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Shane comes back to his hotel room after team dinner and heads straight to his suitcase to grab a pair of sweatpants and his toothbrush so he can get ready for bed.
Since the Metros aren't in New Jersey for very long, he hadn't bothered to unpack when they'd first arrived. He'd just hung his garment bag up in the closet, dumped the small suitcase on the dresser, and pocketed his key card before heading back out to meet the rest of the guys.
But now dinner is over, Shane's said goodnight to Hayden and JJ, and he's ready to crash.
Only when he flips open his suitcase, it's not his neatly folded and stacked clothing that he sees. Instead, the case is a chaotic mess of half folded athletic wear that is not his own. It's Ilya's.
Most of the stuff will get Shane through this trip with only one or two barbed remarks from Hayden about it not being his normal brand of clothing. It isn't the end of the world.
All the important stuff, like his suit and dress shoes, are in his garment bag. Thank God, because wearing someone else's athletic wear is one thing, but wearing their suit is an entirely other thing. He and Ilya are close in build but not identical and there's no way in hell Ilya's suit would have fit him. As for shoes, his sneakers are on his feet and Ilya's slides will work in a pinch. He'll be fine.
He can worry about all that tomorrow morning though. Right now, he needs something to sleep in and a toothbrush. He doesn't love the idea of using Ilya's but they've swapped enough bodily fluids by this point that sharing a toothbrush won't really be all that awful, especially if its only for a two day trip, right?
He's about to grab the toiletry bag, which is tucked into the corner of Ilya's luggage next to his shaving kit, when he sees it - a meticulously folded square of brown and orange flannel. It takes Shane a moment to realize he recognizes the fabric and an even longer moment for him to realize that he's looking at his own shirt. The flannel that he usually keeps at the cottage but that Ilya had stolen last summer. Borrowed, he'd said. It had gone back and forth between their houses a few times since then and now it's here, neatly folded and tucked carefully away from the rest of the chaos in Ilya's bag.
It does something to Shane, seeing it here.
He's never thought much about partners sharing clothes. Sure, he knows that his mom sometimes borrows one of his dad's shirts. And Jackie constantly swipes Hayden's stuff. Shane thinks its cute when she's swimming in some sweatshirt or other of Hayden's that's two sizes too big. But Jackie isn't his partner and it's never been his sweatshirt, so it's never been something that he's thought about all that much.
But now there's Ilya and this flannel shirt. His shirt. That Ilya took the time to fold carefully and hide away in his suitcase, to take to an away game where he's never going to wear it, just so he can have a small part of Shane with him.
He's not going to get emotional about this, Shane tells himself. He's not. And yet he can feel his eyes getting wet while something in his chest constricts in the best possible kind of way.
Shane's team hadn't gone very far today - the flight to New Jersey had only been about two hours - but the Centaurs are headed to Seattle and their flight had left several hours after Shane's. Ilya's probably still up in the air and won't be available until later.
Shane texts him anyhow, so he'll see the message as soon as his plane touches down and he turns his phone back on.
We somehow managed to swap bags. Again.
We really need to stop getting distracted when saying goodbye.
Hope your team doesn't give you too much shit for the white athletic socks you'll be wearing for the next few days.
He adds in a winking emoji just for the hell of it.
That done, he goes rummaging through Ilya's bag. There must be a Centaurs shirt in here somewhere. Sure enough, after digging around a little, Shane finds it. The sleeves are cut off and its not going to fit great - because Ilya has broader shoulders and more defined pecs, while Shane's got a little more bulk through his torso - but it'll do. He whips his current shirt off and shrugs the t-shirt on. Then he snaps a picture to send to Ilya.
Love you, miss you, wish we were together. A shirt's not quite the same as your arms around me.
It's going to be a little while until they're both in the same city again, until they can bicker about who the flannel shirt actually belongs to, until they can kiss each other breathless and fuck each other until they're too tired to move, until they can linger in bed for a long, lazy morning. But for now, this'll do, having these little pieces of each other to keep close.