Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

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

Additional Tags:

Hurt/Comfort, Post-Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Retirement, Career Ending Injuries, hating the vegas knights as is good and correct, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander's Freckles, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Stanley Cup Final, ilya rozanov chirping relentlessly, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Dom/sub Undertones, Fingers In Mouths, reckoning with the future and what it looks like to build one together, Shane Hollander Has an Oral Fixation, Comeplay

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of hwa verse

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-06 Completed: 2026-01-30 Words: 24,018 Chapters: 3/3

here we are and what the hell are we going to do with it

Summary

“Shane.” Ilya takes Shane’s head in his hands, squeezes his cheeks so that Shane looks puffy, absurd. Beloved. “I am saying that to me, even though you are retired, you will always be No. 1 hockey player. Fuck Wayne Gretzky.”

That’s what does it, as Ilya knew it would. Shane rears back, spluttering, outraged, trying not to laugh.

“Oh, I have committed blasphemy now. They will take back my citizenship, big crime, very sad.”

Shane smoothes his hands along Ilya’s calves, rests his fingertips on Ilya’s ankles. “Fuck Wayne Gretzky,” he says. He looks like he can’t believe what he’s saying. Ilya wonders, distantly, if he can get it on tape to play back to himself when things feel particularly bleak. “We can live in exile together. I don’t care. You’re my, my best, my second best hockey player forever too.”

--

Shane decides he has to retire. Ilya, of course, will go with him.

Notes

Wow yay what a world we live in... our beautiful hockey yaoi show. Love these guys.

Title from 'For the Chinese New Year & for Bill Berkson' by Frank O'Hara.

Chapter 1

Ilya cannot sleep. The room is dark and warm, his breathing steady, his body aching only in the way that has become familiar. His face is nuzzled deep into Shane’s shoulder, his thigh is slung over Shane’s hip, he has a comfortable handful of Shane’s chest — and yet, no sleep. It is Shane’s fault. Perhaps fault is not fair, not exactly, but Ilya is not feeling fair when it is two a.m. and they have game five of the conference finals tomorrow and he cannot sleep because Shane is not asleep either, and instead of doing something reasonable about it, like asking Ilya to suck his dick, or taking a melatonin, or doing his yoga breathing exercises, he is lying in Ilya’s arms stiff as cardboard taking long, deep, entirely unconvincing breaths. 

“You are not asleep,” Ilya informs him, when the regularity of the in-out, in-out has become unbearable. Shane is not even pretending to twitch. Doesn’t he know he twitches in his sleep? Ilya must have forgotten to tell him. Unacceptable. 

There’s a brief pause in the annoying breathing, and then Shane starts again. Ilya squeezes his chest, hard. It is a very satisfying handful; Shane has been working on his chest. As far as Ilya can tell, he is the greatest and most direct beneficiary of this. 

“You are a terrible actor, moy spyashchaya krasavitsa.”

“I’m trying to sleep.”

“You are trying terribly.” 

Ilya trails a hand down Shane’s stomach, slips one finger underneath the waistband of Shane’s boxers. Shane’s breath shudders: satisfying, predictable. Ilya waits.

“I was thinking.”

“Mm? About the game? We will beat them. We only did not already because Hazy missed game four. He is our luckiest charm.”

“He feels bad about that.”

“He does not need to. Lisa was in the hospital, so he missed it.” Ilya scratches at the sparse hair just below Shane’s waistband. “Were you thinking of the game?”

“No. Yes. Kind of.”

“We are going to win.” 

“Not just tomorrow.”

“Mm.” Ilya gives up on the waistband, lays his palm flat on Shane’s stomach, rubbing it in firm, soothing circles. “Tomorrow is the hard match, the Caps are somehow good again. But the Western Conference is shit this year. We will beat whoever wins.”

“Right.”

“Our second cup together. Will feel good.” A cup their first season together, and then a lull — not a complete failure, they’ve always at the very least made the playoffs — but a long time where they weren’t quite as good as they are again this season. Hungry young players in other division rival teams, a hole in their own defence, Troy out for almost a whole season with ACL complications. But this time — it is like magic, again. Perhaps even better than when Shane first came to Ottawa, and they were still scrapping for enough decent players to make up the third line. 

“Don’t jinx it,” Shane says, even though he was the one asking. Ilya shrugs. It is not a matter of jinxing. If they don’t win against either one of the Western Conference possibilities, they deserve all they’ll get in the press. He’s not convinced Marcus even knows left from right; and Conrad is definitely playing with a fractured wrist, his slap shot has lost all its power. 

“Alright. But, we are going to win. So you can sleep now.”

“Ilya.” Shane lays his hand on top of Ilya’s, stilling it. A warm, heavy press. “I.”

Ilya waits, but he doesn’t say anything else. He raises an eyebrow, wiggles his fingers under the weight of Shane’s hand.

“Yes?”

Shane swallows. He closes his eyes. Ilya cannot see much, but he can see the dark line of his eyelashes, the thick shadows they cast.

“Is it bad?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Shane says. His voice sounds as it always does, but his hand presses down hard against Ilya’s, holding it there. “I think I have to say it.”

“So, say it. And if it is bad, we will deal with it.” A long beat of silence. “Is it your knee?”

“Kind of.” Shane flexes his foot, as if just now remembering it. “Kind of, yeah.”

“It is bad.” Not a question, this time. Shane has been playing on a fucked MCL since second round of the playoffs. Each time he takes to the ice, it is worse. He is not talking to the doctors, not yet, and everyone is pretending it is just a sprain, something that can be braced, because without Shane perhaps they don’t win. Perhaps they do. But perhaps they don’t. And with him, they will. 

Ilya has put ice on his knee every night. He has helped Shane apply compression, to strap up his braces, to elevate it. He has kissed the tender skin, and fetched Shane his soda and pressed down on his thighs so that he does not move too much when Ilya blows him. He is not a doctor, but he knows hockey injuries, he knows broken bodies. There is a meniscus tear too, perhaps. Shane’s poor, overworked cartilage giving up. He will need surgery. That is not a question in Ilya’s mind, not any more.

“It’s bad. I can still play —” he says it quickly, like he thinks Ilya might stop him, like Ilya could. Perhaps that would be the only thing that could shatter them: Ilya being the one to stop Shane, to take this cup from him. He will not. He doesn’t understand how Shane loves hockey, but he understands not stopping. He understands wanting to hold a solid thing in your hands and say this, this is greatness. 

“We will win,” Ilya says again. 

“One last go at it.” Shane’s fingers flutter, and he turns his head away from Ilya, and Ilya — Ilya understands.

“Ah.”

“Don’t.”

“I am not anything. I am only ‘ah’, because, yes. OK. So you want to retire after we win the cup, OK. Five cups, Conn Smythe, Art Ross, Lady Byng, Hart — only once, not like me, but that is OK, I am the best, Ottawa proved it. You are a generational player, they will put you — and me, yes, obviously — in the hall of fame, and we will have to go to a very boring long ceremony about it. They will retire our numbers and hang them from the rafters and we can wave at them when we go to games, and complain about how the rookies are tiny baby children now.”

“We?”

“Yes, yes, we. What, you think I want to play without you? You think I want to be on the power play with anybody else? We will retire, we will spend a year just fucking and — and swimming in the lake, and eating many carbs, and then…” 

Ilya runs out of steam slightly, here. He knows what he’ll do. Not that he’s been thinking about it, not exactly. Retirement hadn’t really crossed his mind, not until Shane brought it up and everything suddenly became very clear, laid out in front of him just the way Shane had laid out his life in Ottawa all those years ago. He doesn’t want to play hockey without Shane, not anymore. He loves his team, but the thought of — what, saying goodbye to Shane, and Shane at home, and Ilya on the ice with his aching body and his drifting thoughts and nobody to look at him and understand exactly the tick of his brain without having to say a word? No, no thank you. He’s been spending more time with the Foundation anyway, and retirement will give him the opportunity to immerse himself completely. Run a new set of camps during the season itself, expand their outreach, maybe into some of the LGBT+ specific work that Yuna keeps hinting at. He wants to work with the Ottawa Charge, now they’ve got a proper PWHL base in the city, because they are cool, and he thinks Sveta has a crush on their goalie, so if Ilya has an in perhaps she will visit more often. 

But Shane — that is not so clear to him. Shane is hockey. He lives it, he breathes it. When he’s on the ice, it is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Ilya thinks Shane could one day coach — he has become a little better at it, with the children at the camps, and at least with NHL players he would not so often have to fall over himself trying to explain concepts that have become basic, engrained, almost muscle memory to him. But Shane is awkward and embarrassed about his lack of ease with the children, and perhaps if Ilya says and then you could coach he will think Ilya is making fun of him. Perhaps, ordinarily, Ilya would risk it. A lot of the time he is making fun of Shane, and Shane doesn’t mind. But Shane’s head is turned away, his hand trembling minutely. And so Ilya says only —

“And then, we can do whatever we like.”

“We should have a plan.”

“That is what the year is for. Fucking, eating, and also planning. And talking to Yuna, who will already have a plan, and deciding together if it’s a good one.”

“Ilya.” Shane turns in his arms, and bends his head to Ilya’s. Ilya kisses his perfect nose, his freckled cheek. He cannot see the freckles, but that doesn’t matter. One of life’s most wonderful truths is that Shane’s freckles are always there, regardless of whether or not Ilya can see them. “Do you want to retire?”

“Do you?”

It is a real question, and he thinks Shane can tell that, because he rubs his face against Ilya’s, takes a deep breath before answering.

“In a perfect world, I’d have another five years of good hockey in me. Another six, seven, even. But my shoulder is still kinda fucked from last season, and surgery is gonna —” He takes another breath. It is the first time he’s said it out loud: that he will need surgery, and that recovery will not be simple. “It’s not gonna fix everything, not with how I’ve played on it. I don’t know. I don’t know, maybe I finish up, we take the summer, I feel good. I go back. But I don’t want to go back to play bad hockey.”

“It would not be bad.” Shane is not capable of bad hockey. He is not Hayden Pike, who has thankfully already retired, freeing Ilya from ever having to watch him fumble a pass again.

“Bad for me, then.”

“You want to go out on a high.”

“Yeah. Not just. Linger. And everyone knowing Ottawa feels too bad to get rid of me, and riding out my last years on the fourth line, or healthy scratched half the time, and —”

“Yes, I understand.” Ilya, too, would hate that. He feels restless, itchy with the thought of it. Something is either done, or it isn’t. Riding the bench is no way to go. “Shane. I have done everything I ever wanted to do. It will not be fun without you. So, we will retire together. Ottawa will have a fit, but the new rookie — Härkönen, I know his name, don’t look at me like that — he is very good, and Cherny is getting better every day. And owners are a little complacent, maybe, will be good to remind them that winning hockey games is very hard. We are just very good at it.”

“The best.” Shane kisses him, gentle, and then not. Draws back panting to look Ilya in the eye. “I wouldn’t retire if you did first.”

It isn’t an apology. Ilya doesn’t take it as one.

“I know. You love hockey very much. I love winning, I love you. Hockey is. Ah —”

“A means to an end.”

“No, more than that. But not the only thing for me. Not. Not top five, probably.”

“You’re — you’re number one. For me, too. I mean.”

“Oh, that is awkward. For me, I meant Anya. Then your parents, Sveta, no, Troy—” he breaks off as Shane pushes him hard, sending him rolling towards the edge. Ilya grins into the cool of the sheet, stretches. Rolls back slowly, relishing the way Shane grows impatient, closes the final inches first, grabbing Ilya’s waist and pulling him in. 

“Asshole.”

“Hollander.” He kisses his ear, which. Well, not what he was aiming for, but he gives it another kiss anyway. “We have to sleep.”

“You’re not —”

“No. Whatever you are thinking, I am not.” He thinks about it, properly, for a moment, because Shane deserves that. “I am happy, I think.” He prods Shane back into position: Ilya’s nose against his neck, Ilya’s hand on his chest, thumb just resting against Shane’s nipple. Good. “But I will be more happy when we are asleep.” 

“Alright. Alright.” Shane kisses the top of Ilya’s head. “I love you.”

“I love you.” It is more breath against Shane’s skin than it is words, but Shane pulls him in a little tighter all the same. Eventually, his breathing goes deep, his fingers twitching against Ilya’s back. And Ilya follows him softly into sleep. 

—

They win the game. It is harder than it should be, because the Caps’ first-line switch-up has suddenly clicked, and because Haas gets a 10-minute misconduct penalty for laying into McManus for tripping Härk. So it goes. Ilya scores two, Shane scores one, Haas scores one once he’s back, furious and flushed and out for blood, taking them to the win in regulation time. Ilya kisses him on his visor, kisses Shane on the torn seam of his jersey. Afterwards, in their bland DC hotel room, Shane tips sideways on the bed with a cushion between his knees, one hand braced on Ilya’s thigh, and sweetly mouths at Ilya’s cock until he comes. 

The break is not a break at all. It is rehab and practice and video and practice and video and video and video. Look at their defence here, Wiebe says, and Ilya watches Shane and Härk nod their twin nods, and when his eyes blur he sees the patterns their defence make on the ice, and the ways he will slip past them. Vegas won the Western Conference, which is sad for them because Ilya is going to crush them. He would crush them if it was not Shane’s last chance at a cup, and he would crush them if Dallas Kent had not been traded there, but both of those things are true, and so Ilya will crush them double. He swallows his painkillers and he ices his ankle and Shane’s knee and he thinks, longingly and often, of the time where they can properly fuck again, their bodies owed to no-one but themselves. 

Sveta flies up the day before the first game of the finals. She offers to take them for dinner, but Shane’s visceral panic at the idea of any deviation from their established playoff routine is clear, and Ilya persuades her into takeout on their couch, as he steals bites from her leftovers and Shane rigidly munches through his allotted macros. Anya pants on the floor, looking longingly at Sveta, or at least Sveta’s foods. It is perfect, almost. 

But Ilya runs a hand down Shane’s back, and Shane leans into it, and Ilya can tell by the way that he is chewing that he is elsewhere, perhaps running plays in his head, trying to escape the texture of the food in his mouth.

“Do you need crunch?” he asks. Shane looks at him, startled. Ilya rolls his eyes. “The texture, do you need crunch? We have tortilla chips. Not even any salt on them.”

Shane nods, short and sharp, and then looks guiltily at Sveta. Sveta ignores him. She is used to hockey players. 

“Did Wiebe talk to you about Brody’s tactics on the PK?” she asks as Ilya stands, Anya clacking after him.

“Stop talking about fucking hockey!” Ilya calls from the kitchen, where he shakes the chips into a small bowl, because Shane doesn’t like the feeling of his hand brushing against the inside of the chip packet, and because Ilya is a good fucking husband who will not even complain about the fact that this nice bowl Yuna and David bought them is not dishwasher safe. 

“I’m saving your team!” Sveta yells back, rude and offensive because Ilya’s team does not need saving, Ilya’s team will destroy the Knights like they are tiny bugs on his windscreen, splat splat against the boards, their stupid fucking goalie with his ugly helmet falling on his face. Ilya imagines the shots, bam bam bam, lining up neatly whilst whatshisface gapes stupidly and the crowd goes wild, and only when he hears Anya make her little gobbling sounds does he realise he has shaken too many chips out and they are beginning to spill onto the floor. He shoves some of the excess chips into his mouth, and brings the bowl back into the lounge, where Sveta and Shane are using a nest of cables and remotes to play out Vegas’ pitiful attempts at the PK.

Ilya is not worried about Vegas’ PK. Ilya is not worried about either of Vegas’ main goalies, although he thinks their third stand-in might be actually OK, it’s just that the idiots who run that team haven’t noticed that yet. He is, if really pressed, a little bit worried about their PK, which is — it is a little bad. It is getting better! But too many of their players forget about the gaps left by being one man down, and there has been more than one occasion where the other team has sailed straight on through and Hazy has been left to fight it out on his own. Ilya is hoping it will not come to that. Ilya is hoping that Dallas Kent does not open his big mouth anywhere near Haas, who is a sweet perfect baby angel still, seven seasons in, but is taking emulating Ilya perhaps a little too far this playoff run.

He hands Shane the chips, leans against his side and munches loudly in his ear until Shane gets an arm around him and pets his hair. 

“Keppler may actually be good enough to keep you out, if they’re smart enough to bring him in,” Sveta tells him.

“Yes, yes, I know. But they are not smart enough, and their fans love Hughes and his helmet picture that looks like a dick.”

“Oh,” Shane says. “Fuck, it really does. Why the fuck did he get that on it?”

“Because he is an idiot. He does not have Hazy’s artistic sensibility.”

“Hazy’s helmet looks like a comic book threw up on it.” Shane stops, looks vaguely guilty. “Hughes’ is worse.”

“Yes, it’s not even a pretty dick.”

“Hughes probably doesn’t know what one of those looks like.” Sveta stretches, yawns. “Ilyusha.”

“Yes, yes, you should go. I need to fuck Shane for good luck before tomorrow.”

Shane swipes at him, Ilya grins. Sveta leans over to slap Shane’s shoulder, which is the kind of physical contact it has taken them several years to work up to. She stands, shakes out her beautiful hair, and kisses Ilya softly on the forehead. 

“Destroy them.”

“We will.” 

Ilya watches Sveta collect her things, head for the door. Her easy, careless movements, the way she doesn’t look back. He thinks of her small form pressed next to his mother’s, one of the only times they really spent together, his mother reading fairytales to them both. Sveta impatient, squirming, asking when they could go to the rink. Ilya already a little tired, his eyes beginning to close, his head resting on his mother’s shoulder. 

He knows, already, that he will dream of her tonight. He puts Anya into her cage, and holds her tight in his arms, whispering to her softly in Russian. Her warm body, the steady thud of her heart, big trusting eyes that ask nothing of him except to be there to let her out tomorrow, to take her to the dog hotel where she will stay for the rest of the Finals. He takes his pill, even though they make his dreams more vivid, will make the cold touch of his mother’s hand as real as the solid warmth of Shane’s sleeping body. He goes to bed, because it is time to go to bed, and tomorrow they play. He puts his arms around Shane, and he thinks — not now, to whoever is listening. Not now. Give me a few more weeks to win this, just one last time.

His mother’s hand. The white sheets, messy, untucked at one corner. A little blood on the pillow, one sock half-scuffed down her foot. He runs through the house, he cannot speak. Shane rings the doorbell, and it rings, and it rings, and Ilya cannot answer it. He cannot open the door. He can only run circles around the house, his throat raw with the words that won’t spill out of it.

—

They win the first game. It is easy, almost, or as easy it can be when they are all so tired. Their lines flow, the puck feels almost magnetised to Ilya. The shots go past Hughes and his somehow-shocked face, bam bam bam, just as Ilya imagined. He crows in the changing room afterwards, spinning little Härk the Herald around, I love you, you are a god of hockey, we are all gods of hockey, and Shane is grinning and bright. Second game, too. Easy. Third game — it is almost embarrassing. Ilya is beginning to think they will do it in four. The Vegas supporters are looking glum, as they always should. 

“Is your ugly helmet blocking secret communications from your coach?” he asks Hughes, skating past him, stick over his shoulder. “Serious question. Or maybe it is blasting messages into your head? Do not listen to it. Seriously. You have to remember how to play hockey again. It is no good, winning like this.”

Kent overhears, and lunges for him closely followed by some third-liner Ilya hasn’t bothered to learn the name of. He grins, and lets himself topple beneath their combined weight, lets the refs blow their whistles and drag them both off to the penalty box. They score on the power play, obviously. Shane grits his teeth as the puck slides neatly over the line, and Ilya whoops aloud, crashes into him, kisses him wet on the side of his helmet.

“Too easy, huh?”

“Don’t jinx it,” Shane says crossly, but he can’t resist a quick look back at Ilya. “Way too easy. It’s embarrassing.” 

Before the start of the fourth game, Shane gets a supportive text from Scott Hunter, and, presumably, that is why they lose. Ilya says as much in the second period break this fucking old man is so close to death he is practically a ghost, his ghost energy has cursed us, Hollander although that is not what he says to the team, of course. He can feel himself dragging his body through the third period, and he falls badly, humiliatingly, on a line change of all things, has to be dragged up by Troy and plonked on the bench. It is fine — a little stretch in the muscle, nothing he cannot play on, but on top of the throbbing ankle, and the fucking obvious mistakes on the fucking PK, and the obnoxiously good snapshot Kent gets off right before the clock runs out, Ilya is spitting mad by the time they get onto the plane. They’re back at home for game five, three days between to tend their wounds and to try and drum into everybody’s heads that you cannot just leave gaps for Vegas to skate through, that even pieces of shit like Dallas Kent can spot when they are not being covered.

Shane watches the game again and again and again. Shane eats his food and makes Ilya eat his and strokes Ilya’s hair and says — “Look, see that, we did that better in game one, we need to lean into Haas’ dynamism on the wing.”

Ilya thinks about a Shane unanimated by this, a Shane who is not driven forward at every moment by this need to improve, to win, and he cannot imagine him. He will love him, he is not worried about that. Loving Shane has always been irritating and inconvenient and Ilya will happily march through the irritation and inconvenience of loving a Shane who does not know what to do without hockey. But still he cannot imagine him, and he has been able to so perfectly imagine Shane’s every reaction for years now. 

He spots Yuna, David, and Sveta in the crowd the moment they skate out. They’ve been at every game, but Yuna doesn’t normally like sitting with the rest of the families, that close to the ice you can’t always see clearly what’s going on the other side of things, and she likes to have the birdseye view. But today, clearly, they have decided that it is worth it to be close. Ilya does a big wave, blows them a kiss, nudges Shane until he does the same. Well, he does the wave. Not the blowing a kiss. Has Shane ever blown a kiss? Has Shane ever blown him a kiss? Ilya can’t remember him doing so.

“Blow me a kiss,” he demands.

“What? You’re right there, Ilya. I don’t need to blow you any—”

“No? Nothing. Nothing at all?”

“Oh for — you’re an asshole.”

“I know. Blow me. A kiss, Hollander! Don’t look at me like that. We can do that later, I promise, after we win. Bl—”

Shane blows him the world’s most exasperated kiss. Ilya snatches it from the air, holds it to his chest. “You have terrible aim, you know that? Went flying straight over my head. Aim better than that tonight, please. I don’t want to go to Las Vegas again, the flight is very boring.”

Shane rolls his eyes, Shane elbows Ilya, Shane looks up and sees them on the jumbotron and goes a beautiful shade of red that really makes his freckles pop. Their names are announced, and the crowd roars. Shane’s mouth twists, that tiny almost-flinch he always makes when the crowd announces itself in the in-between moments, before his absolute focus on hockey kicks in and everything else fades away.

“And Ilya Rozanov!” Ilya says, along with the announcer, so that Shane will look at him, and not the distant moons of his parents’ faces. “Best player in the league, most MVPs…” 

“Biggest head.”

“Not the only biggest thing.” Ilya can’t stop smiling. He can feel it, the way he felt it that first time with Boston. It’s in the air, in the bodies around him. The ice smooth under his skates, no stupid text from Hunter, Vegas starting their reckless second goalie who is always skating back behind the net right when Ilya is waiting to pounce on the puck.

2-0 at the end of the first period.

3-1 at the end of the second. Vegas got lucky, bad call. Shane spitting with rage after that one, his snarling outraged face that Ilya loves so much. We are going to fucking win, Ilya tells the team. We are going to fucking destroy them, and send them home crying and too embarrassed to ever play this game again, yes? If someone puts an ice cube in their drink they will cry because it will make them think of how completely we have kicked their asses. We are going to bring. It. Home. 

4-1 by minute three of the third, 4-2 by minute 10. But they are going to win. They are going to win and they are not letting up, not a single one of them, and Ilya leans forwards from the bench as the second line flies up the ice, a beautiful speeding arrow, spinning around one defender, passing up to Herald, backshot, Shane — Shane with the puck now, the crowd roaring, Ilya’s hands gripping the side of the rink, so close, so close 

He comes out of nowhere. Brick shithouse of a d-man, shoulder check straight into Shane, and on a good day, on a perfect day, Shane would take the hit and bounce back, stone-faced and ready to go, but Ilya knows almost before it happens. The twist of his knee as it hits the ice, his body crumpling, bending in on itself, a useless instinct of protection. Ilya knows Shane’s face will be closed, his lip bitten through, as Shane fights not to scream.

He is leaping over the boards before anybody can stop him. Shane’s body against the ice. His hand still outstretched, his glove half-off. 

“Shane,” Ilya calls, desperate. “Shane, moy lyubov,” and Shane turns his head — the medics are crowding him, now, but in the gap between their shoulders Ilya can see a perfect slither of his strained face, the movement of his head towards Ilya’s voice. “Don’t move. Don’t move, sweetheart, let them take care of you.”

Someone is saying something about a stretcher, and Ilya sees Shane shake his head, struggle to sit up. At least this time, when Ilya kneels on the ice, nobody tries to drag him away.

“Ilya, the stretcher. I can’t —” 

“I know.” He knows. He knows. He has seen this story before. Twisted limbs and the ice splashed with blood, and the hush of a crowd who has remembered the cost of this game. Shane is done. So either he is carried off the ice for the last time, or he walks. “I will help you stand, come on.”

“Rozanov —” one of the medics starts, and Ilya whips around, and whatever is on his face is enough to make them stutter, take a step back. “I don’t advise…”

“I know. But he wants to skate, so he will skate.”

They step back. Ilya almost can’t believe it, but they do. That makes it worse. If they thought Shane had any chance of bouncing back, they’d insist on carrying him out. But they know what this is just as much as Ilya does, just as much as Shane does. His jaw is clenched tight, his grip on Ilya’s arm bruising as Ilya hauls him up.

“Just to the bench,” Shane says. “I want to watch.” He fists his hand in Ilya’s sleeve, and Ilya meets his gaze, helpless. Those fucking eyes. Ilya would do worse things than hauling Shane across the broken glass of his own agony for what’s in those eyes. “I want to see us fucking win.”

“You will see it, moy lyubov.” It is as sacred a promise as anything in his marriage vows. They move across the ice slowly, the crowd still almost-silent. Ilya looks up, and he meets Yuna’s eyes. She nods, just once. Ilya looks away.

There is some fighting. It is to be expected. But in the moment, Ilya sees nothing but Shane. It is only when he realises both teams have penalty minutes ticking down that he notices Haas in the box, and Kent pressing bloody tissue to his mouth. 

He doesn’t let himself smile. Not then.

They play like men possessed. Even in the middle of it, Ilya can feel the headlines being written. They score twice more — Haas with Ilya on the assist, then Ilya off a spinorama pass from Cherny — and both times Ilya turns to Shane on the bench, and blows him a kiss. The second time, Shane catches it, grinning through the haze of his pain, and Ilya feels his heart thump hard in his chest. 

“You think you can beat my beautiful fucking husband?” Ilya asks the stupid d-man, whose name he will never learn, whose name will only ever be a footnote on Shane’s Wikipedia page. “You think your team knows how to do anything but lose?” 

The player lunges, but he is too slow. He would never have beaten Shane if Shane were not playing injured. He is nothing. He is nothing at all.

They win. Some things are as they should be.

“Shane, I have to get Shane,” he says to Haas, who is trying to maybe eat Ilya’s visor he is hugging him so hard and so sobbingly open-mouthed, but Yuna and David are already there, Wiebe too, helping Shane up from the bench, propelling him into Ilya’s arms, and when Shane lifts the cup, Ilya grips his waist so that his legs don’t fail. And both of them are crying, Ilya’s tears dripping into Shane’s hair, his beautiful hand against the white ice but then him still standing here, still standing here and holding the cup that they won together.

“I love you,” Shane says, and then he wobbles — “Oh, shit —” and someone is taking the cup from him, someone is slinging an arm over his shoulder, we’ve got the ambulance waiting, Rozanov, and Shane is saying no, no, you’re the captain, you have to stay as David and Yuna hurry after him and Ilya is stood there on the ice, whilst other people’s families pour onto it. 

Everybody else is kissing, and Sveta is in his arms, her big eyes filled with tears and speaking so quickly that in the rush of everything Ilya can hardly understand her. “OK, OK, you love me very much, I know,” he says, trying to pretend like his voice isn’t breaking, and he has no idea if she can hear him either. 

He stays, because there is nothing he can do. He stays, because someone needs to speak to the press, and say the things that Shane would want said. He stays, because he is a coward, because he thinks about hospital beds and flatlining monitors and words like prognosis and never again. He skips the party — have fun, Shane, no, OK, Shane would not care if you have that kind of fun, I know, I know, but I want you to have fun, so make me proud, party the hardest, get Haas fucking laid, go, go, GO, come on, I will text, go — but it’s still late when he arrives at the hospital.

Shane is sitting in a wheelchair, in sweats someone from the team must have brought over, David reading a pile of pamphlets beside him. He is wan under the horrible hospital lights, and his playoff beard looks especially scraggly and pathetic, and Ilya is struck by the hollowing, guiltfilled feeling he gets sometimes when he looks at Shane and thinks he is the person he has loved most of all ever in the entire world. 

“Babyyyyyyyyy,” Shane says, grinning wide and gormless. And Ilya doesn’t have to hide at all this time, can betray himself completely, stroke his thumb against Shane’s soft skin without checking the door behind him.

“Oh, they have given you the good stuff.”

“He’s been asking for you every five minutes,” David says, and Ilya must flinch, because he reaches forwards, clasps Ilya’s arm. “No, don’t look like that. He wasn’t upset. He’d have been more mad tomorrow if he’d realised Haas had to talk to the press in your place. That kid cannot hold a soundbite in his head.”

Ilya strokes Shane’s hair back from his head, checking his temperature with the back of his hand. He looks flushed, but he feels fine, normal-warm, so maybe it’s just the starry-eyed giddiness of being off his face on painkillers. 

“They’ve already seen him?”

“Yep. They move fast with you hockey guys, huh? We were whipped straight through. Yuna’s just in talking to the doctor now, but scans are looking — as expected. They’re aiming to bring him in for surgery next week, got this thing and some heavy-duty braces for now. But soon as she’s out, got the rest of lowdown, we can head out.”

“OK.” Ilya sits down on the floor and rests his head on Shane’s uninjured knee. “Congratulations, moy chempion, Cherny says they are toasting you across the city.”

“You’re a champion too.” 

Shane’s hand is heavy in Ilya’s hair, clumsy, but he doesn’t mind. He lets himself close his eyes, rub his cheek against the bony protuberance of Shane’s kneecap, grounding. His ankle is throbbing badly, unignorable now the rush of adrenaline is fading. He unlaces his shoe, flexes it. He can move it, so nothing is broken. Perhaps a bad sprain. That is fine. 

“Ilyusha, your ankle. Dad, we gotta call the doctor, Ilya’s ankle is hurt.”

“We don’t need to do that, it is fine.”

“I’m gonna call the doctor.” Shane makes to stand up, and David and Ilya reach for him with one yell. 

“Sit down, kid. You’re gonna give one of us a heart attack.” Shane frowns at him, and David sighs, stands up. “Let me go get a nurse to look at that ankle, OK? You both stay here. Neither of you move, you hear me.”

“OK,” Ilya says, a little surly, flexing his foot again pointedly. Shane huffs a little, and hooks his uninjured leg over Ilya’s shoulder, pinning him in place. Ilya feels himself flush, feels his mouth drop open before he can stop it, and looks at the uneven patches of paint on the ceiling until the urge to flop over, to curl up at Shane’s feet, disappears.

“Alright.” David picks up the sheaf of pamphlets, dumps them in Ilya’s lap. “Read those, keep yourself busy. I’ll be back as soon as I can find someone.”

“OK,” Ilya says, and then, “Thank you,” because David is kind, and good to him, and they raised Shane to be polite. 

“Stay here,” Shane tells him, as the door swings open and David departs.

“You have me trapped, Hollander.” Ilya tugs at Shane’s shoelace. The heel of Shane’s shoe is digging uncomfortably into his breastbone, but he doesn’t try and move it. “I cannot go anywhere. What is —” He squints at the pamphlets. His English is very good now, but the specifics of some of the surgical terms may be beyond him. “Arth—ross—copy?”

“A baby camera. A tiny baby camera, and then you can see. Inside.” 

“Ah, OK. So that is probably what they will do.” Ilya vaguely wonders if they’ll let him see the footage. The scraping through of Shane’s bone and blood and muscle fibre. He leans his head back against Shane’s thigh, hand curled around Shane’s foot. Listens to them both breathe. “We are champions, again,” he says. It still doesn’t feel real. Feels the ending of somebody else’s story.

“You said we would be.” Shane yawns, big aching stretch, and Ilya frowns at him.

“Did you chip your tooth? I didn’t see, before. This one —” he reaches up “Here.” Shane blinks dumbly at him, smiles. “You did. Wow. Shane Hollander, real fighting man, teeth all messed up.”

Whatever Shane would have said to that is lost to Yuna opening the door, closely followed by David, and a nurse. Probably for the best. Ilya cannot think of a reply that would not have got him kissed, injured or not. 

“Oh, Mr Rozanov, we could have got you a chair!” the nurse says. Ilya shrugs. He is where he wants to be, it is not his fault she cannot see that. 

They check out his ankle. It is a bad sprain, or maybe he has broken a very very tiny bone in his foot. They give him a big boot, which is annoying, but at least means he can still walk. He insists on pushing Shane’s wheelchair into the elevator, and crouches down behind him so that he can rest his chin on top of the top of Shane’s head.

“Are we going home now?” Shane asks.

“Yes, honey.” Yuna has her hand on Shane’s shoulder, her arm brushing Ilya’s face. Her jumper is soft, vaguely ticklish. Ilya wants to lean his head slightly against it, does not. “Ilya’s going to take you home. Ilya — would you like us to stay? Help get him into bed?”

Ilya shakes his head; warm press of her arm as he does so, the smell of her floral perfume. “No, it’s OK. He will just fall asleep. I will call in the morning about the medication, and the pamphlets.”

“Alright. Well, the hospital knows to call you if anything else comes up, and I wrote down his medication schedule so I’ll text that to you now just in case, and let me know if anything doesn’t make sense. There’ll be press commitments this week, but I’ve let Weibe know that Shane won’t be doing anything until at least a week after his surgery, and obviously we’ll stay home with him for everything you need to go to.”

Ilya nods. “Thank you.” He doesn’t say that there will be more press commitments after that, after Shane and Ilya announce they’re retiring together. There’ll already be speculation about Shane’s injury swirling online. “Has the team said anything? About Shane?”

“Not yet. They’re putting together something for us to look at tomorrow, but we’re hoping to keep it vague until after the surgery.”

Until they know the outcome she means. Ilya says nothing. Whatever happens, the outcome is the same. 

“I didn’t know it was that bad,” she says, softly. Over Ilya’s head, David’s hand comes across to squeeze her shoulder.

“I did.” Ilya presses a kiss to Shane’s head. Yuna says nothing. Nobody asks why they didn’t stop him — her son, his husband — from playing injured. Nobody asks if there was another way.

The house is dark and quiet. Ilya’s phone lights up again and again with pictures from the party, with congratulatory texts from other players, the Game Changers coaches, with highlights clips. Clipped, over and over again, is Shane holding up the cup, wobbling, his face clenched in a rictus grin. Behind him, Ilya is pale and weeping. He looks like a ghost. He swipes the notifications away, leaving only the ones from Sveta. 

Ilya types he is ok, home now, surgery next week probably, i love you and then turns his phone face-down.

Shane collapses, mouth open and ungainly, before Ilya can change him out of his sweats. He’ll be mad about it tomorrow, but Ilya can’t bring himself to care. He curls around Shane’s body, and, half-asleep, Shane pats at him until he finds his hand, takes it. 

This is it, forever now, Ilya thinks. There will be no more training, no more matches, no more bruised knuckles and busted teeth. No more beautiful plays, no more ugly ones either. Maybe another dog. A child. Days he can let drift over him.

“We have the rest of our lives, luchik,” he whispers, but Shane is already asleep.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Shane wakes at three a.m. in a wave of pain: deep, nauseating pulses that radiate out from his knee and somehow make his whole body ache. Ilya is curled into his side, one hand down Shane’s sweatpants and the other holding his phone three inches from his face, but when Shane twitches, biting back whatever undignified noise was trying to escape him, he looks up immediately.

“You are in pain?”

Shane goes to deny it, automatic, and then. Stops. There is no pushing forward, no need to shake his head and grit his teeth and insist he can lace up his skates if he just gets a shot in his knee. 

“What’s the schedule say?” 

“The schedule says you are allowed more. Stay — don’t move. I will get them.”

Half of that was in Russian, Shane thinks, or maybe it’s just taking him longer to process all language. Everything feels very far away, unfocused, blurred beneath the spasms in his legs and the memory of how it felt to hear the stadium go quiet and know that he was done. 

Ilya comes back quickly with a handful of pills and a glass of water, and he helps prop Shane up, touches his throat when he swallows. He’s switched on the lamp, and the light is warm and golden, his hair a fuzzy halo around his head. He’s limping, Shane realises, standing lop-sided to avoid putting weight on one foot. 

“Your ankle,” Shane says, half-accusation, and Ilya shakes his head.

“It is not so bad.”

“You should wear the boot.”

“You want me to wear the boot in bed?”

Ilya says it like he’s already won, and Shane pushes at him, tries to look around for where Ilya has stashed the boot. “We can wash the sheets.”

“I’ll put it on next time I get up.” Ilya wriggles back next to Shane, pushes him down so that he can prop his chin up on Shane’s chest. “Haas threw up in the street. Very embarrassing for him, lots of pictures online.”

“Is that who you were texting?”

“Mm, yes. And your parents, and Farah.”

“They’re still awake?”

“Lots to plan. We will have the parade, so they are seeing if you could be in a, uh, a convertible for that, no crutches. There will be a press conference, there will be a fan event. Then lots of little things, taking the Cup around schools, our Cup days, all of that. They don’t think we’ll both need to do everything.”

Crutches during the parade. It would hardly be the first time a hockey player has limped their way through Cup celebrations, but it wasn’t the picture Shane had in his head. He thought — he could have pushed through another few days, the way his knee was before the game. Walking through his hometown, hand-in-hand with Ilya, cheering crowds, and the Cup behind them. Exactly like the first time they won, a perfect closing parenthesis. 

Maybe it’s better like this. More definitive. Some injuries, there’s some grey area, an expectation. Everyone who saw that hit knows that this isn’t Shane being weak, giving up, proving people right. Not with an injury like this, not at Shane’s age. He’ll go with his head held high and everyone understanding that he’s given all he had to give. Thirty-six isn’t so young. It isn’t so old either, but it can be enough. 

Ilya, though —

A sprained ankle. Ribs that never quite healed straight. Three serious concussions, a wrist that aches in the cold. Those are the kind of injuries you grit your teeth against, the kind you know your body is holding in store to curse you with when you’re old, the kind you never bring up of your own accord. And Shane doesn’t want Ilya to hurt, he doesn’t, he hates it, would take it all into his own, useless body if he could. But there’s one rule in hockey, and that rule is team. Team above everything until they trade you, and then right back to team above everything for whoever’s next. And Ilya is captain, which makes it all doubly true. 

He’s already broken that rule once, with Boston, for Shane. Shane asked him to break that rule. He can’t let him do it again. Ilya deserves to go out with fans cheering for him, with fans thanking him on bending knee for back-to-back cups, not an entire team, an entire city, wondering why he’s abandoning them right when everything was going so well, right when they needed him to ride this wave, just so Shane doesn’t get lonely when he’s wandering around his house and wondering what the hell he’s going to do next.

Ottawa’s a good organisation. Good people, who’ve had Shane and Ilya’s backs, who’ve made the team a safe space for them, and for players like them. But it’s still a hockey franchise. The rules are the same. And Shane doesn’t know how to tell Ilya what Ilya already knows. Doesn’t know how to ask him not to give up everything for him, again. 

“Is the pain any less?”

“Getting there.” Shane lets his fingers tangle in Ilya’s hair, breathes deeply. Tries to picture the pain receding from his body, shallower and shallower waves until it is the smallest knot at the centre of his knee, something he can easily flick away. “How’s your ankle?”

“Swollen.” Ilya slides his hands underneath Shane’s sweats again, cups his dick over his underwear.

“It’s not — going to. Swell.” Shane feels himself blush, stupid, embarrassing, pushes on. “I’m not. There’s still a lot of pain, the meds.”

“I know. I am not expecting it to.” Ilya bumps his head up against Shane’s hand, which has stilled, and Shane huffs a laugh, resumes petting.

“Needy.”

Ilya shrugs. “If we go in the convertible, with the open top, they should let me drive it.”

“Not a chance.”

“You don’t think it would be sexy? Wind rushing through your hair, Stanley Cup in the back seat…”

“I don’t think they’d let us put it in the back seat.”

“You are being too logical. Just imagine it.”

“I’d rather imagine us in the back seat. I can’t — I can’t sit right next to you, if you’re driving. Not properly.”

Ilya’s eyes flutter closed, and he rubs his cheek against Shane’s side, exhaling heavily. “OK, you win. Someone else can drive. And then you, me, Stanley Cup in the back seat. Ultimate threesome.”

“Is this getting you going?”

Shane’s kinda joking, but Ilya rolls his hips, and he’s not quite hard yet but he’s definitely getting there. Fuck. Just Shane’s hand in his hair, and a stupid joke about riding around with the Cup. Suddenly, Shane wants this too. Not like Ilya does — the pain is getting better but there’s no way he’s getting hard tonight — but he wants all the same. Wants this, them, together, the only other way Shane’s body has ever made sense to him.

“Can I see?” he asks. 

“Yes.” Ilya rolls away from Shane’s hand, wriggles his briefs off, and — how is Shane still so struck by it, every single time. The way this lights him up all the way through, Ilya’s thick cock and the solid lines of his muscle, blockier now than when they were first together. Long fingers trailing down his stomach, his pretty mouth open and panting. 

“No, no — wait,” Shane says, and Ilya does. Stops, turns his head, frozen in motion. Like a painting, Shane thinks stupidly. Like a moment so perfect someone had to literally sit down and get out their brushes and palette, or whatever, Shane doesn’t know anything about painting, he just knows this, Ilya. In his bed, their bed, a perfect picture every time.

“Wait for what, Hollander? My hair to grow? My dick to fall off?”

“No, asshole, wait, just. On me. On —” He isn’t close enough, and Shane can’t move, needs to stay prone and useless on his back, but he needs Ilya on him, as close as they can get. “My hips, can you sit on my hips?”

Ilya pauses, but Shane makes a harsh, impatient noise somewhere in the back of his throat, and Ilya holds his hands up, placating, half-laughing, swinging a leg over Shane’s hips, settling his hands either side of Shane’s head. “Like this?” 

“Like this.” Shane reaches up, runs his hands along the deep shadows between Ilya’s pecs, his thighs, the curve of his arms. Scratches his nails through the hair on Ilya’s stomach, runs one teasing finger down the length of his dick. Ilya shudders, and watches him. “You can help,” Shane tells him.

“Oh, I can help. Very generous.” 

Immediately, Ilya tries to go too fast. Shane holds back a sigh. He doesn’t want it fast, doesn’t want this done. The painkillers have properly kicked in now, and it’s late, and he is so tired, has worked so hard, and everything feels syrupy and slow. He sits up a little, fits his hand over Ilya’s, makes him slow his pace. Ilya pants, licks his own lips, his mouth slick with saliva, drooling a little as he tries to catch his breath. Shane lets his mouth fall open. Lets Ilya’s spit drop right in.

“Fuck, Shane —”

Ilya stares down at him like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, still, after all these years, and nobody else has ever made Shane feel like this, nobody could ever even come close. His thighs tighten around Shane’s hips, the muscles jumping, and Shane thinks I did this I made him do this I made him like this and when Ilya shudders, when Ilya drags his hand through the mess on Shane’s chest, rubbing his come over Shane’s chest, dipping his fingers into Shane’s mouth, into his own, Shane is smiling.

—

He wakes in pain, again. It’s light, birds calling across the garden, the other side of the bed empty. A glass by his bed, a small collection of pills, a sticky note with his pills schedule on in Ilya’s chickenscratch handwriting. Shane checks his phone — eight a.m., he’s good to take the next dose. He ignores the notifications flashing across his screen, tries to ignore the pang of guilt at the fact that Ilya wasn’t there, celebrating with his team, laughing at Haas and getting him safe home in a taxi. Maybe he still will have another chance. Maybe Shane could meet him after the game, and head to the bar with the team, and they could climb into a taxi together, with Ilya kinda buzzed and Shane indulgent and horny and whole. 

Shane swallows the pills. There are crutches propped up against the bedside table, and he manages to nudge the en suite door open and collapse onto the toilet without incident. Everything hurts. His teeth hurt, and he probes them with his tongue in case one of them has come loose. Nothing moves. He hauls himself up, stands in front of the mirror. His godawful beard has to go, but his grip on the edge of the sink is getting shaky, and he’s not sure he trusts his hands right now. His cheeks look sunken beneath it. He’s been shovelling calories in, busting his ass at the gym, and he’s held onto more muscle tone than he normally does, but the playoff weight loss has hit his face hard. He looks — fuck. He looks old. 

He slams the bathroom door harder than he means to. From the kitchen, he can hear the voices falter, resume. 

The steps are more difficult than they should be. Anya skitters up to him, and he almost trips, hears Ilya cry out — Anyushka, no!— and manages narrowly not to barrel straight into his mom. She catches him around his shoulders, pulls him into her side. 

“Oh, honey. You can rest still, you know. There’s nothing ‘til this afternoon, the team need some time to recover from, well, from all of last night.”

“Pretty sure some of them are only just getting to bed now.” His dad claps him on the shoulder, hand coming up to thread through Shane’s hair. He must be disgusting. Straight from the game to hospital, straight from hospital to bed. He can feel it now, suddenly, acutely, the layer of grime on his skin, a sticky itch over every inch of him.

“Sorry, I’m gross.” 

His dad hums, doesn’t move his hand. Ilya has Anya in his arms, is telling her off in a low, adoring voice. On the countertop, there’s fruit, pancakes, toast, a half-eaten box of timbits. His mom pushes a plate of cut fruit towards him hopefully, and Shane looks at it, trying to envision putting the food in his mouth, trying to imagine how that might be possible. He should probably be hungry. He should probably be eating, with the meds. But when he looks at the grape, he thinks about swallowing it, he thinks about it sitting in his stomach, he thinks about it fuelling — what? Him sat in the back seat of a car, unable to walk in his own victory parade? 

“Shane,” his mom says. “Try and eat something. Just some toast, even.”

Shane makes it through most of a slice of peanut butter toast and a satsuma before he physically can’t make himself eat any more. When he’d imagined retirement, he’d imagined — agh. Kids, mostly. Ilya, and kids, and Shane driving them around and reading to them and making them nutritionally-balanced meals and yelling at Ilya for sneaking them candy. He guesses that will happen, still. But not ‘til he’s recovered from surgery, and even after that the process will take months and months and months. That seems like a very long time, all of a sudden. An empty time, hollow, like a sudden dip in the road that sends your stomach somersaulting into your chest. 

“That’s enough,” he tells his mom. “Sorry, the meds.” Her face, her gentle concern, her mouth already opening to suggest something else. “I’m — I’m gross, sorry. It’s making me feel crazy. Ilya —”

“I will help.” Ilya deposits Anya in Shane’s mom’s arms, hands the crutches back to Shane. Snags the fruit plate, like he thinks he’s being subtle. “And you can get rid of the terrible beard.”

“Sorry, kid, mine’s no good either.” David squeezes Shane’s shoulder, leans into Yuna’s side. Shane can feel his parents watching him as he leaves, the clack of his crutches loud in the open space.

In the bathroom, Ilya sits him carefully down on the edge of the bath. Sinks to his knees, presses his mouth against Shane’s uninjured thigh. Shane tucks Ilya’s long curls behind his ears, rubs his fingers against the bristly sides of Ilya’s own playoff beard.

“Is Haas OK?” he asks.

“Yes, he is fine. He’s just woken up, very embarrassed. You haven’t looked at your phone?”

“No. There was. It was a lot.”

“Mm. Hold on.” Ilya stands, leaves, comes back moments later with Shane’s phone in his hand and plops himself right back down on the floor between Shane’s legs. 

“Ilya.”

“Wait, I am checking.”

“I did actually wanna shower.”

“I know. We will shower together. This is all just drunk texts, they all say Shane we love you Shane we miss you Shane you are so good at hockey, you can read them later. This is news, this is social media, this is Farah but I have already spoken to her, nothing urgent. This afternoon big celebration, after that, don’t worry about it yet. This is Pike, also Shane we love you, he’s worried about you, but he texted me also. JJ, too. I told them you are having secret bionic knee fitted that will let you shoot lasers when you skate.”

“Ilya.”

“Shh, I am almost done.” Ilya reaches up, rests his free hand over Shane’s dick in his sweats, squeezes gently. Shane shuts his eyes, more gut instinct than any real sense that it will help him, and Ilya squeezes harder, is pouting when Shane opens his eyes again to look down at him. 

“Better,” Ilya says. He doesn’t move his hand. Shane still doesn’t think he can get hard, at least not all the way, but there’s heat simmering in the pit of his stomach all the same. Ilya is still scrolling, frowning slightly. “Why does the Sharks reporter have your number? I am going to block him. OK, more press, stupid podcasts, Farah will deal with that. Aw, cute winger from Victoire, she sends best wishes; I should give Sveta her number. The hot one from the gay sports podcast also says he hopes you’re OK, shall I block him too?”

“He’s got a boyfriend.”

“And you have a husband. OK, last ones.” Ilya’s hand is moving now, almost kneading at Shane. Shane feels — he feels fine, this is fine, he doesn’t at all want to tip forwards, knee be damned, and bury his face between Ilya’s thighs. “Wiebe says anything you need, let him know. Yuna spoke to him last night, Farah this morning, it is all fine for now, we’re not saying anything until surgery. Rose says she loves you and she’s proud of you, and she’s visiting us this summer, not a question. She says text her when you’re up — Shhh, don’t move, I am texting, I’m saying hello rose this is ilya he will be at the parade this afternoon in sexy car you can watch it live on youtube. Surgery maybe next week maybe week after. Come and see us this summer instead of going to lolla lineup is shit this year anyway.”

“OK,” Shane says weakly. Sometimes it’s better just to let it happen, to let it wash over him. To let himself sit, just a little bit, in what it feels like to be loved by Ilya Rozanov. 

“Yes, OK. OK, then just texts from your parents, whilst you were asleep, but they are here now. That’s all.” He hands Shane’s phone over; the only notifications left on the screen are from the constantly-buzzing team group chat, and one from his weather app telling him clear skies today. And then a new text from Rose haha you’ve got it fuck lolla! give shaney my love! Tell him rest up! He heart reacts it, hands Ilya back his phone.

“Can we shower now?”

Ilya nods. Drops his hand, sets Shane’s phone aside. Helps Shane take his sweats off, helps him get in the bath — and then strips, gets in there with him, reaching over Shane’s head for the shower attachment. 

“I can wash myself, Ilya.”

“Yes, you do that bit. I’ll do your hair.”

When Shane doesn’t move, Ilya makes that face of his — raised, impatient eyebrows, half-pursed little ‘o’ of a mouth, all exasperated disbelief at Shane’s intransigence. Shane hands Ilya the shampoo. It’s not like it’s a hardship, Ilya’s hands in his hair, massaging firmly against his scalp. Ilya kneeling up a little for the better angle whilst Shane scrubs his legs, looking up, Ilya’s half-hard dick right in front of him, his mouth flooding wet, and it would be so easy, so easy, just to lean forwards and…

“No, we are doing your hair right now. You can suck my dick in a minute, when I won’t get cramp in my legs from kneeling at this terrible angle.”

“I wasn’t,” Shane says, pointlessly, and Ilya fists his hand in Shane’s hair, pulls his head up so that Shane can see him laughing at him. “Yeah, whatever, fuck you.”

“Well, maybe. One of the pamphlets was a sex positions pamphlet, did you see? No doggy, no riding, but lots of other things we can do.”

“The pamphlets? My — my fucking dad had those.”

“Was maybe why he handed them over to me so quickly.”

Ilya pushes Shane’s head back down, and rinses off the shampoo. Shane watches the water stream over his thighs, his dick, pool between them. There’s a bruise on his leg that’s sort of the shape of South Africa, and he pokes at it, watches it pale and then rebloom.

Ilya pretty much lifts him out of the bath when they’re done, wraps a big towel around him and sets him on the edge of the bath so that he can shave Shane’s face. Shane closes his eyes, lets himself think about nothing but the careful, steady press of Ilya’s fingers, the scrape of the razor.

“I think I will do mine, also,” Ilya says. Shane tries to keep his face very still, but Ilya laughs at him anyway. “I know, you think it is very sexy. It is very sexy. Unfortunately, it is also very itchy, and hot.”

“Alright.” 

Shane glares at Ilya until he straps his support boot back on. He means to watch Ilya shave too, to see Ilya’s careful hands on his own face, but the light in the bathroom is hurting his eyes. He still feels tired. He feels — well, he guesses he feels like yesterday he had twenty minutes on the ice and then got shoulder-checked against the boards, but the heaviness in his limbs still feels unfair. He sways forwards until his face is pressed against Ilya’s thigh and ass, until he can rub his skin against the soft hair and breathe in the clean, familiar scent of him. Ilya strokes his hair, spiking the wet strands up between his fingers.

“Almost finished.”

Shane nods, wordless. His mouth opening against Ilya’s skin. 

Ilya helps him to the bedroom, arm around Shane’s back, broad palm warm against Shane’s side. He sits him on the edge of the bed, and grabs the fruit plate from the chest of drawers. 

“Ilya.”

“Yes, moy shmel?”

“Your — bee?”

“Mm. Always buzzing around.” Ilya steps closer, a grape held delicately between thumb and forefinger. “Pretending like you are going to sting me. But you will not sting me.”

He slides the grape into Shane’s waiting mouth. I might, Shane thinks, or thinks about saying, but he is laving his tongue over Ilya’s fingers, he is biting the grape in half, he is chewing with Ilya’s spit-drenched fingers tight on his jaw, swallowing as they trail down his throat. 

“Good,” Ilya says, and he picks up an apple slice.

Shane doesn’t know how much fruit he eats like that. Piece by piece, Ilya’s fingers lingering in his mouth, rubbing against the rough blunt edges of his molars, scissoring wide so that Shane’s cheeks distend, so that Shane can feel the scissored edge of a nail where Ilya has torn it off with his teeth. It stings. Shane whines when Ilya pulls his fingers from his mouth, drops it open, sticks out his tongue. 

“OK,” Ilya says, and gives Shane his cock.

Hayden had asked, once, drunk and well-meaning and stupid, how it could possibly feel good. It was, like, a favour Jackie did for him, he said. Nobody was expected to actually like it. Shane didn’t have an answer for him. It isn’t so much a matter of liking it, really. It is more that when Ilya is in his mouth, his throat, when his hands are in his hair and Shane’s hands are clutching at his thighs, rubbing his balls, pressing gently at his hole and all he can taste was Ilya, all there is, ever, in the whole world is Ilya, it’s like —

It’s like hockey. It is like hockey but better, fuck, not a sentence Shane can ever, ever speak aloud, can hardly think in his own head, but it’s like. It’s like getting charged after a goal, bashed half-up against the boards by your teammates’ enthusiasm, and your body has just done the one thing it is supposed to do above everything else, the one thing you have trained it to do, and for one fleeting moment in the aftermath it belongs to everybody else as they crash into you and pull you into something bigger, right before you have to start it all over again. Sucking Ilya’s cock feels like that. Like letting go.

“You are so good,” Ilya says, half-broken, but Shane wants him all the way falling apart, wants those perfect half-hurt noises he makes when Shane makes him come. He likes how they sound together like this, like how he sounds, choking on Ilya’s cock, the wet horrible ugly sounds of his mouth being taken, filled. Had. He likes that there’s no way to be polite about it. He feels the flush rise in his own cheeks as he swallows hard, digs his fingernails into the meat of Ilya’s ass, holds back his smile when Ilya’s hips jerk and he comes into Shane’s waiting mouth, biting down on his own fist to muffle his noises. Ilya pulls out quicker than Shane would like, but his fingers are in Shane’s mouth immediately, sliding through the mess of come that Shane hasn’t managed to swallow entirely. Shane’s mouth a little sore, a little clumsy, thick with the aftertaste of Ilya. He could stay here, he thinks. He could stay here, swallowing, with his eyes closed and Ilya’s hand on his face, and his knee only just now remembering to throb, and nothing else would need to matter at all.

“Fuck,” he says, remembering. “Fuck, Ilya, my parents are right outside.”

“We were very quiet.” Ilya kisses his forehead, which soothes him more than it should, and goes to fetch them clean sweatpants. “Also they are watching ESPN, and Yuna is probably disagreeing with Bill or Bob or whatever his name is, so they won’t be listening.”

“You know what his name is.”

“No, he has stupid opinions, so I have forgotten it. Do you want black or navy?”

“Black.” Shane catches the sweats Ilya throws him. He’s kinda half-hard, but the thought of doing something about it feels very distant. He’d like Ilya again, really. All over again right now, exactly like that. Ilya catches his chin, and kisses him, tongue-first and greedy. 

Shane thinks about asking him how much fruit he ate. Doesn’t. It doesn’t matter anyway, does it. They won, and the game is over.

—

The parade starts at three. Ilya is pouting because they weren’t allowed either Anya or the Stanley Cup in the back of the car, and he’s been making fun of the driver — a solid, self-serious sort of man with dark glasses and a gum habit — in Russian to Shane for the last five minutes as the engine idles and they wait for the whole thing to kick off.

“Just like he is reviewing the voyska, yes?”

“Voy-ska?” Shane frowns at the one unfamiliar word, knows he’s saying it wrong. He tries to keep his voice low, to match Ilya’s sly undertone, but there’s so much noise all around them, the whooping crowd and their team and speakers blasting two different pop songs, it comes out wincingly loud.

“Uh, like. Soldiers. Ready for battle. Looking over them, like —” Ilya does an annoyingly good impression of the way the driver is surveying the crowd. “Like he is a, uh, commander.”

“General.” Still not the right volume.

“Mm.” Ilya frowns, roots around in his pocket, finds the earplugs that Shane normally takes to the gym. It’s a little better with them in, everything slightly receded.

“Voyska,” Shane tries again.

“Almost.” Ilya kisses his forehead, smoothes back his hair. “You are very sweaty, moy lyubov.”

“It’ll be better once the car is moving. Why can’t these things ever start on fucking time?”

Ilya shrugs, casts his roving eye over the crowd. In front of the car, Haas is leaning into Troy, both of them in sunglasses with baseball caps pulled low over their eyes. Harris is waving at a steward, tapping his watch. At least someone cares about punctuality. 

Shane had promised himself he’d have fun. That this would be a good time, exactly the celebration it’s billed as, but all he can think is this is it. This is it. Last time he’s part of this team for real. Last time he’s Shane Hollander, hockey player, without the leaden weight of ‘former’ tripping him up. 

The car starts. It is better, with a little bit of a breeze. There’s a small girl, four or five, holding a poster with their beaming faces on, and Ilya waves, blows her a kiss. Two teenagers drinking soda and sharing a vape who blush when Shane frowns at them, a mom with a baby on her hip in matching Hollander jerseys. Shane’s A on their chests. Fuck. He’d known the game was the last time he’d get to wear the A, but he hadn’t known — when Ilya had been out on IR a couple of years ago, and Shane had temporarily worn the C, he hadn’t known that would be the last time for that. He shouldn’t be mad about that. Ilya’s a good captain, and Shane had been happy to be his alt, to let Ilya do the rousing speeches and to step into the places that Ilya didn’t fill so naturally. It wasn’t like he was jonesing for Ilya’s place. Not anymore.

He lets his eyes blur, lets his gaze drift over the posters, the jerseys, the occasional pride flag waving high. 

Somewhere in this crowd are his parents, Svetlana, Hayden and Jackie and the kids. Somewhere near the end, they’d said, so they could head to the water afterwards, get some food. 

A giggling group of college kids, facepaint already smudging. An older couple, wearing a jersey design that got retired before Shane hit elementary school. He waves at them, and doesn’t know if they see. The team lean over the crawling car, and yell barely-audible excited nonsense into their ears, clutch them close, and Shane thinks you don’t know, I haven’t told you, I’m doing it again and lets Hazy smear beer-soaked kisses over his cheeks. 

The crowd gets thicker as they near the park, and Ilya leans over to kiss him, to grin against his mouth, soaking up the screams like a cat in the sun. He looks so bright, like this. Like he belongs, a god held up by a hundred thousand adoring hands. 

“I should do more than kiss you,” he whispers into Shane’s ear, his mouth hot, his lips brushing Shane’s skin. “I should get you on my lap in front of everyone, get my hands on you, show them just what is mine. What I have won already. Who do you think they would be more jealous of?”

“Me,” Shane says, frankly. How could they not be? How could they not be, when Ilya looks like this. Shane is staring straight ahead. Aware of everywhere they’re touching: Ilya’s mouth to his ear, Ilya’s hand on his thigh, Shane’s arm around Ilya’s shoulders. Innocent. But only tiny shifts needed to make it not so. 

“Hmm, maybe. I am very beautiful. But I think it would be me. Shane Hollander. Begging for my cock. Wherever he can get it.”

“Ilya.”

“Do you think they’re wondering what I’m saying? Do you think they can guess how badly you want to open your mouth for me, all the time?”

Maybe. Maybe they can. Shane has heard them on the ice, in the crowd, he knows what they say. How much of it stings true. But none of them know this. What Ilya sounds like, how easy he makes it for Shane to ask, to take, to have. 

The car stops just inside the park. Delays up ahead: drunken, delighted fans have pulled down a lamppost. Hazy leans over the car, and ruffles Shane’s hair.

“Are you coming out with us later?”

“Again, Hazy?” Ilya drawls. 

“Well, Lisa’s off tomorrow, so she can actually come out this time. Be rude not to. You aren’t? Rozy?”

“You can,” Shane tells him, panicked, suddenly. Something else Ilya is missing, because of him. But Ilya only shrugs, tips his head back, yawning obnoxiously.

“Mm, maybe. But we will come to the team dinner tomorrow, and we are doing the big press event, and of course we will have a big party after surgery.”

A retirement party, Ilya means. Because after surgery, once they know know, the way everyone on the team is carefully pretending they don’t already, they can tell everyone.

“Are you working with Johnston again this summer?” Hazy asks Ilya. “Hӓrk was too scared to ask you straight up.”

“Oh, Johnston is no good for Herald,” Ilya says dismissively. “Herald needs a skating-specific coach, and also someone who will make him build more muscle. Shane, who was that guy you worked with the other season —”

“Marty?” Shane likes him, but Herald is so skittish, Marty would blow right through him. “Yeah, he was good, but I think actually that guy JJ was with for a while, Cloutier, he’d be a better personality fit.”

“Oh, yes.” Ilya smacks a kiss against Shane’s cheek. “Cloutier is perfect. I will text his email to Herald.”

“Aw, great. Thanks Roz, Hollzy.” Hazy doesn’t seem to have noticed Ilya didn’t answer his original question. “Oh, shit, they got a marching band for this bit, that’s awesome —”

And he’s gone, grinning, weaving slightly, joining the clamour of the rest of the team.

“Did you tell Johnston you won’t be working with him?” Shane asks.

“Not yet. He will be grumpy about it. He thinks I did not work hard enough to comp— to make up for my fucked wrist this season, he had new ideas.”

“You could — I mean, you could try them out?”

Ilya frowns at him in genuine confusion. “Why would I do that? I don’t need to make up for my shitty wrist to destroy everyone in the beer league.”

“You’re going to play beer league hockey?”

“Maybe.” Ilya fidgets with the lock on the door, and Shane fits his palm to his cheek, turns Ilya back to face Shane. “I was thinking — when we have children, maybe their friends’ parents will also play in the beer league, or in the gay team Ottawa has—”

“Ottawa Pride Hockey.”

“Yes. Not very imaginative name, perhaps I will come up with some other suggestions.”

“You wanna play with our kids’ friends’ parents?”

“Yes. Well, or kick their asses.”

Shane doesn’t know what to do with that. Doesn’t know what to do with the sunrise feeling inside himself. He fights not to smile, fails. 

“What about me?”

“Oh, maybe you can referee. You aren’t allowed to play, too competitive.”

“I’m too competitive?” Shane swats at Ilya in outrage and laughs, for the first time in what feels like days. “You broke your little finger trying to beat my mom at badminton.”

“Stupid sport. Why is the thing like that? Why not just use a ball?”

“We don’t use a ball in hockey.”

“Yes, because it would not slide on the ice well. Come on, Hollander, you are supposed to be professional hockey player. Do I need to explain everything to you?”

They grin at each other helplessly, and then Ilya is pulling him in, biting playfully at his ear, the deep baritone vibration of his laugh shaking through Shane’s chest.

They do get the Cup in the car, in the end. Half the team crammed in too, Luca crouched in the footwell, Cherny with his legs stuck out the trunk, Shane pulled onto Ilya’s lap. That’s the picture Harris sends Shane at the end of the day, when he’s tired and sleepy and sitting by the river with Svetlana, watching the sun go down as Ilya and Jackie chase the kids in circles around the picnic blanket.

“Show me,” Svetlana demands, and Shane shows her: his team, laughing, cheering, mouths open in ugly beaming joy. Ilya, his nose smushed up against Shane’s cheek, clearly caught mid-chirp, his face alight with mischievous glee. Shane laughing, one flat palm pressed up against the Stanley Cup, one fist punching the air. “It’s a good picture.”

“It is a good picture.” Shane sends it to Ilya, tucks his phone back in his pocket. Looks out across the reddening water. “Next season will be tough.”

“Because you won’t be playing?”

“Yeah. I don’t — I mean, we’ll see how surgery goes.”

“Shane.” Svetlana raises her eyebrows. She looks so like Ilya when she does that. When Shane thinks about the two of them as little rascally runabout children his chest starts to hurt.

“Yeah. I. Probably not.”

“And Ilya won’t play.”

“Did he — say that?”

Svetlana stretches, lies back, her hands plucking idly at the grass. “No. He did not have to. He will be bored of hockey, without you.”

“He loves this team.”

She shrugs. “I did not say that he didn’t.”

“I don’t want them to hate him.”

“That is why you have a publicist, yes? But also, they will forget, in time. They will remember that he made this team, that he won them two cups. That he was Ilya Rozanov.”

She pronounces his name with relish. Shane shifts, uncomfortably. Svetlana always sounds so sure. It is hard to find the holes in her arguments, the holes Shane knows must be there. It isn’t this easy. It can’t be. It wouldn’t be, if it were Shane, and they have always mirrored each other, always, so —

“Hӓrk needs to work on his speed, if he’s going to be on a line with Haas.”

“I know. We’re going to send him to Cloutier.”

“Oh, Cloutier is good. Cherny should go to Derzhavin though, for his checking.”

“Yeah. Yeah, fuck, good shout, actually. I should text him.”

“Mm.” Svetlana closes her eyes. Behind them, Ilya is spinning Arthur around in circles, both shrieking at equal volume. “And after that, you should tell your GM to speak to me. I am getting bored of Boston.” 

—

Shane spends the rest of the week between press and team commitments, trying to plan. Trying being the operative word. Shane stretches, and he takes slow, crutch-aided walks around their garden, and he clicks around on his laptop and he scrolls through every email his mom has ever sent him about initiatives for Asian youth in hockey and anti-hazing initiatives and mentoring schemes and post-camp coach performance reviews and inside his head it is just white blank space where his future should be.

No, that’s — that’s not fair. There’s Ilya, there’s the shape of children, there’s Anya and their house and his parents warm and laughing on the couch. The rest of it, around Shane, is clear. It’s just Shane himself that he can’t see. The shape of him doesn’t make sense. Like once you strip off the pads and the jersey, down to the naked wasting shape of him, there’s nothing much left.

Still, he thinks. He watches the game back, the part of it that was played after he got hit, and tries to see the shape of the team without him. He thinks they could get to another cup with Ilya, as long as they get a bit more depth on the defence. Sometimes Ilya joins him, and Shane says Haas is passing too wide here or Troy is too scared to dump and chase and then we lose the puck anyway and Ilya mostly nods along. Sometimes he jokes. He’s getting quiet, and trying not to be. Shane worries, of course he does, but he doesn’t know how to tell Ilya he doesn’t need to pretend when obviously everything about Shane in the last few weeks has made all of this worse. When he's not sure that giving up hockey — not Ilya’s love, no, he gets that, but still so much of Ilya's life — won't make it worse. 

“You would be good video coach, I think,” Ilya says, accent thick, English slipping the way it does when he is tired, or his head is starting to hurt.

“Fuck off.” It’s reflexive, the memory of a dozen camps where Shane has struggled to explain basic drill concepts adequately to a bunch of ten-year-olds, feedback forms where parents had written Jennifer loved getting to talk to Coach Hollander about her form but wasn’t always sure if he felt she was doing well. How long it had taken Shane to walk into a locker room and understand enough of the rhythm of it to get by, to get out his own chirps, to know where the line was for him, Shane Hollander. To know which words to ignore and which to hit back at. He doesn’t  — the thing is, he’d had authority as captain because he was the fucking best in the league and look how quickly that had slipped away as soon as they realised exactly what he was. 

“Breathe. Shane. Breathe.” Shane snaps his head up. Ilya strokes his thumb along Shane’s cheek, breathes slow and steady for him. “I was not joking.”

“I’m not — I’m not a good coach.”

“Video coach. Precision. Pointing out patterns, mistakes. Best hockey IQ of anybody I know. You would be good. Doesn’t mean you have to.”

Ilya’s put his wedding ring on his finger, now that the season’s properly over. It’s cold against Shane’s skin. 

Shane’s is still on a chain around his neck. He fumbles for it now, feeling stupid. 

“Will you…?”

Carefully, Ilya unlatches the chain. Holds the ring tight in his hand for a moment, warming the metal, before he slides it onto Shane’s finger.

“I’ll think about it,” Shane says. “The video coaching.”

He does. He thinks about it as he reads the mounting speculation around his surgery, as he smiles in interviews, I’m sure Jason Li doesn’t need me telling him how to play his game, he looks like a great player, wishing him best of luck for the draft, takes pictures, watches Ilya let small children leave sticky fingerprints on the Cup. Maybe. Shane in a dark room surrounded by screens, telling people where the gaps in their game are. He could do it. It would be satisfying, in its way. But no adrenaline taste in his mouth. No bruises to count. Twelve steps removed from the feeling of it all coming together.

The morning before the surgery, Shane sits on the floor of their bedroom, and gets out the cardboard box Svetlana brought back from Russia the summer before last. Their favourite picture is on top, the one they got blown up and that now hangs in the cottage: Irina, visibly suppressing a laugh, with little baby Ilya pulling at her curls. He leafs through the rest. Ilya getting rangier, surlier, more conscious of how his face looks in photos. Him and Svetlana sneering through a haze of smoke. Him dwarfed by hockey pads clearly bought for him to grow into. The shadow of Andrei’s face in one picture, looking away from his baby brother as Ilya shows off the medal on his chest.

“You are feeling nostalgic?”

Ilya lowers himself slowly onto the floor, injured foot stretched out in front of him. 

“I wish we’d been in the juniors together.”

“No. It would have been terrible, very messy. I would have broken your heart. I was not so nice then.”

Shane squints at him. “When did I say you were nice now?” And then, annoyed at himself, knowing that isn’t what he meant, what he thinks. “I don’t believe that. You were nice the — the first time. I mean, you were a dick. But you were kind to me.”

“Very gentle with sweet virgin Hollander,” Ilya says, because he is a dick. Shane elbows him, and Ilya squawks. “Oh, you don’t want your cards?”

“My cards.”

“Good luck for surgery cards.” Ilya produces a sheaf of cards, dumps them on Shane’s lap. He puts the lid on the cardboard box, shoves it back under the bed before Shane can stop him. “Come on, open them. I want to see which superhero Hazy thinks will give you luck.”

Shane lets Ilya change the subject. He reads his cards, and they guess which ones were picked by the team and which ones were picked by their more tasteful spouses. Hazy's has Iron Man on, has a whole paragraph of well wishes and a list of movies he thinks Shane might like to watch whilst they recover. 

“I'll miss them,” Shane says. 

“Mm. Me too. But we say this now, and then next week we get Bood's BBQ summer schedule, and we remember that just because he has retired doesn't mean we have escaped being force-fed alarming kinds of sausages.” Ilya touches Shane's hand. “You'll miss playing with them, I know. But they will still be here. Eating us out of our house.”

“Of house and home.” It sounds nice, kind of. Not that Shane wants them here all the time, but somewhere the kids can come to crash, get some food in them. More little ones running around with Hayden's brood. That's almost the shape of something, Shane thinks. “And there's always the beer league.”

Ilya leans in close, his breath hot on Shane's face. Shane's eyes flutter, his mouth dropping a little open. 

“And you will look so good in stripes, Hollander.”

—

His surgery date comes too quickly, for all that Shane has spent the whole week impatient for it. Sat in his little gown with his mom and Ilya, waiting to go in, he only feels shivery and scared. 

“It’ll be alright, honey,” his mom says. “They’re really feeling pretty optimistic about outcome, and we’ve got a couple of great rehab options right here in the city, or Dr Belsize would be very happy to do house calls if you’d prefer to go back to the cottage whilst you work on it.”

“I’m not going back.”

“To the cottage?”

Shane shakes his head. He stares at his knees, at the glint of Ilya’s wedding band, anywhere except his mom. “To the team.”

“Honey. I mean — I know that’s a very real possible outcome, and it’s good to be prepared, but I really think we should wait until —”

Shane shakes his head again, faster this time. He wants to slump forward. He wants to squish his face against Ilya’s stomach, press his bare feet to the cold hospital floor. He locks his hands together.

“No. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m done. I —” He tries to think of what Ilya had said, how much it had all made sense. “Five cups. Go out on a high. I.” His voice is going to break, he can feel it, and there’s nothing he can do. “I don’t wanna play bad hockey.”

“OK.” Yuna puts her hand on his knee, and squeezes. “Look at me.” 

He blinks hard, clearing the tears. Looks at her. Ilya has shuffled closer, his hand fisted in the back of Shane’s gown. 

“Oh Shane,” she says. “OK, if that’s what you want. It wouldn’t be bad hockey —”

“That is what I said.” Ilya rests his chin on Shane’s shoulder, digging in hard; Shane lets himself take a full breath. “But also, it is OK to be done. Maybe now some of those rookies finally get a chance, huh?”

“I haven’t won the Art Ross in years, Ilya.”

“You’ve had an amazing career, Shane.” She squeezes his knee again. “I’m so proud of you. And you’re going to do amazing things off the ice too. I mean, you already are — look at the Foundation, everything it does.”

Shane nods, numbly. 

“And the scope for expansion is there already, and coming off a cup — and you’re in a shoe-in for first Asian player in the Hall of Fame, about fucking time — it’s a really great time. This is smart, Shane, actually, really smart.”

Shane nods. Maybe there’ll be a plan already. That’s what Ilya said, that his mom would have a plan, and they could decide if they liked it or not. Maybe it doesn’t matter so much if he really loves it, not if it’s good, not if it’ll help people. He’s lucky enough to have had two great loves of his life, and at least he gets to keep Ilya now that the first has gone up in flames. 

“And in a few years, when Ilya retires, maybe we look at setting up something a little more permanent in Ottawa, not just the summer camps.”

Ilya draws back. He doesn’t say anything, but he looks at Shane, and when Shane says nothing his eyes dart sideways. His jaw setting, mutinous. 

“Yeah. That sounds great, Mom. Lots to. Get stuck into.”

It isn’t that he doesn’t want to help the Foundation. It isn’t that. He loves the Foundation, he cares about those kids, he thinks they could be doing more, always more, trying to clear the rotting debris from the beautiful core of hockey, trying to shift the culture, trying to prove things can be different, he’s just — 

Maybe he’s just tired. Just in pain. Maybe he’ll feel differently, once he’s recovered. 

Ilya twitches when they call Shane’s name. He presses a kiss to Shane’s palm, and tells him he’ll be waiting for him afterwards. He sits back down next to Yuna, leaving Shane’s chair empty between them. 

Shane could turn, now. He could say Ilya’s retiring too, both of us, and Ilya wants to run the camps, and raise our kids, and I want — I want 

He lies down on the gurney. He closes his eyes. He feels the guilt sit sick and heavy in his stomach. He listens to them count down. 

Ten, nine, eight —

He stops.

Chapter End Notes

wow moving house is really disruptive to fic writing, who knew!! tysm for the lovely comments on the last chapter, they made me v v happy <3 ty m as always

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

The fifth time Shane wakes up after surgery, it sticks. He reaches clumsily for Ilya's face, beams at him. 

“Ilyushechka!”

Ilya blinks, swallows hard. “That is a new one.”

“Sveta told me.”

“Oh, Sveta, now? You never called her that before, she will be very pleased.”

“I didn't know if she liked me.”

“She likes you.” He pushes Shane's sweaty hair back from his forehead, rubs at the concerned crease between Shane's eyebrows. “I like you.” 

“I like you too.” Shane's face crumples: beautiful, dramatic, even more transparent than he always is. Always so quick to cry. Ilya wants to drink his tears, wants to cup them in his hands and pour them over his face like a baptism. “Ilya, I'm sorry.”

“It’s OK.” Ilya’s a little mad at him, but only a little. And when Shane wakes all the way up, Ilya will have to tell him that Yuna knows. That they had sat in the waiting room together, and she'd gently asked him about how he felt about playing hockey without Shane, and he couldn't lie to her. She hadn't understood, not really, loyalty always her first language. But she understands that Ilya loves Shane. And she is, at least, excited about running the hockey camps outside of the summer, expanding their partnership with Ottawa’s own youth provision. 

Ilya really only needs Shane to understand.

“Can we go home now?”

“Soon. When the doctor can check on you, then we'll go.”

“OK.” Shane turns his face into Ilya's hand, presses his tongue to the crease of Ilya’s palm. Perhaps it is meant to be a kiss. Perhaps he can taste the salt sweat there, and wants to open his mouth to it. If Yuna wasn't coming back at any moment, Ilya would slip his fingers inside Shane's mouth and let him suck. Would watch those pretty eyes slip contentedly closed and count the minutes well-spent. But unfortunately for Ilya, Shane has a mother who loves him and an expensive doctor who will no doubt be hovering any moment now, and so Ilya sits back with his damp hand slipped under his leg.

Still. 

“Does your throat hurt? From the tube?” 

“Yes,” Shane says, like it's just occurred to him.

Ilya hands him some water, helps him drink. “Better or worse than after I have fucked it?” he asks, and when the doctor does come back, Ilya has wet spots all over his shirt from where Shane spluttered his mouthful of water all over him. 

At home, Shane sleeps. Ilya sleeps too, one hand tucked between Shane's legs, the pulse in his thigh beating against Ilya's wrist. It is summer, but Ilya feels hibernation deep in his bones, the crawling need to disappear. Another week, he pleads. Just until he’s a little better.

—

They sleep for what feels like days. Wake to limp to the bathroom or the kitchen, to stretch their limbs. For Shane to take painkillers, to strip his sweaty shirt for a clean one, to pester Ilya until he does the same. Sometimes Ilya wakes to voices in the kitchen, or a cool hand on his forehead, or Anya snuffling her cold nose against his cheek. He rolls over, pulls her closer to him, falls back to sleep. Twice, Shane shakes him awake, something like panic in his wide eyes, and asks if Ilya is OK. If Ilya has taken his medication, or taken something else. I’m fine, Ilya tells him. I’m just tired. The playoffs are so long. 

They both know it isn’t just that. Shane massages his ankle, and makes Ilya drink disgusting electrolytes, and then they both curl up together again, Shane’s face a little less drawn than it was two days ago. Like this, on the very edge of sleep, Ilya feels most at peace. No dreams, no heaviness of being all the way awake, just Shane’s warm breathing body and his thoughts soft round the edges. He tries to talk to his mama, in those moments, as he fades into unconsciousness. Tries to hear her voice.

He wakes again to Shane calling his name. Voice edged with irritation and embarrassment, which makes Ilya sit up half-smiling before he even fully registers what he’s hearing, or that the voice is coming from the bathroom. He finds Shane — ah, it is too good, too delicious, his perfect needy boy, and for a moment Ilya is all balloon, the slow sink of the past few weeks forgotten entirely.

Shane has a little shower chair to sit in whilst his knee heals. He’s contorted on it, almost into a squat, his injured leg sort of stretched out in front of him, one hand white-knuckled on the edge of the seat, the other very clearly buried three fingers deep into his ass. Ilya wants to clutch his own face. Ilya wants to take a thousand pictures. Ilya doesn’t even know what to say, he’s so gleeful. He’s two days out of surgery, and already he has been driven to this. Shane is a beautiful gift sent to him by a trickster god, and Ilya wants to suck his cock so fucking bad it hurts.

“Oh, shanezhka,” he says, voice dripping condescension. Shane glowers at him. “Did you get stuck? Did you forget you had a husband with two working hands?”

“Fuck off. I wanted to — get clean.”

“Oh, yes, this is definitely the best way to go about that.” 

Shane is trembling a little with the effort of holding his absurd position, fighting not to go toppling head-first into collapse, and perhaps if he were not injured, if this were a different time, Ilya would let him suffer a little. But he bends over the bath, hauls Shane up by his armpits; Shane pulls his fingers out of his ass with an excellent slurping sound that makes him glare at Ilya again, and Ilya plonks him back on his chair. 

“My baby,” Ilya coos. Shane is dripping wet, and a little shivery where the water has started to cool, and his face is bright red. Ilya can probably get him to full tears in about five seconds flat. “My baby, let me take you to bed.”

There is a beat where maybe Shane thinks about arguing, but he is still hard, and Ilya’s shirt has got all wet, is clinging to his chest, and Shane keeps flicking his eyes down to where Ilya’s necklace rests between his pecs. Ilya grins. He hauls Shane up again, and they make their wobbly path into the bedroom where Shane collapses onto the bed, and then frowns up at Ilya again like any of this is his fault. Ilya grabs the lube, and makes impatient clucking sounds with his tongue.

“Let me see.” He pushes Shane’s thighs up — careful with the left one, making sure Shane’s grip is around the meat of his thigh rather than the crease of his knee — and beams down at his hole.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Shh. We are reuniting.” Fuck. Shane is a little puffy, sticky with lube, clenching prettily just for Ilya. Ilya rubs one tender finger around his rim, and watches Shane shiver.

“Good?” 

“Good. Ilya — Ilya, please. I need it, you. Please fuck me.”

“I will.” Ilya lets Shane go, kicks off his boxer shorts, strips off his t-shirt, watches Shane’s hands flex on his own thighs as he fights the urge to let go and reach for Ilya. Ilya lays his hands over Shane’s, squeezes. “The pamphlet says like this is OK, but I’m not sure, you get so tense here when you are nearly coming,  and seems probably bad to keep it bent like this for so long.”

“Not gonna be that long.”

“Ah, OK, you don’t want it then, you don’t think it’ll be good—” Shane kicks sideways, heel catching Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya turns his head, kisses his ankle. “On our sides. Better for your knee, my ankle. I can get nice and deep.”

“OK, yeah. Fuck.” 

Shane drops his legs, and there is a blissful second where Ilya is bracketed by his thighs, where he could just drop his face to Shane’s stomach and breathe him in, maybe lick a little at the head of his cock, and then they are both rolling, arranging themselves with familiar ease, and Ilya slicks up his cock and is sliding in. Shane swears, grabs at Ilya’s thigh, fingernails digging in, little points of electricity, and drags him deeper.

“You fucked me up on the ice,” Shane says, and his hand is skirting up Ilya’s body, grabbing Ilya’s face, fingers sliding into Ilya’s mouth, his wedding ring knocking cold against Ilya’s teeth, and Ilya grabs his wrist, traces the metal with his tongue. “That was a dirty hit.”

“Clean hit,” Ilya argues around Shane’s fingers, lost, barely sure what game they are playing. 

“Dirty. You — fuck, move, Rozanov, you played dirty and you know it.”

Ilya lets Shane’s fingers drop from his mouth, lets them leave spit-trails down his neck. “You like it when I play dirty.”

“Show me then, show me, what it — what it looks like when you play dirty —”

“You want to check all my plays?” Ilya rolls his hips, grabs at Shane’s tit, kneading it roughly. “I told you you will referee the beer league games. You love the rules so much.”

“You don’t even know —”

“You know what I know?” Ilya turns Shane’s face towards him, kisses him hard, Shane panting into his mouth. He can feel the edge of Shane’s chipped tooth with his tongue. Shane will get it fixed soon, but for now Ilya runs his tongue along it and moans deep in his throat and thinks about his blood in Shane’s mouth, thinks about the time his nose bled all over the ice and he saw Shane pressing his hand against the stain like it might transfer to his skin. Shane whines when Ilya slows, his hand opening and closing around his cock, but Ilya is not ready for this to be over yet, not quite yet. “I know what I’m going to do on my cup day.”

“I thought — fuck, I thought, you were going to take it to Game Changers?”

“No, you will do that on your cup day, and so will Troy, very nice of you both. Lets me do what I really want. Lets me fuck you in our trophy room again, lets me fuck you right in front of the cup, make you come so hard you —”

“Ilya,” and Shane is trying so hard to sound scandalised, but it comes out ragged, desperate, his cock twitching in his own hand, and Ilya cannot hold back, not anymore, not when Shane is so hot and slick and wanting, not when he sounds so pretty. Not when he is taking his other hand and tangling it in Ilya’s necklace and dragging him close enough to kiss, the chain chokingly tight against Ilya’s traps. 

“What, you think — yes, yes, uhn —you, fuck, you think you would be first hockey player to come on the cup? Going to make you come all over it, lyubimyy, going to make you lick it off —”

Shane jerks, his whole body moving at once, hole clenching around Ilya’s cock, fingers still tangled in Ilya’s necklace so that Ilya’s head jerks too, and he tips it forwards, buries his face against Shane’s shoulder, teeth scraping against his skin as Shane comes, mouth open wet breathless, fuck, Ilya digs his teeth deeper as he chases his own orgasm, hips working faster, and Shane’s body is starting to get sensitive, starting to twitch a little as Ilya drives into him, Shane whimpering high and hurt in the back of his throat, even as he clutches at Ilya’s ass and tries to get Ilya deeper than could ever be possible; exactly as deep as Ilya would prefer to be —

“Hollander.” 

A long moment where all he can hear is his own heartbeat in his ears. Their bodies trembling together, Shane’s soft skin, the spit drying on Ilya’s face. And then Shane moves, just slightly, and the roaring subsides, and Ilya can hear them both breathe, hear it when Shane sighs gently, contended.

Ilya kisses aimlessly, only skin-seeking, as Shane examines his own hand: the come still webbed there, the come he has left in sticky trails along Ilya’s skin. Ilya gently guides it towards Shane’s mouth until Shane sticks his tongue out, dutifully cleaning himself. His eyes flutter closed, his breathing slowing. It soothes him, to have this, to have his mouth filled and to make things neat, a tidying away of a little of what has just spilled out of him. When his eyes open again, when his hand is back in Ilya’s, he is half-smiling. 

“Well. I think we maybe managed ten minutes?”

“Fifteen,” Ilya says loftily, although he has no idea. He rubs his face against Shane’s shoulder, yawns loudly. “Can you sleep like this? With me inside? Or do you need pillow for your knee?”

Shane makes a dubious face, stretches it gently. “You wanna sleep again?” His jaw works. He wants to say something, and Ilya should put him out of misery, say it first, can’t quite make himself. Waits, instead, for Shane to speak. “Have you spoken to Galina? Since finals?”

“Yes, after parade.” Ilya tries to keep his voice light, but he can tell it isn’t working. Shane’s fingers gentle as they stroke along his jaw; Ilya closes his eyes. “It is not abnormal. Big adrenaline crash. Playoffs are hard, we have both been stressed. Surgery. Big future changes. I am sad, or sometimes I am sad, but also — I am not completely lying. Playoffs were very hard this year. I am old retired hockey player, I have to sleep after we fuck, so—”

“You don’t have to be,” Shane says in a rush.

“Don’t have to be what?”

“Retired.”

Ilya looks down at him, and tries very hard not to roll his eyes. “OK,” he says, bracing his hand against the mattress so that he can start to pull out without touching Shane. “OK, I am not having this argument whilst I’m still inside you.”

“It doesn’t have to be an argument.”

“Oh, we are not going to have an argument? No argument when I have told you what I am going to do, told you what I want, and now you are mad about it, because you cannot play hockey so good anymore and I could keep going for — what? Another two seasons, maybe a little more. Get another couple of concussions, see if my wrist stops working for good, but is OK because I can still play hockey, still be one of the best in the world, and you can —”

“Jesus Christ, Ilya, of course — of course I don’t want you to get injured, I’m not saying that —”

“So you aren’t angry that I could keep playing?”

Shane’s jaw works. Ilya is all the way apart from him now, sat back, one arm wrapped around his own knees, but Shane is mostly still just lying there. Propped up on his elbows, tears shimmering in his pretty, pretty eyes, and glowering like Ilya has done anything except be fucking right. “A bit,” he says, voice tight. “Maybe a bit, Ilya, fuck, I don’t — I’m not proud of that. I don’t. Like myself for that. But if it was just that I would keep quiet. Deal with it myself.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows. Go on. 

“I don’t want. They’ll hate you, Ilya. Hate you like half of Boston hates you.”

“Some of them thought it was romantic.”

Shane sits up, ramrod straight, his knuckles white. His face briefly spasms in discomfort: the lube and sweat and come dripping out of him will be a torment. Ilya itches to help him clean. Won’t. 

“And some of them burned your effigy in the streets! Jesus. We live here. We’re. Ilya, we’re gonna raise kids here. I don’t want people to yell shit at you when you’re trying to — buy apples, or pick our kids up. Or, Christ, when you’re playing them in beer league. I don’t. Ilya.” 

Oh, his beautiful eyes. The open, trembling hurt on his face. Still, Ilya does not move. He keeps his arms tightly wrapped around his legs, keeps his face blank and cold. He feels very far from himself, very far from his body. He does not want this. He does not want to hear this. He wants the warmth of their tangled limbs and the distance of the world. 

“Ilya. They’ll know you could have kept going. They’ll know you didn’t, because of me, or — partly because of me. I know you don’t want to play anymore, but you can’t pretend that I’m not a part of that. But if you. I don’t want you to be hurt, I never want you to be hurt, but you could have retired, and I — could have kept going, could have. Fuck. Been good enough for both of us, alright?”

“You think you are so good?” 

“Don’t. Don’t, Ilya. I don’t want to be the reason you lose another home. You — you can’t ever go back to Russia, and you left Boston, you left your team, and this is. I don’t. This is supposed to be where we are, forever.”

“It will be.”

“OK. OK, then — Ilya. You’re the captain.”

“I know. I know this.” Ilya presses his face against the bony edge of his kneecap, tries to sort through the tangled mess of feelings in his chest. There is a part of him, perhaps, that worries about the city, about the team, about not finding it quite so fun to be hated anymore. But he is so tired. He is finished. He could keep playing, and he could keep scoring goals, but the gleeful mess of energy that has been Ilya Rozanov would be elsewhere, dreaming of teasing his husband as he makes blank-faced passes on the ice. “We have a publicist.”

“That’s what Svetlana said.”

Ilya gestures outwards, exasperated. So, Shane will talk to Sveta, but he will sit on his feelings and go all mealy-mouthed with Ilya, his fucking husband, right up until things explode. Ilya has no interest in examining whether or not that’s exactly what he’s been doing too, that isn’t the point, and also if Shane has spoken to Sveta why didn’t he listen to her. They both know that she is right an infuriating amount of the time.

“Things aren’t that simple,” Shane starts, and Ilya makes a guttural noise in the back of his throat and throws his hands out again and Shane stops speaking.

“I am not saying nobody will hate me. People are idiots, some people will hate me. People care too much about hockey, I know this very well. They are in my fucking house all the time, caring too much about hockey. But we have a publicist, and she will tell people, hey, remember that Ilya Rozanov has won you two cups, and he is tired and old, and who knows how many brain cells he has left after being bashed about for so long —” Shane’s face does something clenched and awful, and Ilya feels his chest twist alongside it. He drops one hand, reaches, touches the very tip of Shane’s toes. “She will say, he is going to have a long happy life like retired sniffer dog, and he is going to support the team with youth outreach and the camps. He will make a talent pipeline like Ottawa has never seen. Maybe even —” He wants, suddenly, nothing more than to make the horrible guilty despair on Shane’s face go away. He wants to make him laugh. He wants things to be normal again. “Maybe I will become a EBUG goalie, huh? Old dogs, new tricks?”

“You’re weird enough to be a goalie.” 

It’s not a laugh, but there’s the tiny hint of a smile. Shane’s fingers unfurling slightly where he’d clenched them into fists. 

“You are just jealous, Mr Glasses. You would not be able to keep sight of the puck.”

He thinks Shane will rise to the bait, but he doesn’t. He wiggles closer to Ilya, his ankles knocking against Ilya’s. “Are you giving up hockey for me? Not — I know you don’t love it like I love it.”

“Insanely.”

“The correct amount. Ilya. Ilyusha. Are you doing that? You — fuck. You’ve just held my hand through this whole thing, all my stupid freak-outs, but we haven’t really talked about. This is the end for you, too.”

“No. It is the beginning. We have been talking about our future for so long. For years. And before that, we spent years pretending we did not have one, did not want one, and it made me —” He clenches and unclenches his hand against his knee. He doesn’t have the word for what it made him, not in any language. “It hurt. But I wanted it then, I want it now, now, not waiting for it anymore.” 

Shane blinks rapidly, trying to stop the tears from falling. Ilya can feel them on his own face, rubs his eyes roughly. 

“I am still going to be sad, sometimes, because my stupid fucking brain is broken —”

“Don’t say that. Don’t — only part of your brain that’s broken is the part that thinks McDavid is a better player than Crosby.”

Ilya does almost laugh; his voice cracks, he turns his face away. “You are blinded by Canadian hero-worship, it’s very sad.”

“He’s literally also Canadian, you asshole.” Shane leans forwards, rests his chin atop of Ilya’s knee. “I love you. I love your stupid fucking brain.” 

Ilya strokes his thumb along Shane’s lashline, collecting the remnants of his tears. He looks at him, his torn up, torn open husband. His head whirring away, thinking about all the ways the world might hurt Ilya, not thinking about the most important one. 

“I.” Ah, Ilya does not want to say this. But maybe he has to, maybe it is the only thing left to say. “I am worried about. My brain. Because I worry that without hockey, I am just sad. I can do lots of things for the foundation, but lots of people, lots of hockey players, could also do those things —” Shane makes a loud, protesting noise, but Ilya holds up his hand, shushing him. “They could. It’s good, means it can continue for a long time. But, you know. I will no longer be No. 2 best hockey player, and that is. Maybe it is not true anymore anyway, but that is still how you think of me, a bit, I think. You, we just did it, the pretending in bed, that I am Rozanov and you are Hollander and we are best two players in the world, enemies on the ice, and that —”

“I. I thought it was hot.”

“Yes, of course it was hot. Everything we do together is hot, it was hot even when I was being an asshole to you and you were pretending you did not want my cock in your ass. Shane — Shane, we will not be able to play together, we will not be able to compete, I will not be —”

“We can still compete. Even if you won’t let me play in beer league I’ll still kick your ass at Yahtzee.”

“Shane.” Ilya takes Shane’s head in his hands, squeezes his cheeks so that Shane looks puffy, absurd. Beloved. “I am saying that to me, even though you are retired, you will always be No. 1 hockey player. Fuck Wayne Gretzky.”

That’s what does it, as Ilya knew it would. Shane rears back, spluttering, outraged, trying not to laugh.

“Oh, I have committed blasphemy now. They will revoke my citizenship, big crime, very sad.”

Shane smoothes his hands along Ilya’s calves, rests his fingertips on Ilya’s ankles. “Fuck Wayne Gretzky,” he says. He looks like he can’t believe what he’s saying. Ilya wonders, distantly, if he can get it on tape to play back to himself when things feel particularly bleak. “We can live in exile together. I don’t care. You’re my, my best, my second best hockey player forever too.”

“Fuck you.” 

Shane laughs, strangled. “Jesus, Ilya. When I think about you with our kids. Fuck. If I — God. You think I won’t still get hard watching you play beer league?”

“You will have many critiques.”

“OK, Mr ‘you have a weak backhand’. I’ll have critiques. I don’t give a fuck, I don’t give — Ilyusha, my baby.”

Ilya shivers. Shane’s eyes narrow, like an eagle spotting its prey. “You like that.”

“You like it too. Sometimes I think better than the Russian.”

“Not better than the Russian. Of course I like it. You like it.” His hands tighten around Ilya’s ankles. “I’m just scared.”

“I know. It’s OK.”

“Fuck.” Shane’s eyes squeeze shut. “I’m so scared. I’m so scared I’m not good at anything else. And you’re good at so much. The kids, the camps, talking to my mom about it all. The press stuff, all of it.”

“You are good at being my husband.” 

Shane’s face does something horrible. 

“Am I?”

Ilya withholds most of his exasperation, this time. Permits himself the smallest of eyerolls. “When did you realise I was sad, this playoffs? That things were… hard.”

“Well, it wasn’t playoffs. It was towards the end of the regular season. But you were trying to hide it, and we had to play, we knew we were going all the way, and so...” He trails off, his eyes darting away from Ilya, guilty. Absurd.

“So you only just send me to bed at regular times, and make me food, make me eat, call Sveta for me, call Marly, get Anya cute little jersey even though you think dog outfits are stupid, start trialling me on different vitamin supplements, tell Hazy to run stupid themed quiz night you know I will win, and —” Ilya stops. Fuck. He has been doing so well at winning this argument, at getting Shane to understand exactly why he is wrong, and how everything is supposed to be like this, supposed to be them, and now he has to confess something. In a minute, once he’s — “I love you very much, lyubimiy.” 

“I love you. So much, Ilya, so much. I wish…”

Shane wishes he could fix it. He wishes he could make things perfect. He wishes the world ran according to the smooth railroad tracks of Shane Hollander’s desires and dreams. Ilya wishes that too. It would be so simple if Shane were in charge of everything. Very boring, but very easy, very correct. 

But that is not the world. The world is a puddle of vomit in a bedroom, an empty bottle of pills, a country he can never go back to, an endless missing of a specific kind of snow. The fog in Ilya’s brain, the fog in his father’s, the cruelty in both their voices. And yet this too, this too, Shane’s strong grip and earnest eyes and an unspooling future that Ilya will not give up on. 

“I told Yuna I am retiring,” he admits.

“Shit. I mean that’s —” Ilya watches Shane rework his response in real time, is relieved to realise that he manages to find Shane’s transparency distantly amusing. “That’s fine, obviously. Your news to tell.”

“You were in surgery, and she asked. And I did not want to lie. So. She was shocked, but I explained.”

“Did she talk about loyalty again?”

“I said about the talent pipeline.”

Shane laughs, and tips his head back against Ilya’s knee, and then somehow, so immediately that Ilya does not know how it happens, he is crying: deep, choking sobs, shoulders shaking and his fingernails digging into Ilya’s skin, the kind of crying Ilya has not seen from him in years. Ilya tips them sideways, curls them together, kissing everywhere he can reach, lyubov, moy lyubov, and Shane sobbing it back. I love you, Ilyusha, I love you so much. 

Oh, Shane. It is only that he does not want anything bad to happen to Ilya. It is only that he wants to keep playing hockey forever. He wants to be there, to be in control. He wants to be the one to hip-check Ilya against the boards so that it is never really that bad, he wants to hold himself up in front of the whole city of Ottawa and say look how good I am at hockey don’t look at him don’t look at him. It takes a particularly selfish kind of selflessness to think that Ilya doesn’t want the same. Ah, well. It is the kind of selfishness that wins Stanley Cups. That looks at everything in its way and says no. Get lost. That’s mine. 

Shane’s sobs are easing. He sniffles a little, tries to pretend he isn’t wiping his nose on his own arm. Ilya kisses the top of his head, strokes up and down his back.

“Little better now?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Shh. No sorries, kanadets.” He rocks them a little, like Shane always does when it’s the other way around. Weighs up the tension in Shane’s body, the way his hands are perched on Ilya’s shoulders, like he’s going to ask for a boost. “Your hands are being very polite.” Shane rolls his eyes, slides one of them down to Ilya’s ass. Some of the tension eases from his shoulders. 

“Better,” Ilya says approvingly. He rocks them a little more, and Shane tilts his head up to be kissed. 

“My ass feels disgusting,” he grumbles against Ilya’s lips.

Ilya thinks he can get him squirming against him in five more minutes, maybe not even that. 

“Mm. Maybe I should have stayed inside of you for the argument. Would probably be hard again now, could have just gone straight into make-up sex.”

Shane’s eyelids flutter, his gaze darting downwards. “Want your come in my mouth.”

Oh, wow. Not even close to five minutes. Ilya squints at him, and Shane smiles back, a little tremulous, but still Shane, as dreamy-eyed and easy for Ilya’s cock as he always is. 

“No,” Ilya says, and pulls Shane in to kiss him.

—

“You left a good bite in my arm,” Ilya says later, once they’re sprawled on the couch and vaguely contemplating groceries. 

Shane picks it up, inspects it, pokes at it a little. “Fuck, that’s hot.”

“Very hot. You can see the edge of your chipped tooth here, look.”

Shane squints at it, unconvinced. Whatever. Ilya knows what Shane’s bitemarks look like, he can see. Shane prods at it a little more; slips his hand back into Ilya’s.

“Better?” he asks.

Ilya nods this time. “Feel…” He gestures with their joined hands, a sweeping motion. He feels like all the clogged-up parts of his insides have been washed clean, swept out to sea. “Feel like a dishwasher,” he manages. “It’s good.”

“OK. Good.” Shane rubs his eyes with Ilya’s knuckles, yawns. “Which kind of Greek yoghurt do you want?” 

— 

They have a few days of downtime and scattered press activity before Shane’s post-surgery check-up. Ottawa are making vague noises about Shane and Ilya’s contracts, and so they have to tell Farah that they won’t be coming back. She doesn’t seem to be surprised. Ilya isn’t sure how to feel about that. She agrees to soft-pedal it for now, speak to their publicist and Yuna about spin, loop back in once Shane has had his appointment. 

Shane is done, though. Ilya would know that even if they hadn’t spent so long talking about it, because Shane has started wearing his reading glasses to press events, and that means he doesn’t think he has to hide that he’s long-sighted anymore. It is also, obviously, a very good thing for Ilya. Ilya watches Shane talk seriously to a small girl who has made a diagram drawing of all of Shane’s plays of the last couple of games, and thinks dreamily about a little serious baby Shane who will one day make them beautiful drawings of Ilya’s own plays in beer league, which will no doubt decimate the competition. Or maybe they will draw magical horses, Ilya doesn’t really care. He watches Shane lean forward seriously to talk about teamwork and building a legacy and the magic of the younger players on the team, and thinks wistfully about taking him home and coming across the delicate frame of his glasses.

“Rozanov, are you thinking a dynasty?” one of the reporters asks — new, square jaw, Ilya thinks he is boring in a regular boring way.

“Is bad luck to think about,” Ilya says, thickening his accent, shrugging. Ask the new captain, he wants to say, doesn’t. He sits back, and rests his cheek against Shane’s shoulder, and ignores the ways the cameras click. Shane doesn’t go still, the way he might have, once. He brings his hand up to keep Ilya there.

It’s OK. It all seems OK. Shane lies on the couch with his head in Ilya’s lap and bitches with Rose about her new co-star, and Ilya invites the Pikes around for dinner twice in a row so that Shane is forced to eat normal food or face the twins’ inquisition. It hasn’t been so bad. Not so bad. But Ilya is watching, careful, the way he knows Shane is watching him right back. Circling each other, waiting. 

It is OK. But post-season is not the test. Not when the sun is shining, and nobody on the team knows they are retiring. Shane tells Hayden, and Ilya gives Jackie the rest. Shane tells Rose, and Ilya complains quietly to Sveta about having to wait to tell the team, and she says Ilya it’s two more days, are you a child. Shane holds resistance bands in position for Ilya as he does his ankle exercises, and Farah and Yuna sit on speakerphone and talk them through their announcement options. Two more days is nothing; Sveta is right.

“I think I’m OK with it,” Shane says, the morning of his appointment. Ilya is driving, which is bad for his foot, but he insisted. He wants this little bubble of time for them, before everyone is looking at them again.

“Really?”

“Yes. Or, well. For now.”

“Until you freak out when you see them playing without you, and know you could have fixed it.”

“You’ll be pissed too.”

“Yes, but I will just call them and yell at them down the phone. You will think you should be, uh, psychically beaming into their heads and playing for them.”

“They’ll have blocked your number by game three. But my voice will always be inside their heads.” 

“Yes, this is true. They will go to their graves remembering you screaming about wheel breakouts.”

“And they’d have gone to their graves without a cup if I hadn’t.”

“Very selfless.” Ilya reaches for Shane’s hand, squeezes it. “You’re OK with it.”

“I don’t know. I guess the future feels a bit clearer, now I know — or, have accepted, whatever, that you’re coming with me.”

“OK. Good. Could have had this breakthrough weeks ago, but good.”

Shane raps him on the knuckles, gives Ilya a truly pathetic glare. One of his worst of all team. Ilya beams back.

—

The doctor says what they thought the doctor would say. Shane will walk again, he will run, squat, whatever. He will, if he wants, skate. Ilya thinks he will want to. He will want to play pond hockey with his dad in the winter, with the Pike children. He could, maybe, go back to the Centaurs. He would have to be careful. A lot of work on the rehab, a slow reintroduction, and the weakness would always be there. They sit in the parking lot, afterwards, and Shane calls Yuna and Farah. By lunchtime, the front office is aware. By the end of the day, they’ve sent over their own statement for approval. 

They won’t release it for a couple of weeks, yet. The team have more press engagements, and they want the attention firmly on the cup, on the successes. A little breathing room, time in which to figure out to tell the team. But neither of them want to wait.

Early the next morning, Ilya drives them to Wiebe’s house. He’s waiting for them, sat on the porch, coffee in his hand. He pats the edge of the steps, and they sit either side of him, shoulders pressed together. 

“It’s not a total surprise,” he says. Huffs a long breath out. “We saw the way you went down, Shane, and your camps have been quiet about contracts. And I know you, know you kids.”

“We’ll still be around,” Ilya offers. “With the camps. Maybe some OHL things. Mites.”

“I know. And there’s no getting out of the barbecues. We’ll miss you. Helluva team. Want to see you in the stands cheering us on, you understand that.”

Shane nods. His face is blank, his hands gripping his knees tightly. 

“You did good, kid.” Wiebe claps him on the back. “You too, Rozy. Helluva team, helluva team. The cups, but, Christ, Roz, the way you turned things around in that room. Lot of players got a lot to thank you for.”

“No.” Ilya shifts. “No, they are all very annoying, blame it all on Hazy.”

“Tough luck.” Wiebe takes a long sip of his coffee, winces, blows on it loudly. “Who would you pick? As captain.”

“Haas.”

“Luca’s up there, for sure. Hollzy?”

“Haas for now. Hӓrk in a couple seasons, once he’s settled.”

Wiebe nods. Another beat. Ilya wants to reach across and take Shane’s hand, but he’s worried his elbow would jostle the coffee all over Wiebe. “When you gonna tell the team?”

“Today.” Shane swallows. “There’s a lunch thing, at Troy and Harris’.”

“Alright.” Wiebe claps them both on the shoulders again. Ilya wonders if he should offer to give him a hug. “Good luck with it, boys. Let me know how it goes.” 

They nod, they awkwardly shake hands, and then Wiebe does break, pulls them both into back-slapping hugs that last just a beat longer than normal. He sniffs once, loudly, when he pulls back, tries to smile at them the way he does right after a tough OT loss. It doesn’t quite work, but Ilya thinks he’ll have got there by the time he and Shane are showing up at pre-season games to terrorise the rookies. 

“This is going to suck,” Shane says, once they’re in the car. 

“Very badly,” Ilya agrees. “Luca is going to cry so much.”

“Maybe we should bring our own tissues. Hand them out beforehand.”

“I will hand them out to you, now. You are going to cry as much as anyone.”

Shane doesn’t deny that. Doesn’t even tell Ilya that he’s being a hypocrite, that Ilya will cry the moment Luca does. Ilya has got soft, it’s terrible. It’s not even a secret anymore; absolutely everyone he plays with knows. Fuck. He will have to do something terrible in the off-season if he and Shane have even a chance at terrorising anyone. 

— 

Ilya didn’t expect Troy to cry so much.

—

Around the start of the third heartfelt speech, Ilya starts drinking. By the time the sun is low in the sky the world is spinning, lights flaring dizzily around him, and Shane is pressing a glass of water to his lips and frowning down at him. 

Shane sends Ilya to nap upstairs in Bood’s guest room. Instead, he throws up in the en suite, and presses his forehead against the tiles, and tries not to think about how bad a person it makes him if he can look at Luca’s helplessly trembling lower lip and yes yes cry about it, but still be so fucking happy he’s done. 

“Roz?” Bood awkward and lumbering in the doorway. He’s holding a paper plate of leftovers in his hand. “Shit, man. You OK?”

Ilya waves his hand. “S’been a while. I got weak, very embarrassing.”

“No, you’re good.” Bood looks down at the plate. “Uh. You wanna talk about retiring?”

Ilya smiles at him. His mouth feels like it should be bloodied. “I am going to terrorise the beer league.”

“Sweet.” Bood bites into a sausage, and then looks kinda guilty. “Shit, I was gonna leave this for you. I.” He shoves the rest of the sausage into his mouth, chipmunk-cheeked and still shuffling guiltily and just so ridiculous, and because Ilya is an asshole, and drunk, he tips his head back and cackles like a demon. 

“Fuck,” Bood says, through the sausage. “Let me get Hollzy.”

— 

Shane takes them to sit outside. They sit side-by-side on the damp grass, Shane massaging his thumb across Ilya’s knuckles. 

“It was a lot,” he offers. Ilya shrugs. The stars feel very far away tonight, tiny little pinpricks he almost has to squint to see.

“We knew it would be.”

Shane nods. Nods again. Bends his head to his own knees, their joined hands pressed to his throat. “I feel like I’m letting them down.”

“I know. But there is no point when you would not feel that, yes? Maybe if you were the oldest player the MLH had seen ever. One thousand years old with sixtieth Stanley Cup.”

Shane turns his head, nips at Ilya’s wrist, skin catching between his teeth. “Only sixtieth? And I’m a thousand? The math on that is shit, Rozanov.”

“I am accounting for all the hip operations you would have.”

“Are the lasers back?”

“So many lasers.” Ilya kisses the top of Shane’s head. “I feel bad I don’t feel so bad.”

“We’ve got all corners covered, huh.”

“Good teamwork like that.” 

Shane turns his head a little more, and Ilya accepts the proffered kiss. “I’m glad you feel good about it.”

“Also, you think I’m insane.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I just — I’d play forever.”

“I know this. But you will find something else to do. And Luca will be a very good captain. It will be good for him, eventually will make him blush less in front of the cameras.”

Shane nods, sits up. Resumes kneading Ilya’s knuckles, not quite looking at him. “You should drink some more water.”

Ilya drinks some more water. The cool evening air is already helping, the worst of the giddy swell fading away. From inside the house, the sound of pounding bass and caterwauling: karaoke has started. Maybe they can all get out their feelings like that, whilst Shane and Ilya sit out here and look at the stars, and the next time they see Ilya it’ll be back to normal. 

“I do know.” Shane squeezes Ilya’s hand convulsively. “I do know what I want to do. Not — I’ll still do the foundation, obviously, and Mom was saying that there’s, like, obviously you can do specialist consultancy coaching, during the summer or whatever, or when players are trying to move up to the league, more focused, one-on-one, not whole teams and not the whole time, and also Farah’s talking to the new PWHL arena owners about player consult, for the build, so there’s lots of —”

“Shane.”

“It’s not just my decision.”

“OK.” Ilya knows he’s doing a bad job of not smiling. He can’t help it. His Shane, his thoroughness in everything. “So, what is so crazy that you need me to help you decide? You want to found new team? Move to tiny Canadian province and live out the plot of The Mighty Ducks?”

“That’s not what happens in the movie, Ilya, it’s not a new team, it’s — no, obviously not. Obviously, I don’t wanna own a fucking team, it’s a headache, it’s a massive financial gamble trying to start a franchise, and why the hell would I want to move —”

“Oh, OK, sorry, I didn’t know about massive financial gamble.” There is laughter bubbling all over him. If Shane is this worked up about it, it’s going to be good, he knows it. “Come on, tell me.” 

“I wanna — I wanna be a billet family. For the OHL kids, the rookies, too, maybe.” He pauses, swallowing, and Ilya turns his hand over so that he can clasp Shane’s properly. “I fucking hated being in the CHL. Not the hockey, but the rooms. Being away from my parents, once I moved out of the 67s. I didn’t know. I never knew how to be who I was supposed to be.”

“You were bullied?”

“There was a lot of hazing. That’s how it goes, right? I just didn’t — I was so scared, all of the time. All of the time, Ilya.”

“That they would realise you were gay?”

“Yes. Or wrong. Or — both. I guess. That all the stupid bullshit, all the stuff around hockey that wasn’t hockey, fucking learning to take it, whatever, did have a point, after all, and it was going to prove that I wasn’t supposed to be there. I — don’t. OK.”

Ilya pulls him in, wraps him tight in his arms. He doesn’t think about it much, his years in the JHL. His mother was dead, and his father was getting worse, and Andrei was so angry all of the time. At home there was only them, them and Polina’s fluttering hands and her high voice and her refusal to acknowledge Ilya’s mama had ever existed at all. His only job had been to be good at hockey, and so he was good at hockey. Sasha’s dad was an asshole, of course, but he had snorted coke with Sasha and Sveta in expensive bathrooms, and he had clung to their warm bodies, and he had driven the puck into the goal again and again and again and thrown his body against players and boards and ice, and played so snarlingly well that by the time he was seventeen he was in America, and looking up to find Shane Hollander telling him off. 

“You want to give them somewhere safe,” he says, and Shane nods against his chest. Mama, Ilya thinks, involuntarily, flinging his thoughts somewhere up amongst the distant stars. Mama, why could you not have stayed to meet him? You would have loved him so much. 

“I know it’s a lot,” Shane mumbles. “Like, I remember what I was like as a teenager. I didn’t know how to do, fucking, laundry, or anything. It’s a big responsibility.”

“Giving them a home? Yes.”

“What was it like? In Boston? You were billeted for your first year, right?”

“Mm, with Johnson. His wife was very nice, didn’t like me very much but tried her best. Johnson — I don’t know. He talked to me a lot, but my English…”

“Did it help, listening to them talk?”

Ilya blinks. “I don’t remember them talking. Not much.” He doesn’t even remember her name. He thinks he mostly called her Johnson’s wife in his head. “Your billet families weren’t nice?”

“They were nice. They just. I lost touch with them all, pretty quickly.” He fiddles with his ring. “You’d be up for it?”

“Yes, of course. I will teach useless children to do laundry, make us dinner…” Shane swats at him, and Ilya pulls him in tighter, kisses him smackingly. “No, good plan. Very good plan. All the little boring strange children in the OHL can come and live with us, and be very starstruck for ten minutes until they realise how many crosswords we do and that we are very bad at having quiet sex.”

“We can get better.”

“We have not got better in the last fifteen years. Lost cause. It’s OK, we’ll buy them earplugs.”

“Hazy would say we’re modelling healthy romantic attachment.”

“Yes! See, perfect. Shane. I think it’s a good plan. I think we should do it.” It’s so easy to picture. Shane standing frettingly over some sixteen-year-old baby shooting pucks on their practice rink, ready to eviscerate their every play, and then sending them on their way with a packed lunch. 

Shane smiles: lips pressed together, trying to pretend he’s less pleased than he is.

“Take me home,” he whispers against Ilya’s lips. “I think we need to take another look at the pamphlet.”

—

@OttawaCentaurs: After a combined 3015 games in the MLH, and two transformative Stanley Cup runs for the Centaurs, @rozy81 and @shanehollanderhockey are hanging up their skates. We thank them for everything they have done for this team, and for hockey as a whole.

Shane and Ilya will continue to work with @ottawasportsorg as part of their work with @irinafoundation, @ottawa67s, @ottawaprideinsport and as one of our new billet families. We can’t wait to step into this new future with them. #GoCensGo 

[Attached images: a beaming Ilya and Shane hold up the Stanley Cup, from their first joint season with the Centaurs; a picture of the entire team hugging the Cup from the recent parade; Ilya kissing the Centaurs mascot on the cheek; Shane punching the air after a goal].

@shanehollanderhockey: Hockey has been my life since almost as soon as I could walk, and making the decision to step away from it — and from this team that has given me so much — has not been easy. But I have never wanted to give this sport anything but my best, and going out on a high, winning with the team I love, is the best kind of exit I could ask for.

I would like to thank @ottawacentaurs for all their support over the last five seasons, and in making this difficult decision. I look forward to continuing our relationship via @irinafoundation @ottawa67s and @ottawasportsorg. I would also like to thank my mother @yunahollander and my father David for supporting my dreams from day one, however impossible they might have seemed at first. Thank you to our teammates for the happiest five seasons of my career, and to @haydenpikemlh and @jjitsjj for their continued friendship. It has been my honour to play with you all. And finally, I would like to thank my husband @rozy81, the best captain on the ice, and the best partner off it. #GoCensGo

[Attached images: Ilya and Shane kissing each side of the Cup; a tiny Shane in his first mites jersey]. 

@rozy81: Thank you to @bostonraiders for giving me my first home in the MLH, and to @ottawacentaurs for giving me my last one. I am excited to spend more time with Anya and our family, to work with @irinafoundation, and to raise terrifying rookies for the 67s and the Cens. Hark, better watch out, you will not be the baby for long.

When I first arrived in America, the only thing I knew was that I was going to win the Stanley Cup. I do not think I would have been surprised to learn I would win three of them, but I think I would have been surprised to learn how happy I was doing so. My team, I love you. Boston, I will always be a little bit part of you, whatever you think. Moy lyubov, it is the honour of my life to have played against you and with you, and maybe one day I will finally admit in public that you are the best of us both. 

[Attached images: Anya in a custom Centaurs jersey; Ilya in the middle of the Centaurs celly post-goal; Shane raising the Cup above his head, Ilya staring besottedly at him; Ilya and Cliff Marleau hugging drunkenly over their 2014 Cup.] 

@MLH: Two legends. True game changers. Thank you for everything, @rozy81 and @shanehollanderhockey. 

[Attached graphic: Ilya and Shane raising the cup between them, with Ilya and Shane’s career statistics overlaid.] 

@bostonraiders: Thank you for everything, Rozy. 

[Attached graphic: Ilya raising the Cup in Boston colours with Ilya’s scoring record for Boston overlaid]

[DELETED TWEET] @montrealvoyageurs: Toujours notre capitaine. 

[Attached graphic: Shane raising the Cup in Montreal colours with his scoring record for Montreal overlaid]

                       @hollzysslapshot: what the FUCK is wrong with you guys 

Chapter End Notes

the beautiful visions i have in my head of those poor ohl kids + rookies... mentored within an inch of their lives. hope this was a fun read!! rip the 2k of spanking i wrote that i had to cut because it simply made no sense within the context of the narrative.

if there was something in here you liked i'd love to hear about it <3