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Supposed to be just a quick stop by on the way back to Ottawa. Shane doesn’t even think to turn the car off, just leaves it idling in the driveway as he jogs up to the Pikes' house. Doesn't bother, also, with the doorbell, because he knows it will only alert the cat, who is always looking to make a break between the legs of a visitor. He raps two knuckles on the familiar wood grain, against the spot on the door where Shane knows it'll be the loudest—and that's a funny, pretty thing, isn't it? To know a door this well, to be able to play it like an instrument. Thirty seconds pass with no immediate answer, so he ventures to crack it open and stick his face in the foyer, calling out Jackie's name.
He hears her faint affirmation, and then finds her in the living room, lying on the couch with a cloth on her forehead, newly awake.
The house has a kind of quiet inertia to it—the kids are all at school, and Hayden had to jet to Minnesota late last night for this evening's game. The cat is nowhere to be found.
Shane stands there with Hayden's dead iPhone in hand, which Hayd left behind at the hotel restaurant last night when they met up for a quick post-game drink. The Voyeageurs lost 2-3 to the Cens.
It's 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon. The television is streaming the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on mute. And there is a wide puddle of blood spreading out from between Jackie's legs, staining her Lulus and the beige couch beneath her.
“Oh, shit,” he says, inelegantly.
“What?” She jerks up onto her elbows, wound tight, a sleeper agent primed to hear the phrase Oh, shit, and launch into action.
“Jack, you’re, ah, I think—?” but he doesn’t have to finish, because of course she can feel it now that she’s fully awake. She lifts her butt to inspect the damage.
“God fucking damn it.” She does a tender, careful scoot to the side. The blood in the couch wells up when pressed down by her weight, like wringing out a soaked sponge. Shane tries very hard to not wince.
"Sorry, Shane, can you…?" She motions for him, braced on her thighs, hunched over. She's having trouble sitting up.
It's a slow effort, getting her into standing position. When he has her by her waist, both her hands on his shoulders, he unbites his tongue. "Are you okay?"
"I'm good, I'm good. I'm so annoyed—we literally just got this couch steam cleaned last week. I should have put some Depends on for my nap, I guess." She laughs, but it's a bit beyond him, and he's feeling calcified by embarrassment, slow to meet the humor of the situation.
She's unceremonious when she asks, "Would you mind just throwing the whole cushion in the laundry room for me? I'm gonna go clean up." And she leaves behind a drop of blood on the hardwood as she goes, which Shane discreetly wipes away with some paper towel from the kitchen.
In the laundry room, he places the ruined cushion on top of the dryer and stares at it, where the stain is browning around the edges. It's an astonishing amount of blood. Much more than the little pattern Rose had once left in his sheets. More than any laceration injury he's seen produce. More than he's perhaps ever been faced with in his life. He leans against the washer and googles solutions: period blood couch how to clean, blood in cushions cleaning hack. Then, after admitting that he's not up to the task: how much blood normal for period, bad period when to call 911.
He hears the rushing sound of the toilet flush in the wall pipes, and exits quickly to meet her at the stairs. She's pulled her hair up and has a pair of Hayden's sweatpants on, and is a little less pale than she'd looked on the couch.
"Hayd left his phone at the bar last night, I just wanted to drop it off before I head back," he says.
"You're a lifesaver." She takes the phone and tucks it into the pouch of her hoodie. Christ, there's a little bit of blood on the bottom of the hem, too. "He had to take my iPad with him to Minnesota so we could stay in touch. Good game last night, by the way. Ilya with you?"
Shane crosses his arms, remembers suddenly that the car is still running in the driveway. "Uh, no, he rode back with Wyatt early. They wanted to stop at a cabane à sucre for breakfast."
She smiles. "That boy sure loves his maple syrup."
Shane smiles back. Something feels unspoken between them, tugging at Shane's middle.
He thinks of Jackie as a friend. Every year they work through the Canada Reads shortlist together, sharing their thoughts and reviews in a long-running email thread. She brought the twins for a day trip to the cottage this past summer, and had a glass of wine with Shane on the dock, while Ilya took the girls on a paddle boat tour around the lake. Their conversation was easy, chatty, but she is not Rose—they don't discuss their bodies, and they don't confide in each other about much beyond Hayden's game, and occasionally, Arthur's nascent queerness.
Now he can't help but feel that he's stumbled into a new level of intimacy with her that he's woefully unprepared for.
"I'm…I don't want to be weird, sorry, I know it's none of my business, but should I be, like, concerned? That was a lot of blood."
Jackie leans against the railing, dumps her face into her hands. "I love you," she says. "You're a sweetie. Don't worry, I'm not dying."
"I'm just—is that normal for you?"
She takes a seat, gingerly, on the step. "Ah, okay. This isn't my period."
"Oh." Shane doesn't know what this means, or if he should know what this means, if he should be alarmed or relieved. She must see this on his face, because she seems to make decision, dropping her shoulders and taking a deep breath.
"I'm…it's an abortion."
"Okay," Shane answers instantly, on autopilot. "Like…wait—"
"It was early enough I could do it at home, and the worst is over, I think, But yeah. The meds just make you cramp and bleed like crazy for week." She sighs. "So, I'm assuming Hayden didn't talk to you about it."
Shane shakes his head. He feels every step of this new territory in his whole body, like he's wearing lead boots. "No, I mean, he mentioned you guys were maybe going to try again, a few months ago."
Jackie nods. "Yeah, I thought maybe. I had my tubes untied last year and we were playing around with the idea, but I don't know. I tested positive…God, I think, ten days ago? We sat with it. It just didn't feel right, this time."
"Right. Of course." He's surprised, truly, by this information, and he feels childish and stupid for being surprised. For associating abortion with teenagers and politics, and never imagining this scenario for anyone in his circle of friends. He feels inept, entirely the wrong person to be having this conversation. It sounds a little like a question when he adds, "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"I feel like…" Shane chews his lip. "I mean, you probably wanted to keep this private, and I barged in."
"You've got our gate code, hun, it's okay. I'm just glad it was you and not Hayden's mom. She's so fucking catholic." Jackie stretches, cracks her elbows. She pauses mid-motion to perform a suspicious little look in his direction. "You're not feeling catholic about this, are you?"
Shane lifts his left hand and taps his wedding band. "No chance."
She reaches for that hand, laces their fingers together, breaking with laughter. "Oh, it kind of was a lot of blood, wasn't it? You looked so freaked out, Shane. Oh my god, you poor thing."
He joins her on the step, laughing with her, shaking off the fear. "I, uh, I'm not really well versed in all this, obviously."
She keeps it light, a tone Shane recognizes from when he's overheard her talking Hayden down, when he's spinning out over a mess the kids have made.
"We had a little whoopsie after Arthur was born, too. Hayden doesn't like to talk about it too much. I think he thinks we'll be judged."
"I'm not judging," Shane is quick to say. They're still holding hands—he squeezes hers. He can't think of anything else to share that won't sound trite.
"Thanks, sweetie. I know it's touchy, for some people, because we're married so, like, why not?" She must be thinking of Hayden's mom—she has a sour look on her face. "I just changed my mind."
Shane nods. He feels this sentiment settle into his skin, burrowing down to his muscles, seeds scattered over his body, taking root.
He feels it all the way home, driving slow in the middle lane, letting waves of commuters pass over him. He stops for gas at an Esso about a half hour away from the city and finds his thoughts wandering to Hayden, to the last conversation they had about family planning. He had only said they might try for one more, a joke about having enough babies to fill a shift on the ice.
"And your kid can play goalie," he'd said to Shane.
When Shane gets home, Anya jumps and whines underfoot, and makes the task of dumping his gear bag impossible. "Babe, can you call her?" he shouts into the house.
"Anyuta!" Ilya yells in a sing-song, followed by a piercing whistle. She guns for the living room, where Shane finds Ilya lounging on the chaise of their sectional. Anya jumps up and slithers along Ilya's body, but rolls over to present her belly to Shane. Ilya hisses, shifting her to his side. "No, I'm too full, pupsik, off."
"How many pancakes did you put away?" Shane sits and hauls Anya into his lap, gives her the rough scratches she's been looking for.
"At least ten, probably more. Don't ask about the bacon, you will be upset."
Shane wants to ask about the bacon, but he wants more to not be so predictable.
They settle into the average quiet of an optional skate day. The dishwasher is running, which means Ilya forgot to turn it on before they left for Montreal yesterday. This annoys Shane, but not enough to do anything about it.
The light is starting to go now. They should make dinner soon, maybe the tofu in the freezer. Shane is still knuckle-deep in Anya's fur, listening to her little sniffs and sneezes of regulation, listening to the royalty free music and that annoying influencer cadence drone from Ilya's phone, as he scrolls through Instagram reels.
Shane looks out the window. Across the cul-de-sac he sees the neighbour kids playing basketball in their driveway.
He considers telling Ilya about his afternoon with Jackie, but hesitates. Instead, he asks, "Have you ever gotten someone pregnant?"
Ilya is slow to look over at him, distracted by the recipe video he's watching, but when it registers, he has this look on his face that tells Shane, immediately, what the answer is.
"Why?" Ilya asks. He sounds like he's caught in a lie, but that's not how Shane means it. It just feels a little absurd that they've never had this conversation, and now that Shane has realized it, he won't be able to rest until they do.
"I just wondered if it ever happened."
Ilya's ankle starts to move from side to side, a squirming little tell, despite how coolly he shrugs. "Okay, yes, it happened once."
"What did you do?"
"Well, obviously I don't have a fucking kid, so." Ilya gestures to the air, spelling it out. It's a shade too icy and defensive for safety, but Shane just moves ahead at the same clip. Experience tells him this is usually the wrong way to go about it, but he can't help himself.
"Who was she?"
Ilya's phone has been repeating the recipe video on a loop and it's reached a breaking point. He finally clicks the lock button, irritated, and the silence is sharp and sudden. Anya shakes Shane off and jumps down, her nails clicking on the floor as she follows her instincts to another room.
"Why are you asking?"
Shane says, "I'm curious."
It's amazing that after eighteen years of knowing each other, they can still trip over newness like this. Sometimes it's thrilling; like in Ibiza, their second anniversary vacation, discovering that Shane was excited to have Ilya tell him what to do with a stranger's cock. You can take him a little deeper, sweetheart, come on, I want to see.
And sometimes it's blindsiding, shocking, like when Shane found a forgotten sachet of coke in one of Ilya's bags a few years ago.
"It was fucked up." Ilya shrugs, drumming his fingers on the back of his phone. "It was in Moscow, before I ever knew you."
"Okay." Shane puts his hand on Ilya's chest. "I want to know, though."
He lets Shane scratch at his pec in gentle rotations. The phone is cast aside, upturned, notifications pouring in every few moments and lighting up the periphery. "She was my brother's girlfriend. I was stupid, before I cared about condoms. Or had any money."
"How old were you?"
Ilya hates it, being interviewed like this, but he answers dutifully. "I think, ah, I was fifteen. Why she was fucking embarrassed, probably. She was twenty, or something. She told me only after it happened."
The presence of an older woman in Ilya's history is not a shock, but it troubles Shane like it did the first time he learned about the others; the mother of Ilya's teammate, the assistant strength and conditioning coach for the World Juniors.
Shane hums. "Jesus, you were a baby."
"Yes. I could have ruined my whole life, eh?" Ilya holds Shane's wrist, thumb circling over his pulse. He gives Shane a little tug. "You had sex with your girlfriend in high school. You ever manage to finish in her?"
"Fuck you." Shane pokes his nails gently into Ilya's tit. "Yes, I did."
"So could be a little Hollander out there?"
Shane hears this, and though he knows the two and half women he's slept with are childless, he feels an immense dark cloud system roll through his body at the notion.
He imagines a black haired daughter, playing basketball in the driveway, that rubber tang of a bouncing ball getting closer and closer, and her coming through the front door, into their home, into this room where the two of them sit. When's dinner? Dad? I'm hungry, when's dinner?
It leaves him breathless.
"No," Shane says. "There's no way."
Shane scrubs and scrubs at the mortifying, faceless concept of this child, but the outline is still there. Fuck, how did they get onto this?
He starts to see the forest for the trees—vast, unmarked trails ahead of him. He regrets bringing this up, now, and he wants to move on; Ilya once created an embryo, and that's all there is. Shane does not want to know how Ilya really feels about this. He does not want to look closely at it, not right now, so he swings his leg over Ilya's hip, settling onto his thighs.
Ilya groans, wiggling so his slightly distended gut isn't in the way when Shane bends to kiss him. It's lazy and soft, maple tinged, apologetic.
"We can forget it," Shane says. "It doesn't matter."
It probably does matter a great deal, but Ilya slips his fingers into Shane's belt loops, tugs him closer. His eyes are hazy, his cock is getting hard, and Shane knows they are reaching for sex because they can't reach for words.
Ilya's hand wanders while they make out, dipping into the top of Shane's jeans, feathery on his crack, through his briefs.
"Are you ready? Could you ride me here?"
Shane shakes his head. "No, later. I should go to the washroom."
Ilya huffs, fucks his hips up a few times, meeting Shane's ass in blunted, unsatisfactory surges. He gives up after a minute. If they were five years younger, they might rub a quick one out here, anyway, But time is precious, and their bodies are thirty-six and tired. They need to save their gas.
"'Okay. Later." Ilya drums his hands on Shane's thighs, then slows, breathing and blood returning to normal, arousal gentling away. The silence feels like an opportunity.
Shane looks down at his husband, the blonde curls tucked behind his ears, the darker mustache he's been growing since November, glinting with little greys in the light. This conversation has felt like a botched play, like Ilya is waiting for Shane to reset and face him.
Shane looks away. Ilya drags his hand through the hair at Shane's nape. "When's dinner?" he says.
Later that night, Shane waits in bed while Ilya takes Anya for her evening walk around the block. Shane is flushed and pink from a blistering shower. The eucalyptus damp from the en suite seeps into the room, the extraction fan too sluggish to clear it fast enough.
Shane scrolls through his email with one hand, while he cracks his legs open on top of the sheets, and loads one pump of lube in his other palm. He works a plug into his ass, and also flags the emails in his inbox that he'll need to respond to tomorrow.
The buttery silicone is easy, familiar, a flashing burn that's almost nothing. He pops it out and feels the mechanical aperture of his hole closing, before he presses back in.
Shane switches to his other email account, the personal one, where his thread with Jackie lives. They have one more title from the Canada Reads shortlist left—it's been a month since they last wrote each other, and the CBC will air the big battle of the books in two weeks. He ought to respond to her, pick the final book up from the Indigo in Kanata on their way home from the rink tomorrow.
He leaves the plug inside, wiping his hand on the towel underneath him. His cock is still soft—he'll wait for Ilya to get him there—and he mindlessly scrolls until he gets near the bottom of his inbox. Sharply, he remembers the existence of an email in the middle of the stack, something his dad sent him a few months ago. Ilya is included in the recipients.
Subject: Hopewell Adoption Services - direct contact info.
It had been something Shane's parents brought up on Christmas eve, how David had recently connected with the director who succeeded him at the Treasury Board, how she and her wife had adopted a baby with a private agency based out of Winnipeg, and did they want David to get more information? Did they know it took her five years to find a match? Did they think it'd be a good idea to get on the list now, rather than later?
Shane clenches around the plug, the burning, and he archives the email. He wishes he had the guts to delete it. He wants to delete it. He wants to block his dad's address. He wants—
"Started without me?"
Ilya is in the doorway, and how Shane didn't hear him come in, he has no idea. Shane throws his phone down on the bedside magnetic charger, and sits back on his elbows. "We have to be up at six."
They skip right to the good stuff, Ilya kneeling behind Shane, tapping on the plug while he reaches around to rub Shane's cock. Ilya smells faintly of the skunky CBD pre-rolls that he smokes on Anya's walks some nights. Mostly when he's anxious.
In two minutes flat, Ilya is inside Shane, giving him the effortless, melty pleasure of his cock. Shane embraces the quick erosion of coherent thought, becomes his body. He exists in the stretch of Ilya's thumbs pulling him wider.
When they hit their perfect, wet meter, Ilya stings Shane's ass with two quick smacks, which have Shane backing up onto his cock, gasping. Shane reaches under his flattened child's pose to jerk himself off.
Ilya hisses. "You're going to come on this big fucking cock, aren't you? Da?"
"Da," Shane says to the cotton of the duvet. "Da, da, da, da."
It occurs to Shane too late that, in Russian, it sounds like he's calling Ilya dada. He starts to come at the same time that a cord inside his belly is yanked taught. He cries into the mattress, spasming relentlessly—an incongruous, muscular orgasm that he's suddenly fighting against.
Shane blinks into the pink static, his face pressed into the bed. He sees the phantom basketball player again, the name Hollander printed on her sleeveless jersey. She would hear them through the walls, wouldn't she? They would have to be quieter than this.
Ilya continues to fuck, his mouth hushing out a wide breath, a telltale sign that he's getting close.
Shane seizes up. "Wait, wait, wait, don't come in me."
Ilya doesn't have time to fuck around and whine about it—he just pulls roughly out of Shane and growls, "Where?"
When Shane flips onto his back, Ilya crowds him, pounding his fist hard until his whole body snaps into a rigid freeze. He washes Shane's belly with hot come and moans through it.
Ilya drops down, kissing the little patch of hair that has started to grow on Shane's chest in middle age. "Could have fucking warned me sooner."
"Sorry. I didn't want—" Shane doesn't know. He doesn't know what he wants, what he doesn't want.
Ilya kisses him, sighing. "It's okay. Still have good reflexes."
Shane stays lying on the bed, in the same position, while Ilya pads away to the bathroom. He hears it when Ilya takes a piss, the short, post-orgasmic bursts. The buzz of his toothbrush. The unbothered passing of gas.
Shane runs a finger through the cooling semen on his stomach, bringing it up to the light. A thin, opaque pull between his fingers, however many million sperm dying in the process. His vision blurs. He does not dare blink.
In the morning, it's bulletproof coffee and pea protein smoothies, and a slowdown going East on the Queensway.
“This tastes weird." Shane plonks his smoothie down in the cup holder before he merges into the passing lane. “Did you use the right almond butter?”
“What is the right almond butter? We have two almond butters?” Ilya takes his seatbelt off momentarily, to slip out of his jacket, and the subsequent safety features scream in protest. Shane sighs deeply.
"There’s the shitty one you got last week and there’s the good one from Farmboy.”
Ilya scoffs. “Okay, I used the shitty one, I guess."
“It’s too oily, like, it ruins the whole thing.”
The Nissan ahead of them is traveling. Shane keeps having to tap the breaks to avoid riding its ass. He’s squeezing the steering wheel so hard the leather squeaks under his hands.
“Alright, next time you can make them.” Ilya quietly sips at his own smoothie, all lax and loose limbed in the passenger seat. He pulls his phone out, retreating from this stupid argument, which feels like lighting a match to the vapour that Shane is emitting.
“Well, I can’t make breakfast when I’m busy taking your dog out. So I guess I’ll just get up at five and do both, fuck it.”
“Oh, my dog, yeah?” Ilya performs a little laugh. It makes Shane feel hot all over his entire body. “Okay, Shane.”
They arrive a little late for practice, Shane tense and taciturn, and out of step with Ilya as they stride through the parking garage.
Two hour skate, then lunch, and a meeting with the PT to go over Shane's adductor strain from the month before, which had started to bother him again in Montreal, after catching a stick in a rebound scrum and landing weird.
Shane avoids Ilya all morning, until he can't. They have an afternoon meeting with guys from the Centaurs community foundation. The new partner relations manager has lofty goals and is in the middle of arranging an opportunity with Bluesfest and RBC this summer.
Ilya takes the lead while they discuss the details—the music festival funneling a day's worth of their 50/50 sales into the foundation, potentially Shane and Ilya will have to promote the raffle on the main stage between performances, photo ops afterwards in the bank-sponsored VIP area.
"I don't know if I want to be on stage," Shane says. He has skated himself shaky, and now he feels a bit like a prey animal, everything registering a threat.
"Okay," Ilya says, looking at Shane. He is already fed up, Shane can tell, but he plasters it over with a clipped professionalism. "What about me and Haas? He would be down for it."
The manager sucks his lips into his mouth, sheepish. "I think they were really hoping for the two of you—I didn't mention yet—it might be part of the pride programming for the festival, would that be a problem for you guys?"
They don't land on any firm commitment. There will likely be six more meetings on this subject, ten email threads, probably an exhausting conversation with Shane's mother about whether the bank's involvement will create issues with the Irina foundation, their donor contract with the local credit union. "We'll circle back," the manager says, after they move on to the last agenda item.
Ilya drives them home. They pile their swampy duffels in the back and then have another little argument—this time about connecting Ilya's phone to the CarPlay, so he can put his music on.
"Ilya, when we switch it messes up all my settings. I don't want to spend all night trying to get it back to how it was."
"Fuck, Hollander, fine!" Door slam, echoing across the half-empty garage. McMyer, one of last year's rookie d-men, is a few spaces away and he retreats inside his Tesla so fast you'd think Shane told him to fuck off verbally.
Shane buzzes in the passenger seat as they peel out of there, waiting for more, waiting for Ilya to drop the gloves.
But they just sit in silence while Ilya takes the non-highway route home through big, junky intersections. Ugly flat strip malls box them in on all sides, great dirty snowbanks decorate the roads—the city never gets around to clearing them before the March thaw. There a ping on the dash screen from Shane's phone, a green text message alert that he can't read fast enough before it disappears.
"Did you see who that was?"
"It was Mama," Ilya says. "She's asking if we will go to your cousin's baby shower in April. You want to?"
Shane now regrets fighting to keep his phone connected. He says the first thing on his mind, which is, "I think I'd rather shoot myself."
Ilya's breath hitches. His eyes bounce between Shane, and the road, and back again.
"Know what? Fuck this."
Ilya cuts across two lanes and then swings them, suddenly, into the entrance of a business plaza that holds a closed pharmacy, a chiropractor's office, and an empty shawarma restaurant. They park in front of a melting mound of ice and Ilya slams the car off with a violent jab of the engine button.
Shane can feel the words he said hovering around their heads, stinking the car up worse than their sodden gear. He drops his forehead onto the dashboard. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Shit, baby, I'm really sorry."
Ilya shakes his head. "What is fucking wrong? Huh?"
Shane folds himself further, head nearly in his own lap. "I'm sorry I said that, okay?"
"Stop saying sorry. You're an asshole all day, picking all these fights, for what?"
Shane only ate a quinoa kale bowl and half a banana for lunch, and he's feeling the lack now, as adrenaline moves in to replace his blood sugar. It's a fucking heady combo, laying him bare.
"I'm just being a bitch," Shane says—only a little accurate. The reason for this bad mood is right there in front of him now. It has been rendered perfectly while he wasn't looking.
Ten years ago, it would have taken him a full calendar year for all the twinges and cramps and molar grinding to coalesce and present themselves as what they really are; wants, desires, fears. The older he gets, the less he's able to run from hard truths. They materialize quickly and they won't stay back. Maybe it's just a function of experience, of knowing himself better than he ever has before. Or maybe it's marriage. It's being known.
And Ilya does know. He seems to call it out with ease. "So, this is about last night, is it? What we talked about. You're upset?"
"I'm not upset, it's not like that. I…" Shane swallows a mouth full of saliva. He's so nauseous. "I just think I want to know more."
"Okay? You know as much as I know, Shane. She was pregnant, she got rid of it. Twenty fucking years ago. What, you want me to reach out to her? Apologize?"
Shane finally pulls his head out of his lap to look at Ilya."I want to know if you're sad about it. Like…that you could have had a kid by now, and you didn't."
Ilya looks at him like he has two heads.
"I'm not sad, no. I don't think—" he pauses, squeezes his eyes shut, switching to Russian, to get his thoughts in order. Shane can only make out three quarters of it, but Ilya translates after: "It was out of my hands, as it should be. And it did not feel real, anyway. It's not real at all, it just feels like. Like information. I didn't think about it for a long time, until you asked."
Shane clamps down on the inside of his cheek. He hates how he mumbles, but he can't say it cleanly. "Would you be sad if it turned out that was your only chance?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Ilya, I—" Shane is shaking. He feels drunk. If he lets his lungs expand even a milometer wider, he'll start drowning. "What if I changed my mind."
"Changed your mind about what?"
"About having kids."
Ilya looks away from him, out the window, staring at the sparse light inside the closed businesses. They're silent for a long time. Long enough for a delivery driver to pull into the plaza, get out of his sedan, collect a bag inside the shawarma place, and drive away.
Eventually, Ilya says, "Have you changed your mind?"
It's easy to reach for when the question is so direct. Have you ever been with a guy? Was it better? Shane says, "Yes."
Ilya nods, and the shrug of his shoulders is infuriating. "Okay."
"What does that mean?"
"We don't need to have kids." Ilya says it like it's obvious, like it's something that was always there, that Shane should have always known.
Shane can't accept it. He can't stop his voice from raising. "You signed up for something different."
"I signed up for you."
"You told me you wanted kids."
"Yes, and it was always…" Ilya searches for the word. There's a vein in his temple that swells when they fight, and it's plumped up now. Their voices are too raised for the tiny acoustics of their car. "It's theoretical? No, hypothetical. I don't know."
"You love kids," Shane says to the window.
"I love dogs, also." Ilya laughs. "Maybe as trade off you'll let me adopt two more puppies."
"Don't fucking joke about this." There's a version of this conversation that's soft, where Shane arrives at it rational, assured, pragmatic. Sitting down at the dining table they never use, maybe, hands folded and voices level. He mourns this version.
"Shane." Ilya's hand hovers between them—Shane would like to see it clenched in a fist, but it stays open, floating soft. "You think I would leave you for this?"
"Yes, because it's me making you choose, again." Shane is panicking now. "And you're going to hate me for it. Like, you're going to wake up one day, and regret our whole life, and it will be my fault, again."
Ilya takes a huge breath and holds it. "I can't argue with you another second. I am saying it's okay, you don't believe me. What can I do?"
Shane has no answer.
So Ilya starts the car. The white noise of the heat coming through the vents is soothing and interrupting. Ilya's mouth is so small, clenched tight when he says, "I think you need to eat, you're fucking crashing out."
"Fine."
"Shawarma." Ilya jerks his head to the store in front of them. Shane obliges, out of desperation, feeling completely emptied out. He doesn't want to talk anymore, and he doesn't have to. He doesn't even have to share his order preferences; Ilya always knows exactly what Shane wants.
The rest of the night they spend in separate rooms. Shane disappears into the basement to watch the Montreal game on the big TV. He crafts a lengthy, almost academic text to Hayden containing all his observations about Montreal's penalty kill strategy before he remembers that it's a conflict of interest. If he were anyone else, this hockey game would become visual noise, and he would let his mind wander to his husband, that fight that doesn't feel like a fight, escape strategies and worst-case scenarios. But he is Shane, so he does it all at the same time. As well as he can predict that the Minnesota centre will fan his shot at the blue line when he raises the stick, Shane can also see clearly which suitcase Ilya will pack if he leaves tonight. The titanium RIMWOA that has a better track record for fitting overhead on Air Canada.
Shane counts six men on the ice for Montreal for about four seconds of play, but luckily the refs miss it. He thinks Ilya would go to Sveta's townhouse in Boston, if he was going to leave. A quick browser search tells Shane there's one flight out of Montreal tonight—Ilya would have to get there by car, park and fly at Trudeau, but it would be doable. He'd arrive sometime around two in the morning. Would they go out as soon as he landed? There's that after hours club Ilya used to post stories from on insta, in his twenties. Shane remembers looking it up, opening the location on Google street view, from some lonely hotel miles away.
Minnesota scores off the post with nine seconds to spare, sending Hayden to the locker room, trailing 0-2 before the second period. Shane turns the TV off, and remembers, with relief, that the Cens have a game tomorrow. Ilya is not going anywhere.
Later, Shane waits for most of an hour in bed, just listening to Ilya moving around downstairs, the thuds and hums and the tinny din of media from his phone. Eventually the soundtrack of bedtime begins; light switches clicking, musical tone of the security system arming, Anya's collar and tag jingling up the stairs. When Ilya comes in, he brings the smell of cigarettes.
Shane's heart hammers in the dark. The light from the bathroom washes him briefly in amber as Ilya silently gets ready for bed. He catches Shane's eye in the doorway of the bathroom, brushing his teeth, watching Shane against the frame. He pauses to spit in the sink, and when he comes back he stares at Shane with a serious, clenched jaw. Shane waits and waits.
"Take everything off." It's a flat command. "Get yourself hard."
Shane is not sure if he feels relief, but his body reacts. He huffs, obeys, a little sloppy with the lube when he reaches for it. He wipes his fingers on his thigh, fumbling under the covers, to get his hand on his cock that's already flexing, tingling, reaching for Ilya.
Ilya leaves the doorway and continues his routine leisurely, taking his time by carrying his clothes to the hamper, instead of leaving them on the floor as he usually would. He shoos Anya out of the room, goes out into the hall to lead her to her bed on the landing.
Shane is sinking into the mattress with anticipation, swept into the current of his blood, the wet fizzle of pleasure from his own hand. Underneath it, like another body in the room, is their conflict, which adds a dangerous weight.
"Baby," Shane whispers as Ilya returns. Shane wants him close, wants him back, wants the material of him. He feels this urge to apologize again, but it's something to hold back, like coming too soon.
When Ilya slides into the bed, he covers Shane completely. "Shh," he says. "Don't say anything. Just shh."
His hand closes over Shane's mouth, pressing so that Shane's lips part under the skin of his palm. Shane's tongue rests in the cracks between Ilya's fingers, tasting bitter skin. The nicotine stained there.
Ilya gets him wet, a pillow shoved under his ass, pushes his cockhead against Shane's rim and leaves it there while he jerks Shane off. He moans behind Ilya's hand, lifts his hips.
"Don't come," Ilya says. "Wait."
Shane grunts when Ilya gets inside him, finally, slowly fucking him while his hand stays clamped, drenched with Shane's spit.
"Oh, fuck," Ilya groans. "I want to fucking live right here forever, do you know this?"
Shane's eyes roll. His moan breaks on its way out of his throat, and it has nowhere to go. Shane has to swallow every gasp, like Ilya is feeding Shane to himself. It makes everything inside Shane expand, builds him up and up, everything thrown on the pyre.
"You are fucking crazy if you think I would trade this." Ilya picks up the pace, the dirty sound of it muffled under the covers. "Trade this for anything? Never. Fuck. Nothing."
Shane arches up, folding himself tighter, to meet his husband's perfect, steady fucking. He feels his husband's ass in his hands, tensing with every beat. His husband's language scratching at his eardrums, the sweet things he only says when he's this deep, this close. He switches back to English, generously, when Shane starts to shake from the effort of holding his orgasm back.
"There is no choice. This is what I fucking want. You and me. Just like this, baby." Ilya gasps. He takes Shane's cock, moving his hand fast, slick, immolating. "Let me feel you come. Fuck, let me feel it, come on."
Ilya takes his hand off Shane's mouth then, just as Shane's cock shoots hard and hot in Ilya's rough palm. Shane can feel the volume he's reaching, can feel it rumble in his chest, but he can't hear himself. The airburst of his orgasm renders him senseless. He's still seizing, clenching around Ilya's cock when Ilya slows to a grind, coming inside Shane. He hums through it, hisses like it hurts him to pull out after.
They share a kiss that Shane feels everywhere at once—in his chest, his diaphragm, and somehow even now, his cock. Nothing to do but collapse together and breathe. Ilya cleans the drool from Shane's chin, the tears that have slid along his temples. He lays his head down on Shane's chest, so Shane can pet his curls the way he likes.
Shane can feel the rest of his life in every breath afterwards, lungs expanding to hold a future. The sheer magnitude of being small, like this, together.
Ilya stirs, after a while, reaches beneath the covers again to touch Shane's ass with the pads of his fingers, playing in the gentle leak of his own come there.
"We would get rid of it. If this could take." He smiles, kissing Shane's nipple. "I would drive you to the clinic. Hold your hand, the whole time. Put you to bed after, with nice comfy clothes and rub your back all night."
Shane loves him obscenely. It feels good to laugh, to whistle low and joke, "Wow, what a fucking gentleman."
"Mm. And then I would start pulling out for you, too."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yes, I've thought about all these things. All these scenes from TV shows. Like, if you were dying in childbirth and the doctor tells me I can only save you or the baby?" Ilya brings his thumb to Shane's lip, and though he's smiling, he has such conviction when he says, "I would pick you every time."
***
from: [email protected]
to: [email protected]
subject: re: canada's smallest book club
hey jack
did you finish the last book yet? i really liked it, but i can wait until you confirm to share my thoughts. it has a real shot at winning.
was thinking i could come up there next saturday to watch day 1 of the contest with you, if you're free? it'll stream on cbc gem at 7. i know hayd has a game, but it would be fun to hang with you and the kids. will bring beer?
excited to hear what you think of the book. love you
-shane