Chapter Text
⸻
SHANE
⸻
Here's the thing about Hayden Pike: he asks for favors the way other people announce natural disasters. Casually. Like the information is incidental and the catastrophe is already in motion and your participation is mostly a formality.
“Hey, so, funny thing,” Hayden said, which was how Shane knew immediately that it would not, in fact, be funny. Nothing Hayden categorized as funny ever was. Hayden thought puns were comedy. Hayden had once laughed for four minutes at a knock knock joke a six year old told him. Hayden’s threshold for humor was functionally subterranean.
“Jackie and I need a date night. Like, bad. Like, she’s going to leave me bad... Not really. Maybe. I don’t know. The point is - can you watch the twins Saturday?”
Shane’s brain, which operated at all times like an air traffic control tower staffed by a single very competent and slightly anxious man, immediately began processing.
The twins. Jade and Emerald. Age five. He’d met them. Multiple times. They seemed like perfectly functional small humans at Hayden’s barbecues and team events, where they existed in the background as cheerful, somewhat sticky accessories to Hayden’s personality. He'd never been alone with them. He'd never been alone with any child. He was an only child who’d spent his formative years in rinks and weight rooms and film sessions, not babysitting for pocket money like a normal person. His adolescence had been a straight line from birth to the NHL with essentially no detours through anything resembling ordinary life experience.
This was fine. This was manageable. Children were small. They had simple needs. They operated on clear inputs and outputs. Shane was excellent at systems.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “Of course.”
“Seriously?” Hayden sounded genuinely shocked, which was insulting. “You’re not gonna... I mean, you know it’s both of them, right? Not just one. Both. At the same time.”
“I understand how twins work, Hayden.”
“Do you, though?”
“Goodbye, Hayden.”
He hung up. Stood in his kitchen. Looked at the calendar. Saturday was in four days.
Four days was plenty of time.
Shane opened his laptop.
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.
Three hours later, he had a document.
It was not, he wanted to be clear, an overreaction. It was a preparation framework. It had structure. It had tabs. It had a color coded schedule with fifteen minute intervals and a contingency matrix for common disruption scenarios. He’d sourced it from a combination of three parenting blogs, one pediatric sleep study, and a chapter from a child development textbook he’d found a PDF of and read in its entirety. He’d cross referenced nap windows with nutritional timing and factored in a buffer for what Dr. Becky called “emotional deregulation events,” which Shane understood to mean tantrums and appreciated having a clinical name for.
He’d also ordered a whistle. For structure.
It arrived in two days with Prime shipping.
He held it in his hand and felt genuinely good about things.
⸻
ILYA
⸻
Shane had a binder.
Ilya was not surprised by this. Ilya had known Shane Hollander for long enough now that very little surprised him. Shane approached most things the way other people approached their taxes: with grim determination, meticulous documentation, and an unshakeable belief that if he simply organized hard enough, the universe would comply.
The universe, in Ilya’s experience, almost never complied. But it was one of the things he loved most about Shane, this furious, stubborn faith in the power of preparation. It was like watching someone build a very beautiful sandcastle and knowing the tide was coming and loving them for building it anyway.
Ilya was in Montreal for a few days. Off-season, loose schedule, no reason to be here except that Shane was here and Shane was the reason for most things Ilya did that didn’t involve hockey. He was sitting on Shane’s couch drinking tea and watching Shane stand at the kitchen island with the binder and a set of highlighters and an expression that suggested he was mentally preparing for a playoff series and not an afternoon with two kindergarteners.
“So,” Shane said, uncapping a yellow highlighter. He’d printed a schedule. A real one, on paper, with times and labels and a column marked CONTINGENCY. “I’m thinking we establish a routine within the first ten minutes. Set expectations early. If we control the tempo-”
“Shane.”
“-we can manage the energy levels and avoid a late afternoon crash, which all the research says-”
“Shane.”
“What?”
Ilya took a sip of his tea. “They are five.”
“Exactly,” Shane said, like this proved his point. “They don’t know what they’re doing. That’s why we need a plan.”
There was something almost beautiful about this logic. It was completely, perfectly wrong, but it was built with such conviction that Ilya didn’t have the heart to dismantle it. Shane had clearly been working on this for days. The binder had tabs. Tabs. With labels. Nutrition. Nap Protocol. Engagement Strategy. Emergency Contacts. There was a section titled Observations with blank pages, as though Shane intended to take field notes on children like a man documenting wildlife.
Ilya looked at the binder. Looked at Shane. Looked at the binder again.
“You have a whistle,” Ilya said.
It wasn't a question. There was a whistle on the counter, next to the binder, sitting on top of a neatly folded lanyard.
“For structure,” Shane said.
“You plan to blow a whistle at children.”
“Not at them. It’s a signalling tool. Transitions between activities. It’s in the-” he flipped to a tab. An actual tab. “-schedule. See? One short whistle means clean up. Two means snack. Three means-”
“Shane, Мой любимый,” Ilya said, gently, because someone needed to, “they will eat you alive.”
Shane looked up. His jaw set. That look. Ilya knew that look. That was the look Shane got when someone told him something couldn’t be done. It was a look that had won championships. It was magnificent. It was also, in this specific context, absolutely delusional.
“They’re five year olds, Ilya. Not terrorists.”
Ilya smiled into his tea.
They were going to be magnificent.
⸻
SHANE
⸻
The kit bag was essential.
Shane had packed it the night before Saturday, laid out on his bed like a surgical field. Ilya had watched from the doorway with his arms crossed and an expression of what Shane chose to interpret as admiration and not the quiet, devastating amusement it actually was.
Contents:
Wipes (primary).
Wipes (secondary).
Wipes (emergency third line).
Hand sanitizer, two bottles, different brands, because the parenting blog said some kids have skin sensitivities and Shane was not about to be caught unprepared for an allergy.
Snacks: sliced apple in a sealed container, crackers (plain, no salt), sultanas (nature’s candy, according to one blog; disgusting, according to Ilya, who had tried one and looked personally offended), and a banana.
Spare clothes. Not for the children. Hayden could provide those. For Shane. Because he’d read about spit up and he’d read about food throwing and he wasn't going to sit in someone else’s child’s fluids for three hours if he could avoid it.
The binder.
The whistle.
A notebook, pocket-sized, labelled Observations, with a pen clipped to its cover.
He stood back. Surveyed the bag. It was good. It was comprehensive. It was the bag of a man who was going to walk into a house containing two small humans and walk out having demonstrated a clear aptitude for childcare.
Behind him, Ilya said, “You have packed like we're going to war.”
“I’ve packed like someone who understands that preparation is the difference between success and failure.”
“We're watching children for three hours.”
“Anything can happen in three hours.”
“Yes,” Ilya agreed. “But mostly what will happen is they will cry and need snacks and we will be confused.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Ilya pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room. He was wearing jeans and a soft blue t shirt that was probably expensive but looked like he’d just grabbed whatever was closest, because that was how Ilya moved through the world. Like effort was something that happened to other people. He stopped behind Shane and rested his chin on Shane’s shoulder, looking down at the bag.
“You're nervous,” he said quietly.
“I’m not nervous. I’m prepared.”
“You are nervously prepared.”
Shane didn’t respond to that. He zipped the bag. Ilya’s arms came around his waist from behind, easy and warm, and Shane let himself stand in that for a moment. Just a moment. Because the truth was, and he wasn’t going to say this out loud, not to Ilya, not to anyone, barely even to himself... he didn’t know what he was doing. He'd never known less what he was doing. He'd prepared obsessively precisely because somewhere underneath all the tabs and the schedules and the color coding was a simple, stupid fear that he wasn't going to be good at this, and Shane Hollander didn't know how to be not good at things. His entire identity was built on competence. On excellence. On walking into a room and being the most capable person in it. He'd been that person since he was fourteen years old.
A five year old didn't care that he was the most capable person in the room.
A five year old didn't care about his preparation, his systems, his career, his carefully constructed sense of control.
A five year old was going to need something from him that he wasn’t sure he had.
He was terrified.
He was so terrified.
“Hey,” Ilya said, against his neck. Just that. Just hey. Like he could feel the exact shape of what Shane wasn’t saying.
“I’m fine.”
“I know you're fine. You're always fine. You are the most fine man in the world.” There was a smile in Ilya’s voice. His hand spread flat on Shane’s stomach. “But if you are not fine, that is also okay. We will be not fine together.”
Shane exhaled.
“What if I’m bad at it?”
It came out before he could stop it. Small and honest and nothing like the voice of a man with a binder and a whistle and a three phase contingency plan.
Ilya didn’t laugh. Didn’t dismiss it. Just held him and said, “Then you will be bad at it. And the children will survive. And we will learn. And next time you will be less bad.”
“That’s not exactly a motivational speech.”
“I'm not motivational. I'm honest.”
Shane turned in his arms. Looked at him. Ilya’s face was open and calm in that way it only ever was when they were alone. No performance, no sharp edges, no public persona. Just Ilya. Warm and steady and certain.
“Thank you,” Shane said.
“For what?”
“For not telling me the binder is stupid.”
Ilya’s mouth twitched. “The binder is a little bit stupid.”
“Ilya.”
“The whistle is very stupid.”
“We’re leaving in twenty minutes.”
“The tabs, Shane.”
“Twenty minutes!”
Ilya kissed him. Quick, warm, grinning. Then pulled back and said, with absolute sincerity: “You will be wonderful. The binder will not help you. But you will be wonderful.”
It was, against all odds, the most reassuring thing anyone had ever said to him.
⸻
ILYA
⸻
In the car, Shane drove and Ilya texted Jackie.
Ilya: On our way. He has a bag.
Jackie: Like a diaper bag?
Ilya: He calls it a kit
Jackie: Oh no
Ilya: There is a whistle
Jackie: Oh NO
Ilya: He has done research
Jackie: Ilya
Ilya: He read a pediatric sleep study
Jackie: ILYA
Ilya: For fun.
Jackie: I’m gonna die. I’m literally going to die.
Jackie: PLEASE do not let him blow a whistle at my children
Ilya: I make no promises
Jackie: You're the worst. See you in 20. I need help with my outfit btw
Ilya: Obviously. What are we thinking
Jackie: The green wrap dress?
Ilya: No.
Jackie: You didn’t even think about it
Ilya: I don't have to think about it. The shade of green is wrong for your skin in summer. We've discussed this
Ilya put his phone away and looked at Shane, who was gripping the steering wheel with the focus of a man driving into battle and not to a suburban house in Montreal’s West Island.
He loved this man.
He loved this ridiculous, over-prepared, tab creating, whistle purchasing, deeply terrified man who had read a sleep study because he was afraid of being inadequate in front of two small children. He loved that Shane’s fear of failure was so profound that it manifested as laminated schedules. He loved that Shane had packed three sets of wipes and called them lines, like they were a hockey formation. He loved that underneath all of it - the binder, the system, the contingency matrix - was just a man who wanted, badly, to be good at something new and didn’t know how to want that without also needing to be the best.
Ilya had no such fear. This wasn't because he was braver than Shane, or more naturally suited to children. It was because Ilya had learned a long time ago that you couldn't control how things went. You could only show up and be present and let the mess happen around you and respond to it in real time. Hockey had taught him that. Life had taught him that. Falling in love with the most controlled man in professional sports had really, definitively taught him that.
The children would be fine. Shane would be a disaster. It was going to be the best afternoon of Ilya’s life.
“Stop smiling,” Shane said, without looking at him.
“I'm not smiling.”
“I can feel you smiling.”
“I'm smiling because I'm happy,” Ilya said. “We are going to see children. Children are nice.”
“Children are unpredictable.”
“Yes. That is what makes them nice.”
Shane made a sound that communicated, very efficiently, that he disagreed with this philosophy at a molecular level.
Ilya went back to smiling.
They were going to be so bad at this.
He couldn’t wait.