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The cold air of the former ice rink echoes with the slap of rollerblades on bare concrete. Chirping voices and gleeful shouts as the improvised puck hits the net are a welcome throwback to the old days; back before the world had ended in a gnash of panic and death.
Breathing hard and flushed with exhilaration, Shane twists to a graceful stop at the boards, leaning in for a kiss.
“Okay?” he asks, and Ilya nods, ducking in for a second kiss.
Shane gives it to him gladly, steals a third.
“Wish you were out here too.” he admits, shifting his hockey stick, riddled with teeth marks and dried blood; Shane is as deadly fighting the infected as he is against a puck in the crease.
Ilya offers him a small smile, shrugging and not bothering to look down at the empty air where his left foot should be. The bite on his ankle when they’d originally fled for the promised safety of the ice rink had nearly cost him his life; only Yuna’s quick thinking and her fire-axe had made it cost him just his mobility.
“Someday.” he lies.
It makes Shane smile though, so it’s an okay lie. Of the two of them, Shane is the one who thinks the world will go, must go back to normal someday.
“Hollander!”
Shane waves wordlessly behind him, buying himself a moment more.
“Want to go up to the roof later? Watch the sunset together?” Shane asks, and it’s cute that he’s trying to make date nights happen even now, at the end of the world.
Ilya thinks about how difficult it will be to get up all of the stairs to get to the outside. To the roof, the only safe place for him to be outside, what with the crowds of lingering infected that wander the streets still. He knows Shane will help him; he’s not so sure that he can accept that help right now, with the way his head is.
“Sure.” he says anyway. “Sounds nice.”
“Okay.” Shane smiles. Before all of this, it was Ilya who smiled the most; Ilya who talked and talked, filling Shane’s silences.
Things are different now.
“Go.” Ilya insists, shooing him away.
Shane steals one last kiss before skating back out towards the spray painted marks for center ‘ice’.
Settling back into his seat and crossing his arms for warmth, Ilya watches Shane play.