stop an empty-netter.

“What do you mean?” Shane asks. Ilya still has his hands out like Shane is a freaked-out horse. “You drove. You told me you drove.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. He pauses his Shane-slash-horse soothing to tug at his ear. To scratch the back of his neck. “Maybe you should get changed, though.”

“Ilya?” Shane can’t help the suspicion that bleeds into the confusion. “What’s going on?”

Ilya’s eyes close, just for a second, and he exhales, setting his shoulders. “Your mom also drove.”

“Yeah?” What is this fucking merry-go-round that they’re on? “From Ottawa.”

“Ah.” Ilya grimaces like he’s bracing for a check. “No. She drove from Montreal.”

“Why on earth did she—wait.” Shane studies Ilya’s face. He’s not good at reading emotions, but he’s gotten better with Ilya, and Ilya looks like, like…

“How,” Shane starts, “do you know that she drove from Montreal?”

Ilya mutters something in Russian. Closes his eyes again, and then says: “Because she found me in your apartment packing for going back to Boston to see you, and then we drove together.”

He—what. Shane can’t have heard that right. “You and my mom, what, like—carpooled? To Boston?”

“It was a road trip.”

Oh. Of course. A road trip. Ilya Rozanov and Yuna Hollander road-tripping together. Mom loves a good road trip. They probably listened to four consecutive hours of the best of Lilith Fair.

Ilya and his mom.

His mom and Ilya.

Shane pitches forward into a crouch, groaning into the humid night inside his palms. He’s having a heart attack. Or a stroke. Or a combination heart attack and stroke. Do those exist? If not, then Shane’s the first. A medical marvel.

“Shane?” Ilya sounds so goddamn careful, and Shane’s stomach is a knotted ball of nausea, a tangled mess of trembling, terrified ten-thousand-ton cables heavy and ominous. Shane is positive he’s five seconds away from puking across his nice reclaimed wood floors.

“You’re telling me,” Shane says, still hidden behind his hands, “that for the past two months, my mom has known that you and me were—what?”

The cables sink from his stomach to the bottom of the fucking lake. He looks up. At Ilya’s concern. “What does she know? What did you tell her?”

“Nothing, nothing!” Ilya says, his hands back up. “I did not tell one thing to her, only that we are friends.”

“Oh my god.” Shane stands, rubbing his clammy hand over his clammy forehead. He turns in a circle. Like that’ll help the situation. It doesn’t.

“But I think she knew that you and I are—”

“Of course she fucking knew!” Shane says, wheeling on Ilya, his eyes wide in disbelief. He throws an arm in the vague direction of his parents’ cottage. “She’s a fucking genius! She speaks three languages! She graduated from McGill!”

Ilya throws his hands up, too, like Shane is somehow the unreasonable one. “Oh my god, Hollander, what is it with you and fucking McGill! Is McGill supposed to mean something to me?”

“It means she’s a fucking genius, I just said that!” Shane turns, resuming his pacing. A figure eight, back and forth, like it’ll do anything but make his thoughts race through the dozens of dominos falling into place. How she acted in the hospital. How she stopped mentioning Rose. How she—

“This is why she’s been saying that I can talk to her about anything every other fucking day,” Shane says, each word breathlessly toppling into the next. “Does she know I’m gay? Does she—”

“I think she knows,” Ilya interrupts, “but not because I told her. I think she probably knows for a while, but she did not ask, and I did not say.”

“What did you tell her then?” Shane snaps. He’s. Angry. The confusion is gone, and now he’s angry. He hates how it feels in his brain and body; an itchy, unleashed forest fire under his skin, chaos raging through his nervous system. “Since you’re so adamant you didn’t tell her anything.”

“She asks me why I’m in your apartment, why I’m in a hurry, and I said we’re in the same hurry,” Ilya starts, each word cautious, like he’s carefully choosing each one. “She said that I must be important to you, and I said we were friends. She asked if you were lonely, and I said that I did not know, and that I don’t think you would tell me if you were. That is all. I got her trail mix, and I drove most of the way so she could sleep. We listened also to a lot of sad women playing guitar.”

The words burn through his stomach and head, hazy and disorienting until they finally make sense, and when they do, Shane imagines one of those wildfire helicopters dropping hundreds of gallons of water over his head.

His pacing slows until he finally stops. “You think I’m lonely?”

Ilya looks out the window, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Scratching his nose. Eventually, he says, “I think you were. For a long time.”

Oh.

Shane. He. He was.

But he didn’t know. That Ilya knew that.

“And then,” Ilya continues, “after hospital, after we’re knocked out of playoffs, she sent me a email.”

“She did?” Cautious curiosity steps forward to meet his anxiety, shoulder-to-shoulder in Shane’s pounding heart. “About what?”

Ilya nods, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his trunks. After a second, Ilya hands his phone to Shane, a short email filling the screen.

He squints to read it. About Ilya wanting Shane to talk to his mom of his own volition. About how this is definitely what she thought it was. How she wants to fix this for him, but she can’t. And then—

Shane has never wanted to be tokenized, and it’s my fault for the ways that he is. I can’t protect him from the visible, but I can from the invisible. If he won’t tell me, it’s because he doesn’t want to be the first. So, I’ll do everything in my power to protect that wish. Maybe, one day, if that changes, Shane will tell me, and we can figure it out together.

It’s that third paragraph that cuts through the anxious noise, turning over and over in Shane’s mind. Shane has never wanted to be tokenized, and it’s my fault for the ways that he is.

Shane remembers the first lie he ever told his mom.

He was nine, and he was the one who broke the Sullivan’s window with his slap shot, not Ian Sullivan. And he didn’t tell her that it was because Ian said Shane would never make it to juniors because his eyes were too chinky, and then pulled his eyelids into slits to demonstrate.

He heard his mom called that once when he was little by his Uncle Dan, his dad’s eldest brother, and Dad got really angry. He asked Mom what it meant, and she was so sad when she said it was a bad word that people weren’t supposed to use. That only mean old people said it. To be mean to people like her. And what she didn’t say was, and you.

He hasn’t seen his Uncle Dan since his Grandpa John’s funeral when he was twelve.

Ian Sullivan was the first time someone said that to him directly. He didn’t even know people who weren’t old said that, that it hadn’t been left in those history books he liked to read. And once the confusion and the red-hot sting of embarrassment faded, he knew he couldn’t tell his mom. It would make her sad. And it wasn’t like he could tell his dad, because he would just tell Mom, and then she would be even more sad, because Shane hadn’t told her directly.

And then. It just continued. Little by little.

Shane didn’t tell her how he actually got the scar on his shoulder when he was fourteen. He said he slipped and fell on some black ice after a game. But it was actually because a goalie that Shane embarrassed the entire night with goal after goal found him by the back entrance of the rink—that’s how he used to have to leave games, so the parents from the losing team, and sometimes his team, too, wouldn’t yell at him—and the kid shoved him behind the dumpsters and punched him in the gut, and Shane landed on some broken glass.

And he didn’t tell her that the reason Shane was sick during his first OHL playoffs wasn’t because he had the flu, but because the older guys on the team called him a pussy for not drinking the vodka Garrett Huling bought because he was nineteen and Shane was barely sixteen, and he wanted Garrett to think he was cool.

And by the time he was in his rookie season, he was lying about—so much. What he was eating. The stupid shit he bought from infomercials when he couldn’t sleep. That Chris Carillo, one of the journeymen veterans who had been with Montreal forever, covered his locker with hentai porn as a prank, and Shane didn’t know if it was because he was Japanese or because Carillo thought he was gay.

The Sullivans fixed their window. His shoulder healed. He resigned himself to being called a pussy for not drinking in juniors. Carillo was traded to St. Louis the following season. There was no reason to upset her.

He didn’t tell her about Ilya. He had hoped that would resolve itself, too.

When he looks up from his phone, Ilya looks—sad. Scared, maybe. But it’s more, it’s—

It’s the same look that was on his face in the handshake line after Canada beat Russia in the Prospect Cup. How he looked looming over the crowded arena in Sochi. How he looked when Shane left him on the couch in Boston. How he looked as he watched Don Cherry criticize him, until Shane took the remote and hit mute.

Defeated. That’s what it is. Ilya looks defeated.

The realization acidifies the well of anger in his stomach; a reflux of bile blocked and building behind the lump of hot, claustrophobic guilt in his throat.

Ilya isn’t the one who lied to Shane’s parents. Ilya tried his best, backed into a corner of Shane’s making.

He has to force himself to unclench his deathgrip on Ilya’s phone as he finally passes it back.

“Shane?” Ilya asks. Something’s joined the defeat. It’s. Concern, maybe.

“I fucking lied to them.” It’s a hoarse admission. If he tries to clear his throat, he’s sure he’ll throw up. “For so many years, I fucking lied to them, and now my dad just walks in on me—”

Shane cuts himself off. There are a hundred ends to that sentence, and each one seems worse than the last.

He needs Ilya to understand what Shane can’t say. Shane can’t even understand the slurry of emotions churning in his stomach. All he can think about is the stupid fucking feelings wheel from kindergarten, and all the red and orange and blue feelings, anger and fear and sadness mixing into a purplish black, painting a bruise on the walls of his stomach.

He needs Ilya to understand.

“This is a nightmare. This has to be a nightmare,” Shane says. It comes out harsher than he intended; it's all catching up to him now. “This is my literal fucking nightmare, Ilya.”

“Okay, okay,” Ilya says. He’s close, now, and all it takes is one barely-there touch for Shane to fall into his arms. “Then maybe it’s time to wake up, yes?”

It’s like they’re back in his bed in Montreal, after that miserable game in Ottawa. Half-asleep, Ilya mumbled, maybe it’s okay to tell them.

If only Shane weren’t such a fucking coward.

But what would he have even told them? In Montreal, he and Ilya were—different then. They weren’t. This. What they are now. In love.

He wraps his arms around Ilya, and Ilya doesn’t hesitate in pulling Shane in and hugging him tight. “Fuck, I'm scared.”

“Yes, it's scary, but you're brave,” Ilya says, each word warm against Shane’s cold, bare skin.

“Shut up.” Is Ilya trying to make Shane laugh? Because it’s laughable. Shane isn’t brave. Shane has met brave people. The kids he meets at children’s hospitals are brave. Scott Hunter is brave. Ilya is brave.

Shane has never been brave. Shane has wanted to do nothing but hide his entire fucking life.

“You are,” Ilya says, his hand running up and down Shane’s back. “You're brave.”

Shane would shake his head, but he can’t, really. This close to Ilya. “I feel like I'm gonna die.” Or puke. Or both.

Ilya’s still running his hand along Shane’s spine. It is nice to be pressed this close. Ilya and Shane don’t like. Hug. A lot. Like the skin-to-skin stuff Hayden always talks about.

He stays there for a moment, because if he leaves Ilya’s arms, he has to deal with this. And it doesn’t matter if Ilya thinks that Shane is brave. He isn’t.

Shane just learned the rules to the game, how to kind of navigate everything in his stupid fucking life, and now the rules are changing again. And he can handle the rules changing, but only if it’s so slow that Shane can’t even notice himself adjusting to it. Like gradually increasing the resistance level on an exercise bike.

And also. This quiet, perfect bubble he and Ilya are in is. Over. Or at least it’ll be different. And Shane doesn’t want it to be different. Everything is perfect right now. If something changes, maybe Ilya will—leave. Decide he doesn’t want this. Them. That he’ll change his mind.

Yes, he wants Ilya to meet his parents, eventually, somehow, but—not like this. Not here. Not now. Not when it’s going to change everything. Every single fucking thing.

He exhales and steps back. He needs to deal with this, as much as he doesn’t want to. “So much for easing them into it.”

“Maybe…” Ilya’s hands squeeze Shane’s biceps. “Maybe he didn't even notice?”

That is Ilya trying to make Shane laugh. Something close to a smile twitches across his mouth, but it’s gone in a heartbeat, his pulse jumpstarting as he closes his eyes and tries to picture what he needs to do next. How he’s going to handle this. Figure out the game plan.

“Okay, I'm gonna get changed, I'm gonna drive over. And then. And then.” He stalls, his heart skipping a beat. “Fuck! What am I gonna say?”

He lurches forward, his forehead pressing against Ilya’s. He can’t do this. He can’t fucking do this.

Ilya’s brow contorts. Wrinkles. Against Shane’s. Ilya’s hands slide to Shane’s forearms, grasping them gently. Soothing the hair there.

“Do you…” Ilya takes a deep breath. It looks like he’s bracing for a hit again, and Shane still doesn’t understand why. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Shane meets Ilya’s worried, searching eyes. “Would you?”

“If you want me to. If you are not…” Ilya trails off, and Shane’s confusion returns.

“If I’m not what?”

“Angry with me?” Ilya’s hands tighten around Shane’s forearms, like if he lets go, Shane will. Do something. “If you want me to go?”

Shane’s brow wrinkles. “Go where?”

Ilya shrugs. “I would understand. If you didn’t want to—”

“Didn’t want to what?” His heart thuds, one-two-one-two, like he’s sprinting up the ice.

“Be together anymore?” Ilya asks, his face stony, a perfect, uncaring statue, but his eyes look so. Scared.

Sometimes, just when it looks like the gap between Shane’s knowledge and whatever is going on in Ilya’s head is about to close, there’s a fault line tremor, and the earth slides and stretches until they’re on opposite sides of a canyon.

And sometimes, Shane forgets that Ilya isn’t in Shane’s brain. For almost ten years, it’s seemed like Ilya knows Shane better than Shane knows himself.

“I’m not happy that you didn’t tell me,” Shane says slowly. “Maybe I’ll still be mad after all the—” He waves a hand toward the door to try to encompass all this shit. “But. I’ll probably be mad at you a lot. I just. I want a future with you. I told you that. Do you…not believe me?”

Ilya swallows. Shane watches his Adam’s apple bob. The tick in his jaw.

“I believe you,” Ilya says, his voice thick.

“Okay.” Shane nods. He’s not sure if he’s reassuring Ilya or himself. “So. Will you come with me?”

“Of course,” Ilya says. He steps forward and brushes a kiss to the corner of Shane’s lips. Shane holds onto Ilya, but another wave of panicky nausea washes over him, and he ragdolls into a squat, pressing his face against Ilya’s hairy knees. He stays there until it passes, until he’s positive he won’t puke. Ilya has a hand in his hair now, and after another quiet moment, Shane nods, just to himself, and stands.

Ilya looks determined now, and Shane thinks—maybe. Maybe he can do this. They’ve got a game plan. If there’s one thing Shane can do, it’s follow a game plan.

He and Ilya move around each other in the bedroom, silently washing up and getting changed. Shane stands frozen in his closet. He has no idea what you’re supposed to wear to come out to your parents. Maybe he should wear a t-shirt from the charity clinic he coached last summer. Or is that not formal enough. Does it require, like, a button-down? A Polo?

“What are you doing, dude?” he mutters, just to himself. He grabs a linen shirt that appeared in his closet last summer, which means his mom bought it for him.

He pulls it on, and all he can think about is when he was little, his ears clogged with lake water as his mom dressed him in nice clothes because his Obaachan and Ojiichan were coming up to the cottage. And Shane would complain about having to dress up, because the shirts were always so itchy.

But Mom would tell him that she wanted to show that their sacrifices were worth it. That they left behind everything they knew in Japan to come to Canada for a better life, and that Mom wanted to show that their hard work paid off. That she had a good life, and Shane would have an even better, an even easier one. Less complicated. More success.

He’s tried. He’s tried so hard to make it worth it. To repay his mom. His grandparents.

But. Shane looks different. He processes things differently. He’s really fucking good at hockey, and yeah, that’s made him rich, and that’s helped him actually repay his family, and to move his grandparents into nicer retirement communities and pay off his parents’ mortgage.

But he’s not a doctor or a lawyer. What’s making him rich and famous is also destroying his body. He knows that. In the throes of his concussion, he read article after article through sunglasses in a dark room about CTE, about Bob Probert and Steve Montador. About their mental decline. Their addictions. How their hearts gave out. The lesions found on their brains. And Shane lay in his bed and wondered if that’s how he’d die. His dad. Hayden. J.J. Ilya.

And now he’s gay, too. And in love with an impossible man. And they’re committing to an impossible life. Together.

It just. Kind of seems like the final nail in the coffin of him having an easy life.

He’s going to fucking break his mother’s heart.

Ilya wanted to rinse off. Shane waits by the car, staring at the dead bugs on the hood, his funhouse reflection in the shiny metallic Land Rover logo. What are the pros and cons of joining a witness protection program or something. Just disappearing completely.

The door closes, and Shane looks at Ilya.

…Who decided to wear a fucking Boston shirt. Shane might go back on what he said about wanting a future together. “That is not going to help.”

Ilya looks down at his shirt, then back to Shane. Like Shane’s being the unreasonable one. Again. “Oh, they don’t know I play for Boston? Did your mom somehow miss that? In the car? When I was driving her to Boston?”

Right. Fuck. Shane pinches the bridge of his nose and takes another deep breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”

It’s only a ten-minute drive to his parents. It feels like an hour.

He’s not a fidgeter, not like Ilya, constantly jostling a leg or tugging at his ear. But Shane can’t stop his jittery restlessness, his fingers frantic against the gear stick. The radio is still set to some pop station Ilya chose on the drive up. Whatever song is playing sounds like a grating, miserable dirge.

He remembers sitting in the passenger seat on the way to bury his Grandpa John. Dad was driving, his face stony and somber, as they followed in the procession behind the hearse.

This feels like that. Like Shane is driving to a funeral. For whom or what, he doesn’t know. But that’s what it feels like.

And then Ilya rests his hand atop Shane’s, to stop the tapping, and then lifts it to his lips, kissing once, twice, three times. It doesn’t help, not really, but it’s nice. A nice reminder.

He parks next to his mom’s car. Maybe this was a bad idea. Shane’s arm darts across Ilya to stop him. Like he’s holding Ilya back from a crash. “Maybe you should wait in the—”

Ilya raises his eyebrows.

Shane shakes his head. “Fuck, never mind. Sorry.”

He takes another deep breath right outside the double doors. His parents never lock the left one. He tries to stand up straight, tries not to cringe away. He lets himself hook his thumbs in his pockets. It doesn’t exactly project confidence. But. He needs something to ground him. To make him less uncomfortable.

God, he’s so fucking uncomfortable already, and they’re not even inside.

Ilya presses his hand between Shane’s shoulders, a warm, heavy weight on his back. Not pushing. But. It helps, kind of.

Shane closes his eyes. Nods. Tells himself he isn’t going to throw up. And opens the door.

“Hey, it's me, Shane,” he says and tries not to cringe. What a stupid fucking way to start. Who else would it be?

Both his parents stand from the couch. They’re staring at him. He hears Ilya’s footsteps, can feel his body heat as he stands next to Shane. He watches their eyes track over to stare at Ilya.

Dad seems to shake himself out of it. “Hi. I left my charger at your place, and it's the old one that fits into my Kindle, and all the other chargers we have are newer, so…”

“It’s okay, Dad.” Shane can’t look at him. Can’t look at the slack-mouthed shock and concerned blue eyes. He stares at the console table pushed against the back of the couch. All the photos of him as a kid. Before he was such a fuck up. Or at least. Before he realized he was a fuck up. “I’m sorry. You shouldn't have found out that way.”

“Found out what, exactly?” Mom sounds. Careful. But also like she’s trying to be normal. And failing.

God, this sucks so fucking much.

“I'm gay,” Shane says. He’s only ever said that to Ilya. And to himself, sometimes, late at night when he can’t sleep. Just to see how it would sound. “Which I was gonna tell you soon. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I…”

Ilya clears his throat. It’s so quiet. He’s sure it’s only for Shane to hear.

“And this is Ilya…Rozanov.” Shane meets his mom’s eyes. “But you already know that.”

Nobody says anything.

Then, Ilya adds, “Hi.”

His parents don’t react. They still look so. Concerned. “He's visiting, and we're, uh…”

Shane has no idea what they are. Maybe they should have figured it out before they came here. What did Rose call it? Defining the relationship?

Before he can think of something to say, Ilya places a hand on Shane’s shoulder. “Lovers.”

Fuck. Way to choose the grossest word possible. “No, Ilya, that's gross.”

Ilya takes his hand away. Shane can hear him say a soft oh under his breath.

“But…you hate him?” Mom says. Asks? Is she giving him an out? Is this what an out looks like?

Dad nods. Oh. Maybe she didn’t tell Dad? Is that the out?

Shane tries to inhale and exhale like a normal human. He just feels. Miserable.

“No,” he says. Because he doesn’t hate Ilya. That’s the one thing he knows for sure. “I mean, I get that, but no. I actually—”

He forces his chin up. So his parents can see that he’s serious, that they’re serious. “I love him.”

It surprises him. That it’s so easy to say. The easiest thing to say.

His parents still look. God.

“I did not want this to be how I told you,” Shane says, a rush of air leaving his chest. He sounds so. Desperate. To maintain control. To make those looks disappear from their faces. “I’m, I'm sorry. Can we just sit down, please?”

The please seems to spur his parents into remembering their Canadian manners.

Shane and Ilya are bustled to the table just off the kitchen, where his mom would cut a big bowl of watermelon for Shane to eat after a long day on the lake with his dad. Where he learned after the combine that he’d either go first or second overall, depending on whether Montreal or Boston got the first pick. Where he signed his most recent contract extension. Where he stood in shock with Ilya on the phone, I’m coming to the cottage, echoing in his head, the best thing he had ever heard right up until Ilya told Shane he loved him.

“I think we thought maybe you were gay,” Mom says, handing them mugs of tea and finally sitting down.

He’s been staring at the whorls in the wood, and he looks up. She did? Shane wonders if that was before or after her road trip with Ilya. “You did?”

“I think we thought it was certainly possible,” Dad says.

“For how long?”

“Mmm, for a while, I guess,” Mom says, tilting her head.

Dad nods. “We both know you pretty well.”

He thinks back to—God. Forever ago. Sitting in their favorite restaurant in Ville-Marie. Mom went on and on about Wimbledon and a Swedish prince, no, a Swedish princess, she corrected all too quickly. He said he’d lie about being sick so his parents could watch the match, and his mom said, honey, I don't want you to lie. That's not who you are.

Except. That is who he is.

“I mean,” Dad continues, “what we did not suspect was that you were so friendly with Rozanov.”

“Ilya,” Ilya politely corrects. An easy reminder, accompanied with a close-lipped smile. God. Shane has never seen him be so...respectful.

“Ilya, sorry.”

Shane studies his parents. His dad’s confusion. His mom’s averted eyes. “Mom, did you not tell him?”

“Me?” Dad turns in his chair toward Mom. “Tell me what?”

His mom is staring into her mug. Shane says, “Apparently, Ilya and Mom carpooled to Boston after I got injured.”

“Road-tripped,” Ilya says. “Is a road trip if you buy snacks.”

“You—” For a man who seems to lives in a perpetual state of bemused confusion, Dad looks really, totally fucking lost. “What?”

“No, I didn’t tell him,” Mom says, her eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly. Is she, like, mad about this?

Dad stares at Mom, expectant. If this were any other situation, Shane could almost be amused.

Mom clears her throat. “When I went to pack Shane some things for the hospital, Ilya was, well, there. He seemed to be in a rush to get to Shane, so…” she flexes her hands around her mug. As if that explains it. “Ilya said you were friends. I guessed it was something more than that, but I didn’t know what. Or why he was in your apartment, but—”

She cuts herself off. Shakes her head a little. Exhales what could maybe be a laugh. “But I thought you would tell me, and then you didn’t, and here we are.”

“It's a, a long story.” He looks at the mint and tea leaves floating in his mug. Mom is always trying to get Shane and Dad to eat more fiber. She worries about colon health a lot. Because Shane has tried his hardest to hide every other potential worry from her. “After Ilya broke his jaw, he stayed with me for his recovery. So he could keep seeing the same doctors.”

Ilya’s eyes meet his, his eyebrow barely raised, like for whatever reason, Ilya is—dissatisfied? Maybe? By that explanation.

“But surely you didn’t decide to…” Mom gestures between Shane and Ilya. “Start then?”

“Wait…” Dad says. Shane watches the slow realization on his face, like when he knows the question on Jeopardy. “The All-Star game. You two had so much chemistry.”

Shane watches Ilya’s mouth twitch. If he makes a joke now, Shane will kill him.

“No,” he says slowly. “It was, uh, before then.”

Dad’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh…wow, uh. Wow.”

“So, when?” Mom smiles, and it’s her expectant smile. The one that she gives Shane when he says he has something the day of a proposed shoot, and she smiles and asks, what?

Shane shifts in his seat, the wood creaking beneath him. “Since our, uh, rookie season.”

“Since your rookie season?” Mom looks completely caught off guard by that. She’s usually so unflappable, and now she seems—flapped.

“No, it's not true,” Ilya says, turning toward Shane. “Since before that.”

Jesus Christ. Under his breath, Shane mutters, “Not helpful.”

“Before?” Mom asks, leaning forward.

“The summer before,” Ilya insists, and if Shane didn’t want to kick him, he’d add that they could probably add another year considering whatever happened in the hotel gym after the draft.

Mom opens her mouth. Closes it. Says, “So you've been in love since…”

Shane says, “No! No. No,” overlapping with Ilya’s simultaneous laugh and protest as he says, “No, no, no. No. No, just…”

Mom looks at Ilya, expectant. “Just what?”

“Ah, just…” Ilya waves a hand. “Just.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Shane needs to stop whatever the fuck this is. Now. “Ilya,” he says, warning.

Then Mom visibly gets it. “Oh. Okay.”

“Just what?” Dad’s lost again. Shane wants to die.

“Lovers,” Mom says. There is no God. This is Hell, actually. It was Shane’s funeral they were driving to.

“Okay, no one is allowed to use that word again,” Shane says loudly, his ears burning. God. It’s like the time in 2015 that Ilya somehow figured out that Shane hates the word panties, and texted it over and over again for three weeks straight.

“Well, I would love a drink.” The chair scratches across the floor as Mom gets up from the table. She heads for the basement, which means she isn’t getting the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that’s always on hand in the fridge, but going for his dad’s stash of the stronger stuff.

She comes back with vodka, and despite how awkward it is, despite how Mom keeps looking at Shane, he thinks it’s going…okay-ish? It’s mortifying. But he hasn’t actually died yet.

His eyes flicker over to Ilya after Mom very helpfully points out that their situation is sad. Oh, that’s so sad.

Yeah. It’s fucking sad. Shane knows—they know—that it’s sad, that the whole situation fucking sucks. But he thinks of Ilya in Tampa, saying he would never be able to go home again.

He wonders if Ilya thinks the sadness is worth it.

“Ilya, I gotta say, I'm surprised,” Dad says. Ilya blinks and sits up a little straighter, like he wasn’t paying attention. Or like he wasn’t expecting to be asked a question directly. “You have such a reputation as a ladies' man.”

“Mm. Is not untrue,” Ilya says. One finger is running up and down the bumps and ribs on his glass. Fidgeting. Shane aches to take his hand, to tell him that he’s doing great. Sans the whole lover thing.

He clears his throat. “Ilya likes both.”

Dad’s face does. Something. With that information.

“It's true, I've been with many women, but…” Ilya smiles, his eyes soft and bright, flickering to meet Shane’s. “I have only been in love with one person.”

Oh.

The heart attack from before is back, but now it’s—good. It hurts, but a good hurt, like sore muscles after a good workout.

Shane blinks away the wetness that’s welled up in his eyes and tries to clear his throat again. It doesn’t dislodge whatever’s there, the warm, beating heart of love that’s replaced the anxiety and guilt.

“Same here,” Shane wobbles. “Only one.”

There’s a small, private smile on Ilya’s face, like it’s just for Shane to see. Ilya’s sneaker taps against Shane’s boat shoes, and Shane thinks back to their very first All-Star weekend, and that secret thank you from Ilya. Before they were anything. Before they were everything.

That’s all lost in a skate-spray of snow, shards of ice-cold reality and guilt squalling over him when Mom mutters something and takes her still-full glass to the kitchen.

There’s the sound of the sink running. And then the door. It isn’t that loud when it closes behind her. Shane still winces when it does.

Fuck. Fuck.

Dad’s eyes are fixed on Shane, his forefinger tapping against his folded arm. He doesn’t have to say anything. Shane—Shane knows.

The fear is back. He’s in the car behind the hearse. The lump in his throat has turned to lead. Shane stands up and nearly trips over the chair. He tries to steady himself. Tries to get himself under control. Ilya’s looking up at him, his brow furrowing, like he’s about to stand up, too.

Shane shakes his head. “Um. Just. Stay here. Talk about…hockey. I’ll be right back.”

He spots her sweater over the back of the chair. The wind is picking up. She’s probably cold.

He grabs the sweater, the fabric warm in his hands, like there’s somehow residual heat lingering in the fibers. He can feel the weight of Ilya’s gaze as he leaves the kitchen. He takes a moment to steady himself by the couch, folding the sweater neatly in his hands, pinching the hem, worrying the fabric between his thumbs. Okay. He can—okay.

He carefully closes the door behind him. His mom is just standing there, looking out at the lake.

Shane takes another deep breath. It doesn’t help, really. He walks down the hill to where his mom is wiping her eyes. He feels. Awful.

She must hear his footsteps, turning and offering Shane a watery smile. “Hey.”

“Hi.” He holds the sweater up, an offering, and Mom just looks. Sad. As Shane helps her into it.

“Thank you,” Mom says. He knows she’s looking at him, but he can’t look at her. He stares down the grassy slope leading to the lake. He used to run down it at top speed before flinging himself into the lake. It was the closest thing to skating in the summer. The closest thing to flying up the ice.

He can’t cry. He can’t. If he cries, his mom will cry more. She doesn’t like seeing him upset.

“Mom, um,” Shane starts, and immediately cuts himself off. His voice is so. So wobbly. He can’t cry. He tries to breathe, in and out, but each attempt is shaky and shuddering. Pathetic. He clears his throat. “I need you to know that I did really try.”

She’s looking at him now, he can see her in his periphery, but he keeps staring down the lawn, the greens and blues beginning to blur and swim.

“I tried really hard.” He can’t say to be better. He can’t say to be worth it. He can’t say to be straight. He can’t say to not love Ilya. He can’t cry. He tries to put on a brave face. Tries to smile. So Mom won’t worry. He shakes his head, like it’ll take away the salt sting in his eyes, but— “But, um. I just can't help it.”

His voice cracks and crumbles, twenty-six stripped away to sixteen, the last decade lost in a last-ditch swallow. He blinks, quickly. Still trying so hard. Still failing. He sounds so small, so young, so ashamed when he croaks, “And I'm sorry.”

Mom is already shaking her head. Her hand takes his, squeezing like she did in the hospital. He can’t look at her. He doesn’t. He can’t. He.

“No.” A tug of his hand. He can’t look at her. “You have nothing, nothing to apologize for.”

Each word is. Non-negotiable. He wants to laugh. Shake his head. If he has nothing to apologize for, why does it hurt so fucking much?

Why does it feel like he’s slamming against the ice in Boston, but this time, his entire body is cleaved open. Why does it feel like there’s a stranglehold around his heart, squeezing and choking until the veins in his eyes bulge and burst, and there’s nowhere left for the floodwaters to go.

“Look at me. Look at me.”

Shane. Can’t. He. He can’t even see her. Through the tears. Falling now. The first time he’s failed to hold them back since. Since. He can’t remember.

Mom ducks and steps into his shaking, avoidant sight line. “Look at me.”

Her voice wavers, too. He doesn’t want her to cry, so. He tries to look at her. He has to try.

“I'm sorry that I made you feel like you couldn't tell me,” Mom says, her eyes searching his, the grip of her hand at odds with her earnest gentling.

Her thumb catches a tear tracking down his cheek. Another and another and another follow it, meeting along his jaw, dampening his collar.

“I could see how much he loved you,” Mom says, her voice almost a whisper as she cups his jaw. “I should have said something, and I feel awful that you felt you had to hide it.”

Shane looks at her, tears clinging to his lashes. “You could?”

“He was so scared, sweetie,” Mom says, her hand moving from his jaw to soothe over the crest of his head. “I could see it in his eyes. And I thought, well, maybe he was just shocked by me being there, but then he. He.”

She presses her lips together, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “He packed your bag. He knew all your favorite clothes. I couldn’t even have—”

Mom exhales, closing her eyes. “He was so respectful. And so insistent that I let you tell me. And I saw your face when he came to the hospital, and it, it would take a fool not to see how much you love him.”

“So…” Shane wipes his eyes, the back of his hand coming away a little less damp. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought you would tell me,” Mom says, shaking her head. “And when you didn’t…I convinced myself there had to be a reason. He—well. I sent him an email, and he never responded, so I thought maybe something had happened, that it was, was my fault, that I found him, and maybe he got scared, or you got scared—”

Mom turns her head away as Shane watches another tear run down her cheek. “How terrible of a mother am I, that if you had broken up, you had to be miserable in secret because you felt like—”

“No, no,” Shane interrupts, stepping forward. “Mom. I. I should have told you. I was just—you worry about me. So much. I saw the email, and I didn’t want to…”

“Disappoint me?”

Shane tries to shake his head, or nod, or—do something, but a sob escapes him, terrified and uncontrollable, and he collapses into his Mom’s arms because until Ilya, she was the only one who could make him feel better when he was so. So.

Her tear-stained cheek presses against his, her hand back in his hair. “I am so, so proud of you,” she says, certain, more certain than he’s ever heard her in his entire life. “Okay?”

Mom waits. Expectant. Until Shane nods against her shoulder. Her sweater is damp underneath his chin.

“Please forgive me,” she says, and she sounds—scared. Like Shane will say no. Like Shane could ever tell his mother no.

“I forgive you, Mom,” Shane says, and he tries. Harder than he’s ever tried at anything before. To make her believe it. Because he does. He does. And he’s so relieved, and so—raw. Like he’s been scoured and scrubbed clean, every inch of his body abraded and pink and new.

He hugs her tighter, and through his sniffles, he can smell the lavender detergent she always buys, and her perfume, and everything else he can’t name but can instantly recognize as her. As home. “I love you.”

“Oh, I love you too,” Mom says, rocking him back and forth in her arms. Her thumbs move back and forth, windshield wipers on the drive home, how she used to hold him after bad games and nasty hits. “So much.”

Shane doesn’t let himself cry, and now, he can’t stop. He knows that when he stops, when his eyes finally dry, he’ll step into a new world. And he doesn’t know the rules yet, doesn’t know what challenges and penalties and pain lie ahead. But he has the outlines of a game plan, systems sketched on the locker room whiteboard, and he isn’t. He isn’t.

He won’t be alone.

The thought wrings the last of the tears out of him, the last of the suds and sadness squeezed away. Ilya said Shane was lonely for a long time, and Ilya was right. But Shane isn’t anymore. He’s got Ilya, and he’s got Mom, and he’s got Dad. And they’ll be with him in the long game ahead. They’ll help him figure it out.

He sniffles, finally pulling his head away from Mom’s shoulders. Her sweater is patchy and damp. She holds his face. Wipes what’s lingering on his cheeks away. “You okay?”

He nods, and he feels—hollow. In a good way. Like all the bad was cored out of him, and he can. He can do this.

He opens his eyes. Mom looks like a mess, her eyes and nose red, and Shane is sure he looks the same way, that his skin is blotchy and red.

“Right,” Mom starts. She tries a watery smile, wiping her own tears away. She hates crying, too. “Okay, okay, enough.”

It pulls a huff of laughter from him, and he can see that look on Mom’s face. She’s putting on her game face. It’s kind of terrifying, but she’s smiling, so Shane smiles too.

“All right,” Mom says. She smoothes out the wrinkled shoulders of his shirt. “What's the plan?”

—

Ilya’s first thought when entering David and Yuna Hollander’s home is that he is not dating Shane Hollander, because Shane Hollander has to be dead since his photos are strewn across every surface and covering every wall like a fucking shrine to Shane. Shaneshine, Shaneshrine.

He wants to take Shane by the shoulders and shake him a little, or point at all the fucking pictures, and say, look! Look, you idiot love of my life! They love you!

But he couldn’t, so he didn’t. All day, Ilya has sat amongst the Hollanders and one million photos of Baby Shane, chubby-cheeked, freckle-faced, gap-toothed, and felt like an anthropologist studying the life of an only child of loving parents.

He hasn’t spoken much other than a few words here and there, to try and show Shane’s parents exactly how much Ilya loves him, to try and not fuck anything up.

It feels like his jaw is wired shut again. Like he could speak, but doing so would be exhausting and incomprehensible. Or like he’s somehow regressed a decade in his English, like when Shane introduced himself in that parking lot, and everything moved through his brain in fragmented chunks, thick sheets of ice blanketing and shifting at a glacial pace on the Moskva.

He doesn’t want to make the situation with Shane and his parents worse. His presence is the crux of the issue; he knows that, but he won’t apologize for being here. For loving Shane. But Ilya doesn’t have parents to lie to anymore, and he’s been a disappointment for as long as he can remember. He aches for Shane, tangled up and afraid, even if Ilya thinks everything will probably work out.

He remembers sitting on Shane’s couch the day he got his wires off, pushing Shane away, brushing off his expectant worry, thinking, what right do you have to be scared?

Ilya has big emotions. He explodes loudly and frequently, but it’s like a release—once he’s done, he’s done. Shane couldn’t be further from that.

Ilya has watched up close and from afar over the past however many years as Shane swallowed every emotion, never let the tears in his eyes fall, until a breakdown was unavoidable, and even then, there’s no explosion—Shane just implodes, crumpling into himself. It still takes Ilya aback; the depths of pain Shane seems to experience, and how he tries to hide it from Ilya, from himself, until he physically can’t, chased to the edge of a cliff that disintegrates beneath him.

From Shane’s nice leather couch, he watched Shane fall off the cliff. And he felt like such an ass, and even more so when he got a taste of his own medicine a few weeks later.

Ilya is so often the one who backs Shane to the edge. But he’s also the only person who will dive after him, headfirst into the depths. If Shane drowns, Ilya will drown trying to save him. And Shane’s shown him multiple times now that the reverse is true.

And yet, here they are, staying afloat together. At least—he hopes so. It doesn’t feel like it now, with Ilya sitting across from David Hollander as Shane follows his mother out of the house.

Ilya pushes his chair back to stand, to follow Shane, but David reaches out, a hand landing on Ilya’s forearm. Ilya startles, but it’s not grabbing, just…resting. Gently.

“I think we let them be, eh?” David says. It’s not really a question, but he pats Ilya’s arm once, still gentle, and sits back in his seat. “This is something they’ve gotta work out.”

“Okay.” Ilya is still stuck on the arm pat, but David doesn’t look upset or anything. Ilya is—wary of David. Yuna, he understands. Well, he understands her better than David.

But for the life of him, Ilya cannot get a read on the man. He seems totally unlike Shane and Yuna. Like he was pulled from another family and put into this one.

They sit there. Ilya tries not to stare at David, and he thinks David might be trying not to stare at Ilya. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticks.

Behind David’s head is a photo of Shane in a Timbits uniform. It’s very cute.

“Well, I should probably get started on lunch,” David says, his hands slapping his thighs as he stands. Ilya nods, and fully expects to just—sit there, probably, and wait for Shane to come back, but David pops his head back around the doorway. “You want to give me a hand?”

That—also wasn’t what Ilya was expecting. And he doesn’t know what giving Shane’s father a hand in the kitchen entails, exactly, but he can’t keep sitting here staring at the man like a baffled, mute idiot, so he nods and follows David into the kitchen. It’s nice. A little cramped, maybe, and clearly well-used. Ilya hovers by the butcher block island as David moves around the kitchen, pulling ingredients and cookware out of cupboards.

“So,” Ilya says, scratching his neck, unsure of what to say or do or where to stand. “Shane says you played for McGill?”

“Oh, yup,” David says, rolling a handful of small, funny-looking lemons across the island to Ilya. He sets a shiny metal knife on top of a cutting board and pushes that toward Ilya, too. “Can you halve those for me? We’ll juice them.”

Ilya nods, and is—grateful, actually, to have something to do with his hands. “You played center?” he asks, slicing the first lemon in half.

“Goalie.”

Ilya looks up. David is digging in the fridge. Goalie? Goalies are freaks. And Shane’s dad is so…normal. And boring. It’s where Shane gets his boring from.

He forces his face back to something normal when David turns around.

“Oh,” Ilya says. “That is, is interesting.” And seemingly impossible. Ilya’s not that tall, but he feels like he towers over the man.

“Don’t look so surprised,” David says wryly. He fills the big pot with water and salts it. “Back in my day, goalies didn’t have to be giants.”

Well, that’s true. Svetlana’s father isn’t that tall, either. “I have a friend in Boston. Her father is Sergei Vetrov.”

“No shit?” David turns, looking impressed. “Y’know, I saw him play live, once. My dad took my brothers and me to Montreal for the first game of the Summit Series in the 70s. I was just a kid, but seeing him and Ken Dryden…” David whistles. “No other option for me. And he was young, too. Dryden was what, thirty? I remember Vetrov wasn’t even twenty. Real impressive.”

“Yes.” Okay, well—at least David has correct opinions. And Ilya can keep this in his back pocket. He can get Sveta to get something signed, in case he needs to win David’s favor for anything.

“How’s the jaw?” David asks. “You know, I was at that game.”

He was? “Not much of a game without me,” Ilya mutters, trying to keep the sour look off his face. The only thing he remembers from the game is the puck drop and flashes of Jake holding a towel to his bloody mouth. Montreal had destroyed Boston.

“We like to go to Shane’s games when we can,” David says, fiddling with the stove. A burner clicks a few times before catching. “Well, Yuna couldn’t make it, but I was in town anyway. It looked nasty even from the box. You hate to see any player go down like that, eh? And I guess it makes sense now, why Shane canceled our dinner plans.”

Shane canceled? He never told Ilya any of this. Not that he would, before, but—Shane didn’t even come to see him until the next morning. The knowledge burns in his chest, a kernel of private warmth.

“But, uh, the recovery went well?”

The answer is a big fat no, but he can’t just laugh in David’s face. “It was hard,” he says. “Shane was big help. It would be much worse without him, I think.”

David doesn’t ask another question, so Ilya sets himself to his assigned task. The lemon’s rind is thicker than he expected, and it slips under his knife, rolling. David grabs it before it falls. Goalie, right.

David tosses the lemon back. Ilya catches, turning it over in his hands. “These are weird lemons.”

“Oh, they aren’t,” David says. “Those are yuzu. Kind of like a Japanese lemon. Yuzu spaghetti is Shane and Yuna’s favorite, so I thought I’d make it. You like pasta?”

Who doesn’t like pasta? He’s a hockey player. All he eats is pasta. “Yes, ah, Shane and I made pesto last night. He said you found the recipe?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t Yuna. She can’t cook to save her life.” David pauses, looking at Ilya. Ilya tries to focus on cutting the yuzu into even halves. “You like to cook?”

“Mm, sometimes,” Ilya says. “Is hard to make fancy recipes with travel and hockey, but in the summers, yes.”

“Good, okay,” David says. He stops, like he’s considering saying something. “You know, I feel like I’m supposed to be giving you the shovel talk.”

Ilya looks up, alarmed. The shovel—what? “I have landscaper in Boston?”

David huffs, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “No, sorry. It means to ask about your intentions. With Shane.”

“My…intentions?” For fuck’s sake, why does everyone in this family have such good vocabulary? “Sorry, just so I am sure. What is intentions?”

“No, I’m sorry,” David says. “Just—what do you want from Shane? From your, uh, relationship?”

Ilya stills. The yuzus are cut. “I love him,” he starts slowly. Did he not already say this? Did David think he was, what, joking? “I want a future with him. And he wants this with me.”

“Yes, but…” David seems to shift in place. He hooks his thumbs into his pockets like Shane. “I don’t think I’m doing this right. Just—you have a reputation.”

Ilya stiffens, trying to keep his face neutral. Yes, David has already very helpfully brought up Ilya’s reputation once today. Ilya thought he had made it clear what he thinks about his reputation. He almost wants David to call him a whore outright so Ilya can say, oh, you know who also likes being called a whore?

“I just don’t want you to break Shane’s heart,” David says, finally. His face is—impassive. Neutral. “So. I thought I’d say that.”

Ilya wants to laugh, but he also wants David to understand that he isn’t fucking around here. He puts the knife down, trying to figure out the best way to play this. Most of what he wants to say isn’t for polite company, and he doesn’t even know where to begin to describe the enormity of his love for Shane. He’s not even sure he’s wrapped his head around it.

“First, I am very serious about Shane,” Ilya says, meeting David’s eyes. “I said I love him, and I have loved him for a long time. I want marriage, babies. Get old together.”

Something in David’s expression shifts and mellows.

“And,” Ilya continues, his voice a little quieter, “I think if anyone is breaking hearts, Shane is breaking mine.”

It feels treasonous to say, to admit, but Ilya hasn’t forgotten what may await him when they eventually return to Shane’s cottage.

“Okay,” David says. “Sorry, I don’t want you to think—I approve of this, of Shane and, uh, you together. It’s just a lot to take in. I think we thought Shane was, well, and, you know, you’re so, and I mean, well.”

Ilya has followed exactly zero of that. He’s kind of in awe, actually. He thought Shane was more like Yuna, but Christ, Shane is exactly like his father.

“I feel like I know so much about you,” David continues—clarifies? Ilya has no clue. “But I’ve never even spoken to you before.”

Well, that’s fair. He offers his hand to David. “Hello, Mr. Hollander. I am Ilya Rozanov.”

David looks at Ilya’s hand, his eyebrows raised, but he shakes it. “Hi, Ilya. I think you’re allowed to call me David.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. David smiles, and before Ilya can take his hand away, David places his other hand on top. Squeezes Ilya’s hand just once. Gentle again.

“I wanted to say, I read about your father passing,” David says quietly. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He releases Ilya’s hand with a pat and another squeeze, and Ilya stands there, at a loss for words. He wasn’t expecting—that. And he doesn’t want to seem ungrateful or like a bad son, even though he was, so he quietly says, “Thank you.”

“Is, uh, your mother? Alright?” David asks. “I thought you would be in Russia with your family, not—y’know. Here in my kitchen.”

Jesus Christ. Ilya casts a glance out of the window, but Shane and Yuna must be on the other side of the house. “No, ah, my mother died. When I was young.”

David’s face falls. “I’m so sorry to hear that, bud.”

Bud? Bud? If Ilya knew that playing the orphan card would get him to bud so quickly, he would have opened with it.

Instead, he just nods. He has no idea what to do with the open concern on David’s face.

“The yuzu are cut,” Ilya says, finally. He pushes the cutting board forward and tries to clear the thickness out of his throat. “What’s next?”

David nods, just once. To what, Ilya doesn’t know. “I’ll get started on the sauce if you want to keep watch on the pasta. The water should be boiling.”

It is, and Ilya adds a whole box of noodles, stirring occasionally while David hums behind him. He’s grateful that he doesn’t have to stand face-to-face with him right now.

That feeling of foreign muteness is back. He’s overwhelmed by—all of this, by the magnets on the fridge, and the collection of mugs on a shelf, at the cheery, butter-yellow curtains. This is a family. Seeing it, the pride David and Yuna have in Shane, the loving warmth of their home, is…odd.

Ilya isn’t sure what he’s feeling, exactly. Can he miss something he never had?

“Uh, Ilya? Are you okay?”

Ilya startles. The water is boiling over. He picks up the spoon, stirring quickly. “Shit. I mean. Sorry.”

David’s hand lands on his shoulder. Ilya isn’t expecting it to be so light. “That’s alright, it should be done pretty soon anyway. Why don’t you set the table?”

David shows him where the plates and silverware are. Ilya tries to make each setting look as nice as possible, folding each cloth napkin and placing the cutlery on top.

He wants it to look nice. To look like he tried. Forget Shane being the only person he’s ever loved; he’s never even gotten to the point of sharing a meal with someone’s parents. Well, he’s been to dinner at the Vetrovs, but that was long before Sveta and Ilya ever did anything together. He wishes—he doesn’t know what he fucking wishes.

Except—he does wish he had some compass as to whether this is going well. He thinks it is, but Shane and Yuna have been outside for a long time now, and that itches at him, an anxious twitch that he can’t fidget away.

He finishes setting the table. David is humming in the kitchen, and he doesn’t want just to sit there and look ungrateful or lazy. He wanders around back to the living area, looking for the bathroom. He lingers in the hallway, at the photos hanging on the wall, the framed scribbly artwork. He stops dead in his tracks in front of a photo of—

It’s Shane and Ilya and Gábor Korogyi at the draft framed between two other photos—Shane on the ice with his parents at his first and second cup wins, decked out in Montreal gear, grinning as a perfect trio. They all look so fucking happy, but in the middle is Ilya and Shane.

He can’t remember the last time he looked at a photo from that night. He looks so fucking young. Happy, but terrified. He can see it in his eyes. It must have been right after Ilya nudged Shane because he wasn’t holding up two fingers, thrilled with the idea of even just brushing Shane’s arm with his elbow, because Ilya is standing slightly closer to Shane than he is to Korogyi, and there’s a hint of red coloring Ilya’s ears.

He doesn’t know what to make of it. There’s a photo of him here. In the Hollander’s home. As part of the Shaneshrine.

The front door opens. Ilya feels caught, even though he hasn’t been, so he escapes into the bathroom to piss. After washing his hands, he lingers in front of the mirror.

He still feels as young as he did that night almost a decade ago, alone and terrified that he would do or say the wrong thing and Boston would say, never mind, we want Hollander, and Ilya would tumble down the draft order, or worse, not get drafted at all, relegated back to Dynamo and living under his father and brother’s thumb.

He wonders who he would be if that happened. Maybe he’d be married to Svetlana and fucking around with Sasha. Maybe his father would still be alive. Maybe he would have a couple of kids. Maybe he wouldn’t be here at all.

He splashes his face with water, trying to wash away that thought. Yes, today is awkward, and he hates feeling constantly unsure of himself, but there is nowhere he would rather be than here, with Shane.

So he needs to stop being a fucking pussy and get out of the bathroom.

He wipes his face with the inside of his t-shirt, and when he returns to the table, Shane and Yuna are back, and David is putting a heaping portion of pasta on Ilya’s plate.

“Ah,” Ilya says, as three Hollanders look at him. He points his thumb over his shoulder. “I was just—”

“Sit, sit,” David says, adding another scoop of pasta. “Before everything gets cold.”

Ilya sits. It smells fucking incredible. But—

“You are okay?” he asks Shane, his voice hushed. Shane nods, and besides red eyes and some splotchy skin on his neck, he doesn’t look too anxious or upset. That’s a relief, and all of a sudden, Ilya realizes that he’s fucking starving.

Apparently, Shane has told Yuna about Ottawa and the foundation, because she’s returned to the woman he watched bustle around Shane’s apartment. Watching her boss Shane around is pretty amusing, actually, and between the best pasta he’s ever had and the good Russian vodka that David stocks, the more confident he feels. He’s not fucking this up. This is going well.

David moves the parmesan closer to Ilya, and he douses his pasta in it, letting the conversation mostly wash over him until Shane says that they aren’t coming out; says, we just want a future.

We. Ilya has to believe him. He has to.

Ilya taps his foot against Shane’s again, and dutifully answers Yuna about Ottawa, but it starts to feel less and less like an interrogation. Maybe, just a little, it starts to feel like they’re in on a joke together.

It’s the mention of Scott Hunter—David asking Shane if he’s spoken to him—that pulls Ilya out of his thoughts.

Shane says no, but—

“I did,” Ilya says from behind his hand so they don’t see him chewing.

“You did?” Shane asks, his face surprised. Ah. Another thing Ilya didn’t tell him.

“Yeah, briefly,” Ilya explains. “After the awards in June.” Ilya was up for the Masterson, but he lost to that center in Jersey, which he had fully expected, since the guy overcame fucking leukemia to keep playing. All Ilya had to do was wear a cage and not smoke, and he didn’t even really succeed at the latter.

“And what did he say?” Yuna asks.

Ilya shakes his head. Hunter was Hunter. Ilya offered to buy him a drink, but he was nursing the same boring Manhattan all night and answering placid questions with his boring, polite smile. Ilya congratulated him on the win and tried to say how much he respected the man and what he did without actually saying that he respected Hunter, because he’s Ilya Rozanov and he has a reputation to uphold.

He’s not sure how much of that sentiment got across to Hunter. It’s not like he could say, seeing you kiss a man on the ice made me less afraid to fight for what I want, and now I’m going to go to Shane Hollander’s cottage to make love to him and try to show him that I think we can have this someday. Also, Ilya was a little drunk himself.

“Nothing. I didn't tell him about Shane and me,” Ilya says. He tries to get some pasta out from the newish gap where his wisdom teeth once were. “But what he did, it was…”

He trails off, unable to think of a polite English word that encompasses what Ilya actually wants to say, which is something along the lines of Hunter having balls of steel when Ilya had previously thought he was more like a neutered purse dog.

“Yes, it was very brave,” Yuna says, and Ilya thinks of her email, of how she said that Shane didn’t want to be the first.

He knew she was right when he read that, and now she sounds—relieved. Looks relieved, too. Like maybe she wasn’t just saying, maybe, one day, if that changes, Shane will tell me, and we’ll figure it out together to be polite, or to make Ilya feel better.

“It changed things,” Ilya says, nodding. “For me at least. Maybe for us.”

He’s about to say something else when Shane pushes back from the table, pillowing his head on his folded arms. He hasn’t touched his pasta. Ilya is a little taken aback. He thought everything was going well. He thought the conversation with Yuna was fine. But now Shane is panicking again, and Ilya is worried that it’s something he said.

“Shane?” Ilya asks. He places his hand on Shane’s thigh. “Shane.”

“I’m just freaking out,” Shane says, hidden away again. “I'll be okay in a second.”

The line of his back is arched and tense like a cat. Ilya sits forward, running a hand along the ridges of Shane’s spine.

“Hey, hey, we’re good here,” Ilya says, careful to keep his voice soft. He can feel the tension in Shane’s neck, his shoulders. Ilya tries to massage it away. This doesn’t seem as bad as earlier in the cabin, or the morning after Ilya got his wires off. He thinks it’ll be easier to bring Shane back from this. He casts a glance at Yuna and David, at their worried expressions. “Your family is here. Your boyfriend is here. You’re good here, okay?”

The muscles of Shane’s back shift, and he lifts his head, his eyes a little shiny. “My boyfriend?”

Ah. Fuck. Was he not…

He searches Shane’s face. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. Maybe they’re still going back to the cottage and fighting again. But—it doesn’t look like Shane is questioning the concept. Like he’s about to rebuke it. It seems more like…wonder. Like a revelation. Like Shane looking up at him in the dim lamplight in his bed and saying, holy shit. I love you, too.

“I think so, probably,” Ilya says. Earlier, Shane said that he wanted a future with Ilya. And asked if Ilya didn’t believe him when he said that.

Ilya believes him. He has to believe him. He has to.

“I mean, yes,” Ilya says, firmer this time. And he’s rewarded for it, with a smile from Shane that feels like the sun shining after a long, hard winter.

Fuck, Ilya loves him so fucking much.

He tilts Shane’s head up, ducking to kiss him. Just a quick peck. He can hear Yuna and David say something, but Ilya can’t hear it over his heartbeat.

The rest of the meal is easier. Ilya eats two plates of pasta and three slices of garlic bread. Shane gets a little less tense. David mentions the vintage car that he’s rebuilding back in Ottawa, and Ilya chimes in with questions about horsepower and torque, telling David about the Alfa Romeo he still has his eyes on.

It’s late in the day by the time they finish up. David and Yuna are invited to dinner tomorrow evening. Shane is in the bathroom. And Ilya is standing in front of the draft picture again. He still can’t get over the fact that it’s…here.

“Are you snooping?”

«Jesus Christ,» Ilya swears, fully jumping out of his skin. “I’m getting you a bell.”

“What, on a collar?” Shane looks mostly back to normal. From over his shoulder, a fat, chubby baby Shane gums a sunny smile.

“Please do not talk about collars around baby you,” Ilya hisses. “Or in your parents’ house.”

The corners of Shane’s mouth twitch, but his gaze is behind Ilya, at the photo. “I always wondered why Mom put that one up if she hated you so much. But she said it was important to show that even though I was drafted second, I have more cups than you.”

“Wow,” Ilya says, turning to look at the photos. Yuna’s commitment to her hatred is impressive. “Your mom is vicious. She should be in politics. Or the army.”

Shane hooks his chin over Ilya’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around Ilya’s waist. “I thought it was kind of nice. Like…maybe one day the meaning could change. That it would be there because my parents loved you, too.”

For fuck’s sake. Ilya’s managed to keep the waterworks away all day, and now he’s going to start blubbering here in Shane’s arms.

He tries to clear his throat. “And Korogyi? They love him also?”

He can feel Shane’s smile against Ilya’s shoulder, his hands drifting to Ilya’s hips and pinching the bit of summer fat there. “You’re such an asshole. You ready to go?”

“Yeah, yes. Let’s go,” Ilya says. Shane kisses his jaw, and he catches Yuna and David smiling at them. It doesn’t quite reach their eyes. Ilya gets the sense that it’s not an uncomplicated smile. Where they stand after today, he doesn’t know.

More importantly, he needs to know where he stands with Shane. Boyfriends is all well and good, but what happens when they’re alone again? What happens when Shane remembers that Ilya hid this from him for months?

They leave with shouted plans, and Shane saying he loves them, and Ilya thanking them again for the pasta.

And then, finally, finally, finally, they’re alone. Shane smiles at him from the driver’s seat, haloed by golden sunlight. Ilya would ask Shane to marry him here and now if he had a ring on him. If he knew Shane would say yes.

He won’t; he likes grand gestures too much. Thoughts of a candle-lit dock have followed him around the cottage since that first evening. Maybe in a few years, once he’s settled in Ottawa and is sure that Shane is ready. If they make it through everything else.

“It was okay?” Ilya asks, tentative, once he’s buckled his seatbelt.

Shane blows out a breath, his shoulders relaxing a bit. “I think so?”

Well. That doesn’t inspire confidence, but in terms of Shane, it’s practically a ringing endorsement. “We go home?”

He doesn’t realize what he’s said until Shane’s eyes widen, his lips parting in that unconscious awe. He likes the way the word sounds, how it feels in his mouth. He can’t take it back. He knows they still need to talk more. But it feels right.

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Let’s go home.

It’s only a ten-minute drive back to the cottage. It feels like an hour.

He’s halfway between horny and hyperalert of Shane’s mood, every minute shift in his expression. Before they left for his parents, Shane said, maybe I’ll be mad at you after. Shane isn’t. Is he? With everything that just happened, Ilya would say he isn’t, but gambling has never been his vice. Especially not when it comes to Shane who can be as clear as mud about his emotions.

Speaking of which— “I thought it went well, with your parents,” Ilya says after the pop song on the radio switches to a commercial. “Why did you start freaking out again?”

“Oh.” Shane’s hands tighten around the steering wheel, red returning to his neck and cheeks. “I was just, like, remembering some things Scott’s said to me over the past few years? And I think. Maybe he knows about us. Or at least that I…like you.”

Ilya’s grin grows. “You like me?”

“Ilya.”

“So much that Hunter can tell?”

“Ilya. You just met my parents. I love you.”

His cheeks hurt now. “You looooove me?”

Shane rolls his eyes, but he’s blushing, and Ilya can tell he’s fighting a smile. “No.”

“You do, you love me,” Ilya sing-songs. “Rozanov and Hollander, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

“I’m about to push you out of a tree,” Shane says. “Where did you even learn that?”

“Marly’s fiancée’s daughter.” Millie is a delightfully adorable and also completely evil six-year-old girl who is probably Ilya’s favorite person in all of Boston.

“Somebody’s marrying Marlow?”

“This is what we said,” Ilya says. “She’s too good for him, but she loves him. Wedding is end of this month.”

Ilya’s heart sinks as he says it. He forgot that this is only supposed to be two weeks. They must be done with the first already. Ilya has no concept of how time passes. Days can stretch into years, or he can blink and morning will turn to night. He’s perpetually late, and as he’s gotten older, he’s mostly decided that time—and being on it—isn’t his business.

But this hasn’t been enough time. It’s gone too fast. And from the way Shane’s smile fades away, Ilya’s fucked up by bringing up the reminder.

“But,” Ilya starts, “I could stay longer? Until I have to leave for it? If you want?”

Shane’s eyes dart to Ilya before he focuses back on the road. They’re pulling up to the cottage’s gate. “If I want?”

Ilya shrugs. Shane stops the car, almost says something, and then shakes his head. Instead, he punches in the gate code and doesn’t say anything as he parks.

God. Has Ilya fucked everything up?

He follows Shane out of the car and into the house, trying to figure out something to say, something to fix this. Ilya closes the door to the cottage, and he isn’t even fully turned around before Shane pushes him against the door, kissing him. Hard. Hungry. Angry.

Ilya tries to get with the game, his brow furrowing as he tries to hold Shane’s jaw, but Shane is biting and kissing down Ilya’s neck, rucking up Ilya’s shirt and sliding to his knees. He pulls Ilya’s shorts down, the button popping off, and doesn’t even comment on how Ilya went commando. He just jacks Ilya once, twice, and then chokes himself on Ilya’s cock.

Holy shit.

“Shane,” Ilya gasps, threading a hand through Shane’s hair. Brown, teary eyes flick to his. He doesn’t even pull all the way off Ilya’s cock before he’s swallowing again, taking Ilya as deep in his throat as possible. “Fuck. Hollander, Christ.”

Shane moans around Ilya’s cock, and gags. This is going to be over way too quickly.

“Baby, Shane, give me, give—five seconds,” Ilya says. Shane has the audacity to roll his eyes, but he pulls off with a pop that makes Ilya want to fuck straight back in. “Are you not mad at me? I didn’t tell you about road trip, and—”

“Yeah, I’m mad,” Shane says, mouthing at Ilya’s cockhead, his eyes trained on Ilya’s. “I’m mad that you think I don’t want you here for as long as possible. I’m mad that earlier you thought I would want you to leave.”

Ilya opens his mouth to say—something, but Shane stops him by twisting his hand around Ilya’s cock, tight and mean, just like Ilya loves.

“I’m mad,” Shane continues, “and I want you to fuck me until I’m not.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Ilya may need to revise his earlier thoughts on proposing too soon.

“And then tomorrow, I want to stay in bed all day, because you will be staying until the very last second before you have to go to Marlow’s stupid fucking wedding.”

“Okay, okay,” Ilya says. Smug, Shane takes him back into his mouth, and Ilya can’t help but smile when he says, “Well, until 4:45.”

God. Shane is so fucking hot when he’s mad at Ilya. His eyes narrow, and he asks, “What do you mean?”

“We can’t stay in bed all day,” Ilya says, with an air of patience that is entirely fake. “Your parents are coming for dinner at five.”

The eye-roll he receives is merciless. “Fine,” Shane huffs. “Until 4:45. And I’m going to wear a plug.”

Oh, will he? “A plug?” Ilya asks. Disbelieving, he adds, “You? You got a plug?”

“Yeah, my—wait.” Shane sits back on his knees, suspicious. “Are you the reason all my sex stuff is missing?”

“Sex stuff?” Ilya tries to sound as innocent as possible.

“Yeah, my lube, my, my dildo—why are you laughing?”

Ilya tries to school his face into something more serious. “No, is just—long story. I’m very happy you buy a plug. Now your dildo won’t be lonely.”

Shane’s face softens, and then he shakes his head, like he’s trying to force himself back into annoyance. “Stop distracting me,” he says, bitchy again. “Are you going to fuck me or what?”

“Oh, I’ll fuck you,” Ilya says. He takes Shane’s jaw in his hand, rough, in a way they haven’t been in—too long. Shane’s mouth opens, so pink and red and perfect.

Ilya spits into that perfect, waiting mouth. Impossibly fond and with all the love in his heart, Ilya adds, “Whore.”

Shane groans and swallows, eyes fluttering shut as he fucking savors it. When his eyes re-open, it’s only half-lidded and sultry, pupils blown wide.

Ha. Take that, David Hollander.

Ilya kicks off his shorts and tugs on Shane’s hair. “Up, up,” he urges, and picks Shane up, his hard cock leaking against Ilya’s shirt as Shane strips off his own. Ilya carries him to the couch, and Shane is clearly in a mood, because the second Ilya puts him down, he kicks off his shorts and rolls onto his front, arching his ass into the air.

This is the rest of Ilya’s life. He might cry.

He digs around in the couch cushions, looking for—aha! He did leave a bottle of lube here after the movie they watched the other night. He slicks two fingers, pushing them into Shane’s ass. Shane moans, loud and breathy.

“Just, just fuck me,” he pants. “I want it. I want to feel you.”

Ilya has half a mind to ignore him, to tease Shane with a third finger, maybe even a fourth. But he also enjoys having his balls attached to his body. So instead, he pours more lube on his hand, slicking up his cock.

“Hold yourself open,” Ilya pants, and Shane’s face is bright red when he turns to rest his weight on it, spreading his cheeks wide with his hands. Ilya stares at the winking furl, gathers all the moisture remaining in his mouth, and spits again, the glob sliding down Shane’s crack until Ilya catches it with the head of his cock, notched against Shane’s hole. “You want me to fuck you like a whore, I’ll fuck you like a whore.”

Shane moans again, beyond gone already, and chokes off with a gasp when Ilya fucks inside in one smooth thrust.

He sets a punishing pace, their skin slapping together with every thrust. Ilya’s left hand is gripping Shane’s hip, and his right is splaying across Shane’s head, pushing him into the couch. Shane is moaning like a fucking porn star, breathless and nasty. He sucks his own thumb into his mouth, and Ilya’s been trying to hold on as long as possible, but he can’t, not with Shane writhing underneath him like they’re twenty-four and still pretending to hate each other.

“My cock isn’t enough?” he asks. He smacks Shane’s ass, but they’re both too sweaty for it to land properly. That doesn’t stop Shane from pushing his ass back like he’s begging for more. “I’ll come back from wedding, bring your dildo, put it in your ass, and fuck your mouth, yes?”

“Fuck, Ilya,” Shane gasps. His ass tightens around Ilya’s cock, and Ilya knows he’s coming, hands-free. Ilya will retire tomorrow and become a wag and raise their babies and dedicate the rest of his living days to making pasta and making Shane come without a hand on his dick.

Maybe it’s that thought, or everything, or the way that Shane tries to keep fucking himself back on Ilya’s cock, that makes his hips stutter, thrusting in short, sharp jerks until he’s coming inside of Shane, babbling fuck and I love you and you’re perfect and you’re so slutty and every other thing he’s thought about Shane since—since the day he saw him get hard in the showers.

His ears ringing and his lungs on fire, Ilya slows, riding the aftershocks until he collapses on top of Shane, his back and Ilya’s chest both drenched in sweat.

They lie like that for a long time, until their breathing finally returns to normal, Ilya idly kissing Shane’s neck and Shane tracing his finger in swirls through Ilya’s leg hair. He thinks about the first time they were like this, Ilya whiny as he said, no, Hollander, I want to fuck you.

The memory pulls silly giggles out of Ilya’s chest until he’s breathless with laughter, and Shane is laughing too. They shift, their dicks soft and flopping around until they’re chest to chest.

“What’s so funny?” Shane asks, eventually, smiling. His thumb twisting in a curl at the nape of Ilya’s neck.

“Just thinking,” Ilya says, and when Shane makes a soft, inquisitive noise, he adds, “about how long I’ve wanted this. Wanted you. I know we have time, but—I don’t think it will be enough.”

Shane’s hand stills, his face tender. “You think the rest of our lives isn’t enough time?”

God. Ilya presses his nose to Shane’s sternum and wills himself not to cry.

“Hey,” Shane says, his hand finding Ilya’s jaw, a gentle press for Ilya to look up. They kiss once, twice, unhurried, effortless, and immeasurably sweet.

They part, just barely. “No,” Ilya says into the quiet space between their lips. “I don’t think it’s enough.”

Shane kisses him again and then tucks Ilya’s chest under his head. Ilya might be crying again. It doesn’t matter. He’s safe, here. Here, in Shane’s arms, he can just be.

Against his hair, like an angel above him, quiet save for the rise and fall of their chests, for Shane’s heartbeat underhead, for the crickets and birds singing beyond the windows.

Finally, Shane says, “I don’t think it’s enough, either.”

Chapter End Notes

Well! Sorry this chapter took so long. It turns out writing 13k will take a little bit of time. Also, sorry for lying about the last chapter being the penultimate chapter. FOR REAL, ABSOLUTELY FOR REAL, THIS IS THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER. And Jesus!!!!! What a penultimate chapter for this crazy fucking insane ride.

Fun fact! By mentioning McGill in this chapter, 10 of my 33 works on ao3, or 33% of most everything I've publicly written, somehow feature McGill, a school I did not attend and have only stepped foot on the campus of once.

I don't like to talk about my personal life much in fic (because everyone comments about that instead of about their favorite lines and moments!) but in the course of writing this fic, I've had two grandparents pass. Most recently and a bit more suddenly, my Nana, my namesake, and my mother's mother passed on January 24th. Every ounce of creativity I possess comes from her, and writing about Yuna and Shane in this chapter was very important to me. So, I dedicate this chapter to my Nana. Except for the hot sex at the end, though I'm sure she'd love that.

I can't thank Marivan enough for her dedication and help as a beta. Every part of writing this fic is better because of her.

Come hang out with me on tumblr at @flawlessassholes and reblog the fic art! I love you all.

Back soon with the final chapter (FOR REAL THIS TIME I SWEAR 2 GOD.)

Chapter 9

Chapter Summary

“Do you,” Shane starts, his voice hushed in the private space between them, as if they aren’t the only two people on this lake, or on earth itself. “Do you think we’d be here? If you hadn’t broken your jaw?”

Would they? Ilya tries to imagine it as he buries his head in Shane’s neck, the smell of his skin and sweat and sunscreen blanketing him. Tries to imagine him not going down on the ice in Montreal. Maybe fate would be cruel, and Shane would’ve gotten hurt instead. Maybe Shane wouldn’t have gotten hurt at all. Maybe Ilya would’ve won the cup, or Shane, and Hunter would’ve never kissed a man on the ice. Maybe Ilya wouldn’t have needed to see that. Maybe he needed to see it more than anything he’s seen before.

Chapter Notes

This chapter contains canon-typical homophobic slurs as well as under-negotiated kink. For more detail, please expand the toggle.

In Ilya's POV, he recalls being called a faggot by his uncles, and reclaims the slur throughout the rest of the chapter. Additionally, this fic alludes to under and non-negotiated rough sex, including dry sex/spit as lube, face slapping, and alluded BDSM in the past and present. Both characters are enthusiastic and consenting.

It starts raining four days before Ilya leaves for Boston, and where all things start between them: in the gym.

The rain is on and off at first. Shane will start a set, and by the time he finishes, it will have sputtered to a stop. He should’ve known there was rain coming; he had a headache the day before, the changing pressure systems fucking with his sinuses. He didn't sleep well. He’s supposed to lift with three-minute rest intervals, but he allows himself five.

He keeps staring at the drawing framed above the free weights.

Shane made it in kindergarten. Mom kept it for years and years because she keeps things like that. She had it framed and gave it to Shane right before the start of rookie camp, when it was official, and he’d sign his contract the next day, the maximum allowed for an entry-level contract under the CBA: $900,000, plus $2.85 million in signing and performance bonuses.

Shane always thought it was a silly thing to hang on to. The drawing is pretty mediocre, even for a five-year-old. It’s a stick figure with brown crayon-jab eyes and black, slashed spikes of hair, too-long arms outlined in blue and red, holding an oblong attempt at the cup. There’s a floating check-mark stick, and the legs end in gray, outward-pointing blocks, which he assumes are supposed to be skates. And above it all, blocky and backward-lettered: MY FUTURE.

Some of the other boys drew themselves as hockey players, in Ottawa or Toronto colors. There were doctors and firefighters. Some drew houses, with babies and families and smiling suns. It was the girls who did that, the same ones who added flowers sprouting out of spiky green grass and fluffy clouds in their scribbled blue skies. He remembers that. That only girls drew those kinds of things.

He shakes himself out of it, refocusing on regulating his breathing. He reaches for his towel, but it’s not next to his water bottle. He doesn’t have to look far; it’s hanging around Ilya’s neck as he pedals away on the bike. Ilya always forgets a towel, and even though Shane’s got a stack in the closet, he keeps stealing Shane’s instead, even if it’s already damp.

It’s not like the towel is accomplishing anything. Ilya is soaked with sweat, his hair damp and matted to his forehead with beads perspiring off the frizzy baby curls at his temples. He’s pushing. Going hard, his face bright red and his lips parted, mouthing along to whatever’s playing in his AirPods.

Ilya looks like that morning. The morning after he said he loved Shane, brave but sad, or maybe relieved. And Shane held him as Ilya trembled against the wild, aching racing in his chest, kissing his forehead, tangling his hands in Ilya’s hair, and whispering it over and over again.

Maybe it’s silly, but Shane thinks of that morning as. Making love. Because it was more. More than fucking. More than anything Shane had ever felt before.

With Ilya, everything is more.

Ilya seems so—fragile. Here. He laughs freely and fucks Shane hard, and wrestles Shane in the grass when they play sewer ball, the two of them pushing, shoving, laughing with each other the way Shane always imagined he would if he grew up with a brother or a best friend.

But he also sat on the boulder by the lake, alone until Shane joined him and watched tears track down Ilya’s cheeks. Watched him be hesitant and polite and jumpy with his parents, even after Mom and Dad came over for dinner, and Shane and Ilya went there again for lunch.

Ilya winks at him. Shane has no desire to be eighteen again, but his mouth goes dry, and when he swallows, his pulse races in his throat like two breathless, idiot boys on exercise bikes.

Shane usually gets a little stiff in his shorts when he lifts. If he didn’t have two sets left, he might—

“You want a picture?” Ilya asks, a little too loudly.

And. Yes, actually. He could—wants to—say something stupid and sappy like, I want to look at you like this forever.

But the timer on his phone goes off. Rest interval over.

“I want my towel,” Shane says, and a smile tugs at Ilya’s lips. He sits back on the bike, his legs still pumping. He looks Shane up and down, like he’s considering.

“Okay.” He slows, then stops, then stands up and off the bike. Fuck, he’s so big, his massive pecs rising and falling behind his stupid Boston tank top with the sides slit open. They’re practically hanging out. Like side boob. Miles said that to Rose that night in the club. We love a tasteful side boob.

Ilya’s looming over Shane now, bullying into his space until Shane’s sweat-soaked shirt meets the pleather bench, Ilya’s hands grasping the metal underside, wrists brushing against Shane’s ears and caging him in.

Shane inhales short and sharp through his nose as he watches a bead of sweat roll down Ilya’s chin, eyes fluttering shut as it lands just out of reach of Shane’s tongue, parched and searching.

He opens his eyes. Ilya grins, crooked, impish—hungry.

“I make you a deal,” Ilya says. Fuck. At this point, that’s practically Pavlovian for Shane. “You can have towel now, or…”

Shane licks his lips, an anticipatory dart. “Or?”

Ilya pauses, his eyes alight. He bends closer and licks a long, slow stripe from Shane’s chin to his ear, his warm tongue and spit boiling against Shane’s already flushed face. In the space between one hitching breath and the next, Ilya’s up and halfway across the room to the door that leads outside.

“Ah, I forgot,” Ilya says, light as air as he pushes the double doors open. “We have hill sprints.”

Right. It’s almost the end of the month. They’ve reached the tipping point of summer, when they’re closer to the start of training camp than playoffs. When workouts stop being maintenance and start being preparation.

So. Shane finishes his last two sets, and they run hill sprints from the dock to the deck, breathing hard under the heavy clouds overhead, wobbly and ominous over-filled water balloons barely held aloft.

Shane’s on his third sprint, and between one stride and the next, they burst.

It’s a torrential fucking downpour. The kind of rain that reminds Shane of afternoons on the lake, his cousins shrieking as they held their soaked towels overhead, mud and grass confetti flecked up their bare feet and legs as they ran up the hill to their parents. The kind of rain that Shane associates with fuzzy VHS tapes and shooting pucks into his parents’ dryer, the basement air just as damp as the outside, and his slap shots echoing the steady tunk tunk tunk against the hopper window.

Halfway up the hill to the cottage, Shane hears laughter, loud even over the drum of pelting rain. He turns to see Ilya looking up at the sky, grinning, his curls plastered to his forehead. He looks so—joyful. When he looks back down. Shane’s own smile stretches as wide as the dark clouds overhead.

And then Ilya tackles him into the grass.

He should have seen it coming. Shane goes down with an oof, his arms slipping on Ilya’s broad, wet shoulders. They grapple together, laughing too hard to pin one another properly. And Ilya’s playing dirty by pressing his knee into Shane’s crotch.

He sucks Shane’s cock like that, and between the warm, fat raindrops and the way Ilya is looking at him like he wants to eat Shane alive, Shane comes with a shout that he can’t even hear over the cascade of rain.

Then, in the mudroom, Shane gets on his knees for Ilya, goosepimples covering every inch of his shivering skin as Ilya cages him against the dryer, alternating between slapping Shane with his palm and cock, every thrust down Shane’s throat relentless and brutal, murmuring the filthy shit that gets Shane so worked up, calling him a beautiful cocksucker, a slut, a whore, wiping Shane’s tears and rubbing them around his thin-stretched lips. Yes, fuck, take it, you want to come again? Humping my leg? Fuuuck, Shane, such a filthy fucking cocksleeve. God, I love you. Choke on it, choke on it, fuck, you’re so good—

They can’t keep their hands off each other the entire day. They never had this much time together consecutively, and the shit they get up to is beyond Shane’s wildest imagination, always trying to one-up each other like they’re on the ice. They fuck on the bed and the couch and the other couch and up against the rain-soaked windows, every round sweaty and athletic like they’re twenty-four and fucking it out after a game, eager to wring as much out of each other before they go another month apart.

They spend the evening in the den. Ilya is a reality television fiend, and Shane tries to read for all of one episode until he noses his way into Ilya’s crotch, holding his cock in his mouth until time stops moving and the only thing Shane can hear is the game Ilya’s playing on his phone—he’s been into Tetris lately; he can be such a dork—and the rhythmic rain and Ilya’s heckling whenever contestants aren’t measuring up in his mind.

He must fall asleep like that, with Ilya soft and comforting in his mouth, because he rouses to Ilya carrying him to their bed, and all Shane can think before he falls back to sleep is that it’s always good for fishing after it rains, and that being held in Ilya’s arms is like drifting off in the arms of the nicest, warmest summer day.

Shane wakes up to a scream.

He almost falls to his ass alongside his heart as he scrambles out of bed, almost dizzy from his heart rate accelerating like the sports cars Ilya keeps showing him on YouTube. It can’t be Ilya’s jaw, can it? It’s supposed to be fixed. It has to be fixed. He can’t do it again, can’t relive that morning in Montreal, waking up to Ilya covered in blood, the white sheets of his bed stained like, like he had been shot or stabbed or something. He was as slack-mouthed as someone with a wired jaw could be, and Shane thought that he had—bled out in the night, or had choked on blood and suffocated, and that when Shane reached for his hand, it would be limp and cold, and—

Ilya is standing on the couch, his phone clutched to his chest, eyes fixed on the floor. Shane nearly falls again, expecting to turn into a stop like he’s on the ice and sliding on the wood floors instead because he was cold last night and wore socks to bed, even though Ilya always makes fun of him when Shane does that.

“What?” Shane asks, a little breathless. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

It’s—panic, in Ilya’s eyes, wide and wild. “There’s a spider.”

Fucking. What.

Shane follows Ilya’s sightline to the floor. Sure enough, there’s a wolf spider on the rug. Not even a big one. Kind of cute.

“Yeah?” Shane’s eyes return to Ilya. “Are you afraid of spiders?”

“No, I’m not—where are you going? Kill it!”

“I’m not going to kill it,” Shane says, on his way into the kitchen for a cup and a sheet of scrap paper from the junk drawer. “It’s just here because it’s raining. It doesn’t deserve to die for that.”

“It’s a fucking spider!”

“Yeah, and we’re in the woods? I built my house on top of his house. So maybe he was just trying to go home.” Shane kneels and carefully traps the spider.

Ilya is staring at Shane. Shane rolls his eyes. To the spider, he says, “C’mon, bud, let’s go back outside.” And then, over his shoulder, Shane tosses, “I thought you liked animals!”

From behind him, Ilya says, “That’s not a fucking animal. No, that’s, that’s—”

Ilya trails off into Russian as Shane toes off his socks. If he says anything else, it’s lost as Shane steps into the storm.

He’s drenched immediately, the briefs he wore to bed a heavy, sopping weight dragging each step. He releases the spider at the treeline, and his bare feet squish in the sodden lawn on his way back.

There’s a worm wiggling on the porch. Gently pinched between his forefinger and thumb, Shane returns it to the grass so it won’t dry out once the rain stops. It was a warm shower yesterday, but today it’s like pelting ice, and the blades of grass clinging to his calves itch. But maybe he and Ilya can get in the shower, or the bath. They still have to train. Shane’s got cardio this morning.

Through the braided rivers racing down the door, his eyes find Ilya’s. He’s still standing on the couch.

Shane pushes his hair out of his face, his fingers numb when he pries the door open and struggles to slide it shut, every inch of him soaked to the skin and adding to the floodplain on his floor. His feet squeak as he turns. “Can you get down? You’re going to ruin the couch.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “We’re, what, 180 kilos when we fuck? I think the couch is fine.”

“It’s the—whatever.” Ilya’s going to make fun of him if he brings up cushion longevity. “Can you get me a towel at least?”

Ilya does look a little sheepish as he hops off the couch, a thud that rattles more things in the vicinity of the living room than Shane is comfortable with. When Ilya returns, he’s got one of Shane’s nice bath towels, the extra-long, extra-wide, hotel-quality Turkish towels that cost him an arm and a leg.

“For fuck’s sake,” Shane says, crossing his arms and trying not to shiver. “I’m covered in mud. The shitty beach towels, not the nice ones!”

Ilya scoffs and rolls his eyes again, throwing a bitchy hand in Shane’s direction. He returns with an Ottawa beach towel that he’s pretty sure was his dad’s before it somehow made its way to Shane’s linen closet. Ilya tosses it to him and stalks off toward the kitchen.

Shane pauses his toweling. “What, I don’t get a thank you for getting rid of the spider?”

“I am saying thank you by making your stupid crunchy eggs before training,” Ilya says, pulling the fridge open. He hip checks it shut, the carton of eggs and the milk pitcher in hand. “How many eggs, three?”

Before Shane can answer, Ilya tsks, shaking his head. “No, you’re cardio today, four.”

“Are you using butter?”

“We’re out of the, the—” Ilya mimes spraying a can. “The pshhhh.”

“The cooking spray?” Shane hooks the towel around his shoulders. “I can go out and get some later. But you could use olive oil?”

“A little butter won’t kill you,” Ilya says. God, his arms and pecs look so good whisking. “It’s still summer. Go, do morning shit. Stop babysitting me.”

Shane stands there for another moment, watching Ilya move around the kitchen, tossing the fork into the sink, pouring the eggs into the pan, and grabbing a spatula out of the crock next to the stove. Ilya’s whistling, his cheeks puffed out, and when he reaches for the pepper grinder, he catches Shane’s eye.

“Hollander, Christ, I know I’m very handsome,” Ilya says, annoyed. He jabs the spatula in the direction of the bedroom, a bit of egg flying off. “Go!”

“Asshole,” Shane says, but there’s only a little heat behind it. He’s still wearing a stupid smile when he gets into the bathroom, water still dripping from the hair plastered to his forehead. He rinses his legs and feet off, and by the time he’s brushed his teeth and dressed to work out, most of the shakiness from Ilya’s wake-up call has followed the rest of the mud down the drain.

Ilya’s pouring a waterfall of sugar into his coffee when Shane walks back into the kitchen. There’s a steaming plate of scrambled eggs waiting for him on the island, and a smoothie that’s the correct shade of green waiting next to it.

“Okay?” Ilya asks, lifting the mug to his mouth.

“Yeah, thanks.” Shane slides onto the stool and lifts a forkful of eggs to his mouth, blowing on them before shoveling them into his mouth. The eggs are perfect. Ilya’s looks a lot tastier, covered in Sriracha and melted cheese. He’s going to fart so bad tonight.

They eat; Shane reads through emails while he digests, and Ilya goes outside to smoke, his cigarette in one hand and the umbrella he made Shane find in the other, gesturing animatedly while he talks to someone on the phone.

Shane finishes a response confirming his attendance at Montreal’s annual charity golf tournament—like he had any choice—when Ilya comes back inside, wiping his feet on the same beach towel from this morning.

“Fucking freezing outside,” Ilya mutters, shaking off the umbrella before sliding the glass door shut.

“Who was that?” Shane asks, closing his laptop and pulling his glasses off.

“Gennadiy.”

Oh. Shane has no idea what Ilya’s agent would want at—he glances at the microwave—11:14 on a Tuesday in July. “What did he want?”

“The same stuff he always wants,” Ilya says, clearing Shane’s empty smoothie glass. He doesn’t elaborate, so Shane imagines it’s probably an increased cut or for Ilya to endorse some Russian hair product, which is what Ilya usually complains about. “Doesn’t matter. We work out?”

Shane stands, pushing the stool neatly under the counter. He probably shouldn’t push it, but they agreed to be honest, so. “Does he know that you…”

“That I what?” Ilya’s face is neutral. Passive.

“That you aren’t, like, planning to go back.”

Ilya looks up at the ceiling. Like Shane’s perfectly normal question is so annoying and absurd, he needs to appeal to a higher power. Which is pretty fucking rude. “No, I haven’t told my Russian agent that I’m defecting, Hollander.”

“I don’t think it’s called defecting anymore.”

Ilya waves a hand. “Whatever.”

That means he wants Shane to drop it, but— “You should probably tell him.”

“Oh, should I?” He arches an eyebrow. “Should I do that before or after I ask him to negotiate my contract with Ottawa? I think after because I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Jesus.

Ilya must see the surprise on Shane’s face, because he exhales, his shoulders slumping a little.

“Sorry, that was not…” Ilya runs a hand through his hair. “It’s just. It’s a lot.”

Ilya isn’t saying that Shane is a lot. Shane knows that. But he also knows that—he is.

He opens his mouth to say something, but Ilya walks around the island, his hand trailing along the marble until it’s cupping Shane’s cheek. He kisses him, and Shane can taste the familiar bitterness, the acridity lingering on Ilya’s lips from his cigarette.

Ilya taps Shane’s cheek, his palm clammy from the humidity. “Let’s go. I need a spot.”

They work out. Shane rows, Ilya moves from free weights to deadlifts and doesn’t put anything back, which he’s learned is typical. He spots Ilya as he benches Shane’s body weight, and Shane tries and fails not to chub up. And of course Ilya can tell Shane’s turned on, ‘cause he’s a fucking bloodhound for that.

He crowds Shane against the mirrors, pulling his shorts down and spreading Shane’s ass cheeks, licking a broad stripe from Shane’s taint to his hole, and then teasing Shane with the most ineffectual kitten licks. Shane is fucking leaking precome against the mirror, his face flushed and pressed against the cool glass, each gasp and moan leaving streaky smudges of grease and sweat.

He hears something vibrate, and he wonders if Ilya’s about to surprise him with another new toy, but then Ilya’s hands leave him, and then he pulls away entirely. In the mirror, he can see Ilya wipe his mouth, take a deep breath, and answer his phone.

“Jerry, hello,” Ilya says, his free hand rubbing his neck. “No, I’m not busy. Yes, I can talk. Ah, let me just…”

He lowers the phone and hits mute, making eye contact with Shane in the mirror. “It’s Jerry Johnson.”

Oh shit? Shane turns around as Ilya stands. “Like…the chairman of the league’s board of governors?”

“Yes. Also with his brothers, they are the owner group of Boston.” Ilya looks—serious. Nervous, maybe. “I have to take this.”

“Do you want me to stay here?” It’s really hot when Ilya does that. When he leaves Shane waiting and trembling as he scrolls on his phone or loads the dishwasher.

But Ilya pulls a face. “I think this will take a while, sorry.”

Oh. Shane nods, embarrassed. He starts pulling his shorts back up and falters. He’s still so fucking hard. “Can I—”

“Hollander, why would you ask such a silly question?” Ilya scoops up Shane’s towel, throwing it over his shoulder and pausing in the doorway. “You can come now and see what happens when I’m done with the call. Or you can wait and be good for me. Your choice.”

Ilya shrugs with his affable but cocky I-don’t-give-a-fuck face and leaves. Shane hears his heavy footsteps on the stairs and runs a hand through his sweaty hair. Christ.

He picks up the free weights Ilya’s left out, and stretches on a mat that Ilya fucked him on last week, which does nothing to temper his erection.

When he’s finished cooling down, Shane heads upstairs. The den door is closed, and when he gets closer, he can hear Ilya’s voice, stilted and low. He showers, and by the time he’s dry, dressed, and finally flaccid, Ilya still isn’t done with his call.

Shane just…putters. Runs the dishwasher. Drinks a Gatorade. Eventually, he sits on the couch, book in hand, but he can’t concentrate. He keeps staring off into the gray mist, watching the rain. Ilya got a call from his agent and team owners in one day. That means—something important. Big. But Ilya didn’t seem concerned. Just…serious.

Ilya loves Boston. He’s a very loyal person—to his team, and in general, even if Mom thought otherwise. He changes the subject whenever Shane brings up their plan. He’s already said that he wants to win a cup with Boston this year more than anything.

When Shane was sitting against his headboard, turning the Ottawa idea over and over in his head, he listened to Ilya sleep, the soft snores and the smack of his lips, and thought: what if he resents me for this?

He didn’t even think Ilya would agree. When he did, Shane was so relieved; any thoughts of Ilya resenting him were gone with the soft glow of lamplight, as he held Ilya tight, blanketed by the weight of his body, and whispered over and over again that he loved him.

But. What if. What if he’s not—

“I was thinking of making tacos for dinner,” Ilya announces. He launches himself over the railing, landing on the couch like he’s a fucking pole vaulter. Shane’s asked him at least ten times over the past three weeks not to do that.

“I think we’re out of most of the ingredients for tacos. Or, like, anything.” Shane closes his book and sets it on the coffee table. “You’re all sweaty still.”

“You think I smell?” Ilya lifts his arm and takes an exaggerated sniff of his armpit. “You like to smell, wanna check?”

Shane flushes red, though he does. And to lick, too. Maybe. “Fuck off.”

“No,” Ilya says. He smacks a noisy kiss on Shane’s cheek, and then, low in his ear, asks, “Did you come?”

“No.” Shane tries to fight the shiver that runs through him, and tries to ignore the way Ilya’s nosing the curve of his ear. “What was your call about?”

“Ah,” Ilya says, pulling away. “There’s a…situation, with a potential player. They want me to come to meetings next week. Figure stuff out.”

Shane waits for him to say more. It seemed like he was on the phone for—ever. “Is that it?”

“They didn’t tell me much else.” Ilya sits back, and Shane watches him fidget, tugging at his ear, thumbing his nose. “There are legal things, NDAs. It was all very…” he waves a hand. “Vague.”

“So…how long will you be back in Boston?” The plan was for Ilya to come straight back for another week before Shane has to go to back-to-back weddings for guys he’s played with over the years, a guy he roomed with on the road in juniors out in the Soo, and his winger from his rookie season out in North Dakota.

“They said a week, maybe less, but at least until Thursday,” Ilya says. “But maybe…”

“What?”

“Well, maybe you could come with me.”

Shane blinks. “Go with you—to Boston?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “No, to my secret house in Florida. Yes, Boston.”

“Ilya, I just can’t fly to fucking Boston.” It comes out shorter than he expected, and Shane hates how the words land on Ilya’s face. He stands, shoving his hands into his pockets, and stares out the window.

“So we drive?” Ilya stands, too, his hand warm as it cups the nape of Shane’s neck. His voice quieter, he asks, “Why are you freaking out?”

“I’m not,” Shane says, shrugging him off. “Besides, I’ve got to fly out of Montreal for that wedding. So. I can’t go to Boston.”

Ilya’s eyes narrow. “Couldn’t you—”

“You should make a list for groceries,” Shane interrupts. “I can go out and get them.”

“Why do I need to make a list?” Ilya asks. He looks. Confused. “I’ll just come with you.”

“What? No.” Has Ilya just, like, completely forgotten fucking—everything? “You can’t. People will see.”

“Who is going to recognize me in middle-of-nowhere Canada?” Ilya rolls his eyes again. “I’ll wear hat and sunglasses. It’s fine.”

Shane thinks Ilya is pretty recognizable regardless, but. “It’s still me grocery shopping with, with another man. What if someone takes a picture and puts it on Twitter? I mean, Ilya, come on. Just make me a list.”

Ilya stares at him and turns on one heel, stalking off toward the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Shane takes half a step toward him, his hand resting on the railing.

“To shower. I’ll go to the store.”

Why is he. Is this a fight now? Is he doing this on purpose? “Ilya, you can’t go to the fucking store. What is up with you?”

Ilya stops. Shane watches the way his back muscles tense and shift as he exhales. As he sets his shoulders. Like this is a fight, and Ilya’s gearing up for it.

They’ve only fought once since that day Dad found them, and that wasn’t even really a fight. Shane realized a couple of days after that Ilya was still being—careful. Like Shane was going to change his mind, and ask him to leave, which was ridiculous. He doesn’t want to fight about this, either, but he doesn’t understand why Ilya is all of a sudden throwing their carefully constructed plans out the window for fucking tacos and a trip to Boston.

God. He just. He can’t do another fight. Not right now. Not with Ilya leaving so soon.

He’s already brushing past Ilya and grabbing his keys from the bowl on the console before his brain can catch up to him, to tell him to stop and just talk it out. He fumbles with his shoes, and when he finally gets them on, he straightens to see Ilya’s face, hurt, but also—angry, he thinks, and trying not to show it.

“Just. Text me what you need, okay?” Shane says. He doesn’t wait to hear Ilya’s answer when he nods, and leaves, the door too loud as it closes behind him.

It’s a twenty-minute drive to the nearest grocery store. He just. He needs space, probably. He’s been doing things independently. His entire life, really. Three weeks in Montreal and three weeks here at the cottage—it’s more time than he’s spent with someone who wasn’t his parents. Ever. He was alone, but he was also…used to it. It’s not his usual summer, and it’s okay to go for a drive by himself to clear his head. Ilya likes to go for drives to clear his head. He’ll understand.

He parks, and just. Sits there for a minute. Listening to the rubber scrape across the windshield, watching fat globs of rain absorb each other until they’re wiped away. His umbrella is still resting against the porch door, damp and probably still reeking of smoke.

Shane jogs across the potholed parking lot. He read somewhere once that you get the same amount of wet whether you run or walk through a storm, but Shane always runs.

Ilya hasn’t sent him a list, so Shane walks up and down every aisle, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum. It’s fucking freezing, and everything looks pale and miserable under the fluorescent lights. He buys every conceivable ingredient for tacos, and then a bunch of other shit that they don’t need. Produce and fruit and bread and all the shit that’s going to go bad because in less than 48 hours, he’ll be alone. Again.

He stops in front of the cooking spray.

Shane is so fucking stupid.

He doesn’t want to be alone again. And this stupid fucking grocery expedition is just. Stupid.

God. He pays, and a kid who definitely recognizes him helps him carry everything out to the car. He takes a selfie, trying to look happy and friendly. He probably fails because everything is sloshing around in his gut and his chest, all the rain and anxiety and guilt. He definitely drives too fast on the sharp, winding roads to the cottage, but he just. He doesn’t want to be alone. Right now. Anymore.

Ilya doesn’t come out to meet him, so Shane leaves everything in the car except for the perishables, and even those he just shoves in the fridge. He finds Ilya in the den, FIFA paused on the screen, but when Shane rounds the couch, Ilya’s just. Sitting there. He can see Ilya’s eyes shift, tracking Shane in his periphery.

Shane takes two steps and climbs into Ilya’s lap, straddling thighs, like he did in Boston. Like he did in Tampa.

Ilya looks up at him, something cautious and careful on his face, and Shane. Shane hates it.

He kisses Ilya, needy but unhurried, slipping his tongue into Ilya’s mouth, tracing Ilya’s lower teeth. They’re not crooked anymore, and Shane would hate it, but he can’t hate anything about Ilya. They part, Shane pressing their foreheads together, and then, like they’re actually thinking the same thing for once, they come back together, rushed and desperate.

Shane can’t think, all the blood pulled south as Ilya fumbles with their pants, Shane’s shorts taut and straining around his thighs, until Shane is naked and Ilya is still fully dressed; every shift of Ilya’s terrycloth shirt and swishy joggers frisson against Shane’s fevered skin, radiating and reorienting every cell, every atom of his being surging toward supernova, toward Ilya.

Ilya breaks their kiss to push two fingers into Shane’s mouth. He moans around them, licking and sucking, and makes a pitiful noise when Ilya removes them to press against his hole. He works two fingers in with spit, and Shane relishes the stretch, the sting. It reminds him of Ilya’s first day at the cottage, when he begged for three slicked only with spit, but he wants. Needs. Needs more.

“Shane,” Ilya says into Shane’s parted, panting mouth, his words quiet but startling, the first spoken in the time since Shane returned from the store. Shane knows what he’s going to say, knows that Ilya wants to leave to get lube from the bedroom, but Shane can’t comprehend letting go of Ilya for even a second.

Shane tries to shake his head and kiss Ilya at the same time, a messy endeavor that leaves his face wet and raspy from Ilya’s stubble. “No, just—just fuck me.”

Ilya huffs a laugh. “You’re that desperate for it.”

It’s not a question, but Shane still nods. Ilya’s tone has turned mean, each word coiling, eager springs rebounding in Shane’s stomach.

“I want to feel you,” Shane says.

“Ah,” Ilya says. He looks so fucking smug. “You want it to hurt.”

Shane’s nodding again before Ilya even finishes his sentence. Every time he’s said that to Shane, at least a half-dozen times over the past half-decade, it’s been with the same nasty, knowing, wondrous tone. And it’s always followed by—

“Say it. Say you want it to hurt.”

Shane opens his eyes. He doesn’t know when he closed them. But Ilya’s staring up at him like Shane is. Like he’s.

“I want it to hurt,” Shane says, savoring his reward: a slow grin stretching the skin of Ilya’s face, hazel eyes nearly amber; an alligator eager to lunge at its prey. Ilya quirks an eyebrow, waiting for the cherry on top.

His throat catching and dry, Shane begs again, “Please, Ilya, I want you to hurt me.”

Ilya surges forward, licking and biting into Shane’s mouth as he scissors his fingers, one big hand splayed across Shane’s ass to hold him open. Shane expects him to work up to three, but he holds his hand out for Shane to spit in, slicks his cock with it, and urges Shane to lift upward on his knees so he can align his cock with Shane’s hole.

He slaps his cock against the furl there, and Shane can feel himself wink open and closed in anticipation.

“Well?” Ilya says with another tap against Shane’s hole. “Fuck yourself, if you need it so bad.”

Fuck. Fuck. Shane nods, tears already prickling in his eyes as he reaches for Ilya’s cock, their hands brushing as Shane holds it steady, bearing down as the head bruises in, each inch searing and earned, nonsense forced out of him, Ilya please, Ilya, fuck, it hurts, Ilya I can’t, Ilya, until the words are gone, a silent, breathless cry when Ilya is finally flush against him.

Ilya’s hands leave his ass, and Shane opens his eyes to beg for them back, when Ilya folds his hands behind his head.

“What, you don’t know what to do?” he asks, just short of cooing. Shane can’t meet his eyes, so he looks at the building vein in his bicep, the definition of his trapezius. “All the other whores I’ve fucked knew what to do. Be good and bounce on it.”

Each word sparks, every retreating inch of Ilya’s cock grieved when it goes up in smoke, and every brutal return a hissing fuse. Shane buries his face in the curling, damp hair of Ilya’s bared armpit, moaning into the smell and salt that’s so familiar. He kisses his way up into the hollow of Ilya’s neck, hiding there as he works for the rhythm, as Ilya’s precome begins to ease the burn, until Ilya fists Shane’s hair, wrenching his head back and his eyes open on a gasp.

“Watch yourself,” Ilya says, low and throaty. “Watch yourself come on my cock.”

He nods, stupid with how mindless and slutty he feels. He remembers after the first time Ilya fucked him dry, he left a wad of cash on the hotel’s nightstand. Shane, an idiot, asked what it was for, and Ilya winked and said I always tip my whores well, and Shane got hard again so quickly he thought he was going to pass out. He never asked if Ilya had ever—done that. For real. Hired someone. But. Shane liked it. Loved it. Loves riding Ilya like, like a—

He comes in shuddering ropes, grinding himself on Ilya’s cock, rutting up against his fabric-covered abdomen, and he barely finishes before Ilya tips them, pulling out, spitting on his dick, and fucking back in. He stares down at Shane as he bends him in half, every thrust slapping and over-sensitive until he’s coming inside Shane, white-hot and seemingly endless, panting into Shane’s mouth.

He pulls Ilya into him, so he can kiss him properly, so he can cradle his head and hold him to his chest like he did late into the night.

The sounds of the cottage return once the pounding in his ears and his heartbeat settle, helped along by Ilya petting Shane’s thighs, flank, back.

Shane should say something, but Ilya beats him to it, like he always does, propping himself up on his forearms, his eyes searching Shane’s.

“I called Johnson back,” Ilya says. “Well, his chief of staff. We’re going to do all the meetings Friday and Monday.”

His heart thumps as he stares at Ilya. “You did?”

“I said I had some family things,” Ilya says, his thumb brushing the corner of Shane’s mouth. “Is easy to believe after the spring I had.”

He wants to smile at that, wants to be relieved, but anxiety washes over him like pale moonlight, dark and encroaching like that night sitting up in bed. What if he resents me for this?

“Are you sure?” Shane asks, and Ilya nods, his thumb pressed in the dented scar on his right cheek, then running over his freckles. “I thought you and Marlow were golfing on Friday.”

“I’m paying the bar cart tab,” Ilya says. “I’ll still make the, the rehearsal. But if it gets me back here faster then…” he shrugs. “I want to be here.”

“You do?” He sounds—surprised, he knows. But he was so worried that. That.

He hopes this doesn’t turn into another fight.

“Shane—”

No. He needs to know. He has to ask. He promised Ilya he’d be honest.

“Even. Even with the spiders and the rain and all my. My.” Shane swallows around the lump in his throat. “Me?”

“My me?” Ilya asks, like he’s teasing but—gently.

“I know.” He closes his eyes. “I know I’m complicated. I know I’m a lot.”

Ilya’s thumb is at the corner of Shane’s eye. His other hand cups the back of his head. “Shane. Look at me.”

Shane takes a deep breath. He can be brave. Like Ilya.

“You don’t hear me when I say it the first time?” Ilya’s eyes are soft, and, and. Kind. “I know I was all wired shut. Hard to understand. So I’ll say it again, now that I’m all better. You listening?”

Shane nods, and Ilya nods, too.

“You are allowed this,” Ilya says, completely serious, like he’s making a promise. Like he knows this is important to him. Important to Shane. “With me.”

Shane counts every eyelash, every tiny spot and imperfection in Ilya’s skin. Remembers how he looked the first time he said this, remembers the hollow, ashen arcs punched under his eyes; the rupture of bloodstained bruising scorched across his face.

He kisses Shane, a little less than chaste and earnest, just like a promise. Just like the very first time.

They part, just barely. All Shane can see is the color of the grass when the rain finally stops. How the trees looked as they laughed and held hands on the way to the cottage. Their cottage.

“This is real,” Shane says. It’s no longer a question. All his life, every second with Ilya, he’s needed to know.

Now he does.

There are creases around Ilya’s eyes when he smiles now. They’re getting older. Shane wonders when that happened.

“Yes,” Ilya confirms. “This is real.”

«I love you,» Shane tries. He must finally get it right, because he sees something shift in Ilya’s eyes—joy, alight and alive, each gold flake shining like a million suns across the lake at sunrise.

«I love you, too,» Ilya says. “Feeling better?”

He cups his hand to Ilya’s jaw, the side that was injured, an Ilya so fragile, so untouchable, and somehow seems so distant and foreign from the man here in his arms, from the boy in the showers, but—still the man he loves. All the fractured pieces and jagged edges that Shane loves so deeply and holds so closely, warm and real, his flushed skin shifting under Shane’s touch as they kiss again.

“Yes,” Shane says. “Better.”

—

The air is humid. Fat droplets fall on the back of his neck, then his face, one by one, until there are too many, indiscernible as they shower over him, cascading warmth over his naked body.

He knows where he is. He hasn’t been here in months. He doesn’t want to be here again.

He doesn’t want to open his eyes and look up from his knees and see Shane, exalted and unloving. He doesn't want to open the broken, mutilated maw of his mouth only to disappoint.

It’s not fair. He’s happy. Why can’t that follow him when he sleeps?

«Ilya, look,» Shane says, close to his face and close to correct, but it’s not his usual, perfect Russian. It sounds like Shane’s attempts at repeating Ilya, or murmuring at Duolingo before bed. «Look at me.»

He won’t. He can’t, not when he knows what he’ll see. There has to be another option. There has to be a way out that doesn’t drown him in those damned showers. He can hear the birds, the crickets, the frogs.

There’s a caress along his jaw. It doesn’t hurt. He runs his tongue along the backs of his teeth. The hand—Shane’s hand—cups his jaw, and presses a kiss to his forehead, the corner of his mouth, his lips; each one incongruous to the cold, older man whose eyes met Ilya’s with such disdain.

«Ilya,» Shane repeats, his voice hushed and gentling. «Ilya, look. I need you to see.»

He shifts, and whatever is underneath his knees shifts with him, something soggy and waterlogged. Maybe. Maybe it’s not the showers. Maybe it’s somewhere else. But maybe his brain is lying to him. It has before. Maybe he’s still in a hospital bed in Montreal, mute and terrified and desperate to wake up from a nightmare. Maybe he’s still bleeding on the ice, and when he wakes up, he’ll stare up at Shane’s terrified, frozen face, and learn that everything since the hit has been one long, complicated dream.

Maybe he can be brave, like Shane, who murmurs his name once more, his mouth brushing against Ilya’s ear, cheek-to-cheek.

The sunlight is blinding.

He’s warm and dry except for his sweat, but it’s a good warm, a good kind of sweat. Shane complains that Ilya runs too hot, that he always wakes up with Ilya’s sweaty chest plastered against his back, but he blinks into a patch of light cast across his bare torso to find Shane, haloed in light in the same position he was when Ilya fell asleep last night—with Ilya’s cock in his mouth.

“Oh, fuck,” Ilya groans, his voice raspy with sleep. It doesn’t take long for him to finish, still half-asleep when he comes down Shane’s perfect throat. Shane doesn’t pull off. He’s been so needy for it, has wanted to cockwarm Ilya every chance he gets, like he’s trying to keep Ilya in his bed and couch and lawn chair so he can never leave.

It’s so nice. Warm. He almost drifts back to sleep, but he startles awake, remembering the dream and how much he wants to avoid it. God, he can’t believe he’s having them again. He thought he was free of them.

But that also means he gets to watch as Shane finally releases his cock, kissing the tip, then his thigh, and then kissing his way up Ilya’s body, like he wants to put his lips on every mole and freckle along the way, until he’s on his forearms, hovering above Ilya.

He’s so beautiful in the mornings.

He’s beautiful always, in every second of the day, but especially so now with the way his skin seems to turn golden in the morning glow. Ilya trails a finger over his smooth skin as he catalogues the different shades he’s seen across the seasons: milk white in the dead of winter, blushing and ripe in the fall, wan and bruised in the spring.

Finally, his knowledge is complete: Shane is sun-kissed in the summer, when he’s content to bask, to linger in the last light of day, to take his shirt off to train, to remove the gear and peel off the layers until he’s—Shaneshine, incarnate.

Yuna Hollander. Always right, apparently.

Ilya watches Shane’s big dark eyes as they squish into that close-lipped, self-satisfied smile that makes Ilya want to bite the apples of his cheeks.

“It stopped raining,” Shane says finally.

Ilya lifts his head, no doubt giving himself a horrendous double chin, to cast an exaggerated look at each window that surrounds them. “Has it really? You are, are meteorologist?”

He’s rewarded with exactly what he wanted—a smile that stretches all the way to Shane’s flushed ears. “That’s a big word.”

“You looked at Doppler radar?” Ilya traces the line of Shane’s spine. “The forecast?”

“Whoa, Doppler. Another big word. Are you telling me that you have a weather fetish?”

God, Shane is so bad at chirping. It’s so fucking delightful.

“The Weather Channel is the only thing that puts me to sleep faster than your boring cottage show,” Ilya says. And he likes watching the storm shows, sue him. He would love to chase a hurricane or a tornado, or something.

Shane looks indignant before he refocuses on whatever his little mission is. “Anyway, do you know what that means?”

There’s a miserable flip in his stomach, a half-moment where he worries that Shane will—retreat, or fight, or freak out, and they’ll be back to the beginning again. He doesn’t want to talk about yesterday. He leaves tomorrow. He just wants—

“What? Me fucking you in the grass? Again?” He thumbs Shane’s chin, then his bottom lip as he flushes red again.

“No,” Shane says. “Well—maybe. But we can go fishing.”

Ilya can’t help it. Can’t help the stupid grin that yawns across his face, slow and then all-consuming. He couldn’t care less about a throwaway comment he made on the first day, but Shane—he remembers those things. He gives weight to all the nonsense Ilya says, even if it’s just an eye roll or a goofy, closed-lip smile.

Ilya has spent so long shouting through a bullhorn, begging to be heard, barking to keep back. He doesn’t know what to do with quiet recognition.

“Yes,” he says, his voice thick. “We can go fishing.”

They pack last night’s tacos into the cooler, along with some snacks, fruit and pretzels and beers, plus the good Russian vodka David brought over for dinner that Shane won’t go near. A carton that Ilya thought was more ice cream in the basement freezer turns out to be frozen worms, which are delightfully disgusting. Ilya and Shane push and race down the hill to the boathouse, morning dew the only thing dampening the grass.

He lets Shane boss him through getting the boat ready, calls him captain because it makes him blush just as much as he did in Tampa, takes his time lathering Shane with sunscreen, teases him about his dorky fishing hat. He makes a lot of jokes about rope bondage that cause Shane to sputter and yap at Ilya to focus.

“I drive?” Ilya says, when they’re finally about to head out, sitting in the chair behind the steering wheel. Helm? Is that just ships? The team went to a pirate museum on the cape in his rookie season, and he kind of got into the lore.

Shane crosses his arms. “You have your pleasure craft operator card?”

“My what?”

“Pleasure craft operator card,” Shane repeats, apparently unaware of the words coming out of his mouth. “You have to have one to own and operate a pleasure craft.”

“And you have this card?” Ilya says, leaning forward in the chair. “For operating a pleasure craft?”

“Yes,” Shane says. “I got it when I was sixteen. There’s a course.”

“Ah, a course.” Ilya nods. “Yes, I think you very much needed to take a course in pleasure craft operation.”

Shane is still oblivious, saying something about learning nautical terminology and what buoys mean. God. Ilya has never experienced this much joy while also warring with himself to keep his face as neutral as possible.

“But probably I can skip the course,” Ilya says, and Shane’s face scrunches into his adorable confusion.

“What? Why—hey!”

Ilya makes his move, pulling Shane by his thighs into Ilya’s lap. He grabs Shane’s crotch, squeezing the heft of his soft package and getting something suspiciously close to a squeak from Shane’s mouth. “I’ve been operating this pleasure craft for years.”

He nibbles Shane’s ear as Shane squirms in his lap. “That, that’s not what that means, you—”

“What? I know what every button and switch does,” Ilya says, and pinches Shane’s nipple. “That one turns the headlights on.” He rubs Shane’s less-soft dick. “That one gets the motor going.”

“You’re perverted,” Shane says, wriggling out of the hold Ilya has on him. “Seriously demented.”

Ilya feigns hurt as Shane turns around, bracing his hands on the arms of the seat. Ilya wraps his hands around Shane’s fuzzy wrists, then his hips.

Then, he yanks Shane’s swim trunks down to his ankles. “Look, that’s how you drop anchor.”

Shane punches Ilya in the shoulder, blushing furiously as he stoops to pull his trunks back up. “Fuck you.”

“Yes, this I can do for my beautiful little pleasure craft.”

Shane rolls his eyes. Ilya’s cheeks hurt. This is the best day of his life, and it’s not even noon.

“Do you want to actually get out on the lake today? Or do you just want to keep pissing me off.”

Ilya stands, and before he steps out of the way to cede the seat, he taps Shane on one cheek and then kisses him on the other, a loud, obnoxious smack. “Okay, Captain. No reason we can’t do both.”

Shane’s fighting a smile, Ilya can tell. He takes stock of the boat, wide and flat, the big, U-shaped bench that wraps around the rear. “That’s what this kind of boat is called? A pleasure craft?” It’s not a sexy speed boat or a yacht on the cape.

“No, this is called a pontoon boat. We would rent one every summer growing up, and I could’ve bought, like, a speed boat or a deck boat, but these are safer, with the fence and the swim platform.” Shane flushes as he sits, fiddling with something next to the wheel. “Better for, uh, kids. And I didn’t want to buy two boats. That seemed silly.”

Kids. God. Of course Shane would go for something smart and safe rather than sexy and expensive. It used to be damning, one item in a laundry list of reasons they’d never work together, but now—

Now, an image pops into his head, fully formed and terrifying, of them negotiating sunscreen and life vests with a handful of children underfoot, and Ilya still making stupid jokes just to see Shane smile, just to stretch and savor every single second. To make up for all the time lost.

He kisses Shane properly. Because he can. And then he sprawls across one leather bench and points toward the sun-glinting lake. «Let’s go.»

“Davai,” Shane mutters, his intonation only somewhat tragic. “I’ll show you davai.”

And then they’re off.

Shane is only fast two places—on the ice and in Ilya’s mouth. The entire drive to the cottage would have been agonizingly slow and itchy for Ilya had he not been so enamored. Shane never deviated once from the speed limit. The only time he’s ever seen Shane speed—the only other time Ilya’s been in a vehicle with him—was when he rushed Ilya to the doctor, Ilya balancing a mixing bowl in his lap to catch any more sluggish blood or bile from his mouth.

But Shane is a demon on the lake, first racing on his Jet Skis and now, cutting and rocking over the water. Even if the boat is big and safe, it still goes pleasantly fast, to Ilya’s surprise.

He whoops and sits up to enjoy the wind in his hair, the wake lapping at his hand as his fingers hang off the side of the boat, trailing his fingers in the water. He turns and sees Shane grinning, too. Ilya can see the crinkle of his eyes under his Ray-Bans, his camp shirt unbuttoned and flapping as he stands behind the wheel, his hair shiny and pushed back by the breeze, his easy confidence in his stance.

He looks so far away from the dorky, blushing kid with his earnest eagerness that set forth a chain of desires that still thrum under Ilya’s skin, that infected every drop of his blood, an ash-ended bull’s embers igniting another cigarette, one after the other in perpetuity. To fuck him, to ruin him, to run his thumb over those freckles and say, put that shit away. Don’t you know they can see you?

It’s a private lake, or so Ilya heard for twenty minutes on the way to the cottage, about the process of purchasing a lake and the land he could potentially develop and zoning regulations and on and on, Ilya letting Shane prattle on and drive like a Canadian grandmother because he was just so—stunned. That he was in Shane’s car, and they weren’t hurt, and they were together, and they were both smiling.

He doesn’t know what Shane is looking for, but he seems to find a spot that he’s satisfied with and slows the boat to a stop, rocking gently in the middle of the lake.

It’s a perfect day, objectively. The sun is shining, the lake is pristine, the sky is dotted with sparse, picturesque white clouds. Ilya reaches into the cooler to crack a beer, ready to lie out and bake a little before he goes for a swim, when Shane reaches into the cooler as well, handing Ilya the container of worms.

He stares at the container, affronted. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”

Shane looks over his shoulder, then refocuses on the fishing poles. “Thread the pole and knot your hook?”

“Hollander. You think I know how to fish?”

“You don’t know how to fish?” Shane turns around. “You’re the one who wanted to fish!”

If Ilya wanted to be particularly Shane-like, he could point out that he said he wanted to drink, tan, swim, and fuck on the boat. But Shane seems—kind of disappointed.

“I wanted to watch you fish,” Ilya says, because he can’t let anything go ever. “With your cute hat—”

“It was my grandpa’s!”

“—and your terrible shirt,” Ilya continues as Shane protests that, too, taking one of the poles, “but you can teach me how to fish.”

Shane perks up at that. The whole situation works out splendidly for Ilya. He gets to experience three of his most favorite things at the same time: Shane talking, hyper-focused and animated as he goes on and on about fishing line and lures and tackle; Shane doing all the manly things Ilya hates like dealing with gross fucking worms, deft and confident like when he takes out the trash or licks the sweat from Ilya’s skin; and Shane holding Ilya tight to his body under the guise of helping Ilya’s fishing form.

Shane smells delicious, sunscreen and sweat and dryer sheets all pressed against Ilya’s back, his hands on his hips as he pats Ilya’s hips, then curling around his biceps as Shane directs him through the motion of casting. Ilya watches the arc of the line, the whirling of the reel nearly lost to the sound of the lake lapping against the boat.

The bait and hook land in the water with a distant plop, and Shane takes the rod from Ilya’s hands as he does whatever is involved with setting fishing rods up to actually catch fish, moving Ilya’s beer out of what he thought was a cupholder but is apparently for holding fishing rods.

Ilya sits back down, sipping his beer as he watches Shane deftly set up his own pole, his biceps pulling his short sleeves taut as he casts his line much further away. He sticks his pole next to Ilya’s and looks all too pleased when Ilya pats the leather next to him.

Once he’s tucked up against Ilya’s side, Ilya cracks a beer for him, tapping their cans together. «To the bottom.»

Shane takes a sip. “What’s that mean? Cheers?”

“No, ah, like bottom’s up. More appropriate for you, I think.”

Shane pinches Ilya’s thigh, and Ilya’s grin is too big to even attempt to hide behind his can.

“How did you say it?” he asks, his brow furrowing. “Duh na?”

“Close,” Ilya says, pinching his fingers together. “There’s a very tiny d sound before the n.”

Shane nods. «To the bottom?»

He’s so cute. He’s trying so hard. Ilya loves him so much.

“Yes, good,” Ilya says, kissing him on the cheek. He drapes his arm around Shane’s shoulders, content to watch their little bobber things bob in the water and sip his beer. Maybe he’ll get on his knees and blow Shane in a little bit. Fucking is key for a good day on a boat.

He gets all of five seconds before Shane shifts the way he always does right before he’s about to ask Ilya a deeply personal and invasive question.

“So,” Shane starts. “Why did you want to go fishing if you don’t know how?”

Ilya takes another sip, swishing it around in his mouth before swallowing. It’s instinct, like breathing and winning face-offs, to side-step Shane’s questions. To crack a joke. To deflect.

But deflecting is what got him here in the first place. Ha ha.

“I grew up going to the lake, yes?” Ilya says after another moment.

“Yeah, you said.”

“My father.” Ilya stops. Scratches his neck with a free finger from the hand holding his beer. A drop of condensation lands on his shoulder. “My father would go fishing with my uncles. Would take my brother, too, but not me. It was always, no, Ilya is too little, Ilya is a baby, next year, next year. And then the year I finally go, my uncle catches a fish, and I watch it die, and I start crying. And they all laugh and say, well this is why you don’t take the little faggot fishing.”

It hadn’t been the first time he was called that. But there was something about it, standing there, snot-nosed and furious and watching a fish flop around on the wood planks and die, and thinking it was the lucky one.

“How old were you?” Shane is gripping his thigh, Ilya realizes. Anchoring him. Or trying to.

“Ah. Nine, I think.”

“That’s—fuck. That’s awful.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. “But I think it’s very satisfying to sit here on my boyfriend’s boat, drinking beer, thinking about how I will suck your dick soon. Two faggots fishing. A big fuck you.”

“You shouldn’t—” Shane cuts himself off. His ears are red. “No. You’re right. It’s good. A fuck you, to be. Be two. Uh.”

His heart has to stop creating new physical reactions to the love he feels, or one day, Ilya’s going to be permanently hooked up to one of those machines because his heart was doing too much and got all worn out.

He doesn’t really know how hearts work.

“You don’t have to say it,” Ilya says, entirely too sweet. “But it is fun to say, if you ever want to try.”

“Fuck you, I’ve said it before.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows. “Sure.”

Shane pretends to ignore him. That’s his pretending-to-ignore-Ilya mouth twitch. “I guess I was surprised that you even wanted to go fishing in the first place.”

“Why, because it’s boring?”

“No,” Shane says, and before Ilya can say anything else, he adds, “‘cause I always thought it was super fucking gay.”

Ilya chokes on a sip of beer, cough-laughing as Shane looks so fucking pleased with himself.

“See,” Shane says, smug. “I’m funny.”

Of course he is. He’s second only to Sveta in people who can make Ilya laugh and who lights up at his jokes in return. But Sveta can’t come from only sucking cock. So Shane still has her beat there.

“No, you see, I was shocked,” Ilya says, settling back. Shane maneuvers him so he’s slumped against his chest. Shane kisses his hair, and Ilya cranes his neck to look upward. “That Shane Hollander was so homophobic.”

Shane rolls his eyes and pushes Ilya off him. “Fuck you.”

“Wow. No, it all makes sense. You hate the gays.” He pouts as he shifts, lying against the arm of the bench, putting his feet in Shane’s lap. His big hand wraps around Ilya’s ankle, only a little cold from the beer can. “Are you sure you’re not Russian? Very close to Japan, you know. Maybe you are from the Kurils. Big territory dispute.”

“I know, I did—” Shane is fully blushing at this point. “I did a report on Russian-Japanese relations in, uh. Grade twelve. After we met at the prospect cup.”

Did he now? Ilya is learning all sorts of delightful things today. “Really?”

“Well, it was mostly about World War II, but, yeah. It seemed…interesting.”

“So…” Ilya presses his foot into Shane’s groin, and gets a wary look in return. “You are an expert in Russian-Japanese relations?”

“You already made that joke.”

“What!” What an accusation. Ilya feigns offense. “When?”

Shane tilts his head. “I think it was when you were, uh, in Russia. In February. I was watching a documentary about it when you called.”

Ah. That makes sense why Ilya doesn’t remember. Returning to Moscow for his father’s funeral was hazy even before he was injured. “Well, it’s still funny.”

Shane smiles, but it fades away as he glances at Ilya before quickly returning to staring at the lake. “When you were nine. Did…did your dad, uh, also call you that?”

Ilya opens his mouth to say yes, but when he actually thinks back, he’s not sure. The entire day is blurred. He plays the memory back in his head, straining to hear if anyone’s laugh was missing or quieter than the rest, rewinds to the jokes and mocking to pick out the tenor of his father’s voice, if he had joined in. He was a stern man, quiet until he wasn’t. He was older than his brothers. When he spoke, they listened.

Oh—yes. That’s right.

“No, he didn’t say that,” Ilya says slowly as he turns the memory over once more, just to be sure. “He called me a—well, I think the English would be rag, but it’s, like, soft? Like pussy.”

Shane frowns. “That’s not better.”

Ilya doesn’t have the heart to tell him that, actually, it is, but Shane shifts, and Ilya waits.

“Do you…want to tell me about him?” he asks, halting and careful, and when Ilya doesn’t answer and doesn’t say no, he continues, “it’s just—you told me about your mom. But I understand if he wasn’t, like, the best. Or if it’s too soon.”

What’s considered too soon, he wonders, when every time Ilya saw or talked to his father, he was a dozen steps further away from the man Ilya knew and ever-closer to his grave?

“He wasn’t the best,” Ilya agrees, although that’s putting it mildly. Shane deserves the truth, but Ilya doesn’t want to ruin the day completely. “Maybe I am a bad son, but…it was easier to love him, toward the end. When he couldn’t be disappointed in me. He was pleased with the prospect cup win. Said those Canadians, they never stood a chance against a strong Russian team.”

The memory is sour on his tongue. It was never pride. It was never specific. It was never Ilya’s alone. And even that memory would fade quickly, replaced by something else. Usually yelling for Ira to get up and make dinner. But the prospect cup…

Well, that was the last time Ilya won something for Russia while his father was still alive.

It’s impossible that 2008 is at once nearly ten years ago, but is as fresh in his mind as the last ten minutes. In the scouting reports, they said Canada’s Hollander was shy. That they should be more physical with him, if he were too shy and weak to fight back. But that boy—the boy who introduced himself, who disarmed Ilya—wasn’t shy. He was brave. Annoying, but brave.

He tilts his head to the side. “Why did you come talk to me that year?”

Shane stills at the question. After a moment, his thumb returns to soothing back and forth over Ilya’s ankle bone. “I was an undercover cop for the Regina police. I was going to arrest you for smoking in the wrong spot.”

Ilya huffs out a laugh, and Shane smiles that pleased smile, the one he always smiles when he makes Ilya laugh.

“Come on,” Ilya says. Shane’s thumb runs against the grain of the hair above his ankle. “I answered your questions.”

Shane nods, quiet for a second. “You kept smirking at me during every face-off,” he says, eventually. He squints a little behind his sunglasses, like he’s trying to read his memories. “I thought you were being friendly—don’t smile, you know I’m bad at that stuff.”

Ilya holds his hand up and tries to look serious. “Sorry, sorry. Continue.”

“And then you smiled when you checked me during the round robin game, and you smiled when I picked you off. And I think it was more like…maybe you were thinking, finally, some real competition.” Shane ducks his head, like he always does when he’s about to be cocky, pulling his sunglasses off and scratching his neck with them. “I mean. That’s what I was thinking.”

“Yeah?” Ilya can’t even imagine what he was really thinking during those games. He tries to think back, and all he can remember is—an impossible fondness that definitely wasn’t there in the moment.

Huh. He knew anger, fear, shame, all that could change how you remembered something. It makes sense that love can do that, too.

“And the media—it was like every time someone said my name, yours was said right after.”

Fond, fond, so impossibly fond. “Or the other way around.”

Shane tweaks Ilya’s big toe. “Shut up. So I thought I should introduce myself. And when I watched you practice, or with your team, yeah, you were always laughing, but I thought—well. I was lonely, being so much…better. Than everyone else. And then I saw you standing by yourself, and I thought. Maybe you were lonely, too.”

His heart stutters, a trip over a nick in the ice, and the same kind of chill washing over him as the day he looked at Shane for the first time and knew him, knew it to his bones, the same, core information; the stats and facts that he could rattle off since they were teenagers: 5’11”, 200 pounds, shoots left, likes men, boring and polite and blandly handsome in a way that makes his life and career a breeze, knows the unrelenting pressure of a demanding nation.

That he was lonely, and that he was the only person in the entire world who could maybe, possibly, somehow know the road that lay ahead for Ilya, and who could maybe, possibly, walk alongside him.

He pulls his feet from Shane’s lap. Takes his sunglasses off and sets them aside. Grasps Shane’s chin. And kisses him, burning with every cell in his body and drop of blood in his veins to try and say—everything. Anything. Yes. I love you. I’m not anymore.

He hopes Shane understands. Shane kisses him back with such an intense, fervent urgency that Ilya thinks he might.

Ilya has to pull away, the string of spit connecting their lips breaking as he gasps for air, but Shane chases his lips, and Ilya kisses him again and again. He kisses him like he’s already on tomorrow’s flight to Boston. He kisses him like he’s about to leave half of his heart behind to step back into the real world and all the misery that’s sure to come with it.

Their lips mellow, settling into something less urgent, something intuitive passing between them. Eventually, Shane pulls back, resting his forehead against Ilya’s.

“Do you,” Shane starts, his voice hushed in the private space between them, as if they aren’t the only two people on this lake, or on earth itself. “Do you think we’d be here? If you hadn’t broken your jaw?”

Would they? Ilya tries to imagine it as he buries his head in Shane’s neck, the smell of his skin and sweat and sunscreen blanketing him. Tries to imagine him not going down on the ice in Montreal. Maybe fate would be cruel, and Shane would’ve gotten hurt instead. Maybe Shane wouldn’t have gotten hurt at all. Maybe Ilya would’ve won the cup, or Shane, and Hunter would’ve never kissed a man on the ice. Maybe Ilya wouldn’t have needed to see that. Maybe he needed to see it more than anything he’s seen before.

“Maybe,” Ilya says finally. “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t change it, I don’t think.”

Shane’s hand combs through the curls at the nape of Ilya’s neck. “I don’t think I would either.”

Ilya is content to stay there for a moment, just to be, when Shane shifts.

“Ilya,” he says, nudging him. “Ilya, get up.”

Ilya’s about to protest, or chirp him for ruining the nice moment, when Shane fully just sets Ilya to the side, and Ilya doesn’t even have a chance to be turned on or annoyed because Shane is lunging for his fishing pole, all of his muscles working together so deliciously as he fights to reel something in.

Shane turns, grinning like he’s won the cup as he holds a trout up in triumph. “Ha! I win!”

Ilya grins, his eyebrows raising. “Oh, you win, do you?”

“Yeah, whoever catches the first fish wins,” Shane says as he unhooks the fish. He pauses. “Do you want me to throw it back in?”

Ilya knows his face is doing something gooey and stupid. “I’m not nine anymore, but thank you. We’ll have no dinner if you do.”

“We’ll have no dinner anyway,” Shane says as he tosses the fish into the cooler. “Since you clearly won’t catch anything.”

Ilya laughs and stands behind Shane, his hands resting on his waist. “So you’re a sore winner.”

“Yeah, but the keyword is winner.”

“Well,” Ilya says, nosing the line of Shane’s neck. “What do you win?”

He can see the crinkle in the corner of Shane’s eyes, and kisses his ear. “What did you say earlier about sucking my dick?”

Ilya nips Shane’s neck, turns him as he shoves his trunks down and pushes him into the captain’s chair, kissing down the center of his chest, the rolls of his stomach, biting at the vee of his abdomen, his hands squeezing Shane’s thighs. He presses a sloppy kiss to the base of Shane’s cock, rubbing his cheek against it as he looks upward at Shane’s half-lidded eyes and parted lips.

He knows what he looks like when he does this. He can’t help but smile as he wraps his hand around the base, thumbing over a vein as he rubs Shane’s precome over his lips, his tongue, the stubble he didn’t shave. It pulls an exhale from Shane’s lips, his chest already rising and falling as his breathing picks up.

Ilya reaches up and pinches one of Shane’s nipples, rolling it between his fingers as he takes Shane’s cockhead into his mouth, his eyes closing as he suckles around it, savoring the tang on his tongue and the weight in his mouth.

“Ilya,” Shane murmurs, a hand tangling in Ilya’s hair. Ilya looks up at him, winks, and then takes him all the way to the root.

He fucking loves this. He’s always loved sucking cock, has loved it since he was young and stupid in club bathrooms in Moscow, but he especially loves sucking Shane’s cock. He would’ve dropped to his knees in those showers if Shane had let him, used to dream about it even before his stupid nightmares, and hasn’t been able to keep his mouth off him since.

Shane’s already red-faced and panting, and Ilya tries to smile around his cock. If Ilya had to choose one cock to suck for the rest of his life, he’s glad it’s Shane’s. He loves that he’s cut, loves the length and heft and the way he has to work to deepthroat it. Loves the way Shane gets so wet and leaks down Ilya’s throat, loves the way he gets so hard so quickly and almost never flags, even when Ilya is teasing him or hurting him or making him wait.

He relaxes his throat and begins to bob, fucking himself up and down in long strokes, his hand cupping Shane’s balls, palming one in his hand, pressing his nail ever-so-slightly into the seam as Shane writhes beneath him. He pulls off and licks a drop of sweat rolling down Shane’s torso, dragging his tongue all the way to the humid musk in the crease between his thigh and groin and testing the tender skin there with his teeth. He inhales and drags his nose through Shane’s pubic hair, and up the length of his cock before taking Shane back into his mouth.

He loves this. He loves women, he does, but there’s something delicious that curls in his stomach that he needs this, craves it, and always has. He loves that he was the first man to do this for Shane, to show him how incredible it can be.

On one hand, he hopes Shane never has his cock sucked by anyone else ever again. Hates that even Rose Landry got a chance. But he also hopes that maybe, one day, he can get Shane to agree to a threesome with some mean, nasty freak of a man, someone bigger than both of them that puts them on their knees so he can achieve his dream of making out with Shane around a cock as a man calls them dirty, cocksucking faggots in the kind of sex he hopes makes every single man in his bloodline roll in their graves, preemptive or otherwise.

Ilya reaches down and squeezes himself, moaning around Shane and picking up the pace. He can feel the sweat trailing down his back, can feel the heat radiating off of Shane’s skin. Shane’s going to come soon, he can tell. He never lasts long in Ilya’s mouth. He wants it, wants to taste it, and then he wants to fuck Shane and lick his come back out of him.

Shane gasps, bucking up into Ilya. “Ilya, Jesus, fuck, I’m gonna—”

Ilya looks up at him, holding eye contact as he braces his arm against Shane, pinning him to the chair as Shane begins to come, spurting down Ilya’s throat until he pulls off and lets Shane finish across his open, waiting mouth. He makes a show of swallowing, savoring the heat and salt, and then maneuvers Shane so he’s kneeling on the seat, his ass forced outward, already eager for it even before Ilya reaches for the packet of lube he stashed in his pocket.

He works Shane up to four fingers, until he’s dripping and so fucking open and loose, and then fucks him as hard as he can, their skin slapping and their harsh panting the only sound for miles. Ilya is proud—they get the boat fucking rocking, and then he hauls Shane up, and makes him come all over the fucking wheel of the boat. And because he’s a brilliant, depraved man, he eats his come back out of Shane’s ass until Shane is oversensitive and pushing his head away.

They wash off and float, their bodies turned toward the sun until they’re both starving. It feels primordial to lounge together, naked and absent of any pressing desire, to lie in the vee of Shane’s thighs, his soft, plump cock a warm kiss between his shoulders as Shane feeds him overripe fruit, to lick the juice from his lover’s fingers in this lush, private Eden.

Ilya would stay here forever if he could.

They need something more substantial than strawberries and watermelon and beer, so they unpack the cooler. He teases Shane about putting his trunks back on as they eat most everything they brought and open more beer. Shane catches another fish and gloats about it. Then they bicker about Ilya needing to reapply sunscreen, which ends with Shane lathering sunscreen over Ilya’s bare ass until Ilya holds Shane’s head to his hole, Ilya’s fist wrenched in his sweaty black hair as Shane rims him until Ilya comes all over the leather bench and makes Shane lick it up.

God. They’ve gotten into some hot shit over the years. They have. But they haven’t had the time to get this—this kinky. If this is the kind of mindblowing sex they’re having after three weeks together, he can’t even begin to imagine the shit they’ll be doing in ten, fifteen years when they’re retired.

All he wanted with Shane was time. And all he has to do is get through the upcoming season; all he has to do is get Shane through the upcoming season—something that he really can’t think about or he’ll ruin his own day, lost in the mine field rattling around in his skull—and they’ll have so much more of it.

It still won’t be enough, but it’ll be a start.

Ilya swims some more. When he climbs back aboard, Shane has set the boat’s radio to the Blue Jays game and is reading, so Ilya drapes himself across the platform at the back of the boat.

He drifts in and out for a while, rocking in and out of sleep with the gentle current underneath the boat. He turns to tan his back, a cigarette in one hand and the other dangling in the water, and by the time he’s finished smoking, Shane has dozed off, too.

It’s later in the day, now. He must have napped for about an hour or so. Ilya should be a good boyfriend and let Shane sleep. But Shane did ask Ilya to let him know when he needed to reapply sunscreen, and it is getting close to two…

Careful not to jostle the boat too much, he stands and scoops one of the unfortunate trout out from the cooler. Carefully, so carefully, he pulls the elastic of Shane’s trunks away from his body, tucking the trout in, and then carefully backing away.

He grabs his phone, snapping a photo, but Shane must hear the shutter sound because his nose twitches, his face twisting with discontent in the shadows cast from his hat and sunglasses.

“Mm, Ilya?” Shane mumbles, stretching his arms in a tangle above his head before he freezes. “…Ilya?”

It plays out perfectly, like a movie, and in slow motion. Shane looks down at the fish tail sticking out of his trunks and then leaps out of his seat with a shriek. “Ilya, what the fuck!”

“Is something wrong?” Ilya asks, the picture of innocence.

“You fucking asshole! This is so fucking—” Shane holds the trout between two fingers and throws the fish at Ilya. It slaps, slimy and cold, against Ilya’s nose and then flops to the floor. Ugh, disgusting.

“Hey!” Ilya sticks his hands up, very aware of the fish slime on his nose. “What did I do?”

“You shoved a fish in my pants!”

Ilya looks over both shoulders. “Who, me? Maybe the fish jumped in. Wanted to stay warm—woah, woah—”

He’s flailing backward into the lake, the water cool as he submerges. He lets himself sink a little, opening his eyes to see Shane’s lithe body dive in after him. Everything’s muted and dreamlike underwater, bubbles floating from his mouth as he swims toward Shane’s lower half and pulls his trunks down to his ankles.

He resurfaces to Shane’s sputtering. He shakes his hair like a dog, pushing it away from his face, and grins.

Shane splashes him. “Do you ever give it a rest?”

“Of course not,” Ilya says, splashing back and licking a drop of water from his lip. “But if you were not such a prude, I wouldn’t have to constantly try and get your pants off.”

“Oh, that’s the reason you shoved a fucking fish down my pants?”

“Yes, so if—hey!” Shane’s wet trunks splatter against his face, sopping wet and clinging oppressively, blocking the sun and his mouth. Ilya peels them off, holding them between two pinched fingers. “You could have drowned me!”

“Oh yeah, right,” Shane says, swimming past him and climbing back on the boat. “You’re the one who almost ruined one of the two fish that I caught.”

“Oh, so your dick ruins things?” Ilya says, throwing Shane’s wet trunks on the boat. Shane scoops them up, wringing them out over the edge and pulling them back on, to Ilya’s dismay. “I think my fishing pole is deficient. You rigged it. Shane Hollander can only win by cheating.”

He lifts himself onto the boat, water sluicing off his body. He’s expecting Shane to be watching like he does every time Ilya gets out of the water, but he’s fiddling with Ilya’s pole. Ha.

“I didn’t rig it. Here, watch.” Shane reels in the fishless hook. Ilya rolls his eyes and turns around to wipe off. “I’ll get you a fish.”

There’s a pinch. Ilya swears and looks down at his foot.

The fishhook is pierced through the skin below his ankle bone.

Slowly, he turns back around to watch Shane lower the pole, his face rapidly shifting from confusion to horror.

“Don’t freak out,” Ilya says, though it seems like they’re well past that.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Shane drops the poll and starts to rush toward Ilya, but stops and seems to stall before he moves back to the captain’s chair. “I’m getting the first aid kit. Sit down!”

“Shane, it’s fine,” Ilya says, looking back down at his ankle. It’s not even bleeding that much.

“I said sit down!” Shane snaps. Ilya sits.

“You know, I know I’m a catch,” Ilya starts as Shane bends in front of him, white box in hand. “But I never thought this literally.”

“This isn’t funny,” Shane says as he turns Ilya’s ankle over, examining it. “Do you know the last time these hooks were cleaned? I don’t! You could get, like, fucking tetnus or something.”

“I was already hooked on you, Hollander,” Ilya continues, his smile growing. He’ll keep going until Shane smiles. He’ll keep going for the rest of his life. “You didn’t have to do it again.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Shane mutters as he unlatches the metal tin with a red cross on the front. “Only this could happen to you, Jesus Christ.”

He winces as Shane pours some stinging brown liquid over the wound. “You’re the one who did it!”

“I told you to watch, and you turned around! That’s, like, fishing safety 101.” Shane pulls the skin taut, worrying his lip between his teeth. He’s so cute when he’s serious. “Okay, I’m gonna pull it out. This might hurt.”

“Shane, I broke my jaw, not sure if you remember? Nothing’s going to—ow!”

Fuck. That did hurt.

Shane shakes his head as he rubs two fingers over the wound, setting the now-freed hook to the side. “You’re such a baby. It’s not even going to scar.”

“Oh, so now I am a baby?” Ilya watches as Shane unwraps a Band-Aid and applies it to Ilya’s skin. “What happened to being nice to injured people? You were so nice when I broke my jaw, and now this is how you treat me?”

Shane looks up at Ilya. His face is solemn, but his eyes are big and shiny and happy. “I think we’ll have to amputate, sadly.”

Ilya rolls his eyes and pins Shane to the deck of the boat. “So this is all your big plan? This is how you finally beat Ilya Rozanov once and for all”

“Yes,” Shane says, clearly fighting a smile. “I thought taking you out at the knees was too cliche, so I decided to do it via fishhook.”

He can’t keep a straight face, and neither can Ilya, and they crack up, laughing until they’re breathless and giddy, two boys snorting over a stupid joke.

He rolls off Shane until they’re lying shoulder-to-shoulder, chests rising and falling as they stare into the sun. Ilya reaches between them, finding Shane’s hand and lacing their fingers together.

“Okay, but seriously,” Shane says, squeezing just like he did in the hospital, when he met Ilya’s wide, speechless, terrified eyes, and promised Ilya what he thought of as nothing then and knows is everything now. “We’ll have to head back soon and wrap it up so it doesn’t get infected. So, in the meantime, please try to not get hurt. Again.”

Ilya turns his head and finds Shane’s eyes, already open and waiting and ready. It's his turn for promises. They seem to come so easy these days, and even easier when he looks at Shane.

“Don’t worry,” Ilya says. “It’ll heal.”

❦

Chapter End Notes

When I was nine, my brother cast a fishing hook into my ankle on a lake in upstate New York. All roads lead to the cottage fr.

This fic has been such an insane, unexpected ride. What I thought might be three chapters of maybe 5k each has turned into the longest individual work I've ever written, and that is explicitly because of the response—the feedback, the comments, the friends, old and new. This has been a tremendously rewarding experience that I never expected but am incredibly grateful for nonetheless. There are still so many comments I have to work through and respond to, but I will because they make me so, so happy, you have no idea.

This work would not have been possible without my incomparable beta, Marivan, who is sitting next to me rn at a cafe as I post this. Mari, you are an incredible friend, beta, teacher, listener, shepherd, etc., etc., on and on, and I can't wait to see what we continue to make together. Everyone, go read her fic Not a Strip of Paper Merely which I am watching her write right now! Meta.

Many other thank yous are necessary: Zoë, Chelsea, Lena, Emmy, Angelica, everyone who has commented, dm'd, sent an ask, left a kudos, dropped a bookmark, everything.

Finally, this is not where Alligator Bites ends! I have a planned sequel that is already in progress, so PLEASE subscribe to the series because that will be coming soon! I also have a few more Hollanov fics in the pipe, so stay tuned for those as well.

Come hang out with me on Tumblr at @flawlessassholes, reblog the fic art, and I'll see you back at the cottage soon. ❤️