Work Text:
25.12.2016 🧊
Ilya writes the text, then rewrites it, then rewrites it again.
Merry Christmas 🎄
Have a good Christmas ☃️
Having a good Christmas? 🎅
He takes a long pull of vodka, stares down at the latest version. He can’t tell if these little emoticons make it better or worse.
It doesn’t matter. He can’t send it. He can’t pretend that one text will send Shane running from Rose, back into his arms.
He’s probably with her now, cuddled up in matching sweaters or something equally nauseating.
Or maybe he’s just with his family. It occurs to Ilya that he doesn’t know how Hollander spends Christmas, let alone where.
Is he in Montreal, in that apartment he never lets Ilya get a glimpse of? Or in Ottawa, in a house with a white picket fence, because of course Shane Hollander’s family home would have a white picket fence.
Maybe he’s at that cottage, the one where he does his stupid yoga. It would be blanketed in snow now, the lake frozen over. He would skate on it, bring his younger cousins out, help steady them and teach them some moves.
Does he have younger cousins? Ilya has no idea. Are his Christmases small? Just his parents? Or do grandparents fly out, aunts, uncles?
They must do stupid traditions, but what? Which ones? Do they decorate cookies or little houses? What music does his mother put on? Does he hate it or does he sing along to every word?
Ilya presses his palms to his eyes. Enough. Enough.
Shane—Hollander has Rose now. He’s too scared to ever give that up. They’ll get married and have babies and Ilya will become a funny story from his past, one he never tells.
The problem is, Ilya’s always had a bad habit of wanting what he can’t have. He wants a cigarette, a joint, a house that feels like home. He wants to see freckles flushed from too much eggnog, whispers then pants of Ilya, Ilya, Ilya, that precious declaration he only got to hear once.
He wants his mother. He wants his mother so badly he thinks it might break him. Sometimes he feels like his heart became a hole the day he found her lying there, and everything he’s done since has been a futile attempt to fill it.
Noise. What he needs is noise.
He puts on the TV, turns the volume all the way up. There’s a movie playing about a woman who falls in love with a prince and goes back to his castle for Christmas.
His parents hate her. They can’t be together. They are anyway. Ilya keeps telling himself he’ll change the channel, but he never does. He watches the whole thing, having a dinner of vodka and cookies from the gift basket some brand sent him.
He tries not to imagine Hollander curled up beside him laughing at the terrible jokes, choking down vodka, eating one meager cookie.
As soon as the credits roll, he picks up his phone and opens Instagram. His thumbs conspire against him, typing in Rose’s name without his permission.
She posted a photo of herself earlier today wearing reindeer antlers and a tight brown dress, captioned: ‘Hope you’re having a holiday season brighter than Rudolph’s nose! 😊🦌’.
She’s beautiful. She’s perfect. She’s Shane Hollander’s and everyone knows it.
Ilya wonders if she stocks her fridge with ginger ale. If she bosses him around in bed. No, there’s no way she does. Their sex is boring. That’s the one shred of salvation he has. That she can’t give him what he can.
Only, she can give him everything he can’t.
He drinks more. Drinks so much he’s practically drowning in it. Drinks so much that he writes out a thousand texts:
Do you love her? Do you need her? Do you miss me? Did you buy her a gold necklace for Christmas just to watch it dangle above you?
Have you said my name in bed? Have you tried to get away with it? Rose is so close to Rozanov, don’t you think? Have you ever thought of that? Have you thought of me? Do you dream of me?
I dreamt of you a few nights ago. You were holding my hand after a game. I know you'll ask, but I’m not sure who won. It didn’t matter.
Everyone was staring, but you kept holding on. Then, suddenly, we were underwater, because dreams are so weird. I held my breath just in time. My eyes were closed, but I could feel them. Your fingers still wrapped tight around mine.
Ilya deletes every last word. They’re in Russian anyway. Nothing he wants to say to Hollander right now would make sense to him, which isn’t anything new. Their whole relationship is lost in translation. Was. Was lost in translation.
Another corny Christmas movie starts blasting. Ilya scrolls numbly.
Everyone is celebrating Christmas. Posting stupid photos in stupid hats, smiling with their parents, their partners, their friends, their dogs.
Ilya doesn’t celebrate the holiday, can’t imagine it’s worth all this fanfare, but he’s jealous. Of the dogs, mostly. He wants one, wishes he travelled less.
It wouldn’t be fair to the dog, but it’s nice to pretend he could have one. That he could go out right now and take home this living, breathing ball of fluff that would need him, maybe even adore him.
He swallows. He scrolls. He reaches a picture of Hollander wearing a Santa hat. It was posted by the Montreal Voyageurs account, which he keeps trying and failing to unfollow
The smile is fake. Ilya knows the difference. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes he could forget what Shane looks like, laughs like, sounds like behind closed doors.
None of it is his anymore. It’s Rose’s. In every photo with her, his smile is real. Every last one.
He closes his eyes, if only so he won’t stare at the picture any longer. He falls asleep just like that, on his couch, with only the noise of the TV for company.
He dreams of kisses that taste like eggnog.
25.12.2017 🥞
This is it. His last December alone.
They made the decision for Ilya to stay in Boston for Christmas, because it would raise too many questions if he flew to Ottawa. They wouldn’t be able to explain his presence to David's side of the family, who come out to celebrate every year.
Well, Shane made the decision, but Ilya understands.
It’s okay. He doesn’t even celebrate this holiday worshipping a man who slides down chimneys somehow. And it’s his last time not-celebrating it alone. He tells himself this the moment his eyes shutter open.
He’s still half asleep when his phone rings. He’s brushing his teeth, but he answers anyway, unable to bring himself to wait thirty seconds.
“Hi,” he answers around toothpaste and a smile.
“Hi honey,” Yuna says. “I wanted to be the first to wish you a merry Christmas! I know I beat Shane because he’s still asleep.”
Ilya spits in the sink. “He is?” That’s surprising. Ilya figured he was on a run.
“Yeah, the kids kept him up late last night. They both wanted lots of piggy back rides. They’re obsessed with him.”
Ilya smiles. Shane has two cousins on David’s side of the family, and one has kids who idolize Shane, which isn’t surprising. “Of course they do. He is Shane Hollander.”
“Exactly.” Yuna laughs. “So, what are you up to today? I was looking up Russian Christmas traditions we could do next year but I didn’t find much.”
Ilya’s so overwhelmed by his love for her, by her love for him, that he nearly keels over. “Yes, we do not really celebrate. New Years is a bigger deal,” he says, making an effort to keep his voice even. “I like to eat cookies and watch movies. Last night, I watched the Grinch. Shane told me to.”
“Oh? What did you think?”
“Hilarious!” Ilya says, heading to the kitchen and pulling out pancake mix and chocolate chips. He’s in the mood for something sweet. “I think we would be friends. I like his dog.”
“We’ll have to watch it next year! I’ve already told everyone I’m not hosting next Christmas. David’s mother is throwing a fit, of course, but when is she not?”
Ilya’s hand stills. “You do not have to do this for me.”
“Nonsense,” Yuna says. “You’re not spending your first Christmas in Ottawa alone. And…can I tell you a secret?”
Ilya tries to guess where this is going and fails. “Okay.”
“I’m happy to have a reason not to host. Every year it’s so…well, I shouldn’t gossip.”
“Yuna,” he says on a scoff, “is me. Please gossip.”
So while Ilya makes pancakes, Yuna keeps him company complaining. About how David’s mom always has some criticism disguised as a compliment. How the kids are poorly behaved and destroy her house and Elise and her annoying husband Matt never do anything to stop them. How David’s sister, Linda, is personally offended by the level of wealth and success Shane has achieved.
“It’s because, I’m sorry, I have to say it, her son’s a bum,” Yuna says, a clattering sound following, maybe a cabinet closing. “He’s still living at home, he can’t keep a girlfriend for more than a month, and he has a degree in finance he doesn’t do anything with. Meanwhile Shane…”
“Is Shane,” Ilya says, smiling while he flips his third pancake. “She should not compare. No one can compare to Shane.”
“That’s what I’m saying, but she can’t help herself. And she hates that we put them all up in hotels. She thinks we’re flaunting our wealth. News flash, Linda, I just don’t want you and your grandchildren who destroyed my couch staying in my home!”
“You should tell her how Shane bought the new couch. She will hate this.”
“God, she would. Maybe I will.” The smirk in Yuna’s voice is evident, and Ilya wants so badly to see it. To be in that kitchen, gossiping about these relatives, and suffering through them himself. Then doing it all over again in the summer when they host Yuna's side of the family at their cottage. “I just can’t wait til I can tell her about you. If she’s jealous my son’s a Stanley Cup Champion, it might kill her that my other son is too.”
Ilya freezes. He stops talking, stops laughing, stops breathing. It’s…of all his impossible dreams, he never imagined this one would come true.
That he could be loved like this again. A maternal love, one that comes barbed with pride and protection. And the fact that it’s coming from Yuna Hollander of all people…
“Mom?” a grumbly voice says on the other end, and Ilya’s already clenched heart twists. “Are the pancakes ready?”
Ilya forces himself to shake the feeling loose before his own burns. “I am making pancakes too!”
“Ilya?” Shane’s voice is close suddenly. “Hi. С Рождеством Христовым.”
Of course he said merry Christmas in Russian—and so formally too. Ilya wants to kiss him so badly it makes him sick.
“Hi,” Ilya manages, hoping Shane won’t hear how tight his throat is. “Merry Christmas, my grinch.”
Shane scoffs. “I’m not a grinch.”
“What? Is compliment. He is very cool guy.”
“He stole Christmas.”
“Meh. Those Whos are mean. He should steal it again.”
He can practically hear Shane rolling his eyes. “When’s everyone coming over?”
“In thirty minutes or so,” Yuna answers.
“I can’t do another piggyback ride today. I’m pretty sure that much exertion on my back violates my contract.”
There’s a million jokes Ilya could make about Shane’s back and exertion, but he bites his tongue, plates some syrup drenched pancakes, and heads for the couch.
“I’ve got plenty to keep them busy today,” Yuna says. “Cookie decorating, they can help me make the sponge cake, and then we'll do the gingerbread house competition, of course.”
“Great, they’ll be hopped up on sugar. Did you make the—“
“Yes, I made your protein pancakes.”
“Shane, no.” Ilya gasps. “Christmas is not for protein. Is for sugar!”
“We both have games in a few days,” Shane reminds him. Ilya blows a raspberry.
He stays on the phone while they all eat their pancakes. Yuna makes them every year, shaped like snowmen, apparently. Next year, she tells him, she’ll be sure to get chocolate chips.
Ilya floats through the rest of the day on those two words. Next year, next year, next year.
This year feels endless.
He goes for a run, takes a shower, then a nap. He orders Chinese food, watches the Grinch again, this time without the Russian dub. The voices make it even better.
He wants to text Shane about it, but he doesn’t. He knows he’s busy and Ilya refuses to be needy.
He wants to call Svetlana, but he feels weird talking to her now that he’s Shane’s and Shane’s alone. He’s not sure what they are to each other without sex.
He wants to call his brother and have a different type of man answer. He wants to call Shane.
Instead, he watches the Grinch. He works on the puzzle David sent him for Christmas. It’s of a snowy little house that reminds him of the cottage.
It’s nice. He only wishes he had some help with it.
Around 11, Shane finally texts him. Then texts again. And again.
Ilya frowns around his glass of eggnog, reading and rereading the texts. They make no sense.
Shane: ilyaaaa
Shane: ily is in Ilya
Shane: can u believe that? What are the odds!
Ilya: What?
Shane: I love you!!!
He smiles down at his phone.
Ilya: I love you too sweetheart
Shane: no ily is I love you
Ilya: Oh. Okay
Shane: but di do log u
Shane: love you
Shane: so fuckicnd much
Oh. Oh. Ilya’s grin stretches wide enough that his cheeks hurt. Shane is drunk. This is glorious.
Ilya: You are drunk
Shane: nooo
Shane: had a few glass es of mulled wine
Shane: its cousin tradition
Ilya: Naughty naughty. I will tell Santa
Shane: noooo don’t!!!
Ilya: Did you believe in him?
Shane: who
Shane: 🦉
Ilya: Santa
Shane: of cours e
Shane: I cried when I fodnd out he wasn’t real :(
Shane: did u
Ilya: No Shane. I am Russian.
Shane: anyone can beleiev!
Shane: what r u doing
Shane: send a pic
Ilya shakes his head. He loves drunk Shane. He wishes he’d let himself let loose more often.
Ilya takes a picture of himself smiling, holding his glass of eggnog. Then, he takes one of his half finished puzzle. He’s been meaning to take a progress picture for David anyway.
Shane: dimples!!!
Shane: holt shit wait
Shane: I fell in love with my dad
Ilya: What?
Shane: u r just like my dad!!!
Shane: he drinks eggnog and does puzzles
Ilya: Smart man.
Shane: ilyaaaaa
Ilya: Shaaaane
Shane: they all kep asking I why I am not marri yet
It takes Ilya a second to understand that one. When he does, the smile slips off his face.
Ilya: What do you say?
Shane: too busy to date. hockey.
Shane: Nate asked if I at least get laid a lot
Ilya rolls his eyes. He thinks Yuna was right about this man being a bum.
Ilya: Nate is stupid
Shane: yea
Shane: I probably get laid more than him tho and my boyfirned lives in another country lol
Shane: boyfriend*
Ilya: Sad
Shane: yea
Shane: I almost told them
Shane: about me
Shane: but I didnt
Ilya wishes for the hundredth time today that he was there. That he could hold Shane and run his fingers through his hair and make this all better.
He has no clue what to say, not over text, especially not in English.
Ilya: No?
Shane: ya
Shane: I mean yeah no
Shane: there my family. Dont want them to hate me
Shane: they’re*
Shane: also i feel like Nate would sell the story. He is poor
Ilya snorts a laugh. Shane’s going to be so embarrassed by this conversation tomorrow. Ilya’s going to spend the whole day rereading it, most likely. He’s not sure he’ll get anything else done.
Shane: sorry
Shane: rose says I get bitchy when im drunk
Ilya: You do. Is cute
Shane: ur cute
Shane: so cute
Shane: so so cute
Shane: I miss ur cute face
Ilya: I miss yours
Ilya: Where is my picture? No fair
One comes in a moment later. In an instant, Ilya understands what the Grinch means about his heart growing three sizes.
Shane’s smiling in it, his cheeks flushed like they always get when he drinks, his freckles all scrunched up. There are two people on either side of him smiling too. Elise and Nate, he assumes.
Ilya decides not to hold back, to take full advantage of Shane being too drunk to deflect with sarcasm.
Ilya: Pretty boy
Shane: sto p im already so warm
Ilya: You are so beautiful. I am so lucky.
Ilya: Most pretty boy in Canada. All mine.
Shane: im not
Shane: most pretty I mean
Ilya: You are. There are articles about it
Shane: yea well next year you’ll be the prettiest Canadian!
Ilya: Yes. Next year.
Ilya tips his head back onto the couch and smiles to himself. Next year.
25.12.2018🎅
“Oh come on,” Ilya shouts. Yuna and David let out amused laughs, but Shane places a hand on Ilya’s shoulder, like he’s trying to calm him down. It’s not going to work. “Ridiculous. Making signs to steal your best friend’s girlfriend is evil. No, wife! They are MARRIED!”
“That’s not what he’s doing.” Shane cuddles closer into his side. He looks so cute and cozy, Ilya can hardly bring himself to look at him head on.
He’s wearing a Voyageurs sweatshirt with a pair of sweatpants and fuzzy socks David got him for Christmas.
They’re all in their comfiest clothes, watching their third Christmas movie of the day. Ilya’s so happy it’s making him dizzy. Or maybe that’s all the sugar he’s eaten. Yuna put a lot of chocolate chips in his snowman pancakes.
“Yes he is.”
“He’s getting it off his chest so he can move on," Shane says.
Ilya scoffs. “What if Hayden did this when I was home, watching hockey?”
“Hayden is straight. And married.”
“And in love with you,” Ilya says seriously. On screen, the pretty woman runs after the ugly man and kisses him. “No! Stop!”
Yuna laughs. “I think it’s sweet. Like a goodbye kiss.”
“Her husband is more handsome than this creepy guy. Huge mistake.”
“Mmm, I think they’re both handsome,” Yuna says. This movie was her choice, and for the first time ever, he’s doubting her judgment. Though he does like the plot with the little boy mourning his mother and falling in love with an American. Shane cuddles a little closer whenever those scenes come on. “What do you think Shane? Which one’s more handsome?”
“Huh?” Shane’s eyes go all wide. It’s so cute.
“The only man he thinks is handsome is me,” Ilya says.
“No—I—“
“Hugh Grant is handsome,” Yuna says. “Don’t you think? The prime minister character.”
“Uh…” God, Shane’s so terrible at checking guys out.
“No,” Ilya answers for him. “He is evil too. Making fun of the woman who works for him and then wanting to kiss her. The men in this movie are all evil.”
Shane opens his mouth, probably to argue for the sake of arguing, when the doorbell rings.
“Oh no,” Ilya says. “Is Hayden. He drove all the way to Ottawa with signs.”
“Shut up.” Shane laughs, elbowing Ilya in his side.
“It’s Camille and Antoine,” Yuna says, holding up her security camera app. “Probably dropping off Christmas cookies, but they’ll want to say hello to you Shane.”
“Oh.” Shane goes quiet, still, every loose, relaxed joint tightening.
Ilya says it so Shane won’t have to. He’s not sure he could bear actually hearing the words. “I will wait in the bedroom.”
“You don’t have to,” Yuna says.
“Is fine,” Ilya says, leaving the room without another word.
He wants to stay on the couch. He wants to curl deeper into Shane’s side, to meet Camille, Yuna’s best friend, and Antoine, who Shane calls his cousin even though they aren’t related.
He wants to talk about the weather, and the cookies Camille brought over, and the dumb movie they’re watching. He wants to be Shane’s boyfriend now, here, everywhere.
Instead, he curls up in Shane’s double bed, beneath the organized wall of adolescent trophies and posters of old Centaurs players.
He wonders what teenage Shane would think of him being here.
Not seventeen-year-old Shane who made him come alive on the ice, who pestered him about smoking a cigarette and never stopped.
But Shane before. Shane at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Shane who thought about nothing but hockey and never stopped long enough to consider that he might like boys. That he could even love one.
Ilya pulls the blanket up to his chin. From the living room, he can hear warm laughter.
He could go out there, join them. Watch their faces contort as they try to process that Ilya Rozanov is not just here, but here on Christmas Day, wearing fuzzy socks and sweatpants that match Shane’s.
He stares at a picture instead. Shane at age eight or nine maybe, on the ice, smiling in a sea of white faces.
He wonders what it was like to play against that Shane, who played hard because it was fun, not because he’d be despised by a whole province and himself if he lost.
A few minutes later, the door cracks open. Shane walks through it, eyes shifting nervously. Ugh. Ilya doesn’t want to do this part.
The hard thing about loving a Canadian is there’s always a long series of guilt ridden apologies waiting for him. Ilya doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to talk about it.
Shane crosses the room, sits on the bed beside him. “I’m sor—“
Ilya kisses him hard, captures the word in his mouth. Shane lets out a little hmph of surprise. Ilya loves that noise. He tries to focus on that and not the ache that threatens to rip his chest open.
“I’m sorry,” Shane says, pulling back. “One day…”
Ilya is so tired of one day. He knows that for Shane, one day is a decade from now, maybe even later.
If Ilya had his way, one day would be tomorrow. They would walk around the neighborhood in the morning light, holding hands, and let the world stare.
“Um,” Shane says. “In the meantime, maybe next year when you’re more settled, we can do Christmas at your place?”
“Have you ever thought of me here?” Ilya asks. He’ll pull Shane away from this conversation kicking and screaming if he has to.
“What?”
Ilya leans forward, presses a sloppy kiss to Shane’s neck. “Have you thought of me here?” Ilya repeats. “In this bedroom. When you touch yourself.”
“I…I usually, um, do that in the shower. When I’m home.”
Of course he does. Sweet little Shane Hollander, refusing to dirty the bed his mother made for him.
He hasn’t let Ilya touch him since they got here. The past three days have been so chaste, like one of those Christmas movies where a girl goes back to her hometown and falls for a lumberjack who kisses without tongue.
Ilya’s wearing thin. He wants to take Shane in his mouth, all of him, until they both forget how embarrassed Shane is to be his.
He wants to sink inside of him and not think about the corny Christmas card they’ll never send, that stupid plant they’ll never kiss under, the pictures of them in matching pajamas Yuna took last night that they’ll never post.
He licks a line up Shane’s throat. “Ilya,” Shane pants, the word broken, because he misses this too, craves it, needs it. That much was obvious by the way he kept dropping his head during the sex scenes in Yuna’s weird movie. “We…we can’t.”
With Shane, it’s always can’t.
“So in the shower?” Ilya asks, sucking a little, though not hard enough to leave a mark.
“Hmm?” Shane manages.
“Do you think of me there?”
“I—of course.” Shane’s body sags, relenting. He wraps two fists tight in Ilya’s hair. Good. “Everyday last Christmas.”
“No.” Ilya snakes a hand up Shane’s shirt, rubs a finger over his nipple until he gasps into Ilya’s mouth. “Before that. Christmas before.”
He wants to know. He wants to hear that when he was alone, drinking himself sick, Shane was thinking about him, hard and needy.
“I…yes. Always,” Shane whispers. Ilya can’t help the little thrill that runs through him, chased by relief. “I tried not to.”
“Oh?”
“I was with Rose then. I kept trying to think of her.” Shane laughs a little, like it’s funny. Like Ilya’s heart didn’t drop to his stomach when he first saw those photos, and stay there for weeks. “Then on Christmas, I got drunk with my cousins like always, and I thought of you after. I couldn’t stop.”
Ilya hums against his neck. He pulls Shane’s shirt off, then his pants, leaving him in only underwear and fuzzy socks. Shane lets him. “Yes. Me too.”
“I…”
“What?”
“No. I can’t.” Shane scooches up against the headboard, sinks into one of the many pillows. “It’s too embarrassing.”
Ilya follows him up, presses his body heavily above Shane’s. He reaches a hand down between them, runs it across the now hard line of Shane’s underwear. Shane lets out a shuddering gasp. “Tell me.”
That’s all it takes. “I...Christmas 2014. The year you won the cup. I had a wet dream here.”
“You did?” Ilya delights in the thought. God, he needed this. The mental image of Shane, trying to resist him, always failing.
He reaches into Shane’s underwear, wraps a hand around him to reward the confession. Shane lets out another gasp, more strangled this time.
“Tell me,” Ilya says, “about the dream.”
“That’s the embarrassing part,” Shane whispers. “I…it’s…”
Ilya pulls his hand off abruptly. Shane lets out a little whine. He loves that whine. Some days, he wakes up hearing it echo in his ears. Those are the best days. “Is okay if you do not want to tell me. I do not have to touch you.”
“No, I…Please.”
It’s intoxicating. Shane Hollander, in his childhood bedroom, begging for the star player of his hometown team. Ilya forces himself to ignore his own nagging erection and stay firm.
“Tell me then.”
“We were kissing,” Shane says. Ilya puts his hand back down, strokes gently. Shane lets out a relieved breath. “We—we were just kissing. We were in Vegas. I was on top of you. You couldn’t stop kissing me, wouldn’t stop.”
It’s staggering how well Shane remembers this dream, even years later after so much reality. Ilya stops again, just long enough to grab lube from his suitcase, but Shane whimpers all the same.
He doesn’t draw out his absence. He strokes harder, puts a hand up to cover Shane’s mouth in anticipation of a moan.
"Did you come?" Ilya asks.
“Yeah.” Shane’s breath is hot against his hand. “We both did. From the friction.”
“But in real life. When you woke up?”
“Oh. Yes. Yeah. It was humiliating.” Shane huffs a laugh. “My mom saw me washing the sheets. They’re…they’re in the living room right now, Ilya.”
“I know. So be quiet.” He surges up, kissing Shane while he keeps stroking, swallowing up every last moan. “Let me do this for you. Please.”
“Okay,” Shane pants against his lips. “Yes. Okay.”
He knows what it means, Shane allowing even a simple handjob in this room, in this house. Ilya doesn’t take it for granted. He pumps his hand and he kisses him and he whispers in Russian that he loves him, that he’s Shane’s and Shane is his.
“Yes. Yours,” Shane whispers back in Russian, and fuck, Ilya almost comes right then, untouched.
He scrambles for his own sweatpants before he has the chance to ruin his Christmas gift. Shane pushes down his own underwear and as soon as he does, Ilya takes both of them in his hand.
They’re both gasping, panting, Ilya kissing him hard whenever Shane starts to get too loud.
It’s beautiful. It’s everything. If this is Christmas, Ilya will start to believe in that stupid man who lives with polar bears and makes toys.
He'll believe in anything, any God, any religion, if Shane Hollander’s body is its temple.
Shane comes first, unsurprisingly, and his little cry of “Ilya” makes Ilya follow soon after.
Ilya kisses him. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to stop. Maybe Shane’s dream was a prophecy.
He’ll stay here forever if he can. Til new years, then Valentine’s Day, then next Christmas.
Shane says something he can’t understand. It’s French, he thinks.
“What?” Ilya asks.
Shane traces a finger along his jaw. “I said I love you, and I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear it, so I said it in French.”
Ilya feels raw suddenly, embarrassed that Shane knew he was only trying to distract him. “Okay,” he forces out.
“I really am sorry.” Shane presses a firm kiss to his cheek.
“I know,” Ilya says. He does. Shane wouldn’t have given this to him if he wasn’t.
Shane tucks his head into Ilya’s neck, and Ilya swears he can feel his smile. “I’ve never done that in here before.”
“No!” Ilya fakes a gasp. “Shane Hollander has never brought a boy back to his bedroom? I am in shock.”
“Shut up.” Shane laughs, poking his side. “I’ve never brought a girl back either. Just you.”
Ilya drops a kiss to the top of his head. “I know. You like rules too much.”
“That’s not true,” Shane says. He’s practically pouting. It’s adorable. “I snuck into a girl’s room once, when I was fifteen or so? But I was so nervous about getting caught that I couldn’t get hard.”
“Yes. This is why. Not because you are super gay.”
Shane shoves him away, then immediately presses close again. “Shut up. I’m normal levels of gay.”
“No. You are super gay.” Ilya scooches down enough to press a kiss to Shane’s forehead. “I have slept with many people.”
“Okay?”
“Girls.” He punctuates the word with a kiss to his left cheek. “Boys.” Another kiss to his right.
“I get it,” Shane mumbles.
“And none of them,” Ilya kisses his lips, “have ever been so happy with my dick in their mouth as you are.”
“Oh fuck you!” Shane laughs, nudges and rolls Ilya over until he’s on top of Shane.
Ilya wants so desperately to slot one finger inside him, then another, to ease his dick in and get as close to him as humanly possible. But he knows Shane would never allow that, not here.
So he settles for kissing him, and kissing him, and kissing him. Shane texts his mom that they’re going to bed early.
Soon enough, morning will come. Ilya promised David some puzzle time, and Shane’s stopping by his neighbor’s house to sign the Hollander jerseys “Santa” brought them.
But for now, Ilya presses in close and pretends that they can stay like this forever.
25.12.2020 🖼️
It’s nice waking up to texts on Christmas morning. His Boston teammates never bothered, and he feels moored by the flurry of messages, even if they all basically say the same thing.
It almost makes up for how grumpy Shane is.
He responds to everyone, then texts Troy, who’s notably absent from his notifications.
Ilya: Merry Christmas. You should get mistletoe. Then Harris will have to kiss you.
Barrett responds with a middle finger emoji. Ilya smiles to himself.
He likes Troy. He wishes he could tell him all about Shane, how these days, he feels like he’s fumbling through the dark, with only the small bit of light under the crack of the closet door to guide him.
Instead, he says nothing.
He posts a picture of his foosball table, another page of his virtual scrapbook to look back at when Shane takes half his heart back to Montreal.
He begs Shane to eat a cookie, to allow himself even one minute of eating for taste alone. Shane never gives in.
He gifts Shane the photo of them, younger, lovesick, smiling, waits anxiously for his reaction. Then, Shane says he’ll bring it to the cottage, and Ilya scrambles to hide how crushed he is.
He wants to shake Shane. He wants to get on his knees, beg him to indulge, just this once.
He wants to tell him about Dr. Galina. To tell him that some days, getting out of bed is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. That he’s terrified that one day, he’ll never get out again.
Instead, he takes him upstairs and fucks him. They’re quiet except for the occasional ‘yes’ and ‘there’ and ‘faster’.
But every kiss, every twist then thrust of his fingers, is a plea. Shane asks for more, more, more, but Ilya’s the one begging.
Choose me. See me. Please, oh please see me. Don’t let me fade away little by little.
He feels like Santa in that creepy movie David put on earlier. Like if Shane doesn’t believe in him, he’ll disappear completely. Or something. Ilya was too busy bickering with Shane to pay attention to whatever was happening on that weird train.
He slides his fingers out, slots himself carefully inside Shane. This time, it’s a reminder.
I’m here. I love you. I’ll always love you. I’d kiss you for all the world to see tomorrow if you’d let me.
Please, please let me. He’s back to begging. These days, with Shane, he’s always begging.
And one plea rings out louder than the rest: stay. Stay. Please, just stay.
If I lose you, I lose my family. I lose my world. I lose everything.
“Please,” Shane grits out, as if reading his mind. “Harder. I need you.”
Ilya almost laughs. It’s a fucking lie. Shane doesn’t need him. He never has.
Without Ilya, he has parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, teammates, friends. A country, a province, a home or three.
Ilya, though—what would he be left with if they divvied up their lives? An empty house with one measly, meaningless cup ring. Teammates who don’t really know him, because how can they without knowing Shane?
He thrusts harder. He digs his nails into Shane’s hips. He tries to be so good, so useful that Shane remembers why the risk is worth it.
That’s what the picture was, really. Look, it said as Shane slid it out of its wrapping, you fell in love with me, remember?
Somehow, you love me. Somehow, I’m yours. Keep me. Please, please, keep me.
Shane comes with a gasp, Ilya following. He moans Shane’s name. Shane doesn’t return the favor.
He goes to the bathroom to get a warm washcloth, stares at his own reflection while he waits for the water to get hot.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’ll ask Shane to come to Bood’s Boxing Day party.
It’s pathetic how much he needs Shane to say yes. Needs him to give him this, to let Ilya’s two worlds collide, if only for a few hours.
He comes back into the room, runs the washcloth over Shane’s stomach, his ass. He can practically hear him thinking.
“All good?” Shane finally asks.
“Yes,” Ilya lies, curling into his side close enough to feel his breathing. “All good.”
25.12.2021 🍷
Shane’s grandmother walks through the front door, looks Ilya up and down, and says, “You’re very tall. When you two have kids, use your sperm.”
Ilya can’t help the startled laugh that escapes him. “Okay,” he says.
“Mom,” David says simply.
“What? I’ve read all about it. It’s how the gays have babies. When are you having babies?”
Shane inhales a sharp breath. It’s not the first time they’ve been asked this.
Everyone was so against them being together, now suddenly they’re desperate for little baby Shane and Ilyas running around. Admittedly, Ilya is too.
“Uh, not til we retire, probably,” Shane manages.
“Dude,” Nate says. “Won’t you be, like, fifty then?”
“Aww. Hopefully you’re around to meet your grandkids,” Linda says to Yuna. Ilya exchanges a look with Yuna behind her head. He hates this woman already.
“We’ll, uh, probably be around forty,” Shane says. “As long as nothing takes us out sooner.”
He knocks on the wood cabinet beside him. Ilya doesn’t roll his eyes, because he’s trying to look like a very respectful husband.
“Forty.” Shane’s grandma frowns. “In a decade? I’ll be dead.”
“Mom!” Linda and David say in sync.
Ilya laughs. She’s his favorite already. He’s not sure how she’s a Hollander.
“Excuse me, Mr. Ilya.” Hattie, the younger kid, tugs on his pants. “Are you my uncle now?” Their dad’s eyes go wide. Matt, Elise’s husband, has been casting Ilya stunned glances since he got here an hour ago. To be fair, everyone kind of has been when they think he’s not looking.
“Hmm.” Ilya taps his chin, as if seriously considering it. “Yes. If you will have me.”
“Yay!” Both kids cheer.
“You’re almost as good at hockey as Uncle Shane,” Gabe, who’s a few years older than his sister, tells him. Ilya grins down at him.
“Yes,” he says. “Almost. I am better at making gingerbread houses though.”
“Ooh, gingerbread houses!”
From there, it’s a flurry of sugar and frosting and candy. Ilya is, in fact, better at making gingerbread houses, which he proves year after year.
Shane’s is so boring. No creativity. Ilya says as much, more than once, and Shane laughs, shoves his shoulder into his.
“Yours isn’t much better,” Shane says. “You’ve eaten half of the building materials.”
Ilya pops a gum drop in his mouth. “Is very creative! Is the cottage.”
“It is?” Shane frowns.
“Yes. See, the lake.” He gestures to the little blue circle he made out of Smarties. “And us. And Anya.”
Shane squints down at the two red gummy bears sitting on a bench made out of pretzels. At their feet is a gummy shark. It’s the closest he had to a dog.
Shane grins at him, a stupid grin, big and sloppy. “It’s almost perfect. Needs a loon though.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees. He wants to kiss him, but he knows better than to try in front of Shane’s whole family.
“You have a tattoo of a loon,” Gabe says, startling him. His frosting drenched hands are attempting to scroll on an iPad, which his parents are both ignoring in favor of scrolling on their own phones.
None of the other adults seem too invested in their gingerbread houses. Ilya doesn’t get it. It’s so fun, creating something out of candy.
“I do!” Ilya says. “How did you know that? Are you…what is the word? You see the future?”
“Psychic,” Shane supplies.
“Yes! Are you psychic?”
“No. I saw it.” He swivels his iPad around, revealing a shirtless picture of Ilya from the ESPN spread he did in the fall, dress pants low on his hips, thumbs slung into the pockets. He's shower damp in it (or at least they made it look like he was), beads of water dripping down his bare chest.
Matt’s eyes go wide, finally paying attention to his kids. “Oh, no, Gabe, let’s play your game instead.”
“Let me see.” Shane’s grandma puts her glasses on, leans in to get a closer look. “My my my.” She makes a show of fanning herself.
Shane looks like he wants to dig a hole to crawl into. He's redder than gummy bear Shane.
“Wow. That bear tattoo is…something else,” Linda says. “You must regret it now that you’re a Centaur, huh?”
Ilya fights off yet another eye roll. This woman. “The bear is for Russia,” he says. “Was just a fun, uh…” God, why is English escaping him so much today? He looks so stupid in front of Shane’s family who all have multiple degrees.
“Coincidence,” Shane says.
“Yes.” Even with scarce hints, Shane knows what he means. He always does. “Fun coincidence. I am not sure I will get a Centaur tattoo. Maybe when we win our first Cup, but would be ugly.”
“Because that would be so out of place,” Linda mutters.
“I like the tattoos,” David offers. "They're hip."
“Me too," Yuna says, far more hotly. "He got the loon tattoo for Shane. It’s very sweet.”
Ilya feels his own face redden. She’s never acknowledged the tattoo before. Not that she sees it much, unless they’re swimming.
“And the other was for…Russia, you said?” Linda says. Nothing gets past her. “But aren’t they, you know, against your kind?”
Your kind. She says it like they’re aliens or something. “Yes,” Ilya says. “I got it very young. And you know…is home.”
“Do you go back a lot?” Elise, her equally nosy daughter, asks. Shane stiffens beside him.
“No…” Ilya says, not sure how to play this. Ultimately, he lands on a wry, “I hear they are against our kind.”
“You don’t visit your family?” Shane’s grandma frowns disapprovingly.
Shane looks like he’s eager to say something, but has no clue where to start. It’s fine. Ilya isn’t a polite Canadian. “My parents are dead.”
“Both of them?” Shane’s grandma asks, like maybe he miscounted.
“Yes.”
A long chorus of accented sorrys follow. Ilya never knows what to say to that, so he says nothing.
“That’s so sad.” Hattie looks like she’s about to burst into tears.
“But what about your brother?” Gabe asks.
“My brother?”
“Yes. You have a brother.” Gabe licks some frosting off his hand. “I read that too.”
“You know a lot,” Ilya says. “You should write a book about me.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Elise says. “How nice.”
“Yes.” He wonders if any of them could even conceive of his relationship with Andrei. Of the silence stretching between them, Ilya's old apartment the only proof they ever knew each other. Ilya takes a small, strange satisfaction in knowing that now that he’s openly bisexual, Andrei won’t use his relation to him to get women to fuck him anymore, at least.
“So, Gabe, do you still want to be an architect when you grow up?” Shane asks, squeezing Ilya’s hand beneath the table.
“No,” Gabe says. “I’m going to be a hockey player.”
“You are?” Matt frowns. “I thought you wanted to be an architect like your old man!”
“No,” Ilya can’t resist saying. “He wants to be like Uncle Ilya.”
“Stop,” Shane says in Russian. Ilya just grins at him.
He mostly hangs out with Anya and the kids for the rest of the day, watching some weird series of movies where Santa dies and a man steals his identity. Christmas movies that aren’t the Grinch are very bad, Ilya’s learned.
He doesn’t pay the adults much mind until they slip away for the annual cousin tradition of getting shitfaced on mulled wine, and Shane drags him along.
Nate, the bum cousin, keeps shooting Shane weird looks. He hasn’t said much today.
Ilya isn’t sure if he’s always like that, or if it’s different now. If Ilya’s presence has fundamentally changed Shane’s relationship with his family.
Ilya wants to whisk Shane away, find somewhere quiet to ask him, to kiss him. Instead, he settles for staring right back at Nate, who has the good sense to turn away, taking a long pull of wine.
“So, Shane,” Nate says finally, “you still speak to Rose Landry?”
Shane’s eyes widen in surprise. “Uh, yeah. We’re good friends.”
“Sweet,” he says. “Can I have her number?”
Ilya bursts out laughing. He kind of respects the audacity. Elise hits her brother. “Seriously Nate?”
“What?! It’s wasted on him,” Nate says. “Sorry, man, but I can’t believe you were hitting that and, like, not even getting anything out of it.”
“Were you?” Elise asks. “I assumed it was a beard situation.”
“Uhh…” Shane says eloquently. “I don’t think I should. Give out her number, I mean. It’s…she’s had security issues. And she’s seeing someone. I think.”
“She is?” Ilya asks. “Who?”
“I will kill you,” Shane says in Russian—one of the first phrases he learned. Ilya laughs.
“I can’t believe you know Russian now,” Elise says. “That’s so cool.”
He shrugs. “I’m learning. Trying to at least.”
“He is very good,” Ilya says. If they had written their own vows, one of Ilya’s would be to make sure Shane is never too humble. Which is to say, never humble at all.
“I can’t believe you learned for Ilya Rozanov,” Matt mutters. He’s very drunk, even worse at holding his liquor than Shane is.
“Oh?” Ilya says. “Why? Makes sense. I speak Russian.” Shane covers his nose to hide a snort of laughter.
“Well, yeah.” Matt runs a finger over the rim of his glass. “I’m just still surprised by this whole…thing.”
“What thing?” Ilya asks. “Our marriage?”
“I’m so sorry about him,” Elise says. “He’s a lightweight.”
“Nah, it’s weird,” Nate agrees.
“Nate!”
“What? Every time I turned on the TV for, like, a decade whenever they were talking about Shane, it was always ‘and he hates Rozanov. So much. So so much. He wants to punch his stupid face’. I mean, we all knew you were gay, but I kinda thought you’d end up with, like, an accountant with a six pack or something.”
“You all knew I was gay?” Shane blurts out. He’s the gayest man alive but for some reason he’s always shocked when other people notice.
“Dude,” Nate says. “You’re, like, the most famous guy in Canada and you’ve only ever been spotted with one woman and you got all weird when we asked you about her. And that woman was Rose Fucking Landry. And you weren’t bragging about it every chance you got?” For a bum, he makes good points.
“That’s because Shane’s classier than you,” Elise says.
“No, no fucking way. I mean, yes, but I don’t care who you are, no straight man on Earth would be able to keep their mouth shut about hitting that,” Nate says. “Anyways, I’m just saying, if I was you, I’d be drowning in pussy. Suffocating in it.”
“Ew.” Elise frowns. “You’re disgusting.”
“What? It’s true! You get it, Matt. Hell, Rozanov gets it. He was fucking his way through North America after he got signed.”
“And Russia,” Ilya says. Shane hits him on the arm.
“You ever fuck anyone famous?” Nate asks, leaning in.
“Yes,” Ilya says, leaning closer himself. “I slept with Scott Hunter. Terrible in bed.”
Matt sputters, spitting out some wine. “He’s kidding,” Shane rushes to say, no fun as always.
"I am. He was decent."
“Stop! They’ve never—he hates Scott Hunter.”
“Nonsense! We are friends now,” he says. “His husband wants us to have foursome.”
“Oh my God, no he doesn’t,” Shane says, groaning.
“No. But Ryan Price’s boyfriend does.”
Elise gasps. “You guys know Fabian Salah? I’m obsessed with him.”
Ilya nods. “Shane is obsessed with him too.”
“I’m not.”
“So do you guys know, like, every gay hockey player?” Matt asks. “Do you have a secret club?”
“Yes. We all sit around and drink vodka. Well, I drink vodka. They drink water.” Ilya rolls his eyes. “Here is what they do not tell you on the news: every gay hockey player is very boring.”
Matt scoffs. “Except you?”
“I am not gay. I am bisexual.”
“So is Eric Bennett,” Shane points out.
“Yes, and Bennett is interesting. He was married for twenty years, then started dating Justin Bieber’s younger brother,” he says. “He bought his boyfriend a gay bar! Interesting. Bisexuals are more fun. Is math.”
“Math?” Elise asks. Shane gives her a look like ‘don’t encourage him’.
“Yes. Math. Double the sex, double the fun.”
Everyone laughs and Ilya leans back in his seat, pleased. He likes this. Likes being here, with this family. His family.
Maybe they haven’t quite warmed up to him yet, but it doesn’t matter. They’re still his. Year after year, he’ll be here. Building gingerbread houses and drinking mulled wine and making bad jokes that Shane tries not to laugh at.
Shane and Matt start talking hockey, because all this gay sex talk is too much for both of them, clearly. Elise starts picking apart Nate’s Tinder profile and Ilya leans in, loudly criticizing the photos.
It doesn’t take long for Shane’s eyes to find his. ‘Having fun?’ they ask.
‘Yes,’ Ilya’s answer. ‘With you, always’.
25.12.2036 🎁
Ilya wakes up to lips grazing the hinge of his jaw.
He smiles, blinks hazily at his husband. “Eager,” he says.
“No.” Shane drops his lips lower, to his neck, then his chest, his stomach in rapid succession. “Efficient. The girls will be up soon gushing about Santa.”
“They’re not already?”
Shane stops just long enough to shoot him an exasperated look. “Would I be sucking your dick if they were?”
“You are not sucking my dick,” Ilya points out. “Five Stanley Cups and you are still not perceptive. Sad.”
Shane sighs. He has his hand on the waistband of Ilya’s flannel pajama pants when the door flies open.
“Santa came!” Kat bounces on the ball of her feet. Shane rolls off of his husband, casts him an apologetic look. Ilya just smiles, mouths ‘later’, and savors how pink Shane’s cheeks get, even after all these years.
“He did?” Ilya asks. She jumps in the bed, Emi following her older sister more sleepily.
He wasn’t really interested in doing the whole Santa thing. It seems cruel. Oh, this creepy man is watching you and if you make any mistakes ever, you won’t get gifts.
It doesn’t seem like good parenting. But the girls like it, and Ilya likes staying up late, carefully making footprints out of flour, taking bites out of the cookies they spent the day making.
Shane says he goes over the top, but Ilya doesn’t care. He likes making magic happen for his girls. They return the favor every time they smile up at him.
Emi tugs on his sleeve. “Is Santa Russian or Japanese?”
Ilya tilts his head, considering. “He is from the North Pole.”
“He must be North Pol-ian,” Shane says. Ilya nods in agreement. “Wanna show us what Santa brought you?”
Kat nods excitedly, tugging Emi off the bed and into the living room.
“Your mother is probably awake.” Ilya drops a kiss to Shane’s neck. “Think we can get away with ten minutes?”
“DADDY!” Kat calls out.
“Fine. Five?” Ilya bats his eyelashes.
Shane shakes his head, shoves Ilya’s chest. “Later,” Shane whispers this time.
“Promise?”
“Oh, yeah. Your gift didn’t get here in time so now I have to give you a blowjob.”
“You have to?” Ilya says. “Poor baby.”
“I know. Sacrifices must be made.” Shane heaves an overdramatic sigh. He gets out of bed, holds a hand out.
Ilya takes it. His knee’s stiff today, which isn’t surprising. Three surgeries and it still won’t cooperate. He likes to joke that it’s from getting on his knees for Shane too many times. Shane likes to tease that it’s because he never got into yoga.
They head into the living room and Ilya puts on a big show, gasping at the full stockings and ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ at the presents under the tree.
“Can you believe this guy?” he says to Yuna, who’s beaming in the entryway, capturing everything on her phone. He got her a new one for Christmas, with more storage. She’s always running out of space because of the girls. “Santa is so rude.”
“Rude?” Kat gasps.
“Yes! Look at all these snowy footprints. He doesn’t clean up. And he never finishes his yummy cookies!” He picks the half eaten cookie up, plops the rest in his mouth.
“Papa, no,” Emi says gravely. “That’s Santa’s.”
“Well, he did not finish it. His loss!”
Kat giggles, but Emi doesn’t seem to find any humor in the situation. She’s so much like Shane. Luckily that means he knows exactly how to make her smile.
He reaches a hand down, tickles her shoulder, and she giggles, running happily after her sister to shake presents and try to guess what’s inside.
From there, it’s a whirlwind of gifts. Ilya spoiled the girls, like he does every year. He even got them a mini car they can drive around in, in Centaurs red.
They spend most of the afternoon under the covered part of the driveway, Kat driving her sister around.
“I can’t believe you got them a sports car,” Shane says while David gives very serious parallel parking directions.
“Much safer than a sports car. No sports cars for them. No real cars ever.”
“They’ll be driving before you know it.”
“Shhh. They will be young forever.”
“I think Kat’s starting to catch onto Santa,” Shane whispers.
“No! She will always believe.”
“She’s around that age…”
Ilya puts his hand up in a ‘silence’ gesture.
He wishes, not for the first time, that he could call his mother. That he could ask her what it felt like, seeing her sons’ faces start to form and settle.
Some days, he’s not sure he'll be able to take it without becoming a literal puddle. Thankfully, a black SUV pulls up before he has the time to start blubbering. “Harris!” he shouts.
“Merry Christmas!” Harris gets out of the car and gasps. “Oh my goodness, Katerina! When did you get your license?”
Kat giggles. “Look what I can do Uncle Harris.” She slams her foot on the gas, driving as fast as possible. Which isn’t very fast at all.
“Wow,” Troy says dryly, getting out of the car, apple pies in hand. “She’s just like you, Roz.”
“Yes. She is perfect.” Ilya takes the pies. He’s glad they still stop by on their way to the farm every year. Ilya loves the pies, and Kat and Emi idolize their daughter, who’s thirteen now. Shane says Margot's old enough to babysit, but Ilya disagrees.
“Margot!” Kat gets out of her little car and runs right up to her, tosses her arms around her. Margot laughs, pats her head. “I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“Is Santa real?”
Ilya’s eyes widen. He keeps them far from Shane’s pointed gaze.
“What are you talking about?” Margot says. “Of course he is.”
Ilya decides to add a hundred dollars to her Christmas card.
The rest of the day is hectic and, honestly, exhausting. Before Ilya married Shane, Christmas was such a restful day. Lonely sometimes, sure, but mostly just a day off.
Now, it’s a raucous phone call to Hayden, then Bood, then Wyatt, and wiping tears when Emi drops her doll and becomes convinced it’s injured, and dinner with Shane’s cousins, and a sugar headache Shane insists is his own fault, and obnoxious songs that all say the word ‘Christmas’ twenty times over, like they’ll forget what day it is.
After dinner, Yuna and David take the girls up to the playroom, and Ilya practically collapses on the couch. That movie is playing about the round headed boy who buys a small Christmas tree, and Ilya frowns at the screen.
“I do not want the kids seeing this movie,” he announces loudly to Shane, who’s doing dishes in the next room. “They are so mean to this poor boy.”
“That’s because he’s a blockhead.”
“A what?”
“It’s what they call him—never mind. Come on.” Shane dries his hands and grabs Ilya’s, drags him all the way to the bedroom. “Time for your present.”
“Really? They will be back down soon.”
“Not that one.” Shane laughs. He pulls something out of the closet. “Okay, so I got you a pasta maker, since I know you want to teach the girls to cook. But it’s not here yet, so…”
He hands Ilya a book. Ilya opens it and is immediately faced with a picture of himself the first Christmas he spent with Shane. Wearing those matching sweatpants and socks, smiling while they ate pancakes together.
“Oh.” A lump forms in his throat. “So little.” He turns the page to find them the following year, cuddled up on the couch watching a movie.
“It’s just, um, our Christmases through the years. A scrapbook, you know? The girls helped me make it.”
“They did?” Ilya grins. That explains the glitter glue.
“Yeah. They’ll want to be there when you open it, so act surprised.”
“Okay.” Ilya flips through pages of Christmas after Christmas.
Wine drunk and laughing at something with Nate and his now wife, the first Christmas he brought her over.
Wearing a Santa hat and arguing with Hayden, who’s wearing an elf hat, holding an impossibly young Arthur to his chest.
Pointing up at some mistletoe, laughing at the horrified look on Shane’s face. Then, a second shot of Shane pressing his smiling lips against Ilya's. There’s a sloppily drawn heart beside it that he recognizes as Kat’s handiwork.
Gingerbread house competitions Ilya always wins, Centaurs holiday parties, Anya wrapped in tinsel, Kat’s first Christmas, then Emi’s. Yuna with graying hair and more and more lines beside her eyes. Ilya pressing a kiss to Shane’s flour coated knuckles, and Shane unwrapping a stack of hockey books, pouting when he sees that one is about him.
Blurry rainbow lights, and seven foot trees, and the year Kat made snow angels in the yard til she cried about how cold she’d gotten.
Ilya flips through them with tears in his eyes, which is why Shane gave him this when he was alone, he’s sure.
The last page knocks the wind out of him. It includes three pictures: one of Shane as a kid, sitting on Santa’s lap, his parents on either side of him.
One of Ilya, Shane, Emi, and Kat last Christmas, posing beside an ice sculpture of reindeer, all of them wearing matching antlers.
One of Ilya around age seven, sitting in his mother’s lap. He traces a hand over it. “Where did you get this?”
“It was in the box you keep in the garage,” Shane says. “Of the things you took the last time you went to Russia. It’s a copy, I left the original in the box.”
Ilya already has a few pictures of his mother hanging above the fireplace, so he doesn’t look through that box often. Or really ever. It’s too painful, but it would be too painful to throw it away, so he’s brought it along through three moves.
“I, um,” Shane says. “I know you didn’t celebrate Christmas with her, or at all til you met me. But Christmas is about family, and I felt like she belonged there.”
“She does.” He looks down at his mother’s face, smiling, framed by golden curls. He wants to hug her so badly. He leans forward, pulls Shane down into his lap. He doesn't go as easily as he did when they were young, but he still goes. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Shane kisses the top of his head. “Thank you. For, you know, indulging in the Christmas madness. I know it’s a lot.”
“Yes,” Ilya concedes. “But I like a lot.”
Shane smiles. “I know you do.” He pulls out his phone, checks the time. “I think we have time for your other gift, if you want.”
“No. I want to go slow. Take my time with you.” He pulls Shane in for a long kiss, savors the taste of his lips. Strawberry, because he ate two slices of Yuna's sponge cake.
“We should get out of bed then,” Shane says.
“No.” Ilya lays down, pulling Shane along until he’s spooning him. “I love you,” he says.
He says it three times. Once in English, once in French, once in Russian. One language never feels like enough.
“I love you too,” Shane says, looking out the window where snow is steadily falling. He locks each of his fingers into Ilya’s. “С наступающим Любовь моя.”
Ilya presses his smile to Shane’s neck and drops a kiss there. “Happy new year my love.”