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The last two minutes at the Garden never lasted two minutes.
They stretched, elastic and ugly, time pulled thin by whistles and stoppages and the kind of tension that made Shane’s teeth ache. Boston fans filled the place wall-to-wall, a dark, roaring animal that knew exactly what it wanted and didn’t care how loudly it demanded it. The scoreboard glared down: 5-4, Montreal.
Shane had already scored three times tonight. That fact sat in his body like a second heartbeat, bright and relentless. He could still feel the third one, the way the puck had come off his stick without hesitation, like his hands had decided to stop arguing with his brain for once. He could still see the crease chaos, the goalie dropping, the half-second opening, the net rippling.
It wasn’t his first hat-trick. It wasn’t his first in Boston. It didn’t make the building turn friendly.
If anything, it made the boos more personal.
Across the ice, Ilya was coasting near the red line, not even bothering to pretend he was tired. His helmet was tilted back slightly, like he was taking in the whole scene and daring it to displease him. Two goals, two assists. Shane had watched him make Boston dangerous again and again tonight, watched him create offence from nothing but speed and audacity, watched the Bears crowd rise to its feet because their golden idiot was going to drag them back into it if anyone could.
Shane’s stomach flipped, a familiar twist that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the fact that Ilya could still make him feel like he was seventeen and stupid.
It was always so fun playing against him.
The Bears goalie was on the bench. Six skaters in black and gold swarmed the Montreal zone, frantic, disciplined chaos. A point shot hammered through traffic; it hit someone’s shin pad and pinballed wide. Another shot. Another. The puck bounced to the half wall, then behind the net.
Shane didn’t think. He moved.
Stick in the lane. Shoulder into a body. A shove. A tangle of skates. The puck came loose near the corner, and for half a second it was just there, unclaimed, waiting for someone to have a moment of courage.
Ilya cut in like a knife.
Shane met him.
Their sticks clacked, their bodies collided, and the impact vibrated up Shane’s arms into his shoulders, into his jaw. The puck kicked free again, sliding toward the boards, and Shane chased it without looking at anything else because looking meant thinking and thinking meant hesitation.
He got to it first. He pinned it, felt a Bears player lean into his back, felt the boards bite his hip through his padding. He kept the puck dead. He kept breathing.
The crowd screamed. Not cheering. Not the swell of joy. The animal sound of displeasure. The sound of a thousand people asking for blood.
Shane glanced up anyway, just long enough to catch the far corner of the stands: a small pocket of red, a few hundred Voyageurs die-hards who had either flown in or lived here and suffered for it. They were on their feet, arms raised, faces bright. In the hostile hush everywhere else, their joy sounded bigger than it had any right to.
Time ran out. The horn went off like a verdict.
Boston didn’t erupt. Boston deflated, furious and loud in all the wrong ways. Boos spilled down from the stands, mixed with claps that were more about respect for effort than approval of outcome. A few hats hit the ice, tossed in grudging tribute and then immediately regretted, like the people who threw them had been possessed for a moment and now wanted their hands back.
Shane lifted his head. He found Ilya without trying.
Ilya looked straight at him across the length of the rink, the glass between them, the noise between them, the whole rivalry between them. His mouth was twisted in something that was almost a smile and almost a snarl. He tapped his stick once against the ice, slow and deliberate, like punctuation.
You’re lucky.
I’ll get you.
Shane felt it like a familiar bruise being pressed, and his lips twitched before he could stop it.
Then he turned, because if he didn’t turn, he’d keep looking.
He did the handshake line. He did the nods and the clipped good games. He did the careful regulation of his face as the Bears fans continued to boo, not really at him now but at everything: the loss, the season, the universe. The Garden wanted to be angry. It always did.
When he finally got down the tunnel, the noise dimmed, replaced by the slap of skates on concrete and the echo of voices. The air smelled like sweat and rubber and the sharp bite of cold that clung to equipment after the ice.
The locker room was already buzzing. Music was on too loud. Someone was laughing too hard. The kind of celebration that belonged to a road win and the fact that they’d managed to beat Boston in Boston, which always tasted better, like sugar with a sting.
Shane’s name got shouted. His back got slapped. His helmet got stolen, then tossed back at him. He let it happen. He did what he always did: he smiled when it was appropriate, he said the right words, he took the praise with the careful humility of someone who had been trained since adolescence to be a certain kind of man.
Inside his chest, everything was still humming.
He showered because that was what you did. He scrubbed the sweat off until his skin tingled. He stood under the hot water and let his muscles unclench in tiny increments. He counted breaths without meaning to. He dressed in clean clothes. He ate half a protein bar because his body needed something and his brain accepted that.
When he came back out, the guys were talking about going out. Of course they were. They always did in Boston, partly because it was Boston and partly because it was Boston and you didn’t leave the city without making some kind of point.
Shane put on his jacket. He checked his phone without checking his phone, a glance so quick it didn’t count as impatience.
No messages. Not yet. That was fine. They had rules.
Hayden sidled up next to him at some point, close enough that Shane could hear him without anyone else picking up the conversation. Hayden’s hair was still damp, his face flushed from the game and the shower and the win.
“You’re going out with us?” Hayden asked, casual.
Shane didn’t answer right away. He didn’t have to. The routine had existed long before Hayden knew the truth.
The chirps came anyway.
“Boston Lily’s gonna be pissed if you keep her waiting,” Renaud called from the other side of the room.
Koch joined in, “Hollander’s got more goals than he has words. Only thing he’s talkative with is Lily.”
Laughter. Friendly. Not cruel. The kind of team ribbing that was meant to keep him folded into the group, even when he didn’t drink much, even when he left early, even when he had always had an excuse.
Shane rolled his eyes in the way that made them laugh more. He didn’t have to perform embarrassment; the whole thing sat too close to the edge of reality. That was the point.
Hayden leaned in. “They’ll live,” he murmured, for Shane alone. “Go do your… Lily thing. I’ll make sure you’re accounted for.”
Shane’s throat tightened for a second, a small flash of gratitude he didn’t know what to do with. Not having to lie to Hayden anymore hadn’t made the situation simpler in any way that mattered operationally, but it had removed a particular kind of rot. Shane could feel the absence of it like missing pain.
“I’ll go out with them,” Shane said, audible enough for anyone listening, because the story required it. “For a bit.”
“Atta boy!” Mitty shouted. “Celebrate the hattie!”
They spilled out into Boston winter, into the bite of cold air that made Shane’s lungs protest. Cameras flashed. A couple of fans yelled from behind barricades. Someone shouted his name and something less polite. Shane kept his face smooth and his steps steady.
He went with the team to the bar they’d chosen. He stayed for the first round, even sipped at his beer before sliding it over to Hayden. He let the noise wash over him: music, laughter, the clatter of glasses, the constant hum of conversation. He nodded at the right times. He smiled. He kept his hands around a bottle of water because that was what he did and nobody argued with the captain.
A Bears fan in the corner booed him when he walked past. A man in a St-Simon jersey shouted something about traitors and Canadians. Shane didn’t react. He’d been in hostile buildings his whole career. He knew how to let it slide off his shoulders like sweat.
He watched the clock.
At a time that was late enough to be plausible but not so late that anyone would take notice, he made his exit. He told Hayden he was heading out. Hayden nodded, loud enough for anyone to hear, “Text me when you’re back.”
He took the last round of Lily jokes on the way out, nodded like it was nothing, and stepped into the cold. Hat down, head down, he walked two blocks before he flagged a cab. The driver didn’t recognize him. Or if he did, he didn’t care. Boston had its own stars; Shane was the enemy.
Shane gave the address without hesitation because he’d said it enough times that it had become part of him.
The cab smelled like old coffee and faint pine air freshener. The divider was up. The city slid past in blurred streaks of streetlights and brick. Shane sat with his hands clasped too tightly in his lap and tried not to think about how ridiculous his life was.
Boyfriends.
He’d said it in his head a hundred times since the cottage, rolling the word around like something dangerous and sweet. They were boyfriends. Not just whatever they’d been for years - secret, frantic, stolen, hidden. Not just sex. Not just rivalry.
Boyfriends meant future. Boyfriends meant making plans that weren’t just about the next hotel room.
It also meant that Shane had to keep moving like a spy anyway, because nothing else had changed outside the small circle of people who knew. That was okay; it was more than he had ever dared hope for.
His phone buzzed as the cab turned down a quieter road. A message lit up the screen from Theriault, congratulating them and reminding them of their early flight the next morning. Shane swiped away the message and opened his chat with Ilya. He must’ve been sat waiting, because Shane had a response within twenty seconds.
JANE: You home?
LILY: where else jane
JANE: You played well.
LILY: i score two and still you ruin my life
JANE: You ruin your own life just fine.
I’m just efficient about it.
LILY: you are smug
JANE: I am tired.
LILY: smug and tired. worst combination ugh
JANE: Did you seriously type out ‘ugh’?
LILY: and boring. also very boring. ugh
smug and tired and boring
hurry up so i can fix you
Shane stared at the screen for a moment, the familiar ache of fondness pressing against his ribs. He worried at the side of his thumb with his teeth, then typed back one-handed.
JANE: Almost there. Five minutes.
LILY: lies you take forever when you win
JANE: I am literally in the back of a cab right now?
LILY: ugh
JANE: You’re sulking.
LILY: i am BROODING. sulking is children doing. brooding is sexy.
JANE: You’re ridiculous.
LILY: maybe
hurry up so you can suck it out
door is unlocked
The cab pulled up to a house set back from the road, dark and private, hedges and trees creating a pocket of isolation in the city. The driveway was empty except for one car, and Shane didn’t need to look closely to know which one it was.
He paid the driver and got out. The cold hit him again, sharper now that the adrenaline from the bar was gone. His breath fogged. The quiet was thick, the kind of quiet that made his ears strain for threats out of habit.
He walked up the path. The porch light clicked on as he reached the steps, motion-sensor. Of course. Ilya loved drama and convenience in equal measure.
The door opened before Shane could knock.
Ilya stood in the doorway in sweatpants and a thin shirt, hair damp like he’d showered not long ago, eyes bright with something predatory and pleased. His expression was pure performance sulk: eyebrows drawn down, mouth set in a pout that did not belong on an adult man.
“You took forever,” Ilya said, voice low, like an accusation meant to be answered with penance.
Shane stepped inside, and the door closed behind him with a soft click that sounded too loud in the quiet house.
“Traffic,” Shane said. “Also, you lost.”
Ilya’s eyes narrowed. “You are very rude after I score two goals.”
“You still lost.”
Ilya made a sound like a growl, then grabbed Shane’s jacket at the collar and yanked him forward.
Shane didn’t have time to do anything but react. His hands came up instinctively, catching Ilya’s arms, fingers finding muscle and warmth. Their mouths collided, not gentle. Not careful. The kiss tasted like toothpaste and something else - ginger, maybe, or it was Shane’s brain filling in details because it liked patterns.
Ilya backed him into the wall just inside the foyer, the kind of relentless push that made Shane’s back hit plaster. The impact wasn’t painful, just firm enough to make Shane’s heart stutter. Ilya’s hands slid under Shane’s jacket, dragging it off his shoulders like an afterthought. Shane’s jacket hit the floor. Shane registered the fact that he should pick it up later and then lost the ability to care.
Ilya’s mouth moved to his jaw, his throat, teeth scraping just enough to feel like a warning. Shane’s hands went to Ilya’s waist, tugging him closer. There was a familiar urgency in it, the post-game exhale, the way competition translated into hunger so quickly it was embarrassing.
Shane’s brain narrowed down to sensation: the warmth of Ilya’s skin through fabric, the press of bodies, the sound of their breathing in the quiet house. His own breath came faster, catching on something that felt like laughter and frustration at once.
Ilya murmured something in Russian against Shane’s throat, soft and filthy and affectionate in the same breath. Shane didn’t catch the words - only the intent, the heat of it, the way Ilya’s mouth stayed just a fraction too long at the pulse under Shane’s jaw like he was taking inventory.
Shane’s hands were already under Ilya’s shirt, fingers splayed across warm skin. He dragged it up without finesse, because finesse was for daylight, for interviews, for things that weren’t this. The fabric bunched at Ilya’s ribs. Ilya made a pleased sound and let it happen, and that permission hit Shane like another shove.
Mine, Shane’s brain supplied, stupid and possessive. Mine, mine, mine.
Ilya backed him harder into the wall. Shane’s back met plaster again, the impact vibrating through him, and the jolt snapped something loose - restraint, maybe, or the last bit of distance that still pretended they were careful. Shane’s hands slid lower, greedy now, gripping at Ilya’s waist and the hard line of his hips. He tugged Ilya closer until there was no space left to argue in.
Clothes became obstacles. Shane’s shirt rode up. Ilya’s hands dug beneath it like he couldn’t stand the barrier, like he needed proof Shane was real under his fingers. Something tugged at Shane’s waistband - impatient, practiced - and then there was a strip of bare skin at Shane’s lower back, cold air hitting it for half a second before Ilya’s palm covered it again.
Shane heard himself make a sound that he would, in the sober light of morning, insist had been a cough.
Ilya laughed into his mouth like he’d won something. He probably had. Shane grunted and caught Ilya’s lower lip between his teeth.
They pressed together, desperate and clumsy, and the friction was its own kind of relief - enough to make Shane’s breath stutter, not enough to satisfy. Ilya moved like he always did when he was hungry and pleased and angry all at once: too close, too sure, like he could drag Shane into whatever pace he wanted just by existing. Shane let him, until he didn’t.
He hooked a hand at the back of Ilya’s neck and pulled him in, rougher than he meant to be. He kissed him like he was making a point. He shoved back, turned the angle, stole control for a second just to prove he could. Ilya made a sharp sound – surprised and delighted - and his eyes went bright in the way that always did Shane in.
And there - right there, in the mess of half-undone clothes and skin and heat - Shane saw them. The constellations he knew by heart: those scattered little marks on Ilya’s shoulder, spilling over and down his back, crawling up his neck and across his jaw like stars guiding Shane home. The ones Shane’s thumb always found, the ones his mouth had mapped more carefully than any playbook. He pressed his lips there, once, then again, and Ilya went still for half a beat, like the touch had reached something softer than lust.
“Zayka,” Ilya breathed, and it came out like a warning and a plea.
Shane’s hands slid lower, both of them panting now, both of them too close to laughing and too close to losing it. Shane’s grip tightened. Ilya’s breath hitched. The house was quiet except for them - the scrape of fabric, the harsh pull of air, the soft, involuntary sounds neither of them ever made in public.
They ended up on the floor without anyone deciding that was the plan. The rug bunched under Shane’s shoulder. Something dug into his hip in an unpleasant, domestic way - corner of a mat, maybe - and Shane would’ve cared in any other circumstance. He didn’t now. Ilya followed him down like gravity, like inevitability, like he’d been waiting all night for the moment Shane stopped standing up.
There was a frantic minute where everything was hands and mouths and the relentless need to be closer, closer, closer - until even that wasn’t enough and Shane’s brain narrowed down to nothing but sensation: heat, pressure, the weight of Ilya over him, the fact of him.
Then it tipped. Shane felt it coming and couldn’t stop it, couldn’t have stopped it even if he wanted to. Ilya made a broken sound against Shane’s mouth, all breath and swearwords and something almost tender, and Shane went taut and then loose, the world whitening at the edges before settling back into place.
Ilya was half on top of him, not crushing, just anchoring, chest rising and falling fast. His hair stuck up in ridiculous directions. His mouth was swollen. His eyes were bright, satisfied, and still mildly annoyed, because losing a hockey game was apparently not something sex could fully fix for him.
Shane swallowed. “I showered,” he said hoarsely, the words emerging from somewhere deep in his chest like a complaint his body had filed without consulting his pride.
Ilya grinned. “Yes. I can smell clean you. Very sad.”
“It’s not-,” Shane started, and then he laughed, because it wasn’t really a complaint. It was an observation, the way his life now consisted of showering and then immediately undoing the shower.
Ilya pushed up on his elbows, looked down at him with a deliberateness that made Shane’s throat tighten again. “Shower again, Solnyshko,” Ilya said. “We waste water together. It is romantic.”
Shane rolled his eyes because that was required. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You love it,” Ilya said, like it was a fact.
Shane’s denial hovered for a beat, then he swallowed it. “Don’t get smug,” he said instead, which wasn’t a denial at all, and Ilya’s grin widened like he’d heard the real answer anyway.
They got up, stumbling a little because their legs were not fully cooperating. Shane’s shirt was wrinkled. His face felt flushed. His skin felt too tight, too sticky. Ilya’s hand slid into Shane’s at some point, fingers threading together like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Upstairs, the bathroom was gaudy as always. Shane’s brain filed it under Ilya’s Taste, Unfortunately and moved on. The tiles were too shiny. The mirror was too big. The light fixtures looked like they belonged in a nightclub. The towels were soft in an expensive way that made Shane resent them. The rainfall showerhead loomed overhead, dramatic and unnecessary, like it had been designed by someone who thought subtlety was cowardice.
The only thing that caught Shane’s attention, really, was the shower curtain.
It was new. It had childish illustrations on it - bright, cartoonish, something that looked like a shark wearing a party hat, grinning next to a dolphin with sunglasses. It was ridiculous in a way that made Shane’s mouth twitch before he could stop it, because it was exactly the kind of ridiculous that had become predictable when it came to Ilya.
“You bought a shower curtain,” Shane said, because pointing it out was safer than laughing.
“Is fun,” Ilya said. He was already peeling his shirt over his head and tossing it somewhere behind him with no particular target, not caring that Shane was staring at a shark in a party hat like it was a moral failing.
“It is certainly something,” Shane managed.
Shane stepped out of his own clothes with more care, and folded them automatically - jeans on the bottom, shirt on top, socks tugged, everything squared. He set the stack on the counter, because if he didn’t, it would sit in his brain like an unfinished task.
Ilya was naked by the time Shane turned around, of course, eyes slow and unapologetic as they tracked Shane from throat to waist. Shane felt heat crawl down his neck onto his chest. He shoved Shane playfully and stepped into the shower first, filling the space like he owned it. He didn’t turn the water on. He just stood there, right in front of the controls, watching Shane with bright, lazy eyes.
“Move,” Shane said.
Ilya smiled. “You are very bossy.”
“And you’re an asshole.”
“Yes,” Ilya said, equally unhelpful as he was unrepentant. He stayed exactly where he was.
Shane repeated, under his breath, “Asshole,” and edged in anyway, having to slide past him to reach the handle. Ilya laughed softly and planted an open-mouthed kiss against Shane’s shoulder. Shane turned the water on and adjusted it by feel until it was right. Water thundered down, heavy and warm, and steam began to fill the air almost immediately. The sound was loud enough to blur the edges of thought, which Shane appreciated.
Ilya pressed closer behind him, chest against Shane’s back, hands sliding along Shane’s ribs like he was learning the shape by touch, his renewed interest making itself known against the back of Shane’s thigh.
Shane grabbed the soap, tried to focus on the practical. Soap was good. Soap was a task. Soap was a thing that had steps and a beginning and an end.
Ilya took the soap from him, effortlessly, like he’d been waiting for Shane to surrender the illusion of control. “I do,” Ilya said.
“I can-.”
“Yes, yes, you can do much, Mr. Hat-trick,” Ilya interrupted, voice warm. “You already showered yourself. Now is my turn to shower you.”
Shane could have argued. He didn’t. He stood there and let Ilya wash him, let Ilya’s hands move with a gentleness that didn’t match his mouth, let the water pound and steam and soften the world. Ilya’s fingers traced along Shane’s shoulders, down his arms, across his chest. Shane’s eyes fell half-closed. His brain flared with the usual warnings of too intimate, too soft, too much and then the warning fizzled, because nothing bad followed. Just Ilya’s hands, steady and warm, and the quiet truth Shane still wasn’t used to saying: this was his, now. Boyfriends. The thought ached from somewhere under his ribs.
Ilya’s fingers worked the soap into Shane’s shoulders and down his arms, slow and thorough, like he was memorizing muscle and bone. He skimmed across Shane’s chest, over his stomach, and Shane’s breath went shallow in spite of himself. The water ran between them in hot sheets, sliding over skin that still felt too awake from the game and the foyer and the fact that Ilya never did anything by halves.
Shane’s hands came up to brace against the tile, not because he was falling, but because his body wanted something solid. The tile was cool under his palms, a small contrast that kept him from dissolving entirely.
Ilya leaned in, mouth at Shane’s shoulder. He kissed once, soft, then just shy of sweet. then again with teeth, just enough to make Shane swear under his breath. He laughed quietly, the sound muffled by water and steam.
His hands slipped lower.
Shane’s breath caught, the inhale sharp and involuntary. His hips jerked a fraction, then stilled, as if he could negotiate with his own body by force of will.
Ilya’s grip closed around him with lazy certainty, like he’d always known exactly where to put his hand. The first stroke was slow, almost patient, and Shane had the absurd, panicked thought that he didn’t have time for patience; he had a flight in a few hours, he had a team, he had a life that ran on schedule.
His body did not care about schedule.
Ilya murmured something in Russian against Shane’s skin, and Shane’s mind tried, briefly, to translate. It gave up. The meaning was in the warmth of Ilya’s breath, in the way his hand moved, in the unhurried confidence that made Shane feel pinned without being trapped.
The water thundered over them, loud enough to blur the edges of thought. Shane’s forehead pressed to the tile, eyes half-closed. He could feel every shift of Ilya behind him: chest against his back, thighs bracketing him, the weight of attention like another hand.
Ilya’s free hand slid down Shane’s side, fingers splaying across his hip as if to steady him. It lingered there for a beat, possession radiating through its warmth, reassurance imprinted by its pressure, then drifted further back, palm flattening against Shane’s lower spine. The touch was grounding and infuriating in equal measure, as if Ilya had decided he was in charge of both Shane’s balance and his dignity.
“Il-,” Shane started, and the word broke apart into a sound that wasn’t his name.
Ilya made another quiet, satisfied noise and kept going, unbothered.
The hand at Shane’s back moved again, slower now. Fingers traced along the line where Shane’s body curved, skimming the edge of him, testing. Not rushing. Not crossing any line Shane didn’t want crossed - just pressing, stroking, the kind of touch that made heat pool low and vicious and left Shane with nowhere to put it.
Shane tensed, then tried to force himself to relax, because tensing made everything worse and better at once.
“Jesus, Ilya,” Shane breathed, not with anger, with something closer to surrender.
Ilya laughed against his shoulder, a soft puff of sound. “Yes,” he said, utterly pleased with himself.
His hand tightened fractionally while the other hand kept playing at Shane’s edges: a thumb that dragged slow along the curve of his ass, fingertips that pressed and teased as if they were searching for the exact point that would make Shane lose whatever composure he’d managed to cling to.
Shane’s breath stuttered. His grip on the tile tightened. His thighs trembled with the effort of staying still.
“Look at you,” Ilya murmured, the words turned warm by his accent. “So eager.”
The praise hit Shane like a shove. It shouldn’t have worked. It did.
His body was already too close to the edge, adrenaline stacked with desire, nerves raw from the game and soothed by hot water and Ilya’s hands. The room felt smaller with every second, the steam wrapping around them, the noise of the shower swallowing the world until there was nothing but sensation and the pressure of Ilya behind him.
It didn’t take long. It didn’t need to.
Shane’s whole body went tight, then broke. His breath punched out of him, loud in the tiled space, and he couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through him, the way his knees threatened to give even though he was braced. Ilya held him through it without changing pace, without letting him slip, his hand steady and unyielding and almost gentle.
Ilya kissed his neck again, softer this time. “Good boy,” he said as if he was praising a dog.
Shane elbowed him weakly. “Shut up.”
Ilya laughed, bright and satisfied.
Steam clung to them in layers, the water loud enough that it should’ve made everything simple. It didn’t. It just made Ilya feel closer - too close - warm skin and careless confidence and the kind of attention that always did Shane in faster than the sex itself.
Ilya’s laughter faded into a low hum as he looked down at Shane, still behind him, still pressed in like he hadn’t finished wanting. Like he never finished wanting.
Shane didn’t think about it long enough to talk himself out of it. He turned in Ilya’s arms, caught his wrist for balance, and dropped-.
Too fast. His knee struck the tile harder than he meant it to, a sharp bite of pain that made him hiss through his teeth.
Ilya made a sound that could have been concern, could have been satisfaction. He reached out automatically, hands on Shane’s shoulders, steadying him as if Shane were the fragile thing here. He wasn’t. He just wasn’t built for kneeling on tile in a shower designed by someone who’d never had to kneel on tile.
“Christ,” Shane muttered, more to himself than Ilya.
Ilya’s fingers tightened briefly, like a warning not to be stupid about pain. Then he looked down at Shane, really looked, eyes blown wide in the dim, pupils swallowing up the color. His mouth was parted, condensation from the shower clinging to his lips, and for a second he didn’t look smug or cocky or anything that belonged on the ice. He looked undone. Reverent. Like Shane had done something generous without being asked.
That, more than anything else, made Shane’s chest go tight.
“Zaychik,” Ilya breathed, voice rough with it, the name slipping out like a confession.
Shane’s hands moved without much ceremony. He’d always been good with his hands; hockey demanded it. The shower demanded it differently. He pressed in close, close enough that the water ran between them and made everything slick and easy, and he let Ilya have the one thing he never seemed to get enough of: Shane, choosing this. Shane, on purpose.
Ilya’s head tipped back against the tile. The sound he made was not dignified. It was also not quiet. The shower couldn’t swallow all of it: little sharp swears, English and Russian tangled together, Ilya’s fingers curling hard into Shane’s wet hair like he needed something to hold onto.
Shane kept his focus narrow and practical, the way he always did when his body wanted to run ahead of his mind. Pressure. Rhythm. Attention. The small adjustments that turned fine into right. The part of him that liked doing things correctly latched onto it with grim satisfaction.
Ilya’s hands slid from Shane’s shoulders to cradle the back of his head, not pushing, just holding - an anchor. His thumbs brushed Shane’s temples, absurdly gentle for a man who’d tried to murder him on the ice not even an hour ago.
Then Ilya went tense, all at once, and Shane felt the shift like a change in weather: the intake of breath, the stutter of it, the way Ilya’s whole body tightened as if he’d been struck. Ilya’s voice broke on Shane’s name, the sound punched out of him like he couldn’t help it and swallowed by the roar of the water and the way Ilya shook.
For a moment, Shane stayed where he was, braced on one knee and one foot, letting Ilya come back to himself. He didn’t need to look up to know Ilya’s expression; he could feel it in the way Ilya’s hands stayed on him afterward, careful and grateful and unwilling to let go.
Shane finally leaned back, wiping water from his face with the heel of his hand. His jaw ached in that particular, self-satisfied way that meant he’d done a job properly, as if Ilya’s breathless string of profanities hadn’t been evidence enough. He shifted his knee off the worst part of the tile, wincing, and Ilya made a quiet, disapproving noise.
“You are going to bruise,” Ilya said, voice soft now, almost affectionate.
Shane snorted, the sound startlingly uncharacteristic in the small, echoing space. “As if you aren’t planning to add to it later.”
Ilya’s mouth curved, pleased and wicked in equal measure, and he hauled Shane up by the arms with easy strength, pulling him back against his chest like he wanted Shane upright and safe and within reach. He kissed Shane’s temple - once, quick - and then, because he couldn’t help himself, murmured, “Very good boy,” like he hadn’t learned a thing.
Shane elbowed him again, this time with more conviction.
They toweled off in the damp, echoing quiet. Shane did what he always did - dragged the towel through his hair, pressed it briefly to his face, wrung water from the ends with efficient hands - only he wasn’t really paying attention to himself.
Ilya was all wrong angles and impatience, scrubbing at his hair like it had personally offended him, then dragging the towel over his shoulders and calling it done. Water ran in thin lines down his back, one bead catching the groove of his spine before it slipped lower, tracking neatly into the shallow cleft between the curves of his ass and vanishing. Ilya shook out his hair and sent droplets everywhere, utterly unbothered.
Shane caught himself watching. Too long. Too openly.
Ilya’s gaze snapped up, and his mouth twitched. One eyebrow lifted, slow and insolent, so familiar it yanked Shane sideways in time, back to that dingy dressing-room shower after that stupidly fateful shoot. Shane trying not to look and failing, Ilya catching him and making it a problem on purpose.
Heat crawled up Shane’s neck. He made a face at Ilya by pure reflex and then went back to toweling himself off with unnecessary thoroughness, like he could erase the evidence. In the mirror, his eyes kept flicking back anyway.
Ilya huffed a laugh, the soft kind that said he’d seen straight through Shane’s sudden enthusiasm for toweling. Shane caught Ilya’s expression in his reflection a second later – smug and pleased ad insufferably fond. Like he’d won something. Again. The bastard.
Downstairs, the house was dim, lit by a few lamps and the low glow from the kitchen. The air smelled faintly of something warm - garlic? lemon? Shane’s brain tried to identify it and then realized it wasn’t important enough to warrant effort.
The kitchen looked like it always did: too sleek, too empty, designed more for showing off than living. Except it wasn’t empty now.
On the counter sat a can of ginger ale, cold enough that condensation slicked the plastic. Next to it were snacks - plantain chips and seaweed chips, both in bags that looked aggressively virtuous. Shane set his palm around the ginger ale without thinking, popped the tab, and took a swallow like his body had been waiting for it.
The fact that Ilya kept Shane’s chosen drink and snacks stocked in his house was not new. The fact that it still made something warm and uncomfortable bloom in Shane’s chest was, apparently, unchangeable, if not unsurprising.
“I bought your weird chips,” Ilya announced, leaning against the counter like he was presenting a prize.
“They’re not weird,” Shane said automatically, tearing open the seaweed chips.
Ilya made a face. “They taste like ocean.”
Shane ate one. It tasted like salt and faint fish and a strange, crisp bitterness that his brain had decided was enjoyable years ago. “You eat raw fish,” Shane pointed out.
“Yes. Fish is supposed to taste like ocean,” Ilya said, as if this was a devastating argument.
Shane took another sip of ginger ale. The carbonation stung his throat pleasantly. The sugar hit his bloodstream like a small mercy.
Ilya opened the fridge, pulled out a container, and set it on the counter with a kind of casual care that didn’t fool anyone. He didn’t look at Shane while he did it. Which was, in itself, suspicious.
“I made food,” Ilya said, like he was announcing he’d successfully put his keys in a bowl by the door.
Shane stared at the container. It was labelled, because of course it was. Not with a neat little printed sticker - this wasn’t that kind of house - but with Ilya’s messy handwriting on a strip of tape. Shane couldn’t read it from here. He didn’t move closer yet. Moving closer felt like admitting something.
“You cooked,” Shane said instead, because that was safer than why.
Ilya shrugged, still not looking. “I can cook.”
Shane made a noise that might have been disbelief if he’d put any effort into it. His chest went oddly tight anyway, warm and stupid, the kind of feeling that arrived without asking permission and then sat down like it lived here.
Ilya finally glanced up, quick and defiant, as if daring Shane to comment. “This fits your… macrobullshit,” he added with a hand flourish, the word coming out with perfect, practiced contempt. “Macro… bio… It is the one where you eat like rabbit and pretend it is spiritual.”
Shane’s mouth twitched. “It’s macrobiotic,” he corrected, because his body would dissolve if he didn’t cling to at least one rule. “And it’s not spiritual.”
Ilya’s eyes flicked to the container again. “Mm. Sure.”
Shane flipped the lid. Inside was an actual meal. Not just protein plus whatever was in the fridge, not just pasta, problem solved. There was a grain - brown rice, maybe - vegetables cut to roughly the same size, something that smelled like ginger and garlic and miso. It looked… considered. It looked like someone had cared enough to think about more than just calories.
He swallowed, because the feeling in his chest was suddenly too big for the amount of air in the room.
“You didn’t salt it,” Shane said before he could stop himself.
Ilya’s eyebrows shot up. A faint pink crept up his cheeks, quick enough that Shane could’ve pretended he imagined it if he wanted to lie to himself. “Of course I didn’t,” Ilya said immediately, too loud. “I read your stupid list.”
“It’s not a list,” Shane said automatically.
Ilya gave him a look that said it’s absolutely a list, and then, because he couldn’t leave it alone, added, “Also, you make face when too salty. Like kotik.”
“I don’t-,” Shane started, then stopped, because yes, he did. He cleared his throat instead. “You researched it.”
“No,” Ilya said instantly.
Shane waited.
Ilya rolled his eyes. “Fine. Little bit. Not like… a lot. Russians do not research. We just know things.”
“Russians don’t research,” Shane repeated blandly.
Ilya leaned a hip against the counter, arms folding, chin lifting with theatrical offence. “No.”
“And Russians don’t blush,” Shane said, because he couldn’t help himself.
Ilya’s eyes widened. “I am not blushing.”
Shane looked pointedly at the color still lingering high on Ilya’s cheekbones.
Ilya waved a hand. “Is… steam. From shower. You made it too hot.”
“I made it the correct temperature.”
Ilya huffed, then pointed at the container again as if it had started this argument. “Eat, Hollander. Before you start talking about grains and yin and yang and… and whatever.”
“It’s not yin and yang,” Shane muttered, but his voice had gone softer without his permission. He slid the container into the microwave because that was the next practical step, because doing something with his hands was easier than looking at Ilya and letting the warmth in his chest out.
The microwave beeped. Shane flinched internally and pretended he didn’t. He watched the numbers count down, one second at a time, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that Ilya had cooked - properly cooked - for him. Not thrown something together. Not fed him out of convenience. Fed him like Shane was expected to stay.
The container was warm when Shane pulled it out. The lid bowed slightly with steam; the smell hit him again, sharper now: ginger and miso, and something bright and citrusy. He set it on the counter and reached for two forks before he could decide whether he wanted to be the kind of person who asked Ilya if he’d also like a plate. The kind of person who acknowledged, in words, that this wasn’t a pit stop.
Shane was aware of Ilya’s eyes on him the way you were aware of a spotlight. Ilya lounged against the opposite counter, arms folded, his curls still a little undefined from the shower - half-dried, half-given up, perfectly on brand. He tracked the container with the kind of attention he usually reserved for pucks and grudges.
“Is it… acceptable?” Ilya asked, voice casual, like he wasn’t asking.
Shane’s throat did a stupid thing. He worked around it by lifting the lid again, because he could handle vegetables. He could handle rice. He could handle the fact that the pieces were cut evenly.
“It smells good,” Shane said, which was not quite the same as praise, but it wasn’t nothing.
Ilya’s mouth twitched. “Yes. I am amazing.”
“You are unbearable,” Shane said automatically, and carried the container to the kitchen island.
The island was big enough to be a stage, which was absurd for a house that usually only held one person. Shane climbed onto a stool at one corner. Ilya took the stool beside him, close enough that their knees almost touched, close enough that it would have been uncomfortable if Shane hadn’t already done far worse with that knee tonight.
Their feet found each other under the overhang without anyone making the choice out loud. Shane’s sock brushed Ilya’s bare ankle. Ilya’s toes nudged Shane’s heel, lazy and persistent, like a cat trying to get attention. Shane’s foot slid back, then forward again, because apparently he was participating in this now.
They ate.
The first bite settled in Shane’s stomach like practical relief. The second made something warmer bloom behind his sternum - annoyingly bright and impossible to ignore. It wasn’t surprising. It was just… still new, having Ilya’s care show up this plainly in the open.
“This is good,” Shane said, and his chest tightened with that warm, inconvenient sincerity he couldn’t quite hide.
Ilya’s gaze flicked up fast. The corners of his ears pinked, faintly, and he looked away as if offended by his own face.
“Russians do not blush,” Ilya said pre-emptively, stabbing his fork into a piece of broccoli with unnecessary force.
Shane huffed a laugh through his nose. “Sure.”
Ilya’s foot pressed into Shane’s, harder. Shane pressed back.
They ate in a quiet that didn’t feel empty. The house wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t dead, either. The fridge hummed; somewhere in the vents, air moved. Outside, Boston existed, but it might as well have been another country.
Ilya wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like a fucking Neanderthal, and Shane’s brain snagged on the two grains of rice still stuck to his face. “People talk,” Ilya said.
Shane’s head lifted. “About what?”
Ilya gave him a look. “About me, Hollander. Always about me.”
Shane rolled his eyes because it was required. “You’re not the center of the universe.” He reached over, wiped Ilya’s cheek with his thumb, and deposited the rice in a napkin.
“I am in Boston,” Ilya said, perfectly serious. “So yes.” Then his expression shifted, irritation cutting in. “They say I… what is thing. I am pushing up money.”
Shane’s face did something involuntary, a small twist of disgust at the shape of the rumor. “Squeezing,” he supplied automatically.
Ilya’s eyes flicked to him, pleased and offended at once. “Da. Yes. Squeezing Bears. More money. More years. That I am greedy.” He stabbed his fork into a piece of vegetable like it was the columnist who’d written it.
Shane exhaled through his nose. “They call everyone greedy the second they don’t sign the first offer.”
Ilya snorted. “But for me is… special greedy. Because I am Russian. Because I talk too much. Because I smile when I score.” He bared his teeth in a mock grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Because Ilya Rozanov cannot want anything unless he is villain.”
Shane’s foot nudged his under the overhang, more a reminder than comfort. “Boston media needs a story.”
“They always need story,” Ilya said, and then, in the same breath, softer, “Bears fans are angry already.”
Shane’s mouth tightened. He didn’t like the way that landed in his chest. He didn’t like how easily guilt tried to latch on, searching for something to fix. “They’ve been good to you,” he said before he could stop himself. It wasn’t an argument. It was just true. Boston had given Ilya a home, a team built around him, the crown and the noise and the adoration.
Ilya’s foot kicked his shin under the counter. Not hard, more like a warning tap. “Stupid,” he said immediately.
Shane blinked. “What?”
“You say it like I owe them my whole life.” Ilya leaned forward, eyes sharp. “Bears are fine. Boston is fine. But this-,” His fingers tapped the edge of Shane’s plate, once, like punctuation. “This is my choice.”
Shane swallowed. His throat tightened in that quiet, annoying way it did when Ilya was right.
Ilya kept going, because he always did when he thought Shane was about to spiral into responsibility he didn’t actually have. “Also,” Ilya added, performing casualness with the finesse of a wrecking ball, “they will be okay without me. They have money when I leave. They can - how you say - get new blood, yes? They draft some kid with fresh teeth and no fear. They build again. Is what teams do.”
Shane made a face, because picturing fresh teeth and no fear as a scouting report was very Ilya and also unfortunately accurate.
Ilya’s mouth twitched, catching Shane’s expression. “You feel guilty,” he accused, lightly.
“I don’t,” Shane lied, reflexive.
Ilya’s eyebrow lifted.
Shane sighed. “I just-,” He stopped. He didn’t want to turn this into confession. He didn’t want to make Ilya responsible for managing Shane’s emotions about Ilya leaving Boston. That was backwards. “It’s a lot,” he said instead, neutral enough to be true.
Ilya’s foot slid against his again, gentler now. “Da. It is a lot,” he agreed, like he understood the whole sentence Shane hadn’t said. “But not your job to carry.”
Shane’s chest eased by a fraction. He took another bite because that was what you did with feelings that didn’t have a clean place to go.
Ilya leaned back, restless. “Anyway,” he said, like he hadn’t just kicked Shane out of a guilt spiral with his foot. “Yuna heard things.”
Shane’s gaze snapped up despite himself. “What things?”
Ilya’s smile turned sharp, pleased. “Ottawa things. Hockey people talking to hockey people.” He tipped his fork at Shane. “Not official. Before you start making your worried face.”
Shane made a face. It was not his worried face, despite what Ilya might argue. “I’m not-.”
Ilya’s eyebrows lifted.
Shane shut his mouth. He took another bite. He chewed. He swallowed. “What did she hear?”
Ilya shrugged, casual in the way he only ever managed when he was trying very hard to be casual. “That they are interested. That they are keeping space. That they ask things. What I want. Money. Years. House. All the boring things.” Ilya reached over and closed his hand around Shane’s, a brief squeeze. “Do not worry, moya lyubov (my love). She tells them nothing.”
Shane let out a slow breath and squeezed back. “She wouldn’t.”
“Da,” Ilya said, smug with pride and a little awe. “Your mother is terrifying.”
“She’s competent,” Shane corrected automatically.
“Also terrifying,” Ilya insisted, and his mouth twitched like he liked saying it.
Shane exhaled slowly. That was better. Not a circus. Just the pre-storm weather everyone pretended wasn’t a storm. “As long as nobody’s stupid about it,” he said.
Ilya gave him a look. “I am not stupid. Yuna is not stupid.”
“And you,” Shane said, because he couldn’t not ask again, “you want Ottawa.”
Ilya’s gaze held his. It didn’t waver. “Yes.”
The certainty landed in Shane’s chest like a weight and a promise at the same time. He nodded once, because he trusted himself to do that without his voice doing something humiliating.
He took a bite he didn’t taste, just to give his hands something to do. The practical part of his brain latched on to the only foothold it could find.
“So,” Shane said, carefully casual, “have you looked at the housing market out there?”
Ilya blinked, then smiled like Shane had just told a joke he’d been waiting for. “Ah. Here he is. Mr. Real Estate.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “I’m asking a question.”
“You are asking like you will make spreadsheet,” Ilya said, delighted. “You will have columns. Closets. Attic. Distance to rink.”
“I-,” Shane started, then stopped, because he absolutely would. “It’s just, you’re going to need a place.”
“I have place,” Ilya said, waving a hand at the house around them, as if Boston was going to follow him to Ottawa out of sheer force of personality.
“You’re leaving this place,” Shane pointed out.
Ilya’s mouth twitched. “Yes. Tragic.”
Shane made a face at him.
Ilya’s eyes slid over Shane’s face, sharp and amused. “You are already planning. In your head. I can see.”
“I’m not-.”
Ilya’s eyebrows lifted in silent, infuriating disbelief.
Shane sighed, because lying was exhausting. “I’m thinking,” he admitted, flatly. “It’s what I do.”
“Yes,” Ilya said, and there was something warm under the teasing. “You think so hard for both of us.”
Shane’s stomach tightened in that stupid way it did when Ilya said things like that. He swallowed it down with another bite.
“The cottage,” Ilya said suddenly, like he’d been continuing the conversation in his head the whole time. “We have cottage.”
Shane’s fork paused. We have cottage. We. The pronoun landed and stayed lodged somewhere under his ribs, annoying and bright. He forced his hand to keep moving. “It’s not close to Ottawa.”
“No,” Ilya agreed, unbothered. “But is close to halfway.”
“It’s still a drive,” Shane said automatically. Two hours from Montreal, give or take. Less from Ottawa, depending on where exactly you were coming from. His brain started mapping routes before he could stop it.
Ilya shrugged. “Better than hotel. Better than sneaking.” His mouth curved. “And it is private. I like private.”
Shane’s chest warmed again, the quiet kind. Private meant no one watching them walk into the same elevator. No one noticing two men leaving the same room in the morning. No one counting.
“Also,” Ilya repeated, too casual, “it is ours.”
Shane’s fingers tightened around his fork. He made himself breathe. He made himself take another bite.
He told himself Ilya meant it the sensible way. The cottage was where they met. Therefore, theirs. A shared place. A point on the map they both knew how to reach. It didn’t have to mean anything else.
Shane’s chest refused to cooperate with logic.
“It’s good for meeting,” Shane said, because he needed to anchor the sentence in something practical. “During the season.”
“Yes,” Ilya said, pleased. “And then I need house near Ottawa.”
“Have you looked?” Shane asked again, quieter this time. “At neighborhoods. Outside the city.”
Ilya made a face. “Why outside? City has restaurants.”
“Privacy,” Shane said, then added, because Ilya was Ilya, “and you hate traffic.”
“I do not hate-,” Ilya started, then stopped under Shane’s stare. “Fine. I hate traffic. But outside city is boring.”
“That’s the point,” Shane said.
Ilya leaned back on his stool, studying him. “You are already choosing my house.”
“I’m not,” Shane said reflexively, then saw Ilya’s expression - open, amused, expectant - and felt himself trip over his own instincts. The truth was, he didn’t want to overstep. He didn’t want to act like he belonged in Ilya’s future before Ilya had signed anything, before anything was real enough to touch.
Shane tried again, slower. “I’ll be happy with whatever you find.”
Ilya snorted.
Shane frowned. “What?”
“You say this like you did not judge my bathroom,” Ilya said, accusatory and delighted all at once. “First time you walk upstairs, you make face like interior designer on TV.”
Shane’s ears went warm. “Your bathroom needs judging.”
Ilya’s smile widened. “Ah. See? Mr. Real Estate.”
“It’s not-,” Shane started, then gave up. “It’s gaudy.”
“It is fun,” Ilya said, stubborn.
“It’s… loud,” Shane corrected, because even now he wasn’t sure if gaudy was too far. It still was.
Ilya’s gaze flicked over him, and Shane could see the exact moment the teasing turned into fondness, bright and a little smug. “And you still like my shower,” Ilya said, like it was a fact.
Shane opened his mouth to deny it and closed it again. He took another bite instead.
Ilya huffed a laugh. “Anyway,” he said, mercifully letting Shane keep his dignity. “I do not care much about house. I need door that locks. Big shower. Bath. Fridge.”
“That’s your entire list,” Shane said.
“Yes,” Ilya said, perfectly serious. “It is good list.”
“It’s not a list,” Shane muttered automatically, and then hated himself for it.
Ilya’s eyebrows rose. “You see? You already start. You will have opinions.”
Shane’s foot shifted on the rung of the stool. He tried to keep his voice steady. “It’s not just opinions. You’ll be living there.”
“Yes,” Ilya said, and then, like he’d only just noticed the word choice himself, he added, a little slower, “and you will be there too. Sometimes. It is also your place. Sort of.”
Shane’s stomach flipped. He kept his gaze on his food because looking at Ilya felt like inviting disaster. “Sort of,” he repeated, neutral, because neutral was safer than the truth, which was that his chest had gone tight with something almost painful.
Ilya’s mouth twitched again. “So you should choose. Mr. Real Estate.”
“I’m not choosing your house,” Shane said, but there was less conviction in it now.
Ilya leaned forward, eyes bright. “Why not? You will not let me buy house with stupid bathroom.”
“It’s not the bathroom,” Shane said, then paused, because it was absolutely the bathroom. “It’s everything.”
Ilya’s smile softened around the edges, as if he’d heard what Shane couldn’t quite say. “Yes,” Ilya said. “You are practical.”
The word shouldn’t have done anything to Shane. Practical wasn’t a compliment, not really. It was what you called someone when you meant neurotic but loved them anyway. Except the way Ilya said it, so warm and pleased, like it was something worth wanting, made Shane’s face go hot all at once. Shane lowered his gaze to his food like it could save him, chewing too carefully, and let the soft, stupid feeling sit in his chest without arguing with it.
They finished eating more slowly after that, as if neither of them wanted to be the first to make the evening move on. Shane scraped the last of the rice from the container with the edge of his fork because leaving it felt like waste, and because Ilya had made it. Ilya ate with less attention to the food than to Shane, watching in that irritatingly open way, like he wasn’t even trying to pretend he didn’t care whether Shane finished.
When there was nothing left but a couple of smears on the container and the soft clink of cutlery, Ilya shoved his stool back and took Shane’s plate before Shane could stack it properly. He carried it to the sink like it was an afterthought, then paused as if he’d forgotten what sinks were for.
Shane set his fork down and got up. He gathered the container and the stray napkin with the rice grains in it, because those were tasks and tasks were safe. He walked them to the counter, then to the sink, and the kitchen looked wrong to him in the way it always did after a meal: surfaces busy, things out of place, the kind of low-level chaos his body refused to ignore.
“I’ll do the dishes,” Shane said, and it came out like a simple statement of fact, not an offer.
Ilya leaned against the counter again, watching him. “Of course you will,” he said, pleased, as if Shane had just proved a point.
Shane turned on the tap, adjusted it without thinking and started rinsing plates. He found the rhythm fast: scrape, rinse, stack. His shoulders loosened one fraction at a time, the way they always did when his hands had something to be competent at.
Ilya hovered for exactly thirty seconds before it apparently offended him. He opened a drawer, found a dish towel, and shook it out with unnecessary drama. “I help,” he announced.
Shane’s mouth twitched. “You’re going to make it worse.”
Ilya’s eyebrows rose. “Rude.”
Shane rinsed a fork, then another. “Accurate.”
Ilya took a plate from the drying rack and started wiping it with the kind of enthusiasm he brought to tasks he didn’t actually respect. He missed an entire wet patch, held it up like he was presenting proof of his labour, and looked expectant.
Shane stared at the plate. His eye twitched.
“What?” Ilya demanded, already laughing.
“You didn’t dry it,” Shane said flatly.
“I did,” Ilya insisted.
“You-,” Shane stopped, because the argument was pointless and also familiar enough to be almost comforting. “Give it to me.”
“No,” Ilya said, delighted by Shane’s tone. He dried the plate again, aggressively, as if offended by the idea of moisture. “See? Dry.”
Shane set the other plate in the sink and forced himself to keep moving. “Teamwork,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
“Yes,” Ilya said, smug. “Teamwork.”
Shane washed. Ilya dried badly. Shane tried not to correct every single thing, which was its own kind of restraint and therefore exhausting. Water splashed his shirt. He ignored it. A fork slipped and clinked too loudly against the sink; Shane’s shoulders jumped and he pretended they hadn’t.
Halfway through, his brain snagged on something sharp and unfinished.
The jacket.
He could see it where it had landed in the foyer, crumpled on the rug like evidence. It had been sitting out there this whole time, and now that Shane’s nervous system had dropped below a certain threshold, it became unbearable. The thought lodged behind his sternum like grit.
Shane shut off the tap, wiped his hands on the dish towel he wasn’t supposed to use because Ilya would dry with it and that was disgusting, and said, “One second.”
Ilya looked up mid-wipe. “Where you go?”
Shane didn’t answer. Answering would require admitting that a jacket on the floor had been living rent-free in his brain.
He walked out of the kitchen, down the short hallway, and into the foyer. The jacket was exactly where he’d left it. He picked it up, smoothed it once and hung it in the closet, straightening the shoulders like it mattered. He closed the door with soft precision and turned back.
Ilya was leaning in the doorway, dish towel in hand, watching him like Shane had just performed a party trick.
“You are insane,” Ilya said, not unkind.
“Shut up,” Shane said, but his face was warm.
Ilya’s mouth curved. “You feel better?”
“Yes,” Shane admitted, because there was no point lying when Ilya had clearly memorized the pattern.
Ilya stepped closer and bumped his shoulder into Shane’s, a gentle shove that made it feel like teasing instead of comfort. “Okay,” he said, as if he’d given Shane permission to be himself. “Come. Finish your dishes.”
Back in the kitchen, Shane turned the tap on again and resumed the rhythm. Ilya returned to his post as Official Dryer, still incompetent, still smug. Shane corrected him twice and only hated himself once for it.
When the last container was stacked and the last fork was rinsed, Shane ran the cloth over the counter in straight lines, because crooked lines left streaks and streaks were wrong. He hung the dish towel back up. He set the sponge exactly where it belonged. Only then did his shoulders drop properly, the tension draining in a slow, reluctant release.
Ilya watched him in that quiet way of his, steady and unguarded. Shane tried not to think too hard about what it did to him. It didn’t work. Something warm tightened in his chest anyway, and the words rose up – impatient and simple and familiar as his own name.
“I love you,” Shane said.
He said it the way he’d said it a hundred times: quietly, like a fact, like a hand reaching for something familiar in the dark. It shouldn’t have made his throat tighten. It did, because this wasn’t a hotel room or a hurried goodbye; this was a kitchen, a sink, a jacket hung in a closet like it belonged. Ilya’s gaze held, and Shane felt it everywhere.
Ilya’s expression shifted. Not startled, exactly. Not shocked. Just that brief, soft flicker Shane had learned to look for: the moment it landed. The moment Ilya let it in.
“Da,” Ilya said, and his mouth curved, pleased and a little smug, like Shane had just behaved correctly. “I know.”
Shane huffed, the sound half a laugh, half an annoyed exhale. “You could say it back.”
“I always say it back,” Ilya pointed out, infuriatingly calm. Then he leaned in, close enough that Shane could see the faint dampness still clinging at Ilya’s hairline and the way his pupils widened when he looked at Shane like that. “I love you,” he added, quieter, as if he was aiming it precisely.
Shane swallowed, heat crawling up his neck. It was the same sentence, but it hit differently in this light, in this room, with Ilya close enough to see the softness he usually kept hidden.
Ilya stepped closer. The space between them disappeared with the same inevitability it always did. He kissed Shane like he’d been waiting for permission, and Shane gave it without thinking, hands finding Ilya’s waist, pulling him in. It wasn’t frantic like the foyer, and it wasn’t careful like they were trying to behave. It was hot and familiar and a little stupid, all teeth and breath and the kind of laughter that kept getting swallowed between kisses.
Shane’s back hit the counter. Cold stone kissed through his shirt. He made a small, irritated sound about it, and Ilya laughed into his mouth, pleased with himself, and kissed him harder as if that was an apology.
Shane hooked a hand at the back of Ilya’s neck and pulled, just to feel Ilya yield. Ilya made a low sound that was more satisfaction than complaint and pressed closer, body heat and insistence, like he was reminding Shane that yes, they were done with dishes, but they weren’t done with each other. Neither of them bothered pretending their bodies weren’t reacting; it was pointless. It was also, strangely, comforting. Just another normal, unhidden thing in a night full of them.
Shane’s hands slid under Ilya’s shirt, palms warm against skin. He felt Ilya shiver, felt Ilya’s answering grin against his mouth. For a second it was so easy to forget about flights and hotels and the careful choreography of secrecy. It was just them, crowded into a kitchen in Boston, kissing like they were seventeen again, reckless and unsupervised.
Shane’s brain, traitorous, supplied an image of them doing this somewhere else. Ottawa, maybe, in a house with a door that locked and a shower that wasn’t ridiculous and a bathroom that was still probably going to need judging. A place where Shane didn’t have to leave before dawn like he was doing something wrong.
The thought was so sweet it hurt.
Ilya pulled back first, breathing a little harder, eyes bright in that way that always made Shane feel like he’d missed a step in the conversation. He stayed close anyway, his forehead hovering near Shane’s, hands still on Shane’s waist like he hadn’t decided to stop so much as paused.
“I found something,” Ilya said, casual in the way he got when he was trying not to be.
Shane’s eyebrows lifted. “Something what.”
Ilya’s mouth twitched. “Movie. On Netflix.” He said Netflix like it was slightly offensive. “Russian.”
Shane huffed a small laugh. “Of course it is.”
“It is good,” Ilya insisted immediately, which was always the first sign it was sentimental. “You want?”
Shane should have made a joke. He didn’t. “Yeah,” he said, because the answer was easy.
Ilya looked pleased by it, quick and bright, then covered it with a shove to Shane’s shoulder like he was moving a piece of furniture. “Come,” he said, already turning toward the living room.
Shane followed, because of course he did.
Ilya scooped up the remote from the coffee table and flicked the TV on, scrolling with quick, impatient taps like he already knew where it was and resented being made to prove it. Shane sat down beside him and hesitated for only a second before swinging his legs over Ilya’s lap, claiming the space the way he’d started to lately, like it was allowed. Which it was, now. Ilya’s hand settled warm on Shane’s thigh, heavy and quiet, not asking for anything. He grabbed the blanket from the armrest and threw it over them with unnecessary force. Shane adjusted it immediately until it sat right, and Ilya made a soft, pleased sound like he’d expected nothing less.
The title card flashed in Cyrillic. The preview image looked grainy and dramatic: someone in a long coat, smoke, a city street at night.
“This one,” Ilya said, and hit play before Shane could comment.
Shane settled onto the couch. “What is it?”
“Old,” Ilya said, like that explained everything. Then, a beat later, because it mattered, “Sveta and I used to watch when we were kids. Too young, probably.”
Shane’s eyebrows lifted. “How young is ‘too young’?”
Ilya shot him a look. “Small. I like action. Sveta likes, how you say, chaos? Da, chaos.” His mouth twitched. “It is about thief who pretends to be hero.”
“Of course it is,” Shane murmured.
Ilya’s eyes narrowed, amused. “He is charming, okay? He steals from rich man, then must help people anyway. He tries to run away and keeps doing good on accident.”
Shane glanced at him. “Sounds familiar.”
Ilya snorted. “No. I do good on purpose. Sometimes.”
The movie dropped into its first scene: a man in a coat, a crowded street, quick dialogue that flew by too fast for Shane to grab even with the subtitles on. Shane watched them for a minute, then watched Ilya watching them. Ilya’s expression went from neutral to offended in record time.
He lasted maybe three minutes before his mouth twisted.
“Nyet,” Ilya said, flat.
Shane blinked. “No what?”
“These subtitles,” Ilya said, jabbing a finger at the screen like it had personally insulted him. “Is wrong.”
Shane glanced down at the words. He had no idea if they were wrong. “They seem fine.”
Ilya looked at him like Shane had just defended a war crime. “He said ‘go to hell,’” Ilya hissed, scandalized. “They write ‘leave me alone.’ Is not same.”
Shane’s mouth twitched. “It’s close.”
“It is not close.” Ilya grabbed the remote, furious with the concept of approximation, and toggled the subtitles off with decisive violence. The screen cleared.
Shane turned his head. “Ilya.”
Ilya looked back at him, smug already. “I translate.”
“You can’t translate an entire-.”
“I can,” Ilya said, and shifted closer, shoulder pressing into Shane’s. He started talking again as the scene continued, voice lower now, translating in real time like it was nothing. He didn’t get every word, not perfectly, but he got the shape of it - the intent, the joke, the bite - and Shane realised, slowly, that this wasn’t just about the subtitles. This was about Ilya wanting to be the one who gave Shane the story.
Shane should have been paying attention to the movie. He tried. He really did.
It lasted maybe thirty seconds before his focus slid sideways.
Ilya kept speaking, translating with that careful, slightly slowed English he used when he wanted to be understood. His throat moved when he swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he talked. Shane’s attention snagged on the motion like it was a hook under his ribs. He shifted in closer, settling more of his weight against Ilya and breathing in the clean, familiar scent at his throat.
On the screen, the thief-hero said something that made Ilya scoff. Ilya paused mid-translation to add his own commentary in Russian, then caught himself and repeated it in English with a different word, like he didn’t trust the first one to land properly.
Shane kept looking up at him instead of at the TV. Ilya’s mouth twitched every time he noticed - like he knew exactly what he was doing, like he’d chosen this movie on purpose because it gave him an excuse to talk and be listened to.
Shane didn’t call him out on it.
On the screen, a group of boys were running around outside. There was shouting. Roughhousing. One of them took a hit, harder than it should have been, and stumbled. Blood flashed briefly when he opened his mouth. A tooth, knocked free, clattered onto the ground.
Ilya made a small, sympathetic noise. “Oof.”
Shane’s brain snagged on it. Tooth. Kid. The image shifted sideways, away from Russian boys, to Hayden’s kitchen, to small hands and wide eyes.
“Jade lost a tooth,” Shane said without thinking, because his mouth moved before his brain could decide whether it wanted to share.
Ilya looked at him. “Jade?”
“One of Hayden’s twins,” Shane said. “The younger one.”
Ilya’s eyebrows lifted. “Ah. Little one who likes dinosaur, yes?”
Shane’s mouth twitched. “Yes.”
Ilya settled back, still half watching the film, but his attention tilted towards Shane. “She lost tooth?”
“Last week,” Shane said. “She was… excited. And then panicked. And then excited again. She wanted to tell me.” His chest warmed at the memory. “Hayden woke me up at four-thirty. Apologizing. Whispering like he was in trouble.”
Ilya’s mouth curved. “He was in trouble.”
“Jackie made him apologise,” Shane said automatically.
Ilya snorted. “Good.”
Shane’s gaze drifted, for a second, to the dark window. “Jade was so proud. She held it in her fist like it was treasure.” He paused, then added, because it was the part that mattered in his head, “I didn’t mind being woken up.”
Ilya made a soft sound, like he believed him.
“The problem,” Shane continued, because his brain was already running the whole story now, “is that Ruby wants to lose one too.”
Ilya blinked. “Ruby?”
“Jade’s twin,” Shane said. “Competitive.”
Ilya’s grin widened, delighted. “Of course.”
“She’s been… trying,” Shane said, and felt his face do something between amusement and horror. “Jumping off things. ‘Falling’ down the last part of the stairs. Hayden sent me a photo of bruises on her shins like proof of life.”
Ilya laughed, sharp and loud, then clapped a hand over his own mouth as if remembering the concept of quiet. “This is very… child,” he said, still laughing.
“It’s a lot,” Shane said, and the words were simple, but his chest stayed warm. He loved those kids. He loved the way they trusted him, the way they wanted to share their tiny victories. He loved being part of their world.
Ilya shifted, turning slightly towards Shane, his attention fully on him now instead of the screen. The movie kept moving, but Ilya’s translating slowed and then stopped altogether, like he’d decided Shane’s story was the better one.
“You like them,” Ilya said, like it was an observation and not a revelation.
Shane’s mouth twitched. “They’re good kids.”
“Ruby is not good,” Ilya said promptly, delighted.
“She’s four,” Shane said, because that mattered. “She’s dramatic.”
“She is chaos,” Ilya corrected, as if he had credentials. “I respect.”
Shane huffed a quiet laugh, and the sound surprised him a little. His thigh shifted more comfortably on Ilya’s lap. Ilya’s hand stayed there, warm and sure, thumb stroking slow, absent-minded circles into Shane’s pants like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“They’re fun,” Shane admitted. “They’re exhausting. But-.” He shrugged, because he didn’t know how to say I love them without it sounding too big for the living room. “They’re fun.”
Ilya’s gaze stayed on him. It wasn’t intense, exactly. It was just present. “You are good with them,” he said.
Shane glanced at the TV, then back at Ilya. “I’m fine? I guess.”
“No,” Ilya said, impatient with the modesty. “You are good. You talk to them like they are people. You listen. They climb on you and you do not throw them.”
“You don’t throw children,” Shane said dryly.
Ilya’s mouth curved. “Sometimes you want.”
Shane rolled his eyes, but it didn’t have any real bite in it. He could still see Jade’s face, earnest and bright, the way she’d held her tiny tooth like it was priceless. The warmth of it sat in his chest, easy.
“They trust you,” Ilya added, quieter.
Shane’s throat did a small, inconvenient thing. He swallowed and made himself keep his tone neutral. “Hayden and Jackie are good parents.”
Ilya made a noise that could have been agreement, could have been a scoff. “Hayden is bad hockey player.”
Shane’s head snapped up. “He’s not.”
“He is,” Ilya insisted, smug in the way he only got when he was trying to start a fight for sport.
“He’s a very good hockey player,” Shane said, because the world had rules.
Ilya’s eyes glittered. “No. Bad. But he makes good children. So is okay.”
Shane stared at him for a beat, then huffed a laugh despite himself. “You’re impossible.”
“He is,” Ilya insisted, smug. “But he makes good children. They can be cousins to ours.”
The sentence slid into the room like it belonged there.
Like it was as harmless as the blanket over Shane’s legs, as ordinary as Ilya’s hand on his thigh, as inevitable as the movie still playing on the screen.
Cousins to ours.
Shane’s brain snagged on the word ours and didn’t let go. It echoed, stupidly loud, like the microwave beep had been: sharp, bright, wrong in the quiet. Ours. Ours. Ours.
His body reacted first. Stomach dropping. Heat draining out of his hands. A cold, thin line running up the back of his neck. The couch felt too soft and suddenly not supportive at all, like he was sliding. The blanket was too heavy. The room was too warm. The air was not enough.
On the TV, someone shouted in Russian. It might as well have been underwater.
Ilya was still beside him, solid and warm and real. Ilya’s thumb was still moving slow circles through fabric like everything was normal. Shane could feel every pass of it like a metronome, like a countdown.
Our children.
The words tried to assemble themselves in Shane’s head and came apart again. Images sparked and vanished before he could catch them: a small hand in his, a kid on skates, a tiny jersey, a baby’s cry at three in the morning that never stopped. A suitcase half-packed. A fever. A school phone call. A car seat. The sheer, crushing permanence of it.
His mind lurched away from the pictures and slammed into a different wall - because this wasn’t a future, not abstract, not a daydream. This was Ilya saying it like it was already decided. Like they’d already agreed. Like it was a fact, filed and labelled, sitting on a shelf.
Shane stared at the screen and saw nothing. His heart thudded once, hard enough that it hurt. His mouth went dry, then flooded like his body couldn’t choose a crisis response. The floor shifted under the night, under the warmth they’d built with food and dishes and that stupid blanket, with Ilya translating badly on purpose, and Shane was left holding the shape of it with empty hands.
He needed to say something. Anything. A laugh. A joke. A question. A correction. A word that would put the room back where it had been.
Nothing came.
His lungs forgot what to do for a beat.
He forced air into his lungs. He forced his voice to work.
“You want kids,” Shane said, and it didn’t come out the way he meant it. Too flat, too blunt, like he was stating a stat line.
Ilya blinked, then shrugged like Shane had asked if he wanted another beer. “Yes.”
Shane’s fingers curled into the blanket. Uncurled. Curled again. “Like… actually.” He heard how stupid that sounded and kept going anyway, because his mouth had started and his brain was still catching up. “Like in the future.”
Ilya’s mouth twitched. “Da. In future. When we are not-,” he waved a hand vaguely at everything hockey-shaped about their lives, “always running.”
“How many?” Shane asked, because numbers were easier than the other part.
Ilya’s eyes went bright. He didn’t even pretend to think about it. “Full bench,” he said, pleased with himself. “Whole bench. Many.”
Shane’s laugh stuck somewhere behind his teeth and died there. A full bench. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all his carpenter friends. That wasn’t one baby. That was noise and bodies and years and a life that didn’t come with an off-season.
“That’s…” Shane started.
Ilya tilted his head, waiting, unbothered. His hand was still on Shane’s thigh, thumb moving in slow circles like nothing had changed.
Shane tried again, because the first attempt had been nothing. “That’s a lot.”
Ilya made a soft scoff. “You are so good with kids. You-.” He stopped, searching for the word in English, then made a frustrated sound and continued anyway. “You are patient. Da? They like you. Is good.”
Shane’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. The movie was still playing. He could see mouths moving on the screen, hear the rise and fall of Russian. It sounded wrong now. Too normal.
“Being good with kids is not-.” Shane cut himself off, because he couldn’t find the end of the sentence. Because the end of the sentence was the problem. He swallowed and tried to start somewhere else, somewhere safer. “I haven’t-. I didn’t-.” He stopped, started, and stopped again, breath catching, and the pause stretched until it went sharp. “I haven’t thought about it like that.”
Ilya’s eyebrows lifted. Not teasing this time. Just attention. “You have not thought?”
“I’ve thought about-,” You. Ottawa. A house with locks. A shower that doesn’t look like a clown got a credit card. Shane’s brain threw images at him too fast to hold. He shook his head once, small and helpless. “Not… that.”
Ilya’s thumb stilled on Shane’s thigh. The change was tiny. It landed like a puck off the post.
Shane’s mouth kept moving, because stopping felt like falling. “I just-.” He exhaled, quick and thin. “Kids aren’t-. They are not something you can half do. You don’t get to be tired for a week. You don’t get to-.” He lost the thread, grabbed it again, tighter. “They deserve parents who can be there. Like. All the way there. All the time.”
The sentence sat between them, heavy and badly shaped, like a pass he hadn’t meant to make.
Shane stared at Ilya’s hand on his leg like it was an anchor and also a threat. He could feel his heartbeat in weird places - throat, wrists, behind his eyes. He forced himself to look at Ilya’s face.
Ilya had gone very still. Not angry. Not loud. Just, very much still.
Shane’s stomach rolled. He tasted metal.
“I don’t think I want that,” Shane heard himself say, and the words were suddenly past the point of taking back. “I don’t think I can be-.” He stopped, because the careful phrasing was a joke now. “I don’t want to be a parent.”
Ilya didn’t move.
The movie kept playing, uncaring. Someone on-screen laughed. Shane couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be funny.
Ilya was quiet for a long time.
The film kept going, voices rising and falling in Russian, but it had turned into background noise - like the fridge hum in the kitchen, like the city outside, like the world insisting on being normal while Shane’s chest held his breath.
Ilya’s hand was still there on Shane’s thigh, warm and heavy, but the warmth didn’t feel like comfort now. It felt like proof that this was real. That Ilya was real. That Shane had just said something that couldn’t be shoved back into his mouth.
Shane stared at the TV without seeing it. He watched a man cross a street and realized, distantly, that he hadn’t blinked in too long.
His brain started doing what it always did when something went wrong: it reached for repair. Fix it. Smooth it. Say something that will make the tension drop back into the couch cushions and disappear.
“Sorry,” Shane blurted, because his body knew that word even when his mind didn’t have a plan.
Ilya’s head snapped toward him. “No.”
Shane’s stomach dropped again. “I-.”
“No,” Ilya repeated, sharper this time. Not vicious. Not exactly. Not loud. Just final. He lifted his hand off Shane’s thigh and for a second Shane couldn’t breathe at all - until Ilya’s hand landed again, firmer, like he was pinning Shane in place. Like he was refusing to let Shane slide away from the conversation by apologizing himself into a corner.
“Don’t,” Ilya said, and his English went a little rough at the edges. “You do not say sorry like you… like you hurt me this on purpose.”
Shane swallowed. His throat was dry enough to hurt. “I did hurt you.”
Ilya’s jaw tightened. He looked away toward the screen for half a second, then back, like he’d decided the movie wasn’t allowed to be an escape hatch. “Yes,” he said, and the admission was blunt in a way that made Shane’s chest ache. “It hurts. But is not you being… bad.”
Shane’s hands clenched under the blanket. “It feels like I’m taking something from you.”
Ilya’s eyes narrowed. “See?” he said, and there was the smallest flash of irritation. “This. You make it like I am victim and you are villain.”
“I’m not-.”
“You are,” Ilya cut in, then immediately softened, the way he did when he heard his own edge. “Okay. Not villain. But you make it like you owe me. Like you must pay me back with-.” He waved a hand vaguely, struggling. “With your life. With children. With - whatever.”
Shane stared at him. The shape of his guilt shifted, uncomfortable. “I don’t want to owe you,” he said, because that was true. “I just-. I don’t want you to be disappointed because of me.”
Ilya snorted, quiet and humourless. “I am disappointed because life is disappointing sometimes.” Then, after a beat, as if he needed to correct himself, “I am disappointed because I want something. That is allowed.”
Shane’s mouth opened and shut again. The simplicity of that – of wanting something and being allowed to be sad about not having it - felt like someone had changed the rules of the universe without telling him.
Ilya’s fingers tightened on Shane’s thigh, a grounding pressure. “You are allowed too,” Ilya added, and his voice went slightly quieter. “To want not to do it.”
Shane’s chest pulled tight. He tried to find the words that weren’t a list of catastrophes. He tried to find something that sounded sane.
Instead, what came out was honest in the ugliest possible way. “My brain doesn’t stop,” Shane said.
Ilya blinked. “What?”
Shane exhaled, short. “If there’s something to worry about, it doesn’t stop. It just… loops.” He hated how he sounded; like he was auditioning for sympathy, like he was making excuses. He rushed on before Ilya could interpret it that way. “And with kids, there’s always something. There’s always-.” He gestured helplessly. “They’re small. They get hurt. They get sick. You can’t control anything.”
Ilya’s mouth twisted. “You cannot control anything now.”
“I can control more than that,” Shane said automatically, then regretted it because it sounded arrogant and also because it wasn’t even true; Shane’s whole life was a series of carefully managed illusions of control.
Ilya didn’t pounce on it, which was almost worse. He just looked at Shane, steady and intent, like he was trying to see the exact shape of what Shane was saying.
Shane swallowed. His voice dropped. “I love Hayden’s kids,” he said, because he needed Ilya to hear that part before he heard anything else. “I love them. I like being with them. I like-.” He paused, because admitting it made his chest go warm in a way that hurt. “I like that they want to tell me things. Like it matters to them.”
Ilya’s expression softened slightly, the tiniest release.
“And,” Shane added, because the next part was the knife edge, “I also love that I can go home afterwards.”
There. The sentence sat on the coffee table between them, ugly and true.
Ilya stared at him for a beat. “Home,” he repeated.
Shane’s throat tightened. He nodded once. “Home,” he said, and it felt wrong to call his Montreal apartment that when the cottage existed and Ottawa existed as a hope and Ilya existed beside him now. But it was still the only word he had for the place where he could shut the world out and stop performing.
Ilya’s eyes flicked down to Shane’s legs over his lap, the blanket over them, the fact of them sitting like this. Then back up. “You come home from children,” Ilya said slowly, as if testing the phrase.
“Not from them,” Shane said quickly, because he could feel how it might sound, and the thought of Ilya hearing I want to get away from kids as I don’t like kids made him want to crawl out of his skin. “I mean-.” He exhaled, frustrated. “I mean the responsibility ends. The intensity ends. Someone else takes over. I can breathe again.”
Ilya stayed quiet, letting him talk, and Shane’s own words kept coming now that the dam had a crack in it.
“I could be an uncle,” Shane said, and then corrected himself because the word felt too casual for what he meant. “I can be involved. I can be someone they trust. I can show up. I can do the fun parts and the hard parts, sometimes. But I can’t be the person who is on call forever.” His fingers curled tight under the blanket. “I can’t be the one who never gets to stop.”
Ilya’s jaw tightened again. Hurt flickered over his face, quick and involuntary.
Shane saw it and panicked, the repair instinct clawing up again. “That sounds selfish,” he said, hating himself for it even as he said it. “It sounds like I’m saying ‘I want the good parts and not the-.’”
Ilya cut him off. “Stop,” he said, and the word landed like a hand on Shane’s chest. “Not selfish. Honest.”
Shane stared at him, eyes burning. “It feels selfish.”
Ilya’s mouth twisted, as if he was offended by the concept. “Children deserve parents who want to be parents,” he said, blunt and certain. “Not parents who… force. That is selfish. That is cruel.” He paused, then added, quieter, “I don’t want you to force.”
Shane’s breath caught. “I would love them,” he said, because that was the most terrifying part. “If we had them, I would love them so much. And then I would-.” He stopped, because saying and then I would ruin it felt like stabbing himself.
Ilya watched him, still.
Shane’s voice went rough. “It would kill me,” he said, finally, and the phrase landed with a dull thud. “Not-.” He shook his head once, frustrated. “Not literally. But I would burn out. I would become a worse version of myself. And kids don’t deserve that.”
Ilya’s gaze held his. His face had gone very still again, but not shut down. Just focused. He nodded once, barely.
Shane kept going because his brain was still trying to make the point land in a shape another person could hold. “And you don’t deserve that,” he added, because it mattered too. “You don’t deserve me becoming, like, brittle. Or angry. Or absent. You don’t deserve having to-.” He swallowed hard. “Having to carry me.”
Ilya’s hand tightened on Shane’s thigh. “I would carry you,” he said immediately, and then, like he realized what he’d just promised, he corrected himself with a sharp exhale. “No. I mean-.” He looked away for half a second, jaw working. “I don’t want to have to.”
Shane’s throat tightened painfully. “I know.”
They sat in silence again, but it was a different silence now. Not shock. Not the void. A heavy, breathing thing. A thing with edges.
On-screen, the thief-hero did something dramatic. The soundtrack swelled. Shane didn’t care.
Ilya’s voice, when it came, was quieter. “You still want kids in our life,” he said, and it wasn’t a question so much as him picking up one of Shane’s threads and testing it.
“Yes,” Shane said immediately. “Yes. I do. I want-.” He stopped himself before he could start listing children by name like evidence. He tried again, steadier. “I want to be around them. I want to be part of it. I just can’t be the center of it.”
Ilya stared at him for a long moment. His eyes were bright with something Shane couldn’t name. He swallowed once, hard.
“Not same,” Ilya said finally, rough.
Shane’s stomach clenched. “I know.”
“But,” Ilya added, and the word was small, but it mattered, “I hear you.”
Shane’s chest loosened a fraction.
It wasn’t relief, exactly. It was air. It was the sense that he wasn’t talking into a void. That Ilya was still here on the couch with him, still warm under Shane’s legs, still holding him with that steady hand on his thigh as if he could physically keep Shane from falling off the edge of the night.
Ilya stared at the TV screen for a moment, not really looking at it. His jaw worked. He swallowed. The silence stretched again, but this time it was full of things trying to become words.
“I always,” Ilya started, then stopped, frustrated. He frowned at nothing in particular. “I always think, when I am done, I will have-.” He waved his free hand in a helpless arc, as if family was too large a concept to fit in English. “House. People. Not quiet.”
Shane didn’t move. He didn’t interrupt. He could feel his own heartbeat slow, one careful beat at a time.
Ilya continued, voice rougher now, as if he was forcing it through a narrow space. “When I was kid, I see families. On TV. In movies.” His mouth twisted, bitter and embarrassed at once. “Always same. Mother, father, kids. Dog. They eat breakfast together. They are normal.”
Shane’s throat tightened. He could picture Ilya as a kid, watching those scenes like they were science fiction.
Ilya snorted, sharp. “My father was not normal. My brother…” He shrugged, and it wasn’t casual; it was resignation, the kind of shrug that said there was no point wasting words on men like that. “My mother was-.” His face softened in a way that made Shane’s chest ache. “My mother was angel. But she was still there. With him. Always there.”
Shane’s hands curled under the blanket. He wanted to reach out, to touch Ilya’s face, to do something. He stayed still, because the stillness was space.
“I don’t want that,” Ilya said, suddenly fierce. “I don’t want…” He stopped, searching. “Shit family. I don’t want kid growing up watching man like my father.”
Shane swallowed. “You wouldn’t be your father.”
Ilya’s eyes snapped to him, bright. “I know,” he said immediately, too fast, as if he’d already had this argument with himself a hundred times. “I know I am not him. But I still-.” He pressed his lips together, then tried again. “I still want something better. Something that is mine.”
The word mine landed oddly in Shane’s chest. It sounded like hunger. It sounded like safety. It sounded like a home you couldn’t be traded away from.
Ilya’s hand on Shane’s thigh shifted, then tightened, as if he needed to hold onto something solid while he talked. “And then I meet people here, in America,” he said, voice quieter. “I meet teammates who have girlfriend, wife, kids. They complain about little things - sleep, homework, fights, in-laws, hockey practice - like is pain.” His mouth curved, faintly. “Is annoying. But also good.”
Shane found his voice, careful. “Because it’s theirs.”
Ilya nodded, slow. “Da. Yes. Because it is theirs.”
He looked down at Shane’s legs over his lap, the blanket pooled around them, the place where Shane had tucked himself in without asking. His gaze went unfocused for a second, like he was looking at a memory rather than the present.
“Hayden,” Ilya said, and there was fondness in the word even if he would have denied it on pain of death. “He is loud family.” He made a face. “Jackie is scary. Children are chaos. But they are together. They have-.” He gestured, searching again. “Routine. Holidays. Little stories. Tooth fairy.”
Shane’s mouth twitched, despite everything.
Ilya’s eyes flicked up and caught it. His mouth twitched back, quick and private, then the smile faded as the weight returned. “And I think,” Ilya said, voice low, “I want this. Not exactly their version. But my version.”
Shane’s throat tightened. He didn’t know what to do with the fact that Ilya’s version had just collided with Shane’s limit.
Ilya exhaled hard through his nose, as if angry at himself for being vulnerable. “So when I say our kids,” he said, and his accent thickened on the word, “I say it like it is nothing. Like it is obvious. Because in my head, it is obvious.” He swallowed. “Because I am finally allowed to want it.”
The honesty hit Shane like a bruise being pressed. He nodded, slow.
Ilya’s eyes went sharp. “And then you look like you are dying,” he added, blunt, as if he needed to puncture the softness before it swallowed him.
Shane let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh if his throat hadn’t been tight. “Sorry.”
Ilya’s eyes narrowed. “Stop.”
Shane shut his mouth.
Ilya stared at him for a beat longer, then looked away, jaw working. “I am sad,” he said finally, rough. “I am… disappointed.” He made a face, as if the English words were inadequate and therefore insulting. “I feel like I lose something.”
Shane’s chest tightened. The phrase lose something was blunt and childlike and entirely accurate.
Ilya continued, voice low and stubborn. “Not you,” he said quickly, as if he’d seen Shane’s panic flare and wanted to stamp it out before it grew. “I don’t lose you. I don’t want to lose you.”
Shane’s hands clenched under the blanket. “Ilya-.”
“No,” Ilya cut in again, softer this time. “Listen.”
Shane went still.
Ilya’s gaze slid back to him, and for a second there was no swagger in it at all. Just Ilya, stripped down to the part of him that wanted something simple and had spent most of his life not believing he could have it.
“You are my family,” Ilya said, and the words came out like a decision and a relief at the same time. “You. Now. Already.”
Shane’s breath caught. His chest went tight, then looser, then tight again, like his body couldn’t decide whether to break.
Ilya’s hand shifted on Shane’s thigh, the thumb resuming its slow circles as if the motion was the only way he knew to soothe himself while saying something this bare. “Not consolation,” Ilya added immediately, offended by the idea. “Not prize I get because I cannot have other prize. You are-.” He stopped, eyes narrowing, searching for the English that didn’t cheapen it. “You are the point.”
Shane’s eyes burned. He blinked hard.
Ilya watched him, expression fierce. “I want kids,” he said, blunt again, refusing to pretend. “I want whole fucking bench. Loud house. Little skates. Tooth fairy. All of it.” His mouth twisted, grief already creeping in around the edges of the words. “I want to be a dad.”
Shane’s throat tightened painfully.
“And,” Ilya said, and the word softened, “I want you. I want you more.”
Shane’s mouth opened. No sound came.
Ilya huffed a breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been so close to breaking. “If I can only have one,” he said, slower, like he was making himself accept the sentence as he spoke it, “I pick you.”
Shane’s vision blurred. He blinked again, harder. “You,” he started, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat, humiliated. “You don’t have to-.”
Ilya’s eyes flashed. “Shut up,” he said, sharp, and then immediately softened it with a squeeze of Shane’s thigh. “Sorry,” he added at once, grudging. “But you do not tell me what I have to. This is my choice.”
Shane swallowed. The word choice landed in him like something solid.
Ilya leaned back into the couch, staring at the ceiling for a second like he was asking the universe for patience. When he looked back at Shane, his eyes were bright and stubborn and tired.
“I will be sad,” Ilya said again, quieter, and this time it sounded less like a declaration and more like a fact he was allowing himself to have. “For a bit.”
Shane nodded, because yes. Of course.
Ilya’s mouth twisted. “What is word,” he said suddenly, frustrated. “When you miss thing that never happen. You feel pain for-.” He waved his hand helplessly. “For future that is gone.”
Shane’s chest ached at the question.
It was so specific. So painfully precise.
“That’s grief,” Shane said quietly.
Ilya blinked. “Grief.”
“Yes,” Shane said, and his voice stayed steady by force. “Grief is when you lose something. Even if it’s only the idea of it. The picture.”
Ilya stared at him as if tasting the word. “Grief,” he repeated, softer. Then, as if the word offended him by being true, he scoffed. “I do not like.”
“No one does,” Shane murmured.
Ilya’s mouth curved, small and unhappy. “Okay. I grieve,” he said, like he was spitting the word out. “I will grieve my whole bench.” His eyes flicked to Shane’s face, sharp again. “But not forever. Understand?”
Shane nodded, throat tight. “I understand.”
Ilya’s hand slid up Shane’s thigh, then to his hip, pulling him in closer. Shane went willingly, his body folding into Ilya like it had been waiting for permission.
For a second, Ilya held him too tight - an instinctive clutch, like he could keep the future from slipping away if he just kept his grip. Shane felt the tremor in it, the fine vibration in Ilya’s arm that wasn’t cold and wasn’t adrenaline. It was effort.
“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya said, rough.
Shane’s breath hitched. “I love you, too,” he managed back, the words coming out smaller than he meant them to.
Ilya’s mouth curved again, but it didn’t quite hold. His eyes shone, suddenly wet, and for a heartbeat he looked startled by his own face - like his body had betrayed him with softness he hadn’t authorized.
A tear tracked down one cheek, quick and bright in the TV light. Ilya blinked hard, furious at it, and another one followed anyway.
Shane’s chest went tight. His first impulse was to fix, to wipe it away, to make a joke and redirect. He didn’t. He stayed still and let it exist.
“It’s okay,” Shane said quietly, because sometimes saying it out loud made it truer.
Ilya swallowed. His jaw worked. “No,” he muttered, stubborn, and the word sounded like it was aimed at the universe more than at Shane. His hand on Shane’s hip tightened again. “Is stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Shane said, and his voice held, even when his own eyes started to burn. “You’re allowed.”
Ilya let out a shaky breath that turned into something dangerously close to a laugh and then wasn’t. He pressed his forehead against Shane’s for a brief second, as if bracing.
“I am angry,” Ilya admitted, barely audible.
Shane’s throat tightened. “I know.”
“Not at you,” Ilya added immediately, too fast. Then he hesitated, and the hesitation was the most honest part. His fingers flexed against Shane’s hip. “Not… mostly. Just-.” He exhaled hard. “At this. At everything. At having to choose.”
Shane’s chest ached. “You can be angry,” he said, and meant it. “You can be angry at me, too. I can take it.”
Ilya’s eyes flashed up to his, wet and furious.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Ilya said, sharp with effort. “I don’t want to make you smaller.”
Shane shook his head once, tight and immediate. “You’re not,” he said, voice rough. “You’re not doing that.”
Ilya scoffed, the sound breaking on the edge of a sob. “I say angry things, I-.”
“Say them,” Shane cut in, and the interruption startled even him. He forced himself to hold Ilya’s gaze, to keep his voice steady. “Don’t protect me from it. Don’t turn it into something you have to swallow.”
Ilya blinked, thrown.
Shane swallowed hard. The words felt like they scraped him on the way out. “You’re allowed to be mad at me,” he said again, slower. “I’m in it. I’m the reason you’re losing that picture.”
Ilya’s jaw clenched. His hand on Shane’s hip tightened, not gentle now. “I don’t like saying it like that,” Ilya muttered.
“Then don’t say it like that,” Shane said. “But don’t pretend I’m not part of it.”
Ilya stared at him, breathing hard, eyes shining. A tear slipped down and he didn’t even try to blink it away. “I am not punishing you,” he said, fierce. “I am not my father. I am not-.”
“I know,” Shane said immediately. “I know you’re not. That’s why you can be angry and it won’t be… that.”
Ilya’s mouth trembled, the fury fighting with grief in his face. “I hate this,” he said, and the sentence had teeth. “I hate that I want something and you don’t.”
Shane flinched - just a little - because truth always landed, even when you asked for it. He nodded anyway. “I know.”
Ilya’s gaze sharpened, like he was looking for cracks. “You say you know,” he snapped, and there was pain in the snap, not cruelty. “But you get to go home to quiet. You get to-.” He stopped, as if he could hear himself veering, about to turn it into an accusation he couldn’t take back.
Shane’s chest hurt. “I’m not asking you to make it quiet,” he said, careful. “I’m not asking you to pretend it doesn’t matter. I’m asking you not to make yourself alone in it.”
Ilya swallowed, throat working. He looked down at Shane’s mouth as if he wanted to bite something, as if he wanted to kiss something, as if he didn’t know which would hurt less.
“You are very annoying,” Ilya said finally, hoarse, and it was almost a joke and almost not.
Shane’s mouth twitched, helpless. “Yeah.”
Ilya exhaled, a hard sound. “I am angry at you,” he said, blunt now, because Shane had asked for it. “A little. Because you are you.”
Shane nodded, and the nod was its own kind of acceptance. “Okay.”
“And I still love you,” Ilya added, immediate, as if he couldn’t stand the sentence existing without that tether.
“I know,” Shane said, and this time it didn’t sound like a defense. It sounded like trust.
Ilya’s eyes squeezed shut for a second. When he opened them again, they were wet and stubborn. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said, quieter.
“You won’t,” Shane said, because it was the only promise he could make without lying.
Ilya’s hand loosened on Shane’s hip, then tightened again, pulling him in like he needed the contact to hold the anger without breaking it into something ugly. Shane went willingly, letting Ilya have the weight of him.
They sat there for a moment, the room dim and warm, both of them breathing too shallowly.
Ilya reached up, thumb brushing the tear track on his own cheek as if he could erase it by force. Another tear slipped down anyway. He made a frustrated sound, then - like he’d run out of energy to fight it - he just let his face soften against Shane’s shoulder.
Shane’s arms came around him carefully, a slow wrap as if asking permission even now. Ilya didn’t hesitate. He leaned in, full weight, and Shane felt the quiet shudder of him - one tremor, then another, controlled, contained, but real.
Shane pressed his mouth to Ilya’s temple, a kiss that was more anchor than romance. He didn’t say anything else. He just held him, and let Ilya have the space to feel what he felt without having to apologize for it.
After a while, Ilya drew back enough to look at him again. His lashes were wet. His cheeks were damp. He looked wrecked and stubborn and still, somehow, Ilya.
“I love you,” Ilya said again, like he needed to set the sentence down somewhere solid.
Shane’s breath hitched. “I love you,” he said back, steadier this time.
Ilya’s mouth curved, small. He kissed Shane, soft and brief, and then leaned back into the sofa, dragging Shane with him so Shane ended up half on his chest, held in place by Ilya’s arm.
The movie kept going.
Russian voices filled the room in a steady stream, too fast for Shane to follow without Ilya, and Ilya didn’t translate now. He didn’t need to. The sound was just there, just another layer of warmth, another thing that meant the silence didn’t have to do all the work by itself.
Shane lay half on Ilya’s chest and listened to Ilya breathe. He could feel it under his cheek, the rise and fall, the occasional hitch when Ilya swallowed. Ilya’s arm stayed around him, not loose, not tight - present. Shane’s legs were still draped over Ilya’s, the blanket tucked around them in the corrected, orderly way Shane had arranged it. Ilya’s hand rested on Shane’s thigh, thumb moving in slow circles that weren’t a signal, weren’t a demand. Just contact.
The thief-hero on screen shouted something dramatic. Music swelled. Someone slammed a door. Shane didn’t look up, didn’t care, but he registered the cadence anyway, the way the film kept insisting on plot while their lives stayed stubbornly human and quiet.
Ilya shifted once, small. The movement pressed Shane a fraction closer. Shane went without thinking. He let his hand slide up Ilya’s side under the blanket, fingers splaying over a rib, then flattening there like he could hold Ilya together by touch.
A tear dried on Shane’s skin, leaving that tight, salty feel. He didn’t wipe it away. It didn’t matter. His face was against Ilya’s shirt, and it smelled like soap and the faintest trace of ginger and something that was only Ilya. Shane breathed in, slow and careful, like he was trying to memorize it.
Minutes passed in a way that didn’t feel like minutes. The film moved from one scene to another. Voices rose and fell. The sound of it became almost rhythmic and comforting in the way steady noise was comforting, something to lean against.
Shane’s body loosened in increments. It didn’t become relaxed exactly; there was still the hard edge of reality waiting - flight, hotel, the choreography of leaving. But the immediate crisis had moved from right now to something that could be carried. Shane could feel that shift in his own chest, the difference between being braced for impact and being held.
Ilya’s hand tightened once around Shane’s hip, the smallest squeeze, and Shane’s fingers curled in response, automatic.
He didn’t know if either of them was watching the screen. He didn’t know if it mattered. The film was there, and so were they, and somehow that was enough.
Eventually, the pacing of the Russian changed. The music softened. There was a long shot of a street at night, snow falling in slow flakes, a man in a coat walking away from something he’d ruined and something he’d saved. Shane watched it for a second, just because it was on the screen directly in front of him, and then his attention slid back to Ilya’s throat, to the pulse there, to the fact that Ilya was still holding him.
The final scene ended on a lingering close-up of a face. Words appeared over black. Credits.
The Russian letters scrolled up. Names. Roles. Music that sounded older than the streaming service.
Shane exhaled, and realized he’d been holding his breath for no reason at all.
Ilya’s hand moved, thumb brushing once over Shane’s thigh as if to say, still here. Shane’s fingers traced a small circle on Ilya’s ribs under the blanket, a return message.
Neither of them reached for the remote.
The credits ran out on their own. The screen dimmed. The streaming service asked, politely, what they wanted next.
Ilya made a small sound - half sigh, half laugh - and finally shifted. “Enough,” he murmured, not about the evening, not about the conversation. Just about the autoplay.
Shane’s mouth twitched. He pushed himself up slowly, joints protesting, and felt Ilya’s arm loosen without letting go entirely. Shane leaned in and kissed Ilya once, a chaste, a brief press of mouth to mouth that carried more weight than it had any right to.
Ilya’s hand slid to the back of Shane’s neck, holding him there for a second longer than the kiss required. When Shane pulled back, Ilya’s eyes looked tired and puffy around the edges, but steady.
“I go bathroom,” Ilya muttered, as if announcing it made it less pathetic that he needed a moment.
Shane nodded. “Okay.”
Ilya stood up with a groan that suggested he was an elderly man and not an elite athlete, and disappeared down the hall.
Shane stayed on the couch for half a beat, listening to footsteps, a door, the distant rush of water. Then his brain latched onto the room the way it always did: objects, placement, disorder.
He didn’t do a full inspection. He wasn’t that far gone. He just… checked.
The blanket got folded. The remote went back on the coffee table where it belonged. The empty ginger ale can went into the recycling bin. Shane walked through the kitchen without turning on more lights than necessary, glanced at the counter, wiped one tiny spot of moisture because it would have bothered him otherwise. He rinsed a glass and left it upside down on the rack.
He caught himself hovering near the foyer, eyes flicking to the closet door where his jacket hung. He didn’t open it. He didn’t touch it. He just felt the strange satisfaction of knowing it was there, in place, like he hadn’t been a person who left his clothes on the floor in a heap.
The bathroom door opened. Ilya came back down the hall rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand like he could erase the evidence. His hair was damp again. His face looked scrubbed and stubborn.
Shane’s chest tightened, warm and sore.
Ilya stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked at the folded blanket, the cleared coffee table, the wiped counter. His mouth twitched. “You are unbelievable,” he said, and it sounded affectionate even if he’d never admit that.
Shane shrugged, because it was easier than admitting any of it had been an excuse to keep moving.
Ilya crossed the room, close enough that Shane could feel the heat off him, and bumped his shoulder into Shane’s. A gentle nudge. A reminder.
“Bed,” Ilya said.
Shane’s mouth went dry for reasons that had nothing to do with thirst. “Okay.”
Upstairs, the bedroom felt quieter than it had earlier, the kind of quiet that settled after you’d said hard things and survived them. Shane undressed with his usual neatness. Ilya shed clothes like they were meaningless. Shane watched him do it, the way Ilya’s body moved – loose and restless and still full of life - and felt a familiar want rise, steady and grounding.
They didn’t talk much. They didn’t need to. Ilya climbed into bed and held an arm out, impatient, and Shane went willingly, fitting himself into the space like muscle memory.
The sex wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t frantic like the foyer, wasn’t new like anything they’d done in the early years. It was language: touch and breath, mouths against skin, the quiet insistence of I’m still here, we’re still here, we are good. Shane clung to it with a kind of fierce calm, and Ilya met him there, hands sure, mouth warm, moving like he knew exactly what Shane needed because he always did.
Afterward, Shane lay tangled with him, heartbeat slowing, sweat cooling, the sheets rumpled. The ceiling was the same ceiling it had been an hour ago and a week ago and every time Shane had been here. Everything was the same. Everything was different.
Sleep came in fragments.
At some point Shane opened his eyes and saw darkness and the faint glow of the alarm clock. He stared at it until the numbers made sense. Too early. Always too early.
He shifted carefully, trying not to wake Ilya, and failed immediately.
Ilya made a low sound of protest, arm tightening around Shane’s waist like a reflex. “No,” he mumbled into Shane’s shoulder.
Shane exhaled, the breath coming out like an apology he wasn’t going to say. “Flight,” he whispered.
Ilya’s arm stayed tight. His face was pressed into Shane’s chest; his breath was warm. “Stupid,” he muttered, voice thick with sleep and displeasure.
“Yeah,” Shane agreed softly.
He waited until Ilya’s grip loosened a fraction, then eased out of bed with the careful, guilty precision of someone dismantling something fragile. The cold air hit his skin. He shivered.
In the dim, he dressed quickly. He checked his phone without turning the brightness up. A message from Hayden sat there from last night. Shane typed back with stiff fingers.
Behind him, the mattress shifted.
Ilya sat up, hair a wreck, eyes red and puffy, blinking like the world was personally offensive. For a second he looked disoriented, then his gaze landed on Shane and steadied.
“You’re going,” Ilya said, flat, like naming it made it easier.
Shane swallowed. “I have to.”
Ilya swung his legs out of bed, grabbed the duvet, and wrapped it around himself like a cloak. It made him look ridiculous and a little tragic and, somehow, even more like himself. He followed Shane across the room with bare feet, silent except for the soft drag of fabric.
Shane paused at the dresser, hands hovering over his watch, his wallet, the last small things. Ilya stopped behind him, close, their bodies almost touching.
Shane turned, because not turning felt like cowardice.
Ilya’s face was tired. His eyes were swollen. He looked hurt in the way someone looks hurt when they’re still choosing to be present anyway.
Shane’s chest tightened. “I’m-.”
Ilya’s eyes narrowed. “No.”
Shane shut his mouth.
Ilya stepped closer, lifted his hand, and cupped Shane’s jaw with warm fingers. His thumb brushed once over the corner of Shane’s mouth, slow and deliberate, like he was checking that Shane was still real.
“Go,” Ilya said, rough. “Be captain. Mr. Hat-trick.”
Shane’s mouth twitched, helpless. “Okay.”
Ilya’s gaze held his for a beat longer, then he leaned in and kissed Shane. Not chaste. Not hungry. Something in between: a kiss that said don’t forget. A kiss that said I’m still here even when I’m sad. A kiss that didn’t promise a timeline or a solution, only continuity.
When they pulled apart, Ilya rested his forehead against Shane’s for a second, eyes closed.
Shane breathed in, slow. “Thank you,” he whispered, because the words had to go somewhere.
Ilya’s thumb stroked once along Shane’s jaw, gentle. “Da,” he said quietly, as if he understood exactly what Shane meant. Then, softer still, “Spasibo.” His mouth twisted, almost a smile. “Now go, before I change my mind.”
Downstairs, the house was dark and quiet. Ilya followed him anyway, duvet trailing like the floor, one hand occasionally reaching out to touch Shane’s elbow or shoulder like he couldn’t help himself.
In the foyer, Shane slipped his shoes on. He opened the closet, took his jacket off the hanger, and shrugged into it. The familiarity of the movement hit him in the ribs - jacket in closet, morning departure, Ilya watching. A routine that shouldn’t exist and did anyway.
Ilya stood a few feet away, arms crossed under the duvet, face unreadable in the dim light. His eyes were still red.
Shane cleared his throat. “The Uber’s outside,” he said, because saying I’m leaving felt worse.
As if summoned by the words, a horn honked outside, short and impatient and indifferent.
Ilya’s mouth twitched, humourless. “Of course.”
Shane took two steps toward him and stopped, because he didn’t know if he was allowed to take more.
Ilya solved it by stepping forward first.
He kissed Shane in the foyer, soft and weighted, his hand fisting briefly in the back of Shane’s jacket as if he wanted to keep him there by force. It wasn’t a see you soon kiss. It wasn’t a lie. It was a kiss that said this matters.
When he pulled back, Ilya’s eyes were bright again, stubborn with tiredness. “Text me,” he said, voice rough.
Shane nodded. “I will.”
“When you are at hotel,” Ilya added immediately, like it was a reasonable requirement and not an attempt to build a bridge out of messages.
“I will,” Shane repeated, soft.
Ilya’s gaze flicked to Shane’s mouth, then back to his eyes. “And when you are at airport.”
Shane’s chest tightened, warm and sore all at once. He could hear what Ilya was doing. Ilya could hear it too. Neither of them called it out.
“Okay,” Shane said, and let his thumb brush over Ilya’s wrist, a small, anchoring touch.
“And when you board,” Ilya continued, relentless now, as if the list could physically slow time down. His mouth twitched, betraying him.
Shane’s mouth did the same. “Yeah.”
“And when you land.”
Shane exhaled something that wanted to be a laugh. “That’s a lot of texts.”
Ilya’s eyebrows lifted, offended on principle. “Yes.”
Shane nodded, because he would. Because indulging this cost him nothing and gave Ilya something. “I’ll text you,” he promised, and meant it.
Ilya held his gaze for a beat, eyes glossy with tiredness and everything else. The next words came out quieter, simpler.
“I love you,” Ilya said.
Shane swallowed hard. “I love you,” he answered back, and it wasn’t a goodbye so much as a tether.
Ilya’s thumb brushed once along Shane’s cheekbone. A quick and tender movement, like he couldn’t help it, like he needed to touch him one more time.
The horn honked again.
Shane backed toward the door, hand on the knob, eyes still on Ilya. “Bye,” he said, and it felt too small for everything.
Ilya’s mouth twisted. “Go,” he said again, gentler this time. “I am here.”
Shane swallowed hard, nodded, and opened the door.
Cold air rushed in, sharp and clean. The morning outside was still dark, the street quiet. The Uber sat at the curb, headlights washing the driveway in white.
Shane stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him. He didn’t look back for too long, because looking back made it harder to keep moving.
The horn gave one final, impatient blip.
Shane walked down the path, breath fogging, jacket collar up. His phone buzzed in his pocket - a message from Hayden, probably, or a reminder, or nothing at all. He didn’t check it yet.
Behind him, inside the house, Ilya would be standing in the foyer with a duvet around his shoulders, eyes red and puffy, still hurt, still full of love.
Ahead of him, there was a hotel room and a team and a flight and a life that required him to put his face back on.
Shane opened the Uber door, slid into the back seat, and exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
The car pulled away, tires whispering over the road, and Shane let the warmth of the night sit in his chest – heavy and imperfect and undeniably real - while Boston rushed dark past outside the car.