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It's not like Ilya to ignore Shane, not anymore.
Not since everything at the cottage over the summer.
Maybe even before.
Sure, it's not the easiest to stay in a long distance relationship when your partner lives a five hour drive away and also isn't actually home half the time, but they've been doing their best.
And part of their best is staying in touch.
Especially now, when they're in the same city and have their last game against each other before Ilya transfers to Ottawa.
It seems significant to Shane.
It's like the end of an era.
One they should celebrate by going to town on each other's bodies.
But he needs Ilya's new lock code for that.
It's been hours since he landed in Boston, and Ilya's, seemingly, gone radio silent.
Shane gets his hopes up when text ellipses appear and disappear a number of times, but still, nothing.
Then, suddenly, finally, he gets an incoming call.
"Hey Ilya," Shane says, trying not to let his irritation bleed into his voice.
"Shane," Ilya replies, his voice raspy, his accent thicker than usual.
Shane winces, every kinky idea he had to celebrate post game shattering with that one word,"Have you been ignoring me because you're sick?"
"No, Hollander. Russians, we do not do this," Ilya says. A statement that is rendered completely untrue by the coughing fit that follows it.
"Tell me you aren't playing," Shane says.
"Of course, I'm playing," Ilya says, sniffling a little before coughing some more.
Shane suspects he'd be useless on the ice, and that Ilya knows it.
"Oh, this was what you were avoiding. Me telling you not to play," Shane says.
"Yes," Ilya cracks, tellingly, a little too easily. He must really feel terrible. "I wanted to beat you with a good team for the last time."
"Ottawa isn't so bad," Shane says, even though he knows that Ottawa isn't even close to being in the same league as Boston.
"Ottawa is not Boston," Ilya says.
"No, no it's not," Shane concedes with a sigh. "So, do you still want me to come over after the game, and, I don't know, play nurse?"
"You would make a sexy nurse," Ilya says mischievously, "maybe sexier doctor."
Shane flushes and rolls his eyes, as he assumes, if Ilya isn't fit to play, he isn't fit to have sex either.
"You know I didn't mean it like that," Shane says.
"No, but I can have fun imagining," Ilya says.
XXX
Ilya hates that this is the way his official rivalry with Shane is ending.
With him bundled under two blankets and a duvet, trying not to fall asleep as he watches Shane outplay his teammates on his TV.
He shivers despite the covers and wishes the game would end so Shane can at least be with him.
He's dead asleep when it finally does, which makes him groggy and a little disoriented when Shane shouts his name into his foyer.
He tries to wriggle out of his blanket cocoon only to roll off the couch with a resounding thump.
"Shit! Ilya? Are you okay?" Shane shouts as he hurries into the living room.
"Yeah, yeah," Ilya says, finally pulling himself free of his blankets and climbing back to the couch.
Shane doesn't seem particularly convinced as he helps Ilya back under the covers before pressing his hand to Ilya's forehead.
"You have a fever," Shane says.
Ilya's prepared to take Shane's word for it, but Shane sets down bags that Ilya didn't even see him carrying and pulls a thermometer from it.
"Oh, you are taking this nurse job very seriously," Ilya says.
He says it somewhat teasingly, mostly to get a rise out of Shane.
But he loves Shane for it. It's been a long time since someone took care of him like this.
"Yeah, I do. My boyfriend, who lives alone, is too sick to play hockey and will keep being alone after I leave. I'm worried, okay?"
Ilya takes Shane's hand and laces their fingers together. "I'm okay, Shane. It's just a cold. A very bad, annoying cold, but, still, just a cold."
"You sure?" Shane asks.
"This is what the team doctor says," Ilya says.
Shane sighs in relief before unloading the rest of his bags and handing Ilya painkillers and popping the tab on a Ginger Ale. "Here."
Ilya sips at the Ginger Ale, letting it soothe his throat, as Shane pops open his own.
Ilya raises his up towards Shane's and Shane follows suit until their cans touch. "To the end of the Hollander-Rozanov rivalry!"
They both take a sip of their Ginger Ale before Shane says, "We'll still be rivals."
Ilya rolls his eyes. They both know it's not going to be as intense or as heated.
It's going to change from boiling to a low simmer.
Which is, in many ways, what they want now.
"Is not the same, and you know it," Ilya says.
"Yeah, I wanted us to, uh, celebrate," Shane says. "The end of this."
"Oh, how?" Ilya asks.
"In ways you are definitely not up to," Shane says.
"Says who?" Ilya asks.
"Says me," Shane says.
Ilya tugs at Shane's waistband to see if he'll relent, but he just rolls his eyes before pulling out several vegetables.
"I couldn't find shchi, but I brought the ingredients. I'm going to make it while you rest."
"This is very boring celebration," Ilya says, but there's no heat in it.
His heart is actually melting a little at the gesture.
He dozes in and out to the sound of Shane chopping vegetables and muttering about where Ilya keeps his measuring spoons.
An hour later or so later, Shane sets a steaming bowl of soup in front of him, and his heart aches at the smell.
It's something his mother used to make when he was little, and he can't remember the last time he had it homemade.
He carefully takes a spoonful as Shane watches too hopefully. "Is it good?"
Ilya answers truthfully, "It tastes like my mother's."
Ilya doesn't even realize he's crying until Shane wipes a tear from his cheek.
"Hey," Shane says.
"I'm okay. It's just, I'm sick. I never get sick, and it had to be today, and you make soup like my mother and ..."
Ilya breaks off because he had no reason to be this upset over, nothing, really.
"And you have a fever," Shane says as he takes the soup spoon and sets it next to the bowl on the coffee table before cradling Ilya in his lap. "You don't have to be rational right now."
It's good he doesn't. He lets himself cry into Shane's lap as Shane rubs at his back until it hurts, and he sputters into a coughing fit.
Shane brings him a glass of water and gives him a cough drop after that.
Then Shane wraps his arms around him again, "I'm not leaving you like this. We don't have another game until Tuesday. I'm going to call the airline and change my ticket."
"What are you going to tell your team?" Ilya asks.
"I'm going to tell Hayden the truth -- Boston Lily is sick, and I'm taking care of her."