Work Text:
Ilya’s husband might be going a little insane.
Fuck, Ilya might go a little insane if his husband keeps walking, hobbling really, around the house, then pausing to stare at nothing, then hobbling away to another spot.
It had been four days since Shane got stuck under multiple players in front of Tampa Bay’s net during an away game. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really, but his husband was out with a torn MCL and a badly sprained ACL.
The doctors said they were more worried about any damaged cartilage in his knee.
(Discussing medical problems in his second language was always hell. But when it was Shane who was hurt, it was worse. Because it was Shane, the love of his life, hurting and in pain, and because it was Shane, the person who knew best how to help Ilya navigate the now-few situations where he didn’t know the correct words to use.
The Tampa Bay hospital was, in this way, better than Ottawa. One of the doctors seemed to realize Ilya was having trouble following their explanation, and they called in some person who specialized in helping with English second language patients and their families. There was a tablet, connected to an actual translator. Ilya now understood better what happened to Shane than he had any of his own previous injuries since he joined the MLH.
Ilya knows eventually there will be some camera shoved in his face about Shane’s injury, and Ilya has already decided that will be what he focuses on, the translation services, how that helped him. Not his husband, his love, his Shane, screaming on the ice.)
Finally, after hours of hobbling, Shane sits. At their kitchen table, not the comfortable spot Ilya and Yuna had arranged for him on the couch.
“I’m out for the rest of the season.”
Shane said it as if he and Ilya were in the middle of discussing Shane’s injury, like Shane hadn’t been hobbling and stopping, hobbling and stopping for well over an hour while Ilya puttered around (he liked this phrase) in the kitchen.
Ilya puts down the dish he’d been unloading from the dishwasher and joins his husband at their kitchen table.
“Yes.”
“We wanted to repeat.”
“We still can, Hollander, do not count us out yet.”
Shane looks at Ilya then, a slight smile.
“Never.”
Ilya must lean over and kiss him then. When he pulls back, Shane is smiling again.
“So, five months at least for the MCL, if I go with surgery. Longer recovery without surgery, but the ligaments will probably heal better if I rehab instead, like most non-athletes do.”
Ilya nods his head slowly. They’d already discussed all this, that it might be better to rehab without surgery since Shane would be out anyway, use the three months of the off-season to take it slow.
Shane hadn’t brought up the second reason a surgery might be a better option.
They were worried about the cartilage in his knee, and the MCL surgery would be an opportunity to look at any potential damage.
“I think that might be the way to go, but still have them check the cartilage.”
Ilya studies his husband. He seems reassured. He must have made some kind of plan.
Ilya sits up straighter.
Shane had made a plan! Good, Ilya had worried that Shane would be stuck in head spiraling without hockey for such a long period of time.
“Yes, if you have decided, we will make appointments.”
Shane places his hand on top of Ilya’s on the table. He squeezes lightly.
“If there’s a problem with the cartilage, rehab will be longer.”
Ilya blinks. He knew this. They both knew this.
“Yes.”
“And, ah, do you think the team could start next season without me?”
Ilya turns their hands, joining them, lacing their fingers together.
“We will do whatever we need to for you to heal.”
Shane stares at Ilya, eyes going back and forth between Ilya’s. There is something more.
“What if, with this time I’m already off, I got pregnant.”
What?
That-
He’d always assumed that with both of them being carriers, Ilya would be the one to get pregnant once they’d retired. His style of play was more physical than Shane’s, not by much, but enough to add up over time. So he’d likely retire first, likely need to retire first.
Ilya and Shane had already discussed this, Shane nodding along to Ilya’s explanation, face set in a small pout, visibly unhappy to think about Ilya leaving professional hockey before him, but accepting it anyway. That’s what Ilya had thought, at least.
He’d thought Shane was also in agreement about who would get pregnant.
Ilya would never forget sitting in his “death trap”, as Shane had called it, watching Shane make a cute little face while swallowing pills with a mouthful of ginger ale.
Maybe other men, lesser men in Ilya’s opinion, would be upset watching their lover end a pregnancy. Ilya had just been charmed. Charmed and a bit surprised that someone as in tune with his body as Shane Hollander had not known he was a carrier.
So Ilya would do this.
They would go with a medical insemination instead of the more ‘natural’ way, because a few afternoons in a doctor’s office would be better to associate with their child than a month of displeasing sex between Ilya and Shane. Ilya would let Yuna plan when Ilya would and would not be seen during the pregnancy to avoid the public knowing exactly how their child came to them, avoid the rounds of commentary Shane loathed and even Ilya found grating when it didn’t end even after months and months, and then there would be an announcement a few months later.
Easy, simple.
Shane was throwing that plan out.
“Shane-”
“I know you said you would do it, after we retire.”
“Yes, I will.”
Shane shrugs, like this was not all that important.
“If you still want to.”
What?
Shane squeezes his hand again.
“If you want to be pregnant later, we can do that too. But I think it would work out if I do it now, if my cartilage is messed up.”
“You…want to.”
Ilya had seen this look on his husband’s face many times. The first was in 2010, the first face-off of the second period, when it was still a tight game. Then Canada beat Russia at World Juniors.
“I’m not scared to have your baby Ilya Rozanov.”
He clenches his jaw, he doesn’t say ‘you were then’, because it will not sound how Ilya means. He has never once blamed Shane for that choice, or felt slighted for that choice. It was the right choice. Ilya thought it was a permanent choice, though, and another truth he knew about his husband. It is stupid, but it is annoying to be wrong about the love of his life.
“If I’m already not playing, why not?”
“So, a distraction?”
Ilya can hear some anger in his voice, for their child who didn’t exist, who should never be something so insignificant as a distraction.
Shane rolls his eyes and looks away, shaking his head, before turning back to Ilya.
“A change in timeline. Making a disadvantage into an advantage.”
Ilya is trying not to say, ‘I thought you didn’t want to be pregnant.’
Shane squeezes his hands again.
“The biggest reason to not get pregnant would be hockey. If I can’t play hockey, then it’s a good time to get pregnant.”
“No other reason?”
Ilya realizes that is not quite what he means. There is another reason, of course, a child, their child. But he thinks Shane understands. They both want that. That is not in question.
He is lucky his husband seems to understand what he means.
“What other reason would there be?”
Now he squeezes Shane’s hand.
“You do not want to hide?”
Shane leans over and kisses Ilya then, long and slow. Thorough. He pulls back just enough to look at Ilya.
“What would I have to hide?”