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It had been a whirlwind summer between dealing with the fallout from getting chucked out of the closet, the camps, the wedding, the honeymoon, and signing with Ottawa. One of the best summers of Shane’s life, even with the hard parts, but it was rapidly drawing to a close. Ilya had insisted they have a week of zero commitments at all before the pre-season started up which Shane had tried to push back against—they’d had a bunch of interviews scheduled—but now, sitting on the floor of their livingroom looking at framing samples, well. Shane had needed this. So much. Much more than he’d realized. Quiet contentment, the windows open to catch the last warm breezes of the year, music playing softly on Ilya’s fancy sound system, a plate of fresh fruit on the floor next to where they were sitting, both of them picking at it. It was perfect. Calming.
“I like these two most,” Ilya said, chewing on a strawberry. He nudged two of the frame samples out of the row of ten. Both were wood, both warm, medium tones and, as far as Shane could tell, exactly the same.
Shane picked them up and tilted them back and forth in the light. “Yeah?”
They were making a gallery wall in the living room. More specifically, when Shane had officially moved in at the start of the summer, Ilya had been very clear that he wanted it to be their home, not his home that Shane moved into. He wanted Shane to change things, make the place his own. Shane had tried to remind Ilya that at his old place he’d paid someone else to pick out basically every aspect of the interior down to the pillows. Paying for another designer clearly hadn’t been what Ilya was after, but Shane honestly had no clue how to take a place that Ilya had already, as far as Shane was concerned, made perfect and change it to suit himself.
Ilya had given him a slight (very slight) reprieve by agreeing to let Shane do it in stages, insisting on one change every month. So far Shane had picked out a new color for the walls of the den (a deep blue that reminded him of Ilya’s eyes at night), and gotten a very overstuffed armchair for the livingroom. Then, on their honeymoon (on one of the rare occasions they’d left the hotel room), they’d stumbled on a tiny gallery full of sports themed paintings. There’d been one artist in particular who painted a lot of hockey pieces, and Shane couldn’t stop staring at them. The style was loose and indistinct, the players no one in particular that Shane could tell and the jerseys abstract. But each one captured the feeling of playing hockey in a way he had never experienced outside his own head.
They’d bought every piece the artist had in the gallery, ten in total, and had them shipped to a local framer in Ottawa. The framer, in turn, had sent a package of samples to the house that she thought might go well with the art.
“Honestly, I can’t tell the difference,” Shane admitted, still examining the two Ilya liked.
Ilya reached out and tapped the one on the left. “This one is shinier, and more red.”
They still looked exactly the same.
“Can you just pick the frames, please?” Shane begged. “I picked out the art, that’s my contribution.”
Ilya rolled his eyes with a smile. “My poor Воробейчик. How did you manage to design the cottage, hmm?”
Shane snorted. “Honestly? A lot of coin flips.”
Ilya laughed so hard he fell backwards, sprawling out on the floor with his hands on his stomach.
Shane threw a discarded strawberry top at him. “Shut up. I bought the land first, then sketched out the floorplan myself. The layout mattered a lot more to me than the color of the cabinets and shit.”
Floorplans were easy. They made sense. They had rules. There were regulations for door widths and outlet heights and material use. Numbers were the name of the game. Easy, predictable numbers. Numbers didn’t lie. Numbers weren’t subjective the way things like colors were. They were either right or they were wrong.
Ilya sat up, kissing him on the cheek. “Well, you did very good with the layout, Mr. Rozanov-Hollander.”
Shane felt his nose crinkle up. “Did I not do good with the rest?”
Ilya hummed, struggling to hold back a smile. “The cottage is lovely. But is also kind of… plain? Like a catalog. No little personal things everywhere. No photos on the walls.”
“We don’t really have any photos on the walls here either,” Shane pointed out.
Ilya shrugged. “I would hang more if we had more.”
The words hovered there in the empty, warm air around them. So many years of their lives where they’d never been able to snap fun photos of one another. Shane knew it bothered Ilya, and he would have given anything to fix it, to have not been so paranoid that they couldn’t have saved even a single private photo of themselves during those years. What harm would it have done, really? But there was no way to go back and change it now. They had plenty of professional shots of themselves—individually and together—but that just wasn’t the same as candid shots of their everyday lives.
“Maybe we could commission the artist for something featuring us,” Shane managed eventually, feeling like he had to do something.
Ilya grinned, waggling his eyebrows. “Maybe I will pay her extra to paint you nude.”
Shane put his whole hand over Ilya’s obnoxious face and shoved him away, which only resulted in Ilya licking his palm. Not willing to let that stand, Shane tackled him, rubbing the slobber off on Ilya’s expensive shirt. It wasn’t long before the framing samples were entirely forgotten in favor of other activities.
——
On the last afternoon of their break before the pre-season started, Bood threw one of his BBQs, which Shane was more than happy to go to. It was only his second, given how busy the summer had been, but he’d liked the first one a lot. The man really was a stunningly good cook, and seeing how casual and open the Centaurs were with one another had chased away any lingering fears Shane had harbored about how they’d react to him joining the team. Every single one of them had embraced him immediately, treating him like he’d always been there.
Still, even though he was having a good time watching Ilya play yard games with the kids, eating frankly absurd amounts of food, and getting to know the team better, a couple hours in he still found himself needing a break. There was a small alcove on the porch that he’d spotted earlier, tucked away off to the side somewhat, and he headed for it, surprised to find Luca Haas already sprawled on one of the two wicker couches there. He had a sketchbook on his pulled up knees and a pencil in hand, but Shane couldn’t see what he was drawing from this angle.
“Sorry,” Shane said, stepping back and intending to go find somewhere else.
Haas grinned knowingly. “They’re kind of a lot sometimes, huh?”
Shane chuckled. “Yeah…ah…people in general kind of are, sometimes.”
Haas nodded, waving a hand at the other couch opposite him. “Yours if you want it, I don’t mind. I came up here to sketch for a bit for the same reason.”
Shane considered it. Normally, he would’ve preferred total solitude when he needed a break. Seeing Haas sketching, though…it drew Shane in, latched onto vague things that had been swimming in the back of his head ever since the comment Ilya had made earlier in the week about not having more photos of them. Ilya had actually quite liked the idea of commissioning the artist they’d found to do something featuring them, and Shane did too, but it still didn’t feel like enough. It wouldn’t be a real moment between them, one of the lost ones that only they would ever know. Shane wasn’t sure he could ever explain those moments well enough to have someone else recreate them.
Yet, here was Haas, the only artist Shane had ever known in more than passing. Someone who could maybe help him figure something out that would assuage his guilt over the lack of photos better than one commissioned painting made by a stranger. So he sat.
Once he settled into the opposite couch, he could see that Haas was sketching a series of small portraits of other people on the team. There was one of Hayes, one of Barret, one of Bood, and one that was still loose but even in its looseness Shane could tell it was Ilya from the smirk.
“Can I ask what got you into art?” Shane questioned as Haas went back to sketching.
“Hockey, actually.”
Shane felt his face screw up. “I don’t follow.”
“I’ve been obsessed with hockey since I was a kid,” Haas said. He started to fill in the details of Ilya’s face as he talked, clearly doing it from memory. Shane was enraptured, watching his hands work as he continued explaining. “But when I started to play, I really struggled with translating the play diagrams into actual movement on the ice. It was all too technical for me. I guess my brain just didn’t work that way, at least back then. My coach at the time had a teenage son who came to our practices a lot to help out. He was an artist, and he saw me struggling, so he started sketching out some of the play diagrams with actual figures, and that’s what made things click for me. But then he went off to college, so I had to learn to do it myself. It just kind of evolved from there.”
“Huh.” Shane couldn’t really understand that perspective at all. The point of the diagrams was that they were technical. If you added too much detail they lost their purpose as far as Shane was concerned. But, on the other hand, the explanation made Haas’s play style make sense in a way. He had a fluidity on the ice that many players lacked, a smoothness to his movements. Maybe that came from looking at things so differently. “So you just, what, call up some picture in your head and put it on the paper?”
Haas laughed. “I mean, kind of? Sometimes, I guess. There’s things I’m better at than others. I sketch the team a lot, usually on flights, so I’m really good at getting them down without much effort. Other stuff, I have to use a lot of reference images. Ilya had me paint one of his cars last year, in watercolor, and I literally just sat in his garage and looked at it while I did.”
Shane knew that painting. It hung on the wall in front of said car in the garage.
“I guess I never realized art worked that way,” Shane admitted. “I mean, it makes sense, obviously. People used to sit for portrait paintings and stuff. I’ve just never really thought about it.”
Haas nodded, using the side of his thumb to swipe across Ilya’s cheek and smudge the pencil lines to create a shadow that he refined with an eraser. “Exactly. Some people get really bitchy about it, say that using references is cheating, but they’re idiots. No one can know exactly how every single thing in the universe would look under every single circumstance. You have to use references if you want to be good.”
Shane hummed. “Do you think art is something anyone can learn, then?”
Haas paused his sketching, head tilted to the side and the tip of his pencil lingering on one of Ilya’s curls. “Why?”
Shane shrugged, not wanting to give away the real reason he was asking. It was such a crazy idea, he wasn’t ready to put words to it. “My life has kind of flipped on its head this year. I’m looking at a lot of things differently now, both because I have to and because I want to. I’ve got no real interest in being an artist, but I would like to understand the way it makes you look at things differently.”
Haas nodded, going back to sketching. “Yeah, I do think anyone can. You just have to be willing to put in the time and effort, like with anything else.”
Well, if there was one thing Shane was familiar with, it was putting in time and effort. The trick would be doing it without Ilya realizing what he was up to.
——
As much as everyone joked that Shane was coming for Ilya’s captaincy, Shane was honestly relieved not to be a team captain for once. He’d been appointed to the position so young with the Metros, mostly because the team owners had felt it would be a good media draw to have their young, diverse, number two draft pick as captain. And he’d liked it, obviously done good at it, but it had been a lot to step into, a lot to keep up with. More weight on already heavy shoulders. A season or two just being a regular player would be nice. Bood had mentioned recently that he was considering stepping down as alternate captain after the coming season as he and his wife Cassie wanted to focus on having another kid, so maybe Shane would be offered that spot at some point.
But for now, all that mattered was that Ilya had a lot of captaincy related meetings that Shane did not have to attend, which was very useful for his purposes. He’d also talked his mom into finding Ilya more solo sponsorships under the guise that it was better for the two of them to still be seen as separate people, separate players. Which it was. The solo commitments just happened to also give Shane more time without Ilya snooping around.
In the month since his conversation with Haas, Shane had gone on a deep dive into art. Materials, styles, methods, he’d given himself a crash course in all of it, trying to find a way in that he might be able to do. Like he’d told Haas, he had no real interest in being an artist, not the way Haas was, he just wanted to make a handful of things.
Through his explorations, Shane had realized that art could actually be a lot more technical than he’d ever realized. One method stood out to him in particular because it involved breaking larger pieces down into a grid of much smaller squares, then working on them one at a time. It seemed much less daunting than a whole blank piece of paper. He liked photo-realism too, as he’d learned, at least when it came to what he felt he could accomplish. Yes it was harder and more detailed, but it was also very specific and defined. You knew exactly what you were aiming for.
However, this came back to the original problem: he had no photos of what he wanted to depict. He did have photos of pretty much all the pieces, though, which had lead to another rabbit hole of learning how to use Photoshop so he could cobble together fake photos to later draw. There’d still have to be some inventing, some stepping outside carefully defined bounds, but he wouldn’t have to be coming up with anything from scratch. He could do this.
——
By the time the season really got rolling, Shane had narrowed in on a few more things about his secret project. Colored pencils were the medium he’d selected as they were easy to travel with, didn’t have any smell, could be packed away quickly without waiting for anything to dry, and didn’t require any additional special equipment. He’d even caved and started using them around Ilya, but only to doodle in the bullet journal he’d begun keeping as a cover. The journal didn’t let him practice anything big, but it was great for at least learning how to use the pencils themselves, how to blend and layer colors, how to achieve different effects. He had whole pages dedicated just to swatches of different colors layered in different ways.
He’d also made a list of the moments that he wanted to try and extract from his memory—which had gotten much longer than he’d intended when he started this whole ridiculous project—and then broken that list down by priority. As much as Shane wanted to just draw Ilya a hundred times, the point of this was to be a gift for Ilya, so Shane needed to feature himself as well. Thus, moments of them together moved to the top of the list.
“I like your doodles,” Ilya said, leaning over to rest his chin on Shane’s shoulder as they flew to their next game in Denver.
“They’re just doodles.” Right now, he was working on a journal page summarizing their last game (which they’d won 4-3 in overtime thanks to a goal from Barret).
“And I like them,” Ilya reiterated. “You needed a hobby. A non-hockey hobby.”
Shane rolled his eyes, bopping Ilya’s nose with the end of the red pencil he’d been using to sketch a diagram of the one goal he’d made in the game. “I have hobbies.”
Ilya looked at him flatly. “Name one.”
“Uhhh…”
“BZZT!” Ilya said loudly. “Time is up, Mr. Rozanov-Hollander, that is not question that should require thinking.”
“I…uh…yard work at the cottage?” Shane tried.
Ilya choked down a laugh, flopping back into his own seat. “I love you so much, Mr. Boring. But no. Does not count. At all.”
“Says the man who has been begging me to teach him how to use a chainsaw for years, but gets so distracted by watching me use it that he still hasn’t learned himself,” Shane retorted.
Ilya spread his legs a little and smirked. “You are very sexy in chainsaw chaps.”
“Please know, I have purchased and loaded a spray bottle, and I will use it!” Hayes said from the row behind them, tone jovial.
Shane blushed, sinking down in his seat and glaring at Ilya who had the audacity to look gleeful. He actually got up and turned around to kneel on his seat, arms folder over the top as he interrogated Hayes about the spray bottle, wanting to know what the breaking point had been for Hayes to get one.
“Would you sit back down and buckle up?” Shane muttered, tugging on one of Ilya’s belt loops.
Ilya did, groaning playfully the whole way but obeying none the less. Across the aisle, Dykstra played a whip sound effect on his phone.
Shane closed his eyes, taking a long, slow breath through his nose. “You’re so lucky I love you, Ilya.”
“Yes, yes I am,” he agreed, leaning over and pressing a hard kiss to Shane’s cheek.
The whip sound effect played again.
——
By midseason Shane had narrowed his list of moments down to four. Playing soccer with Ilya out in the backyard of the cottage the first time he’d brought Ilya there, the first time they’d met in that cold parking lot when they were seventeen, sitting on the beach after the first game they’d ever played together, and the first time they had told one another they loved each other.
However, things were trickier now. He couldn’t hide what he was doing behind doodles, and he couldn’t haul a portfolio of P3 paper around North America with him either. Not without Ilya noticing, and/or damaging the paper. So he could only work on things at home, but if he was at home usually Ilya was at home too. He’d eventually had to enlist Barret’s help, telling him only that he was working on something as a surprise for Ilya, so any excuse Barret could come up with to get Ilya out of the house without Shane was welcome. Barret had then enlisted his boyfriend, Harris, and now whenever they were home Ilya was going around to a bunch of animal shelters and taking pictures with adoptable dogs, which were then posted on the Centaurs’ socials to help the dogs find homes.
Shane realized there was a non-zero chance this was going to result in them getting, at least, one more dog, if not more than one, but it was very effective. Ilya never said no to hanging out with dogs, and was always in a good mood after. Besides, he’d been talking about getting Anya a friend anyway. And it was giving Shane plenty of time to work on his project, which had been the whole point.
The alarm on his phone alerting him fifteen minutes before Ilya was supposed to be home went off, so he quickly tucked away his portfolio and other supplies in the back of the small closet in his home office, then went out to meet Ilya in the living room.
“You have a box,” Shane observed when his husband came through the door from the garage. As he spoke, a single little fang came out of one of the holes punched along the sides, along with a tuft of black fur, and ripped away some of the cardboard. Based on the jagged state of the hole, this was not the first time this had happened. “An angry box.”
Ilya grinned proudly, holding out the box for Shane to take. Shane did, warily, keeping it high enough that Anya could not reach it, no matter how desperately she was trying. She wasn’t barking, at least, just chuffing curiously.
“His name is Puck!” Ilya explained, opening up the top of the box to reveal a small, lanky black cat. Puck stood up with his front paws on the edge of the box which put his face approximately three inches from Shane’s. He had a patch of white fur on his chest and light blue eyes. “Poor little guy got stuck in a delivery truck from who knows where, and they found him sleeping in a box of hockey pucks he tore open! He is only five months old.”
Puck leaned closer to Shane, sniffing at his nose, then licked the tip of it once and started nuzzling at his face. He was stupidly soft, even softer than Anya who was now even more desperate to get involved with the whole situation. Shane felt himself melting, knowing immediately he wasn’t even going to put up a fake fight about this one.
“He is pretty cute,” Shane admitted. “Honestly, I expected this whole adventure to end with another dog, though, not a cat.”
“Oh, it still will,” Ilya declared. He gave Puck a good rub with his hand, then leaned down to let Anya sniff the same hand. “But how could I say no to hockey kitten? Shelter said he is very good with dogs, and Anya’s pet hotel says she is very good with cats. We can take them both there when we leave.”
Puck hopped out of the box and onto Shane’s shoulder, startling Shane, but it didn’t phase Puck in the slightest. The kitten just stood there, craning his head around to examine his new home.
“He needs supplies,” Shane said as Ilya scooped Anya up and carefully brought her over towards Puck. Puck’s tiny claws dug into Shane’s shoulder as he leaned forward to touch noses with Anya, making Shane wince.
“I bought basics from the shelter,” Ilya said. “We will make dinner, then go on baby spoiling online shopping spree.”
Two hours later and several things had become clear. Number one, their house was about to become a cat paradise. Ilya had found a website that made extremely elaborate custom cat trees and decided they needed one that looked like a set of hockey lockers. They’d also bought probably a thousand dollars worth of toys (Shane’s contributions were mostly puzzle toys, Ilya’s were things that made noise and/or flashed). There were also several sets of cat shelves and obstacles to hang on the walls, a cat door for every room in the house except the garage and the utility room, and a catio for the porch.
The second thing that became clear was that Ilya had in fact adopted a dog, it just happened to look like a cat. Puck had taken to Anya with gusto, the two of them racing all over the house together and proving that Shane and Ilya had a lot of cat proofing to do. (And that they should probably nix the cat door into their now combined trophy room.) Once Ilya had opened the baggie of toys he’d purchased at the shelter and dumped them on the floor Puck had selected a small plastic spring, paraded around the living room with it in his teeth while meowing for about five minutes, then hopped onto the couch and dropped it in Shane’s lap. Shane was so used to Anya doing that with her toys, he’d thrown it without really thinking. Before he could even think to get up and get it back for Puck—cats didn’t play fetch, did they?—Puck had launched off his lap, skidded across the hardwood floors, snapped it up, and run right back to Shane’s lap, dropping the spring there and literally wagging his tail.
Apparently cats did play fetch. Enthusiastically and endlessly. He was more into it than Anya, who gave up following Puck after the third throw and hopped onto the couch to rest her head in Ilya’s lap. Shane was pretty sure Puck would’ve kept chasing the spring until he passed out if Shane continued to throw it, so eventually he tucked it under his thigh when Puck wasn’t looking.
The third thing that became apparent was that Puck had picked Shane as his person, settling down on Shane’s lap and curling up in a tight ball, purring contentedly as Shane rubbed his little head.
“Adorable,” Ilya declared, snapping another picture. He’d been taking them ever since he got home and Shane was sure they’d be all over social media by tomorrow, if they weren’t already.
“Very,” Shane agreed. “I’m glad you brought him home.”
Ilya scooted closer, kissing Shane’s cheek. “I am glad he picked you. Even if he stole my spot on your lap.”
Shane laughed, turning to give Ilya a real kiss. “You’ll live.”
“No, no, I will waste away,” Ilya wailed, dramatically throwing his head back against the couch. “You must make it up to me somehow.”
Shane knew where this was going. “You want me to give you a blow job because the cat you brought home fell asleep on my lap?”
Ilya grinned. “Is only fair.”
“Well—” Shane gestured to where Puck was fast asleep—“Isn’t it a rule you can’t get up when you have a cat on you? I guess you’re out of luck.”
Ilya narrowed his eyes, looking at Puck. “You are my enemy now, tiny creature.”
Shane patted Ilya’s thigh. “Poor you.”
——
Shane had thought he already knew what winning the cup felt like, the euphoric high that lasted for days, made him grin hard and laugh easy, made him feel like he was floating and untouchable. But not one of his previous wins came close to what it felt like to win it with Ilya while playing on home ice for his home team, a team that had fully accepted him and every part of who he was. His fingers still tingled with adrenalin twenty-four hours later when he and Ilya finally stumbled home after a long night of partying, a morning of dangerous levels of caffeine, and a day of interviews and appearances.
The second they were through the door Ilya slammed him against a wall and they went at one another hard, clothes actually getting ripped off.
“Wanted to fuck you the second you scored winning goal,” Ilya growled into Shane’s skin. “Just take you right there on center ice, like your dream.”
All Shane managed to get out was a stuttered, “Ye-yeah.”
It was another twenty-four hours—this one a mix of sleeping, fucking, and eating—before Shane started to feel remotely normal again. Not that he wasn’t still on cloud nine, it just felt possible to string together real thoughts for the first time in two days. They’d just showered, then stripped and remade the bed before crawling back in to cuddle, Puck and Anya joining them.
“Now what?” Shane yawned, head pillowed on Ilya’s chest, Ilya’s fingers running through his hair and scratching lightly at his scalp.
“We win again next year,” Ilya answered. “And year after that. And year after that, all the way until we retire.”
Shane grinned, kissing next to where Ilya’s cross necklace had settled on his bare skin. “Good plan.”
“We will need trophy house. One room will not be big enough.”
“We’ll build one next to the garage you’re putting in at the cottage,” Shane decided. That was their big summer project, modifications to the cottage. A garage for Ilya’s cars and the snowmobiles he’d bought himself for Christmas, and a fully enclosed yard area for Anya and Puck. They were also going to be taking the Pike kids up there for a whole week this summer so that Hayden could surprise Jackie with a big anniversary trip, which Shane was going to use as a way to figure out how they might need to modify the cottage for their own kids one day. It would be good practice for having kids in general, the first time he and Ilya had babysat the kids for more than a night.
They continued to laze in bed, Shane trying to work up the courage to finally show Ilya what he’d been working on. The four drawings had been done for a couple weeks now, but it had hardly been the time to reveal everything. Too much tension in the lead up to the cup. There was no excuse not to do it now, though.
Shane was proud of the way the drawings had come out, to the point that when he looked at them he couldn’t quite believe that he’d been the one to do it. They really did look almost like photos. But still. He was nervous to show them to Ilya, though he couldn’t quite say why.
Turning to prop his chin on Ilya’s chest, Shane quietly said, “Tell me you think I’m brave.”
Ilya tilted his head, confusion clear on his face. “Of course I think you’re brave, Воробейчик. You are the bravest person I know. Why do you need to hear that right now? Is everything okay?”
Shane kissed his chest again. “Yeah. I just…I’ve been working on something since the start of the season. A surprise for you. A secret. And it’s done, but…” He trailed off with a shrug.
Ilya’s hand came up to cup Shane’s cheek, gently pulling him up for a kiss. “You are very brave. And now I am very curious. Please show me?”
Shane melted into the command, dropping his head to nuzzle into the crook of Ilya’s neck for a moment. “Okay. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
He extracted himself from under Puck—which was always a process, the tiny cat clung on like velcro, usually managing to stay attached until Shane was halfway out of bed—and headed downstairs to his office. He’d gotten frames for all four drawings and wrapped them all up in one box in the order the moments had happened in, layers of protective tissue paper between each. There was a second box as well, one of his sketchbooks, because he’d wanted to show Ilya how he’d gone about all of this, the progression of it. He grabbed both boxes and took them back up to the bedroom.
Ilya had sat up, waiting expectantly. Puck had apparently decided Ilya’s lap was a good enough substitute since Shane had abandoned him, and was now puddled in Ilya’s criss-crossed legs. Anya had shoved her head in there as well, Ilya absently petting them both. Shane set the boxes in front of Ilya and sat across from them, keeping one hand on top so Ilya wouldn’t open them yet.
“Do you remember last year when we were picking frames for the paintings, and you said you’d hang more photos around the house if we had them?” Shane asked.
Ilya nodded. “Yes, but it is fine. We had to be careful, and we take plenty of photos now.”
Shane shook his head. “It isn’t fine, though. We’re not going to rehash that argument, it is what it is, but it isn’t fine. I hate that we don’t have more photos from almost a decade of our lives together. I’ve wanted to fix it for a long time, but I didn’t really think that was possible. I thought about commissioning someone to paint some of the moments I wish we’d photographed, but that felt too…impersonal, I guess. So I, well, did something else. Did this.” He lifted his hand and nudged the smaller box towards Ilya.
Ilya eyed Shane with something like confused anticipation, then lifted the lid of the silvery box. Puck had woken up now, and he immediately started attacking the bow on the box as soon as Ilya set it down next to him. He ripped it free and immediately darted off with his prize, Anya on his heels as he streaked out the door to hide it somewhere they’d probably never find.
“We will not see that again until we move,” Ilya said, echoing Shane’s thoughts.
“Probably not even then,” Shane chuckled, nervously running his thumb over his fingers.
Ilya watched the movement for a second but didn’t comment, turning his attention back to the box and lifting out the sketchbook.
“I still can’t quite believe I pulled this off,” Shane admitted. “So I wanted to kind of…prove to you that I did, I guess? Prove to myself that I did it. That’s what the sketchbook is.”
Ilya’s eyebrows went up and he flipped open the cover, starting to thumb through the first few pages of doodles, then the pages and pages of color swatches and tests, then the gridded recreations of random photos, and finally the gridded recreations of mostly photos of Ilya. Ilya’s jaw had dropped slightly as he got farther and farther into the book, making Shane squirm and blush.
“You did these? All of these?” Ilya said when he reached the last one.
Shane manged one small nod, thumb rubbing even harder at his fingers now.
“Did Haas teach you?”
Shane shook his head.
Ilya looked between the sketchbook and the bigger box, then very carefully set the sketchbook back in its own box before lifting the lid of the bigger one and setting it aside. The topmost drawing was covered in several layers of white tissue paper, which Ilya pulled back to reveal the moment they’d met in that parking lot in Saskatchewan. It was vertical, featuring the two of them from the waist up as they shook hands, Shane grinning and Ilya with a cigarette dangling from his lips that had just the smallest hint of a grin as well.
“Shane—” Ilya choked, looking up at him with tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes, fingers resting on the edge of the frame. “You did this?”
Shane kind of felt like he was going to pass out if he was being honest, but he managed a nod.
Ilya opened and closed his mouth a few times, but in the end didn’t say anything, just gingerly lifted the frame out and set it on Shane’s pillow like it was the most delicate thing in the world. He pulled off the next layer of tissue paper, revealing a horizontal drawing of them at the beach after the All Stars game where they’d played together for the first time in their careers. Shane had drawn them from behind at a somewhat low angle, the focus mostly on their hands brushing together on the sand, the sunset framed between them. That barely there touch had felt so electric, it had taken Shane five tries to get it sketched right, but he was happy with the result.
“That was my favorite game I had ever played until you joined the Centaurs,” Ilya murmured, tracing along the glass over their joined hands.
Shane nodded.
Ilya set that drawing aside on a different pillow, tossed the next layer of paper, and grinned down at the third drawing. It was another vertical one, this time of them playing soccer at the cottage. It had taken the longest by far given all the plants in the background. Shane had chosen to draw it from farther away than the other three, leaving he and Ilya only a few inches tall so there was room to capture the warmth and life of that summer.
“Holy shit,” Ilya breathed, picking it up to look closer at all the details. “Shane this is…Охуенно.”
After a minute, he set that one on a third pillow he pulled over specifically for that purpose, but before he could reveal the fourth and final drawing, Shane hovered his hand over it to stop him.
“This last one is…umm…just for us.” How the rest of his body was managing to function while all his blood was in his face, Shane had no idea. “You can hang it, but only in here. Or our bedroom at the cottage.”
Ilya’s eyes went wide and he batted Shane’s hand out of the way, yanking the paper away to reveal the fourth and final drawing. It was horizontal, like the beach one, and featured the two of them in bed at the cottage in only their underwear, Ilya stretched out over Shane, their foreheads touching, Ilya’s cross necklace dangling between them and glinting in the light. It was the moment they’d first both said “I love you.”
“Shane—” Ilya choked out again, looking up at Shane with a few tears finally breaking free to roll down his face.
“I know they aren’t photos,” Shane mumbled. “But—”
He was cut off by Ilya grabbing the box from between them, the last drawing still inside, and moving it out of the way before climbing right onto Shane’s lap, securing Shane’s face between his hands, and kissing him hard across every inch of his face. “No buts. Shane Rozanov-Hollander you are fucking amazing. Oh my god I love you so much. These are—are— God, I don’t even know good enough English word. Or Russian. Fuck. They are better than photos. So much better.”
Shane squirmed under the effusive praise, trying to lean forward and hide his face in Ilya’s neck, but Ilya wouldn’t let him get away, too determined to continue kissing him. The warm, cozy feeling of making Ilya this happy nestled in right next to the feelings of winning the cup with him two days earlier, right in the center of his chest. It had worked. He’d fixed it, made Ilya feel like this instead of mournful over their previously lost moments.
He hadn’t planned to keep going with the project now that Ilya knew, but if it made Ilya this happy, well. Shane did still have his list of other moments. Maybe he would keep going.