Archive of Our Own ^beta

Snow falls, then melts on the warmth from Ilya’s cheek. Not for the first time ever, and perhaps not the last, Ilya thinks about home.

Home. He turns it over and over in his tongue until the word tastes foreign. It is, in a way, like most words in the English language are, but there’s a more figurative sense to it, he supposes. An irony, almost. This idea of home, of Russia, becoming foreign to him. As if Ilya did not take his first cries there, a cool June morning in 1991. Like Russia is not where his mother is buried, and where his father is buried, and where Alexei, too, will be buried someday.

Irony, yes. A perfectly apt word for a perfectly ironic situation.

December is December, and the snow is the snow, but Canadian winters will always pale in comparison to Russian winters. It’s not necessarily a competition, and it’s not as if Ilya misses it—fuck, he’s had enough brutal Russian snow storms to last him three lifetimes over. Really, if Ilya was being honest with himself, it’s more that Canadian winters are nothing to him, and he never understood why the people around him made such a big deal out of it. It’s snow, he used to think. It will pass. There will be spring to look forward to.

But Russia was another life, the image of which becomes blurrier with each step that Ilya takes. He takes a turn, sees familiar signs, and makes a mental note of the bakery only being a block away now. A low, brick-front with a bell that jingles all too cheerfully when the door opens. He slows as he approaches, peering in through the glass before he even goes inside despite the knowledge that they are, in fact, open for business even on a holiday. Inside, the display case glows with soft yellow light, shining on rows of pastries: croissants, sugar-dusted danishes, glossy tarts with fruit arranged too neatly to touch.

Shane likes the croissants best, he reminds himself. Those plain, boring ones that he tears open and eats with his hands, flakes everywhere, unapologetic and filled with almost a childlike glee. And the cinnamon rolls, with the icing that gets on his fingers and then, because it’s Shane, on my fucking sleeves. Ilya catalogs these things automatically, like he always does—Shane would eat two croissants. Three if he’s in a mood. Then always a cinnamon roll after, because he likes to indulge after being boring. He imagines carrying the box from the car to the house, the smell filling the living room. How Shane would pretend not to care and then absolutely caring the minute Ilya places the treats on the counter.

The snow is coming down harder now, thick flakes drifting onto the ground like they’re heavier than they ought to be. Ilya watches them for a moment before, finally, pushing the door open. The warmth hits him all at once, right there beside the combination of sugar and yeast and coffee. Something in his chest aches just the slightest bit, sudden and sharp, and he has to pause with only one foot through the door just to let it pass.

My second Christmas in the cottage. Second, like it’s something he should be counting. Ilya’s notoriously bad at that; at just letting things happen. But Shane knew what he was getting into. 

Last year was strange, to say the least. New, if he was being kind. Unsteady if  he was feeling… particular. The first time he ever stayed somewhere long enough for the holidays, outside of Russia. This year—this second year—feels marginally quieter. It’s still the same string of lights along the eaves, the same tree in the corner that Shane knows is too big but then refuses to replace. But it all feels more settled.

Still, though, there’s something about it that makes the distance between two separate lives all the more clearer.

Ilya joins the line, shoulders hunched slightly, hands shoved into his pockets. He pulls out his phone and scrolls while he waits, more muscle memory than anything else. The League pauses the season for the holidays, and everyone is so busy with their own lives so there’s really not much to look at: messages he’s already read. News of some Thunder sitting out on future games that he didn’t particularly care about. A photo Shane sent earlier of the shed, the entrance buried in snow, captioned with a dumb joke that made Ilya smile despite himself, though he would not dignify Shane with a response because then he might go around thinking he’s funny when he’s not. Still, Ilya does not linger on anything. The screen is just something to stare at so he doesn’t have to think too much.

When it’s his turn, the cashier looks up with a practiced smile. Ilya orders the croissants, then the rolls. His voice sounds normal, even to his own ears, and that almost surprises him. And it all goes well enough until something comes to mind, and it is immediately followed by a hitch in tone that he can’t quite smooth over. Can’t quite blame entirely on his accent and his shaky command of the English language.

“Do you have,” he starts, then stops. He swallows. “Any… Russian cakes? Or pastries?”

The question feels—ridiculously enough—too big for the small space in between them, so Ilya keeps his eyes on the counter, on a chip in the wood near the register, bracing for the answer he already knew before he even asked. The cashier blinks, apologetic and bored at the same time. “No, sorry. Just what’s in the displays.”

“Okay,” Ilya says, forcing a smile that he knows does not translate well. “Thank you.”

He takes the box when it’s handed to him, nods one last time, and then leaves before the disappointment can settle in his chest too deeply. It’s stupid, really. It’s not like he really expected anything. Two Christmases and many other times that he’s been in this bakery and they have never, not once, put any Russian pastries out. There’s no reason for today to be any different. For them to have, at some point, started caring about widening their range to include shit that Ilya grew up on. 

The bell rings again as the door closes behind him, and the cold rushes back in, sharp and biting. Ilya welcomes it. Lets it sting.

Outside, he turns the corner instead of heading straight for the car. It’s quiet, as if all noise has been muted by the same snow that has reduced the world around Ilya into something much softer. He stops in the middle of the street, breath fogging in front of his face, and just stands there. The cold seeps through his coat, through his boots, into his bones. He lets it. It feels earned, somehow. 

Somehow, he thinks of his niece; of how old she must be now and how fast children grow when you’re not looking. He tries to picture what she might be doing today—bundled up in too many layers, maybe, cheeks red, hands clumsy in her mittens. He remembers being a child and making snowmen with his mother in the courtyard outside their old apartment. The one they had before they moved to the estate. How she laughed when the snowman leaned crooked, when the carrot nose kept falling off, and especially louder whenever Ilya would complain about the snow getting into the inside of his boots and wetting his socks.

He wonders if Alexei is doing the same thing with his daughter. If he’s not entirely a useless piece of shit and is actually out there in the snow with her, patient and present. It’s a big reach. A big dream. Ilya knows his brother. Knows that he’s likely busy disappearing into himself, snorting too many drugs and chasing too many ghosts to remember she exists, blaming every single fucking person in the world for his problems before even considering looking in. The idea of it makes Ilya’s blood boil. He exhales slowly, steadying himself. Some thoughts are simply too heavy to carry all at once.

Eventually, he moves again. Back to the car, careful on the slippery pavement, the pastry box tucked under his arm. He gets in, shuts the door, and sits for a moment with his hands on the steering wheel, letting the heater do its work. The snow continues to fall.

Ilya pulls into the driveway slowly, tires crunching over packed snow, the familiar curve of the path guiding him in even when he isn’t really paying too much attention. He parks in his usual spot, angled just enough to avoid the pile of snow he refuses to clear and will refuse to clear up until it becomes annoying for him and Shane both. He doesn’t turn the engine off. The car idles beneath him, humming low and steady in a way that sends vibrations through the steering wheel and into his hands.

The cottage looms ahead, all warm wood and winter light piercing through glass. He remembers the first time, over two years ago now; remembers thinking ‘this is unreal’. From his exact spot, he can see straight into the living room through the enormous windows. Shane had explained to him once that their incorporation into the design of the whole thing was purposeful. How much he loved the idea of them—the windows and the openness and how they made everything feel bigger than it was. Now, it’s their tree that fills most of his view, tall and full, all its branches heavy with ornaments. White lights twine around it in a soft glow, reflected once in the glass and then for a second time in the windshield in front of Ilya. For a moment, the lights blur together, doubling and smearing, until he blinks and they settle back into place.

It looks peaceful, really. Like something out of a photograph. A scene from one of those holiday cards that Yuna likes to send out to their relatives nearby. Ilya feels, distantly, like he is looking in on someone else’s life.

It’s not entirely unreasonable. In Russia, no one would be celebrating today.

The thought comes unbidden, as they often do. December twenty-five is just another day there, another stretch of winter, another long night after an already long, gray afternoon. Christmas comes later, on January seventh, according to a different calendar entirely. Orthodox Christmas. His Christmas. The one that smells like pine and candle wax and boiled potatoes and cabbage. The one he grew up with, and the one that he has not celebrated in years.

No, he corrects himself. One you will likely never celebrate again.

Ilya used to think it was strange, the way the dates never lined up with the rest of the world. As a kid, it felt unfair, like Moscow—like Russia was always arriving late to things that everyone else had already enjoyed. Later, he learned the mechanics of it—the Julian calendar, the Gregorian, the math of days slipping and accumulating over centuries. Time drifting, misaligned, stubbornly out of sync. He understood it intellectually, of course, Ilya was not a stupid child. Emotionally, it still felt like standing on the wrong side of something. 

Time is relative, he thinks now, still staring at their Christmas tree through the glass. He’s heard that phrase a hundred times, mostly from people who like to sound clever and impressive around the annoying little Russian boy who knew a grand total of fifty words in English. But sitting here, engine running and snow falling all around him, it feels less like a concept and more like a stubborn and insistent truth. Time bends. Splits. Overlaps. Fucking deal with it.

So, in Russia, it is not Christmas yet. It is not yet a lot of things in Russia. That’s good, Ilya thinks. Maybe there, it’s still some earlier version of him. Maybe somewhere, in some parallel alignment of days and months, he is still the captain of the Boston Raiders. Maybe he hasn’t been traded yet. Maybe he hasn’t packed up his life and moved continents and switched languages. Maybe he’s still wearing familiar colors, still answering to a city that knows his name and chants it like it's both a prayer and a promise. Ilya. Ilya. Ilya. Maybe he hasn’t become a Centaur yet. Maybe the future has not yet caught up to Ilya Rozanov there.

It’s a stupid thought. He knows that. Time doesn’t work like that, no matter how relative it’s supposed to be. And yet the idea lingers, stubborn and tempting. Ilya presses on it like he would a bruise. 

His hand drifts, without conscious instruction, up to his chest. His fingers find the chain beneath his coat, slip under the fabric, then close around the small weight of the crucifix resting against his skin. It’s warm there, warmed by his body, and the gold feels smooth and solid under his thumb. He rubs it absently, the way he always does when he’s not quite… there. When his head is trying to box him in. A grounding habit. One of his better ones.

Ilya’s been doing it for as long as he can remember. Long before he understood what doing it meant. His chain has been with him through everything—wins and losses, flights and hotels and locker rooms, then through injuries and celebrations and long, lonely nights in unfamiliar cities. His longest constant, maybe. It has survived more than most things in his life.

More importantly, perhaps, is that it was his mother’s first.

That thought reaches through his chest and crushes his heart where it sits. He presses the crucifix more firmly between his fingers, as if he can anchor himself there. He wonders, not for the first time, if she used to do the same. If, when things felt too heavy for her, when the world pressed in too close, she found comfort in doing the same small, simple motion that Ilya was doing. Thumb against gold. Fingers closing, opening. A tangible reminder of her faith and belief, one she can hold on to when everything else felt like it was slipping.

Ilya closes his eyes and tries to picture her doing it. Sitting beside their kitchen table, tea gone cold beside her, fingers worrying the chain at her throat while she stared at nothing in particular. Or maybe standing by the window, watching snow fall just like this, the streets of Moscow muffled, her reflection faint in the glass. Did she ever reach for it when she was sad? When she was tired? When she felt alone?

If she did, it didn’t save her.

The thought lands so sharply, so devoid of softness that it jolts Ilya out of his pointless imaginings. He doesn’t dwell on the details of her death anymore—he never does. He doesn’t need to, and he doesn’t want to make it a hobby. The fact of her absence is enough. It doesn’t matter what she might have done with the crucifix, because she killed herself anyway. Whatever comfort the thing might have offered her, whatever grounding it might have provided in fleeting moments, it wasn’t enough. If it helped at all, it certainly did not do a good job.

There’s no bitterness in the thought, not really. Not anymore, at least. He’s gotten over that particular emotion early on when he realized it will not bring Irina Rozanova back. Objects don’t save people. Belief doesn’t always save people. Love doesn’t always save people. Ilya knows this better than most.

He inhales slowly through his nose, the air cold and dry in his lungs, and lets it out just as slowly. The heater breathes warm air into the car’s cabin. Outside, the snow is still the snow. Here, his hand stays curled around the crucifix, knuckles faintly aching from the pressure of his grip. He tells himself to let go. He doesn’t. Not right away.

Instead, he thinks again of the tree inside, of the way Shane had insisted on getting one that was “big enough to actually feel like a tree”, whatever that meant, and ending up with one that was so big it bordered on ridiculous. He remembers the struggle of getting it through the door—the needles everywhere, the way Shane had laughed and cussed and refused to give up. He remembers standing back afterward, arms crossed, watching Shane string the lights with too much enthusiasm and not nearly enough coordination, lacking the usual finesse he displays so perfectly on the ice with thin blades beneath his feet. Then, he remembers the quiet satisfaction of seeing it finished, standing tall and bright in the corner of the living room.

This is your life now, the voice in his head reminds him. Threads the words through the crevices in his brain. This is where you are.

And it’s true. This really is his life now. It’s hockey and Shane and the cottage. The snow from the Canadian winter. The Ottawa Centaurs. The holiday season that does not line up with the one he grew up with. The tree set up and glowing through the window on December twenty-fifth instead of January seventh. It’s a life. Domestic. Quiet. None of it is wrong. None of it is bad. It’s just… different. Everything’s just different these days; in a way that sometimes feels like a loss, even when there’s nothing actively being taken from him.

Ilya presses his lips together and takes another deep breath. Pull yourself together. Then he takes another breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He counts them, the way he learned to years ago, the way he does now when his thoughts start to wind up too tightly. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. With each breath, the tension in his shoulders ease up little by little, until the pain in his chest dulls from razor sharp to something more manageable.

Eventually, he loosens his grip on the chain. The crucifix slips back against his skin, settling where it always does. His hand drops to his lap. He flexes his fingers once, twice, watching them go from pale to red as the blood and sensation returns to them. The engine is still running. Ilya glances back up at the house and refocuses his vision, one last time, as if something might change if he just blinks enough.

Nothing does, of course. No flickering lights. No fade to black. Life continues, unbothered by Ilya’s reminiscing and internal negotiations. 

He reaches out and turns the key, finally deciding that he’s had enough wallowing by cutting the engine off. The sudden quiet is almost startling, the absence of noise leaving a hollow space behind that wraps itself around Ilya. For a moment, all he can hear is the faint tick of cooling metal and the hush of snow that’s beginning to blanket the car. Ilya sits in that silence for a while. Pulls himself together. Lets it all settle over him like another layer, until he can no longer take it. Until the idea of Shane waiting for him inside becomes too loud to ignore.

“Ilya.”

The sound of his name breaks his trance softly, curling around his spine and calling his attention. Ilya’s stretched out on the couch, legs crossed at the ankle, a book open against his chest—pages thin and yellowed, soft from use. The paper definitely remembers his hands, what with how much he’s reread its words over the years. He’s been staring at the same paragraph for longer than he’d like to admit, Cyrillic dancing behind his eyelids every time he finds it in him to blink. All dense and bold and precise and packed tight with meaning that doesn’t want to be rushed. 

Or, at least, that’s what he tells himself. That he’s reading and digesting what the words are saying. He knows he isn’t. He doesn’t have to, really, he would know these paragraphs backwards and in his sleep. But sometimes it’s easier to pretend.

“Ilya,” Shane tries again, closer this time, and now there’s a hint of a question to it. 

Ilya exhales and lifts his gaze, finally. “Yeah?”

Shane is standing right there, halfway between the kitchen and the living room, close enough that Ilya can feel the quiet pull that Shane carries without trying. He’s wearing one of the sweaters that Rose gave him last year, paired with old grey sweatpants that have holes on them and definitely belonged at some point to Ilya. He blinks, hit suddenly by a fresh and raw wave of domesticity. And then something uglier.

Sometimes, when his thoughts are as loud as they are now and in a way that would make him hate himself after, Ilya hates how easily Shane looks like he belongs in this place. There’s no rhyme or reason to this feeling. Of course Shane belongs here. The cottage is his home. It was his home first, way before Ilya ever entered the picture. But this ugly part of Ilya dislikes how natural it is for Shane to occupy a space—any space, really, truthfully—that feels borrowed to him even now, even after all this time.

“What do you want for dinner?”

It’s a simple enough question. It shouldn’t do anything to him. It shouldn’t snag or twist or settle heavily in his chest the way it does. But it does, just like that. Things will happen to Ilya, whether he wants it to or not.

His first instinct is to deflect, because it’s easier. It’s the default. A coping mechanism, the psychiatrist from the Centaurs said. Coping mechanism, or the thoughts and behaviors mobilized to manage internal and external stressful situations. Too long of an explanation for Ilya. He’d rather just call it what it is: crazy. It’s fucking dinner, he thinks. What do you need deflecting for? 

Crazy. Now there’s a good word.

“I don’t know,” Ilya settles on saying, shrugging. “Whatever.”

Shane makes a face, then smooths his expression over to pretend like he didn’t make one. “That’s not an answer. Come on.”

“It is an answer. Just not a helpful one, yes?”

Likely deciding that he’s had enough of the attitude, Shane steps closer until he could sit down beside Ilya. Not on the far cushion. No. Never there. He tucks himself close instead, thigh pressed warm and solid against Ilya’s side, shoulder nudging his arm until their balance adjusts, naturally, like this is naturally how they're supposed to fit—all pressed up against each other. Ilya feels it immediately, the way his body reacts before his mind catches up. He doesn’t move away. He never does.

“You know, you always say that when you actually have an opinion,” Shane says, voice low and still so fond despite Ilya being… particularly Ilya. He reaches out and nudges the edge of the book with one finger. “Come on. Tell me. I’ll cook, whatever it is.”

Ilya stares at the page, then lets the book fall closed. “Soup. Or stew,” he replies. “If you want.”

Shane’s mouth curves into a smile, like he’s just won something small but important. “I do want.”

Of course you do, Ilya thinks. You always want the things I suggest, like it was your idea all along. Like you’re letting me lead even when you’re the one doing the work.

He doesn’t say any of it. It feels too mean.

“Good,” Shane says. “It’s snowing, and those are good suggestions for snowy day food.”

Ilya absentmindedly hums in agreement. He shifts slightly, and Shane shifts with him, instinctive and seamless. His arm comes up behind Ilya, settling along the back of the couch, fingers brushing the fabric of Ilya’s sweater before resting there. Not grabbing. Just there. 

“What are you reading?” Shane asks eventually, glancing down at the book. Ilya looks too, but like he’s just been caught doing something wrong.

“Just a book.”

“Oh, really,” Shane replies. “I wasn’t aware it was a book. I thought it was a puck or something.”

Ilya snorts despite himself. “It’s in Russian.”

“No way.”

“Shut up. You know, you are such an asshole. I wonder why your team puts up with you.”

“Okay, okay, we’re hitting low blow territory here.” Shane laughs, full and unguarded and beautiful, the sound vibrating straight through Ilya’s side. “I mean like, what kind of book?”

“I don’t know how to describe… a group of essays,” Ilya frowns, squinting his eyes to get a closer look.

“Compilation.”

“Yes, that. Compilation. Svetlana’s birthday gift from four birthdays ago. Was an insult back then. Like I was boring person who reads boring books.”

“Ah, yes, your worst fear. Being boring.”

“My worst nightmare, Hollander. Terrifies me all the time.”

“The book looks worn as fuck, Ilya, so I know you’ve read this thing a billion times.”

“You have uncovered my biggest secret, oh no. Maybe I really am just a nerd. Will you still love me if I was a nerd, Shane?”

“Of course,” Shane agrees easily, like Ilya was dumb for even asking. Then, “Can you translate some of it?”

The question catches Ilya off guard. Not necessarily because it’s invasive—it’s not, and also Shane could never. But it’s so… earnest. Honest. In ways that Shane could always only be. He asks it the way other people would ask about the time or the weather. No agenda. No trap. No making fun of the mean fucking Russian boy who couldn’t pronounce his vowels right.

“Yes,” Ilya says after a while, choosing his words carefully. “Though…”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want,” Shane shakes his head. He presses a kiss to Ilya’s shoulder, muffling his words as he says them. “Don’t force yourself for me.”

“No, I want to. Is just… It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Why not?”

Ilya taps the cover with his thumb. “Because some things don’t translate cleanly. You lose… texture. Weight. Feeling.”

“Like what?”

Ilya grapples for an explanation that doesn’t feel too much like he’s lecturing. “It’s… I mean, with language, I think, but with Russian, for me, it assumes that you know things. The character’s suffering. The irony of the story. It has its own inside jokes. Ways of telling things that don’t need explanation. They’re just… there.”

“And English makes you spell everything out?”

“Yes,” Ilya smiles blankly. “Such a polite language. I translate one thing for you, I have to explain why author chose that word. Or there is a funny joke and I have to explain why it’s funny for Russians but maybe not for you Canadians. It’s difficult. A lot of work.”

“I get it. That makes sense.” Shane replies, grinning softly.

Ilya feels himself relax, just a bit. It’s easier, then. Shane making things light without making the things you worry about feel shallow.

They sit like that for a moment, side by side and skin to skin, the fire crackling softly in the background. The longer they sit there, the more that Ilya becomes aware of small things: the weight of Shane’s arm behind him, the way Shane’s knee bumps against his every time he breathes, the faint scar on Shane’s knuckle that Ilya always kisses without thinking.

How comforting, he thinks, which is dangerous, because then he starts thinking up ways in which it will be ruined for them. See, it’s never Ilya’s sadness that makes days like this even more difficult to bear. It’s the comfort Shane gives and how it tempts him to believe that they can just stay this way forever, side by side and open, without any consequence.

“So…” Shane says after a while. “Christmas.”

Ilya stiffens before he can stop himself. Shane feels it immediately.

“Hey,” Shane murmurs, giving his shoulder a small squeeze. “Relax.”

“I am relaxed,” Ilya says.

“You’re not, but I’ll let it pass for now.” Shane exhales. “It’s nothing bad or anything. I’m just letting you know that this is your second Christmas with me… and I have cousins.”

“I know you have cousins, Shane. Big family. Your grandparents were very diligent.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane laughs, pinching Ilya’s side. He presses a kiss to Ilya’s temple, whispering his next words against his skin. “What I meant was they’d be coming to my parents’ house tomorrow. It’s my parents’ turn to host the gathering this year.”

Ilya hears the implication. They’d be coming to Shane’s parents’ house tomorrow, which means I have to stay here, alone, for an evening, because nobody knows about Shane and I.

It still catches Ilya off guard sometimes, the way the life they built suddenly becomes much, much smaller when the topic of other people enters the conversation. Ilya would make a joke about not being invited, but he knows it will just hurt Shane and him both. Because the truth is, Ilya wants to know all of Shane and all of his family—not just the stories, not just as names and half-fond complaints. He wants to sit at the same table without having to calculate where his hands are allowed to rest, without translating affection into something safer. More palatable. He wants to be introduced without being reduced into something else—Ilya, the friend. Ilya the charity partner. Ilya, the former captain of the Boston Raiders and one of the Ottawa Centaurs’ freshest faces. 

He wants to be Ilya Rozanov, Shane’s boyfriend. Shane’s partner. The love of his life.

But wanting doesn’t make it possible, and Ilya has long learned the difference between hunger and expectation. So, for now, this is what it is: Yuna and David know, and that will have to be enough. They see and love him and Shane. Meanwhile, everyone else gets a version that fits more easily into the room, and for now, Ilya won’t even be in that room. 

It hurts, of course, in the way that long-term things hurt—not quite sharp enough to protest against and at the same time not loud enough to demand change. He tells himself it’s temporary, and it is, though Ilya does not know for how much longer. Maybe it’s fate, or something, and it’s really just what they’re meant to have right now. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Ilya loves Shane. He loves him enough to hold what he’s given carefully and accept that, once again, things will have to happen regardless of whether or not Ilya wants them to happen.

“Hey,” Shane whispers, snapping Ilya out of his thoughts. Shane’s hand cups his cheek, tracing faint lines on the skin over and over as if doing so would leave a permanent mark. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I’m sorry. I want to bring you, believe me, I do. I really do.”

“It’s okay, Shane. I’ll be fine.”

“And I still feel sorry.”

Ilya shakes his head. Presses a kiss on the palm of Shane’s hand when it meets his lips. “No, no. It’s okay. Enough talking about it already. Do you want to tell me about your cousins? You have never talked about them before, and you didn’t attend last year’s gathering.”

“Yeah, because it was in fucking Utah and I didn’t wanna go to Utah.”

That gains a loud bark of laughter from Ilya. “You really are hilarious. Wow.”

“Shut up.”

“Fine. Just tell me about cousins now.”

“Alright. Well… I don’t know where to start, really. They always take over the house,” Shane hums. “They’re very loud. And annoying. They complain about the food while they’re eating it. Someone is going to put on a movie nobody actually wants to watch.”

“You’ll probably watch it. Because, you know, you’re boring.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, sorry, I mean you are polite. Polite Canadian boy, yes?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Okay, fine. Yeah, I’ll watch it. Doesn’t mean I’ll understand shit.”

“Do you guys play hockey?”

“I ask,” Shane makes a face. “And they always want to do literally anything else. It’s always been like that, because I was the only person who lived and breathed hockey.”

“Aside from Yuna.”

Shane laughs. “Aside from mom, yes.”

“Well, it explains things, at least.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No one wanted to play with little Shane, so little Shane learned how to want things by himself, yes?”

Shane goes quiet for a moment, but Ilya can tell there’s no offense taken. “Maybe,” he admits after a moment. “Kind of. You know, I used to ask all the time? I was one of the younger cousins, so they didn’t like denying me things. I used that to my advantage often. But one thing that I could never get them into was hockey.”

“Why not?”

“They’d rather be doing other things, I guess. Basketball. Video games. Or they’d just sit around.”

“I think it’s because no one wanted to play with someone who was already so good.”

“I wasn’t always good,” Shane laughs. “But… yeah. I don’t know.”

“But you played anyway?”

“I did,” Shane smiles, small and sheepish. “Yeah. Just hitting pucks into a net, all alone.”

There it is, Ilya thinks. The shape of Shane. His stubborn gentleness and refusal to give up his joy just because no one else shares it. It always comes back to that ache in Ilya’s heart that starts up whenever Shane talks about being a kid, surrounded by family and noise and yet somehow alone in the one place that mattered most.

The thing is that hockey wasn’t just something Shane liked; it was the axis that everything else spun around. While everyone else drifted in and out of phases, Shane stayed. He wanted hockey too much. He needed it too, honestly. Like air. And aside from his parents, no one ever really met him there. Sometimes Ilya would, but hockey isn’t his end all, be all. The point is that Ilya recognizes Shane’s loneliness and how distinct it is. One of having a devotion no one else is willing to share. Of loving something so fiercely it becomes a language only you speak.

And that’s why Ilya understands, in the marrow of his bones, Shane’s fear of losing it. So visceral and horrifying to even contemplate. It’s not just a game; it’s the structure of himself—the way hockey gives his days meaning and a future he can picture without effort. Ilya knows how devastated Shane would be if something terrible happened and hockey was taken away. How he would stand in the aftermath with nothing solid left to hold on to. And that’s also why, even when Ilya wants to be reckless with his love—wants to shout it into the open air and refuse to shrink and redefine it any longer—he doesn’t. Because love is as much about protection as it is devotion, and Ilya would never, ever hurt Shane like that.

“What about you?” Shane asks, breaking Ilya free from his thoughts. He’s flipping through the pages of Ilya’s book now, tracing the letters with his fingers as though he’s actually reading them. “What was it like when you were a kid?”

“What was?”

“Holidays. Christmas. Stuff like that. I know you don’t celebrate it today.”

Ilya’s stomach coils. What could he possibly say? That his family’s version of Christmas is too neat, too controlled, and filled with a kind of loneliness so natural it’s pathetic? That it was formal not because anyone cared about the solemnity of tradition, but because the formality kept everything from spilling over? That it was the complete opposite of Shane’s family’s warmth and noise and easy affection, and that Ilya learned early on how to disappear into the corner during a holiday that’s meant to gather people together?

And how could he explain his mother, moving through the kitchen like a ghost, cooking because it was expected of her, because a meal had to exist even when the happiness didn’t? How she would sit afterward and stare out the window, expression devoid of life, as if her body was there but her mind was thousands of miles away? How could he explain his father and the sudden violence of slammed cupboards; the way Ilya learned to read the air before it shifted? That sometimes stepping between his father and the world meant becoming the thing that absorbed the blow of his fists? 

It wasn’t always so bad, but the memories of the good ones never seem to stick around in his mind, and there’s simply no gentle way to translate those brutal ones that exist at the forefront of his mind. There’s just no version of it that fits easily into conversation. And so Ilya says the safest construction of the truth: “It was quiet.”

Shane nods, encouraging.

“It was… I don’t know. A bit strict. Church. Long meals,” he huffs. Rolls his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “My family pretending they weren’t angry.”

“That’s…”

“Pathetic?”

“Lonely.”

“It was,” Ilya swallows. “Yeah. It really was.” His hand moves to fiddle with his chain again, smoothing the pad of his thumb against the metal. “My mother was… religious. She liked the tradition of it.”

Shane hums. “Did you like it?”

I liked doing things with her. “Not particularly, no,” Ilya shakes his head. “I mean, some parts. The food. The way the house smelled in the morning. When Alexei was younger he…”

He doesn’t say anymore. Shane doesn’t push.

They sit in the silence again, a touch heavier this time around than before. Then, after a moment, Shane lifts up the book. Points to a few letters in bold, spelling out ‘Моя семья в разгар Холодной Войны.’ My family at the height of the cold war. “What’s this one about?” Shane asks.

Ilya grabs the book, cracks the spine so the pages stay put. “Words,” he teases. “No… Is something about Cold War and family.”

“Bleak?”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, as in, sad. Miserable.”

“Kind of,” Ilya hums. “But I remember this essay has happy tone to it, at the end. Hopeful, almost.”

“Explain.”

“You won’t understand.”

“Oh, rude.”

“Not just language. Emotion too. Feeling. You won’t get it.”

“Wow,” Shane rolls his eyes, smiling. “Insulting both my brain and my heart.”

Ilya smirks. “You’ll survive.”

Shane leans in, resting his head briefly against Ilya’s shoulder. “You underestimate my fragility. And just for that I’m not having sex with you tonight, just because.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, but he lets his head tip slightly toward Shane’s, their temples brushing, contact sending a shiver through his body.

“Hey,” Shane says, voice suddenly more serious. “Can I ask you something?”

“You’re going to, anyway,” Ilya replies.

“Fair. It’s not a new question, I just… could you teach me Russian? Please? Like, actually teach me?”

Ilya pulls back just enough to look at Shane. “Why?”

Shane shrugs. “Why not?”

“Because it’s hard,” Ilya says. “And pointless.”

“Pointless?”

“For you,” Ilya clarifies. “You don’t need it. You won’t use it. I speak English.”

“I know you do,” Shane says. “And you speak really well now.”

“I know.”

“So?”

Ilya exhales. “So why would you do that to yourself? You don’t have to.”

Shane looks at him for a long moment, a contemplative look on his face. Then, quietly, he says. “My grandmother was Japanese.”

Ilya stills.

“I mean, you already knew that, of course. You’ve met my mom. So was my grandfather, but he died before I was born and just a little bit after my mom moved from Japan to Canada.”

Ilya knows this story in bits and pieces. Yuna moved from Japan to Canada on a scholarship to McGill, young and brilliant and brave enough to cross an ocean and a continent alone at only eighteen. And then she never went back, because she stayed and fell in love with David Hollander, married him a year after graduating, and then built a life that rooted itself quickly and deeply. Shane came after, inevitable in the way that some futures simply are. Logically, Ilya understands that there was family left behind in Japan—parents, siblings, an entire life that was continuing without her—but neither Shane nor Yuna has ever followed the story that far. 

“What was your grandmother like?” Ilya asks, shifting around the couch so that Shane was laying down and he’s peering over him. Shane looks up at him, eyes soft and a little surprised by the question, like he hadn’t expected Ilya to reach for this part of his life story. “I mean, she must be beautiful, if you and Yuna both are.”

“Flaterrer,” Shane rolls his eyes, then exhales slowly. “She was… quiet.”

Ilya tilts his head. “Quiet like you?”

Shane huffs a small laugh. “No, not quiet like me. Different. She didn’t talk much, but silence with her wasn’t awkward. She was perceptive. Always paying attention to things everyone else missed.”

Ilya hums, encouraging. Though he doesn’t say anything, and he stays still, careful not to break the bubble around him and Shane.

“She had this way of smiling,” Shane continues, eyes drifting toward the window as if he’s looking through time instead of glass, just slightly glazed with tears. “Like… I don’t know. Like maybe she knew more than she let on. She always seemed amused, looking back. At the world. Like everything was a little funny if she looked at it long enough.”

“She sounds nice.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees softly. “She was.”

Ilya feels an all-too familiar pain beginning to spread through his chest, which only comes up whenever Shane talks about the parts of his life that formed before Ilya existed in his world. A quiet sort of grief for the boy Shane used to be, earnest and devoted and often so alone. Not for the first time, he wishes that they knew each other as kids. Maybe they could have held each other. Gotten through it all together.

“She moved here eventually,” Shane continues. “From Japan.”

“Yeah, I know a little bit about that.” Ilya replies. “But that’s usually where Yuna trails off.”

“It’s a tough thing for her, talking about it. But yeah, she moved. It was late though.”

“Late, as in?”

“Oh, late as in, like, she was already old by the time she got here.” Shane turns slightly beneath him, resting one hand on his chest to play pick at a loose thread from his sweater. “And I was still really young. I don’t think I understood what it meant. That she left a life behind. Everything.”

Briefly, Ilya thinks of his mom. How she was born in Omsk and buried in Moscow. All those places she’s been and will never go back to again. “Did she like it here?” Ilya asks quietly, afraid that he might say something else.

Shane shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think she hated it,  but she never really settled either. The house was always full—my cousins, my parents, people coming and going. I was always out, too. Hockey was… I mean it kind of became my thing at a young age. I don’t really remember a life before it. The rink became my home, and she… I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you.”

“Oh.”

“You know, we used to sit on the porch together,” Shane says, voice soft and slow. “All the time. Especially in the afternoons. She’d sit in her chair, wrapped up in a sweater even when it wasn’t that cold. I’d sit on the steps or the floor beside her.”

“And you’d talk?” Ilya asks.

“God, I wish,” Shane smiles, though there’s a sadness to it that gives Ilya the urge to pull him close and never let him go. “We didn’t talk. Not really. Sometimes she’d point something out. Sometimes she’d say my name. Mostly we just… sat.”

Ilya feels something inside him twist. “And you were okay with that?”

“I thought I was,” Shane replies. “At the time, maybe. I mean, I liked being there with her. And I could tell she liked it too. But…” he trails off, jaw clenching slightly, as if to steady himself. “I could also tell that she wanted to say more. Something. Anything.”

“How?”

Shane looks up at him then, really looks, as if he really wants Ilya to understand. “She’d get this look on her face sometimes,” he starts. “As if she was waiting for something. Or like there was a sentence sitting right there, on the tip of her tongue, and she just couldn’t get it across the gap.”

“Ah.”

“I didn’t know Japanese, at the time,” Shane whispers, like he’s never said these words out loud before. Like maybe putting them out in the world has a consequence. “And she didn’t have the words in English. Not for anything complicated, anyway. So we just… didn’t try. Didn’t talk.”

Ilya closes his eyes for a second, then opens them again. “That must have been difficult for you.”

Shane tilts his head, then shrugs. “I didn’t know it was, in that moment. I was a kid. I figured that was just how things were. That there was nothing I could do.” He huffs out a laugh, though it’s hollow. “It wasn’t until later, after she died, that it really hit me.”

Ilya’s fingers curl into the couch cushion, grounding himself.

“I started thinking about it more, later,” Shane says. “About how much of her life happened before she ever got here. About everything she might have seen, done, lost.” His voice wavers slightly. “And I realized there were probably a thousand things she never told. Couldn’t tell me. Stories, memories, history and all that fucking… God. All those things she carried alone because I wouldn’t be able to understand anyway.”

Ilya leans closer without meaning to, his forehead aligned with Shane’s. “You didn’t do anything wrong, любимый.”

Shane smiles sadly. “I know. But that doesn’t really change how it feels.”

“No, it won’t,” Ilya replies. “But I will say it to you anyway.”

They lay there in silence for a moment. The fire crackles. The snow falls. The world remains the same.

“I regret it,” Shane says eventually. “Not learning soon enough. Not trying harder. There was so much… lost. Between the two of us.”

“I’m sorry,” Ilya replies. It feels inadequate, but it’s all he has.

Shane’s gaze finds his again, steady and open. “Ilya, what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want that to happen to you.”

Ilya pauses. “With me?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer. Where the conversation is leading him to.

Shane nods. Ilya searches his face for hesitation and finds none. Shane must have seen something on his face, though, because he takes it as permission to continue. “I don’t want to miss things about you. I don’t want there to be parts of you that stay closed off just because I couldn’t understand them.”

Ilya’s heart skips a beat. Then another. And then it tightens painfully, like his ribs are collapsing. “I talk to you,” he says. “About everything.”

“I know,” Shane says quickly. “And I’m not saying you hide things from me. I just—” he breaks off, then tries again. “I know there are parts of you that… how do I put this. That maybe live more comfortably in Russian. Thoughts you don’t translate because it’s too much work, or because it doesn’t feel worth it.”

Ilya’s throat goes dry. “That’s not—”

“It’s okay,” Shane says gently. “I get it. I do the same thing with hockey. With stuff people don’t really care about.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it really?” Shane asks. “Sometimes hockey feels like the only language I could actually speak. And there was a time in my life where I could only ever talk to exactly two people about it without having to hold back.”

Ilya hesitates. “If you put it that way, then sure.”

Shane shifts beneath him, careful not to dislodge Ilya entirely. “I just don’t want anything to be lost between us,” he says. “Not if I can help it.”

The words settle deep, like a pebble sinking into the lake. Ilya looks down at him, at his beautiful man who loves so fiercely and kindly. Shane Hollander, who laced his skates alone and played hockey by himself. Shane Hollander, who found Ilya at eighteen and never let him go again. How could Ilya ever deny him anything, really?

“You’re afraid,” he says softly, running his fingers through Shane’s hair. 

“I am,” Shane replies, not denying it.

“Sometimes, it’s easier to be honest when I don’t have to translate every feeling into something easier to swallow.”

“I know.”

“And sometimes,” Ilya continues, voice a low hum. “I’m afraid that if I let you too far into it, you’ll see things I don’t know how to explain at all. Not even in Russian.”

“I don’t really need perfect explanations.”

“You say that now.”

“I mean it. Ilya, I have only ever needed you. You, completely.”

Ilya closes his eyes briefly. Lets the feeling settle. Блять. “Learning Russian won’t fix everything,” he says.

“I know,” Shane replies. “But it might fix some things. Or at least keep us from losing them.”

“You wouldn’t be good at it,” Ilya says weakly. One last attempt, though he knows it doesn’t fool Shane at all.

“Hey, I learned hockey.”

“Barely.”

“Rude.”

Ilya laughs, and it feels like something in him snaps into place. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll teach you,” Ilya says. “But you’re not allowed to complain.”

Shane’s smile is blinding. “Deal.”

“And you’re not allowed to pretend you understand when you don’t.”

“Am I allowed to pretend I don’t understand when I don’t want to listen to you or do what you say?”

“You’re impossible.”

“But you love me anyway, so what does that say about you?”

Ilya laughs. “Nothing. Everything.” Then he presses his forehead against Shane’s, breathing him in. “That I probably should have never talked to that beautiful boy outside in Saskatchewan.”

Ilya fills the tub slowly, careful with the temperature, adjusting in small increments until the steam curls up around his hands, into the air, and starts fogging up the mirrors. He does this the same way every time—testing, wasting, testing again. Influenced by Shane being a stickler for routine, he’s sure. He undresses without hurry, shoving his clothes in the corner, until he’s left with only his boxers on. 

But before he gets in, he crosses the small space to the window.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that there’s a world outside the cottage, especially when it’s all muted like this: white snow, gray sky, a dark row of trees. The lake beyond them is frozen solid, a smooth and pale stretch that looks almost unreal. Ilya rests his forehead briefly against the glass. The chill seeps in through his skin immediately, sharp and almost painful.

He remembers a day, back in Russia, back when he was small enough that the snow still felt like an adventure rather than a test of his patience and endurance. His mother had taken him out early, before the sun had fully risen, her hand tight around his wrist as they walked toward the lake near the estate. The ice had been thick, layered and strong, tested by others long before they arrived. 

Mostly, Ilya remembers her. How she had laced his skates for him, her fingers red from the cold, movements efficient but careful. How she’d stood once he was upright, watching him with an expression he would later—much later, long after she’s gone—recognize as rare; unburdened and almost hopeful. He had stepped into the ice and felt something settle into place inside him. Wordless and exact, like he was finally somewhere he was always meant to be. The glide. The balance. The way all of the world narrowed down to the clean cut of blades against frozen water.

So Ilya thinks of all of that now, here, staring out at the frozen lake behind the cottage, drowning himself in the pain blooming from his heart to the rest of his body. 

The bathwater laps gently against the porcelain as he lowers himself in, inch by inch, until the heat envelops him. He exhales, not even realizing that he’s been holding his breath. His skin prickles, momentarily, then softens from the warmth. Ilya sinks down until the water reaches his shoulders, his knees drawn up slightly, arms floating loose at the sides. 

He closes his eyes. There’s this funny thing someone said to him once, Marleau, probably, back in the Boston locker room. There’s a long and winding joke that prefaced it, but it eventually ended with the phrase: ‘You can take Ilya Rozanov from Russia, but he will always be Ilya Rozanov.’ He did not know what that meant at the time, but now he thinks he gets it. Probably. 

But it’s funny, really, how all of this is working out so miserably for him. Ilya has spent so much of his life wanting to leave Russia. He made sure he got so good at hockey that there’d be no other choice but to put him where the best teams are: in an entirely different continent on the other side of the world. And now that he has left, now that he knows he would never be back, he finds himself missing it. Or just the feeling of it. He doesn’t know. It’s often difficult to put into words exactly how he feels about his homeland—because how can you miss something you genuinely hate? That doesn’t make any sense. But what he does know is that there’s a part of him that wishes Russia was kinder so that maybe he could stay there. So that maybe he could love Shane there. And maybe, someday, long into the future, he could join his mother there.

His mother. There it is. Because it will always go back to Irina Rozanova—beautiful, funny, and so empty. Who had given him something beautiful in the hopes that it might be enough to carry him forward, into a future without her. How much of missing Russia is really just Ilya missing his mother?

A lot, probably. Maybe even all of it.

The water shifts as he moves, a slow ripple that fades quickly. He opens his eyes, leans back, and then stares at the ceiling, trying to look for cracks that aren’t there and counting his breaths. He gets so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice Shane entering the bathroom, dimming the lights, and then sitting down on the floor beside the tub. Ilya turns his head, sees Shane’s back against the vanity, knees drawn up with his arms resting on them. He’s barefoot, sleeves pushed up, forearms pale in the low light. He just sits there, watching Ilya with an expression so open it almost hurts to look at.

Ilya feels a familiar, treacherous skip in his heart—the one that never went away, not even after eleven years. Appearing every single time that Shane looks at him like this. Like looking at Ilya is the best thing he’s ever done and will ever do; a choice he’ll make over and over again.

Eleven years, Ilya thinks, distantly. So much time, and still so little. His gaze traces beautiful features. Shane’s brows, his lips, the freckles he loves that look so much like stars. He wants this forever. Wants this love and the hope it brings. Wants it to touch every aspect of his life until the stain of it never leaves. He doesn’t care if it will ruin them both.

Ilya lifts one hand out of the water, fingers slick and pruned, and rests it against his chest. The metal of the crucifix is cold against his skin. For a fleeting, irrational moment, Ilya wonders if Shane was sent to him. If maybe his mother is still somewhere out there—watching and arranging small mercies where she can. If maybe she saw the way he was spiraling and decided to intervene in the only way she could. Ilya doesn’t believe in that sort of stuff anymore—faith, divine intervention, God. But the timing has always felt too precise to be coincidence. Why else, and how else, would Shane Hollander think to approach him that day in Saskatchewan? An answer to a prayer Ilya doesn’t remember whispering. A wish granted that he did not remember begging for.

Shane shifts slightly, careful not to break the moment, and Ilya realizes he’s been staring. Still, he doesn’t look away. Shane doesn’t, either. Then, softly, “Talk to me in Russian,” he says. His voice is gentle, pitched the same way it was that night, years ago, over the phone. “Like before. I’ll listen. I won’t understand, not yet, but I’ll listen.”

Something inside Ilya gives way.

“Я скучаю по маме,” he starts, and the words hurt less in Russian, somehow. “Ирина Розанова. С каждым днем болит меньше и меньше... но все равно, как будто все случилось вчера. Иногда мне кажется, что она просто где-то далеко, и все что мне надо сделать это взять телефон, и ей позвонить. Спросить, как у неё дела. Пила ли она сегодня таблетки? Скучает ли она по мне. Но иногда совсем по другому. Наоборот, чувствуется что она где-то вообще в другом мире, в другой жизни. Там, где она не была никогда моей мамой, там где я её вообще не знал.”

Ilya takes a deep breath. Then he admits his shame. “Я даже скучаю по отцу. Какие-то версии его; осколки. Отец, который искал репетиторов для хоккея. Который так обрадовался, однажды, когда у меня первый раз получился хэт-трик. Скучаю по брату, тоже—думаю, какой могла бы быть его жизнь, если бы мама не умерла. Если бы отец не был таким сердитым. Если бы я был... кем-то другим.

“Больше всего, скучаю по дому. По Россие. Не то-что по стране, а... Скучаю по ней, как ты бы скучал по дому. Её земля, язык, люди - чуство, что можно идти по улице и не думать, как на меня смотрят, как я должен себя объяснять, потому-что люди уже понимали все. Как я говорил, какие слова я выбрал, почему. Иногда я желаю, чтоб там было по другому, чтоб страна понимала, чтоб она была добрее. Чтоб она понимала вещи как любовь. Тогда бы все было по другому, да ведь? Мы с тобой были бы вместе, там.”

It’s a dangerous thought, but Ilya isn’t going to pretend it hasn’t kept him up at night before. Taking Shane to places that mattered. The lake where he first put on skates. The rink where he first played hockey. The alley where he got into his first fight. The cemetery where his mother is buried.

“Я мечтаю тебя с ней познакомить,” Ilya continues. He reaches out and takes Shane’s hand in his, then presses a kiss to the knuckles. “Я уверен, что она бы тебя обожала. Я действительно уверен. На самом деле. Она бы знала, то, что я никогда не могу объяснить—насколько ты хорош, насколько ты замечателен. Насколько ты действительный; реальный. Как ты у меня ничего не просишь, кроме просто... меня. Я представляю она бы расслабилась, зная что я нашел того, кто меня искренне понимает.”

Then, his voice falters. “Я боюсь. Каждый день. Постоянно. Боюсь, что моя тоска меня проглотит, как мамина тоска проглотила её. Боюсь, что один день проснусь, и вся эта тяжесть будет там навсегда—и единственный путь её избежать будет просто уйти, навсегда. Другие дни, боюсь что проснусь и буду как папа, что мой мозг будет раскалываться до момента, где больше ничего не останется. До момента, как умереть будет добрее, чем что другое.”

Ilya stops, then. Even in Russian, the next part is difficult. This idea of having two futures available to him, and how in both of them he loses Shane. The water trembles around him as his body reacts to the words in his head. The words he can’t even say out loud. Shane, perhaps sensing his distress, squeezes his hand tighter. Moves himself closer to Ilya, then looks at him as if he wants nothing more than to climb in the tub with Ilya and hold him there. 

“Прости,” he continues, shaking his head so Shane would stay put where he is. “Ты знаешь, когда я был в Россие последний раз, я все это время провел с мамой? Было так холодно. Мои пальцы замёрзли после всего, но мне было пофиг. Я разговаривал с ней так долго. Рассказывал ей все. Даже про тебя. Как мы встретились, как я в тебя влюбился. Как ты иногда на меня смотришь и жизнь как будто опять яркая—а я и думал, что опять так никогда не будет.

“Я ей даже рассказал, что хочу с тобой семью. Ты это еще конечно не знаешь. Но я это так сильно хочу, Шейн. Жизнь с тобой. Будущее. Мы бы были такими счастливыми. Я ей это пообещал—я рассказал ей, все про эту жизнь которую она никогда не увидит. Про все ети вещи, которые она пропустит. Тем, кем я стану, без неё. Я ей сказал—что все это в порядке, что все будет в порядке. Это то, что должны делать сыновья, хорошие сыновья, да? Уходить, меняться, приврощатся в того, кем мама будет гордиться. Я реально надеюсь, что она мной гордиться.

“Я... я никогда туда не вернусь. Я не могу. Это то, что ранит больше всего. Но я это сам себе сделал, и теперь надо с этим жить. Я выбрал тебя, и всегда выберу тебя, я не обижаюсь, но—мне это больно, понимаешь? Меня это ранит. Я никогда не вернусь домой. Я больше никогда не увижу маму.”

Ilya’s words slow eventually, tapering off into quiet breaths and fragmented thoughts. Half the words he’s saying begin to make no sense, threaded together by desperation alone. He keeps at it until he finally softens, loses his urgency, and breathes. He closes his eyes. And he keeps breathing. When he finally blinks his eyes open, he feels wrung out and exposed, like he’s peeled himself open and left everything out where it can be seen and picked apart. 

Shane hasn’t moved. He’s still sitting there, eyes fixed on Ilya with an intensity that borders, almost, on reverent. The knuckles on his other hand are white, like he’s holding himself still on purpose. Or together. Maybe more for Ilya’s sake than his own. There’s moisture in his eyes, but he doesn’t wipe it away. And he doesn’t look away.

“Я люблю тебя,” Ilya whispers then. “Я тебя люблю. Очень сильно. Не могу это даже объяснить, в любих словах. Я люблю тебя. Я тебя люблю.”

For a second, there is only the echo of his own voice in the room. Then, Shane inhales, visibly bracing himself, and says “Я... я тебя люблю.”

The accent is wrong. That’s what Ilya thinks about first. Soft and clumsy at the same time. Shane stretches the vowels oddly, and then hesitates in the last word, like he’s feeling his way through the sounds by touch rather than by memory. 

And then Ilya freezes. Then he laughs—sharp and surprised and helpless, the sound breaking free from his gut like it’s been shaken loose. His chest feels so full, and before Shane can second-guess himself, before the embarrassment can settle in, Ilya reaches out. He grabs Shane by the front of his shirt and pulls.

Shane goes willingly, off-balance and breathless, shocked laughter on his lips and knees knocking against the side of the tub as Ilya drags him closer. Water sloshes over the edge, splashing the tile, soaking Shane’s pants and his sleeves, but Shane doesn’t even flinch. He lets himself be hauled in, lets the enormity of Ilya’s love and desire swallow him whole.

Ilya kisses him deeply and urgently, pulling him so close as if the act alone could collapse all the remaining distance between them. Like if he presses hard enough, close enough, they might fuse into something indivisible. His hand slides up Shane’s neck, fingers threading into his hair, tugging just enough to keep him there. Shane makes a small, broken sound against his mouth and kisses him back just as fiercely. His hands find Ilya’s hair instinctively, sturdy fingers tangling in wet curls, gripping like he’s afraid Ilya might disappear if he lets go. Water beads on Shane’s skin, darkening his clothes, but they’re both past the point of caring. The world is just this now. Just them both.

When Ilya finally pulls back, it’s only because he needs air. He rests his forehead against Shane’s, noses brushing, both of them breathing hard into the small space between their faces.

“Say it again,” Ilya murmurs, still smiling. “Please.”

Shane swallows. His cheeks are flushed, though Ilya is not sure from what—whether from the heat or the vulnerability of the moment. Maybe both.  

“I won’t tease you for your accent, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Shut up. Asshole.”

“Say it again, please?” 

Shane presses another kiss on Ilya’s lips, then he takes a deep breath. Tries once more. “Я тебя люблю.” It’s a little steadier this time. Still imperfect and shaky, but it’s so unmistakably Shane, and Ilya thinks that he really is going to love Shane Hollander forever. 

“How did you—” he starts, then stops, the question rearranging itself. “When did you learn that?”

Shane shrugs, sheepish and proud at the same time. His hands are still in Ilya’s hair, his thumbs rubbing small and unconscious circles at his temples. 

“You say it to me a lot,” Shane says simply. “And I already knew what it meant. I just figured… I could start learning there.” He pauses, then smiles softly. “With my love for you.”

They sit side by side on the couch, thighs touching, shoulders pressed together beneath a single blanket that Shane dragged over earlier from their room. Outside, the snow falls in heavier and heavier drifts. It’ll be a full on storm soon, Ilya figures. Hopefully it clears up enough tomorrow before Shane leaves for his parents’ house.

Ilya lifts his spoon and tastes the stew. “It’s good,” he says.

Shane lets out a breath that sounds almost like relief. “I tried to follow a recipe.”

Ilya glances towards the kitchen, the big pot still sitting heavy on the stove. Still likely full. He arches an eyebrow. “If you followed recipe, I think you made enough food to feed a small army.”

“Fuck off,” Shane snorts, nudging him with his knee. “I did the math.”

“Oh?” Ilya says, amused, settling deeper into the blanket. “You are math genius now, finally?”

“Mhmm. Just enough for two.”

Ilya hums, deliberately slow, then takes another bite. “For two professional hockey players with big appetites, yes?”

Shane laughs warmly. He leans into Ilya’s shoulder. “Of course.”

The stew really is good. Thick and rich in a way that speaks both of skill and care. Shane is an exceptional cook, but there’s something about it that just… hits. Or maybe Ilya is deluding himself by reading more into things than he usually does. Must be the season, he thinks, as he eats slowly, savoring the warmth that’s spreading from his mouth to his chest to his hands. He swallows, then says, “It reminds me of something my mom used to cook. Almost.”

Shane turns to look at him. “Almost?”

“A little. It can’t taste exactly the same,” Ilya replies.

“No,” Shane agrees gently. “I figured it wouldn’t.”

“It won’t,” Ilya shrugs a little. “And maybe it never will. But we’ll make do.”

Shane nods, accepting that easily, and they keep eating. After a while, Ilya speaks again. 

“I don’t like Russia,” he says. “I hate it, most days. It’s bad there. Awful. I am glad to be out. I am glad to be here.”

Shane doesn’t hesitate. “I know,” he replies. “I never really doubted that.”

Ilya stares out the window, watching the snow blur the outlines of the trees. “But I am going to miss my mother. My old life. What could have been.”

Shane sets his bowl aside, turning slightly towards him. “That’s okay,” he says. “I’ll help you through it. And… maybe now that you’ve committed to really teaching me, you and I could just… talk. Learn. Get your mind off things."

Ilya lets out a small breath, something close to a laugh but not quite. “Maybe.”

They fall into an easy silence again, finishing their food. Eventually, they drift much closer to each other, until Shane is tucked beneath Ilya’s chin. Ilya presses a kiss to his hair. 

A minute passes. Maybe two. And then—

“I think I will be sad for a long time,” Ilya whispers. “I think that there are just things I will always miss.”

Shane takes a deep breath. Brings one of Ilya’s hands to his lips and kisses the pads of his fingers. Then says, “That’s okay. We can miss it together.”

Ilya smiles, presses their lips together, and plants his feet home.

Is there a way to be gone and still belong?

Travel that takes you home?

Is that life?—to stand by a river and go.

Quo Vadis, William Stafford

Ilya’s monologue:

I miss my mother. Irina Rozanova. It hurts less and less every day, but it’s still there. Sometimes it feels like she’s only just gone, like I could still pick up the phone and hear her voice. Ask her how her day was. If she had taken her meds. If she’s missing me. Some days she feels so far away, like she belonged to another life entirely. Like she was never my mother, and I never knew her at all.

Sometimes, I even miss my father. Some versions of him. Fragments. The man who got me tutors for skating. The man who clapped once, so proud, when I did my first hat trick. I miss Alexei too. I wonder what his life could have been like if mom didn’t die. If dad was better. If I wasn’t… me.

And I miss home. I miss Russia. Not… not what it is now. I miss it in the way you would your house, yes? The land, the language, the people. I miss going outside and not having to worry about what people think of me, because I was among people who already understood what I was like. How I spoke. Why I choose the words I choose. And… and sometimes I wish home was kinder. Kinder to difference. Love. Because then things would be different, right? Maybe you and I could be together there.

I imagine introducing you [to my mother]. I told you, she would have loved you. She really, really would have. She would have seen what I sometimes have difficulty saying—how good you are. How real. How you don’t ask for much from me except for just… me. I imagine she’d be relieved, me finding someone who just understands.

I’m afraid. All the time. That my sadness will consume me the way it consumed my mother. That one day I’ll wake up and the weight I’ve been carrying has become permanent, and the only way out of it is to leave entirely. And then there are days where I’d wake up and be afraid of becoming my father. My mind leaving me in fragments until there’s nothing left. Until death is kinder than being alive.

Sorry. You know, the last time I was in Russia, I spent the whole day with my mother. It was cold. My fingers were numb by the time I got home. I didn’t care. I talked to her for hours and told her everything. Even you. Meeting you, falling in love with you, the way you look at me and how you brought so much love back in my life at a time where I thought I was done with it. 

And then I told her that I would have a family with you. You don’t know this yet, Shane, but I want one with you so bad. A life together. A future. We would both be happy, I promised her that. I told her about this life she would never see. All these milestones she would miss. The man I will become without her. I told her it was okay—it will be okay, because that’s what good sons are supposed to do, right? They leave, and then they change, and they become someone their mother would be proud of. I hope she is proud.

And I can never go back. That’s what hurts the most here. I made my choice when I left, and now I’m living the consequences. I chose you, and I will make the same choice again and again, and I don’t resent it but I am mourning. Because I can never go back home. And I will never see my mother again.

I love you. I love you. So much. I don’t even have the words, sometimes. I love you. I love you.