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“You’re Russian,” Shane says, as if Ilya doesn’t know this. “Why do you want to celebrate an Irish holiday so badly?”
“Is not Irish holiday,” Ilya argues. “Is drinking holiday. And like you said, I am Russian.” He’s not above leaning into the stereotypes on occasions like this, especially when he knows it will irritate Shane to no end.
The truth, which he can’t tell Shane – not right now when he’s committed to annoying the shit out of him, at least – is that Ilya feels, for the first time in a long time, like his old spark is coming back. He had realized only retrospectively how much of his first two seasons in Ottawa had felt like swimming against an unyielding current, desperately trying to stay afloat. It wasn’t until the bone-deep exhaustion weighing him down had abated that he’d realized how much he misses things like this.
This, in this case, being inviting the entire Centaurs team over to his and Shane’s house to get plastered on the 17th of March, after their game against Boston.
Ever since their wedding back in the summer, their house has become the team’s de facto gathering spot. It’s partially because Ilya feels a responsibility, as captain, for the social welfare of his teammates. But the bigger reason, when he’ll allow himself to admit it, is that there’s an element of childlike joy elicited by their home being full of chaos and laughter in a way that fills the spaces in his heart left by the cold, hushed rooms he’d inhabited cautiously as a child.
“Do you promise you won’t lose a rookie this time?” Shane is looking at Ilya with an expression on his face that desperately wants to be a smile.
“Was one time! And we found him!”
“He slept in a bush, Ilya!”
They’re both laughing now. “Maybe we should give them little tags with our phone number,” Ilya says thoughtfully. “Like Anya has.”
“They’re adults, you idiot, not dogs.”
“So no problem if they get lost, yes?”
“I can’t believe this team made you captain.”
“Is exactly why they made me captain,” Ilya argues. “I don’t see you organizing drinking party.”
“That’s not–” Shane begins, but then he cuts himself off, still fighting back a smile as he shakes his head. “Okay, fine. But if Barrett pukes on the couch again, I’m not cleaning it up.”
The smile on Ilya’s face is a mirror of the one on Shane’s. “Don’t worry. I will make sure he does it on the floor this time.”
Ilya wakes up with his throat burning so badly he feels like he’s swallowed fire. His head is fuzzy, like someone has pulled out his brains and filled all the empty space with cotton balls, and the sunlight filtering through the window feels like a knife being driven directly into his skull. He rolls over with a groan, throwing an arm across his face to keep out most of the offending light.
“Mmmmph,” Shane responds from where he’s lying on the other side of the bed, the sound muffled by the way his face is half-buried in the pillow.
The stabbing pain in Ilya’s skull only intensifies as he forces himself gingerly to his feet, pausing briefly to allow his head to stop spinning before he slowly makes his way downstairs, leaning heavily against the wall for support.
He’s entirely unprepared for the scene that greets him in the kitchen. The countertops are absolutely littered with bottles and cans ranging from empty to half full, and the table is covered in the remnants of several takeout pizzas. Anya is sitting in one corner, gnawing happily on a piece of pizza crust. And in the middle of it all, Harris is standing at the stove, making pancakes.
“Coffee?” Harris asks when he looks up to see Ilya, and Ilya nods, grimacing slightly at the volume of his voice. Harris slides a mug across the counter, pointing towards the coffee maker as he does so. Ilya fills the mug to the brim and takes a long sip, allowing a moment for the liquid to settle in his stomach before he finally speaks.
“How the fuck are you not hungover?”
“Someone had to be the responsible one last night,” Harris says with a grin.
Ilya closes his eyes, taking another sip of coffee. “You just stay sober to make sure we don’t do dumb shit on internet.”
“You’re always doing dumb shit on the internet.” Harris’s grin widens. “I stay sober to make sure it doesn’t get worse.”
“Why is Anya eating pizza?” Shane rubs tiredly at his eyes as he makes his way into the kitchen, and Ilya accepts a second mug from Harris, filling this with coffee before passing it over.
Ilya shrugs one shoulder, sparing a glance down at Anya, who is still joyfully munching on her piece of crust, oblivious to the mess around her. “Is probably fine.”
“Probably?”
Harris – who is whistling, damn him – pulls a plate out of the cupboard and begins piling pancakes onto it. The kitchen slowly begins to fill up with the contingent of hungover Centaurs players who didn’t manage to make it back to their own homes last night, stumbling in as they follow the intoxicating aromas of coffee and food. Shane is standing beside Harris at the stove and scrambling eggs in a large pan when Troy Barrett walks in pale and wide-eyed, a sheen of sweat covering his forehead.
“Bathroom,” Ilya says quickly when Shane shoots him a look, pointing Barrett in the right direction.
The rest of the team nurse their coffees in silence until Troy finally stumbles back into the kitchen, looking marginally less worse for wear, and says, “Ilya, why is Cliff Marleau in your bathtub?”
Ilya just shrugs. “Would not be the first time.”
Wyatt looks up at this, a devious twinkle in his eyes. “Is he asleep?”
Troy grimaces. “Not anymore.”
Marleau himself shuffles into the kitchen not long after this, a wide smile on his face as he claps Ilya on the shoulder. “Just like old times, Roz.”
“Who invited you?” Ilya jokes, passing him a steaming cup of coffee. They’re very quickly running out of mugs.
“Hey.” Marleau’s eyes light up. “Do you remember that time–” he begins, and Ilya knows that Cliff should under no circumstances be allowed to finish his sentence, but no amount of head shaking and pointed looks in Shane’s direction can stop him from concluding, “–that we lost those two rookies down at the waterfront and thought they fell into the harbour?”
“You what?” Bood exclaims with a delighted expression on his face, at the exact same time that Shane turns around and narrows his eyes at Ilya, the spatula in his hand making him look entirely un-menacing.
“So it has happened more than once,” he accuses.
“More than once?” Marleau asks, and Ilya punches him in the shoulder before he can say more.
“Shut the fuck up,” he mutters through his teeth. “The point,” he says, louder, “is that I did not lose anyone last night. Because I am good captain.”
“No,” Wyatt says slowly, his eyes fixed on a piece of paper that he’s just pulled out from under a pizza box. “But you did try to adopt Haas.”
“What do you mean?”
“Form 8D for adult adoption in Ontario,” Wyatt recites, turning the page around to show the rest of the group. The application is half filled out with barely legible handwriting, but a signature clearly identifiable as Ilya’s is scrawled across the bottom of the page.
Shane drops the spatula. “Where did this even come from?” he asks, taking the paper out of Wyatt’s hands so he can examine it more closely.
“From the Government of Ontario website, I’m assuming.”
“No.” Shane shakes his head. “I mean the paper.” He stares down at it, his brows furrowed in confusion, as if he’s waiting for answers to jump off of the very page itself. “We don’t even own a printer.”
“That’s your biggest question?” Evan Dykstra clears the pizza boxes off the table, unceremoniously dumping them on the floor so that Harris has room to deposit a plate of pancakes in their place. “How the page got printed?”
“Yes,” Shane responds, like he doesn’t understand why everyone else isn’t equally concerned about this mystery.
“Personally,” Marleau says, glancing over at Ilya with a shit-eating grin on his face, “I’d be more concerned about why your husband is trying to adopt your mutual coworker.”
“Haas calls Ilya ‘dad’ when he’s drunk,” Troy supplies helpfully, and the entire room bursts into laughter with the exception of Luca, sitting on the floor beside Anya, who begins to blush furiously.
Ilya turns to grin at him, delighted by this news. “Do you see me as father figure, Haas?”
“Fuck off,” Luca mumbles, the flush on his cheeks deepening.
“Hey, now!” Wyatt interjects from his seat at the table. “Don’t talk to your father that way.”
“Don’t worry.” Harris pulls a stack of plates out of the cupboard and begins distributing them. “I stopped him before he could call the Swiss embassy.”
“Jesus Christ,” Shane mutters, leaning over onto the counter until his head is resting on his arms.
“Hey.” Marleau elbows Shane gently in the ribs. “If it makes you feel any better, this isn’t even the worst–”
“You,” Ilya growls, pointing at Marleau, “shut the fuck up. Don’t you have flight to New York to catch?”
“Oh, shit,” Marleau says mildly, as if he’s just remembered this. “Yeah, that’s going to be a bad look if I don’t show up.”
“Boston can’t even have decent captain now that I’m gone,” Ilya sighs dramatically, pulling Marleau into a brotherly hug. “Kick Scott Hunter’s ass to prove you still love me.”
“My pleasure, Roz.” Marleau waves to the room at large. “See you guys.”
“Bye, Cliff,” Shane mumbles, his forehead still resting on the counter.
“Hollander.” Ilya steps up behind Shane, wrapping his arms around his waist and pressing his lips to the back of his neck. “Don’t make our son feel like he is not wanted.”
The entire room erupts into laughter once more, and this time Luca joins in.
“Okay,” Shane concedes, once the last of the Centaurs have been sent on their way home with firm instructions to drink water and get a full night’s sleep before tomorrow’s practice. “You didn’t lose anyone.”
Ilya hums in agreement, moving until his chest is pressed against Shane’s back, wrapping his arms around his waist once more. “We could do it for real,” he says finally.
“Adopt Haas?” There’s a horrified expression on Shane’s face when he turns around. “Ilya–”
“No,” Ilya interrupts, laughing. “Not Haas.”
“Oh.” Shane processes this for a moment, his eyes widening as he realizes what Ilya means. “Oh. Is that…something you think about a lot?”
“I don’t know,” Ilya answers honestly. “Maybe. Is more like…”
There are still things Ilya doesn’t share. It’s not that he’s hiding anything, not exactly. But sometimes he’ll make an offhand comment about his family or his childhood and he’ll see the ghost of something flicker through Shane’s eyes, and it’s a reminder that the things he’s been through are decidedly not normal. And for as much as Shane grieves with him every time he goes through one of these realizations, Ilya prefers to limit them, prefers to allow himself to exist in the sanctity of the present. It’s a peace that he’s worked hard to protect.
But then Shane prompts, “Like what?”, and what’s Ilya’s is Shane’s, and has been since before they’d even been able to acknowledge the shape of what they are to each other.
“Like maybe I could be…what my father was not, for me.”
And he’s worried that this admission might spook Shane, who – despite all the ways in which he’s proven capable of embracing Ilya’s spontaneity – remains analytical at heart, making ten year plans and carefully considering the logistics of every single decision, no matter how inconsequential. But instead Shane leans forward, pressing his lips to Ilya’s without even a moment’s hesitation.
“You already are,” Shane says simply, when he pulls back. “To me, and to Hayden and Jackie’s kids, and–”
“To Haas,” Ilya interrupts, grinning, and Shane laughs softly as he leans in to rest his forehead against Ilya’s shoulder.
“It might take him a while to forgive you for that one.”
“He loves me,” Ilya jokes.
“Of course he does.” There’s something tender in Shane’s eyes when he looks up at Ilya once more. “You’re easy to love.”
He says it plainly, simply, like it makes all the sense in the world. And to him, maybe it does.