Chapter Text
February, 2026
It was Ilya’s first time in Canada. It was his first time ever leaving Russia, to be honest. And of course it had to be in the middle of February, when absolutely nothing fun was ever going on.
And of course it had to be in Canada, the place where absolutely nothing fun was ever going on.
Ilya huffed an irritated breath as he stepped inside a warm coffee shop and out of the bitter, unforgiving cold that he really ought to be used to by now. After all, he was a professional figure skater. But Ilya still hated everything about the cold, from the way it made his eyes sting to the way it made his nose run to the way it flushed his cheeks.
Because Russians did not blush, and it was a fucking embarrassment.
He pulled down his scarf and scowled up at the menu, irritated by the fact that the line was so long that he could hardly read any of the small print.
Ilya had spent the past two and a half hours driving to the hotel being a whiny bitch, complaining about the cold and his own boredom. Basically, Ilya was being a miserable, bored, intolerable fuck, and his figure skating partner, Svetlana, had gotten sick of it.
That was how Ilya had found himself being sent out to get Svetulya a large mocha with extra whipped cream.
Ilya sighed grumpily as he yanked off his gloves and shoved them into the pocket of his coat, which he also unzipped. It was actually absurdly hot in the coffee shop compared to outside, and all the layers he was wearing were getting unbearably uncomfortable.
He huffed annoyedly, blowing up his caramel curls that stuck out from under his plain black toque.
Eventually, he got to the front of the line and ordered Svetulya’s mocha and a macchiato for himself. He scowled when the barista behind the counter brightly told him the wait would be twenty minutes.
“Of fucking course,” he muttered to himself in Russian as he moved to the side to wait.
He leaned against the back wall, his arms crossed as he practically glared around the warm, ambient room. The interior seemed to practically radiate an open warmth, not just from the heating. If it wasn’t practically hailstorming outside, Ilya might have appreciated the large, bright windows.
That was when his gaze caught on a man sitting near the back, at a small secluded table. His cheeks looked flushed even though he was in a warm-looking white and red fleece jacket, and he had turned his head purposefully away from Ilya.
Which told Ilya that this man had obviously been staring at him.
That wasn’t the only reason he caught Ilya’s eye, however: this man was the most absolutely stunning man he had ever had the luxury of seeing.
A corner of Ilya’s lips quirked up and he thought that his day might finally be taking a turn for the better.
Ilya pushed off the wall and made his way across the room, weaving through the various chairs, tables, and potted plants until he was standing across the table from the man.
“Good morning,” Ilya purred, his Russian accent rolling around the words like he knew he was hot.
The man’s warm brown eyes snapped up to Ilya’s face, wide with surprise. He was absolutely gorgeous with slightly tanned skin and a smattering of freckles across his blushing cheeks and the bridge of his nose, his soft lips slightly parted with surprise.
For a moment, Ilya was sure this man was an angel, because the constellations in the night sky must be modeled after his freckles.
“Uh... hi,” the man said cautiously, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“Is this seat taken?” Ilya asked, placing a hand on the back of the chair he was standing behind.
“Um... no,” the man finally admitted.
“Great,” Ilya said with a wide smirk, pulling the chair out and sitting. He seemed so comfortable as he leaned forward on an elbow, his eyes unashamed as his gaze danced all over the man, that he didn’t even have the chance to be shocked. “So, what is your name? Or should I just call you beautiful?”
The man across from him seemingly choked on the sip he had just taken from the paper coffee cup in his hands.
“Wh-what?” the man finally managed to splutter.
“I asked for your name, beautiful,” Ilya repeated, his smirk wide and mischievous.
“Y-you... what?” the man repeated, seeming bewildered.
Ilya could understand; he knew how famous he was, and the man across from him probably couldn’t believe how the fuck this was happening. But before he could say anything else, his name was called from the counter.
“Ah, that’s me,” he said, standing. He flashed the man a smile and said, “You should come to the Olympics on Sunday. You can just give them my name.”
The beautiful man, whose name Ilya didn’t know, finally smirked. “Oh, I’ll be there,” he said, his eyes sparkling with a joke Ilya wasn’t aware of.
But he didn’t care. The beautiful man was coming to the Olympics! That was all he needed. And so he smiled, winked, and turned away to grab his order and head back out the door.
He could feel the man’s gaze on him like a tangible thing the entire time.
Ilya found himself smiling, too buzzed with joy to care that his black jacket was unzipped and the cold winter air was seeping through the red Team Russia jacket he wore underneath, nor the fact that his gloves were still in his pocket.
He was still smiling when he knocked on Svetulya’s hotel room door, the room next to his on the twelfth floor.
“What the fuck took you so long?” she demanded in Russian, taking the paper cup he held out for her.
“Long line,” he said with a dismissive shrug as she let him into her room.
He flopped into one of the armchairs that wasn’t occupied by a series of sparkly costumes, makeup bags, and boxes of bobby pins and hairspray.
Svetulya eyed his relaxed smile. “Uh-huh, sure,” she said in a deadpan. Her gaze said she wanted him to elaborate. Ilya only took a sip from his own coffee until she rolled her eyes and sat on the end of her bed. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he said elusively.
“Chush’ sobach’ya,” she said sharply. Then her face brightened, and she leaned forward. “Was it a boy?”
Ilya wanted to scowl at her for coming to that conclusion so quickly, but the effect was ruined by the smile that made him bite his lip to try to conceal.
Svetulya squealed. “It is!” she clapped a hand to her coffee cup in her best attempt at applause. “So? Tell me about him! What’s his name? Did you get his number? What did he look like? Did he know you?”
Svetulya was the only person he had ever told about his being bisexual; everyone else in the whole world believed him to be straight, which was the only acceptable option in Russia. It was helpful that Ilya had a reputation for sleeping around with a lot of different women.
“I didn’t get his name, but I’m pretty sure he knew me. He looked very surprised when I approached him.” Ilya smirked at the memory of the beautiful man’s shell-shocked expression when Ilya asked to sit with him. “He had a very pretty face. And warm eyes. And soft hair. And adorable freckles.”
Svetulya threw back her head and cackled. “Il’ya vlyublon, Il’ya vlyublon!” she chanted teasingly.
“No I’m not!” Ilya countered, his face warming a bit as he tossed a stray bobby pin at his silly partner.
She only snickered and sipped her coffee, tossing the bobby pin in the general direction of the box that held the rest of them. It landed on the floor, not that either of them cared.
After a few moments of shared silence, Svetulya sobered and began to go over their schedule for the next few days. Ilya half-heartedly listened, already daydreaming about seeing the beautiful man in the crowds on Sunday.
“–we’ll be going first on Sunday, and we’ll need to change out of our costumes before we are allowed to reenter the audience. I think we’ll have enough time to watch Team Canada—they’re going last.”
“What’s so special about Team Canada?” Ilya asked, popping off the lid of his paper cup to throw back the last few dregs of his coffee.
Svetulya huffed a frustrated sigh. “Have you not been paying any attention to the media? Or what I’ve been saying?”
“Eh...” he said with another dismissive shrug.
Svetulya ran a hand over her face exasperatedly, groaning. “Team Canada is the team to beat this year. Not only is this their home country, but the pair is said to be unrivaled in talent.” When Ilya gave no sign of recognition, Svetulya glared at him. “Rose Landry and Shane Hollander? Pomnit’?”
Ilya nodded. “Yes, I think I’ve heard of them,” he said, crumpling his cup and tossing it into the trash bin. “But come on. They can’t be better than us.”
Svetulya rolled her eyes. “The entire skating world has pitted the two of us against the two of them, comparing us.” She glanced down at her phone. “I have to say, they are very pretty, though. Probably boring Canadians, but still pretty.”
She turned her phone around to show Ilya the photo of the Canadian figure skaters she was looking at, but Ilya had long since stopped paying attention. Instead, he had grabbed the remote for the television and began clicking around, looking for something interesting that was on.
Svetulya rolled her eyes and turned her phone back towards herself to scroll through articles about the figure skating pair they were up against.
In Rose Landry’s house, she and Shane were more or less doing the same. Rose was splayed out on the couch of her living room while Shane sat on the floor, leaning his back against the couch. Both of them were watching the television screen as previous competitions and performances of their rivals flashed by.
After a long moment of silence, Shane spoke.
“I met him,” he said quietly, almost too quiet to be heard over the roar of a crowd on the recording as Ilya Rozanov and Svetlana Vetrova held their entwined hands over their heads and bowed on screen.
“Who?” Rose asked semi-distractedly.
“Ilya,” he said. “Rozanov,” he added. “Ilya Rozanov,” he said, as if there was maybe a chance Rose didn’t understand him.
She was silent behind him, but he didn’t dare turn.
“I’m sorry, what?” she said after a beat.
On screen, Ilya was blowing kisses and laughing with Svetlana as they hugged.
“I met Ilya Rozanov,” Shane repeated.
“When?” Rose immediately demanded.
“When I, uh, went out for coffee,” Shane said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing dismally. “I was there for maybe, like, ten minutes when I looked up to see him leaned against the back wall. And then he saw me and came over and asked to sit with me.”
He heard how bewildered he sounded, even though he was the one recounting the whole ordeal to his partner and best friend. As if he still couldn’t believe it had happened.
“He what?” Rose asked, sitting up from where she was lounging on the couch, her eyes wide.
Shane finally twisted to meet her gaze, nodding. “Yeah.”
Rose blinked a few times like she was trying to get her brain to process what it was hearing. “Oh… kay… okay…” she said slowly, gently reclining back onto the couch while she rolled one of the strings of her hoodie between her fingers.
“He, um… he didn’t seem to know who I was,” Shane said slowly, trying not to shock his partner any more than he already had.
Her gaze snapped to his eyes with a slight frown. “Then why’d he come up to you?” she asked.
Shane shrugged. Then he paused. “I… think he was flirting with me,” he said at last.
Rose snorted in a way she would only ever do in front of Shane. “Yeah, sure,” she said, believing Shane to have been joking. But then she saw his face, and she froze. “Wait… actually??”
Shane nodded. “Pretty sure,” he said.
“What did he say?” she asked, sitting up again.
“Well, uh.” Shane giggled at the memory of Ilya Rozanov leaning over the table, his piercing blue eyes bright with mischief as some of his brown curls that had escaped his toque framed his face. “He said something like, ‘What’s your name? Or should I just call you beautiful?’”
Rose had crossed her legs under herself as she listened, but now she toppled back onto her side, cackling.
“What’d you say?” she asked when she finally came up for air.
Shane spluttered similarly to how he had during his brief conversation with Ilya. “What do you think I said?” he asked in a high-pitched voice.
“Yeah, nevermind, forget I asked that,” Rose said, waving her hand in the air like she was brushing away the topic. “And yeah, he was definitely flirting with you.”
“No shit,” Shane deadpanned. “I’m not that fucking stupid.” Rose snickered. “Oh, shut up!”
Shane stood and made his way to Rose’s kitchen, where he grabbed a ginger ale out of the fridge for himself. He grabbed a small bag of Skinny Pop popcorn for Rose along the way, which he tossed to her when he got back.
“Ooh, thanks!” she said brightly, immediately popping open the bag.
They were silent for a minute, half-listening to the commentators talking about Ilya and Svetlana as they cleared the ice onscreen.
And then Shane spoke. “He, uh, he invited me to the Olympics.”
Rose chuckled. “No, yeah, he definitely did not know who you are. What did you say?”
“I said I would be there,” Shane said with a smirk. “And then he winked at me and left.”
Rose shook her head. “He’s a weird one.”
“I’ll say…”
Shane neglected to mention how he actually was a bit excited to see Ilya.
After another long pause, Rose asked, “So. Was he as hot in person as he looks on TV?”
Shane snorted, which was unfortunate because he had been in the middle of a sip of his ginger ale. He coughed painfully while also laughing, which only made Rose laugh behind him.
“I’ll take that as a yes!” she exclaimed between fits of giggles.
“Way better in person,” Shane said, still gasping.
Rose cackled. “I like to hear it.”