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Baby mine, don't you cry
Baby mine, dry your eyes
Rest your head close to my heart
Never to part, baby of mine
Baby Mine - Betty Noyes
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Two months after the cottage - two weeks in which everything in Ilya’s fucking soul reshaped - Shane presents him shyly with a key to his apartment.
Ilya absolutely fucking cries. Just little bit. Shane cries more, so he considers accepting this very fucking reasonable, given circumstances.
Also? He gets to dry tears in his boyfriends perky tits.
Suck it, Rose Landry.
Ilya is very emotionally mature (he is, shut the fuck up, Shane).
Key or no key, he still finds himself knocking, most times, laying a lazy rap rap on the thick wood, waiting for Shane to amble to the door. Maybe is strange, he knows; no one on planet who knows the first thing about Ilya Rosanov would pick patience as virtue of his. Ilya frankly fucking hates waiting; he drives fast, plays hockey fast, lives fast.
Thing is … Ilya still isn’t used to having the luxury of being able to wait for Shane to let him in. Of not being hurried into back entrance, in murder alley. They can’t be open to the world, not just yet, but the idea that somehow he gets to be the one waiting for Shane to let him in the front door of his penthouse apartment; his real place, where he lives, not fuck place?
Tastes better than finest Russian vodka, after drought.
Tonight’s wait is strangely long, even with blush of Ilya’s love. Usually after Ilya knocks, Shane is prompt, opening door like he can’t wait even one more second to see him, and the sparkle that blooms in those pretty eyes at the sight of him makes Ilya wish he could compose poetry, or some shit. Ilya texted him from road when he left the rink; Stittsville is only barely more than 2 hour drive from Shane’s place, and Shane had assured him he was home, waiting, all good, barely more than hour ago.
And then, just as Ilya is about to fish out key, fit it into lock (because what if Shane is not okay? What if Shane is inside, and he needs Ilya, like he did on the ice that fucking day, when Ilya couldn’t even touch him) fucking finally, door opens, and Shane is there, and then?
Ilya blinks at Shane. Shane blinks at Ilya.
The fucking baby Shane is holding in his hands, bouncing its little body absently, just so it giggles, a tone of pure joy, fixes it big eyes on Ilya, and chirps cheerfully, “Da da!”
Ilya is best hockey player in the world. He’s had his bell rung countless times, is no stranger to taking a hit and feeling like world is spinning beneath his feet.
The sight of a baby nestled in Shane’s arms, like it belongs there, smiling at him, hits him like two hundred pounds of muscle have never managed, leaves him reeling.
“So, there’s been a development,” Shane says, apology colouring his tone, as he stands back, moves to let Ilya in, like this is normal thing, like he has not broken his brain.
But we never fuck without condom, echoes like a shot in Ilya’s mind, which he understands distantly, is actual fucking crazy thought. Like, certifiable, put him in looney bin thought, but he likes it much better than idea this is baby of Shane’s with some woman, who will have some piece of Shane forever that Ilya will never be able to have.
“Ilya?” Shane asks, brow lifted in gentle concern, pretty eyes clouded in soft confusion, like he does not understand he and this baby are reason Ilya looks like he’s about one step away from falling off very tall cliff.
“The fuck is this baby?” He settles on demanding, stepping into the foyer of Shane’s place and shaking off his shoes with force, keeping a suspicious eye on the tiny, still unexplained interloper, who blinks back at him placidly, utterly content in Shane’s arms.
Which, frankly, is Ilya’s spot, thank you very much.
“Language” Shane chides, but it’s absent, without venom, and if Ilya had even one functioning brain cell left, the sight of Shane trying to cover little baby’s ears to avoid hearing swear world would send him into a spiral of teasing that he’d never let Shane live down, “Last thing I need to do is hand him back to Hayden having his first word be that.”
Sanity rushes back to Ilya in waves; he frankly generally enjoys not sparing a thought for Pike and his litter, but now that he appears to be able to actually fucking think again, it does seem more likely that the baby Shane is still inexplicably holding is one of his and not say, biologically impossible love child.
That relief washes over him like a wave, makes sense. Not Shane’s baby, no woman in wings, waiting to coax his love away from Ilya. This, Ilya gets, accepts, breathes it in, out.
That the quickest stab of disappointment lances through him?
This he buries the fuck down, shoves in tiny box. He and Shane have been boyfriends for only little more than two months, after ten years of back and forth, of feelings accepted millimetre by millimetre. Shane might not be the man who panicked and left Ilya alone after he said his name during sex anymore, but saying to him, Seeing you hold baby made me want it to be our baby, just for second?
нет. Abso - fucking - lutely not. Ilya’s used to shoving shit he wasn’t allowed to feel for Shane down, keeping it on lock. He’s had years of fucking practice at it. Ilya would break his own fucking arm and miss season of hockey before he said something that put that trapped, scared look back into Shane’s eyes, sent him somewhere maybe Ilya can’t follow.
So he deliberately untenses, relaxes his muscles, skill from before big game useful here, now. Is proud the smirk he sends Shane feels natural on his face, when he asks, tone deliberately obnoxious, “Why you have Pike’s baby? You kidnap it? Could not find better hockey player than Pike to steal baby from?”
Shane only rolls his eyes, before he makes his way back into his living room, where Ilya makes notes of a small amount of scattered baby debris. Bottle on table, little baby jail on floor, soft blanket on couch and fuzzy bunny beside it. The sight of it still sends a shot of longing through Ilya, the causal trappings of an infant in this home Shane has started to share with him, but he’s prepared now, breezes through it.
“Hayden called me in a panic like 45 minutes ago,” Shane answers, as he settles onto the couch, baby easily nestled in one arm, beckons Ilya over with the other, “Ruby and Jade were at some trampoline birthday party, and they both managed to take a tumble off one of those things. Jackie thinks Ruby might have broke her arm, and apparently maybe Jade’s ankle? Hayden wanted to go help her wait with them in the emerg, but figured adding a baby to that scenario wouldn’t help, so I offered to watch Arthur here for a few hours until they’re all home again.”
Ilya doesn’t much like Hayden Pike, but he’s not fucking monster; he likes kids, and the thought of two little ones crying in pain and wanting their Папа sends a wave of sympathy through him.
“Sorry, again,” Shane continues, flicking those big pretty eyes towards Ilya so softly Ilya fucking melts, “I meant to let you know, but it all happened so fast, and suddenly you were here before I remembered to send a text.”
“Is fine,” Ilya assures him, settles behind Shane on his couch, pulls him into the space he’s carved for him in the lines of his body, Shane’s back to his chest, the baby resting comfortable on Shane’s front, blinking up at both of them, “You are good friend. And despite being cursed to be spawn of Pike, is cute baby.”
“Da da da,” said baby declares, imperiously, in the way baby babble tends to be, before attempting to shove its entire tiny fist into its little toothless mouth.
“See, baby agrees with me,” Ilya says, grandiosely, threads one hand lazily through Shane’s hair, breathes in the scent of him, “I tell Pike his baby likes me, speaks Russian, next time I see him.”
“Absolutely do not do that,” Shane huffs, with goodnatured exasperation, like there is a chance Ilya will actually do this thing; confess love for Shane to Hayden Pike through accidental babysitting.
As if: Ilya will find much better way to scandalize Pike with truth of this, once Shane is ready.
They settle into a contented silence after that; the baby’s eyes start to droop into sleep, and not 10 minutes after laying down is making soft little snuffle noises as it sleeps cradled on Shane’s chest, no doubt lulled by the steady beat of Shane’s heart under it’s little tiny ear, his big hand softly rubbing it’s back. It takes barely even five minutes more for Shane to drift off, his breathing evening out to a soft hum that Ilya has spent the last two months memorizing, treasuring the gift it is that he gets to listen to it, now.
Ilya is so fucking in love with this man, and it doesn’t even kill him anymore, because somehow Shane loves him too.
He can’t say it’s the night he’d planned, when he’d gotten on the road; that might have involved sucking Shane off against his kitchen cabinets until he cried oh so pretty tears, and then fucking him over this very couch until they both couldn’t see straight. Still here, safe in this love he and Shane are forming together, he doesn’t have to pretend that the sight of the man he loves tucked into the curve of his body, a sleeping baby on Shane’s chest, doesn’t fill him with a pure warmth that no sex could ever.
It’s not time yet, for this talk, Ilya knows this. Now is time for key to Shane’s place, for shorter drive to see each other. Time for them to grow into what they will become, and Ilya knows it will be extraordinary, because they are fucking legends, they are Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, and their legacy will be written in the fucking stars.
But one day, Ilya will tell him, I want to have baby with you. I want to adopt, or have surrogate, and have baby with you, and make life with you that is safe and full of love and joy. And he knows, in that place deep down at the core of him, that when he does, Shane will look at him with those big pretty eyes of his and say, Yes, I want that too, with you.
Ilya can wait. He has the time. They have the time.
So, with everything he loves cradled safe in his arms, Ilya closes his eyes, sleeps.
And dreams, of all their tomorrows.
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FIN
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