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The night is quiet, still.
Above the chittering, bare branches, velvet darkness spreads across the sky, shining with glittering stars as far as the eye can see. The thin waning crescent of the moon hangs in the distance just above the crest of the mountains, dim light settling in gleaming silver sweeps across the scraped-off ice of the hastily cleared lake.
Snow banks rise around the edges of the dock, deposited from an earlier cleaning and patted down into thick piles; Anya's paw prints dotting across them every so often, her tiny holes dug to snuffle into. Solar-paneled candle lanterns—though Ilya knows their secret to staying lit lies in the batteries tucked away inside—stick out of them every so often, offering the barest hint of warmth beneath the frozen stillness of winter.
Still, Shane does not linger by the lights.
Ilya watches as he glides out across their makeshift rink, his cheeks red, his lips curled into a faint smile as he winds his way through little drifts of snow shaken free by the wind.
His hands are tucked into worn, mismatched mittens, one gold and black, the other red and blue, despite the fact that they have perfectly good Centaurs-branded gloves inside. There's a lumpy scarf wound around his neck, garishly hot pink, a thin strand of yarn dangling from the end. Rose had claimed it added character, but Ilya was fairly certain she just didn't have scissors to cut it and forgot by the time she arrived.
There are buttons at the end of it now, an odd but welcome addition from Sveta; a new one added from tiny shops she visits in Moscow whenever she returns. It provides an uneven heft to the length as it flaps unsteadily in the wind.
Shane, of course, does not even bother to pretend that the extra weight could ever throw him off his game; there is no unevenness on the ice, not for him.
He is glorious here, unburdened by pressure. His eyes are dark as he looks out across the vast icy expanse before him, his shoulders unbowed, and Ilya would do anything for this man.
Anything.
The scrape of his skates across the ice is familiar, the steady churn of gouges across the black. Irrefutably, there is nothing neat about the tracks Shane is carving.
Inside their cottage, Rose and Sveta sleep, curled up like kittens with Anya, the fire low and smoldering. Ilya feels that the warmth of their home has followed them outside; that they are kept safe by the solemn cradle of the branches, the cool light of the moon, the firmness of the ice.
No harm can come to them here.
“Hey,” Shane says, still making wide circles on his skates, an easy gracefulness in his limbs. He looks as if he belongs here, spun out of moonlight and shadow; Ilya's beautiful ice boy. His head is cocked as he flies over their rink, his face tipped up as if he's reading their future in the stars.
Ilya doesn't need the stars to know; their future is theirs in its entirety, and therefore, utterly perfect.
“C'mere.”
He doesn't hesitate; he's near Shane before the end of his words can dissipate into the cold air.
“Can I tell you something?” Shane asks, his eyes averted, white clouds of his breath spilling from his mouth as Ilya keeps pace with him, their partnership clear with every loping glide. He doesn't wait for Ilya to nod or murmur any sort of affirmation, and instead continues immediately.
Ilya has to fight down the urge to collapse against him as he watches his mouth move, to tackle him down and bury his cold face into the heart of him, despite the welcome he knows Shane carries in his bones.
They have come so far from their fumbling beginnings.
He is so excited to see where they'll go.
“When I was a kid, I always thought I'd get married on the ice,” Shane says, serenely. Ilya blinks at him, but Shane is still looking up at the stars, silver curving across his cheeks, highlighting his freckles. He looks content, all his tension unwound as they drift across the pockmarked ice as he continues. “Not that I ever even thought about marriage, but it was a question we got asked in third grade for some reason, and I remember writing down that I wanted to get married on the ice, at a rink. I don't think I answered any other questions.”
He sighs, and Ilya wraps an arm around his waist, listening to his soft breathing. There is more to say, he is sure, as he tips his head back too, letting Shane untangle the thoughts in his head.
“I don’t remember a lot, but I remember getting into an argument with another kid about it being stupid,” he murmurs, as quiet as snowfall. Ilya's heart hurts at the thought of a tiny Shane, defending himself so fiercely, defending his love of hockey. He can picture him, his little warrior; he is sure the scowl he levels at his opponents now would lay the same across his cheeks. “And then, I forgot about it until right now.”
He shifts, slow and steady, the two of them slowly gliding across the lake. He laughs, a gentle, shallow sound that washes through Ilya, warming his soul.
“I think I said the ice because it felt like home to me. Like the only thing I could love, the only thing I’d ever love as much as I did, even then. It was, for so long, the only thing I could feel good at.” His head tilts, turning to meet Ilya's eyes. “And then I met you.”
Ilya can't tell what expression he's making, but Shane's whole face shifts, his doe-eyes shining, his mouth parting. “Baby, I didn't mean to make you cry,” he whispers, reaching up to thumb at the dampness Ilya can hardly feel. The wool mitten scratches across Ilya's cheeks as he tilts his head into Shane's hand. “Should I stop?”
“No, no,” Ilya murmurs. He can't think of any place he'd rather be than skating with his husband, the muted softness of winter around them. He would dash himself against rocks before he ever asked for Shane to be quiet. “Tell me more, moy lyubimyj. I always want to hear.”
Shane doesn't ask again, but he doesn't take his hand away either. “For so long, I thought I was never going to have this,” he says, his eyes fixed on Ilya's. They're skating across the ice, aimless and tangled, steady against each other. “I was hiding, and I was scared, and I didn't know what to do with how badly I wanted you. I didn't know how to handle it when I saw you in person that first time. It was like the whole world shifted to the left and then back again. Like all the imprints of what had come before were knocked out of place.” His mouth twitches, curling into a wry smile. “And we both know how badly I handle disruptions.”
Ilya smiles back, helpless against him.
“But every time we came together, I felt like I was a step closer to understanding, a moment closer to knowing, and it was terrifying and so fucking exhilarating. And then, one day, I woke up, and suddenly, it was like oh, here's this other thing I'm good at.” He sniffles, his eyes so wide Ilya can see the stars speckled in their abyss. “I woke up and thought, I'm good at being so in love with Ilya Rozanov that it's changed me down to my bones.”
Ilya can't blink, even as tears begin to build again in his waterline. He can hardly breathe as he watches Shane.
“And now,” his mouth twitches, “it's like, well, duh, of course I'm in love with you—you're my whole heart. My home. The place I feel safest at, and all those years ago, I was right when I said I wanted to get married at the rink, because really, what I was chasing is the feeling that you give me.”
“Shane,” Ilya whispers, his words clogging up his throat. “You are—” He shakes his head, unable to find the right words. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”
“I love you too,” Shane murmurs.
They're still skating, slowing as they gradually drift closer together, until Shane's tucked in as close as he can be, his hands settling on Ilya's coat, Ilya's arms around him.
“I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've—even when I was lying to myself, all I wanted was you. All I've ever wanted is you. And that even in my craziest dreams, I never imagined we would have this, because I wanted it too badly to let myself think about it,” he whispers, as if being too loud will somehow shatter through the moment. “You're my whole world, Ilya Rozanov. I could spend the rest of my life winning the Cup, and nothing would ever compare to waking up in bed with you.” He blinks, his eyes luminous and beautiful, the gentle breeze dying down as if all of the world is holding its breath. “I would do it all over again, every last bit of heartache and terror, just to be here with you.”
There is a creature in Ilya's chest, a prowling, unsettled thing, matted down with rage and disappointment, held together with the cool grey thread of apathy and built with the stinging bones of misfortune. It has settled over the years, gone silent and watchful at moments, but has lurked, always and constantly, in the hollow of where his heart beats.
It is only ever soothed when he is with Shane.
“I do not have the words,” Ilya murmurs, lowering his head so that their foreheads are nearly brushing. “You have taken them straight from the center of me, moy lyubimyj. It would—I would not be myself if I did not have love for you strung through my soul.” His mouth curves up, even as Shane's face blurs through the tears. “You are my greatest—” He shakes his head, his hands drifting up, clad in the matching mittens of Shane. “If there is something that I was born to do, sweetheart, it was to love you.”
“Ilya,” Shane breathes out, a wretched, tenderhearted expression on his face. He looks as though Ilya has torn at the core of him, has unwound some great secret and pulled it into the light. He looks as though he is love made flesh, beautiful and mutable and ruinous.
You said my name and offered your hand, Ilya thinks, and oh, how many years have they bled for this honesty, for this peace, and I was lost.
“I did not know that love like this was possible,” Ilya confesses, blinking away his tears. “But, Shane Hollander, you have shown me the way.”
Shane whines, high and pained in his throat, and then his mittened hands are on Ilya's face, dragging him down to press kisses across his cold mouth, breathing love into his lungs.
I will love you forever, Ilya thinks, and tastes the salt of their tears, the sharp winter air warmed between them. I would offer my heart if I did not think it would upset you, would step before everything and anything that would harm you.
By the time they pull away from each other, they have spilled out of their cleared-off ice, their blades catching on the windblown snow.
Shane slides his arms around him, clinging as Ilya tips his head against Shane’s, clutching him back equally as hard. They're quiet, for a long, swollen moment, as Ilya watches the faint glow from the cottage windows, content with Shane in his arms.
“Sometimes,” Shane murmurs, as the wind picks up, the branches rustling, the wet thud of snow being knocked free spilling into the air every so often. “I think you're the only thing that kept me sane in those early years. It would've destroyed me, I think, to not have you.”
He laughs, his grip tightening, Ilya's arms gathering him closer in response. “I don't ever want to think about what would've happened if we hadn't, if we hadn't found each other.”
Ilya doesn't either. He suspects he would not have survived very long, that he would've become bloated with fear, with the slow leech of happiness pulled straight from his soul. He would have had his Sveta, and she would've been enough—to a point. He thinks eventually he would have bled out from his haunted wounds, from the ghost of hurt that lives inside his ribs, the soft mush of his heart smashed amongst the graves of his bones.
He doesn't need to tell Shane this. Shane already knows.
He wonders, sometimes, at just how fiercely Shane studied him, still studies him. He no longer thinks about it as an ending, though; instead, he wonders at what point they will know each other as best as they can; he wonders if there will ever be a day that he is not dazzled by the soft newness of love.
It's a strange, exciting feeling; he knows Shane better than anyone, and yet there is more to uncover, more layers to gently lift, as if gloved hands peeling apart onion skin paper, like the art cleaning Sveta once brought him to when they were bored in Boston; the static shock delight of watching age lift straight from the paint.
He treasures every moment shared between them, every new, trembling growth shoot that rises from the garden of love they are planting with their own capable hands. He hopes that by the time they are old, their hands are weathered with love, scarred with thorny devotion, and still soft, clasped together.
“It is good we will never know,” Ilya murmurs, inhaling the bittersweet tinge of smoke on the wind. “I would not want to imagine anything but you for my future, moy lyubimyj. We have worked hard to get here, no? Years of this—years of us. We have been unkind, and we have been sweet, and still, like you, I would never risk undoing a moment in greed; not when it would risk here. Not when it would risk now.”
“You're all I need,” Shane whispers, and Ilya can feel the anchor of love that has dragged them together cinching tight around them again. He leans into the pain, lets the sharp barbs pierce through; he would do the impossible to keep Shane at his side. Has done the impossible. Will always do the impossible. “I don't want to live without you by my side.”
“You won't,” Ilya rasps. It's a familiar vow, sworn with ease. “We will always have each other.”
Shane doesn't respond, leaning in, somehow impossibly closer, and Ilya closes his eyes.
Love, he has found, is a thing that sings with shattered creaking vowels, noise that is pulled straight from the pit of people; the grit of broken glass ground straight into open wounds.
It hurts to love so much, to be so loved in return.
It's painless, too, though, an easy thing; breath in his lungs—reflexive, automatic.
Simple as well, he knows. Warm. Two mismatched mittens, slipped onto cold hands.
They have taken quite a winding path to get here, he knows.
How far will you go for the Cup?, he can remember being asked, all the way back in his rookie year.
Even then, he had known his answer, and it was buried in the glint of wide brown eyes and beautiful freckles, a mouth set with stern obligation, disappointment creased across his brow; as far as I need to, he had answered, and had not added, until Shane Hollander notices me everytime without fail, until I consume his every thought, until I am all that stands between him and the prize he so desperately seeks and he is made to see me.
Now, he stands on a frozen lake under the cold light of a fading moon, the man he loves in his arms.
He breathes in.
He breathes out.
He thinks of that empty, hollow boy, the familiar taste of cigarettes in his mouth, the churning emptiness that had pooled in his stomach. He thinks of the sharp wind of Moscow, that cruel, heavy hand that had guided his every step, that solemn, dark shadow that spills into his veins; the heaviest gift his mother has ever given him.
He thinks too, of the way it had felt, to realize, out of the blue, that Shane had been serious, that he had been earnest and serious, and that there was nothing but kindness in the palm of his hand when they had shaken—twice, to be exact, because his beautiful, perfect husband is nothing more than a bundle of nerves.
Those long, lonely years that stretch out in their past; Ilya is so glad to put them behind him, so glad to be here. But he could not, would not, trade them for the world.
They are important, he knows, in the same way that he knew, when he met Shane's hesitant eyes, that everything was about to change.
How far will you go?, is not asked anymore. It's a useless question.
He has proven how far he will go and what he will do; anything, anywhere, anytime, so long as Shane is with him.
“You're my favorite person in the whole world,” Shane murmurs, slow and quiet, as if he's sounding out the words. Ilya can taste the devotion in his words, the burning ember of love that sits within him. “Je t'aime, Ilya. Ya tebya lyublyu. I love you, I love you, I love you.”
“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya echoes, his voice cracking with the weight of it, the honesty. “I love you, moy lyubimyj. Je t'aime, Shane.”
Overhead, the moon dips below the horizon, the dim light fading slowly, but neither of them moves, still spinning slowly on the ice, their whole world held fast between them.
They should go to bed soon; there are things to do with the holidays, and Sveta will be merciless with her teasing tomorrow, Ilya knows, but there is nothing that could tear him away, not here, not ever.
Shane draws his head down, and they’re kissing again, warm and familiar, love bright and shining between them, and Ilya—
Ilya has never been so blisteringly happy.
What a joy to be alive. What a beautiful thing to hold. What an honor to hold Shane's face in his hands and know that he is loved and able to love so fiercely in return.
I love you, Ilya thinks, and he doesn't care that he’s nearly crying again, his eyes damp. Shane is in his arms, and they are happy; there is nothing more that he could want for.
Shane pulls back.
“We should go in,” he whispers, a tiny secret breathed out just for Ilya. “It's late. We have so much to do tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Ilya says, and kisses him again, his mouth curling into a smile that makes their teeth clack as Shane grins back in return.
“We are being bad,” he murmurs into Shane's mouth. “My favorite thing with you.”
Shane laughs across Ilya's tongue, the vibrations searing into him as familiar heat crackles up his spine before he draws himself back.
“You're ridiculous,” he says, detangling them ever so slightly. He beams up at Ilya, his eyes crinkled, fierce joy and deep pleasure smeared across the curve of his lips, the jut of his chin. “C'mon, baby,” he says, skating a tight circle around him. “Let's go home.”
Ilya nods, words caught tight in his throat as Shane's face softens, tenderness bleeding through.
My home is you, Ilya thinks, and lets the contentment of having Shane unfurl across his skin. My home has always been with you.
Shane's hand catches his, and together, they turn and begin to skate home.