Archive of Our Own

Part One: The Road

The thing about being on the road for three weeks is that you get very good at pretending it's fine.

Ilya has been doing it his whole career. The hotels blur — same bed, different city, same bad gym on the fourth floor with two broken treadmills. He's slept in every time zone on the continent. He knows how to make a hotel room feel like somewhere he lives: keep the bag mostly packed, leave one thing on the nightstand, don't eat room service in bed because that's where you sleep. He knows how to be away.

What he doesn't know how to do, still, after three years of this specific arrangement, is be away from Shane for this long without it getting under his skin.

It starts small. It always starts small.

The first weekend of the road trip, Shane texts that his mom has booked a sponsor meeting — possible new deal, she thinks it's important — and they push their plans by a week. It's fine. Ilya has a game anyway. The week gets busy and the texts slow down and when they do talk, Shane is tired and Ilya is tired and the conversations are short and logistical and Ilya thinks: this is the job. This is what the job is.

He sends Shane a link to a video of a very large dog being confused by a small cat, because Shane is a person who appreciates that kind of thing even though he would never admit it. Shane sends back a thumbs up emoji. Not even a response — a reaction, which is one step above being ignored, which Ilya thinks about more than he should for the next two hours while Ottawa plays a tight third period in Anaheim and he scores the overtime winner on a breakaway that he's too distracted to properly feel good about.

In the locker room, chest still heaving, he picks up his phone. Nothing from Shane. Shane has seen the score — the whole league has seen the score — but there's nothing. He showers and waits and at midnight Shane texts: Nice goal tonight.

Thanks, Ilya sends back.

He doesn't send what he actually wants to say. He puts his phone away and gets on the bus and sits with Bood and laughs at something Luca does with a water bottle and pretends, very convincingly, that everything is fine.

The second week, things slip in both directions.

Ilya misses a call on Tuesday because he's in the middle of a video session with the coaches and his phone is in his bag. When he calls back two hours later, Shane picks up sounding distracted, one ear clearly not in it, and says he's in the middle of something but can he call back after dinner? Ilya says sure. Shane calls back at ten-thirty, by which point Ilya is already half-asleep and the conversation lasts six minutes and consists primarily of Shane describing a bad penalty call and Ilya saying yeah and I know and that's rough on autopilot while staring at the ceiling.

He doesn't say: I've been thinking about you all day and that is not the conversation I wanted.

He thinks it very clearly and doesn't say it.

On Wednesday, he's the one who goes quiet. Ottawa has a brutal loss in Colorado — one of those games where nothing goes right and the team feels fractured after, everyone retreating into themselves — and Ilya doesn't text Shane until almost midnight, and when Shane calls he doesn't pick up because he's already falling asleep with his gear still half-on. He wakes up at 3 a.m. to three missed calls and a text that says ok. hope you're alright. Lowercase, no punctuation, which is how Ilya has learned to read Shane's concern — not the loud kind, not the effusive kind, but the kind that sits in the specific shape of what's left out.

He texts back: sorry. bad game. tired.

Shane: I know. I watched. Sleep.

And that's the thing — Shane did watch. Shane watches every Ottawa game he can, Ilya knows this, has known it for years, the same way Ilya watches every Montreal game. They watch each other from a distance and say nothing about it to anyone, and that is its own intimacy, but right now, at 3 a.m. in a Colorado hotel room with his knee aching and the loss still sitting in his chest, it doesn't feel like enough.

He wants to say: call me. He doesn't say it. He puts his phone down and goes back to sleep.

By the time they hit day seventeen, the distance has weight. Not the logistical distance — two hours on a highway is nothing, Ilya has maintained this relationship across an entire continent for most of its existence. But there's a different kind of distance that builds when you go too long without a real conversation, when every check-in confirms that the other person is alive and accounted for but doesn't reach any further than that. By day seventeen, Ilya can feel it in the specific way he picks up his phone and then puts it down again, the way he starts typing something and deletes it, the way every call ends with him thinking that wasn't it but not knowing what it would have looked like.

Shane, he suspects, is doing the same thing. Shane is very good at not saying what he means when saying it feels like too much.

They're both, Ilya thinks, very good at this specific kind of damage.

The night they beat the Coyotes in Phoenix, Ilya is in a hotel room eating room service chicken he didn't really want, watching clips on his phone because the TV is loud and pointless. His knee is fine, his back is fine, they won, everything is objectively fine. He texts Shane a photo of the chicken because it looks genuinely terrible and Shane has strong opinions about bad hotel food, and Shane sends back: What is that?

Chicken, Ilya sends.

That is not chicken.

It says chicken

Ilya, that is a crime scene.

And this is — this is the Shane he misses. The one who talks to him like this, easy and stupid and human. He sends back a string of increasingly unimpressed emojis and Shane sends back a laughing face and then: I have to do press. Talk later?

Yeah, Ilya sends. Later.

Later doesn't come. He falls asleep waiting for it and wakes up at 2 a.m. to nothing, and the nothing has a specific texture now that he's tired enough to stop managing. He picks up his phone and looks at the chicken photo still there on the screen and thinks about how Shane said talk later and then didn't, and how Ilya has said talk later and then didn't, and how this has been the shape of three weeks: the two of them promising later, and later always becoming nothing.

He doesn't text. He puts his phone down.

He lies there in the dark for a long time.

The FaceTime happens on a Tuesday night, the first time they've video-called in a week.

Shane is in Tampa. He's in bed, propped up against the headboard, the lamp on the side table making everything gold. He looks tired. Not the clean tired of a long road trip — something heavier than that. Something that's been building.

"Hey," Shane says.

"Hey," Ilya says.

The easiness from the chicken texts is gone. Whatever is on Shane's face right now is more careful than that. He's doing the thing — Ilya can see it happening in real time — where he tidies himself up before the call connects. Not fake, nothing Shane does is fake exactly, but arranged. Like a room before company arrives.

"How's the trip," Shane says.

"Fine. Won tonight."

"I know. I saw." A pause. "Bood played well."

"Yeah. He's been consistent." Ilya watches him. "Your knee."

"Better. Trainer did something with it. It's fine."

"Good."

They talk about hockey. There's a long exchange about a division standings situation that Ilya is genuinely not interested in. Shane's voice has that particular cadence it gets when he's talking about work — engaged, present, none of it reaching anywhere. He's not telling Ilya anything. He's broadcasting.

Ilya wants to say: stop doing the press conference voice on me. He doesn't.

Eleven minutes in, Shane says he should sleep. His game is an afternoon start tomorrow. Ilya says yeah, sleep, and means something else entirely, and they hang up and Ilya sits on the floor of his hotel room — he's been doing that, sitting on the floor lately, some urge to be lower than the furniture — and thinks about how that is apparently what they are right now. Two professionals efficiently checking in. Two people who know everything about each other's job and almost nothing about what's actually going on.

He should have said something. He knows he should have said something.

He doesn't call back.

Three days after the Tampa FaceTime, both road trips pass through Chicago within twenty-four hours of each other — Ottawa plays the Blackhawks on Wednesday, Montreal plays them on Thursday. It's an accident of scheduling, the kind of thing that happens twice a season if they're lucky.

Shane texts at noon on Wednesday: Still in town tomorrow?

Yes, Ilya sends. Late checkout, fly out at seven.

I land at 2. I have three hours before I have to be with the team.

Shane looks at the text for a moment. Three hours is nothing. Three hours is everything available.

okay, he sends.

A pause, then Ilya: I'll get a room.

Shane puts his phone away and goes back to the film session and doesn't let himself think about it too hard, because thinking about it too hard is how he manages to talk himself out of things.

He's been in airports for most of three weeks. He can do a two-hour flight from Tampa in his sleep, practically, and he nearly does — he has his headphones in and his eyes closed for most of it, the white noise of the engines drowning out the noise in his head that has been there since October and that he cannot seem to turn down regardless of what he does. The contract clause. The team's penalty kill percentage. The sponsor call his mom scheduled for next Thursday that he said yes to without looking at the calendar first. The fact that they are five points out of a wildcard spot and it is only November and it is specifically his fault, statistically, because his faceoff numbers are down and three of the last four road losses have come in the third period when he's been on the ice.

He knows this is not a productive line of thinking. He also cannot stop doing it.

The cab from O'Hare takes forty minutes in traffic. He texts Ilya his ETA and Ilya sends back a room number and that's it, that's the whole exchange, and Shane watches the city go by through the window and thinks about the FaceTime on Tuesday, the eleven minutes, the way he could feel himself going press conference on Ilya and couldn't figure out how to stop. He had wanted to stop. He'd been in bed in a Tampa hotel room thinking stop talking about the power play, say something actual and then not doing it. Like watching himself from the outside.

He has been doing a lot of that lately.

The hotel is anonymous, the kind of place that exists to be forgettable, and Shane appreciates this in the particular way he has learned to appreciate anything that doesn't require explanation. He knows the code. He takes the elevator, not the stairs, because they are in Chicago and nobody here cares who he is.

He knocks.

Ilya opens the door and for a moment they just look at each other, the way they always do after time apart — the brief recalibration, taking stock. Ilya's in a t-shirt and jeans, hair slightly messy, the particular casual version of him that only exists in private. He looks at Shane the way he always looks at Shane: like he's checking something off a list, relieved to find it there.

Shane steps inside, drops his bag, and Ilya closes the door, and then Shane just — stops trying to manage whatever has been building since Tampa, and turns around, and Ilya meets him halfway without any preamble. They hold on. Properly — both arms, neither of them with somewhere better to be, Ilya's face at Shane's temple and Shane's face pressed to the side of Ilya's neck and Shane's eyes closed and the room quiet around them. Ilya's hand finds the back of his head. Shane breathes out, slow, the first full exhale he's had in days.

"Hi," Ilya says, into his hair.

"Hi," Shane says.

They stand there. The city hums outside. Neither of them moves.

"You're okay," Ilya says. Not a question — a statement. An assessment. His hand is still at the back of Shane's head, and it is not a medical thing, he is just saying: you are here and you are okay and I have you.

Shane wants to say something. He wants to say: I'm not, actually, I haven't been, I've been three weeks in my own head and I keep trying to find the exit and not finding it and I think I need you to help me. He has wanted to say this since Tampa. Since Colorado, probably. Since before that.

"I'm okay," he says instead.

Ilya pulls back just enough to look at him. There's something in his face — he knows, Ilya always knows — but he doesn't push. He just looks at Shane for a moment and then says, "I ordered food," and lets it go.

And Shane — Shane lets it go too, which is the thing he always does and the thing he is starting to understand is not the same as it being fine.

He sees the table. "Did you order half of Chicago?"

"I didn't know what you wanted."

"I can see that."

They eat and they're fine. That's the thing — they are always, on some level, fine. It's easy to be near Ilya, has been since they were nineteen years old and didn't know what they were doing and stumbled into each other in the specific way of two people who were always going to end up here. Shane is aware, in a way he can't always articulate, that being with Ilya is the least work anything in his life requires. He doesn't have to perform. He doesn't have to be the captain. He doesn't have to have his numbers up and his press face on and his mom's schedule managed. He just has to be Shane, which should be the easy thing and which has been, for some reason he can't quite excavate, getting harder.

"Your mom sort out December?" Ilya says.

"She added two things while removing one."

"Of course she did."

"It's fine. It's—" Shane starts, and then doesn't finish. He spears something from the container and eats it instead. He can feel Ilya watching him in the particular patient way that means I notice you're not finishing that sentence. He doesn't finish it.

They watch a movie after. Something forgettable, background noise, and Shane sits against the headboard with Ilya beside him and somewhere in the first act Ilya's head tilts sideways onto his shoulder, and Shane stays still and lets it be there, and the room is warm and the movie is running and after a while he can feel from the quality of Ilya's breathing that he's asleep.

Shane doesn't move.

He sits there with the movie going blue across the ceiling and Ilya's weight on his shoulder and thinks about the eleven minutes in Tampa and the contract clause and the penalty kill numbers and the sponsor call and the fact that they are five points out. He thinks about how Ilya is asleep against his shoulder in a Chicago hotel room in the middle of the afternoon and how that is the best thing that has happened to him in three weeks and how he has been sitting three feet from his boyfriend for an hour and has said almost nothing real. He thinks about the FaceTime. He thinks about all the calls he has ended early because the conversation was sitting on something he didn't know how to say and it felt easier to just — stop. Hang up. Deal with it later.

He thinks about calling his mom back tonight, which he should do.

He thinks about how the flight to Montreal tomorrow is fifty minutes and then he's home and then the schedule picks back up and this is the window, right now, Ilya's face at his shoulder in the quiet hotel room, this is when he could say I'm not okay, help me, I don't know what's wrong I just can't get out of my own head and Ilya would — Ilya would just deal with it. He knows this. He has always known this. Ilya would not need it to be handled. He would sit here in this hotel room for the next two hours and listen to Shane not be okay and not require it to be something Shane had already solved.

He knows this. He sits in the blue-screen dark and knows this and doesn't say anything.

Around ten, the credits roll. Shane reaches over and turns off the TV and the room goes dark, just the thin line of light under the door, and Ilya's breathing stays even and slow. He's really asleep. Shane sits there for another few minutes, his shoulder a little stiff now, not moving.

He could wake him up. He could wake Ilya up and say: I need to talk. Actually talk. Ilya would be disoriented for about four seconds and then he would be present and listening and that would be it, that would be all it took.

Shane reaches over and turns the lamp on low instead. Gets up carefully so as not to wake him, gets his washbag from his travel bag, goes into the bathroom, brushes his teeth. Looks at himself in the mirror for a moment. He looks tired. He is tired. He is tired in a way that has less to do with the road trip and more to do with whatever has been running in the background for three months.

He goes back out. Ilya is still asleep. Shane sits in the chair by the window with his phone and reads emails he doesn't need to read until it's late enough to justify going to sleep, and then he gets into the other side of the bed and closes his eyes, and eventually he sleeps.

His alarm goes off at five. He dresses quietly, repacks his bag, checks his flight, does all the things. Ilya wakes up when Shane is getting his jacket.

"You fell asleep," Shane says.

"I know. Sorry."

"Don't be." He picks up his bag. There is something he should say. He stands there for a moment, jacket in hand, looking at Ilya in the low light of the lamp. His boyfriend, who moved to Ottawa because it was two hours away, who is looking at him right now with that patient expression that means he is waiting and will keep waiting as long as it takes.

"It was good to see you," Shane says.

The words come out flat, the wrong shape, nothing like what's inside them. He hears it the second they're out. Ilya hears it too — something shifts in his face, a small thing, there and gone.

"Yeah," Ilya says. "It was."

Shane leaves.

He's in the cab to the United Center before he's fully processed what just happened, and then he's in the team hotel and there's a walkthrough and then a morning skate and he doesn't have time to think about it, and then it's game day and he doesn't have time to think about anything except the Blackhawks, and then they win and he's on the charter flight to the next city and he falls asleep in his seat and doesn't think about it.

He thinks about it the whole next day.

Both road trips end in four days. Ilya has been counting.

He calls Shane at nine that night from Dallas, in a better mood than he's been in days — Luca did something at dinner involving an autograph that Ilya will tell Shane about later, and the team had a good practice, and Ilya has quietly been on a four-game point streak that he refuses to acknowledge out loud because acknowledging it will kill it. He calls feeling, for the first time in a week, like he might actually be able to say something real.

Shane picks up and there is noise behind him. Music. Several voices. A woman laughing.

"Hey — oh, hold on—" The sound mufffs. A door closing. "Sorry. We ended up going out. Some of the guys wanted to decompress."

"Sure," Ilya says.

"It's been a rough week. They needed it."

"Okay."

"Can I call you back? Like an hour?"

The thing in Ilya's chest — the thing that's been building for three weeks, quiet and patient — moves.

"Sure," he says. "Call me back."

"Yeah. I will. Promise." And there's something slightly distracted in how he says it, one ear still back in the bar, and Ilya notices it and says nothing.

"Yep," he says, and hangs up.

He sits on the floor. His back is against the bed. The Dallas skyline does nothing useful through the window. He thinks about the point streak and thinks about Shane at a bar and thinks about the chicken texts and the FaceTime and eleven minutes about penalty kills and the very specific loneliness of being halfway through a three-week road trip with four days to go and nothing to look forward to because even when the trip ends there will be press and practice and his mom's new sponsor meeting and then, maybe, eventually, Shane. Maybe.

He orders coffee he doesn't need. He watches half a nature documentary. He thinks about calling Andrei and doesn't.

At 1:17 a.m., his phone lights up.

fell asleep, I'm sorry — talk tomorrow?

Ilya looks at it. He thinks, with great precision, about what he wants to do. He could say yes. He could say it's fine. He could say sleep, talk tomorrow, and close his phone and go to bed and carry this for four more days until they're in the same city and it dissolves the way it always does in person.

okay, he sends.

And then, because it's 1 a.m. and he's tired and tired people are honest people:

it is not okay actually

The typing indicator appears almost immediately.

What?

nothing. tomorrow

Ilya, it's 1am, tell me what's wrong.

I said tomorrow

You clearly want to talk about it right now.

It's the tone of it — the patient management of it, even in text, even at 1 a.m. — that tips him over. He calls.

Shane picks up in two rings.

"Hi," he says. And even in one word Ilya can hear it: careful. Pre-calibrated. Already deciding what kind of conversation this is going to be.

"You didn't call back."

"I fell asleep. I said I was sorry—"

"You said an hour."

"And then I fell asleep, which I can't actually control—"

"You have been doing this for three weeks." His voice is flat. He's not yelling yet. He doesn't want to yell yet. "Every time I call, you are somewhere else, or you say you'll call back and you don't. And I'm—I am standing here on a road trip telling you I'm lonely, and somehow that's the problem."

"I never said it was a problem—"

"You texted me Nice after the Anaheim goal. That's it."

A pause. "I said it was a nice goal—"

"Nice." The word lands the same flat way twice. "I called you Tuesday and you said you'd call back after dinner and I waited until midnight—"

"I was tired—"

"I know you were tired," Ilya says. "I'm tired too. I've been tired for three weeks. But I still—" He stops. Presses his free hand flat against the window glass. Dallas doesn't care. "When was the last time you asked me how I was doing. Not hockey. Not the trip. Me."

A longer pause.

"I do ask—"

"When."

Shane doesn't answer right away, and the silence is its own answer, and they both hear it.

"You are very good," Ilya says, "at giving me just enough."

The silence that follows is different — tighter, with an edge that wasn't there before.

"That's not fair," Shane says. Quieter now, and harder.

"Maybe not."

"No — that's—you're saying I've been deliberately—"

"I didn't say deliberately."

"Then what are you saying? Because from here it sounds like I've been failing you for years and you've just been keeping score—"

"I'm telling you the last three weeks have felt like you're humoring me when you can be bothered to. That's all."

"Humoring you." Shane's voice goes cold in a specific way that Ilya knows down to his bones: the cold that comes right before the sharp thing. "I went out with my team and fell asleep and now I'm not invested—"

"It is not one night—"

"You missed a call on Tuesday—"

"I was in a film session—"

"And I waited. I called back twice." Something shifts in Shane's voice — the careful management dropping, something more jagged underneath. "So don't make this entirely about me when you've been doing the same thing. Going dark after Colorado. Not texting until midnight. Not saying anything when I could tell something was off because I was waiting for you to bring it up and you never did."

"I—" Ilya stops.

"Yeah," Shane says. "That's what I thought."

"That is not the same—"

"Why not? Why is it okay when you need space after a bad game but when I have a hard week and go out with my team it's a referendum on how much I care?"

"Because I didn't promise to call and then not do it—"

"You promised nothing and disappeared for a day and a half. I didn't make it a whole thing."

Ilya opens his mouth and closes it. His free hand drops from the window. The fight has shifted, and he can feel it — some of the floor going out from under the argument, the blame redistributing in a way he hadn't planned for.

"Fine," he says. "We have both been bad at this."

"Yes," Shane says. "We have."

"I'm still allowed to tell you it hasn't been enough."

"And I'm telling you that what you want—" Shane stops. Ilya can hear him finding the words, the particular quality of someone who has been sitting on something and has finally decided to say it. "What you want is for me to just be there. Pick up every time, say the right things, fall asleep on the phone with you so you don't have to feel the distance. And I get that. I understand that. But that's not always—I can't always be the thing that makes the road trip okay for you. I have my own road trip."

The words land somewhere Ilya wasn't expecting.

"That is not what I want," he says, but even as he says it something in it rings slightly hollow.

"Isn't it?" Shane's voice isn't cruel about it. Just direct. "Because most of the calls you've been upset about are the ones where I wasn't available exactly when you needed me to be. Not the calls that happened. The ones that didn't."

"There is a difference," Ilya says, "between needing comfort and wanting a real conversation."

"Is there. From where I'm standing it looks a lot like you want me available on demand and when I'm not, suddenly I'm managing you and giving you just enough—"

"Shane—"

"I'm not a hotel service, Ilya. I can't just pick up every time and be exactly what you need and also have my own—"

"I know that," Ilya says, louder now. "I am not asking for that. I am asking for you to actually be present when we do talk, not just going through the motions—"

"The motions." Shane's voice has gone flat. "Years of this and I'm going through the motions."

"That is not what I said—"

"It's exactly what you said."

"I said the last three weeks—"

"You said years. You said I've spent years giving you just enough. So which is it — is this about three weeks or is it about all of it, because I'd really like to know what I'm being tried for here."

The room is loud with both of them breathing.

Ilya presses the back of his head against the window glass and looks at the ceiling. "You are twisting what I said."

"I'm repeating it back to you."

"You are repeating the worst version of it."

"Maybe you should have said a better version."

Silence. It's the kind of silence that has too much in it — the three weeks and the Colorado game and the thumbs-up emoji and the film session and all the things neither of them said on the FaceTime in Tampa and all the things they never say, compacted into the space between one sentence and the next.

"I moved to Ottawa," Ilya says finally. Quietly. He doesn't mean it as a weapon. He means it as the truest thing he has. "I left Boston because you were two hours away and I wanted to be close to you. And this is what close feels like, and I'm telling you it is not enough."

A very long silence.

When Shane speaks his voice is controlled in a way that means the opposite of calm. "Don't do that."

"I'm not doing anything. I'm telling you—"

"You're using it. You're standing in a hotel room in Dallas at one in the morning and using it to win an argument."

"I'm not trying to win—"

"Then what are you trying to do? Because right now it feels like you called me to tell me I've been a bad boyfriend and you'd like credit for relocating. And I'm—" His voice clips off at the end. "I'm not doing this right now."

"Shane—"

"I'm not. We can talk when you're here. I'm going to sleep."

"Don't—"

The line goes dead.

Ilya stands at the window with his phone in his hand. Dallas is still out there, indifferent and lit up. He waits to feel something clarifying — righteous or relieved or even more angry — and what he feels instead is just tired. Tired and two hours away and not sure anymore which parts of what he said were true and which parts he said because he was aiming.

He doesn't call back. He climbs into bed with his clothes on and lies there with the light still on for a long time.

Two days of near-silence. A few logistics texts on Ottawa's end, a read receipt here and there on Shane's. Nothing that looks like what they are to each other.

The morning Ilya flies out, Shane texts: Still on?

Ilya looks at it for a moment. The question mark where there used to be warmth.

Yes, he sends.

No response. Then, an hour later, just:

Come to mine.

Part Two: Shane's Apartment

Ilya lands at 4:12 and takes a cab, not a car service. Car services keep records. He watches Montreal through the window and thinks about how much of his life has been conducted in the grammar of careful omissions — not this entrance, not that elevator, not the front door, not by name. He has been coming to this city his entire career. He used to hate it. He doesn't hate it now. He doesn't know what he feels about it.

Side entrance, the code he's had since 2014. Stairs, not the elevator. Four flights. The door with the three scrapes at the bottom right corner from when Shane moved in, which Shane has never gotten fixed because he says it's barely noticeable, which is not true, but Ilya has never pushed it. He knows this door better than he knows most things.

Three slow, two fast.

Shane opens it before he finishes knocking. He's showered, hair still slightly damp, in sweats and an old Metros t-shirt that Ilya is unreasonably familiar with. He has that specific post-travel tension in his jaw that takes about an hour of being home to go away. He looks at Ilya.

Ilya looks back.

They haven't seen each other in twenty-three days. Shane looks exactly like himself, which is always the first thing Ilya notices when they've been apart — how Shane always looks exactly and only like Shane, no performance of it, no approximation. Just the real person in the doorway.

"Hey," Shane says.

"Hey," Ilya says.

Shane steps back. Ilya walks in and puts his bag down and they're in the apartment together for the first time in twenty-three days, which should feel like relief and mostly does, except underneath the relief is everything that hasn't been said, and that's still there too, patient as ever.

"Drink?" Shane says.

"No."

Shane goes to the kitchen. He pours himself water he doesn't drink, which is what he does when he wants something to do with his hands. He leans against the counter. Ilya comes and stands in the opposite doorway with his arms loosely crossed, and there are maybe eight feet of kitchen between them, and it feels further.

There's a silence. Not quite comfortable and not quite the fight — it's the moment before both of them decide which way this goes.

"So," Shane says.

"So," Ilya says.

"I owe you an apology." Shane sets down the water glass. "For the calls. The—being unavailable. I know I've been—"

"Shane."

"I'm trying to—"

"I know what you are trying to do," Ilya says, not unkindly. "You are trying to apologize in a way that closes the conversation. I would like to have the conversation."

Something tightens in Shane's face. Not offense, exactly. Something more complicated. "I'm not trying to close—"

"When is the last time you asked me something about my life that wasn't about hockey?"

Shane goes still.

"I ask about—"

"My back. My knee. The point streak. The young guys on the team." Ilya counts them on his fingers. "That is what we have talked about for three weeks. That's me on the job, Shane. You called me twenty-two times and I got you on the job and gave you me on the job and that is not—" He stops. "That's not what I'm here for."

Shane's jaw is tight. "I've had a hard few weeks."

"I know."

"It's not—I wasn't trying to—"

"I'm not saying you were trying to do anything." Ilya holds his gaze. "I'm saying you went quiet on me. And when you go quiet I don't know if it's the schedule or if it's something about us, and for three weeks I didn't ask because I was waiting for you to tell me, and you didn't, so here we are."

"I wasn't—" Shane pushes off the counter. He moves toward the window because he always moves toward the window, the closest thing to outside he can get without actually leaving. He turns with his back to the city and his arms crossed. "I wasn't doing anything to you on purpose. I was dealing with my own stuff."

"I know."

"Crowell's been on my ass about a contract clause. My mom has me booked solid until Christmas. The team is—" He makes a sharp gesture with one hand. "We're underperforming and I'm the captain and that means it's my fault whether it's my fault or not. There's a lot of noise."

"I know," Ilya says. "You've said that."

"So maybe try understanding it instead of just—documenting it."

Ilya looks at him. "I have been understanding it for three weeks. I have been very patient and very understanding and you know what I got for it? Nice goal. A thumbs up. Six minutes about penalty calls."

"That was one conversation—"

"Shane. Stop defending the individual moments. I'm not talking about individual moments."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that you spent three weeks treating me like a thing on your list. Check in with Ilya: done. And I let you, because I didn't want to be another thing you had to manage." He holds steady. "But I'm telling you now that it's not okay, and I need you to hear that."

Shane is quiet for a moment. His chin has done the thing it does — gone slightly up, which is his tell when something has hit where he didn't expect it. He's looking at Ilya the way he looks at things he's deciding whether to argue with.

"I wasn't treating you like a list item," he says. Quieter now.

"What were you treating me like?"

"Someone who—" He stops. Starts again. "Someone I didn't want to burden."

Ilya is quiet.

"That's not the same as not caring," Shane says. "I was overwhelmed and I didn't want to—I thought if I kept things light it wouldn't be another thing you had to deal with—"

"I want your problems, Shane. I want the noise. I don't want you to have handled everything before you call me."

"I know that's what you want," Shane says, and his voice has an edge now, something defensive and raw underneath it. "But what you want isn't always what's easy to give. And when I'm already spinning out, the last thing I can do is—call you and fall apart on the phone like some—like I can't handle my own life—"

"I don't need you to fall apart. I need you to be honest—"

"I am honest with you—"

"You told me you'd call and you went to sleep."

"I was tired—"

"You went out first—"

"Oh, so I'm not allowed to go out with my team now—"

"That is not—" Ilya's voice goes up. So does Shane's.

"I had a hard week and I went out for two hours and I fell asleep and I apologized, and you're still—" Shane's hands open and close at his sides. "You're treating it like a pattern of deliberate neglect—"

"Because it was not one night, Shane—"

"I know it wasn't one night, I heard you the first time—"

"Then why are you acting like I'm attacking you for one missed call?"

"Because the way you say it makes it sound like everything I've done for years was never—like none of it counts—"

"I did not say that."

"You said I treat you like a list item—"

"I said it felt like that—"

"That's the same thing to me." Shane's voice is sharp and unguarded, nothing held back now. "Do you have any idea what I've—I have spent years not telling anyone. My parents think I've been alone this whole time. My teammates think I'm some kind of workaholic monk. I have—" He stops, jaw tight, something moving behind his eyes. "I have shaped my entire life around this, around you, and you call me from Dallas and tell me I give you just enough, and now I'm standing here in my own apartment being told I treat you like a list—"

"I moved to Ottawa." The words come out hard. Harder than Ilya intended, but once they're out he doesn't take them back.

Shane goes still.

"I left Boston," Ilya says. "I left a team I had been on for eight years. I signed with Ottawa because it was two hours from you, and no other reason. And I have never — I said I would never use that, and I am using it, I know I am using it, but I am using it because I need you to understand: when I say I am all the way in on this, I am not saying something small. And you treating me like a thing you get to when the other things are handled — it makes me feel like I am the only one who is."

Something crosses Shane's face that is not quite anger and not quite hurt and is specifically the combination of both. "You think I'm not all the way in."

"I think sometimes you are more in than others."

"And the times I'm not—" Shane's voice is very controlled now, which is when it's most dangerous. "The times I'm overwhelmed and not performing perfectly — that's evidence that I don't care about you?"

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you're implying. Every time I'm not exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, the conclusion is that I'm not invested—"

"I didn't say not invested—"

"What did you say?" Shane takes a step toward him, for the first time since Ilya walked in, and his voice is quiet and clipped. "What exactly is the accusation? Say it clearly so I can—"

"That you are so scared of needing me that you've gotten very good at not needing me, and calling that being considerate." Ilya says it evenly. He watches Shane go still. "That when things are hard, the door closes, and I'm on the other side of it. And that has been happening more and more and you know it."

Shane's expression goes somewhere complicated. His jaw is working. He's looking at Ilya the way he looks at things that are true and unwelcome.

"You don't know what scared looks like for me," Shane says.

"I have known you for a long time." Ilya's voice is flat. "I know exactly what scared looks like for you. You go quiet. You manage everything until it's tidy and then you call me and give me the tidy version and tell yourself that counts."

Something moves in Shane's face. "That's not—"

"It is. And you know it is." Ilya watches him. "The door closes, Shane. Every time things get hard, the door closes, and I'm standing outside it wondering what I did."

"You didn't do anything—"

"I know I didn't. That's what makes it worse."

Shane's jaw is tight. The argument has changed shape — it's not hot anymore, it's something colder, which is more dangerous. "So what do you want me to say? That I'm broken? That I don't know how to do this? Fine. I don't know how to do this. I've never known how to do this. Is that what you needed to hear?"

"I needed you to call me from Nashville when you were falling apart instead of going out and falling asleep and texting me at 1 a.m. like I was an item on a list."

"I wasn't—"

"You hung up on me," Ilya says. "Two days ago. You told me you were going to sleep and you hung up. And now you're standing here in your kitchen acting like I'm the one who started this."

"I hung up because you were using Ottawa against me—"

"I used it because I meant it—"

"You used it because you were losing the argument and you wanted a weapon—"

"Both things can be true." Ilya's voice goes up. He doesn't try to stop it. "I meant it and I used it to hurt you and both of those things are true and I am not going to stand here and pretend I was clean in that phone call. But you hanging up does not make what I said wrong. You have been treating me like a problem you schedule around and I am tired of it."

"A problem—"

"Yes. A problem. Something you deal with when the other things are handled. That is what it has felt like."

Shane moves away from the counter toward him, and his voice has dropped, gone very quiet and controlled in the specific way that has always meant he's about to say the sharpest thing he has. "You want to know what I think? I think you've spent three weeks building a case. Every missed call, every short conversation, every time I was tired or busy or human—you stacked it all up and then called me at 1 a.m. and delivered the verdict. And now you're here in my apartment and you want me to confess to something so the score is settled. And I'm not going to do that."

Ilya stares at him.

"That is not what I'm asking for."

"It's what it looks like."

"I'm asking you to be present. I'm asking you to stop closing the door and calling it protecting me. I'm asking for—" He stops. The words back up somewhere in his chest. "I'm asking for you. Not what you've decided I can handle."

"Maybe what I've decided you can handle," Shane says, tight and sharp, "is the only thing I've got right now. Did you think about that? Did you think that maybe I am doing the absolute best I can and you are standing here telling me it's not good enough—"

"I didn't say not good enough—"

"You said a problem."

"I said it felt like—"

"You said it." Shane's voice breaks on the word, just slightly, one fissure in the controlled surface. "Tabarnac—" He catches himself. "All this time and that's—you came here and you said that to my face."

The room is loud with both of them breathing.

Ilya looks at him. Shane looks back. There's something cracked open in his expression — not soft, nothing soft, but something raw underneath the anger, something that has been there this whole fight and is only visible now because they've stripped everything else away. It's hurt. Underneath all of it, it's just hurt, which is the same thing Ilya has been carrying for three weeks, which means they are both standing in Shane's kitchen furious and hurt and twenty-three days of missed everything sitting between them like a wall neither of them knows how to climb.

Ilya crosses the room.

He doesn't think about it. He just moves, and Shane doesn't move back — stands his ground, chin up, jaw set, still angry — and Ilya gets a hand in his shirt and kisses him, and it is not gentle, and Shane makes a sound against his mouth that is still half the argument.

Part Three: What Three Weeks Feels Like

Shane shoves him.

Both palms flat to Ilya's chest, hard enough to move him, and Ilya goes with it one step and then doesn't — grabs Shane by the front of his shirt and pulls him back in. Shane comes and kisses him again, and it has teeth in it, his hands going immediately to Ilya's hair and pulling in a way that is not tender, and Ilya walks him backward until Shane's back finds the hallway wall.

"I'm still angry at you," Shane says against his mouth.

"Good," Ilya says. "I'm still angry at you too."

They're not gentle with each other's clothes. Shane gets Ilya's shirt off and his hands go immediately flat against his chest — pressing, like he's making a point, like contact is an argument — and Ilya yanks Shane's head back by the hair and puts his mouth to his throat, teeth first, and Shane's head hits the wall with a short sharp sound.

"Don't leave a mark," Shane says, which means he doesn't actually care, which Ilya knows.

"No," Ilya agrees, and does it again slightly lower.

"Bedroom," Ilya says against his throat.

"Yeah," Shane says, and stays exactly where he is.

"Shane."

Shane pulls back just enough to look at him. His mouth is red and his hair is wrecked and he's still got the fight in him — Ilya can see it in his jaw, in the set of his shoulders — and somehow that's the thing that gets him. Not Shane softened. Shane exactly like this.

They make it to the bedroom by way of the rest of the hallway, shedding the remaining clothes as they go. Shane's belt hits the floor somewhere near the bathroom. Ilya's other shoe. Shane's shirt catches on the doorframe and neither of them stops to free it properly.

Shane pushes him down onto the bed and follows, and Ilya gets his hands on Shane's hips and lets him settle — and then sits up and flips them, quick and deliberate, and Shane goes with it and immediately shoves back, because Shane never just lets Ilya do anything, which is something Ilya has always known about him and will never stop appreciating. They wrestle for it, briefly, genuinely — Shane getting an arm across Ilya's chest, Ilya using his weight, both of them breathing hard before they've done anything. Eventually Ilya pins him, one hand pressing Shane's wrist to the mattress, and Shane goes still, chin up, looking at him.

"You're still pissed at me," Shane says, pinned, looking up at him. Not a question.

"Yes," Ilya says. "You hung up on me."

"You called me a problem."

"I said it felt—"

"I know what you said." Something in Shane's expression shifts — not soft, not forgiving, just him deciding something. He tilts his chin up. "You going to do something or keep talking?"

Ilya tightens his grip on Shane's wrist.

"Both," he says.

Shane pulls him down by the back of his neck and they're done talking.

They know each other. Years of this means they know each other here the same way they know each other everywhere else — every preference and reflex, exactly where to put a hand to get a specific sound, what slow means to each of them versus what fast means, what kind of touch is comfort and what kind is a statement. Ilya knows Shane is louder than he wants to be and has spent years learning to stop fighting it. Shane knows that Ilya can be pushed into rougher than he started and that he will not complain about it.

Tonight they use all of it. Ilya uses his weight and doesn't apologize for it. Shane drags his nails down Ilya's back hard enough to matter — hard enough that Ilya will find the marks in the shower tomorrow and feel something about them — and when Ilya presses his face to Shane's throat and bites he can feel Shane's pulse jump under his mouth.

"Ilya—" Shane starts, something on the other end of it.

"What," Ilya says against his throat.

"Nothing." His hands find the back of Ilya's head. "Nothing, don't stop."

It goes on like that for a while — the argument and the missing each other finding the same channel, indistinguishable from each other. When Ilya pulls back, Shane is flushed and breathing through his mouth and not bothering to arrange his expression into anything.

"Turn over," Ilya says.

Shane does. He gets onto his stomach without comment, which is its own kind of answer — the argument still somewhere in the set of his shoulders but his body knowing what it wants.

Ilya reaches for the nightstand.

"Don't make this take forever," Shane says into the pillow.

"I will make this take exactly as long as I want."

A short silence.

"Ilya."

"Look at me."

Shane turns his head to the side. His jaw is set, his expression still carrying the last of the fight, but his eyes are dark and focused and he holds Ilya's gaze with the particular effort of someone being made to do something they want and don't want simultaneously.

"Don't look away," Ilya says.

"You're going to make this difficult," Shane says, which is not a complaint.

"Yes," Ilya says.

He's deliberate about it. Takes his time in direct contradiction to the urgency of the last twenty minutes, of the hallway and the kitchen and the three weeks, and works Shane open slowly with slick fingers while Shane breathes through it and holds Ilya's gaze with the specific effort of someone being made to do something they want and don't want simultaneously. One finger, then two, unhurried and methodical, and Shane's thighs shift and his jaw goes tight and he stays mostly quiet at first — controlled, or trying to be — until Ilya finds the angle that makes control irrelevant, and then he isn't quiet anymore.

"Ilya—" Shane starts.

"Still here," Ilya says. "I'm not going anywhere."

Shane's head drops forward into the pillow.

"Look at me," Ilya says.

Shane turns his head to the side again. It takes effort. There's a flush running down the back of his neck now, and when Ilya adds a third finger at the same unhurried pace Shane exhales hard through his nose and his hips push back — seeking more, seeking faster — and Ilya doesn't give it to him. He keeps the same pressure, the same pace, thorough in the specific way he knows undoes Shane faster than urgency ever could. Shane's hands knot in the sheets. His breathing has gone unsteady in a way he isn't managing anymore.

"You're doing this on purpose," Shane says. Rough at the edges.

"Yes," Ilya says.

"I hate you," Shane says, which means the opposite.

"I know," Ilya says, and crooks his fingers slightly, and watches Shane's mouth fall open.

There is something very specific about having Shane like this — every door gone, all of it stripped away by the argument and this, nothing left but the part of him that Ilya is the only person who gets to see. Open and wanting and still carrying a thread of the fight, all of it at once. Ilya has been here for all of it, all the years of it, and it hits him the same way every time. Still feels like something he doesn't entirely deserve. He holds Shane's gaze when Shane keeps it and says his name quietly when Shane loses it and Shane turns his head back and opens his eyes again, and this goes on until Shane has stopped trying to control the sounds he's making and his hands have fisted so hard in the pillow that his knuckles are pale, and then a little longer than that.

"Please," Shane says finally. Flat against the pillow. Not asking — past that, past everything.

Ilya pulls his hand away. Shane makes an involuntary sound at the loss of it. Ilya moves up over him, gets a hand briefly between his shoulder blades — grounding, just here, I'm here — and feels some of the tension leave Shane's body.

He lines up and pushes inside slowly, and they both go completely still.

Just breathing. The room loud with it, the city outside the curtains, the lamp in the hall. Three weeks of distance and the phone call and the kitchen and all of it arriving at once. Ilya has his forehead pressed to the back of Shane's neck and both hands flat on the mattress and the feeling is — it's too much to look at directly. He breathes through it.

Then Shane gets a fist in the sheets and rolls his hips back, impatient, demanding even now, and Ilya lets out a short breath and moves.

He doesn't hold back. There's no building into it — he sets a pace that has twenty-three days in it and Shane takes it and meets it and shoves back against him in the way he always does, the way that refuses to be entirely passive even here, because Shane is never not himself. The sounds he's making are unguarded in a way that only happens in this apartment, the specific unmanaged sounds that only Ilya has ever heard, and they hit him somewhere below thought, below the fight, somewhere that has nothing to do with any of it and everything to do with all the years.

Ilya gets his mouth to the side of Shane's throat — to the marks from the hallway — and Shane's back arches.

"Fuck," Shane says, at nothing in particular. At everything.

Ilya laughs under his breath, low and involuntary, something releasing.

Shane says his name. Once half into the pillow, unintentional. Then again deliberately, turning his head to make it land somewhere — and there's still something defiant in it, in the eye contact he manages over his shoulder, the same stubbornness that has been in him all night. Ilya holds that gaze for a beat. Then he leans down over him, chest pressed to Shane's back, and gets his mouth to his ear.

"I'm here," he says. Low and even. "I'm right here. I have been right here the whole time."

Shane makes a sound that is not a word. His hand comes back, finds Ilya's hip.

"I know," Ilya says. "I know."

He reaches around and wraps a hand around Shane, strokes him once, twice, and Shane's whole body goes rigid. His hand on Ilya's hip tightens, pulls him in, and he comes with his face pressed into the pillow and Ilya's name breaking out of him a third time — loudest of the three, helpless with it, the managed version of him entirely gone.

Ilya follows him with both palms flat to the mattress, forehead dropped to Shane's shoulder, the three weeks cresting and breaking and going dark and quiet at the edges all at once.

He doesn't move.

Ilya is still inside him, still, just breathing, his weight distributed across Shane's back in a way that should feel like too much and doesn't. The sheets are somewhere on the floor. The room is warm and close and everything hurts a little in the good way, the way that means Shane's body has been doing what it was built for and not managing itself for once. He has his face in the pillow. One hand has found Ilya's hip at some point and is holding on.

Neither of them says anything.

Shane breathes. He can feel everything coming down — the argument and the three weeks and whatever he's been running on since October, all of it losing pressure at once, and underneath it is something he hasn't been able to get to in a while. Something quiet. He stays very still and lets it be there.

Ilya shifts after a while. Pulls back, settles beside him, and then his chest is against Shane's back and his mouth finds the back of Shane's neck and he just — stays there. Not asking for anything. Not leading anywhere. Just present, which is the thing Shane has been managing to almost let himself have for three weeks and has kept just missing.

He doesn't think about it. He just says it.

"That was hot."

The words come out muffled by the pillow and slightly ridiculous and completely true, and for a second nothing happens, and then Ilya laughs — the short surprised kind, Shane's favourite, the one that means he wasn't expecting to feel that good — and says yeah against the back of Shane's neck, and something in Shane's chest unknots.

He turns his head so his cheek is against the pillow. He can see the edge of the room from here, the lamp in the hall, the shirt of his that didn't make it off the doorframe. He is aware, in the low particular warmth of coming down with Ilya's arm across him, that he is going to have to say some things. Not later. Now. He has been putting them off since Chicago and before that since October and some of them since longer than that, and the fight cracked everything open in a way that made it impossible to put back, which he suspects was the point.

He takes a breath.

"I shouldn't have said the thing about Ottawa," he says.

Ilya goes still against his back.

"The career move thing. That you came here because it made sense and I was a bonus." Shane looks at the lamp. He can say this. He can say this with Ilya's arm over him and the argument still in the room and the warmth of the last twenty minutes still in his body. "I knew it wasn't true when I said it. I said it because you were winning and I wanted to hurt you back."

"I know," Ilya says.

"That doesn't make it okay."

"No," Ilya says. "It doesn't."

A silence. The city outside. The building settling.

"I also shouldn't have said the thing about giving you just enough," Ilya says. "I was trying to say something true and I found the cruelest shape of it instead."

Shane's hand moves on the sheets — finding Ilya's arm, which is across his ribs, pressing flat. "Was there a less cruel version?"

"Something like: I have been feeling like a low priority, and I don't know if that's the schedule or something I need to worry about, and I was scared to ask." A pause. "That would have been the accurate version."

"And instead you went with just enough."

"You moved to defensive very quickly."

Shane is quiet for a moment. He knows this. He has always known this, and the knowing it doesn't make it easier to catch in the moment, which is the part he doesn't know how to fix. "I do that," he says finally. "When I feel like I'm failing. It's easier to argue the detail than to sit with the bigger thing."

"I know," Ilya says.

"The bigger thing being—" Shane stops. He has been not saying this for months. He says it now, to the lamp, to Ilya's arm across his ribs, because the fight has already done the work of getting it out in the open and what would be the point of stopping now. "I have been in my head since October and you've been feeling it and I didn't—I kept waiting to feel better before I called you about it. I kept thinking I'd deal with it first and then tell you after, when it was handled. And it just—kept not getting handled."

Ilya is quiet.

"I could see myself doing it," Shane says. "Talking to you and not saying it. Knowing you could tell something was off and not saying it anyway. I don't know why I do that. I know you don't need me to have it solved first."

"Why didn't you tell me you were struggling?" Ilya says. Low, not an accusation. Just wanting to know.

Shane turns it over. He knows the answer. He has known the answer since somewhere around the Tampa FaceTime. "Because I've been the problem before," he says. "When things go bad and I go quiet and it turns into your problem too. I didn't want to do that again. I was trying to give you an easier version of me." He pauses. "I know how that sounds."

Ilya moves — shifts his weight, and Shane feels him settle, and now they're more side by side than one on top of the other, and Ilya's looking at him and Shane looks back because that's what you do with your boyfriend when your boyfriend is looking at you like that: you look back.

"It sounds like you still think I need protecting from you," Ilya says.

"Maybe," Shane says. "A little."

"Shane." Ilya holds his gaze. "I want to be the person you call when it's bad. Not after. When it's actually happening and you don't have a solution yet and you're in your head at eleven-fifteen in Tampa and you can't get out. That is the call I want. Not the call where you've already handled it." He pauses. "You understand what I'm saying?"

Shane does. He has understood it for a while. Understanding it and being able to do it are different problems. "I've never done that well," he says.

"I know you haven't."

"I'm going to fuck it up."

"I know that too."

"And you're going to have to tell me when I'm doing the door thing," Shane says. "Not three weeks from now. In the moment. Because I genuinely don't always know I'm doing it — I think I'm protecting you and from the inside it feels like the same thing."

"Okay," Ilya says. "I can do that."

"And when you do—" Shane holds his gaze. "I'm probably going to be defensive about it. I'm not going to immediately say you're right, thank you. I'm going to push back first. I'm just telling you ahead of time."

"I appreciate the warning," Ilya says.

Shane makes a sound — not quite a laugh, close enough. The exhaustion has arrived, finally, all of it: the twenty-three days and the flight and the fight and this, in that order, sitting on him like weather. He is aware of Ilya beside him and the lamp in the hall and the scrape at the bottom of the front door that he has never gotten around to fixing, all the ordinary specific coordinates of this apartment, this life. He has been coming to this apartment for years. It still, sometimes, feels like the most private thing he has.

"The weekend after next," he says.

"What about it?"

"Actual plans. I'll block it before my mom can fill it." He looks at the ceiling. "Actual plans, not I'll see if I can."

"Okay," Ilya says. "Actual plans."

"And I'll call this week. Actually call. Not check-ins."

"I know you will."

Shane turns his head to look at him. This is the part that is hard to say and that he is going to say anyway because he said he would do this differently. "I'm not going anywhere," he says. "I need you to know that. Everything I've been doing this month — the quiet, the press conference voice, the—" He stops. "It was never about not wanting this. Not wanting you. I need you to know that."

Something shifts in Ilya's face. "I know that," he says. "I knew it at 1 a.m. in Dallas. I was scared anyway."

Shane holds that for a moment. Scared anyway. Ilya, who moved cities for him, who is always the one who calls, who sat in a Chicago hotel room two days ago while Shane couldn't figure out how to say anything — scared anyway. "Yeah?" he says.

"Yeah."

"Okay," Shane says. "Good. I mean — not good. But." He doesn't have a better ending for that sentence. "Good that you said it."

"We are very good at not saying things," Ilya says.

"The best," Shane agrees. "World class."

Ilya presses his mouth to Shane's temple, and Shane closes his eyes and lets it be there, neither of them having to perform anything right now, just this: the two of them in the quiet of the apartment after the worst of it is over, deciding to stay.

"Twenty-three days," Ilya says, after a while.

"Never again," Shane says. "We manage the road trips better. I don't go quiet. You tell me when I'm doing the door thing." He shifts, settles, lets himself be horizontal, finally. "We talk like actual people."

"We are actual people," Ilya says.

"We're also two professionals maintaining a working relationship."

"We are also that."

"And also—" Shane stops. He's too tired for the full sentence. He finds Ilya's hand and puts Shane's own hand flat over it. "Also this."

"Also this," Ilya agrees.

A silence. The lamp. The city going about its night, entirely uninterested in them, which is exactly what they need.

“I love you." Ilya says quietly.

Shane turns his hand under Ilya's until their palms are together and presses it flat to his own chest, over his sternum, where Ilya can feel his heartbeat if he's paying attention. He is aware that this is probably not a normal way to say me too. He is also aware that Ilya has known him long enough to know what it means.

"Me too," he says. Low and even and all the way meant. "You know I do."

Outside, Montreal gets on with its night.