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The first time it happens, Shane and Ilya are lounging on the couch, debating what to eat for dinner.
“There’s no reason to deviate from the meal plan,” Shane says, for what must be the third time in ten minutes.
Ilya, who has been resting with his head on Shane’s shoulder, pushes himself up just enough to frown at him. “Is too,” he says. “Reason is: I want takeout.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Okay, no good reason.”
Ilya’s stupid, pink lip juts out like a shelf. “My happiness is not good enough reason for you? My poor tastebuds are not good enough reason for you? I guess you don’t love me after all.”
“You’re such a baby.”
“Please,” Ilya whines. “Come on, Hollander. I want Hunan chicken. And beef and broccoli. And fried rice. And egg rolls. And—“
“Your stomach is a bottomless pit,” Shane complains. Ilya has settled back on Shane’s shoulder. Shane raises a hand to thread through Ilya’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp.
“No, I am just professional hockey player with fast metabolism,” Ilya says. “If only there was someone else who could understand—oh wait!”
“If I ate that much Chinese food, I would puke,” Shane argues.
“Yes, but only because you are not used to eating good food,” Ilya says. “That bird diet, is so sad. Someone must teach you to live a little.”
And Ilya—Shane can tell Ilya doesn’t expect to win the argument. From the way he’s lounging boneless on the couch, the way his phone is on the other side of the room, the playful glint in his eyes. He’s just teasing, chewing on Shane like a dog with a rope.
“Okay,” Shane says.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, let’s get takeout.”
Ilya lurches up like he’s been burned. “What? You want to get takeout?”
“You’ve been asking me for it for the last half hour, Rozanov, why is it so unbelievable I might say yes?”
Ilya squints at him. “Are you a pod person?”
Shane huffs, pushing Ilya away as he rises from the couch. “This is why I never say yes to you, asshole. Who even taught you about pod people?”
“Hazy. At practice, last week. Come on, I was just checking! To be good husband. Shane, wait. Shane, come back, I want Chinese—“
They’re scrolling through the DoorDash menu deciding what to order when it happens. Shane is studying the different vegetable dishes on offer, trying to decide between stir-fried string beans and sautéed bok choy, when he looks up at Ilya and realizes that Ilya is crying. More than crying: he’s crying hard, his face red and blotchy even as his lips stay pressed shut.
Shane drops the phone on the counter. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, half-panicked, instinctively pulling Ilya into his arms. They were just getting dinner. They were just looking at a menu. Does Ilya have some trauma Shane doesn’t know about related to Chinese food? Is bok choy a trigger for him? Fuck, Shane knew he should have picked the string beans.
“Is nothing,” Ilya chokes out into Shane’s shoulder. “Is fine.”
“This is not nothing,” Shane says firmly, because they’re well past the point in their relationship where Ilya can slip these things by Shane. It’s not that Ilya never cries, because he does—a hell of a lot more than Shane, at that. But he doesn’t cry for no reason. Not unless something is really wrong.
“Really, I am not lying,” Ilya insists, sniffling. “I don’t know what it is, it just hit me. I must be extra hungry, I don’t know.”
And no matter how Shane presses, Ilya won’t admit anything else. So Shane puts in the order for their DoorDash, keeping Ilya tucked away in the crook of Shane’s neck while he does, and by the time the food arrives, Ilya already seems more like himself.
Afterwards, when Ilya is sprawled across the living room carpet with one hand on his overfull belly, groaning about how stuffed he is, it’s easy to brush it off as an aberration. An emotional breakdown brought on my hunger and exhaustion, maybe. Nothing worth stressing over. Nothing worth worsening the ulcer that Shane is no doubt already fostering in the pit of his stomach.
And then it happens again.
—
They’re hosting Shane’s parents for dinner. It’s a normal Tuesday evening: tomorrow’s a day off, and they have nothing at all planned for it except maybe taking a leisurely walk with Anya in a nearby park. It’s the sort of blank-schedule luxury they never had before, when they were living in separate cities and every day together required careful planning and long car rides and a constant internal countdown.
They make dinner for the occasion, some sort of Moroccan vegetarian fare that Ilya read was good for people with heart problems. Nobody in the family has heart problems, really, but David’s last blood tests had shown cholesterol levels veering into borderline territory, and everyone but David had agreed it was best to nip the problem in the bud. Shane had sent his dad a detailed plan to reduce his cholesterol through cardiovascular exercise. Yuna, for her part, had banned him from consuming any form of cheese, red meat, or egg. Nowadays, Shane often catches his dad longingly eyeing Ilya’s plates at restaurants, which are invariably loaded with terrible fats and sugars.
The Moroccan whatever-the-fuck is fine, and Yuna and David compliment it profusely, in a way that embarrasses Shane because it’s the sort of reassurance people only give to amateurs. Afterwards, all four of them sit on the couch together, half-watching an old Admirals game on ESPN as Yuna roasts their terrible season. Halfway through, David claps his hands and says, “Time for dessert?”
They brought ice cream. Shane groans when he sees the flavor. “Cookies and cream, really? Again?”
“It’s my favorite son’s favorite,” Yuna says primly, distributing bowls. “So shut up and eat.”
Shane huffs and looks at Ilya, anticipating a chirp. Instead, he finds tears working their way down Ilya’s cheeks.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Yuna gasps, when she sees his expression. She abandons her own bowl on the coffee table, crouching in front of Ilya with her hands on his knees. “Is something wrong? Did I say something? I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Ilya sniffles, wiping at his face. “Everything is great! I love ice cream.”
Yuna shoots Shane a look over Ilya’s head. Shane raises his eyebrows at her in a way he hope he conveys an appropriately-panicked I don’t fucking know, don’t look at me! She sighs, looking back down at Ilya. “Are you sure? Because you don’t have to eat the ice cream.”
“Really,” Ilya insists, shoving a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “It’s good. I am great.”
Shane waits for his mother to give in and reluctantly return to her seat before he slides into the empty spot on Ilya’s right. It’s a strategic miscalculation, he realizes immediately, when he slings an arm over Ilya’s shoulder and discovers that this leaves him with just his left hand to eat his ice cream. Well, Shane didn’t really need dessert anyway. He pretends to be focused on the TV, rubbing his hand up and down Ilya’s bicep.
Eventually, Ilya emerges from Shane’s armpit long enough to eat. When his bowl is licked clean, he starts eyeing Shane’s own. “It’s melting,” he says.
Shane nudges it his way. “Oh no,” he says. “If only I had a husband who could help with that.”
Shane watches Ilya closely for the rest of the evening—the way he eats Shane’s ice cream, the way he collects the bowls to take into the kitchen, the way he gives Anya her seventy nightly kisses, the way he washes his face—but it all seems normal. He seems like his usual self. His usual self, that is, plus tears.
It’s a mystery, and Shane has never been very good about those. He resolves to get to the bottom of it.
—
Since the only thing the two incidents have in common is food, Shane’s initial theory is that this whole thing is gastronomically triggered. Perhaps Ilya has developed some very strange, very selective eating disorder? Maybe he really is experiencing the most dramatic hunger cravings known to man?
But then a week later, Shane and Ilya are in a Zoom call with Farah, discussing her contract renewal, when Ilya bursts into sudden tears. Shane, discombobulated, hastily excuses them from the call before dashing to the kitchen to get Ilya a protein bar. But when Shane offers the snack to Ilya, he refuses.
“We just ate breakfast. I am not hungry,” Ilya chokes around his tears.
So the food theory is disproven immediately.
Shane tries to come up with another, better theory after that, but really, he’s got nothing. He can’t identify a single pattern. It happens at home, at the rink, traveling to games, traveling home from games. Ilya cries in the locker room as he tapes up his stick for practice. He cries while walking Anya on the trail near his house. He cries when a kid in the grocery store comes up and asks him for a fist bump, and he cries as he’s reading a couple’s sponsorship proposal from Fenty Skincare, and he cries as he’s brushing his teeth.
Not long before Christmas, Shane and Ilya go to the Pikes for a casual dinner, and after everyone has finished their lightly-breaded chicken cutlets and broccoli fritters, Ruby and Jade strut out of the kitchen brandishing a cake bristling with candles.
“What’s this?” Shane asks. “Did I forget a birthday?”
Ruby rolls her eyes. “Duh, Uncle Shane.” Jade places the cake in front of Ilya, and Ruby sets the cake knife right next to it.
“It’s Uncle Ilya’s half-birthday,” Jade informs him gravely.
“They learned about half-birthdays in school last week,” Jackie says, smiling over Amber’s snoozing head. “When they realized Ilya’s was this weekend, they were pretty insistent we make a cake.”
Ilya gapes at the girls, exaggeratedly wide-eyed. “You made this?” he demands.
If you ask Shane, it’s pretty fucking obvious they made it. The frosting looks like it was smeared on by a baker wearing mittens. One side of the cake is a good two inches taller than the other.
“Yeah,” Ruby says, chest puffed out with pride. “All by ourselves.”
“I helped!” Arthur pipes up from under the table, where he’s flipping through a book about lizards.
“You’re not an adult, Arthur,” Jade sighs. “It still counts as all by ourselves.”
They insist on singing Happy Birthday to Ilya, even though they’re out of sync and out of tune and their high-pitched voices kind of make Shane’s ears hurt. Ilya blows his candles out and claps his hands together and tells the kids that they’ve done a spectacular job. Then Shane gets up to fetch clean plates, and when he comes back, Ilya’s got tears pouring down his cheeks and Hayden is standing next to him with his arms outstretched like Ilya is a bomb he needs to disarm.
“Ilya, hey, hey,” Shane says, setting the plates down and hurrying around the table to Ilya’s side. “Come here.”
Ilya hiccups. “Is fine. Is nothing. I am just crying because Pike is so ugly,” he blubbers. “And it is so sad that these beautiful children have to look at his face every day.”
“Don’t worry, Uncle Ilya,” Ruby says. She’s leaning over the table with her eyes fixed on the cake. Arthur is back on the floor with his picture book. Jade has disappeared. “My teacher, she told me even strong people cry.”
Pike waits until Ilya’s got his hands over his eyes to meet Shane’s gaze and mouth what the FUCK.
Shane offers his best apologetic expression. Which, because it’s him, means his mouth does something wobbly that can perhaps most accurately be described as a caterpillar imitation. Sorry, he mouthes back.
Ruby swipes a fingerful of frosting. Shane rubs Ilya’s back.
—
In Chicago, the Cens smash the Dogs 4-2, with two of their points coming on power plays. The team goes out to celebrate, at a gay bar in Boystown lit with aggressively orange lighting. The atmosphere is jubilant, the rookies are finally loosening up, and Shane gives in and orders himself a Moscow Mule.
“What is that?” Ilya asks when Shane returns from the bar, copper mug in hand.
“What do you think?” Shane asks, sipping. He can’t quite hold back a grimace. “Wow, that’s a strong pour.”
Ilya frowns, and for a moment, Shane thinks Ilya is going to chide him for crimes against vodka, but then his lip trembles. A moment later, he bursts into tears.
“Oh, baby,” Shane sighs, roping Ilya in with an arm around his shoulders. Ilya buries his face in Shane’s sweater.
“I am fine,” he sobs. “I am normal.”
“Of course you are,” Shane agrees, and throws a napkin at Hazy when it looks like he’s about to laugh.
—
“Maybe it’s something with your medication?” Shane suggests tentatively, when Ilya starts crying for the second time in a single day. The first time was when they were in the shower after their morning run, Shane sucking on Ilya’s cock. The second time was when Ilya took a bite of a blueberry muffin. Shane is trying really hard not to compare those two scenarios.
“Hmm, maybe,” Ilya says. “I will talk to Galina.”
But when Ilya comes back from his next therapy appointment, it’s with an unchanged prescription. “Better not to mess with it, if it is working,” he reports. Which must mean that he’s happy. The medication is working; the medication is intended to make him happy; ergo, he’s happy.
But still—Shane sees these tears, rivers and rivers of them, enough to turn their entire house into a fucking koi pond, and he can’t help but wonder.
“It's not that you’re—sad, is it?” Shane asks Ilya finally.
They’re in bed, reading—or they were, until Shane heard a snuffle from beside him, and when he glanced over he saw tears tracing their way down Ilya’s cheeks. Now they’re cuddling, although Ilya has started getting hard against Shane’s leg, so it’s only a matter of time before it escalates.
Ilya raises an eyebrow at Shane from where he’s plastered to Shane’s chest. It’s absurd, the way he manages to look so incredulous when he’s still actively crying.
“I just mean—usually when people cry, it’s because they’re sad,” Shane tries. “And it can’t be little things upsetting you, because when it—happens, there doesn’t usually seem to be anything wrong. So I was just wondering if maybe it was something bigger. Like, maybe you weren’t happy with our life. Together.”
“With you,” Ilya supplies, because he’s always understood Shane, even when Shane didn’t want him to.
“Yeah,” Shane sighs. “With me.”
Ilya purses his lips. He’s always so dramatic with his facial expressions: exaggerated in the way he drags his lips into a smile, wiggles his eyebrows, crosses his arms over his chest. He’s such a clown, and Shane loves it, because it’s just one more way that they’re perfectly-suited for each other. Shane, who has a hard time reading people’s expressions; Ilya, whose expressions are visible from space. Sometimes, Shane wants to brag about it. Look at this, look at us. Look at how we were made for each other.
“Shane,” Ilya says. “I want you to listen very carefully when I say this. I have never been so happy in my entire fucking life. Okay?”
Shane feels himself flushing, but he can’t help it. “Okay,” he says. “I believe you. I just wanted to check.”
Ilya shakes his head, rubbing a thumb over Shane’s cheek. “Stupid,” he says. “You never need to check. I am always happy with you.”
Shane rubs his face into Ilya’s hand. “Except when I make you get up at six to go running before practice, right?” he says.
It’s meant to make Ilya laugh, but instead, his eyes just go wet all over again. “No,” he counters. “Even then.”
Shane swallows hard, ducking in to kiss Ilya between his eyebrows. He rests there for a moment, his lips pressed to Ilya’s skin, breathing him in. He smells like Shane more and more nowadays. Shane’s detergent, because Shane has strong opinions about which brand best cleans sweat stains out of gym gear; Shane’s toothpaste, because Shane has researched which type of toothpaste is statistically best at maintaining dental enamel; Shane’s cologne, because Ilya is always stealing Shane’s. He claims it’s because he keeps using up his own and forgetting to buy more, but once or twice Shane has caught him sniffing his own wrist when he was wearing it, like maybe he just liked the smell.
“In that case,” Shane says, “are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
This time he does succeed in making Ilya laugh. His nose crinkles like a child’s. “Not unless it’s immaculate conception.”
Shane’s eyebrows shoot up. “I’m sorry? Is sex with me so boring you forgot it already?”
Ilya grins. “Oh, I remember,” he says. “But they also teach sex ed in Russian primary school, which is how I know the things we do will not get me pregnant. You, on the other hand…”
“Maybe you need a remedial course of that sex ed,” Shane says dryly, but doesn’t resist when Ilya rolls over on top of him and immediately sticks his hand down Shane’s pants, thumbing at his hole.
“You’re insatiable,” Shane grumbles, arching up into Ilya’s touch.
“Be quiet,” Ilya chides. “I have important things to teach you.”
—
As soon as the weather hits ten degrees, Bood announces the year’s first team barbecue.
“Come on, man,” Young gripes. “It’s, like, freezing out.”
“You California boys are pussies,” Holmberg says, rolling his eyes. “Feels like summer to me.”
“Bergy, you are from Florida,” Young snipes, but they come, every one of them. Well, not Eaton, who had already promised to visit his grandma at her Toronto nursing home, and not LaPointe, who can’t stop fucking his new girlfriend for more than three hours at a time, but the rest of them. They trickle in to Bood’s house over the course of the morning, toting chip bags and bottles of soda and many, many six-packs. Shane, as has become his habit, contributes a massive salad and vegetables to throw on the grill, which the guys grumble about but always eventually eat.
The warm-weather folk migrate to the living room, where someone’s started a Mario Kart tournament, and the Canadians make their way outside, hovering around the grill and sipping beers and pretending they’re not cold. Ilya joins the Canadians, because, as he likes to tell them, Russian winters eat Canadian winters for breakfast. Shane, who is feeling very benevolent, decides not to point out that Ilya used to keep his thermostat set at 24 degrees.
It’s as they’re standing there, Ilya arguing with Bood about something stupid, Shane idly listening in on a conversation between Chouinard and Dykstra, that Shane finds himself thinking about last year. Shane could never have had this moment last year. Even if he and Ilya had come out to the guys, even if everyone knew about them—the odds that Shane and Ilya would have the same day off were low enough, and then there was the drive to and from Montreal. They always had limited time, and with limited time they tended to prioritize the essentials. Fucking in bed for ten hours was essential. Hanging out with Ila’s teammates was not.
It was a loss, and Shane knew it was a loss, but he had rationalized it to himself by saying that day would come eventually. Not now, but soon. He just had to wait. He was good at waiting. He spent most of his life waiting—waiting for weekends, waiting for game days, waiting for summer.
But now—here Ilya is, in front of him, close enough to touch. Shane doesn’t have to wait for his life to start anymore. It’s already here.
Shane feels the tears coming, but for once in his life, he doesn’t try very hard to stop them. He swipes at his face half-heartedly, and the movement catches Ilya’s attention. He glances over, smiling, but the smile falls when he sees Shane’s face.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, doing a little scurry-hop over to Shane. He moves like a lizard, sometimes, or a mouse. “Moya lyubov, what’s wrong?”
Shane sniffs. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
Ilya’s hands settle on Shane’s waist. He’s frowning, a concerned little furrow between his brows. Shane loves him so fucking much. It’s a good thing spontaneous human combustion is a myth, or Shane would have long ago burnt to a lovesick pile of ashes. “You’re crying.”
Shane shakes his head, helpless to explain it. “I'm so happy,” he says eventually.
All these months, with Ilya and his tears—and finally, Shane understands.
Ilya’s gaze darts over Shane’s face, like he’s checking for a lie, but he must not find one because his expression crumples like a sheet of dough.
“Shane,” he whines, leaning forward to nuzzle against Shane’s jawline. “Not fair. You are going to make me cry.”
Shane huffs out a half-laugh around his tears. “Well, what is it Ruby said? Even strong people cry.”
Ilya kisses the hinge of Shane’s jaw, then his earlobe, like an afterthought. “Okay,” he says, breath warm against Shane’s skin. “Let’s be strong people, then. Together.”