Chapter Text
The rink comes into view gradually as they cross the parking lot, silver and glass catching the late-summer light in uneven reflections. Ilya looks at it automatically.
And there it is again.
His last season.
The words still don’t sit naturally, even after months of conversations and interviews and carefully managed press conferences where people keep trying to make him sound more sentimental about it than he actually is. Retirement feels too clean a word for something this large. Like it should arrive with certainty instead of this strange blur of acceptance and resistance tangled together.
Still, he knows it’s time.
Not because he loves hockey any less. If anything, that part feels impossible now. But because somewhere along the way the centre of his life shifted quietly without him noticing it happen. Toward home. Toward mornings in the kitchen and late-night conversations and children yelling across the yard. He wants more of it while they still want him there this much. More dinners. More ordinary days. More time beside Shane that belongs fully to them instead of being borrowed around schedules and road trips and seasons.
And Shane won’t be far behind (after he’s ‘stolen’ Ilya’s C).
Ahead of him, Shane walks slightly too fast, coffee balanced precariously in one hand while his other keeps checking his phone despite there being nothing new on it.
Ilya watches him quietly for a second.
Shane exhales through his nose, jaw tightening slightly before he looks away toward the arena entrance. Saying goodbye had clearly unsettled him more than he wants to admit. He had been quieter than usual the entire drive over. Not silent. Just visibly trying not to think too far ahead.
“You are doing the thing again,” Ilya says eventually as they step inside.
Shane glances sideways. “What thing?”
“The spiralling.”
“I’m not spiralling.”
“You’ve checked Live360 8 times that I’ve seen”
Shane exhales another breath through his nose, looking away towarda the rink.
“They’ve never been away this long.”
“I know moya lyubov'.” Ilya says softly as he reaches over to lightly squeeze Shane’s hand.
The honesty of it makes Shane glance back at him immediately.
Because that’s the thing.
Ilya feels it too.
He just handles it differently.
Quieter.
Contained carefully enough that it almost passes for calm unless you know him well enough to recognise the effort underneath it. Saying goodbye had done something uncomfortable to both of them. Not dramatic exactly. Just… strange.
The first real separation.
A full week where the house would stay quiet upstairs at night. No Lena appearing halfway through dinner to announce some socially catastrophic ten-year-old crisis involving friendship bracelets. No Theo hovering nearby pretending he wasn’t listening to every conversation anyway.
No twins.
No chaos.
Shane rubs briefly at the back of his neck. “What if Theo gets homesick?”
“He will.”
“That’s not helping.”
“He will also survive it.” He says with false conviction.
Shane huffs softly despite himself.
“He also packed enough emergency supplies to survive societal collapse.. will be fine”
“That’s fair.”
A small smile finally tugs briefly at Shane’s mouth.
Ilya reaches up then, fingers brushing briefly against the back of Shane’s neck as they walk.
Grounding.
Familiar.
“You know they are okay,” he says quietly.
Shane leans slightly into the touch before catching himself. “I know.”
A beat.
“I just don’t like not having them where I can see them.”
Something in Ilya’s chest tightens warmly at that.
Because underneath all Shane’s anxiety there is always this same thing at the centre of it:
love.
Too much of it sometimes. More than Shane fully knows what to do with.
The twins had handled the trip differently from the start.
Lena had been almost unbearably excited, bouncing around the house from six in the morning onward with her sleeping bag dragging behind her like a cape. Every emotion she felt arrived at full volume. Excitement, nerves, impatience, confidence. She experienced all of it outwardly and all at once.
Theo had been quieter. Not less excited, just more focused. Checking lists. Rechecking straps on his backpack. He had practically bounced onto the bus carrying enough camping equipment to survive complete societal collapse, already halfway through explaining flashlight strategy to another kid before he’d even sat down.
At one point Ilya had walked into the kitchen to find Theo standing beside the back door with a handwritten checklist while Lena attempted to fit six separate lip glosses into the side pocket of her bag.
“You don’t need all of those,” Theo had told her.
“I absolutely do.”
“There are bears there.”
“So?”
“So who are you impressing? Wildlife?”
Lena had gasped like this was deeply offensive, followed by her high pitched ‘papaaaaaa’.
Now, thinking back on it, Ilya can still picture the exact difference between them climbing onto the bus. Lena waving dramatically through the windows before the doors had even closed properly. Theo already sitting down calmly, double-checking he still had the emergency contact sheet in the correct pocket of his bag.
By the time they arrived at the school parking lot, Shane was visibly trying not to spiral.
Ilya knew the signs too well by now. The slightly clipped voice. The repeated checking of details already confirmed. The way his attention kept snagging on tiny practicalities because focusing on logistics was easier than acknowledging the actual feeling underneath all of it.
“Did Theo pack the extra socks?” Shane asked for the third time while unloading bags.
“Yes.”
“And Lena has her inhaler?”
“Yes.”
“And the emergency medication forms-”
“In Theo’s front pocket,” Ilya replied patiently. “Where Theo himself placed them after checking three separate times.”
Shane let out a huffed laugh at that.
It wasn’t really about the forms.
This was the first time the twins had ever been away from them properly. A whole week. No evening check-ins. No hearing them moving around upstairs. No Lena appearing dramatically in doorways to announce some deeply urgent social crisis involving glitter pens. No Theo quietly hovering nearby pretending not to want company while absolutely wanting company.
Saying goodbye had felt harder than either of them expected.
Especially because the twins themselves had handled it so differently. Theo had hugged them tightly but calmly, all quiet certainty and careful preparation.
“We’ll text when Coach Murray says we can,” he’d promised. “And if anything actually goes wrong, we’ll call.”
Because the phones were strictly for emergencies.
Not boredom. Not texting. Not casual scrolling.
Shane and Ilya had held that boundary consistently from the start. The twins had phones mostly because the world expected children to have them now, but they stayed supervised at home, charged downstairs overnight, and unused during school trips except for specific check-in windows or emergencies.
Theo respected the rule naturally.
Lena respected it too, but dramatically.
“Okay but what qualifies as emergency exactly?” she had asked while climbing onto the bus. “Like emotionally or medically?”
“Medically,” Ilya answered immediately.
“Emotionally can become medically significant,” Lena argued. More for the sake of arguing Ilya and Shane thought.
Theo just observed the conversation, looking over at his twin who oozed the confidence of their papa.
“Papa!”
“Yes, solnyshko?”
“Don’t let Jacob touch my skincare stuff while I’m gone.”
Jacob, who was tightly at Shane’s side, looked genuinely offended. “I used one moisturiser one time.”
“You used it wrong!”
“I moisturised my arm after my cast came off!”
“It was a Korean serum” Lena screeched.
Jacob scoffed.
Theo buried his face in his hands.
Even Shane laughed at that one. He had reluctantly caved into curating a fancy (and expensive) skincare regime for their 10 year old a few months ago after extensively researching safe ingredients for children.
Then the driver announced their departure.
Lena pressed both hands dramatically to the window like she was departing for war while Theo gave them one last practical little wave from his seat beside her.
Then the bus pulled away.
For a few seconds after the bus disappears, none of them moves.
Jacob stands between them with his backpack hanging off one shoulder, watching the road long after there’s nothing left to see except the fading shape of taillights at the end of the street. Beside him, Shane exhales slowly, arms folded tightly across his chest now like he’s physically holding himself together. Ilya reaches for his hand automatically, fingers brushing briefly against his wrist before threading together properly. The three of them stay there another moment in the strange quiet left behind afterward, all thinking versions of the same thing without saying it out loud.