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They're about forty five minutes into their drive. Shane asked about Ilya's flight, Ilya asked about Shane's collarbone, Shane asked about Ilya's ribs. There's music playing softly in the background, some of it in English, some of it in French. Neither of them have said anything in over ten minutes now, just holding hands and basking in the easy stillness.
Then, suddenly, Shane asks, "What kind of music do you listen to?"
Ilya takes a second to process the question. "What?"
"I just realized I've been playing my music - or well, my dad's music, really - for the whole drive so far. And I thought about how I don't know what kind of music you're even into," Shane rambles a little.
"Why is it your dad's music?" Ilya asks.
"Sorry?"
"Your dad's music, not your music. Why isn't it your music?"
"Oh. I don't really have music," Shane says.
"You do not listen to music?" Ilya asks the question, but even as he's saying it, he realizes that it actually fits really well with the idea he has of Shane.
"Not really? I know it's weird, but I mostly work out to hockey podcasts or audiobooks."
"Is a little weird. But makes sense," Ilya says.
Shane's eyes flick quickly over to Ilya, looking pleased, before settling back on the road. Ilya looks out the window at green trees and occasional hilled landscape. Ottawa and Boston are not so far apart that the terrain or climate is different, and the drive feels familiar and comfortable. Sometimes, in the spring, before the season ended and he had to go back to Russia, Ilya would take long drives. He would take back country roads and pass through villages with fewer than 500 people. This drive is just like those, glimpses of a content, settled life that isn't his. But maybe this time, Ilya gets to have it.
"So?" Shane asks, breaking Ilya out of his thoughts.
Ilya looks over at Shane again. "Hm?"
"What kind of music do you like?"
"Hmmm, why don't you take a guess, Hollander?"
"I don't know! A lot of guys on my team like rap and R&B, some of them work out to EDM. A couple like country."
Ilya makes a sound of disgust. Shane rolls his eyes.
"I didn't think that would be your thing."
"I have listened to some EDM, it is good for working out," Ilya admits. "But I listen to a lot of Russian rap music."
Shane hums and nods, like this is what he expected to hear.
"Sometimes, I listen to classical music."
Shane's eyebrows raise, but his eyes don't leave the road. "Really? Like, what, Beethoven and shit?"
Ilya scoffs, "A German? No way."
Shane laughs, delightedly. "Okay, snob. What then, Tchaikovsky?"
"Is this the only Russian composer you can name?"
"Yeah, obviously. He's the Nutcracker guy, right? And Swan Lake?"
"Yes, Shane, Tchaikovsky is the Nutcracker guy," Ilya replies with a roll of his eyes.
"Okay, asshole, so if not Tchaikovsky, who?"
"Stravinsky, obviously."
"Oh, obviously."
"I like Mussorgsky. Sergei Prokofiev.
Dmitri Shostakovich. Rimsky-Korsakov."
"I've never heard of them," Shane says.
"Ah, you pay a lot of attention to classical composers?" Ilya teases.
"No," Shane laughs. "I'm surprised you do."
Ilya thinks about sitting at his kitchen counter, slowly picking his way through his homework while his mother cooked dinner and hummed along to the music.
"Reminds me of home," is what Ilya says instead.
"That's how I feel about my dad's music. I don't really care much about music, but I spent so much time driving around in the car with my parents, to school when I would miss the bus, or to hockey practice and games and long drives to tournaments, so there's a lot of nostalgia," Shane says, like he can read Ilya's mind.
"What is nostalgia?" Ilya asks.
"Um, like a happy-sad feeling when you think about the past?"
"Happy-sad?"
"Yeah, like, you're happy to think about it but sad because it's over now."
Nostalgia. He'll have to hold on to that word.
"Yes, is like this for me, with classical music," Ilya says. "What music do your parents listen to?"
"A lot of classic rock when I was growing up. I think it's what my mom liked, as a teenager. When I got a little older, my dad started getting really into Canadian folk music, especially from the Maritimes. But both of them have also tried to keep up with modern Canadian artists, especially québécois artists since I moved to Montreal. That's actually where my parents met."
"In Montreal?"
"Yeah. I like some of the playlists my dad makes for me, I listen to them while I drive."
"Are there a lot of Canadian musicians?" Ilya asks, and Shane laughs like Ilya told a hilarious joke.
"You're kidding, right?" Shane asks, but at Ilya's blank look, he continues, "Yes! So, so many. Bryan Adams, Joni Mitchell, Alanis Morissette, Céline Dion! I mean, Leonard Cohen, Drake, Avril Lavigne, Rush, Neil Young, Justin Bieber, The Weeknd! Do you want me to keep going?"
Ilya smiles and says, "Yes."
"Michael Buble, Carly Rae Jepsen, Marianas Trench, Sum-41, fucking Nickelback. Tegan and Sara, The Barenaked Ladies!"
"There is band called The Barenaked Ladies?" Ilya asks through his giggling.
"The Hip! The Tragically Hip. They're huge in Canada, but I don't know if they ever really made it in the States," Shane barrels on.
"You call America the States?"
"Yes? What do you call it?"
"America. Or the US."
"Well, I use those too, but a lot of Canadians call it the States. We're all in North America, so I don't like calling it just America."
"You have many funny Canadian words. Like toque."
"Toque is not a funny word," Shane complains. "What would you call a toque? I mean, in Boston."
"I think they say beanie," Ilya replies.
"Beanie? That's fucking stupid, a beanie is a totally different thing here."
"So confusing."
"It's like how we both have candy called Smarties, but they're completely different. And the Canadian ones are wayyyyy better."
Ilya's cheeks hurt from grinning over at Shane for so long. He could listent to Shane talk about Canadian things for hours.
"You know a lot of musicians for someone who doesn't listen to music," Ilya says.
"I remember names really easily."
"You remember everything easily."
"That is so not true. I remember numbers and dates, statistics and shit. I remember names. I could recite the birthday of everybody in my elementary school class to this day, but if you asked me what I ate for lunch last week, I couldn't tell you."
Ilya noticed back in 2008 that Shane's brain seemed to work differently from most people's. The years that followed only solidified that fact in Ilya's brain. The way he introduced himself in Saskatchewan. The way he answered honestly to sexts even when Ilya knew that Shane knew he was sexting. The way he folded his clothes before sex. A million little details that make up Shane Hollander, that Ilya has been silently collecting for almost a decade now. Ilya loves everything he has ever learned about Shane.
"I do like Tchaikovsky, by the way," Ilya says, because he knows it will make Shane laugh. "It is not Christmas without The Nutcracker."
"We should go to the ballet sometime."
"Do they have good ballet in Canada?"
"Fuck off, of course we have good ballet. Russia doesn't own ballet."
"Try telling Russia this."
"Ballet is French!"
"But not French Canadian."
Shane just shakes his head and doesn't argue.
"Don't ever tell anyone I said this," Shane starts, suddenly serious, and Ilya feels his stomach drop. "But I fucking hate French Canadians."
It doesn't set in, what Shane actually says, for a couple of seconds. But then, slowly, a cackle bubbles its way out of Ilya's throat.
"Shut up! Stop fucking laughing! Obviously I like JJ, and some of the other guys on my team who are from Quebec, but as a whole, French Canadians are rude," Shane grumbles.
"I am not sure you have a good reference for what is rude."
"Fuck you," Shane says, laughing.
"I cannot believe that Shane Hollander, Montreal Métros captain, is prejudice against the québécois."
"Prejudice, who even taught you that word? I'm not prejudice."
"I don't think you can hate a whole group of people and not be prejudice."
Shane scoffs and mumbles, "Whatever."
"It makes sense, they are descended from the French, who are notorious bastards," Ilya says, again because he knows it will make Shane laugh.
Ilya looks back out the window, and focuses on the music playing quietly from the speakers. The song is soft, airy and light with delicately sung French. The towns and rest stops are getting farther apart, and the vast expanse of nature takes their place. Ilya is a city kid, through and through, but his long drives around Massachusetts have given him an appreciation for the quiet of country landscapes.
Shane said he wants to relax with Ilya. As he looks out at the boundless green stretching in all directions, Ilya thinks, for once, he can just let himself be happy.