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Ottawa is strange without Shane. Ilya always knew this would be the reality most of the time when they made this plan. Closer to Montreal is not inside of Montreal, and though Shane is with him, and he is with Shane so much of the time that if he could drag the Ilya of twelve months ago into the future and tell him it was not enough, he would be struck down by him for his terrible greed, Ilya has no trouble finding the time to miss him.
If Ilya is honest, the only reason he leaves the house Shane found for him to rent, "I do not want to buy houses without you," Ilya had cajoled at the time, though he could see Shane's itchy real estate brain fighting not to be charmed by him, is to have something interesting to tell his lover at the end of their days apart. "I laid in bed, and then worked out, and then went back to bed," is not what Ilya wants to admit to with his phone propped up against the flour jar in his kitchen during their FaceTimes.
So Ilya walks. On game days, when he should be available to this new team that voted him captain on reputation alone, he disappoints them. Ilya leaves between morning skate and rink time, only three numbers allowed to get through his do-not-disturb. Two of those, Boodran, his new alternate captain, and Weibe, his new coach, are there only because Ilya is hyper aware of the consequences of not living up to the bare minimum that will keep him in Canada on a work visa.
If he brought it up to Yuna and Farah, they would tell him that no, he cannot be gotten rid of so easily, not with his contract and the no trade provision, but Ilya feels an itch in his hands when he considers that he does not have to try very hard at all that keeps him from asking for that kind of assurance. Let alone how Shane would look at him. It is unthinkable. On days that contain only a practice, no games, he walks for hours, until he finds something interesting enough that he is allowed to go back home.
Today is neither. Ilya walks into a bookstore almost by accident, coming in from the cold. He claps his hands and knocks the snow from his boots, and does not jump when a voice comes from the desk set far enough back from the door not to get wind blown on when the door opened. "Anything I can help you find?"
Ilya looks, actually looks, at where he is and almost walks right back out-- book people do not often think he is very smart in the places where they congregate, as if he cannot read because he speaks with heavy vowels in two languages, and Ilya does not have the patience today. But the man was not rude, and Ilya feels a little look leveled at him from the Shane Hollander who lives at the base of his skull and likes to bitch at him right next to his ear. There's no need to be rude back. Ilya knows how to smile.
"You have Russian section?" he asks, and the man bobs his head to the side in that peculiar way some people have where they are laughing at their own private joke.
"As a matter of fact," the man gets up, spry considering he has white hair and more wrinkles than Scott Hunter's ancient ball sack, and walks right past Ilya and into the yellow light lit shelves. He doesn't look back, a man used to being followed by people who wander into bookstores while he talks, "--used to shelve by genre then language, but no one could put things back right," Ilya takes an extra hop step to catch up in time to hear him finish the thought, taking his gloves off and tucking them into his jacket pocket so his fingers do not stay too stiff to touch old pages, "so I did put them back in their own section a few years back, once Vassy wasn't here to give me hell over it." He winks at Ilya conspiratorially and stops in front of two shelves taller than both of them. "Anything in particular, or just a taste of home?"
Ilya shrugs, his mind catching on the name. "Vassy?"
"My wife." Ilya regrets the question for a moment when he sees the old man's eyes go far away, but the old man grins at him, "Vasilisa. She ran this shop like a navy ship, and I would know." and Ilya remembers that this is a thing people like to do sometimes, to talk about people they have lost, even to strangers. It feels impossible, but he can be a polite boy too.
"She is Russian," is-- stupid of him, but the old man nods, "like the fairy tales. So she must have been a wise woman."
The man bobs his head again but Ilya watches his age come back to him, shoulders rounding as the reality of the past tense catches up to his pride in his stubborn, beautiful Russian wife. "She married me, so," his teeth click, "jury's still out." The phrase is unfamiliar, but the clap on Ilya's arm is not, "Ah, well. You take a look through, let me know if you need anything, son."
Ilya is left in the shelves as the old man retreats back to his desk, blessedly out of sight while Ilya has his little moment of crisis. It is not fair. Canadians are too familiar. Ilya knows this; he has heard it too often lately from David, never from Yuna, not that he has been listening for it. He is not this old Canadian bookseller's anything, not even his customer yet. Ilya does not even know his name, but perhaps, he reasons, it is not the worst thing in the world to remind an old man of his dead wife. Everything that reminds Ilya of home is dead too.
He turns to the books. Some strain in the backs of his eyes relaxes at the sight of Cyrillic on the spines. It would be rude not to take his time to look. Ilya does not have to buy anything, but he knows that will not happen, even if the only books on the shelf are three hundred editions of the same six Dostoevsky novels every pretty girl with glasses wants to make sure he knows she read in college. Vasilisa the Bookseller had better taste than that, Ilya finds.
The books are old. The sort of old that brings to mind night school English lessons, pictures to match with synonyms, the difference between "used" and "antique". These are antique, Ilya thinks, most of them. He thumbs through an outline of philosophy published in 1907 with crisp pages that feel almost burnt against his fingers and wonders if it is something his father would have read in school forever ago. A slim copy of "White Nights" is pried from between two thick volumes, Dostoevsky is inescapable, and Ilya feels a sort of thrill at how bad reading it would have made him feel less than two years ago. He turns it over in his hands and considers the pull in his chest. Puts it back.
Ilya spends too long just staring at spines, and is startled when the bell above the door, invisible from where he's tucked into the stacks but not so far away really, dings and a woman greets the old man, "Afternoon, Gordon," in a high, windswept voice. Gordon. The name settles somewhere in Ilya's throat, and he feels a fervent rush of wishing Sveta were with him in this little bookshop so her voice might sound right to Gordon when they say goodbye to him.
He almost grabs "White Nights" again, but he squats down instead to the low shelves where, of course, he finds the children's books perfectly displayed for little eyes. Народные русские сказки. Russian Fairy Tales. There are a few editions, but Ilya finds the one he wants instantly, as if it was waiting for him. He remembers his mama's voice reading titles for him to pick from. "Snegurochka. The Magic Swan Geese. The Death of Koschei the Immortal."
"Ivan," Ilya remembers crowing for, "Tsarevich Ivan!" and getting the same handful of tales over and over. He flips the book open and immediately it falls to one of those flat, colorful pictures of Ivan Tsarevich pulling a feather from a firebird, and Ilya cannot touch it. He wants to snap the book shut, but he forces a breath through his nose and closes it gently, two hands on the cover when he straightens up and rolls his shoulders back.
Gordon greets him at the counter with a head bob and holds his hand out for the book. Ilya does not want to give it to him, but it is a reality of transaction that he must, so he does. Gordon taps the cover with a thin finger before opening it to the title page to inspect the price written in pencil in the corner. Ilya hadn't even checked. Gordon uses a calculator to tally up the sales tax and writes it out on a page from a pad of receipts. "Cash or card?"
"Cash."
The number is higher than Ilya expects, but it is not too much. Gordon asks if he wants a bag, and Ilya nods. He does not want the weather to touch it. "Thank you, Gordon." Ilya shouldn't know his name, has been introduced, but Gordon does not think he is stupid. Ilya likes him. It is almost painful, how much Ilya likes him.
"You're very welcome, Mister Rozanov." Stress on the second syllable. Ilya doesn't know what's on his face. Something terrible, he expects, but Gordon just bobs his head and pats his arm. "Glad to have you on the team, son. Come back anytime."
Ilya grabs the bag by the twisted paper handles and does not bother putting his gloves back on. "I will." He says, and flees. The cold hits him like a wall, but he thinks he will need to find another interesting thing to tell Shane tonight, so he keeps walking.
-
Thereat was Ivan Tsarevich glad. He spent two nights in the tent, and he found favour in the eyes of Marya Morevna, and she married him. The fair Tsarevna, Marya Morevna, carried him off into her own realm.
They spent some time together, and then the Tsarevna took it into her head to go a warring. So she handed over all the house-keeping affairs to Ivan Tsarevich, and gave him these instructions:
‘Go about everywhere, keep watch over everything; only do not venture to look into that closet there.’
-
Ilya finds a coffee shop with three floors of tables, and it is not much, but when he tries to describe how many odd, lonely people were there, "Like they never leave. So many cups and they are all empty. Everyone just," he makes a tek tek tek sound and waggles his fingers, "like zombie," Shane snorts.
His hand jerks when he laughs, pulling the camera in closer to his forehead. He is propped up on so many pillows Ilya knows he had to have asked for extra to be brought up from room service so he could elevate his knee and still have enough to keep him upright.
Pulled so close, the camera quality sharpens and Ilya can see the dark circles under Shane's eyes. He tuts. "How is your knee, Hollander?"
Shane pulls the phone back, and Ilya catches the movement of one hand going under the opposite elbow to prop it up in the air, "Tweaked it, but I'm cleared. I'll be cleared." Shane's jaw shifts down, opening his throat without opening his mouth.
"You are tired." Ilya tries to keep his voice steady. It isn't Shane's fault to be so busy. It is kind of him to carve out this space for Ilya at all when he has been working so hard all day.
There is a moment when he thinks Shane might lie to him, and Ilya thinks he would let him to stay on the line, but Shane nods. He looks guilty. "I am." If Ilya were on a better team, he would be too. It is a despicable thought. Ilya squashes it. One day off was normal in Boston, it can be normal in Ottawa. But perhaps Ilya hadn't let them be days off, not really. He did not even go down to the shiny new gym he'd made of the guest room to run or lift or anything that would make him better. That would make him hurt.
"Go to sleep, Shane."
"Ilya--"
"You need me to read you folk stories like a baby? Sleep." Ilya brings his own phone close, lips next to the microphone and word drawn out so his voice will rumble in Shane's ears. He pulls the phone back in time to see Shane shiver with it, and that is worth smiling over. "I will talk to you tomorrow, yes? After you win."
"You don't know--"
"I know." Ilya cuts him off. "You will win. I will be here." It comes out funny. Shane's t-shirt stretches over his chest with the breath Ilya thinks is coming before a reproval for sounding so weak, but Shane just lets the breath out. The fabric relaxes.
"I love you." Shane's voice tips up in a question.
Ilya's is steady, an answer. "I love you." He brings the camera to his lips once in a quick, smack of a kiss, and presses the button to hang up before he does something that will ruin Shane's rest.
The house is quiet.
Ilya lays on his couch-- their couch, he should be thinking of it as, with his feet pointed toward the arm rest on the opposite side and his phone on his chest. The couch is too long for the space he has, but he'd wanted something he and Shane could lay down on like they had at the cabin, toes touching. Just him, it feels massive. It could swallow him whole.
He wants Shane.
He wants his mother. It's so stupid. Ilya thinks it in head, then says it out loud into the open, empty air of his rented house. "It's so stupid."
Ilya's limbs feel heavy. He has been strong enough to lift his own body weight for decades, but the idea of gathering up enough momentum to swing his legs onto the floor, to god forbid, stand up and walk to the empty bed he did not make that morning because Shane would not be home to see it, feels utterly impossible.
His back will ache tomorrow at practice. Maybe he deserves it. At least some part of him will have evidence that he did any work at all.
-
Then Koschei entreated Ivan Tsarevich, saying, "Have pity on me and give me a drink! Ten years long have I been here in torment, neither eating nor drinking; my throat is utterly dried up."
Ivan gave him a bucketful of water; he drank it up and asked for more.
-
Ilya is sore at practice, but he does not let on. Ottawa signed him as a star center, best player in the league, and he cannot fail them no matter how much they disappoint him in return.
Ilya calls out, "Again." After every drill, and "Again." Until Dillon retches and Wiebe cuts in before Ilya can tell him to get the fuck up.
"Good practice. Keep some in the tank for tomorrow, how don't we?" Ilya swallows his rebuttal down like acid. "Rozanov." Stress on the first syllable. Weibe isn't looking at him, and for a moment, Ilya wants to blow him off and pretend not to hear in the mix of groans and curses from the rest of the team heading into the locker room, but that sort of thing carries real consequences he cannot deal with. "Get off the ice and walk with me." Ilya nods.
He takes his time unlacing his skates, just to see if Coach will tell him to hurry up, but Weibe is infuriatingly patient. Ilya joins him, reeking of sweat enough to fill up the hallway Weibe takes him down.
Wiebe doesn't walk and talk. LeClaire had a habit of it back in Boston, always turning his head and talking so his players had to lean in to catch everything, conversations that might have been kept private started in the open, no matter where they ended up finishing. Ilya doesn't think LeClaire thought even once about the fact of it making things harder for the players who didn't speak English well or who had been knocked in the head enough times to get a ringing in their ears. It wasn't his job to coddle them, Ilya doesn't blame him, but it does not comfort him that the only sounds as he and Weibe walk are the jingle of keys and his own, too heavy, breathing.
Ilya almost stumbles when Weibe stops short and opens a door, ushering Ilya inside. The room is startlingly barren. Administrative, though there is nothing on the desk and the paint has not been redone on the walls. Ilya can see where old frames used to hang, and it is confusing before Wiebe speaks up.
"Even with the ticket share, some of the more non-essential roles have been cut in the last few years, you understand?"
"Da." Ilya says. "Yes." Ah, it is a demonstration for him, he understands. He is meant to feel shame for not bringing more people in to watch better hockey being played.
Weibe squints at him. His arms are folded. He isn't a clipboard coach, but Ilya knows there are notes on his performance. They are being taken all the time. "The boys put a lot of faith in you, voting you captain the first year out."
"I am not rookie," Ilya shrugs, feeling his back go up. "They wanted to be captained by someone good, yes?"
"Someone who can make them better, yes." Weibe concedes. "But not someone who's going to abuse them. I will not have that."
Ilya raises his chin and does not let Coach see the blow. "We had a day off yesterday."
"And a game tomorrow. Get your head straight, Rozanov."
It might not be a dismissal, but Ilya decides to take it as one. If there are consequences, he will deal with them, but later. Everything will just have to happen later because he cannot spend one more moment in this room, in this facility, in this entire city.
The door crashes closed in his wake. When he finds his way back through the goddamn maze to the locker room, the room goes quiet.
It's Bood who clears his throat, performative, captain before Ilya had come and fucked him over by winning a vote he hadn't even been angling for. Nevermind that he was the better player, had nearly as much experience with the C as Bood did. "Barbecue this weekend." Bood seems to pick up a conversation in progress and the room relaxes.
Sound starts up again to stop the blood rushing in Ilya's ears as he packs his bag. He should shower. Shane will be back this weekend, nose like a bloodhound, and Ilya should not get rank sweat all over the car he wants to drive Shane around in. He won't have the energy to clean it. But he needs to leave.
Book kicks the foot of the bench Ilya is sitting on as he shrugs on his coat, already fresh and clean. He has a wife, Ilya thinks, is pretty sure, who probably does not appreciate stink either. Lucky him.
"You're invited, Rozanov. Win or lose, we've got plenty of practice having a good time."
"Barbecue is your idea of good time?" Ilya shoves crusty curls off his forehead.
Bood laughs too hard. "I don't believe for a second you can't appreciate a good piece of meat, Roz." He leans in, like they have some conspiratorial camaraderie that makes it okay to get in Ilya's space. "It'll be good for moral, you know?"
"Sure." Ilya does not lean away. "Send me your address and time or I will forget."
Maybe Bood will forget first and Ilya will have an excuse.
He claps Ilya on the shoulder and plows right past the way Ilya tenses up. "See you at morning skate, Roz."
Finishing up and leaving takes too long. Ilya feels like he's moving quickly, but by the time he's walking out of the locker room, he's the only one left there. Ilya considers that he may be losing his mind. It is what happens, isn't it? Time gets all funny and people get weird around you.
There is hockey to watch.
-
Ivan Tsarevich gave him a second bucketful. Koshchei drank it up and asked for a third, and when he had swallowed the third bucketful, he regained his former strength, gave his chains a shake, and broke all twelve at once.
-
Ilya cannot stand listening to the commentators who narrate on this channel. They have bad opinions, and their camera operators cannot keep up with the puck, can barely keep up with the men chasing after it, but as soon as Ilya turns off the sound, he regrets it. The house fills up with his own noises again, too soft. Ilya wants to scream. If he knew his neighbors better, maybe, but he has not knocked on their doors, and they have not knocked on his. This surprised him at first. He'd complained to Shane about how Canada was not living up to its reputation as horrifyingly friendly, and Shane had laughed and reminded him that he was a big scary hockey player, and half his neighbors probably thought he would be throwing parties and bringing down their property values. It is unfair of them, Ilya thinks, but he does not scream.
The bag from yesterday is underneath the coat rack. If he leaves it there tonight, he will leave it there tomorrow too, and then it will be Sunday and Shane will be home, and he will pick it up and laugh at Ilya, maybe, for buying a book of fairy tales. There is nowhere to put it, though. Ilya keeps looking over at the bag, as if it might dissapear and stop bothering him, but nothing can be nice to him.
There is a text message from David that comes through when Ilya remembers to turn off do-not-disturb on his phone halfway through the second period. 'You're welcome at the house to watch Shane's game. Chicken parm for dinner.' it says.
Ilya wants to throw his phone into the wall. He doesn't. He adds David's number to his do-disturb list, and Yuna's, and texts him back so late it might be more rude than not responding at all. 'Resting before my game tomorrow)))) Thank you for inviting me, David.'
The response is immediate. Ilya feels bile burning in his throat. 'Sleep well, son. We'll be in the stands tomorrow with bells on.' He looks up, 'with bells on' automatically, imagining for a moment that Yuna Hollander might wear anything louder than her own voice carrying down across the ice. It is a nice, distracting thought. When he looks up, pulled as if on instinct to the image of Shane Hollander in his periphery, the terrible camera work is zoomed in to capture Shane and Pike knocking their helmets together in victory. One goal, one assist. Ilya can almost hear the cheering that would be right next to him on the Hollander's broken in little sofa in their den if he were not such a bad son.
Son-in-law, maybe, someday, if Shane does not regret him now that he is playing bad hockey and cannot find interesting things to do. Ilya shakes his head once, sharp enough to bloom a headache between his eyes. "Shut the fuck up." It is his father's voice, but Ilya lets himself hear it.
Ilya worries his thumb over the smooth face of his phone, digging into the chipped screen protector in one corner with the meat of his flesh to feel the bite of it. He leans forward, elbows on knees, and stares at the television. They show a replay of Shane's goal, beautiful, and dissolve into the next play being set up on the ice after the tv timeout. The Voyagers are good at holding leads. Ilya knows exactly how hard it is to crawl out from under Shane's determination not to give a single inch once he's snagged it, like a dog with a bone.
If Tampa can see the hitch in Hollander's knee, they don't know how to capitalize on it. They let Shane go easy on himself, and Ilya's lip twists-- his love will not appreciate that. He likes it better when he has to work too hard at things. It would be cuter if it did not lead to injuries stacked up inside his body.
Ninety minutes left in the broadcast, Ilya estimates, at least, but Shane will not let it go to overtime. Forty minutes more after that to battle through media and showers and the come-down from the adrenaline rush of being a big star who wins games. Twenty minutes after that for Shane to be settled snug in his hotel room bed ready to be called and told how well he skated and how bad he hides the favoritism for his knee to Ilya's eyes, ready to melt with it and tell Ilya he'll do the same thing tomorrow at his own game in the Canadian Tire Centre with the wrong colors on his back and very little hope of winning anything. All told, Ilya has one hundred fifty minutes before he will have to sound okay with that.
Ilya ticks the volume button up, then down until the sound will only break through with the roar of a goal being scored on either side, and stands, arms above his head in a big stretch that his physio would approve of. His back pops six different ways. If he does not make it off the couch for bed, he will end up limping onto the ice tomorrow, so he cannot stay on the couch.
The bag is taunting him. There is nothing else to do. He could text people. He could cook something stupid and elaborate. He could take a nap that would make time skip until he sees Shane again and has to explain the sleep in his eyes. The book is the only thing to do.
For a while, Ilya stands in his entryway, shoulder brushing up against his coat, book held safe in two hands. He turns it spine up, and runs one finger down the old chipboard and thinning fabric cover. He remembers being so rough with it, grabbing the book down from the shelf and running, tossing it into his mama's lap just a moment before he landed there himself. He always trusted her to catch it and lift it up quick so he would not get hurt slamming into a stiff corner.
It has been a long time, maybe, since Ilya ran for a joyful reason like that and not for conditioning. Months and months now, at the cottage. He takes a deep, quick breath, and rises up on his toes as if the muscle memory of a fun movement will knock his brain right. For a second, his stomach swoops up and he is light and bouncing, and seven years old, then all the muscle of two decades pulls him back to solid tiles with dark, easy to clean grout. Everything is heavy. The second was nice, though.
Ilya does not take the book to the couch. He does not want softness with it, not now, but he splays his palm wide to support the spine and lets it fall open in his hand while he stays stock still next to his hanging coat. "Tsarevna Nesmeyana" The Tsarevna who Would not Laugh. His mama has a bleak sort of humor, Ilya decides, almost before he realizes he has decided to take it as a sign from her. There is no one here to make fun of him if he does.
There is no lesson to pull from the story. There had not been one when he was a child, when he told jokes and balanced cups on his forehead and collected beetles in jars to make his mama smile. There is not one now, but Ilya lets himself read out loud, interrupted only twice by the soft roar of Shane Hollander being magnificent two thousand kilometers away. It is not a long story. Ilya takes his time with it. The game is over when his voice grows scratchy, so there are other things to do.
Ilya puts the book back in the bag and moves the bag next to the couch, put away and not put away. He runs the kitchen sink tap long enough for it to grow too hot, and drinks down a cup of scalding water to sooth his throat. By the time he is settled in bed, Ilya feels looser than he has since Shane left a week ago, and when his FaceTime rings, it is so easy to smile at Shane, and to get a smile back.
"Good game, solynshko."
"Hi, Ilya." There he is.
-
She caught sight of her love, flung her arms around his neck, burst into tears, and exclaimed:
‘Oh, Tzarevich Ivan! why did you disobey me and go looking into the closet and letting out Koshchei the Deathless?’
‘Forgive me, Marya Morevna! Remember not the past; much better fly with me while Koshchei the Deathless is out of sight. Perhaps he won’t catch us.’
-
Morning skate is something of a formality for home games, especially in Ottawa where half the team is made up of settled men, like Bood and Dykstra, who have wives they aren't tempted away from by a relatively sedate night life culture. The rookies, who haven't shaken the moniker yet and rove around as a little band of three, make an effort to be tempted into making bad decisions on roadies when it doesn't find them in town. Early on in the season, they tried to cajole Ilya into coming out with them every week, sure he was more like them than not. There is no good reason he should not have been, and Ilya felt their disappointment in all the ways he fails to live up to that reputation too.
Still, the Centaurs make it a habit to show up, prove they are not hungover or maybe just that they care, no matter what their standing in the league is. They get credit for that.
Ilya says so on the ice, when they are all stretching out and warming up, "Good showing." He lets his voice carry with easy authority over the ice and gets a few surprised heads popping up. Fuck, he's been bad at this.
"We will show Dallas tonight, yes? It was not worth the trip to get their asses kicked by horses." There is a rumble of laughter across the ice that perks Ilya up. He bangs his stick twice and raises his voice, "Cowboys stay home, yes? You will send them home tonight. We will send them back to their fancy ranches and shit ice."
One of the rookies, Holmberg, bright and eager so early in the morning shouts back, "Yes, Cap!"
Ilya points at him, "Yes!" He surveys the lot of them, and finds open looks, a little hopeful, and it is almost crushing to see the second, third, eighteenth chance they are giving him to be their leader. "We pull it together, okay." Ilya claps.
"Hazy," he nods to their goalie, who came over at the same time Ilya did, traded from a team who didn't appreciate him right into Ilya's hands. He's been letting him down, Ilya knows. Wyatt Hayes startles, but nods back immediately. "You do not like to take the puck out of play. I notice this."
"When I can manage it." Hayes talks with his hands, pads waving in the air in a way that gives give a solid circle of space around his body, "It fucks with guy's head when they're expecting a little break in the action, and then woosh, puck's somewhere else."
"If you pass and no one is ready, it just ices. Play pauses anyway."
"Sure, but it's not in my crease anymore." Hayes spreads his arms.
Ilya considers it, cocking his head. It could be fun, even if it backfires, to throw a wrench into the plays they've been making so far this season. There is a novelty to it that sends a fission of excitement under his skin, and Ilya grins at Hayes before snapping his attention to the gathered team. His duckling horses. "Okay, we figure out how to help. Hazy likes his fancy stick saves, we will be there to catch them, yes? Two hours left today to see how it works. Bood, La Pointe, it will be left wing job most often, probably. Get found."
La Pointe looks a little like he might throw up, but Holmberg slaps his back with a whoop that seems to put him back in his body. Bood just nods like the captain he was and has honestly still been during Ilya's funk, and says, "Let's hop to, boys."
The play is not perfect in two hours. It will take, Ilya expects, weeks of real practice to set this up in a way that will work more than half the time, but a good bounce might be all they need. For the first time in months, he feels like there is something to chase on the ice that maybe they can rally around. It is worth it that night, when Hazy slaps a puck flying toward the net down onto the ice and the forward making the shot slows down, expecting a whistle only to find Wyatt has shot to Bood over the center line instead of dropping to one knee to cover the puck where it fell. Bood catches it and Ilya is already flying down the ice to meet the pass he knows in his bones is coming.
It is their only goal of the night, and the Centaurs do not win, but Ilya drags Wyatt into the media scrum after the game with a bright smile and a shake. "It was a save for the highlight reel, I think." He says, and means.
The high of it, fun fucking hockey, carries him through the team celebration at Monks, where Ilya accepts two drinks pressed into his hand and buys a round for the bar.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, 'Sunday, 6pm' received right as Bood is leaving the bar with Cassie on his arm. Ilya reacts to the text with a thumbs up, and all at once the bar is too loud and aftertaste of the beer he's been drinking goes sour on his tongue. Everything was so good today. Ilya closes his eyes for a moment against the tide of exhaustion that hits him and pulls his mood down in a way that makes his hands heavy and his feet slow.
Ilya opens his eyes and flicks his phone screen from Bood's message to his message history with 'Jane'. He scrolls up and double taps on a screen-shot of Shane's flight information to make it big enough to read without squinting. Layover in Toronto, but Shane is only just getting in to Montreal at this hour. The direct flight would have been earlier, but Shane mentioned a meeting in Tampa that moved him to the later trip. Ilya checks his watch to confirm that yes, the plane should have landed a few minutes ago, but there is no text.
A hand slaps his back and Ilya twists, phone hand coming up to guard his face. It is a lesson he learned too well in Boston bars, or more specifically, in New York bars after scraping the Admirals off his shoe, but this is only Dykstra shouting louder than he needs to, "Glad you made it out, Cap! One more before it's time to hit the road?" Ilya cannot quite manage to relax, but he lowers his hand and shakes his head.
"Have one for me, okay?" Dykstra claps his shoulder again and laughs in that easy, drunk way that Ilya suspects he will feel tomorrow morning. He declares his intention to do just that and falls back into the small scrum of men around the bar. Ilya shakes his arm out, and takes the opportunity to slip out into the cold night air. As soon as he does, Ilya takes a deep breath and lets the ice fill his chest. It is not snowing yet, but the air is the crisp sort of cold that comes when the sky is filled with moisture and ready to break. When it comes, Ilya thinks the flakes will be thick and it will be terrible for Shane to drive in tomorrow morning.
He checks his phone again.
"Blyat."
He should move from the sidewalk in front of Monks. He should get out of the cold and into the bright orange Jaguar parked a block away because it is good in the snow, actually, because he pays for the right tires. He should do anything other than feel a twist of neediness at the thought that maybe Shane won't be able to get on the road early tomorrow because it will snow in Montreal too and the plows will not be done, and the twenty-four hours they have planned to steal together will dwindle down even further than they already did when Ilya accepted an invitation to a barbecue like an idiot. It is bad enough they will have to sleep during some of it.
Ottawa is not a city to scream in the streets of. Ilya should have screamed more during the game, maybe, gotten it out of his system.
It would be selfish to ask Shane to drive over now, before the sky breaks, but Ilya wants to be selfish. He imagines what kind of words he would have for himself three or four years ago when every handful of hours with Shane came after weeks or months of counted days, if he told that idiot he was pining and stupid about getting maybe twenty hours instead of twenty-four. It is more than he ever dared hope then, so he has to be grateful for it. He has to be happy.
-
Then he took Marya Morevna from him, and carried her off. But Ivan Tsarevich sat down on a stone and burst into tears. He wept and wept-- and then returned back again to Marya Morevna. Now Koshchei the Deathless happened not to be at home.
-
When Ilya pulls into the garage, four stalls, three of which are for his own pared down collection, he does not register the black Jeep parked in the far stall. Ilya fights with his scarf in the entryway and does not notice the shoes tucked neat in the rack space that was empty when he left that morning. He does not even consider that he did not leave the television on when he walks past the glow of ESPN talking heads in the dark living room until he scrubs his palm over his cheek with a yawn and reaches over the couch to grab the remote so the pixels won't burn in the score ticker at the bottom of the screen, and he feels warmth radiating up toward his arm. Ilya looks down and sees, finally, Shane Hollander tucked into the crease of the couch with his mouth open and arm tucked all the way up by his neck, holding his phone like he fell asleep in the middle of scrolling.
All of the air leaves Ilya at once. It feels like he's been punched in the chest. He just stares at Shane for a moment, almost worried he might not be real, some desperate figment of Ilya's imagination born of wishing so hard, but he is too beautiful. Ilya could not make him up, not in a thousand dreams. He collapses over the back of the couch, folding in on himself and rolling up and over, to land on Shane with no grace.
Shane's arms come up around Ilya before he wakes, with a grunted, "oof" that gets swallowed whole in the material of Ilya's sweatshirt. Ilya hates the sweatshirt immediately. He should have taken it off. He shouldn't have anything so bulky getting in the way of feeling Shane's skin radiating warmth into his own.
Ilya is cold fire, like sipping hot tea around melting ice cubes, and he realizes he is shivering when Shane's legs come up to bracket his hips and his face is pressed to Shane's chest, and Ilya hears his voice, finally, "Hey, baby. Hey."
A kiss is pressed into the top of Ilya's head. Two. Three. He should tip his face up, get them where he needs them, but Ilya feels cracked open in Shane's arms. If Shane sees it on him, it will be too much.
"Did you teleport from Montreal?" He asks into Shane's t-shirt. It is Ilya's t-shirt, he realizes. So thread bare he can feel every plane of Shane's chest through it.
"I ended up not needing to meet in person with Reebok. It was just a phone call, so I thought I'd take the earlier flight direct and drive over." There is a tug at the curls plastered to Ilya's forehead, and they pop out, fluffed up so Shane can get his fingers in to scratch Ilya's skull. "Bad surprise?"
The question is enough to jolt Ilya's head up. He sees the furrowed little line between Shane's eyes and adjusts his hold on him to be impossibly firmer. The urge to correct whatever foolish notion Shane is entertaining, where coming to him early, out of the blue, any time ever at all, would not be entirely welcome is grounding. Ilya's shivering settles inside of his chest.
"Good surprise." He closes his eyes as Shane bends forward to kiss his eyebrow. "The best surprise, moya lyubov. Do it again."
Shane kisses the fluttering edge of Ilya's closed eye, his cheekbone, the corner of his lip. Ilya leans into it, a weed arcing toward sunlight. He feels the words in the puffed air between Shane's lips and his own more than he hears them. "I love you." It is the work of millimeters to kiss Shane. It is the easiest thing in the world.
-
"Let us fly, Marya Morevna!"
"Ah, Tsarevich Ivan! He will catch us."
"Suppose he does catch us. At all events we shall have spent an hour or two together."