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When Shane returns from his shower and slips back into bed beside Ilya, they both do each other the kindness of not mentioning how utterly strange it is. Usually, this is the point when Ilya would be calling a car, sneaking in one last handsy kiss, before sulking out through the back stairwell.
But tonight, they’re not in the familiar Montreal sex apartment, they’re at Shane’s place. His actual place.
Tonight, Ilya lays propped up on his side, head in his palm, tracking Shane’s naked form across the bedroom as he climbs back under the duvet and sits up against the headboard. He glances down at Ilya, grinning gently, and Ilya grins back- a singular and silent acknowledgement that yes, this is new.
Shane tugs until Ilya is draped over his side, head cushioned against his chest. Ilya goes willingly, pressing his nose into warm, shower-damp skin. The unmistakable scent of Shane is overwhelming, and Ilya breathes it in greedily. Tension eases out of him in a long exhale.
They’re in Montreal, coming off of their first game against each other since before Ilya’s father passed just two weeks ago. To Ilya, those weeks have stretched long, as if experienced in slow motion- his world shaken just enough to strengthen the force of gravity holding him down. But with one look at Shane across the ice, Ilya’s world righted itself, the weight eased.
Ilya didn’t even mind that they lost to Montreal. Hell, he’d lose every game he ever played if they were all against Shane Hollander.
“So, how are you doing?”
Shane’s quiet voice lands softly in the lamp-lit room. Both the phrasing of the question and the earnest look on Hollander’s face are distinctly Canadian.
Ilya rolls his eyes and burrows further into Shane’s chest, letting out a loud fake snore.
Shane pulls at Ilya’s hair, smoothing it off his forehead. “Oh fuck off.”
“No, is impressive you waited so long,” Ilya goads. “I expected boring questions sooner.”
A huff. “We were a little busy.”
“Yes, I know,” Ilya agrees with a smile, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to Shane’s pec. Then another, then sucking gently as his hands tighten on Shane’s waist-
Shane threads his fingers into Ilya’s hair and pulls him back slightly. Ilya goes still, half expecting Shane to usher him out the door. But when he looks up, Shane’s considering him with unwavering attention.
Ilya knows those furrowed brows, that soft frown- knows the wordless question in it.
“I am okay, Hollander.”
A long beat passes. Ilya spends it tracing his thumb along the bottom of Shane’s ribcage while Shane’s fingers massage through his curls.
“I’m so sorry, Ilya,” Shane murmurs after a while. “I know I’ve said it already but I feel like I should say it in person.”
Ilya heaves a sigh, plants a kiss on his sternum with a note of finality. “My father was sick. And old. Older than your parents, probably.”
“But you’re young. Too young to have to…” he trails off, shaking his head a bit. “God, I can’t imagine dealing with that right now, at this time in my life.”
“Hmm, maybe,” Ilya responds distantly, letting him off the hook even though he isn’t quite sure what Shane’s point is. If anything, he feels far too old for all this sadness- thought he’d outgrown it by now. Ilya is no child, and Grigori was no father- not for a long time.
Besides, Ilya knows better than anyone that there is no right age to lose a parent.
I was young, he’d told Shane that night in Tampa when he spoke about his mother’s death. Cursory- a half truth, if anything, carefully concealing the terrible crux; Ilya was young, and the moment he splayed a hand over his mother’s cold, unmoving cheek, he was old.
It feels insurmountable at times. Twelve years spent in the sun ray of her gentle eyes, watching them grow wearier and emptier with time. Twelve years of her smiling back at her with matching eyes, matching lips. Twelve years of motherly hands- pinching warmth into his cold cheeks when he stepped off the ice, balancing a cigarette on the balcony in the evenings, tapping her nails against a steering wheel as she drove him to practice, caressing the bridge of his nose when she tucked him into bed. Twelve years pressed against the back of her legs, hiding from his father’s anger. Twelve years spent crawling into bed beside her for a few stolen minutes, muffling out of the world against the fabric of her chenille bedspread. Just as he had the day he found her.
Twelve years was enough to understand that his mother was different. She was sad.
And what does a child do with that? Ilya learned to notice when she needed quiet, when his boundless energy would meet the wall of her gloom. He learned not to be hurt by it. He learned what it meant to take care of her.
And when Alexei began repeating the scathing words of their father, slinging them at their mother in a convincing performance of vitriol, Ilya learned the depth of his protectiveness of her. He’d felt it swallowing him whole as his mother once pulled him off of Alexei, fists flailing, shaking and inconsolable. He remembers her hands on his cheeks, pushing away angry tears, her expression placid even though her eyes were an endless abyss.
This isn’t you, you are not a violent boy.
And when Ilya cried that he couldn’t let anyone speak to her that way, Irina had been insistent.
It's me that’s meant to take care of you, Ilyushka.
Twelve years was not nearly enough.
Twelve years was a lifetime.
“I knew it was coming,” Ilya continues flatly once he’s mostly returned to himself. “That made it… easier.”
Shane considers that with obvious unease.
“You don’t have to keep pretending it’s not bad,” he says, in that adorably tactless way he does. His language is always simplistic- something Ilya once thought was for his sake, back when English still felt like white noise and Russia still clung to him like a second skin. However, he’s learned over the years that it’s just one of those wonderful Hollander idiosyncrasies. Shane’s words cut to the quick with little flair or drama. “This all sucks- you’re allowed to be upset,” he finishes.
Ilya almost grins despite himself as he considers that, ultimately coming to the conclusion that yes, this does suck. But only in the empty, leaden way he’s used to.
The dedicated space inside Ilya’s chest that used to angst over his father is a hardened husk.
By the end, his papa’s disdain for him was no more than reflex- insults barked into a phone, directed at some younger, remembered version of Ilya, a version who was capable of being hurt by it.
The slow-motion car crash of his father’s demise put so much distance between Ilya and his grief that Ilya wondered if it ever felt like anything at all.
“It sucks, yes, but I’m not upset,” he chooses the words carefully. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“But you can, if you want,” Shane insists. “You can talk to me.”
It hangs between them for a long moment, the words withering the moment they’re spoken. They might be true, or they might be something Shane says because he should. Because he’s good and kind. But Ilya has nothing to say either way. He’s still just a coward, uttering one-sided confessions from an ocean away.
Я тебя люблю.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Yes, Hollander,” he pats Shane’s side as he says it, voice stretching thinner by the minute. “You are sorry for my loss, I can talk to you. Very polite, but it is done. I am fine.”
You can stop now, he’s practically screaming. Please stop.
Shane slinks further down into the bed, maneuvering them so that Ilya is tucked against his shoulder, Shane’s cheek against his hair. Ilya shudders with dread as it becomes all the more impossible to imagine leaving. There’s a warm, calloused hand moving over the planes of Ilya’s back, tracing lines between his moles. If he focuses on the feeling, Ilya can imagine that nothing else exists.
What he can’t say, can’t even admit to himself, is that he came here tonight with every intention of breaking things off for good, but gave up on the idea the minute he saw Shane’s face in the doorway.
“Are you going back for summer?” Shane murmurs. “To Russia?”
He wonders if perhaps Shane is doing this on purpose, hoping that he’ll eventually pry something vulnerable out of Ilya. If so, he will surely be disappointed.
“I don’t know,” he hums in reply, feeling no particular way about it. “Maybe.” On the phone, the night of his father’s wake, Ilya said he never wanted to go back. But Ilya rarely gets what he wants.
Desperate to move on, he continues before Shane can interject. “And you will be in Ottawa? Doing yoga, knitting? Fly-fishing?”
“Fly-fishing? Where did you pull that from?”
“Is Canadian thing to do, yes?”
He can practically hear the eye roll. “I’ll be in Ottawa. No fishing. I have a cottage there, and my parents are close.”
Shane tenses the moment he says it, his regret palpable.
Ilya doesn’t acknowledge it, doesn’t have the energy to. He likes that Hollander has nice things. He lifts his head up just in time to see a very complicated expression cross Shane’s face. So sensitive, his Shane. Ilya doesn’t want him to feel bad, so he deflects again, “Tell me about this cottage.”
The ghost of a grin appears as Shane’s head flops away from Ilya then swivels back, fixing Ilya with a knowing look before finally flopping back against the pillow. Ilya props his chin on Shane’s chest and finds he’s at the perfect angle to admire his eyelashes- an underrated feature of Shane’s, Ilya decides.
“It’s beautiful,” Shane says, as if voicing Ilya’s thoughts. “I picked the property myself, had it built. It’s super private. I even have my own well.”
“Your own well?” Ilya muses. “Gee, Hollander, what else?”
“Fuck you,” Shane replies with his usual snappiness as his gaze lowers to Ilya. “You’d like it.”
“Of course I would.”
They stare at each other, a million wordless conversations happening in the dim light. Ilya’s resolve is fraying with every pass of Shane’s hand along his spine.
It’s a long time before Shane says, “Don’t go to Russia.”
A grimace; a small, quick shake of his head. “Hollander-“
“Hear me out-“
“Shane.”
The moment shatters instantly. Ilya almost flinches at the wounded tone of his own voice. His world has jolted out of orbit once again. Gravity bears down, dissolving him into the mattress.
“We’d get like, two whole weeks,” Shane is saying, but Ilya’s not sure he’s totally listening. “Or however long you want to stay. It’s completely private- it’d just be us. Together.” It lingers. Shane is pulling himself up, pulling Ilya with him. They’re eye to eye and it’s miserable to even imagine looking away. Please stop. “We’d actually have time. And I want that with you, you know? I want time to-“
“We can’t.”
Shane’s face falls- brows turning up, lips parting in a frown. The hand on his back stills. Ilya hates himself with sharp, sudden clarity.
“Why not?”
“We shouldn’t.”
It’s not an answer.
“Of course we shouldn’t, that’s the whole fucking deal,” Hollander replies fast, cutting to the quick in that way that Ilya usually loves. Not so much now. “Jesus, Ilya, I had a whole plan to ask you.”
“I’m sorry.”
They’re fully apart now- Shane sitting up in bed, staring daggers into Ilya, who is half-slumped against the headboard, looking at anything but Shane.
“I thought you’d want this.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“I can’t.”
“Well, which one is it?”
What does it matter? Ilya almost asks, but he knows. He knows.
A lurching sense of dread has Ilya rolling over on the bed, swinging his legs over the side with his back to Shane. He grabs his phone off the bedside table and stares down at the black screen until his vision goes blurry. Everything is wrong. He shouldn’t be here; if he looks at Shane again, he’ll surely take it all back. He’ll make a promise he can’t keep and it will hurt worse, weeks, months, years from now. It will hurt worse, and Ilya won’t survive it.
This is probably the best chance he’s going to get to end it. The words are there in his head, running on a loop like they have been for days now. He forces a breath in, licks his lips, squeezes his phone until it’s cutting into his palm.
“I should go,” is all that comes out in the end, when he finally finds his voice. “Early flight.”
Shane huffs, mumbles something under his breath that’s either unbelievable or fucking hell. There’s a rustle as he gets up, pulls on clean sweatpants, slams the dresser a little too forcefully.
“You can let yourself out.” That’s the last thing Shane says before he leaves the bedroom, likely disappearing to his home-gym or his office or his patio or one of the million rooms in this place that doesn’t contain Ilya.
Ilya sort of wishes he could do the same.
The act of leaving feels mechanical, like it’s something his body does without his mind’s permission. The cab ride gets similarly lost to this haze and, by the time Ilya is lying clothed on top of his hotel bed, there’s nothing keeping him upright. The passing thought that this might have been his last night with Shane sinks like a penny in the well of Ilya’s chest. It’s all so much emptier than it should be. He thinks, for the second time tonight: everything is wrong, I shouldn’t be here. He can’t figure out where he should be instead.
That night, he dreams he’s lying beneath his mama’s chenille bedspread. He dreams that Shane is there too.