Archive of Our Own

After Ilya dies, Shane’s world is perpetually filtered through static.

One laboured breath at a time, he goes through the motions of his days. He wakes. He puts on gym clothes. He runs on the treadmill until his feet bleed. He texts his friends and loved ones to assure them he’s alive. He barely speaks out loud if he can help it.

He is hyperconscious of every second of the day; he can physically feel time crawl by, counting down breath by breath, until he can finally succumb to drugged-out, dreamless sleep. His nightstand is littered with empty orange bottles of Klonopin, his auto-renewing prescription reminder texts ping alongside the thousands of notifications he routinely ignores.

This is the world without Ilya. Greyscale and uninhabitable. Yet, everyone expects Shane to live in it. Grief has hunched on his back like a gargoyle for nearly a year now, and Shane feels like he’s going crazy, like no one else can see it but him. They want him alert and upright, as if the monster isn’t crushing him slowly, cracking one vertebra at a time. As if it won’t weigh him down for as long as he can keep himself stubbornly clinging to life. As if he’s really living at all. 

He wakes up on the one year anniversary of the Centaurs’ plane crash, fighting to open eyes glued shut by the residue of crying himself to sleep. His throat is sore and raw from sobbing. He’s certain he has no voice.

Luckily, he thinks with a morbid chuckle, he doesn’t have anyone to talk to.

He stretches out in his king sized bed, his hand smooths over the cold sheets on the other side, the untouched pillow. Every day the same ritual, he runs his hand down the length of the flat, unslept-in bed, using the reminder of his loss as a cudgel with which he can beat himself.

He casts a sleepy look around the nearly unfurnished bedroom. He’d moved into this apartment in Côte des Neiges, desperate to escape the spaces where he felt Ilya’s absence the most. He’d ended up here, in a studio with a bed and a night table, and several feet away, a sparse kitchen with a single blender on the counter, and a fridge filled with a few sad salmon filets and bags of frozen broccoli. This barren bachelor pad is as close as he’s getting to home these days. His parents’ pity had started to feel suffocating after a while, and Ottawa was full of treacherous reminders in the form of endless memorials for the city's poor dead team. It was becoming unbearable, so he’d had to escape. His old Montreal apartment might have been a mausoleum for memories of Ilya, so that would have to go. It sold with the cottage, and he’d poured the money from both sales directly into the Irina Foundation, as if Ilya was looking, as if it could count as an apology.

Shane owes Ilya so many apologies. He might just spend the rest of his sorry life in service of them. He’s spent the last year thinking through them all. Sorry I kept you a secret. Sorry I isolated you from the life you built for yourself in Boston, when you left behind your country and everything you’d ever known to give yourself a chance at happiness. Sorry I made you sad sometimes, maybe even more than I made you happy. Sorry I made you play for a shitty team. Sorry it meant that you never got another shot at the cup. Sorry I ever brought you into my orbit when you should have been free, maybe then you’d still be here.

Everybody calls today. Starting at nine o’clock sharp, Shane’s phone starts ringing and barely stops. It’s unsurprising given his actions in the preceding weeks to this momentous anniversary have sent his friends and family into high alert. Announcing his official retirement from hockey with nothing but a press release from his publicist. Self-isolating under the guise of wanting to avoid the media. Only answering his phone the third or fourth time someone calls. Shane knows it’s a suicide watch in everything but name. But no matter what he says, he’s having a hard time convincing people that he’s not going to do that.

He wouldn’t. It’s unthinkable. Ilya would never forgive him.

He’s never wanted to die before. Never even imagined it. But these days have been harder than anything Shane has ever gone through. Christmas and New Years had been harrowing. Shane has spent the past few weeks in worse shape than he’s been in for months, not that he’s ever been particularly good, but he’d been relatively stable. Then, around Christmas, the walls started creeping in, the grief became harder and harder to bear. The smell of cinnamon would make him throw up. His parents were just short of admitting him to the hospital, and how he’d managed to beg away to be alone for the anniversary could just be chalked up to no one really knowing how to handle this situation. Ilya had left everything unmoored.

So now he kind of wants to do the unthinkable. Or maybe, he thinks about wanting to.

It always stops him in his tracks, wanting to die. No matter how hard life had gotten, he’d never wanted it to end before. Even at the most isolated he’d ever been by his secrets and his standoffish personality, his particularities that made everyone but Ilya get annoyed and leave, he’d still never even considered it. But then he lost Ilya, and it started to feel like a viable option to finally put a stop to the pain.

Maybe Shane’s buckling under it especially easily today because it’s the anniversary.

Maybe he should give himself some credit.

He makes it almost all the way through his morning routine, brushing his teeth and taking a shower, but the energy he was saving to put on his clothes whooshes out of him like a breath as soon as the thought appears.

I want to die.

He topples back onto his unmade bed in his robe. He stares out the window, at Montreal sugar-dusted in snow. More snow was falling, making the white haze thicker and thicker. The forecast predicted a blizzard, the worst one of the season. It's going to be one of those snowstorms that demands the world stay inside and put on their coziest clothes and drink hot chocolate. Shane won't be doing anything but sitting in bed alone and crying, but if Ilya was here... fuck. 

He wishes Ilya was here so bad it hurts: there's a physical cramp in his stomach and his head is a lead balloon.

Too numb to cry yet, Shane decides to finally stop ignoring his phone.

Though it’s only seven in the morning, he knows that people will start knocking at his door if he doesn’t answer soon. Chances of it are low, but Shane hopes that, if he’s on his best behaviour, he might actually manage to spend the day alone. If he’s alone, there’s no one to pretend for, no one he has to convince that he’s okay, or that he will be okay, or that any of this is at all okay. He can just stare off into the distance and focus on breathing so he makes it through, one second at a time until the day ends.

“Hi Mom,” his voice crackles with disuse.

“Good morning, honey. How are you feeling?”

“I mean… bad,” Shane sighs, he doesn’t have the energy to lie.

“Oh Shane, sweetheart,” his mother says, “Would you like your dad and I to come up and see you after all?”

“No, no, it’s good that we rescheduled,” Shane shakes his head even though his mom can’t see it. “You shouldn’t be driving in this weather.”

“Your dad sprung for top of the line winter tires this year, so it really shouldn’t be a problem,” Yuna Hollander is nothing if not persistent.

“I know, Mom, I went with him,” Shane says, exasperated.

”I’m sorry, Shane but I don’t love the thought of you being alone today!”

“I’ll be okay, Mom, don’t worry. I'll be safe.”

“Alright,” she doesn’t sound convinced, “But please call your dad and I if you change your mind. We’ve got no plans today so just give us the word and we’ll drive over, okay?”

“Promise, I’ll let you know.” 

Shane’s independence has been hard won. He’s pushed himself to the brink to appear normal, just for some semblance of privacy. Being watched like a hawk in his grief was exacerbating it, he complained, and his parents had only barely relented. First, they required a middleman like Hayden or JJ to visit him often and report back to them. But just like a prisoner on parole, good behaviour has earned him a modicum of freedom.

The thing about freedom, he’s learned, is that it’s lonely.

When he hangs up, the room plunges into stark silence. Shane breathes through the momentary relief before picking the phone right back up to call Hayden. Their conversation is brief, thanks to the kids, Shane can hear Amber wailing in the background and he gratefully takes the excuse to hang up. After that, he tries to call Rose, but it goes to voicemail. He leaves a message and texts her. He answers a text from JJ and then there’s silence once again.

Nothing from the rest of the Voyageurs who have effectively forgotten him. Because, of course, it was Shane's fault that the arena was haunted by the memories of his dead lover and lacing his foot into a skate made him want to throw up. They weren’t buying whatever excuses Hayden and JJ were doling out on his behalf. They thought he was selfish, first for going on injured reserve with no visible injuries, effectively robbing them of another chance at the cup, then for actually quitting.

It would scare Shane, from a year ago, to think of how little hockey could come to matter in his life. Once it had been his whole life, the entire substance of it. But now, a year after falling from the sky, that life was dead. Shane was dead. He was just waiting for his body to catch up.

He once used to feel a thrum of anxious energy any time he lied. He lies all the time now, just to try and trigger that feeling, or any feeling other than the constant, oppressive numbness that had taken him over since that fateful day in the locker room. JJ’s voice ringing out with the most calamitous sentence ever spoken, “Holy shit, the Centaurs’ plane just crashed.”

He thinks about that day now. In some ways, he never stops thinking about it. It’s the inflection point that has defined his downfall. He lives permanently in the wake of the tragedy. He drowns and drowns and never resurfaces.

He’s only made it to ten in the morning before he accepts that being alone today was a mistake. This isn’t something he should be going through by himself, not if he wants to come out the other side of this feeling unscathed. Right now, he feels drastic, on the precipice of a really stupid decision, he doesn't know what decision, he just know it's not going to end well. Even though he knows in the very front of his mind that he is safe right now, his heart is racing like he’s on the other end of the barrel of a gun.

Shane needs someone. He needs his mom. He needs his family. Hayden, maybe. Someone. Just anyone.

Ilya. More than anyone.

But he can’t have him. Can’t visit him. Not without flying across the world.

When Ilya died, he and Shane were nothing to each other on paper. So Alexei was called, the next of kin no matter how much Ilya hated it. Thank God for Svetlana who, in another lifetime, Shane would have loved to gotten to know, who Ilya had secretly named his power of attorney and executor of his will. Alexei got nothing in the end, and Shane had tearfully accepted as Svetlana explained how they would transfer Ilya's estate in almost its entirety to an endowment for the Irina Foundation. In just that brief horrible time that he'd interacted with Sveta, Shane had understood exactly why Ilya loved her, and wished desperately he would have been less of a coward, and maybe he could have known her and loved her too. They might have bonded over their shared love for hockey, and Ilya. But instead, they never really spoke. Svetlana texted Jane the news, told a grief-stricken Shane on the other end of the line all about how they were taking him back to Russia, burying him next to his mom. It almost made it okay that he was so far beyond Shane’s reach, the knowledge that at least somewhere, Ilya had his mama again. Shane remembers the glint of the gold chain they’d both worn. He hallucinates it flashing in the corners of his eyes sometimes.

It's probably just the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation but when he’s indulging himself, it’s Ilya.

It feels like the marrow is being scraped out of Shane’s bones, with every second of reminiscence the dull, throbbing pain of reality results in Shane folding over onto himself, head between his knees, desperately trying to not hyperventilate.

He relishes the head rush from hanging his head upside down, it might be nice to stay like this until he passes out. The thought startles Shane upright.

There’s no more Ilya. Shane needs his mom.

Shane needs her so viscerally that he doesn’t think too much about the blizzard before hastily putting on his jacket over the clothes he slept in, grabbing his keys, and trudging to the elevator down to his garage. He’s running on autopilot as he gets in his car and navigates the familiar route back to Ottawa, barely looking at the road.

His hands are trembling so badly, the car starts to ever-so-slightly swerve. Shane doesn’t notice, his monomaniacal focus is locked on getting home.

A patch of black ice is in his way, he’s too busy rehearsing his excuses to stave off his parents’ worry to notice it.

The car skids violently.

The all-season tires scramble against the slick pavement, but they just can’t manage to find purchase, and the momentum of the car’s heavy metal frame swings it into a tailspin, into oblivion.

Tugging on the wheel accomplishes nothing.

The snow wends and blurs in streaks across the windshield. He doesn’t know his left from right, or his top from bottom. Everything becomes a white haze.

The last thought he has is about winter tires.

His dad bought the most expensive kind. They’d gone to Canadian Tire together to pick them out. His parents did a lot of that, in the months immediately after, never letting Shane out of their sight, making him trail along, half-present behind them on all their errands. His dad asked if Shane wanted any for his car. Shane can’t remember if he answered.

Ultimately, he wouldn’t be surprised if this is officially the first year that Shane Hollander forgot to get winter tires. Extenuating circumstances and all. He generally forgets a lot these days. Enough missed practices and games out on injured reserve and the league had put him on indefinite mental health leave before he finally quit. That’s a thing now, in the league, thanks to lobbying funded by the Irina Foundation. Ilya would have been so proud of the initiative, and Shane is simultaneously warmed and devastated that even in death Ilya finds ways to take care of Shane. It makes Shane love him so much that the feeling wells up inside of him with nowhere to go until he started choking under the pressure.

These days, these thought spirals are common. It’s irrational, Shane knows, but he can’t help but feel like if he crowds his head with too many thoughts, he risks pushing out a memory of Ilya. And memory is all that’s left of him now. Of course, Shane knows memory doesn’t work like that, he’s sure he read a book about concussions that mentioned that they’re more like re-fabrications every time. Shane hopes that’s not true, that it’s just a theory, because there has to be something real, some actual molecular proof that Ilya existed that Shane can hold safe in his mind and in his heart, and if all that can be is paltry memory, Shane doesn’t want to risk it.

Of course it’s not like Shane doesn’t have a single scrap of Ilya left. Their lives had intertwined enough that Ilya had left plenty of his things in Shane’s house. If he’d had more wherewithal in that blurry immediate after then maybe he would have used his key to get everything he wanted back from Ilya’s place in Ottawa, but he was too late. By the time he was lucid enough and brave enough to try it, he learned Sveta had sold the house, and everything inside it had either been sold or thrown away.

It didn’t stop Shane from driving over there and lingering until the new owners politely yet firmly asked him to leave. They didn’t recognize him so his celebrity earned him no mercy. Not all Canadians are into hockey, after all. Tragically, Shane finally understands what that's like now. 

He thinks about that strange encounter. How he’d been half-possessed making the detour to turn into Ilya’s old neighbourhood. He was meant to be going to get his winter tires installed. He’d forgotten and creeped out Ilya’s neighbours instead.

Now, as a wall of noise from a too-close semi-truck horn blares, and his windshield cracks and explodes, and a million shards of glass make their home in his body, Shane is numb.

He’s been dead this whole time, and now finally his body is catching up.

The world goes dark, and Shane accepts it.

It’s better than static.

—

Shane wakes up to the beeping of his alarm.

Once his brain catches up to the fact that he is actually alive, the first thing he feels is annoyance, quickly followed by guilt. He sighs, his lungs feeling lighter than they have in years. He shifts against the bedsheets and frowns when they chafe against his skin. This bed is cold and unfamiliar, shit, had they taken him to a hospital?

That can’t be it. Hospitals are never this quiet.

He blinks his eyes open wider. Propelled by his own panic, he levers up at the waist, sitting up against the headboard and swivelling his head around, trying desperately to process his surroundings.

A beige hotel room. One like the hundreds he’d seen in his hockey career, variations on a theme. He feels at once warmly nostalgic at the thought of being back in the place that was once his and Ilya’s secret Eden. Hotel rooms started to feel charged, back then, when Ilya’s touch was so scarce. When he’d started counting down the days until the next rendezvous, giddy as the numbers grew smaller, as the space between them shrunk. When Shane had started to appreciate the artistry of Marriot Bonvoy's generic collection of paintings, enough to ask his interior designer to look up where they sourced them, that's the moment he knew he had fully lost his mind. 

Is he still dreaming? Stuck in a memory?

He looks to his right. The lump underneath the covers is identifiable only by the straight tuft of chestnut brown hair splashed against the white Marriott pillow. The tuft groans and flops over dramatically, revealing the face of Shane’s former teammate and perpetual hotel roommate.

“Turn off your alarm!”

“Hayden?”

Another groan. Then Hayden sits up, wrestling free of his nest of blankets, eyes crusted shut with sleep, and blindly reaches over the shared hotel side table until he’s bashed Shane’s phone into silence.

“I told you I can’t run with you. We got in so late last night and Arthur is teething so I haven’t had a quiet night’s sleep since our last roadie.”

Teething? “Why the hell is your six year old teething?”

“What are you talking about, man?” Hayden groans, burying his head further into the pillow, “I don’t have a six year old. The twins are three. Arthur’s one next month. Are you okay? Did you get hit in the head or something?”

Shane feels very, very cold all of a sudden.

“What year is it?”

“Huh? Did you actually get hit in the head?”

“Answer the question, Hayd.”

“2016.”

“Fuck.”

“Seriously, buddy,” Hayden grouses, sitting up fully now, with his eyes still squinted with sleep. “Do I need to call the team doctor? Are you gonna be okay to play tomorrow?”

“I’m fine,” Shane says, too quickly, “Just had a weird dream.”

“What happened?”

Shane blinked rapidly, Hayden’s question fading into the ether as he recognized the date glaring up at him from his phone.

“Are we in Boston?”

“Yes, man, for the game. Jesus, it’s not like you to forget a game. Must have been some dream.”

“It was intense,” Shane deadpans. Whatever Hayden says next is unintelligible to Shane, overtaken by the chilling realization that this very November afternoon is when he visited Ilya’s house in Boston for the first time. The day they crossed all their lines and Shane ran away, overcome by the terror of confronting his own feelings.

How he had woken up here when he went to sleep in 2022 is not something he can make himself dwell on or question too closely— it feels too much like looking a gift horse in the mouth.

If this really is the past, then that means Ilya’s in it.

He doesn’t love Shane, not yet. Or at least, he hasn’t said it.

Shane can work with that. Shane can deal with anything as long as Ilya is alive and breathing in this world.

He falters for a second, almost dizzy with relief and excitement. He realizes he hasn’t looked forward to anything in a year. The feeling dislodges in his chest and rattles around, unfamiliar from disuse.

Grabbing his phone, he scrolls to his texts with Lily. Ilya hasn’t sent Shane his address yet. It’s only six in the morning. Shane dimly remembers the details of this day from the first time he lived it, though later events overshadowed the minutia.

It’s not like it matters. Shane remembers Ilya’s Boston address. He’d visited it a couple of times, that aching year they did long distance before Ilya’s contract was up. Shane hadn’t been lying when he said the place was beautiful, and he was almost sad to see Ilya let it go. But that melancholy had been quickly replaced with the elation of knowing Ilya was only leaving it behind so he could be closer to Shane. He loved Shane enough to leave behind the first home that was his very own, brave enough to want to make a new home with Shane, a home to last forever.

They never got the chance, before. But this time, Shane is determined to make sure they do.

He figures Ilya would be pretty surprised if he showed up to his house out of the blue. Surprised enough to be put off, probably. Shane is way too bad of a liar to think of any plausible excuse. If this is really happening, if Shane is actually by some miracle getting another shot at this, then he’s going to have to play this smart. His impatience to see Ilya again will have to be tempered. He’s not sure how time travel works, but he has the sneaking suspicion that one wrong move could unravel everything.

Ilya is alive.

Just the thought of it is enough to make Shane crack his first smile in a year.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Oh. Right. Hayden’s here. Shane’s brain is so full of thoughts of Ilya, of their day together, of his plans, of what he’ll say, what he’ll do, how it’ll feel to kiss Ilya again, to touch him, to feel his heart beat, to hear his laugh, to feel his breath—

“Shane? You’re kind of freaking me out, dude.”

Shane’s head snaps up. “What? Oh. Sorry. Weird dream.”

“Yeah… you mentioned.”

“I think I’ll go for a run. You know, clear my head.”

In reality, the run is an excuse to strategize. Shane realizes if he’s been dropped off in the timeline where he thinks he has, then he has the opportunity to make a pivotal moment in their relationship go another way. Maybe they can be together, honest together, sooner.

The thought makes Shane pick up speed. Boston is a blur in is periphery, the waterfront, the trees, the historic streets, the people, they’re meaningless fodder standing between him and reuniting with the love of his life.

It’s eleven am, Shane has run five kilometres, showered thoroughly, and eaten a light breakfast, just some probiotic yogurt with organic fruit. The waiting is agonizing. He’s laid up on top of his hotel comforter fully dressed but for his shoes, scrolling through Ilya’s old interviews on YouTube when, finally, the text comes through. His heart sings: it’s from Lily. Just an address, nothing more.

Shane breathes shakily, picking up his phone. It’s been a long time since he’s gotten a text from Lily. (He and Ilya had changed their names in their phones after announcing the charity). In the other timeline, he’d spent the past year scrolling through their shared texts, flinching every time he got to a deleted photo. He’d kept on paying Ilya’s phone bill so as to not lose his voicemail message. He wonders, idly, if his mom would cancel it finally now that they were both gone. His heart hurts at the thought of it. Of his parents losing both their sons.

Another text buzzes, snapping Shane out of his miserable spiral.

Lily: Come whenever.

Well, that answers that question. Shane smiles dumbly at his phone for a second. He always did think that he and Ilya sometimes shared a telepathic bond. Maybe it was just that they always wanted the same thing: each other. Shane’s giddiness erases whatever lingering guilt he was feeling. With barely another thought, he calls his Uber and types in the address.

“Headed out?” Hayden says, as he enters their hotel room after his run.

“Uh, yeah. I’m going to meet a friend.”

“Oh,” Hayden says, grinning in that shit eating way of his, as he wanders over to his suitcase, pulling out his towel and a change of clothes, “So Boston Lily’s just a friend.”

Shane rolls his eyes. With a brief prayer that what he’s about to say next doesn’t accidentally tear a hole through the spacetime continuum, Shane says, “It’s actually Ilya, um Rozanov. He’s the friend I’m going to see.”

It has the expected reaction. Hayden’s mouth drops, and he sputters, “Dude, that is not funny. You and Rozanov?”

“Is that so fucking crazy?”

“I mean, yeah, kind of.”

“Hayden, I’ve known the guy longer than I’ve known you. We practically grew up together. You think we’ve actually hated each other all these years?”

“You sure as shit don’t stop us from ragging on him in the locker room.”

“What exactly would that accomplish? It’s not like I join in.”

That makes Hayden pause for a second. He blinks rapidly, visibly trying to get his thoughts in order. Shane does not have time for this.

“Look, man, my Uber’s here.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

Shane sighs, he really doesn’t want to keep this guy waiting. He works hard to maintain his 4.9 rating. He’s kicked drunk team members onto the curb rather than let them vomit in Ubers associated with his account.

“Can we talk about this when I get back?”

“Sure, whatever. Have fun with Rozanov, I guess.”

“Always do,” Shane says, and with that he’s out the door before he has a chance to panic and take any of it back. Shane races to the grey Toyota that’s arrived to pick him up. He climbs into the backseat, apologetic, but the driver, Ivan, simply ignores him and continues his loud, rapid conversation in a vaguely slavic sounding language which Shane quickly recognizes as Russian.

Shane bites his lip, daring to say a quick “Spasibo,” as he exits the car. The driver looks up at him, a shocked and pleased smile lighting up his otherwise weary face.

“Ah, pozhalustya,” he says, waving as he backs out of Ilya’s driveway. Shane smiles after him. Then he turns around and takes in the palatial house in front of him.

Shane always loved this house, and he loves it even more now, looking up at it, he’s overwhelmed. For him, it’s been years since Ilya sold it when he moved to Ottawa. It was bittersweet, the last year he spent here, all Shane can remember is resenting this place for being so far, but now he thinks of it almost fondly as the first place Ilya made a home outside of Russia, a stepping stone on the journey that would lead him into Shane’s arms. Jumping at the prospect of seeing Ilya again, Shane shakes himself to alertness, smooths his hands down his favourite brown leather jacket, the one he’s worn soft with use. It makes sense in hindsight why Shane had chosen to wear it the first time around. Ilya brought out the softest parts of him, all the time.

He rings Ilya’s doorbell, despite knowing the code.

He waits. It’s only for a few seconds, still, the anticipation quickens his breath.

When Ilya opens the door, he’s shirtless. Shane’s mouth goes dry as he watches the flex of Ilya’s biceps as they curl up when he fixes his hair, which is already perfect and requires no fixing. He looks like he’s just showered, his golden curls are defined and combed back.

He looks like a marble bust of Alexander, in all respects a classical statue, but for one — Ilya is alive.

The thought overwhelms Shane, his plans momentarily waylaid as he rushes into Ilya’s arms. When his body collides with Ilya’s, Shane feels the puff of his shocked breath, the firm muscles of his chest, bare skin brushing against soft leather, cold zipper teeth tangling with his chest hair. Shane feels Ilya’s smile under his lips, again, finally, for the first time in a year, though it has felt like a lifetime.

Shane kisses him softly, slowly, resisting every time Ilya tries to make it deeper, or dirtier. Shane lets him run his tongue along the seam of his lips, savours the feeling of Ilya tasting and digging into the chapped crevices, the pleasure-pain sting sends heat rushing to his groin, and he knows Ilya can feel him getting hard where he’s got his crotch pressed up against Ilya’s thigh. But he doesn’t take it any further. He doesn’t hump the hard line of Ilya’s leg that he’s so generously offered. He doesn’t open his mouth and let Ilya stick his tongue inside. Instead, Shane anchors one hand in the curls at the back of Ilya’s neck, and he uses his considerable strength to hold Ilya still. He presses yet another sweet, chaste, closed-mouth kiss against Ilya’s pouting lips, his pressure feather light, carefully controlled. 

It’s not a move that Ilya’s expecting, and Shane smiles at the combination of shock and delight that overtakes him.  Ilya breaks away from their kiss with a gasp. His eyes are sparkling when Shane finally meets his gaze, managing finally to wrench open his kiss-slackened eyelids.

“Bozhe, you must have really missed me, Hollander.”

Shane laughs, giddy almost to the point of delirium, “You have no idea.”

Ilya smiles, and presses another kiss to Shane’s lips. He’s so quick about it Shane doesn’t have a chance to close his mouth before Ilya finally sticks his tongue right in. Then Shane loses the plot for an undeterminable period of time as Ilya thoroughly tastes the inside of Shane’s mouth. Ilya sucks on Shane’s tongue like it’s candy.

When Ilya pulls away, Shane watches as a string of spit stretches so thin it becomes invisible, snapping with a cold burst against his red, slick lips. He has been thoroughly disarmed of his higher brain functions, his limbs feeling like overcooked pasta in Ilya’s firm grip.

Shane feels up the firm muscles of Ilya’s abs, leaning back to cup his hands around Ilya’s pecs. Without thinking he lowers his mouth to one nipple, then the other, sucking it into his mouth each time and suckling on it until Ilya’s grip on his hair becomes too tight. Shane kisses a path back up Ilya’s neck and seeks out the spot behind his ear that always tips Ilya over the edge.

“Hmm,” Ilya moans, “What has gotten into you, Hollander?”

Shane pants, dragging his lips to Ilya’s ear, he whispers, “You said it, remember? I missed you.” Then, because he can, Shane cups Ilya’s face in his hands and kisses him on his perfect mouth, tracing his defined cupid’s bow with the tip of his tongue. Shane kisses him again, and again, and soon they’re back where they started, making out in the entryway of Ilya’s house, with only one of Shane’s shoes kicked off. In the brief moments he comes up for air, Shane can register the ridiculousness of this situation. He’s got to get a grip.

Shane forces himself to pull back from the kiss, though he’s regretful to leave it, they were really getting into a flow state there, synchronized sips of air, just the right amount of tongue. If they kept at it, Shane was certain he and Ilya could perfect the art of kissing.

He makes himself look into Ilya’s eyes. He kicks off his second shoe. Ilya pouts at him, staring doggedly at Shane’s mouth. Shane smiles, and watches Ilya mirror his expression.

Shane can’t help himself, he leans close, and bats his eyelashes. Ilya sways back into his space, as if spellbound, his eyes locked on Shane’s.

“Do you want to take me to bed?”

“Bol'she, chem chto-libo,” Ilya says, his pupils blown wide.

More than anything, Shane translates in his head. In another life, he’d taken months of intensive Zoom Russian lessons. He never got good enough to muster up the courage to speak in Russian with Ilya, and if he didn’t think it would weird him out right now, he’d jump at the chance to not make that mistake again. As much as Russia haunted Ilya, it was still his country and Russian was still his first language. To know Ilya meant knowing Russia in all the good and bad it contained, in all the ways it shaped the love of his life, most of all through his language. Shane had quit learning it, much like he’d quit everything, after the plane crash. So now, his preternatural facility with languages is saving the day. He is fluent in bird, after all. He resolves to commit to learning Russian now, it’s the very least Ilya deserves. 

Emboldened by the determination of his promise and overwhelmed by understanding Ilya’s secret truth whispered in a language he believes Shane can’t speak, all he can do is leap into Ilya’s arms. As annoyed as he is to be carried, he indulges the side of himself that loves it and doesn’t complain. He keeps a firm grip around Ilya’s shoulders as they make their way up a flight of stairs. Ilya only just breaks a sweat, barely jostling Shane as he rushed the last few steps into the bedroom. He manages to lay Shane down on the bed slowly. But then promptly knocks the breath of out him as he collapses into Shane’s arms.

“Oof,” Shane says, nudging Ilya to rearrange his arms so that they’re more comfortably wrapped around him, “You’re heavy.”

“I think big, tough hockey player Shane Hollander can take it.”

“Have you considered that being light on his feet is what makes him a way faster skater than Ilya Rozanov?” Shane teases back.

Ilya’s smile falters a little. Shane realizes — he called him Ilya. Briefly panicked, Shane tries to distract him, quickly pulling him into a kiss.

They’re getting dangerously close to the subject that made this meeting implode the first time around. Even though Shane knows not to run away this time, he also wants to be careful not to spook Ilya. Too much too soon might not help Shane’s case in the long run. Shane is just not sure how well he can make himself pretend he is anything less than completely devoted to this man in front of him. He’s not sure he’s ever successfully managed that.

When Shane breaks away from the kiss, there’s still a wrinkle of disquiet in Ilya’s expression. There is a usual remedy for this though.

“I want you to fuck me, Rozanov.” 

“On your back, like this?”

Sweet, slow missionary with eye contact was always Ilya's favourite, and Shane loves it too, but he feels too frantic for it right now. 

“I, uh, I kinda want to ride you?”

“Is this question for me?”

“I mean, yeah, of course. Only if you want to.”

“Of course I want, Hollander,” Ilya almost snaps at him, like he’s said something ridiculous. It makes Shane smile, helpless. But he can see where Ilya’s eyes are widening with embarrassment, and he can’t have that. After they get situated, Shane perched on Ilya's lap as he lies back against his paltry few pillows, Shane loops his arms around Ilya's neck and pulls him in close for a kiss, a good one, a deep one. It’s a kiss that leads to Shane hooking his hand in the waistband of Ilya’s sweatpants and pulling down. Ilya paws at the button of Shane’s jeans, unusually uncoordinated and lost in the kiss. Taking some pity on the love of his life (who doesn’t know it yet), Shane takes over, swiftly stripping out of his own pants, then his jacket and shirt. He tosses everything to the side, too riled up to bother to fold them now. Naked, he clambers back into Ilya's lap and kisses him even harder, as if to make up for the two seconds they were just apart. 

Of course, Ilya notices how erratic Shane's being. He pulls back from the kiss and tries to smile, but his eyebrows are bunched up in confusion, “Something gotten into you today, Hollander?”

“Not yet,” Shane quips back, “That’s what you’re here for, right?”

Ilya’s smile dims a little and Shane feels his heart stop. Fuck. He and Ilya had gotten to a point where they were so comfortable expressing their love for each other, the idea that sex is the only reason they got together became laughable. That’s in another life now. In this one, Ilya is growing still, hovering over Shane, his body taut with hesitation.

Shane scrambles to break the tension. He shifts his hips, squirming until he feels the heat of Ilya’s erection right up against the sensitive insides of his thighs, lining up with his own dick and sparking the tinder of desire. With no clothes separating them, the direct contact of skin on skin is intoxicating. Shane begins to rock back and forth in Ilya's lap, which has the effect of shocking a moan out of Ilya and defeating his last shred of hesitation, leaving him nothing else to do but to give in to the heady sensation of Shane’s tender touch. On its path to curl into Ilya's hair, Shane’s hand flits up Ilya’s chest, subconsciously tracing the path of his moles he’d mapped out during long summer nights at the cottage. He smiles at the idea of taking Ilya back there again, unable to hold back a gleeful chuckle as he imagines Ilya coming alive in the sunshine, unfolding and pledging himself to Shane in his deepest most intimate home.

Ilya thrusts once more against Shane’s thighs, a blurt of precome slicking the way. It’s slicker, but not quite enough. Ilya grunts and reaches over to get at his bedside table, inelegantly pawing open the drawer to pull out the lube and condom. Shane bites his lip so he doesn’t accidentally tell Ilya not to put it on. They haven’t used a condom since that first night at the cottage in 2017, but he knows at this point in time, they still have to work up to exclusivity. The thought makes the pit of Shane’s stomach burn with jealousy.

“Hurry up,” he grumbles as Ilya’s slick fingers finally make contact with his rim, and frustratingly just circle the outside of it, lazily, like they’ve got all day.

Technically they do, but the urgency building in Shane’s body and the petulant only child brat he is at his core is starting to break out onto the surface.

“Shh, Hollander,” Ilya says, still maddeningly circling and circling the sensitive skin until Shane feels himself start twitching. “Ya dam tebe vso chto ty zakhochesh', moy malen'kiy l'vonok.”

I will give you everything you want, my little lion cub. Shane translates in his head and tries not to come right then and there. He never knew Ilya was being so sweet to him, so early on. He thinks back to all the times they’d hooked up since their rookie season, all those sentences of murmured Russian that drove Shane crazy. He always imagined Ilya was whispering filthy things, words that got Ilya hot enough that he lost the capacity to say them in his second language. An even more devastating realization dawns on Shane that he might have been saying things too sweet to confess, hiding behind Russian for fear of Shane’s rejection. Fear that Shane had proven him right about in another life. But not in this one.

“Please,” Shane begs, as Ilya presses his finger against Shane’s hole, dipping just the barest centimetre and staying there, teasing and touching but never getting any deeper. Shane bites down hard on a moan, shuddering out his breath, he sticks to something safe, something he’s said before: “I need you.”

That does the trick. Ilya plunges his finger in. It sends a shockwave through Shane’s body, his back arching helplessly, he grinds down onto Ilya's dick. Shane breaks into a giddy grin, utterly satisfied in the knowledge that he hasn’t let himself forget any of this, the most sacred thing he’d ever learned: how to make Ilya happy. Shane has long accepted that he has this rare and special gift, which was really a responsibility. It was as simple as making sure Ilya knew he was needed, totally and profoundly needed, and not only for what he could give but for who he is. Shane needs to work harder on expressing that last part. He wants to start doing it right now.

“Fuck, that’s good,” Shane says, gasping as Ilya fits a second finger alongside the first. Experimentally, he lifts his hips and bears back down on Ilya's fingers, as if he's riding them, giving Ilya a tase for what's to come. 

It has the effect of totally wrecking Ilya. “Yeah?” Ilya asks, breath already coming out in pants, “Is okay?”

“Yes, of course, always,” Shane whispers, pulling Ilya in closer by the shoulders, uncaring if it messes up Ilya’s angle, Shane just needs him closer. Ilya, ever the expert, is unfazed by the shift, and pulls Shane seamlessly into a kiss so heated, he hardly notices when Ilya presses in a third finger.

Shane moans into Ilya’s mouth as he gently stretches and coaxes him loose. It soon becomes too good to bear, and Shane has missed this feeling so much, suffered more than a year’s drought without it. “I’m ready, Ilya, please fuck me.”

Everything stops.

Ilya freezes with his fingers halfway out of Shane’s hole, his mouth gapes, their panting panicked breath mixing. Shane squirms, momentarily confused, until he finally registers what he just said. His eyes go wide, catching Ilya’s similarly stunned gaze, Shane waits, holding his breath.

“Shane,” Ilya says, quiet and awed. His hand comes up to cup Shane’s cheek, thumb stroking across his freckles. It’s so tender it fills Shane’s heart to bursting. This wasn’t remotely the plan, but when it came to Ilya, Shane hardly had a habit of exercising self control.

“Oh, Ilya, come here,” Shane takes Ilya’s face in his hands and drags him into a kiss. Ilya kisses back, frantic with need. When he breaks away, it’s only to hastily roll the condom on and get into position, Shane’s legs wrapped firmly around his hips, as Ilya lines them up. Ilya keeps two hands tight on Shane's hips, preventing him from sitting on his dick right away. Shane can feel him so dangerously close, poised to thrust inside but before he does, his hand comes up to catch Shane’s jaw and tilt it up until his eyes meet Ilya’s.

“You are sure?”

Shane’s heart spills over as he nods frantically, cheek squishing under Ilya’s fingers. His voice is gone, overwhelmed with desperation, he whispers yes, yes, yes.

Slowly, Shane lowers himself onto Ilya's cock, moaning into Ilya's mouth. Ilya guides Shane's descent with a careful grip on his pelvis, setting the pace to a slow, agonizing grind. When Ilya is finally sheathed inside of him, Shane takes the first full breath of air he’s taken in a year. The relief he feels is a cleansing tide, unburdening him of the tar-sticky sorrow that perpetually weighs him down. Now he feels light enough to float, even as he's pinning Ilya to the bed. Shane just loops his arms around Ilya’s neck and pulls him closer, knowing, at last, his heart, lashed with storms and nearly wrecked, has finally made it back to safe harbour. 

Shane moans with reckless abandon as he starts to bounce on Ilya's dick, letting himself feel every bolt of the zinging current building beneath his skin. He tries his best to keep his eyes open to watch Ilya start to glow with exertion as he starts to match his thrusts, his eyes blown black, his curls bouncing and haloed in the clear light of midday. It’s the most beautiful thing Shane has ever seen, it’s a thousand Sistine Chapels. As hard as he tries to maintain his focus, reaching an arm out to balance against the headboard as he rides as hard as he can, he can’t help but screw his eyes shut. Every other thrust sends Shane into a new stratosphere of sensation. Gut-clenching, toe-curling pleasure mounts and rumbles like an oncoming avalanche.

“You will come just like this?” Ilya pants below him. Shane manages a weak nod, his mouth preoccupied with gasping for air as Ilya stills his hips in the air and pistons up into them even harder, making his breath turn into a reedy whine.

“Is a good trick, no?” Ilya continues, “You ever see anyone else do that?”

Shane isn’t sure he’s hearing right. All the blood that would have been in his brain, processing audio, is focused on the feeling of Ilya Rozanov still steadily rocking up into him. The drumbeat of pleasure that reverberates every time the head of his massive cock crashes into Shane’s prostate is so brain scrambling that Shane doesn’t know if he can trust his ears right now.

Still, he approximates an answer, “No, there’s no one else. Not for me. No one but you.”

Before he has a second to overthink what he just said, Ilya fucks Shane even harder, knocking the words right off his lips, and replacing them with a desperate moan, a scrabbling of nails down Ilya’s arms, thighs squeezing together hard enough to bruise.

It’s only after Shane comes all over Ilya's abs, without a single touch to his cock, that he realizes what he said. He thinks, idly, that he should be worried about it. What’s one more confession too soon? Shane doesn’t want to think about it right now. Not when he’d much rather focus on the six feet of smoking hot Russian manhood slaking himself on pleasure from Shane’s body. Ilya can feel the way Shane's thighs are shaking past the point where they can hold him up, and wordlessly he manhandles Shane to flip them over so that Shane's on his back, never once taking his dick out. Their chest press together spreading all of Shane’s release, which makes him briefly wrinkle his nose in disgust until Ilya starts fucking all the expressions off his face, leaving him in an open-mouthed rictus of pleasure, moaning and writhing against Ilya’s navy sheets.

Ilya is distracted in this new angle, thrusting slower now that he’s occupied with running his fingers through the thick white strands splattered all over the hard planes of Shane’s abdomen, tracing up to his pecs, reaching as far up as the base of his throat. Shane risks a glance at Ilya’s eyes and instantly regrets his decision. Ilya’s eyes sparkle with unshed tears, his eyebrows screwed up like he’s desperately pushing back at the floodgates of his emotions. He’s taut with tension, even as he chases his release, his strokes are lingering and careful, like if he makes one false move, he might dissolve.

Ya lyublyu tebya, the confession sits clenched between Shane’s teeth. In another life he had said it as easy and often as breathing. But Ilya looks overwhelmed already, and two lines have already been crossed. Shane’s ingrained need to score a hat-trick might betray him for the first time in his life on this occasion. Still, he tries to hold firm, occupying his mouth with pressing long, suckling kisses to the skin of Ilya’s neck. Out of practice in avoiding leaving hickies, Shane inevitably bites down hard, earning a hiss from Ilya and a hand bunching up in the hair on the back of his head and pulling him up to meet Ilya’s feral gaze.

“Gospodi, you are hungry today?”

“Starving,” Shane pants, losing focus as Ilya’s thrusts keep steadily pounding against his prostate, his spent cock gives a weak twitch. He’s not sure he can come again, but who knows, maybe his twenty-five year old body might surprise him. If he’s going to test any theory though, he’s gonna need Ilya to go harder, now. Shane feels the urge to be a brat bubble up inside him. “You gonna give me what I need, Rozanov? Or are you gonna leave me hungry?”

“I’ll give you what you fucking need,” Ilya replies, through gritted teeth. “Ya otdam tebe vso.”

I’ll give you everything, Ilya promises in Russian. Shane whines, and Ilya’s hips move faster. Shane hears the rhythmic slap of skin on skin as Ilya’s hips meet the soft flesh of Shane’s ass. The relentless internal pressure reaches a fever pitch and Shane’s orgasm cascades for a brief eternity. It bends him backwards in a rictus of pleasure. That’s when Ilya snaps, finishing inside of Shane with a broken groan, and panting with his forehead resting against Shane’s shoulder for so long, it feels like he’s fallen asleep.

But when Shane peers at him, Ilya’s eyes are open, staring off into space. His hand rests idly on Shane’s stomach, his cheek nuzzled comfortably against Shane’s collarbone. Ilya’s breath feels damp and nice, and Shane can sense the rapid patter of his heartbeat where his chest is pressed up against Shane’s bicep. It’s supremely comforting to be surrounded by these signs of life, these reminders that Shane has a second chance, and he’s not going to waste a single second of it.

Reaching down, Shane gets a hand on the underside of Ilya’s jaw and gently tilts his head up until their eyes meet. Ilya’s gaze is warm and fond when it meets Shane’s, but there’s a slight tinge of fear, his pupils flit back and forth between Shane’s eyes, like he’s trying to puzzle something out. And Shane knows, with a sinking certainty, that he’s been acting weird, at least by the standards this past Ilya is used to. Shane bites his lip as he waits for Ilya to say something, to ask him a question he’s not going to know how to answer because he’s always been a terrible liar and Ilya’s always seen through him in an instant.

“You are feeling alright, Hollander?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, lending the focus he usually reserves for hockey to keeping his voice from shaking. “I’m sorry I’m being so intense I guess it’s just…  been a while.”

The telltale curl of Ilya’s smile makes Shane smile helplessly back. He looks straightforwardly at Ilya, his gaze daring him to take the bait.

“Not since the last time we…” Ilya trails off, feigning innocence badly. If Shane’s a bad liar, then Ilya’s a hammy actor, barely believable. It’s a testament to just how much love sends him into a state of hypnosis, and how much he loves it, safe under Ilya’s spell.

“No, not since the last time you fucked me. And the time before that. And the time before that. Ever since I broke up with my high school girlfriend after the draft.”

A third confession spilled. Shane is terrified, but he sticks his chin out, feigning bravery until he can muster up the real thing. Even though his intimidating look is shaken somewhat by the sharp inhale he takes when his nose brushes Ilya’s, he holds Ilya’s gaze firm, heart picking up speed as Ilya’s mask slips away, and his eyes go soft and gooey, and he looks at Shane like he’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever seen. Oh, Shane has missed this look. His heart thuds, as he thinks about the fact that Ilya’s always looked at him like this, even years before they said I love you, and only hours before, in another life, Shane broke his heart.

“You called me Ilya,” he says, his voice velvet soft.

Shane closes his eyes, “You called me Shane.”

“I thought we said…”

“Well, we never agreed on specific terms, did we? I don’t remember signing a contract.” Shane tilts his head, nudging his forehead against Ilya’s in a failed effort to try and make him laugh. He plays into the idiosyncrasies he knows always delighted Ilya, like the way Shane loved his mom. Ilya once confessed it was just how he imagines his own mom, a former figure skating coach, and him would have been with him. “And I’d remember something like that, you know? My mom reads all my contracts. I would have given myself an aneurysm trying to figure out how to sign it without her.”

Ilya’s smile gets bigger and bigger, but he never laughs. Shane moves even closer trying to make Ilya go cross-eyed to keep staring at him, but instead he ends up getting pulled into a long and comprehensive kiss. It instantly derails any train of thought Shane had, and makes him forget all about the plagiarized lecture from his therapist about emotional honesty he was preparing to deliver.

“Okay,” Ilya says, coming up for air, unfairly lucid. “We set terms now, then? Informal contract, oral, your mama does not have to see.”

“What?” Shane says, still dazed, his eyes locking on the spit shimmer coating Ilya’s bottom lip. The only word he caught there was oral. It earns him a gentle slap from Ilya, and a nudge to bring his half-lidded eyes back up to meet Ilya’s gaze.

“New deal, Shane,” Ilya purrs, “You don’t see anyone else, I don’t see anyone else.”

Shane gasps, pressing back in desperately to kiss Ilya again, moaning into his mouth as he presses kisses into Ilya’s cheeks, his earlobes, his eyelids, and once more his lips.

“You would do that?” Shane gasps, finally coming up for air. He knows his eyes are glassy with tears. Shane clenches his fist, willing with all his might for the tears not to fall.

“Yes,” Ilya says, shrugging like this isn’t a total paradigm shift for his entire public persona, “I would for the right person.”

Ever the masochist, and knowing his own coward heart, Shane asks, “You wouldn’t choose a girl?”

Ilya shakes his head right away, “Not when I could choose you.”

The tears fall, Shane couldn’t hold them back if he tried.

“Fuck,” Shane says, his voice cracking, “I told Hayden about us.”

Ilya freezes where he looms above him, his ice-blue eyes going wide and startled, “You what?”

Shane registers what he just said, “No! No, oh my god, not about the… you know. I told him we were friends, and that I was going to see you.”

“See me and do what?”

“I don’t know, hang out?”

“Shane,” Ilya says, with an exasperated sigh, but he’s still smiling, which makes Shane think he’s probably not mad.

Still, he should check. “Are you mad?”

Now Ilya laughs outright, shaking his head, “No, kotik, I’m not mad.”

Kitten, ugh, Shane wrinkles his nose. “He took it pretty well, all things considered.”

“Oh, did he?” Ilya doesn’t even try to mask the sarcasm. Shane rolls his eyes, lightly smacking his shoulder.

“I mean, he didn’t stop me from going,” Shane shrugs, “Even though I just kind of dropped it on him and ran.”

“Mm, so what, he will be expecting you back soon?” Ilya doesn’t look at him when he asks, idly picking at an invisible piece of lint on the pillow next to Shane’s head.

Shane smiles, thinking back to another life, is Hayden your mother? Ilya had once asked with an adorably bitchy little pout.

“No,” Shane laughs, raising his eyebrows, “Even if he was, I wouldn’t care. I’m an adult, he’s not my mother.”

Ilya’s smile is beatific, “Well he has so many kids, maybe he lost count. Included you because you’re so cute.” He reaches over, pinching Shane’s cheek and laughing obnoxiously.

Shane shoves him off, still unable to wipe the idiotic grin off his face. They fall into a play wrestle, Ilya shoving Shane around, rearranging his considerably muscular limbs with his obscene strength. Shane relaxes into Ilya’s touch, letting himself be manhandled like a ragdoll. He giggles, it’s ridiculous, he’s utterly giddy with delight, as they grapple and roll around like the rowdy boys they are. They land with Ilya looming above Shane, his strong hips pressing Shane’s into the bed, his arms clasped around both of Shane’s wrists, pinning them to either side of his head.

The wolfish grin on his face slowly fades, his voice is whisper-serious, “What about the rivalry?”

Shane sighs, his chest heavy with the reminder that so much depends on this stupid narrative. Their careers, the NHL, their reputations in the eyes of millions will be forever changed by the truth of their relationship. It had always been the thing that excited and terrified Shane the most: just how dangerous their love was, how bad an idea, and how vital. When that love was gone, when Ilya was dead, everything else left in its wake was massless, weightless, dark matter and anti-gravity. It was the utter lack of the world, the absence of all meaning.

The rivalry that had once been a load bearing artifice was as easily disposed of as any mistruth. Maybe they don’t actually have to keep it up anymore, or maybe they can start untangling it sooner. In this new life, anything is possible, and Shane doesn’t want to dwell on the things he grew to regret when the only truly essential thing in his life was gone.

Ilya lets go of one of Shane’s wrists, cupping his cheek instead, thumb tracing softly over freckles. Shane tries to gather his courage before he meets Ilya’s eyes, which are so soft with concern. His eyebrows are bunched up adorably, his lips a perfect pink moue. Shane can’t help but tilt his face up for a kiss.

When they part, he whispers against Ilya’s lips, “do we have to keep it up forever?”

Ilya pulls back, meeting his gaze again, “What do you mean?” 

“Aren’t people bored of it by now?”

“Bored of you, maybe,” Ilya says, smirking as Shane rolls his eyes, falling for his provocation. “But I could never be boring.”

“Trust me,” Shane scoffs, “You could. You love it.”

Ilya lifts himself higher off of Shane, and looks down at him like he’s trying to solve a puzzle, “You are different today, Hollander.”

Don’t panic. “Different how?”

Ilya raises both his eyebrows without another word. Shane tries to keep a straight face but is helpless not to crack a smile at the sight of the overgrown Russian clown he’s fallen in love with.

“Okay,” Shane sighs, “I know, I’m being weird. You have questions.”

“Is something wrong? Are you dying?” It has the cadence of a joke, but there’s a sharpness in Ilya’s eyes that wasn’t there before. A memory of Ilya after his father’s death comes unbidden to the forefront of Shane’s mind. The slowness, the cruelty of how Ilya lost his father was a different kind of tragic to the sudden way he lost his mother, but it was tragic all the same. Shane understands why Ilya might be paranoid. His heart breaks for Ilya, knowing just how much he carries, and just how little he shows it.

“I’m not dying,” Shane sighs, he’s never been a good liar, so he decides he’ll try and just say the truth in retrospect, “I just have been feeling for a while like I miss you a crazy amount when you’re gone. Like, not a normal amount. I think about you all the time. I hate that we never spend the night together and that we pretend we don’t like each other and we never take any other excuse to see each other but the four times a year our schedules overlap.”

“And MHL Awards, usually,” Ilya mutters, uncharacteristically quiet.

Shane finally musters up the courage to look at Ilya, and he gasps when he meets Ilya’s gaze, shining with tears.

“Hey,” Shane whispers, his hands shaking free of Ilya’s hold to cup his precious face, “It’s okay, I know I just dumped a lot of stuff on you and you don’t have to say anything right now. I just want you to know… I won’t ask you for anything you can’t give me but I’d just… I’d like to see you more, okay?”

“Okay,” Ilya whispers back, and there’s answer enough in his kiss, lush and soft.

It’s moments like these that affirm for Shane that there is no one on this planet that understands him like Ilya does. Not even his own parents have an intuition this attuned to his own. It’s what makes them so lethal on the ice together, Shane still dreams about that All Stars match, wonders about the course his life could have taken if he and Ilya could have been teammates from the start.

“So,” Ilya says, picking at a loose thread in his sheets, “Will Hayden suspect something if you stay tonight?”

Shane hesitates, “Oh, I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

“So you want to stay?”

“I can text him an excuse.”

“You are sure? You are not a very good liar.”

“Fuck you, I can lie.”

“You really can’t, kotik.”

“Ugh,” Shane rolls his eyes, kitten again, “Don’t call me that.”

“Why? You don’t even know what it means.”

This is going to become a difficult fiction to keep up. Once again, Shane makes a bargain to let another truth slip, “If I tell you something, do you promise not to get weirded out? Because I promise it’s not… I don’t mean anything bad by it.”

“By what, Hollander? I won’t get weird.”

“No, weirded out. You know what? Never mind.” Shane takes a deep, yogic breath, trying to get some sort of grip on himself. “I’ve been learning Russian,” he blurts it out in one rapid staccato, “I’ve been learning for a couple of years now. I’m not great at it yet. You’d probably make fun of my accent. And it’s just basic words and sentences that I understand.”

In the other timeline, he bought a subscription to Rosetta Stone. He cracked open his laptop and was typing in his credit card info practically the minute he got back to the cottage after dropping Ilya off at the airport. It had been the only way he could find to distract himself from all he really wanted to do which was curl up in the hoodie Ilya left behind and sob in his bed from how badly he already missed his boyfriend. If only he’d known then that the pain of that first separation would pale in comparison to that final, most devastating call.

Shane shakes his head, forcing himself back into the present, into his second chance. Here, Ilya is looking at him with wide eyes and open mouth. Shane appears to have rendered him speechless.

He’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing until Ilya finally says, quiet and awed, “You are learning Russian for me?”

“I guess I am,” Shane says, smirking, “It’s not like I have any other Russians in my life.”

“Ah, you don’t need,” Ilya says with a pout and a flap of his hand.

Shane giggles, he can’t help himself, “Okay, just you. That’s okay with me.”

“Good,” and the pout is replaced with a smug little grin, “We practice then? Privet, kak dela?”

Hi, how are you?  Shane feels a burst of fondness at how easy Ilya’s going on him.

“Priv-yet,” Shane pronounces carefully, eyes diligently tracking the widening grin on Ilya’s face, “Um, khorosho?” Hello, I’m good— an understatement, but all that’s available to him in the language right now. He feels so keenly for Ilya, navigating a second language all on his own, always settling for the words that came the fastest, rather than what he really means. It struck Shane, back in that stairwell with Ilya over the phone in Moscow, just how unfair of a set-up it was. Ilya had a whole interior life in Russian that Shane craves more than anything. He’s always been hungry for knowledge, but he’s never felt quite so desperate for it. Shane takes a deep breath,“A tyvoi?”

“Mne konets” Ilya replies, his voice hoarse.

Shane furrows his brow, “You’re... finished?”

Ilya gasps out a laugh, “No, it means I'm fucked.”

"I thought that was supposed to be me?" 

“Mozhet byt', tebya poslali menya pytat'” Ilya retorts, too fast for Shane to catch. Shane rolls his eyes, but smiles because this is why it’s so exhilarating with Ilya, who knows him down to his marrow, because it’s never long before he’s catching on to Shane’s tricks.

“Whatever,” Shane sniffs, “I’ll figure it out.”

“I’m sure you will, solnyshko.”

“Oh, I looked up a list of Russian pet names, too, by the way,” Shane says, grinning in the face of Ilya’s rapidly reddening cheeks. Russians don’t blush, my ass. “Spasibo, sunshine. I like that one better than kitten.”

“Ah, this is not good Hollander,” Ilya grumbles, flopping onto his back beside Shane, he throws his arm dramatically over his eyes, “Now you will know all my secrets.”

“Hate to break it to you, Rozanov, but the cold war is over,” Shane laughs when that makes Ilya roll his eyes, his voice goes unforgivably gentle,“Your secrets are safe with me.”

Ilya doesn’t look back at him, instead, he levels a concerned glare up at the ceiling. Then he says, as if he’s talking to himself, “We have same secret, don’t we?”

That we’re hooking up?  Shane wonders. That’s what it meant when Ilya said it about his coach’s son. But Shane believes, hopes, knows what their shared secret really is. That we’re in love.

“Yeah, I think we do.”

“Are you hungry?”

—

“Fuck, that was really good,” Shane moans around his last bite of the tuna melt Ilya made them. He mops up the last few crumbs on his plate with the side of his thumb, sticking it in his mouth and sucking off the last of the flavour. Shane realizes, slowly, that he’s being watched. Ilya’s eyes are on him, wide and ravenous, even though his own plate is sitting on the coffee table in front of them, empty. The coke can in Ilya’s left hand starts to dent from the pressure of his grip.

“You want another one?” Ilya says.

Checking in with himself, Shane feels the cavernous pit of his appetite, yawning and growling for more. Having finally been shattered out of his haze of grief, food tastes good again.  The feeling startles him, the presence of his appetite was strange, if welcome after so long of being practically nonexistent.

“Um, I think so, yeah?”

“No need to be so shy about it, Hollander,” Ilya laughs, but his eyes are so gentle Shane can’t muster up the energy to playfully feign annoyance. He can only gaze adoringly at this ridiculous, miraculous man, watching with a goofy smile on his face as Ilya gets up and gathers both their plates. As he disappears into the kitchen, Shane settles into the couch, feeling on the precipice of total satiety. He watches Buffalo flounder and listens to the distant sounds of Ilya shuffling around, plates and dishes clanking and the soft vacuum open and close of the refrigerator. It’s a symphony, the soothing song of being home. Shane is home again, finally, after a year of drifting in boundless, frigid, everlasting grief. Ilya’s central heating feels like a campfire after a long desert night. His couch is the softest place Shane has ever sat. He sinks into the cushions, listens to the sounds of his life blooming around him, and sighs in utter contentment and peace.

When Ilya saunters back into the room, Shane’s almost ashamed at how quickly his head snaps up to watch him enter, how carefully he tracks Ilya’s movement as he approaches the couch, pressing a fresh ginger ale into Shane’s hand, a new Coke in his own. Shane holds his breath until the moment Ilya settles in close, so that they’re pressed up together, close enough that Shane can set his drink down and snuggle one arm behind Ilya’s back, the other tucked around his stomach, and he can hold him close, sighing in satisfaction as Ilya gathers him up just the same. They watch the game, like two doves in a nest.

After a moment, Ilya’s hand comes up to pet Shane’s head. Shane nuzzles closer into Ilya’s chest, pressing gentle kisses to the soft downy hair Ilya can grow there. He nudges his nose along the skin of his neck, following the taut line of his tendon until he finds his way into the secret cove behind Ilya’s ear and he comes to rest there, landing with a kiss to stake his claim.

Ilya shudders and practically melts in Shane’s arms.

“Sandwich will be ready in a couple minutes,” Ilya murmurs into the top of Shane’s head some syrupy, indeterminate time later.

“No,” Shane moans, “Don’t get up.”

“Shane,” Ilya laughs, and Shane tries not to gasp, hearing it again outside the context of the throes of passion, it strikes like a dagger to hear Ilya’s Cyrillic syllables curling around his name again, a sound he’s coveted for so long, a sound he thought he might never hear again. “Let go, kotenok, let me feed you.”

“Fine,” Shane grumbles, rolling away from Ilya reluctantly. He flops onto his side and miserably watches Ilya get up and go beyond his immediate reach. The view is nice, that’s for certain. Ilya’s ass is unfairly massive and so perfectly shaped that the first time he saw it in those showers, Shane’s eyes had literally been magnetized to it, the connection only broken by the sight of his equally massive dick. Now, even covered in his expensive sweatpants, its effect on Shane’s psyche is no different.

Shane ogles Ilya’s lithe muscular body with no shame, eyes pin-balling from mole to mole on his broad, muscular back. He finally gets what the big deal with freckles is at the sight of Ilya’s sun-dappled shoulders. His every movement is smooth, panther-like in its grace. When Shane had been learning how to skate, his coach had shown him a video of Mikhail Baryshnikov. Shane remembers being confused, first because he didn’t know men could be ballerinas too, and second because he wasn’t sure what ballet had to do with hockey, he didn’t want to be an ice dancer after all. His coach had explained, as Shane became slowly hypnotized by the statuesque poses and quiet, undeniable strength of the body dancing on the screen. Baryshnikov was beautiful, Shane remembers thinking, as he watches Ilya, he dreams of another world, where Ilya was in the Bolshoi Ballet.

His silly thoughts give way to a giddy delight he’s helpless to smother or hide.

“What is so funny?”

“Nothing,” Shane tries to hide his face in a throw pillow.

“Shane,” Ilya deadpans, “You are terrible liar. We agreed on this, yes?”

“I think Mikhail Baryshnikov might have been my sexual awakening?”

“Ah, so you have Russian fetish.”

Shane throws the pillow at Ilya for that, though he easily dodges it with a bright laugh.

“I was just thinking you move like him. On the ice, yeah. But even now, when you’re not trying, you’re so graceful. I’ve always admired that about you.”

Slowly, Ilya’s smile fades, and it sends a spike of anxiety shooting through Shane’s heart. The moment passes, though, when Ilya tosses a soft blanket back at him. It lands with a thump in his lap and Shane smiles gathering the fuzzy fabric close as he watches Ilya’s hips move as he saunters back to the kitchen.

When he comes back with another sandwich for Shane, he sets it down on the coffee table with a fresh napkin and wordlessly turns his focus to the game. Shane’s not sure if he’s imagining a thread of tension starting to pull between them, or if he’s just overanalyzing Ilya, his eyes fathomless with greed to just look at him, the proof of him alive. But maybe he’s not reading into things, maybe his unusual openness is scaring Ilya— Shane’s just not sure he knows how to control it.

He tries to turn his own focus to digging into his second sandwich— it really is delicious, and entirely outside of his diet, which hadn’t mattered the first time around and still doesn’t matter now. He takes a big bite, and trains his eyes on Ilya’s obnoxiously large TV. Buffalo struggles along through the final period, their fates long since sealed, but the routine of their loss still had some doing left. Shane realizes that tomorrow he’ll play the first hockey game he’s played in a while, without even a practice beforehand. He hopes he can rely on muscle memory to power through and the seemingly endless energy of his younger body.

Ilya laughs, suddenly, drawing Shane’s attention over to him where he’s sprawled out on the couch with his legs up on the sectional, he’s got a hand stuck down his pants, and his other arm sprawled along the back of the couch, still well out of Shane’s reach.

“What are you laughing at?”

“The look on your face when people suck at hockey.”

Shane sputters, “What look?”

Ilya laughs, the sound is deep and rich and warm, “Zloy kotenok.”

Shane instinctively scowls, “I am not a kitten.”

“Of course, not, you are angry kitten,” Ilya says, “So cute. So displeased.”

“Displeased, really?”

“Mm, yes, you think: why would stupid Buffalo first line do that, why can’t their goalie move fast enough, why don’t they put Frisk on the power play, you will be nightmare coach one day when you retire.”

“Oh fuck off,” Shane says, laughing, his chest feels like it’s full of fireworks at the delight of how thoroughly and completely seen Ilya makes him feel. Ilya knows him so well, and loves him anyway, loves him because of all his quirks, all the things that made kids never want to be his friend, Ilya outright cherishes. Shane’s not sure how he ever got so lucky, not only to have this once, but to get a second chance at it.

“Is true. And after you are done terrorizing your team, you will go home and nag your wife to make you macrobiotic dinner and make your kids practice skating after homework.”

The smile slips off Shane’s face, and the silence that follows feels charged. But Ilya doesn’t break it. Instead, he waits. Shane takes a deep breath. He’s promised himself that this time will be different, but that means he has to be brave.

“Husband,” Shane coughs, finally, “Um, probably.”

“What?” Ilya shifts, slipping his and out of his sweatpants and using it to lever himself upright.

“I’d nag my husband to make my macrobiotic dinner,” Shane says, impressed at himself that he keeps his voice from shaking, “And our kids don’t have to play hockey if they don’t want to.”

Ilya looks stunned.

“So what, you are gay?”

“I mean, yeah, I think so.” Shane feels nausea at the thought of trying to date Rose again now, with everything that he knows about what that time felt like for Ilya, how abandoned and hurt and jealous he was. Shane hopes, idly, that they can still be friends. Maybe if JJ invites him out to that party again, he’ll go, but this time he wants to have Ilya on the other side of the phone to text afterwards.

“And you want to come out? Marry someone?”

“Eventually,” Shane shrugs, he knows what the plan was, “I thought maybe after I retire. But maybe sooner.”

Ilya doesn’t say anything, but he makes a face, and Shane recognizes it, it couldn’t more clearly telegraph the sentiment: must be nice.

Russia has always been a spectre over their lives. It’s in the room with them now. History, language, culture, the memories of his mom, all his friends in Moscow, old teammates, coaches, cousins and aunts and uncles. In another life, Ilya left it all behind and never looked back. Shane is still not sure how he could have been worth a trade like that, and maybe, if he’s not careful, Ilya might decide he’s not anymore.

“Would you… ever?”

Ilya shrugs, “I wouldn’t be able to go home.”

“Because of the propaganda laws?”

Ilya’s head swivels towards Shane again, “What, you look this up?”

“I try to stay informed,” Shane lies terribly. It has its intended effect of making Ilya smirk. But just as soon as the smile blossoms on his face, it dies.

“Is not just the law,” Ilya says, his voice grim, “My family, too.”

Shane just nods, waiting for Ilya to say more. He’s always felt so wrong-footed when Ilya talks about his family. An unfathomable sense of dread always takes him over, any time Ilya brings them up, and all he can think about is the kid Shane met outside the rink in Saskatchewan, how young he looked, how big his heart, and how could anyone look at a kid like that and want to hurt him?

“They wouldn’t be supportive?” Shane asks, quiet, knowing the answer.

Ilya shrugs, weary from a lifetime of hope disappointed, “There would be no point in asking.”

It feels final. Though Shane can see the disquiet of the conversation, of even the thought of Russia in the tightness of Ilya’s shoulder. Shane wants to push, maybe if he can convince Ilya to talk to his dad, it might make losing him next year sting a little less, at least with the bitter twist of regret. But the tremor in Ilya’s fingers is foreboding. Shane doesn’t say anything more, but he does reach over, hook his pinkie in Ilya’s and gives a quick tug, before drawing his hand back and eating his sandwich.

When he chances a glance back at Ilya, he’s got the hand Shane touched cradled in his other one, staring down at it with a smile so soft he must think Shane’s not watching. Shane knows that smile, had been on the receiving end of it almost endlessly after the cottage, maybe even before now, looking at it. He smiles into his next bite of his sandwich, glad he asked for another one, glad he isn’t afraid to sate his hunger anymore, glad that Ilya is here to keep him satisfied forever.

Still smiling, Ilya asks, “Do your parents know about you?”

“Mm, no, not yet. But I’m gonna tell them soon. They’ll be good about it.”

Ilya reaches over and squeezes Shane’s hand, “That is good, that you have them.”

Shane’s heart breaks at the naked longing in Ilya’s voice. He doesn’t know how to tell him that one day, Shane’s parents will grow to love him too, that he is going to become an integral part of their family. Ilya won’t believe him, if Shane tells him that Shane was actively planning on making him their son-in-law. It’s unbelievable how Shane went from idly fantasizing about his parents and Ilya having just a chance encounter someday, to working to make sure there could be no more doubt just how firmly Ilya belonged among them. The Hollanders had never noticed that fourth empty chair at their table, not until it was full and a sense of completeness settled over their home. Shane wants to promise Ilya that soon, there will be Sunday mornings in Ottawa, and Ilya will be doing puzzles in the den with David. There will be bookshelves stuffed full of Ravensburger boxes in the basement. There will be summers spent side by side, Ilya plucking weeds with Yuna in the backyard, the two of them as thick as thieves, cracking up as they make Caprese salad with the tomatoes they’d conjured from seeds. Shane knows he’ll never actually replace Ilya’s family, but that’s not what he’s trying to do. Ilya needs people in his corner, who aren’t thousands of miles way. All he’s trying to do is offer him that, a refuge, a home to call his own on this continent.

In those first horrible months after the plane crash, Shane’s parents had tried to stay strong. Shane had been in shambles, catatonic and barely aware of his surroundings. One sleepless evening and indeterminable amount of time after the shattering of Shane’s life, he’d shuffled to the kitchen in his parents house to get some water to help down his sleeping pills. He’d stopped just short of the entryway, feet frozen by the sound of his mother sobbing. When he’d peeked into the room, he’d seen his parents, his mom wrapped up tight in his dad’s arms, both of them shaking with sobs. He’d never seen his mom cry before. His dad had cried once, during Finding Nemo, but never mom. It had hit him, in that moment, how losing Ilya may have hit him the hardest, its impact reverberated out well past what Shane knew.

“We wanted to grow beets this year,” Shane remembers hearing his mom’s voice, broken and devastated and muffled where she’d pressed her face against the meat of his dad’s shoulder. “He was going to show me his mother’s recipe for borscht.”

So many people had loved Ilya, had made plans with him, had pictured their futures with him in it. It was impossible not to love him when you really got to know him. His loss was a crater in the planet’s surface.

In an attempt to hide the way his hands have started to shake, Shane tightens his grip around Ilya’s fingers. He’ll spook him if he talks about getting him to meet his parents now, that can wait until the cottage this summer. The thought of having that first magical summer at the cottage again almost thrills him enough to dispel the cobwebs of grief the memories had just brought on and to stave off the anxiety of asking. He’ll try and avoid getting concussed this time around, if he can help it and it doesn’t create some kind of butterfly effect. Without the accident though, and the inhibition-dissolving effects of morphine, he’s not sure how he’ll muster up the courage to ask Ilya to come stay with him over the summer. Rubbing his thumb along Ilya’s knuckles, Shane knows he wants it badly enough that he’ll push through. It helps that he knows Ilya will say yes, and even if he says no, he’ll mean yes, and his chest fills with sunshine at the sureness of it.

Then the phone rings. Shane gets the briefest glimpse of Cyrillic characters and instantly, he’s filled with cold dread.

Ilya picks it up and Shane watches as the whole line of his body becomes taut.

“I need to get this,” he mumbles, picking up and walking around the corner before Shane can even open his mouth to say something. But what would he say? Don’t pick up? Don’t take this opportunity to talk to your dad for what you don’t know is the last year of his life? Shane can’t do that.

So he says nothing, ultimately, as Ilya hurries away. He shoves the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth, though it’s lost all flavour. On the television, they’re doing a replay of Buffalo fumbling a goal. From the other room, slowly, as Ilya’s Russian starts to get more distressed, it gets louder.

He sounds frantic. Papa, papa, he keeps saying. Shane knows, with a dawning sense of horror, from what Ilya had told him about the last few times he and his father spoke that he remembered less and less every time, until finally, he didn’t even recognize Ilya. Shane’s heart breaks as he listens to Ilya come to terms with his father’s latest bout of confusion, then he hears Ilya’s horrible brother’s name a couple of times.

All in all, Ilya had sent millions of dollars home to Alexei, on the condition that he would take care of their father. Sure he was physically there, but Shane knows that Ilya had had to constantly keep Alexei honest, that he had done the absolute bare minimum in terms of care, that his wife had really handled most of it.

It makes Shane furious. Especially because where he and Ilya are now, he knows Ilya won’t want to talk about it. He won’t let Shane hold him close and remind him what an angel he is, and how little his awful family deserve his boundless, selfless love.

When Ilya comes back, he’s shrunken and forlorn, and Shane wants to buy the next ticket to Moscow and give his shitty family a piece of their mind, most of all he wouldn’t mind socking that asshole brother of his in his genetic-lottery-losing face.

Ilya settles back down onto the couch, pressing his side into Shane’s, and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Shane instantly melts into the embrace, shifting closer and sliding his own arm around the slender curve of Ilya’s waist, the soft inner skin of his arm brushes against Ilya’s bare back, his body a perpetual furnace, as Shane knew well from all those years sleeping next to him. Shane snuggles in closer, tightening his grip and tucking his face into the crook of Ilya’s neck. He presses a kiss to the hollow of Ilya’s throat, where his pulse leaps. Shane’s own heart hammers as he desperately tries to think of the right thing to say.

He settles on “that sounded difficult,”and instantly winces. But Ilya’s chest only rises and falls with a sigh.

“That is… understatement.”

“Big word,” Shane says, with a teasing poke to the side of Ilya’s stomach. It has the effect of making Ilya huff a laugh, and Shane feels some of the tension drain from the shoulder where Shane is resting his head. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“Mm, no, coach will be mad if I tell you about offensive strategy to beat you tomorrow.”

Shane rolls his eyes, “Not about hockey, asshole, about you, your life, your family, whatever.”

“Why do you want to know?”

Because I love you, Shane wants to say, but he can’t, so he bites his lip hard enough to draw blood and after a too-long pause says, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Are we?”

“I’d like to be, if we aren’t.”

Ilya is quiet for long enough that Shane starts to legitimately worry he’s ruined everything but then, finally, Ilya’s chest heaves with a deep breath. Shane glances up at his face from where he’s still tucked into the crook of his neck, and sees the way Ilya’s jaw is set, the determination in his lapis lazuli eyes.

“I think we are maybe a little more than that,” Ilya says, finally, his voice whisper-quiet.

“We could be,” Shane says, trying to tone down the sudden burst of elation, “If you wanted.”

Ilya screws his eyes shut and leans his head back against the couch. “Wanting is not the problem.”

“I know, but can’t we just ignore that problem for now?”

Ilya’s chest shakes with laughter, “You want to ignore problem? Not your usual move.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I worry. I dwell. But maybe not this time, maybe not about this.”

“You are very strange today, Hollander.”

“I know I’m being intense… but I think that’s just how I get sometimes? About the stuff I care about? It’s kind of like how I am with hockey. It’s a lot, but it’s what I do when I’m planning on sticking with something for a long time so… you’re just going to have to get used to it.”

“You are threatening me with good time,” Ilya says, his voice quiet with awe.

Shane smiles and snuggles closer. They sit in silence for a minute, before another question starts to gnaw at Shane, “Have you ever been in a relationship before?”

Shane knows that he’s the first person Ilya’s ever loved, but maybe he’d had girlfriends back in Russia, maybe there were other people important to him. That was one of the biggest things he regretted not knowing, after losing Ilya. Along with never getting to know Svetlana. She’s beautiful, in Shane’s dim memory of the will reading. All he really remembers is thinking that Sveta looked strikingly familiar. It had bothered Shane, not knowing what exactly he recognized in her, because it wasn’t her face from paparazzi shots with Ilya, it was something more than that, like a feeling they’d met before. It took until her leaving with a final handshake and only the most perfunctory eye-contact that Shane realized what it was. She was just as hollowed out by grief, just as lost in the wake of his absence as Shane was. His heart had ached to reach out to her, to follow her out the door and get her number, invite her to the cottage and finally sate his insatiable need to talk about Ilya with someone who also loved him. But he’d done none of that, he’d been a coward, he’d stayed alone and let his grief rot him from the inside out.

“Mm, I had little girlfriends in school, back in Russia, yes, but nothing serious. Then there is Svetlana. She is Sergei Vetrov’s daughter, he was goalie for Boston and Soviet Olympic team. We are… family friends.”

“She was your girlfriend?”

“No, not really. I mean I think we tried once, but we’re better off how we are.”

“Right, but you guys…?”

“What?”

“Um, hooked up?”

Ilya sighs, “Sometimes yes, but it was just for fun, not romantic for either of us. I have known Sveta my whole life. We love each other but just as friends.”

“Do you still get to see her much?”

“Sometimes. She travels for work, but she has an apartment here in Boston. She knows everything about hockey. You would like her, she thinks you are best player in the league.”

The compliment barely registers when Shane is confronted with his next thought: She sounds perfect for you. The jealous goblin of Shane’s heart had said that when Ilya first told him about Svetlana, but now, Shane reminds himself that all these years that he’s failed to show up for Ilya are due to his own obtrusive denial of his love. It’s a good thing that he’s had Svetlana to take care of him, and he wants to make sure this time that she’s a part of any life they might build together. He feels a twinge of guilt knowing that Ilya hadn’t mentioned her at all when he’d moved to Ottawa. Had they kept in touch? Or did Ilya think he had to give up his best friend to appease Shane’s paranoia about their secret? Shane’s heart breaks in retrospect at the thought that Ilya gave up one of the precious few people in his innermost circle for Shane and he resolves not to let that happen again. Never again will he allow himself to shrink Ilya’s world.

“She sounds awesome,” Shane says, “I’m glad you have someone like her in your corner.”

“Maybe you meet her sometime,” Ilya says, it has the cadence of a joke but his expression is flat and serious, like he’s trying not to get his hopes up.

“I’d love to,” Ilya instantly relaxes, “It’s only fair, since you know my best friend already.”

“Pah,” Ilya rolls his eyes, “Do not compare my Sveta to Pike. She would be much better hockey player even if she started tomorrow.”

Shane can’t help laughing a little, even if he feels a little bad that it’s at Hayden’s expense. Ilya’s hatred for him always made him uncontrollably giggly, it was just so over the top and ridiculous. What’s worse is that Shane is pretty sure Ilya knows just how funny Shane finds it and plays it up on purpose, if only to see him laugh.

“Well it’s not like I ever hooked up with Hayden,” Shane says, then he immediately wrinkles his nose. Ilya mimes gagging.

“Do not ever put that image in my mind, Hollander,” Ilya turns his grip into a playful headlock, his other hand coming up to ruffle Shane’s hair as he halfheartedly squirms and tries to free himself. Eventually, Ilya lets up, but it’s only once he’s got Shane horizontal on the couch with all of his body weight pinning him there.

Ilya is blowing raspberries onto the tender ticklish skin of Shane’s neck and Shane is giggling and squirming and trying (albeit half-heartedly) to escape. But then Ilya turns his teasing into kissing and the weight of his body holds in every vibrating worry living beneath Shane’s skin and soothes him into bonelessness. Except for where it matters, of course.

Ilya’s erection rubs against his, just the delicate silk-cotton sweatpants between them and Shane gets hard so fast he feels dizzy. He closes his eyes to stave off the room spinning, and soon enough Ilya is kissing him, and it replaces every uncertainty with a hot jolt of pleasure. Shane chases it like his life depends on it, that steady climb into ecstasy. Ilya’s hands find their way to his pecs and squeeze, which makes Shane squirm and grind harder. Pressing his mouth to Ilya’s, Shane kisses him with dogged focus, licking into his mouth, then, after running out of breath, moving on to mauling the side of his neck.

So turned on he feels drunk, Shane loses all capacity to care about discretion. He sucks a hickey into Ilya’s neck, and he remembers the first time he let himself do this, at the cottage, after Ilya told Shane he loved him, Shane couldn’t help but stake his claim. This is a far more dangerous proposition. They have a game tomorrow after all. But Shane can’t help himself. Mine, mine, mine, the rabid animal of his heart protests, scrambling and clawing in its attempt to burrow into Ilya.

If anything, Ilya’s response enables his lunatic behaviour. The more Shane bites and gnaws the more Ilya’s moans turn high and sharp and he whispers long strings of Russian curses. Weakly, he tries to protest, manages between gasps,“Hollander—  the locker room— they will see—”

“Let them,” Shane growls into Ilya’s ear, his hips picking up speed, “You can tell them you fucked a girl, even though you know there’s no one, no girl, no guy, no one, who can please you like me.”

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya growls, but Shane can tell his cadence indicates that he’s surprised, but in a good way. Like he wasn’t expecting Shane to want to be protective over him. Shane knows Ilya’s not used to being protected. It’s why he vows he’ll never let Ilya’s heart break again, and certainly not at his own hands.

Shane cups either side of Ilya’s precious, pleasure-drawn face, his thumb brushes against the mole on his cheek. Shane fucking loves this mole, he’s missed it, thought he might never kiss it again. The thought is too heart-wrenching, so he leans close and kisses Ilya on the cheek, all around the mole then dead centre, then along his cupid’s bow, his top lip, his bottom lip, his chin, and back to his lips, only this time Shane adds tongue.

It’s not much longer after that they both come, shuddering and moaning into each other’s open mouths, right there on the couch. Shane barely holds himself back from feverishly chanting I love you, I love you, I love you. It’s too soon, but it’s agony to resist.

So Shane says the closest thing, “Ilya.”

“Shane,” he calls back, and Shane sobs into Ilya’s mouth as they both come down, catching their breath.

But Shane can’t quite catch his breath, can’t quite seem to stop sobbing. It’s relief wrapped up in sorrow wrapped up in misplaced grief. Shane’s not even good at basic feelings, this one is so complex it might as well be four-dimensional. In the face of it, all Shane can do is weep.

“Shh, shh,” Ilya rubs big circles into Shane’s back, trying to calm him. “Is okay, Shane, you are okay.”

I missed you so much, Shane thinks, clamping his mouth shut. I can’t live without you. I tried and I can’t do it. Please don’t ever make me try and live without you again. Every sentiment he can’t say, Shane tries to express with the intensity of his kisses. Ilya reacts in kind, holding him close, just tight enough in his embrace to start to feel safe that at the very least they’re together right now.

Shane can wait to miss him for a little while longer.

—

Waking up in Ilya’s arms feels like the earth finally tilting back on its axis. It’s the first morning he’s done this, in this renewed life, and he got to do it way less than he wanted to in the old one. So when he realizes that the very first thing he gets to do today is snuggle back into Ilya’s embrace, and quietly watch his giant Russian grizzly bear sleep, Shane starts to plan.

There’s no way he’s doing anything to risk slowing the progress he and Ilya have made in their relationship. He’s not expecting it to go back to where it was, after they’d dated seriously for years, overnight, but he knows that they have always been a forest fire waiting for just the tiniest spark of ammunition. All they needed was time and proximity to nurture the love between them and make it grow into something all-consuming and undeniable.

Shane starts with Ilya coming to the cottage for Christmas.

It just so happens that the Bears and the Voyageurs don't have any games scheduled for the week of Christmas to New Years, with both Shane and Ilya obligated to go to practice and then reunite once again in Florida for the All Stars game, where they'd be playing on a team for the first time. Shane has been plotting away in the background in breathless anticipation for that game. He's gotten it in his head that maybe this time around he and Ilya can be teammates. It would make their lives so much easier, they'd basically never have to be apart. After some strained conversations with his agent without his mother involved, Shane has a tentative plan for them to both play in Ottawa that he's waiting to propose to Ilya. Shane's terrified it will be too much, too soon, but he's got to be prepared to say it right. But he's not expecting Ilya to be his toughest sell. That'll be his parents, who he'll see, Ilya in tow, in just two days for actual Christmas. 

Understandably nervous for that introduction, despite knowing how well it ultimately went last time and at the very least having the power of choice to share his relationship with his parents at all, Shane had budgeted plenty of time before then to warm Ilya up to the idea. Shane starts with literally keeping Ilya warm. The first morning there is chilly and storming. So Shane elects that they not change out of their pyjamas (Ilya found his striped LL Bean ones weirdly sexy, anyway) and bundles them up under a mountain of blankets on the couch, steaming coffees in hand, the fireplace blazing. They lie there, quietly content in each other’s arms, a 24-hour marathon of old Christmas movies on low volume on the TV. They half-listen to the dialogue, to the crackle of the wood burning, the soft and distant howl of the wind tempered by the thick glass walls. It feels like living inside a snow globe, watching the wintery confetti dance and fall and collect into great big drifts. 

"You're sure you're okay with meeting my parents?" Shane asks for the millionth time, his head resting on Ilya's shoulder as his big scary Russian goes misty-eyed watching a stop motion animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. 

"Yes, Shane, I tell you this already, but I will tell you again and again until you believe. I want to meet your parents. Maybe they can tell me why you are like this." 

Shane pouts, and Ilya immediately melts, cupping Shane's jaw in his massive hand and pulling him in for a gentle kiss. 

"I like you like this, okay? I want to know secret recipe." Shane smiles, just like Ilya wanted him, Ilya brushes their lips together and purrs, "I want to see where you get your good looks from. And your boringness. I know it has to be genetic." 

Shane laughs, pushing Ilya back so he can reclaim his spot in the crook of Ilya's neck, "Watch the movie, asshole." 

Ilya smiles and does exactly that. No argument. Shane feels a prickle of worry in his chest, this time it's nothing to do with his parents. He can't help but notice that Ilya is being incredibly indulgent with him. Maybe a little too indulgent. It's been like this ever since Shane had asked him to come to the cottage for Christmas and New Years. Shane had gotten the idea right as Hayden handed him his bag with a furrowed brow and a gaze pointed at the hickey on his neck. His fear of Hayden and his teammates finding out was the root cause of all of the actions Shane regretted when the plane crashed. He couldn't bring himself to care who saw him and Ilya together when literally all they were publicly, perceivably doing was hanging out. Last time he checked, this was a free country and he should be allowed to do that. After that game, he'd skipped celebrating with the team and brazenly made his way back to Ilya's house, letting them know exactly where it was he was going. Shane had asked him to come to the cottage basically the second he'd crossed Ilya's threshold. Ilya had gone quiet and awed and accepted with a hushed tone and a fierce kiss. 

Ever since he got here, he's been all smiles and kisses and yeses. Shane even made Ilya swear again, for as long as he is at the cottage, that they'll be honest to each other about everything they’re thinking and feeling.

He shows off just how well he can listen that whole first day.

Time at the cottage passed in a blissful haze of sex, food, and cuddling under piles of blankets, watching Christmas movies with cups of hot cocoa, talking about everything and nothing under the sun.

On Christmas Eve, the snow finally calms down, and so Shane bundles Ilya up in all his warmest scarves, ruefully jamming a toque over his burnished curls, and he takes him to watch the sunset glitter over the frozen lake. Shane had mostly watched Ilya, the picture of serenity in the dusky winter light. His gaze had focused on the horizon, his eyes had gone glassy. Nature is undoubtedly beautiful at the cottage, regardless of season, but he wasn't expecting Ilya to be so moved by it. Shane’s not going to complain about kissing tears off of his boyfriend’s pretty eyelashes, it only makes his heart throb with fondness and the need to protect Ilya from any and all harm forever.

Ilya becomes a little kid in the snow, and he cannot resist the urge to pack and throw a snowball at Shane's head as they trudge back into the cottage. Even though it's dark out, the lights on Shane's back deck cast the backyard in a nostalgic golden glow. One snowball begets retaliation which devolves into a full on snowball fight. Shane tackles Ilya to the ground in the snow, but Ilya just as quickly flips him over. The cold snow is a shock to the system where he gets to his skin worming its way through the layers of winter gear. Shane squawks at the sensation as they roll around in the massive piles of powdery white winter. He relents as Ilya pins him to the ground, and stares up at him in wonder. 

His perfect Ilya. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiles. The slightly crooked bottom tooth. The unreserved and unconditional surrender with which he touches Shane. The snow collecting like sugar dust in the dells of his curls. 

He is a vision, a biblically accurate snow angel in that Shane can hardly look at him head on without bursting into flames. Nor can he look away. Helpless, Shane unleashes the wildfire in his heart:  “I love you.”

Ilya's mouth splits into a smile, and Shane can only laugh in giddy relief. These three little words have been burning a hole in his chest for so long, to say them again finally is such a relief.

"Ya tebya lyublyu, Shane, ya tebya lyublyu. I love you, I love you, I love you." Ilya kisses him between each word, barely getting them out, so consumed and lost in Shane.

Shane laughs in the brief gasps of air he can take, and manages, “Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.”

Ilya’s eyes pop open and instantly well up with tears, he falls into Shane’s arms with a dramatic huff, kissing up the column of Shane’s neck with frantic urgency until he finds Shane’s mouth and thoroughly kisses it.

When they finally break apart, Ilya’s cheeks are shining with streaks of tears, “Shane, oh, my Shane. You love me?”

“I do. I've loved you for a long time, now,” Shane confesses, “I wanted to say it so bad and now that I can, I’m going to say it a lot. I’m just warning you, prepare to get sick of it.”

“I could never. I love you too much, even when you annoy me.”

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Shane whispers against Ilya’s lips before pressing them close for a kiss, “Ya budu tebya vechno razdrazhat', yesli ty pozvolish’.” I would annoy you forever if you let me.

Ilya’s face goes unbearably soft, then flickers into seriousness. Brow set, eyes keenly watching every single one of Shane’s twitches and breaths. “Let’s go inside.”

Brokering no argument, Ilya stands up off the ground and offers a hand to help Shane up. Shane takes it, a little bewildered, but happy to comply. He tries not to giggle at Ilya’s obvious impatience as he hastily brushes all the snow off his shoulders and back and shakes the snow off his own body like a dog coming out of a bath.

The second Shane has slid the patio door closed, Ilya’s hands clamp around his hips and turn him around so his back is pressed up against the glass. Ilya is lit up golden from the lamps in the room and he looms closer and closer until he’s pressing his rock hard dick up against Shane’s crotch, lightly humping him until he’s satisfied he feels Shane stiffening up in his pants.

Shane instantly starts sweating under his parka in the heat of the cottage and he makes short order of pulling off every article of clothing he and Ilya are wearing, leaving it all in a wet pile on the floor to deal with later. He might hate himself for it a little later, but Shane has bigger priorities right now. 

As soon as they're both naked, Ilya sweeps in for a kiss. First, he takes Shane’s top lip between his teeth, pulling it taut and letting it go, kissing his bottom lip. Next, he smooths over the plush pout with his tongue. Shane is lost in the sensation, feels fire ants all down his body, he clutches on to Ilya, one hand clasped tight in his curls, the other clinging desperately to his bicep. He pushes that hand down the ridges of his back muscles, lower and lower until he lands on Ilya’s bare ass. Grabbing a greedy handful of one cheek, Shane squeezes with intent.

Telepathically understood, Ilya leads Shane to the bedroom, kissing him without interruption the whole way. After only a day at the cottage, Ilya can navigate this place like he’s lived here for years. Shane doesn’t want to think too deeply about that, though, explaining it away as part of Ilya’s ineffable compatibility with Shane. Ilya knows every inch of Shane’s body by heart, so it’s only logical that such an understanding should extend to Shane’s house.

In a haze of sweet kisses, Shane eventually finds himself staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, sinking into the plush cloud of his duvet. Ilya’s mouth moves lower, kissing a line down his chest, licking through the divot of his ab muscles. Ilya’s hands come up to squeeze Shane’s pecs, thumbing his nipples, but his mouth trails lower. Ilya grins, a ravenous glint in his eye, as Shane’s furiously erect cock twitches violently against his stomach.

“You are so beautiful, moya lyubov,” Ilya purrs, his breath hot against Shane’s sensitive, kiss-reddened skin.

Ilya curls his tongue around the head of Shane’s dick before sucking it neatly into his mouth, where he tongues at it until Shane’s eyes roll back in his head. Shane is reduced to arching his back and moaning so loud it’d wake the neighbours, if the cottage had any. As it is, any wildlife peeking in might see a fawn trapped in the jaws of a hungry wolf, only in this case the fawn is exactly where he wants to be.

Shane’s dick gradually disappears into Ilya’s mouth, his perfect pink lips stretched deliciously around its girth, inching its substantial seven inches down, down, until the tip hits the back of his throat. Through sheer force of will, Ilya doesn’t gag, and Shane watches the vein on his forehead pulse with the effort. It’s hot the same way watching Ilya lift the heaviest weights is hot, a display of pure masculine athleticism and endurance, muscles bulging and straining, face red.

“Wait, wait,” Shane says, screwing his eyes shut so as to not become totally lost in the brain-melting eroticism of the sight in between his legs, “I need you inside me.”

“Hm, how badly?”

“Fuck— don’t make me beg.”

“But I like it when you beg,” Ilya raises his eyebrows suggestively and Shane’s mind goes instantly to a memory of them in this very cottage, Shane tied to the headboard by his wrists with Shibari rope (Ilya had found some in a sex shop in Ottawa, but they were working up to actually using it for its intended purpose), and Ilya had edged Shane so many times his whole vocabulary in every language he knew became distilled down to one word: please, s’il te plait, pozhaluysta.

It wasn’t this Ilya on top of him right now, not yet. Shane blinks, trying to recalibrate, of course Ilya isn’t remembering, he’s just using the present tense instead of a hypothetical because English is his second language, they’re in the throes of passion, he can be forgiven an awkward wording or two. Shane forcibly calms himself down, focusing on Ilya’s kisses as they make their way up his body. He meets Ilya’s mouth for a quick smooch before Ilya’s angling away to root inside the bedside drawer for lube.

“No condom?” He pants, flicking the cap on the bottle of lube with his thumb.

“No condom,” Shane nods, a little frantic, he flutters his eyelashes rapidly as Ilya positions two wet fingers right against his hole, tracing around and around with the lightest of teasing touches, “I got tested before coming to the cottage, I’m good, and I’m only fucking you, Ilya.”

“I tested clear last month, and since then there has only been you.”

“Then fuck me raw, Ilya,” Shane grabs a fistful of Ilya’s curls and presses his mouth right up against his ear as he whispers his request, “Leave behind proof that you were there. You’re the only one who ever will be. It all belongs to you, every single piece of me.”

With that, Ilya’s fingers plunge inside, making quick work of finding Shane’s prostate, Ilya rubs slow circles around it. It has an electrocuting effect on Shane’s spine which arches so violently, Shane’s chest crashes into Ilya’s. Ilya presses him back down, following right along with him, totally unresisting of  Shane’s continued grip on his head. Shane uses that very grip to guide him into another kiss. Suddenly Ilya is syncing the push and pull of their lips as they make out with the steady pumping of his fingers, swallowing Shane’s gasps as he adds another digit, and then another, until he’s four fingers deep, and Shane is all but drowning.

Shane breaks away from the kiss desperately gasping, “Fuck me, please, Ilya, I’m ready, fuck, please, I need you to fuck me right now, please... Please…”

He’d keep begging if Ilya wasn’t so quick to acquiesce, but his voice is reduced to a faint squeak once the head of Ilya’s cock is notched into Shane’s hole, the muscles there attempting to greedily suck him in. It feels fever-hot everywhere their skin touches, but especially every slow centimetre of Ilya’s cock as he slides, lube-slick, pounding a lovelorn rhythm into Shane.

When he’s finally sheathed all the way, when Shane can finally feel him as deep as he can go, when he’s totally and undeniably one with Ilya, that is when Shane can exhale at last. Finally and completely at peace. The itch is already growing in his belly so soon he’ll demand Ilya fuck him in earnest, but for now, it’s bliss enough to just hold him, hot and pulsing, with no barrier between them inside.

“Feel so good,” Shane moans, “Wish I could have you like this forever.”

Ilya swivels his hips, “You will. Forever. I will not go away this time.”

This time? Shane briefly thinks before Ilya grabs the undersides of his thighs and pushes up, folding Shane in half. It changes the angle of his dick so that the swollen head of it batters directly onto Shane’s prostate, drilling and drilling until the tingling pleasure that begins in his pelvis spreads to every single part of his body and he shatters apart.

The pleasure mounts higher and higher until Shane is barely coherent of the world around him. All he can feel is the steady pump of Ilya's hips, in total surrender as he's pounded flat into his own mattress. Shane's hands find purchase against the broad muscles of Ilya's back. Shane digs in his nails and holds on for dear life as Ilya fucks complete sentences out of his brain.

"Take it," Ilya growls, "Just like that, kotik, you can take it even harder, yes?" 

Sometimes Shane worries it’s not the hockey that’ll give him brain damage but the way he totally melts and goes offline when Ilya takes a certain domineering tone with him. He’s been too scared to look it up properly, but he thinks, from a cursory Google and PornHub search, that he experiences something called “subspace.” Shane has yet to really investigate that properly, but he vows to do so now, as the time stretches ahead with the promise of the rest of the holidays spent together. Even after that, Shane has a plan to convince Ilya to come back next summer, and not just for two weeks— Shane has worked out a way that Ilya could do summer training with his private coach instead of his usual guy in Boston. After he meets his mom, she’ll inevitably want to support his career, get him endorsments, and over a series of brunches they would talk about trading to Ottawa, both of them at once. It feels like a wild pipe dream, even now, but Shane is determined to make it happen. No one makes him feel like Ilya does, no one understands him better, no one can make him dream about the future as they fuck him into it. 

Coming untouched feels like dying, a little bit. Shane had learned, on an exchange trip to Paris in grade ten, that the French sometimes called orgasms le petit mort. That little tidbit had lived dormant somewhere in the back of his mind until Ilya forced it to the surface the very first time he made Shane come.

Ilya isn't far behind from his own little death, the only kind of death Shane will tolerate from him. He moans Shane's name like it's the only word he knows and squeezes his eyes shut tight against the fast-approaching crest of ecstasy. 

Ilya's is red all the way down to his chest, his curls askew from Shane's grabbing, his eyes glazed over and unfocused. He pounds relentlessly harder, deeper, and Shane knows he's close as his accent gets thicker and thicker on English words until he finally dissolves into Russian, “So tight. So perfect for me. Ty — moya zhizn', moya dusha, na etot raz ya vso sdelayu pravil'no, ya bol'she nikogda ne prichinyu tebe takoy boli.”

Shane furrows his brow and tries to concentrate on the Russian, he hears you are my life, my soul, and he smiles, endlessly charmed by how Ilya will offset all the mushy sentiment he spews in Russian with English dirty talk. But everything after that Ilya says too fast, too slurred for him to understand.

Shane lolls his tongue out, trying to catch the droplets of sweat falling from Ilya’s hairline like raindrops. Ilya misinterprets it as a bid to take Shane’s tongue into his own mouth, and though that wasn’t Shane’s intention, he’s certainly not complaining about being devoured by a kiss. Now that he’s come, Shane can focus on the steady pounding pressure of Ilya’s hips against his ass, listen to their skin, slick with sweat, slapping and sticking together. He can calibrate his moans from instinctual to pornographic, tuning them to the specific frequency he knows drives Ilya wild, throwing in the few Russian words he can remember inside an orgasm’s haze.

It’s not long after that Shane feels Ilya shuddering, spilling warm inside him. He smiles, satisfied as Ilya doesn’t pull out right away, lingering and riding out the involuntary final thrusts of his hips, staring down at where his come is oozing down the sides. His fingers come down to trace the puffy edges of Shane’s rim, making the pins-and-needles feeling of overstimulation cascading through Shane’s body.

“You’re perfect, so, so perfect for me,” Shane says, kissing Ilya’s shoulder, fingers carding through his hair, “I love you so much.”

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya pants, kissing Shane through a whimper as he finally pulls out. Shane feels the initial gush between his thighs, the reminder of the pleasure he wrung out of his man, and shivers, uncharacteristically delighted by how dirty he feels. “Fuck, you’re incredible.”

“You’re not too bad, yourself,” Shane says, turning over and pressing a coy kiss to the top of Ilya’s shoulder, “You made a fucking mess of me, you better be able to clean it up.”

“I will clean you, kotenok, you want the rainfall shower or the clawfoot tub?”

“The rainfall— wait,” Shane freezes, “I haven’t shown you the clawfoot tub yet, it’s in the basement.” Memories of Ilya’s eerie familiarity with the cottage start to resurface in Shane’s mind. Maybe there were too many of these moments, with Ilya knowing exactly where the glasses and towels and extra sheets were stored, that Shane has thus far ignored.

Ilya doesn’t help his suspicion when he looks away, caught out. Shane vibrates with effort not to jump to any conclusions and he just waits until Ilya looks back at him and sighs. “I saw documentary about your cottage. Many times. I like to watch it when I miss you.”

Shane’s heart melts, overcome with the combination of relief and pure cuteness aggression over Ilya that he immediately forgets what he was thinking about and tackles him to the bed. Once he’s got Ilya pinned underneath him, smiling like the sun, he kisses him like he means it, pulling his hair. Ilya kisses back with just as much fervour and they get lost in each other once again.

It’s distracting enough that Shane forgets: the documentary crew never filmed the basement. It wasn’t even finished when they came.   

—

Whatever Shane doesn’t worry about right then and there will always make space in his head to worry about later. Like now, all the lights in the cottage have been turned off, the blinds are down, cocooning them in a perfect bubble of safety and warmth, this place has always been their altar, their oasis of love. Usually, Shane is the calmest he’s ever been in his life when he’s here. But tonight, he’s been lying awake while Ilya snores peacefully next to him.

There are several things Shane has observed, since getting to the cottage, that have not quite added up.

In Boston, when Shane had approached Ilya half-mad with grief and latched onto him like a lamprey, the picture of absolute desperation, he could tell Ilya was weirded out. Shane had been clingier than he'd ever allowed himself to be before, barely even able to make himself leave in the morning. In the end, Ilya had driven them both to the TD Garden for their game, and Shane had brazenly explained to anyone who asked that he and Ilya were friends. Of course, Shane has had much less patience for the farce of the rivalry this time around and for the most part Ilya’s response to this has been to quietly panic.

Shane’s not stupid. He knows the danger Russia still poses. That’s why he came out to his parents, and told them he'd be bringing Ilya to the cottage. They knew all the best immigration lawyers, they sat in book clubs among diplomats and politicians, a symptom of living in Ottawa. He also wanted to rush their reintroduction because he refused to rob his parents of any more time with Ilya, unable to forget just how broken they’d been to lose him too. So Shane fought through their initial awkwardness and confusion and now, with Christmas on the horizon, Ilya is on the steady path that will take him to a future full of cuddling up between his in-laws on the couch, a hockey game on the tv, a puzzle on the coffee table, and cookies n’ creme ice cream in Ilya’s hands.

Throughout it all, Ilya had been freaked.

He’d asked Shane a million times why he was being so intense and decisive all of a sudden, but Shane had dodged the question at every turn. I missed you. I'm tired of lying to my parents,  He knows no matter how much Ilya loves him and trusts him that to tell him he believes he’s travelled back in time would likely be beyond the pale of what Ilya could handle. So in his shitty-liar way he’s told half truths and gotten around it, his priority was to only reveal the minimum amount of information and to abort any time he sensed Ilya getting scared.

But that has all changed since they stepped foot into the cottage, and Ilya started acting like he did in that other life.

He settled into Shane’s couch and hooked up his Playstation without needing any instruction from Shane, which was weird because as high tech as his entertainment system is, it’s a confusing and idiosyncratic mess of wires and plugs that Shane had spent hours teaching Ilya how to work over one whole evening.

He knew which tap pulled the fresh drinking water from the well and which tap used the municipal water to rinse dishes.

He knew about the clawfoot bathtub.

And worst of all, Shane has been just as intense, scheduling in dinner with his parents, sending a picture of Ilya standing next to his Christmas tree to his group chat with Hayden and Jackie, taking a selfie of the two of them out on the frozen lake and posting it onto his instagram. He’d turned off his phone since but the notifications were in the quadruple digits last time he’d braved a glance. But this time, Ilya hadn’t even blinked. He asked about Shane’s dad’s famous chicken parmesan, which he’s never had before, and Shane doesn’t remember telling him about it recently. He posed for the selfie and even helped Shane pick which one to post. He asked to be added to the Pike’s group chat and started asking after Hayden's kids.

It’s like he’s the old Ilya again. The one that Shane had lost. The thought that it even could be him is overwhelming, and Shane is especially burdened by the guilt of how exactly it happened that they're here in the first place. His accident had changed everything. He'd woken up in this new world. The weight of his story has become a burden on him to keep secret. And if there's anyone in the world he can trust to believe him, wouldn't that be Ilya? 

He glances over to where Ilya is sleeping, the steady rise and fall of his chest is a perfect, unbroken pattern. Determining that he’s in deep enough slumber, Shane lets his lips loosen around a confession. It can't hurt to practice before finally telling Ilya the truth. 

“I think I had a terrible dream,” Shane whispers, and right away the pressure valve starts to ease, his words spill out in a torrent.

“You were playing for the Centaurs. I’d just finished a game with the Voyageurs, and you were on a plane to your next one. Your plane…” It’s a struggle to say it out loud, “Your plane crashed. You died. And I died with you. Not literally. Not right away. But when I lost you, my heart broke into a million pieces, but no one other than my parents and Hayden knew why. I guess it was like internal bleeding or something because on the outside I was basically functional but inside I was just… blank. And I kept getting worse. I stopped talking to people, stopped eating, stopped hockey. I was so erratic they benched me for months. I tried therapy, medication, weed, reiki, literally anything I could think of to feel better but nothing worked. Then, on the anniversary of the plane crash, I wanted you, no, I needed you to be there with me so badly I fucking lost my mind and started driving to Ottawa in a blizzard. I didn’t make it very far. I forgot to get winter tires that year. I crashed my car, maybe I died, I don’t know. All I know is that I woke up and you were alive again, everything else mattered orders of magnitude less. And whatever it was, a demon or a God or some force of the universe sent me back to a day where a choice I made could actually change the outcome. The first time that day happened, I was such an idiot, I was so scared, and I ran away. But I know now that it actually is possible for me to not lose you. All I had to do was be braver, gentler, more honest. And now we’re here, and I’m happier than I thought possible, but I’m just so scared it’s all gonna get taken away from me again and I don’t know how I’ll survive it if it does, I don’t know what I’ll do, fuck, Ilya, I can’t lose you again. It killed me last time, it’ll kill me again.”

“I will not leave you again, Shane, not if I can help it.” The whisper comes out of the dark and startles Shane so badly he nearly falls off the bed, caught at the last minute by a strong hand clamping down on the dip of his waist, pulling him closer. “I will never fly again, if I have to.”

“You’re awake?” Shane whispers, then the realization dawns on him, “You… remember?”

“I’m not sure what I remember, or maybe what I imagine. It’s just some pictures and feelings. When I arrived at the cottage, I was so sure I have been here before. I thought it was just because I saw it on TV. But then, when we watched the sunset at the lake, I think my Mama… she talked to me. Not… not out loud, but inside my head.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me I was exactly where I needed to be. That my soul had found its home. She told me it was wandering, lost, for a long time, but it made its way back to you.”

“Does that mean— are you you? From before? Do you remember everything that happened when you came to the cottage next year?”

Even in the dark, lit blue in the moonlight, Shane can make out the vague outline of Ilya scrunching his nose in contemplation, “Is Scott Hunter gay? I’m not sure if I know that for sure or if I know that because I have eyes.”

“Holy shit,” Shane tries to breathe, reaches over with a shaking hand and clicks the bedside lamp on. He climbs on top of Ilya who’s still blinking adorably, trying to get used to the sudden flood of light. “Holy shit, Ilya, you remember.”

“That dinosaur is really gay?”

“Yes, oh my god, so, it’s probably not great that we know this and hopefully it doesn’t mess up the timeline however that shit works, but yeah, the Admirals are going to win the cup this season, and Scott’s going to bring his boyfriend out onto the ice and kiss him in front of the whole world.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, “A bit dramatic, no?”

“I mean, it changed everything. It helped us kick our asses into gear,” Shane laughs, “You know I was convinced you were planning on breaking up with me before it too. I was laid up on my parents couch with a concussion and a broken collarbone thinking there’s no hockey injury I could get that would hurt more than the idea of not having you in my life anymore.”

“Hockey injury? Who did this?”

“Uh, Marleau, on the Bears. But look, it didn’t even happen in this timeline, or it hasn’t happened yet.”

“I will not let it happen at all, I will talk to Marly, he will back off.”

“Do you think that’ll mess up the timeline though?”

“Are you sure that’s how any of this works?”

“Well, no, I have no idea what this is.”

“Then I think we should use the information we have to try and minimize the hurt where we can, Hollander.”

“Wow, minimize, that’s a good word.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, “Do not patronize me, I know words. More now, I think, that I magically have memories of many more years spent speaking English.”

“Patronize? You’re going to have to start teaching me.”

“No, it will distract your focus from Russian.”

“Ya v etom uzhe ochen' khorosh.” Shane says slowly, bragging with his tongue in his cheek: I’m very good at that already. Shane carefully enunciates all the words in his beginner’s accent to make Ilya grin.

“Da, ty malen'kiy geniy, khitryy malen'kiy geniy.” Ilya muses, Yes, you’re a little genius. A tricky little genius. “Did you understand what I was saying earlier?”

“What when you called me your soul? You know you’re really fucking romantic sometimes.”

Ilya blushes, ducking his face, “The part after that?”

“It was too fast for me to catch, and um, you were kind of scrambling my brain with your dick at the time.”

Ilya doesn’t take the bate, his smile remains so sweet and sincere, “I was making promise to you. na etot raz ya vso sdelayu pravil'no. This time, I will do everything right. ya bol'she nikogda ne prichinyu tebe takoy boli. I am never going to hurt you like this again. Do you believe me?”

Shane is struck dumb, nodding frantically when he can’t find his voice to scream yes, yes, you have my whole heart, even when I believe in nothing I still believe in you. Shane kisses Ilya, overcome, tears spilling down his cheeks, turning their kisses salty.

When he finds his voice, Shane says, “You have never, since the moment we told each other how we truly felt, ever chosen to leave me. You always choose me. And if you could have chosen to, I know you would have stormed the cockpit and landed the plane your self, I know you would never have even gotten on the flight if you knew there was the slightest chance it might mean you wouldn’t come home to me.”

“You are the best thing in my life,” Ilya says, devastating Shane by repeating those fateful words, he read them over and over and over again until they were burned behind his eyelids, “I will always love you. I will always choose you.”

Shane smiles and kisses Ilya deep, trying to convey every bit of his adoration for his man through the slide of their lips, and the press of their naked bodies beneath the covers. Neither of them have the energy to really start anything up right now, but in the hazy lamplight, soft kisses and gentle caresses are the perfect speed.

Suddenly, Ilya pulls away, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“Earlier, did you say I played for the Centaurs?”