Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Various Ottawa Centaurs, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Zane Boodram, Troy Barrett, Hayden Pike

Additional Tags:

Mpreg | Male Pregnancy, Pregnant Ilya Rozanov, POV Ilya Rozanov, Post Heated Rivalry, The Long Game Canon Divergence, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, you bottom one time and the universe says 'bet', Morning Sickness, mentions of canonical suicide, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Mental Health Issues, pregnancy symptoms, mild pregnancy body horror, Discussion of Abortion, Discussion of the possibility of miscarriage

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Malysh

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-28 Updated: 2026-10-10 Words: 141,309 Chapters: 18/20

Simple Learning

Summary

In late October, Ilya picks up some kind of freakish Canadian flu that dogs him into November.

It is the weirdest shit. He has to duck out of practice because his nose starts bleeding twice in one week and he wakes up in a hotel in Columbus with another one that leaves stains on the pillow. On the flight back to Ottawa, Hazy drops into the seat next to Ilya midflight and asks, "This isn't, like, a cocaine thing, right?"

Ilya laughs so hard it's probably a little rude.

They have a plan. Ilya's body has a different plan.

Notes

this 100% sprang out my belief that of the two of them, ilya would enjoy pregnancy way more. my thanks to lugarn for spitballing and reading along.

find me on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 1

In early September, Ilya and Shane manage to wrangle one last weekend at the cottage before the pre-season starts. Ilya's deeply grateful for the time. His summer has slipped through his fingers like water cupped in his palm.

He spent July methodically ending his life in Boston. Sat down with his coach and the Raiders’ GM and told them he was not coming back and could not explain why in a way that either of them believed.

What kind of crazy person leaves the best for the worst? They tried to talk him out of it and all Ilya could say was that the trade was what he needed to do. He was sorry. He appreciates everything Boston has given to him, the man they have helped make him.

Signing with Ottawa was a conversation with different questions that Ilya could not answer in a way that made sense to their coach or GM. Players of Ilya’s caliber do not get traded to last place loser teams unless they have done something very bad that requires exile. But Ilya’s reputation as a libertine still holds; most people miss that he has mellowed with time.

(Shane has grounded him, is what Ilya cannot say. Years of going, going, going, chasing the next thrill, the next party, the next fuck only made him lonely and further hollowed out the emptiness inside him. Boring, goody-two-shoes Shane Hollander’s steadiness has begun to fill him up.)

He spent August moving to the third home country of his life. Outside of hockey, Ilya had not realized how shallow his roots in Boston were until he was leaving. He sold his house. He went to his favorite Japanese place down by the Pru. He said goodbye to his teammates, who were baffled and hurt and wanted explanations more generous than personal reasons.

Marley pulled him into a hug so hard it made a joint in Ilya’s spine pop. “You’d fucking tell me if something was up, right, Rozy?” he asked in a low, rough voice. “This is really, really what you fuckin’ want?”

“Of course I fucking would,” Ilya lied. Half-lied? Nothing is wrong in the way Marley meant, so technically not a lie. “Tell team not to eat shit without me.”

Marley laughed. “Fuck you, Rozy. We’re gonna smear you across the ice in October.”

”You fucking wish.”

He moved into a hotel in Ottawa for a couple weeks and spent those days in Centaurs training camp and wandering around the city. Ilya has still not completely decided what he feels about either the team or city when he is alone. Ottawa is nondescript. The Centaurs are very nice and very bad. He feels a little bit like a piece from a different puzzle trying to slot into place.

He found a place in Westmount with Yuna and David Hollander’s help. When he’d found the one, he had very hesitantly asked them if they wanted to come see it before he officially made the offer and they had agreed so fast and so enthusiastically that Ilya had not known how to thank them.

That afternoon, walking through the empty, sunlit rooms with Yuna and David and Shane on FaceTime, was the closest Ilya had felt to family since he was twelve years old. For most of his life, Ilya has not been able to see a future beyond hockey. In the place where everything after retirement was supposed to be, it was blank nothing. In the house, he could see the faint, smudged outline of maybe a future.

He still wakes up most mornings with a deep and terrible certainty in his chest that he is going to open his eyes to find it all snatched back. No Centaurs, no Ottawa, no Hollanders, no Shane. He will be standing in a club with a nameless girl in his arms, looking at Shane looking at him. Ilya tells himself it will go away. Eventually, it will go away.

Still, it is much easier to believe that as he watches Shane’s car come up the road to the cottage.

**

The first night they fall on each other like hungry animals, Shane’s teeth in the meat of Ilya’s shoulder, Ilya’s hands fisted in Shane’s hair. They fuck on the entryway floor with the front door half-open. Ilya can hear the stupid fucking loons as Shane sinks down onto his cock, head thrown back, nails digging into Ilya’s chest.

Ilya yanks him down to kiss, shoves his tongue into Shane’s mouth and swallows the wounded, desperate noises that pour out of Shane’s chest. It has not been even three weeks since they last saw each other. Shane Hollander has turned Ilya into a desperate creature.

He feels when Shane gets close in the way his body shakes, how it tightens around Ilya’s cock. Shane pitches forward, elbows braced on either side of Ilya’s head and chants, “Fill me up, fill me up,” in Ilya’s ear and there is nothing else Ilya can do but obey.

He pistons his hips up into Shane and comes with a groan in the shape of Shane’s name as Shane sucks on the pulse point in Ilya’s neck. Shane’s cock is trapped between their bodies, the drag made easy by the slip of sweat. Ilya says, “Come for me, sweetheart,” and Shane does, with a noise that sounds like it almost hurts.

Shane collapses onto Ilya’s chest, strung out and boneless. Ilya kisses his forehead, his temple, his cheek, the crown of his head, murmuring low nonsense in a bastard mishmash of Russian and English. It is crazy, Ilya thinks, how much more it is to be with someone when you acknowledge you miss them in the first place.

**

They stay up late.

It is not a discussed choice, not exactly deliberate. It is a mutually understood resistance to the limits of time. It is a little funny, in a way that Ilya feels as a lonely ache in his lungs, that they spent so many years satisfied by snatched hours scattered between long months and now whole days are barely more than starvation. Ilya had Shane for two weeks in July. There is a cost, knowing how good it can be.

Ilya’s dreams drift toward the future, their future. They’re hazy things, unfinished and inexact. But they are anchored by possibility. Ilya keeps them tucked away in the back of his mind and, slowly, they grow.

**

Shane asks, "What's one thing you want to do that we never have?"

It is Sunday morning and the light pouring in through the walls of windows is a muted rosy-pink. Tonight they will fall asleep in different beds.

Ilya looks at Shane, laying on his side with his head tipped into his hand as the morning casts him in clear, cool colors. His freckles are shaded faintly purple. Ilya reaches up and brushes his knuckles over the bridge of Shane's nose and the rise of his cheekbones. It is a kind of memorization he has only ever done with Shane and his mother, in moments he must make sure will live in all his senses. This is how it felt, how it sounded, how it smelled. For things that must not be easily forgotten.

Shane's eyes slip closed and he leans into Ilya's touch. His hand is curled loosely on Ilya's belly; he spreads it flat and draws his palm up to Ilya's chest and presses the tips of his fingers into Ilya's skin. The points of contact are a half-circle above his heart.

There is only one answer to Shane's question that comes to Ilya and it catches in his throat.

The first time he fucked Shane, Ilya watched the knowledge of what it felt like to let someone inside light Shane up. He saw the nervous rictus fall off Shane's face and turn to disbelief and awe and a little pain. It is not so easy, learning something about yourself that will shape the rest of your life. Shane's body was made to be filled and Ilya loves him for that.

Ilya's own body is not so -- specific. Which is fitting, he thinks. Shane Hollander is something or isn't something, he does something or he does not do something. His wants are not a matter of breadth, but depth. The few things he wants, he wants entirely, all the way, unending.

Ilya's life trained him to fit into whatever small spaces he could find and scrape up what meaning he can. He is very good at being exactly what people expect him to be, which is different from being what people want him to be. He has sometimes worried that he is nothing more than the remnants of old expectations, that he will never be able to untangle who he is from who he pretended to be.

But they made a deal to be honest.

"If I said I wanted you to fuck me, is that a thing you would do?" Ilya asks.

Shane opens his eyes and stills. The anxiety crease appears between his brows. "I don't. I'm not." He swallows and Ilya watches his Adam's apple bob up and down. "I'm not good at that."

"That is answer to different question."

Shane cuts his gaze down, to the side, back down, up to the ceiling, over Ilya's shoulder. Ilya lays a hand overtop Shane's on his chest and rubs his thumb over his knuckles. He waits. He is learning to trust that Shane's silence does not mean he is getting ready to run.

"It's never been good for me," Shane says at last. "With girls, I mean."

He says it like a confession of a very bad mistake and Ilya understands why, understands that Shane accepting he is gay does not undo the failure he'd felt every time his brief, awkward encounters with girls made his skin crawl with wrongness.

"Do you think it would maybe be different with a man?" Ilya asks.

Shane's expression turns puzzled. "I don't -- know?"

Ilya allows his mouth to cant up into a half-smile. "You never thought about it, did you?"

Shane scoffs. "Shut up."

"I am not teasing you, Hollander."

"Yes, you are."

"Only a little bit." Ilya rolls onto his side and props himself up so they are eye to eye. Shane's cheeks are faintly pink. "If it was something I wanted, would you try? Is okay if you still don't like it."

To Shane's credit, he thinks about it for several moments. The rising sun warms him, turning the spatter of freckles their familiar light brown. They have hours and not many of them. Ilya's instinct is to take back the request, the same way he started to take back I love you in July. But he resists it. They cannot be anything if they are not honest.

"Okay," Shane says and he crooks an embarrassed little smile. "I'm probably still going to be bad at it."

Ilya reaches across the bed, curls his hand around Shane's neck and pulls him into a quick kiss. "I don't fucking care, it's you. I will still like it. How do you want me?"

Shane laughs and it's maybe a little high and a little loud, but that's okay. They fuck in daylight now. Nothing will ever come close.

**

When Ilya thinks back to that morning -- and he will often think back to that morning -- the clearest thing is not the physical sensations. Shane's cock sinking slowly, carefully into him is less important than the look on Shane's face, open and shocked. It is Shane's voice asking is this okay, still okay, are you okay, like a circle of their lives closing. Shane asks because Ilya asked, he is careful because Ilya was careful.

It is not the best Ilya has ever been fucked, but it is the only one that really matters. On his back with his legs around Shane's waist, arms above his head braced against the headboard, Ilya rocks into the roll of Shane's hips and lets the noises pour out of him because he is not capable of words.

Ilya can tell that Shane does not love it and that is okay. Ilya can also tell that Shane is not somewhere else in his head. The ragged, "Fuck, Ilya," that falls out of his mouth is real. Shane comes buried deep inside and Ilya can feel it, feel Shane's cock pulse as it empties. Ilya wants to tell him he's good, he's so good and beautiful and perfect but his tongue is clumsy.

And then, spent, Shane pulls out and drops onto his belly, circles a hand around Ilya's cock and swallows it down to the root. Ilya bucks up into Shane's mouth and comes down his throat so hard his hips come up off the bed.

Shane crawls up the mattress with Ilya's come still on his tongue and kisses him.

**

The pre-season — it happens.

Ilya puts up decent numbers and Ottawa does not win a single game. It is less disappointing to Ilya than surreal. He has never in his life been part of such a disaster, other than maybe during Sochi, which at least had the excuse of an injured goalie. The Centaurs are both healthy and terrible.

It eases the sting a little bit that Boston’s pre-season is extremely mediocre. If Ilya still secretly envies the wins they do eke out, that is not something he has to share. Montreal’s pre-season goes extremely well, of course. Ilya is not so good a person or boyfriend as to not be a little irritated.

Yuna and David, to Ilya’s surprise, come to the last game wearing Centaurs sweatshirts Ilya thinks were probably bought when Shane was a little kid. Their presence is oddly distracting to Ilya. He keeps glancing up to their seats, expecting they will be empty and it was just his imagination. Ottawa loses 4-1 and afterward, the Hollanders take Ilya out to dinner.

It is awkward, at first. Ilya assumes Shane has asked them to do this and the invitation is mostly obligation, but he’s wrong. When Ilya thanks them for taking the time, David and Yuna exchange a look that Ilya cannot interpret. David says, “You’re family, Ilya. Or close enough for government work.”

Ilya does not know what the fuck that means and his face must show that, because Yuna claps a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh and David smiles.

“English is a stupid language,” Ilya says, taking a chance on a joke.

David and Yuna both laugh and Ilya can see Shane in both their faces. That quickly, it is much easier. Ilya grins.

“My apologies,” David says. “It means at the bare minimum.”

Ilya files the phrase away to pull out in a moment when Shane least expects it. Close enough for government work. Sure, why not. Makes as much sense as any other baffling English idiom people have said to him.

The Hollanders insist on paying, despite Ilya’s protests. They stand outside the restaurant for a few minutes afterward as all three of them check their phones for updates about the Montreal game. Shane puts up two goals and an assist and the Metros head the regular season riding the high of a pre-season sweep.

”He will be so annoying about it,” Ilya says, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t believe that for a second, my son is always polite,” Yuna says, her mouth cocked in the same little grin Shane gets right before he says something very mildly insulting about another team.

“That is lie, your son is liar,” Ilya says. “He will be so smug, so — suffering? Insufferable.”

Yuna hesitates for a flicker of a moment, then reaches out to rub Ilya’s shoulder. “I know that and you know that because he’s comfortable with us.”

Ilya laughs and nods. “Okay, yes. That is fair.”

The three of them stand in silence in the warm glow of light coming through the restaurant windows in the chill of late September. Ilya wishes Shane was there with them for no other reason than because it would feel more — complete, maybe.

“Thank you, for this,” Ilya says. He means his tone to be light and it almost is.

“Of course,” David says, clapping him on the shoulder.

“It’s our pleasure,” Yuna says.

Later that night, after Ilya has driven home to his new Ottawa house and showered and changed into sweats he actively stole from Shane and a shirt Shane accidentally left at Ilya’s place in Boston one time, Ilya curls up on the couch to answer Shane’s call.

“How are you doing?” Shane asks. “I saw the score.”

Ilya forgoes answering in favor of drinking Shane in for a moment. He’s leaning against his headboard in Montreal with damp hair and his glasses on, wearing a Raiders hoodie Ilya thought he lost in the move. Weird coincidence, of course. Ilya smiles.

“Is like they say. Pre-season doesn’t count,” Ilya says.

Shane nods very earnestly and says, “Exactly," with the sincerity of a man who has lost maybe ten pre-season games in his entire career.

“I will live,” Ilya says, shrugging. “It would be less terrible if you were here.”

“I wish I was,” Shane says and that is perfectly, entirely honest. “It won’t be so long, at least?”

It will be the better part of three weeks, which feels like roughly ten thousand years. They will be a busy three weeks, which Ilya supposes is something. Season openers in Boston were always loud and electric, every seat in the Garden full. He has been told that Ottawa is a little quieter. ‘Dead’ and ‘a little pathetic’ have also come up.

“Three weeks is nothing, yes?” Ilya says. “We have waited longer than that.”

Shane nods and ducks his head. “I’m trying not to count the hours.”

Ilya has a countdown actively on his phone. “Of course not, that would be crazy.”

Shane laughs.

**

Ottawa loses their season opener against St. Louis, but loss was essentially a foregone conclusion, so it doesn’t sting as much as it could have.

The locker room is remarkably cheerful afterward. Bood comes up to Ilya and slaps him heartily on the back. “Welcome to Ottawa, Rozy.” A ragged cheer goes up from the rest of the team and Ilya glances around the room for a punchline to the joke.

“None of you are bothered by this?” Ilya asks.

Hazy — Hazy the goalie, not Haas the rookie — grins brightly. “Hey, a 3-2 loss to St. Louis isn’t bad. Better than a shutout.”

“He’s not wrong,” Coach Wiebe says as he comes in. “I saw a lot out there tonight that I liked and that we can build on.”

It’s very different to the “win or get murdered in an alley by a season ticket holder” attitude of the Boston locker room and Ilya does not really know how he feels about it. Still, he’s the unknown quantity here, not the captain. So he shuts his mouth and listens to Wiebe.

Afterward, he goes out to a bar with the team to celebrate not losing as bad as they could have. He actually has a pretty good time.

**

In late October, Ilya picks up some kind of freakish Canadian flu that dogs him into November.

It is the weirdest shit. He has to duck out of practice because his nose starts bleeding twice in one week and he wakes up in a hotel in Columbus with another one that leaves stains on the pillow. On the flight back to Ottawa, Hazy drops into the seat next to Ilya midflight and asks, "This isn't, like, a cocaine thing, right?"

Ilya laughs so hard it's probably a little rude, but does seem reassuring to Hazy.

Ilya says, "If it was cocaine thing I think I would not be so tired."

Hazy nods. "Or you'd need a better dealer."

"Or that, yes."

The exhaustion is almost as bad. The team doesn't pick up on that as much, but only because they have not traveled with Ilya before. He falls asleep on every flight and every bus to the point that it becomes a joke. Someone starts a group chat that's exclusively funny pictures of Ilya sleeping.

Ilya passes it off as a normal thing for him and nobody questions it. A couple times he even falls asleep on Shane in the middle of calls and wakes up the next morning sore from sleeping on the couch and texts from Shane telling him goodnight and to get some rest. Ilya plays it off as the adjustment to a new team taking it out of him and Shane buys it.

(Ilya feels -- not telling Shane the whole truth puts a weird feeling in his chest. But it's not like Shane can do anything about it and Ilya doesn't want to trouble him or be a distraction. He definitely doesn't want to spend what little time they do have together with Shane fretting about a stupid lingering cold.)

None of it keeps Ilya off the ice and that is the thing Ilya focuses on.

Not that him being on the ice seems to make all that much of a difference. He's better a little under the weather than most other players are on their best fucking days, so he scores goals and puts up very good numbers. But, good or not, he's just one guy and his personal stats don't translate to the Centaurs overall. They eke out a win here and there, but it never turns into momentum like Ilya is used to.

After an infuriating loss to Tampa Bay in overtime, Bood sits down next to Ilya, half-dressed in his game day suit and stewing. He nudges Ilya's shoulder with his own. "You know," Bood says, "We're actually doing better than we were this time last year."

Ilya cannot stop the sarcastic, "Oh, really? Yay," that pops out of his mouth.

Bood looks at him for a long second, wherein Ilya has just enough time to start berating himself for being a fucking asshole. Then Bood laughs, loud and deep. "Yes, Rozy, fucking yay. It could be worse. We're getting paid real money to play hockey, superstar. It could be fucking worse."

"Amen!" Hazy says from his own stall, not looking up from his phone.

Ilya exhales deeply and drops his head. "Yes, okay, okay, it could be worse."

Bood slaps his back. "That's the spirit."

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Weird Canadian flus, man. Not to be trusted.

Chapter Notes

i have added a couple additional tags to cover some standard pregnancy symptoms, to be on the safe side.

additionally, i wanted to say thank you to everyone who left feedback. it gave me one whole feeling and it is deeply, deeply appreciated. <3

Ilya endures the beginning of November.

The stupid fucking mutant Canadian flu doesn’t even do him the favor of going away, it gets weirder. He gets hit with random waves of nausea that go as fast as they come. His nose is either bleeding or he’s so stuffed up his speaking voice takes on an embarrassing nasal quality.

Halfway through practice one day, Chouinard asks, “Rozy, what the hell are you so allergic to it’s fucking you up this much in the middle of winter?”

Ilys scoffs. “I am allergic to nothing, Russians do not have allergies.”

“That sounds fake,” Hazy says. “If it’s not allergies, is it—“

Ilya brandishes his stick. “If you say fucking cocaine thing I will break this over your head.”

“Who is doing cocaine?” Bood asks as he skates up.

“Not Rozy.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “It is cold, you all have heard of this? Yes? Go be in your net. Go away.”

Hazy wanders off amiably enough, but Bood lingers, his expression thoughtful. Ilya likes Bood, both as a teammate and a person. He is the kind of guy that is a good influence not just on rooks, but on the whole team. He’s observant, too, in the same way Ilya is. It’s useful on the ice.

Ilya likes it a little less when that assessing face is aimed at him.

“It was joke, there is no cocaine,” Ilya says.

Bood chuckles. “I believe you. But just for the record, you don't gotta prove anything, yeah? I don't know what your other locker rooms were like, but no one here is questioning if you're an asset to the team.”

Ilya bristles reflexively, feeling a dig at Boston that he doesn't really believe Bood means. Boston was a work hard, play hard team and Ilya liked that. He never had trouble keeping up.

“I am fine,” he says, words more clipped than he wants them to be.

Bood flashes a half-smile. “Okay, Rozy.”

**

That night, Ilya eats Chinese takeout standing at his kitchen counter as he texts back and forth with Yuna about Christmas presents for Shane. She keeps asking very casual questions about what Ilya himself might like. Ilya grins; Shane comes by his lack of subtlety honestly.

He swallows down a bite of orange chicken and has one second where he grimaces at it going down weird, then he’s hurling himself toward the sink and puking all over three days worth of dishes. His favorite chicken is less good coming back up.

He sags against the counter once he’s finally done, breath coming in ragged, acidic gasps. He turns on the tap, rinses out his mouth and drinks cold water from his cupped palm until it starts to slosh in his stomach.

“The fuck was that?” Ilya asks his empty kitchen. It does not answer.

So he rinses out the sink as best he can, tosses the rest of the chicken in the trash, and crawls into bed to watch the third period of the Metros game on his phone. He pretends he is asleep and does not answer Yuna’s latest message.

**

It all comes to the most bullshit possible head the week of American Thanksgiving.

The Centaurs are riding the high of an upset 2-1 win in Toronto. It’s true that Toronto was down a goalie, a defenseman, and a winger due to various injuries, but who fucking cares? Toronto is 97% cheating assholes and a win is a win.

On top of that, Ilya’s phone is full of texted Christmas plans with Shane and his parents and he is extremely excited to actually see Shane do all the traditions he’s casually mentioned over the years. Ilya does not care about Christmas, really, it was not so big a deal in Russia, but the fact that he is spending it with the whole Hollander family is fucking wild.

(He’s sort of part of that family, which is even wilder. It’s not a thought he lingers on because it fills his chest with too many feelings that are too big. Still. He used to call himself an idiot for daydreaming about such impossible things. It's still a month away, but that is almost nothing. Ilya has waited much longer for less exciting things. )

It's the middle of an optional practice that Ilya decided to go to largely out of stubbornness. If he's going to feel like ass whether he skates or not, he might as well skate. He wants the Centaurs to like him, childish as that thought sometimes feels. It's important that they want to keep Ilya on the roster for Shane's plan to work. Ilya will die before he fucks that up.

They're running drills, nothing exciting or particularly taxing. Harris is pulling people aside to record things for social media. He doesn't have winning games as part of his PR strategy, but he says winning is not necessarily required for people to love a team and its players. Ilya thinks that sounds very fake, but he's not in PR, so who cares what he thinks.

It happens so fucking fast. One second he's absentmindedly listening to Hazy talk to Haas, who is too polite to interrupt, about some comic book that Ilya has never heard of. He watches Dillon make shots at their backup goalie and fail to get even one into the net. Harris is filming Chouinard, both of them laughing. Wiebe and two assistant coaches are looking at a clipboard.

Then, suddenly, Ilya realizes Hazy's voice has decayed into a strange rushing sound in his ears.

Ilya stares out at the rink, at his teammates and the coaches and Harris. The colors are strange — wrong? They are too bright and too sharp, but the sounds are far away and muffled. Underwater? Ilya inhales and it does not feel like the air goes into his lungs.

He thinks this is probably bad.

The world tilts and Ilya falls into black nothing.

**

Ilya opens his eyes to the distant beams and dark metal of the rink roof.

Someone says something in English. The voice is familiar, but Ilya cannot place it.

His head is pounding like each beat of his heart is a mallet smashed against his temples. His body feels far away. Does it hurt? Ilya doesn’t think so, but he would not bet his life on that. The ice is very cold against the back of his neck.

“You with us, Rozanov?”

Ilya screws his eyes shut for a moment and when he opens them again, the world stays in place. Coach Wiebe’s face hovers over his left side and one of the team doctors hovers over the right, Ilya still can’t conjure up his name. Wiebe’s face is tight with concern.

Ilya says, “Sorry,” and his voice is filled with gravel.

“You passed out on us for a second,” the doctor says. “Are you feeling any pain?”

Ilya shakes his head. “No, I am okay.”

His thoughts begin to sort themselves into place. He’s at practice. The team has one game between them and American Thanksgiving, which means exactly twenty-four hours with Shane.

“Think you can sit?” the doctor asks.

Ilya nods. “Yeah, I am fine. I am okay.”

The doctor and Wiebe each take one of his arms and pull up. Ilya’s vision spins again and he tries to tamp down a groan and does not succeed very well. Alarm spasms across Wiebe’s face. Ilya can only imagine how much he’s regretting spending all that Centaur salary money on what was supposed to be a star center.

Ilya makes himself inhale slowly and exhale slowly. Then again. His vision steadies but his stomach yaws unpleasantly.

“Any chance you forgot to eat today?” the doctor asks.

Ilya opens his mouth to say that he got McDonald’s on the way to the rink because he was on the phone with Shane and Ilya finds Shane’s disgust for fast food funny. What comes out is a very ugly and disgusting retch. The doctor lunges to the side and that is the only reason Ilya does not puke on him.

**

“I would strongly prefer you go to the hospital, just to be on the safe side,” the doctor says.

“That would certainly make me feel better,” Wiebe agrees.

Ilya’s sitting half-dressed by his stall in the locker room, which means he’s looking up to both men. It makes him feel young in a shitty way, too much like the coaches of his youth who yelled at him because his father expected they would do so.

“I am fine,” Ilya says. He does not want to sound petulant, but he thinks he probably does a little, which makes it sound like he’s lying.

Which he isn’t. He finished off two Gatorades over the last twenty minutes and has eaten a package of violently orange cracker and peanut butter sandwich things someone produced from the depths of their bag. He feels no worse than he did when practice started, other than a faint, unpleasant aftertaste on the back of his tongue.

“Rozanov, I know I’m repeating myself, but you passed out,” the doctor says, frowning. “There is a fine line between grit and irresponsibility and you're toeing it.”

Ilya scrubs a hand through his hair. “I eat leftovers for breakfast. Probably they were bad. Or is little stomach bug.”

Ilya knows he’s pushing his luck. He only just stopped Wiebe from calling his emergency contact — who is very sneakily listed as Jane Regina and who would very much freak the fuck out if told Ilya got dizzy in practice. Ilya is not destroying the fucking plan they have worked so hard on for anything less than imminent death.

Unfortunately, to Wiebe and the doctor, that looks like he's being a pointlessly stubborn asshole.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Wiebe says at last. “You don’t want to go to the hospital? That’s fine. But you go get checked out somewhere, today, and that is the only way I'll consider not benching you tomorrow.”

Jane will also freak the fuck out if Ilya is benched with no explanation.

“Yes, okay. Fine.”

Wiebe visibly unclenches. Guilt twists in Ilya’s gut.

The doctor nods. “Get a ride. Do not drive yourself.” Ilya scoffs and the doctor forestalls him with a raised hand. “You passed out. I’d rather be cautious than have to scrape what’s left of you off the road.”

”Fine! Okay. Fuck me.”

**

Harris the social media guy unexpectedly volunteers.

Ilya almost says no automatically. He only knows Harris a little bit and most of the time he is taking pictures or recording videos, which Ilya is always very conscious of. It’s a little illogical, probably. Short of stealing Ilya’s phone and going through it, there’s nothing about Ilya that implies Shane. But ten years of being very careful about potential proof of their secrets is deeply ingrained in Ilya.

Ilya looks at Harris for much longer than is polite, going back and forth in his mind. If he is fair, Harris has actually never been invasive. He did a lot of welcome to the team promo stuff with Ilya during training camp and the few times he asked a question Ilya didn’t know how to answer, Harris didn’t push or pry.

And unlike an Uber driver, Harris definitely won’t go on Twitter and announce that he just dropped Ilya Rozanov off at a clinic and set off a firestorm of speculation and catastrophizing.

“You must promise me that if I puke on your car, you will not hate me forever and only post ugly pictures.”

Harris laughs. “If you barf on my car, I’ll just send you the cleaning bill.”

”Deal,” Ilya says. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Harris smiles very kindly. “I’m guessing it hasn’t been a great day. I’m happy to help.”

Ilya wonders if he will ever stop being surprised by the automatic kindness of the entire Centaurs organization. He can’t imagine the Raider’s social media person offering a player a ride that couldn’t be documented and posted for likes and engagement. She was not a bad person — she was actually very funny in a sharp, slightly mean way Ilya liked — but her world started and ended exactly at the boundaries of her job.

Harris’s car is a very practical one that is definitely good in the snow. It has many brightly colored stickers, mostly about dogs or being gay, on the back bumper and window. It does not look like the car of someone who is part of the MLH. Which is not a bad thing. But Ilya does notice, the same way he notices the flare of discomfort in his chest.

“I know it’s not much,” Harris says, his voice light and mild. “But I pinky swear she’s reliable.”

What is Ilya so fucking afraid of? He shakes his head to dislodge the thought. Harris wears little pins with rainbows and he/him on them every day. His sexuality is not a fucking secret. His openness, it’s not — contagious, and Ilya does not not like that such a word even comes to his mind. He’s not ashamed of who he is. He doesn’t think.

“Sorry,” Ilya says. “I am--” He waves a hand in a meaningless gesture.

Harris smiles sympathetically. “It’s okay. Come on.”

Ilya folds into the passenger seat and immediately there is an overpowering smell. He makes a very unattractive, aborted gagging noise and claps a hand over his mouth. He’s not sure what the fuck it is; the car is tidy enough. When Marley wasn't seeing a girl, his car turned into a dumpster of discarded Monster cans and that never bothered Ilya.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Harris says, shoving his key in the ignition and starting the engine. “I sort of have a dog and you stop noticing the smell after a while. Here, I can open the windows.”

The cold air feels good on Ilya’s face and his stomach grudgingly unclenches. He takes a couple slow swigs from the Gatordate he snagged for on his way out the door. Harris pops open his center console and pulls out a crumpled plastic gas station bag.

Ilya takes it. Better to be safe, he thinks. “Thank you. Sorry. It is not that bad.”

Harris waves the apology off. “I feel comfortable assuming that if you had the choice, you wouldn’t look as green as you do.”

Ilya slumps down a little. “That can be your next fun player fact for Twitter. Ilya Rozanov will choose puking zero out of one hundred times.”

Harris chuckles as he pulls out of his spot.

They sit in relative silence for a couple minutes. Harris has the radio tuned to some local pop station with the volume turned down low. He absently sings along as he drives, but not the actual lyrics, just la-la-la and da-dee-da nonsense syllables. It weirdly reminds Ilya of Shane, a tiny bit.

“You have a dog?” Ilya asks.

"Sort of," Harris says. "My parents are always taking in strays and I help out with them. There's one I'm probably going to adopt, once he's ready."

"Cool," Ilya says. He thinks Harris would be a good dog owner.

“You could get a dog,” Harris says, with the same expression he has when he's captured something he thinks the internet will love. “They’re wonderful companions.”

“I am gone one third of the year.”

“That’s why they invented doggy daycares and hotels.”

Ilya cocks his head. “There are hotels for dogs?”

“Tons of them, actually.” Harris glances at Ilya with a smile. “I have a list of excellent ones I highly recommend as long as my arm.”

“You are wasted on PR. You should be salesman.”

Harris laughs. “I’m really happy with my current gig, but I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”

There’s an opening there, Ilya thinks, to ask questions about the team to someone that has some of the same — considerations Ilya does. Ilya drums his fingers against his thigh and looks at Harris sidelong.

Boston was a strange place to play hockey, in some ways. The city shaped the team, of course, but even as a rookie, Ilya had felt the gap. Hockey is old fashioned in the same euphemistic way Ilya’s father was old fashioned. Boston had early gay marriage and that kind of thing and Ilya sometimes felt the friction between that side of the city and his own bubble of teammates and Raiders leadership.

Ilya felt very much at home in the hockey world. He never imagined himself on the other side, really. Even if he wanted to be someone who marched in parades with flags and shit, he was cognizant of his Russian passport, and Russian father. He was going to eventually find a girl to marry and then it wouldn’t matter who he used to fuck. Then Shane happened. And now he wonders.

“You like Ottawa?” Ilya asks. “You like the team? Working for them.”

”I do,” Harris says. “I wouldn’t mind if we won a little more, but if wishes were horses. It’s still what I want to be doing.”

Ilya does not know what the fuck horse wishes are standing in for in that sentences, but he sets that aside. “Did you ever work for other teams?”

Harris cocks his head a little and Ilya tries to school his face into nonchalance. Or failing that, queasiness.

“No,” Harris says. “Honestly, before this job I would never have considered the possibility.”

“Why?”

Harris’s expression does something that Ilya cannot quite read. “I couldn’t imagine a place for myself. Where I could be myself, you know? And that’s not optional for me.”

That is a striking level of bravery and a weird longing pulses in Ilya’s chest. He drinks a little more Gatorade. This is the weirdest fucking day.

“But Ottawa is okay?”

Harris nods. “Ottawa is okay. And now there’s Scott Hunter. So, maybe in a couple years there’ll be a lot of teams where I could see myself. Maybe. I hope so.”

“Maybe,” Ilya echoes.

“Do you like Ottawa?” Harris asks.

Ilya tips his head back and against the rest and exhales hard. “It is very different.”

“From Boston?”

“From Boston,” Ilya agrees. “From Moscow. It is not where I thought I would be.”

“In a good way? Bad way? Just different way?”

Ilya shrugs. “Both, I think.”

Harris turns into the parking lot of the private clinic that several of Ilya's teammates go to for their families and anything outside of the realm of team doctors. Ilya hasn’t been yet and he has no reason to be afraid, but his stomach churns regardless. Harris pulls up to the front.

“Good luck,” Harris says. “I hope you feel better.”

“Thank you for the ride,” Ilya says, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the door.

“You’re welcome.” Harris smiles. “And for the record, I’m glad you’re here. I think everyone is.”

Ilya is still scrambling for a response to that as Harris drives away.

**

The waiting room of the clinic is empty and the woman at the front desk immediately ushers Ilya into a room in the back. She hands him an iPad with one thousand questions about his medical history on it and tells him someone will be in shortly. He answers them as quickly as he can and probably leaves important things out, but whatever.

A nurse comes in to run a little wand over his forehead to take his temperature and stick a monitor on his finger. She draws blood and gives him a cup to pee in and directions to the nearest bathroom. Ilya's legs are still a little wobbly as he pisses and he's annoyed that he has to do it all. It's a fucking stomach bug. Why do they need piss for that?

The doctor is a brisk woman with salt and pepper hair pulled back in a severe bun. Ilya tells her what happened, how long he's been feeling weird, about the nosebleeds and the puking. She nods as she listens and when Ilya's done with his story, she says, "There are a lot of things that can cause these symptoms, but the prolonged duration is unusual. We'll get you some anti-nausea meds and run some tests."

The nurse brings him a tiny pill that dissolves under his tongue and ten minutes later, he doesn't feel sick at all. His mood significantly perks up. She even gives him a blister pack with more to take home.

Then the doctor knocks on the door and comes in with a very neutral expression. A terrible ominous unease slides down Ilya's spine. She sets a sheaf of papers next to the computer and sits down on the little chair with wheels facing him. She steeples her fingers.

“Have you ever been tested for the REP13 gene?” she asks.

Ilya has never fucking heard of the REP13 gene. “No — I don’t know. What is that?”

“Hess Syndrome?”

Ilya has never fucking heard of that either. “Syndrome? I am sick?”

Fear churns in his stomach and bile rises in his gorge despite the magic pill. He digs his fingers into his thighs and wills it down. There’s nothing in his stomach to bring back up which is the kind of logic that the body does not care about.

“No, not in the way you’re thinking,” she says. “It’s an outdated name, we don’t use it in medicine any more, but people are often familiar with it.”

“Well, I am not. What does this mean?” He swallows hard.

The doctor straightens her shoulders and her expression softens slightly, which Ilya does not like at all. “Ilya, do you know that you’re a carrier?”

The word is faintly familiar but not immediately clear. He frowns as he hunts for the meaning. His brain throws up possibilities: carry like Sveta shoving her purse into his hands and telling him to carry it, caring like the thing he spent years pretending he didn’t feel for Shane, careful, careless, carrion. The last one he only knows from part of a documentary he watched on a plane about vultures.

A memory surfaces. In a club in Boston with Sveta and a handful of others that were not friends exactly, but were familiar faces in a shared orbit. Sveta asked where someone was, Ethan or Evan or something like that. One of the other girls leaning over conspiratorially. “The idiot’s a carrier and he got himself knocked up so mommy and daddy called him back home.”

Knocked up Ilya knows. Sometimes as teasing bullshit, sometimes from a teammate panicking over an accident. It’s a stupid idiom.

”I am not,” he says. He almost does not recognize his voice in the harsh, cold words. “I am not — that. No fucking way.”

The softness in the doctor’s expression shifts to a terrible pity. Ilya’s hands are shaking; he curls his fingers into fists and pushes them into his thighs. He can feel the rabbit-fast beat of his heart in his ears and jaw and neck.

“You are,” the doctor says. “A standard part of bloodwork is a pregnancy test. Yours came back positive.”

“It’s fucking wrong.” His ears fill with the rushing sound again.

He thinks that his papa is going to fucking kill him when he finds out and it doesn’t matter that he’s dead, he will find a way and if he can’t then Alexei will. There are not enough kilometers on the planet for Ilya to go as far away from them as he will need to.

And Shane — Ilya shoves Shane’s face away.

“We ran it three times, to be sure.” She reaches for the sheaf of papers and holds them out.

Ilya takes them and does not look at them. “This is not real,” he says, shaking his head. “No. This is. I am not this.”

“I know this is a shock,” she says. “You should take as much time as you need to wrap your head around it and you don’t need to decide anything today. But I do want you to keep in mind that you have options.”

Ilya opens his mouth and knows he’s lost the fight with his stomach and the doctor must see it too, because suddenly there’s a trash can between his legs and all Ilya can think is that the only thing that would make his day worse would be puking on a second person.

**

Everything after that happens only because Ilya’s body goes through the motions while his mind hovers in a strange flat space where everything is not real.

He leaves the office without the papers, walks past the front desk without making another appointment, sits in the back seat of a car that drives him home, hears the cadence of the driver speaking and does not understand a single word, unlocks his front door, sags against the wall, slides down to the floor.

His mind is not in his body or maybe his body is not a real thing. He has not felt like this since he was twelve and staring at his mother laying too still in her bed. In the small gap before he screamed for help, he remembers wondering if he imagined hard enough, could he put the pills inside of himself, too. What a magic trick that would have been.

He wants his mother. And that is the thought that cracks him open. He keens out a sound, an inhuman, inarticulate cry that there is no one in the house to hear.

**

It’s dark by the time he manages to get up off the floor.

He stumbles to the bathroom. His mouth is cottony and sour, so he brushes his teeth. A goalie Boston had for one season once told him that stomach acid destroys your teeth. Ilya doesn't know if he was right, but it sounds true. He spits and rinses and stares at the stranger reflected in the mirror. That Ilya’s face is cast in colorless gray, darkened to smeared bruises beneath his eyes. He does not look like a professional athlete, he looks fucking diseased.

Acidic panic starts to rise in his gullet again and Ilya flicks off the light and turns away. He scrubs his knuckles against his breastbone for the sharp flare of aching pain and swallows hard. He shuffles to the living room and drops onto the couch.

He turns the TV on a random channel to override the terrible and lonely silence of his big house and remembers his phone is in his pocket. He fishes it out and finds dozens of messages from Wiebe and his teammates and Harris. The genuine concern stabs into Ilya's guts. All the Ottawa Centaurs want from him is good hockey and he's finding new and exciting ways to fuck that up.

So he messages the team to lie that it is nothing serious, he just has a stomach bug that will pass, though it is probably best that he be benched for their next game. It feels very wrong, but he’s 90% sure Wiebe was planning to do it anyway, so.

Twenty minutes later, he unlocks his phone again and opens his chat with Jane. The last message says, Seventy-one more hours, not that I'm counting, with a heart emoji. Ilya stares at the empty reply box through the end of whatever movie was showing on the TV and through the first bit of the next.

Eventually he sends: i am benched for next game. doctor says is not serious, just stomach bug. don't worry.

He falls asleep on the couch and wakes up at two in the morning to an infomercial and with a stiff neck. He drags himself to bed and falls back asleep, pretending he didn't see Shane's response.

Chapter End Notes

and ilya thought he was going through it before

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

Ilya has to tell Shane. He has to. All he's got to do is open his mouth and say it.

Chapter Notes

Ilya wakes up late and for one wonderful moment, he lives in a world where yesterday did not happen. There’s snow pattering against his bedroom window, but he is warmly nested in his bed. Shane isn’t there, but there is only one game until Ilya makes the drive to Montreal so they can spend one precious Thursday together.

He stretches and his stomach lurches; memory hits him like a rotten smell.

“Fuck,” Ilya says. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck.”

He spends the next hour laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, while his mind goes in circles and circles and circles. There is a — a thing inside him. Growing inside him. There is a thing growing inside him in some dark corner of his body Ilya did not know even existed.

It is both too real and impossible, a contradiction that crawls through Ilya's body like another living thing. Ilya asked Shane to do something that Shane said he did not love and, punchdrunk on his own improbable happiness, he was foolish enough to think that he could slip past consequences unnoticed. It is the least funny joke Ilya has ever heard. Ilya knows better and that will not save him at all.

His phone rings. The tinny notes of his stupid ringtone are too loud and too cheerful and Ilya stares at it for a long, strange moment. He only answers because it is Wiebe, who says, "I just wanted to make sure you're getting some rest and staying hydrated and all that."

Ilya does not realize he is expecting to be dressed down for missing a game for a reason so stupid as a little tummy ache until Wiebe doesn't do that. There were games in Boston where half the team fled the ice at both intermissions to puke, chug down Gatorade, and still played through to the bitter end. Marley once made it only as far as one of the rook's stall and barfed right into the kid's bag.

"I am being lazy in bed right now," Ilya says.

"Good," Wiebe says and Ilya is pretty sure he means it. "I just wanted to check up on you. Feel better."

"Yes, okay. I will."

It is the strangest conversation Ilya has ever had with a coach and he stares at his phone until the screen goes black. He is increasingly suspicious that he owes Brandon Wiebe for much more than just his trade.

**

Eventually hunger and the need to piss drag him out of bed.

He remembers to take one of the puke pills the doctor gave him, then makes a couple sandwiches and settles on the couch with his plate balanced on his knees. He eats the first sandwich very slowly, pausing after each bite to make sure it's going to stay down. Whether it's the pill or chance, Ilya doesn't know, but he feels fine and so scarfs the second one down.

"What fucking sense does it make to give me hunger and puking at the same time?" he grouses in Russian.

He spends some of the morning curled up on his couch half-watching a marathon of the TV show about the people who fish on boats for crabs. Huge, cold ocean waves rear up and crash over the decks of the ships and all the little sailors go slipping and falling. The captains sit in their dry wheel rooms talking about how it has been a hard season, because it has always been a hard season.

But restlessness piles up quickly. His leg starts bouncing and he drums his fingers on his thigh. Thoughts start to fetch up on the snags in his mind, echoing and redoubling into new mutations. There is something inside him. His father is going to kill him. He is trapped with no way out. There is something inside him.

His exhaustion is suddenly meaningless. He yanks on sweats and a tank top and goes to the home gym in the basement.

It takes a minute fucking with the light dimmer to find a level of illumination that’s bright enough to see but doesn’t make pain bolt through his head at the glare. There are cold drinks in the mini fridge; Ilya grabs three of them and gets on the treadmill. He starts up the fishing boat show on his phone. The waves are less intimidating in miniature. He runs.

He gets a couple more texts from his teammates. They’re a mix of ribbing him for taking a sick day and sincere wishes for him to feel better soon. Skimming them over makes guilt rise in Ilya’s craw and when he looks up at his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, his mouth is set in a grimly determined line.

He sends three flipping off emojis in a row. Haas responds first, with a timid suggestion that Ilya should be getting some sleep or drinking soup. That sets off a barrage of recommendations of ways to get over a cold faster, which quickly dissolves into arguments about ways to get over a cold faster.

Ilya decides he took Haas’s advice for a nap and closes the chat. He keeps running.

He finds a very stupid rhythm: fifteen minutes running as fast as he can because the burn in his lungs is too sharp and hot enough to ignore, five minutes jogging when he gets lightheaded and the world starts throbbing in his vision, and five more minutes standing on the unmoving treadmill with his arms braced and head hanging, heaving in huge gulps of air while his stomach shudders and spasms, repeat.

Somewhere in the strange fugue state, his phone rings again and it’s Yuna.

Ilya smacks the emergency stop on the treadmill and swipes to answer.

“Yuna. Hello,” he says.

“You sound like you’re out of breath, are you okay?” Yuna asks.

“No, no, no,” Ilya says, a little too loud. “No, I left my phone in other room and ran to get it. I am okay. My lungs are good. Sorry. Is everything okay?”

“With me? Yes, I was calling to check on you, Ilya.”

“I am not very sick. I am just normal, small sick. I am okay, you don’t need to worry.”

“That’s good to hear,” she says. “Is there anything that you need? I can bring you some groceries or medicine if you keep your fridge as bare as half the hockey players I’ve ever met. David makes a mean chicken noodle soup, too.”

The sincerity of the offer is excruciating. An apology fills his mouth and dies there. What would he even say to Yuna Hollander? Ilya has been nothing but a bomb in their family and somehow he’s magically found a way to one up falling in love with their son.

“I am good,” he lies. “But thank you, for offer. I appreciate it.”

“Of course,” Yuna says briskly. “In that case, get some rest and if anything changes, David and I are here.”

Ilya hangs up, drinks half a Gatordate to pretend that his stomach is just unsettled because of the — thing and not because lying to Yuna when she is constantly making the choice to be okay with Ilya loving her son makes Ilya feel like a worm. He gets back on the treadmill.

When Shane calls, Ilya has run past the point of training or practical endurance. He is staggering with his hands clenched white-knuckle tight on bars slick with sweat, running like a prey animal with hot breath and sharp teeth on the back of his neck. The idea of Shane's voice, thick with concern that Ilya does not deserve, is like heavy stones in Ilya's chest. He does not want to answer.

But there are consequences ignoring Shane's calls, when he is already worried. Ilya slaps the emergency stop again.

Shane immediately asks, "Are you feeling okay? I can ask my mom to come over if you need anything."

Ilya stumbles off the treadmill and sits down heavily on a weight lifting bench. He cracks open another Gatorade and drinks a third of it, glad Shane cannot see. "I am feeling better, moy pomidor. I have been resting all day. I told you, is not serious."

“Okay,” Shane says. Ilya can picture him chewing on his bottom lip across the distance. “I can make the drive to Ottawa, if I need to. If I leave directly from the airport, I can just toss some of the clothes in my suitcase into your washer.”

Shane is in Anaheim and the Metros’ plane won’t land back in Montreal until very late. The Centaurs are playing Tampa at home and Ilya won’t even go to the arena.

”No, is okay,” Ilya says. “You will be very tired; I do not want you driving like that. I will come to you, like we planned.”

“Are you up for that?” Shane asks, there’s a thread of incredulity that Ilya could find a little insulting, but he shoves it away.

“Yes,” Ilya says, imitating certainty that he does not feel. It feels deeply selfish to still want Shane's presence, but Ilya already knows he is selfish about Shane. It feels like an uglier thing with a secret in his belly that he does not know how to fix.

”Okay,” Shane says. “But if you don’t feel up to it at any point, just let me know. Please.”

The 'please' hits Ilya in his chest and he’s very glad that Shane can’t see his face. “I promise, lyubimiyy. I will probably leave Ottawa early and maybe watch game at your place.”

“Okay. The door code is the same.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. “Have good game for you personally, but please lose.”

“Asshole.”

“You love me.”

“And you love me.”

**

Ilya’s fucking nerves are in shreds all day, so before night even starts to fall, he gives up waiting. He tosses some clean clothes and his toothbrush and deodorant in a backpack and jams the blister pack of puke pills into a folded pair of socks, which feels like a very stupid thing to do as he’s doing it. Which does not make him not do it.

He stops at a gas station before he gets on the highway and grabs a couple more bottles of Gatorade and some crackers. The cashier clearly recognizes him, despite his very sneaky disguise of sunglasses and a Red Sox ball cap. Ilya doesn’t meet his eye and feels like a dick.

He glances longingly at the cigarettes and his fingers twitch against his thigh. In the face of Shane’s ridiculous hatred of the smell — which, privately, Ilya does find a tiny bit ridiculous — and his dire pronouncements of how much lung cancer Ilya is going to die from, Ilya has truly cut back to lighting up only in the most stressful situations.

The irony of this is not lost on him.

It’s snowing lightly when he finally gets on his way, but it's not terrible. It’s almost pretty, the way the flakes spin in the wind. It reminds him strangely of Moscow, of standing in a park in twilight with his mama, both their faces turned up toward the sky. Ilya does not really remember her voice, any more. But he hears her laugh.

He shakes his head to clear the memory and turns up the volume on his stereo.

It is a mostly uneventful drive. He has to stop at a second gas station to fill up his tank and take another fucking puke pill. The blister pack had seemed like plenty as he fled the clinic, but not at the rate he's going through them; a problem for Ilya to solve later. He eats a couple dry crackers. They stick to the roof of his mouth and go down in an uncomfortably congealed lump.

It’s fully dark by the time he hits Montreal. He pulls up to the entrance of the garage attached to Shane’s building and has to get out of his warm car to punch in the code to open the gate.

Inside the building, Ilya tries not to look suspicious as he taps in door code, even though he feels like a fucking burglar. He hopes Shane's neighbors have better things to do than monitor for strange visitors.

He closes Shane's front door and slumps against it. Ilya lets his backpack slip off his shoulder and drop to the floor. He tips his head back and exhales long and hard; exhaustion returns to him like a tide coming in, given a deeper tenor by the fatigue in his muscles and the sour twist of his empty stomach. He should probably not be here. But Shane is the only home Ilya has to run to, so.

He sheds his coat and boots -- coat hung neatly on a hook, boots in the shallow tray to collect any ice or snow -- and pads toward the living room. He passes the kitchen on the way; nestled between two apples is a small bag of hot cheetos with a post-it note on it that says more in the pantry in Shane's precise handwriting. His stomach clenches at the thought of eating them, but the fact of their presence, of Shane making room in his home -- Ilya's eyes start to burn.

In the living room he turns on the back half of the Metro's game and sprawls onto Shane's couch. There's a blanket draped over the back that smells like Shane. Ilya shoves his nose into it and inhales deeply. Comfort he probably doesn't deserve warms him nonetheless.

His eyes start slipping closed almost immediately and Ilya fights it, but he’s so fucking tired after the insane twenty-four hours he’s had that it’s a futile thing. He drags the blanket overtop himself and lets the low murmur of the commentators and Anaheim crowd lull him down.

And then someone is gently shaking his shoulder and saying, "Ilya. Hey, you in there?"

Ilya cracks open his eyes, disoriented until the person leaning over him coalesces into Shane.

"Lyubimiyy," Ilya murmurs. His voice is a rusty croak that makes Shane smile. "You are here."

"I am," Shane agrees. "Hi. I missed you."

Ilya hooks a hand around Shane's upper arm and pulls him down onto the couch. Shane huffs out a laugh, fond and indulgent, and lets himself be pulled. He's still in his gameday suit and he smells like recycled air and cleaning chemicals and Ilya does not give one single fuck. The weight of Shane's body ranged over him is an off switch for Ilya's worries, even if only a temporary one.

“Come on,” Shane says. “I want you in my bed. You’ll sleep better.”

Ilya grumbles a protesting sort of noise. “Sleep is waste of time.”

Shane chuckles. “Tell that to the dark circles under your eyes. Come on.”

Ilya stumbles to his feet and allows Shane to tow him down the hallway, making coaxing noises like Ilya is a stubborn puppy. It should be annoying, but Ilya is so fucking glad to have Shane’s actual hands on him that he cannot muster real indignation.

Shane herds him into bed, pulls off his sweatpants and socks, and pulls the duvet up. “I’m gonna shower,” Shane murmurs. “I’ll be fast”

And true to his word, he is. Fifteen minutes later he climbs into bed, hair still damp and curling around his ears. He shifts over the center line of the mattress and settles with his head on Ilya’s shoulder, hand splayed on Ilya’s chest.

He says something, but the solid weight of his body drops Ilya down into deep sleep so quickly he doesn’t catch it.

**

Ilya dreams that he is showing Shane around the apartment he grew up in, leading him down endless branching hallways and series of rooms that are mishmashed contortions of real and imaginary, with exaggerated, illogical proportions. Shane keeps tugging on his hand, saying that this isn't Ilya's home and they don't belong there, but they can't leave until they find Ilya's mama and she has to be somewhere; she never leaves this sad, shadowed place.

**

Ilya jerks awake with unvoiced Russian in his mouth to the watery, dim light of early morning casting a pall over a strange room. He blinks hard, wincing at the scrape of grit in his eyes.

"Good morning," Shane says.

Ilya jolts and memory thuds into place, displacing the clinging remnants of a dream that's already slipping through his fingers. Shane is laying on his side, hair rumpled from sleep. There are shadows beneath his eyes -- light brown rather than bruise purple, but still. There is tiredness there and it fills Ilya with a deep tenderness. Distance makes it difficult for Ilya to take care of Shane in all the ways he wants.

"Good morning," Ilya rasps.

Shane reaches out to tuck Ilya's hair behind his ear. He trails the pad of his thumb along the line of Ilya's jaw and over his bottom lip. It is not a sexy touch, particularly, or Ilya does not think it is. It is more like familiarization. Shane remapping the contours of a face he knows very well, deepening the grooves of that memory.

"You okay?" Shane asks. "Bad dream?"

The whole overwhelming truth of the last two days swells up in Ilya's chest so terribly that for a moment he thinks it will burst past his lips whether he wants it to or not. He will barf up his mistake and it will sit there between them, stinking and impossible to ignore. The quiet of the morning will break, this one fucking day they have will collapse into panicked crisis handling. Shane will never look at Ilya the same way ever again.

Ilya swallows it down and down and down. He crooks the best smile he can manage and rolls onto his side to face Shane. "I already forgot," he says. "Hi. You are here."

Shane laughs. "So are you."

"Come here."

"We both need to brush our teeth," Shane protests.

Ilya sighs theatrically. His personality -- the parts that are worthy of showing to Shane -- starts to click into place. He fists his hands in Shane's tee shirt and shoves his face into the crook of Shane's neck. "Pomidor, we are cuddling, get back here." He licks Shane's throat.

Shane screws up in his face in performative disgust and starts to roll away. "You aren't kissing me until you brush your teeth, that's gross."

"You are so demanding," Ilya sighs. "Hold still, I promise I won't kiss your mouth."

They don't get out of bed for another forty-five minutes and Ilya almost forgets the secret thing burrowed beneath his skin.

**

He has to tell Shane.

He just can't make himself do it.

Which is made worse by the fact that he really fucking wants to pretend that nothing is happening for this one last day, even as he shies away from the idea of it being a last day. But he can't do that either. His mind won't allow it. So Ilya spins in place as the minutes fall away, distracted and subdued.

And he gets away with it, too, because Shane thinks he is getting over being sick. Ilya gets out of the shower and Shane settles him on the couch with more of the fishing boat show on the TV. He brings Ilya orange juice -- real orange juice, with sugar and shit -- and a bowl of some rice porridge thing that Yuna used to make him when Shane was sick as a kid.

"I put some egg in it, too," Shane says.

"You cooked this?" Ilya asks. "For real?"

"It's not hard," Shane says, dropping down onto the couch and curling up against Ilya's side. He is warm and solid and Ilya loves him.

"Did you have to call your mom for instructions?" Ilya asks.

Spots of color blossom on Shane's cheeks. "Fuck off."

Ilya laughs because he is supposed to laugh, but the idea of Shane wanting to give Ilya the same things that Yuna gave to him is -- Ilya can't find a word for it. It is like homesickness for a place he has never been. Ilya wants to make Shane the raspberry tea Ilya himself hasn't had since he was twelve. He eats a bite of the rice and it's pretty good, though he would have eaten the whole thing regardless.

Ilya has to tell him.

In the show, one of the boat captains has a fight with his son while the rest of the crew pretends they are not hearing it. Shane sticks his hand into Ilya's hoodie pocket and strokes his thumb in a steady arc over Ilya's stomach, so close to the bomb that is going to detonate his life into pieces.

"Do you think this will ever stop feeling--" Shane says, waving his head as he searches for a word. "I don't know. It's just nice, being together like this."

"Never," Ilya says.

It is nice, this practice domesticity. Ilya could get really, really used to this really easily. The ten, fifteen years between the present and when they're both retired could get very long and very lonely. There is a deep greed inside Ilya that drinks in every second he spends with Shane and only wants more. There are voices that whisper in Ilya's mind that there might be another way. Their plan can change.

Isn't it already changing, Ilya thinks.

He has to tell Shane, but he can't. His excuses are cobweb thin -- he should see another doctor just to make sure the clinic did not swap his results with another patient, he should know for sure what he wants to do before he drops something this big in Shane's lap -- and the truth is so much simpler. He is afraid and that's all it is.

"I am sorry," Ilya says.

Shane lifts his head from Ilya's shoulder. "For being sick? No, don't be sorry. You don't need to be sorry. We're still together and that's the point. I miss you, all of you. I'm not mad or anything, okay?"

Ilya nods.

**

For lunch, Shane brings Ilya more of the real orange juice and a bowl of David Hollander’s chicken noodle soup, which is as good as Yuna said.

“Are you sure you were not foundling left on porch?” Ilya asks. “Both your parents make such good food and then you burn no butter popcorn.”

Shane makes an extremely affronted angry little cat noise. “I made the okayu and the soup, asshole.”

He smacks the back of his hand against Ilya’s chest and his knuckle directly hits Ilya’s nipple. An incredibly bizarre bolt of pain flares in his chest and he chokes on a spoonful of soup. Which is lucky, because the cough disguises his yelp.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Shane takes the mostly empty bowl and thuds his palm between Ilya’s shoulder blades a couple times. Ilya hacks up a couple more deep coughs, then chugs the rest of the orange juice. Shane switches to rubbing his back.

“I almost died,” Ilya says, wheezing a little.

“You did not almost die,” Shane says, rolling his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Ilya gives him a thumbs up. “Peachy,” which is a nonsensical way to say he is good that Hazy taught him.

After Shane does the dishes, he comes to stand in front of Ilya and holds out his hand. “Come on, you need to get some fresh air.”

Ilya groans. “Open a window.”

“No, you need to move around, too. It’s good for you.”

“Who said this?”

”My mother and my grandmother.” Shane grabs his hand. “Come on, up.”

They both put on their boots and winter coats. Ilya only has his toque, but Shane pulls an extra scarf out of his closet and carefully winds it around Ilya’s neck, pulling it up so Ilya only has to duck his head slightly to have his nose and mouth covered.

They go up two more flights of stairs to a metal door that has ROOF ACCESS stenciled on it. Shane pushes it open and together they step over the threshold. There’s a chunk of rock by the door that Shane nudges into place to keep the door propped open a couple inches.

It’s cold on the roof, and windy. No snow, but the sky is thick with clouds that threaten it. Ilya inhales deeply and the mild burn of cold air in his nose and chest actually feels pretty good. He tips his head back and pushes his hands into his pockets.

Shane comes to stand beside him and copies his stance.

“Okay, it is not bad,” Ilya says. “Fresh air. Whatever.”

Shane chuckles. “Told you.”

They stand in silence for a few minutes. Ilya’s mind empties a little as wind buffets his face. The chill has a scouring element to it. Not perfectly, his thoughts are too jumbled and expansive for that, but it’s an improvement.

He turns to say something to Shane and catches Shane already staring at him. “Are you daydreaming about kissing me or do I have something on my face?”

Shane rolls his eyes. He says, “You aren’t that irresistible, typhoid Rozanov,” but it is a performance Ilya can see through.

“Says the boy who got on his knees for me two seconds after letting me in your hotel room.”

“You jerked off at me in the shower first!”

”Yeah and you were so fucking into me you forgot to be afraid of gay sex.”

Shane snorts. “I didn’t forget.”

“You opened your door anyway.”

“And you should be really glad I did.”

Ilya smiles at him. “It is one of the things I am most grateful for, Hollander.”

Shane tries to suppress a smile, but can’t. It’s so normal, for their weird definition of normal. Ilya wraps an arm around Shane’s shoulders and pulls him in until they’re standing chest to chest. Shane loops his arms around Ilya’s waist.

Ilya kisses the tip of his nose. Shane cocks his head and leans forward and Ilya kisses him properly. It’s an easy thing, a slow, exploratory slide of tongues.

It doesn’t get heated. Ilya wants Shane in the way he always fucking wants Shane, every minute of every day, but he is also exhausted and worried. His willpower feels threadbare. The kiss helps.

“That was very good distraction,” Ilya says when they part. “But I think still a distraction, lyubimiyy.”

Shane sighs. “I just. Are you okay? Really?”

Ilya chest spasms. “Yes, I am okay. Why?”

“I’m overthinking, probably.” Shane shakes his head. “Sorry.”

“Is okay,” Ilya assures him. Shane is already tucked into his side so Ilya tightens his arm around Shane’s shoulders. “I am okay. Just a little tired, yes?”

Shane settles back onto his side. “I wish you could stay.”

From Shane’s lips to God’s ears, which is a phrase Marley taught Ilya during his rookie season. “Me too.”

**

At some point Shane herds Ilya back into his bedroom and into the unmade bed. They are almost out of time and Ilya doesn’t want to fall asleep, but a thin sleep takes him anyway. He wakes with a soft, interrogative sound to Shane’s knuckles brushing over his cheek. His eyes are gritty and he squints at the blurry oval of Shane’s face.

”Hey,” Shane says. “I have to head out, I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“Time? When is it?”

”Almost six.”

Ilya shakes his head to clear the clinging remnants of strange and restless dreams. Almost six means it is the next day and Shane has to fly to some fucking city somewhere because Montreal has a game. Ilya knows Shane cannot stay and so it would just be unkind to ask and make him say no. Knowing that does not make Ilya want to beg less.

“Miss you,” Ilya says. “Be safe going.”

Shane kisses the center of his forehead. “I will. Get some more sleep, okay? You look exhausted.”

Ilya is exhausted, but that is another thing it would only be unkind to say. Shane cannot fix it in the ten minutes before he has to leave and Ilya will not burden him like that.

“Love you, lyubimiyy.”

“I love you, too.”

Shane goes.

Ilya lays there until he hears the front door close, then he rolls into Shane’s still warm side of the bed and shoves his face into Shane’s pillow.

“Fuck.”

Chapter End Notes

ilya: don'tbesuspicious.gif

i do at this juncture want to promise that ilya will tell shane, it's just a process, you know? as ever, thank you so much for the feedback, especially the person who spotted the junior reference. <3

if you are on tumblr and are so inclined, i'll be reblogging this post when chapters are posted.

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

Fun fact: ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.

Chapter Notes

i want to give a little bit of a head's up here that my intention with this story is to dig into the complicated and nuanced feelings that unplanned pregnancy often brings up. i've added a couple additional tags for some potentially harder things that will come up at some point. if you have any specific questions, please feel free to comment here or hit me up on tumblr where i am also technicallyverycowboy.

all that being said, i promise that when the torment nexus finally spits ilya out it will be into a happy ending.

thanks so much for reading. your comments and feedback mean the world to me.

Ottawa has a road trip through LA, Dallas, and fucking Boston immediately after the holiday and Ilya has never before in his life so seriously considered faking an injury so he doesn’t have to go.

But the idea of letting down the team and Wiebe more than he already has is too much, so he makes the fucking drive from Montreal back to Ottawa and packs his fucking suitcase and gets on the fucking flight.

Bood, Hazy, Dillon, Chouinard, three fourths of the team see him on the plane and say something about welcome back or they’re glad he’s feeling better. They are excruciatingly sincere, too, and Ilya feels like even worse of a liar. He was supposed to make their lives easier, not be another worry.

An hour into the flight, Bood drops into the seat next to him. Ilya’s been leaning into the side of the plane using a hoodie as a pillow, looking out the window while his mind goes in circles. He should have told Shane. He is an asshole and a coward and a shit excuse for a boyfriend. Everyone is going to hate him. And so on.

He lifts his head and glances at Bood. “There is problem?” he asks. He sounds more annoyed than he means to.

“No, no problem,” Bood says. “You just looked kind of miserable.”

Ilya stares at him. “This made you want to be near me?”

Bood shrugs. “I’m not gonna start pumping you with questions, Rozy. I figured miserable with a teammate might be better than miserable alone.”

He isn’t wrong. Ilya misses fewer things about Boston than he thought he would when he requested the trade, but he misses those things with painful intensity.

Marley had a finely tuned sense for when Ilya needed a little space and when he needed to be bullied into leaving his house and getting out of his own head. And he had no problem at all barging into Ilya’s place and dragging him out by the scruff of his neck like a baby kitten who needed loud music and shots to get over himself.

Ilya hasn’t talked to Marley since he left. He doesn't know what to say. He cannot say the truth and so does not know what to say at all. Ilya fucking misses him. He wants to tell Marley he was right about Montreal girl getting under his skin and who she really is and that they accidentally made something together.

“Okay,” he says. “Is cool if we don’t talk?”

“Fine with me,” Bood assures him. He puts his AirPods backs in. Ilya leans against the well. He doesn’t feel better, but it is weirdly easier to set his thoughts aside and he manages to fall into a doze.

**

LA feels like a surreal oven after frozen Canadian winter.

Unpleasant, sticky sweat rolls down his back every minute that Ilya is outside. Ten years in Boston gave him a reflexive dislike for the west coast for absolutely no reason other than playing with dozens of people who said ‘fucking California’ like the fucking was a real part of the name. Rose fucking Landry lives in LA.

He gets his own hotel room. He raises an eyebrow at Wiebe when he takes the keycard and Wiebe shrugs. “Thought you might appreciate getting some uninterrupted sleep.”

The kindness is going to ruin his fucking life.

But he shoves that thought away, says, “Thank you,” and goes up to his room. Because going from Ottawa to LA means going backwards in time, it’s not even noon yet local, so he lays down and sleeps for almost two hours.

He wakes up too hot and squinting against bright sunlight streaming in through the curtains he forgot to close. He reaches for Shane and his hand lands on the plasticky hotel blanket. He’s still fucking tired and he’s hungry and his stomach has the has the ominous clenching he is so fucking tired of.

He yanks a pillow over his head and curses into the mattress in Russian and English and even a couple stupid French insults that he’s picked up so he knows when he’s being insulted by Canadian teams on the ice. His anger, he knows, is irrational.

(Deep in the back of his mind, he knows the anger is really terror that he is coming up against a point where he will not be able to keep going as he is.)

It isn't until he is standing in front of his stall in the guest dressing, hours later, that he realizes what he is about to do.

The game starts in twenty minutes and there’s a little bit of unusual tension in the team, because the Kings are stuck in a losing streak and there’s a little tinge of possibility in that. It tips the odds just a little bit in their favor. It’s not one in a million that Ottawa might snatch a win.

Ilya’s dressed in his base layers, listening with half an ear. Hazy’s talking about some new superhero movie that is coming out, Iron Man: Also Avengers 27 or something. Bood’s talking Dillon through LA’s roster in a very tactful way that doesn’t imply any doubts that Dillon is capable of picking it up on his own.

Ilya picks up his shoulder pads and thinks, very clearly and very calmly, there is a small and fragile thing inside you, and you are about to play a professional hockey game.

He goes very still.

His mind offers up nothing more and the stark simplicity is unsettling. There is no emotion, really, not in a way that makes any sense at all. No fear. No desperate hope. He would understand either. It’s just understanding. This is what he is doing.

“Bood, you want to deal with media tonight?” some PR person says and Ilya almost drops his pads.

No one notices.

So he finishes gearing up, like he has done for twenty-five years of his life. He’s on the ice for the first face off and wins it and when the final bell blares, Ilya has put up a goal and Ottawa has won, 2-1.

That night, laying awake in his hotel bed, he catalogues his body. What feels normal? What feels weird in a way that is becoming normal with each passing day? He hunts for anything that feels new and finds nothing and doesn’t know how to react to that.

He cannot pretend there is nothing appealing about the idea of it all being taken out of his hands. If fate makes that choice then it’s over and everything goes back to normal and Ilya is relieved of the burden. It is a very heavy thing and he is not at all certain he’s strong enough to carry it.

But there is also a strange tinge of — he does not know how to describe it. It’s not strong enough to be regret, in the way he regrets being cruel to Shane at the Olympics or he regrets the relationship he never had with his brother. It is more like the wistfulness when something that was very unlikely doesn’t happen. You did not really hope, but. There was a chance. It was not impossible.

**

Dallas is fine; Ottawa loses 3-1, but Hazy makes some nice saves and Haas scores, which is still novel enough to him that his shock is funny.

Boston is a fucking nightmare.

The mood in the arena is ugly from the moment they hit the ice for warmups. The Raiders are having a profoundly mediocre season and the hometown fans know exactly whose fucking fault that is. Two different effigies of Ilya are burned on the sidewalk.

The angry fans are not so distracting to Ilya. He’s played many games to a soundtrack of jeers and boos and seething hatred. But his former teammates have been personally betrayed and they are fucking furious. Ilya cannot even fucking blame them for their rage. He would be furious, too.

He snatches a three minute phone call with Shane in an empty bathroom. Shane says, “Fuck them. If they can’t win without you, then they don’t fucking deserve to win,” and Ilya misses him so intensely his fucking eyes start to burn with tears, which is insane.

It is a mean, dirty game from the first puck drop.

The Centaurs do their best to shield Ilya, but Boston is frankly the better team and they’re on a mission. Ottawa is not a team that inspires a lot of feeling in their opponents — what is the point of hating a team that’s going to lose anyway — and they are not used to playing dirty themselves. They are outmatched.

Ilya takes check after check and all the bullshit of the last month boils into rage in his chest. Fuck him for leaving? Fuck Boston for making him fucking leave, fuck Boston for so quickly forgetting that Ilya got them their only cup in the last ten years, fuck Boston for being Montreal’s rivals and jamming Ilya into a bullshit rivalry story.

Marley avoids Ilya on the ice, which is one more thing than Ilya can swallow down. Marley, his best friend Marley, stays as far away as he reasonably can. He won’t even fucking look at Ilya.

The angrier Ilya gets, the more stupid fucking mistakes he makes and the more stupid fucking mistakes he makes the angrier he gets. The penalty boxes are almost as busy as the ice itself, piling multiple players in again and again. The intermissions do nothing to calm the mood.

Midway through the third period, Bood gets the puck and takes off toward the Boston goal, Ilya hot on his heels. And it feels like they’re clicking a little and maybe between the two of them they’ll rip one goal out of the miserable shitshow of a game.

A fucking rookie that Ilya did not play with and has never met, hunting for retribution that he has no right to, comes up from behind and rams his shoulder into Ilya's side. Ilya goes down so hard his head bounces off the ice. Pain explodes, his vision grays around the edges; he sucks in a breath and fire licks along his ribs.

He hears the refs’ whistles and crowd cheering and thinks, please, no, please, not this.

Then the team medics are crouching next to him and asking questions. They go through the concussion checks and he must pass because then they’re helping him to sit up. Ilya can’t entirely stop the low, wounded sound that punches out of him.

He stares into the eyes of a doctor that Ilya cannot tell about the secret thing inside him, if it is still growing. And it is in that moment that Ilya realizes with terrible clarity that he wants to keep it.

**

The team doctors look him over. They press their fingers against his ribs, where the skin is already red with bruising that Ilya knows will deepen to livid purple in the next few days. The bones are not broken and everyone is very relieved.

Ilya nods and says inane things in the right place, but half his mind is floating five feet above his head. The other half is grimly scouring the many layered pains in his body. There is a vicious ache that pulses in time with his breath that is his ribs. His headache has been pronounced not a big deal; he ignores it. The mild, post-exertion soreness in his thighs barely counts as pain.

He feels nothing else, but in truth, he does not know what something going wrong feels like. Maybe there is no feeling, just a sudden stillness smaller than Ilya can perceive.

"Well, you're having a hell of a month," Wiebe says, sympathetic rather than recriminatory.

You have no idea, Ilya thinks.

He scrubs his hands over his face and shoves them through his hair, lank with dried sweat. "I am sorry," he says, slumping forward, elbows braced on his knees. A year ago, the Garden was full of fans who loved him and teammates who respected him and even a few friends. Everything has been his choice, but it feels like a fall from grace, and the cost is heavy.

"I'm not dressing you down, Rozanov," Wiebe says. He taps Ilya's shoulder as he heads toward the door.

Ilya does not have it in him to put his bruised skin on display in the showers, so he winces his way back to the locker room and changes into his stupid fucking suit. It takes almost ten protracted minutes having to pause every three seconds to breathe through a new stab of pain. Fucking ribs. Leaving the arena, he feels like slinking away.

His phone starts buzzing as walks through the hotel lobby. Texts from Yuna and Shane, both asking if Ilya is okay. In the privacy of an elevator car, Ilya leans slumps against the wall and forces himself to breathe deep, like if he takes in enough clean air he can expel the hideous tangle of it all.

He texts Yuna, i am ok. a little sore and i will have bruise tomorrow. no big deal.

He texts Shane, i am ok. :* ugly bruise tomorrow, but i passed concussion check, so already doing better than you. :P

**

There is some small relief in the solitude of his hotel room. Ilya strips out of his clothes and drops them on the floor in a trail between the front door and the bathroom. He cranks the shower hot and leans against the sink while the water comes up to temperature.

He stands beneath the spray with his forearms braced on the tile wall so the water thunders against his upper back. It’s not as good as a massage — especially not one from Shane, who can usually be enticed to fool around in the middle — but it’s something. It helps. He feels looser as he cuts the water and wraps a towel around his waist.

He goes to the sink and wipes a streak of condensation off with his palm. The Ilya staring back at him looks like shit. But a strange thought does occur to him.

He wipes away more of the condensation and feels his pulse tick up a little. He drops his towel and steps back until he can see all the way down to the tops of his thighs in the reflection.

Does he look different?

He doesn’t think so. The planes and dips of his musculature are there, familiar. There is maybe a little less definition, but Ilya likes to eat real food and has never and will never apologize for that. He is not built for macrobiotic boiled chicken and sad lettuce bullshit. He knows damn well that definition is dehydration, not strength.

He turns to the side.

He says, “Oh, fuck,” with an incongruous calm.

There is a rounded curve to his stomach. Easy to miss if you think such a thing is impossible, easy to miss even if you are looking for it. He presses his palm to his belly and the strange curve has a firmness to it that does not feel like hard muscle or bloat. It feels weirdly warm and he doesn’t know if that is something real or his mind.

He strides into the bedroom and yanks on a pair of sweats he abandoned on the end of the bed when he got ready for the game. He snags his phone off the side table, unlocks it, and scrolls to the only number he can think to call.

It rings twice, then connects. “I saw the hit, Ilyushka, did he break your ribs?”

Svetlana’s voice, the cadence of her Russian, washes over Ilya better than good vodka. “I need to tell you something that you won’t believe, but I promise I am not lying.”

There is a very brief pause and the hum of background noise quiets. “Tell me.”

“I am pregnant.”

Svetlana inhales sharply. “Fuck, Ilya. I was worried you fucked up your shoulder, but I think I have changed my mind. That would maybe be better.”

Ilya laughs and it is maybe a tiny bit wet. “It would be easier.”

“Why the fuck did you play? What does — Jane think?”

Suddenly Ilya cannot endure another second pretending that Sveta does not perfectly well know who the fuck Jane is. It is a ridiculous pantomime and Ilya feels ridiculous for maintaining it. He trusts Sveta significantly more than Hayden Pike. He knows Sveta can keep a secret.

“Shane, just Shane. It is stupid to say Jane. You know.”

“Of course I know,” Svetlana says. “So, Shane. What does Shane think?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“Oh, Ilyushka.” Svetlana sighs. “Tell me everything.”

Ilya does. The cottage weekend in September and the thing he asked Shane to try. The weird exhaustion he hasn’t been able to shake. The nosebleeds and nausea. Passing out on the ice. The clinic. For as big as it all feels to Ilya, it is short in the telling. Svetlana knows where babies come from.

“Fuck,” she says when he stops. "This might be the deepest in the shit you have ever been."

“I don’t know what to do,” Ilya says and it comes out softer than he intended, a little fragile. It should be embarrassing but it has been a very long day and he might be too tired for bravado. Especially with Sveta.

“Well, ultimately there are not many choices,” Svetlana says. “You have a baby or you do not have a baby.”

“You make it sound easy.”

Svetlana laughs, sharp and humorless. “I said simple, Ilyushka, not easy.”

Ilya swings his legs up onto the bed and settles on his side, facing the window. There is the smallest sliver of moon in the dark sky and the stars are distant pinpricks of light behind the familiar skyline. Ilya feels very small, and it sucks, and he hates it.

He tucks his phone between his ear and the pillow. His right arm falls naturally over his belly and he thinks of that round firmness against his palm and panic struggles to rise again.

“I cannot think, Sveta.”

Svetlana hums a mollifying noise. “First, you will not panic. That will help no one. We will talk it through.”

Ilya nods, even though Svetlana cannot see it. “Yes. Okay. What options are there?”

“You can decide fuck having a baby," she says. "The reason does not matter. If you do not want a baby ever or you do not want a baby right now or whatever. If you do not want to be pregnant, you are allowed to stop being pregnant. You make appointment somewhere discreet and take care of it.”

“The simple choice,” Ilya says.

“Yes,” Svetlana agrees. “You maybe miss one game for vague illness reasons and nobody questions it.”

There is a part of Ilya that wants to make that choice, to reduce the consequences of something he and Shane never meant to do from the rest of their lives to two crazy weeks that will fade with time. There is some strange comfort in knowing the option exists. If he is overwhelmed by the gravity of it all, it is not nothing to have the choice.

But something deep inside him snarls at the thought of washing his hands of the whole thing. It is a sharper echo of the plea that burst in his chest as he hit the ice. It is somehow like the way he feels about Shane; a teeth-bared assertion of Ilya's claim on the thing he wants.

So, it is not all of him that wants to be done with it, or most of him. Which is a hard thing to admit even to himself. It is a realization so new and raw that he cannot be certain he will feel the same tomorrow and the day after. He thinks, probably, that he will. He does not say any of it aloud. He is not ready yet.

“Option two,” Ilya says.

“Yes. The hard way.” Svetlana’s voice does not go gentle or particularly comforting, which is in itself more of a relief to Ilya. They do not and have never bullshitted each other. Growing up in rooms full of powerful men and their simpering lackeys trying to curry favor soured them both on saying what people want to hear.

“I have to stop playing,” Ilya says.

“Yes, you stop playing immediately,” Svetlana says. He can picture her ticking things out on her fingers. “You go on LTIR list for the rest of the season. Hopefully spend the summer getting back into shape to return next year. It is not ideal but not so bad.”

Ilya snorts. “Not so bad?”

“Ilyushka, the Centaurs are not making it to the post-season whether or not you are there. It does not matter. There may be longer term consequences for your body and abilities, but those are not predictable.”

Ilya flinches at the thought. It is uncomfortable, the idea of his body changing in permanent ways that he cannot control.

“And there would be a baby,” Ilya says, pushing that thought away, even as he splays his hand over his belly again.

“There usually is when pregnancy is over,” Svetlana says wryly.

“I have to come up with a story for where it came from.”

There is a long pause where Ilya can feel Svetlana’s searching gaze from hundreds of kilometers away, peering through his skin and bones to the heart of him. They have spent most of their lives wrapped around each other in some fundamental way that is deeper than whether or not they’re fucking. Svetlana sees him, good and bad.

“Ilyushka, why are you afraid to tell Shane?” she asks.

Ilya tenses against an accusation the question does not contain.

He wants to say that he doesn’t know. It is a fear born from a shocking situation that Ilya has never considered and was not prepared for. The unknowns are vast and he is simply overwhelmed. The fear is broad and general and it is less about telling Shane than the idea of saying it out loud to anyone.

“We have a plan, Sveta,” Ilya says. “Shane is not good with changed plans.”

“I see.” Svetlana pauses. “Does he not want kids?”

“No — I mean. He doesn’t not want kids. Or he has never said that. We have not really talked about it.”

Of course they haven’t talked about it. They just admitted they wanted to be together five fucking minutes ago, after one thousand fucking years. They did not know it possible to make babies, so of course they never considered the possibility.

“Well, I think it is time to fucking talk about it. And to tell Shane.”

“Why?” The question comes out so fucking pleading.

“Ilyushka, does he love you or not? Do you trust him or not?”

“I know he loves me,” Ilya says, suddenly harsh. “Which has made him run before, Sveta.”

Svetlana makes a short, percussive sound of disgust. “He is coward?”

“No, he —“ Ilya exhales hard. “He is bad with unexpected things.”

“He survived you. I bet you were very unexpected.”

Ilya manages a sharp laugh. “He was curious.” He rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling, thinking about that one almost-perfect day when Shane agreed to stay. Astride Ilya's lap on the couch he had been so fucking beautiful.

“Ilya?”

“What would you do?” he asks.

Not unkindly, Svetlana says. “I do not want to be a mother. I would get rid of it as fast as possible. Easy choice for me. Not so easy for you, I think. Do you want kids?”

Ilya closes his eyes. ”I am afraid of having kids,” he says at last. “My father, I can’t —“

”You are not him,” Svetlana says, her voice hard. A lifetime of watching the way Grigori Rozanov treated his family from across rooms seeded a hatred of Ilya’s father deeper and purer than Ilya’s own more complicated tangle. “There is no world where you become him.”

Ilya’s eyes start to prick and he swallows hard. “What if I get sad like her, Sveta?”

At Irina Rozanov’s funeral, Ilya’s father told him to stop sniveling and stand up straight. Svetlana was the one who pulled him into an empty room and held him as they cried together.

“Being sad like her doesn’t mean dying like her, Ilya. You have people who love you, you have Shane, you have me.”

Ilya’s breath hitches. “I wish I could talk to her now.”

“I wish you could, too.”

“I wish you were here.”

“If you need me, I can be,” Svetlana says.

God, does he want it. But it is almost Christmas and Ilya cannot hide from those plans without alerting Shane (and both other Hollanders) that something is wrong. “If you don’t have plans for new year’s, maybe.”

Svetlana laughs. “Ilyushka, of course I have plans. But I will break them for you.”

“Thank you, I am honored.”

“You should be.”

There is a moment of comfortable silence, then Svetlana says, “You don’t have to make a choice tonight. But you don’t have a lot of time either.”

Ilya nods. “I know”

“Think about what you want. Not what you think Shane wants, Ilya. What you want.”

”I will,” Ilya says.

“Good. I love you, Ilyushka.”

“I love you, Sveta.”

**

He lays awake in the dark for a long time after they hang up.

What does he want?

Everything Shane will give him. Anything Shane will give him.

There is a — crass desperation when it’s put in such simple terms that Ilya does not love it. It is true nonetheless. During the infuriating, heartbroken Rose Landry days, Ilya thought, with humiliating frequency, that he would have been just fine with Shane dating Rose Landry while they fucked in secret. Ilya would have played the mistress to keep Shane.

But Ilya has Shane now, though the league probably shares much less well than Rose Landry would have. Fuck, maybe Ilya is a mistress to the inexorable, lumbering meat grinders of the hockey machine. It is almost like a bargain in a fairy tale. Ilya can have Shane, but only at the cost of ten or fifteen years. A hard bargain. Ilya would make it again.

What does he want?

The problem, Ilya thinks, is that he has always wanted too much. He was a child that clung to his mama's attention that grew up into a man that clings to Shane's attention. There is a dark pit inside him that aches like an empty growling stomach. Ilya has tried to fill it, with hockey and with sex and with vodka and with drugs and with boys and with girls and with trophies and with records and and and.

Ilya has spent so many years of his life crushing his wants and throwing away the mangled pieces. Which has never really worked, of course. The tide of longing always eventually rises up and overspills the barriers in Ilya's mind. And then he asks Shane to stay and Shane runs away. In his secret heart, Ilya does not understand why Shane came back.

He scrubs his hands over his face.

What does he want? What does he want, what does he want, what does he fucking want? It is too big a question to answer. But he also cannot keep pretending it is not happening. Time will make choices for him if Ilya does not. If there is a pathetic relief at the thought, it overlays a stubborn refusal.

So, fuck what he wants for the moment. Ilya can rip open those wounds someplace that isn’t a Boston hotel room. Maybe he can start with what feels possible. If he allows the crazy premise of there being a baby, is there a life to be imagined?

Ilya closes his eyes. He sets his palm on his belly.

He has a picture of Shane saved on his phone, of Shane sitting on the Pikes’s couch with their baby son on his lap, both of them locked in to whatever was on the TV. It was one of maybe half a dozen Pike posted on Shane’s birthday and Ilya saved it from an impulse he chose not to examine too closely. Probably he should have, given what his life has become.

But it is actually very easy to let that single captured image spool out. Replace the blond wisps of littlest Pike’s hair with the dark mop Ilya has seen in Shane’s baby pictures. Move them to Ilya’s couch in Ottawa. Add himself, leaning into Shane’s side with a small, fat fist wrapped around his pointer finger.

Shane does not think of himself as being good with kids. And he isn’t, but mostly in the way that Shane is not particularly good with people, whether they are five or ninety-five. But Shane would not have to be good with all kids, just one. That, Ilya can see.

Shane with a toddler wearing the smallest skates in the world and a tiny #24 jersey. Shane putting bandaids on scraped knees. Shane pulling a kid out of a brawl, trying to pretend his smile is anger. Shane bent over homework, two dark heads so close they almost touch.

Something brushes against Ilya’s cheek and he realizes that he is crying.

“Okay,” Ilya murmurs. “Fuck. Okay.”

**

Ilya dreams about his mama. It is one of the strange, jumbled dreams that is half memory and half longing. They are skating in the freezing sunshine, Ilya's small hand in hers. They are sitting on the floor in a dark room filled with the humped shapes of furniture or maybe monsters and she whispers stories to him. She is standing in cold waves on a gray beach, staring out over the water like she is listening to it speak.

She is whispering in his ear that there are places where the windows open and let in warm sunshine, where the four walls of a home do not feel like a terrible, sucking gravity. The cold water has already risen to her ankles, but Ilya is on land. The tide will rise, she warns. It will always rise.

Chapter End Notes

okay look i know he still hasn't told shane, but it's a process and the next chapter, currently sitting at 7k, is extra long for a reason

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

The only way out is through.

Chapter Notes

“— and the question on everyone’s mind going into tonight’s Ottawa versus Buffalo game is how much longer this Ilya Rozanov slump is going to last. Number eighty-one has looked like an entirely different player for the last several games and fans have got to be wondering where the star center they were promised is —”

“What do you fucking know?” Ilya snaps, stabbing at his phone to close the video. “Fucking assholes. Fuck.”

There are twenty minutes left on the exercise bike’s timer, two hours until he needs to leave for the arena, and two days until Christmas. December has been hard enough without the talking heads on ESPN clucking over his performance, sighing in disappointment like Ilya does anything for their fucking approval.

He drops back into position and gives in to the least destructive impulse he can find: pedaling a bike that cannot move like he is being chased. There is a black kind of humor in that, Ilya thinks, and because he is alone in his private gym, there is no one to be unnerved by the manic bark of his laughter.

When the timer beeps, he staggers off the bike and drops down heavily onto a weight bench, sucking in great gasping breaths of air that are very loud. He swipes the back of his hand across his mouth, then shoves his fingers though lank clumps of sweaty hair. His thighs burn.

He wants, irrationally, to get back on the bike and keep going.

**

In all the years Ilya has played hockey, from his first team of wobbling toddlers to the cup winning best of the MLH, he has never played up an injury.

Downplay them? Sure, absolutely, all the time. Ilya has the same general disregard for personal safety that any high-level hockey player must have. All their careers are years long games of chicken played against degrading cartilage and accumulating concussions. Consequences belong to the future, of course, which makes them some other guy’s problem.

Are they stupid choices? Of course they are, so often. There are eighty-two games in a season, any one of them is just barely more than than one fucking percent of how it all shakes out in the end. It is logically crazy to throw yourself on the ice with a fucked up knee for 1.2% of one season in an entire career.

But if you think like that, you don’t play hockey. And Ilya is really fucking good at playing hockey.

And he has still spent the last two weeks letting everyone believe that he has not totally shaken off the Boston hit. Ilya has allowed an implication. And he feels like a real fucking asshole about it.

He thinks about that as he walks grimly into a cheerful locker room full of teammates to a round of greetings. Ilya waves a hand around in vague response and goes directly to his stall, head down and headphones in. He’s trying to project focus but has a feeling it’s landing more like sullen teenage embarrassment.

The truth as the rest of the Centaurs understand it is that Boston’s egregiously dirty hit — and their very Canadian outrage about that is the single thing that is funny to Ilya in the whole mess that is his life — landed really fucking hard and he is playing injured. Very noble. Very heroic. Twice Hazy has called him a brave little toaster.

So Ilya playing conservatively, even extremely conservatively, only makes sense. After all, they have watched Wiebe limit Ilya’s ice time over the last several games and seen Ilya accept it without complaint. And they are very used to losing; that part isn’t even different. They support Ilya, as a teammate and a friend.

“You doing anything fun for Christmas, Rozy?” Bood asks.

“Russians do not care about Christmas,” Ilya says.

Which is technically not another lie to add to the pile. It is also not an answer, but Ilya is getting very good at responding around questions rather than to them. It is not a skill he is particularly proud of.

The conversation behind his back moves on. Ilya unbuttons his slacks and swallows a small sigh of relief. They are just on the wrong side of too tight, because Ilya’s life is devolving into a series of fucking cliches and he has no one to blame but himself. He just has to get to Christmas. Not in the stupid ‘the magic of Christmas will fix everything’ way, of course. It’s just the point past which Ilya cannot justify in his own head still not telling Shane.

Ilya closes his eyes and entertains a brief fantasy of getting knocked unconscious on the ice and spending the rest of the season in a convenient coma. Which he can’t even really enjoy, after Shane's concussion and genuinely thinking for one empty moment that maybe he was dead.

Ilya shakes his head to dislodge that mental image and pulls out his phone.

His recent messages with Shane fall into one of two wildly discordant types. One is very carefully worded concern over Ilya’s mental and physical wellbeing that, weirdly, has not been assuaged by Ilya repeatedly saying that he’s fine and not much else. The others are extremely excited about Hollander family (plus one extra Russian) Christmas.

Jane’s most recent message just says, soon!!!. It is the most exclamation marks Ilya has ever seen Shane use.

“I have a question,” Hazy says, appearing at Ilya’s side.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Hazy,” Ilya yelps, almost dropping his phone.

“Who is Jane?” Hazy asks.

“None of your business.” Ilya holds his phone to his chest, because it is important to not be extremely fucking weird about a very simple question. “Go away.”

Hazy ignores him. “You’re not planning on spending Christmas, like, sitting in a dark room staring at a wall, right?”

Ilya blinks at him. “The fuck does that mean, Hazy?”

Hazy shrugs. “I don’t know what Russians do. That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“If you don’t want to do that or whatever it is you were planning on doing, you’re welcome to hang out with me and Bood’s family.”

“I do not think you can invite me to someone else’s Christmas.” Ilya says. “And why are you spending Christmas with Bood?”

“Lisa’s a doctor. She works Christmas so everyone owes her a favor.”

“You are welcome to come, Rozy,” Bood adds from across the room. Ilya looks over his shoulder and catches Bood’s eye. “There are always a couple guys from the team that come over.”

Ilya allows himself exactly one moment of wanting very much to yes so he can avoid his own life. “I have plans, but thank you.”

“Open invitation,” Bood says.

“Plans?” Hazy repeats. “Plans with—“

"Hazy," Ilya says and whatever Hazy sees in his face is enough to make him back away with his hands up. The rest of the team allows Ilya a very respectful amount of space for the rest of the pregame.

Some part of Ilya — a morbid, gruesomely curious part of himself that is incapable of not jamming his thumb into a bruise — wonders what they are thinking about him. Why do they think Ilya is playing like he’s the second string on a mediocre rec league team? Do they listen to the fucking commentators and analysts and nod along to the speculation that Ilya has run face-first into the limits of his talents?

He feels unkind even entertaining the thought as he goes through the motions of kitting himself out. The room around him is cheerful and so good natured it suffocates Ilya, a little. Typical, for him to suspect innocent teammates to avoid his own shitty choices.

Standing half-dressed in front of his stall, his left hand drifts toward his stomach. He owes a lot of people better than he has given them lately.

**

Buffalo scores twice in the first period; the rest of the game feels like everyone is twiddling their thumbs while the clock counts down at one tenth of normal speed. Ilya spends most of the third period on the bench bouncing his leg, not bothering to hide his impatience. He glances at his fucking bare wrist a couple times, despite the fact that he does not have a Rolex deal and the free watches that come with one.

He is at least in good company rushing to leave the arena afterward. People have flights to make and last minute gifts to buy, so Ilya doesn’t have to duck conversation or invitations to go to a bar or dinner. He says a general goodbye and safe travels and merry Christmas as he goes out the door. If he tacks on a mental apology for how the year has gone, that is his business.

**

Half an hour into tidying up the house in anticipation of Shane's arrival, Ilya realizes he has been so et up with anxiety, he has managed to lose sight of the fact that they will have three days together. A frisson of excitement breaks through the noise.

They have not had such time together since the cottage in September, the realization of which makes Ilya honk a very stupid laugh in the middle of dumping an armful of floor laundry into a basket. That fucking weekend. Christ. They will never be able to look at the cottage the same way again. He hopes Shane can live with that. Fuck, it's the least of the things Ilya hopes Shane can live with.

Two weeks have not changed the quiet certainty in Ilya's gut of what he wants to do about the secret growing thing. He's been half-expecting his conviction to crumble beneath the weight of his fear, which has also not gone anywhere. That, Ilya thinks he should have anticipated. Every meaningful decision he has ever been certain about in his life was also fucking terrifying.

At least there is no space left in him to be nervous about spending Christmas with Shane's parents. This is optimism, Ilya thinks, or, as David Hollander would say, it is close enough to the work of the government. It's funny to Ilya, at least. American Thanksgiving feels ten thousand years in the past. Such petty worries he had then. This is also funny to Ilya, so. Possibly he has broken his sense of humor. Oh well.

Shane texts when he's an hour out and Ilya gets in the shower. He hums tunelessly and thinks about his plan, which has two steps. The first is to tell Shane he's pregnant and the second is to hope that Shane -- Ilya doesn't know what is reasonable to expect Shane to do. His plan actually has one and half steps and that's after spending most of his waking hours since the Boston game thinking about it.

When he gets out of the shower, he wipes condensation off the mirror and examines his profile in the reflection, which has become a habit. He is a big man; the curve of his belly is still subtle. He doubts anyone would look at him, famous professional hockey player and playboy, and jump to the right conclusion. But, he thinks, maybe the most observant people might -- wonder.

Borrowed time, Ilya thinks, which is one of the rare good English idioms. It makes him think of his brother, forever reaching into his own pockets and finding cobwebs to pay back his debts. His father, too, making phone calls to the long buried past. A family curse, then.

Ilya huffs a quiet laugh. Yes, yes, he is a poor, sad little orphan boy with dead parents and a brother who hates him, but one who has gone halfway around the world to plant roots with beautiful freckles and brown eyes. Fuck Russia and her Rozanovs. It is Christmas in a very boring city in Canada.

“Everything will be okay,” Ilya says to his reflection. He almost, almost, believes it.

**

Shane finally arrives a little after midnight and Ilya, who has been standing at the living room window waiting, meets him at the front door.

“Hi,” Shane says, as he crosses the threshold. “Fuck, I’ve missed you, come here.”

It is like the color has returned to Ilya’s world. He cups Shane’s jaw in his hands and yanks him into a kiss, deep and desperate. Shane makes a longing noise and Ilya swallows it. Shane shifts his shoulders to get his heavy coat to slide off, then fists his hands in Ilya’s hair. Ilya makes his own aching sound.

“Take me to bed,” Shane gasps when they both must breathe. “Right now.”

Afterward, Ilya dozes on his belly, half on top of Shane. The steady rise and fall of Shane's chest is lulling; so is the light touch of Shane's small kisses on the crown of his head.

"Sleep," Shane murmurs. "You need it."

Ilya does.

**

Ilya wakes in the warmth of Shane’s body pressed along his back and Shane’s palm grinding slow circles against his half-hard dick. Ilya sighs in hazy pleasure and flexes his hips into the touch. Shane noses at the delicate skin behind Ilya’s ear and he shudders.

“My favorite good morning,” Ilya murmurs.

Shane laughs. He drops kisses on the back of Ilya’s neck and down the slope of his shoulder. Ilya can feel the hard jut of Shane’s dick against his ass; he reaches back and finds Shane’s hip and urges him in closer.

They rock together in the watery light of winter mornings, slow and easy. Warmth slowly becomes heat. Shane’s exhales turn to sighed ah that puff against Ilya’s skin. He pushes his hand into Ilya's sweats and palms his dick.

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya sighs.

“Come for me.” Shane’s lips graze against the shell of Ilya’s ear. “I want it. Come for me.”

Ilya digs his fingers into Shane’s hip and comes with a groan.

**

Later, Shane asks, “How are you feeling?”

Ilya is dozing in the satiated warmth of coming twice in one morning and all he feels is hazy, languorous contentment. Being in bed with Shane is the reward for all the other parts of Ilya’s life.

”I cannot feel my legs,” Ilya says. “But other than that, very good.”

Shane’s expression takes on a wry slant. He tucks Ilya’s hair behind his ear and traces the sharp corner of bone that is the hinge of his jaw and continues down the line to Ilya’s chin. He cups Ilya’s chin in hand and Ilya stills without thought. Shane studies him.

“Lyubimiyy?” Ilya says.

Shane rolls into Ilya's side, tucking his face into Ilya’s neck and sighing from the gut. Ilya presses a hand to the middle of his back and kisses the crown of his head. He should probably ask what Shane was looking for, but he doesn’t.

**

On the way to Yuna and David's house, Shane says, "Thank you, for being willing to do this."

Ilya glances at him. “Being willing to drive for fifteen minutes?”

“No, for spending Christmas with my parents.”

“Ah, yes,” Ilya says. “The important and beloved family traditions your parents are letting me do. You are welcome, it is a terrible struggle."

Shane socks his arm and Ilya laughs. "I know Christmas isn't a big deal to you," Shane says, toying with one of his hoodie strings and looking down into his lap. "But it's a lot, being tossed into something important when it's all new to you."

Ilya thinks of a much younger Shane, sitting next to him at a table in front of a thousand press people asking questions in complicated snarls of English they expected Ilya to answer, in the unthinking way of native English speakers. Shane stepped in so deftly, no one realized it was a rescue operation and Ilya got to keep his pride.

To most of the MLH, Ilya's foreignness is little more than an accent that many women like and jokes about Soviet Russia. His homeland, his childhood are the prologue to his real life, which only began when an American team brought him across an ocean. Shane knew nothing about Russia, but he saw how lost Ilya was and helped.

That day, their feet touching underneath a table while camera flashes blinded them both, Ilya remembers thinking that, in another world, he could really like Shane Hollander.

"It is not a hardship for me," Ilya says. He extends his palm across the center console and Shane laces their fingers together. "I thought I would never have a holiday with family again, so. Thank you."

Shane brings their intertwined hands to his mouth and kisses Ilya's knuckles. "I'm really glad you're here."

"Me too."

"But seriously." Shane squeezes his hand. "If you need a break, that's fine."

Ilya laughs. "Hollander, I like being around people so much more than you do. But if you need a break, I will pretend I need one too and we can fuck in your childhood bed."

"You're such an asshole. Absolutely not."

"How big is it? Is it little tiny one so you will have to sleep on top of me?"

"You are unbelievable."

**

It is a stranger feeling than Ilya expected to participate in the cherished rituals of a family he is not entirely part of. What is second nature to them is unfamiliar to him, this version of Christmas that Ilya has only seen in movies and assumed was not real.

It’s not that he is unwelcome. Yuna and David are not strangers to Ilya, anymore. He sees them more than Shane does. And there is not a single good liar in the Hollander family, so Ilya is confident that if they were only tolerating him for Shane’s sake, he’d be able to tell.

They are all careful to fold Ilya in, too. David tells the story of making cookies with his parents and grandparents and how when Shane was young he refused to help because he did not like how the raw dough felt in his hand. Ilya hands Yuna ornaments to hang on the tree and she tells him where they came from.

Halfway done, she sends David and Shane to bring another box down from the attic, so it is just the two of them with a box of small trinkets and a fresh cut tree.“I didn’t grow up doing a lot of this stuff either,” she says. “Even after David and I got married, we didn’t do a ton until Shane was born”

“There is not much Christmas in Japan?” Ilya asks.

“No, not when my parents were growing up. There's more now, but not at all on the same scale as here.” Yuna picks up an ornament that is a bunch of flat wooden sticks glued together with some glitter strung with a crookedly tied length of red yarn. “There were a couple years where they came over on Christmas Day with presents for Shane, but they passed when he was pretty young.”

“I am sorry,” Ilya says and Yuna flashes him a tight, small smile that Ilya has seen on Shane’s face so many times. “What is actual important holiday in Japan?”

“New years.”

“Same, in Russia,” Ilya says, surprised by the depth of how much he likes that symmetry. “New years.”

Yuna looks at him again and this time her smile is real.

Shane and David come back with the missing box and join them. Twice Ilya looks up to Shane staring at him with dumbfounded joy, as though he cannot quite believe that the thing he sees is really happening. He touches Ilya more than he usually does in front of other people. Little things, a hand in the small of Ilya’s back, setting his chin on Ilya’s shoulder, an arm around Ilya’s waist.

And it isn’t that Ilya wants to be somewhere else. He spent so many years filled with a deep and fruitless yearning for more of Shane and now he has more, he has as much of Shane as Shane can give and the promise of all of him. Yuna and David, their kindness and their welcome, is more than he probably deserves.

But there is a strange something lodged in his chest. He feels doubled, or maybe split in half. One part of him is decorating cookies, dabbing frosting on the tip of Shane’s nose while David laughs. Another part of him is watching from the outside, like he is staring at strangers through a window.

The secret hiding beneath his skin beats like his pulse.

And it is easy, to see the places where a little one would fit. Another stocking on the fireplace. Lifting up a small body to hang ornaments on the tree. Little hands helping to push cookie cutters into dough. There is room in the Hollander house for another, maybe even a little bit of quiet loneliness waiting for something to ease it. It doesn't have to be a baby, but it could be.

Ilya wants it to be, and he does not know what that means for the future they have planned.

**

After the dinner dishes are done — Ilya’s offer to help is waved off by Yuna despite Shane’s protests and he uses the time to slip upstairs and puke where he won’t be overheard — David turns on a marathon of funny little animated movies and teaches Ilya the word claymation.

Ilya ends up curled into Shane’s side beneath a plaid blanket. Shane absently toys with Ilya’s hair and hums along to the songs. Ilya’s attention keeps wandering back to Shane’s face, lit by the glow of the TV and the brightly colored lights strung on the tree. He imagines a third little body curled up with them.

Ilya doesn’t even try to fight drowsiness when it comes and he slips into the hazy space between awake and asleep.

At some point, he hears Yuna say, “I’m so glad both of you are here,” her voice just a little tight.

“Me too,” Shane says. “I didn’t think — it didn’t seem possible for a long time, you know?” Then, after a long pause, “Is he doing okay?”

“How do you mean?” David’s voice.

“I don’t know,” Shane says, soft. “We see each other as much as we can and we talk a lot, but we’re still apart a lot. Sometimes I worry — sometimes it feels like he’s telling me everything’s good because he doesn’t want me to worry.”

“He's had a tough season and some bad luck,” Yuna says. “And he misses you.”

Shane sighs. “I just don’t want him to be miserable, for me.”

“It’s a lot of change for him,” David says. “I’d call it adjustment, but I wouldn’t say misery. Which isn’t nothing.”

Shane huffs out a laugh and tucks his face to the crown of Ilya’s head. Ilya thinks I’m not miserable, I want things I cannot have which I have done my entire life and lets his mind drift away.

**

Ilya wakes up on Christmas morning wedged against the wall because Shane’s childhood bed is the size of a fucking postage stamp and Ilya still needed them to sleep in it together. At least it is warm.

Shane is already awake, because he is incapable of sleeping in. “Good morning.”

“Did Santa come?” Ilya asks.

“I don’t know.” Shane threads his fingers in Ilya’s hair, rearranging the curls as best he can. “I guess we’ll see when we go downstairs.”

“You never peeked as a kid, did you.”

Color blooms on Shane’s cheeks. “Shut up.”

Ilya kisses him.

**

The day is quieter than Ilya expected, which he does not mind.

David makes pancakes for breakfast and Ilya gets one down, explaining that he has always found them too sweet. Shane teases him a little — “You have the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I know and pancakes are too much?” — so Ilya throws a blueberry at him that bounces off his nose down into his shirt.

It’s not really that funny, but all four of them break into laughter anyway, even Shane. A small moment, but it makes Ilya’s chest clench with painful longing. He has never eaten a meal with his family where they all laughed.

Yuna and David each got Ilya a gift, which is surprising, and Ilya does not know what to expect as he unwraps them. Both are thoughtful. David’s is a bottle of excellent Russian vodka that is very hard to find in Canada and Yuna’s is a vintage Centaurs tee shirt with a particularly terrible drawing of the Centaur.

“It is hideous,” Ilya laughs. “I love it. Thank you.”

Yuna smiles, obviously pleased in the same way Shane gets. “When I was looking I kept thinking eventually I’d find one that wasn’t ugly and I never did.”

After the wrapping paper has been thrown away (but not the cardboard boxes, for some reason, those are folded up to be reused) Yuna and Shane go outside to take shots at a miniature goal. Which seems like adding hockey practice to a holiday where the point is not having to do that kind of thing, but what does Ilya know.

"They'll be out there for a few hours," David says, sitting down at his table with the puzzle Shane got him for Christmas and allowed Ilya to add his name to the card. "You're welcome to join me, if you want."

"Yeah, okay," Ilya says. "I have not touched a puzzle since I was little kid."

David shrugs. "I'd bet they still work about the same. Look for the corners, start with the edges, and build in from there. Easy."

It is more meditative than Ilya expected to sort through the pieces and parcel them out into neat piles, one for the edges, one for each color of cat fur, a big one for the wallpaper in the background.

Ilya has not really considered David Hollander much. Shane is so much like Yuna and her approval -- Ilya knows he seeks it out. Part of it, probably, is that David is the one who caught them in the act. Only kissing, yes, but kissing with Shane pressed against the glass door with Ilya’s hand on his ass. A bit of embarrassment lingers.

Feigning a casualness he does not really feel, Ilya places an edge piece and says, “Thank you for letting me be here.”

“Thank you for being here,” David says equably.

Ilya nods a slightly awkward acknowledgement. He tries another edge piece in a few different spots but with no luck. David places several in the same span of time and Ilya must make a face, because David glances at him and chuckles.

“Everyone has one thing they’re good at,” David says. “If it helps, I never came within shouting distance of you and Shane at hockey.”

“You played in university, yes?” Ilya asks. “I forget name of school.”

“McGill, and yes, I did play.”

“Were you any good?” Ilya asks, deciding the odds are better than not that David will not take it as a veiled insult.

David tilts a hand back and forth. “I was okay. Good enough for McGill, but not more than that. My most impressive accomplishment from those days was catching Yuna’s eye.”

“How did you meet?” Ilya asks. It is thrilling to learn things about Shane’s parents directly rather than filtered through him.

“I was at a bar near campus after a game. We’d won, so everyone was in a good mood, and I’d had a couple beers. Yuna sat down next to me, looked me in the eye, and told me that I’d done a good job with the goal I scored but that my backhand was weak.”

Ilya laughs. “Yes, this makes sense, I can imagine it.”

“She was the prettiest girl that had ever spoken to me,” David says. “And I knew that she’d be honest with me. Thirty-five years later, it’s the best choice I ever made. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.” He pauses, then asks, “How did you and Shane meet?”

There are many answers to that question, or so Ilya thinks. There were times it felt like every time they were together they were meeting new versions of each other. He toys with a puzzle piece. A hesitant instinct says that he should not answer without getting Shane's okay. But the story is innocuous enough.

“It was at the first Prospect Cup, the year we — Russia, I mean — won. I was smoking in parking lot and he came up and said I was great to watch play.” Ilya can still picture that Shane so clearly, in his hat and winter coat, holding out his hand to shake like they were old men. “Then he told me I was supposed to smoke in another part of parking lot special for smoking.”

David laughs. “That sounds like my son.”

“I thought he was flirting with me,” Ilya says, something he has never told anyone else, even Shane.

“Was he?” David asks.

Ilya shakes his head. “No, he was just being like he is. But it was good mistake, really. If I had not thought he flirted with me first, I probably would not have talked to him at the draft or say we should both be in commercial.”

“I’d say it all worked out in the end.”

“Yeah,” Ilya agrees. “I think so.”

**

That night, Ilya lays awake for an hour and then another, staring at the slightly discolored patch of ceiling where Shane once pinned up a poster of Gretzky.

Tomorrow Shane will drive back to Montreal in time to make a flight to Columbus and Ilya will go back to his empty condo where the rest of his life is waiting for him. Ottawa hosts Tampa the day after tomorrow and Ilya is supposed to be on the ice, but he won't be. He cannot be.

Ilya knows that he has run out of room and time to keep his secret. He knows, too, that the curdling terror of saying it out loud will not go away. It is unavoidable. But he is also tired from carrying the weight of it all alone. Avoidance grows teeth with time, becoming a separate fear that lives alongside the first. If this is the end of him and Shane, it will break Ilya's heart. But at least he will know.

Sleep is not coming, Ilya admits, and so he slides out of bed as gently as he can. Shane sighs deeply and his fingers flex against the warm spot Ilya left behind. It took so many years for Ilya to be allowed to see Shane asleep and it is one of the things that still catches in his chest.

"Ya tebya lyublyu," Ilya murmurs.

He leaves Shane to his dreams and slips downstairs to the living room. The strings of lights around the tree are still on; their light lends a dreamy softness that blunts the shadows.

Ilya sits on the loveseat that has been his and Shane’s place for the last two days.

There is a version of the future where that loveseat solidifies into a permanent groove, where they sit on it every Christmas, every birthday, every dinner. It is a piece that can fit in the puzzle of the Hollander family. Ilya has never fit in a family.

There are a lot of ways for that future to spool out. It can be just him and Shane, side by side, and that’s a good future. Ilya has spent so much of the last ten years daydreaming about that future without any expectation that it could ever be real. He could be happy in that life.

It could also be him and Shane and someone else, where this little thing inside him becomes a fragile, new life they hold in their arms that grows and grows up, loved and wanted, a reflection of their family. Ilya could be happy in that life, too.

It is a harder future. It’s a greedier life for Ilya to want.

He wants it anyway. He wants it so fucking much.

Ilya sits and rucks up his shirt and cups his hands around the small, solid thing in his belly. His heart is thunder in his ears.

He says, “Hello, malysh.”

"Ilya?"

The low, sleep-rough rasp of Shane's voice does not startle him.

He looks up and Shane is standing uncertainly on the threshold of the room, in a pair of sweats that have passed between them so many times neither of them are sure who they originally belonged to and a team Canada tee shirt from Sochi. There is a poetry in that unconscious collection of their pasts.

In his memory, Svetlana asks, “Does he love you or not?”

But maybe that isn’t the right question, Ilya thinks. Shane loved him when he fled Ilya’s house and ran into Rose Landry’s arms. Shane ran because of that love.

The question is if Shane will run or stay.

How many times can Ilya upend his life before it is too much? How many plans can Ilya change before Shane breaks? Is what they have enough to hold when it is not just hidden, but hard? And there is only one way to know and Ilya is so, so tired of not knowing.

“I need to tell you something,” Ilya says.

The concerned line appears between Shane’s eyebrows. “Is it — are you okay?”

“I am pregnant.”

And now it cannot be taken back and Ilya exhales.

Shane stares at him, uncomprehending. Ilya could fill the silence with the thousand versions of this moment that he has rehearsed in his head, but it would not be fair to drag Shane into a conversation halfway done when he has not even had a chance to speak. So he lets the silence sit.

"What?" The crease in Shane's brow deepens. He shakes his head a little. "Ilya?"

"I am pregnant," Ilya repeats. Absurdly, he points to his belly. "There is baby, in there."

Shane makes a noise that Ilya has never heard before, soft and sharp, punched out of his chest. He shakes his head again; his fingers curl and dig into his thighs. "How is that possible?" His voice has lost the rasp and overshot his normal tone to something half an octave higher. "Ilya, please."

"The cottage, in September." Ilya cocks a humorless grin.

"That was one time," Shane says. The words trip over each other. He sounds like he did that day in Ilya's house, standing there with Ilya's shirt clutched against his chest.

Ilya shrugs. "That is as many times as it takes."

Shane is shaking, Ilya notes in a remote way. Ilya knew better than to expect -- joy, happiness, excitement. He could not expect feelings from Shane that he himself did not have. But Ilya has always nursed small, irrational hopes. A gift from his mama. He wonders how his father reacted when his pretty young wife told him she was pregnant with an unnecessary second son.

"Ilya," Shane says, helplessly. He takes a step back. "I don't -- I can't --"

"Please, Shane," Ilya says. "Please."

“I — I just need — I need a second.” Another step. “Just a minute. I just —“

He hits the bottom of the stairs and almost falls on his ass. Even as acidic fear is rising in Ilya gorge, there is still a pang of affection at how Shane can be the most graceful on the ice and lose all control of his body off it. Shane catches himself with a hand on the bannister and looks up at Ilya with eyes like a hunted prey animal.

He pushes off the banister and disappears down the hall. Ilya hears frantic rustling, the back door opening and slamming shut, and then silence.

"Fuck," Ilya says to the empty room.

For some amount of time -- it might be minutes or an hour, Ilya couldn't begin to guess -- he sits still on the loveseat, hand on his belly, feeling only a hollow nothing so big that it could swallow him whole. It’s not shock — he distantly wishes that it was — so much as profound finality. They tried to be something, but they were never going to make it.

His thoughts drift through the old paths of recrimination he has had for so long they have become permanent grooves. He should know better than to hope, but he is too stupid to stop. Happiness is not for him. Failure is all he has ever been good at.

His father's voice.

Fuck him, Ilya thinks suddenly. Grigori Rozanov is dead and rotting and he has no voice. Ilya is not a lonely little boy in Moscow, he is not a rookie hiding on the roof of a hotel, he is not even the man that asked Shane to stay despite knowing that they could not be more.

He has told Shane fucking Hollander that he loves him in two languages and in uprooting everything to move to the third country of his life. And Shane fucking Hollander has said it back, in words and in a plan that threaded the narrow needle of their lives so they could be together. Ten years Ilya lived on scraps of stolen hours. Fuck that.

So, he stands and follows Shane's path through the kitchen to the back door.

Ilya is not at all certain he is doing the right thing as he shrugs on his heavy winter coat, but it is the only idea he has. Maybe Shane will always spiral into his head sometimes, caught in the undertow of all the things the world demands from him and his own impossibly high standards; Ilya will have to dog his steps and pull him back in, remind him that the world does not hinge on his perfection. Ilya accepts this.

Maybe love is knowing when someone can do better and expecting them to do so. So fucking romantic. I love you, so get your shit together. I love you, so I will stand here while you claw through the worst parts of your mind. I love you tired, I love you scared, I love you because I cannot live any other way.

So, if Shane wants to run away he’s going to have to go farther than his parents’ backyard.

The back door squeaks a little when Ilya opens it. The night is clear and so cold; Ilya’s breath fogs up toward an enormous sky spattered with stars and a silver moon.

Shane is standing a little ways away from the back steps with his head tipped up, staring into the sky like if he is still enough and quiet enough and patient enough, it will give him answers. Maybe it will, like staring into the fire at the cottage seemed to. Maybe it is just that the idea of Shane Hollander is so much bigger than Shane himself, and there is comfort in being reminded he is small.

Ilya puts his hands in his pockets and walks to Shane. The snow squeaks under his untied boots, loud in the stillness of the night. Ilya looks for fear inside himself and does not find it. The lack will not last, of course. But in the absence, he inhales deeply for the first time in weeks.

They can be brave. They have been brave before. This is not the same thing as hope, but it is a near cousin. What has happened once can happen again.

They stand together in silence, close enough that their shoulders nearly touch. Their breath mingles together in fleeting clouds of mist. Ilya looks at the stars, too. He thinks about walking in the dark of a cold Russian night as snow fell, calling the only person he wanted to talk to, not truly expecting Shane would answer. And yet he did.

"I'm sorry," Shane says in a soft, cracked voice. "Ilya, I'm so sorry."

"You did nothing wrong." Ilya scuffs the toe of his boot into the snow.

"Ilya, I did this to you," Shane counters. "I -- I didn't think and I was careless and the consequences of that are happening to you, and that's not fair to you."

Ilya barks out a laugh. Accidentally, yes, but it echoes loud. "You did not know this was even possible, Hollander. I did not know it was possible. And I asked you to fuck me, so it is my fault."

"I don't think that's how it works." Shane scrubs the heels of his hands over his eyes.

"According to who, Shane?" Ilya asks. "We fucked and it was great and we did not intend to make baby. It just happened. I am not angry with you, not even a little bit, okay?"

“Why not?” Shane asks, ragged. “I would be mad at me. I would be furious at me. This is — it’s crazy, I don’t understand how this can be real.”

“I get it,” Ilya says. “But it is real. I am sorry.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel,” Shane says. There is a plaintive quality to the words, a deep uncertainty. From someone else it might be a veiled accusation — you have done something that I must have feelings about and I resent that — but not from Shane.

“I think you can have any feeling,” Ilya says. “I did not know how to feel either.”

“When did — how long have you known?”

Ilya exhales hard. “Not very long.”

Shane nods, and looks back to the sky. “And you’re not joking, right?”

“No, Hollander, when I tell a joke it is funny.”

“This isn’t funny,” Shane says.

“No,” Ilya agrees. “It is not funny.”

Shane turns his head toward Ilya and he looks so — lost. Which is better than angry or disgusted, but still breaks Ilya’s heart a little. Uncertainty, it undoes Shane.

“What do we do?” Shane asks.

It would be easy to answer with instructions for Shane to latch onto and follow and maybe they would make Shane happy. Probably, even. But they might not. They might become a cage that closes in around him as the years pass, tearing away pieces until the person that remains is unrecognizable.

Ilya was raised by a father that did not want him. Sometimes it is better to have nothing.

“I am going to have baby,” Ilya says. Shane’s face spasms with something like pain. The inherent unfairness of the choice aches to the marrow of Ilya’s bones. When he daydreamed about an impossible, idyllic future, it was never like this.

“Why?” Shane asks, again, the loudness of his voice discordant with the quiet night. “It would change everything, Ilya, everything. You won’t be able to play for months and how would you hide it?”

”I don’t know!” Ilya shouts. “I don’t fucking know, okay? I have no answers. But I am doing this. I will find them.”

“How can you make a decision without knowing?” Shane pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes. ”I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do?”

“You have to decide that,” Ilya says. “I will not make you do this thing. It is the rest of your life. Our lives.”

Shane frowns. “I don’t — what does that mean, Ilya?”

And so they come to the possibility that has lived in the back of Ilya's mind for long weeks.

Ilya cocks a lopsided smile. “This doesn’t have to be your baby, Shane. It can just be mine.”

“Is that—“ Shane’s voice pitches higher. “I don’t — you don’t want —“

“Don’t be stupid,” Ilya snaps, sharper than he means to. “Of course I fucking want you. I always want you, it is the fucking constant in my life. But I will not be the one to put you in a cage. And I will not have a kid grow up with a dad who does not want them.”

Shane’s face collapses. “Why — I don’t understand why.”

”Why what?” Hidden in his pocket, Ilya presses his knuckles against his belly. “Why do I want kid at all?”

“No, I know that, I know you like kids and they like you,” Shane says. “Why — why with me?”

Ilya laughs, high and helpless. “Shane, I fucking want every part of the rest of my life with you. I don’t know why this happened, okay? I don’t believe in plan from God or whatever. But it is happening and that I cannot change. It is bad timing. It will complicate every fucking part of my life. But I just —“ he trails off, grasping for an explanation that will make sense. “I want it, Shane. More than bad timing or the rest of this season. And I know — I understand that it will maybe be different for you. You might need to go.”

”Go?” Shane echoes. “You mean run.”

‘Run’ hangs between them, strung between Shane’s guilt and Ilya’s grief.

It is unfair, Ilya thinks, that one choice made in one moment can echo so loudly in a life that it touches everything else. Shane ran once, for reasons Ilya understands and has a quiet compassion for, and he came back, which is the part that really matters. But he ran first and so Ilya must live with the knowledge that Shane has it within him to run.

Ilya closes his eyes and makes himself breathe. The cold is scouring.

“A baby is a lot more than saying your name,” Ilya says. “I am saying I would understand. There is part of me that wants to run. I do not want to be your jailer, Shane. You did not ask for this.”

”Neither did you,” Shane says.

“Yes, but—“ Ilya pushes the toe of his boot into the snow, hunting through his English vocabulary for a way to explain. “I decided to keep it on my own. And I am sorry for that. I should have talked to you.”

”Did you think you couldn’t?” Shane asks with terrible hesitancy.

Ilya exhales heavily. “I did not want to throw a stick of dynamite into our plan. I was afraid of all of it. I am still afraid.”

Shane angles his body toward Ilya’s and presses a hand to Ilya’s sternum. For a long moment, Shane holds himself still and says nothing. When he asks, “Do you want me to run?” it is in the flat, distant way he gets when it takes everything within him to speak at all.

“No,” Ilya gasps, voice breaking. “I want you with me more than anything. I am so fucking scared, Shane. I am probably making terrible choice.”

“Ilya.” Shane moves his hand to cup Ilya’s jaw. “I don’t run from you,” he says. “I can’t. I won’t. Never again.”

His eyes are bright with tears and that pushes Ilya over the edge. His breath hitches. “Do you hate me?” Ilya asks.

”No,” Shane says with iron in his voice. “I love you.”

He pulls Ilya into his chest. It’s something.

**

Later, back in bed, Shane spoons up along Ilya’s back, arm curled over Ilya’s waist. The closeness required of two big men in a small bed is pleasantly warming while the biting cold clings to them. Shane noses at the nape of Ilya’s neck, a quiet assurance of his presence. Ilya is exhausted, but it is a cleaner kind than has dogged him through the fall, less burdened by secrets.

Ilya is on the edge of sleep when Shane softly asks, “How are you doing? I didn’t ask earlier, I should have.”

“You were dealing with a lot. Is okay.”

Shane kisses the back of his neck. “Okay, well. How are you?”

If Ilya says he is tired and wants to sleep, Shane will not push. Ilya is certain of this. Ilya also knows that the reason he is hesitant to answer is that he cannot be honest without admitting the things he has chosen not to say over the last several weeks. Not so much lies, but omissions. Edited answers.

"My body is not so bad," Ilya says, after a pause that is a little too long. "It is weird things for me, but normal for being pregnant. There is a lot of puking and being tired. But at least I know it is not some terrible Canadian disease trying to kill me."

Shane hums an acknowledging noise. "Does that stop?" Shane asks. "I don't know anything about -- this."

"Me neither," Ilya admits.

Shane tucks his face into Ilya's shoulder. "How are you this calm?"

Ilya shrugs. "I have had a little time to get used to it," he says.

"Right." His voice is muffled but Ilya can feel the warmth of his breath. "I think I need a little time, too."

"That is okay," Ilya says, reaching a hand back to pat Shane's thigh. "I knew you would. There is no big rush, okay? You can take a little time."

Shane’s arm tightens around his middle. He kisses the base of Ilya’s skull, the knob of his spine, the back of his neck, the curve of his shoulder. They’re long and lingering, but without real heat. There is an apology in them that Shane does not really owe.

Ilya lays his hand on top of Shane’s and squeezes it. His own apology. He will offer a better one later, with words and answers, but it is enough for now. Ilya sinks down into a deep, deep sleep.

Chapter End Notes

good hustle, ilya. now it can get really complicated!

malysh means little one or baby. it's a common pet name for kids.

thank you so much for the continued feedback, it means a lot. <3 you can find me on on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

The mortifying ordeal of being known by your (sort of) in-laws.

Chapter Notes

Ilya wakes in Shane’s tiny childhood bed a little overwarm but more rested than he's felt in weeks.

He yawns deeply and cracks his eyes open; Shane is already awake, lying on his side with one leg draped over Ilya’s thigh, anchoring and pleasantly heavy. He’s studying Ilya with his brow creased in thought. The light coming through the windows is the blue-tinged coolness of early sunrise.

“See something you like?” Ilya asks. His voice has gravel in it. The corner of Shane’s mouth turns up in a small, but easy smile. He runs his fingers through Ilya’s hair and Ilya hums a noise of soft contentment.

“Last night happened, right?” Shane asks.

Ilya nods. He wipes grit from the corners of his eyes with his thumbs and blinks to clear it away. “You hoped it was dream?”

“No,” Shane says, then, “Not exactly.” He skims his fingers around the shell of Ilya’s ear and his jaw and down his throat, and rests his hand in the center of Ilya’s chest. Ilya inhales deeply to feel the full weight of it, and exhales slowly. A small part of him had worried that Shane would never want to touch him again.

“Can I—“ Shane begins, then stops himself.

“Can you what?” Ilya asks.

Shane drops his head for a moment, then looks to the side, to the ceiling, back to Ilya. It is a familiar sequence: Shane Hollander wanting something he is embarrassed to ask for. Ilya smiles at him and reaches out to brush his knuckles across Shane’s warm cheek.

“Can I see?” Shane asks.

“See what?”

Shane slides his hand down Ilya’s sternum and ribs to his belly. “See” he repeats.

“Oh,” Ilya says. “Yes. Okay.”

Anxiety flares in his chest, but ignorably so. It helps, maybe, that he has spent the last few weeks hoping Shane would not be repulsed by the idea of something growing inside Ilya the way Ilya is pretty sure he would be repulsed by something growing inside of himself. Ilya pushes back the blankets and the air is pleasantly cool on his skin.

Shane curls two fingers around the hem of Ilya’s shirt and gently rucks it up. His knuckles accidentally skim over Ilya’s stomach; it tickles a little, and Ilya shivers.

“I’ve been lying here wondering how I didn’t notice,” Shane says. “I should have.”

“I can only barely tell,” Ilya says, which straddles the line of truth and lie. He has gotten in the habit of standing in front of the mirror every time he gets out of the shower to track the reshaping of his body, something Shane cannot possibly do. Ilya has come to appreciate that a change can be both unnoticeable when you are not paying attention and monumental when you are.

“Still.”

“There is not much, yet,” Ilya says.

Shane looks up at him. “But something.”

“A little something, yes. Here.” Ilya pushes his sweats down. The waistband settles along the bottom curve of his belly.

“Oh,” Shane says. His eyes widen. It’s not wonder, really, but it’s also not disgust. Disbelief, maybe. Like staring at one of those illusions until your eyes unfocus enough to see the hidden picture. Ilya is bigger than he was that terrible night in Boston. Not much, but bigger.

“Can I?” Shane’s hand hovers an inch above Ilya’s skin.

“Yes,” Ilya says. “I like when you touch me, Hollander.”

Shane rolls his eyes; it is a step back toward their normal and one of Ilya’s fears eases.

Shane, careful in his uncertainty, cups his palm around the firm rise of Ilya’s belly. Ilya inhales sharply for a reason he cannot quite explain. Not sensitivity, exactly, that so far is the domain of his fucking nipples. But there is something in the conscious acknowledgement, the same way that hearing Shane say his first name fundamentally reshaped the context of their intersecting lives.

“Holy shit,” Shane murmurs. “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees.

The moment lingers as Shane’s hand does, unspooling outward from the first hesitant touch. Words, deflections and assurances and distractions, fill the back of Ilya’s mouth and he swallows them down. It is hard, Ilya thinks, to have your wanting so closely examined by someone who sees you very well.

“What is in your head?” Ilya asks.

Shane looks at him. “I don’t know. It doesn’t — it still doesn’t feel real. Is that weird?”

It stings Ilya a very teeny tiny little bit, there are so many other things Shane could be doing that would break Ilya’s heart that it barely registers. There are many blank spaces in Ilya’s own mind of what happens between now and a baby in his arms, unreal and empty places with no knowledge or experience to give them shape.

“No, I don’t think so,” Ilya says. ”It felt like — a joke, you know? A prank, when I found out.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees. “It kind of does.”

“Shitty prank, though.”

“Yeah, not very funny,” Shane says, soft. “What do we do?”

A very reasonable question, but one Ilya does not have an immediate answer for.

“I am not really sure,” he admits. “Mostly I have been worried about getting to this point. I don’t know a lot about being pregnant. Or having a baby. Sorry.

Shane strokes his thumb in a reassuring arc on Ilya’s stomach. “No, it’s okay. I get it. I don’t really know anything either.”

“I know for sure I have to tell Wiebe that I cannot play,” Ilya says. “I know that much.”

“Right. Fuck.” Shane pushes the heel of his free hand into his eye. “How will he take it?”

“Okay, I think? I don’t really know for sure.”

“Yeah. This is. Different.”

Ilya can scent Shane’s anxiety rising. “There is nothing that has to be done today, okay? You have a little time, like you asked for, yes?”

“Okay.” Shane nods. “I’m sorry.”

“Is okay.”

Ilya shifts to free his arm that's pressed between their bodies and hooks his hand around the back of Shane’s neck and pulls him in. Shane allows himself to be moved, curling into the space against Ilya’s side where he belongs.

**

Shane goes to shower and Ilya lingers in bed, limbs starfished out to take up every available inch of mattress. Tonight Ilya will sleep in his big, comfortable king bed and his back will love it. The attendant loneliness will suck, though. As will trying to figure out what the fuck he needs to do now.

“How hard can it be, malysh?” Ilya murmurs, lifting his head to look down his chest to his stomach. Probably pretty fucking hard, he can admit to himself. He wishes, with all the fervency of hindsight, that he had shied away less from anything that went into details about the physical process of growing a baby.

Shane leans in through the door, hair damp, and says, “Dad’s making breakfast, when you’re ready,” and goes before Ilya can try and wheedle him back into bed.

Ilya levers himself up with a groan and pauses long enough to try and stretch out some of the stiffness. His spine crackles like bubble wrap in the hands of enthusiastic children. It is possible some very small part of him will not hate sleeping in his own bed again.

When he gets to the kitchen, the entire Hollander family is already dressed in normal clothes because they are all insufferable morning people.

David is scrambling eggs and frying bacon; Ilya pauses on the threshold to test out the smell. His stomach briefly churns, but he thinks it is as much because he is hungry as the pregnant puking. He does not understand why it is called morning sickness when it absolutely does not limit itself to the morning. Probably this is a question with an easy answer that he has been too chickenshit to look up.

Yuna is reading something on her phone very intently, absently pushing a lump of egg around her plate. Shane is staring into space, his brow creased in thought.

“Good morning,” Ilya says, sliding onto the island stool across from Shane.

“Morning,” David says. “I’m working on more eggs, it’ll just be a second.”

”Thank you.”

Ilya picks an apple from the bowl in the center of the island, takes a bite, and frowns. They’re not rotten by any means, but unpleasantly softened and a little grainy. It feels too rude to throw it away after a single bite, though, so he takes a few more and tries not to grimace as he swallows.

“Did you sleep all right?” David asks.

“Pretty good, thank you,” Ilya says.

On the other side of the kitchen, the coffee machine beeps and Yuna looks up from her phone. Ilya sees the empty cup next to her plate and offers, “I can refill?”

Yuna gives him a very knowing look that says Ilya is not slick and she knows when someone is desperately trying to make a good impression. Ilya smiles at her, brows raised, trying to convey that he knows she knows. Ilya wants very much for Yuna Hollander to like him, which he does not feel he needs to lie about. Everybody wants the mother of their boyfriend to like them.

“Thank you,” Yuna says. “I take it black.”

”Ah, that makes it easy.”

Ilya carries her cup to the coffeemaker and pulls out the pot.

The bitter scent of a very dark roast punches him in the face and hits his stomach like an accusation. Ilya thinks, very clearly, that he has made a very stupid and avoidable mistake, because he fucking knows that coffee is one of the stupid fucking things that sets him off. He also thinks, unhelpfully, about the pill he forgot to take tucked away in his bag upstairs

He stumbles back a step from the counter and claps a hand over his mouth, making a noise that has Shane’s stool scraping back from the island as he asks, “Ilya are you okay?” in alarm.

In an easier world, Ilya would be able to answer that question and politely excuse himself. But Ilya’s world is not easy and he is beginning to suspect this is simply a fact of being pregnant. He turns to find Shane on his feet, hand outstretched, David and Yuna both staring at him with urgent concern.

Ilya is not ending this fucking holiday puking all over their kitchen.

So he takes off down the hall to the only downstairs bathroom and just manages to yank open the door in time for the little bit of food he has eaten to come back up.

A hand touches his back, then Shane is kneeling next to him on the very cold tile. He rubs a small circle between Ilya’s shoulder blades through the last of the heaving. Though, on the bright side if such a thing exists for such moments, Shane’s comforting presence does make it better than all the other times Ilya has puked since October. Shane even flushes the toilet.

“Such a gentleman,” Ilya rasps, dropping gracelessly to the floor. He leans against the wall and swipes the back of his hand across his mouth.

“I try,” Shane says. “Are you okay?”

Ilya waves a dismissive hand. “I am so used to it at this point, Hollander. Fuck.”

Shane grimaces. “That sounds terrible.”

Ilya huffs a rough laugh. “I can think of more fun things to do with my mouth. Water?”

“Here.” David’s voice makes them both jump.

Both Hollanders are standing just outside the bathroom door. David hands Ilya a plastic cup of cold water, which he takes with a murmured thanks. He swishes the first sip to rinse out of his mouth and spits into the toilet, then tries drinking a couple small swallows. The cold feels good in his throat.

David and Yuna remain in the doorway.

“I am okay,” Ilya says, trying to smile.

“Are you?” Yuna asks, arms folded across her chest. “Because I won’t lie, I have some doubts.”

“Mom.” Shane rises. He does not step dramatically between Ilya and Yuna like it is a movie and he has to defend his poor knocked up boyfriend from a threat. But he does step closer to Ilya, hands raised to reassure or placate.

“Don’t ‘mom’ me,” Yuna says. “He has been sick off and on for, what? Two months at this point? That is concerning, Shane, and certainly not some passing virus. I am worried. Your dad and I are both worried, for that matter, and I do not understand why you aren’t.”

“I am right here,” Ilya interjects.

Yuna turns the full force of her gaze on him and Ilya tries not to wilt. “Fine. Ilya, this is not normal. Something is wrong. You need to see another doctor. You needed to see another doctor weeks ago.”

“I am fine,” Ilya insists. “I know it looks like a lot, but it is not serious like that.”

“I’m not seeing how this isn’t serious,” David says.

“How can you possibly say that if you don’t know what’s going on?” Yuna demands. “You’re a professional athlete. You know better than to take stupid chances with your health and your body.”

Logically, Ilya knows that he is not being yelled at like he is a disobedient child who has failed his father as he always does. His heart does not understand this, though. He looks up at Shane, who looks back down at him with his face in a rictus of guilt, hapless as Ilya himself feels.

Ilya says, “I know what is going on,” at the same time Shane says, “He’s pregnant.”

For a moment, they are all silent.

“Pregnant,” Yuna repeats, like it is a Russian word that she has never heard before and cannot quite figure out how to pronounce. She stares, uncomprehending, at her son. The color drains from Shane’s face. “He’s pregnant.”

Shane locks up and Ilya wishes he was not on the fucking floor. “Yes,” he says and Yuna’s eyes cut back to him. “Yes. I am pregnant.”

Yuna stares at Ilya for a long moment, her expression unreadable, then looks back at Shane and his terrible, rigidly blank expression. Then she turns and disappears back into the hall.

Shane drops his hands into his face and sucks in a short, sharp breath that is very loud in the small bathroom. David turns his head to the hallway Yuna retreated down, but stays where he is. He looks very much like he did standing in the cottage that summer day.

“Okay,” David says. “We’re going to get Ilya off the floor and into the living room. Then I am going to find your mother and the four of us will talk about this.”

Shane nods, his face still in his hands. Ilya says, “Yes, okay.”

**

”You know, when you said you needed a little time, I thought it would be a little longer than that,” Ilya says.

Shane winces. “I didn’t mean to say it. It just — came out.”

They’re sitting on the loveseat in the living room. Ilya has a half-eaten banana, courtesy of David Hollander, in one hand and his other arm wrapped around his stomach. Shane has his head down and both hands hooked around his neck, which almost disguises the fact that they are shaking.

“I know. I believe you.” Ilya knocks his shoulder against Shane’s. “It will be okay, Hollander.”

Shane shakes his head. “She’s never going to forgive me.”

Ilya finishes off the banana and sticks the peel in the empty water glass David brought him in the bathroom. “Come here,” he says, laying his arm across Shane’s shoulders. There is a moment of resistance before Shane exhales hard and curls into Ilya’s side.

“What if she never wants to speak to me again?” Shane asks.

“That will not happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Hollander.” Ilya puts two fingers beneath Shane’s chin and raises his head. His eyes are distant and glassy in the way Shane gets when he is deeply overwhelmed. “First off, you are not a fifteen year old confessing your boyfriend knocked you up in the school bathroom. You are grown adult and you are not even pregnant. Second, she is your mother and she loves you, yes?”

“I feel like I fucked up,” Shane says.

Ilya kisses his forehead. “The first thing I thought when the doctor told me was that my papa was going to kill me.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yes, I know. Look.” Ilya cups Shane’s jaw in his hand. “I will tell her the truth, okay? That you did not even know until last night and everything is because of me. If there is anyone to be angry at, it is me, Shane, not you.”

“I don’t recall saying I was angry.”

Shane freezes at the sound of his mother’s voice; Ilya thinks, please help, and pictures his mama.

“Sorry,” Ilya says.

Yuna smiles thinly. “I suppose it was a fair assumption.”

She and David sit down on their couch, both moved in toward the middle so they are also side by side. Ilya curls a hand around one of Shane’s wrists and coaxes his hands off his neck, murmuring reassuring nonsense. Shane puts one shaking hand on Ilya’s thigh and forces himself upright.

“So,” Yuna says. “How about we try this again from the top.”

“Yes. Okay.” Ilya exhales deeply, tells himself that these are the wages of the choice he has made and he knew it was going to be harder work. “I am pregnant. I told Shane last night, so he is also surprised.”

“Okay.” She sounds less like the woman Ilya has spent the holiday with and more like the professional Ilya has brushed against here and there over the course of their careers. “I’m assuming this wasn’t planned.”

“Of course not,” Shane says.

“You weren’t—“ She waves a hand. “You weren’t being careful?”

“Jesus, Mom—“

“I did not know,” Ilya cuts in, vivid memories of the fucking word ‘lover’ echoing in the Hollander’s cabin kitchen bouncing around his head. “I did not know I am carrier. We were not being stupid. We did not know.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to not know about yourself, son.” David says.

“I was never tested,” Ilya says. “My father would not have allowed it.”

Shane squeezes his knee. “Ilya’s dad was — very traditional.”

“I see,” Yuna says. “That sounds difficult. I’m sorry.”

Ilya shrugs. “He is dead now, so.”

Yuna flashes a wry, almost-smile. “Okay, so. What are you going to do about it?”

“We are still deciding—“

“We’re keeping it,” Shane says, lifting his chin and meeting his mother’s eye. “It’s Ilya’s body and that’s what he wants, so — that’s what we’re doing.”

For a long moment, Shane and Yuna look at each other like there is no one else in the world. Ilya wonders what versions of Shane Yuna sees when she looks at her only son, after thirty years connected by blood and life. How much of herself has Yuna given up for him? A kid who likes hockey does not turn into the best player in the history of the game on his own.

Whatever she sees, Yuna nods. “Okay,” she says.

There is a moment of silence, then David says, “I suppose that means congratulations are in order, then,” in his mild way.

The absurdity of it makes Ilya honk a laugh. “Sorry — I’m sorry. Thank you.”

But it cuts the lingering tension. Yuna’s shoulders drop and the line of her mouth softens into a smile. Shane sags; Ilya kisses his temple.

“So, what’s your plan?” Yuna asks.

Shane groans. “Mom.”

”What?” Yuna holds her hands up. “You need a plan!”

**

The eggs and bacon intended for breakfast have congealed into unappetizing lumps, the smell of which makes Ilya blanch so expressively Yuna throws up an arm to keep him from going into the kitchen. Ilya apologizes and excuses himself to run up the stairs and swallow one of the puke pills dry. They end up eating bagels in the dining room. “From an abundance of caution,” David says.

Not being disowned and ejected bodily from his family home fortifies Shane such that Ilya allows himself to be a little quiet. Telling Shane was, at the core, a very simple fear; more complicated fears are rising as that tide recedes. Maybe this is borrowing trouble. Ilya isn’t sure.

When they are all finished eating, Yuna looks at Shane and says, “You’re helping with the dishes,” in a way that does not allow disobedience.

Ilya watches the pair of them walk into the kitchen, then glances at David. “She’s not going to murder him with spatula or something, right?”

David makes a small show of thinking it over. “I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but probably not. Most likely she’s pumping him for details and quizzing him about logistics.”

Ilya sighs. “He really only has known for ten hours and he was asleep for seven of them.”

“Oh, I believe you,” David says. “Come on, you and I are going to work on that puzzle.”

“You are trying to distract me.”

“Of course I am. Won’t work unless you come with me.”

If Ilya could hear more than just the faintest lilt of Yuna and Shane’s voices, he would resist more. He has no compunctions about eavesdropping, especially when he is the topic of discussion and especially when it’s Shane. But he cannot, so he trails after David to the living room and drops down into the chair across from him.

The edge is not yet completed, so Ilya pulls over a small pile of pieces and starts trying to place them with desultory effort. He wishes he could turn back the clock just a couple hours and get back into bed with Shane, wrapped up in their little cocoon of blankets and Shane’s hand on his belly.

“How are you feeling?” David asks.

Ilya looks up from the piece he has tried to click into the same place three times. “Yuna asks Shane for many details and you ask me? Very strategic.”

“Oh, come on, you’re so cynical. I’m curious entirely of my own volition. Also you were the color of chalk on my bathroom floor. Now, of the two of us, Yuna is the better host, but even I get a little worried when a guest looks like they might pass out.”

“Sorry,” Ilya says. He returns the piece to the little pile and leans back in his chair. “I am okay.”

“You say that a lot.” David connects two long strings of edges, then glances up at Ilya.

A year ago, there were two people in all the world who knew Ilya well enough to notice that and say something about it. He’s not entirely sure how he feels about the change. It has been a long few days surrounded by a family of people who simply and without reservation love each other. That Ilya finds such a normal thing — a lot, to deal with, is probably says something not great about who he is as a person.

But if David Hollander is boring, he is also less intimidating than Yuna. Besides, Ilya knows he will have no choice but to get better at talking about his no-longer-a-secret.

“I am tired a lot,” Ilya says. “I puke a lot. Not as much as I was, but a lot. And not just in the morning, so morning sickness is a lie. For a while I got a thousand fucking nosebleeds, but those are also better. Sometimes my legs cramp so bad in the middle of the fucking night it wakes me up. But I thought maybe I was dying of some terrible disease for a few weeks, so at least I know it’s not that.”

“And that’s not nothing.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “It is not nothing.”

“I know this won’t help any of that,” David says. “But do you want to see Shane’s baby pictures?”

”David Hollander, there is nothing I would like more in this world than to see baby pictures,” Ilya says, and he means it.

(If Grigori Rozanov kept any of the baby pictures his wife took, Ilya did not find them during his brief hunt through his father’s apartment during the week of his funeral. He left Moscow for the last time with nothing more than an old shoebox, long hidden away in his closet. Ilya has one photo of his mama holding him on her lap when he was a toddler.)

David goes to a bookshelf and pulls out a green album. He waves Ilya over to the couch and spreads it open on the coffee table.

“Behold the legendary Shane Hollander,” David says. “about an hour and a half old.”

Infant Shane looked like most tiny babies that Ilya has ever seen, small and squashed, a little unfinished and displeased at having been evicted from the womb. Yuna and David holding him, thirty years younger, changes the bundle in their arms from any baby to Ilya’s Shane. They become precious.

Ilya brushes the tips of his fingers across a picture of Shane in the arms of an old Asian lady that must be Yuna’s mother. The resemblance across three generations is striking.

“He has so much fucking hair,” Ilya says.

David laughs. “The nurses said the same thing.

There is something about them being physical photos, too. Someone took these pictures and had to trust that they captured such an important thing. Someone had to sit down with the album and slot each one into a plastic pocket for safekeeping. It is tangible love.

Ilya turns the page to baby Shane asleep on Yuna’s chest in the same living room Ilya is sitting in. Yuna, clearly exhausted, looks at the camera with the smile of a shared secret. Look at this perfect thing she helped make.

“He’s so small,” Ilya says.

“Yeah,” David agrees. “Yours will be, too, at first.”

“Were you scared?”

”Absolutely. I was terrified.” David brushes his thumb over Shane’s face, slack in sleep. “But we figured it out. You and Shane will, too.”

Coming from David, it almost feels possible.

**

David pulls a couple photos from the album and gives them to Ilya despite Ilya’s protests. “Yuna always got doubles,” David assures him. “I promise, Ilya, there are boxes of photos in a closet that didn’t make the album cut.”

Ilya goes upstairs to carefully stow them in his bag and when he comes back down, Yuna and Shane have joined David in the living room. Ilya catches Shane’s eye and raises an eyebrow in silent question. Shane does not look like he has been — crying or screaming or anything, but Shane also sometimes refuses to have feelings until he explodes, so.

Shane nods that he is okay, though, and he looks no worse than a little worried, which is fair.

The rest of the morning and afternoon pass in a quiet that is not totally comfortable. A couple times Yuna asks questions that veer toward planning that Shane heads off with a groaned, “Mom, you promised,” which she does not seem bothered by. Ilya still tenses.

Pike calls and Ilya makes faces from the other end of the loveseat, poking his feet into Shane’s thigh to be annoying. Shane flips him off and smacks at his feet while David watches from the couch, hiding laughter behind unconvincing coughs. Pike’s four thousand kids all get a turn to say merry Christmas to Uncle Shane and tell him all about their presents.

“Mom and Dad say hi,” Shane says. “So does Ilya.”

“Ilya does not say hi, you are liar,” Ilya protests. Shane flips him off again.

There are leftovers for lunch. Ilya’s plate is carefully put together by Shane because he is still not allowed in the kitchen, which is funny enough to Ilya that he isn’t bothered. Afterward, Shane asks if Ilya wants to shoot goals at the mini net, trying so very hard not to look hopeful that Ilya says yes, despite it being hockey practice on a holiday.

Shane is clearly a little nervous about them being together outside, where any passerby or neighbor could see. Ilya takes the stick he offers and says, in a low voice, “It is so kind of your parents to take pity on an orphan Russian and let me spend the holiday with friends.”

Shane looks at him for a longer moment than Ilya expects, relief and gratitude on his face, but also something that Ilya cannot quite identify. Shane’s eyes dart down to Ilya’s belly and then come back up, which is a kind of explanation, even if Ilya thinks there is something in it that he did not quite catch.

But they are counting down the last few hours of the holiday and Ilya has already had his share of very important and brutally hard conversations; he is not hunting for another. So they spend an hour making shots, chirping each other, and shooting the shit about hockey.

“What do you think Ottawa’s problem is?” Shane asks.

Ilya sighs heavily. “I think about this all the fucking time. Most of them are good or very good on their own, so it does not make sense that it is a constant shitshow as a team.”

“Tanner Dillon is pretty weak.”

Shane is not wrong about Dillon, but only Ilya is allowed to say such things about him. He rolls his eyes on principle. “Bood is good. Hazy is good. Haas is very fucking good. I am good. I don’t know. I think they expect to lose.”

Shane lines up a shot and asks, so very casually, “Are you worried about how they’ll — react?” without looking at Ilya.

So brazen, Hollander, Ilya thinks with a mix of affection and mild exasperation. There is no one Ilya talks to about Shane, but if there was, Ilya feels very certain he would have a hard time convincing them that hockey’s goodest boy Shane Hollander hides a reckless streak. Even if it comes out in euphemistic questions.

“A little,” Ilya says, then, “Maybe a lot. It is different than a trade or injury or retiring, you know? I think they will be okay? But I don’t know.”

Shane makes the shot. “They should remember how lucky they are to have you.”

Ilya snorts. “I think that would be easier if they were actually going to have me for the rest of the season.”

Shane has no response for that, but after they’ve put everything away in the garage, he pulls Ilya in close and kisses him, lingering and very sweet.

**

Eventually Shane can’t put off leaving any longer without running the risk of being late to his flight. A needy part of Ilya that he is not particularly proud of wants to beg him to stay. There are many more things they need to talk about — which is only a small part of it, mostly it is that Shane’s absence hollows out an empty place inside Ilya.

Yuna and David retreat back into the house after their goodbyes to give Ilya and Shane a moment. Ilya is grateful for this. When he looks to Shane, his eyes start to prickle with absurd, childish tears. He wants three more days to hole up with Shane in his house and just be with him.

“Let me know what happens with your coach,” Shane says. He smooths his palms over the open front of Ilya’s coat, absently neatening the way it lays like he would a tuxedo jacket.

“I will.” Ilya wraps his hands around Shane’s wrists and stills the anxious, compulsive movement. Shane’s fingers curl inward and he sags a little, like he is a puppet who has had one of his strings cut.

Shane looks tired, and no wonder. Ilya, for better or worse, whether he wants to or not, does not have a grueling game to play in eighteen hours. The existential exhaustion of knowing he will not play in any games for the rest of the season is a different thing to endure.

They stand together in silence for a long moment. There is so much Ilya wants to say, but none of it easily contained into a few moments before they go back to the demands of their separate lives. He wants to comfort Shane, too, and does not know how. Don’t be afraid? Don’t worry? Ridiculous things to say, given the situation.

“I love you,” Ilya says, because it is true.

A thin smile flickers across Shane’s face. “I love you, too. And don’t worry, okay? We’re gonna — we’ll figure this out.”

Ilya nods. “We will. This is —“ He hesitates, swallows hard. “It can be good, yes?”

Shane ducks his head and touches his forehead to Ilya’s, a small thing he does with no one else. Ilya lets go of Shane’s wrists and curls one hand around the back of Shane’s neck. He inhales Shane’s mingled scents, toothpaste mint, woodsy soap, clean deodorant. The physical mundanity that matters because Ilya loves him.

“I have to go,” Shane says. “Fuck. Okay.”

“Yes.” Ilya makes himself let go, take a step back, push his hands into his pockets. “Drive safe. Tell me when you are on plane and when you get there.”

“I will.”

Ilya sees indecision pass over Shane’s face, then he reaches out and lays his hand on Ilya’s belly. There is nothing much to feel through layers of tee shirt and hoodie and coat, but. Ilya sucks in a sharp breath.

“Be good, okay?” Shane murmurs.

Ilya stands on the driveway as Shane pulls out into the road and finally drives away, watching his stupid practical British snow car until it turns and disappears into the neighborhood. He keeps standing there, even when the sound of the engine fades and the early evening returns to quiet.

He stands there so long, Yuna comes out of the house and stands next to him in companionable silence. The light is starting to fade to deeper blues as the early evening of winter encroaches. Tomorrow Ilya has to talk to Wiebe and tell him that his big talent investment will not play another game in Ottawa for the rest of the season and hope it does not cost Ilya his place.

“Ilya, I’m going to ask you a question that I know is a little invasive,” Yuna says evenly.

Ilya tenses. “Okay.”

Yuna looks at him then, her gaze considering. Ilya stifles the urge to scuff his foot against the concrete or scratch a nonexistent itch on his nose or wrap his arm around his stomach. There is no anger, but that might be easier than her frank regard. Ilya can match anger.

”How long have you known?” she asks.

Ilya flinches, which is an answer in its own right. “I — If I don’t tell you I also don’t have to ask you not to tell Shane.”

“You two should tell each other this kind of thing,” she says, cocking her head. “But my place is not between you two. I’m not asking with the intention of telling my son.”

Ilya believes her, which surprises him, a little. Not because Yuna seems like someone to gossip, but because her priority is her son and she swings at anything that might hurt him. But maybe finding out about them and the secrets Shane kept changed her, too.

“A month,” Ilya says. “Right before American Thanksgiving.”

She nods, but there is no shock in her eyes. “The stomach bug?”

“Yes.” Ilya fidgets with a loose thread in his coat pocket. “I know I should not have waited so long, it was not fair—“

“Hey.” Yuna puts her hand on his shoulder, her thumb stroking an arc exactly the same way Shane does. “Anyone would be overwhelmed finding out something like that. If anything, I’m kicking myself for not putting it together.” She squeezes his arm. “So, you’ve been dealing with this alone for a month.”

“I was alone because of me,” Ilya says. His eyes prick with tears. Fucking hormones or whatever it is.

“And that made it easier?” she asks, brow arched.

Ilya shakes his head. “Probably not. No.”

She squeezes his arm again. Ilya leans into the touch. Setting aside Shane unilaterally making the announcement, there is a deep and profound relief in Yuna and David also knowing. Like Ilya and Shane are stupid teenagers who have finally told an adult about something that is bigger than they can handle alone.

“Have you seen a doctor?” Yuna asks.

“No, not yet.”

The only question he has been able to consider is whether or not he wanted to stay pregnant. Beyond that was too huge, too unfamiliar, too complicated. He doesn’t know how to explain to Yuna that continuing to play hockey was his version of asking God or the vast, uncaring universe what he should do. It sounds insane, and it probably was.

“Would it be helpful if I did some research?”

The circle of Ilya’s thoughts stops short. “What do you mean, research?”

“I can look up some obstetricians that might be a good fit. You should see someone soon. Maybe find you a couple resources about what to expect when you’re expecting.”

The end of the sentence has a lilt to it that sounds like she is referencing something that Ilya does not know, but he sets that aside. ”You do not have to do that,” Ilya says.

”Yes, I know. I’m offering.”

”Why?” The question falls out of him unexpectedly and he immediately feels vulnerable for how plaintive it is. He has shown more than he meant to with one single word and it matters to him very much that Yuna not think him a repugnantly immature choice for her son. And grandkid.

“Because all the stuff that goes into having a baby was wildly overwhelming for David and I and Shane was very much planned. Going from not knowing you even could to pregnant sounds about ten times harder.”

”Yes,” Ilya says. “It is very hard.”

“You’re not alone, Ilya,” she says, gentle in a way Ilya has never heard from her before. “You can’t do it alone. You will run yourself into the ground trying. Putting together an email isn’t an onerous task for me and I would like to do it. Please.”

Ilya fucking sniffles and it is deeply embarrassing. “Okay. Yes. Thank you.”

They fall back into an easy-ish silence. Ilya stares at the road, already wanting Shane back.

“I should go,” Ilya says. The idea of his Ottawa house is very empty.

“You could stay for dinner,” Yuna says. “You could even stay the night, if you wanted.”

Ilya snaps his head toward her, uncertain how to read the offer. Yuna is — terrifying is too strong a word. At least it is too strong a word now; that first afternoon, standing in the entry of her summer cottage as Shane confessed that hatred was actually love, Ilya had been more scared of her than any coach or enforcer.

The thing about Yuna is that she is the architect of all the parts of Shane’s life that are not hockey itself. She has been the buffer, the translator, the negotiator, the saleswoman, the protector, the keeper. She has done the things that would paralyze Shane with anxiety, or be so intractably difficult that it might impact his game. It’s a lot of fucking thankless shit and Ilya rode in and fucked everything up.

“Is okay,” Ilya says. “You have had me for three days already.”

Yuna looks at him, one eyebrow arched again. “I wouldn’t offer it was trouble, Ilya.”

Yuna Hollander does not remind Ilya of Irina Rozanov. But she does sometimes remind him of Sveta and the way she has rolled her eyes at Ilya’s bullshit since they were nine years old.

“I. That would be good. Nice.” Ilya clears his throat. “Thank you.”

Yuna’s expression softens into a smile. “You really are welcome here, Rozanov. You should get it through your head. You can tell yourself it’s all because of that baby, if that makes it easier.”

Ilya snorts and Yuna’s smile widens. "I see. I am just suitcase for grandkid."

“Exactly. But a nice one, with good wheels. Come on, inside, it’s freezing. David’s making spaghetti.”

“Ah, I am being bribed.”

“Bribed has such a terrible ring to it. I’d say enticed. Is it working?”

“It is such good spaghetti.”

“Isn’t it?”

Ilya eats his first dinner at Yuna and David Hollander’s table without Shane. He is quiet, but that doesn’t seem to bother either of them. The conversation is idle, kept broad so there’s plenty of easy room for Ilya to chime in here and there. The spaghetti is so fucking good and satisfies a craving Ilya had not realized was there.

After dinner, David sits down with his puzzle. Yuna sits on the couch with her laptop balanced on her knees and her glasses on, answering a crazy number of emails for the day after Christmas.

Ilya settles onto the loveseat — his and Shane’s loveseat now, he thinks — and watches a movie about alligators trying to eat a girl and her dad during a hurricane. Halfway through he starts to nod off; David gently shakes his shoulder, says, “Just a suggestion, but I bet you’ll sleep better in a bed.”

Ilya yawns an apology and stumbles upstairs, crawls into Shane’s bed and falls asleep.

Chapter End Notes

i saw a tumblr post this week about how all three of the hollanders will simply leave an uncomfortable situation and i respect that about them.

thank you so, so much for all your comments. i rewrote ilya telling shane a couple times and i'm so glad it hit. <3

heads up, next week i will be on vacation, so there will not be an update. but i should be back the week after.

i can be found on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 7

Chapter Summary

The mortifying ordeal of making your team realize they don't have a maternity leave policy.

Chapter Notes

Ilya wakes up cold in Shane's childhood bed, blinking at the half-familiar humps of furniture in the colorless gloom of dawn. He feels like he has left something important behind in his dreams, but they are already gone.

He looks at the bedside clock. It is just after five. Too early for Ilya, too early for everyone normal. One of his hands is flung out onto the second pillow where Shane should be. He curls his fingers into the wash-worn fabric of the pillowcase. It is a very faded thing decorated with patterns of winter trees and snowflakes and people skating on ponds.

Unease sits heavy in the pit of his stomach.

The room is still Shane's room. Unchanged, of course, from the last two nights that Ilya slept in it. But the warmth of it has ebbed away and with it the small spark of comfort glowing in Ilya's chest. He feels misplaced, in the room and in the home and in the Hollander family. Without Shane to coax him in, Ilya is once again standing on the outside with his nose pressed to the glass of a life that he is not suitable for.

It is a terribly lonely feeling and he shudders beneath the blanket, wrapping his arms around his stomach in the name of a protective instinct he knows, logically, is unnecessary. Even so, he cannot stop himself.

A strange claustrophobia closes in on him. The weight of the Hollander family's happiness constricts his chest. He needs -- he suddenly wants some of the loneliness of his Ottawa life and the empty spaces in it where distance is also breathing room.

He gets up and pulls on a sweatshirt over the tee shirt he slept in and calls it dressed, feeling a thin thread of urgency to make sure he has left before the rest of the house wakes up. Still, he takes the time to make the bed, carefully tucking in the sheet the way Shane does.

Ilya feels deeply ungrateful as he eases down the stairs with his bag over his shoulder. The house, even cast in shades of dull gray, pulls at Ilya with a deep yearning that lodges in his chest. Part of Ilya wants to turn back against the tide of this roiling unease, but he cannot find such willpower inside himself.

He texts Yuna and David that he has some errands to run and sorry for leaving without saying goodbye.

He pauses on his way out the front door with his hand on the doorknob, turns his head to glance over his shoulder. "Thank you," he murmurs in Russian. "I will come back."

The morning air on his face is reproachfully cold.

**

His own house is as big and empty as Ilya was trying to avoid the night before, like it always is. Except worse, for the little things that are evidence of Shane having been there. Two ginger ale cans in the recycling. A sink with no dishes in it. The unmade bed. There is still relief in the isolation.

Ilya’s clothes smell like the Hollander house. He strips and bundles them into the laundry basket, then cranks the shower up hot and stands beneath the spray for so long he loses track of time in the billowing steam. He rehearses what he is going to say to Wiebe until the words start to lose meaning through sheer repetition.

The shower does something to wash off the worst of the gloom. Enough, at least, that eventually Ilya can splay his pruned fingers over his belly and stroke his thumbs over the curve of it.

"I think maybe I am a little bit a fool, malysh," he says. "I thought telling your --" He hesitates over the word, though Shane is not there to react one way or the other. "I thought telling your dad was the hardest thing. I think that is probably not true."

It does not feel strange to talk to his belly, which itself becomes the strange thing. He would not swear to it, but Ilya has a faint, vague memory of being told that babies can hear things before they are born. Which maybe should mean Ilya not troubling them with the worries of their fumbling parents; he is doing the best he can.

He lingers under the heavy, hot spray until the steam is so thick he gets lightheaded. He dries off with the towel Shane used and left hanging neatly on the rack, both from missing Shane and because it would disgust Shane. Ilya smiles faintly at the thought of Shane's face wrinkled up in distaste. So fucking prissy.

Semi-dry, he wipes condensation off the mirror, drops his towel, and stands to the side to examine his profile.

The curve feels more pronounced than it did when he last looked right before Shane arrived. He cannot say for sure how much of that is real and how much is the effect of having finally told Shane. Perhaps a secret no longer kept always feels more obvious than before.

There is an unfamiliar pink mark, though, tracing the edge like a bracket around his bellybutton. Ilya frowns and runs his thumb along the length; it is just skin, he thinks.

Realization comes a moment later, as a memory of Shane lounging naked in their bed at the cottage in a pool of warm sun. The light made the stretch marks on his hips and ass almost glow. Ilya spent fifteen minutes tracing each of them with his tongue, scattering kisses and nips of his teeth here and there while Shane whined and wiggled and made no effort to get away.

It is such a small thing, Ilya thinks distantly, light and innocuous.

Ilya does not think of himself as being precious about his skin. It is impossible, to a certain extent. Hockey writes a story on your body. He has had some kind of bruise for probably 90% percent of the twenty years he has been playing. Often they have been extensive and livid smears of mottled bright purple that slowly fade to sickly greens and browns.

And he has permanent scars, too. Less than the average player, maybe, though that is due more to luck than any particular skill. He has broken his nose twice. Two of his teeth are fake. There is a three inch scar on his scalp from a fight when he was fourteen that got out of hand. He is not a fucking model. He uses his body hard.

A pristine body is -- boring. The first thing he liked about Shane was the freckles Shane is bizarrely self-conscious of. He kisses the scar on Shane's shoulder so often that when Shane wears sleeveless shirts that show it off, he swats Ilya away after the fourth or fifth time.

So then why is he frozen staring at the mark in the mirror?

He traces his thumb over it again. The skin might have a slightly thinner texture to it, but that could just as easily be his imagination. Then, he lightly drags his thumbnail over it. He shudders a little, but it does not hurt or feel particularly more sensitive.

Experimentally, he reaches up and drags the nail over his nipple with the same pressure. That makes electricity bolt down his spine and he hisses. The sensation jolts him out of his head a little; a shudder goes down his back and into his limbs.

"I see you, malysh," Ilya says finally. "How many of these do you plan?"

Clarity blooms. An injury is a matter of healing. A bruise, a break, a cut looks the worst up front and fades with time. This mark, this little line of pale pink skin, is the start of a change.

"You chose this," he says, looking into his own eyes. "You want this."

Ilya-in-the-mirror has nothing to say.

**

Ilya arrives earlier for practice than he ever has before in his professional career.

He cuts the engine of his stupid, practical-in-the-snow car and just sits there as the warmth from the heaters slowly bleeds away. The parking lot is sparse, but that makes sense. Plenty of the Boston staff used to take off the few days between Christmas and the new year, if they were not essential. Fuck knows Ilya would, if he could.

He wishes Shane -- he wishes for Shane. Ilya wants the steadying bulwark of his presence; fuck, he would take the distracting jitter of Shane's frantically spiralling, anxious brain. Any version of Shane, so long as it was them together.

(Sometimes, a small part of Ilya hates the scraps of hours and days they cobble together, reminding him again and again that his life is so much better when Shane is physically in it. When it was hours snatched every few months, it was easier to forget how good it could be in the long droughts between. It is harder to so constantly brush against the only life Ilya has ever truly craved.)

"I have to tell Coach, malysh," he says. "I really cannot play and so I have to tell him."

He skims through his memories of the last four months, trying to think of any moment when Brandon Wiebe did not face his team with his particular air of calm practicality. There is no hockey coach on all of the planet earth that never raises his voice to snap harsh criticism or rebuke unacceptable conduct. The level varies, but it is always present.

He cannot think of anything, though.

He tips his head back against the head rest and closes his eyes. Inhales through his nose and exhales through his mouth. Shane tried to teach him some of the meditating, mindful stuff over the summer and not much of it stuck. Sitting still makes Ilya’s mind go faster.

The breathing thing works okay, though. Ilya’s not sure what makes it different from taking a normal deep breath, but he hears the one-two-three-four-five count in his head in Shane’s voice, which is nice. He does feel a little calmer when he opens his eyes. A little.

He pulls out his phone and texts Shane, going to talk to Wiebe now. fingers crossed I still have job in half an hour.

He presses his palm to his belly. “We are first active hockey player to ever get knocked up. Being first sucks.” Ilya sighs. “I think I owe stupid Scott Hunter a thank you for being first gay player. Terrible.”

His phone buzzes with an answering text from Shane. We’re going to be okay. I love you. You’re very brave. Ilya shoves his phone back into his pocket before the swell of feelings in his chest spills over. The almost crying might be worse than the puking.

“I wish your dad was here. He is probably anxious mess right now.” Ilya snorts a laugh. “I say this like I am not anxious fucking mess. Fuck, okay. Let’s do this, malysh. If you don’t make me puke in the middle, we will get greasy burgers for dinner.”

A weird kind of calm falls over Ilya as he pushes through the doors. It’s a strange sense of distance, a brittle acceptance. Ilya cannot get out of this thing and he has no power to dictate the outcome, so. Ilya’s luck will hold, or it won’t. What will be, will be. The sun rises tomorrow either way.

**

The halls are very quiet as Ilya walks to Wiebe's office. He passes a facilities guy with a cup of coffee in his hand who nods a bleary greeting and a woman wearing a suit in the middle of a phone call Ilya thinks does something in accounting. She flashes a brief, distracted grin.

The quiet makes Ilya's footsteps loud, though the thought feels unbearably dramatic as soon as he has it. Sneakers on linoleum do not echo for anyone who is not a fucking drama queen. A memory of some movie he watched with Marley on a long flight to somewhere in the west pops up; old fashioned prison guards leading a guy with magic powers to the electric chair. Ilya rolls his eyes. Walking down a hall to talk to your boss is obviously exactly like walking to your execution. An obvious and sensible comparison.

Maybe irritation is better than fear or something.

He is so close, is the thing. He is close to everyone who really fucking matters to him reacting to his news as well as he could possibly hope for. Luck stacked on luck stacked on more luck does not feel reassuring. It feels like narrowing odds.

Ilya has thought, a little bit, about -- contingency plans. He has done some research about residency and citizenship in Canada, enough to make it very clear how little he understands about the process. He has casually bookmarked a couple immigration lawyers, ostensibly as part of the old plan, but also just in case.

He has thought about being traded, too, or busted down to the minors. The possibility fills him with irrational dread, even aside from knowing the odds of any team wanting a knocked up player are probably dead zero. Still, the idea of being further away from Shane than he already was -- Ilya could not bear it.

When he gets to Wiebe's office the door is open. It usually is, which is something Ilya appreciates. Many coaches do not make the same effort to be accessible. Still, Ilya knocks on the frame to announce himself.

Wiebe looks up from a sheaf of papers. Mild surprise passes over his face; Ilya almost bursts into nervous laughter, though it is a fair reaction. Ilya is not a morning person, nor is he quiet about it.

"Rozanov," Wiebe says. "What can I do you for?"

"I have a thing I need to talk to you about," Ilya says.

Wiebe sets down his papers and straightens in his chair. "Of course. Have a seat." He beckons Ilya in with a hand.

Ilya can feel his pulse tick up as he crosses the threshold. He closes the door behind himself and wants to turn the lock, but resists. Logically, he knows that no one would ever barge into a head coach's office through a closed door without knocking first. Illogically, Ilya's heart is beating rabbit-fast in his chest.

Wiebe's office carries within it the mementos and memories of his predecessors. Ilya remembers almost nothing about them despite having played regularly against the Centaurs in Boston; truthfully, he thought very little about the Centaurs at all, since the games were generally such easy wins for the Raiders. He does not quite feel guilty about that. Ilya was not particularly rude to them -- ruder than usual, at least.

But he feels far more aware now that in dismissing the team he was choosing not to see much more than he thought. Talent, of course, from the players that are now his teammates and whose skills he actually admires very much. But the intangible things, too. A team that liked each other. Coaches with scales that did not exclusively prize winning at all costs. Things that are not reflected in stats and points and records.

Which is not to say that Ilya does not miss winning. He misses winning so fucking much sometimes he could choke on the jealousy he feels watching Montreal sweep a roadtrip or Boston struggle to regain their footing without Ilya and still breeze past Ottawa. Losing to the other bad teams that will not make the playoffs is a special kind of hell.

But a year ago, Ilya thinks, he would have hated it a lot more.

Ilya’s professional career has been under the leadership of the loud, intense men that fit into the ethos of what Boston is as a team. And Ilya liked that, he liked the passion, liked a room that rewarded him for hurling himself at every obstacle in his path. He still likes it. Sometimes he misses it.

But now, when he's pissed off after a loss, he appreciates Bood's slaps on the shoulder and being told, "Buck up, buttercup, we're still getting paid to play hockey." He can laugh when Hazy ropes Chouinard and Dillon into singing, "We're not the champions, my friend," without skill, but very loudly. It is very stupid and very funny.

Ilya does not want to lose this place, he realizes. Beyond the plan, beyond Shane and the shorter distance between them and Canadian citizenship and the glimmering promise of a life in the sun, Ilya likes the fucking Ottawa Centaurs and Brandon Wiebe.

He does not want to disappoint this man.

Ilya sits. He practiced so many speeches and he cannot find any of them. He wishes Shane was sitting in the other chair or his mama. He wishes that anyone else in the history of the league had sat in their coach's office to have this conversation before. He wishes he had been allowed to know his body could do this thing.

"I need to go on LTIR list," Ilya says. "I cannot play for the rest of the season."

Wiebe frowns and Ilya winces as his body anticipates anger. It is how his Boston coach would react and, in a weird way, Ilya would feel more sure of how to respond. He has a lot of practice taking screamed rage from men with power over him. He does not fear it.

Wiebe does not yell. "Okay," he says, slowly. "Any particular reason? Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Ilya says, honest without meaning to be. His eyes prickle and he has to look to the ceiling and blink hard to keep from completely humiliating himself. When he looks back to Wiebe, his expression is one of naked concern.

"Talk to me, Rozanov," Wiebe says. "What's going on?"

There is no way to ease into it, Ilya realizes. Or maybe it is just that he cannot bear to do an unconvincing song and dance to pretend this is not a very big thing. Because it is. It is very big.

"I am pregnant," Ilya says.

For several very long seconds, Wiebe stares at him.

Some manic part of Ilya desperately wants to ask how long it's been since Wiebe last heard a brand new reason one of his players needed to be benched. He chokes that down because the last thing he wants is Wiebe to think Ilya's being flippant about fucking over an entire hockey organization.

"Are you being serious?" Wiebe asks. He sounds genuinely unsure.

Ilya nods. "Yes, I am serious."

"Fuck me." He leans back in his chair and rubs a hand over his mouth. His eyes turn to some point above Ilya's head, though Ilya does not think he is really seeing anything.

Ilya's hands are shaking. He jams one into his pocket and starts fucking with the string on his sweatshirt with the other. The little plastic bit at the end is starting to splinter into a couple pieces from long use and many washes. Ilya flicks his thumb over it for the way it catches beneath his nail and tugs.

"Pregnant," Wiebe repeats, then he sits back up in his chair and returns his gaze to Ilya. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

"How far along?"

Ilya did not anticipate that question and so flounders for a moment. "Since the end of September."

Wiebe's eyes widen. "You've known since the end of September?"

"No!" Ilya does not mean to raise his voice. "No. That is when it -- happened. I did not find out until later." The euphemism feels ridiculous as he says it, as if by speaking around how he ended up pregnant he will be able to stave off -- he doesn't even know what. Questions about how. And who.

Ilya realizes he is also coming out to Wiebe.

"I didn't suspect --" Wiebe begins, but he cuts himself off. "Never mind, that's unimportant. Okay. Okay."

"I am bisexual," Ilya says.

Wiebe blinks at him. "So I assumed," he says. A beat later, in a much steadier tone, he says, "I appreciate you telling me that."

Ilya shrugs.

“Yeah, okay,” Wiebe says and it sounds like a response to something, despite Ilya’s silence. He rakes his fingers through his hair. “Well. Of all the things I thought you might say, this was—“

“Yeah, I was surprised, too,” Ilya says. “I did not, you know. Know. That I could. Before this.”

“Jesus Christ,” Wiebe says expressively. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay, mostly.” Ilya drops his hoodie string and tilts his hand back and forth. “Tired a lot and puking a lot, mostly.”

Wiebe snorts, his mouth canting into an unexpectedly wry smile. “I can’t believe you’ve been putting up the numbers you have been playing — pregnant.”

Something about Wiebe saying the word cuts through the tension. Ilya manages a smirk at the sort-of-praise. Wiebe’s posture loosens as the initial surge of shock ebbs back. Ilya keenly feels the absence of expected rage. He is probably not going to be thrown out of the arena by his collar.

“I am sorry,” Ilya says. “I know the timing is bad.”

Wiebe cocks his head. “I’m assuming this wasn’t planned, right?”

Ilya barks a laugh. “No. It was not planned.”

“Don’t apologize.” Wiebe waves a hand. “Life tends to happen in less than ideal moments, I find. I’m not going to hold that against you. Next season will come.”

Fresh fear slides down Ilya’s spine. He forces himself to keep his eyes up. “You will want me here, next season?”

Puzzlement passes across Wiebe’s face. Before Ilya can scrape together a less oblique question, understanding dawns. “Rozanov, you’re leading the team in goals right now and it’s not even close. I feel confident you’ve got a lot of good hockey left in you. Personally, I’m hoping for a solid ten years. So long as you want to be here.”

“I do,” Ilya says, too fast and a little wet.

“Good,” Wiebe says. “I’m not in the business of fucking over my players, Rozanov, even when they do crazy things.”

“A lot of coaches would,” Ilya says.

“I know.”

“Thank you.” Ilya swallows hard.

His relief is so profound the next several minutes blur out a little bit. Wiebe, reasonably, does not know what needs to happen on an organizational level. League policies for carriers only exist on the staff level, not for players, so far as either of them know. Canadian law probably has something to say about it, at bare minimum.

Ilya gives him the okay to tell whoever Wiebe deems necessary, even though giving his permission briefly flares panic in his gut. Wiebe adds several items to a handwritten to-do list and promises he’ll keep Ilya in the loop.

“Are you planning on making a public announcement?” Wiebe asks.

“I — fuck. I had not thought about it,” Ilya admits.

“We’ll follow your lead either way. Whatever announcement we make can be as detailed or vague as it needs to be. If you’ve got a minute, you should talk to Harris and get started on contingency plans and the like.”

“I will.”

“Do you want to tell the team?”

The question is unexpected. Ilya frowns. “I cannot just stop playing and not tell them anything, yes?”

”No, of course not. Rozanov, have you ever heard the phrase ‘two can keep a secret if one of them is dead’?”

Ilya resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Fucking English.”

Wiebe snorts. “Look, I would like to believe that every member of the organization would have some basic respect for your privacy. Realistically, the more people that know, the more likely it is that this gets out before you’re ready. And I don’t mean maliciously. People slip up, say more than they mean to, don’t realize someone’s listening.”

It probably says something unflattering about how much Ilya does not know what the fuck he’s doing that he is genuinely taken aback. Wiebe is right, of course. Hockey players gossip like old Russian women talking shit about their neighbors and the useless drunks their granddaughters are dating.

The real question is a matter of honesty, and shame. Is he going to tell the truth or create a story? Ilya doesn’t care about deceiving people he does not know. He used to half of the fans in an arena hating him. But he does not want the first thing he teaches Malysh to be shame.

“I will tell them the truth,” Ilya says. “I owe them that.”

”Okay,” Wiebe says. It is a little impressive, Ilya thinks, how quickly he has found equilibrium. “I don’t know if this helps or not, but this is genuinely not as bad as I was braced for.”

Ilya cocks his head. “What did you think it was?”

“Oh, you know.” Wiebe waves a hand. “Just that you hated everything about Ottawa and Canada and wanted to be traded to any other team in the league.”

The idea is so absurd Ilya cannot stop himself from laughing, a little high and a little frantic. “No, Ottawa is good. Is great. I am happy here.”

”Glad to hear it,” Wiebe says.

**

The communications team offices are almost empty when Ilya walks in.

One of the interns -- a real one that is a student studying public relations at university, not someone's uncle's father's goat's stepson's personal assistant's third cousin -- is at the front desk. She drops her phone face down when she sees him, sitting up very straight in the chair and trying to look very focused and not guilty.

"I am looking for Harris," Ilya says. "I saw nothing, I will swear to this."

She blushes, but her expression breaks into a real smile. "It's been dead as hell, Mr. Rozanov."

"This makes your focus and being--" He waves hand. "Doing your job very much. Fucking word, I cannot find it."

"Professionalism?" Harris sticks his head out of his office.

"Da, that, yes. Thank you. She has excellent professionalism," Ilya says. "You should hire her."

"Of course. People certainly weren't fighting to man the desk this week and I remember that kind of thing." He smiles at the intern, who grins back a little sheepishly. "Ilya, come on in."

Harris waits until Ilya closes the office door behind him to break into an extremely wide grin. "I just got an extremely, extremely interesting message from Coach Wiebe," he says. "And let me just say, as the person who risked getting barf all over their car, I think I should get dibs on godfather."

It is so totally not what Ilya was expecting that he just stares for a moment. Long enough that Harris's smile dims slightly and he sits down in his office chair, visibly putting on his own professionalism. Ilya's stomach lurches.

"Obviously," he says, aiming for levity and definitely not quite getting there. "Is actually law in Russia, whoever is driving when you find out is automatically in top three contenders for godfather."

Harris stares right back for another long moment, then bursts out a loud honk of laughter. "Who -- who are the other -- two?" he asks between breakthrough fits of giggles.

"Guy who sold you the vodka you drank the night the condom broke and the cousin you snuck away from family gatherings with the most to smoke once the arguing started. Then there is a three-way fight in hospital and whoever wins is godfather."

"Damn, I'm not much of a brawler," Harris says, with a theatrical sigh.

"Is okay, I have no cousins and we did not drink vodka."

Ilya can see curiosity flicker in Harris’s eyes and half expects him to ask who Ilya did not drink vodka with. For a moment, Ilya really fucking wants to tell him, which is an unsettling urge.

“Anyway, plans,” Harris says. “In the short term, we’ll keep everything vague. That does unfortunately mean you’ll probably end up with everyone and their mother blowing up your phone, but ‘no statement,’ is a valid answer. So is ignoring them.”

”I can do that.”

“That being said, we should have something prepared for if this leaks.” Harris seems genuinely regretful, which Ilya appreciates. “When and if you do decide you want to make an announcement, I’ll have something ready in support.”

“I’m sure fans will love that.”

Harris frowns. “They can deal with it like grownups or get blocked. You’re having a baby, not going to prison.”

“I think many of them would prefer prison.”

“Probably, but fuck those fans.”

Harris’s face turns red and Ilya laughs in delight.

**

When they have finished roughing out a very barebones plan, Harris points him in the direction of an empty conference room.

Ilya slips in and closes the door behind him, then skirts around the long table so he can sit with his back to the windows and see anyone coming. He calls Shane, expecting to leave a message for him to listen to after morning practice in whatever city he is in. Columbus? Detroit? He memory is a fucking sieve lately.

Shane picks up on the last ring. "Hey, I'm here. One second." He is a little out of breath. Ilya hears some echoey clangs and then the click of a lock. "Sorry, I had to make sure the bathroom was empty."

"Is okay," Ilya says. Shane's voice, even made tinny across a million kilometers, is like a balm to Ilya's fried brain. The morass of anxiety knotted up in his mind does not untangle, that is far too much to ask, but it stills.

"How are you? Are you okay?" Shane asks. "I only have a couple minutes, I'm sorry."

"No, is okay, I understand. I talked to Wiebe."

He hears Shane suck in a breath. "How did it go?"

"Good," Ilya says and it is only in saying so to Shane that it really hits him. "It was about as good as I think I could expect, actually. I am not being cut or sent to minors. He did not know exactly how things will happen, but he was not angry."

"Good." Shane's relief is palpable. "That's really good. Good. Fuck. How are you?"

"You know, okay." Ilya leans back in his chair, which tips enough for him to sort of look out the window at the city sprawled out below. "Probably my hands are still shaking a little. I think -- I don't know. I keep expecting shoe to fall."

"To drop."

"Yes, whatever." An obvious question fills the back of Ilya's mouth and he straightens up in his chair. "How are you doing with all of this?"

"Oh." There is a long pause that makes unease flare in Ilya's gut, though he tells himself that the nature of Shane Hollander is that it often takes him three to five days to answer questions about his feelings. Ilya reminds himself he finds this charming. "I'm getting used to it?" Shane says at last.

Ilya nods, then remembers Shane cannot see him. "That is okay. It was a lot to drop on you."

Shane huffs a laugh at that. "Yeah, for sure. I was reading some stuff on the plane."

"Anything interesting?" Ilya asks.

"Depends on your definition of interesting," Shane says. Ilya hears a series of short bangs. "Shit, okay, I've gotta go. I'm really proud of you, okay? I love you."

"I love you, too."

**

Ilya takes the stairs back down the main floor on his way to the locker room.

He pauses in the stairwell and leans against the metal railing jutting out of the cold concrete wall. It feels too incautious to ruck up his shirt, but he slides one of his hands beneath the hem of his hoodie so he can press his fingers against taut skin. He wonders if pregnancy makes everyone constantly reach for their stomach or if it is just him being weird.

"Don't tell anyone, but I am a little scared," Ilya murmurs. "Not because of you. You have done nothing wrong. But this is fucking hard. Okay." He shakes his head like a dog shaking off water. "Okay, enough sadsack bullshit. One more time. Please don't make me puke. I would appreciate that a lot."

The walk down the broad hall to the locker room takes him past Wiebe's office. Wiebe looks at him through the open door and nods. Ilya returns the nod in kind and it helps. A coach, in truth, cannot always force a team to behave as he wishes. He is one man against twenty. But it matters. It is a foundation.

Ilya feels a little less like he is walking into a bear trap.

The chatter of half a dozen overlapping conversations dies down when Ilya walks in, clearly not kitted out for practice. It is like Ilya is nine years old and called up to the front of the classroom to answer questions about things he did not study for. He was stupid to think telling Shane or Wiebe would be harder. There are so many fucking eyeballs on him.

Ilya doesn’t pray to God or whatever. That kind of belief died in him a long time ago. But he does send a thought to his mama, for whatever that’s worth.

“I have an announcement,” Ilya says. He sounds surprisingly normal in his own ears, way more normal than he expected. “I will not be playing against Toronto.”

A wave of concerned murmurs passes through the room, which is better than a wave of angry muttering. Ilya will take it.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Hazy asks.

Ilya laughs. He doesn’t mean to, but he can’t stop it. Suddenly the idea of trying to ease the team into is stupid and pointless, so fuck it. “That is matter of opinion, maybe. I am having a baby.”

Nervous tension flips to baffling laughter and smiles so fast it’s like falling into another universe.

“Fuck, Rozy, you don’t waste time,” Chouinard says, slapping him on the back. “You’ve been in Ottawa five minutes and you already found a girl willing to have kids with an asshole like you? Congratulations, man.”

In five years, Ilya thinks, this moment will be extremely funny.

“Haven’t even introduced her to the team. Are you ashamed of us, Rozy? We’re not very good, but it’s still professional hockey,” someone says, Ilya does not catch who.

“Congrats, Rozy,” Bood says with deep sincerity. “Kids are great. I’m happy for you and her.”

“Fuck me,” Ilya groans. “I was not clear, everyone shut up.”

The tension returns, but even worse. Wonderful. Ilya shoves a hand through his hair and casts his eyes heavenward, if one can find heaven in rusty beams and mysterious stains on dingy cinderwall.

“I am having baby,” Ilya says, smacking a hand to his belly. “Me. Baby is in me.”

So fucking eloquent. In the moment of flabbergasted silence that follows, Ilya decides he will do some light editing when he tells this story to Shane.

Hazy, of course, finds his voice first. “How?”

Ilya says something very coarse and probably unfair about Hazy’s intelligence in Russian. A couple of his teammates who have picked up a smattering of words here and there go a little bug-eyed.

“What did that mean?” Hazy asks.

Ilya closes his eyes for a moment. “You are married to doctor, Hazy. Jesus Christ. When two hockey players love each other very much—“

“Two hockey players?” Chouinard repeats. “This. You. With another player?”

Ilya’s going to throw himself off a fucking cliff. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not—“ Bood waves his hand in an unhelpful gesture. “Someone here?”

“Fuck, no, of course not.” Ilya grimaces at the thought, which is maybe a little insulting to the rest of his teammates, but the relieved exhales from every corner of the room suggests they’re too relieved to be offended.

“What I am trying to tell you,” Ilya says. “Is that I am benched for the rest of the season. I am sorry for that.”

”You’re having a baby,” Hazy says, with feeling. “Of course you can’t play. You don’t have to be sorry. What kind of assholes would be mad about that?”

Ilya can think of ten or twenty entire MLH teams that would be very fucking mad about it, but they’re not Ilya's problem. And Hazy’s words do seem to cut through a lot of the immediate uncomprehending shock. Ilya forces his shoulders not to defensively hitch up as he skims his eyes from face to face.

He sees surprise, of fucking course. Some wariness, which isn’t wonderful, but really not too bad. There are a couple small smiles, which makes that frantic hope start punching through Ilya’s deliberately tempered expectations. There are a lot of parents on Ottawa’s roster. Maybe it helps? Ilya doesn’t know.

Bood steps forward again and looks Ilya in the eye. “Congratulations, Rozy. I’m happy for you and — whoever else might have helped.”

Bood sets the tone, Ilya thinks. “Thank you,” he says and he hopes Bood knows it’s for a lot of things other than this moment.

It takes a second, but Bood breaks the logjam of uncertainty. Not everyone comes up to Ilya and he makes a note in the back of his mind of who doesn’t, but he’s not going to jump to the worst conclusion.

Chouinard slaps his shoulder significantly more gently and says, gropes for something to say, and lands on a tight smile.

Hazy goes in for the hug and Ilya lets it happen. “I think it’s cool,” Hazy says. “It’ll be like our own little mascot.”

Later, watching the rest of the team do bag skates from the bench, he hears the singsong lilt of drugged up Shane. It could have been worse.

**

Ilya stops by Wiebe's office after he leaves the locker room. They need time to talk amongst themselves without Ilya present; it is unavoidable, no matter how uneasy the thought makes him. He dislikes being a spectacle. But that is the reality he has chosen and he knows he will do himself no favors breathing down their necks.

"How'd it go?" Wiebe asks.

Ilya settles on, "Pretty good, I think. Mostly they are shocked."

"Good. That's right about what I expected. And they'll come around with a little time."

"Yes, probably." Ilya cannot tell how certain of that Wiebe really is, though he strongly suspects it is more certain than Ilya himself is. In his mind he hears Yuna telling him that he cannot do this alone and he will run himself into the ground if he tries. Absurd, to Ilya's Russian sensibilities, but maybe something the aspiring Canadian in him can believe.

"Were you planning to stay for the game?" Wiebe asks.

The question startles Ilya, even though it is an obvious one.

MLH rules only say that if he is on the injured list he cannot play. It is perfectly fine for him to attend as a spectator. He can even theoretically practice, though his particular 'injury' separately forbids that. Something in him hesitates, though.

It is always -- frustrating, a little, to watch a game you cannot play in. Forget hockey specifically, this is true for any athlete Ilya has ever known. Every error and missed opportunity feels like a reproach for your absence. The goals look harder to score, every hit one a teammate has taken in your place. Ilya is not a person who likes to sit still.

But sitting and watching is all he will do for several more months.

It occurs to Ilya, probably much later than it should have, that he is going to miss hockey.

"You doing okay, Rozanov?" Wiebe asks in a low voice.

Ilya startles. "Yes, sorry. I just was thinking I do not really know what I am supposed to do for the rest of the season."

"Oh." Wiebe looks equally startled by the thought, which does weirdly make Ilya feel a little better. "That's a damn good question, isn't it? Hm."

Ilya pushes his hands into his pockets to keep from wrapping them around his middle. In an ideal world he would look -- unbothered, maybe? But Ilya's world has never been an ideal place, except for the small pockets he has carved out with Shane over the years. Still, holding himself feels much too vulnerable in front of his fucking boss.

"Okay," Wiebe says after a couple moments of thought. "Given the nature of your 'illness,' I don't see any reason to keep you away, assuming a doctor doesn't disagree. Your skills on the ice -- and don't take this as a swipe at them, you are for damn sure one of the best I have ever coached -- aren't the sum total of what you bring to the team. Your experience and insight are incredibly valuable and don't require you to put on your skates."

It is possibly the kindest thing any coach has ever said to Ilya.

"Thank you," he manages, despite an embarrassing lump in his throat. "That is. I appreciate. That."

Wiebe shrug. "It's just the facts, Rozanov."

"Still. Thank you."

Wiebe smiles. "Anyway, we'll work all that out in the coming days, okay? I did speak briefly with the GM and Harris. For tonight, we'll just announce you're out for the game. Tomorrow we'll sit down and hash out a longer term plan, draft a statement, all that. We'll make that bigger announcement before the next game or we might just wait for the new year."

It is not really a reprieve, but it feels like one. If nothing else, it gives him a few more days before the press descends on him with questions that span a gamut of very stupid, extremely invasive, and wildly insulting. Ilya will take every second of that he possibly can.

"Yes, okay," he says.

**

He watches the game from his couch with a complicated knot in his chest.

Some of it is his real physical exhaustion, which feels unfair given how many fucking times he’s accidentally napped over the last three months. It’s emotions, too. Seventy-two hours seesawing between terror and relief, terror and relief have wrung him out.

He might also be avoiding the full reality of being benched for such a long time. There is a layer of insulating distance watching on TV rather than being present at the arena. He can couch it as not wanting to be a distraction for the rest of the team, which is a little bit true, but mostly an excuse.

Maybe it is also that he can already feel an uncomfortable difference in the way people look at him. No one in hockey — other than Shane — has ever questioned the narrative of who Ilya Rozanov is. ‘Playboy asshole’ is so common in the league; Ilya is one among dozens.

Now he is singular for something that has nothing to do with his accomplishments and it feels very different. If people aren’t yet wondering about the gaps in Ilya’s life where a partner is not, they will be soon. They will talk to each other, speculate. Some will assume an incorrect loneliness and pity him for it.

It’s a lot of fucking bullshit and he cannot even go out and get irresponsibly drunk about it.

The Centaurs lose 3-1.

**

That night he dreams of the cottage in high summer, hot and sunny. He is alone on the deck where there is a long table, heavy and ornately carved like the one in their formal dining room when he was a child, but covered in white cloth that waves lazily in the breeze. It is piled high with fruit: perfectly orange clementines, heavy purple grapes still on the vine, red and pink and yellow and green apples, fat watermelons with striated green rinds, dusky pomegranates, golden and green melons split in half so their seeds glint.

He stands at the head of the table, alone. It is too much for him to eat. In its excess, the bounty becomes faintly grotesque. There should be others but Ilya does not know if he is too early or too late. Loons howl across the lake.

**

He spends the off day before the last game of the year roaming restlessly around his house until he annoys himself. He throws on his baggiest sweats and a pair of sunglasses and goes for a run, forgoing his usual route for reasons he decides not to examine too closely.

Fifteen minutes in he comes to a dead stop in the middle of a block to pull out his phone and Google whether it is okay to run when pregnant. Thankfully, Google says it is fine, so Ilya runs for another forty-five minutes.

When he gets out of his post-run shower he has an email from Wiebe with the statement Harris has written. Ilya reads it over twice before he realizes he is hunting for any possible problem to have a reason to delay its release. He responds with ok, then flops down on the bed and stares up the ceiling. He hasn't gone without playing hockey for longer than a couple weeks for the majority of his life.

His brooding is interrupted by his phone. It is a text from Yuna, saying that it is fine he left without saying goodbye and thank you for spending Christmas with them.

Ilya reads it and groans, dropping his forearm across his eyes. They are being so fucking nice about everything and supportive and helpful and Ilya snuck out of their house like he was making a getaway with a sack of stolen silverware over his shoulder. And for what? Fuck if Ilya knows.

All the shit he said to Shane about him running and Ilya is doing the same thing. It is hypocritical and he knows it. He does not want to be this version of himself, shying away from good things because his fucking dad believed Ilya did not deserve good things. Grigori Rozanov is dead.

So, he calls Yuna before he can chicken out.

“Hi, Ilya,” she says. The measured calmness in her voice is reassuring, maybe. Not that he thought she was going to yell at him. He is not a kid, much less her kid.

“Hello,” Ilya says. “Are you busy right now?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Do you want to get lunch?” Ilya asks. “On me. Of course.”

“Oh — yes, of course.”

Half an hour later he is sitting in a booth tucked in the back corner of a pub, sharing a basket of fries with Yuna that were battered with beer and are extremely good. His burger is really good, too.

“Did you pick that shirt on purpose?” Ilya asks. Yuna looks down at her blue Metro’s sweatshirt — the same one Shane brought to the cottage — then looks at Ilya and smiles. It is the same smile Shane gets when he is about to say something a little mean about another team.

“Of course not,” she says mildly. “A complete coincidence.”

“Ah, of course,” Ilya agrees. “This is another thing Shane gets from you.”

Yuna chuckles. “Shane didn’t have much space to be an overt asshole.“

“Like me.”

“Yes, like you.” They share a smile.

They spend another hour eating a second basket of fries. The conversation meanders from hockey stats to the playoffs to Boston’s mediocre season to the Metros’ excellent season (Ilya groans) to what the Centaurs need to do to get their shit together. It is almost like talking to Sveta, except he tries to cut back on the cursing.

Ilya did not fully appreciate how knowledgeable about hockey Yuna is. There is no player Ilya mentions that she cannot recall anything about their stats or history, including guys who rode the bench for one season in Boston that no one remembers. It is incredible.

“They will make the announcement tomorrow,” Ilya says eventually.

Yuna nods. “How are you feeling about that?”

“It has to happen, so.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Ilya sighs. “I don’t know. I have been bored for the last two days without hockey and it is going to be a lot more of that.”

“It’s a hell of a sacrifice,” Yuna says. She reaches across the table to rub his forearm in comfort. “You’re doing something hard.”

“I am choosing to do it,” Ilya demurs. “People do it all the time.”

”People also survive car crashes all the time and have brain surgery all the time. Something being common doesn’t mean it’s easy. Cut yourself some slack."

Ilya wonders what it is like to still have someone like Yuna after you have left childhood behind. Someone to retreat back to when the demands of your life outpace your nascent adulthood, or even just to ask questions of, ask for help.

"I think my mom would have liked you," Ilya says, before he thinks better of it.

Yuna slides out of her side of the booth, comes around the table, and wraps her arms around Ilya.

**

Harris texts Ilya before the game the next day to tell him the announcement is going up. He adds, My recommendation is to turn your phone off for the next three days, which is probably very good advice.

Ilya refreshes Twitter again and again until the news drops. He has already read the press release, but he clicks on it anyway and reads it again. It is perfunctory and the reason given is almost absurdly ambiguous.

A vague and unspecified worry that something would go wrong slides out of him. In its wake is an old friend that coils up in Ilya's gut. It is the low, expansive fear of looking into the dark abyss of a future that he cannot control or predict.

He watches the reactions and the replies pour in, a mix of baffled question marks, entitled anger, catastrophizing worries, and some well wishes for a speedy recovery from Centaurs fans. Boston fans show up, too, mostly to point and laugh. There is one guy that says, you've had him for five minutes and you already broke him?? un-fucking-greatful behavior, canada, that Ilya saves a screenshot of.

An email notification pops up as he's reading, titled 'Resources' and sent by Yuna Hollander. He opens it and his screen immediately fills with two paragraphs. He scrolls down to three paragraphs, then four, then a list of links and keeps going and going and going.

“Fuck me,” he mutters, raking his fingers through his hair. Though really, it is his fault for thinking Yuna Hollander would ever do just a little research for something she thought was important. Ilya decides he is not going to digest anything it says while his notifications on all social media are going nuts and closes it for the time being.

He ends up scrolling through the tweets directed at other members of the team. Bood has posted exactly one thing saying that he would never disrespect the privacy of any teammate. Haas has said nothing, but has disabled tagging. Hazy is responding here and there with a mix of completely ridiculous reasons (a meteor fell on Ilya's head, they discovered he was actually a small alien piloting an Ilya suit) and medical-ish reasons (acute keratasthenia, capillical torsion) that Ilya is 95% sure are not real diseases.

His phone buzzes with a text from Shane that says, i'm sorry you have to deal with this. you're the bravest person i know. i love you.

Ten seconds later, Shane sends a second message that says, fun fact: it is the size of a pear.

He pushes his hand up into his shirt to rest on his belly. “Your dad says you are the size of a pear, malysh.”

Chapter End Notes

ilya pulling the classic cat move of not wanting to play hockey when he has to and wanting to play hockey when he can't.

thank you the comments and feedback. i appreciate every single one. <3

i am also on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy

Chapter 8

Chapter Summary

Happy New Year, or close enough.

Chapter Notes

Ilya is woken by his phone buzzing itself off the bedside table and falling to the floor with a thump.

The rug muffles the vibration’s irritating whine enough that he considers rolling over and going back to sleep. His head is muddled with the remnants of dreams he has already forgotten.

His phone starts buzzing again. “Do we think it is second call from same guy or first call from new guy?” he asks, looking down at his stomach. “People are gonna be so fucking annoying, malysh.”

Ilya allows himself a deep sigh and a groan — bitching about things that make him nervous is the source of his moral courage — then rolls over and gropes along the side of his bed until his fingers find cool metal. The buzzing pauses for three seconds and starts up again.

Phone in hand, he shifts onto his back and jams an extra pillow beneath his head. He taps the screen and twenty-seven million notifications immediately fill the entire thing. Dozens of missed calls from strange numbers, hundreds of messages and texts, thousands of mentions across Twitter and Instagram.

It is exactly what he expected, and still profoundly fucking annoying.

“I should have listened to Harris,” Ilya says, tapping in his code. “Except for many more than three days.”

He skims through his missed calls. Mostly unknown numbers, other than half a dozen from his agent. Ilya winces at those, made precisely every half hour since five in the morning, Ottawa time. He left voicemails, too, and Ilya knows what they say without needing to listen to them. His agent is Russian, traditional, and picked by Grigori Rozanov.

Ilya flicks away the voicemail notifications and sets his phone on do not disturb. The vultures in the shape of journalists and podcasters and reporters can squawk their questions to the void, Ilya has no comment.

His texts are a little better. Many are from people who have his number from five years ago sniffing around for insider source details to hawk to the highest bidder. He cannot rouse himself to anger when the intention is so transparent. Mixed in is a smaller handful — mostly women that he slept with a couple times — that seem like relatively sincere good wishes. Ilya will not respond to them either, but he appreciates the thought.

Bood and Hazy and a couple other Centaurs have texted various supportive things. Some of them are clearly awkward adaptations of what they usually say to each other when a wife or girlfriend is pregnant. It is a crazy situation; Ilya does not fault them for fumbling.

The team chat is more normal, brisk with reports of the calls and messages everyone else has been getting about Ilya. Hazy’s strategy of ridiculous lies is popular. Half the messages are riffing on increasingly absurd answers. Ilya likes several of them and sends: i give permission for you all to lie so long as lie is funny.

From Svetlana: Two people have asked me already this morning why you are out. I love pretending I do not know things that I do. They are so annoyed, it is intoxicating.

From Yuna: It’s going to be okay. If you need anything, don’t be a stranger.

From Shane: i’m sorry you have to deal with all this. it sucks. i love you.

**

Ilya spends the morning into the afternoon on the couch with his laptop balanced across his knees and the fishing show in the background. There is a bad storm and many of the fishermen have doubts about their captains and it bizarrely reminds him of Sochi and trying to lead that clusterfuck of egos and injuries.

He steels himself and opens Yuna’s email, which is no shorter in the light of day. That said, the information is meticulously organized and that eases some of the overwhelm.

The first section is an overview about how being pregnant actually works with many links to further information. Obviously Ilya knows that he knows very little, but it is still humbling to realize the extent of that lack. It is also slightly embarrassing that Yuna both judged him ignorant and that she was so right in her assessment.

He clicks on a link that takes him to a website with detailed information for each week. Immediately, a little window pops up in the corner saying that if he tells it when conception happened, it will calculate a due date. Important information that Ilya is not positive he is ready to know.

He does it anyway. The window thinks for a few seconds and then spits out mid-June. Ilya barks a laugh.

”No,” he says, closing the little window. That cannot be accurate. Ideally, he is extremely busy winning cups in mid-June.

Ignoring that, Ilya starts clicking to the pages for various weeks, trying to ignore that there are apparently forty of them in pregnancy. The number feels slightly absurd and somehow much longer than nine months.

It is a little comforting to skim over the earlier weeks that he has already passed and see that most of the things he has dealt with, however shitty, are very common. He very much likes reading in later weeks that a lot of the early shit should start easing up. If he skims over the details about the crazy shit his body will do, that is between Ilya and website.

Nowhere does he see any specific mention of what playing a high intensity contact sport might do, but Ilya has done what he has done and he cannot change it now. This, of course, will not prevent him from thinking about it, but whatever.

There are more links and a list of books that Ilya decides to come back to later, then a list of obstetricians, a word Ilya tries unsuccessfully to pronounce three times before mentally changing it to baby doctor. For each, Yuna has included their location, their ratings, and additional helpful details.

One of them, a Dr. Ivanov, has an asterisk by it and Yuna’s note says that she spoke to his office and was told that he speaks fluent Russian. That she would even look for a doctor that speaks Ilya’s language is more than she had to; making the extra effort to confirm it makes something kick in Ilya’s chest.

“I think you are lucky, malysh,” he says. “Both of us.”

He fills out the form on Dr. Ivanov’s website to request an appointment.

The email ends with Yuna saying she knows this is an overwhelming amount of information and not everything can be handled at once. Take as much time as you need, Yuna writes. And don’t forget you have people in your corner.

Ilya’s phone rings before he can begin to come up with an adequate response.

He startles at the blare of his ringtone after two hours of silence. Very few people ring through when he decides to ignore his calls and it’s usually Shane or Svetlana. Ilya mutes the TV, sets his laptop aside, and fishes his phone out of his pocket.

The screen shows a blurry, dark picture taken at a club the night Boston won the cup and Marley’s name.

In truth, Ilya forgot that Marley was still on the list of allowed numbers. When Ilya was playing for Boston, Marley tended to favor the tactic of showing up at Ilya’s house and banging on the door until Ilya answered rather than phone calls. Still, Marley was the one teammate — friend, though that is more uncertain than it used to be — that Ilya wanted to always be able to reach him.

Ilya accepts the call. “Hello.”

“Hey, brother,” Marley says. That nickname in that voice hits Ilya like a punch for how much he has missed it.

“Hey,” Ilya echoes. “I am — it is good to hear from you.”

“Yeah, good to hear your voice, Rozy. I — you know, I saw you’re out for the rest of the season.”

”Yes,” Ilya says. The back of his throat feels crowded with all the things he wants to say, but his tongue is thick and stupid.

“Are you okay, brother?” Marley asks. “Not dying or anything, right?”

“I am not dying,” Ilya says. He has never before sounded so stilted talking to Marley, who punched Ilya’s arm in greeting the first time they met and said that Ilya was talented but also still a snot-nosed rookie kid who had a lot to learn. “I am okay, actually.”

There is a pause as Marley leaves room for Ilya to tell him what is really going on that stretches uncomfortably as Ilya does not. Ilya realizes he has not come up with a cover story for people that actually know him and feels stupid for the lack. There are more people in the world than Hollanders, Centaurs, and strangers.

“Well, it’s fuckin’ good that it’s not that bad,” Marley says at last. “I gotta go, brother. Take care of yourself, yeah?”

“I will.”

”Good. Talk to you later.” Marley ends the call before Ilya can respond.

**

The conversation with Marley leaves Ilya unsettled and vaguely irritated.

It only occurs to him after he's hung up that he could have told Marley. Not about all of it, of course, but at least about the pregnant part. The idea just did not occur to him and that bothers Ilya the more he thinks about it.

It's not about lying as a whole. Ilya believes in the necessity of some big lies and also that small lies are often very funny. What he does not like is how reflexive the lying was, automatic and unthinking, and for no reason. Of all the people he played with in Boston, Ilya is pretty sure Marley would be okay about it. He has a sister that is some kind of LGBTQ alphabet person and he tended not to join in the worst of the homophobic bullshit.

He is Ilya's best fucking friend. Or was, at least. Several months of neither of them talking to each other suggests otherwise. And that irritates Ilya, too. He has often really fucking missed Marley's stupid American accent and bad jokes. For ten years they saw each other almost every day; Marley knows him like few others do.

Ilya has avoided Marley because he knows Marley is going to reasonably ask why the fuck Ilya did what he did; Ilya is not allowed to tell him the truth.

'Allowed' draws Ilya up short. Allowed. As in he has to get permission to tell Marley about his life and oh, Ilya does not like that. It itches beneath his skin. Pike gets to know about everything -- though Ilya realizes he is assuming Shane told him the baby situation, which on reflection Ilya is only 50/50 about.

The point is that Ilya did not expect Shane to ask his permission to tell Pike. And yet, this frustration bangs up against Ilya having accidentally let slip the two fucking hockey players thing. No one has brought it up, but Ilya harbors no illusions that the team has forgotten. Which still means a pool of more than seven hundred fucking guys, but Shane is not going to be comforted by that.

Ilya types i am thinking about telling marley into his messages with Shane and sends it before he thinks better of it.

**

The rest of the afternoon drags by.

Ilya checks his notifications a couple times. More phone calls, more emails, more tags, all variations of the same shit he saw last night and woke up to this morning. He skims to see what speculation is gaining the most traction and is very slightly disappointed that most people think that whatever the bad hit in Boston fucked up, Ilya needs surgery to handle it.

There is a smaller contingent that thinks he is in rehab, which Ilya appreciates in a weirdly fond way. He put a lot of fucking work into being a great fucking time in Boston. His partying has almost entirely stopped in Ottawa, but it is nice that some people think he's still dancing with beautiful women in clubs and then, apparently, snorting coke off their tits when he takes them home.

He does not see one single thing suggesting he could be knocked up, which is a relief, of course, but also a little disappointing? Which feels like too strong a word for the thought that, in some ways, people figuring it out without him having to say anything would be simpler and Ilya then himself could not be blamed.

With the sun setting comes people posting about the new year's parties they are going to and that fills Ilya with a simpler and cleaner kind of naked envy. He looks at girls in dresses held in place by tape draped over each other or tucked under the arms of hot men. God, Ilya wants the throb of too loud dance music and flashes of colorful lights, the heat of bodies packed together dancing. It is impossible to have thoughts. Sounds great to Ilya.

The Centaurs chat is also full of plans. Most of the younger guys are cheerfully anticipating how wasted they are going to get after four bars. Many of his married teammates have plans with their wives and girlfriends; romantic dinners at restaurants where it is hard to get a reservation or a night in a fancy hotel. Both of which sound better than Ilya’s nothing.

The loneliness Ilya has been trying to ignore overspills his avoidance.

Ilya never wants to return to Russia, but on the last day of the year he misses her with a childish longing for home. And maybe it is no more complicated than the overbearing focus on Christmas in Ottawa and Boston. His patience for a holiday that he does not care about has worn thin after so many weeks of it, celebrating with the Hollander family aside.

Maybe it is that he rattles around the big house he bought thinking of sharing it with Shane and a family. Ilya filled his Boston house with teammates and friends and one off fucks and the warmth of other people. He has not done the same, in Ottawa, for reasons he cannot explain. Missing Shane is so profound and constant that the idea of other people underlines that ache.

Or maybe it is nothing more than the simple reality that Ilya does not live in his homeland and there is loss in that. There were places scattered across Boston where Ilya spoke Russian that he has not found in Ottawa. But he has not really looked. It is hard to rebuild a life in a city that is only special because of someone who no longer lives there.

Maybe it is that Malysh will grow up in his dad’s world and Ilya will have to teach him about his papa’s. Christmas will come naturally and new year’s will be unusual, something to be explained as a tradition from a far away land that Ilya cannot ever take him to. Russia will be as real as Neverland, the violence of Ilya’s excommunication eclipsing the small beautiful things.

Or maybe it is just very fucking pathetic to be a sadsack home alone on a night he has partied on for fifteen fucking years. Maybe he fucking cries about it a little.

When he’s done doing that, he starts the fucking fishing boat show back up and tries not to check the time on his phone.

**

In the middle of the fourth or maybe fifth episode in a row, Ilya's doorbell rings.

Frowning, he looks over his shoulder to the door, as though he has magic powers to be able to see through it. He can see a slice of fully dark sky through a window. The only person who has ever shown up on his Ottawa doorstep at this time of night is Shane, which makes hope kick in his chest for one single moment. But Shane is not in the fucking country. It is not possible.

The doorbell rings again, three times in quick succession. It ticks Ilya over into being annoyed, which at least has the benefit of getting him up off the couch and striding toward the door. If it is kids doing some weird Canadian new year's tradition Ilya has never heard of he might have to yell at them in Russian. It is always scarier to English only speakers to hear shouting in a language they do not know.

He yanks the door open harder than he needs to, a little bit spoiling for a fight.

“Suprise!”

Svetlana is standing on his porch with a bottle in one hand and an overnight bag on her shoulder. Her hair is dotted with snowflakes and her eyes have the glassy look of someone who has crossed many time zones. The new year has already come to Moscow.

“What are you doing here?” Ilya demands.

“I am kidnapping you to hold hostage until every citizen of this boring city gives me fifty dollars.” She raises an eyebrow. “May I please come in and kidnap you where it is not freezing cold?”

Ilya steps back, but the moment she crosses the threshold he cannot stop himself from pulling her into his arms. She comes easily, laughing with indulgent fondness. She smells like recycled airplane air and expensive perfume and Ilya has missed her so fucking much.

“I thought you had plans,” Ilya says into the side of her neck.

“And I said I would break them for you, which is why I am not in an expensive hotel room drinking champagne and sitting on the face of a beautiful woman.”

Ilya laughs, face still pressed to her skin. “You are the martyr of martyrs.”

“They will make a saint of me when I die.” She kisses his temple. “Now let go of me so I can take off my coat.”

“No,” Ilya mumbles.

“You are ridiculous, Ilyushka.” She pats his back and, gently, pushes him back a step. “Here is what will happen tonight. You are going to tell me which is the best shower in this house and I will go use it because I have been flying so much and I feel disgusting. You are going to order the best food you can get delivered here. Then we will eat this food on your couch and not get drunk, until it is new year. Okay?”

Ilya salutes. “Best shower is in my bedroom. Up the stairs and to the right.”

“Thank you.” She hangs her coat in the hallway closet and picks her overnight bag back up. “Will Shane go mad with jealousy if we sleep in same bed or am I exiled to spare room? Not to fuck, obviously, but to sleep.”

Shane probably will not love it. Shane will almost definitely hate it. Shane will also have to get used to it, Ilya decides. Fucking was always the least important thing he and Sveta ever did in the grand scheme of decades of friendship. She is the closest thing to family Ilya has left, so.

Svetlana has one knowing eyebrow raised when Ilya looks at her, prepared to be stubborn about it. She has never plainly given Ilya her opinion of Shane, but she does not need to. Shane Hollander is hot and talented, but he is also a large part of the reason Ilya will never go back to Russia and has made Ilya cry.

Someday Ilya will make them spend time together so they become real people to each other rather than just some guy with a claim to part of Ilya’s heart and life.

“It is fine,” Ilya says.

“Good.” She pats his cheek. “We do not change for boys, Ilyushka. Not even pretty ones.”

Ilya watches her go up the stairs, smiling. Sveta has not yet been in this house and her presence makes it feel a little more like home. The thought makes Ilya’s eyes burn because every third fucking thing almost makes him cry.

“There must be third option other than crying or puking, malysh,” Ilya says. “I have reputation, you know?”

Ilya flicks through the delivery options, already knowing Ottawa does not have Russian food outside of a couple delis and one pie place that he keeps meaning to try and has not. He settles on Thai and orders way more than two people should need. As the puking has eased back a little, Ilya has gained a constant low-level hunger.

He goes to the kitchen to put Sveta’s bottle of some kind of sparkling juice pretending to be champagne into the fridge, next to several cans of Shane’s ginger ale.

Ilya sighs. Montreal does not have a game, but they’re in the middle of a road trip, so Shane is either in Florida or North Carolina. Ilya unlocks his phone and hovers his thumb over Shane’s number, indecisive. He feels like it is respectful to tell Shane about Svetlana, but he also still has 'allowed' banging around in his head. Shane sees Rose whenever they're both in LA or Montreal.

Ilya annoys himself waffling. He taps Shane’s number and sits at the kitchen island. It rings enough that Ilya begins to wonder if Shane, having refused every effort of his teammates to get him to go party, has gone to bed at 8:00.

“Hi,” Shane says, a little breathless. “Sorry, I’m not rooming with Hayden, I had to get to the stairwell.”

“Is fine,” Ilya says. “I assume you are getting pretty to go party all night with drunk Americans, yes?”

Shane scoffs. “We have a game tomorrow I don’t want to be tired for.”

“So tragically boring, Hollander.”

“Are you going out to party?” Shane asks pointedly.

Ilya wishes. “No, party has come to me.” He hesitates. Shane is sensitive about Sveta but that is at least half Ilya's fault for floating the idea of marrying her for citizenship. Which he did almost entirely to see how Shane would react, but Shane does not need to know that. It all worked out. ”Sveta is here, actually.”

”Svetlana?” Shane asks, as though there is more than one Sveta it could be.

“Yes,” Ilya says. “It was surprise. We usually spend new year together. It is — tradition.”

”Right.” Shane’s voice is strained, but he is trying very hard to mask it. “For how long? How long is she staying, I mean.”

“Not long. She has job and life still in Boston.”

“Right.” Shane also tries to hide his relief and is not successful. “Well, that’s good, doing your tradition. I’m sorry I can’t.”

“Me too. I miss you, lyubimiyy.”

“I miss you, too, so much,” Shane says, tone softened. “And I'm sorry I haven't been there for the last couple days.”

"I know," Ilya says. "It is what it is."

Ilya wants to tell Shane that he has needed Shane for the last three days, but in a way that won't make Shane spiral in guilt and self-recrimination. Hockey is what it is; they both understand the demands and the rewards. And what they have now is better, though that is easy to lose track of sometimes. A compromise is still a compromise and running out the next decade of their life like this is still a very long time.

But he hears Sveta's footsteps on the stairs and there isn't enough time to even scratch the surface of that conversation, much less whether their plan even still makes sense, given everything.

“I have to go,” Ilya says.

"Wait, one second," Shane says and Ilya freezes his entire body. "So. Marley."

Ilya's stomach churns. "Yes. I want to tell him."

"Okay." Ilya hears Shane take a deep breath. "About being pregnant or--"

'Or' is an even longer conversation that Ilya does not want to do over the phone, where they cannot see each other's faces.

"Being pregnant only, lyubimiyy."

"Okay, sure, that's fine. You can tell whoever you want," Shane says, obviously relieved.

"I love you. I will talk to you next year."

”I love you, too. Happy new year, Ilya.”

**

“My new year’s outfit is usually so much hotter than this,” Svetlana says when Ilya comes into the living room. She is wearing leggings and a Raider’s hoodie and thick socks and her hair is in a silk bonnet.

“So is mine,” Ilya says, dropping onto the couch. “At least there are no heels.”

”I like heels, Ilyushka,” she says. “I like to be taller than boys and see how much it drives them crazy.”

She settles tucked along Ilya’s side. Ilya has desperately missed the physical reality of her, her scent and her warmth and weight. It does not matter that they have been apart for months, they still slot together as easily as breathing.

”Which of your stupid action movies is most festive?” she asks.

Twenty minutes into the movie, the food arrives. They do rock, paper, scissors and Ilya loses, so he hauls himself off the couch to answer the door and take the bags. He gives the delivery driver a fifty as tip, and he says thank you sixteen times before Ilya closes the door.

He stops in the kitchen to get the sparkling not-wine and some plates and glasses on his way back to the living room and sets all of it down on the coffee table.

“That smells good,” Sveta says approvingly.

“I would not dare to order shitty food for you,” Ilya says and starts ripping open the bags and taking the plastic lids off the containers.

When he looks up, Svetlana is staring at him.

“What?” Ilya asks. “I cannot have food on my face already.”

”I am trying to decide if you look different yet or not,” she says, cocking her head.

Ilya stands and turns to the side. The waistband of his sweats is already riding lower than it used to because it is no longer comfortable around his waist -- which is another thing he probably needs to deal with and is avoiding. He pushes it all the way down and pulls up his shirt.

"Ta-da," he says sardonically.

“Oh shit.” Sveta’s laugh is tinged with disbelief. “It is real. That is so weird.”

“Oh yes, it is weird for you,” Ilya says. He pulls his pants back up, feeling a little more naked than he ever did when they were fucking.

“I think all pregnancy is weird,” Sveta says, with an unapologetic shrug. “Like a parasite. No thank you, for me.”

Ilya has spent so much of the last three months thinking about pregnancy and babies and domesticity that Sveta’s complete disinterest is a welcome change. A reminder, too, that Ilya is still himself, not only Ilya-and-baby.

“How is Boston?” Ilya asks as he breaks a pair of chopsticks in half. “How are you? What is your life?”

“You would know this if you ever replied to my messages or picked up the fucking
phone,” Sveta says primly. “One of these days you are going to need my help and I will be in Moscow or Italy or Monaco and you will be shit out of luck, Ilyushka.”

“I know, I know. I am sorry. There has just been a lot happening.”

“Yes, I know. You were scared and you crawled into your own head, like you do. You must work on this, Ilyushka. You live very far away from me now and it is a much longer trip for me when you go too quiet.”

That would sting coming from anyone else, but coming from Svetlana it is a simple statement of fact, not a dig or admonishment. She has dragged him kicking and screaming out of his mind enough times that she has earned the right not to baby him about it. And Ilya is so extraordinarily happy to be in the same room as her that if all she wanted to do was rant about his worst qualities and many failures, he would gladly listen.

It takes him a second to realize that Sveta has said all of this while staring at her food, without even a single glance toward Ilya. Which is a thing they both do when they want to hide something, because they can read each other too fucking well.

“Svetlana,” Ilya says, drawing out her name into sing-song. “What is happening in your life?” Ilya asks.

“My life is my life,” Sveta says loftily, but it is undercut by the red patches on her cheeks.

“You are a fucking liar and I cannot jump on top of you until you tell me. What is it?”

“You are so dramatic!” Sveta scoffs, but she also sets her fork down and wipes her mouth with a napkin. “It is not a big deal, okay? My life is as my life always has been, I am just. Seeing someone. A woman. Ta-da.”

“You are dating someone?” Ilya asks incredulously.

They were teenagers the last time Ilya can remember her dating someone and it was another hockey player with dark hair and green eyes and not enough talent to realistically pursue a professional career like he planned. Two months in he yelled at her in front of a group of friends for pointing out a weakness in his game and Ilya had to break his nose.

They went back to her family’s apartment and she brought him ice for his knuckles. Ilya was messing around with Sasha then, which could not be formalized even if either of them wanted such a thing. Sveta and Ilya agreed that fucking was more fun than dating and they rode that together through their twenties.

“There is someone I see more regularly than usual,” Sveta says. “It is nothing like you and Hollander, with monogamy and the rest of your life forever and — and babies.”

“Does she have a drawer in your closet?” Ilya asks. Sveta opens her mouth and says nothing and Ilya cackles. “Fuck, she does.”

”Shut up.” Sveta tries to glare, but the corner of her mouth quivers in a smile. “Whatever. I am not moving to Canada for her.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She is an academic.” Sveta’s expression softens in a way that Ilya thinks she herself is not aware of. “She researches something about cells and treating diseases that she has tried to explain a few times but I do not speak scientific English. She is fantastic in bed and thinks monogamy is a con invented by the church.”

”So she is your dream woman?” Ilya teases.

”She is not boring after two months,” Sveta says. “Maybe that will change.”

Ilya nudges her elbow into her side. “You don’t want it to.”

Sveta shrugs, still smiling.

**

”What were you really going to do tonight?” Ilya asks. He is on his second plate of pad thai, having decided that the fucking heartburn he will inevitably get is a fair price.

“A very romantic evening with a couple that I am friendly with,” she says, setting her almost finished plate on the coffee table.

She leans into Ilya’s side; he slings his arm around her shoulders. The familiar weight of her body is — comforting is not enough of a word. It brings color and warmth to Ilya’s world, the same way Shane does. He suspects neither of them would appreciate the comparison.

“Are they a man and a woman or two women?” Ilya asks.

“Two women. Why? Are you jealous, Ilyushka?”

“Of course not. I just want to make sure I am picturing it right. What about your girl?”

“She was going to watch and not touch herself,” Sveta says smugly. “I know, much better than yours. But I am generous with my friends who are only allowed to fuck one person. I hope Hollander is very good in bed.”

“Are you suggesting I would fuck someone who was bad in bed?” Ilya asks with theatrical shock. “You know me better than that, Sveta, I am wounded. He is just two hours away, most of the time.”

“This is the downside of only fucking one person,” she says, looking up at Ilya with her mouth curled into a wry smile.

Ilya shrugs in concession; he does not love how rarely he and Shane actually get to fuck. “He is worth it.”

Sveta makes a face. “So domestic. Terrible.”

“Lucky for you it is not contagious.”

**

Ilya lets Svetlana pick the next movie and she decides on one about robbing a casino. They both stretch out along the length of the couch, Svetlana warm against his back. She sets her chin on the top of his head.

“Boston is different without you,” she says, midway through the movie.

Ilya looks over his shoulder to try and see her face, but the way they’re positioned makes it impossible. Which was probably her plan, Ilya thinks. Vulnerability is equally unnatural to both of them.

“More boring, yes,” Ilya agrees.

“Yes, the clubs of Boston have truly felt the lack of one hockey player who used to hook up with the prettiest girls three years ago. Public mourning is ongoing. The sun may never shine again.”

“The last time I was in Boston they burned two effigies of me.”

“Which means they still care about you, yes?”

Ilya snorts a laugh. “You could always move to Canada.”

Sveta makes a noise of such deep disgust that Ilya feels the vibration of it. “Yes, I will leave job that I am extremely good at and that pays me so much money, all of the people I regularly fuck, the clubs where I dance and find the people I fuck for one night, and being four hours from New York when I am in the mood and move to the most boring part of Canada.”

“It is probably not the most boring part,” Ilya counters. “There are lots of places up north where there are almost no people.”

“Oh, well, in that case.”

They lapse into silence. Ilya realizes that they are breathing in rhythm. Sveta starts idly toying with his hair, wrapping a curl around her finger and letting it unwind. He can’t remember the last time they were together before he left. He feels the weight of how long it’s been.

This is the thing Ilya struggles to explain to Shane when the fact that Ilya and Sveta have fucked chews on his anxieties and insecurities. Sex was just an extension of curling up together and flopping on top of each other, seeking out the comfort of their skin touching. It was never meaningless, but it is meaningful in a way Shane, who shies from touch, does not understand.

“I have missed you, too,” he says quietly.

Sveta kisses the top of his head.

**

They turn on some countdown to the new year show when the heist movie ends. Sveta goes hunting in the kitchen and brings back a mostly uneaten pint of ice cream and two spoons. They sit cross-legged and pass the carton back and forth.

“Your brother has sent me messages a few times,” she says.

Ilya stills with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

He should not be surprised. He isn’t exactly surprised.

“To beg for money?” Ilya asks flatly.

Sveta’s face creases into a moue of distaste. “What else? He does not ask, of course. He is greedy shit, but not that stupid. He has not forgotten the last time you spoke to him. I do not think he liked learning that he could not stop his little brother from breaking his neck.’

“Anyway. He does not ask, he hints. Oh, everything is so expensive, Svetlana. A wife is so expensive, a daughter is so expensive, Svetlana. He could sell your apartment, but will not. The address is too good to give up. I would not choose to starve in a castle, but I am not Alexei Rozanov.”

“Fucking asshole. You told him to fuck off, yes?”

Sveta makes a percussive sound of disgust. “Of course I did, Ilyushka. I am not the only one. I think Alexei is also learning that people respected your father but they do not confer the same feeling for the poor reflection of a son.”

”Truly a cursed man, my father. Two chances at a son and both unable to pass muster.”

Sveta nudges her foot against Ilya’s calf. “You are your mother’s son.”

Ilya hums a noise of neither agreement or disagreement and eats another bite of ice cream. For a couple months after the funeral, Ilya had sporadic nightmares of his hands covered in blood as his mama frantically searched for Alexei, or opening the front door of his Boston house to find Alexei’s apartment, stuffed full of his friends with their violent, vicious hands.

He sees Sveta deciding whether or not she is going to push and when she decides to relent for the moment.

“Has he messaged you?” Sveta asks.

Ilya snorts. “He might have tried, but I blocked his number as soon as the plane took off. He can beg the void for money. It is no longer my problem. He cannot touch my niece’s trust. If there is an emergency for her, it can be taken care of without any money passing through his hands.”

“Good.” Sveta raises her glass in a toast and drinks. “He deserves no more.”

The worst Alexei can do now is tell people that Ilya fucks men and he won’t do that because it will taint him by association. It was never a secret that Ilya’s money paid for his entire fucking family, and a younger son taking care the older is already a small shame. Alexei could not stomach it.

“How is Sasha?” Ilya asks.

Sveta shrugs. “Fucking his way through. the men of Paris that cannot resist long eyelashes and a pretty face. His father still pays for everything and in return Sasha only goes back to Russia when he absolutely must.”

“Good for him,” Ilya says. He has not seen Sasha since turning him down during the Sochi Olympics and it has been much longer than that since they had a real conversation. Still, he was Ilya’s teacher for many important things. Without Sasha Ilya does not know if there would be Shane and that is a gift.

They chat about other friends from the last teenage years Ilya lived in Russia: marriages, divorces, children, vices, crimes, deaths. Ilya only half remembers them, but back then he cared about hockey, Sveta, and partying in that order. They were his friends in only the most superficial way.

“Oh, also,” Sveta says. “I forgot to tell you. I got a drink with Marleau a couple weeks ago.”

“Marley took you out for drinks? My Marley?” Ilya asks. Cliff Marleau does not go out for drinks, he goes out to get wasted with his friends and stumble home after last call and Ilya had a lot of fun doing it with him for years.

Sveta laughs. “No, not like that. I ran into him by coincidence. He definitely forgot my name, but he offered to buy me something expensive and we talked for a few minutes.”

“About what?”

“Mostly you,” Sveta says. “He wanted to know if you were doing okay on — how did he say it — on, ‘the most bullshit team in Canada in the most bullshit city in Canada.’ He was already a little drunk. He said you had not talked to each other at all.”

“We actually talked a little today,” Ilya says. “But before that, we had not.”

“I think he misses you.”

“I miss him,” Ilya admits and it’s weird how much it feels like confessing a secret. “I don’t want to lie to him.”

Sveta arches an unimpressed eyebrow. “Then don’t lie to him. Hollander can deal with it.”

That hangs between them for a too-long moment where Ilya should say something, but can think of nothing to say. Then Sveta snakes the last piece of cookie dough in the ice cream carton with a smug smile. Ilya shouts in outrage. The moment passes.

**

“Why do this now, Ilyushka?” Svetlana asks. “Why not wait?”

Ilya’s head is in her lap and she’s idly carding her fingers through his hair. His first impulse is to deflect the question, claim it is purely a matter of feeling and he has no concrete answer. It would only be half a lie. She might even let it go. Probably not, but it is distantly possible.

Ilya is tired of lying to the people he loves.

“We made this baby,” he says. “And maybe there would be a different one later, but there is no promise of that. The choice was not have a baby now or have a baby later, for me. It is if I will have this baby or not.”

“I see.” Svetlana’s hand stills on the crown of his head. “That sounds a little like guilt, Ilyushka.”

Ilya shifts onto his back and looks up at her. They have grown up together with his head in her lap, through childhood and awkward adolescence and their wild, boozy twenties. Every part of them has changed, except Svetlana’s brown eyes, peering past Ilya’s skin and bones to the secret buried truth of him.

“Guilt is not exactly right,” he says. “I am being selfish. Keeping him is selfish.”

“Having a baby is always a little selfish, yes? No baby asks to be born. What makes your selfishness so special?”

“We, Shane and I, we didn’t decide to keep him together. I decided that.”

Svetlana’s nose wrinkles. “It is your fucking body, Ilyushka, you get more say.”

”But it is both our lives,” Ilya counters.

She sighs deeply and scratches his scalp like Ilya is a cat. “So, what? You are worried he will not stay?” she asks. The words are even, designed neither to accuse or soothe.

“He just asked for a little time.” Ilya shrugs.

”That is not an answer.”

“I think—“ Ilya rubs a hand over his face. It is fifteen minutes until midnight of what has been the longest year of his life. “I do not think he will run. I think we will figure something out. But I don’t know what it will be.”

Svetlana’s mouth flattens into a compressed line. “You have given up a lot of things for Shane Hollander, Ilyushka. When does he start giving things up for you?”

”He has given up things, Sveta.”

“Like what? Heterosexuality? I do not think that counts.”

Ilya cackles and Svetlana cannot repress one grudging giggle. “I would not say he gave that up for me. It is more like I made him forget he was supposed to be straight.”

“For ten years.”

“For ten years.”

“Ilyushka,” she says, serious again. “Just promise me you will not give up everything. Okay? That is all I ask.”

Ilya reaches up to cup her cheek. “I promise.”

**

They count down the last ten seconds of the year holding wine glasses filled with the stupid sparkling juice. At midnight, they clink and drink.

“Happy new year, Ilyushka,” she says. “And happy new year to you too, malysh. Even if you are already a buzzkill and you are not even born yet.”

Ilya rubs his stomach. “Happy new year, Sveta. And thank you, for coming.”

“Ah, well. I could not let you spend the last free new year of your life being alone and sad. Next year I will sit on two beautiful women’s faces in your honor.”

“Of course. As I expected.”

Sveta sets down her empty glass and opens her arms. “Come here.”

Their bodies fit together, even around Ilya’s stomach, Sveta’s arms around his neck, his around her waist. She is home not because she is the last piece of Russia Ilya has, but because she has seen him at his best and his worst and neither flinched nor looked away.

“I love you, Sveta,” Ilya murmurs.

“I love you, Ilyushka.”

**

Exhaustion hits Ilya embarrassingly soon after midnight, enough so that Svetlana looks at him and volunteers to put the leftovers in the fridge. Ilya leans against the armrest of the couch, forcing himself not to lay down. He will fall asleep and his body will be very angry about that in the morning.

His phone buzzes and he jumps, then straightens himself back up. The notification says he has a voice message from Shane, which is not something Ilya can remember Shane doing before. He ups the volume and taps play.

“S novym godom, Ilya. Ya tebya lyublyu.” Happy New Year -- or close enough.

Ilya looks up at the ceiling because he will not have the first thing he does in this year be crying over a voice note, even if it is from Shane, even if it is Russian. He plays it again, then one more time. And then again.

“His pronunciation is for shit,” Sveta says.

“I don’t care.”

She leans over the back of the couch and wraps her arms around him. “You are so stupid for him, Ilyushka.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. He plays it again.

Chapter End Notes

i checked a couple sources for the russian and i'm 90% confident. the internet is, however, known to lie, so if it's wrong please let me know.

thank you for the comments and feedback, i appreciate it so much <3

i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 9

Chapter Summary

Fake it til' you make it.

Chapter Notes

January starts with a three game series at home for Ottawa.

In theory, Ilya should appreciate having that small buffer to figure out what the fuck he’s supposed to do riding the bench for the rest of the season. In practice, he is still getting deluged by questions from the press (and fans and people with podcasts that have eight listeners that Ilya refuses to consider real press.) Not being in Ottawa sounds fucking great.

They play Washington first and it’s odd, but not so terrible. Ilya’s primary goal is to not be an enormous fucking distraction, so he makes himself scarce in any places the press might be.

The game is scoreless for the first two and a half periods, then a pretty pass from Bood connects with Haas, who snaps the puck over the Washington goalie’s weak left shoulder. The fans go nuts. The Washington bench looks stupefied. It’s fucking great.

Ilya is more nervous than he wants to admit going into the locker room after the game — which is stupid, he knows — but it’s fine. The team is in a great mood, loud and ebullient. Ilya finds Bood and Haas to tell them both how fucking gorgeous that goal was; Bood laughs and Haas turns bright fucking red.

“This is why you have to keep coming to the games,” Bood says, knocking his elbow against Ilya’s. “Team good luck charm is just as important a position as star center.”

Ilya snorts. “I think I will wait to see if you motherfuckers win more than one game before I start planning for second career.”

Bood laughs, a rich and rolling sound that Ilya has become very fond of. “We’ll do our best.”

“You fucking better.”

Three fourths of the team decide to go out and celebrate, but enough decline, citing leftover new years headaches and not being nineteen, that there is no reaction to Ilya also begging off. Which, possibly there would not have been one regardless.; Ilya has been less social in Ottawa than he was in Boston. But still, the cover makes it easier.

Later that night, Ilya is in bed, absently flipping between different social media sites, when Shane calls.

“Hello, lyubimyy,” Ilya says sweetly. “How was your game?”

“Oh, fuck off." Montreal’s first game of the year was a nailbiter loss, all because of the worst possibly timed fumble from a rookie than Shane thinks is cockier than his talent warrants.

“Mine was great, thank you for asking,” Ilya says.

“You’re such an asshole.”

“That is weird way to say ‘congratulations on spectacular win.’”

Shane scoffs. “I saw one good goal—“

“Very good goal. Exceptional goal. Perfect goal.”

There is a beat of silence, in which Ilya knows Shane is mentally reviewing the night’s highlight reel. Then, grudgingly, he says, “Fine. Exceptional goal.”

“You are so right, it was exceptional. I will tell Haas you said this. He might pass out.”

Shane makes a sound of profound annoyance and disgust. Ilya bursts into laughter; he loves this man so fucking much it’s stupid.

**

Ilya wakes up early-ish the next morning and tries to pretend he is not at all wound up about practice.

He fails in his efforts before he even gets out of the shower, accidentally spending fifteen minutes standing beneath the spray with his hands splayed across his belly as his brain cycles through many possible ways for this first practice to go to shit.

Ilya’s traditional strategy for getting through awkward situations has been bravado and bullshit and a willingness to start shoving if people go over the line. He has less freedom to do this now, of course. The fighting part most obviously, but also being an asshole. His trade prospects are limited if he truly blows up his relationships in Ottawa.

“I am supposed to be good at people, malysh,” Ilya says. “Between me and your dad, at least. But I am best at pissing people off and that is not the way to go, I think.”

Eventually he does get out of the shower, dries off, checks his reflection. He gets a text from Shane as he’s brushing teeth: Plane’s about to take off. I love you. Tell the pear I said hi. Ilya splatters toothpaste on the mirror with a bark of laughter.

“Malysh the Pear, your dad says hi,” Ilya dutifully reports.

**

He listens to the radio during his drive to the rink. The win should pull focus to the players who made it happen, but Ilya's absence is the bullshit lens through which much of the chatter passes. It is a mix of insulting shock that the Centaurs are capable of winning without Rozanov and declarations that this proves Ilya Rozanov isn’t shit. Both are extremely annoying.

Ilya rides that annoyance out of his car and into the building. It’s much busier than it was right after Christmas; he exchanges nods and murmured hellos with half a dozen people between the doors and Wiebe’s office.

He cannot tell if people are actually looking at him longer than they need to or if his mind is conjuring up staring that isn’t real. The back of his neck prickles with discomfort that Ilya shoves aside as best he can. If it is real, there is nothing to be done. People are going to look and Ilya making a scene about it will only make it worse.

Ilya knocks on Wiebe’s open door.

“Rozanov, good morning,” Wiebe says. “How are you fe — how are you?”

It is a smooth recovery, but Ilya hears the first syllable of ‘feeling.’ It rankles, a little. Ilya’s brain makes a wild leap to doubt about his abilities that Wiebe absolutely does not intend.

“Pretty fucking good, after last night,” Ilya says.

“Amen to that.” Wiebe smiles broadly. “So, okay. I have been thinking about what to do with you and I think what makes most sense is unofficial assistant coach, focusing on your line. How does that sound to you?”

Ilya gets the hint. His line is Bood, who is exceptional, and Tanner Dillon, who is not.

“Works for me,” Ilya says. “Maybe don’t expect miracles.”

Wiebe nods. “I understand. Do the best you can and we’ll see how it goes.”

**

It is weird to watch from the other side of the boards as the team warms up. It is weird to be at practice in sweats and sneakers rather than skates. It is weird to watch rearranged lines try to fill in his spot. The whole fucking thing is weird, discordant, like a wrong note in a familiar song.

The weirdness of it does not go away as Ilya starts shouting corrections at Dillon, whose deficiencies are underlined by not having someone of Ilya’s caliber to compensate for them. To Dillon’s credit, he does not get pissy about it the way other thin-skinned teammates Ilya has had would, but. Attitude only gets you so far.

Once or twice, Ilya catches Bood’s eye and he nods. Ilya takes it as approval and encouragement and support, which is probably a lot to extrapolate out of one nod. Bood has an expressive face.

Wiebe cycles several people into Ilya's spot, with results that range from okay to 'how the fuck are these people paid real human money to play hockey?' Ilya keeps this observation to himself, but he also catches Wiebe's normal calm broken up by little winces more than once. The problem is that Ottawa does not really have another very solid center to move up to the first line and thus only have a more manageable second line hole to fill.

Haas makes the best show of it, but Dillon cannot keep up with Haas and Bood, and the second line flails without him.

Wiebe waves Ilya over when practice is done and the team heads for the locker room. "What do you think?" he asks.

Ilya shrugs. "No one died?" It isn't much, but at least Wiebe gets a laugh out of it.

**

They play Winnipeg next and it is, charitably, a shitshow.

It is painful to watch from the stands. The entire team is out of sync from the first puck drop. Even the people Ilya privately thinks of as the load-bearing talent of the team, like Bood and Hazy, struggle to get their shit together.

Passes don’t connect and the lines don't keep pace with each other. Two separate people trip over their own fucking skates and go ass over teakettle sprawling across the ice. Hazy lets one get by purely because he’s distracted at a sign a fan is holding up.

It is embarrassing.

“On the plus side,” Harris says, midway through the third period, “at least you’re not down there in the middle of it.”

Ilya groans. “If I was down there in the middle of it I could fucking shake all of them.”

”I think tonight they’d need a more divine kind of intervention to get it together.”

The game wraps up a 5-0 rout and a third of the occupied seats are already empty because of fans deciding to put themselves out of their misery and leave early. Ilya envies them a little.

He still makes his way down the locker room, greeted by a low, scattered round of waves and hellos. Hazy is laying on the floor, half undressed, staring at the ceiling. A couple are already in the shower. Most of the rest are sitting in front of their stalls, stripping off their equipment or looking at their phones.

Ilya makes his way over to Bood. “What was that you said last time? I am good luck charm?”

Bood stares at him, then barks out a helpless laugh.

**

Ilya begs off joining the rest of the team in drowning their sorrows in a small ocean of beer and vodka. There is a weak round of boos in response. “I have plans more fun that watching you fuckers cry,” Ilya says. A couple people flip him off, but it is good natured enough.

He drives straight to the Hollander house from the arena for what Yuna described as dinner, despite it being after ten. He pulls into their driveway and ignores the low pulse of — whatever the fuck it is. Residual guilt, or something, from fleeing their house like a thief after Christmas. Yuna has told him it is fine. David has told him it is fine. Shane asked both of them separately and he says that they said it was fine.

That Ilya is unused to parents without caveats says more about him than the Hollanders.

He grabs a backpack tucked into the footwell of the passenger side, ignores the urge to hunker down in his car for reasons that want to be logical but are only cowardice, goes to their front door, and knocks.

David answers approximately three seconds later, smiling warmly. “It’s good to see you, come on in.”

“Thank you for having me,” Ilya says.

He hangs his coat up on a hook by the door and toes his loosely tied boots off. The slippers he wore in the house during Christmas are on a small shelf beneath the hooks, next to Shane’s. He slides those on and David flashes him a very small thumbs up.

(In the run up to Christmas, both Shane and David had made a point of telling Ilya that shoes are not worn inside the Hollander house, but bare feet are also frowned upon. Yuna would present the slippers as a casual option, but Ilya was to understand them as non-negotiable. Ilya has always worn slides inside his own homes and thus was not shocked, but he found the fervency with which Shane and David emphasized this particular rule very funny.)

Yuna comes around the corner that leads to the kitchen. “I’m glad you could make it, Ilya.”

“Between home cooked meal and eating leftover take out on the couch, it was not a hard choice,” Ilya says. Yuna and David both chuckle. “Is okay if I change out this fucking suit?”

“Of course,” Yuna says. “I assume you remember where the bathroom is?” The corner of her mouth cocks up into a wry grin.

“Oh yes,” Ilya says. “I think I will remember until I die.”

Yuna laughs and waves him off to the bathroom. He quickly pops the fly on his trousers and sighs heavily in relief, running his knuckles around the reddened, indented band of skin across his stomach from the waistband digging in. He shimmies them down, crumples them onto a ball, and shoves them into his backpack. His shirt also gets crumpled but he folds the jacket.

He replaces them with a pair of sweats so old and worn stretched out that it feels very slightly disrespectful to wear outside of his own house, especially in front of the Hollanders, but he picked them by virtue of being comfortable without having to push the waistband down. For the top he has a black tank that stretches a lot and an oversized zip up hoodie.

(He needs to fucking buy clothes that will fit. He just -- doesn't want to.)

Ilya drops his backpack off by the front door, then follows his nose to the kitchen.

**

Dinner is chili and it is very good. Ilya takes several careful bites to run it past his stomach -- the puking has eased up a lot, but not gone away entirely -- then scarfs the rest of the bowl. He is going to have to sleep propped up on seventeen pillows to combat the inevitable heartburn, but it really is very good chili.

Conversation is easy, too. The more time Ilya spends around the Hollanders, the less he second guesses every other thing he says. They talk about the Centaurs while Ilya groans; David valiantly tries to insist it wasn't that bad while Yuna shakes her head. They talk about the Metros win in St. Louis and Shane's two goals while Ilya makes faces. People are talking about the possibility of a third cup for Wonderboy Hollander. Unconscionable.

"By the way, was the email I sent helpful?" Yuna asks, very casually.

Ilya only then remembers he forgot to send even the simplest thank you. "Yes, very helpful. I am sorry, I forgot to say."

Yuna waves him off. "Pregnancy brain happens to the best of us. Did you make a doctor's appointment?"

Ilya makes a mental note to Google what pregnancy brain is supposed to mean and assures Yuna that he has made a doctor's appointment. He refrains from saying that he feels very fucking weird about it, because it is an objectively dumb feeling for Ilya to have about such a basic part of having a baby.

Dinner is interrupted by Ilya's agent calling again. He curses in Russian, rejects the call, and flips his phone face down. Yuna frowns.

“Is that press being pushy?” she asks. “You don’t have to accept harassment.”

Ilya shakes his head. “No, it is my fucking agent.”

Yuna and David exchange a look. Ilya cannot understand the unspoken conversation that passes between them, but he certainly sees it.

“Have you not talked to your agent?” Yuna asks.

Ilya stuffs a bite of chili into his mouth to buy a little time. He has not talked to his agent since the announcement because he already knows exactly how the conversation will go and it will not be pleasant. But explaining this to the Hollanders, who threw the weight of their lives behind their beloved son, would require talking about his miserable family and that always ends in pity. Except with Shane, but Shane is different.

“I cannot talk to him about this,” Ilya finally says. “He is Russian and very traditional. If I tell him I am pregnant he will — he will definitely not help me.”

“I see.” Yuna’s expression goes thoughtful. She taps her thumb on the rim of her bowl. “It sounds like you need a new agent to me.”

Ilya honks a very, very stupid laugh. “He has been my agent since I was rookie.”

Yuna shrugs. “So what? If he’s no longer serving your best interests, you’re not obligated to maintain that relationship.”

The idea is obviously absurd. Ilya has never really considered firing the man, only daydreamed about it. His father would never have allowed it. Bad enough that Ilya did not play for a Russian team, he would at least have his interests represented by a fellow countryman.

"Maybe, but -- I would have to find a new one and hope that they were any better about me having a baby. Or at least not tell everyone they know after kicking me out of their office."

"There are plenty of agents in the world," David says, reasonably.

"Shane likes Farrah a lot," Yuna adds. "Mention it to him the next time you talk."

There is something very -- significant, in the idea of sharing an agent with Shane. Both in the synchronicity of it and in their names being tied together. Ilya swallows hard against a swell of emotion he isn’t quite prepared to examine and nods, says he'll ask Shane how he feels about it.

**

Game three is against Detroit and Ilya is nervous about it to an extent he knows is ridiculous. Giving Dillion a handful of pointers across two practices is only 'coaching' in the most technical sense of the word. He has done as much and more playing on the same line as the kid, to mixed and mediocre results.

"Everyone knows how Tanner Dillon plays," Shane says on the phone, irritatingly reasonable, as Ilya drives to the arena. "At worst he does as well as always. Best case scenario is he does better and they'll have you to thank for it."

"He is not that bad," Ilya says, which is a lie. On principle he cannot allow people from other teams to speak badly of his fellow Centaurs, even if it is Shane and he's right.

"Okay," Shane says in a tone straddling a line between placating and aggressive neutrality. It is a little irritating -- Ilya does not care for being handled like that -- but in the privacy of his car he allows a tiny grin. Shane hides the judgemental asshole part of his personality very well with everyone except Ilya.

They spend the rest of the short drive chatting inconsequentially. Ilya parks and cuts the engine of his car, then picks his phone up out of the mount and holds it to his ear. "I am at arena, I have to go," he says, with a tinge of regret. One of the downsides of not being able to play he failed to anticipate is how much more time he spends looking at his phone during games, hoping to see messages from Shane. It feels very adolescent and a little embarrassing.

"Okay," Shane says. "Wait, one second. I was going to text it to you, but I have a fun fact."

"Tell me."

Ilya hears the shuffle of pages turning. He has asked Shane where the fun facts come from and Shane has refused to tell him, as though Ilya is incapable of guessing that Shane, known reader of very boring biographies and hockey nonfiction, has branched out and bought one or two books about how babies are formed. Ilya would bet that Yuna also sent her son an email, whether or not he requested it.

And yes, Ilya knows fun facts are not a replacement for the conversation they need to have, but they are something, some small sign that Shane is -- invested, maybe.

"Okay," Shane says. "Right now sweat glands are forming."

"Ah yes, extremely exciting."

"They're important," Shane insists. "Especially for athletes."

"You have decided he will be athlete?" Ilya asks lightly, ignoring that he can feel his heart thudding against his ribs.

"I--" Shane cuts himself off and Ilya waits. "Maybe not an athlete," he says hesitantly. "But probably athletic, right? Given -- us."

"Yes," Ilya agrees. "Probably."

**

“Tell Twitter that if Morris wants to stay on top of Haas he should stop being so fucking slow and if he wants Detroit to win he should retire and let someone not one hundred years old have a chance,” Ilya says to Harris midway through the second period.

“You’re right and that is funny, but I am rephrasing it,” Harris says as he types.

“Rude. Give me phone, I will tweet.”

“Absolutely not, I like my job.”

“You do not trust me, Harris? I am offended. But also the fans like when you are mean. I will defend you, I swear.”

Harris publishes a tweet about Haas’s goal with a slightly watered down comment that Morris is going to have to speed up if he wants to keep up and doesn't mention Detroit's flailing goalie at all. Ilya continues making suggestions all through the game, trying to make Harris laugh hard enough that he has to stop typing. It isn’t goals, but it is scoring points, in a way.

Haas’s goal is the only one of the game. Ilya is deeply torn between exultation at the win and a pouting kind of envy he tries very hard to ignore. There are so many games left in the season that he will have to watch from the sidelines.

The locker room is loud and nearly as happy as Boston was when they won the fucking cup, which Ilya supposes is the upside of low expectations. But their joy is infectious and Ilya deliberately sinks into it; he cannot spend the next five months resentful, everyone will end up hating him.

He makes his way over to Haas, slings an arm around his neck and ruffles his hair. “That was fucking beautiful,” Ilya shouts. The rest of the team cheer and Haas makes a strangled noise of mortification and turns bright red.

Ilya falls into the familiar rhythm of the post-game, talking and bullshitting and trading affection insults. He could almost forget it is different at all. Wiebe comes in smiling with congratulations and generous praise. He even cancels practice to a round of cheering.

As they finish showering and dressing in their street clothes, people start tossing out suggestions of where to celebrate the win. The younger guys lean toward a club, the older a bar. Ilya is only half paying attention. He can have a good time anywhere.

“Rozy, you coming with?” Hazy asks.

Ilya looks up from his phone and thinks, why not? He is in a good mood. He will be the only sober one, but even that is more appealing than his empty house.

Before he can answer, Dykstra hisses, “Dude, come on,” at Hazy in a low voice that the entire room can still hear.

Hazy looks as bewildered as Ilya feels. “What?”

“He can’t, dude.” Dykstra gestures toward his stomach.

Hazy swivels to Ilya. “You can’t go out at all?”

Something very ugly and too close to rage spikes through Ilya.

Conversation falls to awkward murmurs; some of them try to pretend they are not listening, but most do not. Ilya’s free hand twitches toward his stomach, which he cannot allow in this moment and so he curls it into a fist instead. His skin begins to crawl with awareness of the eyes on him. Ilya manages a laugh, but it sounds too sharp and tight to be real.

“I can't fucking drink, I will not fucking explode if I take one step into a place with liquor," he snaps, and only then does he realize the Centaurs have not seen him truly angy yet.

Dykstra's face blotches with patches of red and his expression twists into mulish anger that he has no right to. And Ilya should find a way to make a joke and play the moment off with a show of good humor. He should appreciate that the intention is misguided care and there are many other teams that would close ranks and push him out. The kindness with which the team has treated him should buy them grace in their fumbling with a situation that is also new to them.

Ilya does none of that.

"My fucking bad," Dykstra mutters, turning to face his stall with his head ducked.

Hazy shoots Ilya a helplessly apologetic look and mouths 'sorry.’ Ilya nods stiffly in acknowledgement, forestalling an apology that Hazy doesn't owe him and that Ilya has no desire to hear. Conversation slowly picks back up, but it stays muted and the unabashed, celebratory mood is gone.

Half the team, Dykstra included, decide to go to one of Ottawa's very mediocre clubs. Ilya's desire to join them has curdled, but not doing so is a concession that his pride cannot stomach. He goes with the rest of the team, which includes most of the guys who have kids, to a bar.

He drinks Coke without the usual whiskey and adds nothing to the conversation beyond one word answers. Bood and Hazy both try to coax him in, but Ilya has nothing for them that is not poisoned by anger they are not responsible for.

Chouinard raps his knuckles on the table after less than an hour and says he has to get home. Ilya uses the excuse to leave, too, and tells himself he's imagining his teammates eyes on his back as he goes.

**

Ilya is sitting on his couch in his suit with the fly unzipped, stewing in a morass of anger and regret and embarrassment when Shane calls an hour later.

Ilya looks at his phone and sees Jane and seriously considers not answering. His mind is a black whirlpool that Shane does not deserve to be dragged into. Bad days are Ilya’s burden to bear. The idea of Shane seeing it, the way Ilya’s mind sometimes collapses in on itself, is too excruciating.

But worrying Shane is not a significantly better option, and maybe Ilya wants the comfort of his voice.

“Hello, lyubimyy.”

“Congratulations,” Shane says. “That was another exceptional goal.”

“You are so generous with your praise when Montreal has no game,” Ilya says.

Shane does not deign to argue that particular point. “It’s just the truth. Haas is very good.”

“He will be superstar one day. After I retire.”

“Are you okay?” Shane asks.

The question catches Ilya by surprise and he deflects automatically. “Yes, of course.”

“Really?” Shane’s voice is — careful and a little uncertain, the way it always gets when he's trying to puzzle out Ilya's emotions. It doesn't come naturally to him. Ilya hears Yuna Hollander in his mind: you two should tell each other this kind of thing.

“No,” Ilya says, wincing at the horrible nakedness of a single word. “I am a little bad.”

”What happened?” A thread of tension enters Shane’s voice, but he does a pretty good job of containing it.

“It is very stupid.”

“Tell me anyway?”

Ilya tips his head back and closes his eyes. “After the game, Hazy asked if I was going out to celebrate and Dykstra made it a thing that I obviously could not because of being pregnant.”

It sounds so much fucking stupider explained out loud.

“They care about you,” Shane says. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Ilya does not know how to explain the helpless fury of people with no right to control his behavior making such decisions without bothering to fucking ask Ilya first. How, for a terrible moment, Ilya was back standing in silence next to his father, forbidden from saying a single word about his own life.

“They do not get to dictate what I do,” Ilya says. “I am not a fucking child or crazy or stupid. They were talking about me right fucking in front of me. They would not have done that a month ago.”

Ilya eyes prickle and he fucking hates it, hates feeling like his own body is arguing the exact opposite of what he wants, hates the seed of doubt it plants in his mind that actually Ilya cannot be trusted to handle himself.

“It’s belittling?” Shane suggests.

“Yes.” Ilya sniffles like a crying toddler. “It is fucking belittling.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ilya huffs a watery laugh. “Me fucking too.”

“What — how can I make it better?” Shane asks.

“I don’t know. Probably you can’t.” Ilya scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes. “Come fuck me so I have something else to think about.”

It’s a joke, but Shane says, “Okay. I’ll be there in two hours.”

Ilya snorts. “Very funny, Hollander.”

“I’m not joking.”

“You have practice tomorrow morning,” Ilya counters, ignoring the painful flare of hope in his chest. “You are going to drive two hours here and back before 8:00 AM? That is crazy, Shane.”

“I’ll sleep a couple hours with you and I’ll be a little tired tomorrow. It’s one practice.”

”I was joking. You do not need to do this. I am okay.”

“Would it help?” Shane asks, a thread of stubbornness in his tone. “Be honest.”

Ilya sighs. “I am always better when I am around you.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in two hours.”

**

It is impossible for Ilya to really believe that Shane “Noted Overachiever” Hollander will sacrifice practice in the name of sex, but he gets up off the couch anyway. He showers. Puts clean sheets on the bed. Checks the fridge for cold ginger ale. He even does the dishes, because Shane is incapable of sleeping with even one cup in the sink.

Shane shows up in worn joggers he only uses as pajamas with a half-empty backpack slung over one shoulder; a domestic version of him Ilya usually only gets in summer at the cottage. Shane opens his arms, says, “Come here,” and Ilya folds into him. Buries his face in the curve of Shane’s neck, fists his hands in Shane’s shirt. Lets himself be rocked with Shane’s hand warm on the back of his head.

“Is this the most irresponsible thing you have ever done?” Ilya asks.

”Other than falling in love with you, yeah, probably.”

**

When they move, Shane laces their fingers together and leads Ilya up the stairs to the bedroom; he closes the door and Ilya exhales.

"Let me take care of you," Shane says. "Please?"

Ilya's first instinct is to make a joke out of the request, but Shane is looking at him with pleading in his pretty brown eyes.

So, Ilya allows Shane to gently push him down onto the unmade bed. He opens his legs and Shane steps into the spread of them, cupping Ilya's jaw in both his palms. Shane soothes the muscles at the hinge with his thumbs. They release and Ilya's mouth opens; Shane murmurs something low and appreciative that Ilya does not fully catch because Shane also feeds both thumbs in. Ilya circles both blunt digits with his tongue and sucks.

The dark night contracts down to just each other, untouchable. Shane slips his thumbs out of Ilya's mouth to pull off his hoodie and toss it aside. Ilya makes a low noise of longing and leans in, pressing his face into Shane's stomach. He smells like woodsy bodywash, clean and comforting. Shane slides his fingers through Ilya's hair, easing through the tangles; then he scratches lightly and Ilya arches into it.

"Good," Shane murmurs. "I've got you."

He unzips Ilya's hoodie and pushes it down his shoulders. Ilya shimmies it the rest of the way off and throws it across the bedroom in the vague direction of the laundry basket. Shane rolls his eyes, but his mouth curls into a fond smile. They both pull Ilya's shirt off; Shane takes it and tosses it toward the laundry basket. It is barely a joke, but they both giggle.

Shane kisses the top of Ilya's head, lingering for a moment, then he takes half a step back and sinks down to his knees.

Ilya has seen him do this a hundred times, at least. Shane loves being there, belongs there in the same instinctively animal way he was designed to be fucked. It spikes heat into the cradle of Ilya's hips every fucking time, makes his cock thicken every fucking time. Shane looks up at Ilya through the sweep of his lashes and runs his palms up Ilya's thighs.

Ilya understands the intention without needing to be told. Shane hooks his fingers in the waistband of Ilya's sweats and Ilya lifts his hips and together they yank them down to Ilya's thighs. Shane pulls them the rest of the way off and away. Shane's mouth drops open with a soft, needy sound.

It is the first time Ilya has been completely naked in front of Shane since telling him about being pregnant; Ilya’s body has changed since then. An uncertain kind of shyness makes his fingers twitch with the urge to — cover himself.

Ilya looks at his body a lot, is the thing. He knows all the places it is different from from the version that Shane loves so much.The firm curve of his stomach and the bracketing stretch marks are only the most obvious. His nipples are bigger, and have darkened to a true brown. His fucking posture has started to shift as the weight of Malysh tips his hips forward.

“What do you think?” Ilya asks lightly. “So hot, I know.”

Shane looks up at him with lust-drunk wonder. “Yes. Always.”

“It’s not — it’s not too weird?” Ilya wants to sound like he’s teasing. He does not.

Shane runs his palms up Ilya’s thighs again, slow and very careful, then around Ilya’s hips and up his sides. He brushes his thumbs over Ilya’s nipples; Ilya arches and sucks in a sharp breath at the stupid strong flare of sensation. Then back down, to Ilya’s stomach, hands splayed over the strange new topography.

“It’s a little weird,” Shane says. “Not in a bad way.”

Ilya swallows hard. “Okay.” He pushes his fingers through Shane’s hair and tugs a little; Shane’s face goes slack and he sighs out a low noise of pleasure.

Shane leans forward and kisses Ilya’s stomach. It is something he has done so many times in ten years making his way down from Ilya's lips to his cock. Shane is mouthy in bed. He bites and kisses, chasing after fingers and cock to fill him up. But it is different and there is no point in pretending otherwise.

"Okay?" Shane murmurs and the brush of his lips against Ilya's skin makes him shudder.

Ilya nods. "Yes."

The quality of Shane's kissing goes hot and sucking. Raunchy, Ilya thinks. He doesn't remember where he learned the word and he's not sure he totally knows what it means, but a fragment of memory says, hot and kind of dirty at the same time. Shane kisses the inside of Ilya's thighs, back and forth, leaving his claim on Ilya in tender skin that will darken to bruises by morning.

Then Shane cups Ilya’s balls in one hand and circles the other around Ilya’s half-hard cock. Electricity slices through Ilya’s hips, up his spine and back down. Ilya makes a stupid, garbled sound and Shane fucking laughs at him; the sound of it is warm and erotic for some fucking reason.

“Missed me?” Shane asks.

“Only your mouth,” Ilya gasps.

Shane licks the underside vein and Ilya makes another stupid noise. This time, when Shane laughs, the vibration of it buzzes around Ilya’s cock and Ilya’s brain empties of all thought more complicated than desperate desire. Shane’s mouth is hot as a brand, familiar as a home, and hungry as Ilya is. Ilya’s hand curls into a fist in Shane’s hair. He can feel the top of Shane's head brushing against the underside of his stomach.

Shane has a natural talent for sucking cock that Ilya sometimes thinks outstrips his talent for hockey, and in ten years he has learned the intricacies of Ilya's body in better detail than Ilya has. Ilya's hand in his hair makes him greedier for it, pushing down further and further.

It has been weeks since they saw each other and Ilya knows he cannot last and doesn’t try to. Pleasure coils up in his hips like a wound spring. His thighs start to shake and Shane understands, swallowing Ilya down past the outer edge of comfortable.

“Shane, Shane, Shane,” Ilya chants until the words devolve into garbled, panting groans and he comes down Shane’s throat.

**

Ilya is still panting in the aftermath as he reaches for Shane to pull him up onto the bed, clumsy hands hungry for the hard cock that is always waiting for him after he comes down Shane's throat. And Shane comes up, sprawling half on top of Ilya. Ilya shoves his thigh between Shane's legs and he's still hard, but hisses in discomfort.

It takes Ilya a second to figure it out. The realization of what happened bursts through Ilya like the laugh of delight that follows. Shane's cheeks color and he mutters. "Sorry, I came already."

The only moment Ilya has loved him more is the first one, when Shane folded his clothes in the middle of a hook-up.

**

Shane cleans them both up and gently bullies Ilya into getting all the way onto the bed and beneath the blankets. Ilya floats in a doze, listening to Shane brush his teeth and wash his face. The Ilya of three years ago, first realizing that maybe he accidentally caught some small feelings, would never believe that one day he would know the order of Shane’s nighttime routine.

Shane settles into bed smelling like mint and fits himself along Ilya’s side, warm and solid. “Was that a good enough distraction?” he murmurs.

Ilya hums a contented sort of sound. “Yeah, pretty good.”

“Good." For a moment, they lay together in easy, content silence. Then, “Can I ask you a question?”

Ilya groans. “Yes, but you will get a fucked out and tired answer.”

"Did you tell Marleau?" Shane asks, quiet.

Ilya is so unprepared for the question that for a moment he is nineteen again, listening to his teammates bullshit back and forth so quickly Ilya's English could not keep up. He opens his eyes and looks searchingly at Shane's face. "Marley?"

"Did you tell Marleau about being pregnant?"

"Not yet," Ilya says after a just too-long pause.

"Why not?" Shane asks.

Ilya hesitates.

It is almost two in the morning and Shane will have to leave so early to make it to practice on time. Ilya is warm and sated and very well-fucked. It is easier to shrug off the question and Shane would not press. The honest answer is an uncomfortable one, and Ilya has so little comfort in his life. Less with each day that passes.

"Because even if I tell him about Malysh, I will still have to lie about why I left Boston," Ilya says. "And I am tired of lying to him."

"Oh." So soft, that sound. "Do you want to tell him everything?"

There is care in how Shane makes his way through the question. Ilya hears the echoes of other things Shane has asked him: Sick like crazy? Is it very terrible? The hand Shane is carding through Ilya's hair is trembling the smallest little bit. Ilya wants, with overwhelming fierceness, to protect Shane from every single thing that terrifies him.

"Yes," Ilya says.

Explanations crowd the back of his mouth. Pregnancy makes Sveta viscerally uncomfortable. Ilya has no one he can talk to about everything other than the Hollanders, and their acceptance and kindness does not make them any less Shane's parents. Ilya never gets to talk about the full truth of what Shane is to him. Ottawa is so fucking lonely sometimes.

But Shane nods before Ilya can voice any of them. “Do you trust him?”

”Yes.” Ilya wonders if he is dreaming. “I trust him. More than Pike, anyways.”

A moue of exasperation flickers across Shane’s face, quickly gone. “You can tell him,” Shane says. “Everything.”

Ilya stares at him. “Everything.”

“Yes.”

“I — are you sure?”

Shane nods. “My family and best friend know. Yours should, too.”

“Hollander.” Ilya reaches up to cup Shane’s jaw in his hand. “Are you sure?”

He watches a tangle of emotions play out on Shane's face in the way he swallows and chews on his bottom lip, his brows drawing in so much the worry crease appears between them, his eyes flicking away from Ilya, down and to the side and up and back around.

"It really fucking scares me," Shane says, at last. "I don't -- feel sure. But it's not fair for my shit to dictate what you do. Fake it 'til you make it, I guess."

Ilya kisses him.

Chapter End Notes

shoutout to my beloved wife for suggesting shane come in his pants.

also! heads up: i am going into a really busy time of year at work and i have some other writing commitments with deadlines coming up, so updates will probably be every other week through summer.

i do have some shorter interlude scenes of things that ilya's pov kept out of the main story that i'll try to throw up between chapter updates if i can swing it.

thank you all so much for the comments and feedback. this is the longest thing i've ever written solo and the encouragement means a lot to me.

i am also on tumblr as technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 10

Chapter Summary

a doctor and a best friend

Chapter Notes

Ilya spends the night before his first baby doctor appointment watching the Centaurs play the Mammoths in Utah from his couch, trying not to be annoyed that he is not there in person. Not out of any affection for Utah; it is a weird state full of weird people with no coffee.

What bothers him is staying behind for the first road trip since being benched. There is a tinge of significance to his being absent that rankles, like he is conceding to Dykstra having a point about all the things Ilya cannot do. Ilya knows this is not rational, and yet.

He is not in Utah because he forgot to check Ottawa’s schedule when he took the first appointment he was offered. Dykstra pulled him aside at the end of practice and coughed up an awkward apology that he clearly rehearsed with Caitlin. It is possible some deeply uncharitable part of Ilya briefly longed to tell Dykstra to eat shit, but Ilya manfully restrained himself.

(Is Ilya still planning on pointedly asking Hazy or Bood if Dykstra has permission to go out for the rest of the season? Who can say. Ilya is not a perfect man.)

He checks on Montreal’s game against Winnipeg, too. Shane gets a hat trick two fucking seconds into the second period. The boyfriend in Ilya is so fucking proud of his generationally talented man. The Centaur in Ilya is deeply annoyed at Montreal’s spectacular season. A third cup in ten years is frankly greedy.

Truthfully, Ilya is barely paying attention to either game. The spectre of his looming obstetrician — a word that keeps bumbling off his tongue to the point that it is starting to be actively irritating — is like a predator breathing hotly on the back of his neck. This is a dramatic metaphor, Ilya knows. So is the anxiety roiling in his gut.

Yuna suggested that he write down a list of questions for the baby doctor beforehand so he does not have to remember them in the moment. Yuna’s advice is pretty much always worth following, so Ilya has a notebook on the armrest of the couch, half covered in his chickenscratch Cyrillic handwriting. He is pretty sure most of his questions are too stupid to actually ask.

When does he stop puking for good? Is he allowed to travel on airplanes? Why does he want to eat onion bagels with nutella on them? How big is he going to get? How does birth work?

Ilya skims over the list and groans, rubbing a hand over his face.

He has been reading from the links Yuna sent. He bought a digital copy of one of the books so he could read it on his phone. They are helpful, but Ilya is not the person they are talking to. He is not a woman, he will absolutely not be mama, he does not live with his partner, he has not been dreaming about this since he was small.

What little they have to say specifically about carriers is usually in a footnote or tiny little aside. The most interesting thing he has learned is that nobody really knows what percentage of men are carriers because so many of them only find out by accident. There is a kind of camaraderie in knowing he is not special.

(He has also learned that Alexei is probably a carrier, too. And his father definitely was one. Ilya’s fucking feelings about that shit are too complicated to even consider, so he does his best not to think about it at all.)

On his TV, Utah scores and Ilya sighs. The Centaurs are doing their best, but they have an unavoidable center-shaped hole in their game. There is only so much they can do. Ilya wants to be on the ice so fucking bad.

Guilt follows in the wake of wanting. To the list he adds: did he hurt Malysh playing hockey?

**

The Centaurs lose and Montreal wins. It is terrible.

A couple hours later, he gets a text from Shane that says, fun fact: the bones are ossifying. Ilya immediately calls him.

“Hi,” Shane says. In the background, Ilya can hear the mumble of Pike saying that if Shane wants to have phone sex he is going to have to do it in the bathroom because poor little Pike is tired.

“What the fuck is ossifying?” Ilya asks. “Also tell Pike that he is not worthy of listening to our phone sex.”

“Nope, I will not tell him that,” Shane says. “Ossifying means the bones are turning into bone.”

Because that makes sense. “What do you mean bones is turning into bone? What were they before?”

“Oh. I don’t know, it doesn’t say. Cartilage, maybe?”

“Weird.” Ilya makes a face that he is glad Shane cannot see. There is something intensely disquieting about the thought of hard bones in the center of all his soft organs.

“Bones are important,” Shane says with a level of sincerity that suggests he thinks Ilya might not already know this.

“Yes, I know. Especially if you are athletic.”

“I mean — yes.” Ilya can hear Shane blushing from two thousand kilometers away. “Right. That’s true. Probably. Definitely. Anyway. How are you?”

Ilya allows the deflection. He is not sure how much teasing about this Shane can handle before it tips into overthinking and panic; he’ll retreat if that happens and Ilya needs him to — not do that.

“I am okay,” Ilya says. “I have to go to doctor tomorrow.”

He wants to sound casual and he mostly does. Knowing Pike is fucking eavesdropping helps. Ilya would rather die than than admit to being nervous where Hayden fucking Pike can hear.

“I remember,” Shane says. His tone softens slightly. “Is there anything I can do?”

Shane could skip Montreal’s next game, come to Ottawa, and go with Ilya to the stupid fucking appointment. If Ilya begged — sincerely begged — Shane would probably do it. Probably. Maybe.

But it isn’t a fair thing to ask. Ilya could have figured out a day where Shane coming was possible, if not exactly likely, but he didn’t and that is on him.

“No, is okay. It is just doctor appointment. Not a big deal.”

“Okay. Call me afterward?”

“I will,” Ilya promises.

**

Ilya watches the clock on his bedside table tick from 1:59 to 2:00 and groans.

“Are you doing this, malysh?” he asks.

He’s so fucking tired and he’s been trying to fall asleep, but every time he starts to drift off something snatches him back.

His calf cramped up hard enough that he started spitting Russian curses and had to roll out of bed to stretch it out. Laying on his back made heartburn lick up through his chest and into his throat. Ilya does not sleep on his side and trying to is uncomfortable. He has to pee twice.

“Are you nervous, too?” Ilya asks, palming his stomach. “And I know it is not your fault. I am just complaining.”

He doesn’t want to go to the fucking baby doctor.

The whole thing, the idea of needing this kind of doctor at all, makes him extremely fucking uncomfortable. It’s embarrassing, maybe? Which is stupid and nonsensical. Ilya’s job is his body and he has no choice but to be attuned to it. He’s used to doctors and physical therapists.

But maybe that is actually part of it. It bothers him, a little, that he did not know this fundamental thing about himself. It bothers him a lot. His body has kept a secret from him and that feels absurdly like betrayal. Because now he has to wonder what else he doesn’t know. He has to consider the possibility of more secrets.

And the stupid questions multiply and multiply and multiply. Ilya doesn’t know shit about babies, having one or making one, and how is he supposed to trust that his body knows what it is doing under these conditions?

How does he know if something is wrong? He can tell whether a muscle is strained or sprained or torn, whether his nose has been bashed or fully broken, if a bruise will be purple or red-tinged. Practical things. Injury things. Hockey things.

Being pregnant is more like having a sickness, at least so far. And not that he ever really thought about what it would be like to be pregnant, but his impression had been like — holding an egg or something. A baby needed the protection of another body, but was itself separate, contained.

Ilya does not feel separation. Separation is bullshit. His body is a resource for this other body to draw on. It takes. He looked up the ossifying thing after he talked to Shane and learned that babies leech calcium. Ilya needs that calcium so his bones don't shatter like twigs next season.

And the idea of Shane seeing this is a little terrible, after Ilya convinced him they could have this baby and the rest of their lives at the same time. To struggle with things makes Ilya feel like a liar. He said this was what he wanted, so what right does he have to bitch and whine that he’s tired and sick of puking?

And what if something is wrong? Ilya has been shying away from that thought. That possibility. He took hits, really hard hits, and the only protection Malysh had was muscle and skin. He’d felt like there was no other choice at the time, but it feels so fucking selfish now.

“I am sorry,” Ilya murmurs. “Please be okay.”

**

The morning of is overcast and cold, the kind of unpleasant weather where all the snow is gray and the sidewalks are crusted in layers of salt and are still fucking icy.

Ilya slowly eats a couple onion bagels leaning against the kitchen island, scrolling through his phone. He has a couple very casual messages from teammates asking how he’s doing. Ilya suspects he will be very sick of that question long before his baby is outside of him. Pike posted a picture of him and Shane eating at some restaurant. Fucking Pike.

“Your dad is gonna try to convince you to like Hayden Pike,” Ilya says. “We will not do this, not even to make your dad happy.”

He leaves the house earlier than he strictly needs to and drives to a nondescript office building. The sign out front lists a couple different kinds of doctors. He doesn’t know what an endocrinologist is.

He sits in his car for a couple minutes. He is doing that a lot, lately, and it’s a little less fun in a boring blue SUV with four wheel drive that’s good in the snow than it is in a Spyder.

“We could just go to the woods,” he says. “Find a — I don’t know. A bear cave. Come back down when you’re done cooking. Would make your dad sad, though. And your grandparents. And maybe Hazy and Bood. So probably better not.”

Ilya decides he’s probably not going to get more courageous hiding in his car from a doctor at 10:00 AM on a weekday, so he goes inside.

**

It looks like a doctor’s office.

Ilya feels a little foolish for being as surprised by that as he is. Of course it looks like a doctor’s office, it is a doctor’s office. He never expected to see dozens of patients with broken bones sticking out of their bodies at orthopedists.

What sense does it make that the obstetrician would have a thousand babies overflowing out the door?

But the office is just a set of double doors with a plaque next to it listing the names of the doctors. Ilya reads them one by one with his hand wrapped around the handle; the one he’s seeing, Ivanov, is second from the top

He peers through the narrow pane of glass to the room within. He sees a couple upholstered chairs and a low coffee table with a bunch of little pamphlets in a plastic display. There is a fish tank against one wall. A woman sits behind a counter, typing on a computer.

Ilya swallows hard. He does not want to do this.

“Fuck,” Ilya mutters. “Fuck me.”

If he turned around and left, no one would stop him. He could tell Shane that he went, and Yuna and David and the Sveta and the team; he could lie to them and he would not be questioned, not immediately. A lie that could not last forever, of course, but it could buy him time.

Time for what, though? To pretend that he is prepared for this enormous thing when he isn’t? Time to reconcile the certainty and the fear rolling around in his brain making him second guess every single fucking thing he has done since September?

Those are excuses, not reasons, and they are not good enough.

Ilya pulls the door open and steps inside.

**

Five minutes later, the woman behind the counter has led him through a door to an exam room in the back. She gives him an iPad with some forms to fill out and says that the doctor will be along shortly. If she recognizes Ilya by name or by face, she gives absolutely no indication of it. She closes the door when she leaves.

The exam room is exactly the same as any other Ilya has ever been in. There is an exam table with medical instruments hanging on the wall beside it, some cabinets with a sink, a computer with the monitor attached to an arm that can swivel around.

The only thing that marks it out as a baby doctor office is a poster with a heavily pregnant woman and man in profile. Their normal organs have been squashed to make room for their babies. This makes sense and is still not something that Ilya has considered.

”Fuck, malysh,” Ilya mutters.

He shifts in his chair to put the poster a little bit at his back. Is this cowardice? Maybe, but a cowardice that Ilya can live with, given the scale of terrifying shit he’s dealing with. He starts filling out the forms on the iPad and quickly runs into large chunks asking questions he cannot answer.

The extent of what he knows about his parents’ medical history is that his father died from dementia and his mother died from despair. He knows absolutely nothing about Shane’s medical history outside of hockey; it had not occurred to him that such a thing would come up, which makes him feel foolish again. Half of Malysh is Shane.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and texts Shane and Yuna and David: is there history of illness in the Hollander family I should tell baby doctor?

Someone knocks briskly on the door and Ilya jumps. “May I come in?” they ask.

Ilya shoves his phone back in his pocket. “Da. Yes. Come in.”

The doctor that enters is a man in his late forties with neatly trimmed dark brown hair peppered through with gray and a short cropped beard. He wears glasses with no rims and has a pleasant, nondescript face. He reminds Ilya a little bit of Wiebe; they share a quiet calmness that makes Ilya fractionally relax.

He closes the exam room door and sits on a rolling stool by the computer.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Ivanov,” he says.

He does not have a Russian accent, but there is a certain Russian familiarity to the cadence of his voice. Russians parents, Ilya thinks, or at least grandparents that he spent a lot of time around growing up.

“Ilya,” Ilya says, then, “Rozanov. Ilya Rozanov.”

Dr. Ivanov smiles. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Yes. It is for me to you, also.” Ilya grimaces. His tongue is clumsy from nerves. He sounds like a rook fresh from Moscow, not someone who has spent ten years living in America and Canada.

Dr. Ivanov nods at Ilya, then turns to the computer. “Let me pull you up and we can get started.”

Ilya tries not to fidget and the best he can manage is toying with the string on his hoodie rather than bouncing his leg, deciding that is probably the less annoying of the two.

“So, this is your first OB appointment,” Dr. Ivanov says. “Is that correct?”

Ilya nods. “Yes. I know I am late for it. I did not—" He does not know how to end the sentence.

Dr. Ivanov looks away from the screen and Ilya expects disapproval in his expression that is not there. “It’s not uncommon for people to come in for a first appointment a little later than would be absolutely ideal. The important point is that you’re here.”

Ilya looks to the ceiling for a couple seconds, unwilling to cry in front of this man. “Yeah, okay,” he says.

Dr. Ivanov turns back to the computer. Eyes on the screen, he casually moves a half empty box of tissues to the edge of the counter, where Ilya can reach. “Since this is your first appointment, it’ll run longer than most of the rest of them will. We’ll go over your medical history, your family’s medical history, anything you know about the contributing partner’s medical history—“

“Contributing partner?” Ilya echoes, eyebrow raised.

“It’s not great, I know," Dr. Ivanov says, "but father and other father and mother and other mother and contributing mother and carrying father can get very confusing very quickly. So, it’s carrier and contributor for the sake of clarity.”

“Ah, okay. I will have to tell him that.”

“You’re welcome to bring him or any one else you’d like to future appointments.”

Ilya makes a noncommittal noise and looks down at his hands. He expects Dr. Ivanov to ask about the empty space in the room where Shane should be, but he doesn’t. Ilya exhales from a strange tangle of relief and regret. The ache of missing Shane throbs in his chest.

“Okay, so.” Dr. Ivanov turns back to Ilya. “The plan for today. Like I said, we’ll go over medical history. We’ll take blood and urine samples. We also do an ultrasound to get a sense of how far along you are and your due date. We can also talk a little bit about what the rest of this process looks like.”

“Oh, just all of that. No problem,” Ilya says. “Easy.”

“It’s overwhelming for a lot of people,” Dr. Ivanov says mildly. “I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Yeah,” Ilya says. “Okay.”

**

A nurse comes to take some of Ilya’s blood, then hands him a cup to piss in and points to a bathroom down the hall.

He locks the door, then turns and leans against it, head tipped back and eyes closed. He inhales deeply and exhales slowly. The last time he was in a bathroom with a stupid plastic cup was in the final fucking moments of his normal life. This test cannot make him — more pregnant, obviously. His stomach still clenches at the memory.

He’d been so fucking annoyed about having to hand his piss over when he obviously had some kind of stomach virus. How certain he had been. How fucking ignorant.

It is unpleasantly visceral to remember that awful fucking day. A faintly sour taste fills the back of his mouth and he almost gags. He shudders a little and looks down. For a moment, he is faintly startled to see the curve of his belly.

“Fuck this,” Ilya mutters, shaking his head. He lived through that day and he will live through this one. Peeing in a cup is not difficult; there is no reason for him to make it difficult.

He pushes off the door and sets the cup on the edge of the sink. He pulls his phone out of his pocket to see if Shane or Yuna or David responded to his question about important Hollander medical history, but none have.

Ilya shoves his phone back into his pocket, shoves down his sweats and pisses in the fucking cup. There’s a little cubby on the bathroom wall with a sign that says to leave all samples there. Ilya does, washes his hands, and goes back to the fucking exam room.

When Dr. Ivanov comes back, Ilya asks, “What are the tests for?”

“Several things.” Dr. Ivanov ticks them off on his fingers. “Standard bloodwork to check for underlying issues that might not be caused by pregnancy, but could have an impact. We’re checking hemoglobin and Rh factor. We can also do genetic testing on baby for several conditions.”

"Conditions?” Ilya asks. “What conditions?”

“Chromosomal abnormalities, like Down’s syndrome or genetic conditions, like cystic fibrosis.”

“That— I mean.” Ilya feels worry cramping up his chest like the muscles in his legs after long, long bag skates. “That all sounds bad.”

“I understand,” Dr. Ivanov says. “These conditions are rare, especially if there’s no family history. And if testing showed the presence of something, it’s not a guaranteed worse case scenario. There are a lot of people in the world with these conditions living happy lives.

“Okay.” Ilya forces himself to exhale, absently rubbing a small circle on his belly. “I have another question.”

“Of course.” Dr. Ivanov says.

“Do you know—“ Ilya grimaces. “There is no way to ask this and not sound like a fucking asshole. Do you know who I am? What I do?”

Dr. Ivanov smiles wryly. “Yes, I have heard your name before. I believe you play hockey.”

”Da. Yes. I — okay. I played the whole season, from September to Christmas, yes? Hockey is not, you know, gentle. I took hits, a lot of them. What is normal for hockey. Did I—“ Ilya’s throat clogs and he has to cough it away. “Did I hurt him?”

“I see.” Dr. Ivanov’s expression softens. Not to pity, Ilya couldn’t bear pity. But understanding. “So, yes, there are risks associated with high intensity activities. That being said, the primary risk would be miscarriage and that hasn’t happened.”

Relief floods through Ilya so hard his head spins for a second. “He is okay?”

“I can’t say that for sure right now. There’s nothing jumping out as a major concern. But we’ll get a good look during the sonogram and go from there.

Ilya nods.

**

Going through his own medical history is easy enough.

It is mostly hockey injuries, and thus extensive, but not terribly relevant. Broken bones, knocked out teeth, sprains and tears and one concussion when he was a teenager. These things are not inheritable, except perhaps in the possibility that Ilya’s child will also be an adrenaline junkie.

It is more difficult to talk about his father. Ilya says ‘dementia’ and pauses, braced for the uncomfortable sympathy of people who assume an easier relationship than Ilya had with his father. Dr. Ivanov, to his credit, only makes a note and nods. Ilya does not know if that is medical training or also having a Russian father, but he appreciates it either way.

Harder still is his mother.

“She died when I was twelve,” Ilya says. His hands drift toward his stomach. Protectiveness, maybe, or comfort. He isn’t sure and it doesn’t matter.

“How did she pass?” Dr. Ivanov asks.

Ilya swallows hard. The last and only time he has ever told this story was at the cottage with his head in Shane’s lap, staring into a fire while the loons called through the darkness across the lake.

In truth, there are fewer and fewer people each year who know the full truth about Irina Rozanov’s death. Her death certificate says accident, not suicide, something Ilya did not know until he was in his twenties and accidentally found a copy while looking for other papers one summer. In retrospect, it only makes sense. It would have reflected poorly on Grigori Rozanov to have a wife choose death over life with him.

The idea of repeating the English words he told Shane is uncomfortable. In Russian, he says, “She swallowed a bottle of pills.”

At that, the smallest sympathetic wince flickers across Dr. Ivanov’s face, but no more. “Did she have a history of mental illness prior to that?”

God, it has been so long since Ilya spoke Russian with anyone other than Svetlana. Shane is trying to learn, but it is harder going than French was. Ilya appreciates the effort, but it is very different to exchange slow toddler sentences with Shane than it is to just speak.

“She was sad a lot,” Ilya says. “I was young, I never knew more than that. She was just sad, as far back as I can remember.”

Dr. Ivanov writes a longer note and cold unease slithers down Ilya’s spine.

“Does that mean something, for us? For me?” Ilya asks.

Dr. Ivanov sets down his pen and steeples his fingers. “It is a risk factor to keep in mind. It increases the statistical odds for you to experience post-partum depression or anxiety.”

The words are vaguely familiar, but no more than that. Again, Ilya realizes that he may be more unprepared for pregnancy than he realized he was and that is a heavy, cold feeling in his chest.

”What is that?” he asks.

“Mental illness that occurs during pregnancy or after giving birth.” Dr. Ivanov explains. “Your mother having a mental illness is a risk factor. It doesn't guarantee you will. That being said, post-partum depression and anxiety are more common than people think. A lot of carrying parents experience some degree of it."

“What happens?” Ilya waves a vague hand. “If it does — what will that mean?”

“We’d treat it like we would if you were dealing with mental health issues and weren’t pregnant. Having a support system is important, therapy or counseling, possibly medication, if necessary.”

Which sounds equally shitty to Ilya, but he keeps that thought to himself.

**

The physical exam is both awkward and uncomfortable, but bearable. Ilya blurts, “You are the first new fingers to be inside me in a long time,” and Dr. Ivanov visibly restrains himself from laughing.

Ilya actually does know what an ultrasound is, a bright spark of competence in the middle of all the other shit he doesn’t know. He’s gotten a couple for injuries over the years, among the much more frequent x-rays and scans. He figures it can’t be that different when the purpose is looking at a baby rather than a torn ligament.

The technician — a young woman with long dreads and a piercing in her nose that Ilya immediately likes — has him bare his stomach. Which is a little weird. The only other people who have seen the evidence of Malysh are Shane and Sveta, both of whom have also seen him naked a thousand times. It is different for a stranger.

But the technician is cheerful and professional as she tucks towels into the waistband of his pants and the hem of his raised shirt. “So we don’t get any goo on your clothes,” she explains. “It will wash out, but slimy fabric feels gross.”

”You know this from experience?” Ilya asks lightly.

”So much personal experience.”

Ilya expects the goo to be cold, but it isn’t. The technician catches the surprise on his face and laughs. “This set up is a fancy one with a bottle warmer,” she explains. “It’s nice, right?”

Ilya has to choke down the first thought that comes to his mind, which is wondering if there’s something similar for sex lube. Shane complains endlessly about the cold when they fuck in winter.

“Yes, very nice,” he says, slightly strangled.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket while the technician fiddles with the machine. No message from Shane or Yuna or David still, which irrationally stings. Ilya knows they are all working. Dr. Ivanov comes into the room at that point anyway and it no longer matters.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s take a look.”

The technician puts the wand on Ilya’s stomach and the screen comes alive.

At first, it is just blobs of gray and black that remind him of televisions from his childhood going to static when there was nothing else to display. It would be kind of funny, Ilya thinks, if it turned out the clinic test had actually been wrong and he isn’t pregnant. He never bought one of the tests to do at home. Why bother? They had to be less accurate than what a doctor did.

But the technician adjusts the wand and patterns start to emerge. Ilya sees a row of thin, rounded white lines so close they’re almost touching and a strand of white dots in a gentle wave.

“That’s the spine,” Dr. Ivanov says, tracing out the dots with his finger. “And ribs.”

”The bones are ossifying,” Ilya murmurs.

Dr. Ivanov glances away from the screen, smiling. “Yes, exactly.”

The wand moves again. With those bones as landmarks, the rest is easier to understand.

Dr. Ivanov continues to explain. The pairs of stubby, webbed paddles are hands and feet. The curved edge is the back of the head; apparently the bones of the skull will not fuse until after he is born, which Ilya thinks he might have already known. The fluttering mothwings are the heart.

Ilya stares at the screen and Dr. Ivanov’s voice drops away to a background murmur.

Malysh is a fucking person. Not a blueprint or a clump of cells or a fucking alien tadpole. There is a baby, head and arms and legs, curled up beneath Ilya’s skin. He moves.

It hits Ilya like a fucking sledgehammer as a positive test and the kid he has so easily imagine connect through the fertile loam Ilya did not know was inside him. Everything Malysh needs to grow has to come from Ilya alone, blood and food and fucking calcium. All of it.

And at the end of it, someone is going to put a fragile thing in Ilya’s arm.

“Ilya?” Dr. Ivanov’s voice jolts through the roaring in his head.

“Yes?” Ilya says. “Sorry. It is just. A lot.”

**

The appointment finishes in Dr. Ivanov's office, though Ilya is barely present.

He nods in the right places and scrounges up noncommittal answers. Dr. Ivanov hands him a thick folder he says has a bunch of helpful information for Ilya to read over. Ilya thanks him and even opens it, but the words might as well be written in Japanese.

There are a couple copies of the ultrasound in it, too, and Ilya's breath catches, even with most of Malysh hidden behind the pocket. He snaps the folder closed and hugs it to his chest as Dr. Ivanov continues to speak.

"Ilya, everything looks good," Dr. Ivanov says. "Okay? Baby is exactly the size we'd expect at this point and developing normally. I don't see anything to be concerned about. I know it's a lot."

"Yes," Ilya says mechanically. "Thank you."

**

Ten minutes later Ilya walks out of the office with several more appointments scheduled, thousands of pages of rules he needs to start following and choices he needs to start making, the card of a therapist that speaks Russian, and a due date. He feels weird about all of them, in different ways.

Once he's in his car, he sets the folder on the passenger seat and slots the therapist card into his wallet to think about later. The faint ghost of his father barks that he did not raise weak sons and America has made Ilya even softer and more pathetic than he already was. It is a reflexive vitriol and it glances off Ilya in the face of more important things.

He brushes his thumb over the face of the little card Dr. Ivanov wrote his due date on. The online calculator was right, June 21st. It is comically bad timing for a kid with two parents who play professional hockey. Ilya will remember to laugh about it later. He adds the date -- his due date, and he does not know why that makes him uncomfortable -- to his calendar.

And then he sits in his car.

He had thought -- no, he had assumed that it would be different, after the appointment. There is now a permanent record that Ilya Rozanov is pregnant. There is a doctor to tell him what to do, what the right choices are.

He's supposed to feel excited, right? Ilya chews on his thumbnail as he examines himself for any spark of that. Want is easy to find. He wants this baby in a way that is deeply instinctual. Ilya goes back and forth on the idea of fate, but it is the closest explanation he can find.

But excitement?

No. No, it is just a deeper level of fear. A fucking chasm of terror.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and Ilya yanks it out with clumsy fingers. He sees Shane's name and barely catches the text (i don't think so) and calls him. The phone rings a couple times.

"Hey," Shane says. "I wasn't sure if you'd be done or not. How did it go? How are you? How is the pear?"

"Shane," Ilya says.

"I'm here," Shane assures him. "Ilya?"

"They have to do so many tests, Shane," Ilya says and his heart is thundering in every part of his body, banging painfully against the bone cage of his ribs. "Because he might have some genetic sickness. There are so fucking many of them and I have never heard of them and I cannot answer if they are in my family or not. Who can I even ask? My brother will not fucking answer me. And maybe you and me have different kinds of blood and that is also dangerous for Malysh."

The words tumble out faster and faster, tripping over each other and piling up, and his accent ratchets up stronger than it has been in years. He is getting louder, too, spiralling up and up as he disgorges every fucking thing he has pretended not to feel.

"And there are vitamins I should have been eating the whole fucking time and I did not and there is food I am not supposed to eat and I cannot remember if I had any of them since October. But I know that I fucking drank and that is so fucking dangerous--"

"Ilya, hey, take a breath--"

"And I have one million fucking things to decide that I know nothing about. I have to fucking decide where to have Malysh and how to have him and I did not fucking know there was any other way to have baby than go to hospital pregnant and leave with baby! I have never been around babies, Shane, I know nothing and he will be here so fucking soon--"

"I've been around babies a little. I can -- I can show you, Ilya, it's okay."

"Is not okay, Shane! I saw him inside me and he has spine and ribs and heart and hands! He -- he is a person, Shane, the smallest fucking person I have ever seen and he is inside me! He is moving around but I can't feel it and how will I know if something bad happens if I cannot fucking feel it?"

"Ilya!" Shane shouts and Ilya's teeth click for how hard he snaps his mouth closed. "Take a breath."

"Shane--"

"One breath," Shane says, voice low. "Please. Just one."

Ilya's chest hitches as he pulls in several short pants of air and he shudders hard as he exhales. "Okay."

"Now another."

The second goes in a little easier and out a little smoother. Ilya's heart recedes back into his chest. "Okay. I am okay."

"What happened?" Shane asks. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. No. Probably not. I am freaking out. A little."

"I'm sorry," Shane says. "Fuck. I have to leave for the arena in five fucking minutes. Are you at home?"

The game. Ilya forgot about the fucking game that Shane has to go play. The last thing he needs is the distraction of Ilya's bullshit.

"I am okay," Ilya says. "You need to go. Is okay."

"I can be late, don't worry about it," Shane says. "Can you get home? One of my parents can come get you. I'll call you back the second I can."

"I am okay," Ilya repeats. If he repeats it enough times he can make it true. "I did not expect you to answer. I was going to leave a message."

Not a good lie and in the silence that follows, Ilya knows Shane doubts him. But time pressure works on Shane in predictable ways and Ilya correctly guessed that he will not push with other responsibilities pulling him away. "It's okay," Shane says at last. "I'll call you tonight, okay?"

"Yes, okay."

"When you get home, I think you should call Marleau," Shane says. "So you're not just sitting alone."

"Sure," Ilya says. Why not? Eventually he will burn through all the fear his body can experience and come out the other side feeling nothing.

"I love you. Fuck, I have to go."

"I love you, too."

**

Ilya drives home and goes inside his house directly up the stairs to his bedroom. He strips out of his clothes and leaves them in a pile on the floor, yanks on his loosest sweats and baggiest hoodie and crawls into bed, leaning against the headboard.

He picks up his phone and before he can overthink it, calls Marley.

"Please," Ilya mutters, truthfully not sure if he is asking for Marley to answer or ignore him.

Marley answers after a couple rings. The screen fills with his stupid square face and dark hair and scruffy stubble. The blue wall behind him means he’s in his living room and the angle of the lamplight across his face means he’s probably in the huge, hideous recliner he is so proud of. Boston is not playing, so he probably also has a disgusting American beer in the recliner’s cupholder.

Why does a fucking chair need a cupholder? Ilya asked that question every time they got drunk at Marley’s place and every time Marley said that Ilya would never understand because all Russians enjoy is suffering.

”Hey, Roz,” Marley says. He looks confused, which is fair. His mouth is also canted up into a half smile. ”What’s up, brother?”

Marley has asked Ilya that question so many fucking times. Before every practice and game of Ilya’s rookie season. On the plane after every Montreal game, whether Ilya was smugly self-satisfied or stewing in loneliness. After hard hits and lost games and bullshit penalties and too many beers and, and, and.

Ilya brought so little of his old life with him to Ottawa. And, if given a chance, he would not make a different choice. But sometimes it feels like who he was for ten years means nothing to his new life. It is too similar to how he felt when he first got to Boston, where people so casually acted like his life had only just started when he left Russian soil.

“I have to tell you why I am on LTIR list,” Ilya says. If nothing else, he has learned there is no gentle ramp up to telling people.

Marley’s expression goes flat with badly concealed worry. “You said you weren’t sick?”

“I am not,” Ilya assures him, for all the good it does. “I am pregnant.”

Marley’s face goes slack with blank shock. He stares at Ilya through a million kilometers of distance and half a year of mutual silence. If Marley does not take it well, Ilya is not really afraid that he will spread the news around. He is afraid Marley will look at Ilya with revulsion and they will never speak to each other again.

Ilya waits him out for five or six protracted hours that are really about thirty seconds. “Fucking please say something, Marley.”

Marley closes his eyes. “Gimme a fuckin’ second, Rozy. You're serious?”

”Yes.”

“Okay, then shut up for a second,” Marley says, “I am updating my mental fuckin’ picture of Montreal Girl.”

Ilya does not shut up. He cackles like an insane person, which makes Marley open his eyes. He stares at Ilya for a second, then starts busting up, too. Then the two of them are laughing at each other so hard they both have tears streaming down their faces.

And they are okay again. Easy.

"So, you fuckin' left some shit out when I asked why you were leaving," Marley says when they can breathe again. He drinks deeply from a silver can.

"Yes," Ilya says, swiping the backs of his hands over his eyes. "A few things."

"You were -- knocked up?" There's a short pause before the word comes out. It could be disgust, but what Ilya sees in Marley's face is much closer to disbelief.

"No, not then. Not yet."

"Okay, I get it," Marley says. "You left because of Montreal Girl. Guy? Montreal Guy. Can I keep calling him Montreal Girl?"

Ilya imagines Shane's expression if he ever hears that nickname. “Yes, you can keep calling him Montreal Girl.”

"Great. So, what, Ottawa was the closest you could swing? Montreal wasn't interested?" Marley makes the same face everyone in Boston makes when the Metros come up. "I guess they've got Hollander if they're good with second best."

“Something like that,” Ilya agrees.

“And Montreal Girl-Guy knocked you up?” Marley asks, incredulous. "Canada doesn't have rubbers?"

”I didn't know." Ilya shoves a hand through his hair.

"Didn't know what?"

"That I could fucking be knocked up, Marley."

Marley's face contorts with a level of horror that Ilya weirdly appreciates. "Fuckin' hell, Rozy. That's a fuckin' surprise."

”Surprise,” Ilya repeats. “Yes, surprise. I like that. Surprise. Ta-fucking-da.”

“Fuck, brother.” Marley runs a hand through his thick hair and kills the rest of his beer. Then he leans over to open the stupid mini-fridge he uses as a side table to grab another and cracks it open. Ilya looks at the can with a humiliating longing. There are so many things he would like to get drunk about for just one night.

"So, you're into guys, too?" Marley asks. He chugs half of the beer. "Or is Montreal Girl-Guy that fuckin' special?"

Ilya blinks at him for a second, unprepared for the left turn in topic. “I am bisexual,” Ilya says, disliking the thread of hesitance in his voice. “Is that problem for you?”

“Are you fuckin’ serious, Rozy?” Marley looks genuinely offended. “I paid for my sister’s pussy and punched Lowery in the gut when he tried to say something about it.”

”I fucking know that,” Ilya says. “I don’t know. We were all very fucking drunk that night. I do not think Lowery remembered who punched him in the morning.”

”And he never said shit about my sister again either.”

True, now that Ilya thinks about it. No one ever mentioned Marley’s sister after that. Ilya deflates a little, slouching back into his pillows. Marley is studying him with a level of focus that Ilya has not often seen from him.

“I am sorry I did not tell you.”

"Fuck that, brother," Marley says. "Besides, I had a sneaking fuckin' suspicion."

"You did?"

This is the first time Ilya has heard about it. He wracks his memory for anything, any single moment when he ever seriously thought about telling Marley, and comes up empty. Ilya never even entertained the possibility of telling anyone before Scott Hunter upstaged his whole team.

"Yeah, for a couple years."

"How? Why?"

Marley smirks. "You remember how we used to sometimes bring one girl back to the hotel for both of us? Back then, sometimes when you got really fuckin' plastered you'd start pointing out guys, too."

"I did fucking not."

"You fuckin' did and you have a type."

"Fuck you, what type?"

"Dark hair, brown eyes."

"Whatever."

"What does Montreal Girl-Guy look like, Rozanov?"

Ilya knows hes fucking blushing. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Marley shrugs. "You never remembered in the morning and never mentioned it. I figured if you wanted me to know, you'd have told me."

"It wasn't about you," Ilya says. "For a long time it was not important, you know? I like women, I like fucking women. I thought one day I would meet one I wanted to marry. Then it would not matter if I used to fuck men, too."

“You’re full of shit,” Marley says.

"What the fuck does that mean?".

Marley rolls his eyes. “You started texting Montreal girl and getting real worked up about her -- him your second fucking year. I might be the only fuckin’ guy in the world who knows that, but I don’t buy that shit for a fuckin' second.”

Ilya feels his face go hot. “Fuck you, whatever.”

“You don’t fuckin’ fool me, brother,” Marley crows. “You were ass over teakettle in love with he -- him for years.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe!” Ilya yells back. “Whatever! I am in love! Fuck you!”

“So, who is he?” Marley asks.

Ilya says, “Shane Hollander,” easy as anything.

“Fuck off,” Marley laughs.

Ilya says nothing.

Marley’s laugh cuts off. “Don’t fuck with me, brother.”

Ilya continues to say nothing.

"Rozy," Marley says.

"I know, okay!" Ilya shouts. "It was an accident!"

“This whole fuckin’ time Montreal Girl was Shane fuckin’ Hollander?”

Marley says Shane's name with the same profound horror he would if Ilya showed up to a Raiders game in full Metros kit and a Yankees hat.

“It was just sex at first,” Ilya says.

“Yeah? How’d that work out? Fuck,” Marley asks. Then, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Shane Hollander knocked you up?”

“Da. Yes.”

“You fuckin’ moved to Canada for Shane Hollander?” Marley sounds truly outraged about that one. “Did you two even consider bringing his ass to Boston or fuckin’ New York? Hunter’s nine hundred years old, they’re gonna need new talent in five fuckin’ minutes.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Ilya demands. “You are mad that I am in Canada?”

“You’re my best fuckin’ friend and favorite fuckin’ teammate, Rozy, of course I’m pissed that you moved to another fuckin’ country, didn’t tell me why, and then ghosted me for six months.”

”So, what are you saying? You do not care that it’s Shane Hollander?” Ilya asks in disbelief.

"I don't give a shit about Hollander!" Marley yells. "I give a shit that you fuckin' disappeared on me!"

Ilya never thought about it like that. Not once, in all the months he has been in Ottawa. He figured that teammates come and go every season; it's part of the game. He knew Boston would miss his talent and resent him for leaving a gaping hole in their game. But there are other centers in the world. They would fill it in and time would turn Ilya into a line in the history books.

His eyes start to burn. "I -- I did not want to lie to you. I couldn't figure out what to say."

"'Marley, I decided I want Montreal Girl for real, so I gotta go,'" Marley says in a terrible imitation of a Russian accent.

"Marley, I decided I want Montreal Girl for real, so I gotta go," Ilya repeats. "Also Montreal Girl is Shane Hollander."

"There you fuckin' go." Marley smiles. "Was that so fuckin' hard?"

Ilya laughs, a little wet. "My fuckin' bad."

"So." Marleau raises his beer in a mocking salute and pounds the rest of us. "What's being knocked up like?"

Ilya snorts. "Why, you want to try yourself?"

"I could if I fuckin' wanted to."

"For real?" Ilya asks. "You never told me this."

"When the fuck would it have come up? I don't think I've ever tripped and fallen asshole first onto a dick before and I'm not a fuckin' porn plumber."

Ilya throws up his hands. "When we were fucking the same girl?"

"Fuck me for trusting your fuckin' aim, I guess," Marley says, trying to fight down a smile. He fails and they both laugh.

"Being knocked up is okay," Ilya says, adjusting his position on the pillow. "Kind of weird."

"It's a wicked fuckin' secret, though," Marley says. "You good, Rozy?"

"I don't know what I am doing," Ilya admits. "But I am a little better now."

"No shit you're better. You've been surrounded by boring, polite fuckin' Canadians for six months."

They talk for a long time.

Chapter End Notes

to anyone who thinks that is an improbable amount of fucks for one conversation, to you i say ride the T after a red sox game and get back to me. i have chosen to use the marleau spelling because the idea of people falsely accusing him of being quebecois is funny to me.

now i gotta go finish my bigbang <3 as ever and always, thank you so much for the comments and feedback.

i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 11

Chapter Summary

Everything, everywhere, all at once.

Chapter Notes

Ilya rides the high of having Marley back in his life through the slog of January, eyes on the prize that is Ottawa hosting Montreal at the end of the month.

And it’s fine, mostly.

Shane keeps his word and calls Ilya back about the baby doctor, but Ilya crashes early after hours talking to Marley and misses it. Ilya calls Shane back the next morning, forgetting that Shane is on a flight to Columbus or St. Louis, somewhere in the midwest. The first Hollander Ilya does speak to is Yuna, who apologizes for taking so long to respond and sends him a detailed family tree with three generations of medical history.

Shane calls again that night, by which point Ilya feels very melodramatic about his little meltdown. Shane sounds so fucking worried and is so apologetic, too. Ilya doesn’t want to add an entire new slew of things to be anxious about.

So he edits his recounting of the appointment down to something smoother than the experience of it strictly was, and tells Shane his due date is June 21st.

“That’s the end of the playoffs,” Shane says. “That’s the middle of the cup.”

“I know,” Ilya says. “It would be good year for Montreal to get knocked out early.”

Shane frowns. “I can’t control that.”

He actually can, at least a little bit, but Ilya keeps that thought to himself. He would never ask Shane to do such a thing.

Beyond that, Ilya buys the baby vitamins Dr. Ivanov recommended and takes them every fucking morning. It’s mostly a coincidence of timing that the puking just about stops at the same time, but Ilya credits that improvement to them anyway. This is gratitude, he thinks, which is closer to excitement than terror.

He changes his grocery order to leave off anything that is now forbidden and adds the boring rabbit food that is good for Malysh. He FaceTimes Shane as he clears out his kitchen and pantry, tossing everything he cannot have, except the alcohol. Shane gamely listens to Ilya bitch about it for the better part of an hour.

“And I have to wash the fucking vegetables,” Ilya whines. “Who washes fucking vegtables?”

”I wash my vegetables,” Shane says, frowning in mounting horror. “Everyone washes their vegetables. Have you not been washing your vegetables this whole time?”

“I barely cook for you anyway, don’t worry about it.”

He brings all his beer to a barbeque Bood hosts so it stops haunting him every fucking time he opens his fridge or goes into the garage. The good Russian vodka is carefully stored in a cupboard for summer. He is going to pick a night and get trashed like he is eighteen and at a Moscow rager.

The food stuff ends up being easier than clothes, which Ilya is thwarted in putting off by Yuna’s sharp eye and willingness to bulldoze past his excuses.

She beckons him to her and David’s couch one night after dinner at their house — it is more padded and upholstered in softer fabric than Ilya and Shane’s loveseat — and says, “Ilya, look. Your body changing is going to keep being weird. It won’t stop. So you can feel weird about it in pants that don’t fit or weird about it in pants that do.”

Impossible to argue with such logic. So Ilya sits there, arms folded over his chest, as Yuna goes through several dozen tabs, nodding or shaking his head. Afterward, David invites Ilya to work on his current puzzle — a painting of a lighthouse — and it takes Ilya an hour to realize he feels better.

The clothes show up the next day, because Yuna Hollander pays for express shipping when the occasion calls for it. Ilya tries everything on, face screwed up in discomfort. It all fits and it feels fine; better on his stomach, certainly, where the stretching skin is sensitive and itchy.

It takes him the better part of three hours to clock the issue. The clothes are cut to accommodate his stomach and that intentionality makes him look — more pregnant. Baggy joggers and oversized shirts made a case for bloat or gorging himself that these do not.

He snaps a couple pictures and sends them to Shane, Sveta, and Marley individually — though the idea of a group chat with all three of them is very funny and something to think about.

Sveta: to think this man was once the boy slut king of boston.

Marley: lol u look like a soccer dad

Shane: you look so fucking good :)

The spread of responses makes Ilya laugh so hard he gets lightheaded and has to collapse down onto the end of the bed. The funniest fucking part is that he feels better.

His body is weirder. Not bad, necessarily, or repulsive in the way Shane or Sveta would feel. But it is a slow and steady and strange reshaping of all the aggregate parts of his body as they reorganize, following genetic instructions that carry on regardless of what Ilya feels about it all. It is an odd mix of gut-deep discomfort and an unexpected kind of marvel.

His stomach grows and the stretch marks multiply, which he knew to expect. He does not expect the dark line that neatly bisects his stomach from two inches above his navel all the way down to his pelvis. It looks like he is splitting in half, but no. It is another normal thing.

His nipples get bigger and darker, which is fine, and his chest swells, which is significantly less comfortable. Ilya has never considered the line between pecs and tits before. Not having to take his shirt off in front of the team becomes one very small positive to not being able to play.

The weight he puts on — normal, per Dr. Ivanov — does not concentrate only in his stomach, it is distributed around his entire body, his hips and thighs and ass. These parts of him already have bulk from muscle, but they turn soft, in a way. Faint stretch marks show up on his hips.

(The folder from Dr. Ivanov sits unopened on the coffee table, where Ilya can look at it every day and decide to open it later.)

His hair looks fucking great, though. So. Could be worse. Ilya’s fucking mantra.

**

He works out a place in the rhythm of the team that is, if not comfortable, bearable.

He spends practices slowly dragging Tanner Dillon toward the limits of what he is capable of, which turns out to be not very far away from where he started. Ilya can tell he really is trying and so does his best to tamp down his temper, reminding himself that Dillon has been thrust into a very difficult position.

When Ilya starts to snap anyway, Hazy comes over to blab about superhero movies to Dillon and Bood comes over to Ilya and talks about the next team Ottawa is set to play. If Bood tried to hide what he was doing, Ilya would fucking despise him for it, but Bood is more upfront than that.

“Remind me next season that I owe you ten thousand favors,” Ilya says.

“You don’t owe me anything,” Bood says mildly. “But if it’s that important, you can take the C off my hands.”

Ilya blinks at him. “I am definitely not earning that this season.”

Bood says, “Good captains are hard to find, Rozy,” like some fucking riddle and returns to babysitting his mediocre linemate.

The Centaurs sail into a losing streak so spectacular it becomes a statistical anomaly, which the team copes with by forgoing pride entirely and deciding to find it funny. Montreal is playing better than they did leading up to both their recent cups and Boston picks up a center from Winnipeg that starts clicking with the team, so Ilya is in his own very personalized hell, but whatever. He got Dr. Ivanov’s okay to fly, so at least he gets to watch his beloved teammates lose on the road, too.

Speculation about Ilya’s absence ramps up again, which he continues to ignore. If there is a small voice inside him whispering that he can only ride silence for so long — it’s fine. Ilya has practice ignoring much more insistent bullshit than that. He can show up with a baby one day and everyone can fucking deal with it.

He spends most of the home games with Harris, which is a bright spot. They shift from friendly to something much closer to friends and Harris keeps Ilya apprised of what the internet is saying about him.

“The most popular theory is still that you need surgery for an unspecified injury,” Harris says. “Rehab has fallen off since you’re still coming to practice and going to games. The newer speculation is some kind of Russia issue.”

“Russia issue?”

Harris laughs. “It’s an umbrella category. I’ve seen visa or residency issues of some kind. I’ve seen that you have secret ties to the Russian mob and you’re benched as a safety precaution. I have seen that you have secret ties to the government and you’re benched as a safety precaution.”

“My father was police, the ties are not secret,” Ilya says flatly.

“People love a conspiracy,” Harris says with the equanimity of a man who is paid Canadian dollars to know every last insane thing internet is saying about his hockey team. “Point being, no one has floated pregnancy yet.”

“Yay.”

Ilya keeps ignoring his agent’s twice daily phone calls until the avoidance feels too absurd to continue. Yuna’s advice in mind, he mentions to Shane that he has been thinking about switching to a Canadian agent and Shane promises to ask Farah if she has the bandwidth for a new client.

The sum of it all — Malysh and Shane and Centaurs — maybe is not the first life Ilya would choose for himself, but it is one he can live with. Knowing it is temporary makes that a little easier. The important part is that he can handle it, no problem.

**

And then fucking Toronto fucks it all up.

Ilya walks into practice on an innocent Thursday after a 5-2 loss to Minnesota, thinking about Tanner Dillon’s fumbled passes, and is immediately beckoned into Wiebe’s office.

Alarm bells start going off in Ilya’s head. Wiebe’s expression is a facade of his usual calm that belies a weird tension. Ilya’s first, unhelpful thought is that there has been some radical change in Centaurs management and Wiebe has been tasked with telling Ilya his life is over.

Instead, Wiebe says, “We’ve finalized a trade for Troy Barrett.”

Ilya cannot stop the percussive noise of disgust that punches out of him. He claps a hand over his mouth too hard to pass off as casual and Wiebe raises an eyebrow.

Deciding that he is already fucked in demonstrating even the bare minimum of professionalism, Ilya doesn’t try. He folds his arms over his chest and says, “Troy Barrett is a fucking asshole.”

“I’m aware,” Wiebe says. “You see what happened between him and Kent?”

Everyone in the fucking MLH from the commissioner down to the newest facilities staff has seen the leaked video of Troy Barrett laying into Dallas Kent for being a fucking predator in front of God and every player on the Guardians’ roster. Thirty seconds of screaming against years of trailing after Kent like a dog is not exonerating to Ilya, personally. But Kent has always defaulted to the homophobic for his insults.

“I guess that answers which horse Toronto is going to back,” Ilya says, which is not an answer.

“I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“No, it is not surprising at all.” Ilya exhales hard. “Why are you telling me this before rest of the team?”

A moue of discomfort passes across Wiebe’s face. “We’ll have to see how it goes, but the idea is he’ll fill out the first line with Bood and Dillon for the rest of the season.”

“My spot,” Ilya says flatly.

“Yes, but—“ Wiebe holds up a hand to forestall a protest Ilya had no intention of making. “The ultimate idea is that next season you’ll be back at center and he’ll shift to winger, where he’s got the most experience and we have a first line that can’t be dismissed.”

A solid plan. Very logical. Ilya wants to punch a wall.

**

”It doesn’t sound like you’re being replaced,” Shane says that night, sitting in his bed in Montreal, glasses on. “And Dillon will never be able to keep up with you and Bood, but Barrett can.”

“Why is everyone so fucking hunky-dory about Troy fucking Barrett?” Ilya snaps. He is also in his bed, but in Ottawa. The two hours between them feels like they’re standing on either side of a glass window, palms pressed together and unable to touch.

Ilya wants to be bitching about this to Shane’s face, sitting across his lap while Shane’s hands soothe up and down his back. He wants the animal comfort of their bodies pressed together.

“I don’t think hunky-dory is right,” Shane says.

“Whatever! You know what I fucking mean. Troy Barrett fucking sucks. He is going to ruin the team.”

Shane is silent for a beat too long. “I don’t think he can make the Centaurs do worse than they already are.”

Ilya snorts derisively. “Not about hockey, about the team. He is going to fuck up the vibe.”

Shane hums an acknowledging noise that is so very clearly doubtful at the core. Ilya bites back a selection of comments as to how Shane does not get to have opinions about team vibes given he has spent his entire career in the weird, stilted, fussy bullshit that is the Metros.

“Hey,” Shane says. “I’m not — it does suck to see someone in your place, even temporarily.”

Ilya deflates a little and slumps back into his pillows. “It really fucking sucks.”

“The pear is really lucky,” Shane says, which is a blatant and transparent attempt to distract Ilya away from hockey; Ilya decides to let it work. He splays his free hand over his stomach and starts sweeping his thumb back and forth in a steady arc.

“Yes, most lucky fruit in Canada.”

Shane smiles. “Fun fact, the pear is the size of a pepper.”

“Ah, I see, yes, this makes sense. Pear is pepper.”

“The size of a pepper,” Shane corrects.

“Why is the comparison to fruit?” Ilya asks. “Who decides this? Why not balls or something? Malysh is size of softball.”

Shane shrugs. “I don’t know. More people know fruits than sports?”

“Okay, maybe, but at least balls are all same size. Fruit is many fucking sizes. What kind of pepper? The long green ones? The little tiny red ones? The yellow ones? These are all fucking peppers.”

Shane tries to stifle laughter but fails and the sound of it is a balm.

**

Ilya feels a little better after he hangs up with Shane, but it doesn’t last.

A restless dissatisfaction starts to creep in around the edges that pushes him out of bed to roam around his house. He checks the front and back doors to make sure they’re locked, and they are. He makes sure the stove burners are off, even though he had Greek takeout for dinner.

There is nothing out of place, though, not that Ilya can find. No one has been in the house other than him since Shane’s spur of the moment visit and the few signs of his presence have long been tidied away. There is a loneliness in that lack Ilya pushes away for another night.

He flops down on the couch and pulls out his phone. It is nearly midnight and Ilya groans, shoving a hand through his hair. He rests his other hand across his belly. Troy Barrett’s stupid fucking face bubbles up in his mind like sewage backing up a drain and with it comes the lowlights of the Centaurs’ abysmal run of losses.

The arrogant fuck is going to come riding in to patch Ilya’s absence and play the fucking hero.

It’s definitely too late, but Ilya unlocks his phone and calls Marley anyway. Boston won their game against Nashville, so Ilya reckons a one in four chance that Marley will pick up and be in any state to have a conversation. More likely is that he answers trashed with the roar of a bar in the background. Enviable, but acceptably so.

It rings so long Ilya starts debating whether it’s worth trying to call again, then Marley’s voice is in his ear, loose and loud. “Hey, brother,” he almost yells. “Gimme a second.”

Ilya hears a chorus of familiar voices in the background — Boyle and Connors and Persson — overlapping each other in the din of the Raiders after a win. Someone asks who the fuck Marley is talking to and Marley says Rozy and there’s another swell of sound. Some boos, which sting, but also, Hey, Roz, and, Ask him if he’s tired of fucking Canada yet and wants to come home.

Boston isn’t home, but it’s not not home. The loss of it all had felt so — manageable, maybe. The enormity of what he was going toward in Ottawa, Shane and a passport and the only future he wanted, eclipsed what he was leaving behind. But it hit harder than Ilya realized and he wishes that he had told them something better than he did, explained even a little more. He could have said that he was going toward someone important.

Ilya hears the screech of a heavy door and the background noise cuts off. Marley’s shoes squeak on what sounds like fresh snow. “Fuck, okay,” Marley says. “Sorry, it’s too fuckin’ loud in there to talk.”

“Is okay,” Ilya says.

A lighter clinks and Marley inhales deeply. Ilya can almost smell the cigarette; his mouth fills with saliva for how fucking badly he wants one.

“It’s awful fuckin’ late to be calling me, Rozy,” Marley says. “It’s gotta be past your fuckin’ bedtime.”

Ilya scoffs. “We are in the same time zone, asshole.”

”But you’re knocked up and I’m not. So long as I can stay upright in the morning, no one gives a shit what I do. You gotta get rest and shit, right?”

“Fuck off. You’re not my dad.”

Marley laughs. “Thank fuckin’ God for that. What’s up?”

Ilya sighs and closes his eyes. “Troy fucking Barrett.”

“Right, fuck. I heard about that. That whole thing with Kent is a fuckin’ shitshow.”

”Yes. And now he is coming to Ottawa to fuck up my team.”

“That fuckin’ blows, brother,” Marley says with the conviction of the slightly drunk. “He’s a fuckin’ asshole, even for Toronto.”

”I know,” Ilya grouses. “And he is — like. I don’t fucking know. Taking my spot.”

“What the fuck? Like, permanently?” Genuine alarm colors Marley’s voice.

“No, just for the season, while I am out. Or that is what I am told.”

”Oh, Jesus, brother.” Marley exhales hard. “I mean, Ottawa’s gotta plug that hole and Barrett’s got some skills. But that still fuckin’ blows, man. I’m sorry.”

“Of all the fucking assholes, you know?” Ilya shakes his head. “Had to be that one.”

“Barrett’s not worth it, brother, don’t fuckin’ stress about him. Next season you’ll be back on the ice and everyone’ll forget he exists.”

“I fucking hope so.”

“I fuckin’ know so.”

The absolute certainty with which Marley speaks is very kind of him and Ilya knows he means it. Ilya wishes he was half as certain. “Go finish fucking celebrating,” Ilya says.

“Go to fuckin’ bed and get some fuckin’s sleep,” Marley says. “That’s my godkid you’re carting around.”

“I told you, there is stiff competition for godfather.”

”Am I supposed to be fuckin’ afraid of Hayden Pike? Be fuckin’ serious.”

Ilya hangs up and, again, feels a little better. He goes to bed before it, too, can start to ebb away.

**

Two days later, Troy Barrett shows up to his first practice as an Ottawa Centaur.

Sitting in his car in the parking lot, Ilya briefly entertains the idea of turning around and driving back to his place and calling in sick. It is only knowing that calling in sick will be taken as calling in pregnant that stops him. The team has tread more carefully since the little dustup with Dykstra, but Ilya still feels the low current of surreptitious observation. He does not like it.

“If Barrett decides to blow our cover I will beat him to death with a stick,” Ilya says. “Hazy and Bood will help me hide body, I think. Barrett is such a fucking asshole.”

He strokes his stomach and thinks about the sonogram picture he has folded in his wallet that he has not yet shown anyone, waiting until he can give Shane his copy in person first. Ilya has made — better peace, at least, with the idea of Malysh’s bones buried inside him, but it is a reality he thinks about cautiously. It is just so fucking strange.

“Okay,” Ilya sighs. “Fuck it. We are not hiding from Troy fucking Barrett.”

Ilya walks into the building with as much bravado and swagger as he can manage, which is very little. He is not exactly waddling — a word that he increasingly despises the more he reads it — but his gait has changed along with his posture. It is difficult to fake being hot shit wearing fake jeans with no fly.

It is very tempting to pause outside the locker room, but Ilya refuses to give into the impulse. Nervous hovering is a level of embarrassing that feels impossible to recover from. It is the kind of thing that becomes a joke on a team to be retold and recounted until it is a permanent mark on a reputation.

So, Ilya walks in with his head raised, looks around and — no Barrett.

”Hey, Rozy,” Hazy calls from his stall. “What’s your favorite team to play?”

“Did Barrett decide not fucking show up?” Ilya asks. “And why the fuck do you want to know that?”

“He’s taking pictures with Harris,” Hazy says. “And no reason. Just curious.”

Ilya does not buy that shit, but he also cannot think of any reason to ask other than idle curiosity. “New York, maybe. Tampa. I don’t know.”

“What’s your least favorite place to play?”

“You are being fucking weird, Hazy.”

“I’m team bonding.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “I don’t fucking know, Hazy. Utah is boring. Buffalo is boring.”

“Interesting.”

Ilya fails to see how that could possibly be true, but decides he doesn’t want to know badly enough to press the issue. He drifts toward Bood, sitting half-dressed for practice in front of his stall, deep in conversation with Dillon, who is listening very intently.

Their next game is against Montreal — finally — and Bood is doing his best to prepare Dillon for it. Ilya knows exactly how much Dillon is likely to be able to do against the Metro’s defense, never mind what Shane is probably going to do to their own defense. There are stacked odds and then there are lost causes. Being trapped on the sidelines has unearthed a pessimistic streak in Ilya he is not terribly proud of, but still.

He listens with half an ear for ten or fifteen more minutes, then the locker door opens and closes and the low murmur of conversation grinds to a halt.

Ilya looks over his shoulder; Troy Barrett walks to his new, mostly empty stall with his head down and his shoulders up, looking weird and ill at ease in Centaurs red and black. Infuriating fear trickles down Ilya’s spine and locks him up for a couple seconds as danger sirens go off in his mind.

Ilya grits his teeth. Yes, danger, he fucking gets it. Troy Barrett’s mouth is unendingly full of bullshit and the chances he will keep it closed as a favor to Ilya are slim to none. There is fuck all Ilya can do about that and freaking out will not fucking help. And Ilya is not going to skulk around the locker room like he shouldn’t be there.

So, he turns around and faces Barrett, who glances up from his hands and startles a little, to see Ilya looking at him.

Barrett’s eyes start on Ilya’s face and flick down to his stomach. They sit there for longer than is polite under any circumstances. Discomfort — Ilya will not fucking call it shame, he will not — bubbles in his gut. His skin prickles.

“There is something you want to say to me?” Ilya does not try to suppress the ugly suggestion of violence in his words, little though he can back that up as he is.

Barrett jumps. His eyes snap back up, rounded with disbelief. A remote part of Ilya notes that his face is almost appealing wearing an expression that is not the sneering contempt Ilya saw so often playing Toronto. Barrett stares at Ilya and stares and stares and says nothing, as the muscle in his jaw twitches.

“You are mute?” Ilya pushes.

“No,” Barrett says.

A smarter person, or at least a wiser one, would let it go. Ilya knows this. There is no good reason to antagonize Troy fucking Barrett and plenty of reasons not to go hunting for his anger. Ilya has secrets to be kept and that is done by the graces of teammates who are good enough people to keep their mouths shut.

Then there is a hand on Ilya’s shoulder and Bood says, “Rozy,” in a low voice.

Ilya is not in the mood to be fucking placated, even by Zane Boodram. The only thing that keeps Ilya from turning and unloading on him is that none of this boiling anger is Bood’s fault. The C on Bood’s jersey matters, too, and Ilya will not make Bood’s life harder by giving Barrett the impression that captaincy means nothing.

“What any of us know about Roz’s business doesn’t leave this room,” Bood says.

“He’s—“

“He’s a teammate.” Dykstra cuts in. “Who hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Whether Dykstra means that as a statement of support or a jab at Dallas fucking Kent or both, Ilya doesn’t know. What he sees is a fleeting spasm of hurt on Barrett’s face that is immediately quashed down.

“I don’t know shit about Rozanov’s business,” Barrett says “Got it.”

He bends down and the tension breaks. People go back to dressing for practice. Bood claps Ilya on the shoulder once more and returns to his stall. Ilya has no reason to go to his stall — which does still have his name on it despite being almost entirely empty — so he drifts toward Hazy, who is both endlessly good natured and can happily carry on a conversation by himself.

Barrett quickly stands and heads for the ice, head ducked down as he goes. Ilya watches his back until he disappears. His mind replays that flickered expression again. Ilya shoves it away.

“That was fun,” Hazy says.

Ilya snorts. “You played for Toronto, yes?”

“I keep the bench nice and warm, yeah.”

Ilya jerks his head toward the door. “Is he as big an asshole as he seems?”

Hazy shrugs. “Pretty much. It was him and Kent, for the most part. Wherever Kent led, he followed.”

“Will he—“ Ilya waves a hand. “Go around telling everyone he knows about Malysh?”

“I think he got kicked out of Toronto for saying what he really thought,” Hazy says. “I don’t think he’s looking to do that again. And honestly, who would believe him?”

Ilya grunts a grudging acknowledgement of that. Hazy grins at him and knocks his elbow into Ilya’s. Ilya elbows him back. They do this back and forth a couple times, until Ilya rolls his eyes, one corner of his mouth tugged up into an unwilling smile.

“What’s a maloosh?” Hazy asks.

”Malysh,” Ilya corrects. “It is just pet name. Like, baby. His dad calls him pear.”

The last bit falls out of Ilya’s mouth before he can stop it and sits there between them.

“His dad Ja—“

”Hazy.” Ilya glares at him. “You will pretend you do not know this.”

“I will not,” Hazy says cheerfully. “But I won’t tell anyone else.”

**

Wiebe is talking to Bood, Dillon, and Barrett when Ilya gets to the ice and Ilya could choke on the envy that spikes through his chest. The hazy specter of next season feels like an uncertain promise. Ilya has less faith in plans than he did four months ago. There are too many ways for plans to fall apart.

He spots Harris standing with his elbows braced on top of the boards, watching as the team warms up. The little clump of Wiebe and the first line breaks up; Bood and Dillon start stretching and Barrett starts making shots. Barrett isn’t Ilya and he certainly isn’t Shane, but he is good. He is better than most.

Ilya posts up next to Harris, copying his elbow-braced posture. Harris glances at him sidelong and Ilya has to tamp down the urge to fidget at the frank assessment in the look.

“So, what do we think?” Harris asks. Ilya grunts out a derisive, very Russian noise. Harris laughs. “That bad, huh?”

To Harris’s credit, he does not press. They lapse into a silence that is not uncomfortable as the team starts running drills. Ilya watches Troy Barrett outskate Tanner Dillon to almost the same degree Ilya himself does. Did. Harris snaps a couple pictures with his phone, then swipes his way through them, deleting the rejects as he goes.

“What do you think?” Harris asks. “One or two?”

Both pictures are of Bood and Barrett, caught in a moment of synchronicity. In the first, both of them are looking off to the side where Ilya knows Tanner Dillon was lagging behind. In the second, Barrett is looking at Bood.

“Two,” Ilya says. Barrett snaps a very pretty goal past Hazy and Ilya stifles the urge to boo. “What do you think?”

Harris looks up from his phone. “About Troy?” Little spots of red blossom on his cheeks.

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “Yes, about Troy.”

“He’s very good,” Harris says, not quite meeting Ilya’s eyes. “Not better than you—“

”Thank you, I am touched.”

”I actually mean that,” Harris says with that unabashed sincerity that Ilya is still getting used to. “I’m not just saying it.”

Now Ilya’s own face is warm. He nods. “Thank you.”

“He’s been okay to me with all the promo stuff.” Harris’s expressions shifts to thoughtful. “Pretty reserved, but he’s had a tough month. I don’t think I can fault him for that. And whatever faults he has, he stood up to his best friend. That counts for something.”

Ilya grumbles. Does one fight make up for years of trailing after someone like Dallas Kent like an obedient dog?

“I think that when we get to next season and have you and Bood and Barrett on a line together, something special will happen,” Harris says. “That’s what I think.”

Ilya wants to be on a line with Bood and Barrett now, but that whining is not Harris’s to handle. Not when he is already being so gracious about having Ilya as a tagalong.

**

Barrett is good.

Ilya watches Ottawa’s new first line run through drills and, yes, it is rough, that’s a given. Tanner Dillon is still who he is and the chemistry is awkward for how clearly Barrett wants to be practicing with any other team. But he is good enough that it is still a marked improvement.

Ilya fucking hates it.

When practice ends, he cannot stomach the thought of lingering. He should; his entire fucking purpose on the team is to be a second set of coaching eyes for Dillon and Bood has taken that seriously. Barrett doesn’t change that except he does and the roil of envy and anger in the pit of Ilya’s gut is spoiling for an excuse to get really fucking ugly about it. Ilya is not fucking losing his shit at Troy Barrett in front of the team.

So he leaves, throws himself in his car and slams the driver’s side door shut. Sits there in the January cold with his hands wrapped around the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn bloodless white. He has nowhere to fucking go but home and he is sick to death of his empty house’s cavernous solitude.

He could call Shane and Shane will try to calm him down, but Ilya does not want to be fucking calmed. Marley is on a plane to somewhere in California and besides, he has already fielded one inconveniently timed conversation about Troy fucking Barrett. Which leaves one other option.

He fishes his phone out of his pocket and calls Sveta.

Ilya drums his fingers on the steering wheel as it rings. “You are lucky I am my own boss, Ilyushka,” Sveta says. “Some of us must keep normal business hours.”

“Lucky for me,” Ilya grinds out.

“Oh, I see.” Sveta’s tone sharpens. Ilya hears a door close. “What is wrong?”

“Troy fucking Barrett.”

“Practice did not go well?” she asks.

“No. Yes. It was fucking fine.”

“That was three answers, Ilyushka. Pick one.”

A percussive sound punches out of Ilya’s chest. “It was fucking good, okay? Rough, obviously, but good for a first fucking practice.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“He is in my fucking spot,” Ilya spits.

“And?”

“And what?”

“You cannot be in your spot, Ilya,” Sveta says pointedly, words devoid of placation. “Obviously someone has to be there in the meantime and you want them to be capable.”

”I fucking know.”

“Yes, you fucking do,” Sveta agrees flatly. “This is the consequence of the choice you have made. Did you expect your team to limp through the rest of the season being crushed every game to spare your feelings?”

“No!” Maybe, Ilya thinks, and a thread of shame worms through his anger.

“Then what is the problem?” Sveta asks again. “The actual problem?”

“He could fucking replace me,” Ilya shouts, so much louder than he means to.

Sveta fucking scoffs. “These dramatics, Ilyushka. First, Barrett is not a center, he is a winger by choice and that is where he excels. Second, he is in the top 5% of players and you are in the top 1%. You are better and you know that. Third, your coach has told you his plan is to put you on a line together. Which do you think he wants more? You and Barrett on a line together with no Dillon dragging either of you down? Or another season with Dillon trailing after better players?”

“I know — fuck.” Ilya scrubs his free hand across his face. “I know. I fucking know. I just. I hate it. Fuck.”

“You are allowed,” Sveta says. “But do not fucking lie to yourself, Ilyushka. There is no problem. You are in as good a situation as you could possibly expect and you know that. You are lucky. You do not have to feel lucky, but you do yourself no favors pouting in front of your team.”

Ilya thumps the heel of his hand against the steering wheel and bites back a curse at the ache that judders up into his wrist. He slumps back in his chair; his fucking windows are fogged over for how much warmth is pouring off him.

“This is fucking hard,” he says finally. “It is harder than I thought it would be.”

“You will live,” Sveta says.

“Very comforting.”

“You do not call me to be comforted, Ilyushka,” she says. “We have never promised to soothe each other. We have promised honesty and that it is what you get. Do not forget that I love you, even when you are like this.”

“I love you, too.”

“Good. Now, I am going back to my work. If you want to talk like adults, you can call me back later. I love you. Get over yourself.”

Sveta hangs up and Ilya sits in his car for another fifteen minutes before he drives home.

**

The night before Montreal comes to Ottawa, Ilya dreams of his mama sitting in a chair next to a window in a room with no walls or maybe walls that change and shift like running water at the edges of his vision. He knows this room and has never been there; he once belonged here but has never been welcome.

There is a blanket on her lap, wash-faded and tattered around the edges. Ilya knows what the satin trim feels like brushed against his cheeks and nose. He can hear his mama’s voice singing from so far away Ilya can only hear the melody, but sitting in the chair her mouth is still.

“Where is he?” Ilya asks.

She looks up at him and her face is bleached white, tinged blue and purple around her mouth. “Where did you leave him?” she asks.

**

The timing doesn’t work out to allow Shane to sneak away before the game, but knowing he is in the city puts Ilya into his best mood in weeks. They text back and forth all morning. Ilya sends Shane a picture of the maple syrup and hot sauce drizzled bananas he has for breakfast, which Shane flatly refuses to accept are actually very good.

Ilya tidies up the house in anticipation of Shane: ginger ale in the fridge, dishes done, clean sheets on the bed. He throws away the old takeout boxes lingering in the fridge and makes sure he has the protein powder shit Shane puts in his disgusting smoothie things.

In the locker room before the game, Ilya simply ignores Troy fucking Barrett’s presence, though he does clock the misery that keeps spasming across Barrett’s face. There are many things Ilya could say about that, starting with a pointed reminder that he is still getting paid human money to play hockey, just like Bood reminded Ilya himself.

But whatever. Ilya has no interest in trying to drag an asshole kicking and screaming toward appreciating how soft a place he has managed to land. He could be suiting up in the minors.

Then Hazy asks, “Who do you miss most in Boston?”

“What are you, a fucking cop? Why do you want to know this?”

“No reason,” Hazy says in that guileless way of his. In the stalls on either side of him, Chouinard stares aggressively down at his phone and Haas fumbles with his shoulderpads.

Ilya narrows his eyes. “I do not fucking believe you.”

“Come on, everyone I played with in Toronto sucked,” Hazy says, just a little bit louder than he needs to. Ilya glances at Barrett, who does not look up. The tops of his ears turn red, though. “But you liked Boston.”

Ilya shakes his head. “Who do you think, Hazy? It is Marley, obviously.”

Harris comes in a little later and talks to Barrett for a couple minutes. Barrett doesn’t perk up or anything so human as that, but the rictus of flat unhappiness on his face does ease for a couple seconds. The corner of his mouth twitches and Harris smiles broadly back at him.

“What did you say to him?” Ilya asks Harris as they make their way to the team box. “He almost looked human for one whole second.”

“Nothing, I just told him good luck and that we might not be very good, but there are a lot of good people here,” Harris says.

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “He has been okay to you, right?”

Harris shrugs. “He’s been fine. He was a little weird about the pins—“ He gestures to the little array of rainbow badges on his shirt, “—but that’s pretty common.”

Ilya frowns. “If he gives you shit about being gay, I will punch him in his fucking nose, pregnant or not.”

“My hero,” Harris teases. “He didn’t give me shit. I think he just wasn’t expecting it.”

Ilya does not entirely believe that, but Harris has significantly more practice being openly gay in a hockey organization than Ilya, who has not yet specifically named his sexuality to anyone other than Wiebe, does. He lets it go.

**

The game is a fucking disaster.

Barrett’s supposed talent is nowhere to be found. He fumbles passes and misses shots like he and Dillon are trying to one up each other in a game of who can look the least like a professional hockey player. Montreal scores three times in the first period, one of the goals coming from fucking Pike.

And Ilya cannot keep a goofy fucking smile off his face because Shane is right there.

Midway through the second period, Harris looks at Ilya and says, “You are having a remarkable amount of fun for a game where we’re down by five.”

“No, it is just—“ Ilya finds no end for the sentence. He feels his cheeks go pink.

Harris nods. “You know, I heard something about when two hockey players love each other.”

“That was figure of speech,” Ilya says with as much nonchalant dignity as he can muster, which is not much.

“Right, of course,” Harris says, then Chouinard manages to get the puck past Montreal’s goalie and Harris is distracted away from their conversation as he does the rounds of social media updates.

The game ends 6-1 and all Ilya can think about is Shane.

**

They cannot leave the arena together, much as Ilya wants to, so they settle for leaving at the same time.

Ilya is distracted and impatient loitering in Ottawa’s locker room, checking his phone every two minutes until Chouinard laughs and asks, “Jeez, Rozy, you got a hot date?” A moment of slightly awkward silence follows where Ilya can feel so many eyes flicking to look at his stomach.

”A hotter date than any of you fuckers,” Ilya says, to a round of laughter and ribbing. When he gets a message from Shane fifteen minutes later (done with press, leaving now) he leaves to more jokes, flipping his teammates off as he goes.

Shane’s cab pulls up only a couple minutes after Ilya gets home. Ilya opens his front door as Shane is jogging up the driveway, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat and shoulders hunched up against the cold. He glances up and down Ilya’s street for any prying eyes, but his smile is bright and open and his posture relaxed in the way he gets when Montreal wins.

“You look like someone I know,” Ilya says.

“That’s so weird, you look like someone I know,” Shane says as he crosses the threshold.

Ilya slams the front door shut with one hand and fists the other in Shane’s coat, pulling him into a kiss that is frantic around the edges. Shane shoves his hands immediately into Ilya’s hair and tightens them into fists. The sting spikes heat in the pit of his belly and he groans into Shane’s eager mouth.

“God, I’ve missed you so much,” Shane murmurs when they break apart.

“Me too.” Ilya cups Shane’s jaw in his hand. “Hi. You are here.”

“I am,” Shane agrees, smiling again. “So are you.”

Shane strips off his coat and boots, then Ilya laces their fingers together and tows Shane up the stairs. They only have the night; the Metros leave Ottawa early enough that it is technically impractical for Shane to sleep over. But Ilya needs him. He craves Shane’s touch in the same deep and needy way he craves cigarettes, the pull echoing through his whole body.

When they get to the bedroom, Ilya asks, “Shower?”

“God, yes,” Shane says, with feeling.

So they strip (suits hung neatly in the closet by Shane) and Ilya turns the water up as warm as feels reasonably in line with the internet’s frantic bleating about how dangerous hot showers are for babies. Shane’s mouth pressing light kisses across his shoulders is a very good distraction from missing a more scalding heat.

Standing under the spray, Shane fits himself against Ilya’s back and keeps mouthing at Ilya’s neck and shoulders, switching between kisses and little nips. His hands roam too, up Ilya’s hips and sides and around to squeeze his chest, soothing Ilya’s little gasp with a low, murmured noise. Back down to Ilya’s belly, hands spread wide over the firm rise of it and down further still, to cup the bottom.

Ilya leans back into the solid, steady comfort of Shane’s body, distantly aware that his dick is half-hard. So is Shane’s and Ilya grinds his ass back until a sharp little ah slips out and Shane’s fingers momentarily dig into Ilya’s skin.

“Were you hard the whole game?” Shane asks and Ilya laughs.

“Were you, Hollander?” Ilya teases.

“I asked you first,” Shane says. His cheeks are flushed and yes, it could be from the shower, but Ilya would bet a thousand dollars it has nothing to do with water at all.

“You like that idea, lyubimyy? Me sitting in box next to social media guy, moving around the whole fucking game so he did not see how fucking hard I was? Watching you rudely demolish my fucking team—“ Shane laughs smugly at that. “—and getting so fucking turned on I was praying I did not come in my pants?”

“Fuck,” Shane exhales. “Ilya.”

“You want me to say how every fucking thought I had all night was you?” Ilya asks, rolling his hips back again.

Shane’s hand circles around his cock and Ilya lets himself gasp at the touch; he wants Shane to hear how fucking good it feels, how much Ilya has missed him.

“I am talking to my team but really thinking about you in team shower,” Ilya says as Shane jacks him. “I watch you score fucking goals against my fucking team and the only thing I can think about is you bent in half with three of my fingers inside you. You win the fucking game, Hollander, and I cannot even care becaause my head is full of the noise you make when I finally give you my dick—“

Ilya comes so hard the only reason he doesn’t end up on the floor is Shane holding him up.

“Fuck, Ilya,” Shane pants. “Fuck — all I wanted to do was come over the boards and fucking get to you—“ Shane ruts against Ilya’s ass and Ilya laughs for no reason other than the sheer pleasure of it. Shane sucks Ilya’s earlobe into his mouth; Ilya shudders hard at the bright zing of sensation.

“What would you have done to me, Hollander?”

”Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Shane chants. “Fucking — gotten on your lap and sat on your dick in front of the entire arena while they had to watch and know they’ll never get that — fuck.”

Shane dick pulses as he comes, face buried in the curve of Ilya’s shoulder.

**

They do not go for a second round in the shower, though Ilya does push Shane into the tile wall and kiss him until the water starts to cool. Shane makes a show of complaining about being rushed for the actual shower part; he also steals the shampoo out of Ilya’s hands and washes Ilya’s hair, so.

Ilya staggers to bed with damp hair and pruned fingers, loose and content and happy. He starfishes naked across the width of the mattress and watches Shane return the bottles to the shelf and hang up the damp towels. In barely voiced Russian, Ilya murmurs, “Your dad likes things to be in their right place, malysh. But not because he is a neat freak. I think it makes him feel safe.”

“What did that mean?” Shane asks, turning off the bathroom light.

“So nosy, Hollander,” Ilya says. “I was not talking to you, I was talking to Malysh.”

“Right, of course.” Shane moves Ilya’s arm and lays down next to him on his side. He brushes Ilya’s hair off his forehead and straightens his necklace. He is so fucking fond of Shane’s small habits. Shane tries so hard to minimize them with most people.

”He’s getting bigger,” Shane says.

”Oh, really? I had not noticed.”

Shane rolls his eyes, but also splays his hand over Ilya’s stomach. His thumb strokes an arc that crosses over the darkened line that starts at Ilya’s navel. “You change a lot, every time I see you. It sucks to miss it.”

“I can send you naked selfie every time I get out of the shower,” Ilya offers.

”Don’t know how I would explain that one.” Shane says wryly. “Plausible deniability might be a stretch.”

He means it as a joke and Ilya understands how he is supposed to take it. It is the familiar patter of how they make peace with the secrets their lives demand. It’s all part of their plan, cobbled together on a summer night and sealed with ‘I love yous.’ Shane offered Ilya forever.

It is a plan for two people, though. It was built on a foundation of assumptions about the future that Shane has stuck to, but Ilya has not. Ilya’s life, at least, is no longer just his own; he knows this is something they have to talk about. He doesn’t want it to be now.

But he is never going to want it to be now. Malysh has ossified bones and a heart. His coming is no longer an abstract thing Ilya can turn his face from, leaving the difficult parts to a future version of himself that knows what the fuck he’s doing. June is a real month and it is not far away and it will not wait.

“You still do not want to come out?” Ilya asks.

Shane cocks his head and, to his credit, does think about it. But not seriously, Ilya thinks. “It’s just private, you know?” Shane shrugs. “I don’t want that to be the only thing people think about me. Are you thinking about it?”

Ilya stares at him.

His first thought is that Shane is trying badly to make a joke. They are supposed to laugh together at the idea of people being so stupid or stridently homophobic that they would refuse to do the basic math of pregnancy.

But Shane’s brow is creased in worry and his expression is — guarded.

Ilya cannot have this conversation lying down. He pushes himself up to sitting, grunting softly at the effort of it. His balance is more fucked each day and he is already sick of it. Shane’s eyes widen in confusion and nascent alarm; he sits up, too.

“Hollander, it will not matter if I officially come out or not,” Ilya says. “People will know.”

“What—“

“Shane. Hollander.” A sharp, disbelieving laugh punches out of Ilya’s chest. “Where do fucking babies come from?”

He watches realization dawn on Shane’s face. Hectic red patches bloom on his cheeks and crawl down his neck and shoulders. He scrubs a hand over his mouth and looks up and down and up and to the side; anywhere but at Ilya. The cold fear in Ilya’s chest ebbs and in its wake comes something hot and sharp and mean.

“I didn’t think about that?” Shane says. The words are awkward and Ilya would bet Shane did not intend them to be a question.

“So lucky, that you can not think about it,” Ilya says. He curls his hands into the rumpled blanket so neither of them can tell how much they shake. ”I have to think about it.”

“Ilya.” Shane reaches out, but Ilya pulls away.

“What does your future look like?” Ilya asks. “What do you see?”

Shane stares at him, so helpless and so lost. And the bitch of it all is that more of Ilya wants to comfort him than demand answers. He wants to soothe his thumb over the wrinkle between Shane’s brow, kiss his hot cheeks, pull him close. Ilya would murmur a thousand promises that it will all be okay, if he had any kind of choice. If it was just him.

“We have a plan, Ilya,” Shane says at last. “What else am I supposed to see?”

Ilya remembers, suddenly, the sonogram tucked away in his bedside table to give to Shane after the Montreal game. He shifts over enough to reach the drawer and pull the picture out, but the angle is weird and a corner catches on something enough to crumple the paper a little. Of course it does.

“Here,” Ilya says, holding it out.

Shane takes it and Ilya watches the realization of what he is looking at crash across Shane’s face. “Oh,” slips out of him, so soft it is barely a sound. The paper trembles in his hand.

“He is person, Shane,” Ilya says. “Do you know how many days are between now and June?”

Shane’s eyes flick up. “No.”

“Like, one hundred and fifty. That is all. We have plan for two people,” Ilya says, hating the burning sting of tears in his eyes. “Just you and me. But we are not just two people anymore, we are three fucking people and that breaks our plan. I broke it and I’m sorry. We have to make new plan. Or at least I do.”

“What does that mean?” Shane's word trip over each other. “I want to be here, I told you that.”

“How, Shane?” Ilya scrubs his fingers through his hair. “What does that fucking mean, being here?”

”I don’t know.”

Ilya turns his head and looks at him. Shane Hollander, his Shane, sitting there naked in Ilya’s bed with his hair mussed and freckles spattered across his nose and cheeks.

Ilya sees him at nineteen, laying on a hotel bed naked except for socks, saying he does not know what he wants when what he means is asking for it feels impossible. Shane at twenty-two, on his back staring up at Ilya with wonder in his eyes as he realizes how good his body can feel. Shane at twenty-seven, napping in Ilya’s bed because he decided to stay.

Ilya loves all of them. They are all afraid, because fear is the millstone tied around Shane’s neck that colors every single fucking thing Shane does. It is the hardest thing Shane lives with, Ilya understands this.

But he needs Shane to fucking deal with it.

“If you do not come out, what are you?” Ilya asks.

“To you?”

“To Malysh.”

Shane’s mouth opens and nothing comes out. Ilya waits.

“I’m — I don’t.” Shane squeezes his eyes closed.

“What do you want to be? Dad, but only in secret? The first fucking thing we teach our kid is to lie so our lives are easier? He grows up knowing he is too shameful for anything but shadows?”

“No!” Shane says. “I don’t want that at all, I’m not ashamed of him! Fuck.”

Ilya’s cheeks are wet and, for once, he cannot find it within himself to care. His breath hitches and Shane’s eyes snap to him. “I don’t—”

”Hey,” Shane says and his voice is low again and soft again, but edged with the same burr as Ilya’s. He reaches across the empty space and, this time, Ilya allows it. Shane brushes away tears with his thumb, so very fucking gently.

“You said you are missing things now, but you will miss so much fucking more if you are in Montreal next season. You are okay with this?” Ilya swallows hard. “To watch your kid grow up on your phone? To hold him two or three times a month?”

”Ilya,” Shane murmurs.

“That is not what I want, Hollander.”

“You want—“ Shane cuts himself off and looks back down at the sonogram. “I would have to leave Montreal.”

“I left Boston.” Ilya says, gray exhaustion coloring his words. “I moved to Canada for you once, but not again. Even if there was any chance Montreal would want me, I am not willing to do that to the Centaurs. I owe them better than that. And I am not quitting hockey. Your career is important to you, mine is important to me.”

“I never meant to make you feel like you had to leave Boston,” Shane murmurs.

Ilya manages a lopsided kind of smile. “You didn’t, lyubimyy. I made that choice for me and I would choose it again.”

“But?”

“I would lie for you,” Ilya says, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. “If it was just us, I would tell so many fucking lies and not care even a little bit. I miss the old plan, a lot. It was so much fucking easier. But there are three of us now. And I need—”

Shane shifts closer. He’s so fucking warm. “What do you need?”

Ilya lifts his head and looks at Shane, really looks at him. There are so many easy, flippant answers to that question, half-truths and complete lies, appeasing deflections and casual minimizations. But Shane is looking at him with the rawest kind of need. And it isn’t fair for Ilya to shy away from his own truth and hold it against Shane for not giving him what he needs.

“I need you here, with me,” Ilya says. “I need you to help me figure out what the fuck we need to do for Malysh, because I am so scared all the time that I am fucking up and don’t know it. I need you to be better than how afraid you are, Shane.’

“And if you cannot do any of those things, I need to know if you are not going to be here, so I can figure out how to do this on my own.” Ilya reaches across the space between them to brush his knuckles over Shane’s cheek. “I love you, Shane Hollander. So fucking much and I will meet you halfway, but you have come to me, too. So, I think you should take that picture of our kid and go think about it.”

”You really want me to go?” Shane asks. He sounds heartbroken.

Ilya means to say yes, but the word sticks in his throat. Maybe it’s selfish or weak-willed, but he does not want to sleep alone on the one night he doesn’t have to. “No, sleep here with me. But tomorrow, when you leave, only come back when you have an answer.”

“Okay,” Shane says. “I — I will. I love you.”

”I love you, too.” Ilya exhales hard. “I am very tired.”

Shane rolls out of bed so Ilya can pull the blankets back and crawl under them. He even comes around to Ilya’s side of the bed to pull the quilt up and smooth it over him. His expression is so distant Ilya cannot read it but Shane bends down to kiss him and murmurs, “Good night.”

Ilya sinks down into a doze to the sound of Shane in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and washing his face. It seems as though he’s in there for a long time, which Ilya understands. He spends a lot of time looking at himself in the mirror, wishing for answers his reflection does not have.

Right before he falls asleep, Shane’s warm body curls up against his. When he wakes up, it is late morning and he is alone.

Chapter End Notes

so that's been brewing for awhile. i'm sure everyone will feel better and all problems will be solved in the morning.

also, two questions i have been asked! one, i am tumblr exclusive social media content, i do not have a tiktok/threads. my inbox is open, though i may take three to five business weeks to respond.

two, anyone who wants to is totally welcome to write fic or make art or gifs or covers (and check out the gorgeous one skargasm made!) or any other kind of fanwork for this fic. i am deeply honored that anyone would want to and i just ask that you link back here as a related work on ao3 and keep ai out of it.

the response to last chapter left me truly Gobsmacked. thank you all so much <3

Chapter 12

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad road trip through fucking Toronto.

Chapter Notes

The sheets smell like Shane when Ilya wakes up and, for a brief moment, he expects to hear the soft patter of running water from the bathroom.

But he hears nothing and memory follows the empty quiet. Still, he reaches across the mattress to Shane’s side of the bed; his hand lands on blankets that have been pulled up and smoothed flat, cool to the touch. Ilya curls his fingers around the soft cotton. A terrible howl of grief sits unvoiced in his chest.

He says, “Fuck.” Then, “Fucking fuck.” English is an ugly lump of a language, but there is usually some poetry in cursing. Even that is inadequate for the abandonment churning in Ilya’s lonely gut. It bubbles in the center of him like a dying fish flopping on the dock.

His phone chirps.

It is difficult to wallow in his personal psychodrama to the tinny, shimmery jangle of whatever fucking ringtone he picked when he got his phone. He scrubs a hand over his face and swipes the thing off his bedside table, stabbing at the screen until the noise cuts off. A notification helpfully reminds him that the Centaurs are leaving for a three game road trip in five hours.

Ilya has made a point that he is coming on this road trip. Because he is a fucking idiot and God’s least favorite fucking child.

His agent’s daily morning call comes through. “Fuck off,” Ilya yells, because he’s alone in his house and there is no one to care if he starts ranting and raving. He ignores his fucking agent and tosses his phone back onto the side table.

“What the fuck are you doing, Rozanov?” he asks himself in Russian, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. The movement makes something on his shoulder twinge with a mild ache that Ilya usually likes; the memory of Shane’s teeth in his skin is significantly less pleasant when Ilya wakes up alone.

“I don’t think I could have fucked this up more, Malysh,” Ilya groans. “Fuck.”

The closest thing Malysh has to an opinion is thwarting Ilya’s nascent plan to burrow back under the covers by making him have to piss. Resentment at the inconvenience of such a base physical need flares so spitefully in Ilya that it jolts him out of his head, a little. He cups his belly in his hands and murmurs an apology in English and then again in Russian.

He crawls out of bed and trudges to the bathroom, pisses and washes his hands, and figures he might as well brush his fucking teeth so long as he is at the sink. The Ilya reflected in the mirror has bruises scattered across his shoulders and neck that belong to a night that ended better than the dark circles beneath his reddened eyes suggest.

Ilya splashes cold water on his face and drinks some from his cupped hands. His stomach tremors again; he braces himself on the edge of the counter and breathes through it.

He yanks on sweats and shoves his phone into his pocket without looking at any of the notifications that accumulated over the night. The possibility of seeing nothing from Shane feels as terrible as the possibility of seeing something from Shane. Not knowing one or the other can only be a temporary reprieve, but Ilya will take whatever crumbs the universe has to offer. This is pathetic, he knows.

He glances down the hallway to the front door on his way to the kitchen; Shane’s coat and boots are gone, because of course they are. It still lands like a loss and Ilya has to swallow down a wounded noise. He told Shane not to come back. What fucking right does Ilya have miss him?

He walks into the kitchen and there is a piece of paper on the island, held down by an old Raiders branded thermos.

Ilya can see Shane’s painstakingly precise handwriting from across the room. The lines of whatever he has written are so fucking neat, impossible to mistake for Ilya’s own scrawl in either Cyrllic or Latin letters.

Ilya stares at it for longer than is dignified, but his claim to such a thing feels increasingly tenuous.

“Fuck,” Ilya mutters, then he stomps across the kitchen and snatches up the fucking note

Ilya,

I’m sorry I have to leave so early. I thought about waking you up, but you looked so tired it seemed better to let you sleep.

You’re right about everything you said last night. I haven’t been thinking about the future and what I want mine to look like. I’m sorry.

I need to figure some things out. I love you.

Shane

PS - I cut up some fruit for you for breakfast. It's in the fridge.

**

Ilya eats the neatly sectioned slices of apple and chunks of mango and reads and rereads the note until the words start to blur together on the page.

What the fuck does ‘I need to figure some things out’ mean?

He falls back into an old game, sort of, that he used to play with himself during his first year or two in Boston. So often it felt like he knew just enough English to get completely lost in the loud, fast conversations that babbled between his teammates. He goes word by word.

I is Shane, of course. Need is also easy, it is something Shane must do. To is one of those fiddly grammar words that native speakers cannot define to save their life, operating instead on vibes. Figure means a million things, from a body to a fucking math problem, but paired with out it is understanding or solving, maybe. Some is a fucking undetermined amount. Things is anything. Any fucking thing in the universe.

Shane must solve an amount of stuff.

“Jesus Christ, Hollander,” Ilya mutters, dropping the fucking note to push the heel of his hand against his eye.

What kind of cryptic bullshit is this? What is Ilya supposed to take from this? Good morning, boyfriend and papa of my unborn kid, I need to vanish into Montreal’s fucking hockey schedule to do something about some stuff, also here is some fruit for breakfast.

But there is an I love you, so at least Ilya has that.

He wants very much to call the day a loss and get back into bed, turn off his phone and fall back asleep for a hundred undisturbed hours. Just him and Malysh and nothing else.

But the world does not stop turning and if Ilya refuses to show up for the rest of his life, people will come looking for him eventually. That is an avoidable embarrassment. It is one thing for his team to whisper to each other about how Ilya Rozanov ended up pregnant and alone. It is another to be seen crying over a plate of fruit.

So Ilya finishes his food and washes the dishes. He goes back upstairs and into a perfunctory, lukewarm shower. He opens his suitcase on the end of the bed and carelessly tosses three games worth of clothes in. He has packed a travel suitcase one thousand fucking times in his life. It requires little thought.

On his way out the door, he shoves Dr. Ivanov’s folder into his backpack and folds Shane’s note into his wallet, tucked next to Ilya’s copy of the sonogram picture.

**

Ilya is the first Centaur to arrive at the airport, which has never happened to him before in his entire professional career. He curls up in an uncomfortable chair with a hat pulled down low on his forehead. The rest of the team is used to him constantly falling asleep; they leave him alone until it is time to board, then Chouinard shakes his arm.

On the plane Ilya stakes out a window seat near the back, headphones on beneath his sweatshirt’s hood. A couple glances cast his way that Ilya pretends not to notice. Hazy leans over and murmurs something to Bood, too. Ilya opens the baby book on his phone and grimly applies his focus to reading. Neither Hazy nor Bood make their way over to him, if that means anything at all.

At some point in the middle of the flight, Ilya looks up from his screen and his eyes land on Troy fucking Barrett, sitting in the window seat directly across the plane. He’s leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest, headphones also on underneath his hood, staring out the small window at thick gray clouds scudding on the wind.

He is a portrait of misery. He looks like Ilya’s fucking shadow.

Fucking Barrett. Ilya has so many of his own problems to worry about, there is nothing left for the saddest exile out of Toronto. Bad luck for the rest of the Centaurs to be stuck in the middle of two black holes of personal bullshit. For the thousandth time, Ilya mentally promises that he will take them to the playoffs next season if he has to break legs on other teams to do it.

**

Toronto has never been Ilya's favorite city and the shadow of Dallas fucking Kent and Barrett's so very recent falling out casts a tense and ugly pall over the game before a single Centaur walks into the arena.

The locker room veers between stabs of forced enthusiasm and grim tension. The clash between the two is garish in an awkward way that kneecaps the team's reliable chemistry. Even Bood's usual steadiness feels unnatural, like he is gritting his teeth through the reassurances that come so naturally on any other night.

Barrett is the last person into the locker room. He looks like he is walking toward his execution.

Ilya would not call his reaction sympathy in any sincere way, but it is difficult to not feel at least a little pity for the poor fucker. Playing against an old team is rarely comfortable, doubly so when a departure happened on bad terms. Barrett's trade was a fucking excommunication from the only professional home he ever had, and he has been branded a traitor.

The single game Ilya played against Boston in the fall was a shitshow under significantly less -- intense conditions. It was still bad enough to warrant scattered headlines about a scorned Boston team making it very clear how they felt about being abandoned by their star captain. If Ilya were Troy, he would also want to be anywhere else than Toronto. Anyone would feel the same.

Ilya watches a couple teammates try to say something to Barrett and he watches Barrett listen with his mouth compressed into a flat line and give terse, one word responses that make it so clear that he wants only to be left alone. Even Hazy, who can have a conversation with a parking meter, gives up after three minutes. He catches Ilya's eye from across the room and shrugs. What can you do?

There is no part of Ilya that wants to -- he does not know how to describe it, exactly. Take responsibility for Barrett's shit mood? Play the peacekeeper between Barrett and the rest of the team? Play mother hen? It's the last thought that fetches up and sticks; it feels so fucking obvious as the truth of it sinks into Ilya's gut.

Ilya will not be cajoled or wheedled into being some kind of fucking team mother. He will not.

And at the same fucking time, Troy fucking Barrett is part of Ilya's fucking line and that also matters. Ilya has been asked to act as a quasi-coach and ignoring one third of that generously given responsibility is a fucking copout. Ilya feels that truth, too, and the injustice of the awkward position he's in burns in his belly.

Immediately, Sveta's voice is in his mind. You do yourself no favors pouting in front of your team. Get over yourself.

So he waits for a quieter moment when most of the team has left for the ice to start warm ups. Then he walks up to Barrett, who looks up at Ilya unwillingly, expression guarded. "I didn't say anything to anyone," Barrett says.

"Good, you are not stupid, then."

Naked dislike flashes across Barrett's face. It's the most sincere Ilya has yet seen him and, weirdly, it thaws out maybe two percent of Ilya's own dislike. "So -- what?" Barrett asks.

"You think Kent did what he did, yes?" Ilya asks.

Barrett looks away and his hands curl into loose fists on his thighs. It could be anger, Ilya thinks. It is a little bit of anger. But Ilya knows the terrible, cleaving grief of profound disappointment when he sees it. It is a cousin to a broken heart. Irritating pity flares in him again, bubbling strangely in his gut. But still, Barrett nods once.

"Then fuck the Guardians," Ilya says. "Fuck Toronto. Fuck Kent. In ten years you will be able to sleep at night."

Barrett scoffs. "You think they won't?"

"Who gives a shit about them? They are not the point." Ilya shakes his head dismissively. "You will be able to live with yourself. That's not fucking nothing."

He leaves it at that and pretends he cannot feel Barrett's eyes boring into his back as he goes.

**

The horrendous shitshow of a game comes to a dramatic crescendo when motherfucking Dallas Kent throws down his gloves to smash his bare fists into Barrett's face. It takes several refs to pull him off and Ilya very nearly goes over the fucking boards himself. The Toronto crowd screams in raucous glee to see the blood they so badly wanted.

**

When Ilya gets back to his hotel room, he sprawls out on the bed and stares up at the hotel ceiling. Exhaustion has become a headache throbbing behind his eyes and his mouth has the sour, metallic taste of swallowed rage with nowhere to go.

His phone buzzes. He fishes it out of his pocket and glances at the notifications flicking across the screen. A couple blistering texts each from Sveta and Yuna about the many ways the league should be grinding Kent into a mincemeat to then set on fire. A bunch of emojis from Marley that Ilya will find funny in the morning, maybe.

And a text from Shane. That was rough. Is Barrett okay? Then, ten seconds later, Are you okay?

Ilya tosses his phone across the bed, far enough away to be unreachable.

**

In a just world, Ilya would simply fall asleep like that, but the world is unjust. So, Ilya forces himself up and into the shower, where the lulling warmth of water against his skin temporarily sands down the rough edges of the rest of the world. He braces one arm against the tile wall and curls the other around his stomach; he hums fragments of songs his mama used to sing to him when he was little.

Maybe it will not be so terrible, if the worst happens. Ilya is living proof that growing up with a father can be worse than growing up without one. But the thought of that — it is too bitter for even humorless laughter. Ilya tightens his arm around his belly. How long, Ilya wonders, does it take to 'figure some things out'?

"It has been less than one day and I miss your dad," Ilya whispers in the safety of the warmth and steam. "I miss him so fucking much."

He gets out of the shower, thinks about the joking offer he made to send Shane naked selfies, and hesitates for too long of a moment standing at the sink. He looks at himself in the hotel mirror and is strangely struck by how fucking far away he is from any place he has ever called home and for what? For games that he cannot play in? For a team that does not need him?

There is a jagged edge to the thoughts and after them comes a deep unease.

But it is nothing, Ilya decides. It is hormones and shit from Malysh making his thoughts swing to the farthest extreme in every direction; he is supposed to feel a little crazy, that is normal. Shane is -- uncertainty, piled on top. None of it means anything deeper about Ilya or his brain. His sadness is not special. Everyone is sad.

He dries off and pulls on sleep pants and an old tee shirt only to realize he is too restless to sleep. He paces his hotel room from the door to the window for fifteen minutes, scrolling absently through his phone without absorbing a single thing his eyes skim over. He sends back some emojis to Marley and likes several of Sveta's most colorful ideas about what Dallas fucking Kent deserves. To Shane he sends, i am ok and nothing else. Is that spiteful? It's not not spiteful.

Barrett is not at all the distraction Ilya is looking for; he is the one that keeps bubbling to the surface of his thoughts.

Ilya mutters Russian invective and pulls up twitter. It takes no effort to find many different clips of the fight and Ilya grimly scrolls through several of them. Some angles make it clear fucking Kent was screaming in Barrett's face, though none picked up any audio. Ilya watches with his lip curled in distaste. Kent's face contorts in rage he has no fucking right to and Barrett fucking takes it like the blows are no less than he deserves.

Ilya shoves his feet into his slides, pockets his door key, and steps out into the hushed hall. He goes up four rooms and raps his knuckles on Bood's door, half-hoping he will not answer. Then Ilya will have tried and he can crawl into bed and stew about his own myriad problems, any of which is far more important than Troy fucking Barrett's shitty ex-teammates making him sad. Ilya is not a captain in Ottawa. It is annoying how hard the habit of acting like one is to shake.

Bood opens his door in sweats and faded Soca Warriors tee shirt. He looks unsurprised to see Ilya.

"Hey, Roz," he says mildly.

From behind him, Hazy says, "Rozy! You have good timing, I convinced Bood to watch Blade."

"What the fuck is Blade?"

"He's a vampire. Well, actually, he's a daywalker. His mom was bitten by a vampire while she was pregnant with him and --"

"Come in," Bood says over Hazy, stepping back.

Ilya hesitates. "I don't want to—"

Bood cocks his head. "You're not intruding."

"C'mon, man, we have pizza!"

The offer feels absurd against Ilya's mood, but it tugs at him regardless. Does he want to go back to his room and continue to pace? Flinching at every noise his phone makes for fear that the next message will be the first domino to fall in his life collapsing? The thought is so fucking dramatic in his own mind, miserable and self-centered. Who would want to spend the rest of their life with that person?

"Yeah, okay. Why not."

Ilya steps into Bood and Hazy's room. It is very similar to his, but with two queen beds. More alive, too, or at least lived in. Hazy's bedside table is strewn with his things: phone, headphones, two thick comic books, water bottle, Icy Hot, a paper plate with a pizza crust on it. Bood's side is tidier, but still marked by his presence. One of the hotel pillows has been replaced with a different one in a case made of fabric that shines. On the television, a pale woman is leading a guy through some kind of meatpacking plant.

"We just started," Hazy says cheerfully. "Pizza and soda on the dresser. I'll move over."

Ilya feels awkward for no real reason as he puts a piece of pizza on a thin paper plate, picks up a sweating can of Coke, and goes to sit on the edge of Hazy's bed. He is much more used to being the one inviting the rooks or the new trades to his hotel room, nudging them in the direction of the teammates Ilya thinks they will get along best with. Beer to soften the edges and loosen people up, Ilya chirping to break up tension. He is great at it.

Being the new guy again after a decade makes him feel — young. Young in a shitty way, young like he must keep track of his phone for when his father inevitably calls, young like two thirds of his money only passes through his bank account on its way to Alexei, young like seeing Shane three or four times a year for meaningless fun.

"Dude, you can spread out," Hazy says, kneecapping Ilya's reverie on the past. "Get comfortable. I'm not gonna start cuddling you without asking."

Ilya scoffs. He also moves over a couple inches and brings both his legs up onto the bed. Hazy stuffs an extra pillow behind his back, which Ilya bristles at for a split second, before taking Sveta's advice to get over himself and leaning back. He needed the extra pillow.

On the TV, a crowd of people are writhing together as they dance.

"I thought you said this was vampire movie," Ilya says.

"It is! Give it two seconds."

Blood starts to pour from the sprinklers.

"I take it back," Ilya says. He eats a bite of pizza.

**

An hour later, the vampire bad guy is telling his minion that he wants the hero guy alive and Ilya is, if nothing else, engrossed enough to override everything else banging around his brain. Hazy's running commentary should be annoying — and it is, sort of, but in a way that ends up being endearing instead. Ilya will retain none of it, but Hazy does not expect people to remember his trivia. Bood has volunteered that his girlfriend, Cassie, loves scary movies and has made him dress up like the main guy for Halloween before.

Hazy announces that he has to piss. Ilya starts to move out of the way, but Hazy says, "Rozy, you look comfortable, it's fine," and crawls off the end of the bed. Ilya stares at him as he trots around Bood's bed and goes into the bathroom. His stomach bubbles weirdly and Ilya does not know if it's annoyance or offense or possibly a grudging gratitude. He is comfortable.

"You good, Rozy?" Bood asks once the door closes.

"I am fine," Ilya says automatically. "Why?"

Bood shrugs. "You looked like maybe you had something on your mind when you knocked."

Ilya exhales hard and runs his fingers through his hair. Bood looks at him with a calmness that manages to invite conversation without demanding Ilya divulge his secrets. Ilya picks at nonexistent lint on his shirt until he annoys himself with waffling.

"Barrett," Ilya says.

Bood's face clouds over. "Yeah, that was — bullshit. I knocked on his door earlier. He said he was fine and just wanted to sleep."

Ilya cocks his head. "Do we believe him?"

"Not really," Bood says, shaking his head. "But I'm also not his dad. I can't make him open the door.”

”He does not want to be here,” Ilya says.

“Most people who get traded here don’t.” The wryness in Bood’s tone makes Ilya huff a soft chuckle. Going into the draft, everyone says they would be honored to play for any team at all. After the draft, some people are in Boston or LA or Montreal, some people are in Buffalo or Utah or Ottawa.

“I choose to be here. I am very special in this way.”

”It’s definitely an interesting choice,” Bood says, but his gaze does that assessing thing where it feels like he is reading your bones. “What kills me about Barrett is that I genuinely think he could be a lot of what we need.”

“Yeah?” Ilya cocks his head.

“Maybe not this season,” Bood delicately amends. “Or at least he can only do so much. But next season, with you and me and him? That could be something.”

“Harris said same thing.”

Bood smiles. “Harris has a good eye.”

“For talent?”

“For people that have something special hiding behind who everyone thinks they are.”

Ilya doesn’t know what to say to that, so he makes a noncommittal noise that he suspects still tells Bood more than he means to. Then the bathroom door opens and Hazy comes out, drying his hands on his thighs. "What did I miss?"

"Wishing Barrett would hang out, tonight of all nights," Bood says.

"I meant in the movie, but yeah, that too." Hazy crawls back onto the bed and sprawls out, careful to keep his limbs on his side.

**

Ilya does not dream about his mama. He dreams that he is in Moscow, crouched down in a graffitied tunnel as snow falls, his phone tucked to his ear as Shane listens on the other side of the fucking world.

In Russian, Ilya pours out every thought he has had since he found out he was pregnant in an unbroken ramble. The fears and anxieties, the hopes, the wants, all of it. All the truths that Ilya has kept to himself that he wishes he had shared. All the dreams of a future.

When he finally finishes, Shane says, “Ya ponimayu. Ya tozhe, Ilya.” I understand. Me too.

**

In the hotel lobby the next morning, Ilya gets out of the elevator and sees Bood exchanging words with an older white guy that Ilya does not recognize. Bood’s expression is scrupulously neutral and stiffly polite. The guy claps Bood on the shoulder and Ilya starts walking a little faster.

The extremely familiar gesture was the end of the conversation, though, and by the time Ilya gets to Bood, the guy has already taken off toward the elevators.

“Who the fuck was that?” Ilya asks.

Bood frowns. “Curtis Barrett, apparently.”

“Barrett?” Ilya echoes, turning his head toward the elevators. “Like, our Barrett?”

“Seems so.” The words are slightly clipped.

“What did he want?”

Bood exhales hard. “He wanted to tell me, as captain, that he was going to have a word with his son about team loyalty.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Yeah.” Bood grimaces.

**

Troy Barrett shows up for the flight to Philly in the same miasma of misery that has followed him like a stinking cloud since he set foot in Ottawa. But on top of that, his face has the green cast of someone who woke up with last night’s liquor still sloshing around in his stomach and his breath is sour.

Hungover can be funny when half the team is groaning in shared misery. It is pathetic on one guy that spent the night holed up alone in his hotel room. Barrett slinks down the aisle to the last row and hunkers down into the window seat. Ilya rolls his eyes.

A girl Ilya fucked a couple times during his rookie year groaned something about his daddy issues once, when Ilya rolled out of her bed to answer a phone call from his father. He had not known it was a saying at the time, but the phrase stuck with him. It had a disdainful quality that made Ilya’s stomach squirm at the accuracy.

Every third fucking player in the league has daddy issues. Ilya is not special in this way, neither is Barrett. The world is rife with fathers who never got their own shot, fathers who got injured, fathers who are just fucking assholes.

Nobody gets to the MLH alone. There is always someone who gave something up to get a kid to practices and games, who bought the gear and paid for the gas, woke up early, watched the tape, gave innate talent a path to something more. Mothers, in Ilya’s experience, see professional success as the reward. Fathers keep track of the debts and expect to be repaid.

And Ilya is a fucking soft touch for those who are similarly burdened by their fucking fathers.

When the seatbelt light goes off, Ilya stands, shoulders his backpack, and crosses the center aisle to drop down heavily into the seat next to the saddest boy in the world.

Barrett jumps when he realizes his little tableau has been intruded upon. His eyes widen in surprise, then narrow to suspicion as Ilya ostentatiously settles into his new seat. Ilya unzips his backpack and pulls out a bottle of Gatorade. He holds it out. Barrett blinks at it.

“You want to spend whole flight with nothing but liquor in your stomach?” Ilya asks, shaking the bottle.

Barrett scoffs. Ilya shakes the fucking bottle again.

After a ten second standoff, in which Barrett clearly realizes that Ilya has him wildly outmatched in stubborn persistence, he swipes the bottle with a mulish frown. Ilya raises an eyebrow and Barrett rolls his eyes; he also grudgingly unscrews the cap and chugs a third of it.

“Was that so fucking hard?” Ilya asks.

“Why do you even care?”

”You are member of the team, like it or not.”

Barrett’s expression flickers with the profound sadness Ilya keeps catching out of the corner of his eye. He cuts his gaze away from Ilya, back out the window and then down to his hands; he starts peeling the label away from the bottle in ragged plastic strips. He unscrews the cap and takes another drink, glancing at Ilya sidelong as he swallows.

“Thanks,” he says. The word is very awkward.

“You are welcome.” Ilya folds his arms across his chest and settles into his seat. “Drink the whole fucking thing and maybe I will leave you alone.”

This is a lie, but Barrett will find that out soon enough. He turns back to the window as he nurses the drink, flicking his eyes toward Ilya as often as he thinks it will not be noticed. Ilya pulls out of his phone and pretends to scroll through it. He has more messages from Sveta and Yuna and David and Marley — and Shane, too. He should reply to them.

Troy finishes the Gatorade and holds out the empty bottle like it is a dead rat. He also looks seventeen percent less like death.

“You think I am flight attendant? Or garbage man?”

“I think you’re an asshole,” Barrett mutters.

”Amazing, there is one thing we agree on.”

Barrett shoves the bottle into the pocket on the seat in front of him. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Ilya drawls, adding extra syllables to the word to emphasize the sarcasm. “How is your face?”

Barrett’s hand jerks up to brush over the purpling split in his lip even as his expression shutters back into the faint sneer immortalized in his official team portrait. Ilya, who saw the unhinged rage on Dallas fucking Kent’s face and the crushing misery on Barrett’s, finds it less convincing now.

“I’m fine,” Barrett says flatly. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“This is not worry, this is friendly. You have heard of it?”

“Right.” Barrett rolls his eyes again. “I’m fine.”

Ilya nods and decides to go for fucking broke. “Your dad fucking sucks.”

The vulnerable horror the flashes across Barrett’s face is fucking awful and proof, if Ilya needed such a thing, that Bood got the measure of Curtis Barrett. The son swallows hard. “What did he — he said something to you?”

Ilya shrugs. “He said he would talk to you about team loyalty.”

Barrett flinches. “I’m not going to do—“

“No one here thinks you are going to betray team,” Ilya says, cutting him off. “Or that you fucking betrayed Toronto.”

Barrett laughs humorlessly. “Yeah, sure.”

Ilya uncrosses his arms and leans across the armrest, forcing himself not to laugh at the way Barrett shifts back against the wall. “Not every fucking team is crammed full of shitty people,” Ilya says. “You will learn this.”

Then he settles back in his seat, pulls up his hood, and takes his phone back out. Barrett stares at him for several long, uncertain seconds. Ilya opens his baby book and picks up on reading about possible complications in the second trimester.

Barrett pulls his own hood up and leans against the wall to stare out the window. Twenty minutes later he is asleep and that feels like a victory.

**

But the satisfaction only lasts until the puck drops in Philly. The game fucking blows.

Barrett gets the puck in the net in the first period and for one singular fucking moment Ilya suddenly believes the potential Wiebe and Harris and Bood see. Next season materializes as a real thing. Barrett’s talent exists. His face on the jumbotron lights up with a vicious joy, but joy nonetheless.

Then the refs fucking take it back. It is a bullshit call and Ilya knows it and there is nothing he can do but hunker down in his fucking seat and watch it all fucking fall apart again.

It is worse without Harris and Ilya fucking misses him. They text, but it is not the same and every time Ilya’s phone buzzes, his heart lurches with dread and hope that it might be a message from Shane. His stomach bubbles off and on; each time, Ilya braces himself against the surge of nausea he expects to follow, though it never does.

In the second period, Barrett makes another shot that clangs off the metal of the goal and rockets right back toward him. It’s a comical fuck up and the Philly crowd roars with laughter.

Haas ekes out a goal in the third to prevent a shutout, but it is a cold comfort. In the locker room afterward, even Wiebe’s equanimity is thinned out into a kind of grim exhaustion. “We can do better than this,” he says, but it sounds like pleading rather than conviction. Fresh guilt tastes sour on Ilya’s tongue.

Ilya’s phone buzzes several times as Wiebe is speaking. He pulls it out of his pocket in the subdued silence that follows and finds several messages from Shane. Their existence now cuts like deliberate cruelty and Ilya’s hand trembles as it tightens around his phone.

It is stupid to read them in a room full of his teammates, but Ilya is pissed about the loss and their last game, pissed about Dallas fucking Kent and Troy fucking Barrett, pissed about sitting on the sidelines, pissed about the fucking things Shane needs to figure out and that a little time has become weeks. He is sick of fucking secrets, his own and Shane’s and the ones they share. He unlocks his phone.

Shane: Jesus, that was brutal. Is Barrett trying to fuck you all over??

Shane: Are you okay? I miss you.

Ilya exhales a harsh sound, like his lungs have been seized in the grip of a crushing fist. So normal, these things Shane has the gall to send to him, so fucking banal. Shane fucking Hollander at his finest, pretending the things that scare him do not exist. Ilya is so fucking tired.

He is going to cry, Ilya realizes. He looks up at his team: Barrett yanking off his pads with barely contained violence, Bood scrubbing his hands over his face, Hazy’s hang-dog silence. Crying in the face of their frustration is a humiliation that will kill Ilya.

He leaves. He leaves and makes it out of the arena and into a cab, where he presses a hand over his mouth to muffle the hitched gasp of his breath. The driver glances at Ilya over his shoulder once; whatever the man sees smothers anything he might say.

Ilya cuts through the hotel lobby with his head down and throws himself into an elevator. His phone buzzes again as it slowly climbs. Shane calling now and Ilya almost hurls it against the fucking wall. The only thing that stops him is the doors sliding open with a soft chime; he stumbles into the muted hush of the empty hallway.

His hands shake as he fumbles his keycard into the slot. For a brief moment, Ilya seriously considers the possibility that he might not be able to get into his fucking hotel room and he'll have to ask someone for help. Which is the kind of thing that spins out into worse and worse rumors, amplified by his mysterious medical issues. The kind of rumors that grow teeth and claws and stain a reputation, long after a moment has passed.

It doesn’t happen. He gets the door open.

His phone buzzes with the notification of a voicemail. Ilya tosses the fucking thing into his open suitcase. He strips off his hateful fucking game day suit and leaves it crumpled on the floor at the end of the bed. Who gives a shit if they have another fucking game before going back to Ottawa? Ilya doesn’t fucking matter to the team, his team.

He cranks the shower up and, standing beneath the pounding spray, he loses his shit.

Ilya sobs with his entire body, bent over, arms around his chest, throat raw, snot on his face. He sobs like a child whose world has ended, like a little boy who has found his mother’s cold body, whose father looks down at him with repulsed contempt.

“I don’t know what to do,” he gasps in Russian, pleading with an empty room.

**

Eventually it burns out. His childish sobbing tapers off into hiccups that themselves even out to normal breath. The shower washes away the snot and tears and sends them down the drain to join the rest of the waste. A heavy dullness settles over him. He straightens up, runs his hand up and down his stomach.

“Sorry, Malysh,” he murmurs. “It has been a shit week.”

He takes five minutes to give his body a desultory scrub then reluctantly cuts the water. He avoids the mirror as he dries off. Embarrassment starts to ooze up in the wake of — whatever it was. Grief. Fear. Ilya is too tired to interrogate his own mind. He desperately hopes no one saw.

The room is chilly when he opens the bathroom door and Ilya shivers, the tremor of which goes oddly into his gut for a brief moment. Ilya presses his hand to the curve of it. He should probably find something to eat, but the effort feels so much higher than his minimal appetite warrants.

Sleep is much more appealing; something he needs, too, according to the internet and the books and Dr. Ivanov. The justification is hollow even as he thinks it. He wants — what does it matter what he wants? Ilya is so fucking tired of wanting. He unearths sleep clothes from his suitcase and ignores his fucking phone.

As he’s pulling on the old sweats and tee shirt, someone knocks on his door.

Ilya’s body locks up for a second, freezing like an animal staring down the car that will obliterate it. Ilya’s first, very stupid thought when it goes is that his shirt is just small enough to leave a strip of bare skin between it and his pants.

“Rozy?” Bood’s muffled voice comes through the door. “It’s me.”

Ilya could ignore him, he thinks. He could not answer and say nothing with a dozen easy excuses he could give in the morning. He was already asleep. He had his headphones in. He was in the bathroom. Ilya is unfit for the presence of other people, hollowed out and scraped raw.

He doesn’t want to be seen, as he is. He cannot stomach the inevitable pity, the disappointment, the disgust. It is not enough that he has given them nothing, no. Ilya has become a problem to be endured and it matters so little that he never intended it. He wanted so fucking badly to repay their gratitude. What use are his wishes?

But it is Bood. Bood, who has welcomed Ilya with an extended hand, who plays on an incomplete line with one teammate who is simply not of his caliber and another that endures the team like a punishment, who wears the C even though Ilya knows he does not love the weight of that responsibility.

Ilya owes Bood more than the rest of the team. But even that is an incomplete accounting. Bood has earned the best Ilya has; he at least deserves more than Ilya’s most self-destructive worst. Ilya opens the door.

“Hey, Roz,” Bood says amiably. He holds up a McDonald’s bag. “I brought food.”

Ilya stares at him. “Why?”

“I thought you’d be hungry.”

“You are my mother now? I am big kid, I can feed myself.”

“I’m your captain,” Bood says mildly. “And my mama believes deeply in feeding your people.”

Ilya meant to answer long enough to offer assurances that he is fine, he needs nothing, he needs no one. There is nothing for Bood to worry about. Whatever problems Ilya has are his alone.

But he softens a little, at the thought of Bood’s mama teaching her son kitchen lessons. And in that small amount of give comes a softly asked question: does Ilya really want to be alone? It is strange to realize that no, he does not.

Ilya takes a step back and opens the door. “Okay. Fine. Come in.”

“Thank you,” Bood says.

Ilya closes the door and wipes his palms on his thighs. Bood drags the chair tucked under the desk to the end of the bed and sits. He looks expectantly at Ilya, hovering awkwardly by his own door.

Ilya tugs uselessly on the hem of his shirt as he crosses the room and sits on the end of the bed. It’s so fucking weird and it shouldn’t be. In Boston, Ilya invited his teammates to his hotel rooms all the fucking time and he went to theirs without a second thought.

But he has not done the same in Ottawa. Not deliberately, exactly. It's just that Shane has eclipsed everything else, in a way. But that isn’t really fair because it is not something Shane has done. It is what Ilya has done, sectioning his life into either being with Shane or wanting to be with Shane so badly there is nothing left. He cannot hide the depth of his wanting and so it has been easier to stay away.

Bood hands him a burger and fries. Ilya murmurs a thank you that Bood waves off.

“You did not have to do this,” Ilya says.

“Eat the damn burger, Rozy.”

“Fine, okay. I am eating. Jesus.”

“Thank you,” Bood says, with apparent sincerity.

Ilya eats the fucking burger and Bood eats his. The silence is not easy, exactly, but it is less uncomfortable than it could be. He gets a little of his appetite as he eats. The food blunts the sharpest edges in Ilya’s mind.

He knows he is being checked on, is the thing. And that stings in some way that feels less important than it has, given he is only eating because food has been handed to him. Bood is that kind of captain. He is that kind of man. A gratitude that feels so fucking pathetic sloshes through Ilya; he cannot imagine voicing it.

He finishes his food and crumples the wrapper into a ball. His stomach does the bubbling thing again, and he winces. Bood swallows the last of his own burger. “You good, Rozy?

Ilya waves a dismissive hand. “It is just weird heartburn or something. Babies do weird shit to your stomach.”

“Oh, yeah,” Bood says. “That makes sense.”

But there is an odd cadence to the words that snags Ilya’s attention. He tosses his trash into the McDonald’s bag, then splays both his hands over his belly. Bood’s eyes flick toward them for only a moment, but Ilya catches it.

“Okay, what?” Ilya asks. “You are thinking something.”

Bood huffs a laugh and scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “No, it’s — I just thought maybe they were moving around.”

The world stops. Ilya’s heart bangs against the cage of his ribs. His breath gusts out of his chest.

His awareness contracts down to his body and all the complex mechanics of it and the sensory input he so casually ignores. There is a piece of food caught in one of his molars. The exposed skin on his belly is cold. His lower back and calves are quietly sore.

Deep in his growing belly, something part of him but apart from him flutters.

It has been days. He has been feeling it for fucking days.

He thinks, I have to tell Shane.

“Rozy?” Bood’s voice comes from very far away.

“Yes.” Ilya’s own voice is barely closer.

“You good, man?”

No, not really. No, not at all. Ilya’s chest contracts. Malysh is moving and Shane is a million miles away.

“Ilya,” Bood says. The world returns with the unfamiliar sound of his given name in Bood’s voice and he jolts, looking up and seeing nothing at first. He blinks hard and Bood solidifies in his vision. He’s leaning forward, face stricken by a terrible, naked concern.

“I am fine,” Ilya says. “I just — I did not — I think you are right. I didn’t realize.”

He is apparently unconvincing. Fair, Ilya thinks, he cannot even convince himself of his own deflections. Bood’s fear is not assuaged and he slowly stands, hands held out in front of him like Ilya might bolt if he moves too quickly. That is probably also fair.

Then he sits down next to Ilya on the bed.

“What?” Ilya asks.

”I’m gonna hug you,” Bood says.

Ilya barks a strange laugh. “Why?”

“Man, you really look like you need it.”

What Ilya needs Zane Boodram cannot provide. Ilya cannot even describe the full shape of his need without telling secrets that are not his alone. And it is awful to need so deeply in front of Bood. Ilya knows how heavy the burden of it is and so he has spent a lifetime doing everything he can to keep it away from others.

But loneliness is a cavernous hole in Ilya’s chest and Bood is there.

“Okay,” Ilya says.

Bood pulls him in. The strength of Bood’s arms is almost-familiar, an echo of other big, solid men that Ilya has loved. Ilya sags into it, taking what he does not really deserve.

And God, Ilya has missed being touched. Missed sprawling in bed with Sveta, missed the heavy sling of Marley’s arms over his shoulders. Missed fucking every night, messy kisses and the slide of skin and the animal comfort of waking up next to someone warm.

He misses Shane. He has always missed Shane; a little secret he has kept to himself. From the first time he left one of Shane’s hotel rooms at nineteen, with the taste of Shane fucking Hollander on his tongue, Ilya has missed him when they are not together.

When Ilya lets go, Bood doesn’t move.

“Rozy,” Bood says, low and careful. “Look. You play it close to the vest and that’s fine. It’s not a problem. I get why you would. And I’m not trying to force anything out of you.”

“I can’t tell you,” Ilya says.

Bood nods. “Yeah, I figured. That sounds — hard.”

Ilya nods. “Yeah.”

“And you’re doing something hard as it is,” Bood says. “And, maybe, doing it alone?”

”I don’t know anymore.”

The truth of that uncertainty spoken aloud lands like a blow. Maybe he will be alone, Ilya thinks. Maybe Malysh will come into the world and walk through it with his dad nothing more than a resemblance writ on his face. Shane will exist only in small things Ilya alone recognizes.

Ilya will again not be worth staying around for. That, he cannot say. That, he can barely admit.

“I’m sorry,” Bood says quietly.

Ilya shudders. “I’m sorry, I can’t—“

”It’s fine, Roz,” Bood cuts him off. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

Ilya nods once.

For a moment, Bood looks at him with indecision in his brown eyes. Then he leans forward. “Roz, you know people want to help you, right?” he asks.

The question is so fucking unexpected it becomes absurd.

”Help,” Ilya echoes.

“Yeah, Roz.”

“What help?” Ilya asks, the question harsh. “I don’t need help.”

But Bood stays steady. And his steadiness is a kind of agony against Ilya’s desperation to hold his life together as the future he was reckless and stupid enough to believe in starts to slip through his fingers. It is a bulwark Ilya has not earned.

”I think you do,” Bood says. “Roz, you are part of this team. And I get that you don’t feel like it right now. But you are. We give a shit about you, like we give a shit about each other. You are part of that, Rozy.”

How can he be? Ilya rode in on the wave of his storied fucking career, full of promises about what he could do for the poor Ottawa Centaurs. And all those promises came to is three months of profoundly mediocre hockey, his mind barely on the fucking ice. And all he can give them for the rest of the fucking season is his absence.

Ilya shakes his head. “You did not sign up for me riding the fucking bench.”

“So what, Roz?” Bood puts a hand on Ilya’s forearm. “It’s one season. You’re having a baby. What’s one season against that? Your kid is going to last longer than any hockey. Having a baby you want is a good thing.”

”Is it?”

”Yes,” Bood says, gentle finality in his voice. “It is.”

Ilya realizes that Bood is the first person to say that to him, that Malysh is a good thing. A surprise, yes, and a sacrifice. A terror. A complication. A choice. But also a good thing.

“I am selfish,” Ilya says.

“Fuck that.” Bood squeezes Ilya’s arm. His hand is very warm. “Roz, listen, please. I need you to hear me. So, I didn’t tell you this, but a bunch of the wags have a group chat where they’re trying to figure out how to show up for you.”

Ilya stares at him. “What the fuck does that mean, Bood?”

Bood cocks a smile. “They want to help you how they helped each other when they had kids. They’ve got advice and answers and tiny clothes and — I don’t know. Experience. They’ve made it through these playoffs before. They know what it’s like. But you’re a player, not a wag and they know that and — they respect that. They don’t want to make it weird for you or step on your toes.”

It is not Ilya’s toes that feel stepped on, he thinks. It is something deeper and uglier than that. A fundamental thing that claws up out of his guts, snarling and whining in equal measure, at — at what? Another fucking implication? Is it nothing more than the last dying remnant of his mind that does not believe Ilya could possibly be capable of being bred like an animal?

What a terrible way to treat kindness, Ilya thinks.

Something cracks open inside him and Ilya braces for rage or grief; it takes him a moment to understand that it’s relief. If the worst happens. If Shane is not there. Ilya does not have to be alone. Malysh can have more than just Ilya.

It is not enough. It is not what Ilya wants for either of them. But it is also not nothing.

“Fuck me,” Ilya gasps. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“You’re good.” Bood squeezes his arm again. “There’s a lot of people who want to be there for you, if you let them in.”

Ilya does not know what fucking feeling it is that quakes through him, he just knows that strange laughter punches out of his chest and his stomach squirms again and he’s fucking crying.

“Fuck, Bood, you have to stop.” Ilya laughs raggedly. “I will fucking — I don’t fucking know. Cry so much I pass out, or something. Fuck. This week has fucking sucked.”

For a long moment, Bood stares at him, then he exhales and tension drains out of him.

“The kid’s moving,” Bood says, swiping the back of his hand across his eyes. “That’s something?”

Ilya cups his stomach in his hands. “That is true. Fuck.”

“What does it feel like?” Bood asks, moving back to the desk chair. “Is it weird?”

”It is just like — bubbles, kind of? Or like a little fish moving around?” Ilya strokes his thumb over the strip of bare skin. He realizes he doesn’t give a shit if Bood sees it. It’s his fucking skin. Bood has seen him naked so many times.

Bood cocks his head. Ilya sees him debate for a second, then he asks, “Could other people feel it, you think?”

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know. Why do you ask, Captain?” he asks pointedly.

Bood rolls his eyes and smiles. “Idle curiosity. Don’t worry, I know how to keep my hands to myself.”

“I am not worried,” Ilya says. “And I never said no. You just have to ask.”

Bood straightens his shoulders. “I don’t know how to phrase this in a way that doesn’t sound weird. Rozy, can I see if I can feel a kick?”

In truth, tension slides through Ilya at the thought, but he sets it aside. “Yes, Bood, you can try to feel him kick. I am pretty sure you will not, though.”

Carefully, very carefully, so fucking carefully, Bood sets his palm on Ilya’s stomach. His hand is gentle. For several seconds, both of them are quiet and still. Then, Ilya’s stomach — no, Malysh. Malysh shifts.

“Did you feel that?” Ilya asks.

“No.” Bood settles back in his chair. “It’s just between you two right now.”

Ilya strokes his stomach. He likes it, a little, that he has a little time where he is the only person who can feel the tangible proof of Malysh. “You will be first person I tell when you can.”

“I’m honored,” Bood says. “I clocked that him, Rozy. It’s a boy?”

“Oh, not for sure, it is just how I have thought of him, I guess.” Ilya flashes a grin. “You will be first person I tell when I find out.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Bood laughs.

**

Ilya does not dream.

**

Their flight out of Philly leaves early the next morning, which means half the team is red-eyed and barely awake, Ilya is not special. Bood catches his eye for a moment and nods once, but no more. For this, Ilya is grateful.

His phone buzzes in his pocket as he sits next to Hazy. Barrett is hunkered down in the back, but Ilya has nothing left for him. He will have to be someone else’s problem or be content stewing in his extravagant unhappiness. Hazy flashes Ilya a bleary smile.

“Wanna watch the Blade sequel?”

Ilya hears Bood’s voice. There are people waiting outside of the loneliness Ilya has never felt like he could escape, if he lets them in. “Sure,” he says. “I will watch the fucking sequel.”

He takes the earbud Hazy offers.

**

When they land, Ilya has agreed to watch the third fucking Blade movie, and Hazy is so fucking delighted Ilya would suspect he was being mocked if it was anyone else. But no, Hazy is just — like that.

Ilya pulls his phone out his pocket and flicks it off airplane mood. The backlog of notifications come through in a burst. Texts from Sveta and Marley and the Hollanders and a weird one from Shane — Promise you love me scared? — that Ilya has no fucking idea how to interpret.

He has a voicemail, too, from a Canadian number, that he only stops in the process of deleting because he realizes it might be from the baby doctor office. Sighing, he taps the notification and tucks his phone between his ear so he can start putting things back into his backpack.

Hi, Ilya. My name is Farah Jalali; I’m Shane’s manager. I had a long and I will say surprising phone call with Shane yesterday and I wanted to reach out and introduce myself. Shane walked me through everything you two have planned, so congratulations, first of all!

I am more than happy to represent both of you. I think it’ll definitely simplify things to have one person managing responses when you two start making public announcements. The three of us can start talking strategy whenever you’re ready. It’s a big step.

Oh, and before I forget! I also wanted to give you a heads up that I’ll be reaching out to Ottawa later today to start the process of getting Shane where he needs to be next season. I don’t know how much the organization knows, but I didn’t want you to get caught by surprise.

I think that’s it. I’m looking forward to working with you and Shane. Please feel free to give me a call back whenever you’ve got a second to talk. My number is 514-555-3952.

“Rozy?”

Ilya jerks his head up and his phone drops into his lap. There is a roaring sound in his ears; he can feel his jackrabbiting pulse throb in his neck and wrists. He blinks at Hazy.

“Are you okay, man?” Hazy asks.

“I—“ Ilya says. “I don’t fucking know.”

Chapter End Notes

shane, writing the note: ok i need to make sure i'm being extra clear so there's no possible way to misunderstand

i doublechecked the brief bit of russian to the best of my abilities, but if i fucked it up, please let me know.

MAN this chapter fought me. enjoy.

thank you all for reading and the very generous feedback. i am frequently Overcome by it. <3

as always, i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 13

Chapter Summary

siri, play 'life is a highway'

Chapter Notes

It takes ten thousand years for the plane to lumber to a stop, another ten thousand for Ilya’s slow fucking teammates to gather up their shit, and another ten thousand to get off the fucking plane.

The entire time Ilya’s heart pounds so hard he wonders, distantly, if it might crack through his ribs. He considers the possibility that this is a panic attack. If it it, he owes Shane an apology for not realizing how fucking overwhelming they are. His mind feels fractured between panic and eerie calm; he feels fucking insane.

Hazy stays glued to his side from the plane to the bus to the hotel. He keeps up a steady stream of inane babble that Ilya hears none of. He belatedly realizes that Hazy is camouflaging whatever is happening to Ilya with a conversation that no one will interrupt. It is not unusual for the person trapped between Hazy and the window seat to look glazed.

At the hotel, Ilya is handed a keycard and starts toward the elevator without even a half-assed thank you. He tells Hazy he is fine and shrugs him off. Hazy’s expression makes it very clear how plausible he finds that, but he does not follow. Ilya cannot say if he is grateful for that or not.

In his room, he sits down at the desk and redials his voicemail.

Hi, Ilya. My name is Farah Jalali; I’m Shane’s manager…

He listens through the entire thing twice. The second time he remembers to scribble down her phone number with a shitty hotel pen.

His voicemail informs him he has three more new messages and Ilya ends the call.

”What the fuck, Hollander,” he says aloud.

Shane wants to be traded to Ottawa. Shane is asking to be traded to Ottawa. Shane’s fucking manager — no, that is wrong, their fucking manager — is getting the ball rolling on Shane’s fucking trade to fucking Ottawa.

Ilya rakes his fingers through his hair. He feels everything. He feels nothing. He does not fucking know what he should feel when the shock finally ebbs. God, Ilya is sick of crying in mediocre hotel rooms in shit cities. Shane has asked to be traded to Ottawa.

Inanely, Ilya thinks that if there is a single person in Montreal who does not already hate him, they’re about to. A stupid thought that startles a harsh cackle of laughter out of him. If there is anyone left in Ottawa who does not like Ilya, getting Shane fucking Hollander to move to Canada’s most boring city might change that, too.

The hockey isn’t the point. Obviously. The point is Shane will be in Ottawa. With Ilya. With Malysh. Ilya’s head swims and he drops it down; he feels the muscles in his neck twinge from the stretch.

He suddenly remembers Shane’s last message. Promise you love me scared? What the fuck does that mean? What the fuck does any of this mean? It doesn’t feel real. Why is Ilya the last fucking person to be told about whatever the fuck Shane has been doing?

Anger spikes in his chest that Ilya already knows rings a little false, but it’s something other than helpless shock. It’s enough to get him to pick up his phone.

**

Ilya’s first call rings and rings and goes to voicemail.

“Goddamnit, Hollander,” he yells. He dials again.

The second call rings and rings, then Shane says, “Hi, I’m sorry, I was running on the treadmill. Fuck, I’m so glad you called. I left you messages.”

The full weight of the days they haven’t spoken to each other slams into Ilya’s chest so hard it steals his breath. He thinks, I need to figure some things out, and an inarticulate scream of rage and fear and grief and loneliness claws up his throat to the back of his mouth.

He chokes it back down.

“Shane,” he says, the name a rough and raspy thing.

“I’m here,” Shane assures him. “God, I miss you. I miss you so much.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Ilya asks.

“You were right,” Shane says. “I don’t have everything figured out yet, but I have most of it. I wanted to tell you. It's been — I don’t know. So much.”

The sense that Ilya has missed something important blooms in his chest. The conversation is veering off his expectations, muddying the clarity of his righteous anger. He thinks, do you love me scared, and, I need to figure some things out in all their bullshit ambiguity. The words have foxed edges in his mind for how many times he has thought about them.

“Ilya?” Shane says. “Are you there?”

“What happened?” Ilya asks. “I saw you left messages. I have not listened to them.”

“Oh.” Shane wheezes a strange, high laugh. “Fuck. Sorry.”

”Is okay. What happened?” Ilya presses.

“I told my team that I’m gay,” Shane says. “I mean, I did more than that, but that was the specific thing I called about. So. Yeah.”

Ilya forgets English and Russian in the silence that follows, mouth open and empty. He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again; the hotel room remains unchanged. He thinks, you’re right about everything you said last night, an unambiguous declaration of fact written on the same paper with the same pen that Ilya’s brain deemed meaningless. Why?

“Ilya?”

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya says. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Shane huffs out a sound too rough to be a sigh. “I mean, I didn’t tell them about you and the pear. Not because I’m ashamed —“ those words come out in a rush, “— but I didn’t want to without your permission.”

“Are you okay?” Ilya asks.

Shane hesitates. Fair, Ilya thinks. Very fucking fair.

“The sky hasn’t fallen,” Shane says slowly. “I’m more okay than I thought I would be. I wish you were here.”

“I—“ Ilya begins, but cuts himself off.

This is not how he wants to have this conversation. Not like this, not over the phone while he sits in a mediocre hotel room in a city that means nothing to Ilya. He needs to be able to see Shane’s face, to reach across space between them and touch him. They should be in Ilya’s house that he bought for them and the family he could only barely allow himself to dream of.

Someone knocks on his door; Ilya nearly drops his phone for how hard he jumps. Bood says, “Rozy, it’s Bood and Hazy.”

To them, Ilya yells, “One second!” He asks Shane, “Can you get to Ottawa?”

“Ottawa? Why?” Shane asks quizzically. “I mean, yes. We’re not playing tonight. I can leave in ten minutes. But why?”

“I will see you tonight,” Ilya says.

“What do you mean? You're not in Ottawa either?"

“I fucking will be, this is important,” Ilya says. “For you and me and us. I am coming. I will make something up. I will tell them there is family thing. Is okay.”

Shane is silent long enough for Ilya’s stomach to curdle.

“You can tell them the truth, if you want," Shane says at last.

**

Bood knocks again as Ilya staggers to his feet and crosses the room. He fumbles the door open and steps back, saying nothing. Bood and Hazy come in with matching concern on their very different faces; it almost strikes Ilya as funny, if there was any room left in his mind for such things. He can tell them the whole truth.

“What is going on?” Hazy demands. “You looked like you were gonna pass out all the way from the plane to the hotel. You’re freaking me out.”

Bood, ever the calmest person in the fucking room, knocks his elbow against Hazy. “Are you good, Rozy?” he asks.

Ilya stares at them.

Most of his instincts say that it is better to lie. He can always tell them the truth later, once he knows for sure that Shane’s permission will stick. A lie is simpler, it leaves Ilya room to maneuver down the line, space to sand down anything too sharp to share. Ilya’s life has trained him to the wisdom of discretion. People cannot use what they do not know against him.

The rest of Ilya, an unfamiliar quiet voice in the back of his mind, says this is Hazy and Bood and they already know most of it and have probably guessed more. Ilya’s secrets are not so unfathomable. If Bood and Hazy were going to take anything badly, they would already have done so. The team is not full of assholes.

“Malysh's dad told his team he is gay,” Ilya says.

Both Hazy and Bood freeze for a moment; Ilya can see the same series of thoughts go through both of their minds. Scott Hunter’s kiss did not remake the league from the foundations up and the things team owners and coaches say to cameras are too often platitudes. Their players still hurl slurs on the ice and no one blinks.

”Fuck,” Hazy says expressively. “Is Jane okay?”

“Jane?” Bood echoes. Ilya sees the wheels in his mind turn, sees the disbelieving moment the idea clicks. “Ilya, it’s not—“

Hazy flicks his eyes back and forth between them. “It’s not what?”

The fragment of some stupid saying about how courage is actually doing shit when you are scared bubbles up from the recesses of his brain. So does the memory of Shane sitting in a Florida hotel room, asking if Ilya feels it too, and Shane standing in the cottage in the middle of his worst nightmare.

Sometimes it is harder to get what you want, Ilya thinks, than to be disappointed.

"You cannot tell anyone else this,” Ilya says, his voice far calmer in his ears than he feels.

"Cross my heart, man," Hazy says. "We can spit on it, if that'll help."

"Your business is your business. I promise," Bood says.

Ilya steels himself. "Malysh's dad is Shane Hollander."

“Shit,” Bood murmurs.

“Shane Hollander,” Hazy repeats. He sounds dazed. “The Shane Hollander? Montreal Metros Shane Hollander?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Unless there are two of him and there better not be, one is stressful enough.”

For a split second, Bood and Hazy are both silent, then Hazy cackles and Bood’s breath huffs out of his chest in a slightly strangled laugh. Ilya drops his hand; the corners of his mouth tug up in a smile that probably looks more like he is a wolf baring his teeth, but Ilya can manage no fucking better.

“So, I’m guessing the Metros don’t know about you either?” Bood asks.

Hazy scoffs. “That’s your first question?”

Ilya barks out a hysterical little laugh. “Fuck, sorry. Sorry.”

Bood shoots Hazy a pointed look, then asks, “Do you need to go?”

“I —

“Rozy,” Bood says, cutting off Ilya's protest before it can begin. “I’ve never done it myself, but it seems like telling your team something that big would be a moment you’d want your — partner or boyfriend or whatever with you.”

”Oh, yeah, definitely you’d want ’em there,” Hazy agrees.

Ilya stares at them. “You are both being very fucking normal about this.”

“You dropped when two hockey players love each other in the middle of the locker room, not me,” Bood says. “Not a huge pool of possibilities, Roz.”

“Shane Hollander, though,” Hazy says. “I mean, I get it, but damn.”

Ilya snorts. “You get it.”

”He’s objectively good looking and a good enough hockey player to keep up with you,” Hazy says. “It all tracks.”

It sounds so very fucking simple when reduced down, but Hazy is not wrong. Shane is very good looking and very good at hockey and those were the first two things Ilya noticed about him.

”So, we need to get you on a plane,” Bood says.

**

It turns out there are no direct commercial flights between Buffalo and Ottawa and if Ilya has to spend four fucking hours waiting in Toronto's airport he will lose his shit and make a scene. Bood kindly offers to make some calls to try and charter something, which feels too fucking dramatic for the situation at hand.

In desperation, Ilya pulls up directions on his phone. It’s a just over a five hour drive, per the app, though Ilya assumes that is based on going the speed limit the whole time. He could probably do it in four and a half. And he would be doing something, which is much more appealing than sitting on a plane alone with his fucking thoughts.

“I just need to rent a car,” Ilya says, decision made. “Or buy a fucking car, I do not care.”

Bood looks at him assessingly. “Are you sure, Rozy? That’s a drive.”

“It is probably about same amount of time in the end,” Ilya demurs.

Ilya’s phone chimes with a message from Shane. Leaving Montreal now. I love you.

“I am sure,” Ilya says.

**

Bood volunteers to call the hotel concierge to arrange a car. Hazy decides to go down to the lobby to buy road trip snacks. It is so fucking strange to have people Ilya is not paying volunteer to help him with things. Ilya’s thanks feel inadequate to their gifts, but he gives them nonetheless.

Bood says, “Of course, Rozy, we’ve got you.”

Hazy says, “Part of the ship, part of the crew,” and Ilya has no idea what the fuck that means, but it feels close enough to ‘you’re welcome’ that he lets it go.

Ilya calls Wiebe.

“I have to go home,” Ilya says before Wiebe can say anything. “It is family thing. I am sorry.”

“Do what you need to do,” Wiebe says. “I trust you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Yes, I will.” For the first time in Ilya’s life, he realizes it is possible he means that.

Half an hour later, Ilya is on I-90 in a tasteful Mercedes going east toward Albany. He has two bottles of coke, a Gatorade, a box of granola bars, and a dusty looking cookie the size of his hand in the passenger seat. The car’s navigation tells him to continue for 224 kilometers.

**

It takes about twenty minutes for the last of Ilya’s adrenaline to burn itself out; behind it comes an unease that crawls through his mind, down into his guts and sits there.

Ilya turns the radio on, then off, then on again, hunting for a distraction that he cannot find. The unreality of it all clings to him like cobwebs as the nice-ish car he has borrowed smoothly chews up the distance.

Solitude is a strange thing when Ilya has another person inside him, so is loneliness. Both of them quietly come as Buffalo and his team fall further and further behind. Ilya drives with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his belly. He taps his fingers against his stomach when Malysh moves.

He says, “Shane came out,” aloud to test the sound. The words feel like a betrayal in his mouth and Ilya wonders how long that will last. He says, “Shane told his team,” and that feels a little less unnatural. The ambiguity is a shelter to fall back into, which both comforts and annoys Ilya.

“Your dad told his team, Malysh,” Ilya says, absently tapping his thumb. “Not about you and me, but being gay. This is secret, but I was not sure he would ever do that. He is very fucking brave, if you give him enough time.”

Ilya huffs a laugh. “I wish sometimes he could be brave a little faster. This probably is not fair of me, but I have spent weeks of my life waiting for Shane Hollander to decide the order he wants things. Hockey is first, usually. But he wants to be traded to Ottawa.’

“Is what I want. You and me and him together in one place.” Ilya sighs. “I wish he told me his plan. I think — well. I think your dad thinks he said something to me in that fucking note that he did not. And I don’t know what the fuck it is. I can guess, yes? But what if I am fucking wrong?’

”I have been wrong before. I have asked for too fucking much before. And he does not tell me it is too much, no. He — he fucking runs away and I sit there and wait for him to fucking come back! It always for me to trust that he will fucking come back, every fucking time.”

”I did not fucking ask him to move heaven and earth!” Ilya spits out. “I asked him for a fucking answer! That is all. To tell me with his words if he is going to be with us or not. And I get this meaningless fucking note and nothing messages for days and the first I hear is from his agent. That is crazy, yes? I am left out of my own life! That is insane thing to do.”

Ilya realizes, belatedly, that he is angry.

His mind wants to shy away from it, but Ilya has nothing but the company of his own thoughts as he drives. Muted heat flushes across his face. It is not rage, not really, not compared to what his father and brother were casually capable of. In another family, Ilya would have learned to rage back, but he learned the futility of the fight young. Better to feel nothing.

Ilya never wants to open his mouth to speak to Shane and hear his father come out. He would rather cut open his skull and excise the man entirely.

But the anger exists, a low flame burning in his guts. Why, Ilya asks himself. Why?

“Sometimes I feel like I am obstacle to your dad’s real life,” Ilya says. “Like I am — I don’t know. A thing he has learned to live with. That in perfect world it would be different and his life would be so easy. And I am not easy. I was already every fucking complication in the world before you. Now I am a — a bomb.’

”I am so fucking tired of waiting for him to choose. No, I am so fucking tired of waiting for him to act like he made the choice. He can be fucking afraid. I am afraid. Your dad sometimes treats his life like a problem to solve, but that is bullshit. There are not solutions for every single thing. Living his life will disappoint some people and he cannot avoid that. But I will be there next to him. If he allows.”

Malysh moves. Ilya taps his thumb.

**

Three quarters of the way to Syracuse, Ilya pulls into a rest stop that is nothing more than some sketchy bathrooms and a sun faded vending machine to piss. The floor of the men’s room is ominously sticky. He half-expects someone to jump out of one of the stalls with a knife to murder him.

He inhales clean, cold air deeply as he walks back to his car, head tipped up to the sky. Thick clouds, the flat gray color of a depressing apartment block in Moscow, scud overhead, threatening the shit kind of snow that freezes into sharp crusts of ice.

Still, the cold feels nice and Ilya gives into the urge to linger, leaning against the hood of the car and pulling out his phone. The Centaurs group chat has messages from a handful of teammates awkwardly hoping everything is okay.

Bood says, Good luck, Rozy. To both of you.

Wiebe’s message makes him snort laughter at the improbable ridiculousness of it. Why do I feel like you already know something about the very interesting phone call we just got?

He decides not to respond to either before he talks to Shane.

As he scrolls through his messages, a question comes to him. He opens his chat with Yuna and reads over the last few messages they have exchanged. It is jarring to realize how often she has asked how he and Malysh are doing where Ilya has brushed her off with variations on he’s fine. Ilya calls her before he can talk himself out of it.

Yuna answers almost immediately. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Ilya says.

“Oh, honey, I’m glad to hear from you,” Yuna says with genuine warmth in her voice. “How are you doing?”

Ilya forces himself not to say he’s fine. “It has been long week.”

“Travel weeks always are,” she says. “When do you head home?”

“Team flies back tomorrow night,” Ilya hedges. “I actually I had thing I wanted to ask you.”

”Sure.”

Ilya looks out over the mostly empty parking lot and the highway beyond. He could be in one million different places spread across the entire continent; if he wanted, he could get off at the next exit and merge onto a different highway going a different direction and not stop until he hit the Pacific or the Gulf.

But he does not want to. He is already going toward where he wants to be.

“Has Shane told you any news?” Ilya asks.

“I see,” Yuna says slowly. “Well, he told David and I that he did want to talk to us about something, but only once you were home. That’s all.”

”Oh.”

So, Ilya is not the last to be told what the fuck Shane has been doing. That is something, he thinks.

“I don’t suppose you’d give me a hint?” Yuna asks lightly.

Ilya manages a mostly normal laugh. “I know nothing.”

“A likely story, but okay. I can live with curiosity.”

They chat for a few minutes. Ilya promises to come over for dinner when he has a free night.

**

“Do you want to hear story of first time I met your dad? I do not want you to think he has no good parts. He does, so many of them. We were seventeen, playing against each other in tournament, and already people were talking about our rivalry. I was in smoking in parking lot of arena, minding my own business and your dad came up to me and said two things.’

“First, he told me I was smoking in wrong part of parking lot. Second, he told me I was great to watch play. I had never gotten compliment like that before. I thought he was fucking with me for a second, you know? That maybe there was some hidden English meaning in his words that I did not understand.’

“But no. He really meant it. And then I thought he was doing a shit job at flirting with me and I was so surprised that a golden boy like Shane Hollander would be so fucking reckless. He was not flirting. Or I think is more accurate to say he did not know he was flirting. He is like that. He is unaware what he does to people. I never stopped thinking about him.”

**

Ilya has to piss again when he hits Syracuse, so he pulls into a sprawling rest stop with one thousand gas pumps in front of a building. It has a couple different food options that are designed to be inhaled on a brief stop or eaten in a car without mess. The floor of the men’s room is barely sticky and the lights work. Ilya does not feel in danger of being murdered at all.

He spots what looks like a worse version of a Boston corner store tucked into the back of the main food court. Coolers full of bottled drinks line the perimeter and shelves haphazardly stocked with criminally expensive snacks and car shit take up the middle.

One wall is covered in shelves stuffed full with cheap tee shirts and hoodies that say SYRACUSE and I Heart NY. There are piles of tchotchkes for tourists to panic buy when they realize they forgot to get one fucking guy a souvenir.

Ilya’s lower back and shoulders are stiff right up the edge of pain, so he ducks into the store for painkillers and finds a small array of normal over the counter stuff. Ilya grabs a bottle of Aleve at random and takes up to the counter. He sets it down in front of the cashier.

She looks at the bottle, then up at Ilya, then back down to the bottle.

“Um,” she says. “I think maybe you want Tylenol instead?”

Ilya cocks his head. “Why do I maybe want that?”

Color reddens her cheeks. “Well, it’s just that you’re not supposed to take Aleve when you’re—“ She holds her hand out six inches away from her stomach, “—pregnant? But Tylenol is okay.”

Suddenly Ilya feels the eyes of every single person at the fucking rest stop boring into his back. This must show on his face, because the cashier turns a blotchier red and is suddenly very fascinated by the wall of wadded up shirts and plastic memories. Ilya zips up his heavy coat, very normally, not at all suspiciously.

“That. Okay.” So eloquent. Ilya snatches the Aleve back, returns it to the shelf, and picks a bottle of Tylenol at random. The cashier says nothing as she rings him up and gives Ilya the change for the American twenty he had in his wallet.

Ilya mumbles, “Thanks,” and flees.

**

Back in his rental car, Ilya cracks open the second bottle of Coke and mechanically eats two dry granola bars.

He knows, obviously, that his body has changed significantly from that first firm palmful he felt. He compulsively looks at his body almost every day, watching his silhouette slowly round out. He has counted the pink striations on his stretched skin. The athlete that has existed in Ilya’s bones and muscles melts away a little more with each day.

And he has known, in the abstract, that eventually he would cross the Rubicon of deniability. Eventually, any given stranger would be able to look at him and see Malysh for what he is. Ilya could avoid this only by retreating into hermitage for months and to what end? He will never pretend that Malysh is anything less than what he is, Ilya’s flesh and blood.

But it is very different to know someone has looked at him and seen the truth without being told.

It is almost funny, Ilya thinks. He has told Shane that they are running out of fucking time and that Ilya cannot wait for him while Ilya himself dawdled in the delusion that surely there is time before ambiguity’s shelter is beyond his grasp.

Ilya pulls out his phone. He has messages from Shane:

Made it to the house. It’s weird to be here without you.

I miss you.

I’ve said that like four times today. Sorry

When does your flight get in?

Ilya sends back, i decided to drive. eta 2.5 hours. see you soon. i love you.

He has one from Harris, too: I hope everything is okay. If you need anything when you get home, I can drop anything and come help. There are several little hearts at the end.

Ilya hears Bood again, that there are people who want to be there for him. He hears Farah, too, who is ready to talk strategy for announcing the life Ilya so desperately fucking wants to the world, making calls to get Shane’s fucking trade to Ottawa going.

The same unfamiliar voice in the back of Ilya’s mind that told him Bood and Hazy would be okay whispers that maybe, maybe, this is not a dream. Maybe he is on the edge not of his life collapsing, but coalescing.

“Fuck,” Ilya says. “Okay.”

To Harris he says, I am okay. It is family thing. I will tell you later. Will you still help me to make announcement about Malysh?

Harris replies before Ilya even has time to put the key in the ignition. Yes, absolutely. I’ll start working on some statement language now.

Ilya leaves Syracuse going north on I-81 toward Canada.

**

“You should know that I am also not perfect, Malysh. Probably you already know this from me talking to you all the time. I promise I will not dump my problems on you when you are outside of me. They are not your burden. Anyway, I am not perfect.’

“If I had to pick just one thing change that I did to your dad, it would be the fucking Sochi Olympics. I was captain of Russian team and it was a fucking shitshow immediately. Too many fucking egos, too much fucking pressure to win at home, injuries. It was fucking embarrassing. I was embarrassed. And my papa was furious.’

“Being around my family makes me into a mirror of their terribleness, so I was furious, too. Your dad just came up to me to see if I was okay. That is all. No one was fucking watching. It hurt to look at him. Because if I looked at him, I wanted him to put his arms around me and tell me it was okay. So I told him to go away.’

“And that would be bad enough but on top of that, I did not talk to him for months, not until we presented award together.”

**

Crossing the border is painless enough; the way the agent goes bug eyed strongly suggests he knows who Ilya is, though he is professional enough to only stare. Ilya sends Shane a picture of the Welcome to Canada sign and ignores his hours old message: Driving? What do you mean driving?

Once he is on the correct side of the border, he exhales long and hard. He gets on the 401 going toward Ottawa, toward home.

**

“You must promise me you will keep this a secret, Malysh, but you a little bit exist because of Scott Hunter. You can never tell him that. He is ancient; it might give him heart attack.’

“Anyway, after your dad got hurt, I had decided that I had to end things. Because I loved him so fucking much, but I knew he would never want to be with me like that and it was too hard. It was too dangerous. I cannot understand how anyone saw my face after that hit and did not immediately see how much I loved him.’

“Wanting what you cannot have kills you slowly, but it kills you. And then I am packing to go back to fucking Russia for the summer and watching the fucking Admirals win the cup. And then Scott Hunter is upstaging his team’s first championship in five hundred years by kissing his boyfriend.’

“And suddenly it was possible. It made me brave enough to go to the cottage with your dad. To tell your dad I loved him, in a language he understood. And now there’s you.”

**

Ilya parks his rental car on his driveway and kills the engine.

The sudden silence cuts off momentum that has carried him 500 kilometers down the highway in less than six hours. His lower back is locked up with tension that is going to be an ugly kind of pain. He flexes his hand around the steering wheel; his fucking fingers are stiff, too.

The windows of his house glow with yellow light through the curtains.

Shane is in there, Ilya thinks. Shane is inside his house — their house, apparently, their fucking house — and still Ilya's chest locks up with fear that if he goes inside, he will be alone. Ilya shudders, murmurs, "Fuck, fuck, fuck," into the stillness. He glances up and down his street and sees nothing other than puddles of lamplight. If Shane — if there is no Shane, it might kill him for real.

The front door opens. Shane steps out.

A noise slips out of Ilya, soft and pained. He has spent hours thinking about Shane fucking Hollander and only Shane, about ten years of life, four months of pregnancy, and the uncountable years of an unknown future. The physical reality is so terribly much more.

Shane, standing there in jeans and a Red Sox hoodie Ilya knows was stolen from his clean laundry, arms wrapped around his middle against the cold. He is wearing his fucking glasses. He came out to his team. He is asking for a trade to Ottawa. He looks at Ilya and raises a hand in greeting, smiles.

Malysh wiggles in Ilya's belly. "Me too," Ilya murmurs. "I missed him, too."

That stupid cliche about courage bubbles up in Ilya's mind again. Shane ran to him. Ilya will not be the one to pussy out at the last second and flee screaming into the night. Call it pride, whatever. Pride is inadequate. Pride is about what you know you are owed. This is about Ilya accepting what he wants. Harder, Ilya thinks. So much fucking harder.

Ilya gets out of the car.

**

Shane says, “God, I missed you,” on the landing.

“Yes,” Ilya says. “Inside.”

Shane hovers as Ilya takes off his coat and kicks off his shoes; Ilya straightens and Shane folds into him, hands splayed on his chest, face pushed into his shoulder. Ilya brings a hand up to curl around Shane’s neck. He hears the low sigh that leaks out of Shane’s chest.

And it feels so fucking good to hold Shane, it does. Shane’s hair smells like Ilya’s shampoo; one of the small domesticities that undo Ilya in every spare moment they scrape together. Ilya wants it to be this easy.

But his back is shooting pain up his spine and into his hips and the fingers on Shane’s skin ache. A stranger to Ilya knows more about his future than he does. Shane’s incomprehensible fucking note is folded in his wallet. There is anger in Ilya’s belly.

He does not want to be angry at Shane. He is not entirely sure that his anger is reasonable; he knows they have misunderstood each other in some way. Anger passes, Ilya knows, or the hard burn of it does. He can bank this anger to embers and shove it aside, smile at Shane and make himself so easy to love.

But that is not fair.

Not fair to Ilya, yes. But not fair to Shane either. What Ilya leaves unsaid, what he swallows down, what he smoothes over becomes something it is impossible for Shane to know. Ilya’s secrets — he tells himself they are to protect Shane. But are they? Really?

The logic of the story Ilya has told himself feels sound enough. Shane Hollander is a man burdened with so many fucking responsibilities and impossibly high standards. The world demands so fucking much from him every minute of every day. Ilya does not want to be another weight Shane carries on his back.

But not knowing is a burden, too.

“I have to sit,” Ilya says, letting his hand slide off Shane’s neck.

“Yeah, of course,” Shane says. “Sorry.”

So they go to the living room. Ilya lowers himself down onto the couch with a hissed sound; Shane’s eyes widen in alarm that Ilya waves off. “From driving. It is fine.”

“I can't believe you drove.” Shane sits down next to him. He has brown shadows beneath his eyes. He has not been sleeping well. “Are you okay?”

“Okay?” Ilya could laugh, if only it were funny. “I don’t know, Hollander. This morning I got message from agent saying that she knows all about our plans that I know nothing about and that she is working on trade that I did not know was happening. I do not know if I am okay. I do not know what the fuck is happening.”

The easy contentment in Shane’s face dims. Ilya hates that. “What do you mean?” Shane asks. “I did what you asked. I left you a note explaining. Did you not see it?”

Shane's oblivious confusion shreds Ilya's patience.

”Explaining?” Ilya repeats. “You said, ‘I need to figure some things out.’ How the fuck was that explaning? What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means exactly what it means?” Shane looks so genuinely fucking baffled, so unprepared for the conversation. “I had to figure out what I needed to do to make everything we want happen. That’s what it said.”

“No, fuck you, that is entirely different fucking sentence, Hollander,” Ilya snaps. "How I was supposed to guess all of that?"

The stricken expression on Shane’s face is devastating. “I don’t understand. Why are you mad at me? What else — what did you think it meant?”

“That you had to fucking figure out what life you wanted!”

“What? No! What?” Shane shakes his head like he’s trying to shrug off a hit that left him dazed. “I want our life, of course I want our life. You know that!”

“Do I know this?” Ilya asks sharply. “How would I know this?”

“I thought you did?” The sentence trails up into a question.

“You thought I did, but also you did not bother to answer the one fucking question I asked, Hollander?”

”I’ve been working on the answer!” Shane throws his hands up. “I just needed some time to figure out all the pieces.”

“I did not ask for a fucking plan!” Ilya shouts. “Just an answer.”

”An answer without a plan to make it happen doesn’t mean anything!” Shane shouts back. “It’s just words! This is too important for that!”

That lands. That — Ilya knows this, about Shane, that the meat of his promises lives in the how. It was not the idea that they could someday be together in a far-flung future that made Ilya say, ‘I love you.’ It was the plan for how they could change the narrative, how they could be closer together, how their lives could intertwine.

I need to figure some things out, Shane wrote. You were right about everything you said last night, Shane also wrote.

“Why did Farah Jalali tell me this and not you?” Ilya asks.

“I tried to tell you,” Shane says. “I left you messages.”

“Hollander, I do not listen to my voicemail.”

“Not even mine?” Shane asks quietly.

A frisson of guilt shudders through Ilya at that.

“I only listened to the agent one because I thought it was baby doctor,” Ilya explains. It sounds much stupider said out loud.

“Oh. I thought —“

“What?”

”I thought you were just — I don’t know. Waiting for me to figure it all out.” He looks down at his hands, half hidden by the cuffs of Ilya’s borrowed hoodie. “You — you really thought I didn’t want you?”

“I thought—“ Ilya gropes for any fucking words explain how the uncertain dread felt like cold sludge in his veins as an oily voice whispered in his mind about what Ilya did and did not deserve. “It felt possible. You have never — fuck. You have never said it, Shane.”

Shane shifts closer to Ilya. They are still not touching, but Ilya can feel the warmth of his body.

“Okay.” Shane closes his eyes for a moment, opens them again to look directly at Ilya. “Okay. I meant for that note to say you were right that I wasn’t doing — that you were doing everything alone and I wasn’t helping at all. I wanted you to know that I heard you.”

Ilya is going to fucking cry again. “Say what you want. So I can hear.”

“I want you. I want our pear. I want to stop hiding,” Shane says.

He moves closer again. He extends his hand, palm up. Ilya takes it.

**

They leave a trail of clothes between the living room and the bedroom.

Ilya drops down onto the bed with a low grunt of effort and pain and Shane kneels in front of him, pulls his socks off and his sweats and briefs down even as he’s clawing at the fly of his own jeans. He kisses the insides of Ilya’s thighs, then takes Ilya’s hardening dick into his mouth. Ilya groans at the burst of pleasure and Shane groans, too, and that vibration shimmies over every fucking nerve Ilya has.

“Lyubimyy, Lyubimyy,” Ilya gasps, groping down to fist a hand in Shane’s dark hair.

He has to curve his arm around his belly, which makes the angle a little awkward. He still finds purchase and yanks Shane’s head up. Shane makes an obscene wet sound and looks up at Ilya with his mouth open and spit-slick. His eyes are so fucking dark, endlessly deep pools for Ilya to fall into.

”I want inside you,” Ilya grits out. “Get the fuck up here, Hollander.”

Shane staggers to his feet as Ilya slowly shifts further up onto the bed. Ilya shoves pillows behind his shoulders and neck, watching as Shane yanks his jeans and underwear down and impatiently kicks them both aside. His dick juts out, hard and gleaming at the tip and Ilya makes a deeply fucking undignified noise.

Shane makes his own noise as he tips forward onto the bed and crawls up until he’s straddling Ilya’s hips. Some extremely small logical part of Ilya notes that they probably won’t be able to do this comfortably for much longer; it only makes him more desperate.

Ilya gropes between the headboard and the mattress for lube and hands it to Shane, then wraps his hands around Shane’s broad thighs, digging his fingers into the hard slabs of muscle. Shane shudders, shoulders rolling in and hips flexing up. Ilya tells him he is beautiful in Russian. Shane pours lube into his palms, wraps one hand around Ilya’s cock and shoves two fingers from the other inside himself.

It’s an impatient kind of sex that means Shane will have a hitch in his step tomorrow, but Shane’s face is not the face of a man who cares and Ilya needs him too much to preach caution. There are times when all that can be done is fucking hard, when the aftermath is as important as the moment itself. There are a lot of ways to stake a claim on someone. Ilya fucking wants them all.

Shane rises up higher on his knees, positions Ilya’s dick, and sinks, long and slow, all the way down. Ilya throws his head back against the pillows, garbling out sounds that could have been words if there was any part of Ilya’s mind left for such coherency. Shane shudders again, thighs quaking around Ilya’s hips. He drops his hands to lay overtop Ilya’s on his thighs, and starts moving.

The first roll of Shane’s hips obliterates anything outside their bodies. His cock slides up and down Ilya’s rounded stomach, smearing pre-come over Ilya’s taut skin. It’s devastatingly hot in a way Ilya cannot explain. He looks up at Shane, his beautiful Shane. The contours of Shane’s body are so fucking familiar. No one can compare.

And Ilya needs more of him, needs all of him. He pulls his hands free to wrap one around Shane’s wrist and tugs.

Shane tips forward, catching his weight with a hand planted on the bed beside Ilya. His body echoes the curve of Ilya’s, trapping his cock between their stomachs. “Fuck,” Shane gasps. “Oh, fuck, oh my god.”

Ilya loses track of how long they rock together. At some point, Shane’s thighs go tight around Ilya’s hips, his stomach contracts, and Ilya feels his cock jerk as he comes. Ilya follows him over the edge.

**

“I had a whole speech planned,” Shane says afterward, as he toys with Ilya’s hair, wrapping a curl around his finger and letting it spring free.

Ilya’s legs are still missing, but he gathers the willpower for English. “Oh? What kind of speech?”

“An explanation, I guess.” Shane exhales; the warm gust of his breath teases down the back of Ilya’s neck. “Something like that. I don’t know.”

“An explanation?” Ilya echoes. “I think I would like that. Tell me your speech.”

Shane groans a little. “No, it’s dumb. This night went a lot differently in my head.”

Ilya shifts enough to be able to see Shane’s profile. There are splotches of pink on his cheeks that have nothing to do with how hard he just came. He looks down at Ilya and tries out a smile. Sincere, Ilya thinks, but it is trying to overshadow recrimination and Ilya cannot allow this.

“Stop being an asshole to yourself,” Ilya says. “You wanted to tell me something, yes? Tell me now.”

Shane hesitates, pressing an absent kiss to Ilya’s temple and Ilya hums an appreciative noise. That softens Shane’s indecision, tugging up the corner of his mouth in a small grin.

“Okay,” Shane says. “So, that night, after you told me to, ah—“

“Get your shit together.”

”Yes, get my shit together. I laid there in bed for the rest of the night and I couldn’t sleep. I thought about a lot of things, obviously. But one of them was that I haven’t explained anything about what I’ve been thinking since Christmas. Or feeling, either.’

“I had good reasons. Or I thought they were good at the time. I didn’t want to stress you out when you were already dealing with so much on your own. I didn’t want to be another thing you had to handle.”

“I want to handle you, Hollander,” Ilya says.

Shane kisses his temple. “The point being, the reasons felt a lot more selfish the more I thought about it. So, I guess I just — wanted to tell you.”

“Tell me.” Ilya kisses his collarbone. “I am listening.”

“Okay.” Shane exhales again, slow and steadying. “So. I always said that I wanted a family, when people asked. I wanted to get married to a nice girl and then we’d have some kids and it would be exactly what I was supposed to be, you know? I’d do the same thing my teammates did. I said that’s what I wanted.’

“And I — it’s weird. I did genuinely think I would have a family, right? It wasn’t a lie. But I also could never picture myself going after it. Like — I don’t know how to explain this. It felt like something that would happen to me. One day I’d wake up in the middle of that life and I’d be happy, because that life is supposed to make you happy. But I wouldn't know how I got there. Does that make sense at all?”

The lies you believe in order to reconcile yourself to the things you are supposed to do are beautiful things. They make so many promises, offer so many rewards. The bargain is so simple. It is easy to pretend you cannot feel the threat that underlies it all. The rewards for compliance are real, but so are the repercussions of disobedience.

“Yes,” Ilya says quietly. “It was not so different for me, before my father died.”

“The thing is, I could never picture that family.” Shane shakes his head. “I never thought about it. I never — I don’t know. Missed it, maybe? I didn’t have this idea of what the girl of my dreams would be. Not like other guys did.’

“But that’s not entirely true, I don’t think. I know, actually. Because no matter how hard I tried, the only person I ever saw in my future was you. You’ve always taken up so much space in my mind, from the very beginning. How could anyone ever eclipse that?’

”When we chose each other, I accepted that meant I wasn’t going to have that family and that was okay because I had you.” Shane lifts Ilya’s hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. “I accepted that it was gonna be hard to keep our secret, that we couldn’t be together as much as we wanted. Worth it, to me. Always. And then you told me you were pregnant.”

Shane’s voice breaks a little and it comes out as a rasped laugh. “Sorry,” Ilya says.

“God, don’t be, not for a second,” Shane says. Ilya’s throat thickens too much to speak, so he nods. “You told me you were pregnant and — I don’t know. It was like everything I didn’t feel for all those years hit me at the same time. Because this, us, I could picture. I could see it. And all the want I’d ever pretended to have hit me, all at once. It was terrifying.’

“I was — so afraid. And I know, I’m always fucking afraid. But all I could think was that I had no idea how to do any of it and there was no way I wouldn’t fuck it up. I’d fuck up being a dad and I’d fuck up being a boyfriend. I couldn't even say that I’m gay to my team. That’s not the kind of person anyone should have a kid with.”

“Shane.” Ilya reaches up to cup Shane’s jaw in his hand. Shane leans into his palm, eyes closed, mouth pinched in pain. “That is not who you are, lyubimyy.”

“But I can be, Ilya. We both know I can,” Shane says. “It’s not who I want to be. I don’t think it’s who I have to be. It’s just hard. And you’re the one who gets hurt.”

“Then apologize.”

That startles Shane. He looks at Ilya for a long moment, searching and unsure. Looking for a catch, Ilya thinks. Hard to believe, for Shane, that not everyone is keeping score of his mistakes as some kind of debt he must repay.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says.

”For what?” Ilya asks.

“Oh. I — okay. I’m sorry that I haven’t been here with you. I’m sorry that I haven’t been there for you. I’m sorry I scared you, I guess? That I made you think that I didn’t want you and our pear. I’m sorry I didn’t realize I was leaving you out.”

Ilya was raised by a mother trapped in a life that made sure she understood what a terrible burden she was; apologies were the murmured litany of her existence, dispassionate and endless and without meaning. He was raised by a father who neither apologized nor forgave and still expected his son to grovel on his belly.

Their very different lessons came to the same conclusion for their son. Things are done; you live with what you can and excise what you cannot. Try to make your own peace, if you must submit yourself to such humiliation. Otherwise, move on. It is all you can do.

Both of his parents are dead. Ilya is not.

And Shane’s apologies do not fix everything. There is still sadness pooled at the bottom of Ilya’s lungs. He will live with the echo of this particular loneliness the same way he lives with knowing Shane can run. But the thing Ilya has learned is that most forgiveness, in the end, comes down to wanting to forgive someone. He does not want to forgive his father or brother and so does not. He wants to forgive Shane.

That is enough for a foundation.

“Thank you,” Ilya says. “I'm sorry I did not listen to your voicemails. I fucking love you.”

Shane kisses him.

**

They linger in bed until Ilya’s stomach starts growling. Shane cajoles him up with slightly pained promises of ordering takeout.

”You really do feel bad,” Ilya teases as Shane kneels with Ilya’s discarded sweats in hand.

Shane’s face reddens. “You’ve had a really long day. You need to eat and so does the pear. Now, put your clothes on before I change my mind and go make smoothies.”

Ilya laughs as he does as he has been told; Shane ducks his head to hide a smile.

Shane offers a hand that Ilya decides to accept as he levers himself to his feet. His temporarily forgotten lower back spasms; Ilya spits out a few choice Russian phrases as the full weight of Malysh drags his pelvis and spine into exaggerated curves.

“I can’t believe you drove all the way from Buffalo,” Shane says. “You were at an airport.”

“Fuck you, it was faster. And I would not have been rushing so much if you had not written worst note in history of the world.”

Shane groans. “The dumb thing is I rewrote it four times.”

Ilya laughs at him all the way down the stairs.

**

An hour later Ilya is eating the last naan dipped in what is left of the gravy from butter chicken. His feet are shoved under Shane’s thigh. There is some basketball documentary on the TV for background noise, but the volume is low and neither of them are paying attention.

Ilya finishes the last bite and sets the empty container on the coffee table.

“So, you told your team,” Ilya says, doing his best to imitate Bood’s mild way of broaching heavy things.

“I did,” Shane says. One corner of his mouth tugs up into a muted smile.

“How did that go?”

Shane shrugs. “Good. Fine? I don’t know. I mean — I don’t know what I expected.”

“There were no punches?”

“No, no punches.”

“No parade either?”

Shane shakes his head. “No, no parade. It wasn’t — anything, I guess.” He looks at Ilya sidelong. Ilya nudges his thigh. “I’ve spent so many years thinking about it, you know? I imagined all these different ways it could go. Good, bad, whatever. Then I stood up and said it and got nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Shane nods. “I mean, Hayden made a little bit of a show of saying that it was fine and that I’m the same captain I was yesterday. But everyone else just — stared? It felt like I’d stood up in the middle of a movie theater and all they wanted was for me to stop interrupting.”

“That is—“ Ilya looks for words and finds none. He imagined telling Boston here and there over the years. His own fantasies spun out in a similar dichotomy, perfect or terrible. But he never imagined nothing. Nothing makes him uneasy.

“I should be grateful,” Shane says. “It could have gone a lot worse.”

“True. But could have gone better, maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Shane shrugs.

"I am proud of you, lyubimyy. Are you glad you did it?" Ilya asks.

"Yeah, I am. It's lighter. That's nice." Shane exhales hard, then looks back at Ilya with a more real smile. “How did your team take it in the moment?”

Ilya snorts. “I deployed successful distraction technique of being knocked up. Much more surprising than me fucking men, I think.”

Shane laughs. “My mistake. I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

“Next time you will not have to come out,” Ilya says. “I will kiss you in locker room. Also we will have baby.”

“You are not kissing me in the locker room.”

Ilya smirks. “Bet I will.”

“That’s unprofessional.”

“Because first word people think of for locker rooms is professional.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “We’ll see if Ottawa actually wants me first.”

Ilya laughs at the joke, but Shane does not. He is trying to hide a restrained worry beneath the play-sternness. “You are Shane Hollander, lyubimyy. Of course Ottawa wants you. Any team in the league wants you.”

”They do already have a star center,” Shane demurs, picking at a loose thread on the cuff of Ilya’s sweats. “And they have to think about salary cap.”

”I will take paycut.”

“You will not,” Shane firmly. “And besides, Ottawa is only half of it. Montreal has to agree, too.”

Ilya realizes he has not thought about that part. “You think they will not agree?”

Something complicated passes over Shane’s face. He wraps a hand around Ilya’s ankle and pulls a foot into his lap, runs his thumb up the arch with enough pressure to pull a low groan out of Ilya.

“It doesn’t matter if they agree or not,” Shane says. “And they won’t like that.”

“It doesn’t matter? What does that mean?”

“I told Farah to make it clear that I will be in Ottawa next season, trade or no trade. If they agree to it, we can wait to officially push it through in July. I’ll finish the season. I’ll get them one more cup. If they don’t, next season I’ll pay the fines from Ottawa.”

Ilya sucks in a breath. “Shane.”

”Ilya.”

”That would end your career,” Ilya says.

“Yeah, probably.” Shane pushes his thumb into Ilya’s foot, kneading at a tense muscle until it gives. “So. I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

**

They spend another hour talking on the couch. Shane haphazardly lays out the pieces of his plan, starting with the trade and going outward in a million different directions.

He has looked up paperwork to give them the right to make medical decisions for each other. He has an appointment with his lawyer to update his will. He has a schedule of what baby doctor appointments he can make it to and which he cannot. He has a list of fucking agencies to a hire a nanny from.

“Have you picked out where he will go to university, too?” Ilya asks.

Shane’s cheeks redden. “He might not go to university. We didn’t.”

“Sorry, my mistake. Have you picked which team will draft him?”

Shane scoffs unconvincingly. “I’m not — he doesn’t have to play hockey. Obviously. And there are too many variables that go into draft picks to have anyone in mind now.”

“Even Boston?”

“Even,” Shane says, visibly struggling. “Even Boston.”

”Very convincing, lyubimyy.”

“Oh, fuck off. Like you’d want him in Montreal.”

Ilya shrugs. “I want him to be happy. Wherever that is.”

Shane’s expression softens. “Me too. You know, Hayden actually said something this week that got me, when I told him about the trade.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “What?”

“It was a question, actually. I said something about how I always thought I would only ever play for one team. I was drafted to Montreal and I’d retire in Montreal. And he said he knew that was important to me, but asked how I thought I’d feel if I saw his kids more than my own. And I hated that thought.”

“I hate it too,” Ilya says. He awards one singular mental point to Hayden fucking Pike.

“I don’t want him to ever think that he’s less important. I hope he knows that.”

“You could tell him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is right here.” Ilya gestures to his stomach. “Talk to your kid, Hollander.”

They look at each other for a long moment. There is a little uncertainty in Shane’s face. If some small part of Ilya sees a muddle of panic and resentment and revulsion, Ilya knows it to be the voice of his own fears. What he really sees in Shane’s brown eyes is a question of worth. Does he deserve to speak to Malysh?

Ilya lets the moment unspool. It would be so easy for him to become the conduit through which Shane and Malysh pass to reach each other until it calcifies into a permanent barrier. Malysh deserves better than that, yes, but so does Shane, so does Ilya himself. Their kid does not need to be protected from his dad.

Ilya drops his left leg off the couch so Shane can shift over; he brushes his fingers against the hem of Ilya’s shirt and looks to him for permission. Ilya nods. Shane pushes his shirt up and bares his stomach, stretched and changed as it is.

Shane carefully places his spread hands so Ilya’s navel navel is contained within the circle of his thumbs and first fingers. Ilya shivers; unexpected desire kicks faintly in the cradle of his hips.

Shane bends forward and presses his mouth to Ilya’s skin. Not quite a kiss, Ilya thinks. There are words just outside the edge of his mind that he cannot grasp to name the feeling. Something akin to his mama holding her necklace in her fist when she watched him play, how she would bring that hand to her mouth when he scored.

“Hi,” Shane murmurs. “It’s me. Your dad. I’m — I wish I could be here more than I can right now. I’m sorry, for that. And I’m — I want you, okay? I want you so much.”

Malysh wriggles.

“Oh,” Ilya says.

“What?” Shane asks, lifting his head.

“He heard you.” Ilya reaches out and brushes his knuckles over Shane’s cheekbone. God, he hopes Malysh has his freckles.

“He did?” Shane looks back down at Ilya’s stomach. “How do you know?”

“He did a flip. I felt it.”

The wonder that breaks across Shane’s face is like the first clear light after a storm.

**

First New Message:

Hey, it's me. I know it's late. I hope you're getting some sleep. I just wanted to tell you I got some appointments set up with Farah -- my agent, Farah -- and my lawyer. I guess that's not actually much of an update, but I just wanted you to know. Anyway. I love you. Tell the pear I said hi. He's the size of a mango.

Second New Message:

Hey, it's me. That was a shitshow. I can't believe they made that call on Barrett's goal, that was bullshit. Anyway, I talked to Farah -- my agent -- today and I told her what's going on and it's good with her. She seemed kind of excited, actually. I gave her your number. First thing she's going to start working on is my trade. I never thought I'd say that. God, the idea of getting to play on the same team is -- I don't even know. I can't believe it's real.

Third New Message:

I told my team. About me. I did it. Fuck. Sorry about the echo, I'm in a stairwell. I -- fuck. I don't know how to feel. But I did it. God, I miss you. I love you so much. We're gonna make this work. I promise.

Chapter End Notes

good job, shane, i knew you could do it.

i had a lot of fun being able to get into shane's head a little bit. when i was first talking out this entire thing with my wife, the idea that shane and ilya were both trying so hard to not inconvenience each other that in doing so they accidentally got wildly out of sync was the elevator pitch for the vibe.

thank you for the feedback/comments/kudos, i read and treasure every single one.

i can be found on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy

Chapter 14

Chapter Summary

The calm before the flood.

Chapter Notes

Then it's February and Ilya is sitting in the passenger seat of Shane's boring car as Ottawa recedes into the distance.

Shane is technically supposed to be in St. Louis, along with Bood and everyone else the league has summoned to the All-Star game Ilya completely fucking forgot about. Understandably, he thinks, given how many more important things have taken up all the space in his mind. And it's not like there was a chance Ilya would be asked to play.

Shane, however. Ilya keeps looking up from his phone to make sure he's still there. It is just so fucking improbable that Shane 'Golden Boy' Hollander would shirk any kind of responsibility hockey deigned to dump in his lap. His excuse, admittedly, is only half-manufactured. He did take a hard hit in the Metros' last game that did tweak his shoulder. That is true, Ilya watched the hit as it happened, fingers digging into his couch as visions of Shane laid out cold on the ice sliced through his mind.

"I can’t believe you lied to your coach," Ilya says.

"I didn't lie," Shane says severely, making too much of a show of outrage at the mere suggestion. Ilya stifles a laugh.

"Sorry, you — what is word? Misled? You misled them."

"No, I — they asked if I was still sore and I was." Shane's cheeks shade increasingly red.

The Metros' leadership was unwilling to risk a season ending injury for a game that means nothing. So, Boiziau is in St. Louis and Shane is in Ottawa, driving toward two days at the cottage that feel very illicit. There is something sexy about even this smallest act of rebellion. Ilya knows Shane likes to be bad sometimes, but Shane choosing to be bad specifically for Ilya kicks heat into his belly.

"If your mom finds out that you are skipping class because of me she is going to think I am bad influence."

Shane scoffs. "Choosing not to play a recreational game that doesn't count isn't skipping anything, it's not even skipping practice. And my mom likes you way too much for something like this to change her opinion."

"That is magic of having grandkid inside me," Ilya says, patting his stomach.

Shane rolls his eyes, but grins a little. "You know that she liked you before the grandkid part, right?" he asks.

The one single downside of getting Shane to finally talk about everything is that he is now deeply conscious of the kinds of lies Ilya's brain will weave in the face of ambiguity. His chosen method of combatting this tendency is thorough and blunt honesty that means Ilya has to be as fucking honest back. It is a little weird. Ilya keeps getting caught out in offhand comments he barely thought about before making them.

"She hated me for longer," Ilya says.

"She didn't hate you," Shane counters. "She hated — I don't know. Number 81. Rozanov. The idea of you."

"What the fuck difference is that?"

"Number 81 is — an idea, I guess. Something the league made up to have a story for people to latch onto. You are you. She likes you."

Ilya does not seriously harbor doubts that Yuna Hollander secretly hates him. Still, hearing it spelled out is — something.

Shane reaches across the center console to squeeze Ilya's knee. Ilya picks up his hand and kisses each of his knuckles.

They lapse into an easy quiet, broken only by the soft music of one of Ilya's playlists and the hum of tires on asphalt. Ilya has only ever seen the stretch of road they're on drenched in the warm yellows and greens of high summer. The tail end of winter is more austere, but Ilya still likes it. Maybe that is just the magic of knowing that there is the only total privacy they ever get waiting for them at the end, but whatever.

**

They have to make a pit stop so Ilya can fucking piss.

Shane surprises him, a little, by getting out of the car, too. The rest stop is not crowded, by any means, but there is a trucker contemplating an ancient vending machine and a woman with two kids sitting at a picnic table while they run around. Neither of whom suddenly spin around to fucking stare at Ilya or Shane, but still.

Being constantly recognized has been one of the weirder adjustments Ilya has had to make in moving to Canada. He got recognized in Boston, obviously, and it felt often at the time. He understood that America did not love hockey in nearly the same way they love their stupid football or basketball. He knew that Canada does love hockey. Even so, it has taken time to get used to so many people knowing who he is on sight.

But many is not all. And recognizing him does not inherently mean giving a shit.

Logical, yes, but after the Tylenol cashier, Ilya is very aware that he is clinging onto the last days of even half-hiding Malysh. He knew it was coming, but the reality of it is harder and weirder. Ilya has always been able to use his body exactly as he wanted to and he does not love the odd vulnerability of that loss of control.

But he has his winter coat on, so.

"Do you want to trade?" Ilya asks Shane. "I can drive."

Shane pauses in the middle of rolling his so very, very sore shoulder. Ilya would bet good money that he is not aware of the spasm of anxiety that flashes across his face. "No, I'm good. I like driving."

Ilya raises an eyebrow. "Do you?"

"I can do it," Shane says. "And you can relax."

Ilya remembers Dykstra's assumptions and how much that pissed him off. It is, annoyingly, less irksome coming from Shane. Ilya can even understand the impulse, though he might argue that needing Shane to be there for him does not inherently mean Shane — coddling him.

"Okay," Ilya says. "Be my driver — there is fancier word, I cannot think of."

"Chauffeur," Shane says.

"Yes. Be that if you want."

"I do," Shane says with such sincerity Ilya cannot stop himself from laughing.

**

Having been excused from the terribly strenuous labor of driving a nice, if incredibly fucking boring car on a well maintained and mostly straight highway, Ilya applies himself to catching up on the million fucking messages he has been ignoring.

He assures the Centaurs group chat that he is fine, everything is fine, he’ll be back at practice after the break.

Chouinard replies immediately: you had us all fucking worried roz. thought maybe something happened to the rookie.

It takes Ilya a second to realize that Chouinard is not talking about Haas, he means Malysh. It had not occurred to Ilya, maybe stupidly, that him vanishing from a road trip for ‘personal reasons’ could very easily imply something medical. Honestly, Ilya had not assumed most of the team cared that much, beyond Ilya being benched.

The assumption suddenly feels — ungenerous. Ilya replies: malysh is good. he is kicking me right now. you can all go back to worrying about detroit’s defence.

That gets a flurry of ‘fuck offs’ and ‘we’re on VACATION rozys’ that Ilya laughs at. He splays a hand over his stomach and murmurs, “You are going to have one thousand nicknames, Malysh the rookie pear.”

“Malysh the what?” Shane asks.

“The rookie pear.”

“Where did the rookie come from?”

“Team chat. No, you cannot see, is for Centaurs eyes only. Very secret.” Ilya looks up at him and cocks a grin. “You cannot see it yet.”

Shane keeps his eyes on the road, but Ilya sees his smile.

Hazy started a new group chat with him and Bood and Ilya: i just heard that shane hollander won’t be at the all-star game this year. hmmmmmm interesting. my spidey sense is tingling.

Ilya snorts. i heard he is resting his shoulder

Bood: These are the things you have to think about when you make the playoffs, Hazy.

Hazy: raise your hand if you’ve never played on a team that made it to the playoffs

Bood: Raise your hand if you warmed the bench at the playoffs.

Bood: And I, personally, am fine with the substitution. Boiziau can hang with me and Vaughny.

Ilya cackles so loudly Shane jumps. “Sorry,” Ilya says, “Sorry, lyubimyy.”

“What’s funny?” Shane asks.

“Hazy and Bood.”

A shadow flickers briefly over Shane’s face, but it does not linger. In truth, Ilya had not been entirely sure how Shane would take the reality of Ilya’s teammates knowing about them. The knowing is not comfortable; Ilya can see that plainly. It will take time for him to work through years of ingrained secrecy. But he is trying very hard and, mostly, succeeding.

Ilya: i am sure whatever hollander is doing it is a lot more fun than boring interviews

Hazy: or whoever he’s doing

Bood: Jesus Christ, Hazy

Ilya also has messages from Marley and Sveta. Marley’s is just a series of emojis liberally sprinkled with eggplants and peaches.

Sveta: Tell me, is it Jane’s shoulder that is broken or his back?

Ilya: ask me again in three days

The last message is another new group chat and Ilya is not yet sure how he feels about it. It is titled ‘81 WAGs,’ which did, at least, make him laugh the first time he saw it.

He opens it for the dozenth time in two days and scrolls through the messages, which are mostly hellos, sprinkled with a couple introductions from people he has not met before. He had been a little surprised to see a couple ex-girlfriends and ex-wives, but it made sense. Ilya had played with people in Boston whose partners he liked much more than the teammate.

Ilya sighs. He wants their help, is the thing. He wants to have people he can ask the questions he keeps wishing he could ask his mother. He just does not know what the fuck to say. He does not want these women to think he is stupid or at least extremely ignorant.

“You okay?” Shane asks.

Ilya looks up from his phone. “Yes, it is nothing.”

“Your face doesn’t look like nothing?” The end trails up into a hesitant question. Shane glances away from the road to look at him.

Ilya groans. Fucking honesty. “A bunch of Centaurs WAGs made a chat with me to talk about pregnant stuff. Bood says they do this when one of them is pregnant, to give advice and whatever.”

“That’s good, right?” Shane says. “I mean, they know more than we do.”

“Yes,” Ilya reluctantly agrees. “I just — I don’t know. I do not want them to think I have no fucking idea what I am doing.”

“I don’t think most people know what they’re doing with their first baby.” Shane shrugs. “Hayden and Jackie didn’t, with the twins.”

“Does Pike ever know what he is doing?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying that I think maybe talking to people who have had a baby is a good way to figure out what you’re doing.”

His point is annoyingly sensible. Ilya makes a face and Shane tries to hide the mildly smug grin he gets whenever he successfully convinces Ilya to do something boring and good for him. Usually it is about drinking a disgusting green smoothie or throwing out his last lingering pack of cigarettes.

Ilya sends, hello. thank you for this. i am grateful.

Selena Chouinard: Of course! I know it’s a little weird, but being pregnant a little weird lol

Ilya: it is very weird.

Elly Y: Right? And everyone talks about the miraculousness and skips right over the days it feels like a chestburster is going to bust out of you.

Ilya watches messages trickle in and exhales a long, deep breath.

**

They have to stop in town for groceries. Ilya unbuckles his seatbelt and pulls out his phone to find something to watch while he waits, except Shane does not close his door and head inside. He stands there, looking at Ilya with his brow creased in thought.

“You are letting the warm air out,” Ilya says.

”Do you want — are you coming?” Shane asks, the words compressed together from three to one: areyoucoming. It is a familiar cadence, echoing a question asked in a hospital room a long time ago: will you cometomycottage? Ilya understands better, now, what it takes for Shane to ask.

“People will see,” Ilya says.

Shane nods. “Yeah. I know. I’m — that’s okay with me.”

He says it with conviction that is shaded by bravado; he wants to mean it more wholeheartedly than he does. But there is no other way for them to shake off years of ingrained hiding other than to simply not hide and accept whatever happens.

”Da,” Ilya says. ”Okay.”

They fall in step as they cross the parking lot, pressed together against the cold from shoulder to wrist. The backs of their hands brush; Shane curls his pinky around Ilya’s first finger and leaves it there. Ilya’s breath hitches softly; Shane does not look at him, but he does tighten his finger’s hold.

The store is more of a market, better suited to the small town than some sprawling concrete box. It reminds Ilya of Boston, and the brightly lit, crowded corner stores he would sometimes stumble into with his drunk teammates in the early hours of morning for Gatorade and snacks.

It is predictably empty on a weekday afternoon. There is one woman behind a counter wearing a vest over her sweater, who looks up when the door opens. Ilya sees surprise flash across her expression, but a mild kind that is just as quickly set aside.

Shane picks up a little basket and straightens his shoulders the same way he does before he hits the ice during games. Ilya stifles a bark of laughter in the crook of his elbow, pretending it is a cough. Shane shoots him a quizzical look that Ilya waves off. If he tried to explain how funny it is that Shane needs approximately the same amount of willpower to win a brutal hockey game as he does to pick up groceries for a couple days with Ilya he thinks that might be a dam that he cannot easily close back up.

Shane pulls up a list — of course he has a list for this — on his phone and starts down an aisle. Ilya has not shopped for his own groceries since the moment he was able to afford having them delivered, so he is content to follow. He puts his hands into his pocket to keep himself from touching his stomach very obviously.

"I was just going to grab some basics," Shane says. "Is there anything in particular that you're — craving?"

The word hangs in the air between them. Shane's cheeks turned very pink, as though he just absently asked Ilya if they needed to buy several bottles of lube and one thousand condoms in the middle of the most crowded grocery store in Montreal. Ilya hiccups out a laugh and he feels his own face go warm.

It is absurd and funny the meaning an innocent word can take on. As though anyone would hear 'craving' while standing in their general vicinity and immediately jump to the conclusion that Shane Hollander must have knocked up Ilya Rozanov with no other possible explanation even considered.

For a moment, they look at each other. And then the rictus of white-knuckled determination slips off Shane's face and he grins, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. It is the calmest expression Ilya has ever seen him have when they aren't safe behind a locked door, and something buried deep in the back of Ilya's mind quietly eases.

"There are a lot of things, Hollander," Ilya says. "I want fresh kimchi from Korean place in Boston that closed three years ago."

"There might be one or two jars of prepared kimchi somewhere in here," Shane says. "What else?"

"MMs with peanut butter inside."

"M&Ms."

"Whatever, you know what I mean."

As they continue around the store, Ilya makes a game of picking up the most macrobiotically incompatible things he can find and tossing them into the basket so he can watch Shane valiantly try to maintain a neutral expression. Shane, to his credit, says nothing until Ilya grabs a package of Oreos.

“If you’re going to get them, get the double stuffed ones,” Shane says, nose wrinkled in righteous disgust and annoyance. Ilya knows him well enough to see the gleam of desire trying to hide in his eyes.

“Why?” Ilya says, sing-song and innocent. “They are for me, yes? Shane Hollander would never put such a thing in his mouth.”

Shane blushes. “I’m just saying that if you’re going to have Oreos, the double stuffed ones are the best.”

“I did not know you like things that are double stuffed. That is your rule, yes?”

Shane brow creases in confusion; Ilya grins at him while the wheels in his head turn. When the threesome innuendo clicks, Shane chokes out a scoff and looks up at the ceiling. The color on his face deepens and fuck, Ilya loves him so stupid much. He returns the normal Oreos to the shelf, picks up a double stuffed package and gently adds it to the basket on Shane’s arm.

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Shane mutters.

“You can take me everywhere,” Ilya says. “If you want to.”

He means it mostly as a joke, but it does not land that way. It sits between them; a statement of fact that is neither recriminatory or melancholy. Shane drops his eyes to Ilya’s face and the color on his face starts to recede. Ilya offers half a smile.

Malysh chooses that moment to roll. Ilya makes a quiet noise and presses his hand against his stomach. He feels the movement inside himself and, he thinks, very faintly against his palm.

Shane’s eyes widen and his free hand comes up, fingers splayed. But he stops himself before he can touch. There is longing in his eyes.

Ilya makes a decision.

He cranes his neck to glance around the store. It seems unlikely a horde of customers could have stormed the place without either of them hearing, but whatever. It is still just them and the woman at the check out.

He grabs Shane’s wrist and tows him down the aisle until they are standing beside the endcap where the check out woman cannot see. (There are probably cameras, Ilya knows, but he chooses to ignore that.) Safely concealed, he places Shane’s hand just off his navel and lays his own overtop.

“Ilya—“

Ilya cuts him off. “Wait one second.”

Malysh obligingly kicks Shane’s palm.

“Can you feel?” Ilya asks.

The naked shock on Shane’s face is answer enough.

**

Ilya leaves putting the groceries away to Shane and goes to the wall of windows that look out over the deck and the lake. So different from summer, though Ilya thinks there is still beauty. The lake has a crust of ice surrounding the iron gray water. In a different winter, Ilya would cajole Shane into jumping off the dock with him.

“You will love this place someday, Malysh,” Ilya murmurs. “I hope you will. I think you will.”

Ilya hears a cabinet close, then Shane presses against his back. His arms come up and he overlays Ilya’s hands with his own, cupped around the bottom of his stomach. Ilya hums a contented sort of noise and leans into the steadying bulwark of Shane’s body.

Shane noses at the sensitive skin behind Ilya’s ear; Ilya drops his head to the side and it becomes soft kisses that trail down to his jaw and along his hairline. Ilya makes a noise that shifts between a sigh and a groan and rolls his hips back. Shane cuts off a grunt.

“Is that a gun in your pocket or are you happy to see me?” Ilya teases.

“Who taught you that?” Shane presses his face to the curve of Ilya’s shoulder.

“I don’t remember. Probably Marley.”

Ilya laces their fingers together and skims their joined hands over his curved stomach to his chest. Even the blunt pressure of their hands, muted through layers of clothes, sends sensation zipping along the paths of his nerves. Ilya sucks in sharp breath. He feels Shane’s cock start to chub up.

“You want something, Hollander?” Ilya asks with feigned careless curiosity.

Shane makes a noise into Ilya’s shoulder, helpless in its wanting. “Always.”

“I have fun fact for you,” Ilya says. “Do you want to hear?”

“Yes.”

“In second trimester, a lot of people want to fuck again.” Ilya sing-songs it a little. He learned that fact at some point in December while trying to figure out how long he was going to keep puking.

“That — that is a fun fact,” Shane manages.

“What are you going to do about it?”

Shane wraps a hand around Ilya’s wrist and tows him up the stairs and past the kitchen into their bedroom. Ilya expects Shane to pounce on him, but instead he pulls Ilya in close and kisses him.

It is almost indulgent to stand there and kiss. When they only had an hour or two, there was barely enough time to fuck. They collided, spurred on by animal need that relegated anything tender to a stolen moment in the aftermath.

“Would you be willing to do something for me?” Shane asks when they break apart. His face is flushed.

Ilya makes a show of considering. “Probably. Is it really weird?”

“No. I mean. I don’t think so?”

“That was very convincing, lyubimyy.”

“Will you undress for me?” Shane asks.

Ilya cocks his head. “Yes, I already had plan to do that. Is usual, when we fuck.”

“I mean while I watch, asshole.”

“Brave of you to ask me to do lapdance and also call me asshole.”

“Not a lapdance,” Shane insists. “Just. Undress.”

“Why?” Ilya asks. “I mean, I will do this. But why?”

Shane’s expression goes soft with an unexpected depth of longing. He runs his hands up from Ilya’s hips, over his sides and back down, sketching out the contours of Ilya’s body with his palms. A slow heat starts to pool in Ilya’s hips.

“You change so much,” Shane says quietly. “I just want to see all of you.”

Ilya cups Shane’s jaw in his hand and draws his chin up. Shane’s eyes flick away, up and down and to the sides, then land on Ilya. He has such beautiful eyes, Ilya thinks, a brown so deep it is impossible to appreciate the depth of them unless Shane allows you to get close. Shane does not allow many people to get close.

Ilya kisses him. “Yes, okay. But you get naked first, so is fair.”

A strange nervy tension thrums through Ilya as Shane sheds his clothes and folds them into a neat pile. It has been not even three days since the last time Shane saw him naked; Ilya’s body does not change that quickly. There is no reason for anxiety, but it bubbles in his stomach regardless.

Shane settles on the bed, leaning against the headboard. It is a weird echo of that night in Las Vegas; same places, different positions. Same request, Ilya realizes. Take your clothes off. Maybe that is just a very predictable want between the two of them.

“I am not dancing for you,” Ilya says, lightly as he can. “My balance is fucked and I might fall on my ass.”

“I didn’t ask for a dance,” Shane says with great dignity that is undercut by his half-hard dick.

Ilya unzips his hoodie and shrugs it off to drop on the floor. It’s new enough that it has left little black fuzz behind on his shirt. He brushes at it, knowing it is a fruitless exercise. Maybe he is stalling, a little.

He pulls his shirt off more slowly, shivering a little as cool air hits his bare skin. It is harder to drop than his hoodie and Ilya ends up standing there with his shirt balled up in his hands. He looks at Shane, who now has a hand wrapped loosely around his much harder dick, and almost laughs.

“Yes, so sexy,” Ilya says, dropping his shirt. He snaps the elastic waistband of his stupid fake jeans with a thumb.

But Shane does not laugh. He cocks his head to the side and the thoughtful crease appears between his brows. The weight of his gaze is heavy as it skims across Ilya’s body, so fucking changed from what Shane fell in love with.

Ilya shoves his jeans and underwear down and kicks them off. “Ta-da,” he says. “You have seen all of me now?”

Ilya has, he thinks, done a decent job of accepting that to have their kid, his body must change. There is always a price for important things. He has soothed himself with the knowledge that it is only temporary. Ilya is not disgusted at what pregnancy is doing to him, only — disconnected, maybe. It is still sometimes hard to bridge the gap between what he thought his body could do in September and what it has actually done.

“You look fucking amazing,” Shane murmurs.

“Yeah, okay.” Ilya snorts. “Can we fuck now?”

“Hold on,” Shane says. “I mean it, Ilya. You look—“ His eyes rake over Ilya, dark and hungry. “You’re so fucking hot.”

“Please, Hollander. I know what I look like. Is okay.”

“I don’t think you actually do,” Shane says. He extends a hand. “Come here.”

Ilya comes around to the side of the bed and lays down on his back. Shane kneels next to him. The perspective of Shane looming over him is interesting. The intensity of his regard makes Ilya feel almost small; he does not mind that, weirdly. It probably helps that Shane’s dick is at his eye-level, hard and already drooling.

“Now what?” Ilya asks.

“I think about you when I jerk off,” Shane says, which is not an answer.

“I already know this.”

“No, I think about you — like this. I think about you pregnant.” Shane leans forward and rubs his face across Ilya’s stomach, like some kind of fucking cat. Ilya knows this to be a thing Shane does when he is so overwhelmed by the intensity of his need that all he is capable of is the most blunt kind of touch.

“Why?” Ilya’s voice comes out rougher than he expects. His stretched skin is sensitive and it feels a little weird, but his dick still starts to thicken.

“You’re just so—“ Shane drops kisses up Ilya’s stomach to his chest. His breath gusts over Ilya’s sensitive fucking nipples and Ilya hisses. “You’re so fucking hot.”

“What is hot, Hollander?” Ilya presses.

Shane groans and licks one of Ilya’s nipples. Sensation cracks through Ilya like a static shock. Pleasure and pain are both inadequate to describe the intensity.. His nipple stiffens against Shane’s tongue.

“It’s —“ Shane tries. He splays a hand over Ilya’s belly and licks him again. Ilya shudders hard. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Try.”

”I’m inside you,” Shane says, the words rushing out. “All the fucking time. I’m inside you and people can see it and it doesn’t matter if they know it was me, I know it was me and you know it was me and I’m the only fucking person that lives inside you.”

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya groans.

Shane skims his hand down Ilya’s stomach and wraps it around his dick. Ilya makes a stupid noise and arches up off the mattress. Shane takes that as an invitation to catch Ilya’s nipple lightly between his teeth and Ilya makes a stupider noise. He shoves his fingers into Shane’s hair.

“For years, I knew we could never have anything, it wasn’t possible,” Shane pants. “You’re everything, Ilya. Everything I wanted and knew I couldn’t have. You fucking kept me. You’re so — lush? I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s so fucking hot.”

Ilya bucks up into Shane’s hand. Shane leans forward and kisses him, a messy, frantic slide of mouths and tongues. Ilya comes with a noise that Shane swallows.

**

Afterward, Shane gets up and comes around the bed to murmur that he’s going to start dinner and that he’ll come get Ilya when it is ready. Ilya could protest, but he is already half-sunk into a doze, warm and loose. “Leave door open,” Ilya mumbles; Shane smoothes back his hair and kisses his temple.

Ilya floats in the in-between place for an amount of time he could not guess if his life depended on it, lulled by the soft bustle of cooking that drifts in from the kitchen. Malysh is quiet in his belly, too, as though they drift together in the same dreams. Ilya has not felt so peaceful in a long, long time.

Eventually, good smells join the quiet noise, drawing Ilya up toward wakefulness. He cracks open his eyes to late afternoon sunlight pouring in through the wall of windows. The sky beyond the lake is just starting to shade with the deep oranges and purples of twilight. Ilya yawns so hard his jaw pops.

He snags his phone off the bedside table and snaps a couple pictures of the sunset before he can overthink it. They cannot be posted — the internet is too full of people who can take one branch from a tree and extrapolate an exact location — but Ilya mostly wants them for himself. It is as close to a picture of Shane at the cottage as is safe.

For the time being, at least. That thought makes a jittery warmth bloom in Ilya’s chest. They will have a baby the next time they come to the cottage, probably. They will play on the same team, probably.

What will he do, Ilya wonders, if he gets everything he wants?

**

After dinner, Shane lights a fire in the pit.

Ilya sits on the bench with his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat as Shane drapes them in layers of blankets to ward off what cold the fire itself cannot overcome. Ilya closes his eyes and basks in the flickering warmth. The only thing missing is the loons. Shane has assured him they will return with spring.

“Warm enough?” Shane asks as he finally settles, arm slung across Ilya’s shoulders.

“You know I am Russian, yes?” Ilya asks.

Shane rolls his eyes. “Fine, is the pear warm enough?”

“It is questionable. He might need eight more blankets.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says, unable to suppress his smile.

Ilya kisses his cheek. “You did a very good job, lyubimyy.”

Fire in winter invites the same thoughtful quiet as fire in summer, like there are answers hidden within the shifting streaks of red and orange. Ilya sighs deeply from his gut. Shane absently strokes his fingers over Ilya’s arm and the steady back and forth of the touch becomes another rhythm to sink into.

Time goes a little malleable. Ilya’s mind narrows down to sensation: the heat of the fire and chill of the winter night, the rasp of the lake broken by the occasional crack of ice, the millions of pinprick lights spangled across the night sky. Shane, solid and warm against his side, the rise and fall of his chest with each breath and the pine tang of his soap.

“This is the only place in the world I want to be right now,” Shane says quietly.

Ilya hums a noise of agreement. “Yes. Me too.”

**

Ilya spends most of the next morning in bed on his back. Shane tucks himself along Ilya’s side, head on Ilya’s shoulder and hand on his belly. They talk a little, but mostly it is enough to lay together in the same space. When Malysh wiggles, Ilya moves Shane’s hand. Sometimes he feels it, sometimes he cannot.

“Does it hurt?” Shane asks.

“No. It is kind of weird, but I am getting used to it,” Ilya says. “I kind of like it.”

”Yeah?”

“It is like proof, you know? That he is okay.”

Malysh shifts and Ilya moves Shane’s hand to the right. Shane smiles. “Hi, pear.”

**

The rest of the day is quiet, too.

Shane stretches out on one of the couches with some hockey biography he insists is very interesting. Ilya exchanges messages with Hazy and Marley; they send pictures of the warm beaches they’re sunbathing on and Ilya sends them pictures of the lake.

He sends the lake pictures to Harris, too. Harris sends back several emojis with hearts for eyes. He also sends a selfie taken in his office, pulling an exaggerated bored face. Ilya laughs. He also notices a pair of sneakers half out of frame that do not belong to Harris.

Ilya: who is keeping you company in your struggle?

Harris: It’s Troy. He stayed in town and was bored. He brought me coffee.

Ilya: just out of goodness of his heart???

Harris: He’s nice! Once he warms up to you.

Ilya doubts that, but he lets it go.

He spends some time in the WAG chat, too. It is still a little awkward and Ilya reads every message he sends over a couple times to make sure he does not sound like an asshole in the way he can be with the Centaurs. He mentions his upcoming anatomy scan and the reassurances that flow in do genuinely make him feel better.

Elly Y: totally fair to be nervous about it, especially given how people talk about it as The Way You Find Out Something is WRONG.

Elly Y: but you also get to see the baby in a lot of detail and that’s cool!

CaitDyks: and you can find out if they’re a boy or a girl.

Elly Y: that too!

Selena Chouinard: The lead up is stressful, but remember that most of the time they don’t find anything. All you need to do is remember that and drink water beforehand.

Ilya: I can do that. Thank you.

**

Shane drifts toward Ilya as dusk lengthens the shadows and turns the light cool and silvered. His hands are cold from washing dinner dishes as they slide into Ilya’s hair and tug his head back for a kiss. Ilya opens his mouth at the coaxing of Shane’s tongue.

In their bedroom, Shane murmurs, “Will you fuck me?” The ‘while you still can’ does not need to be said.

“Yes,” Ilya says.

They strip off their clothes and Shane gets onto his hands and knees at the edge of the bed. Ilya runs his palms up Shane’s back and down his hips and thighs; Shane shudders hard when Ilya’s stomach presses against him.

Shane's mood is an impatient one, desperate around the edges, looking for something he can carry with him into the next day. Ilya opens him up with two fingers and Shane arches into the almost too much burn of it. The flex of his powerful muscle is fucking mesmerizing. Ilya coats his dick in lube and smears some on Shane's hole, thumb just barely dipping in. He pushes into the hot clutch of Shane's body and they both make wounded noises.

The heft of Ilya’s stomach throws off his balance and slows his rhythm, so he makes up for that by fucking Shane slow and hard, jolting Shane forward every time he bottoms out. Shane’s cries echo loudly in the cottage and the sound he makes when he comes is ragged and desperate.

“Don’t stop,” Shane gasps and Ilya doesn’t, he fucks into Shane’s oversensitive body, hands so tight around Shane’s hips he’s going to leave bruises, and comes so hard everything else in the fucking world stops existing.

**

It is dusk in Ilya's dreams. The deep oranges and pinks of the setting sun glint against water that stretches beyond the horizon. The sand Ilya sits on is still sun-warmed. The waves roll in and out, in and out; a heartbeat, of a kind.

His mama sits next to him, looking up the beach past his shoulder. Her smile is soft and easy, even as tears slip down her cheeks. Ilya brushes one away with his thumb. "Why did you cry when you were happy?" he asks.

"Because I never learned how to be happy," she says. Her voice sounds like the surf.

**

Ilya wakes up alone in bed.

The darkness is so complete that, for a disoriented moment, he does not know where he is. Cobwebs of dreams cling to his mind that disintegrate as he tries to grasp them. “Mama?” he murmurs, then, “Shane?”

Shane’s name solidifies the world back into shape. The halfmoon light is dim, but it glints the edges of the lake and the windows. The bedroom door is open, too, and a faint, more yellow glow sketches the outline of the frame. Ilya looks over his shoulder to the digital clock on Shane’s bedside table. It’s almost two in the morning.

He could go back to sleep, but some instinct quietly contradicts that. Ilya thinks of Shane waking him in the middle of a summer night with a mouth full of English plans that Ilya could barely parse. Ilya has wondered, sometimes, what it is about the night that makes honesty so much easier for Shane.

Ilya pushes back the blankets and tosses a couple pillows aside and gets out of bed. The extra pillows were a good idea; his back aches less than it has in weeks.

He follows the warm yellow light out of the bedroom. Across the dining table and kitchen, he sees a lamp turned on to the dimmest setting in the sunken living room and the top of Shane’s head.

Ilya crosses past the wall of tall windows to the step down and finds Shane folded up on the couch that faces out to the lake. His legs are pulled up and there’s a can of ginger ale sitting on a coaster on the side table. He is staring past the windows, lost in thought.

“What are you doing out of bed at this hour, young man?” Ilya asks. “I think it is past your bedtime.”

Shane looks at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then blinks a few times. Ilya waits for his expression to shift from the blankness of deep thought as Shane comes back to himself.

“Did I wake you up?” Shane asks. “I’m sorry.”

“Is fine.” Ilya waves the apology away. “I had dream. It was not you.”

“Bad dream?”

“No, just dream.”

Ilya steps down into the living room and sits on the opposite end of the couch. Shane straightens out his legs so the soles of their feet touch in the middle; his expression softens, though the worried crease between his eyes does not ease.

“So, what are you thinking about so early in the morning?”

Shane flashes a small smile. It is meant to conceal, Ilya thinks.

“Just — I don’t know,” Shane says. “Just stuff.”

“What kind of ‘just stuff’?”

Shane hesitates, looking down at his hands. Ilya waits him out.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what I did to make you think I didn’t want you and the pear,” he finally says. “Because it — I don’t know. It scares me, I guess, that I could be that wrong about how you were doing.”

“Half of it was my own stupid brain,” Ilya says.

“But a lot of it was me,” Shane presses. “And you aren’t stupid, Ilya.”

Ilya makes a noncommittal noise. “I am not still angry, Hollander.”

“I mean, it would be okay if you were?” Shane says slowly. “I just — I don’t ever want you to feel like that. I don’t want the pear to feel like that. But I’m not — I don’t know. God, why is talking about this so hard?”

Ilya cocks a small smile at this man he loves so much, stumbling through the awkwardness of honesty. Some part of him grimly says that he asked for Shane’s honesty too fucking easily, failing to consider his own half-truths and omissions.

How does he explain a lifetime of being desired — for hockey, for money, for sex — but never wanted? His father is a corpse that will not stay buried. His fingerprints are smudged across every fucking piece of who Ilya is and every fucking facet of his life. Dead men should not speak so loudly.

“When I am alone,” Ilya says slowly, “my mind fills in the empty spaces with — unkind things.”

“Oh,” Shane says. “I haven’t been saying enough, have I?”

Ilya flinches. “I — it is very fucking needy.”

Shane shakes his head. “No, it’s — it just sounds lonely, to me.”

“You know,” Ilya says, looking down at his belly. “It is what it is, Hollander.”

”I know, but you don’t have to pretend that it isn’t what it is,” Shane says, frowning as he speaks. “Does that make sense? Being apart sucks and it’s not your responsibility to act like it doesn’t.”

“It is better to wallow?” Ilya asks, more sharply than he intended. “We should waste time when we are together crying that we are paid crazy money to play a sport?”

”Is that what you think I’m saying?” Shane asks, frustration breaking over his face. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to explain.”

Ilya freezes. It is an asshole move, he realizes, to ask for Shane’s honesty and then pretend he cannot understand what is uncomfortable for him to hear. Shane is trying so fucking hard.

“I understand,” Ilya says. “I do. I just — we are not together much. I do not want to waste that time on sadsack bullshit. Everything is hard enough. I don’t want to make your life harder. I want to make it easier. Better.”

An understanding dawns on Shane’s face that makes Ilya’s stomach clench. “You’re not as okay as you tell me you are,” he says, so very fucking carefully. “You leave out a lot more than I realized, don’t you?”

“I am —“ Ilya gropes for any word in any language. “I get through the day.”

“How long did you know?” Shane asks abruptly.

“What do you mean?”

Shane looks him in the eye. Ilya feels suddenly like a butterfly spread and pinned down, thoroughly seen and unable to hide. “How long did you know you were pregnant before you told me?”

Ilya opens his mouth; he says nothing.

What is there to say? He cannot lie to Shane about this. Misleading or prevaricating are no more than variations on that same theme. Shane might or might not see through them but either outcome is something Ilya cannot stand.

“Does it matter?” Ilya asks.

“Yes,” Shane says. “I think so. It matters to me.”

Some part of Ilya snaps at that, hackles raised against a fight that Shane is not trying to start. Ilya recognizes the pushback as guilt, for what little use that is in mediating the trapped feeling growling in his chest. Why must it fucking matter now, weeks after Ilya told Shane the truth? What difference does Shane knowing about that long and terrifying December make?

Ilya’s own slew of doubts from those first days feel like a tacit indictment of how much he wants Malysh now. They are — vulgar, maybe? Unflattering. Embarrassing. Ilya gave Shane no choice about keeping their kid and admitting that the choice was a struggle exacerbates the unfairness.

Ilya looks away. “Like — a month?”

“A month,” Shane echoes. “Late November.”

“Yes.”

Shane goes silent and Ilya forces his eyes from the dim kitchen past Shane’s shoulder to Shane himself. He braces for anger and finds a strange kind of grief instead.

“Something really bad could have happened,” Shane says.

Ilya flinches. “I know. I’m sorry,” he says. “Playing was irresponsible, I know. But baby doctor says he is okay —“

“That’s not what I mean,” Shane says, shaking his head.

Ilya stills. “What do you mean?”

“Something really bad could have happened and you would have been alone,” Shane says. “You shouldn’t have — it’s not fair to you, that you had to hide it. That I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me.”

“You did nothing wrong,” Ilya says, except it comes out like begging.

“I did something,” Shane counters. “Or maybe I didn’t do something.”

Ilya shakes his head. “I was scared, Shane.”

“Of me?” Shane asks, so very soft.

“No—“ Ilya says. “Yes — it was — fuck.”

Shane swings his legs off the couch and comes to Ilya’s side, kneeling down on the thick rug so he can cup Ilya’s jaw in his hands. He brushes a tear away with his thumb and kisses Ilya the same way he kissed Ilya at a different All-Star game not so long ago.

“What were you scared of?” Shane asks.

Fucking honesty. The terror of those first days floods back into Ilya; but maybe it never really left in the first place. He has been so fucking selfish all the way down and that guilt is a heavy, sucking thing that claws at his mind.

Life has taught Ilya time and again that it is better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission, but that truth increasingly does not hold in the life Ilya is trying to live. Shane does not fucking punish Ilya because he is not Ilya’s father and Ilya is not his mother.

“How many times can I ruin your life, Shane?” Ilya asks, voice clipped and shuddering. “I am — I am a fucking bomb, Hollander. I make you give up things you want that you have worked for your whole fucking life —“

“No,” Shane says, a single word so sharply authoritative that it cuts off Ilya’s spiral. “Fuck that, Ilya. Absolutely fuck that. You have never ruined my life. Never. Not once.”

“No?” Ilya asks plaintively.

”God, no. You — fuck, Ilya. My life is only real because of you.”

“What does that mean?”

Shane exhales hard. “I was never going to be who I thought I had to be,” he says. “But I would have spent my whole fucking life trying, okay? I would have kept trying to be straight, I would have gotten married and had kids with a girl and every day I’d wake up unhappy and pretend that I wasn’t. It would have just been a lie built on top of a lie.”

“It would have been easier,” Ilya murmurs.

“It wouldn’t be. It never was,” Shane says. “It wasn’t easy. It was never easy. Unless I was with you.”

“You mean that?” Ilya asks, his voice thick. “For real?”

“Yes,” Shane says. “I mean it.”

**

“I wish we could stay here,” Shane says softly once they’re both back in bed.

Ilya is tired, but it is a cleaner kind than has dogged him. There is a quiet between them that is raw around the edges, but in a good way, like the ache of sore muscles the morning after an intense game.

If his heart still does not entirely believe Shane, Ilya can at least recognize the gap as the product of his own mind. Time will close it, Ilya thinks, and maybe that is only fair. They have always needed time.

Probably it says something about them that giving words to what they think and feel has a cost to it that feels so physical, but it is what it is. Someday they will learn how to not do everything the hard way.

Shane’s hand rubs a slow circle around Ilya’s belly. His hand has kept drifting back to the firm rise of it, which Ilya likes. Maybe an inadequate word for the encompassing comfort of being understood, but no matter. Ilya is as content as he ever feels.

“Me too,” Ilya says. “But we will come back.”

**

Shane spends the morning packing up the leftover food, sorting their shit between their bags, and making the bed. Ilya sits at the kitchen island and takes a couple more pictures of the lake.

“Everything’s in the car,” Shane says as he joins Ilya. “You ready?”

“You know what’s kind of crazy?” Ilya asks in lieu of an answer.

“What?”

“Next time we come here we will have a kid.” Ilya cocks a lopsided smile at Shane.

“We’ll be — parents,” Shane says.

It is only a different way of saying the same thing, but the word hangs between them regardless, powerful in a way that rocks through them both. It is the difference between a thing you do, Ilya thinks, and a thing you are. They will have a baby for only a little while, but they will be parents for the rest of their fucking lives.

It hits Ilya, suddenly, how much change is waiting for them to return to their real lives. Things that cannot be taken back once done and in front of an audience of millions.

“Fuck.” Ilya wraps an arm around his stomach. “We will be fucking parents.”

Chapter End Notes

whew, this last two weeks have been hectic as fuck and i was not sure i was gonna turn this one in on time.

thank you all so much for the comments and feedback. it means the world to me. (and for the record, i am not creeped out by multiple comments. a couple people mentioned feeling awkward about that and you do not need to be at all.)

i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy

Chapter 15

Chapter Summary

do it scared

Chapter Notes

Halfway back to Ottawa, Ilya gets a text from Harris that says, I hope you were serious about making that announcement, with a link to a reddit post.

Ilya stares at the link, says, “If there is rest stop soon, we should stop. I might need to puke in a second.”

Shane whips his head toward Ilya. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I am not sure yet.”

“Okay, sure,” Shane says. Ilya’s single inane thought is that cryptic bullshit sure does suck to deal with, but he keeps it to himself. Only partially by choice; his body is locked up with a yawning fear so encompassing it circles around to a strange, empty blankness.

Five minutes later, they’re parked in a little carve out next to the highway. There’s a plaque bolted to the guardrails that says something about the scenery and history and whatever and half a dozen rough parking spots marked out in the gravel.

“Ilya,” Shane says. “What’s wrong?”

Ilya taps the link.

It opens to the sort of familiar Centaurs community page. Ilya has browsed through it here and there, mostly after his move to the team was formally announced over the summer. His primary take away then was that it had a third as many members as the Raiders one.

This post is a slightly blurred picture of Ilya’s profile in a parking lot. If he had been looking even a little more to the left his face would not be visible at all. If he wasn’t walking into the wind, the curve of his stomach would not be so clearly, damningly outlined.

“Fuck me,” Ilya says.

Shane leans across the console; Ilya feels him see the picture and freeze. “Oh,” he says. “Shit.”

The caption only says, what the fuck is wrong with him?? The top comment says, Stomach cancer? A tumor? My sister thinks he looks pregnant. It has more than a thousand upvotes. There are dozens of collapsed replies. One says, she kinda has a point.

Ilya fumbles his door open and heaves.

Shane unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car to jog to the back. He returns with a bottle of water that he opens and puts into Ilya’s shaking hand. Water sloshes out as Ilya takes a long, unsteady drink. His mouth tastes like sour acid and metallic fear.

Shane puts a hand on the nape of Ilya’s neck. His thumb sweeps a steady arc. Ilya drinks more water.

“Fuck me,” Ilya mumbles. “Fuck.”

“It’s okay,” Shane says. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Ilya makes a wet sound that garbles a scoff and a laugh and a groan. “I am maybe not ready for this. Like, I knew it was coming. But I am — I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Shane squeezes gently. “I’m here. We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

**

”I can stay," Shane says for the third time. “I can, Ilya.”

“No,” Ilya says, repetition sharpening his tone. “You need to be on a fucking plane in two hours and fifteen minutes, Hollander.”

They’ve been standing in the foyer of Ilya’s house for twenty minutes not quite arguing. Shane was supposed to just drop Ilya off and immediately head back to Montreal to get on a flight to Nashville or Carolina or wherever the fuck the Metros are going next. But he got stubborn about making sure Ilya took a puke pill and was okay and the last thing Ilya wanted was for him to go.

But Shane is now running an hour and a half behind and his time buffer has evaporated. Ilya took the puke pill and feels fine. The shivering cold in his stomach is not a fucking physical thing.

”It’s one game,” Shane insists.

“Shane, you are about to ask your fucking team to fucking trade you,” Ilya snaps. “This is not the fucking moment for ‘it is just one game.’ Not now, not with everything.”

Ilya watches Shane hunt for a serious counterargument and come up empty. Frustration spasms across his face. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck. I fucking hate this.”

“I know,” Ilya says. He smooths down the front of Shane’s coat, neatening things that are not out of place so he has something to do with his hands. “I also hate it. But it is just one fucking reddit post, okay?”

”Ilya, it’s more than that,” Shane says.

“Of course it fucking is. But there is nothing that you can do about it today, so there is no point in you missing a game and pissing off your team.” Ilya manages a lopsided smile. “I will talk to Harris and make a plan. Then you will call me tonight and I will tell you plan.”

Shane’s shoulders drop. He says, “Fuck,” on an exhale and his head drops, too.

“Hey, listen,” Ilya says, bringing Shane’s head back up with two fingers beneath his chin. “You leave now so that you can be here when I need you more later. Okay?”

The muscle in Shane’s jaw jumps, but he nods. “Yeah. Okay. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Ilya kisses him. “Now get the fuck out of here before you miss your plane.”

“Okay, I’m going.” Shane hikes his bag up on his shoulder. “God, this sucks. I love you. I love you, too, pear. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“Drive safe,” Ilya says.

**

Ilya watches Shane’s car through the open front door until it turns at the end of the street and vanishes from view. Then he closes the door and bursts into tears so violent he doubles over. The guttural gasp of his breath is humiliatingly loud in his own ears and he hates the feeling of snot running down his face.

It takes twenty minutes for him to finally shake it off and start to wind down. Behind the maw of sadness is a sharp embarrassment. He goes to the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face and blows his nose. The version of him in the mirror looks miserable. He thinks about the therapist’s card in his wallet, flinches, and discards the thought.

He does not really want company, but feels beholden enough to his promise to have a plan for Shane that he messages Harris regardless. Harris responds quickly and even offers to make the drive to Ilya’s place. It is selfish, and Ilya knows it is selfish, but he still accepts the offer. His house may echo with its own emptiness, but there is safety within its walls nonetheless.

**

Harris shows up half an hour later with a box of donuts.

“They’re apple cider donuts,” he says. “Usually I’d bring actual apple cider, but that felt tone deaf considering you can’t drink right now. But the donuts are as good if not better. Your house is beautiful, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Ilya says. “Are you going to come inside it?”

“Right, yes.” Harris’s cheeks go a little pink. It is the most nervous Ilya has ever seen him and there is something a little charming in that.

He crosses the threshold and starts toeing off his sneakers as Ilya closes the front door. “Thank you for coming to me,” Ilya says. “I was in car all morning and my back did not love that.”

“Of course! It’s no trouble at all.” Harris follows Ilya to the kitchen and sets his box of donuts on the island.

“You want something to drink?” Ilya asks. “I have water and Coke and ginger ale.”

His palms are a little clammy, which is ridiculous. Ilya spent most of his Boston years hosting a slew of people, teammates and hookups and Svetlana, and he knows he is good at it. He hasn’t done the same in Ottawa, but it is absurd to think he has lost the knack of it.

“Water would be lovely.” Harris sits on a stool and pulls his laptop out of his bag. The back of it is covered in many shining stickers that are mostly about being gay and dogs, the same as on his car.

Ilya takes two glasses out of the cupboard, adds ice, and fills them from the water dispenser on the fridge. He sits on the stool to Harris’s right and sets both glasses down. The apple scent of the donuts hits him and his stomach growls ostentatiously, loud enough for Harris to hear it and chuckle.

“Try one,” Harris says. “They’re cake donuts, so the texture is a little different than a normal one.”

Ilya takes a bite. They are denser than he expects and taste of cinnamon and honey alongside the apple. Ilya scarfs the rest of it and reaches for a second, unable to summon shame with himself for this particular thing. Harris laughs, too, and the bright sound of that eases some small part of Ilya’s mind.

“These are very delicious,” Ilya says, reaching for a third. “Malysh and I both like very much.”

“Good, I’m glad Malysh likes them."

It is a little strange to have Harris in his home, or maybe it is more that it is strange to have someone who is not a player in his home. The communications staff in Boston were extremely competent professionals on the other side of a firm boundary line between players and staff. It would never have occurred to Ilya to invite one of them over.

But Harris is unusually close to the Centaurs; not a bad thing, Ilya thinks, but another small way in which playing (or riding the bench) for Ottawa is very different.

“Okay,” Harris says, as Ilya starts on a fourth donut at a more moderate pace. “So. Announcement. How are you feeling?”

Ilya groans. “I don’t know. I thought I was okay and then I read post and puked a little, so.”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry—“

“Is fine!” Ilya says. “It is fine, I promise. It is better to know, for me. I knew it was coming. It is just a lot to actually do.”

“That’s very fair,” Harris says sincerely. “For what it’s worth, it’s limited to that one post right now, so I think we have some wiggle room before the idea picks up steam.”

“Okay.” Ilya inhales deeply. “So. What is our fucking plan for this?”

”I have two ideas,” Harris says. “Well, one real idea and one sort of dumb addon that I thought of when you told the team they could say whatever they wanted about why you were out so long as it was funny.”

“Tell me."

“So, first is a statement from the team. I’ve been working on some first draft language with my boss since you asked me about it. It'll need to be approved by people above my paygrade, so it might change a little, but probably not that much.'

"In terms of timing, I think it would make the most sense for your personal statement and the teams to go up at the same time. It should sound exactly like any other announcement, because we want to set the tone that the organization is treating this exactly like they would anything else.”

”You think this will make people normal about it?”

“God, no,” Harris says. “The point it’s making is that the Centaurs do not have an issue with this and you, as a member of the team, have their complete support behind you.”

”Right, okay.” Ilya pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. The weird crying jag lingers in his head as a throbbing ache behind his eyes. “That is fine. What is the stupid second idea?”

Harris’s face softens into a more real smile. “Okay, so, I just want to say up front this is very gimmicky and I won’t be offended if you think it’s dumb. But I had an idea for a tee shirt.”

Ilya cocks his head. “A shirt?”

”Yes. Here.”

Harris pulls open an image and holds his phone out. It looks like a normal merch shirt, Centaurs emblazoned across the chest in the same blocky letters that every team on the planet uses. Ilya is pretty sure this is already a shirt that they sell to fans.

This one just also has future Centaur emblazoned on the stomach.

The laugh that punches out of Ilya is a truly hideous combination of cackling surprise and phlegmy bark. Harris’s smile broadens into the smugly satisfied one he gets after a particularly good mid-game tweet.

**

“Do you want to know who Malysh’s dad is?” Ilya asks, later.

They have migrated from the kitchen to the living room. Harris has spent the last hour working on a statement for Ilya to post to his personal accounts, for no other reason than he is a kind person. Farah could also do this, Ilya is sure, but he does not know her, yet.

“Only if you want to tell me,” Harris says. “That’s my official answer. My unofficial answer is yes, of course I want to know, Mister When-Two-Hockey-Players-Love-Each-Other.”

Ilya groans. “That was figure of speech.”

“Sure it was.”

“It is Shane Hollander,” Ilya says.

It tastes a little different than telling Bood and Hazy,no longer fueled by desperation and the frantic need to do something. Still a little weird, still a little like betraying a secret, but less so, Ilya thinks.

Harris’s hands go still for a long moment. “Is he just Malysh’s dad or are you two something?” he asks. “I’m sorry, that was an invasive question.”

Ilya waves the apology off. “I think it is logical. And yes, we are. You are now third Centaurs person to know that.”

“I’m genuinely honored.”

”How bad do you think it will be?” Ilya asks abruptly.

Harris looks up from his laptop and seriously considers the question, to his credit. Ilya is grateful for that in a way he does not know how to express.

“It’s going to be intense,” Harris says, “because it’s you. You being pregnant, at minimum, implies something about your sexuality that is going to be really unsettling for a larger group of people than I wish it would. A lot of them are going to feel like you lied and that’s going to feel like betrayal.’

“People have a lot of assumptions about male carriers. I’d expect a lot of surprise that carriers are allowed to play, even though that has never been any kind of official policy. A lot of people are going to assume that you’re gay — that’ll actually come from all sides, even from the rest of the rainbow.”

“Rest of rainbow?” Ilya asks.

Harris smiles. “Other queer people.”

“I see.” The idea of being part of that group is uncomfortable for reasons Ilya suspects he will have to deal with at some point. Fucking men has always been something Ilya does; habit rather than identity.

“There’s definitely going to be a lot of speculation about who” Harris waves a hand that broadly encompasses all of Ilya.

“Who knocked me up?” Ilya suggests.

“Yes,” Harris laughs. “About who knocked you up. I’d put money on Cliff Marleau being asked about it multiple times. Scott Hunter is also going to come up, I guarantee.”

“Scott Hunter has husband.”

“I know.” Harris raises his hands. “But he’s gay.”

Ilya pulls a face. “I do not fuck fossils.”

“I know, I know! I’m just saying that’s probably going to happen.” Harris pauses, then. He taps his thumb on the table as he thinks, then says, gently, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Shane Hollander also came up.”

”Why?” Ilya asks. He is not entirely sure what answer he wants, or why he does not need to be at all convinced that Harris is right.

”Your names are paired up so often. As rivals, yes, but a rivalry has chemistry, the same way any relationship does. You wouldn’t be the first to take that chemistry into your private lives. And,” Harris says, and the shift in tone makes it clear that this is the more real reason. “There have been gay rumors about Shane for years.”

“Years?” Ilya repeats.

“Yeah, years,” Harris says. “He’s dated one woman for two months the entire time he’s been in the MLH. Now, that one woman was Rose Landry, but still. That’s a lot of years to be a confirmed bachelor. Those rumors have actually ramped up a little recently.”

Ilya winces. “He came out to his team just a little bit ago.”

“Gotcha,” Harris nods. “That makes sense.”

Ilya runs his fingers through his hair. “Fuck. What else I do expect?”

”There will be a lot of very ugly things said about your character and your talent and your inherent worth as a human being. You’ll probably get called many very specific and detailed slurs.’

“There will be threats, against both of you. You and Malysh. All of these things are always happening to some degree, but it’ll be more intense than anything you’ve dealt with before. You’ll be a lightning rod because you’re the first. Same way Scott Hunter was.”

“I don’t care what people say about me.” Ilya swallows hard against a lump in his throat. “People say shit about me all the time. But Malysh —“

“It’s different?” Harris asks quietly.

Ilya nods. “He is not even born yet. He has done nothing and he did not ask to have us for parents.”

“He could do a lot worse. I think so, anyway,” Harris says.

Ilya flashes a half-hearted smile. “I think his life will be harder because of me.”

“Ilya, I really don’t think that’s true,” Harris says, so very fucking kindly. “And both of you have so many people in your corner already, and that number will grow once the world knows about him. There will be plenty of fans who’ll be supportive and excited, if for no other reason than because they’re thinking about the 2040 draft potential. You’ve got the team and Wiebe. And Shane Hollander, apparently. You and my godkid are not alone.”

Ilya laughs wetly. “You have to defeat Marley in combat first.”

”I’ll send a champion in my stead.”

”Who? Maybe Troy Barrett?” Ilya raises an eyebrow.

Harris turns red. “No! That’s ridiculous.”

**

The rest of the week feels like a held breath.

Ilya goes to practice and Wiebe pulls him into his office, says, “Shane Hollander. Of all the people in the damn world, Shane Hollander?”

Ilya shrugs. “You know how it is.”

“No. No, I do not.”

The Centaurs are extremely interested in bringing Shane Hollander to Ottawa, exactly as Ilya knew they would be. He texts, good news, centaurs are already making hollander jersey for you.

Shane says, good to know. Ilya knows the subdued tone has nothing to do with a lack of enthusiasm. Ottawa is simply not the hard part of the trade.

Ilya almost literally runs into Barrett on his way into the locker room. Barrett says, “Hey,” in a tone that is almost friendly. “You’re back. You’re good?” He looks surprised at his own question.

“Yes,” Ilya says. “You were worried about me, Barrett?”

“Fuck off.” Barrett looks to the floor. “Everyone just thought maybe something happened with the rookie. Harris was worried.”

Ilya cocks his head. “Did you spend the whole break with Harris?”

Barrett goes red, says, “Whatever, man, glad you’re fucking good,” and flees.

He meets with Harris and his boss, the Centaur’s Director of Communications to finalize the plan. They tentatively pick a day after Ilya’s anatomy scan, which makes it more real. Harris’s boss assures him of pretty much the same things Harris did, that the organization is 100% behind him and no amount of backlash will change that.

He talks to Farah, too. She looks over the personal statement Harris mostly wrote and has a small number of tweaks and suggestions. Ilya apologizes for not getting in touch with her faster, to which she smiles and says, "It sounds like you have a lot on your plate. And I have a feeling we'll be talking a lot over the next couple months."

He also, on his own, meets with an immigration lawyer recommended by a friend of Yuna’s whose wife was born in Thailand. Ilya likes the lawyer immediately; she has a commanding presence and straightforward manner that is very reassuring.

“So long as you’re signed to a Canadian team and thus employed, there shouldn’t be problems on the Canadian side.”

”And the Russian side?” Ilya asks.

“That depends on Russia,” she says. “It’s possible they simply won’t acknowledge any of this is happening unless and until you try to go back. It’s also theoretically possible that they’ll invalidate your passport or take more extreme measures. Russia — at least as of right now — can only revoke citizenship of people who were naturalized, which you were not.”

”What do I do if they take measures?”

”Potentially apply for asylum.”

Ilya leaves her office with a new host of things to worry about and a deep homesick yearning in his chest. He calls Sveta when he gets home and rattles off everything to her.

“I will not allow anything to happen to you, Ilyushka,” Sveta says.

“You will fight all of Russia for me?” Ilya asks.

She snorts. “I would fight God for you and you know that.”

**

The night before the scan, Ilya has the disgorged contents of Dr. Ivanov’s folder spread across the coffee table as Shane unpacks half a dozen boxes of Chinese takeout from two plastic bags.

Shane yawns midway. The Metros finished up a three game trip through the south the night before and flew back to Canada very early. Shane then had an important meeting with Farah and Metros leadership, which he has said very little about other than it went pretty good, just with some caveats to go over.

He asked if Ilya was okay waiting to talk about until dinner with his parents after the scan so he only has to go through it once. He looked so fucking exhausted after the drive to Ottawa on top of everything else that Ilya agreed.

“How am I supposed to make choices when I have never fucking had a baby before?” Ilya grouses.

“Did you read any of the birth stories?” Shane asks. He opens a box of chicken fried rice and puts it in Ilya’s hand.

“Some,” Ilya mumbles, which is not technically a lie. He skimmed several of them exactly enough to know he did not want to know more.

Shane hands him chopsticks. “It’s just a plan," he says, putting a hand on Ilya’s knee. “It doesn’t commit you to anything.”

Ilya grumbles, but cannot argue the point.

It’s not really that Ilya is afraid of birth in and of itself. Physical pain does not particularly scare him, after a lifetime of playing a brutal contact sport at the highest level.

The indignity of it all makes him queasy. It’s some strange emotional cousin to how he initially felt about the 81 WAGs chat, like he is being shunted into a role that does not suit him and given no choice about it. So many fucking people will see him naked and spread open. It is like making porn, but not sexy at all and he won’t be paid.

“How about this,” Shane says. “I’ll give you two options and you say whatever comes to you first.”

“You will not let this go, will you?”

“Nope.”

”Ugh. Fine.” Ilya flops back onto the couch and stuffs another bite of rice into his mouth.

Shane shuffles through the stack until he unearths the blank birth plan beneath a packet about possible common health complications. “Okay. Home birth or hospital birth?”

“Hospital, obviously. I do not want to think about it every time I walk through living room.”

“Okay. Birth center or hospital?”

”What is difference?”

“A birth center is like the midway between home and hospital. The rooms are more like a bedroom than a hospital room, but it’s connected to a hospital.”

“Mm. I am okay with that, so long as doctor is right there.”

Slowly, they make their way through the sheet, until most of the spaces at least have a mild preference. Ilya is very okay with pain management. The only person he wants there is Shane. C-section only if necessary. He wants to hold Malysh right after.

Shane stacks all the papers neatly together and returns them to the folder, then pulls his legs up and leans into Ilya’s side. Ilya is not sure if he feels any better having a plan. His gut says such plans have matchstick bones that will break in the face of whatever actually happens.

**

"Shane?" Ilya murmurs later, cocooned by Shane's body pressed along his back and the dark night.

"Yeah?"

"I am a little bit scared," Ilya admits.

Shane hums a soft acknowledgement. He gropes up Ilya's side until he finds Ilya's hand and laces their fingers together. "About the scan?"

"Yes. But also about announcement, too? Both Malysh and that I am not as much straight as people think." Ilya sighs. "And about being parents soon. Really soon."

"I'm a little bit scared about all of that, too. It's a lot of — it's scary stuff, I think," Shane says. "But you — we're brave, right? We'll find a way through, you and me and our pear. All three of us."

"Promise?"

"Cross my heart."

"Okay. Yes."

**

The scan is a quieter affair than Ilya imagined.

It is just him and Shane and the technician in a room with the lights dimmed. Ilya gets warm goo spread across his belly again. Shane sits in a chair next to him and keeps hold of Ilya’s hand. The technician briefly goes over what to expect and then her little wand thing is on Ilya’s stomach and Malysh is on the screen.

Ilya can feel Shane’s reactions through their interlaced fingers in the minute tense and flex of his muscles. Each time the wand moves to reveal a new part of their pear, Shane inhales in barely vocalized wonder.

Not that it hits Ilya any less. Watching Malysh’s arm move on the screen and feeling that motion beneath his skin is a little earthshattering. Ilya lacks an English word for the way the scan coalesces what he knows and what he feels. He squeezes Shane’s hand, too.

“That is our kid,” Ilya murmurs.

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Yeah, it is.”

The landmarks of their kid reveal themselves one by one: the curve of his skull that looks meant to be cupped in a palm, the white bone scaffolding of spine and ribs and limbs, the hummingbird fast flicker of his heart. Safe in the dark cavern of Ilya’s body, Malysh kicks and rolls.

Toward the end the tech asks, “Do you want to know the sex?”

Ilya glances at Shane, who says, “Whatever you want.”

“No,” Ilya says. “We will find out soon enough, I think.”

**

When the scan is over, a nurse comes to the room and leads them to the same exam room Ilya was in the first time, with the posters on the wall showing how a baby squishes all your fucking organs.

“Look,” he says to Shane. The profound horror that crashes across Shane’s face is very fucking funny.

“Glad it is not you?” Ilya asks.

Guilt collides with the horror, which is also very funny. Shane tries very hard to school his expression into something, anything else and fails miserably. Ilya snorts a laugh and sits on the end of the exam table.

“It just looks — uncomfortable,” Shane says. He tears his eyes away from the poster and looks Ilya up and down. “It really doesn’t hurt?”

“No, Hollander, it really does not hurt. Most of the time.”

“Good. That’s good.”

A couple minutes later, Dr. Ivanov knocks on the door and comes into the room. Shane’s deeply ingrained manners kick in and he stands, wiping his palms against his thighs. Ilya catches the single moment where Dr. Ivanov registers that Shane is Shane, and his eyes widen just a little. Then it is gone, because he has much better control of his face than Shane does.

“Ilya, good to see you,” Dr. Ivanov says. “And this is?”

“He is the — the giver. That is wrong word.”

“The what?” Shane asks.

“Contributor?” Dr. Ivanov suggests.

“Yes.” Ilya smiles. “He is my contributor. And boyfriend.”

“Nice to meet you,” Shane says. His cheeks are very pink.

“It’s a pleasure.” Dr. Ivanov shakes his hand and that, inexplicably, settles Shane a little, apparently soothed by the successful completion of a small social ritual. He sits back down in the chair next to the exam table. Dr. Ivanov sits on the stool.

“So, first things first. Your scan didn’t show anything to be concerned about. Everything looks completely normal and exactly what we’d expect. Baby is on the big side, but well within normal ranges.”

The relief that flushes through Ilya is so profound it becomes a physical wave of warmth that slides down his spine and outward into his limbs. His head swims and he drops it down. A hand — Shane’s shaking hand — curls around Ilya’s wrist. Dr. Ivanov says nothing, allowing Ilya the moment he needs.

“That is very good,” Ilya says when he can lift his head again. Shane lets go of his wrist to hold his hand.

“It is,” Dr. Ivanov agrees. “So, how are you doing?”

The rest of the appointment is much easier. There are more routine tests Ilya needs to do in the coming weeks, for blood sugar and that kind of thing. Shane asks a couple specific questions that make it very clear that whatever baby book he has been reading, he finished the whole thing.

They talk about the stupid birth plan and Dr. Ivanov suggests that Ilya needs to start looking at hospitals to decide which one. Apparently there are tours they can take, which Ilya will not be doing. He also suggests taking some kind of how to breathe and not die from pain of giving birth class, which Ilya will also not be doing. The idea of walking into a room of couples alone is not one Ilya is willing to entertain. Fuck that.

“So, any last questions?” Dr. Ivanov asks.

“I have one kind of weird one,” Ilya says.

“Go ahead.”

Ilya tightens his hand around Shane’s and tries not to feel awkward. “I am going to be making a public statement about Malysh soon and there will probably be a big reaction.”

Dr. Ivanov nods sympathetically. “Yes, I imagine so.”

“If, like — a reporter or someone figured out you are my baby doctor, no one would answer questions or anything like that, yes?”

“Absolutely not,” Dr. Ivanov says and the surety in his voice is very comforting. “I and the rest of the practice take patient privacy very, very seriously. We wouldn’t even confirm you are a patient, much less answer questions. You don’t need to worry about that at all.”

“Thank you,” Ilya says. “I thought so, but I just — wanted to ask.”

”I understand. Though, given this,” Dr. Ivanov says, “have you given any additional thought about reaching out to the therapist? It could be helpful to have someone to talk to while navigating this announcement, aside from potential post-partum depression management.”

Ilya feels Shane tense.

“No, I did not,” Ilya says. “I think it is not necessary now, but I have card with number still.”

“I understand.”

**

“It is not a big deal,” Ilya says when they get back to the car.

“I don’t know what the deal is at all,” Shane says.

He turns toward Ilya, arms folded across his chest. The keys dangle from his hand and Ilya has the stupid thought that he could probably snatch them back. It is his fucking car after all.

“It is nothing,” Ilya insists.

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

“Look, it is nothing, okay?” Ilya says, sharper than he intended. “It is just that because of how my mom died, I am a little tiny bit more likely to get baby depression. That is all. I am fine and I will keep being fine. There is nothing to worry about.” Ilya is unconvincing in his own ears and the trouble on Shane’s face does not clear.

“That makes sense,” Shane says. He looks down, to the side, back up, gearing himself up to say, “This is — I need to know this kind of thing.”

Ilya scoffs. “You need to know about problem I do not have?”

”I need to know about things I need to look out for.”

“If I get sad, I will tell you,” Ilya snaps. “There, fake-problem solved.”

Shane looks to the side, out the driver’s side window to the endless gray concrete slabs of the garage. He turns back to Ilya with a thread of steel in his eyes that makes Ilya’s hackles rise.

“I think you should talk to the therapist,” Shane says.

Ilya gawps at him. “Why the fuck would I? I am fine.”

Shane lifts his chin a little. Ilya hardly feels cowed; he was a team captain for a long time, too. It draws him up short, maybe, with a mouthful of unnecessary arguments. ”You’re not as okay I think you are, right?”

“Come on, Hollander. I am lonely sometimes, okay?” Ilya says. “The days we are not together are a little bit shitty. That is not depression, that is life. That is nothing.”

“Ilya, you’re doing something really, really hard,” Shane says at length. “It’s hard to have a baby at all, and you have a thousand more things on top of that to deal with. You’re about to announce the pear to the world. Anyone doing that could use a person to talk to.”

“I have you to talk to.”

“What about when you need to talk about me?”

“Marley. Sveta.”

”Ilya,” Shane sighs.

“What?” Ilya folds his arms as if the gesture can contain the ugly snarling thing in his chest.

His mouth tastes like pennies, sickly and metallic. The ghost of his father whispers in one ear and the ghost of his mother whispers in the other, about weakness and failure and the taint passed down through blood from one generation to the next. If Ilya inherited his mother’s devastating sadness or his father’s prolonged deterioration that means he will pass both along to Malysh, planting a bomb in his brain before he is ever born.

So Ilya swallows down his bad days, choking the life out of them before anyone can possibly notice that his smiles are not always sincere. His sadness can be the product of a childhood that will bear no resemblance to how they will raise Malysh. Russia can keep the miserable Rozanov legacies.

“Isn’t it better to have more help than you need than to realize you need help that isn’t there later?” Shane asks. “I mean, none of the people you talk to even live in Ottawa, Ilya. Not one. Having someone here, all the time — I don’t know. I think it would be good.”

Ilya scrubs his hands over his face. Malysh kicks, which feels a little like traitorous agreement with his fucking dad.

“I will think about it,” Ilya says. “Okay?”

Shane studies him for a moment, brow furrowed, then nods a little reluctantly. “Yeah, of course. Thank you.”

“Is okay,” Ilya says. “Is nothing.”

**

The drive to Yuna and David’s house is quiet.

Ilya watches Shane from the corner of his eye as the tension thrumming in his shoulders winds up tighter and tighter. With the appointment out of the way, Ilya has capacity in his mind to think about the unnamed caveats the Metros want in exchange for Shane’s trade.

“Whatever the Metros want, we will figure it out,” Ilya says.

“Yeah,” Shane says, flexing his hands around the wheel.

Shane knocks on their front door just as dusk starts to shade the sky purple and Yuna answers, ushering them over the threshold and into the warmth and light of the Hollander home. Ilya slips a hand into the pocket of his hoodie to make sure he did not lose the sonogram picture as he kicks off his shoes.

“It’s so good to see both of you,” she says, hugging them both in turn. “Your dad is just taking chicken out of the oven.”

She herds them into the kitchen; Ilya is instructed to take a seat at the table while Shane is pressed into service to drain the water from a pot full of peas. Yuna opens a cabinet to get plates. Ilya likes watching them, likes the comfort they have in moving around each other.

Even so, there’s a taut thread running through the ostensibly light conversation. Ilya realizes he is not completely positive that David and Yuna know about the trade at all. He cannot really imagine them reacting terribly. But he also knows how Yuna feels about team loyalty.

Shane brings over two plates and sits on Ilya’s right. His leg immediately starts bouncing from anxiety that Ilya wishes he could blink out of existence. Yuna joins them. She briefly catches Ilya’s eye and smiles softly. She is worried, Ilya thinks, startled to realize that he knows Yuna well enough to clock that.

David is last, sitting with a dramatic groan that makes Yuna roll her eyes.

“So,” David says. “What happened in that meeting, Shane?”

“Shouldn’t we eat first?” Shane asks. Ilya puts a hand on the knee that isn’t bouncing and squeezes.

“Quick vote,” David says. “Who wants to know about the caveats? I do.”

“Me also,” Ilya says, shrugging at the look Shane shoots his way.

“I think it’s better to get it out in the open and then we can plan,” Yuna says.

Shane sighs heavily. “Okay, fine. We can talk about it now.” He sets his fork down and leans back in his chair. “The short answer is that yes, they are open to a trade. I don’t think they were excited about the idea, but said they’re willing.”

”We can work with that,” Yuna says. Her brow has the same furrow line Shane gets when he is very focused. “I’m assuming the timing would still be July?”

“Yes. I said I would finish out the season and do my best to bring home a third cup. The trade would officially happen in July and next season I’ll be in Ottawa.”

”This is good, yes?” Ilya says. “This is what you had planned.”

“It is, yeah.” Shane flashes him a tight smile. “It’s as good an outcome as I was hoping for.”

But?” David says.

“But,” Shane echoes. “There are some additional things they want from me.” He runs his fingers through his hair and chews on his bottom lip, eyes down and shoulders tight.

“What are they?” Yuna asks.

“They don’t want me to disclose my personal relationship until the season is over,” Shane says, looking at the grain of the kitchen table. “They think it’ll be a distraction, and they don’t want people distracted during the playoffs.”

For a long moment, all four of them are silent. Shane folds his arms across his chest. Ilya can see the muscle in his jaw flex.

“You told them about me?” Ilya blurts out in shock.

“No, not specifically,” Shane says. “I would never do that without talking to you first. I told them I have a partner that's part of the league, not specifically another player. I just wanted to give them a heads up so they weren't blindsided when I talked about it. I didn't think they'd — I don't know. Shut it down entirely."

“Is that an official condition?” Yuna asks, leaning forward with an anger in her eyes Ilya has never seen before.

”Of course not.” Shane shakes his head. “Not in the way where there’s any proof of it. But I don’t think they meant it optionally.”

“That is a completely inappropriate thing to ask of you,” Yuna snaps. “Completely inappropriate and almost certainly discriminatory.”

Shane responds and Yuna says something else; Ilya lets their conversation fuzz out to background noise.

The fucking Metros. Ilya knew that the weird non-reaction they had to Shane being gay was only a surface level disinterest. He knew. It is an abhorrent way to treat the man who took them from playoff absentees to back to fucking back cup wins. They’re going to crash and fucking burn without Shane and Ilya is going to watch and laugh.

It is a very fucking petty price to demand Shane pay on his way out the door. Assholes.

But. It is also no more than what they have been doing for ten years, only a little longer than they hoped. Ilya would put up with a lot more to guarantee Shane will play in Ottawa next season.

“I can live with this,” Ilya says, cutting off Shane and Yuna both. Both their heads whip toward him in such perfect synchronicity Ilya almost laughs. ”It is basically doing what we are already doing. We have done this for a long time. Four more months is nothing.”

“It’s not fair to you,” Shane says.

”None of this is fair to either of us.” Ilya shrugs as casually as he can manage. “The Metros want to take one last dig at you on your way out the door? Fine. Next season you are in Ottawa and you can say whatever the fuck you want about how the Metros treated you. We are together. We have baby. We have the rest of our lives. Fuck the Metros.”

Shane slumps back in his chair and presses the heel of his hand against his eye. “I’m so fucking tired of lying.”

There is a deeper exhaustion in the downbeat hunch of Shane’s body, more than just this latest demand. Ilya feels the contours of a long line of little moments that have built up over Shane’s spectacular tenure in Montreal. Maybe there is more, Ilya thinks, to Shane’s driving need to be the best than his own ambition.

There’s an echo of that exhaustion on Yuna’s face, too, as she looks at her son. There is a weight to her gaze, an understanding threaded through with helplessness that Ilya has never seen on her before. Ilya wonders suddenly who taught Shane he needed to be the best. Ilya wonders why that lesson was so important.

“Hey,” Ilya says, wrapping a hand around Shane’s wrist and gently drawing it away from his face. Shane looks at him with bruised eyes, mouth pinched into an unhappy line.

“I didn’t —“ Shane says, then cuts himself off and shakes his head.

“What?”

”I’ve done everything they ever asked me to do,” Shane says. “Everything. And I just — I thought it would be enough, I guess. I thought that — I wanted to believe that they’d let me play for them and be who I am, but I was wrong.”

“You did nothing wrong,” Yuna says.

“It feels like I did.”

“Your brain lies,” Ilya says. “Listen to your mom.”

Shane brushes his thumb beneath his eye and looks up to the ceiling. He probably needs to cry, Ilya thinks, but he himself is no better. Shanes inhales deeply and exhales slowly, then straightens.

“If I agree to this,” Shane says, “I won’t be able to say anything about our pear and all the shit is going to come down on your head. I hate that. You shouldn’t have to shoulder that by yourself.”

Ilya shakes his head. “I am more than willing to shoulder this for a few months so we can tell the whole fucking world about us and our kid next fucking season.”

”It’s not fucking fair fair,” Shane yells. His voice cracks at the end and he puts a hand over his eyes. “I’m the same fucking person I was at the start of the season and I don’t understand why they have to treat me any differently.”

"Honey," Yuna murmurs.

"How do I keep playing for them?" Shane asks, tight and desperately unhappy. "Most of the fucking team has been — off, or — weird, since I came out. And I told myself they just needed to get used to it. The Admirals came around to Scott Hunter. Montreal would do the same. And they haven't. And they won't, right? It's not going to happen.'

"I didn't think they were going to be happy about it. I knew that wasn't going to happen. I'm not stupid. But I thought I'd done enough that it would be — that I could go on good terms. I thought I'd earned that much."

“Come here, lyubimyy,” Ilya says, reaching out to curl a hand around the back of Shane’s neck and pull him in. Shane shoves his face into the curve of Ilya’s shoulder; his unsteady breath is hot and harsh.

Ilya strokes his back and looks across the table to Yuna and David in an almost childish impulse; surely an adult can fix this problem that is too big for Ilya and Shane. But Yuna’s mouth is a flat line of barely restrained anger and David is rubbing his temples.

“I’m sorry,” Ilya murmurs.

Shane drops down further, pushing his face into the crease where Ilya’s stomach flares out from his chest. Beneath the table, he curls an arm around the widest part of Ilya’s belly. Ilya rubs his thumb in an arc on the nape of his neck until the tension finally bleeds out.

Shane sits back up, but stays tucked into Ilya’s side.

“What is the pear?” David asks at the same time Yuna asks,“What are you expecting backlash for?”

“Pear is Shane’s nickname for Malysh,” Ilya says.

“Ilya is going to make a statement about being pregnant,” Shane says. “People are starting to guess.”

“Oh.” Yuna presses a hand to her chest. “When is that happening?”

“Soon.” Ilya sets an absent hand on his stomach. “I wanted to wait until after the scan. Which reminds me. I have a thing to give you.” He pulls the folded sonogram picture out of his pocket and pushes it across the table.

David picks it up and spreads it open. “Oh, look at that,” he says in a soft tone that Ilya has never heard before and does not feel quite entitled to.

Yuna brushes the tip of her finger along the curve of Malysh’s head, eyes suddenly bright in the mellow light. She briefly rests her head on David’s shoulder and he kisses her temple.

Ilya studies them as they stare down at the outlines of Malysh sketched out in filmy black and white. It does something to Ilya that he cannot quite name to watch the way they orient toward each other, heads bent down, almost touching. It is the unthinking familiarity that comes from two bodies being near each other for a long time.

“Baby doctor says he is good,” Ilya tells them. “Everything is what it should be.”

“He?” David looks up. “A boy?”

“No, not for sure. We said we did not want to know.”

“Looks perfect to me either way.” David smiles. “Good work, Rozanov.”

The praise makes Ilya briefly shy. He has not consciously done anything to make Malysh, he has just existed and trusted Malysh to do what he needs to do. Still, not all soil yields. The loam inside Ilya has at least done that much.

**

There is a little more conversation as they actually eat the meal David cooked. Yuna asks about the statement Ilya is going to make; Ilya shows them Harris’s shirt. Both Hollanders laugh at that. Shane rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling as he does.

“You can always come here, if you need to get away from your place,” Yuna says.

”I think me hanging out with Shane Hollander’s parents is probably same thing as disclosing our personal relationship,” Ilya says, genuinely a little regretful. He glances at Shane, brow furrowed in thought.

“Does that —“ Shane looks up. “That goes for me, too, doesn’t it.”

“Yeah,” Ilya says. “I think so. At least at the start, when everyone will be looking at me.”

“Fuck,” Shane exhales. “I don’t — I really didn’t think they’d ask for things I could never get back. I’m sorry. This isn’t at all what I wanted.”

“I know.” Ilya picks up his hand and kisses his knuckles. “I understand. I am sorry, too.”

Malysh chooses that moment to move with enough force to startle an ah out of Ilya. All three Hollanders lunge toward him simultaneously. He smiles and waves them off. “He just surprised me. I am fine.”

It breaks the tension, and gives them something else to think about, and that is not nothing. Yuna and David settle back in their chairs. Shane presses his palm to Ilya’s stomach as Malysh continues to roll and wiggle.

“Hi, pear,” Shane says.

“Are you having fun doing whatever you are doing, Malysh?” Ilya asks.

“Shane was a restless one, too,” Yuna says. “David used to sing to him.”

Shane looks up. “You did?”

David shrugs, his mouth canted into a fond smile. “I sure did.”

“Do you think it would work on the pear?” Shane asks.

“The pear,” David repeats, shaking his head a little. “You never know. It might.”

Yuna nudges David with her elbow. “Try.”

”Okay, okay.”

Ilya does not know the song David Hollander sings. It’s about a woman riding on the highway in the desert that sounds very faintly familiar, like maybe he has heard it once or twice before. David’s voice is unexceptional, but steady and clear.

Shane murmurs, “I do know this,” and starts humming along. Ilya strokes his hand over his restless stomach. He looks up to Yuna brushing a tear off her check. When their eyes meet, she shrugs and smiles. What can you do?

It hits Ilya, then, that this moment is the formation of a new Hollander family memory and he is an integral part of it. He is not standing on the edge with his nose pressed to the glass of a place he does not belong and cannot get to. The boundaries have expanded to include him, him and Malysh the pear.

David sings and it might be a coincidence, but Malysh slowly settles.

**

Ilya dreams he is floating on his back in a cool lake.

Sunlight dapples gold across the rippling water; high summer at the cottage. A wild profusion of growing things gleam lushly green on the shores, spattered with bright bursts of color: oranges and yellows and reds and purples. He sets a hand on his stomach and realizes he is also in bloom, skimming his palm over the pronounced curve. He has never been pregnant in a dream before.

He looks toward the dock and his mama, Shane, and David Hollander sit on the end with their feet dangling down into the water. He hears names in the familiar Russian lilt they are meant for: Danil, Nikita, Pavel, Yaroslav. His mama laughs, says no, no, no, no.

**

Ilya invites the entire team over the night before the announcement goes up.

It is impulsive, really. He finishes the little ‘future Centaur’ shirt photoshoot with Harris and is hit by an unexpected giddiness at the absurd fucking comedy of it all. If only Grigori Rozanov could see the depths to which his second son has fallen. The shock would be enough to kill him.

The wheels of this thing that is Ilya’s life are moving such that what he wants is no longer important. There is a freedom in knowing there is nothing else he can do. There is a freedom in letting go. There is so much in Ilya’s chest that he cannot name in either language he speaks and it tastes sweet and sour and bitter on his tongue.

And it is funny, it really is, that Ilya can spend a life looking to the future and finding nothing and know, in his heart, that it means he is destined to live fast and die young, leave behind a pretty corpse. He looks into that unknown now and it is still black, but a black with a beating heart.

So, he invites the whole team and their wives and girlfriends, and almost everyone comes. He wears the ‘future Centaur’ shirt Harris allowed him to keep after he took pictures. Why not? The secret of Malysh is over.

The kitchen counters fill with food and drinks. Young brings several six packs and comes into the house yelling, “Nobody gets to say a fucking thing to me! I asked Rozy what to bring and he said beer!”

Harris shows up with more donuts and Troy Barrett, who stands a step behind him with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking everywhere except at Ilya. As soon as they’re over the threshold, Barrett mumbles a hi and makes a beeline to the Hazy and the X-Box.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Ilya asks Harris sweetly.

“I just gave him a ride!” Harris protests.

”What kind of ride, Harris?”

”Ilya!”

Several WAGs make a point of coming up and saying hi, asking how he’s doing and reiterating that if he needs anything, all he has to do is ask. The discomfort of straddling the line between player and partner is pretty quickly overridden.

At some point he notices a couple paper bags piled on the bottom of the stairs. Selena Chouinard catches him looking and says, “Oh, a couple of us brought some baby stuff.” She kindly pretends she does not see the extent of Ilya’s reaction to the first things that belong to Malysh.

Ilya has never had so many people in his Ottawa home before. They fill up the corners and soften the edges; Ilya closes his eyes and basks in the murmur of conversation and scattered laughter and the sheer physical warmth of other people.

He gets a text from Shane a couple hours in, asking if he has time to talk for just a minute. Ilya excuses himself to the bathroom as his phone starts to ring.

“Hi,” Ilya says.

”Hey.” Shane is trying valiantly to sound normal, but wistfulness bleeds through. “I know you’ve got people over, but I just — I don’t know. I wanted to hear your voice.”

“How are you doing?” Ilya asks.

“I think I should be asking you that.”

“We are asking each other, Hollander.”

Shane chuckles. “I’m — I’m okay. I wish I could be there. So much. How are you?”

”I wish you could be here,” Ilya says, lightly as he can. “I am okay. Scared, but not so much as I thought I would be. We will see if that is still true tomorrow morning.”

“I’m not planning on setting my phone down tomorrow. If you need me, I’m a call away.”

"Hey, Shane?"

"I'm here."

"Tell me —" Ilya swallows hard. "Tell me it will be okay."

"It will be okay, Ilya."

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The call ends and Ilya returns his phone to his pocket.

A wave of unbearable longing for Shane punches the air out of Ilya’s lungs. A deep pit of loneliness opens up in his chest, sucking Ilya’s mind into the mire of it like mud. He cries in strange, near-silent gasps.

He is afraid. He is so fucking afraid.

Ilya has spent years constructing the person he plays for the rest of the world, trimming away parts of himself that do not fit, playing up the things that do. 81 is an idea, Shane said, not knowing how fucking true that is. He has spent ten years threading the needle of being watched by a million eyes, but seen by a number of people he can count on one hand.

This is the last night of his life, Ilya thinks, and the reality of that finally hits him. His life divides on this day; Ilya before and Ilya after. The terror and dread is the inverse of how he felt getting on the plane to Boston for his rookie season, desperately happy for the sheer distance from all the parts of his home that has never wanted him.

He wants his mama. He wants her to tell him that he is her brave Ilyushka, strong and true. He wants her opening his closet doors and looking under his bed for monsters, tucking him in and murmuring that the night is now safe and nothing will come for him. He wants her hand in his as they skate in slow circles, knowing that if he falls all he needs to do is get up again.

No one understands that every mirror holds a ghost of his mama. That Ilya’s face is an echo of her own because Ilya was his mother ‘s son from the moment he was born. Her curls fall across his forehead, her smile curves his mouth, her eyes look back at him.

He wants Shane to know what her love feels like, as Ilya knows how Yuna’s does. He wants her and Yuna to tell each other stories about their sons. He wants David to show her pictures of Shane when he was so small. He wants her hand on his belly, whispering to Malysh in Russian. He wants Malysh to grow up with the quirks of her speech in his own Russian.

He wants to give her the home she always deserved, the peace of his fucking father’s cruelty and demands finally silenced.

And Ilya can have none of it. Tomorrow the world decides how much punishment they will mete out for the ways he has failed to be who he was supposed to be.

So Ilya does what he has always done. He shoves it down and swallows the inarticulate howl crowding the back of his mouth. He wipes the tears and snot away and splashes cold water on his face. He stares at himself in the mirror until the smile plastered across his face is — is close enough for government, whatever the fuck it.

He goes back to his party.

(He thinks about the therapist’s card in his wallet.)

**

It is easier to bear, when he is surrounded by people again.

No one clocks him well enough to ask about it, but Bood and his girlfriend, Cassie, settle next to him on the couch and stay there. They think he is nervous, which is not untrue, only incomplete.

When Malysh kicks, Ilya says, “Give me your hand, so I can keep promise.”

Bood offers Ilya his hand with puzzled acquiescence that brightens into a smile when Ilya puts that hand on his own stomach. Malysh goes still for a minute or two, but does eventually shift.

“Holy shit,” Bood says. “Rozy.”

Ilya grins. “I said you would be first to feel.”

**

As the night wears on, several people suggest to Ilya that maybe some of the team should just crash where they are so they are not driving tired or tipsy. Ilya, who is not stupid, recognizes the unspoken agreement for what it is.

Dykstra is the fourth person to bring it up and Ilya throws up his hands, “Fucking hell! You all can just fucking say you are not leaving me alone for this!”

There is a moment of silence, in which Dykstra turns bright red and looks up to the ceiling as if trying to summon divine intervention. Then Hazy, who has spent most of the night on Ilya’s floor, playing video games with Barrett, yells, “We’re not leaving you alone tomorrow, Rozy!”

“Fine! Okay! Whatever!”

Ilya plays up his exasperation a little, saying he only has two guest beds so whoever stays can fight for them or learn to cuddle. He is performing being more okay than he really feels, maybe. It is too vulnerable to tell them how meaningful their presence is. It is the best he can do.

People start to trickle out as it gets late until it is just him sitting on the couch, watching Hazy and Barrett’s 97th game of the night. Hazy claimed the Centaurs first and Barrett bounced between a couple other teams until he realized video game Ilya is still a Raider in this version and he settled on that.

Bood and Cassie are in the kitchen, packing up the leftovers. Ilya offered to help and Cassie pinned him in place with a look and said, “Be serious, Rozanov.” Haas is already asleep in one of the spare rooms, tired after a night of bug-eyed disbelief that he is in Ilya’s house.

Harris plops down next to him on the couch, red-cheeked and loose. He leans unashamedly into Ilya’s side and Ilya brings an arm up to lay across his shoulders. Ilya can smell apples in his hair and chuckles. He almost kisses the top of Harris’s head.

“I have something I want to tell you,” Harris announces.

“Are you sure?” Ilya asks lightly. “Will the Harris that wakes up tomorrow regret what you say tonight?”

“Yes, I am so sure.”

“Tell me.”

“I,” Harris says with great sincerity and minimal dignity, “am really proud of you.”

Ilya tries so hard not to laugh and does not manage to. He claps a hand across his mouth to stifle it. “For what?”

“For telling the world about Malysh. It would be a lot easier to hide,” Harris says with a shrug. “Can I touch your belly?”

“Sure. And thank you for telling me this.”

“I hate that people are going to be assholes.” Harris’s hands are smaller than Ilya’s own, smaller than Shane’s, smaller than Bood’s. He sets his hand delicately on the top of Ilya’s stomach and curls his fingers in and out like he would scratch under a dog’s chin.

“I am not afraid of assholes,” Ilya says.

“They’re just always so loud. You have to promise me you won’t believe any of the things they say, okay? They suck. Fuck them.”

“I will try my best,” Ilya says in a more honest answer than he realized.

Harris makes a pleased sound that makes Barret’s head jerk to the side, looking over his shoulder. Ilya smiles pleasantly at him and gets to watch Barrett go tomato red while Hazy scores a goal. Interesting that Barrett did not try to get a ride home with anyone else.

“Do you want to see the future Centaur picture I picked for the team’s post?” Harris asks.

“Sure.”

Harris unlocks his phone and pulls up an email to open the attachment. Ilya looks at himself standing with his hands on his hips, one corner of his mouth cocked up in a smile that comes across like he knows the shirt is a silly gimmick, but it is funny nonetheless.

“Do you like it?” Harris squints at the screen. “There were a lot of good ones. You are very photoable. Photographingable. You take really good pictures.”

”Thank you. And yes, I like it.”

“Did you decide on a picture for the one going on your accounts?” Harris asks.

Ilya shrugs. “I thought I would probably just use this one. I have the words you wrote for me — thank you for that, again. Does the picture matter?”

“Of course it matters. Let me see.” Harris says, holding out his hand. Ilya gives over his phone and settles back into the couch. Harris spends twenty minutes scrolling through his camera roll, tapping into some to adjust the colors and that kind of shit.

He presents a series of three. First, a mirror selfie from December, where Ilya looks more amused than he remembers feeling. Malysh is barely a palmful. Ilya cannot remember which hotel he took the photo in.

Second is Ilya at practice, deep in conversation with Bood across the boards, focused and intent. His brand new clothes fit around his obviously, undeniably pregnant stomach.

Last is a photo Ilya does not immediately recognize. He realizes it must have been taken earlier in the evening. He’s smiling at something just out of frame, both hands cupped around his stomach.

“Which one?” Ilya asks.

“All three,” Harris says firmly.

**

The announcement goes up at 8:00 AM.

Chapter End Notes

first, i underestimated how ominous 'the calm before the flood was' as a chapter summary and i would just like to say: my bad.

second, the song david sings is unknown legend, specifically as sung by tunde adebimpe

third, i did do some research into canadian immigration laws for professional athletes and protections for pregnant people, but 'what if a male russian hockey player got knocked up by his hockey player boyfriend' is a more specific set of circumstances than was covered. if anything is egregiously wrong, please let me know.

anyway. thank you for the feedback, as ever. i am consistently blown away by how generous y'all are. <3

i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 16

Chapter Summary

Everybody has a fucking opinion.

Chapter Notes

heads up, this chapter includes some homophobic language.

Ilya should sleep, but can't, so he lays awake in bed through the long, slow hours of the night and watches patches of moonlight track their way across his bedroom. He strokes a hand over the curve of his stomach, back and forth and back and forth. Malysh is quiet.

The buoying comfort of other people recedes into the darkness and a fear that tastes like exhaustion rolls back in. Ilya feels like the only living thing in the world, only barely tethered to reality. He makes himself breathe, deep in and slow out. Unknowns cling to the edges of his mind. Will he still exist after tomorrow? Will any part of the person Ilya has made himself into remain?

But those are the questions that can drive you fucking crazy.

"I don't know what happens tomorrow, Malysh," Ilya murmurs to the gloom. "It might be really fucking bad. Not all bad, probably. But maybe mostly bad."

Ilya has spent a lot of time deliberately not thinking about best cases and worst cases. He knows that his mind tends toward catastrophe; there is no bottom to the terrible consequences Ilya can conjure. It tempers even the good Ilya imagines. What little he hopes for or dreams about comes with an asterisk, because there is always a cost. It is better to prepare for that than be blindsided.

"I wish your dad was here," Ilya says, and it feels like a confession. "I wish — I don't know what I wish. That he could hurt less. That it could be easier, for him. I wish that for me also, but I think you and me have more than him, right now.'

"None of this is your fault, Malysh. You must know this, yes? You are not responsible for anything that happens. If I must give something up, you are worth any cost."

Ilya only realizes the truth of that as he says it.

**

A thin sleep takes Ilya in the muzzy hours between night and morning. He dreams in patchwork and smeared impressions that unravel into meaninglessness. His mama is there and not there, alive and dead, reaching for him and running away. Shane is a voice on the edge of hearing and a flicker of movement on the edge of vision. Ilya chases them both in circles and circles and circles, hands outstretched toward something that should be there, but isn't.

**

ID: An Instagram screenshot of a post by user ilyarozanov. Caption reads "good guess, but i do not have tumor." There are 2.6k likes and 414 comments.

**

Ilya swims up out of sleep slowly, squinting at his room cast in watery morning light. The muted sounds of movement and voices drift up the stairs from the main floor. The previous night comes back to him and with it, the significance of the day.

“Fuck,” Ilya murmurs, scrubbing the grit from his eyes. “Okay.”

His phone is on his bedside table, face down. Ilya stares at it and stares at it and stares at it a little more. He is not sure of the time and so not sure if the carefully coordinated posts of his little announcement have gone up or not. There is nothing to be done either way. Knowing this makes it no easier.

Malysh rolls in his belly and that is enough to jolt Ilya out of his tangled mind. “Yes, okay, thank you,” he says as he picks up his phone.

The screen lights up with a million notifications and the time. It is almost 8:15. Ilya’s stomach writhes with a useless kind of immature panic that he thought he buried with his father or at least left behind in Russia. It is the childish need to hide something that will get him in a great deal of trouble at home if caught.

“Fuck this,” Ilya mutters. He unlocks his phone and pulls up Instagram.

His post is up exactly as it should be and Ilya flinches even so. He skims over the caption and the statement itself, formatted prettily by Farah. The words so familiar from repetition they have started to jumble together into a meaningless string of letters. He stares at the pictures Harris chose and edited. They give the impression of a man with much more certainty than Ilya feels.

There are already several comments. It is probably better if he does not read them, Ilya thinks, as he opens them up.

what the fuck is this shit

is this real??

did he get hacked or something

There is nothing really funny in the disbelief and yet hysterical laughter bubbles up in Ilya’s chest. Because they are not wrong, it is so unbelievable. Nothing about the person Ilya has played for the greedy, grasping hockey machine was ever meant to suggest that he was capable of something so absurd as getting knocked up. Ilya knows how they fucking feel. He feels it, too.

He keeps scrolling.

**

ID: An Instagram comment screenshot by user jake1717 who has the default user icon. Comment reads "jesus fucking christ another one??" and has 87 likes.

ID: An Instagram comment screenshot by user ultaemancipation9 with an Ottawa Centaurs logo user icon. Comment reads "god really does hate the centaurs most of all".

**

Ilya forgets to check his personal messages until he's going down the stairs. There are fewer from random acquaintances and old hook ups than when the team announced he would be out for the rest of the season. A redhead named Carolyn he took home a couple times says, I can't believe we could have been having threesomes with another Raider the whole time. Ilya saves a screenshot of that one.

Most of them are from people he knows well, which is a larger number that he realized.

David: Don't let the bastards get you down. You and Shane have handled everything much better than I probably would. I'm proud of you both.

Yuna: No matter what happens today, tomorrow and next week and next season you will still be Ilya Rozanov and better than almost anyone else in the game. And if anybody becomes a real nuisance, I'm more than happy to send a pointed and slightly threatening email.

Svetalana: Shoulders back and chin up today, Ilyushka. I love you and your little buzzkill.

Marley: you got this, brother. and any player who wants to make an issue about it can skate right into my fist

Shane: I hope you got some sleep last night. Call me if you need me. I'm glued to my phone today. I want you to know that any bravery I've had dealing with my team I learned from you. You make impossible things possible. I love you so much. Tell the pear I love him, too. And fun fact: the pear is the size of corn.

"Corn? One corn?" Ilya shakes his head. "Malysh, your dad says he loves you and you are the size of a corn."

Malysh shifts. Ilya presses a hand to his stomach; he feels movement inside and out and the doubling is strange and fascinating in equal measure. He says, “Good morning,” and Malysh kicks against his palm. “Hi, yes. I feel you. We are going toward food right now.”

Ilya’s kitchen is a buzzing little hive of activity.

Bood is at the stove with pans on two burners, both of which appear to be cooking some kind of omelette thing. Harris is perched on a stool, squinting at his laptop like a man who had one more beer than was wise the night before. Barrett stands at Harris’s elbow, refilling his coffee. Ilya rolls his eyes.

Haas is also sitting at the island with a mug held in both hands, blinking in owlish disbelief at the morning he has awoken into. Hazy sits next to him, arms folded on the counter as a pillow. Even odds as to whether he is awake or not, Ilya thinks.

It is a surreal fucking scene.

They are not required to be in Ilya’s kitchen. No one made them come. No one has made them stay. They could do so much less — a message, a phone call — and Ilya would consider that more than enough. More, certainly, than the connection of playing on the same team requires.

This day is a burden, which Ilya knows. The ripples of his choices have been slowly moving outward for months and now they're fetching up onto the people around him. And yet here they are, in his fucking kitchen.

“Hey, Rozy,” Hazy says blearily, jolting Ilya out of his brooding. “Hey, rookie.”

“Out of curiosity, did team decide I needed five babysitters today and you all drew short straw or was it a volunteer thing?” Ilya asks mildly.

“My boss and I decided that it made sense to have a staff member with you for the day,” Harris says, “and I thought it would be more comfortable on your couch rather than a chair in my office. Everyone else is here for you because they want to be.”

“Is this true, Barrett?” Ilya cocks his head at Barrett, who has finished pouring coffee and is now standing next to Harris for love of the game.

Barrett blushes. “I just — it sucks, when people turn on you. I know how much that fucking sucks. So.” He looks up and meets Ilya’s eye, so clearly braced for a harsh reaction that has more to do with whatever the fuck is wrong with Toronto that Ilya himself.

“Okay,” Ilya says. “So long as no one is being held hostage.”

“A burden shared is a burden halved,” Hazy intones, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “And there are five of us plus you so it’s a burden sixthed. And a sixth of anything isn’t that much.”

Ilya snorts as he sits down on the stool next to Harris. “Thank you for this wisdom.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, how are people —“ Ilya waves a hand. “What are they saying?”

“Eat this first,” Bood says, setting a plate in front of Ilya. “It’s got eggs, cheese, peppers and some ham. Food makes everything easier to deal with.” He knocks his elbow against Ilya’s arm.

Ilya opens his mouth to say something to that and realizes that any kind of sincerity runs a very real risk of making him fucking cry and it is too early in the fucking day to start that shit. So he sticks a bite of omelette in his mouth to smooth over an acknowledging grunt. The food tastes very good.

**

ID: The bottom half of an Instagram post by user ottawacentaurs. Caption reads "Special one of one limited edition merch modeled by our own #81 Ilya Rozanov! #futurecentaur". There are 227 comments.

**

Ilya cleans his plate, holds it out to Barrett, and says, "Put this in sink."

Barrett bristles a little, but Harris shoots him a pointedly quelling look, and he deflates and does as told. Ilya catches Bood's eye across the island and raises an eyebrow. Bood's shoulders quirk in a very small shrug, which means it's not just Ilya and that is gratifying.

"I am fed," Ilya says. "Can I know what people are saying on team's posts now?"

"I would characterize the general reaction as surprised," Harris says delicately.

"What the fuck does that mean, Harris?" Ilya presses. "I can just look on my own fucking phone."

"The top comment is, and I quote, 'what the fuck is happening right now?'" Harris says, frowning like the collected horde of Centaurs fans have personally disappointed him. "There's a lot of we must be kidding and is this a joke and saying it can't possibly be real. There is the expected amount of vitriol—"

"What is vitriol?"

"Anger expressed badly."

Ilya snorts. "Worse than what they already say about me?"

"It's certainly more specific," Harris says. "The point is, I am removing those people and their comments."

"I like this one, though," Hazy pipes up. "'Leaving aside the actually bonkers news, who do I have to bribe to get one of those shirts.' Can we do that, Harris? I think we should do that."

"I'm happy to ask."

"Some of these are really sincere, I think," Bood says. "Congratulations and that kind of thing. Some funny ones, too. Like, here, 'this is the real gay agenda and we never lose.' And this one, 'one season of Rozy off the ice in exchange for second Rozanov the Centaurs have dibs on is honestly an extremely fair deal.'"

"That person is correct," Haas says firmly.

Ilya laughs and it feels mostly natural. "He might not want to play hockey," he says.

"Surely not," Haas says, horrified.

**

ID: A Twitter screenshot. User todd @tattodd posted "what the fuck #ilyarozanov". User Name @mhlfan72 replied "I Do Not think this is Real".

**

The team has an afternoon cross country flight to start a road trip through Canada, which Ilya thinks was probably a deliberate choice in terms of timing. It is more difficult to compulsively refresh social media sitting on a plane than holed up in your house. More difficult to isolate, too. Ilya does not love feeling so managed, but the trip ends in Montreal, which eases the sting.

Bood, Hazy, Haas, and Barrett all need to go home before getting on a plane, so they leave mid-morning. Bood pulls Ilya into a one-armed hug and Hazy reaches up to ruffle his fucking hair. Ilya makes a show of trying to shrug both of them off, but there is no effort behind it. There is animal comfort in the casual touch that Ilya is not capable of explaining to either of them, but he thinks maybe they understand it regardless.

Haas very politely thanks Ilya for the use of his guest bed, and adds in a rush at the end, “I am very glad you are a Centaur and I would not change anything.". It takes Ilya a moment to sort through the babble of it, by which point Haas has fled to the back seat of Hazy’s car.

Barrett drags his feet, lingering on Ilya’s front step. Ilya watches him wrestle with something in his head, drumming his fingers against his thigh. “Don’t hurt yourself thinking so hard,” Ilya says.

“I’m not —“ Barrett says hotly. “Can I ask you something?” He winces at his own words.

Ilya cocks his head. “I do not promise I will answer.”

Barrett shifts his weight back and forth on his feet, face screwed up like he is in physical pain. He suffers so extravagantly and it is very fucking funny and Ilya will not apologize for that. “It’s not Harris, right?” Barrett blurts out.

Ilya blinks at him. “Harris is not what?”

Barrett gestures toward Ilya. “The rookie’s — you know —”

The complete and utter absurdity of the question is so profound that Ilya first assumes it is Barrett making a terrible attempt at humor. But when Ilya snickers, Barrett breaks out in bright patches of red that crawl down his neck, which makes Ilya laugh harder.

"You are serious?" Ilya asks. "You are asking if I am fucking Harris. Or no, you are asking if Harris has fucked me?"

“Forget it!” Barrett yells. “Forget it, forget I asked. Bye.”

He bolts toward Hazy’s waiting car and Ilya keeps cackling.

**

ID: A Twitter screenshot by user sammie @sammieamie. Their icon is someone playing hockey. Tweet reads "i'm looking at the pics of rozanov since january and i think we might be the idiots here #ilyarozanov #futurecentaur". There are 439 retweets, 12 quote tweets, and 8.3k likes.

**

Harris is still sitting at the island when Ilya goes back inside. He's coming along on this road trip and somehow was the only person with the foresight to bring his suitcase to the sleepover. Ilya sits down next to him with a soft grunt. The island stools are not particularly tall, but they feel taller with Malysh throwing Ilya off-kilter.

"How are you doing?" Harris asks. It is a distracted question; his eyes remain glued to the screen.

"I am okay," Ilya says and it is mostly not a lie. "Barrett just asked me if you are Malysh's dad."

Harris chokes on nothing and garbles out a sound that may or may not have begun as a word, Ilya cannot tell. His hands skitter to a stop and his eyes go wide. Color floods into his face. Ilya pushes a half-full glass of water across the island and smiles pleasantly.

Harris chugs the whole thing. "I'm so sorry, I don't know why he would think that."

Ilya shrugs. "I don't think the part he cares about is Malysh's dad."

"Oh?" Harris presses a hand to his chest. "Why — why do you say that?"

"This is something you also care about?" Ilya asks.

"I —" Harris covers his face with his hands. Ilya waits him out. "My — Troy — the point of today is you! Anything else doesn't matter."

"I would rather you tell me what the fuck is happening with Barrett than read fifty comments from angry people with seventeen numbers in their name calling me a faggot."

"There aren't that many like that," Harris says, softening slightly. He sighs and closes his laptop. "Nothing is happening."

"Do you want something to be happening?" Ilya asks.

"I mean, who wouldn't? Troy is beau — he is very good looking. Objectively."

"Ehh." Ilya tilts his hand back and forth.

"Oh, please," Harris says, folding his arms across his chest. "He is and you know it."

"Too bad about his personality."

"He's really not that bad. Everyone expects him to be an asshole and figuring out how to not be one is harder than it sounds."

Annoyingly, Ilya knows how that feels. Playing hockey would be so much easier if the only expectations anyone had were about what you can do on the ice. Wanting to be better and being better are two very different things, and where Ilya has Shane, Barrett had Dallas fucking Kent.

"You know there are nice men in Ottawa," Ilya says.

"I could say the same to you," Harris shoots back, but with a smile. "Anyway. There's really nothing much to tell. He hangs out in my office sometimes. I don't even know for sure that he swings my way."

"If he does not, he cares about whether we are fucking way more than is normal."

**

ID: A twitter screenshot by user Troy Barrett @troy_barrett_95. Tweet reads "Rozanov is undeniably one of the best playing the game. Injuries take people off the ice all the time. This is no different." The tweet has 76 retweets, 14 quote tweets, and 619 likes.

**

Harris is fully engrossed in his social media stuff when Shane messages to ask if it's a good time to talk, so Ilya leaves him in the kitchen with his laptop and goes into the living room. Alone, Ilya's banked anxiety fizzes back up. The reemergence is unpleasant and irritating.

Ilya shoves that away and calls Shane, who answers on the second ring.

"Hey, hi." The familiar timbre of Shane's voice eases through Ilya the same way good vodka does, blunting the edges of the world to make them easier to bear. "How are you doing? Don't say 'okay.'"

Ilya sighs heavily enough to make sure Shane can hear. "What if that is the truth, Hollander?"

"I don't think one word is ever enough for days like this," Shane says. "Are you okay?"

"I —" Ilya gropes for words in English and only finds half of them and he finds little more in Russian. It is, truthfully, a matter of vulnerability, not language. Ilya has not so acutely felt a lack of control over his own life in a long time. "I don't know. I am better than I would be alone and also every second feels like it will be the one where everything goes to shit. It is stupid."

"No, I don't think so. I think it makes sense."

Ilya hums a low noise. "How are you, lyubimyy? Don't say 'okay.'"

Shane laughs a little. Ilya can picture him ducking his head and the half smile he tries to hide. "It's the same as it has been, I guess. Nobody is saying anything to me and we're all pretending everything is normal."

"Fuckers. Are you sure you want to win them another cup?"

Shane sighs. "Maybe they'll remember why they used to like me if I do," he says, a wry joke underpinned by longing Ilya isn't sure Shane is aware of. "Anyway. I've been reading comments and stuff about you and Malysh and it seems — okay might be a strong word. But not as bad as the worst I imagined?"

Ilya has learned two new English slurs since he woke up, but Shane still isn't wrong. They are uncomfortably discordant truths to hold at the same time. Was it different for Scott Hunter? Ilya can't remember. His singular focus had been on Shane and the cottage. It was probably bad, too. Hockey is — hockey is what it is.

"Pretty much. We will see how long that lasts."

"I think people will come around."

"Yeah, maybe. I hope so." Ilya runs his fingers through his hair. "Shane?"

"I'm still here."

"Talk to me about something that is not this," Ilya asks. "Anything. I just want to think about other things for a little bit."

"Yeah, of course. That's a good idea," Shane says slowly. "Okay, so. I've been thinking about names for the pear."

It is an opening too perfect for Ilya to let pass. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing and says, "He already has a name."

There is a long pause before Shane says, "What is it?"

"Boris. Is perfect, yes?"

There is a longer pause, then Shane very carefully asks, "Would you consider other names?"

Ilya breaks and laughs. Shane makes a deeply disgusted noise and Ilya loves him so fucking much.

"You're such an asshole," Shane grouses. "Oh my god."

"Boris is good Russian name, Hollander. Tell me your names if they're so much better."

**

ID: A twitter screenshot from user Zane Boodram @zboodram. Tweet reads "Rozy is an asset to the team and a great teammate and friend. I'm looking forward to at least ten years on the same line." Tweet has 4 retweets and 70 likes.

**

Harris volunteers to drive to the airport. Ilya does not know what it is about the idea of him driving while pregnant that freaks people out, but whatever.

“Was this always road trip you were coming with the team?” Ilya asks. “Just a coincidence?”

“Yes and no,” Harris says. “We’d always planned on me tagging along for either this trip through the west or down south next month. Recent events made this trip the — let’s say, obvious choice.”

There is a tinge of humiliation in that, but less than Ilya was braced for. The debts he is accumulating to the people who surround him is a separate, less immediate issue. Ilya cannot forget, but he can ignore them. At least temporarily.

“You know you do not have to do so much for me,” Ilya says.

“I want to,” Harris says, like it is a simple and obvious truth.

“Why?”

Harris cuts his eyes away from the road to Ilya. A flicker of something strangely sad passes over his face, quickly shuttered away and replaced with an easy smile. Ilya knows that Harris has intuited something that Ilya did not intend to tell him. Uncomfortable, but Ilya has done so many uncomfortable things lately. That is perspective, probably.

“I have a lot of answers to that,” Harris says. “Professionally, we’re part of the same organization, of course. The things that impact you also impact the team. I know exactly what you would tweet without supervision.”

Ilya presses a hand to his heart. “But I am so funny, Harris.”

Harris laughs. “I never said you weren’t. But, yes, professionalism is part of it. But a lot more of it is because we’re friends, so far as I’m concerned. I care about you. We’re family twice over.”

He says it so casually, like family is a simple thing. And maybe it is, for Harris. Ilya is aware that his family skews his perception of such things. But even so, the assertion is no less meaningful.

“Twice?” Ilya asks. Harris pretends he does not hear the thickened hitch of the word, nor does he see the thumb Ilya brushes beneath his eye.

“Yes, twice,” Harris says. “Once because of the Centaurs and once because we’re queer.”

“All alphabet, queer people are family?”

”More or less.” Harris makes a face. “There are some exceptions. But we definitely are. And you show up for family, whether it’s family by blood or circumstance or choice.”

Ilya pictures Shane sitting heartbroken at his parents’ kitchen table, back bowed beneath the weight of the ransom the Metros have demanded for his freedom. It is not always so easy. It is often not so easy. “Thank you. For showing up.”

“You’re welcome. Thank you for — I don’t know. Letting me show up.”

Ilya doesn’t know what to say to that, so he nods and trusts that Harris understands. Baby steps, or something like that.

**

ID: A twitter screenshot from user WYATT HAYES @whyat_heys. Tweet reads "i think you're all just jealous of our new rookie [baby chick emoji, hockey stick and puck emoji, baby bottle emoji]". Tweet has 140 retweets, 48 quote tweets, and 481 likes.

**

Ilya doesn’t intend to sleep through the entire five hour flight to Edmonton. But switching his phone to airplane mode is enough of a relief that exhaustion catches up. He nods off before the seatbelt light goes off and wakes up to Hazy gently shaking his shoulder, saying, “Good morning, starshine.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Ilya grumbles.

“It’s a song. The earth says hello. We have begun our final descent into Edmonton.”

Hotel room assignments have Ilya sharing with Bood, which feels like another thing that straddles the line between quietly keeping an eye on Ilya and business as usual.

It helps that Bood’s equanimity doesn’t waver in the slightest. Ilya can feel the eyes of other teammates flicking toward him whenever they think he won’t notice. Well-meaning, and Ilya does believe that, but it rankles nonetheless. He could protest that he is not so fucking fragile, but doing do would only make him sound more fragile.

He reminds himself that none of them have ever dealt with something like this, either.

Behind a closed door, Bood says, “I know you’re sick of being asked, so I’m just going to say that if you want to talk about how you’re doing, I’m happy to listen,” then sets about unpacking his bag.

Ilya still has not found language to explain how he is doing, so he takes the out of a noncommittal acknowledging sound and sprawls across his bed. He pulls his phone out and just holds it for a couple minutes. He could just choose to stay on airplane mode for a few more hours. In truth, it probably makes no real difference if he throws himself into the fire or not. Neither his absence nor his participation will stem the tide.

But the idea of Shane reaching across the monumentally unfair distance between them and finding nothing is unbearable. He switches his phone back and waits as hundreds of notifications all try to come through at once.

“How’s Hollander?” Bood asks.

“Maybe having a worse week than me,” Ilya says. ”At least my team is not full of fucking assholes.”

“What possible reason do the Metros have to be assholes to their best player?”

Ilya huffs. “Nothing, if world was fair. The rest is long story.”

Bood shrugs. “We don’t need to be at the arena for three more hours.”

Ilya realizes, to his own sincere surprise, that he actually does want to talk about the fucking Metros with someone who is not in the throes of their own deserved and more important grief. He folds his arms behind his head; Bood takes the cue and sits down on his own bed.

“Shane will be traded to Ottawa in July,” Ilya says. “Wiebe and the admin people know, but rest of team does not.”

"Are you serious? Bood asks. Ilya nods. "Damn. That's — that's good. That's great."

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “For team or for me?”

“For the team and for you and for your kid,” Bood says. “I’m sensing a catch, though.”

Ilya snorts. “Metros leadership does not want him to disclose his personal relationship until the season is over. They worry about their poor little hockey team being distracted by such a — terrible fucking crime, I guess. They will make trade easy for Shane if Shane makes the rest of this season easy for them.”

“That’s fucked.” Bood frowns. “That’s really fucked. The Metros are — intense, but still. Can they even do that?”

“Probably they are not supposed to, for all that fucking matters.”

**

ID: A twitter screenshot of a thread between two users, #1 Avs Fan @dendef who has a tattooed hand user icon and BunBun @bunnyke who has an icon that reads "nobody knows I'm a lesbian".
@dendef: what the fuck is happening in hockey right now??
@bunnyke: their emotional support womanizer guy is pregnant and they’re crashing out
@dendef: by another guy????
@bunnyke: rozy’s asshole and i aren’t friends like that how would i know

**

Midway through the second period, an Edmonton defender gets in Bood’s face and says something, which is normal. Bood throws down his gloves and decks him, which is extremely not normal. Barrett comes charging over and throws his own punch and lurid red blood spurts out of the defender’s nose.

The inevitable brawl that follows clears both benches. All Ilya can do is watch, sick to his stomach with rage and guilt, as the refs shoulder their way into the fracas and try to break it up. The Edmonton crowd roars their fury, their disgust.

“This isn’t your fault,” Harris says in a low, tense voice. Ilya cannot tear his eyes away from the ice and says nothing. Ottawa claws out a joyless 1-0 win.

In the locker room, Ilya corners Bood. “What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bood says, mouth set into a flat line. His lip is split.

“It fucking matters to me,” Ilya snaps.

“Ilya.” Bood’s voice is as authoritative as Ilya has ever heard it. “Let it go. I am asking you, as captain, to please let it go.”

Bood asks Ilya for almost nothing while giving more than Ilya has any right to. Ilya grits his teeth so hard his molars ache, nods once, and steps back. Bood puts a hand on Ilya’s shoulder as he passes by; whether it is thanks or comfort or nothing at all, Ilya is too wound up to tell.

Wiebe’s post-game speech is short and perfunctory. When he finishes, Ilya quietly asks, “Is it better if I go back to Ottawa?” in a low voice.

Wiebe rubs a hand over his mouth, then shakes his head. “You’re not a dirty secret, Rozanov. I will not let you be treated like one.”

“I am distracting,” Ilya says.

“The world is full of goddamn distractions,” Wiebe says. “People can cope or lose. Either way it’s not our problem to fix. You are part of this team and I want you with us.”

Ilya nods.

**

ID: A screenshot of a Twitter exchange. User puck @puckos tweeted, "Did anyone catch what Tremblay said to Bodram?" There are 30 retweets and 314 likes.
User ice queen @letwomencheck replied, "i meannnnnnn i think we can all hazard a guess bestie". There are 6 replies, 32 retweets, and 314 likes.

**

Ilya wakes up the next morning to a message from Marley that says, coach is a fucking asshole, brother. ignore his shit.

Ilya closes his eyes and makes himself breathe through the wrenching knot in the pit of his stomach and the flush of hot shame that licks through his veins. Sharp pain flares across in his clenched hand; his nails cut into the meat of his palm. He hisses and shakes it out.

“Fucking keep it together, Rozanov,” he mutters in Russian.

He opens the browser on his phone and searches Coach Reilly’s name. The internet coughs up a clip from the previous night's Boston game against Minnesota. Some fucking reporter asks Reilly what he thinks about his former star center’s announcement.

His face twists into a moue of distaste that feels like a punch to the gut. He folds his arms over his chest and says, “Better that shit be the Centaurs’ problem than mine,” in a flat, clipped voice. “We’ve got hockey games to win. That mess is a distraction that no team needs.”

Ilya plays the clip again. And again.

Marley is not wrong that Reilly is an asshole. He was an asshole when Ilya was drafted to the Raiders and an asshole through all the seasons that followed and an asshole when told Ilya had decided not to resign.

But he was an asshole that Ilya understood and got along with. He put the C on Ilya’s jersey and told him not to fuck it up. He said, “Of course you fuckin’ did,” when Ilya won MVP. He told Ilya, “Your old man should have been proud of you,” when Ilya told him he needed to go to Moscow because his father was dead.

He lets the clip run out and it moves on to game highlights. Marley’s face fills the screen. He has an ugly bruise on his cheek and the tinny voice of the reporter says Marley showed up to the game like that and had nothing to say about what happened there.

Ilya opens his messages and sends, what happened to your fucking face, marley?

The typing bubble pop up almost immediately and Ilya watches it flick on and off for five fucking minutes until Marley at last says, minor disagreement that has been handled.

Ilya: with who, marley

Marley: you have enough to fucking deal with brother, no need to worry about something i’ve taken care of

”Fuck that, Marley,” Ilya snaps. “Fucking fuck that.”

“Rozy?” Bood’s head lifts from his pillow. “S’wrong?”

Ilya bites the inside of his cheek. “Nothing. Is fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” Ilya lies.

Everything he thinks to say to Marley is poisoned by anger that is not his fault and will blow up the foundation of their friendship. So he says fucking nothing at all.

He spends the next hour reading comments from Boston people saying they always knew something was fucked up about him and thank god the Raiders unloaded him before this bullshit. Someone says, how do you watch someone eat up all that salary cap space, sit on his ass for a season, and play with him again?

**

ID: A screenshot of a twitter post by ESPN @ESPN. Tweet reads "Boston Raiders' Coach weighs in on bombshell Ilya Rozanov announcement.

**

Ilya spends most of the three hour drive from Edmonton to Calgary reading every stupid fucking article he can find with his name in the title.

The opinion stuff bothers him the least. People have had opinions about Ilya since he was seventeen and they have often not been kind. What does Ilya care if some guy with a reddit account thinks he is a traitor to everything hockey stands for? It is only noise.

More irritating are comments coming from press people that Ilya has talked to for years. Their words are carefully neutral and yet do nothing to hide the reproachfulness and scolding behind them. There is a wounded quality, suggesting a personal betrayal from Ilya that they have no fucking right to claim.

There are some that do get under his skin. Is Ilya Rozanov Hanging Up His Skates for Motherhood? posted on some sports gossip website. Top Draft Prospects to Replace Rozanov on the front page of another. The assumption that Ilya is finished in all but name digs claws into his mind and refuses to let go.

Halfway to Calgary, Harris sits down next to Ilya, says, “Hi. Look at this,” and holds out his phone.

“I am fine,” Ilya says. “You don’t have to cheer me up or whatever.”

“I know, which is why I only came over here to show you something.”

Ilya sighs and takes Harris’s phone. It’s open to an Instagram post from the WMLH with a series of pictures of their players pregnant or holding little babies. The caption says, Congrats, Rozanov! You’re in good company.

“That is kind,” Ilya says.

“I thought so. Plus, a good reminder that it’s very normal to have a baby and get back on the ice.”

Ilya had not thought of that and it — it does something. “It is, yes.”

“And then there’s also this.” Harris takes his phone back and flicks to a reddit post titled nice hockey responses to rozanov with a neatly compiled list of posts from active players.

Many of them are no more than what Ilya expected. Most of the Centaurs have said something, ranging from reposting the team’s statement to congratulations to clear reiterations of Ilya’s place on the team. There is one from Marley and one from Scott Hunter.

But there are others he did not expect. Connors is the only other Raider, but his post says, rozy was a great captain and he’ll be a great dad, and Ilya decides to focus on that part. Several other Admirals are in there and Eric Bennett, too. Carter Vaughn’s post says, congrats, rozy, and the admirals call dibs on rozy jr.

“Like I would ever let my kid play for New York,” Ilya says.

Harris laughs. “Keep going.”

There’s a smattering from several other teams, Minnesota, Seattle, LA, and more. Colorado’s captain and Chicago’s alternate are in there. Even less expected are JJ Boiziau and Hayden Pike. Shane probably asked Pike to post, but Boiziau doesn’t know about them.

“I just wanted to make sure you saw these,” Harris says. “I know there’s a lot of noise. I’ve blocked more people in the last two days than in the entire rest of the season combined. But it’s not all bad, Ilya, and I think that matters.”

“Yes,” Ilya says thickly. “I — thank you.”

**

ID: a screenshot from a discord channel called #girls-gays-theys-and-nick

unauna: lmaooooo my brother is freaking out because his fav hockey player is knocked up
theo bo beo: l o l o l
nick: which one?
unauna: rozy
twyyyyyyla: rozy like ilya rozanov??????
unauna: idk let me check
unauna: yes, him
twyyyyyyla: your’re KIDDING
theo bo beo: why on god’s gay earth do you know a hockey player
twyyyyyyla: i know exactly two boston athletes, one is gronk and one is ilya rozanov
nick: what the fuck is a gronk

**

They get to Calgary midmorning, practice in the afternoon, and have the evening off.

Ilya turns down invitations to find a bar or to find a club more than once. In the abstract, he appreciates his teammates making it extremely clear that his company is wanted. But the performative inclusion is irritating after the fourth time and the last thing Ilya needs is some fucking phone video of him pregnant at a dive bar going around the internet.

He’s rooming with Bood again, who also decides to stay in. They order room service and Ilya finds a marathon of the fishing boat show to put on the TV. They eat in a mostly companionable quiet.

Ilya is almost finished when his phone starts buzzing with a FaceTime request from Shane. He looks at Bood and Bood looks back at him, both of them momentarily locked up in uncertainty. Ilya has never taken a call from Shane in a shared hotel room.

“It is Shane,” Ilya says unnecessarily. “Are you — I can go?”

“No, man, that’s fine with me,” Bood says. “If it’s fine with you.”

Fine is a strong word, but whatever. Ilya settles on his bed and accepts the request.

Shane’s face fills the screen. He looks fresh from the shower, skin slightly pink and hair damp, sitting in his own hotel bed. The Metros are — somewhere, fuck if Ilya can remember. He has his glasses on. Ilya misses him so fucking much.

“Hey,” Shane says, mouth curling up in a little half-smile.

“Hi, lyubimyy.” Ilya smiles back as best he can. “Bood is here, so you know. We are sharing room.”

“Oh.” Shane’s posture straightens. Ilya bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

“Is okay?” Ilya asks.

Shane nods a little too enthusiastically. “Yeah, of course. That’s — that’s fine. Good. Hey, Boodram.”

Bood looks up from his phone, says, “Hey, Hollander,” in the uncertain cadence of someone who thinks they have forgotten the name of whoever they are talking to.

For a moment, all three of them are awkwardly silent, then Ilya casually says,“I hope you were not calling for video sex.”

Bood honks out a strangled laugh and Shane squwaks in horrified indignation. Ilya cackles and some of the tension in his shoulders and back eases up.

”Why are you like this?” Shane asks despairingly.

Ilya shrugs. “Now it is not awkward. You are welcome.”

“Not awkward?”

Malysh wriggles, like the sound of Shane’s voice caught his attention. Ilya rubs his stomach. “Our pear says hi.”

That takes Shane’s annoyance out like a puck to the knee. There is a sweetness in his smile that reminds Ilya of their first time at the cottage together, the way Shane looked at him like his presence was a marvelous thing.

“You can’t just use him as a distraction,” Shane says, successfully distracted.

“I think I can.”

“No, that’s cheating, you asshole.”

“Is only cheating if you get caught.”

“I did catch you!”

”But it still worked.”

”That doesn’t make it not cheating.”

On the other bed, Bood tries unsuccessfully to turn a laugh into a cough. “You have comment you want to make?” Ilya asks, eyebrow arched.

“This —“ He gestures toward Ilya and his phone. “It makes more sense than I thought. It actually makes a lot of sense.”

Shane’s face screws up in embarrassment, but Ilya sees the flicker of smug satisfaction beneath it.

**

ID: A screenshot of an article link. Next to a headshot of Ilya the article link reads "Get in girl, we watch hockey now as second player busts out of the closet"

ID: Screenshot of a post on subreddit r/Fauxmoi by user iloveitwhenhotguyscry. Title reads "Ottawa Centaur Ilya Rozanov Announces Surprise Pregnancy" and it has a Breakups/Makeups/Knockups flair. The picture is one of Ilya in his gear that says "Centaurs' coach confirms organization's commitment to Ilya Rozanov" with a link to the ESPN story.

**

The next morning, Ilya wakes up to a message from Farah that says, the story has been picked up outside of sports media, and that is going to intensify things, and a deluge of messages and mentions and emails and calls, more than he could possibly read in two months, much less one fucking morning.

The words are jumbles of Latin and Cyrillic that only spasm into meaning for his own fucking name: Rozanov, Rozy, Ilya, Rosanov, Roz, Rosanoff, Ilia. His name in the mouths of a million people banging against the bars of the cage he is trapped in, clawing desperately for their piece of Ilya’s flesh.

The scale of this thing he has put in motion suddenly yawns open in front of him like a split in the earth that has no bottom. The taste of copper and acid flood into his mouth

"Fuck," he mutters.

He is still rubbing the grit out of his eyes when Svetlana calls and he almost rejects it reflexively. The clock on the little table between his and Bood's hotel beds says that it is not quite 9:00 in the morning. Unease bubbles up in his gut. Sveta does not rise early without a very compelling reason to do so.

"What is wrong?" Ilya asks in lieu of a greeting.

"Your news has made it home, Ilyushka," she says.

"How bad is it?" The dread that rises in his chest is the cold fear of his long ago childhood, tiptoeing around a heavy and unhappy home, knowing that it was futile. His father's voice and fists would find him no matter what he did.

"It is exactly what you would expect." A weariness threads through her voice and Ilya wonders how many hours she was kept awake, answering calls from the other side of the world. "To be with a man is very bad. To be pregnant is worse." She pauses, then sighs. "I know you already know this, Ilyushka, but you cannot go back to Russia. You must not."

Old news and it still hurts. Does a person without parents and without a home really exist?

"I know," Ilya says. "I know."

"Alexei called me," Svetlana says, "to demand I tell him how to reach to you"

Ilya shudders. "Did you—"

"Of course not, I told him nothing. But I think he will still try. He is humiliated and we both know he cannot stomach that."

Ilya presses the heel of his hand to his eye. "I am sorry you are caught up in it."

Svetlana scoffs. "Fuck your brother. I am not fucking afraid of him.”

”I should not have done this,” Ilya says. His own voice sounds distant and distorted in his own ears. “I should have hidden, Sveta. I fucked up.”

“Ilyushka—“

“I was fucking stupid to think I could do this.”

“No, Ilyushka —“

“He will fucking kill me, Sveta. There is nowhere on fucking earth I can run that he will not find me and kill me. There is nothing that will stop him.”

“That will not happen.” There is violence in her voice. “I will not let that happen, Shane will not let that happen, your team will not let that happen. It will be okay.”

“How do you know?” Ilya demands or begs or cries or screams or or or.

“I —“ Svetlana begins, and says nothing more.

Chapter End Notes

me, last night: i don't need to sleep i need to finish
my lovely wife: you've misspelled rozanov twice, go to fucking bed

which is to say, my apologies that this is a day late. i had a four day migraine last week and i was unable to anything.

anyway! this is a bit an experiment in ~mixed media~ and i can't promise there are no typos in the images. i tried and therefore no one should criticize me etc.

thank you all for the feedback/comments/enthusiasm. i cannot say enough how much i appreciate them and how motivating they are.

i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy

Chapter 17

Chapter Summary

Shane, Interrupted

Chapter Notes

heads up: this chapter has some minor pregnancy complications and is partly in a hospital. more details are in the end notes. my tumblr inbox is open if you have more specific questions. <3

Shane wakes up in a dim hotel room in Anaheim with a word in the back of his mouth that comes out a sigh.

It's early, even for him. The first threads of dawn are only just starting to limn the nondescript furnishings in softer purple. March in California is warm; not unwelcome, but faintly incorrect to Shane's Canadian sensibilities. Hayden is still asleep in the bed closer to the window, one arm slung across his face. Their flight out of Montreal was delayed by mechanical issues and the team had gotten in much later than intended.

Shane feels like he's forgotten something.

He goes through the rest of the week in his head. Game in Anaheim tonight; the Ducks are having a very average season, so unlikely to be either a cakewalk or a struggle. LA tomorrow, the back to back games offset by the negligible travel time. The Kings' roster skews young, energetic and unpolished and vulnerable to Montreal's technical precision. Then Colorado, who Shane hasn't thought about and then home.

Most American crowds are more laidback than Canadian ones, especially so for California crowds, so there's nothing there. No additional team events either. It's a short roadtrip, just a quick swing through the west coast then back home — or back to Montreal, at least. The Centaurs are doing the rounds of western Canada teams, which means Ilya is on the same coast, a couple hours north.

Shane allows ten seconds imagining himself getting in a car, telling the Metros to fuck off, and not stopping until he found Ilya and their pear. Longing is a physical ache in strange places: his molars, his jaw, his hands, his sternum. His craving for Ilya used to be a more abstract thing, suffused through his life as a generalized dissatisfaction he could never quite pin down. Admitting their feelings specified it, the pear has honed it. It's hard, going through the motions of his life feeling incomplete.

But he sets that aside, though doing so is becoming increasingly difficult. Ilya is twenty-five weeks along and the pear is the size of a zucchini. Ilya does have a point about the ambiguity of the food comparisons, but Shane found the fruit and vegetable chart sitting in the airport the day after Christmas, trying to understand what the thing growing in Ilya was. At first it was a means of approaching the idea of a baby sideways enough to stave off panic, but that changed as a thing the size of a pear became their pear.

Shane sighs and rubs a hand over his face. There are good reasons he's bartering the present for his and Ilya's shared future, or at least sensible ones. They ring really fucking hollow sometimes, when Ilya's pregnancy feels like a glimpsed montage of months compressed into minutes.

He decides he isn't going to fall back asleep, so quietly dresses and goes to the hotel gym.

**

Shane's mind is ten years in the past as he pedals the stationary bike. Ilya as he was at eighteen is still so vivid to Shane, long legs sprawled open, throat bobbing as he drank from that white water bottle Shane still has tucked away in a box in his closet. Shane hadn't understood, then, that hating someone and wanting someone can feel so nearly the same.

His phone unexpectedly rings and Shane skids to a stop, inasmuch as he can on a bike that can't move.

Shane shoves sweaty hair off his face and wipes his damp palm on the thigh of his shorts. It's an unknown Canadian number calling and he frowns at that. He is scrupulously careful about who he shares his personal cell number with, so he almost never gets unexpected calls. His first instinct is to let it go through to voicemail and see if they leave a message; the thought that it might be about Ilya or their pear or both overrides that.

He answers. "Hello?"

"Hollander? Shane Hollander?" The caller's voice is faintly familiar, cadence tight. There's noise in the background that Shane can't fully suss out beyond the rise and fall of a voice speaking in a language that probably isn't English or French.

"Yes, who is this?" Shane asks.

"Thank fuck, man. This is Zane Boodram."

Shane's stomach ices over with dread. "Is Ilya okay? What's wrong?"

"I'm not actually sure," Boodram says, then muffled, "Rozy, here. It's Shane. Well, I already called him, so you might as well talk to him. Here."

Thumps and crackling, then, "Hollander," in a choked, rasping version of Ilya's voice, strung tight in a way Shane has never heard before in all the years they have known each other. The dread in Shane's stomach twists.

"Yeah, it's me, I'm here," Shane says, aiming for normal and failing miserably. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Moy brat," Ilya says and Shane isn't sure he realizes that Russian is coming out of his mouth. "Moy brat. I was so fucking stupid."

Shane realizes he actually knows what 'brat' means from the basic Russian he's been struggling to learn, and that feels like a minor miracle. "Your brother?" Shane asks. "Did something happen to him?"

Ilya laughs, but it's an ugly, miserable sound. "He is going to fucking happen to me and I was stupid enough to think I could fucking get away." He says something else in Russian that Shane doesn't catch, but it sounds harsh and unforgiving.

"What — did he threaten you?"

A violence Shane has never felt before in his life rips up out the cold in his belly with a snarl. If Alexei Rozanov so much as comes within a hundred miles of Ilya, Shane will tear him apart with his bare hands and leave him in so many pieces no one will ever find his entire body. The force of it shocks him, as does the realization that he means it.

"He is asking Sveta how to find me," Ilya says. "And she won't say anything but it doesn't matter because he knows where I am and he will find me and he'll fucking kill me."

"No, Ilya, there's no fucking way. No one is going to let that happen. I won't let that happen."

"Listen to him, Rozy," Boodram says. "He's absolutely right. Your brother would have to go through every single fucking Centaur to get to you and the rookie. It's not happening."

There's an even more muffled voice who adds something that Shane doesn't catch. Ilya responds in Russian and Shane does hear Sveta in it, which explains why Boodram called him instead of Ilya himself.

"I don't know what to do," Ilya says, but he sounds depleted rather than terrified, or maybe so afraid he's swung back around to something worse, the hopelessness of believing there is nothing he or anyone else can do.

"I'm here," Shane says. "Listen to me, we will figure this out."

It takes Ilya a long time to say okay, but he does, eventually.

Shane, with Boodram and Svetlana, spends another fifteen minutes slowly talking Ilya off the ledge. The conversation is made awkward by happening in three different locations, on two different phones, but that doesn't matter. Shane has never heard Svetlana's voice before and he wishes, pointlessly, that this wasn't the first time they ever talked. Her English is much less accented than Ilya's, which surprises Shane.

She lays out what she told Ilya, which is significantly less catastrophic than Ilya took it as. Ilya murmurs an apology for being dramatic that all three of them immediately protest. Ilya clearly doesn't agree, but he doesn't have to. Shane knows the week Ilya has had. No fucking wonder his mind went to the worst extremes.

Shane asks, "How likely do you think it is that Alexei would try and do something?"

"Not very," Svetlana says. "Alexei has no fucking money and a coke habit. He would not pay for a plane ticket when he could put it up his nose. And he is a fucking coward; he will yell and scream if he gets the chance, but he doesn't have the backbone for much else."

"He has gotten fucking violent before," Ilya says.

"Because your father told him to," Svetlana counters. "And he was terrified of your fucking father. He was a puppet and without the old man, he is a puppet with cut strings."

Ilya makes a noise, but doesn't argue.

"If he were to leave Russia, would you know?" Shane asks.

"Yes." Her certainty is oddly comforting. "Even if he tried to hide it from me, someone would notice if he suddenly left."

"That's something," Boodram says. "Rozy, I think to be on the safe side you gotta talk to Wiebe and leadership. They'll take something like this very seriously."

"I agree," Shane says.

"I fucking hate this," Ilya mutters. "Fuck."

**

Hayden is awake and sitting up in bed when Shane gets back to their room. He looks up from his phone; whatever casual greeting he was going to say immediately falls away. "What's wrong?"

Shane's body thrums with recursive anxiety that has nowhere to go. His brain is caught in an echoing loop of moy brat, moy brat in Ilya's voice, threaded through with hopeless terror. Shane feels sick to his stomach, made completely fucking useless by the prison of distance. He isn't where he should be and he hates it.

"Shane," Hayden says and it sounds like he's already said his name a few times. "Talk to me, man."

"It's Ilya," Shane says, dropping down onto his bed, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees.

"Fuck, is he okay?" Hayden shoves back his blankets and swings his legs down so he's sitting opposite Shane. He reaches across the distance and puts a careful hand on Shane's knee. The individual contact points from his fingers are very warm.

"Yes, sort of?" Shane drops his head and hooks his hands around his neck. "I don't fucking know because I'm not there."

"What happened?" Hayden asks. "Talk to me."

"His brother."

"Rozanov has a brother?" Hayden sounds genuinely surprised, but that makes sense, Shane realizes. He didn't know Ilya had a brother for at least the first couple years and even then, what little Ilya ever said about him was in the context of their father's decline.

"Yes, and he's worse than an asshole and he's trying to get ahold of Ilya. And Ilya is freaking out."

"Jesus." Hayden exhales hard. "I'd freak out, too."

Shane lifts his head enough to see Hayden's face, expecting the grimace of a kid being made to eat vegetables. What he finds is a frown that looks sincere, tinged around the edges with worry. Shane's surprise is probably unkind. Hayden has thawed toward Ilya since Shane told him about their pear, like realizing he knows more about pregnancy and babies than Ilya and Shane combined has awakened a sense of responsibility toward them, or at least their kid.

"I want to be there with him," Shane says, and it comes out thick. "Fuck."

"I know." Hayden squeezes his knee. "And I bet he does, too. It sucks for everyone."

"But it's not just his brother, it's the whole fucking world. It sucks more for him."

"I mean, yeah, probably," Hayden concedes. Then, after a pause, "If he needs you, you should go."

"He doesn't want me to do anything to risk the trade."

Hayden sighs and opens his mouth and says nothing. He leans forward and presses his forehead to the crown of Shane's head.

**

Shane isn't in the mood to play nice for the press before the game. He's been asked to do it less, too, which is both a personal relief and something he recognizes as the insult it's meant to be. If he thinks about it impersonally, who they are sending out becomes an interesting insight into who they're going to replace him with — and it's not going to be Hayden, because when Shane told him to ease up for his own sake, he said, "Absolutely fuck that."

But the game the Metros are playing is about minimizing distraction, though Shane is pretty sure it's less about distracting the team than disrupting the hockey world's perception of the team. So when he's told to go, he goes. It's not like there's anything for him in the locker room other than Hayden and, to a lesser extent, JJ hovering near like guard dogs.

And then the first fucking question is, "I assume you've heard about Ilya Rozanov's news? People are curious about your reaction."

Shane clenches his teeth to keep the words he wants to say in his mouth and folds his arms across his chest. He feels a little stupid for not anticipating the question, but he's been so focused on real, actual Ilya that his archrival #81 receded.

"I think there have already been plenty of reactions," Shane says.

(Like the one from a 90s MVP winner saying that if you're taking up that much of a team's salary cap, you owe it to them to do everything in your power to be on the ice. Or the op-ed from a journalist (who couldn't hack college hockey and got cut his freshman year) moaning about the importance of hockey's masculinity. Or the fucking Christian mom group calling on the league to officially ban carriers from being eligible to play.)

"You and Rozanov have had a unique relationship," the reporter presses.

Shane is so fucking tired of lying.

"I think that Rozanov is one of the best to ever play the game. And if half a missed season and having a kid is enough to overshadow ten years of a career, that says more about the league than it does about Rozanov."

The reporter laughs, but it's fake. "Well, some would argue being — " She pauses, like the word is distasteful in her mouth. "Well, being pregnant is a little different from an injury."

"Then they're making a stupid argument," Shane says.

There are a couple more standard questions to which Shane gives the rote answers he's been giving for years. If it wraps up a little more quickly than usual, Shane doesn't care. When he gets back to the locker room, he pulls out his phone and messages Ilya, Press asked about you tonight. I should have expected that I guess.

When he gets back to the locker room during the first intermission, Ilya has replied, jesus hollander tell them how you really feel.

Shane wishes. Shane really fucking wishes.

**

After the game, Shane asks Ilya if he can call. It takes Ilya a long time to respond, and when he does, he says, i am so fucking tired i will fall asleep on you. tomorrow.

And it doesn't feel right, but Shane decides it must be his anxiety and Ilya's rest is more important than that.

**

The Metros leave Anaheim midmorning and it's a short trip to LA. Shane spends it reading over the document where he's collected the questions he and Ilya need to answer and the decisions they need to make, highlighting the ones that feel higher priority and the ones where he thinks it'll be harder to get a straight answer from Ilya.

Hayden asks if Shane wants to get lunch after they're settled in the hotel, but Shane begs off. He already feels thin-skinned and cagey and his head is overfull and starting to go in circles. He wants to be in LA less than he wanted to be in Anaheim because he wants to fucking be with his boyfriend and their kid.

He spends a couple more hours trying to chase down possible scenarios for the next three months.

If the Metros get knocked out in the first round, Shane will get himself to Ottawa before the hangovers hit the disappointed Montreal fans. If they go all the way to the final, then Shane has to wrap it up in four to allow the maximum buffer for Ilya's due date and pray that their pear inherited his papa's tendency to show up fifteen minutes late and not Shane's own punctuality.

If Boston doesn't make it to the playoffs — they're hunting for a wildcard spot — or if they get knocked out in the first round, Shane wonders if Marleau would be willing to spend some of his summer in Canada. Both because Shane thinks Ilya would love the company and also because it will make Shane feel better knowing someone is there with him.

Hayden comes back a couple hours later with some salmon and rice meal in a takeout box. "I know you didn't eat lunch, you have that distracted face," he says, dropping it on the hotel desk in front of Shane. He fishes a plastic wrapped knife and fork out of his pocket and drops that, too.

"Thanks," Shane says, suddenly aware of his hunger.

"You're leaving me soon enough as it is," Hayden says. "I'm not gonna let you head out even earlier because you starved. And Rozanov would kill me."

Shane huffs an approximation of a laugh. The salmon and rice is fine. Some spiteful part of him wants to buy a hundred Snickers and gorge himself because fuck giving the Metros his best. Childish, probably, but Theriault and leadership started it.

Shane thinks he might be unraveling a little. That's probably not good, but he doesn't know what to do about it.

"How is Rozanov?" Hayden asks lightly.

"Fine, according to him." Shane pushes the rice around the container. "Tired."

Hayden drums his fingers on his thighs. "So, do we believe that or?"

"Maybe?" Shane sighs. "I don't know. I don't think I would be okay if I'd just made that kind of announcement to the world, but that's me, not Ilya. And I don't — it's not fair to say he's lying, right?"

Hayden shrugs. "I mean, I would say that suspecting someone might not be telling you the whole truth and accusing someone of lying are two different things."

"Maybe," Shane demurs.

It's early evening when they leave for the arena. Shane can feel Hayden looking at him sideways, but Shane doesn't know when he's not saying and Hayden keeps not saying it.

Shane's phone starts to ring as the elevator doors close, but the call drops before he can answer it. It was another unknown number, which makes him uneasy.

The elevator doors slide open to the lobby and Hayden and Shane step out. There are a couple other Metros scattered around. Comeau looks up and sees Shane and sneers and it's like being back in juniors, surrounded by teammates who craved his skill for the wins and hated his talent for highlighting their own mediocrity.

Hayden's phone suddenly chirps several times in a row with the sound he only uses for Jackie. Shane opens his messages with his mother. The last thing she sent was a promise that she would physically go to Ilya's house to check on him when the Centaurs got back. try not to worry, she said. Shane exhales hard. Sure. Try not to worry.

Then Hayden says, "Hey, Shane," in a strange tone.

"What?" Shane looks up from his phone.

"Uh—" Hayden glances around the lobby, eyes flicking back and forth in a way that makes Shane's skin prickle with unease.

"Hayd," Shane says. "What?"

"Something might have happened in Vancouver?" It trails up into a question at the end and Shane's heart falls out of his body.

"What happened?" His voice is a disembodied sound, alien and unfamiliar.

His phone starts ringing with the same unknown number. Shane accepts the call, says, "Who is this?" Rude, some detached part of his mind chastizes. Shane was brought up to have better phone manners than that. There's a roaring sound in Shane's ears.

"Is this — Jane?"

Whatever Hayden sees on Shane's face has him muttering, "Fuck, fuck me, fuck." He grabs Shane by the shoulder and pushes him away from the elevator and into a little alcove; it's a miracle Shane doesn't fall on his ass, he's a thousand miles away from his body.

"What happened?" Hayden keeps his hand on Shane's shoulder, squeezing so hard it would hurt if Shane cared at all.

"This is Brandon Wiebe," the caller says. "Ilya had some kind of dizzy spell or fainting spell and he's fine, okay? He's awake now and already complaining, but he's getting checked out in the emergency room just to be safe."

Shane makes a noise, a raw and wounded thing, and his knees give a little. Hayden throws an arm around his chest to hold him up. Shane notes, in a detached way, that Hayden's hands are shaking; Shane did not know Hayden cared about Ilya like that.

His mind spins out into a thousand unimaginable things, each so brutally vivid it feels more real than Shane standing crammed into an alcove in a hotel in fucking Los Angeles. All the things that could have happened and every single one is Shane's fault, because you can't protect someone if you aren't with them and Shane is so fucking far away.

"Hollander," Wiebe says, then, "Shane," and that's the inexplicable thing that cuts Shane's mind off. His name in the mouth of this coach.

Shane sucks in a long breath; it whistles a little, but air is air. He swallows and the hard lump in his throat goes down reluctantly. It's possible he might be sick, but that'll have to wait.

"Is he okay?" Shane asks. "What happened?"

"He's okay," Wiebe says. His voice isn't gentle, exactly, nor is his tone warm. But there is something there that Shane does not hear from Theriault, especially lately. The best word Shane's scrambled thoughts can cough up is that Wiebe sounds fair, like he'll hear you out before passing judgement.

"And the pear?" Shane asks.

"The pear?"

"Malysh," Shane corrects himself.

"He's fine, too," Wiebe assures him. "They're both fine. They're talking about maybe admitting for the night for observation, just to be on the safe side."

That Ilya agreed to that precaution speaks to a doctor that was not going to take 'I'm fine' as an answer. Or that whatever happened freaked Ilya out enough to want the reassurance of caution. There's the tug of another anxiety spiral in that thought Shane violently shoves away in his mind. Not now.

"I'm coming right now," Shane says. "I'll be there in a few hours. Do you know if he has his phone?"

"I'm not sure."

"Can I talk to him?"

"Yes, absolutely, give me one second."

Shane hears a door open and the murmur of several different voices, the tinny hum of an announcement being made over an intercom, another door. Wiebe's muffled voice and, finally, the familiar rhythm of Ilya's accented English.

More fumbling, then, "Shane?"

Shane starts crying. He can't help it. Hayden shifts so that he's standing between Shane and the rest of the world. "Ilya?"

"Lyubimyy, I am okay. Do you hear me? I am okay. Pear is okay."

For a given definition of okay that includes bone-weary exhaustion, Ilya sounds okay. Shane wants to believe him, wants to believe that whatever happened has been massively blown out of proportion by the game of telephone route information has made its way to him. But Ilya is very good at sounding okay and Shane has been very bad at recognizing the little half-truths and omissions Ilya sometimes hides behind.

"What happened?" Shane asks.

Ilya pauses. It's too long of a pause and Shane's gut twists. "I got dizzy," Ilya says.

"Ilya."

"What?" His voice hardens around the edges.

"Please," Shane says. His voice breaks.

"I got caught in crowd outside the arena," Ilya says, each word sounding wrenched out of his mouth. "Fucking people asking questions. Not press, not actual press, just fucking people recording on their fucking phones. I got lightheaded for a second, not a big deal. But because of Malysh, everyone wants me to go to hospital to get checked out."

The image of Ilya surrounded by a horde of people — angry fans and prying reporters and protestors — all reaching out to claw away their piece of Ilya Rozanov bursts technicolor in Shane's mind.

"I'm coming to you," Shane says. "I will be there as soon as I can."

"I am fine," Ilya insists, but it's not convincing and that might be because Ilya's voice wavers or because Shane can't accept that as true and it doesn't fucking matter because Shane is not staying in fucking Los Angeles. Maybe Ilya doesn't need him but Shane needs Ilya.

"I'm coming," Shane repeats.

"Okay," Ilya says.

**

Hayden gets them both back up to their room and Shane should tell him to go, go to the arena and do his job because Shane doesn't care about whatever meaningless consequences the team chooses to impose on him, but that does not mean Hayden deserves to be collateral damage. But when Shane opens his mouth to say this, Hayden cuts him off with, "Shut up, I'm staying whether you want me to or not."

Shane can't get the thank you Hayden deserves out of his throat, but he manages a nod and that has to be enough.

"I need to get to Vancouver," Shane says.

"Call your mom," Hayden says. "I'll call Theriault."

Shane calls his mom.

"Honey," she says and Shane can tell from her voice that she saw whatever Hayden did. "Is Ilya okay? Do you know what happened?"

Her own fear ricochets through Shane, doubling up with his own, growing fangs and claws that carve runnels into Shane's head and heart. Every time Shane has gotten hurt, she has always been there. (Which isn't true, a muted part of his mind whispers, she hasn't always been there but she has always come and those are two different things.) He drops down onto the end of the bed.

"I don't know," Shane says, his voice is flat and empty which makes it sound like he doesn't care when it means that he cares too much. "He fainted, his coach said, and he's getting checked out in the emergency room and his coach said not to panic, but I — I — I have to get to get to Vancouver now and I don't know what else to do, Mom, I don't know, I don't know—"

"Shane," she says and it's her manager voice, her negotiating a deal voice, her refusing to compromise voice. "Take a breath."

Shane inhales in ragged bursts.

"Exhale."

Shane does.

"I am going to get off the phone and find you a flight and I will call you back in no more than twenty minutes. You are going to get your things together and get ready to go and drink some water."

"Mom," Shane says. "If he's not okay or the pear —"

"Until we are specifically told otherwise, they are both okay. Understand?"

"Yeah, okay." Shane swallows hard. "Half an hour."

"That's right. I love you so much."

"I love you, too."

**

Shane ends up the only passenger on a chartered flight. Normally, it would feel like a heinous waste of money and an uncomfortably self-important thing to do, but Shane isn't having a normal day. Theriault calls right before takeoff and Shane ignores him, because he feels on the edge of — something reckless and almost violent.

He spends the three hours in the air staring out the window as daylight fades into oranges and purples and night rolls out over the west. Shane hunts through his mind for some kind of equilibrium and doesn't find it. Old memories and current terrors jostle in his thoughts; what Shane has done side by side with what Shane is doing, tied together by the common thread of the ways he has let Ilya down.

But if Shane goes down that road, he might fall apart and he can't do that. The best he can do is to sink into the collection of little daydreams, half imagination and half hope, he has about the pear. A little head with curling hair cupped in his palm. A toddler jumping off the end of the dock into Ilya's arms. Tying the laces of skates for someone who isn't afraid to fall because he knows he'll be helped up.

**

When they land, Shane has a message from his mom that says she spoke to Ilya and he really is okay and that someone from the Centaurs is going to pick him up from the airport. He also has a message from another unknown number — Shane is sick of unknown fucking numbers — that says, Hi, Shane, this is Harris Drover with the Centaurs and I'll be your transportation tonight There are four smiling faces at the end.

Shane knows the name and that Ilya spends games with Harris and that Harris helped write Ilya's statement. Once or twice Ilya has called him a friend in a slightly uncomfortable way that isn't about Harris, but about a thread of doubt within Ilya that people like the real him rather than #81.

Shane responds to say he's arrived and five minutes later a rangy guy wearing a fleece Centaurs jacket comes through the door of the small terminal for private flights. He says, "Hi, I'm Harris, and I'm sure the last thing you want is to chat, so follow me and we'll go right to the hospital."

He's right and Shane is immensely grateful to be excused from those niceties.

Shane responds to his mom and Hayden and messages Ilya to say he's landed as Harris navigates out of the airport. Once they're on the road he asks, "Is he really okay? Sometimes he —" Shane fumbles for the words he wants.

"He says he's fine when he's not?" Harris suggests, his mouth canting up into a small smile.

A friend, Shane thinks, no matter what Ilya's doubts whisper. "Yes. That exactly."

"He's okay," Harris says, glancing at Shane like he wants to make sure Shane believes him. "They decided to keep him overnight because his blood pressure was a little bit high."

Preeclampsia, Shane thinks, a word he had never heard before Christmas that's now permanently etched into his mind with all the other pregnancy complications he's read about, most of which sounded more serious than 'complications' implies.

"What caused it?"

Harris's smile fades down. "I think Ilya would rather he be the one to tell you."

**

Shane keeps his shit together as they pull up the hospital and walk through the sliding glass doors into a weird side entrance and as security checks their IDs and as the elevator rises up to whatever floor and as they walk down the quiet corridor to Ilya's room.

Harris knocks on the door, opens it, and says, "You'll never guess who I found loitering outside."

Then Shane sees Ilya and, inevitably, loses it.

**

"Shane, lyubimyy, is okay, I am okay, Malysh is okay, there is no reason to cry."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was so fucking scared—"

"I know, lyubimyy, but I am right here, yes? And so is Malysh, see? He is doing flips, I think. He missed you. Don't cry. Everything is okay."

**

Harris slips out to give them a minute and Shane has mostly calmed down when he comes back with an armful of vending machine snacks. "It's not much,but I'm guessing you probably didn't get a chance to eat," he says. It takes Shane a second to realize Harris is talking that kindly to him, not Ilya.

"I didn't," Shane says. "Thank you. And for the ride."

"I'm so genuinely happy to help. And on that note, I should get back to the arena for what's left of the game. Shane, this is not the way I would have liked to meet you and I promise next season will be much more fun. Ilya, please get some rest and that means not hunting through twitter for the new meanest thing some asshole has said about you."

Ilya grumbles and Harris pins him with a look. "Fine, okay. Fuck. No twitter for me tonight."

"Thank you. Call me if you need anything," Harris says on his way out the door.

**

The hospital bed isn't big enough for two fully grown hockey players (and even if it was, Shane's single priority is Ilya's comfort, even if that means looking in his pleading eyes and saying no). Shane pulls up a chair as close as he possibly can and settles for folding his arms next to Ilya's thigh and dropping his head onto Ilya's lap.

They watch the end of the Centaurs game like that. Ilya threads his fingers into Shane's hair and leaves them there; the weight of his hand is an overriding switch that turns down the noise in Shane's mind. Their pear moves a couple times that Shane can faintly feel, which is a reassurance on its own.

It's a weird game. The Centaurs are tense, but they channel it surprisingly effectively into focused play. Vancouver is theoretically the better team, but they bring a strange awkwardness to the ice that matches the unusually subdued crowd. Even the announcers feel stilted and overly formal; there are a few overt mentions of Ilya and their thoughts being with him, but more moments where Ilya is present in the silence.

The game sits scoreless after the first two periods. Ilya makes a couple sporadic comments, but stays mostly quiet. A nurse comes in twice to check on him and the pear. The smallest pulse of anxiety at being caught so intimately with Ilya throbs in Shane's chest, but it feels more like habit than real feeling. There is nothing more important than being where he is.

Boodram scores in the third. His expression as captured by the cameras doesn't look particularly celebratory to Shane. Determined, maybe. Shane knows Boodram has been one of the few people in Ottawa Ilya has been at all willing to lean on, which means Shane owes this man more than he could ever possibly repay.

"He is good, yes?" Ilya murmurs.

"Yeah, he is." Which is actually true. Boodram is good, better than the Centaurs' record reflects.

Boodram's goal is the only one of the night. The Centaurs celebrate a very little bit, but they clearly don't want to linger on the ice. Vancouver slinks back to their bench, heads down. Their coach watches them file past with his mouth set into a flat line that doesn't disguise his anger. He can go fuck himself, for all Shane cares.

"You want to watch post-game?" Ilya asks.

"Doesn't matter to me. Whatever you want is fine." Shane pushes himself up straight, wincing as his spine pops.

Ilya flicks through channels until he lands on some show about people hunting alligators in a swamp, which feels almost cartoonishly American to Shane, but it's only background noise. Shane stands and stretches, grimacing at the stiff pull of his muscles. Ilya scrolls through his phone, brow creased.

"LA won," Ilya says. "2-1."

"Okay."

Shane doesn't say that he doesn't care that LA won and Montreal lost. He doesn't say how often that's happened lately when it comes to the Metros, how the meaning the team's successes has always conferred on Shane's life is slowly withering as the season drags on. Theriault has made it very clear how little value he places in a version of Shane that's at all real.

"Go shower," Ilya says. "For your back."

"I'm fine," Shane says, which is automatic and a lie.

"You smell like airport," Ilya says. "Shower is also for my benefit."

So Shane digs clean sweats and a thermal shirt out of his bag and takes a brief, but hot shower. It doesn't compare either of their home showers, but it's not bad. Shane isn't precious about that kind of thing and he doesn't know why he's thinking about it. He wishes he was in the ensuite bathroom in Ottawa and that Ilya was sprawled out in his huge bed.

Ilya is on his phone when Shane finishes, probably with Svetlana given that he's speaking Russian. He sounds like he's trying unsuccessfully to convince her of something. Shane shoves his dirty clothes in his bag and returns to the chair. Ilya takes one of Shane's hands and sets it on his stomach as he argues with probably-Svetlana.

Their pear kicks Shane's palm and Shane smiles and feels a little like he might cry. He leans forward until his face is almost touching that taut curve and murmurs, "Hi, pear," so quietly he might not be making a sound. "I missed you, too."

Ilya absently sets a hand on the back of Shane's neck, thumb sweeping back and forth. Their pear shifts again in a slower, bigger roll. Maybe he's getting tired, too.

Ilya ends the conversation with, "Ya tebya lyublyu, Sveta," then shoves his phone beneath his pillow. Shane looks up at him and Ilya sighs heavily. "She has decided she is coming to Vancouver to — babysit." He says this like it is an absurd thing.

"Good," Shane says. "I'm glad."

That draws Ilya up short for a moment and disbelief flickers across his face. Which is fair. Shane knows he didn't react perfectly to her unexpected New Year's appearance, painfully envious that she was there and he was not. He's much more settled about the fact that they used to fuck and he mostly owes Jackie for that. She listened to his wine-drunk recitation of what little Shane knows about Ilya and Svetlana's relationship and asked, "So what part of him leaving the city where she lives to move to the city you kind of live in makes you worry that he loves her more?"

"Yes," Ilya says. "So tomorrow you can go back to your team and Sveta will babysit me home."

"We can figure out tomorrow — tomorrow." Shane yawns hard and Ilya catches it.

**

Shane wakes up the next morning brutally sore and Ilya wakes up impatient and irritated, ready to walk out if getting discharged is going to take too long. Shane makes noises in the right places and doesn't argue; Ilya has a right to be far angrier than he is, given the week he's had.

A doctor does come and reiterates what Ilya was already told. He's fine and their pear is fine, most likely he had a fairly intense panic attack, but he should follow up with his obstetrician when he gets home.

The doctor ends with, "Try to minimize stress as much as you can," and Ilya shoots him a look so venomous, Shane has to bite the inside of his cheek to prevent inappropriate laughter.

**

They take a cab back to the hotel. Ilya asks, "Together?" and it takes Shane a second to figure out what he means. Shane looks at the driver; his face is carefully impassive, but Shane's pretty sure he recognizes them. And he just can't find it within himself to care.

"Together," Shane says and they both get into the back seat and the world doesn't end.

They walk into the hotel together, too, and Shane can't keep himself from drifting toward Ilya, his elbow and his back, not quite so overt as holding hands, but intimate all the same.

It isn't that Shane has suddenly been freed from his anxiety about being caught, it's just that his need to be near Ilya is so much fucking stronger that it eclipses the fear. Shane keeps his hand in the small of Ilya's back as they cross the hotel lobby not out of defiance, but because he has to. Without the physical reassurance of that touch, Shane will — die. He'll fall apart. He'll implode.

Ilya slumps once they're in the elevator. He leans into Shane's side a little and Shane rubs a small circle on his back. He wishes home wasn't on the other side of the country. More than anything, he wants to tuck Ilya into his own bed and crawl in next to him.

"I'm sorry I scared you," Ilya says quietly.

"It's not your fault," Shane says. "You didn't do anything wrong."

The walls of the elevator are mirrored and, for a split second, Shane sees Ilya's face go utterly bleak before he pastes over it with a much more muted disagreeing frown. Shane kisses his temple, unsure what to say or do. It's been less than forty-eight hours since Shane's phone rang with an unknown number because Ilya was too panicked to call himself. It's been less than a week since Ilya flayed himself open for the whole fucking world.

And Shane hasn't been there. Because the rest of his fucking team can't be trusted to win if at all distracted. Anger lurches in his stomach that he has to shove down. That's been happening more, too, and Shane doesn't know what to do about that either.

Ilya doesn't have the keycard for the room, so he bangs on the door until Boodram yanks it open. He blinks blearily at the pair of them, still mostly asleep. "You're Shane Hollander," he says.

"Yes, he is," Ilya says. "You have to let me in, but please can he come inside, too?"

"Yeah, of course." Boodram steps back to allow them to file in. The door swings shut with a satisfying click.

The full weight of the last eighteen hours slams into Shane behind the relative privacy of a closed door. Ilya nudges him toward the unmade bed on the far side of the room — Shane thinks of it as Hayden's side, but manages to keep that an internal thought.

"Take a nap," Ilya orders. "I am going to shower."

"Need help?" Shane asks.

"In front of my teammate, Hollander?" It takes Shane a couple seconds to catch the innuendo and he feels heat bloom on his face. Ilya smiles sweetly at him; Boodram has the tact and manners to disguise laughter in a cough .

"You're such an asshole," Shane says.

"You like it."

Shane does, but he's not doing this song and dance in front of Zane Boodram, who did ask to be witness to them. And frankly, Shane is tired enough that he doesn't want to argue with Ilya about a nap, so he kicks off his shoes and sheds his coat and lays down. An anxious little warble in his mind tries to kick up about the fact that Shane has both a game in Denver tomorrow afternoon and a pregnant boyfriend that needs to get home to Ottawa. Shane ignores it.

**

When Shane wakes up, late afternoon sunlight is puddled on the floor and Boodram is gone. Ilya is in bed next to him, but leaning against the headboard as looks at his phone rather than sleeping. He feels Shane stir and looks up from the screen. Shane says, "Hi," in a raspy croak.

"Hello." Ilya sets his phone aside and smiles down at him, reaches out and brushes Shane's hair back from his face. "The team added a night to this room, for us. They are gone already. Harris says that before next season we should come to eat dinner at his farm."

"Harris has a farm?"

"His family does. They make really good doughnuts." Shane nods, agreeing with nothing other than wanting Ilya to keep touching him. "Sveta will get here tomorrow. And I talked to Yuna. I had to convince her she did not also need to come. But she says she will figure out you getting to Denver and to not worry about it."

"I didn't think I was asleep that long."

Ilya huffs a soft laugh. "You are very lucky, Hollander. There is nothing for you to worry about until tomorrow."

"I am lucky," Shane murmurs. "Lay down with me?"

Ilya does, and that's how they spend the rest of the day, curled up together because Shane needs touch Ilya to make sure he's real and Ilya seems to need the same thing

**

They order room service for dinner, then shower together and at some point the warmth and the mist overrides their collective bullshit and problems. Ilya says, "Hey," soft and low, curls one hand around the back of Shane's neck and skims the other down his chest to his dick. Shane sighs at the simple pleasure of that touch and pushes his thigh between Ilya's legs for Ilya to rock against. Shane's sense of time goes loose; it's thirty seconds and six hours and ten years. When neither of them can hold back, Ilya comes on Shane's thigh and Shane comes in Ilya's hand and the water washes the mess away while they lean into each other.

**

Shane asks, "What really happened?" and Ilya's face collapses into something raw.

"I was going to arena with Bood," Ilya says. "My head was not very good, after announcement and my brother and reading the things Russian say about me. I was not paying a lot of attention because of everything in my head. And then someone is yelling my name and there are people around me and Bood.'

"They are yelling questions and recording on their phones. They are not like normal press people, I think. Maybe they are not even hockey people. And crowd gets bigger because people hear. Bood is telling them to back the fuck up. And then someone touches Malysh — my stomach.'

"It was like all of me, my head and my body and everything, turned into fear at once. I could not think anything or say anything or move. And my brain said I was going to die and I could not argue or ignore, I knew.'

"Everything after that is not clear because then I was inside arena and people were saying my name and then hospital. They give me medicine to calm down and then I am fine, but they want to keep me overnight and you were there for the rest."

Shane can picture all of it. Ilya's distraction while Boodram pays attention. Strangers see him like they're wolves smelling blood. Ilya is not a real person to them; he is a sordid scandal, he is content. Someone breaks through that last barrier to lay their hand on Ilya and their pear, fingers digging in. Ilya's obliterating terror and a voice in his head saying this is his fault, his failure.

And Shane knows the shape of what blitzed through Ilya's head in the hospital, the recrimination and the helplessness. The possibility that he would live and their pear wouldn't.

Shane wraps his arms around Ilya and holds him as he trembles. Shane says, "I'm so sorry," and, "I should have been there," and he means it. But he has said those things before and Shane's sincerity has not yet unlocked a way for him to be where he should be and where he must be at the same time.

Later, when Shane is curled up along Ilya's back in bed, he says, "I think you should call the therapist. If you need to do it for the pear or — or to prove me wrong that you don't need help, that's okay. I don't want you to have to go through this again, Ilya."

Ilya says nothing so long Shane thinks he's not going to answer, then he murmurs, "I should be happy. I am getting everything I want. You and Malysh and the team. Someone normal would be happy."

"Are you?"

"Sometimes. I think I am not capable of being happy all the time. So what is the point?"

"I think there's a lot of room between what happened yesterday and being happy all the time. I just want things to be easier for you. Maybe that isn't happiness, but I don't think anyone is happy all the time. But I think it can be easier."

"Okay," Ilya says.

**

They're both a little raw in the morning and they don't have a lot of time because Shane has to go.

His mom gets him a ticket on a commercial flight to Denver. Shane might actually get there before the rest of the team does and something about that feels unfair in an unarticulatable way; Hollander has always given a little more than anyone else ever had to, the kind of thing coaches pay lip service appreciation to and Shane has to pretend that it isn't just an expectation he dresses up as a choice to make everyone comfortable.

He waits until Ilya goes to shower to call Theriault, who answers with, "Will you be gracing us with your fucking presence tonight, Hollander? Because if not, I don't want to hear it."

Hello to you, too, asshole, Shane thinks and very nearly says aloud. He extinguishes the words in his throat, like he always has. Politeness doesn't get him respect in the same way bravado does for others, but it's minimally objectionable and the rules are easy enough for even Shane to understand. It's gotten him this far.

"I'll be in Denver tonight," Shane says. His voice does not sound normal. He doesn't feel normal. Nothing about anything in his life is normal.

"Fine," Theriault says, and he hangs up.

"Goodbye," Shane says to the hotel room. "And fuck you."

He texts Hayden to relay the same news, then watches as the typing bubble pops up and vanishes and pops up and vanishes. Shane frowns down at it, unsure how anything he said would need that much thought put into a response. Several minutes later, Hayden finally sends back, you're not going with rozanov back to ottawa?

Shane can't type out that entire conversation, so he settles for, a friend of his is on her way here and she'll go with him. he told me he didn't need to be fussed over and i need to do my job.

Hayden sends back a thumbs up.

Ilya comes out of the bathroom with wet hair and a towel around his waist, skin pink from the heat of the water. Desire kicks faintly in Shane's hips; he looks like a fucking wet dream, even with shadows beneath his eyes. Whatever expression he sees on Shane's face makes his mouth cock into a crooked smile.

"See something you like?"

"Yes," Shane says, which is not the correct response to go along with the game, but the lies of his life are heavier than usual. Even playacted ones are more than he can manage

But Ilya knows him better than anyone else in the world. His expression softens, unoffended by Shane's inability to play along with the teasing. He crosses to the bed and sits down next to Shane with a low grunt of effort. In the detailed notes from the anatomy scan, Shane read that their pear measured in the 90th percentile for size, which makes sense. Both his parents are big men.

"I don't want to leave you," Shane says.

Ilya sighs. "I know, lyubimyy. But it is only two days. Less than two days."

But it's not. It's two days now and two weeks before that and an entire summer before that and two years before that, all the way back to the first time they ever met in a parking lot. Shane counted out how many days they had been together a few years back, tipsy at a club with his teammate, wanting nothing more than the relief of Ilya's body tangled up with his in a safe room. The number he arrived at was shockingly small.

"I hate this," Shane says. But he says that a lot, and it feels inadequate.

"I hate it, too." Ilya wraps an arm around his shoulders and Shane allows himself to be pulled in. He kisses Shane's temple and cheek and noses at his jaw and into his hair. Ilya is doing a very good job of being as okay as can be expected. But there's some frisson in Shane's mind quietly saying that it's an act.

"Please let me stay?" Shane asks.

"No," Ilya says. "We give up now for later and you have a job to do."

"It's one fucking game."

"You already missed one fucking game." Ilya's tone goes stiff, stubborn. "You will miss nothing between now and when you come home other than a long and boring flight and sitting around with Sveta"

Shane wants that, is the thing. He wants that so much more than he wants to fly to Denver and spend another fucking game going through the motions of being the respected captain of his team, looking at every other player and knowing how shallow their respect for Shane was the whole fucking time. And Ilya doesn't ask for a lot, in fact asks for much less than he should. Shane has bulldozed over enough, too focused on his own shit.

"Okay," Shane says. "You're right."

Ilya smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

**

So, Shane puts on clothes and packs his bag.

He clings to Ilya long enough for it to feel desperate and that's fine, because Ilya clings back. They kiss like one of them is on a ship and the other on the dock, slowly being pulled apart into an unknown future where they might not see each other again. It's a really dramatic metaphor, but Shane is dramatic about Ilya and their pear.

He tells Ilya, "I love you so much," and, "I'll see you soon," and, "Please take care of yourself," and other inane things, like he's trying to weave protection around Ilya with the words. Ilya says, "I love you, too," and, "I will," and, "I will," and, "I will," promising everything Shane asks. Shane bends down and touches his forehead to Ilya's stomach, through the skin and muscle and fat, to their kid. "I love you," Shane says. "Be good."

And then he leaves the hotel like he's supposed to and gets into the car to the airport and checks in and finds his gate and every single step feels like the worst decision he has ever made and there's nothing he can do about it.

Then he's sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair next to his gate, toque pulled down low and sunglasses on. He feels hollowed out and uncontained at the same time; the parts of him that should be full are scraped bare and the parts of him that should be empty are wound up like violent springs.

He messages Hayden to say he made it to the airport. He should ask how the LA game went or how angry he can expect Theriault to be, but what does it really matter? Their playoff spot is clinched. Shane has fulfilled the requirements imposed on him for the regular season.

It scares him a little, how often he thinks that none of it matters. There is a knot of fear buried deep in his mind that he tries to avoid and trips over anyway. What if the real cost the Metros extract from him is the game itself? What if he gets to Ottawa and realizes that his love of hockey has burned to nothing over this last season?

His phone rings and it's Hayden. Shane isn't sure he's going to be able to play at being a person and not a collection of anxieties and obligations, but he answers.

"Hey," Shane says.

"So, okay, here's the thing," Hayden says and his tone is odd, a little rushed. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sitting at my gate."

"No, not what you're literally doing, I mean it bigger than that. What are doing at the airport?"

"I'm flying to Denver to meet the team?" Shane says, already knowing that isn't an answer to Hayden's question, but unable to come up with anything else.

"That's not — okay." Hayden inhales deeply and when he speaks again he sounds much closer to normal. "Why are you coming to Denver instead of staying with Ilya?"

Shane blinks. "You've never called him Ilya."

"Well, now I have. Ilya, Ilya, Ilya."

Shane frowns. "You sound angry."

"I'm not — well. I'm not angry at you. Yet."

"Yet?" Shane repeats. He shakes his head a little, like that'll clear some mystifying cobwebs out of his mind. "I don't understand."

"Last night, after the game, Jackie called me and we talked like we always do. You've heard my side of that conversation a thousand times. And after we'd talked about the kids and the house and whatever, I mentioned that you were going to meet back up with the team in Denver."

"I don't understand—"

"Let me finish, man, I have a point. I mentioned that and I didn't think it was anything important, right? But then Jackie said that was sad. And I asked her what she meant. And she said that if she was in the hospital, everyone would tell me to go and be with her, and it was sad that you don't get that.'

"And she's right — I mean, she almost always is — and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it and about you flying to play a game that doesn't matter because fucking Theriault is an asshole and about how Rozanov is in the middle of a shitstorm so intense it put him in the hospital. And I'm your best friend and I didn't question that."

"It's different for us," Shane says. He intends it to be a statement of fact, but it doesn't come out that way. A memory surfaces of Ilya sitting on the end of a hotel bed in Florida, trying so hard to be distant and failing, saying 'you don't like me, Hollander,' like his heart was already broken.

"I know," Hayden says. "I know that. And I'm not trying to convince you to do anything because you have the most complicated life of anyone I know. I just want you to hear one voice that says if Ilya needs you, and he probably does, you should go. And fuck the Denver game."

In retrospect, the first thing about Ilya that ever scared Shane was how he unlocked a bottomless well of longing Shane hadn't known existed within himself. It rises up inside him now, overspilling the carefully constructed places Shane tucks it away so he can get up in the morning without Ilya and still be able to live his life.

"People won't forgive me," Shane says.

"Shane," Hayden says, gently, the same way he speaks to his kids when they come to him with skinned knees and monsters under their bed. "Most of them aren't gonna forgive you no matter what you do. And you haven't done anything to apologize for."

"I don't want them to hate me."

"You know the team needs you more than you need the team, right?" Hayden asks.

"What —" Shane doesn't know what question to ask.

"Bud, we're not winning a third cup without you. That's just how it is. If the rest of the league knew you were looking for something else, you'd have three hundred offers tomorrow. And when you're gone, Theriault has a team with a Shane Hollander shaped hole in the middle that he knows he can't fill."

"So what?" Shane presses the heel of his hand to his eye. "What do I do with that?"

"Remind them that you staying through the end of the season is a favor to them," Hayden says. "And if you need to be somewhere else — like with your pregnant boyfriend who just spent a night in the hospital — you go and everyone else can deal with it."

**

Shane stands up from his uncomfortable plastic chair and hikes his bag over his shoulder and leaves the airport and gets in a cab and goes back to the hotel and goes to the room he just left and knocks on the door.

And when Ilya opens it, Shane says, "I was in the wrong place. Can I come in?" and Ilya lets him in.

Chapter End Notes

chapter notes: ilya has an intense panic attack and is hospitalized overnight for monitoring. there is no actual complication, ilya and malysh are both fine.

fun fact: this chapter has been referred to as the shinterlude since i first starting tossing around the idea in the earliest days of writing. i hope you enjoyed this detour into shane's complimentary torment nexus.

thank you all so much for the feedback and comments (and migraine commiseration and reminding me that no one dies if a chapter takes longer than i wanted it to.) the horrors were horroring this september and being able to reread comments has been really meaningful.

i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

Chapter 18

Chapter Summary

a best friend and boyfriend walk into a bar

Chapter Notes

A single hotel room is not big enough to contain both Shane and Svetlana.

**

Yuna arranged a very reasonable early afternoon flight for what was supposed to be Ilya and Svetlana. Shane suddenly not being on his way to Denver throws everything into chaos.

Svetlana sits on the end of the made bed as Ilya yanks on the cleanest clothes he has and Shane packs. She watches Shane with cool neutrality that suggests she is not thrilled about a third wheel. Ilya says, “Please be nice,” to her in Russian and she holds up her hands. But not understanding what was said makes Shane flinch and all Ilya has succeeded in doing is making it more awkward.

The ride to the airport is worse. The silence is excruciating and Ilya knows it is his place to say something that will cut through the tension, but he has nothing to offer them. Shane’s knee bounces as he texts back and forth with Yuna. Svetlana barely glances up from her phone, fingers flying as she sends her own messages.

The small terminal for private flights isn’t thronged with crowds, but it’s still more people than Ilya wants to be around, which is the most hideously ungrateful thought he could possibly have. He could be jammed into the middle seat of a budget airline, too tall and broad and pregnant to not encroach on other passengers.

So he swallows that down and sits on the first chair he finds, scrubbing a hand over his face. His eyes feel raw; he cried when Shane left and cried when he came back. Svetlana and Shane sit on either side of him.

The blare of Shane’s ringtone startles all three of them; Ilya watches Shane's expression lurch into overlapping anxiety and anger and knows who it is without needing to ask.

“You do not have to answer,” Ilya says. Which is true in only the most technical sense, that no one will seize hold of Shane’s finger and force him to accept the call. No small part of Ilya wants to snatch the fucking thing out of Shane’s hand and stomp it into shattered glass.

“I made the choice I made,” Shane says. “And that means standing by it.”

Shane answers as he stands and Ilya can hear the tinny roar of Theriault’s voice as he goes off on Shane like he is some mediocre rookie getting into drunken bar fights and showing up to practice hungover, rather than the most talented player he will ever coach. Shane goes to the windows, which is not really a private place, but there are limited options.

“I know — I am aware that I am missing a game I said I would be at, and I apologize. It’s unavoidable,” Shane says, his tone flat and clipped in the way it gets when his composure starts to fray.

“That fucking guy,” Ilya mutters.

“I thought Hollander would be halfway to Denver by now,” Svetlana says in deceptively mild Russian.

“He was supposed to be.” Ilya’s skin prickles with a strange unease as Svetlana looks at him. “He left for the airport but came back.”

”As I have already said, it is a family emergency. I will be back in Montreal for our next practice.”

“I see,” Svetlana says.

In the face of her assessing gaze, Ilya feels like he has been caught out in a lie for no reason he can make sense of. Tendrils of crawling claustrophobia start to wrap around his mind, which he has never before felt with Svetlana. There have just been so many fucking eyes — and hands — on him and the days have started blur together.

“Ilyushka,” Svetlana says in a softer, lower tone.

”I didn’t ask him to come back,” Ilya says. “I told him to go.”

”My understanding was that the organization didn’t want to hear any details about my personal life.”

”He is not a child,” Sveta says. “He is a grown man who knows what his responsibilities and obligations are. He has made a choice. Do not demean that, Ilyushka, unless you want to say he is foolish.”

It is the kindest thing Svetlana has ever said about Shane, if only because it is not really kind. The most understanding, maybe? Her frankness lends a ring of truth that cuts off the protest in Ilya’s mouth before he can speak.

“He is playing with fucking fire,” Ilya says instead.

Svetlana shrugs. “What reason does Theriault give him to play nice?”

”Okay, fine. My partner is dealing with pregnancy complications. How much more detail would you like?”

The corner of Svetlana’s mouth twitches. “I did not know Hollander could be such a bitch.”

“I did,” Ilya says. “You do not really know him.”

Sveta looks at him for a long moment, then inclines her head in concession.

**

The small plane has more than enough room for them to spread out, but they stay clumped together in the middle, where two rows of seats face each other. Some part of Ilya wishes he was with the Centaurs, lulled by the presence of so many people and their scattered conversations. The longing makes his stomach squirm in ingratitude as he sits next to the window.

Shane sits next to him and Svetlana sits across from him. They are both a protective bulwark and the bars of a cage. God, Ilya wishes he could disappear from the earth for a little while, away from the rabid mob of hockey fans and the invasive questions and his fucking brother and the unspoken threats of his homeland.

It would be easier, he thinks, if it was just Shane or just Svetlana; Ilya can orient himself toward one with a little effort. Instead, he feels like a magnet pulled toward two strong poles that ends up spinning in place. There is an abyss between these two people that matter more than anyone else in the world to Ilya, of who they are and who they know Ilya to be, that Ilya is supposed to be able to bridge.

Ilya really, really fucking wants them to like each other and the depth of that wanting feels a little childish.

They sit in another excruciating silence as the plane takes off and heads east, losing hours and daylight as they go. Svetlana is impassive, remote in a way she perfected as a child in Russia for the too-often moments when unwelcome hands tangled in her hair and praised her exotic beauty. Shane is no less distant, a furrow of worry between his brows as he stares into space.

“This is going to be a very fucking long flight if we all sit here in silence the whole time,” Ilya finally says in desperation.

One corner of Svetlana’s mouth quirks into a half-smile and Shane blinks as he returns from his reverie.

“What do you want to talk about, Ilyushka?” Svetlana asks, cocking her head.

“Anything,” Ilya says. “Weather. Hockey.”

“We’re getting close to the post-season?” Shane tries, though it comes out less a statement of fact than a question.

“True,” Svetlana agrees. “So, Hollander, do you have a plan to win the cup alone while your team throws baby tantrums?”

A startlingly loud honk of humorless laughter busts out of Shane and finally breaks some of the tension thrumming between the three of them. Shane, pink-cheeked, ducks his head and scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. Ilya squeezes his thigh, comfort and encouragement.

“Play like my life depends on it, I guess,” Shane eventually says. “And hope everyone else trips? It’ll be me and Hayden and JJ, at least.”

Svetlana nods. “Boiziau is solid. I suppose Pike is not nothing.”

“Oh my god,” Shane groans. “Not you, too.”

“Fifteenth best Metro is not an insult, lyubimyy,” Ilya says. “Half your team is not even better than nothing right now.”

“Yes,” Svetlana agrees, one corner of her mouth tugged up into a small smile. “It makes sense to put you with linemates who will not resent a support role. Not all mediocre players have the lack of ego required for that.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“It was not a compliment, Hollander, it is the truth.”

Shane flashes a muted version of the smile he pastes on for press conferences and filming commercials. Not exactly insincere, but certainly rehearsed. Ilya squeezes his thigh again and his expression softens into something tired and more real.

“Honestly,” Shane says. “I’m not sure I want to win them a third cup at this point.”

“Do not be ridiculous, you must win this cup." Svetlana leans back in her chair.

“It’s not like they’ve earned it,” Shane grumbles.

“It’s not about them, lyubimyy,” Ilya says.

“Of course it is about them, in part,” Svetlana says, looking at them both like they are very stupid. “You must win this cup so that when Montreal wins nothing for the next thirty years, they will do so knowing that they never had a dynasty. You had a dynasty while you happened to play for them. They will have to live knowing they fucked themselves.”

Ilya watches Shane turn that over in his mind. A small smile plays across his mouth as he nods. “That’s a good point, Svetlana,” he says, pausing slightly before saying her name. His pronunciation is not perfect, but far from the worst Ilya has ever heard.

“They want to take your dignity, Shane,” she says. “Let them fucking try and they will hang themselves.”

“My mom would love you,” Shane says.

“Yuna would love you,” Ilya agrees.

Svetlana’s smile sharpens. “I have seen your mother. She is very beautiful.”

“And married,” Ilya says, nudging his foot against her shin.

Shane blinks at them in puzzlement for a few seconds until the insinuation clicks. “My mother is off limits,” he says severely; Ilya and Svetlana dissolve into laughter that Shane tries to resist, but cannot.

And it isn’t friendship yet — Shane and Sveta may never truly be friends — but it is enough to fill the hours of the flight with inconsequential conversation. Enough for Ilya to sit back quietly in his chair and doze, lulled by the low murmur of their voices.

**

It’s late when they land in Ottawa. Ilya is so fucking jetlagged he feels dislocated in time, which is a weird counterpoint thread of unreality combined with his relief at being back home. The charter plane people — probably only because Yuna asked — have arranged a car.

Svetlana and Shane have a moment of staring at each other when Ilya opens one of the back doors. Ilya is too tired for the standoff to be as funny as it will be in the morning, so he gives them thirty seconds, then slams the back door closed and comes around to the front passenger seat.

Ilya watches them in the rearview mirror as Ottawa slips by outside his window, Shane’s mild chagrin and Sveta’s restrained amusement. It is so fucking stupid for Ilya to be a competition between them. There are not people lining up around the block to deal with his bullshit the way they both do. But God, he loves them both.

Malysh rolls in his stomach in slow waves, like he is also glad to be home. Ilya strokes his hand over the curve of it and tries not to think about the acidic echo of terror that’s followed him like a shadow since that stranger’s hand touched him.

**

Ilya is not prepared for how much of a relief it is to be home until he crosses the threshold and almost starts crying.

He shakes it off, but Shane still catches enough to put a hand on his shoulder, both comfort and a wordless question. “Long week,” Ilya says. True, though incomplete. But Shane understands. He kisses Ilya’s cheek, then his temple; he puts his hand on Ilya’s stomach, too, and Malysh wiggles.

They’re all overtired from traversing too many fucking time zones in a short amount of time and varying degrees of wrung out, so it feels natural to retreat into a small amount of solitude.

Svetlana’s girl — whose name Ilya is going to fucking find out before she goes back to Boston — calls and she takes the conversation to the spare bedroom. Ilya hears her say, “Hi, solnyshka,” as the door closes.

Ilya gently bullies Shane toward the shower, knowing how Shane feels about wearing the same clothes two days in a row, especially when also made to sleep in them. “Get clean clothes from drawer, not basket,” Ilya says. “Basket has only knocked up clothes.”

Shane nods, but hesitates at the foot of the stairs. “I know this is dumb,” he says, “but part of me is worried to leave you alone.”

Ilya wants to brush that off, but flippancy dies in his mouth. “More than anything, I want to lay down right now. Is bedroom near enough, Hollander?”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says.

“Is okay,” Ilya says. “I get it.”

He follows Shane up the stairs and slaps his ass as he goes into the bathroom, which does make Shane yowl like an offended cat, but also gets a real, if small, smile. Ilya changes into clean sweats and settles leaning against a pile of pillows in bed.

He ignores his social media notifications, but does skim through his messages. He made sure to tell Wiebe and the team chat that he was okay, no damage done, but heading home early. They were also told the barebones outline of Alexei, just in case, which is vaguely humiliating in a different way than passing out.

The level of anger from the rest of the team at everything blooms a weird crawling feeling in the pit of his stomach. It feels outsized to what happened, one conversation about his brother and thirty dizzy seconds and a night of observation. Ilya has been nothing but an escalating series of distractions since before he knew about Malysh. He’s conscious that this one was avoidable, had Ilya handled himself better.

He also has a separate message from Barrett, of all fucking people, that just says sorry your brother sucks. sucks when family is like that. Ilya huffs a very soft laugh. From what little he saw of Barrett’s dad, it is genuinely possible Barrett really does know what it is like.

Ilya sends back, this is why you are lucky to be only child.

He debates calling Yuna, but it’s late enough that he doesn’t want to risk waking her up, so he messages the chat with him and Shane and his parents that they made it safely to the house and thanks Yuna for all of her help. It feels inadequate in the face of all she did while also worrying about Malysh and, apparently, Ilya.

The last thing he looks at before setting his phone aside is an email from Farah that says, I think you should definitely consider this with a forwarded email from someone Ilya has never heard of who says they write for a magazine that he is only very vaguely familiar.

She says her name is Sylvia and that she has been working on a first gay guy in hockey piece about Scott Hunter — Ilya rolls his eyes — and she wants to know if Ilya would consider talking to her, too. and making it a first gay guy and first knocked up guy article.

Ilya’s immediate reaction is that the last fucking thing he wants is to give people more fucking fodder to talk about him, but doesn’t love the flare of shame in that reaction. If Scott Hunter agreed to talk to this person and Farah thinks it is a good idea, Ilya should probably at least think about it.

But that is something for later. For now, Ilya sets his phone aside and exhales.

**

Shane comes out of the bathroom in an old Raiders shirt — as if Ilya needed further proof of how angry he is at the Metros — that's a little too big on him. The collar slips down just enough to catch a flash of clavicle and desire kicks in Ilya's hips.

He comes to the end of the bed and stands there with a small smile playing across his mouth. Ilya has slid off his pile of pillows to sprawl diagonally across the mattress. He likes the perspective of looking up at Shane, skin faintly pink from hot water and damp hair curling around his ears. Ilya wants to pull him down into bed, curl up beneath the blankets, and stay there for a few days. Maybe weeks. He is tired of being brave, tired of watching Shane be brave in turn and run ragged by the weight of it all.

Ilya pats the mattress in invitation; Shane obligingly crawls onto the bed and fits himself along Ilya's side. He is so fucking warm. He splays a hand across Ilya's stomach, absently sweeping his thumb in a soothing little arc. Malysh has settled as Ilya has, but there's the smallest little shift, like he's sighing in his sleep.

It's good, it's so fucking good, but there remains in Ilya's chest a knot of unease.

When Ilya opened the hotel door he expected Svetlana, of course. When it was Shane, he had been so fucking stunned all of his languages failed him; he could barely glean any meaning from Shane's stumbling tangle of explanations and apologies and promises. Something about being in the wrong place. Something about worth. And then barely fifteen minutes later, Svetlana knocked, forestalling any conversation. It all feels a million years in the past.

“I have question for you,” Ilya says.

”Ask me.”

“This morning, why did you come back?”

Unexpectedly, Shane smiles. “You’re not going to like it."

“Well, now I must know.” Ilya jostles his elbow into Shane’s side.

“Hayden called me while I was waiting for my flight —“ Shane says and Ilya groans extravagantly. “You asked, Rozanov. Hayden called me and — well. He said a lot of things, but the gist of it was that if I had a pregnant wife or girlfriend in the hospital, not one would say shit about me being with her. And that’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not,” Ilya concedes. Another fucking point to Hayden fucking Pike, though he suspects Jackie had a heavy hand in it.

“He said that the Metros need me more than I need them. And if you needed me, then I should go. So I did.”

Ilya swallows hard. He will not fucking cry because of Hayden Pike; he has too little dignity left to throw away the rest of it. “Hayden Pike said this? Are you sure?”

"Positive," Shane says, but then his expression softens. He reaches out and brushes Ilya's hair back. "I want you to know that no matter what Theriault does, I don't regret being here. Not for one second."

“You will make him cry talking like that.” Svetlana's voice comes from the door, along with a light knock. Shane and Ilya both crane their necks to look at her, but she stays where she is on the other side of the threshold. “Maybe you will get lucky and the Metros will win tonight. You might be spared Theriault’s worst.”

Shane huffs weary noise. "His issues with me are bigger than any one game."

"Little men do love to scream," Sveta says wryly. "Particularly when they know they have made a mistake. The Metros may not be sad to see you go, but I doubt Montreal will feel the same."

"Come in," Ilya says. "Lay with us?" He glances at Shane, who has willingly shared a bed with probably less than five people in his entire adult life. His expression goes tight for one flickering moment, but passes. He nods and doesn't start grinding his molars into dust.

Svetlana briefly hesitates, looking back and forth between Shane and Ilya, also assessing Shane's willingness. Whatever she finds is enough to get her through the door and onto the bed on Ilya's other side. She curls into the same space as Shane, mirroring him except that she puts her hand on Ilya's chest. She is also very fucking warm.

It is crazy to have both of them, to smell woodsy soap and coconut shampoo, feel callused fingers and the points of long nails. Ilya has never allowed himself to admit wanting such an impossible thing, but God he feels steadier than he has in weeks with the three of them in a pile — four, if you include Malysh.

(Is there one small part of him that wistfully wishes there was any chance that the three of them could fuck? Of course there is. Ilya is who he is. But there is unlikely and there is impossible and Ilya would never ask that of Shane or Svetlana. There is nothing wrong with a very occasional daydream.)

They lay together quietly, until Ilya's mind starts to fuzz around the edges as his thoughts fall away. Emptiness is not the same as happiness, Ilya knows, but it is a respite that he has not much had lately. For these strange moments, his world is only these two people that he loves without condition.

Eventually, though, Shane says, "Ilya?"

Ilya already knows what he is going to ask. "Da, luybimyy?"

"How bad was it really?"

The hands they have on Ilya's skin both shift. Shane's palm presses against his stomach, like he wants to sink through the skin and muscle and crawl inside. Sveta's fingers curl into a fist then flattens back out; she was — maybe is — more scared than she let show.

Ilya doesn't know how to answer.

Can he make them understand how fast it happened? Can he explain how his stomach curdled with fear that ratched up into terror, that for a split second he thought he was going to puke? Does Ilya even have the words to describe how the world tilted and blurred? What it was like to know he was going to die? To know that his belly had become a graveyard?

"It was bad," Ilya says and can hear how remote he sounds.

"I'm so sorry," Shane murmurs.

"Ilyushka," Sveta says.

"You know the worst part?" He does not mean to speak, but the words come out regardless, escaping his mouth like a swarm. "I did not expect it. I have been so fucking lucky, with the team and Wiebe, that I started to believe it would all work out. I forgot all the things I was afraid of in November. I forgot about my fucking brother, so fucking far away. So fucking stupid of me."

"You're not stupid," Shane says.

Ilya shakes his head. "I thought I could handle it all, you know? That I could figure out what the fuck I'm doing. But I don't know what the fuck I'm doing and every day I am hounded by a million people asking why, why, why and I cannot answer them. I don't know why Malysh happened. I deserve less than I have been given and I don't know why.'

“It is like every day, every fucking second, there is more and more I cannot fucking control about my own life,” Ilya confesses to the dark, tucked between the warmth of two familiar bodies. He can feel the rise and fall of their chests, hear the soft susurration of their breath. “And what I say does not matter, either. I am either lying or too stupid to realize I am lying.”

”They do not know you,” Sveta murmurs.

“What does that change?” Ilya asks. “They do not want to know me, for real. They want a fucking story or proof that their judgement is fair or even just to fucking watch a fucking circus.’

“And what can I do? If I say nothing, people talk and make up rumors and decide what is true. If I argue, then I give them attention and every word I say is picked over a thousand times. I can protect Malysh now, a little, because he is inside me. But he will not be forever and he does not deserve to suffer for my choices.”

“Our choices,” Shane says. “It’s not all on you, Ilya.”

“Yeah, okay.” Ilya sighs. “And on top of all of that, I cannot do any of the small stupid bullshit I want to. Can't fucking drink, can't fucking smoke, can't do drugs. It is really fucking hard, sometimes, to share my body. And it's not Malysh's fault, but it is what it is.”

There is silence after he speaks, Shane and Svetlana both curl in tighter to his sides. Their bodies telegraph what words do not communicate. Shane, strung so tight with tension he is almost trembling, pressing his damp cheeks to Ilya's chest. Svetlana, so carefully still as she stomps down the violence in her heart.

Then, Svetlana says, "I cannot fix this, but I have an idea."

**

"When Irina died," Svetlana says, in the distant tone of memories that still hurt, "I was afraid that Ilya would follow her."

Ilya sits in a chair Shane dragged into their bathroom. Shane sits quietly on the counter, hands tucked beneath his thighs. This morning, Shane and Svetlana had never spoken to each other in person. Ilya has never told anyone this story.

"She was all the joy of his world," Svetlana continues. "The day of her funeral was terrible and for the first time in my life, I could do nothing to fix it or make it better. Irina — I loved her, too. She made us — me and Ilya and Sasha — feel like we were not just a pack of misfits.'

"That night, I laid in my bed and I could not sleep. My mother had just returned to her home, on the other side of the world. My world felt half-dead without her and all I could think about was she could be on the floor of her bathroom and I would not even be able to find her. And then someone was knocking on my window and I knew who it was."

It is more of an echo than Ilya can explain to Shane. Ilya looks at himself in the mirror and his reflection is thirty years old and twelve, he is in Ottawa and Moscow, in a moment that will cleave him and his life in two.

It is probably no more than an embellishment of Ilya’s mind, but Shane looks younger, too. Ilya can feel the presence of memories Shane has not touched in a long time. Maybe they were both lonely boys, separated by thousands of kilometers and five years.

Sveta runs her fingers through Ilya’s hair. Her parents were freshly divorced at twelve and she was much too young to shoulder her own grief, much less freshly-orphaned Ilya’s howling despair.

"I opened the window and Ilya fell onto my floor, crying so hard. I asked what he needed or what I could do and he had no answer. We were twelve and without our mothers to turn to. He kept saying again and again that he did not want to be himself, he did not want to be Grigori's son, he did not want to be Ilya Rozanov."

He'd had no other way to disgorge the cavernous fear and despair that felt so much bigger than Ilya's body, begging for something he could not name from the last person in all the world that loved him. Maybe he just wanted permission.

"How do you become someone else? All I could do was help him change a little. So I dragged him and the scissors I had for school to the bathroom and started hacking off his hair. It was a ragged fucking mess when I was done, but he did not feel like a terrified animal trapped in the skin of a boy."

"Did it help?" Shane asks.

"Yes," Ilya says. "It was — I was so sad and felt so trapped, but this one thing I could do."

Shane nods. "Is it still sadness, now?"

Ilya looks to Svetlana, who has flown across a continent twice in one day for him, who repaid Ilya's clumsy comforting when told her parents were divorcing by saving Ilya's life. They have never kept score with each other, but Ilya knows the depth of his debt to her. Her mouth crooks into a smile that carries the weight of two lonely children, drawn together by their differences.

"I have never been the Ilya Rozanov these people thought I was," Ilya says. "I am not interested in trying to be. I want — I want people to look at me and know that the man they imagined was never entirely real."

"Okay," Shane says.

Svetlana picks up the clippers. "Last chance, Ilyushka."

“Do it.”

It doesn't take long. Sveta makes a much neater job of it than she did at twelve. Shane watches, eyes tracking the path of curls as they fall to Ilya's shoulders then down to the floor. Ilya expects — disappointment, maybe, banked regret at the loss of something Shane has always liked about Ilya's body. But that isn't what Ilya sees.

"There," Svetlana says, rubbing her palm over Ilya's shorn head. "You are reborn."

Ilya wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her in, presses his face to her stomach. "Thank you," he murmurs. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Ilyushka."

"Svetlana," Shane says and they both turn toward him, still sitting on the counter. "Would you do mine, too? Please."

Svetlana cocks her, considering Shane's request. She glances down at Ilya, not seeking permission so much as gauging his reaction. She looks back at Shane and says, "That is a hell of a statement to make, Hollander."

An almost savage anger flickers across Shane's face. “I want to make a lot more of a statement, but until I can do that.”

"Okay," she says. "Come here."

They switch places. Ilya leans against the counter, absently rubbing his own palm over the rough velvet of his shorn hair. Shane sits, shoulders back and spine straight, looking at his reflection. Svetlana squeezes his shoulder, maybe support or maybe encouragement or maybe both.

"Ready?" she asks.

"Yes," Shane says and a few minutes later, Shane's hair has joined Ilya's on the tile floor.

Ilya pushes off the counter and stands behind him, framing them together in the mirror. Shane relaxes, a little, letting his head tip back onto Ilya's stomach. They still look like themselves, which is very faintly surprising for reasons Ilya cannot explain. But they also echo each other in a way their lives have never allowed.

"What do we think?" Svetlana asks.

"I like it," Ilya says.

Shane nods. "Me too."

**

Ilya offers to clean up, but Shane rolls his eyes, says, "It's going to be two minutes of sweeping," and sends him to bed. Ilya intends to wait for him, but falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

**

Ilya dreams he is standing in a room that catches on the outer edge of his memory, almost-familiar. His mama stands by a window holding something in her cupped palms. She looks up at him; the planes of her face are softened by the hazy yellow light filtering in through the glass.

"I kept this piece of you," she says, tipping her palm so Ilya can see the curl of baby-fine blond hair, held together by a piece of red string.

"I lost it," Ilya says. "I'm sorry."

She brushes her fingers over the strands. "You can lose something and still have once kept it. It is only hair, malysh."

**

Ilya wakes up alone in his dark bedroom. He squints into the gloom.

The bathroom light is off and the bedroom door has been pulled most of the way closed. Shane's side of the bed is still made. Ilya wouldn't bet his life on it, but it feels like time has passed over to very early morning.

He rolls out of bed, snags a hoodie left on top of his dresser, and goes out to the landing.

There is a slash of muted yellow light coming from the living room, and the indistinct murmur of low conversation. Ilya pauses at the top of the stairs, head cocked toward the sound as he searches for decipherable words. He cannot distinguish any, just the back and forth of familiar voices made strange by proximity.

There is a choice to be made, Ilya thinks, one hand already on the banister. He could return to bed, leave Shane and Svetlana to say what they must to each other without. Or he can go lightly down the stairs and stand in the shadows outside the living room and listen.

It should probably be a harder choice. But Ilya is not a perfect man.

Some of the stairs sigh and groan beneath his feet, but the lilt of conversation continues uninterrupted. Ilya suspects it would take more than a creaking floorboard to pull either of their attention away. He keeps close to the wall as goes toward the living room, however overwrought it feels to slip through the darkness like some vampire in a movie.

“—you surprised me, Hollander. I will admit that,” Svetlana says. Ilya huddles against the wall, just outside the lamplight.

“What did I do?” Shane asks.

”You followed my Ilyushka out of the shadows. Part of the way, at least.”

“It was what he needed. Needs, really. And it was something I probably needed to do for myself, too.”

“You are not my concern, Shane Hollander,” Sveta says, with a light little laugh. “You have sometimes been an enemy in my mind. If you accidentally improve yourself while taking care of him, I suppose that is good.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“I will take my thanks in you being what he and your little buzzkill need.”

“I’m trying, I promise.”

Shane is trying, Ilya thinks, and maybe that matters as much as doing right. That is simply life, running away and coming back, running away and coming back, going and always returning the people you have made promises to.

“Do you know how long he has loved you, Shane?” Sveta asks.

Shane makes a soft sound, almost shy. Ilya realizes he has never told that story to anyone, and it is very possible that Shane has not either. They are both protective of the little time they get alone with each other. And most people they have told have much larger immediate questions than the smaller beats.

“He said it the first time he came to the cottage,” Shane says. “We both said it.”

“Very sweet, but that is not the question I asked. Do you know how long he has loved you?”

”I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Maybe — well.”

”Just say what you are thinking, Hollander.”

“Before Rose,” Shane says, so soft. “I think so, anyway.”

Sveta hums a considering sound. “And how long have you loved him?”

There is a long beat of silence, during which Ilya can feel his heart beating in his throat and wrists. Malysh starts to shift, rolling from one side of Ilya’s belly to the other in a slow wave. Ilya cups his hands around the bottom of his stomach, absently stroking his thumbs over his own skin.

“There was a day, right before Rose, where we were — where I realized that no one made me feel like Ilya does.” Shane exhales hard. “And then I ran away, so. But I felt it before that, I think. No, I know. I know I felt it before that.”

“When?”

“Why do you care?” Shane asks.

“Because I think this is the last chance I will have to tell Ilyushka what I really think of you,” Svetlana says in her frank way. “When I go back to Boston, I want to know in my heart that he is as safe as he can be.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“If I answer you, can I ask my own question?”

Sveta chuckles. “Sure, Hollander. You may ask your own question.”

”After Ilya won MVP, we ended up in his hotel room and we — it was a — a good night —“

“Yes, Hollander, you fucked, so scandalous.”

“It was great,” Shane says and Ilya can picture the red splotches on his cheeks. “But afterward it was weird. I didn’t understand at the time, but I think he was upset about going back to Russia for the summer. But he kicked me out — kind of, I mean. It’s not like I would have stayed the night if he asked. But I got to the elevator and I felt weird and unsettled because —“

”Because?”

“Because he didn’t kiss me. And that felt wrong.”

“That was a long time ago,” Sveta says lightly.

“I know.”

"Hollander, I need to know you understand that all the love you have for my Ilyushaka has no — legal proof," Svetlana says and there is an unsuppressed thread of worry in her words. "The only family he has so far as governments are concerned is his brother. And Alexei is very far away, but that distance would not matter if something very bad happened.

“Yeah. I’ve — I think about that, a lot.”

“What will you do about it?”

“I think about asking him to marry me,” Shane says in a rush, words tripping over themselves. Ilya has to bite the inside of his fucking cheek to keep from making a noise. “But I don’t want him to think I’m asking just for the paperwork or the legal stuff. I want to ask him because I want to marry him. Everything else is a bonus.”

Ilya's heartbeat is a roar in his ears, 'marry me' banging around his head, echoing and doubling and repeating. He wants to flee back up the stairs and stagger into the living room, but he can do nothing but lean against the wall and hope his knees don't give out.

“Are you asking my permission?”

“No,” Shane says, with a sudden thread of steel in his voice. “Ilya is the only one who has the right to say yes or no. But it would be nice to — to have your blessing, I guess. You matter a lot to him.”

Sveta huffs a laugh. “Well. Take my blessing, Hollander. And do not fuck it up.”

“I won’t.”

"Good. Now what is your question?"

Shane is silent for a moment. "Did Ilya ever talk to you about you two getting married for citizenship?"

"Oh, Hollander," Sveta laughs, indulgent and almost fond.

"That's not an answer, Vetrov," Shane says.

"Vetrova."

"Sorry. That's not an answer, Vetrova."

"I cannot tell you how much I want to say we discussed it at great length just to watch you try to pretend that hearing that is not making you die inside."

"I mean —"

"You already sound like you are dying inside, Hollander. But I think we will be in each other's lives for a long time, so I will not be cruel. We talked about it maybe twice since he drafted and only as a last resort option. I have never wanted to marry him and he has never wanted to marry me. You can rest easy, Hollander. I do not want your man."

"Thank you," Shane says quietly. "This has been such a weird day."

**

Ilya makes it back up the stairs and into bed. Ten minutes later, Shane carefully joins him, taking great pains to not wake Ilya up. He curls up along Ilya's back and kisses his shoulder, so lightly it is like the wings of a moth brushing against his skin.

**

Ilya wakes for the second time because someone is gently shaking his shoulder. He cracks a bleary eye open to the cool light of morning and Svetlana leaning over him. Shane is fast asleep, an arm and leg slung heavily across Ilya. His breath has a soft whistle to it.

"How are you awake?" Ilya grumbles.

"I am not fucking knocked up," she says sweetly. "And I have a flight to catch."

"Already?" Ilya yawns.

She cups Ilya's jaw in her hand. "My girl has some important thesis thing this afternoon and she needs me more than you."

Ilya huffs a laugh. "What is her name?"

"Jane."

"You are serious?"

"Of course not," Svetlana says. "Her name is Alma."

"Alma," Ilya repeats. "Alma and Sveta."

"Yes, yes," she says, cheeks faintly red. "Before I go, I have one more thing to say to you."

"Okay." Ilya isn't positive he's awake enough to remember anything she's saying.

"You and Hollander need to figure out what you are actually going to do," she says. "You have made your decisions about being together and having little buzzkill, but do you have any idea what that will look like? Will you live in this house when Hollander comes to Ottawa? Does little buzzkill have a crib or whatever babies need?"

"I —" Ilya begins, but he has nothing more. He has vague daydreams, and that is not the same.

"You have time, still," Sveta says. "Don't waste it. Because the day after little buzzkill is born, the rest of your lives start, whether or not you have prepared."

"Okay," Ilya murmurs. "I — okay."

"I love you," Sveta says, leaning in to kiss his forehead. "I will tell you when I land in Boston."

Ilya says, "I love you, too," and then she's gone.

**

Shane doesn’t have all day before he has to head back to Montreal, but Ilya decides to let him sleep in a little. It gives Ilya some alone time to mull over what Sveta said.

She isn't wrong, and Ilya can admit that. In the fall, the only question he asked himself was if wanted to have a baby. Once that decision was made, his questions became if Shane was going to be with him or if Ilya was going to be alone. Ilya has thought a lot about being pregnant and very little about how he will be a father. 'How' is a much harder question, he thinks.

When Shane wakes up, Ilya feeds him cut fruit and toast for breakfast, which probably isn't macrobiotic, but Shane still eats it. He is so stupidly fucking beautiful sitting there are the kitchen island, rumpled from sleep as the morning sun shines gold on his skin. Ilya rubs his palm over the soft bristle of Shane's shaved hair and Shane hums a little noise of contentment.

When he’s done eating, Ilya says, “Come with me.”

He tows Shane up the stairs, to a closed door of what has technically been a spare room that Ilya has never used once. Nervy tension bubbles in his stomach, but it feels like the lingering dust of old fears, ready to be brushed away for good. He opens the door and says, "I think this is a good place for Malysh."

The room, admittedly, does not at all look like a baby's room. The walls are painted a flat gray. The only furniture is a bed in one corner that no one has slept in and a nightstand Ilya does not remember ever owning. The closet door is cracked open to show a pile of boxes Ilya never got around to dealing with after he moved in. The only thing that suggests a baby is the clump of bags on the bed from the WAGs.

“In Russia,” Ilya says, “It is bad luck to get things for a baby before it is born. It is like — something that is not true but people kind of believe?”

“A superstition?” Shane suggests.

“Yes, superstition.” Ilya shakes his head. “I know this fucking word, but everything falls out of my mind lately. But yes, superstition. And I have a little bit been telling myself that this room should be empty. Probably my mama did not buy things for me and I am just being Russian. But maybe that is a little bit of a lie. Maybe I am also hiding a little."

Shane laces their fingers together and squeezes Ilya's hand. "I might be doing that, too, a little," he says. "There's so much happening now, you know? And I don't want — I'm afraid that if I'm distracted, I'm going to get the wrong things or make a bad choice and not even realize it until the pear gets hurt."

"Yes," Ilya sighs. "I did not actually read the birth stories," he admits.

Shane huffs a small laugh. "I know. Or I was pretty sure."

"It is like — I know he will be born, yes? He has to get outside of me some way. But things go wrong, sometimes, and there are so many fucking ways for it to go wrong that could hurt him so much, or me. And I cannot know what will happen and I cannot try again. I want him so fucking much, but what if I cannot actually care of him?"

"You ask for help," Shane says. "We ask for help."

Ilya flinches. "Parents are supposed to take care of their kids, Shane."

"Accepting help is taking care of him," Shane counters. "Jackie and Hayden have gotten help with all of their kids. Jackie's mom stayed with them for like two months after their son was born. A couple of the WAGs used to go to their house and watch the kids so Jackie could shower and sleep a little."

Ilya has to look away from Shane's face. "What happens if I am just bad at being his papa? And I never get better at it?"

"Hey." Shane cups Ilya's jaw in his hand and gently turns his head. "You already love him, Ilya. Everything else is something you can learn."

Ilya doesn't try to stop crying.

**

Later, when they're both a little red-eyed and sitting on the edge of the bed, Shane says, "The pear is the size of a cauliflower now."

Ilya rasps out a laugh. "So talented, Malysh, to be both our kid and a salad."

"I know you like the fun facts, Rozanov." Shane nudges an elbow into his side.

Ilya is struck, suddenly, by the way Shane looks in this moment, his smile and shorn hair and rumpled pajamas. By rights, there should be thousands of kilometers between them right now. Ilya knows Shane can't just stay in Ottawa and Ilya would not allow him to torpedo his career like that. But for this moment, Shane is here with him and he has stopped running.

Ilya realizes he is not afraid that Shane will run.

”You know you never actually told me the names you were thinking about,” Ilya says.

Shane rolls his eyes. “And whose fault is that? Boris. You’re such an asshole.”

Ilya grins at him, unrepentant. “It was very funny and I do not apologize. But I do also want to know for real. But I also am preemptively vetoing Wayne.”

“That’s not what I was going to suggest,” Shane says, though the tinge of pink to his cheeks suggests he might have thought about it. “Anyway. If the pear is a girl, I thought maybe you’d want to name her Irina?”

Ilya hesitates. "I think maybe that is a lot to put on a kid? A lot of sadness."

"Okay," Shane says gently and kisses his shoulder.

“What else have you got?” Ilya asks, setting aside the ache of sadness he gets when he thinks about the ways Malysh and his mama will never know each other.

“For a girl, I like Penelope, too.”

Ilya chuckles. "I did not make you wait twenty years, Hollander."

"It felt like it sometimes."

"And I was fucking you most of the time."

Shane rolls his eyes again, but he’s also smiling. “If he’s a boy, I thought maybe Emil?”

“Emil,” Ilya echoes. “I like it, I think. Why Emil?”

“It means rival,” Shane says, trying and failing to hide a smug smile. Ilya fists a hand in his shirt and yanks him in to kiss.

**

Something is changed in Ilya, by the hospital and by Shane returning.

He struggles to describe it and what he does come up with feels too trite. A door unlocking. A puzzle piece clicking into place. But it is nothing so settled as that, not really. He is still waist deep in the unknown future, mired in the opinions and expectations of the whole fucking world. He is still afraid.

But it is still some cousin-feeling to the simple clarity of certainty. Reconciliation, maybe, to the new truths that now underlie his life. The world's acceptance of who and what he is will not come so quickly or easily, and it is an unfair burden that he has to shoulder. The weight is worth the rewards.

Acceptance, too, that Shane will come back. There will be times when he must go, but his time of running away is over. Not much, maybe, to build a life on, but Ilya has made do with less.

**

The rest of March slips through Ilya’s fingers and April comes with the tentatively warm sunlight of spring and the reappearance of green growing things.

He goes to the baby doctor as instructed by the ‘don’t be stressed about your stressful fucking life’ doctor. Everything checks out; Dr. Ivanov agrees that he probably had a panic attack. Ilya expected this and it is still a relief.

Dr. Ivanov also says, “Given this, I’m upgrading seeing a counselor from something to think about to something I’m advising you to do. It doesn’t have to be the one I recommended, but someone.”

Ilya calls the fucking counselor, even though he doesn’t want to and isn’t really convinced it will do anything. He shows up to the first session not sure what to expect, beyond a faint memory of a movie where a guy laid on a couch and the therapist hypnotized him.

The first thing Galina — and Ilya feels kind of weird using her first name — asks is, “Would you prefer Russian or English?” Ilya grudgingly admits that if all he gets out of it is one hour a week in his mother tongue, that helps.

Ilya assumed that every session would be him telling her all his shittiest memories, but they aren’t. The first one is mostly just going over his history, but not in detail. She asks why Ilya decided to try therapy, what he hopes to get out of it. Paradoxically, that makes it easier for Ilya to talk about baby depression.

“I don’t want Malysh to ever go through what I did after my mother died,” he admits, for the first time.

A couple sessions in, when Ilya is more comfortable, she says, “You’ve had dark days since you were a kid, I think it’s worth asking if you’ve maybe been dealing with some level of depression for a long time.”

Ilya calls Shane from the parking lot after that one and Shane listens to him cry for almost an hour, sitting in some closet at the Metros’ rink, half-dressed for practice. Shane says, “I’m proud of you.”

Ilya debates whether it is better for him to ride out the rest of the season at home and suggests as much to Wiebe. To which Wiebe said, “With the caveat that your health and the rookie’s comes first — fuck that, Rozanov. You belong here.”

His first practice back, Bood pulls him aside with an alarmingly troubled look on his face and says, “I’m so fucking sorry for what happened,” and Ilya has no fucking idea what he’s talking about for ten seconds.

“No, shut the fuck up with that,” Ilya says when it clicks, genuinely offended that anyone would suggest the mob was Bood’s fault. “What the fuck else could you have done? I do not accept this apology. You have done nothing wrong.”

”You scared the fuck out of me, Rozy,” Bood says, and it is Ilya who initiates the second hug of their relationship.”

The rest of the team welcome him back by ribbing him about his hair and how sad all the kids with Rozanov posters on their walls are going to be, which makes Haas turn scarlet. Most of them find an excuse to scrub a hand over Ilya's head, even Barrett.

Malysh starts wiggling as it happens and since they're already touching him, Ilya makes a split second decision. "If any of you fuckers want to feel Malysh, this is your one shot."

Hazy comes bounding over first and Ilya flinches a very little bit. But Hazy asks, "Where?" before he puts his hands on Ilya's stomach. Ilya flashes him a small smile and Hazy nods. Ilya smacks his hand against Malysh's foot.

Twenty minutes later, the dads on the team are reminiscing about feeling their kids kick, while Haas and Dillon are both wide-eyed with a level of horror so extreme Ilya can only find it funny.

“Does he do that all the time?” Dillon asks. "Moving around like that?"

“Sometimes he sleeps,” Ilya says. “He had hiccups once. That was kind of weird.”

”Oh, no,” Haas says, taking a step back as though pregnancy is a communicable disease.

“Wait until the rookie’s a little bigger, that’s when it gets really weird. That’s the real chestburster shit,” Chouinard says fondly.

**

Ilya spends the Centaurs’ last road trip of the year in Montreal. He enjoys the domestic novelty of Shane coming home to him after work; he also likes the shade of red Shane’s face gets when asked how butch he feels with a housewife waiting for him.

“You know that’s not how I think of you, right?” Shane asks one night, and it means something to Ilya that he does. There is love, Ilya thinks, in someone choosing to pay attention.

“I know you don’t,” Ilya says, and kisses him.

Ilya expects to spend most of his time on Shane’s couch reading the baby books that Shane has already finished, with their highlighted passages and neat margin notes. And he does. But when Shane is home, they sit together and slowly work their way through everything they have both been avoiding. It’s a wide spread of things.

Shane officially puts his place up for sale (someone with an aunt who works in real estate posts on the Metros subreddit that Hollander’s house has been listed and Ilya very much enjoys reading two hundred comments of Montreal fans trying to convince themselves it means nothing.)

He also reads one million reviews of every baby thing under the sun, cribs and car seats and strollers and a thousand other things Ilya has never heard of. The first time Shane actually buys something to be delivered to Ottawa, they both exhale hard when the purchase is completed.

Ilya reads the fucking birth stories all the way through and adds things to the stupid birth plan. He makes an effort to stop calling it the stupid birth plan. He asks the 81 WAGs chat questions about the weird stuff and, like magic, it gets easier to ask.

“Selena says that with natural birth you feel like your guts are going to fall out whatever hole the baby came out of and with a c-section you feel like your guts are going to fall out of your stomach and you have a long incision through your abs,” Ilya reads to Shane.

There is a pause before Shane says, “Surgery recovery sounds worse to me."

Ilya snorts. “Easy to say when it is not your asshole.”

The last night Ilya is in Montreal, Shane invites his parents to dinner and surprises them and Ilya with reservations at a nice restaurant.

And yes, Shane’s hands do shake as he tries to button his shirt, enough so that Ilya bats his hands away and takes over. Ilya leaves the top button undone because he likes stealing glances at the hollow of Shane’s throat. Shane goes to pick a watch and comes back with two, one for himself and one for Ilya, with a band that matches Ilya’s sweater.

“Matching hair,” Ilya says, rubbing his palm over the velvety nap of Shane’s cut hair. “Matching watches. Very sneaky.”

The corner of Shane’s mouth quirks up into a smile. “We wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”

Shane was vague about what happened between him and Theriault, saying that they had reached an understanding. But people have noticed. They don’t know what to make of it, or they are pretending they don’t know what to make of it. It is very funny.

It is a little weird to sit down with all three Hollanders in public, but not as weird as Ilya expects. Yuna and David are still Yuna and David, the same people Ilya has eaten dozens of meals with. And yes, they’re all a little more discreet than usual, picking the words more carefully. It’s still so much closer to normal than Ilya thought it would be.

They talk about hockey, if the Raiders are going to clinch the wildcard spot, if the Admirals have any chance of a repeat with Vaughny playing on a recently healed knee and Scott Hunter being the cryptkeeper, how Barrett is finding a rhythm in Ottawa. They only avoid the Metros and nobody really wants to talk about them anyway.

Ilya makes an offhand comment about the article thing Farah sent him, and it piques Yuna and David’s interest.

“I’ve read other pieces of hers in the The New Yorker,” David says. “She’s very good.”

“It would give you a very good chance to lay out your side,” Yuna says. “I think you should do it.”

Ilya shrugs. “I want people to stop talking about me.”

Yuna laughs. “From your mouth to God’s ear. But assuming they won’t, this can also be the last thing you say about it all. Anything you don’t address isn’t going to be addressed, no matter how many people ask.”

“I had not thought about it like that,” Ilya admits. He turns to Shane and asks, “What do you think?”

“I think you should do it,” Shane says with far less hesitation than Ilya expects. “I think people are going to keep making up stories until they have the real one.”

That night, Ilya tells Farah he’s in.

**

The Admirals come to Ottawa the first week in April — and win 3-1, but Scott Hunter does not score, which does ease the sting a little — and the magazine squeezes a photoshoot into the only four hours Hunter has free before his team heads to Chicago.

Ilya is not entirely free of nerves about the whole fucking thing. He’s only done half his scheduled interviews with Sylvia and he likes her a lot and appreciates that she has not pushed to know who Malysh’s dad is. But it’s still him saying a lot of things out loud for the first time.

And his body has changed since the night in the hospital in ways that are less obvious to the eye but more significant for him. He has gone from feeling pregnant to pregnant, a subterranean intensification that suffuses through his entire body.

It’s a strange catalog. His gait widens into something aggravatingly best described as a fucking waddle. He picks up a weird clumsiness that has him banging into furniture. Sporadic breathless moments bring him up short, when Malysh crowds up under his ribs. Malysh’s movement grows so much that it visibly shifts the topography of Ilya’s stomach, like snubbed mountains that rise and fall for as long as it takes Malysh to stretch.

Yuna offers to come with him and Ilya hesitates. It feels indulgent, to ask her to take time from her day to sit in an uncomfortable chair twiddling her thumbs while Ilya and Scott Hunter are painted and styled and made to snuggle up under the blistering heat of too many lights.

But Ilya is nervous and having Yuna there sounds much better than not. So he accepts the offer. If anyone recognizes her when they walk in together, they refrain from asking why Shane Hollander’s mom is hanging out with Ilya Rozanov.

Scott Hunter is already there and he greets Ilya with a raised eyebrow and knowing smile. “You’re crashing my article, Rozanov,” he says wryly.

“They thought a cover with just a fossil on it would not sell, so it was necessary to bring me in.”

Scott laughs and shakes his head. “Congratulations.”

Happiness looks good on him, Ilya can admit in the privacy of his own head. Or it could be that regular dick looks good on him, but one tends to follow the other. In the year since he upstaged his entire team, he has lost the undercurrent of tension he used to carry, like he second guessed every word he said, every look.

“How is your librarian?” Ilya asks.

“His name is Kip and he’s not a librarian.”

“How is Kip?”

“He’s good,” Scott says. Ilya wonders if he’s aware of the smile that flickers across his face. “How’s your — situation?”

Ilya raises an eyebrow at him. Scott looks placidly back at him. “My situation?” Ilya asks.

Scott shrugs. “Nineteen year olds are not as discreet as they think they are and I needed some air.”

If Shane ever finds out that Scott Hunter saw them on that fucking balcony in Vegas, Ilya is never going to hear the end of it and Scott Hunter has the gall to be amused.

“He is fine,” Ilya says. “Fine as he can be.”

The photos the magazine wants are simple. Ilya and Scott Hunter in dark pants against a simple backdrop. They want Ilya shirtless, which he agrees to do only if Scott is also shirtless. That backfires a little when Ilya has to look at Scott’s firmly muscled stomach and pretend he isn’t a little envious. A lot envious. Whatever.

They start with solo shots of Scott, so Ilya wanders over to Yuna. “How are you doing?” she asks.

Ilya shrugs. “Fine. I just wish that — that we could both be here,” he says.

“Someday you will be,” she says.

The poses for the duo shots are simple, too, mostly variations on Ilya sitting and Scott standing. The photographer gets a couple accidental candid ones, when Malysh jams a foot into Ilya’s ribs. Ilya’s laughing with his nose wrinkled in discomfort as Scott hovers in alarm. Scott’s hand on Ilya’s stomach, surprised at the kick he feels. The photographer promises to send those ones to Ilya.

At some point they decide to change something about the camera, so Ilya says, “I have question for you.”

Scott studies him for a moment, then sighs. “What?”

“What did you say to Hollander when he fought you that one time?”

Scott fucking Hunter smirks, self-satisfied and a little mean. It is the most attractive he has ever been to Ilya. “I told him — in so many words — to take your dick out of his mouth before he spoke to me.”

Ilya cackles. “The fuck you did, Hunter, what did you say?”

“I told him he was starting to sound like you.” Scott shrugs, so very casually, like such laser focused chirps are simply part of his repertoire. “I could have told him all the things I heard when I was trying to sleep in Nashville, but I restrained myself.”

“Oh yes, you are the wisest, oldest man, Hunter.”

“I am three years older than you two.”

“Three hockey years are like twenty-seven normal years.”

**

The Centaurs’ season ends with a home ice 4-2 win against Detroit, which officially cements them as the second worst team in the league.

Chapter End Notes

i would just like to say, for the record, that i planned the emotional gay shaved heads long before connor storrie cut his.

thank you all so much for the comments and feedback, especially those of you that read taller than the rafters and decided to give this one a chance. you're all wonderful.

i am on tumblr at technicallyverycowboy.

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Cover Art inspired by "Simple Learning" by technicallyverycowboy by sk_inspired (skargasm), skargasm