Archive of Our Own

“Ottawa is really fucking cold. So much harsher than here—the valley funnels arctic air or something.” Shane studies Ilya’s wool peacoat as he slips into it near the door of Shane’s apartment. It’s very open at the neck. “I hope you brought something warmer than that.”

Ilya makes a derisive sound while he rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. “I am from Moscow.”

“I know that—but how long has it been since you’ve been there in the winter? The body forgets,” Shane answers, choosing to ignore his attitude. He pulls a well-loved Hudson’s Bay scarf from his closet and wraps it gently around Ilya’s neck. He gets a second eye roll for his trouble. 

“Uh-huh,” Ilya mumbles. He doesn’t reject the scarf, but pushes lightly against Shane’s arm. “Are we leaving for your frozen hellscape home city, or staying here for three day fuck vacation?”

Shane can’t help the grin that breaks over his mouth. “I mean, it is frozen, but it’s nice otherwise.”

“Yes, I have been there. So nice.” Always with the sarcasm. Such a fucking asshole. 

“You’ve been to fucking Kanata—that’s not Ottawa, not properly. When I was little, the Cens played at the Ottawa Civic Centre near my house, before they built the Paladium and moved them out to the fucking suburbs. Have you ever gone into the city when you’ve been there for a game?” 

Ilya shakes his head. “Never had a reason. Team hotel is always close to the arena.”

“Well, this time you’re going to.” 

The look Ilya gives him is so soft, Shane feels his face warm under the power of it. He clears his throat and throws the strap of his duffle bag over his shoulder. 

As they make their way down to the underground parking beneath Shane’s building, his phone pings with a text from his mom.

Storm is coming through. Drive safe!

He opens his weather app. The forecast has changed since he last checked it the morning before the game against Boston. He’d usually be more diligent, but he’s been distracted. Ilya’s been in his apartment and mostly naked since then, so it’s not like anyone can blame him for not paying attention to the weather. 

“Fuck, it’s going to snow. Supposed to get like 20 centimetres.”

“Is that a problem?” 

He shakes his head, still swiping distractedly through the app information and road reports. Nothing looks bad yet. “Don’t worry, my car is good in the snow. I promise not to kill us.” 

Ilya seems a bit dubious, but he doesn’t say a word, just helps Shane pack their bags into the back of his Land Rover and watches with a small smile as Shane checks the washer fluid level and tires. 

Shane replies to his mother before snapping on his seatbelt and starting the engine, making sure the seat heat is turned on on Ilya’s side as well as his own. 

I’ll be careful. We will be later if it gets heavy. Leaving now.

Luckily, the snow doesn’t start to really come down until they’re away from Montreal and on the 417 headed for Ottawa. 

It’s awkward at first. Shane tells Ilya he can put music on if he wants, but he doesn’t take him up on the offer which he’s secretly grateful for once the snow gets heavier. It’s somehow easier to see when his other senses aren’t also being inundated with stimuli. 

They manage to make stilted conversation for the next 20 kilometres until Shane’s phone buzzes where he left it in the cup holder. He’s got the steering wheel in a tight grip and doesn’t want to look away from the road to check it. Visibility is bad enough, and he has to keep moving onto the clearest strip of asphalt on the highway.  

“Could you check that for me? Passcode’s 1917.” 

Ilya takes a second to answer. If he hadn’t just been complaining about the travel mug of coffee Shane made being too strong, Shane would think he’s fallen asleep. But then he exhales kind of shakily and Shane can see his hand reach toward the cup holder out of the corner of his eye. 

The click of Shane’s phone unlocking is loud in the cocoon of the car, the snow outside muffling all natural ambient sound. 

“It’s Pike,” Ilya says. “He sent a picture.”

“Of what?”

“His dick.”

Shane lets out a surprised laugh. “He did not. Fuck off.”

“No, is of two adorable children with cookie sprinkles all over their faces.” 

Shane smiles to himself. How he misses those little terrors. He’d never considered himself a big fan of kids until he met them and watched them grow. “That’s Hayd’s twins, Jade and Ruby.” 

There is an electronic whoosh as another message comes through. 

“A video this time,” Ilya informs him. Shane can hear tinny Christmas music playing in the background, and then a loud chorus of “Merry Christmas, Uncle Shane!” that’s got an incredibly obnoxious echo. 

He can’t stop himself from grinning. “Can you hold it up so I can record a voice note?” 

Ilya doesn’t reply, but holds the phone near Shane’s mouth. 

“Hey guys, Merry Christmas to you, too. Eat lots of sugar—it’ll help you stay awake waiting for Santa. Love you so much!” 

He nods his head to let Ilya know he’s finished and hears the whoosh as he sends the message. 

A moment later Ilya lets out a bark of a laugh. “Pike says to go fuck yourself. Should I tell him I am going to do this for you?” 

“Shut up,” Shane answers with a grin. 

“And now Pike says: Also fuck you for buying those noisy fucking microphones and letting them open them before Christmas. They won’t stop screaming into them as loud as they can. I’m going to icepick my eardrums.”

Shane cackles at that. “Those microphones are the most obnoxious thing I could find. When you speak into them it distorts your voice and there is this really awful reverb.”

“Very evil of you. He will get you back some day with loud, messy toys.” 

“I mean, I probably won’t have kids anyway, so I think I’m in the clear.”

Ilya is quiet for a moment. He places Shane’s phone back in the cup holder. “Why not?”

“It's not like I’m going to get married. I mean, not to a woman.” A memory of Ilya is his classic black tux at the MLH awards presses insistently against the backs of Shane's eyes—a different setting, a different reason for the attire filling in the space around him in his imaginings. He can’t let himself hope for things like that. God, he gets too intense too quickly and the last thing he wants to do is scare Ilya away. He begs his traitorous brain to clear the images of Ilya away like the wipers are doing to the snow relentlessly splatting against the windshield. 

Ilya is still watching him in his periphery. Shane clears his throat. “But I guess I could adopt. My parents thought about it, after… They couldn’t have any more kids after me. They had issues even having me, so… But they ultimately decided against it and just focused on me. I sometimes wonder if that’s why my mom is so intense about, well, every single thing I do.”

Shane forces an awkward laugh. God, he hates when he rambles like that. He never remembers half of what he even let past his lips once he’s done.

“And this is something that bothers you?” Ilya’s voice is quiet, as intent on the answer as his eyes are on Shane’s profile. 

Shane shrugs one shoulder and grips the steering wheel. “I mean, sometimes. It has been. The past few years mostly because she turned into my manager—a very pushy one I had a hard time telling no. Which led to, well, you know…”

“You being very sexy on many billboards and television commercials.” 

“Jesus, you saw those?”

“Oh yes. There was one in Boston of you in a very tiny bathing suit. I jerked off to it many times.” He can hear the smile in Ilya’s voice. He wishes he could see it on his face, too, but the fucking weather is making it impossible for him to look away from the road. 

“You did not,” Shane chastises around a laugh. “Oh my god, Ilya.”

“Is the truth. You were very sexy. Thank you, Manager-Mama Hollander.”

Shane groans and shakes his head, then manoeuvres the car toward the bare strip of highway as he rounds a bend. 

“Sorry,” Ilya says after a moment, “You were not finished talking about your mother and I interrupted because of how sexy you are.”

Shane huffs another short laugh. “I was just, uh, just going to say that I didn’t used to mind. Before the draft and the brands and everything, before the Montreal of it all—it was nice that I always knew she would be there. In the stands, at press, at tournaments. When I was playing away in Kingston, if I called her, she would come. No matter what. It was also a great excuse when I didn’t want to hang out with the guys on my team. There were so many fucking assholes, and I was always the youngest one there.”

“How old were you, when you played away from home?”

“Fifteen the first year.” People had always commented on how amazing he was to be given special permission, how proud he must have been to be chosen at such a young age, but he’d been a kid. Desperate to prove himself, but so, so afraid. “The others were all close to twenty. I got called a momma’s boy a lot, but they mostly left me alone.”

“Hmm… I was also called this,” Ilya says. “But by my brother.”

“And he’s an asshole, right?” Shane asks. Ilya had mentioned him before, when admitting to Shane that going back to see his family was not something he enjoyed. 

“Yes. Big, useless asshole.”

“But you have a good relationship with your mom?” If he was being called a momma’s boy, he must. 

Ilya’s voice is quieter when he replies. Shane can barely pick it up over the rumble of the tires and the wiper blades squeaking across the windshield. “I did, yes,” he says. “But she is dead. Since I was twelve.” 

Fuck. “God, Ilya, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.” 

“I know, Shane. Is okay.” 

But it isn’t. Shane can hear the raw pain in Ilya’s voice. He chances a quick peek over at him and finds him looking down at his hands, fingers tightly interlaced in his lap. 

It’s like a physical ache, not being able to comfort Ilya properly—it twists Shane’s insides, makes him choke on his words. “And I can’t even hold your hand. Fucking snow.”

“Is okay,” Ilya repeats. His own warm hand slides over onto Shane’s thigh and squeezes once, a reassurance, and then just stays like a comfortable, grounding weight. 

He is tempted to ask Ilya more questions, but he doesn’t want to make him speak about something painful when Shane can’t hold him. He can’t help but think, while he was away at hockey camps having his first panic attacks and crying to his mother on the phone in the middle of the night, Ilya was grieving his. 

He wishes he could have known him then. Wishes he could have tried to help in some small way. Wishes he could even now, when it’s obvious that Ilya is still not okay. 

He chances taking a hand off the wheel and lays it over Ilya’s on his leg, pulling it up to press his lips to the palm before setting it back down to rest against his thigh. 

“I’m here for you, if you ever need to talk about anything, okay? I want to help in any way I can.” 

Ilya’s hand tightens around his thigh muscle. “You do help,” he says, his voice quiet again. “Being with you helps.”

Shane pulls off the 417, sighing in relief at the familiar scenery marking his way home. The wind has picked up, tossing snow at them from all directions. He has to creep along once he gets to Bank Street, the packed slush making the pavement greasy beneath his tires. 

“Of all the fucking days,” he grumbles. The squeak of the right wiper blade on the wet windshield is beginning to get under his skin. Ilya hums quietly next to him. “We’re almost there,” Shane tells him, like a promise to them both.

When he finally turns onto Fifth Avenue he wants to whoop in excitement. As much as he feels secure behind the wheel, driving in bad weather has never been something he particularly enjoys. He’s so exhausted by the trip he doesn’t even bother to flip on his blinker before pulling into the driveway of his childhood home. 

Shane’s parents had purchased their three story Rideau Red brick Victorian house in the Glebe in the late 1980s before house prices in the area had skyrocketed. They’d been smart — the property was now valued at well over a million dollars. And Shane can’t imagine a time when he won’t consider it home. 

He takes a deep breath once he steps out of the car, stretching his legs and back and letting the snowflakes wet his hair and gather on his eyelashes. He’s just turned to Ilya to make a joke about not killing them after all, when the front door flings open and his mother’s voice exclaims from the covered front porch, “Thank God! I was about to send out a fucking search party!”

“Yuna.” David laughs fondly from inside. 

“What? I’m sure Ilya isn’t offended by a few f-bombs, David. He’s a hockey player, for Christ’s sake.”

Shane chuckles under his breath. He wonders what Ilya will think of his mom’s filthy mouth. The first time Hayden had spent time around his parents he’d been visibly shocked by her cursing, and even more so when he’d heard Shane curse in front of her. He’d understood the reaction when he met Hayden's very old, very conservative parents some time later. 

“It’s snowing, Mom. I told you we’d be slower.” 

She walks to the edge of the steps and smiles at Shane before her eyes shift to Ilya. Shane can see the tension practically radiate off of his wide frame as Yuna takes her measure of him. “Well, get in here!” she says. “Why are you both just standing there? Dad can get your bags.”

David is already making his way out through the side door, his big snow boots on. He waves Ilya’s protests away when he tries to beat him around to the back of the Land Rover to help. “I got it, I got it. I’ve been shovelling so I’m already wet anyway. You boys go inside and stay dry.”

Shane grabs Ilya’s hand and pulls him along, though he looks over his shoulder with one last token protest before he’s hustled up the steps and into the house. 

Yuna thankfully doesn’t begin interrogating Ilya as she leads them up the stairs to the third floor where Shane’s bedroom and bathroom take up the entire space apart from a small open area tucked against the rounded oak bannister, but Shane can tell she wants to. Why else would she walk Shane to his own room as if he doesn’t know where it is?

At the top of the stairs, she pauses, hand on the newel post. “Get freshened up, boys. Food will be ready soon and we can get to know each other.” The smile she gives Ilya is the slightest bit wary, but Shane can probably only clock it because he knows her face so well. He hopes so, anyway, because Ilya’s hand in his already feels damp with nervous sweat. 

“Dad will leave your bags here,” she says as she turns away and heads back down the stairs. A subtle way of telling them they don’t have to worry about him entering the bedroom. 

Shane studies the landing, the small loveseat in the alcove under the skylight where he used to sit and read, the stick he’d been using when he scored his first OHL goal mounted on the wall between the linen closet and the door to his bathroom. 

“Come on.” He tugs lightly on Ilya’s hand and pulls him into the bedroom. 

As much as the house is decked out in Shane’s achievements, his childhood bedroom is mostly devoid of hockey memorabilia. He wonders if Ilya is surprised by this as he watches him walk the perimeter of the room, studying photographs of Shane’s old friends still sitting on the bookshelf. He picks up a small rectangle of metal and examines it intently before holding it towards Shane with his eyebrows raised in question. 

Shane shakes his head, a quiet laugh escaping him. “That’s the number off a seat at the Ottawa Civic Centre—TD Place now. Dad stole it when we were there for a game—the last one before the Cens moved to the new arena. He says it was falling off, but he probably helped it along.” It’s one of his earliest vivid memories, that game. They’d walked over to the Civic Centre, Shane perched on his dad’s shoulders, gripping the tickets in his mittened fist like the most precious prize. 

Ilya grins and twirls the little metal number plate in his palm a few times before setting it back on the shelf where he found it. It seems like some sort of player’s intuition that he zeroed in on one of the only hockey-related things still in the room. 

Which is why Shane shouldn’t be surprised ten minutes later when Ilya pulls open the closet to hang his shirt and finds the other one. 

“Pavel Bure?” He waggles his eyebrows at the poster on the back of the closet door. “So your type has always been a sexy Russian forward, yes?”

“Oh my god, I was a child when I bought that poster,” Shane argues with a laugh. 

“And yet you kept it and hid it secretly in the closet. What is the word….” Ilya strokes his chin theatrically like he’s thinking deeply. “Ah, yes… ironic!”

“Shut up, I liked him because he topped in points for like—”

“Topped. Just like me I think, uh?” Ilya’s eyebrows complete another obnoxious manoeuvre. 

“Like 20 years older,” Shane grumbles.

“So you know his birthday, too?”

“What— Shut up!” Shane’s cheeks and ears are so flushed the skin is tingling. 

Ilya watches him like he’s a prey animal. “You do!” he crows. 

Shane heaves a sigh and throws himself backwards onto the bed, hiding his hot face in his hands. “March 31st, 1971,” he mutters under his breath. It pains him to admit that Ilya is right. 

Ilya’s resulting laughter is positively gleeful. Shane feels the mattress dip when he joins him, curling up against his body with his mouth at Shane’s warm ear. “I met him, you know,” he says. “Kind of an asshole, but pretty mouth.”

Shane means to tell him to shut up again, but it comes out as a tumble of nonsense. 

“Does it make you jealous? That I met your Russian hockey boyfriend?”

Shane rips his hands away from his face and glares up at Ilya. “You’re my Russian hockey boyfriend, asshole.”

Ilya grins widely, showing all his teeth. “Your first Russian hockey boyfriend,” he corrects. 

Shane shoves Ilya’s shoulder and rolls over onto his stomach.

“Did you open your closet and secretly jerk off at him, thinking about his stats?”

“No,” Shane grumbles into the duvet. “Fuck off.”

“Oh, Rocket Richard trophy two years in a row!” Ilya moans in an exaggeratedly high pitch. 

“See, you know that too!” Shane accuses, rolling back over to poke Ilya in the stomach with an angry finger. 

“Everyone knows that.” Ilya's eyes are narrowed and contemplating young Pavel Bure like he’s offended him somehow. Ilya loves to tease, but when he fixates on a specific source of teasing he’s usually trying to cover up something else. 

“Oh, I see,” Shane says. Ilya’s eyes snap to him. “You’re jealous. Of a poster.”

Ilya sniffs—he somehow makes it sound derisive. 

“He was very pretty,” Shane continues, voice purposely soft and dreamy. “I loved when he was interviewed after games—that sexy accent.”

Ilya’s mouth drops open in offence and he points a thumb at his own chest. “This is my accent!”

“Mmm… but he did it first.”

Ilya scoffs loudly and tackles Shane, startling a laugh out of him. “First, yes, because he is old, ugly man. And I am young and sexy and you will only jerk off to my accent, Hollander.” 

Ilya digs his long, thin fingers into Shane's sides, tickling mercilessly while Shane writhes, uninhibited laughter mixed with choked gasps streaming from his mouth. He slaps at whatever parts of Ilya he can reach. “Okay, okay!” he calls. “I will only jerk off to your accent.”

Looking smug at his triumph, Ilya ends his attack. He hovers over Shane’s heaving chest and watches him catch his breath with a little tilted smile. 

Shane blinks up at him for a moment before pulling him in for a soft kiss. He lets his lips slide from Ilya’s mouth down his chin and across his jaw, then up behind his ear. “If only you also won the Rocket Richard two years in a row,” he whispers with a sigh. “Such a shame.”

Ilya pulls back, his mouth hanging open in shock. Shane licks his lips and tilts his head to the side, readying himself for what’s shaping up to be something very fun. 

“You—” 

Ilya’s retort is interrupted by Yuna’s voice hollering up the stairs.

“Boys! Food is ready!” 

Shane groans. He closes his eyes and attempts to will his half-hard dick to be patient. He can wait until his parents leave to visit his aunt’s house in the evening. He can. 

“Later,” he tells Ilya. He scoots off the side of the bed and grabs Ilya’s hand, hefting his heavy body up off the mattress to follow him downstairs. 

Ilya pokes him in the ribs on the way down. “Later you are in so much trouble,” he whispers, making Shane laugh. “Not even your Pavlusha can save you.”

“What are you laughing about?” Yuna asks with a bright smile when they round the corner into the kitchen, the room lit with the soft glow of the newly revealed sunshine diffused by the freshly fallen snow.

“Ah, nothing— Ilya was teasing me about my old Pavel Bure poster,” Shane answers with a roll of his eyes. He motions Ilya toward the kitchen table.

His mom pauses with a plate gripped in her hands. “Ah, yes… when you latched on to the prettiest player in the league who wasn’t even on one of your favourite teams… That should have been our first clue, I suppose.”

First clue? Oh. 

“Mom!”

Ilya cackles, and then slaps a hand over his mouth as if shocked at himself. 

“Or his crush on that lifeguard at the pool,” David adds from near the stove. 

“What? I didn’t have a crush on Dylan. Oh my god.”

His dad gives him a look from over his shoulder. “Yet you knew exactly which one I was talking about,” he mumbles as if to himself.

Did he have a crush on Dylan? He remembers getting flustered whenever they spoke, but he was a shy kid… Then he remembers Dylan’s full, pink lips, and pretty blue-green eyes. Fuck. Okay, maybe that was a fair assessment of the situation. Maybe he has a thing—like a type or whatever. “He was an adult!” he argues anyway, not wanting to give in.

“Shane, he was 16 when you were 14,” Yuna says with a pointed look. 

“Dylan?” Ilya infuses the word with a million filthy things. 

“Don’t you start again.” He jabs a thumb into the middle of Ilya’s spine and points at a chair. “Sit there!”

Yuna places a plate in front of Shane as he slumps into his own seat next to Ilya. “Did I raise you to be rude to your boyfriend, Shane?” she asks. There is a teasing glint in her eye. 

Ilya cackles again and Shane kicks his foot under the table. “Yeah, you did actually,” Shane sasses. 

David’s warm chuckle announces his arrival; he sets a large tossed salad on the tabletop. “He’s got you there, hon,” he says, and drops a kiss on Yuna’s cheek. 

“Anyway,” Shane says loudly as his parents both take their seats across the table. “This is Ilya.” He motions to his left. “Officially.” 

“Hi,” Ilya says, voice timid in a way that seems to shock Shane’s parents.

“Thank you for coming, Ilya,” Yuna says. “We’re so happy you can spend the holiday with us. And I apologize for my son’s rudeness—no matter what these two say, he did not learn that from me.”

Shane and David both snort at the same time and get identical glares directed at them one after the other. 

“Thank you for inviting me,” Ilya says. He seems equal parts amused and baffled by Shane’s family’s antics. 

“Mom, one of the first things I remember you telling me was ‘you don’t have to like everyone—make them earn your good opinion’. You basically gave me a free pass to be rude to people.”

“I’d say it’s a bit of nature and a bit of nurture,” his dad adds and pours a glass of water for Ilya. 

Yuna narrows her eyes at Shane, then looks between him and Ilya before shifting in her chair to face Ilya. “Except I’m always willing to adjust my opinion,” she says. 

Ilya looks nervously at Shane before pointing at himself. “Me?”

“Yes. But you’re going to have to answer several questions first.”

“Jesus, Mom,” Shane says with a groan, and then to Ilya, “you don’t have to answer any of her questions.”

“I, uh…” Ilya’s eyes flit between Shane and his mother, and then to David whose relaxed amusement seems to calm his nerves. “I will answer.” 

Yuna hums under her breath and begins passing the dishes of food around the table. She stays quiet as plates are filled with sandwiches and salad. She watches Ilya avoid the cherry tomatoes in favour of extra slices of radish. Shane slips a hand over Ilya’s knee and gives it a squeeze when he sees his Adam’s apple bob under her assessing gaze. 

She waits until they’ve all dug in before speaking. “So, how do you like Boston, Ilya?” 

Ilya nods his head until he’s finished swallowing the food in his mouth. “Is a nice city. One of the better cities in the US with a team, I think.” 

Yuna nods. “And the team?” she asks with pursed lips. 

“They have treated me well,” Ilya says noncommittally.

Yuna hums again, like maybe this was the wrong answer. Shane rolls his eyes and meets his dad’s amused ones across the table. Ilya takes a drink of water. 

“Are you close with any of the players?” 

Ilya shrugs. “Marlow is a good friend. The others are good guys, but I am not very close friends with them. I hang out with Connors, St-Simon and Carmichael most often. They all like Shane very much.”

A smart addition. Shane sees Yuna’s stern demeanour crack just a bit. David hides a smile behind his water glass. 

“Any other close friends in the city?” 

“Yes, an old friend from Russia—Svetlana. We have known each other since we were children. She travels for her work and is often in Russia visiting her father, but it is nice to have her close some of the time.” After Yuna nods, he adds, “Her father is goalie Sergei Vetrov. He was good to me when I was learning to play.” 

Yuna raises her eyebrows and Shane can tell she is impressed that Ilya knows former hockey royalty like Vetrov. Another good answer. It’s going well. Shane allows himself to relax and abandon his deathgrip on Ilya's kneecap just as she decides to go in for the kill. 

“And the women friends you’ve been photographed with—are you close with any of them?” 

“Mom.” 

She ignores Shane and continues to watch Ilya, swirling the water in her glass like it’s wine. 

Ilya sets his fork down on his plate and takes a slow breath like he’s preparing himself. Shane wants to reassure him again with a simple touch, but his hand is shaking a little so he keeps it in his own lap. 

“I have not—” Ilya begins. He shakes his head slightly. “No, I am not close with any of those women,” he says. “I have spent much time partying, having meaningless hookups. It was a distraction—something to do to pass the time, to stop my brain from thinking.” He looks over at Shane. Shane has never heard Ilya talk about this so explicitly, but he nods anyway. Ilya looks back at Yuna. “I was alone most of the time when I was not playing. So I would go out a lot—getting drunk and going home with women. I do not do this anymore.” 

“And you were with Shane during this?” Yuna asks, her jaw clenching. 

“Mom, I told you we weren’t exclusive for a long time,” Shane says. 

“You were lonely without Shane,” David says in a quiet voice. 

Ilya’s eyes drift over to him and he nods. “Yes,” he says, equally quiet. “But I did not want this to be true. I did not want to admit it to myself then, because I thought there was no chance for more. That Shane would not want more. That we couldn’t have it even if he did.” 

“And now that you know you can…” David lets his words trail off. 

Yuna hums again. She puts down her water glass. Ilya’s vulnerability seems to have settled something for her. “We need to come up with a plan. You need a statement written at the very least—but also a plan on how to protect both of you if something leaks.” 

“This is probably a good idea,” Ilya says. “In case someone sees us.” 

“You are both very recognizable,” David agrees. 

They begin eating lunch again like what they just said isn’t utterly terrifying. But they’re right—if Shane and Ilya are spotted together being anything other than perfectly straight-passing, people online will riot. The picture or story or whatever it happens to be will be passed around, investigated, picked apart and they will be judged however hockey twitter or whoever else sees fit. 

Shane’s stomach roils at the thought—a sneaky photo or video of them kissing, or Ilya whispering something filthy in Shane’s ear picked up by a microphone. He can’t eat another bite. He pushes his plate away, his head light, his eyes trying to focus on the glass on the table in front of him. He takes a shaky breath and swallows once, and then again, trying to get some moisture back into his suddenly dry mouth. He should drink something, he thinks idly, but instead he leans forward and rests his cheek against the glossy wood of the tabletop. 

“Shane?” he hears from multiple voices. The word sounds indistinct, far away, tinny like a blown-out speaker. 

There are hands on him, heavy and warm. He breathes in and out and feels more himself. “It’s okay, I’m just freaking out a bit. I’ll be fine in a minute,” he tells the voices, the hands. Ilya, he realizes. The hands belong to Ilya. 

Ilya’s voice is clearer when he speaks next, closer. “Shane, is okay. I’m here. You are okay. Please don’t panic.”

The shake in Ilya’s voice is enough to have Shane sitting upright again, his head woozy from the quick movement. “Hey, not a panic attack, okay? Not a bad one.” 

Ilya nods, his hand clamped around Shane’s upper arm the way it had been in Vegas. His throat bobs as he swallows and his eyes have taken on a glassy sheen. God, Shane must have been a truly awful sight in that washroom to have scarred him this deeply. Ilya looks so afraid that he’s going to keel over. 

“I’m sorry I scared you. In Vegas.” He takes Ilya’s free hand and pulls it into his lap, squeezing his fingers the way Ilya is squeezing his bicep. “I really don’t have attacks like that often. Maybe once every couple of years at most. Okay?”

“You had a panic attack in Vegas?” Yuna asks. 

Shane looks up to find another set of glassy eyes. “Yeah. After we left the stage. Ilya helped me.”

“That’s why you were late coming back… I’m sorry, Shane. I was—”

“Mom, it’s fine. We’re okay now.”

She nods, but her mouth twists the way it does when she’s stopping herself from crying. 

Shane doesn't eat more of his lunch, but he does enjoy the rest of the conversation—his dad quizzing Ilya about Russian vodka, his mom joining Ilya in mocking Buffalo’s sad defence and Vegas’s everything. He’s almost sad when the meal ends. 

“I’m going to get this cleaned up so we can start on the cookies,” David says. 

Ilya immediately jumps up to help, stacking plates and glasses to bring to the kitchen. While Ilya and David fill the dishwasher and wash the pots and pans, Shane begins to gather the ingredients for the standard Christmas cookies they bake every year: shortbread, gingerbread, chocolate chip, the little cinnamon ones he can never remember the name of. 

“Shit,” Yuna mutters, rummaging through plastic containers in the baking cupboard. “I forgot to buy the damn carob chips.”

“Carob?” Shane asks. “Since when do you use carob chips?”

Yuna straightens and puts her hand on her hip with a sigh. “Since Caroline’s daughter decided to be vegan.”

“It’s not a big deal, Yuna. So we don’t bring vegan cookies,” David says with a shrug.

“Right. And if I show up without cookies for Becca, your sister will never let me hear the end of it.”

“Or we could just not go,” David offers quietly. 

“I’m not going,” Shane says. He’s honestly relieved to have Ilya’s presence as an excuse to avoid his dad’s family this year. He knows they will all gossip about him being a snob who thinks he’s too good for them now that he’s rich and famous, but he honestly couldn’t care less. Since his grandmother died he hasn’t enjoyed a minute in their company anyway. 

“I’m not giving them the satisfaction.” Yuna plops three containers of different flours onto the countertop. “If they want to talk shit about us, I’m going to at least make it a chore for them.” 

Shane can see his mom’s upset, even though she tries her best to seem like she doesn’t care. His Hollander aunts have never liked her and have always treated her like an interloper. “We can go get them,” he offers. “Herb & Spice should be open—I’ll get the stupid carob chips, okay?” 

“You don’t have to—” his dad begins.

“The snow stopped. It’s fine. It’s just down the street. Let me check if the sidewalks look cleared.” 

He steps outside to assess the snow situation. When he arrives back in the entryway, Ilya is grinning at something in his dad’s hand. 

“He is adorable. Very big cheeks.” Ilya laughs softly, a finger tracing what Shane now realizes is a photo of himself. A photo his dad has kept in his wallet for years—toddler Shane at his first Ottawa game, grinning at the camera and holding a puck that one of the players had given him. 

Yuna leans over, smiling at the picture too. “It was always a fight between us which jersey to put him in,” she tells Ilya with a laugh. “David’s team was Ottawa, and mine Montreal.” She turns to find Shane watching them. “But you’re in the right jersey now, aren’t you, honey?” 

Shane tries to smile for her, but he has a feeling it’s not very convincing. He remembers those little arguments, remembers his mother joking with his dad and removing his Cens jersey to replace it with Montreal and how he’d cried about it later, worried she’d thrown his Cens jersey away. He remembers chanting under his breath anyone but Montreal the night he awaited the results of the draft. 

They get bundled up so no one brave enough to venture outside will be able to recognize them. Yuna even goes so far as to wrap a buttery cashmere scarf around the bottom of Ilya’s face. With his toque and sunglasses, the only visible part of him is his nose. 

Shane laughs as they push their way out through the door. “You look stupid too, Hollander,” Ilya grumbles, his words muffled by the scarf. 

Shane shrugs. “But you care about that way more than I do.”

It turns out the sidewalks are not actually passable yet so they go back to get Shane’s car. Once they’re inside and inching toward Bank Street, Ilya takes Shane’s hand from where it’s resting on the gear shift. 

“You liked the Ottawa jersey better, didn’t you?”

Shane smiles a little sadly, gazing out the front window. Of course Ilya picked up on that. Sometimes he fears how easy it is for Ilya to read him. “I didn’t want her to be upset with me. Dad was always so much more relaxed about hockey so I knew he wouldn’t care.

“Mom is a first generation Canadian; her parents moved to Montreal from Japan in the sixties. Growing up, she became obsessed with hockey, with the Metros. She always says it’s what made her feel Canadian when she didn’t fit in in other ways… It was, well, it has been a lot to live up to, I guess? And then as I got older and knew I would be drafted… Montreal was doing so badly, had been for a while, and I knew I’d be drafted one of the top spots. I honestly—fuck, you can’t ever tell anyone this, okay?”

He pulls to a stop at a red light and finally looks over at Ilya, heartbeat fluttering in his throat. Guilt floods him like icy lake water in his lungs… sometimes he wonders if it’s normal to feel as he does, to hold so much guilt and fear over his own internal thoughts, wants, needs. 

“I won’t tell anyone, Shane.”

Shane’s lips stick together with how dry his mouth is; he has to swallow twice before he can form a word. “Promise?”

Ilya widens his eyes to make sure Shane knows he’s being fucking melodramatic about it. But if his mom, if the team ever knew…

“I fucking begged the universe to let me be drafted to literally any other team but the Metros. I knew she would just get more… intense about everything if I played for them. And, well, she did.” On several occasions his own mother had even stuck up for the Metros management when Shane complained about them in front of her. It made Shane feel like her second favourite child. 

Shane is pulling into a barely-cleared out parking spot when Ilya speaks again. “You still like them best?”

“Who?” Shane checks the area for people but it’s still mostly deserted. 

“Ottawa.”

“Oh.” Shane shrugs. “I know they’re terrible, but they’re my hometown team. I wish they had more talent, I guess. And better coaches.”

 “If they had you they’d be better.”

“Sure, somewhat, but I’m only one guy.” He unlatches his seatbelt and turns to face Ilya who is watching him, eyes intent. 

“Montreal was terrible before you,” he says. “You carry them on your back like a fireman.” 

Shane has a lot of residual guilt for the way he feels about his team a lot of the time. Because they do count on him too much. Some games, he’s on the ice for more shifts than is good for his body, but Theriault doesn’t care so long as Shane can wring out another win, another few points. He wishes they had a better strategy than get the puck to Hollander. “Yeah, fine. I do have to carry them quite a bit… but we also have great defencemen and we have Mitty—he’s an awesome goalie.” No team can get by without a good goalie. No matter how many first rate forwards they manage to acquire.

Ilya tilts his head as if contemplating Shane’s argument. “Yes, okay. So if Ottawa had you plus good goalie they could rebuild. They already have okay defence—they only need confidence. Probably the only reason they are not last in the division.” 

“I mean… maybe. Theoretically, I suppose. They’d still need more depth at centre. And their wingers are…well, Boodram is good. He’s wasted on that team, honestly…” Shane trails off. It’s really too bad Zane Boodram had been drafted to the Cens. He’d be one of the best players in the league by now if he hadn’t. He’s still good, but he might have been great on a better team. He shakes himself out of these thoughts—what difference does Boodram’s bad luck make to him? He’s not Shane’s teammate and he never will be. “It’s not like it’s gonna happen anyway,” he tells Ilya. 

He pushes open his car door when Ilya says, “Okay.” The Ilya okay that sounds a lot like you’re so full of shit. 

He closes the door again and turns back to look at him. “What?”

Ilya is making a face. “You said you wish you played for other team besides Montreal. It was your idea.” 

“I meant when I got drafted, not—”

“You like playing there?” 

“Sure, I mean—” Shane stops. He always chooses the easiest, least controversial answer when asked anything, like every conversation in his life is a post-game interview. With Ilya he knows he can be honest and it won’t go any further than the car. 

“Not really. I only like a few of the guys if I’m being honest. And the coaches and GM, well—”

“Assholes.” Blunt, as always. 

 Shane sighs. “Yes.” As much as it pains him to admit his team isn’t living up to his dream of playing in the MLH, it also feels a lot like relief to finally say it out loud. 

“I, uh, I’ve thought about it, you know? Blowing it all up. Not re-signing at the end of my contract and going free agent. Looking for a team that’s more… I don’t know. With fewer slurs in the dressing room, more care taken by management. Honestly, it’s ridiculous how fucking homophobic the club is seeing as it’s in Montreal. Montreal is like the gayest city in Canada. I blame Coach for letting the bad climate fester. And also our GM, Pelletier—fucking asshole.” He stops his rant, his heart racing beneath his ribs. He checks the perimeter around the car again, half expecting his mom or Theriault to pop out and tell him off for disloyalty. 

“How much longer on your contract?”

“One more year after this one,” he answers in a hush. 

 Ilya nods. “Maybe you should think about it some more.”

“You just want me to stop beating you. I see you, Rozanov,” Shane jokes. 

He expects some chirping in return, but instead he gets a warm gaze and fingertips running over the front of his hair. “I see you, too.” 

Shane swallows down the sudden lump in his throat. He’s never really felt seen by anyone. It’s equal parts amazing and terrifying. He thinks that Ilya might be the only person who wants Shane to think of Shane, instead of a million other moving pieces that could be affected by any decision he makes. 

“I’m going to. Think about it, I mean.” 

His honesty is rewarded with a kiss. 

The shortbread is in the oven and the other non-vegan cookie batter is mixed and ready to go by the time they get back from the store. 

Shane has to hide a smile when Ilya awkwardly delivers the bag of carob chips to his mother. He’d tried one in the car and announced them to be inedible. “You will not be eating these, will you, Yuna?” he asks in a warning tone. “They are not good.”

Yuna lets out a surprised laugh and shakes her head. “No, dear, don’t worry. We’ll feed them to the relatives we don’t like.” 

“David’s family?” Ilya asks in a quiet voice and she laughs again. 

“Exactly.” 

Shane begins to tidy up all of the ingredients and measuring cups that are no longer needed after his dad coaxes Ilya over to help him form the chocolate chip cookie batter into balls for their turn in the oven. He’s lucky his task is simple, because he’s so distracted watching Ilya interacting with his dad he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything more complicated. 

They’re getting along so well—his dad even manages to get Ilya to admit he has taken to doing crossword puzzles over the past few years to help expand his English vocabulary. He’s telling David how Marlow used to try to help him with them, but he’d quickly outstripped Marlow’s crossword abilities. 

Yuna calls Shane over to fetch her the vegan butter from the fridge, her quick hands whisking a small bowl of egg replacer. 

“Can you grab the maple syrup too, honey?” she asks. 

“Aren’t you making carob chip?” 

“Yes, it’s for sweetener. Apparently sugar isn’t vegan?” 

“Right,” he answers. He grabs the glass bottle of maple syrup from the door of the fridge. “White sugar. It uses bone char, and has bugs in it or something.”

“What?” The word is a chorus featuring everyone in the room. 

Shane shrugs and sets down the bottle next to his mother. “It’s kind of nonsensical—flour mostly uses bone char too, and it has way more bugs in it and it’s still considered vegan most of the time.” 

“Hollander, please stop telling us there are insects in our food. No one wants to know this.”

Shane looks up to find Ilya looking disgusted. And then he pops an entire ball of raw cookie dough into his mouth. 

“Don’t—” Shane starts. 

“Raw flour can cause E. coli poisoning,” Shane and Yuna finish scolding in unison.

“In stereo,” David whispers. Shane flushes. 

Ilya holds up his hands, placating. He looks about ready to laugh in Shane’s face. “Relax Hollanders, I will not poison myself with cookies. Is okay. I am very big. Would take a lot of flour to get me.”

Shane scowls over at Ilya only to turn and see the identical pointed look on his mother’s face.

“Wow,” Ilya says. 

“Yep,” David agrees with a chuckle. “They’re something.”

“But a very wonderful something I think.”

David chuckles again and claps him on the arm. “Smart guy.”

Ilya stuffs another glob of chocolate chip cookie dough into his mouth. When he reaches for more, Shane takes two strides forward and slaps his fingers.

“Maybe not that smart,” David mutters. Ilya laughs so hard he actually snorts, then looks embarrassed at having made the noise. 

Shane can’t keep up his annoyed act in the face of Ilya’s laughter. He pulls his sticky hands away from the cookie dough and kisses him on the cheek. 

The moment Yuna and David are out the door and on their way to Shane’s aunt’s house in Kanata, he grabs Ilya’s hand and yanks him up the stairs. 

As they round the bannister, hearts pounding in synch, Ilya smirks. “Do we have a threeway appointment with Pavel I have forgotten?” 

“Shut up,” Shane informs him, and pushes him through the doorway and onto the bed. 

The door slams behind him as he looks down at Ilya’s splayed limbs and tilted smile. His full lips part and his eyes sparkle with mischief. “Eager?” He definitely means it as a taunt, but the word comes out so breathless that it sounds like a proclamation of Ilya’s own state rather than a question for Shane. 

“Fuck yes,” Shane answers anyway. The past two hours have been torture, sitting with his parents watchng a movie, unable to run his hands and mouth over Ilya’s warm skin. 

He straddles Ilya’s body, hands caressing his sharp cheeks, his long neck, his shoulders, his arms…

“Did you lock the door?” Ilya’s eyes flit between Shane and the door behind him, his pupils tracking, nervous. 

“No lock.” Shane’s voice sounds choked, overcome. He leans down and captures Ilya’s soft mouth and finally feels like he can breathe. 

Ilya gives as good as he takes—licking, consuming, the pressure of his insistent tongue and his contented moans going straight to Shane’s cock. Shane holds his face in place with both hands, tilts his head to better accept Ilya’s tongue and grinds down against him with a swallowed groan. 

“Is okay without the lock?” Ilya gasps as Shane moves his spit-slicked lips over his throat and farther down. 

Shane nods and suckles at Ilya’s clavicle. “They’ll be gone for hours…and they wouldn’t come up here anyway."

“You’re sure?”

Shane slides his open mouth off Ilya’s throat and looks him in the eye. He seems nervous, worried that Shane’s parents will burst in on them like they’re naughty teens in a terrible movie. Hell, Shane’s parents hadn’t even burst in on him when Shane was a teen, trying his best to live up to those sorts of characters and act how everyone expected him to act. 

“If they didn’t do it when I was sixteen, they certainly aren’t going to do it now,” he says. He kisses Ilya’s swollen mouth once before wrenching his shirt up to expose a nipple. 

He stops a second later when Ilya goes still. “Whasamatter?”

“You have had others in this room?” Ilya sniffs and looks away from Shane’s eyes, trying to smirk like he’s making a joke. “Other than Pavel, of course,” he adds to complete the performance. 

“I mean, just a high school girlfriend. Nothing to be jealous about.”

Ilya’s eyes meet his, brow furrowed above them and lips pursed below. “Jealous?” He scoffs. “Of course I am not jealous.”

But he is. If Shane wasn’t blocking his access, he would definitely be crossing his arms petulantly over his chest. He sniffs again and looks toward Shane’s closet as if the Pavel Bure poster might join the conversation somehow. His face looks pinched and shuttered. 

“O-kay,” Shane replies, stretching out the word. He searches for a distraction, some levity to make Ilya laugh instead of pout. He remembers Jessica in his room, how uncomfortable he’d always felt, how inevitable it all seemed, like he was going through the motions, everything preset for him. He hadn’t even stopped to think that the way he felt wasn’t the norm for most people. They enjoyed intimacy, enjoyed the sense of discovery during their first fumbling sexual experiences. Shane had never got that until Ilya. He’d never truly been present and excited and well… horny.

“My dad came home once, while I was fooling around with Jessica,” he says, forcing a laugh. “He yelled from downstairs that he was home just as she moaned really loudly. Couldn’t meet his eyes for days.”

Ilya is watching Shane intently now, his gaze no longer focused on the closet. 

“I kinda wished he’d come up, you know? Get mad at me, send her away. So I'd have an excuse not to see her for a while.” Shane feels his smile slowly fade. He’d spent so many years forcing himself into situations he didn’t want to be in, and he’d never really allowed himself to think about how much damage he’d done to himself in the process. “That’s pretty fucked up, huh?” 

Ilya doesn’t agree or disagree. He wraps his hands around Shane’s hips and holds on tightly. “Why did you? If you didn’t want to?”

Shane shrugs. “I guess… I’ve always done a lot of things because people expect them of me. And not because I actually want to.”

Ilya hums under his breath, his eyes intent on Shane’s, his thumbs circling, soothing the skin above the waistband of Shane’s sweatpants. “And what does Shane want?” he asks gently after a moment. He tilts his head to one side, presses in more firmly with his thumbs. “For Shane,” he adds. He must see something in Shane’s face that tells him it’s a necessary addition. And it probably is. 

Shane doesn’t think anyone has ever really asked him that question before… and if they had, he’d probably given them the same answer he gives Ilya now. 

“Back then… I just wanted to play hockey.” 

Ilya hums again and runs one hand up Shane’s back and into his hair, his fingers tangling and pulling just slightly. Just enough to feel good.  “And now?” he asks in a quiet voice. “What do you want now?”

“You.” 

It’s not even a conscious thought or a conscious decision, to admit to what he’s been terrified of admitting for years now. He’s afraid he’s made a mistake for one awful second, and then Ilya’s eyes fill with moisture and he presses a kiss to Shane’s shoulder, his neck, his jaw, his eye, his forehead. 

 “I’m yours,” he says between the kisses. “I am yours, Shane. Since you shook my hand twice in two minutes, I am yours.” His voice is thick with tears, his hands following his lips with featherlight touches. He whispers a phrase in Russian as he goes, over and over until Shane captures his lips in a deep, shuddering kiss. 

The sex afterward isn’t anything like Shane was expecting when they’d rushed up the stairs, more like their first time at his apartment than any time since. Ilya kisses him deeply, breathing stuttered Russian into his mouth as he rocks gently into his body, one hand gripped around his naked thigh, pulling it up around his waist, the other holding Shane’s own hand, fingers entwined on the bedsheets. They finish together for the very first time, gasping each others’ names against open mouths and thoroughly shaking apart. 

The tenderness in Ilya’s gaze while he cleans come and lube off Shane’s skin has his stomach twisting in knots. He has to close his eyes against the onslaught of feeling. 

Christmas day comes early—the neighbour kids’ raucous backyard snowball fight waking Shane in the dim light of a crisp, clear morning. 

He can smell pancakes and maple bacon cooking downstairs, his dad already up and using the promise of delicious food to rouse everyone else. David has always had the enthusiasm of a kid when it comes to holidays. Shane rolls over to find Ilya’s eyes on him, his expression soft. 

“Good morning, moya dusha,” he says in a hush, voice still raspy with sleep. 

Shane hums back at him and wipes the back of his hand across his cloudy eyes. “Merry Christmas.” 

Ilya’s small smile grows. “What happens now?” he asks. 

Shane keeps forgetting that Ilya’s holiday celebrations have been very different from his own. He reaches out to fix the crushed curls on the side of Ilya’s head, Ilya leaning into his hand like a contented cat. 

“Breakfast,” Shane says. “And then we open presents.” 

Ilya’s smile widens further, making him look about five years old. And Shane can’t hold back another second—he presses all of his tremendous, terrifying feelings against his grinning mouth in a smacking kiss.

Yuna had left them both flannel pyjamas the day before—thankfully not matching—and they pull them on before trundling down the stairs in the direction of the wonderful food smells. 

“Boys!” David greets. “Merry Christmas!” 

They mumble greetings in return, and Shane clings to Ilya’s arm as he leads them closer to the kitchen, sniffing the air. 

“What are you cooking, David?” Ilya asks. “Smells very delicious.”

“It’s the bacon,” Shane says around a yawn. He wants to pour himself a cup of coffee, but not enough to detach from Ilya’s warm body to do so. 

“Bacon does not smell this good,” Ilya argues, sniffing again.

“S’maple,” Shane says around another yawn. He doesn’t know how Ilya is so alert. They’d gone three rounds instead of sleeping the night before. It’s not fair that only Shane is feeling the effects of that decision. 

Ilya turns his head, eyes slightly narrowed. “Why is everything maple?” 

David huffs a little laugh and offers the plate of cooked bacon. “That’s why,” he says when Ilya bites into a slice with a groan. 

“Please tell me you will eat this, Shane,” he says around the rest of the slice he’s stuffed into his mouth. “Even if it is not in your diet. Is too good to deprive yourself.” 

Shane takes that as his sign to get that cup of coffee. “Maybe if you don’t eat it all before I get the chance.” 

Ilya grabs another piece of bacon and contemplates Shane across the kitchen island. He switches the bacon from his right hand to his left, licks his now empty fingers, and lunges. 

Shane shouldn’t be surprised. He could see the wheels turning in Ilya’s head, the mischief in his eyes, but he’s too slow nonetheless. Ilya catches him easily, one strong arm around his waist, and smashes the bacon into his face. It’s a good thing he’d put down the coffee pot. 

Shane tries to keep his mouth closed—he doesn’t want to give in too easily—and ends up with grease on his cheek and lips and bacon crushed against his teeth. Just as he almost slips away and wins, he makes the mistake of laughing. Ilya whips him around at the sound, folding him backwards over the island and feeding the bacon into his laughing mouth. 

“Eat the maple piggy, Shane!”

Shane splutters, still trying to fight half-assedly while he laughs. Ilya’s dancing eyes look down at him from above. 

He raises one impish eyebrow and his attention flits to the side. “I think he needs another, don’t you agree, David?”

“No, one is enough,” Shane argues while his dad chortles near the stove, fresh bacon sizzling in the pan. 

“Not enough,” Ilya argues back. He sneaks long fingers under the edge of Shane’s top and digs them into his side, making him squirm. “You had only one cookie yesterday. One! Won’t your Santa Claus be angry with you?”

Shane grinds his teeth to keep from laughing and tries to push Ilya and his tickling fingers away with his knee. “I’m a grown man. I don’t believe in Santa Claus.”

“What? Who will bring you gifts? If you do not believe in him, he will bring you nothing, yes?” 

“Why will he bring me nothing? For not eating cookies? Or not believing in him? Make up your mind.” 

Ilya tsks. “If you anger Ded Moroz he will do much worse than not bring gifts.” 

“Ded Moroz?”

Ilya waves his hand in the air as if to wave away Shane’s question. “Is like Santa Claus, but Slavic. So… sexy.”

Shane uses Ilya’s distraction to put the kitchen island between them again. “And what does sexy, Slavic not-Santa do if you piss him off?”

“He will leave a stick for someone to beat you with.” Ilya shrugs like this should be obvious. “Or freeze you to death.”

“Is that true?” Shane studies Ilya’s face, his mischievous smile, his twinkling eyes. “You’re full of it.”

Ilya laughs. “Okay, okay… he just leaves stick as a warning: if you are not better next year you will get beaten with this stick.” 

Shane lets out an amused scoff. Of course he didn’t bother to deny the more dire of the two options. 

“Also he makes his granddaughter Snegurochka carry all the packages. He cannot risk getting messy—he is too sexy for this.”

And Shane loses it at that, fully laughing. Which is when Ilya goes in for the kill. He’s so fast and snakelike Shane doesn’t realize anything is happening until he has a mouth full of crispy maple pork and a smug boyfriend licking the leftover grease from his fingers.

“Ilya, are you feeding bacon to my macrobiotic son?” Yuna’s voice sounds amused as she enters the kitchen.

“You are macrobiotic, Shane? So this means you can eat yourself?” 

 Ilya screws up his face. “Sorry,” he says quietly in Shane’s ear. “That sounds too perverted for in front of parents.”

Shane bursts into a fit of giggles, face warm, and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone for the entirety of breakfast. 

Ilya is adorable sitting next to Shane by the Christmas tree, shyly handing gifts to his parents and receiving his own more shyly still. Even with the crazy short notice, he’s managed to get both Yuna and David perfect things based on offhand remarks he’s heard Shane make over the years. Shane hadn’t even realized he’d been paying attention. 

Besides the very nice bottle of premium Russian vodka he’d brought for David, which had been a total fluke. 

He shrugs when questioned how he knew David liked vodka. “Everyone who is not Shane appreciates good vodka.”

Shane shoves him until his big shoulder knocks a low-hanging ball off the tree, and gets scolded by his mother. 

Ilya quietly mocks him and Shane flips him off when Yuna is distracted by a new necklace from David. 

Ilya picks up David’s hockey stick shaped back scratcher. “Ded Moroz left this for you because you are a bad boy,” he whispers to Shane. “I will spank you with it later.” 

“Fuck off, that’s my dad’s.” Shane takes the stick and tosses it back towards the pile of opened gifts. 

Ilya grins toothily until Shane grabs a large wrapped box and shoves it at him. “This is for you, you dick.” 

“From you?” Ilya asks. He picks up the gift and shakes it next to his ear. 

Shane rolls his eyes. “Just open it.” 

Ilya peels back the paper slowly and pops the tape on the box. “You bought me a big coat.” His voice sounds confused as he pulls the black down parka out of the tissue paper.

“We’re going skating later. You’ll be cold.”

 “I am Russian.” 

 “Shut up and get warm, asshole.”  

Ilya laughs and undoes the zipper, then slides his arms through the sleeves. 

Yuna watches Ilya pull the hood up and tighten the drawstring under his chin. “Oh, Canada Goose. Those are really nice.” She’s scarily quiet for a moment, and then, “You know, that would be a great brand for you, Shane.”

“Mom.”

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just hard to turn off sometimes.” Shane thinks he’s in the clear, until her face brightens like a cartoon lightbulb just illuminated above her head. “Oh, it would be a great campaign for the two of you together!”

“Mom.” Shane’s protest sounds weak this time. An ad campaign with Ilya would be so much more enjoyable than one by himself. And since they’re publicly friends now it wouldn’t seem so weird. “Okay, maybe that one. If Ilya wants to.”

He and Yuna both look toward Ilya and he stares back, blank-faced.

“You’re in it now, kid,” David whispers under his breath. 

“I, uh… what is happening?” Ilya asks. He looks so small, so young sitting on the area rug, swallowed by the enormous parka, hood up so only the centre of his face is poking out. He has the zipper in his hand and he pulls it up and down with the quiet zip zip zip as if testing its smoothness. 

“Would you want to do a brand campaign for Canada Goose together?” Shane asks. 

Ilya pauses his zipping. “You have spoken to them?”

“No, not yet. But I will if you’re both interested. They’ll agree.” Yuna looks at the logo on Ilya’s coat like she’s making a plan to attack it. 

“They’d be terrified not to,” David says out of the corner of his mouth and Ilya grins at him. Warmth spreads throughout Shane’s chest seeing how much Ilya and his dad already enjoy each others’ company 

“I, uh… yes. We did the CCM commercial together and that was good,” Ilya says.

“Right,” Yuna agrees. “That was a very successful campaign.”

Shane rolls his eyes and slumps against Ilya, his weight pushing him down onto the rug next to the Christmas tree. 

Ilya tenses up under him until he hears David and Yuna laugh, then his body loosens and he wraps his down-filled arms around Shane’s back. 

“I’ll contact them after the holidays.” Yuna’s voice trails off as she heads into the kitchen with the empty coffee mugs. 

The rest of the day passes far too quickly, and they spend Boxing Day morning sleeping late before packing in a rush. 

Ilya helps David with breakfast while Shane triple checks the house for anything they may be forgetting. Ilya’s flight back to Boston leaves early in the afternoon, and they’d decided that flying out from Montreal was less conspicuous than Ottawa, so they have a bit of a drive to get him there on time. 

David packs their bags into the back of Shane’s car, Ilya chasing after him to help. Shane has just joined them outside when his mother accosts him on the front porch. 

“Can we talk before you go?” she asks. 

Ilya meets his eye and quickly looks away. Shane can tell from the way his jaw clenches that he assumes he will be the topic of conversation and that whatever is coming must be negative. Shane’s first instinct is to go to him, to reassure him everything is all right, but instead of listening to it he allows himself to be tugged along toward the snow-covered garden next to the garage. 

Yuna doesn’t waste any time once she gets him alone. “So—you’re going to marry that boy. What's the first step in the plan? I can help.”

The first part of Shane’s current plan is to make sure Ilya stays with his dad near the car and doesn’t hear a word his mom is saying. Once he spots them chatting while David checks the washer fluid he breathes out through his nose and turns back to face Yuna. “Mom, that’s a little early to—”

She shakes her head while he’s speaking, then flat out interrupts. “No, you’re going to.”

Shane wants to laugh. “It’s been decreed?”

“Oh yes.” 

He really does laugh this time, a little hysterically. At least she likes Ilya. 

“Look, I can tell you love him, Shane. And you may not like it, but you are just like me.”

“When have I ever said I don’t like it, Mom?” It makes him sad suddenly, that she thinks he doesn’t appreciate most of the ways they are similar. She’s made him focused, smart, resilient, and okay, also a bit overbearing and prone to catastrophizing, but no one’s perfect. 

She waves his words away, though she does look touched for a split second first. “When I met your father I said to myself: handsome, plays hockey, smart and kind, and also respectful to women? Wrap that one up, I’m taking him home. And I can imagine you’re thinking is along those same lines. Sometimes it just happens that way—you meet someone and automatically know: this one belongs to me.”

“Oh my god, Mom.” Shane drops his face into his hands. “You can’t just decide someone belongs to you. Don’t they get a say?” 

She gives him a pointed look before continuing as if he hadn’t spoken. “And it’s not like you to not have a plan. So what’s holding you back?”

Shane closes his eyes with a deep sigh. She’s right, of course—it isn’t like him not to have a plan. And a backup plan just in case the first plan goes sideways. But with Ilya, he’s never had a plan. He’s always walked in and through just hoping to hold on, hoping to keep it together, to not to screw it all up and lose him, while also being overly careful as to not be exposed. It’s been a fucking nightmare for his nerves. “I just—I don’t want to get too intense and scare him off. He’s not like us… I mean, in the way you mentioned.”

She narrows her eyes. “You mean because he was a manwhore?” 

“Mom!” He at least appreciates her use of the past tense. 

 “Look, I don’t think he’s missing his rakish ways now, honey. The way he looks at you… that boy is in love with you. Maybe he hasn’t said it, but his face sure has.”

Shane has to pause and swallow down the emotions the words have rising to the surface. 

“I know your instinct will be to have an intimate ceremony at the cottage, but that would send the message that it’s something shameful you’re trying to hide. We should definitely go big. Invite some really important people too. Show you have power behind you.” 

It takes all Shane has not to start hashing out options and scenarios with her. “Mom, too soon.” 

She holds up her hands. “Plans are important.”

“Jesus, I know. Just… give me at least until the end of the season to make sure we’re on the same page before you start looking for a florist and gathering pamphlets about adoption in Ontario.”

“Fair enough. But this summer is fair game.” It sounds like a warning. 

What the fuck has he done, giving her a timeline? She kisses his cheek with a smile before sending him on his way to the car. When he turns back to give her a final wave goodbye, she points at Ilya and mouths, look at his face. 

Ilya is watching him with a warm look—his eyes soft and his lips turned up in the smallest smile. Shane finds himself blushing in the light of it. He doesn’t look back at his mother to confirm her suspicions. She’s already smug enough. 

“Did you have a good talk with your mother?” Ilya asks once they get on the road. His fingers drum against his thigh. 

“Yeah…” Shane swallows, suddenly paranoid Ilya had been close enough to overhear the conversation after all. “She really likes you, by the way,” he says as a cover for his nervousness, “just like I said she would.” 

“She asked for my number.” Ilya rubs his hair, looking bashful, “and gave me hers.”

“Oh shit…” Shane doesn’t even want to imagine what her motivations are. Taking over Ilya’s brand deals? Starting a Russian literature book club? Asking for his ring size? “If she, like, starts sending you sponsorship stuff and whatever, you can tell her to stop. She can get really pushy about… well, most things. That’s just how she shows love. I mean—”

Ilya gives him an out. “Yes, she has already sent many links about how to quit smoking.”

“Ah, well…” Shane clears his throat. That’s not so bad.

“You would like me to use them, I think,” Ilya says with a knowing chuckle. 

Shane shrugs. He’s not going to say no to that, but he also doesn’t want to seem like a controlling freak. 

His phone buzzes with a message.

“Want me to?” Ilya’s hand hovers over Shane’s phone. 

“Yeah, please.” 

“It’s Yuna. She says: "What about Le Belvédère in Wakefield?” 

It takes Shane half a second to decrypt the French name from Ilya’s pronunciation and then to remember what Le Belvédère in Wakefield even is. His parents had shown him photos they’d taken there at the wedding of his father’s work colleague… “Oh my God!” he yells when he realizes. He flaps his hand at Ilya. “Voice note!” 

Luckily Ilya understands him and only looks a bit like he thinks Shane is a maniac. He holds Shane’s phone near his mouth to record. 

“Mom, STOP. Too soon. We can talk about that later. Holy shit, Mom. Jumping the gun a little! Stop!” Shane knows he sounded unhinged, but tells Ilya to send it anyway. She should know exactly how badly she’s stressing him out.  

“What the fuck is jumping the gun?” 

“Just, like, doing things before it’s time… I guess a better expression would have been ‘don't put the horse before the cart.’”

Ilya’s brow furrow gets angrier for a split second and he opens his mouth, probably to complain about the English language, only for a sheepish look to take over his face. “Okay…we have this one in Russian, too,” he admits. 

“Don’t put the horse before the cart?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” 

“Poperod bát'ki v péklo ne lez' also.” 

“What does that mean?”

"Don't rush into hell ahead of your father.”

“Oh… that’s kinda, uh, dark.”

“Yes, is Russian.” 

Ilya winks at him before focusing on his own phone. He’s quiet for a moment. When Shane looks over to check on him, he finds wide eyes and a hand pressing his phone flat against his chest like he’s trying to hide something. Shane has a vivid memory of Ilya's dick popping up in a message while he was sitting across from Hayden in a hotel room. 

“Something wrong?” 

Ilya shakes his head, a nervous laugh stuttering out of his mouth. “No, no,” he says. “Nothing.” He startles when his phone vibrates under his palm and almost drops it. 

“You sure?”

Ilya’s answering smile is nervous. He looks down at the screen. “Oh, Yuna is sending me a message now.”

“Oh no,” Shane mutters under his breath. 

Apparently Ilya heard him because he responds, “Yes. About Canadian citizenship… she sent a link.” 

 Shane feels heat creep over his cheeks and down his neck. The flush feels different than embarrassment, more like fear, fear that dangles on the edge of a possible disappointment. “Oh, I—you can tell her to stop.” Please don’t want her to stop. 

Ilya shrugs. “Is fine. I would like that,” he says, “to have a Canadian passport.”

“You would?”

“Yes. I would take American if I had to, but Canadian would be better... better for bisexuals. And for Russians. Would be good to not have a Russian passport.” 

“You’d have to live here a specific number of days a year over a few years for permanent residency first—I don’t know how many offhand. Would you… would you want to do that?” Shane does his best to keep his voice level while his pulse flutters with hope. 

Ilya hums like he’s thinking it over. “Yes, with you after the season ends.” He pauses for a moment, fiddling with his phone case and looking out the side window. His voice is a bit quieter when he continues. “If I had a house here, would days travelling in Canada for games count? Plus summer months?”

“Summer for sure, but I don’t know otherwise. My dad knows a lot of people who work at Immigration and Citizenship Canada. He could ask them for advice.” 

“Yes, your mother said. And also that David’s friends could make this happen faster.” Ilya’s mouth is curved up in a fond smile. 

Shane chokes on a laugh. “Of course she did.”

“Maybe…” Ilya pauses. He rubs and pulls at his earlobe, rolling it between his fingers. “Maybe you are not the only one who thinks about free agency at the end of their contract?” He says it like a question, like he’s asking for permission, for reassurance that Shane would be okay with that choice. 

Shane's heart stutters. “Yeah?”

“Mmm. A Canadian team would be good. I have two more years in Boston, but maybe after.”

“What if—”

“What?”

Shane shakes his head. The early stages of a plan tickle at his brain, but he needs some alone time, some quiet to fully form the tickles into a whole idea. “I, uh, let me think about it for a while.”

Ilya offers no protest. Just strokes Shane’s thigh and turns on some mellow music. 

It feels like a particularly twisted sort of torture, not being able to hold Ilya, to kiss him goodbye when they arrive at the airport. They stare into each other’s eyes for a long while as the clock ticks down, their precious time together coming to an end.

Ilya breaks away first. “I will see you in five days,” he says to the hands clutched in his lap, then slips into his new Canada Goose parka and slides his sunglasses on to hide his face. 

They’re on the tip of Shane’s tongue again, the words. But something stops him. He licks his bottom lip. “See you soon.” It sounds flat, graceless, not like it means what he wants it to: I love you or you are everything to me. 

He grabs Ilya’s hand and squeezes it once, twice, then lets him go. 

❄️❄️❄️

Shane has spent his every free moment in the past few days making sure everything is perfect. When Ilya texts him from the airport that he’s on his way, Shane wipes his clammy hands on his jeans and gets to work. He reheats and organizes the dishes just as he’d been taught by Vera, the head chef at the highest rated Russian restaurant in the city. How he’d managed to talk her into catering for him on the morning of December 31st he’ll never know. 

He’d gone for all the traditional dishes she’d suggested—roast duck with apples, Olivier salad, caviar and fresh bread, jellied meat, and some layered salad cut into circles with fish at the bottom that Shane is really not sure about. She’d told him what kind of sparkling wine to get, and that he should buy tangerines, which he’s placed on the table in a bowl but doesn’t know if they will actually eat. It’s too much food, way too much. He looks at the spread and begins to second guess himself… has he gone too far? What if Ilya hates it? What if he thinks Shane is overstepping? He doesn’t like to talk about Russia, about his family or their traditions. Maybe he will hate the reminder of home. Maybe all he wants is to tumble into bed and take Shane apart like he’s been promising in his messages over the past five days.

Shane has the bowl of tangerines in his hands and is about to stow it away when he hears the beeping of Ilya inputting the door code. He looks toward the entrance, then at the tangerines, then back as the lock clicks and the door slides open. He whispers a curse and sets the bowl back on the table. If it’s too much he’ll just have to apologize for overstepping, say he’d been so excited about spending another important day together that he hadn’t been thinking clearly. 

Ilya walks into the dining area with wide eyes. “Do I smell herring?” 

“Oh—I, um…” Shane points lamely at the table full of much too much food. So much fucking food for two people. What was he thinking? Vera must have thought he was feeding an entire family. “Happy, uh, Happy New Year.” 

Ilya studies Shane for half a second, then drops his bag on the floor and takes two long strides to him and grasps his face in his large hands. His whispered Russian words are cut off when he presses in for a deep kiss. He tastes like coffee and mints and smells fresh like cold Montreal winter air. Shane sighs into the kiss and lets the tension melt from his body, then slips his hands up under Ilya’s cable-knit sweater to rest against the warm skin of his lower back. 

Shane sighs happily again. Ilya’s lips have migrated to his jaw and on to his neck, where he suckles at the sensitive spot just below Shane’s ear, making him gasp. He lets his hands slip over the jut of Ilya’s hipbones and around and down to his ass. He knows he’s getting distracted away from something important, but maybe it’s not that important? Ilya’s ass feels amazing in his hands—the perfect contradiction of supple and firm. He hums in contentment and gives it a squeeze when he feels Ilya’s teeth scrape lightly against his skin. 

“You have Russian food,” Ilya whispers against Shane’s neck. 

Right. Food. Food that will spoil if it sits out unrefrigerated as they do… other things. He pulls his hands away and rests them somewhere safer. 

“I, uh… yeah. I had it catered by a Russian chef, so don’t worry that I fucked it up trying to make it myself,” Shane babbles back.

Ilya’s answering laugh sounds mixed with a sob. “You do this for me,” he says in a hush like he’s talking to himself and not to Shane at all. 

Shane pulls back a little and slips one hand around Ilya’s jaw and the other into his soft curls. He looks him in the eye—something he’s struggled with his entire life, but somehow not with Ilya. “Of course I did,” he says quietly. “You did all my family’s holiday stuff. I know I can’t recreate any of yours, not really, but I thought if I at least got some traditional dishes—” 

Ilya cuts him off with another kiss. This one is almost ferocious, teeth and tongue and half-gasped Russian words in between that Shane really wishes he could understand. He catches one that he somehow does understand—something Vera had said when she was teaching him how to cut the little round salad things into circles. Ideal'noj.  Perfect. 

Ilya pulls back from the kiss with a smile on his mouth and eyes that are the slightest bit red. “Come,” he says, “you must try salat olivye.” 

He looks so happy Shane can’t even argue about how he shouldn’t eat it because of the absolutely diabolical amount of mayonnaise it contains. Instead he allows Ilya to pull him into the chair by his side and make them a plate of everything to share. 

The watch on Shane’s wrist chimes at ten thirty. He taps Ilya’s bare ass. “Time to get up. I have a surprise.” 

Ilya looks as though he’s deciding between being intrigued and whining that he wants to stay in bed. His intrigue wins out. “A surprise? What is it?”

“It won’t be a surprise if I just tell you, will it?”

Ilya makes a grumbling sound at the back of his throat, but still pulls on items of clothing as Shane tosses them at him one by one. 

At the front door, Shane removes Ilya’s parka from its hanger in the closet before grabbing his own. He is bent over pulling on his boots when Ilya squawks, “What the fuck? We can’t wear the same coat, Hollander.”  

Shane swallows a sigh. “We aren’t. Mine’s blue. And a completely different model.” 

Ilya makes an exasperated sound and Shane rolls his eyes at him. “Sorry to be warm instead of cool. Anyway, we’re going out in public and the point is that no one sees us so what does it matter?”

“‘Rozanov and Hollander Get Caught Sucking Each Other’s Dicks’ is much better headline than ‘Rozanov and Hollander Get Caught Sucking Each Other’s Dicks In Matching Outerwear.’” 

“Okay, first of all, shut up. Second of all—this is Montreal, the headline would definitely say ‘Hollander and Rozanov’ and not the other way around. And third of all, we aren't going to be sucking each other’s anything… Outerwear?” 

Ilya’s mouth turns down at the corners. “Ever again?”

“Later. Jesus. We just fucked like an hour ago… I thought I was insatiable,” Shane adds in a grumble. He begins pulling out toques and scarves and mittens. 

“What is insatiable?” 

“Like, always wanting it… impossible to completely satisfy.” He tugs a toque down over Ilya’s head, rearranging the little curls that peek out beneath the band, fingertips lingering on Ilya’s forehead. 

“Mmm… You are insatiable.” Ilya licks his lips lewdly and waggles his eyebrows. 

Shane swats him on the chest with a pair of mittens. “Shut up and put your boots on.” 

He parks in the staff spaces where he’d been told and unhooks his seatbelt. Ilya is watching him in confusion from the passenger seat. “Trust me, okay?” 

Ilya shrugs and follows him into the cold night without question.

They go around to the side of the building where Shane inputs the code he was given next to one of the nondescript doors. 

Ilya lifts his eyebrows at Shane once he’s hustled them both quickly inside. “UHaul? Are we getting a truck to make delivery?”

“Ded Moroz rented a truck so his granddaughter could bring your naughty stick here personally—it’s a really big one,” Shane says in a deadpan. “She needs to return the truck here before she flies back to Russia, so she asked us to meet her.”

Ilya’s mouth curls happily and he gives Shane a few slow blinks, something he does when he finds Shane funny but doesn’t want to admit it by laughing outright. 

“Come on, we’re going to the roof,” Shane tells him, and leads him into the stairwell. 

On the roof, everything is just as Shane left it—the snacks and camping chair loveseat he’d bought for them to cuddle on. 

“What is this?” Ilya asks as Shane unpacks a fluffy blanket he’d brought for extra warmth.

“The fireworks are just over there,” Shane tells him, gesturing in the general vicinity of Quai Jacques Cartier. “There are always crowds on the bridge, at Clocktower Beach—the usual places. I thought this would be more private.”

Ilya only nods. Shane wishes for more light to better judge his reaction. The city’s glow is not enough to see him at his current distance. 

“Are we both supposed to sit on this?” Ilya places a hand on the back of the collapsible loveseat. “We will break it.”

Shane laughs a little, internally cringing at how nervous it comes out. “It won’t break. It holds over 600 pounds of weight. I made sure.” He bites his lip to stop from saying more. Ilya doesn’t question him further, but he’s definitely figured out that Shane bought it specifically for this night. 

They settle in, Ilya making an exaggerated face when the chair creaks under their combined weight. Shane throws a blanket at him, but Ilya just gives it a flat look and makes no move to use it to cover himself. 

“This is very good view,” Ilya says. “How are we allowed up here, only us?”

Shane sighs, unfolding the blanket and tucking it tightly around them. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m Shane Hollander.” 

“Oh, are you?” Shane can tell Ilya is biting back a grin. 

“Everybody in this city is in love with me,” he continues. 

“Well then,” Ilya says with a teasing smirk on his mouth. “Is lucky for me that you are not in love with them back.” 

“It really is,” Shane says with a little shrug. “I’d rather slum it with you than any of the thousands of people in this city who’ve offered me their hands in marriage on multiple occasions.” 

“Slum it?”

“Yeah, you are only the second best player in the league after all… but it’s not like I can date myself.” 

“Oh, I see how it is, Hollander.” Ilya’s face is all fondness and cheek. “You are being bad, chirping like this, uh?” He clenches his teeth like he wants to bite Shane and pulls him forward by his down-filled sleeves. “I must teach you to behave.” 

He goes for Shane’s neck, mouth open and ready to leave a mark, but comes up sputtering with a face full of scarf fuzz. He picks the fibres off his tongue, cussing under his breath in Russian, then pulls Shane to his side and smacks a kiss on his cold cheek. 

Ilya snuggles Shane against him, rocking him slightly, his fingers playing idly with the logo on Shane’s coat sleeve. His bright eyes watch the city for a long moment and he hums along with the music that can be heard from the party in the distance. 

His fingers pause on the Canada Goose logo. “Did you buy me this big matching coat because you planned for us to be on top of a building outside tonight?” 

“It’s not the same coat!” Shane reiterates. 

“It’s the same enough.”

“That’s not—” Shane huffs, his breath turning to mist in the cold air. “Maybe I did.” 

Ilya grins, leaning in slowly until his white teeth blur in front of Shane’s eyeballs and his cold nose pokes into his cheek. “You bought me a very expensive big matching coat for one night on top of a building.”

“How do you know it was expensive?”

“Marly. He asked if I was moving to his hometown Northfuck, Saskitoba to need such a big, warm, expensive coat.” 

“Northfu— What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“This is what Marly said.”

“Isn’t Marlow from Flin Flon?”

“What what?” Ilya scrunches up his face. “Did you change languages?”

“It’s a town in Manitoba… okay, it's also a little bit in Saskatchewan. Hence the Saskitoba, I guess.” Shane shakes his head.. “Anyway… the coat’s not that expensive. We’re fucking millionaires.” 

Ilya snorts and digs his cold nose into Shane’s cheek again. “He thinks Jane bought it for me.”

“Well, he’s not exactly wrong.”

“Sometimes Marly is not so stupid,” Ilya says. “Not too often, but sometimes.” 

“Do you think he knows? That Jane is me?”

Ilya shakes his head. “I said not so stupid. He is not smart enough to put that together. If he saw us fucking he would probably say: Oh wow, Roz, you are having so much fun with your best buddy Shane Hollander! And then he would talk about how hot you are because he is obsessed with you just like entire city of Montreal.” 

“You’re so full of shit.” 

Ilya cackles. 

Shane holds a hand up in front of Ilya’s face. “I’m giving you the finger under this mitten. Just so you know.” 

“You are flirting with me, Hollander? Under this mitten,” he grabs Shane’s hand and kisses the fuzzy wool. “Under all your clothes, I think. So, so many clothes. You are like a babushka, dressing in so many clothes on cold night.” 

“You’re such an asshole,” Shane says through a laugh.

“A very warm asshole, hmm? Whose dick must I suck in thanks for that?” He looks Shane over with exaggerated movements and faces, then shakes his head forlornly. “I can’t even get at your dick with this big coat.”

“No one is getting at dicks out here in this weather. Speaking of headlines: Hockey Superstars End Up in ER with a Case of Frostbite on their Privates. Rozanov was heard to say: 'I thought I could keep Hollander’s dick safe from the cold in my mouth’, Shane quotes in his best Ilya impression. 

Ilya cracks up laughing until he’s wiping his eyes. “I do not sound like that, Hollander. And you are not very funny.” 

“Laughed pretty hard for me not being very funny… And also, ta yeule.”

“What does that mean?”

 “Shut up. Except… worse.” 

Ilya puts on an expression of mock outrage. “You are very rude boy. People should know this—then they will not ask to marry you so much I don’t think.”

“Oh, is that your goal in making sure everyone knows?” 

Ilya sniffs and shrugs one shoulder but doesn’t answer the question. “If you would like me to shut up so badly, I have an idea how you can do this.” He makes a grab for the zipper of Shane’s coat. 

“God, Ilya, stop it!” He swats Ilya’s wandering hands away. “It’s too cold.” 

Ilya continues to pull at Shane’s clothing while Shane dodges and laughs. “Hollander, I want to suck your diiiiick,” he whines with a pout. 

“Okay, okay! It’s almost midnight. After that we can go back to my place and you can suck my dick as much as you want.” 

“I will eat you, and then rest of the olivye.” Ilya pats his stomach. 

Shane is ready to complain about the amount of mayonnaise again when the crowd begins counting down in the streets below. 

Once they get to one, cries of Bonne Année and Happy New Year reach them through the night. Ilya leans in and captures Shane’s mouth just as fireworks erupt overhead, colourful bursts illuminating behind his closed eyelids.  

The year before, the Metros had gone on a roadie directly after the holiday break. They’d been in Raleigh on New Year’s Eve and the team had convinced Shane to go out with them to ring in the new year. They’d coaxed him to find a random woman to kiss at midnight, but he’d stuck close to Hayden instead, knowing he wouldn’t cheat on Jackie with even so much as a kiss—something some other married guys on the team had no qualms about. At the stroke of twelve, he had shared a hug with Hayden and eventually J.J. when he’d peeled himself off his dance partner. It’d been nice to celebrate with his friends, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t wished he’d been right where he is now, entwined with Ilya in the winter cold, locked in the most fervent New Year’s kiss of his life. 

“S novym godom,” Ilya says. He holds Shane’s face in his hands, thumbs tracing over his cheekbones. 

“Happy New Year,” Shane answers. Vera told him that s novym godom is how you wish someone a happy new year in Russian, but he’s too self-conscious to attempt it. He’ll definitely fuck up the pronunciation. 

“Will be the best year ever, I think,” Ilya says. And when Shane leans in to kiss his forehead in agreement, he continues, “I will win back to back cups, but will still let you take me to the cottage maybe.” 

Shane pulls back and smacks him on the arm. “You won’t be winning shit, asshole.” 

Ilya barks out a laugh, then reels Shane back in, pressing soft lips to the shell of his ear. He whispers something in Russian. Shane picks out what sounds similar to the novym godom from the new year greeting at the end and the tee at the beginning that he’s almost positive means you, but has no idea about the rest of it. He wants to ask, but stops himself. If Ilya wanted him to know he would have said it in English. 

They watch the rest of the fireworks, ensconced in their loveseat and each other, their lips and hands in constant contact, a magnetic force they cannot control. 

The last burst cracks across the sky—a golden willow, light trails sizzling as they dissipate in the air, leaving a moment of silence in the aftermath. The crowd at the quai seems to hold its breath and Shane feels as though he’s doing the same. 

“I’m so glad you’re here with me tonight,” he says into the strange quiet. 

“I am too,” Ilya replies in almost a hush. His eyes flit from Shane’s face to the sky above and back again. Like he’s nervous.

“Ilya?” Shane prompts. 

He huffs a little like he's laughing at himself, then disentangles his hand from Shane’s to unzip his coat and reach inside. “In Russia, we give gifts in the new year, not in December. I, uh…”

He pulls a small box out of his inside pocket, then shrugs and looks away again. 

“You already got me a gift,” Shane argues. He feels nervous suddenly, Ilya’s behaviour making anxiety churn in his gut. 

“It’s just something—” He presses the box into Shane’s mittened palm. “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want.”

Shane fumbles with his mitten, finally pulling it off to give him enough dexterity to open the box. It isn’t wrapped, but is held closed by a neatly tied red ribbon. 

He can’t look at Ilya as he pulls the ribbon free and takes the top off the box. Inside nestled in the velvet is a gold chain carrying a circular pendant—an eight-pointed star with what appears to be the sun behind it.

“If you don’t like it—” Ilya says again when Shane has paused for a moment too long. 

Shane shakes his head, glancing Ilya’s way at long last. “No, I like it. It’s really nice.” He removes the necklace from the box and brings it closer to his eyes, straining to see the design in the increasing dark of the night. He can’t make out the details, so he grabs his phone. 

Ilya is still until he realizes what Shane is about to do. He catches his wrist in one hand. “Oh, you do not have to…” His voice trembles just slightly. “I, uh—”

The tremble of Shane’s anxious hands matches Ilya’s voice, but he’s curious now. What has Ilya decided he’d rather Shane not see? 

He hits the flashlight button on his lock screen and is immediately forced to close his eyes at the sudden brightness. He fights against the resulting tears and bouncing spots and pulls the pendant under the phone’s light. There is something small and delicate engraved on the back of the star. He leans in closer and closer still until he can make it out: the number 105. 

He stares blankly for a full minute before it clicks: 105. 24+81=105

Ilya is looking out toward the water when Shane snaps his head up. “You—” 

Ilya raises his shoulders slowly in an awkward shrug. “Me,” he replies to Shane’s aborted question. 

“Fuck.” Shane lunges. He grasps Ilya’s face, his freezing fingers clutching, the necklace pressing into the skin of his cheek. He slots their lips together in a messy kiss before settling his forehead against Ilya’s, eyes fluttering closed. “I—fuck… I fucking love you, you know?” 

He doesn’t mean to say it. The words have been sitting on the tip of his tongue for months now, teetering there, unstable. And now they have fallen off the edge in the most ungraceful possible way. 

Ilya stays silent through several heartbeats. Shane hadn’t been counting, but he starts once he realizes, and after the count of four they pick up speed. “I, uh, if that’s too much, I—”

“No.” The word sounds strange, strangled. Shane goes to sit back, but Ilya holds their foreheads together. He leans in after a second and kisses Shane’s mouth, leaving behind the taste of salt. “I fucking love you too.” Ilya’s voice wobbles. Shane sucks in a breath and drags him into his arms. He gasps a Russian curse word into the crook of Shane’s neck and Shane squeezes him tighter. 

“Let’s go home,” Shane whispers against Ilya’s hair. 

“Home?” Ilya’s voice still wobbles, but he sounds a bit more sure. He sniffles and pulls back to look Shane in the eye. 

“Yeah. You still have all that mayonnaise to eat.”

Shane’s favourite little smile of amusement turns up the corners of Ilya’s mouth. “And also you.”

“And also me.” 

They pack up the loveseat and blanket and snacks they hadn’t even touched and walk in tandem down the stairs and into the cold, dark night. People are still milling about, celebrating in the streets. And for once, Shane isn’t worried they will be spotted. He isn’t worrying about anything at all.