Chapter Text
The sound of the doorbell was a discordant note over the drone of Shane’s blender and its questionable green contents. He checked the time on the clock on the mantle of his and Ilya’s Ottawa home and saw that it was a bit before 8am.
That’s really odd. It’s a Saturday, who else would be up early enough to ring our doorbell right now?
On his way to the door, he unlocked his phone. No missed calls or texts or anything. He wondered briefly if Ilya heard the bell. And if he did, would it be enough to get him out of bed this early on a game day?
He cracked the door just enough to reveal–a teenage girl? With tears rolling down her face?
Probably an overzealous fan.
“Sorry, I can’t help you with–”
He stopped his sentence dead in its tracks when he saw those too-familiar eyes. The same ones he fell asleep next to every night. And then her mouth–with that unmistakable Cupid’s bow–started spilling out frantic Russian far too fast for Shane to decipher even at the best of times, let alone with all the adrenaline now coursing through his bloodstream.
He put out his hand in a gesture to stop her rapid fire Russian and gestured her inside as he loudly called for his husband to come downstairs immediately, hoping his words didn’t drip with anxiety so much as urgency. He thought of asking the girl to slow down, but he was certain that Russian at any speed wouldn’t absorb in this moment.
In the span of just a few breaths, Ilya was bounding down the stairs like he was ready to fight someone. Shit, he probably thought we were getting robbed or something.
Ilya’s gaze landed first on Shane’s wide, terrified eyes, and he began to scan the room, landing almost instantly on–
“Masha?”
“Dyadya Ilya!” she half-yelled as she threw down her backpack and ran to where Ilya stood at the base of the stairs, his face a mosaic of emotions Shane couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around. She threw her arms around the back of his neck, and he scooped her up like she was completely weightless, a tiny smile curling the edge of his mouth before panic overtook his entire body.
In Russian equally as frantic as his niece’s was, he quietly asked her, “Where is your father?”
“He’s still in Moscow. He doesn’t know I’m here. Please don’t make me go back there, Uncle Ilya, I can’t go back!” Ilya could tell she was on the verge of a panic attack.
“Okay, okay. Let’s just take a breath and calm down a little, and we’ll talk more about…well, about everything, Masha. I’ve missed you.” She seemed to melt into the safety of Ilya’s embrace, and he gently walked over to the couch and deposited her gracefully onto the cushion and sat down beside her, taking her hand to comfort her as she continued to cry and hyperventilate.
He gestured to where Shane stood, still frozen in the doorway and letting in the cold Ottawa winter. In English, he said, “my love, please close the door.” Then, in Russian slow enough that Shane could understand it, he said “Masha, this is my husband, Shane. Shane, this is my niece, Mariya, but we all call her Masha.”
Stuttering through his already tenuous Russian, Shane responded, “Hi Masha. It’s really nice to meet you. Can I get you something to eat or drink?”
Her honey-blond ponytail bounced on the back of the couch as she nodded her assent. Shane didn’t know what she wanted, but he figured water and toast were a fairly universal meal for someone on the verge of a panic attack, right? He hoped that was true. He moved quickly to the kitchen and poured her a glass of water and popped two slices of bread into the toaster, then moved slowly back into the living room to place the glass on the end table next to the couch. He returned to the kitchen and drank down his nearly abandoned smoothie as he waited for the toast to pop up. When it did, he spread on a bit of butter until it melted, then scooped some strawberry jam into a small bowl in case she wanted it, and brought out a bottle of honey as well. Shane really wasn’t sure if his Canadian taste buds would mesh well with her Russian palate, so he decided options were a good thing.
The scene that met him when he re-entered the living room almost brought him to tears. He had known better than anyone that the rough-around-the-edges hockey all-star he married has always been extraordinarily gentle and loving beneath his tough exterior. He’s never hidden it from anybody, but Shane had been allowed to see the softest parts of Ilya in a way no one else could ever totally understand. And yet, the tenderness with which he held Masha as she sobbed into his chest was something Shane hadn’t been prepared for, even after all these years. It wasn’t uncommon for Ilya to hold Shane for comfort, but seeing it and feeling it were shockingly different experiences. Ilya’s arms enveloped her in safety as he pressed soothing kisses to the crown of her head, and soon she fell into an exhausted sleep, having clearly spent the last God-knows-how-long on high-alert traveling here. He laid her down on the couch, tucking a pillow under her head and a blanket around her body, and took the toast Shane had made into the kitchen and started nibbling on the corner, a vacant look in his eyes.
A long moment of stunned silence passed between the two men, the weight of the arrival of this unexpected guest settling squarely on both their shoulders until Shane finally broke the silence, saying “I can’t say this is what I expected when I heard the doorbell ring.”
“That is understatement of the century.” Ilya drawled back, his usually tight English slipping further from cohesion with the stress of the situation and his comfort in the presence of his beloved.
“Ilya–what do we do?”
Ilya’s eyes suddenly sharpened into determined focus. A look Shane was intimately familiar with. It’s the set of his jaw as he’s staring down a game-winning slapshot with a defender hot on his heels and the crowd roaring their praise or their rebuke. It is the ultimate intensity the depths of those icy green eyes can invoke, and his voice was deep and steady as he replied, “She is ours now, Shane. She will never, never be my brother’s daughter ever again.”
Shane forced down the panic that threatened to claw its way out of his throat and crossed the kitchen in two big steps to wrap himself in Ilya’s embrace. “What’s happening, Ilya?”
“She is gay. Or some kind of not-straight at least. Alexei read her journal and found out about it a month ago and she has been in…what is word for it? Camp to make people not gay?”
Alarm and shock overtook Shane as he gasped out, “No! Not a conversion camp!”
“Da. Conversion camp,” the words were slippery in Ilya’s unguarded Russian accent, “she ran away three days ago. But she is smart girl and had escape plan ready in case this happened. She had people who helped her to get out of Russia and to Ottawa. To us. We are her escape plan.”
Shane was going to pass out. He could feel the hyperventilation threatening to consume him, only exacerbated by the sudden dampness on his forehead where Ilya’s tears were collecting. This stoic man who so rarely let a single tear fall was openly weeping at the witness of Masha’s suffering. Shane sank ungracefully to the floor with his back to the kitchen cabinet, the knob digging uncomfortably into his shoulder blade as he put his head between his knees and struggled to breathe normally. Ilya took another small bite of toast at the counter across from Shane, desperately trying to regulate just as Shane was.
After what felt like a century, but was likely only a few minutes, Shane felt Ilya enter his personal space without actually touching him. When Shane finally opened his eyes, he saw that his husband was crouched in front of him, and Shane reached a shaky hand out to caress Ilya’s cheek, the contact a grounding force for them both. Ilya placed his hand on top of Shane’s, deepening their physical connection. These silent interactions had become commonplace in these years of being married. They anticipated each other’s needs and found their own co-regulatory system that seemed to work on pure intuition.
After a few moments, Ilya stood and bent down to haul Shane up by the elbows until they were standing together face-to-face, eyes glossy with fear. They took a few deep breaths together, then Shane took Ilya by the hand and asked him another question: “can we handle this?”
“We have to. She needs us.”
“Are we the best option for her, though? We’re so high-profile already. Can we guarantee her safety?”
“Anyone who tries to hurt that girl ever again as long as I live will have to kill me before they touch a hair on her head.”
“They’ll have to kill both of us. That ‘s not what I’m concerned about, Ilya. But we’re celebrities. Sometimes the danger isn’t physical. Remember how hard it was to deal with the Internet trolls when we were outed? And we were fully developed adults in a stable relationship that was based on mutual love, respect and choice. Masha is a teenager who is scared for her life right now and has just survived something traumatic. We can’t stop the public from voicing their opinions on the matter. And the public will voice their opinions. Loudly. How the fuck do we keep her safe?”
“I do not have answer right now. But we will figure it out together. All three of us.”
“This is a lot to handle, Ilya. This is a big decision–”
“Is not a decision, moya lyubya. There is no other choice. She is our daughter now.”
“I know she’s family, Ilya. But we should talk about this, or else–”
“What is there to talk about, Shane?” Ilya’s voice was rising–not exactly in anger, but exasperation was making his tone more hostile than he had intended. “I won’t send her back. I won’t send her away.”
“I would never suggest sending her back to Russia, I know how dangerous it is there for people like us. But surely there are programs here in Canada that–”
Ilya could no longer find the right English words, so he spoke in Russian and hoped that Shane had learned enough in these years of lessons to understand him. “No. She is the last good thing from Russia. She is all the best parts of my family in one person. I will protect her like my mother protected me and how my mother deserved to be protected herself. She is my daughter now, and I will be her father for all of my life. She’s mine to love and protect just like you are mine to love and protect, Shane. We are a family now. I know that it’s scary and it’s a big change. I know you don’t always tolerate big changes well, and I’m sorry that this is all happening so fast. I know you are scared. So am I. But this is our life now, and we will make it work. We will make it beautiful because we love each other.”
Shane didn’t understand every single word, but he understood enough. He wiped a stray tear from the corner of Ilya’s eye and nodded his agreement, punctuating it with a choked-up “Ya tebya lyublyu.”
Ilya took a deep breath and his tone changed to something much more playful, and he said, “As your team captain, I feel the need to tell you that you will miss morning skate if you do not leave in the next twenty minutes.”
“Fuck, I totally forgot about it with all of this.” Shane gestured to the general vicinity with an exacerbated sigh.
“Is okay. We will not be at morning skate today. I will go call Coach and tell him we have family emergency.”
“What do we do about the game tonight?”
“After I call Wiebe, I will call our parents. They will come to Ottawa and help Masha settle in while we kick Detroit’s asses. And we will figure it out as we go. Yes?”
“But they don’t speak any Russian.”
“Ah, yes, but Masha speaks very good French. Her mother was French, you know?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, well, half-French. I did not know her well. But I think her father is French missionary sent to Russia to start church in Moscow.”
“So poor Masha got an asshole father and an overbearing religious mother?”
“Yes. Could not have been fun childhood.” A twinge of devastation clouded Ilya’s face. “But we will do better than they did.”
“Yes. I mean, it’s not like we could do any worse than they did, right?” Shane knew the joke was a risk, but Ilya’s unabashed smile indicated that it was the right choice. Ilya playfully hauled Shane up until he was sitting on the edge of the kitchen island, straddling Ilya’s waist, and kissed him passionately.
And just like that, Shane and Ilya were not only husbands, but also fathers.