Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, David Hollander, Yuna Hollander, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Adoption, Kid Fic, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Racist Language, Fluff, POV Alternating

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-26 Completed: 2026-03-04 Words: 23,810 Chapters: 4/4

Things You Should've Expected

Summary

Something tugs in the center of his chest. He should be angry, furious at his brother for trying to do something to screw him over, even after years of not speaking. He’s been doing the same since they were kids, using Ilya as a scapegoat to slip out of his responsibilities and consequences for his own actions. Doing this - getting a woman pregnant that isn’t his wife and claiming it’s Ilya who has done it - is just something else to add to the list.

Instead he just looks at the picture of this tiny little boy and wonders if he’ll have freckles.

Notes

Gonna preface this by saying all research for the adoption and surrogacy rules for this fic was google, so if anything is wrong I'm sorry. I'm not Russian and I've only ever dealt with Russian paperwork when it came to getting a tourist visa and that was insanely thorough and a pain so I'm sure I'm glossing over a bunch of things.

Also, Russia changed the rules for adoption post-Ukrainian Invasion, seemingly in attempt to keep Russian children in Russia and make it completely illegal for gay men to have any hope to adopt, so we're ignoring that.

We never do find out what Svetlana's dad is minister of, but since I'm assuming with the way he's talked about he's basically the in universe version of Vladislav Tretiak if he had been allowed to go to the NHL by the USSR, I made him Russia's minister for sport.

The conversations in Italics are in Russian.

Chapter 1

It’s a peaceful Sunday morning, which means Ilya should’ve expected this.

Ilya’s sprawled against the sofa at home, his sprained wrist curled close to his chest in its brace. Shane’s on his morning run with Anya, and Ilya’s contemplating if he could prod Shane into making him breakfast when he gets back. He wants pancakes, and the high protein whole wheat mix Shane insists on using isn’t bad. Shane only complains a little bit about Ilya covering them with syrup and butter.

He almost drops the phone when Sergei’s name lights up his screen, interrupting his instagram scrolling. Almost doesn’t answer it, too, but he forces himself. Of all the responses they'd gotten from back in Russia, it was probably Sergei who had shown the most sympathy, but he hadn’t tried to contact him since. Ilya knew he wouldn’t call unless it was important.

“Your brother has done something stupid.”

No nonsense. Ilya always liked that about him.

“When hasn’t he?”

“I’m not joking, Ilya. This is bad. He is talking about you to the press.”

Ilya snorts, “And yet again, when is he not?”

It was true; when he and Shane had gotten married, Alexei had gone on state TV to complain about how Ilya had abandoned his family for Shane, how their parents would be rolling over in their graves at the thought of their son with a man, becoming a Canadian citizen and turning his back on the Russian federation who made him. It had been very dramatic, and they still continued to roll him out whenever something happened to Ilya. This time he was sure it was because of his wrist injury and missing the playoffs.

“There is a baby, otherwise I wouldn’t be calling you. I would let Sveta or your agent deal with talking to you, but this child is something that must be dealt with as well so I volunteered.”

Ilya frowns. He still doesn’t understand what that has to do with him, or why Svetlana must deal with anything.

“Let me guess, it’s a new child that he can’t care for and he’s claiming it's my fault.”

“No. Instead he knocked up some random woman that’s not his wife. But it looks like you.”

Ilya grits his teeth and ignores the dread that fills his chest.

“Why does that matter? We’re family, it happens.”

Sergei is silent on the other side of the phone.

“Sergei. Of course it can look like me. We are brothers. My niece looked like me too.”

“Ilya…”

Ilya drops his head to the back of the sofa, knowing where this is going.

“He’s telling everyone it’s mine.”

“Yes.”

Ilya shakes his head, “I haven’t been to Russia in years, and I am married to a man. I would probably get lost, now, if I saw a woman with her legs spread.”

Sergei barks out a laugh. It’s not a happy sound.

“Doesn’t fucking matter. The baby is half Asian. The mother is Koryo-saram, I think. They’re claiming you have a fetish. He went straight to the press with pictures, claiming you’re a deadbeat and making him raise your child because the mother doesn’t want it.”

Ilya feels ill.

“Where is the mother?”

“That's why I am calling you, not my daughter. Sveta is finding her. You know how she is.”

He does. She’s the type of person who can know everything about everyone, if you give her a bit of time and the right connections. It’s something which she usually has, considering how she fits into society circles in Moscow.

She also hates Alexei almost as much as he does, and would do anything to protect Ilya, even if it meant flirting with Alexei’s loser friends for a name and number.

“Look. If this gets to the press in the US, you know how this will go. Here you are a joke to most people after you married Hollander. There are people who still think you did it to get citizenship, which is why this is getting any traction at all. But in the west, if they think you are fathering illegitimate babies and abandoning them to play house with your husband…”

It’s not good. It makes a mockery of his marriage and plays into his formerly horrible reputation as an arrogant asshole who fucks anything that moves.

It also makes Shane look stupid for ever thinking he could actually settle down. Something Alexei surely considers a bonus.

“I… I should talk to Shane and our agent. See how serious this actually is, or what the game plan should be.”

“You should.”

Ilya stares at the ceiling, thinking.

“I know you can’t promise, but is there… I know you are only Minister for Sport and it’s not mine, but I don’t want someone to…”

“Nothing will happen to your nephew, Ilya. I promise. It’s not his fault his father is an idiot.”

Sergei’s voice is soft, and Ilya feels tears well up behind his eyes, suddenly overwhelmed with sympathy for this poor little baby being born to someone who hates his existence.

“It’s a boy.”

“Yes. Sorry, I don’t know the name, nothing has been said in the press. I’m sure Sveta will know.”

Ilya scrubs a hand over his face.

“Thank you, Sergei.”

They hang up and Ilya switches to the browser on his phone, searching for his name in cyrilic.

Sergei is exaggerating, a bit; he does find articles and photos, but it’s not on the front page of anything except a few terrible Russian gossip sites, sensationalized and intercut with a few photos of him. It’s also pretty clear from the wording of most of the articles that they think it’s a joke.

The baby is tiny. Maybe two or three weeks old. He’s got a little tuft of dark hair and a similar eye shape to Shane. Fat cheeks and the same button nose most babies seem to have.

But he looks like Ilya. Like his mother and her father, the way Ilya does. At least from the few pictures he has from his childhood - the few that didn’t get destroyed in a fit of rage or thrown out by his stepmother, the ones he hid away in boxes under his bed and moved with him always, and are now adorn their house in Ottawa and their cottage. They have the same lips and chin, straight from Irina’s father. The second picture - The baby looking slightly disgruntled, lying on a blanket covered in ducks - looks so similar to the one he has of himself from the day he was brought back from the hospital. You could almost confuse them, if it wasn't for the fact that the baby is clearly partially Asian.

And Ilya knows that Shane would say something about how not all Asians look alike, and Ilya knows he is right, of course he is right. That doesn’t change the fact that here, with chubby cheeks and dark hair and brown eyes, Ilya is reminded of every other picture hanging in the hallway at Yuna and David’s house, just as much as the ones he knows from his own childhood.

Something tugs in the center of his chest. He should be angry, furious at his brother for trying to do something to fuck him over, even after years of not speaking. He’s been doing the same since they were kids, using Ilya as a scapegoat to slip out of his responsibilities and consequences for his own actions. Doing this - getting a woman pregnant that isn’t his wife and claiming it’s Ilya who has done it - is just something else to add to the list.

Instead he just looks at the picture and wonders if he’ll have freckles.

He shouldn’t care about this kid, outside of him being family. He shouldn’t. But he can’t –

Anya comes rushing in, excited, jumping up and the couch to lick his face for a few seconds before zooming off, into the kitchen for her water. Shane follows shortly after, sweaty and in nothing but running shorts, stopping dead when he sees Ilya’s face.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Ilya shakes his head, looking away and rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. He can’t say anything, because he knows he’d just start crying in ernest.

“Baby,” Shane says, patient, tilting his face back so he can look at him, “What’s going on? What’s got you so upset?”

Ilya hands his phone to Shane. He won’t be able to read the article - His Russian speaking skills are impressive, but his reading comprehension of cyrilic is terrible - but the pictures are there.

Shane stares, dumbfounded, before looking at Ilya with raised eyebrows.

“...Did someone do one of those weird baby morph things again to look like what our kid would look like?”

Ilya laughs, bubbling up from his chest, and the tears fall harder.

“It’s my nephew. Or son, depending on who you ask.”

Shane blinks at him, confused.

“I’m sorry?”

Ilya shrugs, “Alexei.”

Shane makes a face like that explains everything and nothing. He frowns down at Ilya’s phone before he begins tapping at the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“translating the article.”

Ilya can tell the second it is in English, because Shane’s eyes widen in complete shock. He drops down on the sofa, not caring about the sweat drying on his skin.

“This… okay,” He says, and then hands Ilya his own phone, “Text Farah I’m gonna send it over? She’ll want to see this.”

Ilya does as he’s told, his hands shaking and he uses Shane's pin. He stares at Shane as he reads the article, frowning.

“What does the word Koryoin mean? Just a Korean living in Russia?”

“It’s… they are… ethnic? Yes? Ethnic Koreans but they have become Russian. Most have been in Russia since even before Soviet times, and don’t go back. A lot don’t even speak Korean anymore.”

Shane hums.

“He looks so much like you.”

“He looks like my grandfather,” Ilya explains, “My mother’s father. She always used to say I was his mirror.”

Shane smiles in response, like he finds the whole thing cute.

“Well,” Shane says, slow. He looks like he wants to say something, but bites his lip.

“What?”

“I mean… wouldn’t it be our son? We’re married. He’s like, my stepkid, or whatever.”

Ilya snorts, “not in Russia. They’d never allow it. You would be Papa’s roommate, and even then, it would not be okay.”

Shane goes back to staring at the photos on Ilya’s phone. When he looks up, there’s something hard in his eyes, like he’s made a decision.

“He could be my kid here, though.”

Ilya takes a few seconds to comprehend what he’s saying.

“...You are serious?”

“We want kids, you know? We’ve been talking about this for awhile-”

Ilya shakes his head, “You demanding I fuck a baby into you when you are about to come is not the same as talking.”

“Fuck off,” Shane rolls his eyes, “We have talked about this. We both want kids. Maybe-”

“Shane.”

“He’s our nephew. And if you read the article - or like, the google translated version - it says that his mother contacted Alexei because she doesn’t want the baby and is trying to get him to you so you can have custody. He could totally be lying, but I doubt there’s not some truth there.”

“Shane.”

“I want a baby with you,” Shane blurts out, going pink, “I mean, it’s like… way earlier than I thought it would be happening? But I think it’s… I don’t know. This just feels right?”

“It doesn’t matter, because-”

“Because why?”

Ilya goes quiet, shaking his head.

“It just doesn’t. We can’t. Alexei wouldn’t allow me to.”

“So we don’t deal with him. He said it’s your kid, so you get put on the birth certificate as the father. We claim she’s like… a surrogate, or something. Or we don't have to claim anything, it's not their business, just say he's ours.”

“That won’t happen. There’s no way they’d let-” His voice cracks, and Ilya looks away, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

“Ilya,” Shane says, hand around the back of his neck, “forget about the other stuff. Don’t think about laws or what could go wrong or whatever. Do you want him here with us?”

Ilya takes a steadying breath and meets Shane’s eyes.

Shane works himself into a panic, over stuff like this. He should be losing it, stressed out about what people will think or say, not Ilya.

But he isn’t. He’s calm, collected. Ilya knows he’s thinking of a million contingency plans, and all the things that can go wrong, but Ilya knows he’s also thinking of good things; daycares and sleep schedules and centaur sweaters and when he can learn to skate. The hand me downs from the kids Jackie would surely love to give him to get them out of the house. How to safeguard the cottage for toddlers and train Anya to be good around the baby. How their training and away schedules will work with an infant. The look on David and Yuna’s faces when they find out they will be grandparents.

God, Ilya wants.

“I do.”

Shane lets out a shaky breath, smiling with suspiciously wet eyes.

“Okay. Then we do it. Or at least try.”

Ilya nods again, because if he opens his mouth to agree, he will cry. He wipes Shane’s eyes with his hoodie sleeve, even though there are no real tears, just to make Shane laugh.

“We should wait for Svetlana, before we decide. She was going to contact the mother.”

Shane smiles, and kisses his forehead.

“Okay. We'll wait for her.”

Svetlana looks tired, when they finally facetime a few hours later. It’s barely midnight in Moscow, but she looks as exhausted as she does when she’s been partying all night, home at 5am and coming down from alcohol and whatever else.

Svetlana, just like her father, cuts to the chase.

“She wants money, not a baby. She realized he was your brother and decided she'd keep it for that reason alone. She thought she could get millions of rubles out of him, instead she’s getting this mess.”

Ilya snorts. The thought of Alexei being worth anything but debt to his drug dealer is laughable at best, but he can see how it might seem like a payday if you didn’t know anything about them. Even though Ilya is a degenerate Canadian faggot now, everyone back in Russia would expect him to still be giving them money to live, because that’s what you do with family.

“So she doesn’t care.”

“About the child? No. Well, not really? She is taking care of him, but doesn’t want him to raise. She is pissed at Alexei, going to the press, dragging this out in the open, and she feels bad about you both being dragged into this. I don’t think it’ll be too hard to make this go away.”

Shane opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then closes it.

“What?”

Shane looks at Ilya, who nods.

“What do you think she’ll want if we want to have the baby and have her sign an NDA so no one knows it’s actually Alexei’s?”

Ilya tries to clamp down the anxiety he feels when the words hang there.

Svetlana looks at the two of them, and then turns to Ilya before switching to Russian, “Has your man lost his mind?”

“His man knows enough Russian to know when you’re calling him crazy,” Shane says, rolling his eyes.

“You two want this to stay now?”

“We run the risk of Ilya looking awful either way, okay?” Shane says, wincing, “And it’s like… birth tourism, or whatever they call it. But I’ve been thinking, and it’ll look a whole lot less shitty if we make it seem like the baby was planned adoption, we were trying to keep it quiet because of everything that this all involves, and Alexei has fucked it up and ran to the press, and it derailed immigration.”

“Yes,” Ilya’s eyes snap from Shane to Svetlana’s, “Has anyone at Pervý Kanal seen the baby outside of the photos? Or talked to the mother?”

Svetlana studies him, frowning.

“No, I don’t think so,” Svetlana finally says, slow, “Just your brother to the press with the pictures. When I contacted her she only answered because I have an American phone number. She thought she’d get a pay day and then ditch the kid – her parents or an orphanage, I didn’t ask. She’s not even in Moscow, She’s in St. Petersburg. Alexei told her he was there managing your Russian interests when they met," Svetlana scoffs, "like that man could manage anything outside of a coke binge.”

“So, we lie,” Shane shrugs, “Canada is super limiting on surrogacy, you basically need like… a friend or relative, and you have to cover all their expenses but you can’t pay them or buy them anything that could be considered payment. Russia is way easier, especially if you're a citizen. If anyone asks, we say it's a planned adoption, that's it, and if push comes to shove, we can say we found a surrogate through an agency, and she’s Asian, so we figured it was kind of perfect, almost like a mix of the two of us.”

Svetlana tilts her head, looking at Shane.

“You know a lot about this.”

“We knew we both wanted kids. It’s sooner than planned, but I looked into it before. Adopting from Russia as a Russian citizen is pretty easy, actually. It’s more complicated to get the baby from Russia to Canada as two married men, but there are like… loopholes, and stuff. Ilya can adopt as a single man and then I can adopt him once he's here in Canada. They’re supposed to change the laws within the next couple years, I think, so maybe now is the best time.

“And what is Alexei gonna do? Say he lied?” Shane scoffs, “If we do nothing and deny it and people buy it, for what? So his nephew ends up in an orphanage? If we do this – if we say we planned this, that you're working as our inbetween since it’s unsafe for us to be in Moscow…”

It’s not a bad plan, really. The whole thing will probably give Ilya a stress ulcer, but he doesn’t doubt it will work. The paperwork from Russia should be easy - Ilya knows if it isn’t then all it will take is money in the right hands to make it easy, because Russia - and Canada should be okay too, especially if they can rush the baby’s residency through the Canadian system.

Svetlana looks at Ilya, her mouth in a firm line.

“You both want this?” She asks, staring him down, “this is not just you being stupid over him and giving him whatever he wants? Or you seeing this kid that looks like you and is Asian like him and deciding that this fulfills whatever egotistical narcissistic bullshit you have going on? You want to be parents?”

Ilya doesn’t even need to think about it.

“Yes.”

Shane laces their fingers together and gives him a squeeze.

“Svet, this is… it’s family. And I know what people said about me being half Asian as a kid, and what they still say about me. And that's in Canada. I don’t… I’m not gonna let him go through that.”

She nods, just once. Ilya thinks of the dinner after his father’s funeral, when she told him she’d do anything for him. Knows she’s going to move heaven and earth to make this happen.

“Okay. Well. We will need documents,” Svetlana frowns, thinking, “A power of attorney, for me. Copies of your passport, your Canadian passport too. She hasn’t gotten him a birth certificate, yet, and only her name is on the maternity certificate. If we can put you on the birth certificate without you being here, that would be best. That shouldn’t be too hard, and if it is, we can make it happen. She’s… I talked to her, yes? And she doesn’t give a shit. She thought she could get something out of the situation and it backfired. I think she would be okay lying and signing NDA as long as she gets paid.”

“We can talk to Ilya’s immigration lawyer,” Shane adds, “Maybe she’ll know what to do.”

“Yes. That is best. I will speak to Yuri – Papa’s lawyer. He has an office in St. Petersburg. He will help, maybe, or know someone who can, and will keep secrets if we ask nicely. They’ve known each other since they were children.”

“The only problem is getting him a visa for Canada, I think. I don’t think he can just come on a tourist visa and citizenship will take months I’m sure.”

Ilya chews his lips, thinking.

“Maybe… If we can get the baby to Finland on the ferry, we'd be able to get him from there, and we’d be dealing with a much easier process in a much more comfortable country while we wait for approval.”

Svetlana’s eyebrows raised at Ilya’s suggestion.

“You want me to take a ferry? With a baby?”

“It’s two hours, Sveta, and probably easier than a flight,” Ilya says, and she snorts, “You act like you won’t love it a little, playing spy and smuggling a baby over the border.”

“Still, I think a flight is better. Makes it easier to get him a visa when we can go anywhere.”

Svetlana smiles, devious.

“Of course, you are paying for everything. I will drop him off with you and then all expenses paid holiday for Auntie Sveta to regain her sanity after being the one to spend her summer taking care of your baby and doing all the work.”

Ilya rolls his eyes.

“In order for that to happen we need this to work. If Alexei finds out he will ruin everything, including that child’s life.”

“I know-”

“And nothing gets signed over before you have the baby and she’s signed away her rights. No money, no nothing. We need to have a proper custody agreement in place, not just her word.”

“Of course-”

“If she’s the type that hangs around Alexei, she’s not trustworthy, and I can’t-”

“Ilyusha-”

“I mean it,” Ilya demands, “I need her understand what we are his parents-”

“Ilya,” Svetlana snaps, “I will fucking kidnap him if I have to. I know you will worry, but I am not stupid, especially when it comes to something like this. She doesn’t want the baby, and you do. Alexei will not touch a fucking hair on his head. It will be fine.”

Ilya takes a deep, calming breath, focusing on Shane’s hand on his knee, squeezing. He knows he is being paranoid. He knows, but-

“What’s his name?”

“What?”

“His name?” Shane repeats, “Did she tell you? The article didn’t say when I translated it.”

“And Sergei didn’t know,” Ilya adds.

“She’s been calling him Aleksandr.”

Ilya hums. It’s a perfectly fine name, Russian but not distractingly so. Kind of boring, kind of western, so maybe perfect for their nice Canadian-Russian boy.

“And her’s?”

Svetlana smiles.

“Irina.”

Ilya can’t help it. He fucking giggles, because of course.

“I will talk to Papa, and to Yuri, see if they can help. I told her I would call tomorrow morning, and we will discuss everything, after I talked to you. I will text after.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Svetlana nods, just once, then hangs up.

They both stare at the black screen of Ilya’s phone for a minute before Shane turns to him, bewildered.

“Holy fuck.”

“Shane…”

Shane just blinks, staring at nothing.

“Did we just… ?”

Ilya giggles again. He can’t even deny that it is anything but a giggle.

“I… fuck.” Shane tugs at his hair, “Shit. My parents will need to know. And then the team’s front office, and our lawyer and insurance and our wills have to be updated like… we have to get a nursery ready and-”

“Shane, breathe. It may not even happen.”

But Ilya can tell from Shane’s expression that it has to. He was always like this; either he would panic and come up with the worst case scenario and insist everything was going to go wrong, or instantly settle into the idea or plan and do everything in his power to make it happen.

“What’s the nickname for Aleksandr?”

“Sasha.”

“Yeah no,” Shane shakes his head, “Not using that.”

Ilya laughs. He doesn’t know how to tell him Sasha will probably tell everyone that they named the baby after him, and Shane will just have to deal.

“We can use the western version, yes? Just call him Aleks.”

“Or Sandar, I guess.”

Ilya makes a face, “Aleks is better.”

“I think we can let our son decide, maybe, when he is older.”

Shane goes still, realizing what he’s just said, before reeling Ilya in, and kissing him hard.

“I really, really need you to fuck me right now.”

Ilya pushes himself up from the kitchen island, and follows Shane to the bedroom.

The next morning, Ilya wakes up late with sore hips and thighs and several text messages.

Irina agreed to the idea. Thinks it’s for the best. I think she is very angry at your brother, and knows this will anger him more.

Yuri had her sign the NDA. It’s a standard form, so he just had her come in early this afternoon to do it. Said it was important to do that first, before anything else is done.

We talked a bit about the money. Yuri says you can pay it to my Russian account and I can transfer to her since you don’t have one anymore, it’s perfectly legal since I will have power of attorney. I will have to pay Yuri as well, but he was very nice about you and Shane. Wanted me to tell you his daughter is in Sweden to be with her wife, so you don’t have to worry.

She’s going to keep the baby until I get the birth certificate. I think she is afraid I will disappear with him and not give her anything. I gave her a bit now, for his expenses, since he is yours. She seemed shocked, it was strange.

Yuri’s son does family law, and will have a custody agreement done in a few days. Dima says she can sign off her rights and he can have it filed and recognized within 48 hours. It’s the same as what they do for surrogacy and adoption cases. Then she gets the money.

I will be on the train to St. Petersburg tomorrow, 6am. We’re going to do the birth certificates online, now, thank fuck. Send me a scan of your passport so I can upload it? Also if you have one of these digital signatures. I will sign for you if not, you know I have done your signature before.

Overnight a power of attorney, please. I know you can afford it. I will send you the address of where you can send it to. I will send back any paperwork you need for your lawyer. Yuri and Dima both say it’s good to have a paper trail.

You owe me many, many favors for this.

Everything goes very quickly after that.

They hadn’t made it past the first round of playoffs, and for the first time in his life Ilya wasn't disappointed. The fans aren’t happy, but are at least understanding. Between his wrist, Wyatt's dislocated knee, and their entire checking line somehow getting mono simultaneously, they had too many injuries, too tiring of a season.

(it also helps that Montreal had crashed and burned, and everyone knows Seattle has it in the bag this year.)

Ilya diligently reads the Russian news for the first time in years, looking for anything mentioned about himself. Outside of a single follow up article that regurgitates the same quote from his brother that pops up a few days after the NDA is signed and the custody agreement is filed, nothing is said. It feels like Alexei went to the press to get Irina off his back about the baby, or maybe get Ilya's attention. Now that she has and Ilya didn't respond, he doesn’t care.

He leaves it alone, knowing when the news breaks it will be hell. Alexei always hated looking stupid, especially when it was because he was proven a liar. This is going to make him look like an idiot, on top of knowing who Aleksandr’s real father is. The fact that his disgusting freak of a brother and his gay husband is going to raise his baby as their own will be salt in the wound.

They have talked to Farah, and she agreed that the best thing to do would be to say nothing until everything is settled, and Aleks is in their custody and safe in Canada. Then, a simple press release, and an instagram post. They both agree that they don’t want the baby’s face everywhere online, but since there are already photos on Russian sites, they’ve decided one or two more online isn’t the end of the world.

He talks to their immigration lawyer, and she refers them to a colleague who specifically deals with international adoption immigration, a nice woman named Nuzhat who coos over any pictures of Aleks and blushes anytime Shane makes eye contact with her. She explains that while getting Aleks citizenship won’t be difficult, it will be time consuming, though thankfully they can start the process right away without him in their custody. It alleviates some of the stress, knowing that the petition for their son is done and they’re waiting on the courts.

They pick out a bassinet, knowing Aleks’ll be in their bedroom for the next few months. They assemble it together, and the resulting argument makes it very clear why they are paying someone else to help with the actual nursery.

Shane begins to devour every parenting book about adopting children he can find. Ilya tries to do the same, but he can’t focus. He spends a lot of time on the phone with his therapist, or demanding updates from Svetlana – she gives in, mostly. She has been to see the baby three times, since they met to file for his birth certificate, and she only can do so much. Irina seems to be a fan, letting Svetlana take him whenever, not caring. Ilya supposes it’s hard to care when you know he’s not going to be around for much longer.

Then, when he’s checking his texts after a call with the team physio about his wrist, he finds new messages from Svetlana.

Papers have come today.

He is a Rozanov. didn’t know if Shane wanted to have his name attached but this was easier. Nothing can happen to it now but I guess when he becomes Canadian, he can take boring last name.

There’s two photos attached. The first is Svetlana holding Aleks on her lap, one arm tight around his belly to keep him upright. She’s laughing, and Aleks has a fist full of her hair. His big brown eyes stare directly into the camera, and he’s making the same face Ilya makes when Harris demands he ‘puts his gameface on’ for instagram and he tries not to roll his eyes.

And then-

ROZANOV, ALEKSANDR ILYICH

Ilya stares. Reads through the birth certificate again. Reads Father: Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov until it stops looking like a real name.

He goes upstairs in a daze, to show Shane, Anya on his heels.

He finds him in the room that will become the nursery, staring at the swatches he has taped on the wall.

“Sorry, Marie called and apparently we need to pick a wallpaper today for the installers to be able to come in next week.”

“I thought we agreed on painting it green?”

“Green for the cottage, yeah. But we need something for home, and she convinced me to go with wallpaper. I think the one with the stars? It’s only going on one wall and the rest will be cream, so it won’t be too much, and it’ll be able to stick around for a while. We probably won’t have to worry about taking it down for a few years.”

Ilya shrugs.

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

Shane frowns at him, “You okay? You fought me on the green for a whole day, but this you’re just… okay with?”

Ilya hands him his phone, Svetlana’s pictures open.

“Holy shit,” Shane breathes, “That’s early, isn’t it? Didn’t Svetlana say it would take longer?”

Ilya shrugs again.

“Ilya, are you okay?”

“For once, you are not panicking. I must do it for both of us.”

Shane laughs, running his fingers through Ilya’s hair.

“I’m saving the panic for when we tell my parents.”

Before Ilya can respond, Ilya’s phone rings in Shane’s hand. He answers the facetime request without hesitating.

“Svet…?”

Then, Shane’s face drops, his eyes widening.

“I figured I would call,” She explains, her voice tinny through the phone speaker, “it’s easier to do that than text.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Shane turns the phone so Ilya can see, and there, in her lap, is Aleks.

For once he is smiling instead of grumpy, a brightly colored toy clutched in one hand. His other hand is clutched around two of Svetlana’s perfectly manicured fingers.

Ilya doesn’t know if he’s ever seen anything that’s made him more relieved in his life.

“I figured he should say hello to Dada and Papa, yes?”

“Hey buddy,” Shane croons, “nice to see you.”

He grunts, waving the toy in his hands.

“Everything was signed over this morning officially. She has the money you sent me, and is done. Me and your Synochek are going to have takeaway dinner and an early night then back to Moscow tomorrow on the train.”

Ilya scoffs, “A two hour ferry ride is too much but a four hour train is okay?”

“Eh, he is a good baby,” She says, rubbing his belly, “Hasn’t cried or puked on me once, so he already has a better record than yours.”

Shane looks at Ilya, eyebrows raised.

“She is liar, I never cried.”

“Just the vomit then?”

“I have puked on you, sweetheart. It happens when someone gets sick.”

“Or drinks a whole liter of vodka after drinking half a case of beer at 15,” Svetlana rolls her eyes, “Where are you both? This doesn’t look like any room in your house.”

“We’re in his bedroom,” Shane says, flipping the camera to show her. It’s fairly spartan at the moment - Just an assembled crib and an armchair that will go in the corner along with a bunch of boxes - but Svetlana still smiles, ”It’s the upstairs guest room, we just got rid of everything and are waiting on the decorator to finish it.”

“Look at that, Zaychik, your own room!” Svetlana coos, kissing his head.

Aleks babbles something, waving his tiny fists.

“It is good you are getting ready, since I have filed for passport already, and it will be in a week. Rush job. You will need to thank my father for that. I sent on the paperwork to you as well – birth certificates, the NDA, all of that. Should be there in two days, if Russian post does it properly. Yuri did it in English and Russian, so you can just give it to your lawyer.”

“Thank you, Svet, really,” Shane says, earnest, “How are you holding up? I know we kinda… ruined your summer. And now you’re gonna have to watch him until this all gets settled and stuff.”

“Eh, not so bad. My cousin has agreed to help, once we get back to Moscow, until I can get him a visa to leave. Her daughter is three and very excited to have a baby to play with. I think you will need to send them a gift or something, as a thank you. I’ll figure it out.”

“Whatever she wants,” Shane promises, “How did the whole handover go with Irina?”

Svetlana made a face, “I swear, if Alexei wasn’t married, they would be perfect for each other.”

“What?” Ilya tears his eyes away from watching Aleks to look at Svetlana, “How do you mean?”

“She didn’t care about Aleks, yes? Handed him to me like he was nothing, didn’t even really say goodbye. But she was awful about the money. I don’t understand why, she was fine until now. Me and Yuri both had to remind her you’re not buying a baby, you are adopting a nephew and we're paying for her to keep quiet. But she said that you should stop being cheap. Then she got mad because I bought Aleks a pram, like we talked about, and didn’t think to give it to her.”

Ilya frowns.

“Why would she need it? If she doesn’t have him anymore?”

“I don’t know, sell it?” Svetlana shrugs, “Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter. The baby is yours now. So is his fancy pushchair. And that’s that. Now,” She grins, “What do we think Chicago is going to do tonight?”

The three of them chat a bit more, mostly about Aleks and the nursery and how they think San Francisco is going to fair against Seattle. Svetlana agrees that the stars will be the nicest, and that San Francisco will put up a fight but still lose. They go on until Aleks starts fussing and Svetlana leaves them to give him a bottle.

Ilya’s hands shake, after they say goodbye. He feels jittery, after seeing Aleks sit so sweetly, smiling and looking happy.

“Babe,” Shane murmurs, wrapping his arms around Ilya, “Everything is going to be fine.”

“She wants more. What if she -”

“She can’t Ilya, okay? You know she can’t.”

“I know. I think I am more nervous now than I was before,” He admits, feeling stupid, “I… he’s mine, now, and will be ours. So many people could mess this up, and we’ll never see him.”

Shane kisses his forehead, then his nose, and both cheeks.

“Soon,” he murmurs, “you will never have to worry about this again. He’ll be right here, spitting up on your shoulder and crying in the middle of the night and everything will be perfect and you won’t know how you ever felt scared.”

Ilya lets out a shaky breath, pressing their foreheads together.

“Yes. It’ll be okay.”

They go up to the cottage the following week, just two days after Svetlana receives Aleks passport in the post, just like Sergei said she would. They both wanted to check out the nursery and prepare the house for the rest of the summer and Aleks arrival, and this way they avoid most of the mess from the building of the nursery at home.

Marie speed ran things without compromising, the walls a deep green and furniture perfectly picked. The space feels a bit like a show room rather than a room for their child, but it’s nice. Ilya knows it will be nicer when Aleks is there, and it’s not so tidy and put together. The kind when they have too many toys and blankets and clothes; a constant low level mess like you’d find with the Pike children, homey and lived in.

They can only really stay for a few days, thanks to the meetings they now have to have with what turns out to be multiple lawyers. The case to make Aleks a Canadian citizen finally moves on to the naturalization hearing now that they can submit a birth certificate and copy of his foreign passport. Nuzhat formally requested a rush due to their status as public figures and the inherent risk of Aleks being in Russia with Ilya as his sole legal parent, and it was granted within hours, to their shock. They estimate it should be only a month or two to get Aleks passport, and they might be able to get the citizenship certificate to travel before that even with it pending.

With it comes the adoption process for Shane, which will take months longer and might not even happen this year. Adoption records are public in Ontario, even ones in process, so if anyone catches wind of what they are doing, the press could have access within a simple online search and blow everything up. Ilya’s just glad Shane is starting to show something other than complete confidence and the single minded focus of a man with contingency plans for his contingency plans.

Yuna and David, of course, insist on coming to see them. They’ve been able to play off the beginning of summer as being busy, but Ilya knows it’s only a matter of time. Shane wants to tell them, but doesn’t know how, so he’s been avoiding it.

So of course, that means Shane is a panicky mess when David asks the innocent question of why the fridge seems so bare.

“We have to go back in a few days.”

Yuna hums, not even looking up from the vegetables she’s chopping.

“Oh? Stuff with the foundation?”

“Not really. Marly and Carter are gonna fill in for us, and Scott’s going to bring up a few New York rookies. Marcus might get involved, too, if we can get the scheduling to work out with his training in Winnipeg.”

That stops her. She frowns, confused, “You’re not going to be involved at all this summer?”

Ilya looks at Shane, who is starting to sweat.

“We’re gonna have to fly out to Europe? So it might not be a good thing to highlight that we’ll be there.”

This time, even David stops what he’s doing to look at them both.

“I thought you two were planning to stick around this summer, instead of going on vacation?”

“It’s not really… vacation?”

Her frown deepens, and Ilya can see Shane trying not to wince.

“Where are you going?”

“We don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Shane, just give it up,” Ilya hisses in Russian, taking out his phone and opening the last photo Svetlana sent him. Aleks in nothing but a diaper, both his hands clutching his right foot. It was taken after he had been given a bath. There’s something about his expression that is so unmistakably Ilya that he could almost believe that he is biologically his own. He stares at it for a second before he sets it on the table in front of his in-laws.

A look of absolute disbelief crosses both Yuna and David’s faces.

“Is this…?”

They both nod. Shane’s hands are shaking, and Ilya pulls him close, kissing his head.

“Oh sweetheart,” Yuna murmurs, staring at the photo, “I knew this was something you both wanted, but I didn’t think this would be so soon.”

“We didn’t think so either,” Shane says, his voice watery, “We found out about a month ago-”

“A month!?”

“Aleksandr is my nephew,” Ilya says, “My brother… he is,” Ilya made a face, “You know. He told everyone Aleks is mine, so not to get in trouble with his wife or owe Aleksandr’s mother any money. We discussed it and decided to make him ours, but it is better to act quickly. Svetlana has gone back to Russia for the summer and is working as a… go between? Yes?”

“We gave her power of attorney,” Shane explains, “So she can handle all the legal stuff, since we can’t really be there safely. The mother didn’t really want him, so it’s straightforward. We just… we’re playing it off like it’s a straight adoption situation, and not a ‘my brother’s trying to drag me through the mud with the press to get my baby mama off my back’ situation.”

Yuna hums, “I don’t know if people are going to completely believe that. You said it’s in the Russian press?”

“Yes, but no one there seems to even really believe it,” Ilya frowns, “Most people there think that since I married Shane that means I can no longer be attracted to any woman, so they think it’s fake. They’re not totally wrong, except it is his son. Nothing has come out in the US, either, so it feels like we’re in the clear, for the most part.”

“We just… we want him out, because if Ilya’s family finds out, there’s a chance they could protest it and the government will go along with it. Ilya is listed on the birth certificate and everything, and we just got his Russian passport, so now we have to get him a visa to somewhere we can pick him up and wait it out until he gets his Canadian passport. But if they object, there’s a chance that they could get custody without us ever seeing him.”

David is still staring at the photo, silent. When he looks up at Ilya, there are tears in his eyes.

“He looks so much like you. If I didn’t know any better I’d think he was yours.”

“He looks like my mother,” Ilya murmurs, suddenly feeling shy, “I always took after my mother’s family, yes? My grandfather was, ah… let me find it.”

Ilya takes the phone back, flicking through pictures until he finds the one he was looking for. It was something his Aunt had sent him, shortly after his father’s death – His mother as a child, sitting on his grandfather’s lap, his mother and his grandfather smiling at the camera. He wasn’t that much older than Ilya in the photo.

“He could be your twin,” Yuna says, clearly shocked.

Ilya nodded, “Yes. I was told that most of my life. He was very handsome, to the end. Shane will be lucky, when we are old and gray. I will still be beautiful and sexy silver fox and he won’t.”

“Fuck off,” Shane laughs, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

“His… Aleks’ mother is Asian?”

“Korean. There’s a lot of ethnic Koreans in Russia that either fled when the Japanese invaded in the early 1900’s or got expelled by the North in the 50’s.”

Yuna hums again. Ilya knows she’s already thinking of optics. Shane does too, judging from the look on his face.

“Mom-”

“I’m mostly just… thinking how this might register as egotistical.”

“Mom-”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” She raises her hands in surrender, “Really, Shane, I doubt anyone would judge you both. I’m just wondering how you could frame this if it comes up that he’s Korean not Japanese and people aren’t good about it. Especially if they think you picked someone Asian as a surrogate on purpose and decided on a Korean while being Japanese.”

It did make sense, a bit, to Ilya. People judged Shane for not being Asian enough and acting too white all the time. He could see how certain people would claim that Shane picked a Korean woman to carry his baby thinking that it was ‘good enough.’

“There’s also the whole… sperm donation aspect, and how Ilya did it-”

Shane looks mortified at the thought of his mother discussing Ilya coming in a cup.

“Oh my god, please stop talking.”

“These are things you need to think about, Shane. If you’re going to play this off as surrogacy - even if you never call it that and just let people assume - people are going to think Ilya was a donor. How he did it when he couldn't enter Russia safely is something that we need to think about...”

From behind her, David catches Ilya’s eyes as she starts talking about how to pivot them into a family unit versus just a couple.

‘Should I get the spreadsheets out?’ He mouths from behind Yuna’s shoulder, and Ilya can’t help but laugh.

(Yuna’s laptop does, eventually, come out, though excel stays closed. They leave with a more solid media plan in place and every photo and video of Aleks they have sent to David’s email.)

Three days later, they’re twenty minutes into a post-citizenship hearing nap when Svetlana calls Ilya.

“Sveta?”

Svetlana breathes into the receiver.

“Alexei knows.”

Ilya’s heart drops out of his chest, his vision tunneling.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I don’t. But,” Svetlana lets out a shaky breath, “Can you be in Paris in three days?”

“Paris? Why–”

“It doesn’t matter, can you get there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” She takes a deep breath, grounding herself, ”I will get Sasha to fix it.”

Then she hangs up.

He turns to Shane, who’s frowning at him, half asleep.

“Alexei found out. I… I don’t – Sveta said we have to be in Paris by Friday-”

Shane all but dives for his phone when he explains.

“There’s a flight from Montreal on Thursday with seats available. Direct. Gets in the next morning at 6am if there's no delay. I’ll book it now.”

He relays the information to Svetlana, and the response comes within ten minutes.

Good. We’ll meet you at CDG at 8:35am.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

There is, in fact, two (!!!) Canadian bars in Paris. The first time I went to Paris I nearly died laughing when I came across one, then I found out there was a second one while googling random shit for this fic.

They also are the only place I've ever seen Canada Dry available in Europe. Regular European ginger ale is, in fact, different then the stuff you get in North America, though you can get something close to it by Schweppes (or at least it's sold here in Germany) that is called (you guessed it) American Ginger Ale.

As always, the Italic conversations are Russian.

I might write another bit of this, which is basically adorable bits of everyone meeting Aleks for the first time, but I haven't decided if that will be a whole seperate thing or not. for now, we're saying this has another part coming.

Shane is waist deep in the lake, Aleks held tight to his chest. He can hear him talking to the baby, though he’s too far away to get a proper understanding of what he’s saying. Aleks’ chubby little feet splash in the water, his face obscured by a sunhat.

Ilya watches from the deck, his heart so full it feels like it’s going to burst. Shane can’t stop smiling, tickling his belly, making him giggle. Anya is sunning herself on the stairs down to the dock, content, her tail wagging happily.

A hand slips into Ilya’s, squeezing.

“You’re doing the right thing.”

Ilya shrugs, his eyes never leaving Shane and Aleks.

“I am used to fixing Alexei’s mistakes, even the big ones.”

“He was never Alexei’s, sweetheart. And never a mistake. You have to know that.”

Ilya bites the inside of his cheek. Anya is suddenly up, taking a running leap off the dock and crashing into the water. Shane shouts as he gets soaked, his body angling away to cover Aleks so he doesn’t get wet.

“What if I mess this up?”

Aleks turns his head then, his brown eyes going wide when he sees Ilya. He begins to babble, waving his little fists in Ilya’s direction, reaching for him. Shane presses kisses all over his cheeks, and he giggles.

“Impossible.”

Charles de Gaulle airport is a fucking nightmare, massive and confusing on top of being busy with summer holiday goers.

There was a hold up at border control, which made things worse. It’s the first time Ilya’s traveling outside of North America as a full Canadian citizen and they demand to see his Russian passport as well. He’s exhausted and English is hard and he spends close to ten minutes explaining why he had an old US residency permit in an almost expired Russian passport when he was a Canadian. They clearly don’t believe it when he says he plays in the MHL and Shane ends up having to explain in French and they all snicker at his Canadian accent and pretend they can’t really understand him.

They have an hour to kill before Svetlana and Aleks arrive after they collect their luggage and Ilya is afraid he might go insane. He’s was too plagued by anxiety to really sleep on the flight, and the hour or so he did manage to get was interrupted by strange dreams he doesn’t really remember. No one approaches them, neither one of them famous enough in Western Europe for anyone to really care, but Ilya still catches people staring and it sets him on edge.

They end up changing the arrival area for Aleks and Svetlana’s flight as it’s landing, causing the pair of them to have to rush, arriving just in time to see Svetlana leave passport control, make up done, hair styled and dressed well enough to make them both look awful.

But none of that matters, because there, tucked into his stroller and still dressed in his pajamas, is Aleks. Ilya feels cold all over with nerves, Shane’s hand in his own the only thing keeping him grounded as the push through the crowd.

“Hi buddy,” Shane coos, tears in his eyes the second he takes him in. He blinks up at Shane, but doesn’t fight when Shane unclips the belt across his chest and pulls him into his arms.

Shane's lower lip wobbles when Aleks nuzzles his head against his chest and closes his eyes. Ilya runs his thumb along the little fist clutching Shane’s sweatshirt and it immediately opens, clinging to his finger. He blinks sleepily at him with big, dark eyes, offering him a little grin before he nuzzles his face deeper into the softness of Shane’s hoodie.

Ilya clenches his teeth so hard it hurts just to stop himself from crying in public.

“He was the perfect angel, fell asleep almost as soon as we reached altitude,” Svetlana says, tucking herself under Ilya’s free arm, “whined a bit while we got there, but that is not surprising.”

“How was it getting in?”

“They were fine. I booked the earliest flight hoping they wouldn’t ask questions and it seemed to work. They barely looked at his visa at immigration, thank fuck,” She sighs into Ilya’s shoulder, “Told the French I was his mother and we are waiting for his American passport because the Americans take forever to do anything, and he seemed to buy it.”

“Better than us,” Ilya murmurs, rubbing his thumb along Aleks’ little knuckles, bringing it in so he can kiss the back of his hand, “I thought I was going to be bounced because the idiot did not understand I don’t need valid Russian passport if I am Canadian but still need both to say I am also Russian.”

Shane hums, eyes wet. He doesn’t seem to be registering anything either one of them are saying, enamored with the baby starting to snooze against him.

“What is next?”

“Your nice french speaking husband will get us a cab, and we will go to Sasha’s apartment in le Marais,” She says, matter of fact, “Which he was very nice about and offered me to use since he is off his face in some club in Berlin for the week. Then you two figure out what the fuck you are staying, we will drink a bottle of wine and maybe some of his vodka -”

“It’s 9am?” Shane interjects, confused.

“-And after you can leave and I will be alone for the first time without a wet diaper or bottle in over a month.”

Shane chuckles, "Okay, fair enough."

He reluctantly puts Aleks back into his stroller, clipping him in and taking it from Svetlana.

Svetlana looks at the bag she wheeled behind her, and then Ilya expectantly.

“Jesus Christ,” He grumbles, taking Svetlana’s bag as well as the ones him and Shane are using, dragging all three as they head towards the exit.

“Part of that belongs to the clothes I have bought your baby. And I have the diaper bag."

“Wow, so much effort from you.”

“It is a backpack,” she says, as if it’s deeply offensive to be carrying the nondescript black backpack she has on.

They follow Shane through throngs of people and outside. The cab driver laughs at Shane’s very Canadian accent while speaking french, but soon enough they are all being dropped off in front of a gorgeous, traditional looking building and Ilya is dragging their suitcases into an even nicer flat on the second floor.

(“How does Sasha afford this?” Shane says, a little bit awed.

Svetlana snorts, tapping in the code for his alarm system, “His mother is an East German socialite whose father was on the board at Gazprom her whole life, and his father was a gold medal winning winger for the Soviets. How do we think?”)

Ilya is sweaty and exhausted and he doesn’t care, not really, because the second he is in the door his son is deposited into his arms as Shane mumbles about freshening up.

He’s shocked at how much Aleks reminds him of Shane up close. He has the same dark hair and eyes, though his eyebrows seem more like Ilya’s. They have a similar shaped face, outside of his little chin, which he got from Ilya's side. He knows there are probably going to be people that will think he’s only claiming paternity because the mother was Russian but he is really Shane’s baby, especially as he grows up and into his face.

“Irina looked like she could be Shane’s family,” Svetlana says, returning from the kitchen with a corkscrew and a bottle of wine, as well as a vodka for Ilya, “I’ve never seen Yuna when she was young, but I imagine they look almost the same. Sisters, maybe.”

“How did you know that was what I was thinking of?”

Svetlana rolls her eyes at him, working at the bottle in her hands, “Please. You think I don’t know how to read you? You’ve probably already started praying that he gets freckles.”

When Svetlana settles, after wine, vodka, a bottle of formula and a sparkling water have all been distributed, she fixes them both with a serious look.

“You will send my father vodka and flowers for the rest of his life,” She says, no nonsense, “You cannot understand the amount of strings he has pulled over the last few weeks, simply because I have asked him or he felt sorry for your baby. And you will buy my cousin and her daughter a nice present for helping,” She wrinkles her nose, thinking, “I think we will send them on a holiday.”

“And whoever got him the visa,” Shane adds, leaning into Ilya’s shoulder while Aleks gets greedy with his breakfast, “They deserve something.”

“That you have to thank Sasha for. Really, thank the man he is sometimes fucking that works in the French embassy for Aleks’ schengen visa. We had already applied but when I said I needed it he managed to push it through within two days. He thought it was cute, you smuggling your child out of Russia. Sticking it to the man, he said,” Svetlana smiles, “Sasha would do anything for his nephew.”

Shane leans against Ilya to kiss the top of Aleks’ head.

“Maybe we should start calling him Sasha,” He murmurs, and Ilya snorts.

“Don’t give him the satisfaction.”

Svetlana grins at him, “he will do it anyway. And if you are still here when he comes back he will insist on seeing all three of you, I’m sure.”

Ilya shifts the baby as he finishes eating, holding his chest in his hand with his bib rucked under his mouth before he begins to pat him on the back firmly, the same way Jackie showed him when he fed Amber the first time. Drool and milk dribble down Aleks’ chin as he burps, and Shane lifts his bib to wipe at it.

He kisses Shane, just because he can, their baby held between them.

“Alexei contacted my father. That’s why we left.”

Shane is suddenly still next to him.

“He wanted to know if you had talked to him lately. Asked if I had said anything about what was going around in the press. Papa said nothing, of course, but I know his friends said something about me asking around. Or maybe Irina, I don’t know.”

“You said she was fine with this whole thing.”

“She was. But,” Svetlana shrugs, “You know the type of women your brother is around. She could have been perfectly fine until she got her money, then decided that wasn’t enough. Hell, maybe it all went up her nose already, and she needs more. Or Oksana found out her husband is a piece of shit for the one millionth time, but wants her daughter to know her sibling, and Alexei is panicking.”

Shane is quiet, “You don’t think he’d do anything?”

Svetlana frowns, looking at the glass in her hands.

“I think he hates thinking that you have won again. But no, I don’t think he will.”

“Think or know?”

“Well, what the fuck is he going to do now?” Svetlana scoffs, annoyed, “In Russia it was different, but you have your baby. He is yours on paper, and in every single way he can be. You are in a different country he can’t get to. No one is taking him from you.”

Ilya sighs, “Sorry.”

Svetlana waves him away.

“I get it. You are getting your… little domestic Canadian dream. You are nervous.”

Ilya shrugs, petting the downy hair on his son’s head. Aleks blinks slowly up at him with Shane’s big eyes, a little milk drunk and happy with a full belly.

“Nice things don’t happen to me without some sort of issue.”

Svetlana snorts into her wine.

“They do now. Deal with it, you paranoid asshole.”

On their first night, Ilya can’t leave Aleks alone.

After Svetlana throws them out of Sasha’s apartment they spend the first day in their Airbnb, too tired to do much else. Ilya and Shane trade him back and forth, pausing to give him kisses even when they aren’t the ones holding him, never more than a foot away from each other. Every nap is taken against one of their chests instead of in the crib in the second bedroom. He is only set down once, when Shane insisted on ‘tummy time.’ Ilya had no fucking clue what he was talking about but let it happen anyways, the both of them lying on the floor with Aleks while he attempts to lift his head.

It’s in the middle of giving him his 11pm bottle that Nuzhat texts, asking if they can chat in a half hour. They settle Aleks in the crib, leaving him alone for the first time in hours, and have just enough time to pile on the sofa together before answering her facetime call.

“So, just to get at it: I petitioned for an emergency residency visa for him. Just got out of a meeting for it.”

“You think it’s necessary?”

“Your brother is so terrible that you guys rushed to another continent to get your adoptive baby as far away from him as possible, so yeah. Probably."

Ilya laughs. She's not wrong.

“What are we looking at, if they actually try something."

Nuzhat shrugs.

“All the paperwork you guys filed is legit. The lawyer your friend got was thorough. In the eyes of Russia and Canada, Ilya Rozanov is a single dad, with the mother not in the picture, trying to get his son his own secondary citizenship. It’s implied that she’s a surrogate, though not confirmed. The only thing you could get grabbed for is fraud-”

Shane lets out a strangled sound, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Highly, highly unlikely,” She says, voice firm, “And that’s only because you didn’t declare that you were married, which was major news in Russian news outlets when it happened and everyone knows anyway, even if you didn’t put it to paper. Irina would probably have to come forward too, and if she wanted to she has an NDA anyway, so she wouldn’t talk.

“My worry is if your brother gets his passport canceled,” She explains, “which there are pathways to do so as a ‘concerned uncle’ who is worried about your ‘alternative lifestyle,’ Or even him just fraudulently claiming it’s been stolen. If it happens when he’s already entered Canada, it would be fine. Since Ilya has custody and he has a pending case with the Canadian government for citizenship and there’s also Shane’s case for adoption, they can’t do anything to him. There would be issues, I’m not going to lie about that, and you wouldn’t be able to leave Canada with him until they were resolved, but I doubt that’d be on your mind anyway.

“If they do it when you’re in France it would be a total mess. They could just refuse a new one unless you went back to Russia. Shane would not be able to enter without a visa, and there’s a good chance they would not grant him one. Ilya going on his own would not be safe. So that means that Aleks will not be able to leave France, and you won’t be able to stay past your 90 day free entry.

“Thankfully there’s not a lot of goodwill for Russia and their policies and people are sympathetic. Add in the fact that you’re dealing with a baby potentially being ripped away from his loving parents for no reason outside of discrimination against LGBTQ individuals and your brother who has already claimed in a very public way that you are the biological father as well as a mother who confirmed you on the birth certificate… I don’t think we have to worry.”

Ilya presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, groaning. He can feel the headache forming, and the constant stream of info is a lot.

“What would the timeline be?”

“Best case scenario? Two, maybe three weeks,” Nuzhat shrugs, “Worst we wait for Citizenship to come through, which will take at least another two months. Yet again, all hinges on how urgent they view this as. You being public figures and the upcoming season might play into it.”

“Will this mess up his citizenship?”

“If this is granted, it’ll more than likely take longer than we thought, but there is almost no way they could deny him anyway. His birth father is a naturalized Canadian. His other father was born in Canada. Once we manage to get him to Canada he will be staying there probably for the rest of his life. And, if we’re honest about it, you guys make far too many Canadian and international companies too much money to get either one of you in a position to jeopardize that. Rolex and Nike would probably fight it out to sponsor his visa if we looped them in.”

Nuzhat studies them both, her lip sucked into her mouth.

“It’s a lot, okay? I know it is, but I genuinely think things will be fine. I’ve dealt with way, way worse and it turned out to be fine. We just need time. And like… sorry guys, but you’re stuck in Paris for two or three weeks, that’s not some horrible thing,” Nuzhat smiles at them both, “Go to the markets, eat a crepe, Take him to play in the parks… I don’t know… go to museums, go to Disneyland. You let me worry, while you just enjoy being new parents in a place where almost no one knows who you both are and you can pretend to be normal, okay? I’ll let you know when I hear anything.”

They do what they’re told. They go on walks, they take their son to the park, and they get out of the house. They sit in cafés with Svetlana for hours while she’s there, hear her stories about the parties they’re missing out on for bottles and diaper changes. Ilya lets Shane drag them around the Musée d’Orsay, impressed with the architecture as much as the art. They eat out and shop in street markets and Shane speaks so much french it stops turning Ilya on and just becomes a normal part of their life.

Aleks charms everyone no matter where they go. He’s incredibly happy, all the time, to the point that people constantly comment on it. He likes to be in the baby sling Shane bought their first few days in Paris, or held outward facing on their laps, watching the world go by. He smiles and coos and babbles to anyone who looks at him kindly, shyly snuggles into Ilya’s shoulder when the women who work at the boulangerie on the corner baby talks to him on their morning breakfast run.

They find a gym, a place close to their apartment with childcare. It makes both Shane and Ilya realize they hate leaving Aleks, even if it is with a professional for a few hours, so they can do their normal summer workouts. Then Shane gets talked into going to London for some Rolex event and Ilya and Aleks stay behind for the two nights he’s gone, which is obviously unbearable for Shane. He doesn’t want to think about what’s going to happen on their first road trip.

Shane’s workouts stay, but his diet goes (somewhat) to hell, to Ilya’s amusement. The first time Shane tried to explain how his macrobiotic low fat diet works while they’re out he gets such a withering look from their server he doesn’t bring it up again. He allows himself to eat red meat and cheese and pastries when they are outside of the apartment, and instead keeps it up at home. Shane looks at himself mournfully, like he's ruined himself and isn't workout harder and making his morning runs longer.

Ilya doesn’t laugh at him. It’s kind of hard to when the tiniest bit of extra weight he has put on is seemingly going to his ass and thighs and Ilya spends all his time wanting to sink his teeth into him.

(It’s even harder to say anything when they finally learn to have sex quietly, succeeding in not messing up the baby’s habit of sleeping a solid six hours at night.)

Sasha and Gaspard, his French… whatever, invite them over for dinner, shortly after Svetlana goes back to Moscow. Sasha flirts mercilessly with Shane as he always does, trying to get under Ilya’s skin, but really only succeeding in making Shane flustered. Gaspard absolutely adores Aleks and spends the whole night chatting easily with Shane in french, saying it’s payback for Sasha’s refusal to learn. Sasha calls Aleks his favorite nephew, and then refuses to touch him when he spits up on Ilya’s shoulder.

Ilya spends a lot of time thinking of his mother’s family, mostly when he’s rocking Aleks at night or feeding him in the early morning quiet while Shane sleeps. Mostly of the memories he has from when they were allowed to leave Moscow to visit his mother’s village. Thinks about how gentle he remembers his Deda being, despite how many medals Stalin had pinned to his uniform in the war. The way he would hold his hand when they would walk to leave flowers on his grandmother’s grave. How happy his mother was, puttering around his garden and singing old pop songs with her sister while they made dinner.

Alexei never went, miserable even as a child, saying it was too boring, that he hated the village, hated their stupid neighbors and Mama's family. They were never allowed to go back after his grandfather died when Ilya was seven, and his mother started to get worse. He wonders if all the goodness that should’ve been in Alexei was saved for this smiley, happy baby, who grins like his Deda did when Ilya would come back with a red mouth after hiding in the raspberry bushes.

They fall into an easy rhythm, when it comes to their son, happy even when he’s not. They’re less worried about appearances, being in a country where hockey is barely a blip on the sports radar and the stress that brings is nonexistent. They don’t fight, even over stupid things.

(Well, that’s a lie. There is, in fact, one fight that Ilya won’t let go of.

“We are not going into a Canadian bar.”

“We are Canadians, no?”

Shane gestured to the infant he currently has in a sling on his front.

“Do you want me to try to explain this? Because people are probably going to ask. And that shit will be on instagram in two seconds.”

“So egotistical, Hollander,” He said, kissing the top of Aleks’ head, “You think everyone is going to know who you are? No one has bothered us once since we got here.”

“...You can literally see a poster with my face on it through the window. We’re not going when he doesn’t even have his Canadian residency.”)

Ilya doesn’t want to leave, really, even though he knows they’ll have to, that leaving is a good thing, a promise their son is becoming theirs, forever.

When Ilya gets a call from an unknown number with a +7 country code, he doesn’t answer it, letting it go to voicemail. They are in the middle of giving Aleks a bath after he somehow managed to poop all the way to his shoulders, something Ilya has learned is somewhat normal, to his horror.

The second time it calls, when he and Shane are on the sofa and Aleks is down for his afternoon nap, he knows he has to answer it, putting it on speaker.

“Where is it?”

Ilya nearly laughs. It’s been two weeks since they’ve arrived, and he’s just now getting to it. He wonders if he was high and forgot that his brother’s son was actually his own.

“Did you buy a burner phone to call me and harass my family?”

“Who gives a fuck,” Alexei hisses, “Where the fuck is it?”

“If you can tell me who you’re talking about, and give me a name, maybe I can help.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Alexei all but screams, “you and that slanty eyed bitch know what I’m talking about!”

“Wow, I’ve never heard that one before.” Shane deadpans, and Ilya chuckles.

“Alexei has never been very creative,” Ilya murmurs, feeling the rage of his brother through the phone, “probably why he was fucking terrible at most things.”

“Speak Russian, you fucking faggot!”

“Are you talking about me, or my husband?” Shane says, easily. His accent isn’t the greatest, but it’s enough to stun Alexei. It’s enough to stun Ilya, really, how quick it all came out of his mouth.

“Your китаёза thinks he’s so fucking smart,” Alexei spits, wrong footed thanks to Shane’s knowledge of the russian language, “I don’t care how many times he takes your cock, he is not family, and this is family business.”

“Our son is his business,” Ilya hisses, “and he’s not chinese, you fucking idiot. If you're going to be racist, at least use the right slur.”

“He is not your son!”

From the other room, Aleks begins to cry, awake from his nap due to the shouting. Shane is up instantly, but he hesitates, looking at Ilya.

“Go on Solnyshko, I’ll take care of this.”

Shane nods, leaving Ilya to deal with his brother.

“He is mine. Has been since the moment you went to the fucking press and claimed he was publicly!”

“That doesn’t mean shit!”

“Well who does he belong to, then? Because according to the Russian government he is mine, and according to Canada he will be Shane’s in the next few months.”

“You think I can’t change that? One word to the press and everyone will know who that bastard mongrel belongs to.”

“Go then,” Ilya shrugs, watching Shane sway with their son through the open door, attempting to calm him, “Tell them. Say you lied. Tell them I adopted a child you wanted to abandon. Because I promise you, it will not go the way you think it will. I will make sure of it.”

Alexei has nothing. Alexei is not their father; he doesn’t have the same connections only a long, storied career can bring. People don’t naturally like Alexei, only wanting around him if there’s something there for them to gain. With Aleks out of the country, he can’t block much of anything, especially if he doesn’t know where they are. Alexei can’t get a visa to enter Canada without the funds to do so, and he doubts they would approve him anyway. There’s nothing else he can say to the press without imploding his own life.

Ilya has the upper hand – he lives an ocean away with a second passport and more money than he knows what to do with. A proper family man, with a husband, kid, dog, and house; a point of pride for his adopted country. Alexei can scream and spit and curse as much as he wants. Threats against Ilya mean nothing now.

“Fuck you and your whore, brother.”

He hangs up, leaving Ilya’s breathing and Aleks cries the only noise in the room. Shane returns to the sitting room now that the yelling has stopped, looking worried.

“My sweet boy,” Ilya croons, frowning at Aleks’ wet lashes, “It’s alright, sweetheart. No tears now.”

Shane sets him into Ilya’s arms and he holds Aleks tights to his chest, his lips pressed to his forehead. Aleks just sniffles, letting out a sad, warbled little whine, headbutting Ilya’s chin.

“Alexei doesn’t know Aleksandr's name,” Ilya says, gazing up at Shane.

“Yeah, I figured that much when he kept calling him it.”

Shane's hands are shaking, and Ilya reaches for him, bringing him in close, trying to soothe him with the arm not holding their child.

“Shane. He doesn’t even have his name. He bought a burner phone so he could scream at us because he wants to intimidate us, and I have him blocked. He has nothing.”

Shane’s eyes widen.

“If he wants to do anything to mess with Aleks’ passport, he can’t do it without knowing his full name.”

“Yes.” Ilya hums gently, bouncing Aleks in his arms. He’s calm now, but wide awake, trying to lift his head on his own.

“I want to talk to your father.”

Shane blinks at him, confused by the subject change.

“Okay…? He’s probably at the office right now.”

Ilya nods. It’s a Thursday, which means David works from home after lunch. He’ll probably be home in around two hours. Maybe a bit sooner, so he can let Anya outside.

“Yuna should be there as well. I’d like her opinion.”

Shane nods. His mom had dealt with Ilya on occasion; When Rolex had wanted Ilya for the ads they shot together after they got married, she’d brokered his deal to match Shane’s using her connections, and had given him advice when he resigned with Nike for more money.

“We should go for groceries, yes? Aleks will like it. Maybe he will fall asleep again, and finish his nap.”

Ilya gets Aleks ready. Their Carrefour isn’t far, and they’re quiet as they pick out everything they need, going off the list Shane made.

By the time they return and put everything away, David has texted Shane back that they can call them anytime, and that both he and Yuna are home.

They answer on the second ring, the both of them on the sofa with Anya.

“Is everything okay? You boys made it seem urgent.”

“It is fine, here. But..."

Shane trails off, looking at Ilya.

"I have decided I want Aleks to be a Hollander.”

There’s a beat of silence, where both Yuna and David seem stunned.

“Wow,” David breathes, “I… I would be honored, really.”

“Yes. Well.” Ilya straightens in his seat, “I think I would like us both to be. Me and Aleks.”

Yuna and David share a look. Shane stares at Ilya.

“Oh sweetheart. Are you sure?”

“I know I didn’t change when we got married, because it was complicated. And I don’t think I would like to do it publicly – I could still be Ilya Rozanov for Hockey, yes? I think I need to be for company contacts.”

“The branding of it,” Yuna supplies, “is important. Not that things haven’t changed before, but you are recognizable, as Rozanov.”

“Yes. But for private. I have looked, and I will have to pay fee, now, since we have been married for over 90 days. And he will have to take my name when we get him his citizenship, so we should wait. But when Shane adopts him, I think we should both make the change.”

“Ilya…”

Shane’s eyes are wet when he looks at him through his own blurry eyes, and he presses their lips together in a quick kiss. He turns back to David and Yuna, and smiles.

“My name gave me hockey, yes? My father’s influence got me coaches, tryouts, and whatever else. Got me MLH. But you have given me Shane. I would not be here, if it wasn’t for him. Aleks would not, either. This is my family. My husband, and our baby boy, our parents… his grandparents.”

“Kiddo,” David says, his voice warm, “I would love it. We’d love it. If my dad was still around, he’d love it. You don’t have to explain yourself.”

Ilya nods, staring at Aleks in his arms. He smiles up at him, looking so much like Ilya as a child that it’s almost painful.

“Okay,” Yuna says, her voice wet, “No more of this. No more crying. How is my baby? Is he still sleeping six hours in the night? Shane had awful sleep regression around the time that he hit the three month mark.”

Ilya curls himself and their son into his husband's side, and lets Shane take over the conversation.

I know I should call but I also know it’s like 2am there and you’re probably asleep but will want to hear this asap.

Your appointment at the embassy is at 12:35pm Tuesday. All three of you need to go, and you’ll need all of your passports plus Aleksandr’s translated birth cert. His final citizenship hearing has been set for the end of September, so you might have to talk to the team to get out of some games in the preseason. I’ll leave that up to you and your agent to deal with since I don’t know if you’ve told them yet.

No word on Shane’s adoption hearing, but this is probably more important. You can call me normal office hours if you need any clarifications.

Congrats guys!

They go to their appointment, wait in an uncomfortable waiting room, and pretend the receptionist isn’t staring at them. Get called back, hand over their paperwork to another person who seems slightly flustered by their presence, and she disappears with it.

(There’s a poster of a barely legal Shane on the wall in full Montreal gear, with a cheesy slogan promoting diversity as one of Canada’s biggest strengths. Judging by how everyone has seemingly stopped to stare at the three of them, he’s shocked Shane hasn’t been asked to sign it.)

They wait another twenty minutes before she returns. She shows them the visa that has been stuck to Aleks passport, along with the paperwork that they must also present to the border security officer when they arrive. Since they don’t have a flight home yet, there is also additional paperwork, on the off chance they have to transit through America or the UK to get back. They have a 30 day window to return from the visa being issued, and once Aleks enters, he isn’t allowed to leave until he receives his citizenship and own Canadian passport.

“That is it?” Ilya asks, and she laughs.

“I can make it more complicated if you would like?”

“No, this is fine.”

She grins, “Well, congratulations to you two, on the baby. And I wish you luck for the next season.”

Then she bends down, making eye contact with Aleks in his stroller. He takes her fingers, babbling, and she shakes his little hand with a smile.

“And congratulations to you, sweetheart, we are always very excited for another new Canadian to join us.”

Just like that they are out and in the sunshine, all the paperwork they need to bring their baby home in a folder in his diaper bag.

Ilya turns to Shane, grinning. They’re both smiling like idiots. Ilya doesn’t know if he’s ever been this happy.

“There is one thing we have to do now, yes?”

“I can’t believe we’re going to pay nine euros for a fucking Molson’s.”

Ilya laughs around his bottle, delighted. The place is empty - to be expected, for a sports bar at 2:30pm when there’s no sports actively in season - and the only other occupants are a group of American tourists with thick southern accents he can hear all the way across the bar, drinking beer and eating burgers.

“At least they have Canada Dry for the boring Canadian."

He’s not wrong. It took Shane two days to decide European ginger ale is too herbal and frankly kinda gross. And then complain about it. Loudly.

“Yeah, well, I’m surprised you’re not stuffing your face with junk food already.”

Ilya makes a face, “I do not trust the French to know how to make Poutine. It does not even say gravy, it says sauce. What does it even mean?”

“it means find something else. I’ve eaten enough fats and carbs over the last three weeks to last me a lifetime.”

Ilya waves him off. On the muted TV screen to Shane’s left, they watch a younger version of Shane in Game Four of Montreal’s playoff series against Chicago. Aleks is tucked into his elbow, greedily drinking down his own bottle. He shifts his little body easily as he finishes and Metros go up 4-2, adjusting his grip on his chest to burp him.

Their server comes back and Ilya orders some nightmare of a thing called ‘The Grand Canadian’ which seems to be a mix of five different types of fried foods plus nachos. He can feel Shane judging him. Worth it.

Suddenly, Shane’s phone is out, filming him, a grin creeping onto his face.

“What? You want me to get in trouble with the Cen’s nutritionist?”

Shane laughs, shaking his head.

“No. I just realized what's on the wall and you clearly haven't, and I need to get footage of you when you realize what you’re sitting under.”

Ilya frowns, before tilting his head up and back against the booth seat, taking in the blue and white signed jersey above his head.

“Pike?” He says, incredulous, “How terrible do you have to be to have Hayden Pike’s sweater on your wall?!”

Shane laughs, adjusting his single handed grip on Aleks while he records with the other.

“Hayd will enjoy this.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, pulling a face. Aleks began to babble, in Shane’s arms, reaching for Ilya. Without hesitating Ilya takes him, curling around him and tucking his head into his shoulder.

“I will send them mine, when we get home, then we will have something the French can admire,” He murmurs, conspiring with Aleks, “Not something they got on discount because they need things to hang on their walls. Then when you get drafted in 17 years, Zaychik, they can hang us up next to each other, and say this is our booth.”

Aleks just beams at him, sweet as can be, before promptly throwing up a full bottle of formula down Ilya’s front.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

Totally lied, this is probably gonna have five parts now. We're stuck with this baby until their little one gets a new passport. Also in Shane POV since, you know, it's his parents meeting their baby.

My brain currently feels like it's going to explode due to a headache so if their are any mistakes I'm sorry, I'll come back and fix them tomorrow.

…Buddy

Shane

Where the hell did you get that kid in the video?

Seriously Shane.

SHANE

Where did you two get a fucking KID?

You can’t just send me that shit and then ignore your phone!

Fuck.

Where even are you??? That is not Canada.

I can’t believe you two adopted a baby without telling us first. Jackie is losing it right now. The kids are going to go nuts when they meet their cousin

Is this why you guys fucked off and made us do the camps this year? And why you guys have the SUV parked in our garage? Jackie said you guys were all weird when you came over and told her you needed to catch a flight, but I didn’t ask when I got home and saw

Like this has to be the ‘family emergency’ right

????

Do you need any hand me downs? Please get some of this shit out of my basement

we have so many toys and clothes thanks to the kids and Jackie won’t get rid of any of it.

…

It’s along story

Along

A LONG

If you want you can come pick us up from YUL in two days so we can get my car I can explain.

I promise the secrecy will also make sense.

Also anything you have we will gladly take. We got a bunch of clothes but we still probably need more. I remember Amber having way more than we have for Aleksandr.

Jackie just shrieked ALEKSANDR at the top of her lungs and scared the shit out of Arthur now he’s crying jesus

Of course Bud. lmk when you come in?

Jackie says she’ll go through everything tonight and get it washed and stuff so it’s good for him. We have bouncy chairs and shit too if you want, she’s gonna clean them up and get batteries.

she wants to know if I should grab a car seat? Like you’ll probably need one, since I’m guessing you don’t have one with you. Apparently they expire?? And the ones we had were trashed.

Nah, there’s one in the car, already installed. We’ll be in at 12:45 from Paris.

Not even surprised lmao. See then you bud.

The three of them go through passport control all at once, hastily corralled into the line at the end of the immigration counter. All their passports are put down together– Shane’s Canadian, Ilya’s Russian and Canadian, and Aleks’ Russian on top, the confirmation of his citizenship hearing and translated birth certificate tucked into the same page as his residency visa – as Shane’s stomach is in anxious knots.

The border security officer doesn’t even look at them, going through Aleks’ passport first, reading through the paperwork with a frown. She scans his passport, then sets it aside, before going for Shane and Ilya’s.

When she finally looks up to make eye contact with Shane, she nearly drops everything in her hands.

The officer chirps a loud ‘Welcome home!’ as she waves them through, barely looking at anything but Aleks leaning against Ilya’s chest with wide eyes. It’s been that way since they boarded their flight yesterday, Aleks in Shane’s lap in his business class seat. At one point a woman in a row ahead of them fully turned around with her ipad in an attempt to get a photo of Aleks and was clearly irritated he had been handed off and was napping with Ilya with his partition up, inaccessible to her.

“All the stress for that,” Ilya mumbles, grinning, and Shane laughs, the tension easing from his shoulders, “How long until he’s on the internet you think?”

“I give it ten minutes.”

While they’re waiting for their luggage Shane begins to wonder how hard it would be to convince Ilya to buy a place in Paris. While the privacy of his cottage is what he usually prefers, there was something about being anonymous in a city that felt more freeing in certain ways. They were recognized a grand total of once, by a group of teenage boys from Norway, who insisted they wouldn’t put any pictures out or tell anyone about Aleks and had kept their word. They got into habits and routines, without having to look over their shoulders. Shane could take the baby to the park and talk with the other parents without anyone asking how the season was going or trying to take pictures. Ilya and Aleks could run for coffee and breakfast and the worst thing that would happen is the bakery on the corner would slip them an extra of the apricot pastries that had become Shane’s favorite and he’d feel obligated to eat it. He knows he’s going to miss it, especially when people start finding out and have opinions the same why they had opinions on their marriage.

Hayden is waiting at arrivals, brightly colored fabric clutched in one hand. He hugs Shane, Aleks sandwiched between them.

“Jesus. That’s a baby.”

“Well I hope you’d recognize one,” Ilya says as he hugs him, “You have eighteen of them.”

Hayden doesn't even comment, staring at Aleks.

“Dude,” Hayden says, a little bit awed, “Can I like…?”

Hayden makes grabby hands. Shane eases Aleks into his arms, and Hayden easily situates him, muscle memory kicking in.

Aleks just chews on his fist, big eyes staring up at Hayden.

“He’s basically Ilya if he was Asian. What the f-”

“Pike.”

Hayden grins, bouncing Aleks. Shane can feel his skin crawling as he notices the stare down they’re getting from random travelers.

“We should go.”

“Oh! Yeah. Uh, just.”

Hayden shakes out the fabric in his hand, easing one of Aleks arms into it.

“Jackie insisted I bring him Arthur's old jacket, because it's raining. She didn't know if you guys would have anything like that for him and it is kinda chilly out right now.”

Ilya frowns.

“It is rainbow?”

Hayden makes a face at him.

“Shut up, you’re a rainbow.”

“I mean, yes, I am,” Ilya grins, “There was very big news story about it. Many people were mad at you.”

Hayden rolls his eyes at Ilya, swapping Aleks from one arm to the other and easing his other arm into the jacket, pulling up the hood.

“Come on, Bubs,” Hayden says to Aleks, kissing his forehead, “Lets go see Auntie Jackie and all your cousins.”

Klaraaaaaaa @KlaraRose_ 37m Okay but I just got back from my grad trip to Switzerland and Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were on my flight from Paris with a WHOLE ASS BABY.

Klaraaaaaaa @KlaraRose_ 35m Like they were in business and I was in premium economy but it was them. They were passing the baby back and forth and at one point Ilya was walking up and down the aisle with him(?) because he was fussy (bc he’s like a BABY baby, like few months old, didn’t cry the whole flight tho!)

Klaraaaaaaa @KlaraRose_ 33m Also know it was them bc FAs were totally talking about it when I went up to ask if I could get water to take my meds and one of them was super bitter, apparently she gave Ilya her number on a Boston to Ottawa flight yeaaaars ago and he never called her lmao

Shane is unsurprised the cottage is lit up and his parents car is in his driveway when they get home.

It’s close to 8:30 by the time they arrive, having extracted themselves from the Pike’s and made the drive later than they thought they would. Jackie had taken Aleks out of their arms and refused to give him back, not to mention the kids were absolutely thrilled at having a baby to play with. Aleks had thankfully lapped up the attention, lying propped up a nursing pillow on a playmat and allowing himself to be poked and prodded by various children with a smile.

Hayden had spent a lot of time muttering under his breath to Shane he was thankful for the vasectomy.

Ilya had called his parents on their drive over, assuring them that they didn’t need to come, that they could arrange something for tomorrow. They both were exhausted, and knew that since Aleks’ schedule was all messed up, they’d spend the night trying to fix it. Yuna had agreed, though it seemed to come too easily, with too little disappointment.

Anya darts out the front door as soon as the car is parked, Ilya out of the car and on his knees as she excitably jumps all over him. Shane laughs, leaving all their stuff in the car along with the trunk full of baby things that Jackie gave them, unlatching the car seat from its base.

He kicks off his shoes once he hits the entryway and sets Aleks down, unhooking him and pulling him out. He checks his diaper and makes a face; definitely wet.

His mom ignores them both, though Shane can’t really blame her, her eyes welling up with tears as she sees Aleks in his arms.

“Hello sweetheart,” She murmurs, her hand ghosting down Aleks’ back. Shane eases him into the cradle of her arms and she laughs, her eyes wet, “Oh look at you. You are a Rozanov, aren’t you? You’re gonna be so handsome when you get big.”

Ilya wraps himself around Shane from behind, both of them watching Yuna coo over the baby. Anya jumps at Shane, paws on his stomach, and he scratches her behind the ears.

“You guys didn’t have to come. I get it, but it’s fine mom, really.”

She waves him off, not really paying attention, too focused on snuggling Aleks.

“After all that traveling we figured we’d spend the night. Help you with this little one.”

“It’s fine. We can manage, come on.”

“Sweetheart,” Yuna says seriously, “You are not going to fix the baby’s jetlag in one day, and it makes everything so much worse when you are exhausted too. Me and your dad can deal with it tonight while you guys sleep, okay?”

“We can work in shifts. We’ve been doing that.”

“We traveled with you when you were this young. We know how it works,” Yuna’s expression makes it very obvious she thinks Shane’s being difficult for no reason, “I took you to Japan on my own once, because your dad couldn’t get off work and your grandparents went ahead. You were awful, okay? It’s the only time you made me cry when you were that young. This is gonna suck, maybe worse than it did for me because you were a toddler then and he’s still a baby. Just let us do this.”

Ilya laughs, muffling it against Shane’s shoulder.

“Sorry, I can’t imagine Shane being terrible even as a little boy.”

“The only time he was terrible,” Yuna grins, “And judging from how you talk about this one, it's probably going to be the same.”

Shane relents.

“Fine. Come on, he needs to be changed. Is Dad in the kitchen?”

“Yeah, chicken piccata. We have chickpea pasta for you, don’t worry.”

Ilya blows a raspberry, his chin still hooked over Shane’s shoulder.

“He eats normal pasta now. Paris has made his diet terrible,” Ilya chirps happily, “Now he can get dad body and no one cares because they are too distracted by our baby being so cute.”

“Ilya-”

“It is okay, I like the dad body.” he murmurs, kissing Shane’s cheek before he breaks loose from Ilya’s arms.

He takes Aleks back and heads towards the nursery, not commenting.

He knows it’s fine; he’s supposed to be bulking for the season anyway, and although the type of stuff they were eating in Paris is not the type of stuff anyone would say is good for bulking outside of maybe the steak, it’ll be fine once he goes back on his normal diet and starts working out at a normal rate. He hasn’t even gained weight anywhere weird, really, mostly his legs, glutes and maybe chest.

It’s fine. He’s getting older, and has something more important to worry about now anyway.

He flicks on the switch to Aleks’ room, turning him slightly so he can look, feeling silly because he knows the baby can’t see more than a few inches from his face.

“What do you think, huh?”

Aleks babbles unintelligible nonsense, and Shane chuckles.

“Good, Marie will be happy to know you approve of her work.”

He eases Aleks down onto the changing pad, making quick work of his wet diaper. He then changes him out of his dirty outfit and into one of the clean sleepers in the dresser while he has him stripped down, knowing he’ll probably need to be changed for bed soon anyway. They can give him a bath tomorrow. He’s so tired that right now all Shane wants is to eat his dad’s cooking, feed his son a bottle and fall into bed, there's no way he's setting up a baby tub.

When he picks him up, his mom is in the doorway, watching.

“You want him back?”

Yuna shakes her head, then thinks better of it.

“Well, yes. But-”

Shane laughs, and hands him over.

“I can’t… it’s incredible that he’s here,” She kisses Aleks’ forehead, “Was it hard, getting in?”

“It was pretty standard. Border security was more stunned that it was us, I think. I was so nervous about something going wrong I forgot how people are, sometimes, with me and Ilya. In France no one noticed except for three Scandinavian guys that were on holiday.”

“It must’ve been nice.”

“It was. When we were waiting Nuzhat said we should enjoy being parents someplace no one knows us, and she was right. I’m glad we got that, really.”

Ilya bursts into the room suddenly, interrupting.

“Do we have the ah,” Ilya frowns, thinking, "Allergy medicine? For Aleks?”

“I think so, yeah. It’s probably in the master bathroom with all the other stuff I got him.”

“Good. I have realized Anya must meet her sibling and do not want anything bad to happen.”

Yuna laughs, handing the baby over.

“My dad-”

“David is busy, he can cuddle his grandson when he is not standing over hot stove, yes?”

And then Ilya is gone.

Shane pauses, plucking the heavy quilt hanging over the foot of the crib before the two of them follow Ilya back to the center of the house. Shane greets his father and Ilya breezes right past him with a giggling Aleks, making David laugh.

“He said this was the most important person for him to meet,” David explains, shrugging.

Ilya sits on the floor of their sitting room before situating Aleks in his lap, calling for Anya, who trots over happily.

Anya sniffs around him for a bit, confused by this tiny human. She goes back to her bed in the corner and brings him a toy and waits for him to pick it up, tail wiggling. When Aleks does nothing but chew on Ilya's fingers, she stares at Ilya instead, her head tilted.

“I think he is too small for that, sweetheart,” he says, scratching her behind the ears, “maybe in a few months he can play.”

Anya flops on her side, and Ilya scratches her belly. Ilya then takes Aleks’ hand and mimics him doing the same, making him giggle. Anya seems to appreciate it too; as she rolls over onto her feet, she licks Aleks’ cheek, before wandering off.

“He’s gotten the seal of approval,” David says, “Now can we eat?”

Shane is completely unsurprised his dad ends up eating with one hand, the baby held with the other arm. Even when Ilya finishes and insists he can take him, he refuses.

After they finish and the kitchen is clean, Shane takes the quilt he had grabbed from the crib - the one Ilya had found online and insisted on, dark green on one side and cream and patterned in realistic drawings of mallards, loons, and canadian geese on the other - and spreads it on the sitting room floor once they’re done. Aleks lies on his front, working on lifting his head up, as the four of them talk about their time in Paris and what they missed at home, keeping an eye on him, Anya watching from her corner of the sofa.

Shane has to swallow down the lump that forms in his throat multiple times at how it feels, sprawled on the floor with his Dad and his baby, his husband stroking their dog as his mother goes on about some energy drink deal she heard Ottawa is getting involved in and what they’re going to do with their kid when the season picks back up.

“I think I’m gonna retire.”

Shane just blinks at his dad, not sure if he heard right.

“I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, anyway,” he explains, his fingers curled around Aleks’ tiny ones, “But with this little guy around now, I think it’s right. And you know I’d be happy to be with him when you can’t, if you want?”

“Of course we’d want that, David,” Ilya interjects, “are you serious?”

“I mean, you could get a nanny too, or regular childcare. Though I suppose you might want to have him go into some sort of childcare maybe once a week anyway, for socialization with other kids.”

“Why wouldn’t we want you to look after him over a nanny, dad?”

David looks a little shocked that they so easily agreed to it.

“Well, okay. That’d be great. I was thinking, since I spoke to you mostly in French when you were young, and I assume you’d want him to learn, so I can do that for him. We did have you in an immersion school after, which is where you really learned, but every bit helps.”

“Yeah, I mean, we’ll probably do the same with French and Russian.”

“I don’t know Russian, obviously, but I’d assume there are a few Russian schools too, especially with embassy workers around.”

“We’ve looked into one or two that had a children’s program one day a week,” Shane explains, “Though its start is at three years old I think? But that makes sense, I guess. No use teaching a second or third language if you can’t really speak anything at all. And we both will probably speak Russian to him at home, anyway. Having you use French with him would be perfect.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Shane sees his mother take Ilya’s hand, moving close.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

When Shane turns his head to look at Ilya's face, Ilya looks like he might cry.

“Is okay,” Ilya rubs his free hand across his eyes, “Is… I am tired, and feeling… sentimental?”

“Baby?” Shane tilts his head, switching to Russian, “What’s really wrong? Is something bothering you about this?”

“It’s nothing, I’m happy your dad wants to look after him. It honestly makes me feel better, having him over anyone else. It’s stupid. I just… I wish Mama was here, with Aleksandr and-” Ilya shook his head.

Shane rested his head on Ilya’s knee, gazing up at him sympathetically.

“Sweetheart...”

Ilya took a deep breath, slowly exhaling, trying to calm down.

“Okay, we aren’t going to be sad over this. Not now. Your dad is going to retire and look after our baby and teach him French with a horrible accent. And we will all be Hollanders and people will think I am boring and probably Dutch for the rest of my life.”

Shane shoots him an unimpressed look.

“You're too pretty for them to think you’re Dutch. And you don't know how to ride a bike anyway.”

Ilya snorts, and doesn’t even call him out on the terrible joke.

They try to stay up as much as they can despite their parents' insistence it’s fine for them to head to bed, the both of them desperate to get back to their normal sleep and workout schedule. It’s only when Ilya falls asleep during Aleks' bedtime feeding, they finally get told off.

“Alright,” Yuna interjects, plucking Aleks from Ilya’s arms along with the bottle, “to bed with the both of you. We’ve got this one.”

Ilya showers while Shane dives face first into their bed. It feels like heaven, after nearly a month of being somewhere else, the sheets not being right and the mattress too soft.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees the bassinet, the one he and Ilya almost killed each other over while building.

He feels itchy and uncomfortable, suddenly, like he hadn’t taken up Jackie’s offer to let him shower in their guest bath after the plane this morning. Shane sits on the edge of the bed, staring at it, and feels the phantom weight the three month old he should be holding against his chest, the one who’s in his sitting room right now, probably watching the news with his parents.

“You are upset.”

He shrugs, as Ilya appears in front of him, wearing nothing but a towel, hair wet.

“I’m not… upset, I would never say that.”

Ilya thumbs one of the dark circles under his eyes, frowning.

“She means well,” Shane says, leaning into Ilya’s touch, “And honestly she is right. But…”

“It’s his first night home.”

“Yeah. And I know he’s okay, he’s gonna just in his room, literally next to us, and he’s spent the last three weeks in another bedroom and two and a half months before that not even in the same continent as us and I still–”

Shane shrugs. Ilya sits next to him, kissing his shoulder through his t-shirt. Then his neck, cheek, and finally landing on his lips.

“It is weird, to miss him?”

Ilya shakes his head.

“I think it would be strange not to.”

Then Ilya kisses him again.

“We are not having sex when my parents are down the hall and have a baby monitor to the nursery,” Shane murmurs against his mouth after a few minutes. Ilya pulls away to come back, pressing their foreheads together.

“Sweetheart, I am so tired I don’t even know if I could get it up.”

Shane lets out a shocked bark of laughter.

“Wow.”

Ilya pulls a face, before kissing him again, chaste.

“We have a child now, I do not need to be romantic anymore. You are stuck with me anyway.”

The dim under cabinet lighting is on in the kitchen, when Shane quietly leaves their bedroom, ready for his morning run. He hesitates for only a second before he follows it.

The only other light is the predawn pink glow that comes from the treeline over the lake. The bottle maker is switched on and Shane turns it off as he walks by and down the three steps into the sitting room.

“How was he last night?”

David, curled over his grandson on the edge of the sofa, shrugs, before kissing Aleks’ hair.

“Only woke up once, and your mom got him back down quick enough after a diaper change and a bit of a walk around the house. You said he usually takes a bottle at six, but he was making noise earlier and five isn’t too far off.”

Shane hums in agreement. Aleks tilts his head back at the noise, his mouth still sucking away at his bottle. When his eyes meet Shane’s they crinkle in such a way that he knows he’s smiling at him around his full mouth.

Shane moves to the sofa with them both, his run forgotten. They sit, just watching Aleks, until the rattle of an empty bottle interrupts the stillness of the room.

“I can do it.”

David hands him over to Shane easily, smiling as he watches him situate Aleks and burp him. When he’s done he cuddles Aleks against his chest the way he knows he likes, his head tucked into Shane’s shoulder.

“How is it bud?”

Shane thumbs the shell of his son’s ear as Aleks snuffles against his neck, sleepy.

“Incredible.”

David chuckles.

“These things usually are.”

Shane stares out the windows overlooking the lake. Aleks’ cheek is warm against his own.

“I didn’t… I mean, we had talked, and I knew we wanted kids but…”

“It doesn’t feel real?”

Shane nods his head. Aleks let out a grunt at being jossled, and Shane shushes him, patting his bottom.

“Wait until he’s holding his baby in front of you, kiddo. Then it’ll really feel like something.”

Shane smiles, thumb rubbing gentle circles on Aleks’ back, his breathing even in sleep.

“You know, I didn’t want to bring this up in front of Ilya, and you both were so tired last night anyway, but… did his brother find out yet?”

Shane nods.

“He called us when we were in Paris and he was pissed. But it felt… I dunno. Weird. Like he was panicking. Like he didn’t consider the option that we could get to Aleks before him, or would even want to. I could tell he didn’t expect that Irina would be okay with us having her baby, or be mad at him for going to the press. Or that we’d be able to figure everything out so fast, with immigration and the lawyers, thanks to Svetlana and Dima and Nuzhat.”

Shane pauses, unsure of telling his father the thing his brain kept coming back to, when he thinks about the last few months.

“I think Alexei did this on purpose. It just… backfired on him, and we got to keep Aleksandr, instead of Alexei using him.”

David’s eyebrows raise.

“I mean, I don’t know,” Shane explains, “not for sure, or anything. But from everything I’ve heard about him, and what little Ilya let me see of how he was before his dad died, plus the way Svetlana said Irina acted when we gave her money and stuff, I’m pretty sure. He thinks he’s smarter than he is, and I can see this as a scheme he thought would make him money. He didn’t actually think Ilya would do anything if he told the press it was Ilya’s, he just figured that would get his attention so he’d contact him and then could scam money out of him.

“He found Irina and apparently he talked about Ilya in a way that convinced her that it was a massive payday, having a baby with someone like him, and she believed him. Ilya’s got a trust for his niece that’s around a quarter million US dollars, which would go pretty far in Russia, but Alexei can’t access it, only Katya can have it when she hits 18. And he basically paid for everything for her before. He adored her, really, and was the only member of his family he seemed to, besides his mom. I know Ilya would fight it, but eventually give in, if there was another kid, and Alexei got that too. He knows Ilya would care about another niece or nephew, especially if he thought it looked-”

Shane closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“If he looked like you.”

Shane nodded. He rubbed his cheek against Aleks’, thinking.

“Are you okay, bud?”

“I don’t know. I’m mostly angry, but also like… sad? Like okay, he tried to turn Aleks into a pawn to get money out of us, and that makes me furious, of course it does, but it didn’t work, so what does it even matter? Why does it matter that his birth parents were greedy and didn’t care about him? He’s ours. I get to be his dad and Ilya is so good at being his Papa already. Me and Ilya get to teach him to skate, and he’s gonna have so many aunts and uncles, between the team and Hayd and Jackie and Cliff and some of the WAGS. He’s gonna get to go to Ottawa games with you and mom and he’s going to come here every summer and swim in the lake and we get to watch him grow up –”

Shane’s voice cracks and he swallows around the lump in his throat. His eyes are wet but at the moment all he can feel is the blind rage that’s taken up space in his chest.

“Shane.”

“He’s the most important thing in the world to us and he was just going to be thrown away for fucking money by the people that birthed him. They were going to use him against Ilya until they couldn’t anymore and he’s just a baby, so many bad things could’ve happened to him–”

“Shane,” David cupped the back of his head, making him turn to look at him, “He’s here, okay? That didn’t happen. He’s safe. He’s yours. No one can take him from Ilya, and in a few months, when they sort everything, it’ll be the same for you. Okay? Nothing’s gonna touch him.”

Shane nods, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

“Everything is good, kiddo. Thinking about all the bad things that could’ve happened but didn't will do nothing but drive you crazy.”

Shane takes another deep breath. Aleks smacks his lips against his neck, shifting and butting his forehead against his jaw.

“Yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t… I’m okay. We’re okay.”

David squeezes the back of his neck before letting go, standing up from the sofa.

“Go back to bed, yeah? That’s best for everyone I think. You’re probably still exhausted. They say you need to sleep when your baby sleeps for a reason.”

Shane stands, trying not to wake Aleks up. He follows his father up and towards the bedrooms, splitting in opposite directions.

Ilya is sprawled on his back, one arm flung across Shane’s side of the mattress and a knee bent at an awkward angle. He shifts Aleks in his arms and lays him across Ilya’s chest so he can tug his running shorts and compression shirt and socks off. Instantly the arm that is tucked into his side wraps around Aleks, one eye cracking open to look at Shane.

“No run?”

Shane curls back up into bed and tucks his head into Ilya’s shoulder, his arm sliding around his waist. He watches his son sleep on his husband’s bare chest.

“No. Here is more important.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

They haven’t told the team yet.

Between summer training, brand meetings, and meetings with their adoption lawyers and immigration, they have a baby to take care of. Kids take up so much time, and babies require so much attention. It makes sense.

Yuna isn’t happy about it, and Farah agrees with her. Ilya knows they’re making sense – their front office will want to be clued in and make a media strategy for whatever response they get when they do announce Aleks to the world - but part of Ilya is annoyed that they require a ‘media strategy’ when it comes to fatherhood when no one else does.

It also means that the team will find out, and Ilya knows that will mean everyone will want to meet Aleks. He wants that, of course he does, but he also just wants to stay in this little bubble of the three of them for a bit longer. Everything was so stressful for those first weeks, and he wants just him and Shane and Aleks and Anya, going for walks and playing in the lake and rolling around on the floor during tummy time while Shane makes dinner.

Aleks gets sick for the first time and it’s honestly nerve wracking. It’s just a bad cold - Aleks is absolutely miserable, clingy and too warm with fever and refusing to eat properly but not in any real danger - but Ilya ends up deep diving on everything that can go wrong with a baby that young and without any sort of immunizations and he nearly has a panic attack.

It’s Shane that talks him down, though he’s not sure Shane isn’t sick of him and the way he’s making the situation more stressful. Baby’s get sick. Their son got sick even though they tried to keep him away from germs as much as they could, probably from Shane and Ilya themselves. They naturally interact with so many various strangers throughout the day thanks to their line of work, and probably brought something home that was too much for Aleks’ immune system. Maybe they shouldn’t be so intent on keeping Aleks away from people.

When the preseason schedule comes out, he knows they’re running on borrowed time. Thankfully Aleks’ citizenship hearing doesn’t interfere with any preseason matches; they’ll have their first game the day before, Buffalo at home, then Aleks gets his passport, and then two days after they’re off to Boston. The first time they’ll be away from Aleks for more than a few hours.

Ilya is dreading it.

Cliff facetimes him, that night, and he answers without thinking, tired with a cranky baby on his shoulder. Aleks had missed his afternoon nap due to a doctor's appointment and the round of shots he needed at four months old. He had apparently viewed Shane holding him while they stuck needles in his little thighs as a betrayal of the highest caliber and wanted only Ilya all day. He could tell it broke Shane’s heart, a little, even though they knew he’d be over it by the time he woke up the next morning.

In hindsight, he probably should’ve warned Cliff about the whole becoming a dad thing.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Buh?” Aleks lifts his head off Ilya’s shoulder, blinking at the phone with his sweaty curls plastered to his forehead.

“A baby, Marly, don’t swear in front of him.”

“Where the fu-” Cliff gnashes his teeth, stopping himself from swearing, “Where did you get a baby Roz?”

Shane is suddenly above Ilya, standing behind the couch, back from his shower and fully dressed.

“Cliff.”

“Hollander.” Cliff offers him a salute, and Shane easily takes Aleks into his arms from above.

“Come’re Buns, Let’s leave Uncle Marly and Papa to have a talk.”

“Uncle Marly,” Cliff mutters, “Jesus Christ. And Buns? What the fuck?”

Ilya shrugs.

“I call him Zaychik,and if you translate, it means little bunny. So Shane calls him bunny, but then shortens it, too.”

Cliff blinks at him like he's never seen him before in his life.

“Fuck, Rozy,” Cliff laughs, “You guys are full fucking domestic. You have a fucking kid.”

“I mean, yes. I am very married and boring,” Ilya watches as Shane moves around their kitchen, Aleks held with one arm, “Aleks is from Russia. It has been… complicated, because we did not know we would be adopting him. So we decided to tell no one, except lawyers and family, until he has Canadian passport. We will probably tell the team next.”

Cliff raises his eyebrows at him.

“He is my brother’s. Aleks is not a child he had with his wife, so,” Ilya shrugs, “He does not care about him. Is more complicated, but that is why we have him.”

Cliff winces.

“Shit, Roz. That’s rough.”

“Yes. Does not matter now, he is our son. For once it is good he was a piece of shit, because we got Aleks,” Ilya can’t help his smile, “I get to be his Papa.”

Cliff shakes his head, his face incredibly fond.

“Man, Hollander’s always had you wrapped around his finger, but that kid's going to have you ten times worse. Christ.”

The rest of the conversation switches to the preseason, if the Cens are going to come out with the boys after like usual, and if Aleks will be there. It’s easy, the way it always has been with Cliff, and Ilya wonders if it might be okay to let them all know about their baby.

“Does this mean I can finally tell Rose?” Shane asks, as they talk about it when they have dinner that night. For once they’re in the sitting room instead of at the dining table, Aleks having fallen asleep in his swing.

Ilya pauses, fork half way to his mouth with a bewildered look on his face.

“You haven’t already?”

Shane freezes.

“You said we should hold out? And I agreed?”

“With our team, Shane! We agreed about the team since none of them can keep anything quiet. Not one of your best friends!”

“Oh. Well… oops?”

“Yeah,” Ilya laughs, “Oops.”

(Shane does call her later, when Aleks wakes up from his too late nap and thinks it’s time to party even though it’s 10pm. She coos over his baby like everyone does, then laughs when he explains why she’s finding out then instead of a months earlier.

“I knew already, babe. Svet sent me pictures and everything this summer. I figured you were doing the whole quiet until it’s public thing and then I’d act surprised.”

“...Since when do you talk to Svetlana?”

She just smirks.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”)

A few days later, Bood spams the group chat at midnight to make plans for a barbecue to welcome the newbies and get everyone together before the preseason training camp starts. After how things went with Cliff and Rose, it seems the perfect time to let them all meet Aleks.

Of course, Ilya decides he has to have fun with it.

“I can’t believe we are doing this.”

Ilya shrugs, taking Aleks from his car seat.

“Bood said kids are welcome.”

“I know, but we still should maybe give them a heads up.”

“More fun this way.”

And it is. They’d shown up early enough that there's almost no one there. When Ilya lets himself into the backyard, Aleks in his sling on his front, everyone goes quiet.

“I’m sorry, am I hallucinating?” Harris breaks the silence, “did someone put acid in the margs you made Jesse?” He turns to one of the rookies Ilya is embarrassed to admit he doesn’t know, though he’s pretty sure he’s the goalie they got from Dartmouth? Either way he looks a whole lot more flustered than he should.

“No, it is our baby. It is true, what you see,” Ilya takes a deep, dramatic breath, “I got Shane pregnant.”

Everyone stares in disbelief.

“Jesus Christ Ilya.” Shane snaps. He takes Aleks away from him in a huff, clearly so annoyed he doesn’t think he deserves possession of their baby.

“Okay, okay, I did not get my husband pregnant, though I have tried before-”

“Stop, Roz, oh my god! No one needs that mental image.”

“But this is actually legit?” Troy asks, looking between the three of them, “That’s like… your baby?”

Shane’s annoyed expression softens.

“Yeah. I mean, he won’t be legally mine for probably six or seven months because of adoption laws and stuff, but then he’ll be a Hollander. Aleksandr’s our son.”

It feels like a bomb has gone off.

Everyone is suddenly talking all at once, congratulating them and cooing and squealing and insisting on holding him. The WAGs get to him first and Cassie and Caitlin won't let him down; eventually Bood gets his hands on him and baby talks his way through explaining exactly what he’s doing with his smoker set up while checking his brisket. As soon as he’s deposited into Ilya’s arms again Troy takes him, all so Harris can take a million photos as he and Troy roll around with Chiron in the grass. They realise very quickly after he arrives that Aleks absolutely adores Wyatt, refusing to leave his arms even when Shane tries to take him for a diaper change.

By the time everyone shows up, goes through their own cycle of disbelief and demands to have the baby, Ilya or Shane haven’t properly held their son in what feels like hours.

“Now he has a million uncles to spoil him I guess,” Shane murmurs, and Ilya laughs.

When Aleks starts whining and Shane goes upstairs to settle him for a nap in one of the guest rooms, Ilya gets cornered.

“I can’t believe this happened and you didn’t tell us shit, dude.”

Ilya winces at Troy. Shane and Yuna both told him this would happen, that the team might be annoyed about not being let in on the secret.

“It was very sudden. He still is not Canadian, so I worry.”

“How is he not Canadian? Isn’t he like… a surrogate situation? Kid’s basically you in Asian form.”

“No,” Ilya shakes his head, biting his lip. They hadn’t really discussed who would know what, but Ilya had told Cliff, and he had no problem with Ilya asking him to keep it quiet, and Ilya knew he would. The Cens are more close knit than Boston ever was, and secrets tend to not stay secrets for long, but if anyone can keep one for them, it’s Troy.

“He’s my nephew, if you want to go by blood. My brother got a woman pregnant that was not his wife and then when he got caught out he told everyone it was mine.”

Troy goes white around the edges, looking sick.

“Fuck, Roz. That’s awful.”

“Yes, it was not nice.”

“So you and Shane were just like… ‘okay, guess he’s ours now?’”

Ilya chews this inside of his cheek, watching as Shane rejoins the party, this time baby free.

“Kind of. I don’t think I would have ever been able to feel okay about myself, if I left him. It is… me and Shane knew we wanted a baby, but it was too soon? But at same time, how could we let him go and rot in some orphanage in some shithole part of St. Petersburg where it is not safe for a baby and then go on and adopt some other child? He is my family, now he is just… different family. Better.”

“Better to have him safe and loved and here too soon than him being unsafe and unloved while you wait for a hypothetical child who doesn’t even exist, yeah?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Troy smiles at him. Then punches him in the arm, hard.

“What was that for?”

“You’re still a dick for keeping it from us,” Troy points out, matter of fact, “And also basically ditching all of us this summer. Come on. Time to make it up to the team.”

With Aleks down he and Shane finally properly make their rounds. While they did send texts and have chatted in the group chat, they’ve pretty clearly been distracted this summer, and they others have taken up their slack, especially when it comes to the newest members of the team. They finally get introduced to new rookies properly, plus the d-man they traded for from the Swedish league, a big handsome twenty-something Russian guy named Lors.

“Ah, not Russian, Chechen,” He grimaces, and Ilya immediately feels like an asshole for repeating what he was told.

“Sorry, I didn’t–”

Lors puts his hands up.

“I’d call myself German before anything so you’re fine, really. I was born in Bochum, and my parents are Chechen. You’re probably the only one that gets the difference. I only have a Russian passport to visit my grandparents but I would never live there, because Russia…” Lors made a face.

“Yes, I know little about how Russia is,” Ilya says, thinking of the child they all but smuggled out of the country in question. Lors thankfully laughs.

“Yes. Russia would have the same views about me as they do you.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows at him, taking in his slightly crooked smile, the chipped lower incisor. Something about him is so familiar, and it’s going to drive Ilya crazy until he figures it out.

Ilya pretends to not notice Luca is very interested in their conversation.

“More reasons to be thankful you have an EU passport.”

They clink their bottles together.

“And your Canadian one.”

Aleks wakes up in the middle of dinner; Luca feeds him while Shane and Ilya eat, blushing as everyone ribs him about being a good big brother. They find out Lors is one of five kids and has six nieces and nephews, and is apparently an absolute natural with babies, from the way he burps Aleks after Luca admits he doesn’t know how. Aleks whines until he lands in Wyatt’s lap, then spends his time gazing up at him happily, enamored. Jesse - who is the backup goaltender they got from Dartmouth like Ilya thought - studied Anthropological Linguistics and basically earns the name Ivy within ten seconds of him talking about how he’s already thinking of applying for masters programs here in Ottawa and the ideas he has for his thesis, much to his apparent annoyance.

Ilya gets his son back just in time to watch Shane #2 - the loudmouth kid they drafted with maybe the worst Alberta accent Ilya’s ever heard - get a bonfire going with Holmberg’s help.

The conversation devolves the way it always does when you get a bunch of the guys together and drunk around a fire; shittalking, league and personal gossip, their chances for the season. Someone is arguing about music. A few of the players with small kids make their way out, getting hounded for leaving early though everyone understands. Ilya and Shane stay, though Ilya’s sure they’ll probably have to leave soon from the little snuffly, sleepy sounds Aleks is making, snuggled up against Shane’s chest.

Then Luca says something and Lors throws his head back and laughs, and Ilya’s brain malfunctions.

“Holy shit!”

The conversations stop, everyone turning to look at Ilya.

“Sorry, is just... you have reminded me of someone, but I figured it out.”

“Now I am nervous.”

“No, is not bad. Is sexy.”

Shane leans forward and swipes Ilya's beer, dumping the bottle out on the grass next to him without jostling their dozing baby. Ilya barely notices.

“Dude,” Young laughs, “are you calling another man sexy in front of your own husband?”

“No. I mean, yes, he is sexy, but I am just saying he reminds me of someone. Maybe not sexy either, ah… romantic?”

Lors laughs at him, loud and bright. He’s pretty tipsy, though not as tipsy as Ilya. He feels a bit like a lightweight, on the edge of drunk after a few beers, but considering before this he’s had maybe four drinks all summer and Shane agreed to be their designated driver, he thinks he’s allowed.

“Dude, are you about to get wistful about an old hook up?”

“No, not old hook up,” Ilya makes a face, “He was skating coach when I was… 10? Maybe? My mother knew people at the rink, and I liked hockey, so she got me skating coach to help with my speed since I seemed like I took it seriously. He was very handsome. First crush on a man. Then my brother ruined it.”

“I feel like I don’t even want to know at this point,” Ivy groans, sipping his drink.

“I know right,” Young murmurs, “It’s like having your dad talk about how hot his high school girlfriend was in front of your mom.”

But before Ilya can begin his tangent about why, exactly, his brother ruined his first crush on the very beautiful man who trained him, Aleks lets out a shockingly loud yawn, pulling away from where he’s perched in Shane’s arms to blink sleepily at Ilya. He babbles something unintelligible, waving his little fists, before slumping back against Shane's chest. Ilya reaches a hand out and he immediately clings to his fingers, bringing them to his mouth to chew.

“Okay, Papa’s story is boring. I think it’s time to go home.”

Preseason is not something to be nervous about. Especially a game against Buffalo.

Hell Ilya doesn’t even give a speech normally, and sure as hell isn’t going to do it tonight. He’ll talk to the rookies of course, especially the ones that have made it past camp but he knows will be off to Belleville or back to their Juniors team by the start of season. It means something to them to hear from Ilya, but the room at large doesn’t care.

Everyone is loud instead; arguing over the aux cable for the locker room speaker system and chatting amongst themselves. Bood gets heckled when his mom calls him and he answers, and Shane #2 is whining about how he can’t find his stick tape. Lors and Luca’s heads are close together, chatting quietly, in their corner stalls. Troy catches his eyes at some point and tilts his head in their direction, amused.

Ilya will not give in to the thought that he’s nervous because this is his son’s first game. He can’t even properly watch it, and has no concept of what hockey is. There are zero nerves involved.

It’s better, when they get on the ice. Ilya pairs off with Ivy, and he turns out to be a fairly solid goalie. Shane #2 starts chirping them both from where he’s stretching on the ice, somehow both obnoxious and endearing.

“Dad’s here,” Shane says to him as he skates by, and Ilya makes a full turn until he finds him.

David and Harris are down near the bench, the two of them in conversation with Wiebe; David’s in Shane’s Cens sweater and –

Ilya stops.

Aleks is with him - of course he is - in a pair of little black baby leggings and a tiny crew neck sweatshirt he definitely was not wearing when they dropped him off with his grandfather before heading to their pre-game.

It’s got the centaurs logo on the front, ‘C’ where it sits on Ilya’s own chest, but what makes his heart drop is the slightly cramped HOLLANDER and 81 on the back.

David’s standing far enough away and the arena is empty enough that no one notices Aleks, but he stares at his own son with his number on the back.

His palms itch as he skates over, tugging his gloves off and tucking them under his arm.

“Where…?”

“Someone in merchandising found out and thought it would be cute,” Harris says, smiling, “we don’t actually make baby jerseys because the cost margins are insane, but they whipped this up out of one of their infant sweatshirts and some of the letters from the smallest kids jerseys we have instead.”

It is, obviously, adorable, if only because of Aleks’ adorable beaming face and perpetual bedhead of almost black curls. Someone - Ilya’s bet is on Wyatt - has given him a puck, and he clutches it in both his hands, waving it at Ilya.

Fuck. Ilya cannot start crying right now.

“David,” he says, holding his hands out, And Aleks lurches forward, nearly dropping his puck, wanting his Papa. He slides easily into his arms, the weight of him familiar, though his ability to hold up his head on his own is new.

Aleks frowns as he settles, his little fists smacking Ilya’s chest with the puck. Ilya can only assume he’s confused by his pads, so used to snuggling into a soft warm skin instead of hard plastic.

“Let’s go say hi, yes?” He kisses Aleks’ forehead, trying not to hit him with his visor, “Daddy will be happy to see you Zaychik.”

Shane is decidedly not happy to see Ilya on skates with their baby.

“You have razor blades attached to your feet and you are gliding around on a slippery surface with our helmetless son who still has a soft spot. This is like one of the least safe things you can be doing with him Ilya, come on. You can trip with him in your arms so easily.”

“When was the last time anyone we know tripped that badly when it was important?”

Shane levels him with a look that would kill a weaker man.

“Okay, bad example,” Ilya waved him off, “And before you say ‘Ilya we are keeping it quiet until he is Canadian’ he’s going to be a citizen by 10 in the morning tomorrow. Is close enough.”

Aleks smiles at Shane, babbling something, before he tries to shove the edge of his puck in his mouth.

“No Bun, not that,” Shane skates closer, pulling the puck from his mouth, “that’s filthy, we don’t chew on stuff like that…”

Aleks gives up the puck to Shane easily, then holds out his arms, something he’s started doing over the last week or so when he wants to be picked up.

Shane, powerless in the face of their baby, takes him into his arms without hesitating.

From across the ice, Ilya hears Wyatt screech.

“Where’s my baby at!?”

“Haas, he didn’t mean you, he meant the real baby, Jesus, stop looking confused.”

“I’m not even the baby anymore?” Luca says, confused, “Gabe’s 18?”

“Aleksandr Ilyovich Shanov Rozanov Hollander!”

“That’s not how Russian names work,” Lors makes a face at them all.

“What would you know? You’re like… Czech?”

“Chechen,” Ilya, Lors and Luca all said at the same time. Luca seemed to go a little pink, as Lors turns to him, grinning.

“And I speak Russian as a first language, so yes, I understand what the hell is going on.”

“Okay,” Shane sighs, watching their team devolve into talking over each other, “we will go say hello.”

“Yes, then, we will make Dada happy and give you,” Ilya boops Aleks on the nose, “to Grandpa, then we will play this game and you will watch your first ever hockey game, right Zaychik?”

Aleks just giggles in response.

In the end, Ilya and Shane can’t pick, so they go with a few photos.

The first comes from one of the team photographers before the Buffalo game. Luca, Lors, Shane and Ilya are on the ice, in full gear and in conversation, not looking at the camera. Ilya is holding Aleks, his back to the camera, the ‘HOLLANDER’ and 81 on his back visible. One of Aleks’ little hands has reached out, and is clinging to the top of Luca’s stick above Luca’s own gloved hand. In his other fist is a puck.

The second is from their time in Paris. Ilya, Gaspard and Svetlana are sitting on the balcony of their rented flat, sunglasses firmly on all three of their faces. Svetlana and Gaspard had been hungover from the party they had attended the night before, something some friend of a friend of Gaspard’s ex had invited them to, something Ilya and Shane had been happily not invited to, spending their night eating takeaway dim sum and giving Aleks a bath instead. Sasha was still inside, sleeping off whatever was in his system in the spare third bedroom they never used, the one all three of them had piled into when they had shown up to the flat at 6am, still drunk. Ilya is smiling at Svetlana as she clearly complains about something, gesturing wildly. Aleks is curled up against Gaspard’s chest, dosing, sun hat on.

The next is from the afternoon they spent with the Pikes. Shane is still crosslegged on the floor, the Pike children surrounding him. Aleks sits happily in his lap, Arthur and Amber in front of him trying to include him as they do a puzzle. Shane is gazing up at Jade, who’s trying to explain something to him about the tablet she has clutched in her hand.

The fourth is taken by Yuna, just after they get home, Aleksandr’s Canadian passport and citizenship certificate tucked in with his Russian in the laptop compartment of Ilya’s backpack. Ilya and Shane are both seated on the patio behind his parent’s house in Ottawa. Anya’s head is on Ilya’s knee, staring up at him with puppy dog eyes, while Aleks sits in Shane’s lap, hands holding him tight around his middle. Clutched in his hand is the tiny Canadian flag that was given to him by the judge who processed his case for citizenship as Ilya and Shane tried very hard not to cry.

Shane is looking at Aleks, trying to keep him from poking himself in the eye with the tiny flag pole. Ilya is looking at Shane.

Congratulations to Aleksandr for becoming Canada’s newest citizen! Papa, Dada and Anya love you so much.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry this took so long! Literally within a day of posting the last chapter I fell flat on my face and broke my nose and basically had no desire to write through two black eyes.