Chapter Text
Ilya just had this feeling. Long before the symptoms, long before the diagnosis. Kind of similar to what happened to his mom. He just had this… feeling. Like he shouldn’t have left for his little league hockey game, shouldn’t have stayed for the after party where he won a stupid medal for all his achievements, already the up and coming best hockey player that Russia had ever seen. That anyone had ever seen. He shouldn’t have left, because his mom was so tired that day, so exhausted, and from what? Ilya didn’t know.
But he left her there, in bed tucked under the blankets, in her dark room, and followed his dad to the car. When they returned, he bound straight for her room, excited to show her his medal and tell her about the game. Something was off immediately. Something about the air in the room, something about the stillness. None of it felt right. She didn’t react to him, not like she usually did. Even on her worst days, she would roll over, smile at him, and ask him to crawl into bed with her.
She didn’t move. She didn’t smile. She didn’t breathe.
Ilya didn’t have to get close to her to see the empty bottle pills next to her in bed. He didn’t have to get closer to know that she wasn’t going to answer him, but he tried. His hands gripped her shoulders and smoothed her hair from her face, but she was already colder than normal. He couldn’t wake her.
It was an accident, his dad told him, stern and serious as he dragged him out of the room. You will tell no one. Stop crying. It was an accident.
Ilya didn’t stop crying, but no one came to check on him. He cried until he couldn’t breathe and pounded on his pillows. He chucked his stupid medal across the room and watched it bounce against the wall, breaking in two. If he didn’t go to the game, maybe she would still be here. If he didn’t stay for the party, maybe she would still be alive. If, if, if. He should have known. He was only twelve, but he should have known.
And then he had that feeling again. Years later. It catches him by surprise. By now, he knows that he inherited his mothers disease, that sometimes he’s not okay, but it’s a little more than just being not okay. It’s deeper, heavier, harder to carry. It’s a burden, weighing him down, keeping him under a fog that distorts reality. He hates it, but sometimes it makes him feel closer to his mom again. He can’t even remember her voice anymore.
When that feeling comes back, it feels like it squeezes the air from his lungs, brings him back to that day he left mom in her dark room and came back to find her cold.
His dad has dementia. It’s progressed. It confirms all his suspicions for the past few years, remembering long phone calls with his father where he answered the same questions over and over, when his dad tried to remind him of his failures from when he was younger as if it just happened five minutes again. Asking him to bring home bread or vodka. Ilya knew it, even if no one else wanted to talk about it.
It wasn’t a quick death, but sometimes Ilya thinks it was a more terrible death. His dad was sick for years, and sometimes it made him nicer, but mostly it made him angry and confused. The world continued to move while he stayed stuck in place, searching for Irina and Ilya like they were still in the same house, like Ilya wasn’t living a million miles away on purpose. He suffered, which made their whole family suffer. Ilya is accused of being lucky, that he got to duck out on their family and continue his life while their father deteriorated. He won’t compare tragedies, but it still eats at him that he wasn’t there.
And he just knew, at some point, deep in his chest, in his soul, that he would end up inheriting his fathers disease, too.
Shane watches Ilya when he doesn’t know he’s looking. For as much as Ilya claims to be perspective, he seems clueless to other people watching him, observing him. He’s not even being sneaky. He’s leaning in the doorway, watching Ilya bent over their desk, scribbling something on paper before glueing something down on it. He writes something underneath before capping a marker and leaning back on the chair, nodding down at his work.
And then he glues that page into a binder, picks it up, and pushes it under a bookshelf.
“Ilya?” Shane calls, confusion lacing his tone, trying to make himself known. He’d never snoop, and he trusts Ilya with his life, but that? That was weird, right?
Ilya straightens up and looks at him like he just got caught doing something he’s not supposed to. But he smiles, and the look is suddenly gone, replaced with a genuine excitement to see Shane. “You’re early,” he says, crossing the room and wrapping both his arms around his waist.
“Meeting ended early,” Shane tells him, momentarily forgetting about his husband hiding something under the bookshelf to instead melt into his arms. “I couldn’t wait to get home to you.”
“Long day?” Ilya questions, sympathetic, rubbing his back.
He offers a noise of agreement. “Just tired of talking about the same thing everyday.”
“Wanna lay down and tell me all about it?” Ilya asks, firm fingers kneading the tension out of his back.
Shane’s about to say yes until he remembers why they’re in here. It’s not unusual for one of them to need to use their small office, mostly put together out of necessity and hopes to keep work away from the dinner table. Between running the charity and staying up to date with everything the NHL throws at them, they needed to keep that confined.
“What were you working on?” Shane asks, pulling slightly away from him to look at his face.
A blush covers his cheeks as he looks from Shane back to the bookshelf. “You saw me?” He asks, sounding embarrassed.
Shane chuckles. “I stood in the door for like five minutes. Whatever you were doing had your focus.”
His cheeks get redder, and Shane can feel his hands get warmer through his light hoodie where he’s still digging his thumbs into the flesh at his lower back. Shane loves how easily Ilya shows his emotions on his face now, after all this time. It’s still work, but Ilya’s been slowly letting people see his emotions, how things affect him. It might be an endless uphill climb, but moments like this show Shane just how far that he’s come. If this were ten years ago, Ilya probably would have scoffed and tried to distract him with sex.
Scratch that, it might still be Ilya’s only defense, because his hands slip down to grope his ass. Shane hisses and swats his hands, taking a step away. “What did you hide under the bookshelf, Ilya?” He mumbles something under his breath, looking a lot like a kid about to be in trouble. “What was that, love?”
“I am not yet ready to show you,” Ilya speaks up, turning his eyes up to catch Shane’s. He holds them, chin held up, like he’s daring Shane to push it further, or like he doesn’t want Shane to push it. “Is project. Incomplete.”
“Okay,” Shane agrees, stepping back into Ilya’s space. “You’ll show me when you’re ready?”
Ilya smiles, small and shy, not at all like the grins or smirks he’s usually throwing in Shane's direction. It turns his insides to mush all the same. “Of course, moya lyubov.” The name turns Shane soft in his arms, pliant as he’s guided to the couch, down on Ilya’s chest where his heartbeat feels like home.
It’s silent between them, the room echoing the calm that only exists when they’re together, when they’re touching. It’s like a medicine, a balm over a burn. Shane is tired, and his words want to shut off, and Ilya knows, cooling the stress from the day with lips against his forehead. And even though Shane is still curious about Ilya’s project, he knows not to pry. They have their tells, and Ilya getting shy of all things, is a big one.
Anger or defensiveness are common, even if they’re becoming increasingly more rare in their relationship. It’s like as soon as they were able to say it out loud, those three words that they repeat probably thousands of times a day now, it unlocked everything they were holding back. It wasn’t always easy, and they still have their days of turning back towards old coping methods. Shane shuts down, doesn’t speak until he lashes out. And Ilya will turn his back, sometimes, when it gets hard. He’ll get defensive before trying to redirect their attention, a reach for a distraction.
So for Ilya to be shy over this, Shane believes him. And he knows better than to try and get Ilya to tell him anything before he’s ready, and Shane can be patient. Plus, he’s so so tired, and he’s been looking forward to this all day, to Ilya all day. He can have a horrible day, but the second he’s home, the second Ilya cups his face or grabs his waist, it’s like it all disappears.
He was made for this, for him, for them.
It’s all in his head. It has to be, but it gnaws at him, keeps him awake at night. Ilya stares into the dark, eyes unfocused towards the ceiling, listening to Shane’s soft breathing next to him, the quiet noises he sometimes makes, vowels with no shape. He wants to sleep. He should be sleeping. Shane’s arm is loose around his waist, his bare chest pressed up against his back, and his breaths are fanning across his shoulder. It’s usually the perfect recipe.
But Ilya can’t sleep. Is he supposed to focus to sleep? Or is it a lack of focus that’s supposed to help? He can’t figure it out right now, because his brain keeps replying the day, scared of losing it, scared of missing moments, terrified of waking up and forgetting what he did yesterday.
He slips out of bed, shifting his pillow down for Shane to curl around in his place. Shane shifts, and he freezes, but then he settles with a small whine, and Ilya pads softly into their office.
He still hasn’t told Shane. He hasn’t even talked about it in therapy. It feels like talking about it is as good as jinxing it, like the second the words leave his lips that it’ll come true. It would be immediate. He’s never had good karma. So he keeps it locked up to worry about when he’s alone, when there’s a lull in the day, when he can afford some silence to ponder his surely impending doom.
The binder is still where he left it last, untouched. He trusts Shane not to go looking for it until Ilya is ready to show him. And this is something that needs a preface. He can’t just hand it to his husband and say here. It would make no sense and Shane would have questions, questions like why, and Ilya isn’t ready to tell him why yet.
So he prints off more pictures. Ilya’s gotten very good at sneaking pictures, he has to. Especially because, even after all these years spent in front of cameras, Shane still gets incredibly awkward when there’s one pointed at him. Ilya gets Shane when he isn’t looking, when he doesn’t notice. He takes one every day. Sometimes just of him sleeping on the couch with Anya, sometimes him on the ice with the kids at the charity camps, some with him and his parents. He’s even snuck selfies, he’s so good at this. Perfect pictures where Ilya is staring straight into the camera while Shane looks a way off with a genuine smile, mid laugh. His favorites are the ones of him blushing, the redness across his cheeks making his freckles look darker. He can’t even help himself sometimes.
The mini portable printer connects right to his phone to print out each memory. The pictures are small, but he glues them down onto paper and scribbles messily next to them everything they did that day. He’s not sure if he’s journaling or scrapbooking anymore, but he can’t stop. The moments are too precious, and life is too long to remember them all even without a clock ticking over his head, reminding him of the inevitable.
He writes the date next to each picture in his scrappy handwriting and then a few lines about the day. Sometimes it’s not even about the day. In fact, a lot of the time it’s about how much he adores the man he’s with, how happy Shane makes him, how lucky he feels to be welcomed into not just his life but his family.
His freckles make me weak even after fifteen years, Ilya writes next to one that Shane’s freckles perfectly pop in. Ilya stares at the photo for a moment, memorizing. Shane is smiling and it’s mostly his profile as he stares off camera, a light flush on his cheeks from the cold. He’s outside with a Centaurs scarf wrapped around his neck, the glow of a bonfire warming his face. It’s from Bood’s barbeque a couple nights ago, and Ilya managed to sneak more than a few photos of everyone.
He tapes them on the same page, desperate to remember every moment with the people he considers family. Troy + Harris being in love, he writes under a picture of Harris sitting in Troy’s lap, Troy’s face pressed into his neck while Harris was telling a story. Bood + Hazy being boring, he writes next to one of Wyatt showing Zane a new edition of a comic he had been talking about for weeks while Zane feigned interest.
“Baby?” Shane’s voice startles Ilya from his task, and he sits straight up, heart beating a touch faster than it was before. “What’re you doing awake?” His eyes are sleepy and half-lidded as he sweeps over Ilya behind the desk, concern etched into his features.
Ilya’s fingers itch to take a picture, but he left his phone in the bedroom. “I am sorry,” he announces, closing his binder with the pages in it, loose pictures tucked into a pocket at the side, standing. “I could not sleep.” He glances between the binder and Shane, torn between going right to his arms or hiding his project.
Shane nods towards the desk where Ilya is still standing, “Still not ready to show me?” he asks, his voice gentle even through the scratchyness of the early morning.
He shakes his head, trailing his fingers over the plastic of the binder. “Not yet,” Ilya answers, pushing the binder to the end of the desk. “Soon, moya lyubov. Promise.”
Shane smiles, soft and warm, nodding his head. “Okay,” he says, and he holds his hand out towards him. “Come back to bed?”
It momentarily stuns Ilya, causing him to pause midstep towards his husband. He’s stunning, even at who-knows-what-time-it-is in the morning. With his hair smooshed to one side of his face and the wrinkle from the sheets still etched into his cheek, wearing an old ratty Metro’s t-shirt and a pair of Ilya’s old sweatpants that he cut into shorts. Shane looks sleepy and soft, and in love. There’s a tenderness in his gaze that Ilya sometimes still can’t believe he’s deserving of, that Shane’s love hasn’t wavered through the years they’ve been together but grown stronger instead.
He sees it in his eyes right now, the amount of love bursting out of Shane for him right now. It makes Ilya want to cry, or scream, or bite the sensitive flesh between Shane’s shoulder and neck until he cries. It feels like it claws up his throat and threatens to suffocate him. The love Ilya has for Shane is rivaled only by Shane’s love for Ilya.
“Yes,” Ilya agrees, regaining himself, leaving the binder on the corner of the desk. Their fingers link together and Shane leads the way back to their bedroom. Ilya follows wordlessly, falling into bed behind Shane and pressing against him, dragging Shane back so he can bury his face between his shoulder and neck, breathe him in.
“Are you okay?” Shane’s voice is quiet in the stillness of their room, laced with drowsiness.
“I am,” Ilya tells him, tightening his grip around his waist. “I promise.”
“Okay,” Shane sighs, wiggling himself further into the curve of Ilya’s body. “You’ll show me your project soon?”
It sounds like Shane’s on the verge of being asleep again, words slurring and light. Ilya kisses behind his neck and nods. “Soon.”
He just hopes he never needs it.
They’re thirty-six now, but sometimes when Shane blinks, he still sees that seventeen year old boy smoking outside the rink in Saskatchewan, drowning in himself and his expectations, oceans away from his family, feigning arrogance as a form of self-protection. Then he blinks again, and it’s his husband Ilya, smiling so wide it looks like it could split his face, lighter than he’s been in years despite everything that still weighs him down sometimes.
They’ve come so far together, yet it still feels like they’re only just beginning. That they have an entire lifetime to be together, and after that, another lifetime, because Shane is convinced that they’ll find each other in every lifetime and experience every version of themselves that the universe has to offer.
He doesn’t even care how corny he sounds, it’s the truth. Nobody goes through what they go through to not stay together for every version of themselves.
A force slams into his legs, threatening to take him down, but Shane steadies himself on his skates just as he sees Skylar fall backwards on the ice, landing with a small oof. “Coach Shane!” he exclaims, trying to push himself up, hands slipping. “Coach Hayden said it’s time for the scrimmage game!”
Shane holds his hand out for the kid and pulls him back up, straightening his helmet back on his head. “Are you ready?” he asks when it’s fixed, bending at the waist to look at the kid.
“Yes!” Skylar bounces on his skates.
He laughs and nods his head, patting the kid on the shoulder as he straights back up. Ilya calls across the rink, “Get into positions, kiddos!”
It’s a scramble across the rink, kids racing in different directions, separating into their practice teams. Ilya and Shane still don’t coach the same team, their competitiveness still healthy and thriving. It was a surprise when this year Ilya and Hayden decided to coach a team together, but Shane’s been listening to them bicker across the rink all afternoon. All week, actually. Still, it’s nice to see his husband and his best friend get along.
Ryan blows the whistle for the game to start, and Shane’s team wins the face off. He lets out a cheer from his side of the rink as Ilya boos him across the ice.
And it doesn’t matter which team wins, these are kids, and they’re either just starting hockey this year or coming back for their fifth visit to the camp. It’s not that serious, but Shane already knows his team is going to win. His kids will destroy Ilya’s team, and Shane can hold it over his head for the rest of the season. It shouldn’t matter as much as it does, but they’ve always thrived on oneing up each other. Besides, Ilya’s kids won last year and he gloated about it for weeks.
It would have been unbearable if Ilya didn’t look so stupid happy about it.
There’s a flash across the ice, and Shane turns just in time to see Ilya lowering his phone back to his side, the lens clearly having just been focused on Shane. He looks sheepish at being caught, shoving the phone quickly into his pocket while calling out to his group of kids. Shane can’t take his eyes off him now, and doesn’t even remember to cheer when his team wins.
“How often do you do that?” Shane asks in the car later, slouched in the passenger seat, their fingers linked together over the center console.
“Do what?” Ilya asks, glancing at him before focusing back on the road.
“Take pictures,” Shane tells him, tapping his fingers over the back of his hand. “Can I see?”
Ilya’s lips turn up the edges as he nods. “Soon.”
“Soon?” Shane wrinkles his brow, twisting his body to look at him. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll show you everything soon,” Ilya tells him, like it’s obvious, but it suddenly feels like they’re talking about two different things.
Shane remembers the binder then, the one under the bookshelf. He hasn’t looked for it, but he knows that it’s still there. Ilya’s been repeating that word like it’s a prayer the past few months, not out of a lack of curiosity, but out of trust for his partner. Ilya is cryptic sometimes, concerningly so, but it’s always been a sort of surprise he’d been planning.
But it’s been stretching longer and longer and that word kind of feels like a dog whistle for Shane. When is soon?
It must show on Shane’s face, because Ilya asks, “What?”
He tries to make himself sound lighter than he feels. “I’m just starting to not like the word soon.”
“Why?” Ilya wonders, confusion painting his face. “Is good word.”
“It’s a good word because it leaves all accountability from you to actually follow through,” Shane answers quickly, tone sharp. His chest tightens immediately, something sour filling his mouth. “I didn’t mean that,” he rushes, taking in Ilya’s pinched face and clenched jaw. “I’m sorry, Ilya. I’m just frustrated that it feels like you’re hiding something from me, and it makes me worry. I didn’t mean that though. I know you’ll show me when you’re ready. I’m trying to be patient.”
Ilya’s face doesn’t change, and he doesn’t offer anything back in acknowledgement. It makes Shane feel worse, worry and regret twisting through his body. He doesn’t pull away though. He grips his hand tighter between them, and the simple gesture has Shane’s shoulders loosening.
“You have been patient,” Ilya agrees in their driveway, car turned off. His hand is still gripping the wheel, fingers tight and knuckles white. Shane can see the way he’s grinding his teeth, his tell for when he’s struggling to find the right words. “And I want to tell you. But today was very long day. Can we talk tomorrow?”
“Hey,” Shane calls out, dropping Ilya’s hand to cup his cheek, turning him to face him. Ilya’s blue eyes look even bluer with tears brimming in them, shinning in the sunlight. “We can talk whenever you’re ready,” he tells him, stroking across his cheek. “I don’t want to rush you.”
“I think maybe is important,” Ilya’s voice is watery when he speaks, laced with emotion. He keeps looking off to the side of Shane’s face, like it’s too hard to look at him right now. Shane remains steady, allowing Ilya whatever kind of distance he needs right now. “Tomorrow, we talk. But tonight I just want…” he clicks his tongue and shakes his head, pulling out of Shane’s grasp to lean back against his seat. He breathes deeply through his nose. “Will you hate me if I work on the project tonight?”
Shane huffs at even the thought of it. He could never hate Ilya, no matter how hard he tried when he was younger. And he tried so damn hard. They were rivals, he was supposed to hate him. But somehow, Ilya invaded his pores and his dreams. Shane thinks he fell in love that night in the fitness center after the draft, he was just too stupid to realize.
“I’d never hate you, baby,” Shane assures him, dropping his hand to his shoulder, squeezing. “I’ll start dinner and let you know when it’s ready?”
“Thank you,” Ilya tells him, voice tight with emotion. He turns to look at him, offering a nod of gratitude that Shane returns with what he hopes is a reassuring smile. The tension seems to bleed out of Ilya’s shoulders, tension that Shane maybe put there from his earlier outburst, but maybe that had been building for months already without Shane noticing. Has Ilya been suffering again without Shane noticing? Surely he would have noticed something. Ilya doesn’t hold it all in like he used to. They’re better like that.
He feels sick thinking about Ilya struggling without him, that he’s shouldering something Shane doesn’t know about when they’re so close. It wraps claws around his chest and squeezes, damn nearing trying to steal the air from his lungs. Maybe it’s panic? Shane definitely feels scared, but it’s a little more than fear. His own eyes are getting blurry with tears.
“Shane?” Ilya’s voice calls him out of his spiraling, his hand squeezing his knee.
“Just promise me,” Shane tells him, reaching for his hand, holding it between both of his. “Promise me that you’re okay and that you’re not bottling it all up again, Ilya. You-you’re not alone anymore and I love you so much and I know that it’s hard sometimes but you’re so important to me and I never want to see you hurting or-”
“Sweetheart.”
Just that one word stops all the racing thoughts in his head. Shane snaps his lips shut. He blinks the tears away and takes a deep breath, shuddering.
Ilya is smiling. It’s gentle and kind and affectionate. “I love you. And I am okay. It is not that kind of thing. Okay?”
He nods and just clutches his hands to his chest, both of them still leaning awkwardly over the center console of the car.
“I love you,” Shane repeats.
“I know,” Ilya reminds him with a happy sigh. “Ya tebya lyublyu bol'she chem umeyu vyrazit' slovami.”
Shane fights back a fresh wave of tears at the words, nodding. He presses forward, releasing Ilya’s hand to cup his damp cheek, dropping his forehead against his. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”
And he’ll say it forever, remind Ilya of it everyday in every language if he has to. And it’s not even a have to, he wants to. Loving Ilya, especially openly now, is one of the greatest gifts of his life. He’ll never get tired of it, and he knows that Ilya feels the same way. They’re both sappy and soft for each other.