Work Text:
“You want eggs or…”
Ilya waves his hand at him in a way that probably means he wants eggs. Shane cracks four into a bowl, whisking. He’s supposed to see his PT today. He has a feeling he’s one injury away from a Serious Conversation about his career. His mom’s been trying to get him to consider that this might be his last season. Shane already knows it is. He just has to accept it before he tells anyone else.
When he steps out of the kitchen with Ilya’s four-egg omelette, he has a very blank look on his face. “Ilya…?”
His husband is holding his phone listlessly in his hand, and he doesn’t seem to hear Shane. He’s just looking into nowhere, face still, carved out of stone. Christ, he always looks good.
“Hey, Ilya…”
“Eggs,” Ilya says, almost sounding like himself. He turns back to Shane as if he never went anywhere at all. He reaches out a hand, scrunches it up. “Gimme, gimme.”
Shane laughs. “Okay, okay.” He hands Ilya his breakfast and hovers. “What happened while I was cooking?”
“Hm?” Ilya is eating, but it looks like a chore for him, which it never does. He shovels one forkful in, mechanically, and then another, on autopilot. He hasn’t said mm yummy eggs while doing his little shoulder wiggle even once, which is how Shane knows it’s serious.
“Come on. You think I’m dumb?”
“No, no.” Ilya swallows, and puts his fork down. He says, very evenly, “My brother has died.”
That lands like an anchor. “Oh, wow.”
“Yes. Very wow.” Ilya puts his plate down, half-finished. Shane doesn’t like the stillness that’s come over him, the rigidity in his shoulders. “I will go home in two days. The funeral is on Saturday.”
“That’s—” Soon, Shane thinks, but maybe it isn’t. It’s only Monday. He will leave on Wednesday, probably arrive sometime Thursday. “Okay. When will you be back?”
“Next Monday, probably. Or, I will fly on Monday, but I will be back on Tuesday.” Ilya looks up at him, eyes dull and certain.
“Is it… safe?”
Ilya shrugs. “I talked to Svetlana. I am not so famous anymore, and my Russian passport does not have your last name on it.”
“Okay.”
“I will be fine.”
“Okay.” He sounds like an idiot. Okay, okay. And then he asks, “Do you want to go home?”
It’s like that night in Vegas over a decade ago. Do you want to go home? Do you like it there? Is it safe? Sometimes Shane feels like a baby.
Ilya says, “I have to go.”
“You haven’t spoken to your brother since the last time you were in Russia. You don’t have to go.”
“I am the only man in the family now,” Ilya says. He stands up, then, picks up his plate, all that muscle brought to bear on this problem. Shane sighs. “Lara needs me there.”
Shane has no idea who Lara is, but he can guess. He knows Ilya has a niece, too, Alexei’s daughter. That’s pretty much all he knows.
He puts his hand on Ilya’s forearm, just to feel him. Sometimes it hurts him how bad he loves Ilya, the intensity of it, like it’s something too big to fit inside his body. And the shape of Ilya’s jaw, set and certain, in some kind of hurt that’s more complicated than grief but is still grief— fuck, but it hurts to look at. He wants to fix it so bad. He wants to reshape the world for him. Shane kisses his cheek, and the corner of his mouth. “You want me to come with you?”
“No, no,” Ilya says, shrugging him off. Shane’s hands feel cold. “You have game on Thursday. No need to miss it.”
My brother-in-law just died, Shane thinks, but Ilya’s always been this way. Always kept Russia far away from their relationship, as if he wanted to forget all about it, pretend that whole hemisphere never existed. As if Ilya doesn’t sometimes drive an hour out of his way to the Eastern European grocery store just to speak Russian and buy little snacks he doesn’t need.
“All right,” Shane says, “just— just kiss me, at least.”
Ilya smiles at him. He looks so fucking good when he smiles, like the goddamn sun. Ilya kisses him, eyes closed, all romance, and gives him another peck on the cheek and walks away. The kind of intimacy that expects welcome, that expects another chance. Every day of his life Shane thinks that being with Ilya is the kind of luck he can’t afford to waste.
Ilya lands at nine in the evening local time, which is one in the afternoon on Thursday. Game day. Shane has been drinking so much electrolyte water he’s pissing pretty much every hour on the hour, which is normal enough. He checks his phone after the afternoon warmup skate, but Ilya still hasn’t texted him.
He hits the gym—nothing too excessive, just keeping his muscles moving before the game. He wants to finish before three so he can have an hour to recover and think about plays, run over the passes he’ll make. Haas is wearing the C tonight, but Shane still takes winning personally.
Ilya calls him. He sounds tired over the phone, looks tired—still gorgeous, but tired—when they video call.
Even the looming night of a game isn’t enough to distract him from the memory of Ilya’s voice. He misses him so bad. Is it normal to miss someone this bad when they’ve been gone for 24 hours?
The rest of the weekend goes like that, pretty much. Shane skates, and hurts, and worries about Ilya. He drinks his protein shake as if that will save him from the fact that he just doesn’t have enough cushioning between his knee bones to keep him safe anymore. He puts ice on everything and does his PT exercises religiously and still hurts because he’s playing professional hockey at thirty-three fucking years old.
Mom makes him go to a concert the night of Alexei’s funeral. “Does he want you to be available for him?” she asks, genuinely asking, and Shane shakes his head because of course not. “Well, then. You should do something to take your mind off it, because otherwise you’re going to be glued to your phone like a teenager.”
Shane was actually glued to his phone from ages 21 to 24, but he gets the idea. Anyway, they go to the symphony.
Shane reads through the entire program before they start. The conductor got a degree in Switzerland. Shane didn’t even know conducting was something you could get a degree in. The first violinist is from Prince George but studied at the RCM. He studies the shape of their shoulders, their forearms, looks at the way they all walk onto the stage carrying their instruments. He knows people who play at this level usually started studying music as little kids. He knows people probably have to do exercises—workouts, maybe?—to condition their muscles and joints for certain instruments. Maybe in another life he would’ve been a musician.
And then the music starts, and it’s— he doesn’t know how to say it. It’s a whole different animal from the shit they play on the ice when they score goals, different from the national anthems, different from what Dykstra cues up on road trips. This is the kind of thing Shane wishes he had the vocabulary for. All he can think of is the moment between the tunnel and the ice, between the roar of the arena and the shuddering emptiness in his ears afterwards, the post-game high of being all lit up inside, and the fact that Ilya is in fucking Moscow. He feels all of that, all at once.
When he checks his phone after the concert, Ilya is texting him. Still texting him, even though it’s six in the morning for him. Shane scrolls up to see i give up all of russia for you and his eyes burn.
For the rest of that weekend they keep missing each other. He texts, Ilya texts him back the next day. Shane replies again and Ilya takes another four hours to reply. They call, briefly, the day before Ilya’s flight, just to say I love you, and then Ilya is in the air and Shane is counting down the hours until he can pick him up.
What he learned, this weekend, is that he fucking loves hockey. Everything he is can only be understood through hockey. He still wants to be the best so bad it hurts. But then there’s Ilya, who is beyond even hockey. If Shane was already retired, he could have gone to Russia with him. Or at least it would’ve been an option on the table.
He doesn’t know. Maybe he didn’t learn anything this weekend. All he learned is that he missed Ilya like a snapped tendon, all the other muscles compensating just to make up for the absence, everything twisted the wrong way. He doesn’t think he can train this kind of ache out of himself.
Shane picks Ilya up at seven in the morning on Tuesday. “Hi,” Shane says, getting out of the car to help Ilya put his suitcase in the trunk, despite Ilya’s protests.
Shit, he looks good. Shane looks over at him in the passenger seat, the reflection from the side mirrors lighting up his face.
“You look like a dream,” Ilya says, voice low and rumbling, gorgeous. He smiles that devastating little half-smile.
Shane nods. “Yeah. You too.” And he kisses him there, right in the pickup line, before driving off.
He feels… settled. He didn’t know what it was to feel settled before he brought Ilya to the cottage six years ago. He exhales, lets Ilya kiss his wrist, all up his forearm. Here he is, driving on a sunny Tuesday morning with the love of his life in the car. He doesn’t need to know what to say next.
Ilya says, “I want to tell you something.” And then, after a second, he adds, “I don’t want you to say anything. I just want to tell it to you. Is it okay?”
Shane really thinks about it. Can he listen to something without saying a thing in reply? No matter what? But yeah, of course he can. For Ilya he can. “Sure,” Shane says, swallowing a croak in his throat. “Go ahead.”
Ilya grips his hand, thumb running over Shane’s index finger. Shane drives, quiet, doesn’t turn on the radio. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Ilya look at himself in the side mirror.
Eventually, Ilya says, “He hurt me for so long.”
Ah, fuck. Shane presses his palm into Ilya’s, and waits.
“I hated him for so long,” Ilya says, that voice rumbling through the car. Shane looks back at the road, so he doesn’t run them into a ditch chasing after Ilya’s cheekbones, his eyes, his mouth, chasing after the chance to make him smile. Christ. “My father, too, I hated. But… I wish they were still alive. I wish I didn’t have to hate them anymore. I wish I hadn’t left them.”
Shane drives. He can hear that Ilya is quietly crying, a wetness to his breath. He looks at the road under the pink sky, clearing as the sun rises higher.
“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya says in one harsh breath, “I wish I hadn’t left them behind.”
Shane really— but he can’t— so he doesn’t let himself think of anything to say. He just squeezes his hand, and Ilya clutches back desperately, just as hard, and Shane blinks fast so his tears don’t blur the road.
“What is that?” Ilya asks. Menacingly.
Shane looks around their kitchen. “What is what?”
“This.” Ilya shakes his collagen powder. “New protein?”
“Oh my god. It’s collagen, you freak.”
Ilya narrows his eyes. He looks genuinely dangerous. Shane’s getting kind of hard, which is really embarrassing but par for the course in this relationship. “Not… meal replacement?”
Ah. There goes Shane’s boner.
“I’m eating fine,” Shane snaps. As if he’s a fucking child. As if he can’t follow all the nice little suggestions on the nice little printouts from the nice little therapist. As if he’s scared of solid food. As if he’ll die at the sight of an Oreo.
Ilya comes closer, warm at his side, presses a kiss to his neck. Shane sighs. “I only worry,” he murmurs, and Shane settles. He knows that. “First time you are alone in the house for so long since therapy, ah? And I have never seen this… callogen.”
“Bood recommended it after the Thursday game.” Shane shakes it off. His stomach is still tight, paranoid, but Ilya is here. “It’s collagen.”
“Oh,” Ilya says, and then he reaches his hands up and Shane fucking knows what’s next— he pulls his arms in, trying to protect his armpits, but Ilya reaches in and tickles. Tickles! “English word, Hollander,” Ilya says, while Shane gasps for air, laughing. “So difficult, take pity.”
“You’re— hey!” Shane pushes him away. “You’re such a child!”
“No, I am not a child, I am so handsome man—” and Ilya presses Shane up against the counter, laughing too, and Shane can’t do anything except let Ilya kiss him and kiss him, all light.
Eventually, softer, Ilya says, “I think you got more handsome while I was away.”
Shane blinks up at him. He’s sure he can guess what he looks like—starry-eyed, in love. Ilya brushes some of Shane’s hair out of his forehead and Shane wants to cry. “No, I think it was you,” he whispers back, holding Ilya’s jaw in his hand, warm against his palm. “I think you got more beautiful while I wasn’t looking.”
“Then we should see each other every day,” Ilya murmurs into Shane’s throat, ducking his head, and Shane holds him. “All day every day, so we don’t miss it.”
“Yeah.” Shane’s voice is hoarse. “How’d I get so lucky, huh?”
Ilya shakes his head. Shane holds his breath and listens, and there, in the quiet, is just a little hitch of a breath— a little collapse.
“Hey,” Shane whispers, “you okay?”
“Yes,” Ilya grits out, rubbing his face against Shane’s shoulder in a way that makes it really fucking obvious he’s wiping tears away. He clears his throat. “I’m fine.”
And then he looks up at Shane, eyes red but clear, mouth firm, and that— the tenacity of it, or the love in it, or maybe the tightness in his stomach that hasn’t really gone away, or maybe the heavy feeling of living through to the other side of grief, through to the rest of your life, the rest of Shane’s life here and looking right at him— whatever it is, Shane starts crying.
“Hey,” Ilya says, shushing him, thumb wiping tears away and then getting soaked by the next ones, “hey, collagen boy, what is wrong?”
Shane shakes his head, laughs a little at collagen boy, and cries some more, and then that sets Ilya off— and there the two of them are, pressed up tight against each other in the kitchen, crying. Just like that night when Ilya said he loved Shane, foreheads pressed against each other’s. Does it kill you too? Shane didn’t know it could get worse, but here, six years later, he feels even more of it. All full up with love.
“Love you,” Shane murmurs. Ilya grips him tighter, so tight it hurts, mouth pressed so hard against Shane’s neck that he expects a bruise just from the blunt force of it.
Ilya rocks him. Shane closes his eyes and holds him. There’s nothing to be said, nothing to be done. All there is is the truth, which is that they’re in it together.
Later that day, in the afternoon just before sunset, Ilya massages Shane’s calves. He has another game tomorrow. The state of him can’t possibly be shocking to Ilya, who always played a nastier game than Shane did. This is probably why Shane is still playing while Ilya can barely get out of bed some days.
But still Ilya rubs gently over Shane’s bruises, takes care with the soles of his feet. Shane watches him. He remembers the way Ilya played with cracked ribs, the purple on his shoulders every season. Knives on his feet.
Shane loves hockey so much it burns like thorns pressed up against the inside of his skin. He wishes they didn’t love it. He wishes they loved other things like sitting in ergonomic chairs at the Treasury Board of Canada. But no. They love their violence.
“You are a good fighter,” Ilya says proudly, pushing Shane’s sweatpants up to reveal the nasty bruising just above his knee. He got that last week when one of the Guardians enforcers checked Haas hard, and Shane was the closest man there. He’d gotten a stick to the thigh, but he’d given back just as good. He liked that fight, and likes thinking of Ilya watching it with grim pride, like a king watching his knight on the battlefield.
Ilya outlines the shape of the bruise with his index finger. “I think we are lucky to be old,” he says out of nowhere.
Shane snorts. “We’re thirty-three. That’s not even middle-aged.”
Ilya shrugs. “Did you ever think you would become thirty-three?”
Shane thinks on that. Maybe a little. In the background, vaguely, he knew it would come soon enough, in the hazy nothing-world of after-the-MLH. “I thought I’d have a wife,” he says, feeling a little nauseous.
He remembers Rose. He loves Rose so much, can’t imagine what his life would be like if she hadn’t sat him down and talked some sense into him. But the actual nights— Jesus. His stomach roils. It wasn’t so much that it was bad, although it was bad. It wasn’t even that he felt bad for Rose, although he did. It was just— the whole thing, the entire thing was humiliating. It was like he’d been stripped naked and shoved out onto the ice, expected to play.
“I thought I would be dead,” Ilya murmurs, and Shane reaches for his ankle to hold him. He knows this already. It’s not a shock. But still, every time, he thinks— I might have been a widower. Even if you’d died before we’d been married, I would have been a widower. Shane grips that ankle, tethers Ilya to life.
Ilya pulls Shane’s sweats down again, covering the bruise. He thumbs over Shane’s shin, the little white line where Shane took a skate blade through his pants during a bad practice three years ago.
“When I saw him for the last time he was thirty-one. Younger than we are. And he was still fucked up all the way until he died.”
Shane swallows. “Your brother.”
“Yes, my brother.” Ilya looks at Shane’s shin and Shane looks at Ilya’s curls, head bent down to look at Shane, to love him. “I think I am lucky to be different from him.”
“It’s not luck,” Shane says. “You did it yourself. You worked hard for it.”
Ilya pauses. And then he looks up, meets Shane’s eyes. In the orange light of five PM he looks made of fire. Haloed in light.
Ilya tells him something in Russian, and Shane’s Russian is good, but not spectacular. And, mostly, Shane is distracted by the fact that he gets to look at him. For nine years their eyes cut away from each other, nine years they pretended they didn’t want to look. A whole career of being afraid to look in the locker room and in the showers, a whole career built on not looking away from the puck, a whole life built because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Scott fucking Hunter’s kiss in 2017 even though he knew he was being obvious as all hell, but he just had to risk it anyway—
And now he gets to look. Easy as anything. Ilya, shoulders rounded with gentleness. Grief doesn’t exist on the rink. It’s too bright, too clean, too public for that. But even though Ilya is brighter than all that, brighter than arena lights, lit like a hero in the setting sun— even in the sunlight grief exists. Even in brightness. Even in Ilya. Next to love, next to joy. How can he hold all of that? How did Shane get so fucking lucky?
“You were not paying attention, were you,” admonishes Ilya.
No, he wasn’t. Shane shakes his head.
“Too busy looking at me.”
I promise to see all the true things inside you for the rest of our lives. “Yeah,” Shane says, throat clicking. “I like looking at you.”
“Because I am so handsome.”
“Yeah,” Shane laughs, chest cracking open a little, easing. “‘Cause you’re so handsome.”
Ilya goes back to rubbing his left thumb over the ball of Shane’s foot, right hand occupied with scrolling through his phone. Shane pokes his thigh with his toe. “Tell me again,” he says. “What you said in Russian. Let me try again.”
Slowly, carefully, Ilya sounds out: “Мне в холодной землянке тепло. От моей негасимой любви.”
Shane thinks it over. “I’m warm… underground? Where it’s cold? Because of…” and he flushes. “Because of your love?”
“Close, yes,” Ilya says gently, accommodatingly. Sometimes Shane thinks Ilya is so good at accommodating him. The least Shane can do is fit his life around Ilya’s shape. “It is a poem. Old poem, from the 1940s. Difficult to translate poems. Ah… I am warm in the cold bunker. From your…” and Ilya types something on his phone, looks at it for a hard moment. He mouths the word to himself. And then he looks back at Shane, those eyes so warm on him: “Your inextinguishable love.”
Shane rubs his hand over Ilya’s ankle, trying to warm him. “Yeah,” he says, thinking of it. And then he rearranges so he can kneel, can bend over to kiss Ilya’s ankle bones, the inside of his fucked knee, his hip bone. Head in Ilya’s lap, Ilya’s hand in his hair, Shane says: “Inextinguishable is exactly it. No matter what happens, I’ll still love you.”
“It is better in Russian,” Ilya says. Shane nods, because that’s probably true. And he says, softly: “негасимой.”
Shane tries to say it. He sounds out the vowels. “Negasimoy,” he tries.
“Yes, мое пламя.” Ilya’s voice is all warmth, all love.
Shane closes his eyes. “Your flame,” he says, a promise.