Work Text:
Day 1
The last time Shane touched Ilya was in a hotel room in Philadelphia after the All-Star Game, four hours before their respective flights home. Ilya had been half-asleep, sprawled face-down on the king bed with one arm hanging off the edge, and Shane had traced the line of his spine from the nape of his neck to the small of his back, slowly, memorizing the topography of it with his fingertip. Ilya had made a low, contented sound and mumbled something in Russian, and Shane had pressed his lips to the knob of bone at the top of his spine and whispered, "I have to go."
"No," Ilya had said into the pillow, with absolute conviction, like the word alone could change the laws of time and distance and professional hockey schedules.
"My flight's in three hours."
"Miss it."
"Ilya."
"Shane." Ilya had rolled over, squinting up at him, hair wrecked, pillow crease on his cheek. He'd reached up and hooked a finger through Shane's belt loop and tugged. "Five more minutes."
Shane had given him twenty. They'd kissed slowly, lazily, the way they only kissed when they were about to be separated—as though they could store it up, bank it like fuel for the weeks ahead. When Shane had finally pulled away, Ilya had caught his hand and held it for a beat too long and said, "I love you. Call me when you land."
Shane had called. Ilya hadn't picked up—already on his own flight, probably, phone in airplane mode, thirty thousand feet above the Eastern Seaboard and getting farther away by the second.
That was Day 1.
Day 4
Their schedules were a disaster.
Shane looked at both teams' calendars on his laptop and did the math with the grim efficiency of a general planning a campaign. Montreal had a five-game homestand followed by a West Coast road trip. Boston had three at home, then a swing through Florida and the Southeast. There was no overlap. Not a single city where they'd both be within driving distance for the next three weeks, minimum.
He texted Ilya: Looked at the schedules. It's bad.
Ilya replied twenty minutes later: I know. already looked. maybe I fake injury and fly to montreal
Don't joke about that.
who is joking
Then, a minute later: we will figure it out. always do.
Shane stared at the message and tried to find comfort in it and couldn't, because the truth was they didn't always figure it out. Sometimes they just endured it. Sometimes three weeks became four, became five, and by the time they finally got to each other they were so starved and desperate that the first hour was all teeth and urgency and the second hour was Shane lying in the dark trying to memorize the sound of Ilya breathing next to him before it was taken away again.
He typed: I miss you already.
He deleted it. Typed instead: Yeah. We'll figure it out.
Day 7
Shane watched the Boston-Tampa game on his laptop in bed.
He told himself it was scouting. Montreal played Boston in three weeks, and any responsible captain would study their rivals' systems, track line changes, analyze the power play. This was preparation. This was professionalism.
This was Shane lying in the dark at 11 PM watching Ilya Rozanov skate and feeling his chest crack open.
Ilya scored twice. The first was a wrist shot from the circle—quick release, top corner, the kind of goal Shane had watched him score a hundred times and never gotten tired of. The second was a breakaway, Ilya cutting across the ice with that lethal, effortless stride, deking the goalie onto his back, tucking it five-hole with a flick of the wrists.
The Boston broadcast showed the replay three times. Shane watched Ilya's face each time—the flash of joy, the fist pump, the way his teammates mobbed him against the boards. Ilya was grinning, his mouthguard hanging from his teeth, looking like the happiest person alive.
Shane paused the video on Ilya's face mid-celebration. Stared at it. Pressed his thumb against the screen like he could touch him through it.
Then he closed the laptop and lay in the dark and thought about how many people got to see Ilya smile like that. Thousands in the arena. Millions on TV. And none of them knew what that smile looked like up close, sleepy and soft in the morning, directed at Shane across a pillow. None of them knew and Shane couldn't tell anyone, and the knowing was a kind of richness and a kind of poverty at the same time.
His phone buzzed.
did u watch
Shane typed back: Watch what?
asshole. u watched. I could feel u watching
You can't feel someone watching you through a screen.
I can feel u always. is like sixth sense. shane-sense.
Shane huffed a laugh into his dark bedroom. Then: You played well.
I know. scored twice. am very talented and handsome.
Goodnight, Rozanov.
goodnight hollander. dream of my beautiful goals 💋
Shane locked his phone. Pressed it against his chest. Did not, under any circumstances, smile.
(He smiled.)
Day 10
The problem with Instagram was that it existed.
Shane didn't post much himself—the occasional team photo, a skyline shot, the kind of carefully curated content his PR team approved of. But he checked it more than he'd ever admit, and he had a burner account—no posts, no followers, following exactly one account—that he used exclusively to look at Ilya's page.
Ilya posted constantly. Not hockey content—that was handled by the Bears' social media team. Ilya's personal account was a chaotic mosaic of his life: restaurants, sunsets, his cat (a massive orange tabby named Czar who hated everyone except Ilya), selfies at the gym where he was shirtless and gleaming and clearly knew exactly what he was doing.
Today's post was a photo from a charity event. Ilya in a dark suit, no tie, top button undone, standing with a group of people Shane didn't recognize. His arm was around the waist of a woman in a red dress—a model, maybe, or a socialite, someone tall and beautiful and laughing at something Ilya had said.
The caption was in Russian. Shane screenshotted it and pasted it into Google Translate.
Great night for a great cause. Thank you @bostonchildrenshospital 🖤
Nothing about the woman. No tag. Just Ilya's arm around her waist and her hand on his chest and her head tilted toward him like he was magnetic, which he was, because Ilya Rozanov was magnetic to every living person on the planet and Shane was supposed to be fine with that.
Shane was not fine with that.
He knew—knew, rationally, with the part of his brain that processed facts and not feelings—that Ilya was allowed to attend charity events. That putting his arm around someone for a photo meant nothing. That Ilya loved him, had said so out loud, had whispered it into Shane's skin in two languages.
Rationality did not help.
Shane stared at the photo for eleven minutes. He counted. Then he put his phone in the kitchen and went to the gym in his building and ran on the treadmill until his lungs burned and his legs shook and the image of Ilya's hand on someone else's waist was replaced by the white noise of exhaustion.
When he got back, sweating and breathing hard, he had three missed texts from Ilya.
boring charity thing tonight. smiled so much my face hurts
some woman spilled wine on my shoe. very expensive shoe. I forgave her because she was nice and also because shoes are just shoes
I wish u were here. u would hate it. too many people, too much small talk. but I would like to see u in a suit 😏
Shane stood in his kitchen, dripping sweat onto the floor, and felt the jealousy drain out of him so fast it left him dizzy. Replaced by something worse: longing, plain and enormous, like a physical ache in the center of his chest.
He picked up his phone. Typed: I saw your Instagram. Who was the woman in the red dress?
Deleted it.
Typed: I ran 10k on the treadmill tonight because I saw a photo of you with your arm around someone and I lost my mind.
Deleted it.
Typed: I miss you so much I can't think straight.
Deleted it.
Sent: Sounds boring. Get some sleep.
Day 13
They tried to call. They always tried to call.
The problem was time zones and game schedules and the fact that Shane was pathologically incapable of calling when it wasn't a "good time." He'd pick up the phone at 10 PM Montreal time and calculate that it was also 10 PM in Boston, but Ilya might be at dinner, or with teammates, or driving, and Shane didn't want to interrupt, didn't want to be needy, didn't want to be the person who called just to hear someone's voice because that was a level of vulnerability that still made his skin prickle.
So he'd wait. And Ilya would text—call me when u can—and Shane would see it an hour later after stepping out of the shower, and he'd call, and Ilya wouldn't pick up because he'd fallen asleep, and Shane would listen to Ilya's voicemail greeting (in Russian, the only words Shane recognized were his own name buried somewhere in the middle, which Ilya had once told him said "if this is Shane Hollander, I am probably thinking about you") and hang up without leaving a message.
They managed twelve minutes on Day 13.
Shane was in the back of a cab heading to the airport for the West Coast road trip. Ilya was in his apartment in Boston, fresh off a win, his voice loose and happy in a way that made Shane close his eyes and press the phone harder against his ear.
"I wish you were here," Ilya said.
"I know."
"I mean I really wish. Czar is not good company. He bit me today for no reason."
"He has his reasons."
"His reason is he is asshole cat." A pause. "I scored tonight."
"I know. I watched."
"You always watch." Shane could hear the smile in Ilya's voice. "My biggest fan. Very dedicated."
"I'm scouting. Montreal plays you in ten days."
"Mm. Scouting. Is that what you call it when you watch me skate with your hand in your pants?"
Shane's ears went hot. The cab driver was two feet away. "I am not having this conversation right now."
"Why? Where are you?"
"In a cab."
Ilya laughed—that full, unrestrained laugh that sounded like joy distilled into sound. "Okay, okay. Very professional Captain Hollander. No dirty talk in cab. I understand."
"Thank you."
"But when you are alone in hotel tonight..."
"Ilya."
"I'm just saying. Call me."
The cab pulled up to the departures terminal. Shane said, "I have to go," and hated the words the way he always hated them—the way they felt like a small, necessary wound he inflicted every time.
"Okay." Ilya's voice softened. "Fly safe. Kick ass in Vancouver."
"I will."
A beat. Then, quietly: "I love you, Shane."
Shane was standing on a curb outside the Montreal airport with his bag over his shoulder and his phone pressed to his ear and people streaming past him in both directions, and he wanted to say it back so badly it felt like drowning.
"You too," he managed. The abbreviated version. The coward's version.
He could tell by Ilya's silence that it wasn't enough, but Ilya, because Ilya was patient in ways Shane didn't deserve, just said, "I know," and hung up.
Shane stood there for a long time before he went inside.
Day 16
Vancouver. Late. Shane couldn't sleep.
He was lying in a hotel bed staring at the ceiling, his body exhausted from the game—a 3-2 win, Shane with an assist—and his mind running at full speed, cycling through the same loop: Ilya Ilya Ilya.
He opened his phone. Scrolled to Ilya's contact. His thumb hovered.
It was 1 AM in Vancouver. 4 AM in Boston. Ilya would be asleep.
Shane called anyway.
It rang five times. Six. Shane was about to hang up when the line connected and Ilya's voice came through, thick and groggy and confused.
"Mm. Shane?"
"I'm sorry. I know it's late there. Go back to sleep."
"No. No, I'm—" A rustling sound. Ilya sitting up. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I just—" Shane pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. "I wanted to hear your voice. That's stupid. I'm sorry."
"Is not stupid." Ilya's voice was softening, the sleep clearing out of it, replaced by something warm and alert. "I'm glad you called."
"It's four in the morning."
"I don't care. Call me at four in the morning every night if you want. I will always pick up for you."
Shane's throat tightened. They were quiet for a moment—just breathing, three time zones apart, connected by a cell signal and whatever stubborn, impossible thing they'd built between them.
"How was the game?" Ilya asked.
"We won. I got an assist."
"Of course you did. You are Shane Hollander."
"It was a secondary assist."
"Only you would call after a win and complain about which kind of assist."
Shane almost laughed. "How was your day?"
"Boring. Practice, lunch, nap. Harris asked if I wanted to go to a bar after and I said no because I am old man who goes to bed at ten."
"Harris." Shane knew the name. Young forward, recently called up. Twenty-two, good-looking in a flashy, careless way. Shane had seen him in interviews, had seen the way he looked at Ilya—admiring, eager, the way young players looked at stars they wanted to orbit. "He asks you out a lot?"
"Is not out out. Is just bar. Teammates do this."
"I know what teammates do."
Something shifted in the silence. Shane could feel the edge in his own voice and couldn't smooth it out. Ilya was quiet for a beat too long.
"Shane. Are you jealous of Harris?"
"No."
"You are. You are jealous of twenty-two-year-old boy who cannot grow beard."
"I'm not jealous. I just—" Shane exhaled through his nose. "You have this whole life I can't be part of. Teammates and events and people who get to be near you every day, and I'm—I'm watching your Instagram from a burner account in the dark like some kind of stalker."
The confession came out before he could stop it. The burner account. The watching in the dark. All of it.
Ilya was silent for three agonizing seconds. Then: "You have burner account to look at my Instagram?"
"Forget I said that."
"No. That is—Shane, that is adorable."
"It is not adorable, it's pathetic—"
"Is adorable and also very hot. What is the username?"
"I'm hanging up."
"No, don't hang up." Ilya was laughing now, that low, delighted laugh that meant Shane had accidentally revealed something Ilya found irresistible. "Okay, I will stop teasing. But Shane—you know there is nobody, yes? Harris is a child. The woman at the charity thing was wife of hospital CEO. There is nobody."
"I know that."
"Do you? Because you sound like you don't."
Shane closed his eyes. The hotel room was too dark and too quiet and Ilya was too far away and the truth was sitting on his tongue like a stone.
"I know there's nobody," Shane said. "That's not the problem. The problem is that I can't—if we were normal, if this was a normal relationship, I could just be there. At the charity thing. At the bar with your teammates. In the stands when you score. I could put my hand on your back and everyone would know you were mine and I wouldn't have to lie awake looking at photos of other people touching you and going insane."
The silence that followed was thick and alive.
"Yours," Ilya said softly.
"What?"
"You said 'mine.' That I was yours."
Shane's heart was hammering. "I—yeah. I did."
"Say it again."
"Ilya—"
"Please."
Shane swallowed. "You're mine."
Ilya exhaled—shaky, audible, a sound Shane felt in the base of his spine. "Yes. I am. I am yours, Shane. Only yours. No one else's. Not Harris, not anyone."
"And I'm—"
"You are mine." Ilya's voice dropped, rough and low. "You have been mine since you were twenty-one and I kissed you and you grabbed my shirt so hard you ripped the collar."
Shane remembered. Of course he remembered. He remembered every single time.
"I want to touch you," Shane said, and his voice didn't sound like his own anymore. "I'm lying here in this hotel room and you're three thousand miles away and I want to touch you so badly my hands hurt."
"Then touch yourself." Ilya's voice was dark silk. "And pretend it's me."
"Ilya—"
"I'm serious. Close your eyes. Put your hand on your chest."
Shane's breath hitched. He slid his hand up his own sternum, flat-palmed, the way Ilya did. "Okay."
"Lower."
His hand drifted down. Over his ribs. His stomach. The waistband of his boxers.
"Are you hard?" Ilya asked.
"Yes." He'd been hard since Ilya said yours.
"Good. Take yourself out. Slowly."
Shane pushed his boxers down and wrapped his hand around himself, and the relief of contact made him hiss through his teeth.
"Tell me," Ilya murmured. "Tell me what you want me to do if I was there."
"I want—" Shane's hips twitched into his own grip. "I want your mouth on my neck. That spot behind my ear that makes me—"
"I know the spot. What else?"
"Your hands. On my hips. Holding me down."
"Mm. I love holding you down. Love how strong you are, how hard you fight it before you let go."
Shane stroked himself slowly, eyes squeezed shut, and Ilya's voice poured through the phone like something physical—low and accented and so intimate it felt like being touched.
"What else, Shane?"
"I want you inside me." The words came out broken and raw. "I want you to fuck me so I can feel it for days. So every time I sit down on the bench during a game I think about you."
Ilya groaned—a real, unguarded sound, and Shane heard the faint slick noise that meant Ilya was touching himself too, three thousand miles away in a dark apartment in Boston with his phone pressed to his ear, and the knowledge of it made Shane's whole body flush.
"I would go so slow," Ilya said, his voice fraying at the edges. "So slow you would beg. I would make you say my name—not Rozanov. Ilya. I want to hear you say it."
"Ilya." Shane gasped it. His hand was moving faster, slick with precome, and the phone was hot against his ear and he was so close already, wound so tight from sixteen days of wanting that it wasn't going to take much. "Ilya, I'm—I'm close—"
"Me too. Shane—God—I want to see your face when you come. I want to be there. I am so tired of not being there."
The crack in Ilya's voice—the raw, exhausted frustration of it—hit Shane harder than any of the dirty talk. Because underneath everything, underneath the desire and the jealousy and the 4 AM phone calls, this was the wound: they loved each other and they couldn't be together, and wanting was the only thing they could do.
"Come for me," Ilya said, barely a whisper. "Come for me and say my name."
Shane came. Hard, wrenching, his back arching off the hotel mattress, Ilya's name tearing out of him like it was the only word he knew. He heard Ilya follow—a choked groan, a stuttered breath, Shane's name in a voice that sounded like prayer—and then they were both just breathing, ragged and spent, the phone line crackling softly between them.
Silence. Long and aching and full.
"Seven more days," Ilya said finally.
"Seven more days," Shane repeated.
"I will be counting."
"I've been counting since Day 1."
Another silence. Then Ilya said, very quietly: "I love you. And not the 'you too' version. I want the real one tonight. Please."
Shane lay in the wreckage of himself in a hotel room in Vancouver and gave Ilya the only thing he could give him from three thousand miles away.
"I love you, Ilya."
"There," Ilya breathed. "That will keep me until I can touch you again."
They stayed on the line until Ilya fell asleep. Shane listened to his breathing for a long time before he hung up.
Day 23
Shane stood in his apartment in Montreal and waited.
He'd cleaned. He'd cleaned the apartment three times, actually, which was excessive even by his standards, but his hands needed something to do because his brain was short-circuiting. He'd changed the sheets. Bought groceries, including the stupid expensive yogurt Ilya liked and would absolutely eat all of in one sitting. He'd showered and put on a soft gray t-shirt and jeans and then changed into a different t-shirt and then changed back into the first one and then called himself an idiot out loud in his empty kitchen.
Montreal played Boston tomorrow night. Ilya's team had arrived this afternoon. The game was at 7. It was 9:30 PM, and Ilya had texted forty-five minutes ago: leaving hotel now.
At 10:12, there was a knock at the door.
Shane opened it and Ilya was there.
Just—there. Standing in the hallway in jeans and a black hoodie with the hood pulled up, hands in his pockets, snowflakes melting in his dark hair. He looked tired—there were shadows under his eyes that Shane catalogued with a pang—but he was smiling. That private smile, the one the cameras never got. The one that was only for Shane.
"Hi," Ilya said.
Shane grabbed him by the front of his hoodie and pulled him inside.
The door wasn't even closed before Shane was kissing him—hard and desperate and messy, twenty-three days of deprivation pouring out of him in a single graceless act. Ilya kicked the door shut behind him and caught Shane's face in both hands and kissed him back with equal ferocity, walking Shane backward until his shoulders hit the wall.
"Fuck," Shane breathed between kisses. "Fuck, I missed you—"
"I know. I know. I'm here." Ilya kissed his jaw, his neck, the hollow of his throat. His hands were everywhere—under Shane's shirt, up his back, pulling him closer like he was trying to eliminate the concept of space between them. "Twenty-three days. Never again. I don't care what the schedule says. Never again."
"You can't promise that."
"I'm promising it." Ilya pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes fierce, thumbs tracing Shane's cheekbones. "I will drive through the night. I will fly standby. I will fake a groin injury. I don't care. Never again."
Shane wanted to argue—wanted to be the reasonable one, the one who calculated risks and maintained boundaries—but Ilya was here, warm and solid and real, and Shane could smell him, could feel the scrape of his stubble and the heat of his palms, and reason was a foreign concept.
"Bedroom," Shane said.
"No." Ilya shook his head. "Here first. I can't wait. I need—Shane, I need you now."
Ilya dropped to his knees right there in the hallway.
Shane's head fell back against the wall as Ilya's hands found his belt, unbuckling it with practiced urgency, pulling his jeans and boxers down just far enough. Ilya looked up at him—flushed, desperate, beautiful—and took Shane in his mouth in one long slide that made Shane's vision blur.
"Fuck," Shane choked out. His hand found Ilya's hair, gripping hard, and Ilya moaned around him and the vibration sent a shockwave through Shane's entire body. Ilya sucked him like he was starving for it, like twenty-three days had built a hunger that could only be fed this way—wet and messy and urgent, one hand gripping Shane's hip, the other wrapped around the base of his cock.
Shane lasted an embarrassingly short amount of time. He tried to warn Ilya—tugged at his hair, gasped "I'm going to—"—but Ilya just took him deeper and looked up at him with those dark, unwavering eyes, and Shane came down his throat with a broken sound, his knees buckling, both hands fisted in Ilya's hair.
Ilya swallowed. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Stood up and kissed Shane with a filthy, possessive thoroughness that let Shane taste himself on Ilya's tongue.
"Now bedroom," Ilya said.
They made it to the bed this time. Barely.
Shane pushed Ilya onto his back and stripped him with shaking hands—hoodie, t-shirt, jeans, boxers—revealing all of him, the body Shane had been dreaming about for twenty-three nights. He pressed his mouth to Ilya's chest and breathed him in and felt something in him go liquid with relief, the way a muscle released after weeks of clenching.
"You're here," Shane said against his skin, and it came out thick and desperate and he didn't care.
"I'm here." Ilya's hand cradled the back of his head. "I'm not going anywhere."
"You are, though. Tomorrow night we'll play each other and then you'll get on a bus and go back to Boston and—"
"Shane." Ilya tipped his chin up. "Tomorrow is tomorrow. Right now I am here. In your bed. And you are wearing too many clothes."
Shane undressed. Ilya pulled him down and they pressed together skin to skin, every point of contact a homecoming, and Shane made a sound that was embarrassingly close to a whimper and buried his face in Ilya's neck.
They moved together slowly. Shane was still sensitive from coming minutes ago, but his body was responding to Ilya's proximity with a greed that bordered on biological—Ilya's thigh between his legs, Ilya's hands on his ass, Ilya's mouth on his throat sucking a mark that Shane would have to cover with concealer tomorrow and didn't care about right now because right now Ilya was claiming him and it was the best thing he'd ever felt.
"I want you to fuck me," Shane said.
Ilya made a rough sound. "Are you sure? You just—"
"I'm sure. I'm sure. Please."
Ilya prepared him with a thoroughness that was almost unbearable—slick fingers working him open, careful and deliberate, reading every hitch of Shane's breath. By the time Ilya finally pushed inside him, Shane was hard again, aching, his hands fisted in the sheets.
"Oh God." Shane arched into it, taking Ilya deeper. "Oh—fuck—Ilya."
Ilya held still inside him, trembling with restraint, his forehead pressed to Shane's temple. "You feel—Shane, you have no idea—I have been thinking about this every day—"
"Move. Please, move."
Ilya moved. Deep, rolling thrusts that hit Shane in exactly the right place, and Shane wrapped his legs around Ilya's hips and pulled him impossibly closer. They found each other's rhythm immediately, the way they always did—like their bodies had a shared language their mouths hadn't caught up to yet.
It was slow and intense and nothing like the frantic hallway blowjob minutes ago. This was Ilya taking his time, savoring, making up for twenty-three days with every stroke. Shane clung to him and let himself be taken, let the walls down, let Ilya see the raw, desperate need he usually kept locked behind his sternum.
"Mine," Shane heard himself say. He was barely conscious of the words leaving his mouth. "You're mine. Tell me you're mine."
"Yours." Ilya's voice was shattered. "Always. Only. Yours, Shane."
"Nobody else."
"Nobody else. Never."
Ilya shifted his angle and Shane cried out, back bowing off the bed, and Ilya wrapped his hand around Shane's cock and stroked him in time with his thrusts, and it was too much—the fullness and the friction and Ilya's eyes locked on his and twenty-three days of aching want cresting inside him all at once.
"I love you," Shane gasped, and this time it wasn't the coward's version, wasn't "you too" or silence or a deflection. It was the full, terrifying, unedited thing, pouring out of him with the same helpless urgency as his orgasm when it hit—overwhelming, obliterating, Shane's whole body seizing as he came between them with Ilya's name in his mouth.
Ilya buried himself deep and followed, his whole body shuddering, a broken sound muffled against Shane's shoulder. Shane held him through it, arms locked around his back, legs tight around his hips, keeping him as close as two people could be.
They lay there after, tangled together, breathing hard, sticky and spent. Neither of them moved to clean up. Shane kept his arms around Ilya and Ilya kept his face pressed to Shane's chest, and the room was quiet except for the sound of two people relearning how to breathe.
"Twenty-three days," Shane said.
"Never again," Ilya said.
"You can't actually promise that."
Ilya lifted his head. His eyes were bright. Fierce. "Watch me."
Later—clean, warm, Ilya wearing a pair of Shane's sweatpants that were slightly too short on him—they sat on Shane's couch in the dark and didn't turn the TV on. Ilya's head was on Shane's shoulder. Shane's hand was in Ilya's hair, idly combing through it. Outside, the snow was falling.
"I have confession," Ilya said.
"What?"
"I also have burner Instagram. To look at your page."
Shane stopped breathing. "You do not."
"I do. Is called—" He paused. "Okay, don't laugh."
"I'm going to laugh."
"Is called hockey_fan_definitely_not_ilya."
Shane laughed so hard his stomach hurt. Ilya grinned against his shoulder, pleased with himself, and Shane pulled him closer and pressed his lips to the top of his head and thought: twenty-three days of misery for this. Worth it. Every second worth it.
"I have another confession," Ilya said.
"What?"
"I ate your yogurt already."
"I bought it forty-five minutes before you got here."
"Yes. Is very good yogurt. Thank you."
Shane shook his head. He was still laughing. Ilya's hand found his under the blanket they'd pulled over themselves and threaded their fingers together, and they sat like that—quiet, close, ridiculous—until Shane felt himself starting to drift.
"Stay tonight," Shane murmured.
"Wild dogs could not drag me away."
"That's not the expression."
"Is Russian expression."
"It's definitely not."
"Shh. Am Russian. I know Russian expressions. Go to sleep."
Shane went to sleep. Ilya's heartbeat against his arm, steady as a metronome. The snow falling outside. Tomorrow they'd be rivals again—Shane in red, Ilya in black, sixty minutes of war on ice—and nobody in the arena would know that twelve hours earlier they'd been tangled together in the dark saying mine, yours, mine.
But they would know. And for now, that was enough.