Archive of Our Own

1.

***

Ilya didn’t date. 

Hookups were easy enough. Hookups made sense. Hookups were easy to slot into the spaces between flights and practices and games and recovery periods. A single night—maybe two—and then everyone could move on with their lives from there. No one expected much of anything, and no one stayed long enough for things to get complicated. 

Generally, it’s how he preferred things. 

Or, at the very least, it’s what he’d always told himself that he preferred.

Bluepaint24 didn’t seem to want that. And, oddly, he had been enjoying the banter with him in Grindr—an app that he theoretically knew sometimes lent itself to actual dating, but was much more often used for a hookup here and there. 

At first, he assumed that Bluepaint24 was talking to him because he was bored. Curious, maybe. He didn’t make much of an effort to hide who he was—many users on Grindr were hiding secrets of their own. Hockey fans sometimes recognized him on the app and a few had tried to leverage that into something interesting for themselves, but the novelty usually wore off quickly once they realized that he spent far more time asleep on planes than he did actually going out partying in clubs. But the naps on planes didn’t make it onto PopSugar or TMZ, so it tracked that the public perception of him would seem that the only thing he did was take shots and dance. 

Bluepaint24 didn’t seem impressed enough by his general image to fit into that category—he wasn’t even sure if he had recognized him for sure before he’d realized that he was one of the players on the ice. Actually… now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure if Bluepaint24 had even clocked who he was after realizing that he was a player. 

But talking to him had become weirdly addictive very quickly. He argued with him, teased him. Rolled his eyes at his ego instead of feeding into it. Any time they talked about hockey, it seemed like he genuinely understood the game instead of just the spectacle around it, which made sense if he really had been a player himself. Sometimes, he’d say things about the Raiders that made Ilya stare at his phone for a full minute afterward because he seemed to catch things that even Ilya hadn’t noticed. But he did that about all of the teams, it didn’t even seem like it was a forced attempt to draw attention to his knowledge about Ilya in particular. 

And the fact that bluepaint24 didn’t seem to be looking for anything from him was becoming increasingly apparent as he sat alone at a little table for two at a quiet Italian spot in the North End, staring at the condensation sliding down the side of his untouched water glass. 

The restaurant was small and dimly lit, all dark wood and flickering candles in old wine bottles and actual fucking table clothes. Couples filled most of the tables around him, leaning together over half eaten pizzas and probably Lady and the Tramping their fucking spaghetti. 

Ilya hated all of them just a little bit. 

For the first half hour, he’d chalked it up to traffic or just a general tardiness. But it was after the waiter had passed by again with that careful expression of someone trying not to look pitying that he’d realized that he probably wasn’t coming. 

He tried to ignore the waiter as he arrived for another drive by, glancing down at his phone for what felt like the tenth time in five minutes. Nothing. No missed messages, no explanations. Nothing at all. 

“Can I bring you another drink while you wait?”

Ilya glanced automatically toward the empty seat across from him before he forced his gaze back to the waiter. “No. Thank you.”

The waiter hesitated for just a half second too long before he nodded and drifted off toward the kitchen again.

He felt stupid. He knew that it was stupid to even feel stupid about this. He barely knew him at all. They’d exchanged messages in an app for a few months, had never met in person, and he hadn’t even seen a photo of the guy’s face yet. And here he was, sitting in a restaurant genuinely sad that he’d been stood up. 

Humiliating. 

Because somewhere in between the messages, he’d started wanting something more than just the messages. More than just little typing bubbles appearing on his phone late at night in anonymous hotel rooms. 

But Ilya did not date. 

And here he was, sitting alone in a restaurant. 

***

***

After the dinner disaster, he probably should have lost interest. Objectively, that’s probably what made the most sense. He was Ilya fucking Rozanov, and Shane had stood him up. 

But also, he was just Ilya. And Just Ilya was absolutely fascinated by this pretty boy with freckles and the oddest sense of humor that he’d ever encountered. 

They still hadn’t met in person. Most people would have taken the hint for what it was and moved on, and usually Ilya would have too. 

Instead, they’d started talking more. Texting Shane quickly became a structurally important part of his day, slipping in so gradually that he didn’t notice at first.

A text when he woke up for morning skate. 

Another while he sat on the training table getting his knee worked over by physios. 

Messages waiting after games, after flights, when he got back to his hotel room.  

Shane became threaded through every empty space of his days so naturally that after a while, Ilya stopped thinking about whether he expected the messages and simply started reaching for his phone automatically every time he had something that he wanted to say. 

It was a bit ridiculous. 

They still hadn’t met. 

And yet… 

It was stupid, honestly. Not even the flirting, although there was plenty of that. That part always came easily to Ilya. It was familiar enough—no one could ever accuse him of not knowing how to flirt or make people laugh and blush. 

But this was something else entirely. Shane remembered things. Little Things. Which teammates annoyed him, which reporters asked him stupid questions. Which injuries ached when it got cold outside, which games left him too wired to sleep afterward. 

And Ilya was starting to remember things back. 

Which of his professors in Montreal he hated the most, when he had exams scheduled. Which nights he stayed up late to close out the library, and which mornings he’d wake up early to run before classes. 

It started feeling incredibly domestic very quickly. 

Some nights they would talk until Ilya fell asleep with his phone still in his hand. Other nights Shane would send him photos of textbooks spread across a table in the library for Ilya to reply to in the morning with blurry shots of an empty arena. 

It felt oddly intimate, and he thought that might be part of why he craved it so much. He didn’t need to perform for once in his life. While Shane understood what he did for a living and was obviously aware that he was Ilya Fucking Rozanov, he wasn’t so blown away by Ilya’s celebrity that he lost the ability to chirp him or have a basic conversation with him. It felt a lot less like they were trying to seduce each other and a lot more like they were somehow building towards something a lot bigger. A much bigger Something that was absolutely terrifying given that Shane still lived in Montreal and Ilya had no idea what he was planning to do when he graduated. 

2.

The locker room was loud in the comfortable, familiar way that it always was after a big win. Music was booming from someone’s speakers loud enough that he was fairly certain he could hear his name plate rattling against his stall, half the team shouting at the top of their lungs at each other while equipment hit the floor in heavy clatters as they shed all of their layers. Someone was already replaying an ESPN slow motion replay of a blocked shot to a huddle of men who cheered every time the shot missed the goal. 

Ilya barely noticed any of it. He sat at his stall, one elbow braced on his knee as he stared down at his phone while his pulse slowly returned back to baseline. 

He was thrilled to find a text from Shane waiting for him. 

A grin tugged at his face as he replied, absolutely thrilled that Shane had not only been watching the game, but had opinions about it. 

Across the room, Marleau narrowed his eyes, immediately clocking Ilya’s distraction from the post-game joy to focus on his phone instead. 

“Oh fuck off,” Marleau said, tossing a glove at him. “What’s that face?”

Ilya looked up slowly, blinking as he came back to his body—in the loud, reeking locker room—instead of the conversation with Shane. 

“What face, Marley? Is just my face, no?”

“That face,” Connors chimed in from nearby. “You’re making a face like you’re trying to climb through the phone and grope whoever is on the other end.”

“Okay, can we go like a single day without talking about Cap’s sex life?” one of the rookies asked, fidgeting slightly as he was forced to listen to the team interrogate their captain once again. 

“You know I’m right,” Connors said, rolling his eyes. 

Ilya rolled his eyes right back. 

“Are you meeting up with a girl tonight, Cap?”

“No, Marley. No girl. Not tonight.”

His smile widened traitorously and he heard the ripples of it move through the locker room as his teammates kept their eyes on him. 

“Oh my god,” Marleau yelled, finger pointing directly at Ilya on the off-chance that someone had already forgotten what was going on in his stall. “There it is again!”

“Jesus Christ,” Carmichael muttered under his breath. “He’s giggling. Cap is actually fucking kicking his feet and giggling.”

“I do not giggle,” Ilya said automatically, not looking up from his phone. “Russians do not giggle.”

“You are giggling right now,” St-Simon informed him. 

“No. No. I am… smiling.”

“You are kicking your feet,” Connors added.

“I am not—” 

He looked down. Well shit. 

“Oh, he’s down bad,” Connors shouted, laughing loudly at his misfortune. 

Marleau leaned over, squinting suspiciously at his phone. “Who the fuck are you texting? Still want to claim there’s not a girl, dude?”

“No one.”

“Bullshit!” half the team cried at once. 

Ilya sighed dramatically, locking his phone and shoving it into his stall. “Is not a girl. Is boy.”

The room quieted immediately with the terrifying speed of sharks sensing blood in the water, or Boston drivers sensing an almost car-shaped gap they could shoot. 

Connors’ mouth fell open in shock. “A guy?”

“Just one singular guy?” Carmichael added. 

“Huh,” said St-Simon. “That’s new.”

Marleau looked absolutely offended. “Dude, I’m supposed to be your best friend. Since when do you willingly text the same person repeatedly if you’re not planning to go out to meet them?”

“You are all acting very strange,” Ilya said, knowing that they were perhaps a bit justified in their surprise. 

“You never stick around to talk to people like this. You once left a guy in Chicago asleep in your hotel room.”

“I left him water,” Ilya mumbled as if that helped his case at all. 

“That makes it worse dude, you get that, right?”

Marleau tossed a roll of tape at Ilya’s chest, snagging his attention. “Okay, seriously. Enough bullshit. Who is he?”

Ilya shrugged one shoulder. “His name is Shane.”

“Shane,” Connors repeated slowly. “That is the whitest name I’ve ever heard.”

“He is Asian. And Canadian. So his white part is the whitest that white people can be, I think.”

There was a moment of silence as the team took that in before Carmichael barked out a laugh so loudly that it echoed in the room. 

“Oh my fucking god, dude.”

“No!” Connors yelled, doubling over with the force of his laughter. 

Marleau dragged his hands down his face, looking absolutely exhausted. “Absolutely not. You’re not doing this.”

Ilya felt his brows knot together. Nothing that he’d said should have resulted in a reaction like this.

“You have a Canadian boyfriend?” Connors wheezed, clutching at his knees in a way that felt at least twenty percent more dramatic than the situation called for. 

“He is not my boyfriend. Yet.”

“Sure,” St-Simon said with faux solemnity. “Your Canadian not-boyfriend.”

Carmichael was still laughing. “Does he also go to another school? That’s why none of us know him?”

“He is student in Montreal, yes. How did you know?”

The laughter got louder. 

“I do not know what this means,” Ilya admitted, still confused about what was going on around him. 

“It means he’s fake, dude.”

Ilya stared at Marleau flatly. “Why would I invent Canadian man? I could have invented something much more exotic.”

“Because you’re lonely?” Connors offered, wiping tears off his face. 

“I am not lonely.”

“Okay, Cap. You’re talking to Shane from Montreal.”

“He is not from Montreal,” Ilya corrected automatically. “He is from Ottawa. He is just student in Montreal.”

“Oh my god,” St-Simon said, pointing at him dramatically. “Shane from Montreal by way of Ottawa has lore.”

“He’s getting defensive,” Carmichael whispered, nudging Marleau with his shoulder. 

“I am not getting defense,” Ilya snapped. Why were they all making this into some sort of giant joke?

“Okay,” Marleau said, leaning forward with his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Okay. Prove that he’s real.”

Ilya blinked once, not sure what they were hoping that would prove. “What?”

“Photo,” Marleau repeated. “C’mon then. Let’s see this mystery Canadian boyfriend.”

“He is not my boyfriend,” Ilya repeated, even as he unlocked his phone and started scrolling through the photos he’d received from Shane before turning the phone outward for them to inspect once he’d found one. 

The photo of Shane was one of his favorites—one of the rare ones he’d sent that actually showed his face. Shane still remained oddly self-conscious sometimes about the whole Ilya Fucking Rozanov of it all, which just meant that Ilya had a good excuse to shower him with praise and compliments every time that he did send one. 

The photo showed Shane sitting cross legged on the floor of what looked like a library, freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks under the frame of a pair of glasses, his smile wide as he grinned up at the person taking the photo. One sleeve of his university hoodie had ridden up his forearm, and Ilya had had thoughts about the strength that the tone of his arm implied. 

The team stared for a long moment before they seemed to step away in unison. 

“…  Fuck off,” Carmichael said finally.

“What?”

“That guy is not real.”

“Yes he is,” Ilya insisted. “He sent me that photo. Friend took it in library at school.”

“Exactly,” Connors said. “That is a stock photo of a grad student.”

“Is not a stock photo,” Ilya insisted, scrolling for other photos. Unfortunately, many of the other photos had worse lighting, or were taken to show off his muscular torso instead of his face, or were photo after photo of the library or his breakfast.

“Oh my god,” St-Simon choked out when Ilya didn’t immediately offer another photo. “This is the fakest man alive.”

“No he is not,” Ilya said. “He’s been to one of our games.”

“Did you meet up with him after?” Marleau asked, looking down at him in concern. 

“I—No. I waited at restaurant for him but he got nervous when he saw me and left. We have been talking since then.”

“Oh my god,” Marleau wheezed out, leaning against his stall. “You’re getting catfished.”

By the time that Ilya finished telling Shane about the catfishing allegations, most of the rest of team had finally returned from the showers. 

Connors was still laughing intermittently every time he looked at Ilya, and Carmichael was explaining the Canadian Girlfriend trope to every rookie within earshot, even though with each explanation it somehow got more and more insulting toward Ilya specifically. 

Marleau still looked genuinely worried for him. 

“You cannot seriously think I am getting catfished,” Ilya muttered, finally yanking his sweaty jersey over his head. 

“You waited alone in a restaurant for a man you’ve never met who conveniently said that he got scared the second he saw you. How do you know he was even in town?”

“Grindr shows distance away,” he said, stripping off his pants. “He was in arena.”

“Can’t you spoof that stuff? Like a VPN or whatever?”

“He said he had anxiety Marley. I believe him.”

“Oh my god,” Connors barked, still laughing nearby. “You’re defending him.”

“Of course I am defending him,” Ilya snapped. “There is nothing to defend him against.”

“You literally don’t know if this guy is who he says he is,” Carmichael said. 

“I know exactly who he is.”

“Cap,” Connors said carefully, finally no longer laughing. “You have never met this man in real life. Have you guys at least talked on the phone? Facetimed?”

“Ah, no,” Ilya admitted. “We text a lot. But tonight we’re facetiming. He just said so.”

Marleau just stared at him, clearly still skeptical. 

“Okay, fine. Then I want you to screenshot. Take one screenshot and send it to the group chat with both your faces visible on the screen. Then we’ll admit that you aren’t being catfished.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “Yes. I do this. Then you will see—Shane is not catfish. He is real Canadian boy.”

***

3.

***

By the time Ilya arrived at the arena the next morning, he was already irritated. Partly because Shane had been pulling an all-nighter to finish a paper and he’d attempted to stay up with him to keep talking, but mostly because he realized that the universe itself was conspiring against him to make Shane look fake. 

He should have known the second that he stepped into the locker room that he was fucked. 

Connors looked up immediately from where he was jumping into his pants when Ilya shouldered the door to the locker room open. 

“There he is! Good morning, Cap!”

“Here we go,” Carmichael muttered, already grinning. 

Marleau was reaching out, hands grabbing for Ilya’s phone before the door had even closed behind him. “Screenshot. Now.”

Ilya stopped short, his bag hanging off one shoulder. “…Good morning?”

“Nah uh,” Connors said firmly. “No distractions out of you. Did your Totally Real Canadian Boyfriend answer the FaceTime or not?”

Several heads immediately turned toward him from around the room. Ilya sighed heavily through his nose and started stripping off layers. 

“We did not FaceTime last night, no.”

The room exploded with noise, and Ilya desperately wished that he’d been able to get a few more hours of sleep. He wasn’t rested enough to deal with this. 

Connors was doubled over against a stall laughing, and Carmichael was slapping a bench hard enough that a roll of tape bounced onto the floor and rolled off into the abyss of the room. Marleau, meanwhile, looked genuinely pained. 

“Buddy…”

“It was not his fault,” Ilya immediately snapped. 

“Sure thing, Cap,” St-Simons said. “What very real-person emergency did he suffer?”

“His phone broke,” Ilya said quietly. 

“Cap…”

Marleau looked up at the ceiling like he was asking God for strength. 

“No, listen—” Ilya continued. “Someone hit him outside library and he dropped it down stairs on his way home to FaceTime me.”

Connors stared at him blankly for a moment. “He dropped his phone?”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Is not so hard to believe. People drop phones. Happens all the time.”

“And that’s why you couldn’t FaceTime? Because he broke his phone right before you were supposed to video call?”

“Yes!”

“And let me guess,” Carmichael added. “The webcam on his laptop is broken too?”

Ilya narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Carmichael. “How did you know that part. I did not tell you that.”

Marleau covered his face with his hands, apparently having given up on God’s intervention. “Jesus Christ.”

“Cap,” St-Simon wheezed. “You are talking to a forty-seven year old man named Craig.”

“His name is Shane, not Craig. He is twenty-four. Is student.”

“What’s he study, Cap?” Connors asked, eyebrows furrowed. 

“Sports psychology. Why?”

“Now wait a damn minute…”

“Cap,” Carmichael said very slowly, like he wanted to make sure that Ilya understood every word out of his mouth. “This dude studies athlete psychology and somehow convinced you that he’s a broke grad student with no phone and a tragic backstory. He just gave you the perfect excuse for why you’ll never be able to talk to each other in any way except for text.”

“Not true,” Ilya said. “Is temporary.”

“Let me guess,” Connors jumped in. “He’s already ordered a new phone and it’s on the way.”

“Ah, no,” Ilya said, reaching for his skates. “Not quite”

“Cap…”

“Please tell me he didn’t ask you to buy him a new phone.”

“No, no,” Ilya said. He could practically taste his teammate’s relief in the air. “He didn’t want me to but I did it anyway. Computer, too. For school. He was very annoyed—was very cute.”

“Reverse psychology,” Carmichael said, nodding like that somehow explained everything. “It’s textbook.”

“What is this?”

Connors stared at him with dawning horror before turning to the rest of the room. “Guys—guys! He’s hunting our captain for sport.”

“Cap,” Marleau said. “Ilya. This man studies psychology.”

“Yes, yes. I have said this.”

“And now you’ve bought him thousands of dollars worth of electronics.”

“Yes…” Ilya said like it was obvious. “His old ones were all broken. Semester is ending soon—very inconvenient timing for him.”

“You don’t see how this looks?”

Ilya crossed his arms, annoyed with his team. “It looks like I want him to succeed in his studies. And like I want to talk to him. Win-win for Ilya Rozanov.”

Every one of his teammates made almost the exact same exhausted expression. 

“Oh my fucking god. He’s in love with the fake Canadian.”

“I am not in love,” Ilya said, tying the final knot in his laces.

“Yet?” St-Simon offered very unhelpfully.

Ilya ignored them completely, yanking his phone from his stall instead, irritation burning hot beneath his skin. They were all being absolutely ridiculous. Shane had explicitly not wanted him buying him stuff. He’d been very clear about that. 

“Get on the ice. I will be there soon.”

***

4.

The first time they actually spoke on the phone was an accident—or at least that was how Ilya would choose to remember it later. 

In reality, he had been staring at Shane’s texts on his screen for nearly five minutes before he pressed the call button. 

It was late in Toronto, which meant that it was much later in Montreal. The Raiders had played Toronto that evening and lost in overtime, which meant Ilya was alone in a hotel room with a bit of adrenaline and regret still buzzing unpleasantly through his veins while his team tried to drown their sorrows at the bar or in someone they found there. 

Normally, he would’ve gone with them. But all he could think about after he shucked his sweaty gear was the absolute barrage of texts that had been waiting for him when he unlocked his phone—a series of rants about dirty calls and blind refs and a stolen goal. It had made his stomach swoop and made the loss feel a bit more tolerable. 

So instead of sticking with his team, he found himself sprawled out on the hotel bed—just a little too big to be in alone—with room service balanced precariously on his stomach while he stared at his phone instead of the cooling French fries. 

They were squabbling over his knee—Shane had noticed that he was slightly favoring his left over his right, which was something he was trying to hide from the team doctors until the playoffs were over. He had a slight overuse injury in his right knee, which led to him leaning on his left, which would make it ache and cause him to favor the right again, which would aggravate the injury. Rinse and repeat. 

And Shane had noticed it before anyone else. 

The PDFs that Shane had sent him for gentle stretches and mobility exercises had been favorited and saved on his phone and his iPad, and he was grateful that there was someone in the world who cared this much. 

He stared at the message for just a moment before his finger tapped the call button. He immediately regretted it and considered hanging up, but then the ringing stopped. 

“Ilya?”

The voice on the other end of the phone was softer than he’d expected—both in tone and volume. He hadn’t really given much thought to what Shane would sound like, and had certainly never imagined that the first word he’d ever hear him say would be his own name, but he found that the sound of his voice was his new favorite thing about him. 

“Hello? Did you mean to call?”

“Hi, Shane. Yes, sorry. I just… wow.”

Shane let out a quiet laugh, and Ilya could hear him shuffling around a bit. “Texting not doing it anymore? You should be lucky I’m in a private room—normally I would never answer the phone in the library.”

“Mmm,” Ilya hummed. “Still keeping up the scam? Pretending to be in library at… one o’clock in the morning?”

“Unfortunately,” Shane sighed. “I have a paper due Friday and I don’t feel like it’s quite ready. I’ll be leaving soon, though. They lock up at three.”

“You should get some sleep, probably.”

Shane sighed again, and Ilya could hear a soft sound that was likely him scrubbing his hands over his face. “Yeah, I know. I just… this professor is such a hardass, and I feel like I get nowhere with her no matter how many times I go to her office hours or stay late. Like, don’t get me wrong—she’s absolutely brilliant and completely right to run us ragged.”

“Oh?” Ilya asked, reaching for a French fry and just being happy to hear Shane talk.

“Yes. Oh my god, I’ve learned more from her this semester than I did in my entire undergrad, I swear. But disappointing her feels like kicking a puppy, and I know there’s something missing from this paper—I just can’t figure out what it is.”

“You are too hard on yourself, maybe. I am sure it is perfect.”

“That’s because you’re not in academia,” Shane scoffed. “Being terrified that your research is somehow critically deficient is part and parcel of the whole process. You get punched professionally—it’s a different skill set.”

Their conversation drifted after that. Not to anywhere important, and not a sort of clumsy getting to know you, but a direct continuation of all the conversations they’d already had. From professors to hockey, from hockey to travel. From travel to the truly baffling fact that Shane willingly drank coffee out of a vending machine in the basement of the library just because it was available twenty-four hours out of the day. 

Somewhere around two, Shane started reading sections of his paper out loud in a very dramatically serious voice. Somewhere around two-thirty, Ilya started grading him on incredibly arbitrary merits. 

By three, as Shane was walking back to his apartment, he was lying flat on his back staring at the ceiling while Shane complained about statistics. 

“Like, why does every sports psych professor think we all secretly want to become statisticians?”

“I… do not know what statistician is.”

“That’s because you’re pretty,” Shane said. “You don’t need to know.”

Ilya laughed down the line, grinning when he heard Shane chuckle in response. “So what is your excuse then? You are much prettier than I am.”

Ilya smiled into the empty room at the sound of Shane’s laughter. Neither of them acknowledged how long they stayed on the phone, just like they didn’t acknowledge that the conversation had lasted nearly three hours. 

Just like they didn’t acknowledge that neither wanted to be the one to hang up first. 

“I should go,” Shane said eventually, the exhaustion thick in his voice.

“Yes,” Ilya said quietly. “You probably should.”

There was a silence on the line, and neither of them made a move to hang up. 

“Ilya?”

“Hmm?”

“Good luck Thursday. Or… tomorrow, I guess.”

A ridiculous amount of warmth settled low in his chest, and he didn’t dare admit how much that quiet little good luck meant to him. 

“Thank you.”

“Night, Ilya.”

“Goodnight, pretty.”

“Jesus Christ,” Shane whispered just before the line disconnected. 

Ilya stared at the ceiling for another minute before he set the phone down beside him. Then he rolled over to reach for it again immediately. Just to make sure Shane had actually hung up. 

It was ridiculous. 

He was ridiculous. 

He slept better than he had in weeks.

They beat Toronto. 

***

His next argument with the team about Shane happened entirely because his friend Rose had a mean sense of humor—or maybe because Shane did.

The distinction was becoming harder and harder to make out the more stories he heard about the two of them together.

Practice wasn’t scheduled for another half hour, which meant that the locker room was only partially occupied. A few guys were already dressed and yammering on about something he couldn’t make out. Others were wandering in carrying coffee or breakfast sandwiches.

Ilya sat in front of his stall re-taping the blade of his stick.

When his phone buzzed, his attention immediately shifted as he thumbed open the message.

For a second, Ilya simply stared dumbly at the photo on his phone before he laughed. Unfortunately for him, it was his real laugh, and it immediately caught the attention of several of his teammates standing nearby.

The photo showed Shane on a park bench, likely somewhere in Montreal. Between his fingers was a hockey card—one of the ones that would’ve had a stick of chalky gum with it if he’d been ten years older.

But not just any card—one of his cards. And Shane was very clearly kissing it. Very clearly. His eyes were closed, his lips dramatically puckered.

It was perfect, and Ilya immediately saved it and considered changing both his lock screen and his home screen to show it.

Once it was saved, he allowed himself to zoom in. Mostly because Shane looked good in the photo—all black clothes and his dark hair falling into his face—but the kissing was nice too.

Ilya barked out a laugh again, and Connors immediately took a step in his direction. Shit.

He didn't see what Shane said next, because suddenly Connors was there, looming over him and blocking out the fluorescents, and Marleau and St-Simon weren’t far behind him.

“You’ve got the Shane face,” Connors said, poking him in the cheek as he settled down beside him.

“I do not have Shane face.”

“You absolutely do,” Marleau muttered, watching him carefully.

“No.”

“Yes.”

Several heads turned. Like sharks scenting his blood in the water, the lot of them. Or… like hockey players scenting a source of potential embarrassment.

Same thing, really.

“So what did Craig send this time?”

“He is not fake, Marly. His name is Shane.”

“Sure thing, Cap,” Marleau said, crossing his arms over his chest in clear disbelief.

Ilya looked down at the photo. Then back up at the team. Then… back down at the photo. A slow smile spread across his face. For once, he possessed irrefutable evidence that Shane wasn’t a scammer or a catfish.

“Fine,” Ilya said.

Connors brightened, and within thirty seconds half of the locker room had somehow clustered around his stall. Ilya held his phone out to them, waiting for one of them to take it.

“Evidence.”

“Of?” St-Simon asked, an eyebrow lifting.

“Shane.”

“Here we go,” Marleau muttered, but he took a step closer, regardless.

Connors took the phone first. He was silent, but his eyebrows flicked up before he handed the phone directed to St-Simon without saying a word. St-Simon looked too—blinking slowly—before he passed it to Marleau.

“… Dude. No.”

“What?” Ilya asked, frowning.

“No.”

“What do you mean no? I hear you, but you keep saying nothing.”

Marleau flipped the phone around, and the photo hadn’t changed. Shane. Bench. Hockey card. Kiss. Proof. Beautiful, obvious proof.

“Yes. Is Shane. What do you mean by no?”

Connors jabbed a finger at the screen, clumsily zooming in closer.

“The card, Cap.”

“…Yes…?”

“The card.”

“Yes, Connors,” Ilya snapped. “The card. Yes. Is me. My card. Me on the card.”

“Cap. The card.”

“Connors. If you keep saying card eventually I will hit you. What about card?”

“It… looks photoshopped?”

The room immediately exploded into noise around them.

“Oh my God!”

“So right, dude, you are so right.”

“Yes, absolutely yes.”

“There it is.”

Ilya stared at Connors, not having any idea what he was talking about.

“What?”

Carmichael snatched the phone away and immediately groaned. “Buddy. That card was edited in.”

Ilya looked from face to face, taking in every one of the teammates clustered around him. Every single one of them looked serious. Every last one.

“You think someone edited my hockey card into this photograph?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

There was a silence where no one spoke up, either because none of them had the answer or because he was the only one who didn’t.

“Cap, the perspective is weird. The shadows are weird. The angle is weird.”

“No…” Ilya said slowly, standing up to look at the phone upside down in Carmichael’s hand. “All looks normal. I have that card. You’ve all seen that photo. That is the card.”

Carmichael zoomed in again, looking at the image carefully.

“I think there was originally something else there. Like a coffee cup, maybe?”

“Why would someone replace coffee cup with hockey card?” Ilya asked, frustrated that they seemed willing to find every answer to this nonexistent question besides the correct one.

No one answered him. Marleau floated up next to him, still staring carefully. The longer he looked, the worse his expression became.

“Cap… who took this?”

“Rose,” Ilya said, shrugging.

“Who is Rose?” Marleau asked, eyes still locked on the photo on the screen.

“She is his friend. Drama major. Well, Drama major with a minor in photography, he says.”

The room erupted again, luckily this time a dull murmur instead of an absolute wave of noise.

“Cap,” St-Simon said. “If Rose is a real person, and she is really a photography student, she would know how to edit photos.”

“Yes,” Ilya said slowly. “Is very convenient. Color correct, balance light levels. He has told me all of this.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I can’t with you, dude.”

Briefly, Ilya considered murder.

Then he remembered that they were in the middle of a cup run and getting ready to play Vancouver in their own barn.

Ilya changed his thoughts to planning to murder instead.

Across the room, one of the rookies spoke up. “If he’s fake, this is honestly sort of impressive.”

“Thank you,” Carmichael said, handing Ilya his phone back.

“Like… the production levels are crazy.”

“Thank you!”

Marleau was still looking at Ilya with a truly, deeply concerned look that was somehow worse than all the jokes.

“Ilya…”

“What.” he snapped, unable to tolerate much more of this when he had just been so excited to show them that Shane had started carrying his card around.

“You understand why we’re worried, right, man?”

“No,” Ilya said. “I really do not. He is real. We have talked.”

“On FaceTime?” Marleau shot back almost immediately.

“No, it was late. We were on the phone in Vancouver, we talked while he was studying.”

“Anyone can be anyone on a phone call. You don’t know this guy, man. ”

“Yes,” he said softly, his voice quiet when the weight of that accusation hit him. He did feel like he knew Shane—as well as he could for someone he’d never met in person. But they’d been talking almost nonstop since that failed date in Boston. Good morning and good night texts, conversations about school and hockey, about childhoods and future plans. “I do know him.”

“No, you really don’t,” Marleau said, just as softly.

“He is real,” Ilya said, sighing heavily and locking his phone, tossing it into his stall.

“Okay.”

“He is,” he repeated firmly.

“Okay.”

“He has my hockey card, and he wanted me to know that.”

Ilya hated every single one of them at least a little bit in that moment. Like, sure, he could vaguely understand why they were concerned. But he was extremely frustrated that they all seemed to view him as some sort of naïve child who could be lied to and scammed and conned out of his senses.

Why couldn’t any of them be happy for him?

His phone buzzed loudly in his stall, and everyone froze. Slowly, Ilya reached for it.

When he looked up again, there were twenty pairs of eyes fixed on him. Still waiting. Still suspicious. Still ridiculous.

Fuck all of them.

Despite himself, Ilya laughed, and the entire room started groaning again.

“Oh my God.”

“There it is again.”

“He’s doing the face, what did I tell you guys?”

Ilya didn’t bother defending himself—not that they’d listen to him anyway—but that was mostly only because Shane was still typing.

A smile tugged at his mouth, and he heard Connors mumble something that—while he couldn’t make it out—had some of his teammates snickering.

Maybe he did have a Shane face. But that wasn’t the important part.

The important part was that Shane was real. And eventually one of these idiots was going to figure that out.

***

5.

He’d stopped updating the team every time something changed in his relationship with Shane. Stopped checking his phone in the locker room—sometimes even going so far as to just leave it in the glove box of his car outside instead of even bringing it into the arena.

He knew that they thought they were being supportive, but he also knew for a fact that none of them had sat Hammersmith down to tell him that the woman he met at the bar after a game was secretly a puck bunny who had an eye on his wallet and wanted the social credit of becoming one of the puck bunnies—and she had been.

But the second he finds someone he’s excited about, they all seem to think he was too naive or unaware to figure out whether Shane was a real person or had an interest in him for anything besides who he was. He knew for a fact that Shane only cared about the fact that he was a hockey player because he had an opportunity to talk about games with someone else who cared about the sport as much as he did—even though there was a part of Ilya that was actually pretty sure that Shane cared about hockey far more than he ever had.

He knew Shane didn’t like that he not only had money but was perfectly willing to spend it on him without a care in the world.

So yeah. The team didn’t need to know anything more about Shane than they already did. It was none of their business that they not only were still talking on the phone, but that they were calling every day. Sometimes more than once.

And if the new phone meant that they were able to FaceTime each other whenever they wanted now?

The team didn’t need to know about that, either.

Marleau would probably try to claim that Shane was laying the groundwork for sextortion or something. That sounds like something Marleau would try, and sounds like something Shane wouldn’t.

Having Shane as something that was just his—without the judgment, the opinions, and the attention of the team—was becoming far more valuable, anyway. He’d always thought that he was never one for dating—honestly, he’d sort of figured that he would be a lifelong bachelor before settling down with someone scandalously young who was willing to tolerate him once he was past his prime.

But instead, he had Shane. And he found that he desperately, more than anything else in his life, wanted to keep him.

He was trying to focus on the tape review before their next game but found that he was unable to focus on anything besides the memory of Shane pressing that kiss to his hockey card. He’d revisited that photo more times than he wanted to admit. Hopefully, no one would ever ask.

Before he could give it much thought, he paused the game on the screen—Vancouver in a game against Anaheim from a few weeks prior—and reached for his phone, pressing the FaceTime button and waiting for it to connect.

Shane answered after only a beat, his eyes looking a bit tired, and glasses perched on his nose.

“Hello, pretty boy. What are you doing?”

Shane smiled softly at him, lifting a paperback book up and waving it in front of the camera.

“Now that classes are over, I finally have time to read something for fun. It’s about a boy named Rintaro who ends up alone in this old bookstore after his grandfather dies. There’s this talking cat who shows up, and they go on these adventures saving books from people who don’t appreciate them. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. What are you doing?”

Ilya flipped the camera around, showing the screen of the TV before he flipped it back to the front-facing camera.

“Just reviewing tape. We are two to none, but that does not mean anything. Finals are anyone’s game until they are won. As much as I have tried to focus, I keep thinking about my pretty boy with freckles that I could be talking to instead.”

Shane smiled at him bashfully, his cheeks turning a bit pink. “If I’m a distraction, I can let you go. You need to be ready for the next game—I don’t want you off just because you’d rather be talking to me.”

Ilya shrugged, picking up the remote and making it clear that he was turning the TV off entirely. “If you are a distraction, you are the best one I have ever known. I am doing extra review. I have already reviewed with coach and team today. I always have time for you.”

Shane shuffled slightly on his couch, settling down and staring intently at the screen. “If that changes, just tell me. I don’t want to get you off your game. Game three tomorrow—it’s an important one. You could sweep the series.”

“Do not jinx us, Shane,” Ilya said, rolling his eyes and staring down at the tiny Shane on his screen.

“I’m not! I said you could, not that you will. And besides, I told you that you should probably be reviewing tape—obviously I don’t think you have this in the bag yet.”

“Even my Shane does not believe in me,” Ilya said with a sarcastic sigh.

“Your Shane?”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “I think so. I would like it if you were my Shane.”

Even if he’d wanted to, Ilya didn’t think Shane would have been able to hide the wide smile on his face at the sound of that.

“I would like to be your Shane, yeah. But how would that work? I mean, you’re in Boston, I’m in Montreal…”

“People move, Shane,” Ilya said with a shrug. “And sometimes they do not. Maybe you come to Boston after you graduate, maybe I ask to sign with Metros. I do not want to be Metro, but I would like to be with you. Maybe I use my money to fly you to see me whenever it is too hard to be apart. We can figure it out.”

Shane just stared at him for a moment. The wide smile that had spread on his face at the sound of my Shane eased somewhat—not gone, but softer and smaller. He looked almost startled, as if he expected Ilya to follow that up with a joke or something.

Or maybe like he’d thought the whole thing would stay suspended in this weird little bubble of phone calls and text messages.

“That sounds like a very simple solution to a pretty complicated problem,” Shane said after a few more moments of silence.

Ilya shrugged, watching him carefully and trying not to make it obvious exactly how gone he was for a man he had never met. But—knowing what he knew about Shane—he probably already knew. “It seems simple enough to me.”

“Sure,” Shane said, rolling his eyes not unkindly. “Because you aren’t the one who needs to figure out where you’re going to live and work after graduation.”

“No,” Ilya allowed. “I am not trying to figure out where I’m going to live. I am trying to figure out where you are going to live. My plan can come second. Shane—I am Ilya Rozanov. I can play for any team in the league.”

That got a genuine laugh out of him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be reviewing tape right now?”

“Yes, I was.”

Shane looked at him a bit fondly, giving him a soft, small smile. “And now you’re planning my future for me?”

“Yes, Shane. Of course.”

“That’s insane,” Shane said, smiling again.

“I thought it was romantic.”

“Insane, Ilya.”

The two of them just sat there, grinning at each other through the camera. For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. Ilya took the time to just watch him as Shane adjusted a blanket on his lap, tucking himself into the corner of the couch.

He really liked looking at Shane—nearly as much as he liked talking to him. It was becoming a consistent problem. Months of photographs and chatting hadn’t prepared him for the reality of being able to watch Shane exist. The fact that Shane was willing to even tolerate a conversation that offered the potential of them being able to exist in the same place… unfathomable.

Something warm and a bit dangerous feeling had started showing up more and more often whenever he looked at that smile. The sort of thing that made him start having thoughts he probably shouldn’t think yet. Have wants that he maybe hadn’t earned.

“I have an idea.”

Immediately suspicious, Shane’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Ilya through the screen.

“That never ends well with you. Last time you had an idea, I ended up with thousands of dollars of new electronics.”

“I think it ends very well. If not for my ideas, you couldn’t see me right now.”

“Sure. What is this new idea you have?”

He knew he should probably think this through a bit more before he said the words, but he also knew that if he spent too much time thinking about it, he might not have the courage to actually say it.

“You should come to Boston,” he said, watching Shane’s face for any sign of his reaction.

“You mean… after playoffs?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Now. Game three is tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

Shane’s answer was small and careful, and he suddenly felt incredibly nervous.

“You could come. I could… buy you a plane ticket. No one is using my tickets for the game. I could pick you up from airport? Or maybe you could take train. Canadians love trains, and apparently the Silver Line is running again. Easy transfer to Green Line, you could stay at my house—”

“Ilya.”

He stopped talking, fisting the hand not holding his phone into the fabric of his shirt and trying to swallow back the urge to vomit that he suddenly felt.

“You do not have to,” he said quietly, not quite willing to look at Shane’s face on the screen anymore.

“I want to,” he said quickly, calling Ilya’s attention back. “I do. I just don’t know if I can.”

“Okay,” he said quietly, knowing that the word came out more disappointed than he wanted it to. Shane’s expression immediately shifted and softened again.

“No, Ilya. Hey—”

“No, is okay. I understand.”

“No. You don’t. I mean it. I really want to. But flights are expensive, and it’s a whole thing crossing the border. And my summer classes are starting soon, and I don’t know details about what my schedule is going to look like.”

“I can get your flight, Shane. And you can even leave after we have a chance to actually see each other, if you want.”

“I don’t want you buying my ticket, Ilya,” he said, sighing. “Game tickets? Fine. It’s not like I could get a ticket to the game now on my own if I wanted to that hasn’t been scalped. But getting me a flight, too? That’s ridiculous.”

“Shane. I have money. You are a student.”

“Stop being rich at me, Ilya. I just… your team already feels weird about this whole thing. I know that’s not what this is, but I don’t want them to have another reason to think that I’m taking advantage of you.”

Ilya sighed, hating that he understood exactly what it was that Shane meant by that. It was one thing to know the truth of the situation—it was another thing entirely to have to constantly defend that truth against people who didn’t want to hear it.

“I’ll think about it, okay? I’ll think about it, and I’ll let you know. I just… I can’t say yes right now. You get that, right? It’s not that I don’t want to say yes, I just… I can’t.”

Ilya nodded, understanding. He hated it, but he understood.

“Probably best, anyway. Would be very distracting for me to know you were in the stands and not just watching on TV.”

“Distracting?” Shane asked, laughing a bit.

“Very. I would play worst game of my life. I would spend entire game looking for you and trying to tell if I could see your freckles from ice.”

“Are you actually serious?”

Ilya sat up, adjusting the phone to make sure that it showed all of his face. “Shane. If I knew you were in the same building as me, I do not think I could focus on anything else.”

Shane nodded slowly, his face sobering.

“Okay. Okay. How about this. Put me down for two of your tickets. One for game three, one for game four. I’ll even let you buy me a ticket for game five if you lose tomorrow. And I… I won’t tell you before if I can make it.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, a smile spreading quickly over his face. “Yes. Of course—yes. Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes.”

Ilya found himself hoping harder than he ever had that somehow, impossibly, Shane would figure out a way to come.

***

The first indication that something was wrong came when Connors nearly barrelled over an equipment staff manager trying to get back into the locker room after morning skate. He shouldered his way through the door hard enough that it bounced against the wall, drawing the attention of several of the occupants of the room and turning more than a few heads.

“You okay?” Carmichael asked, frozen in place as he stared at Connors, who looked around the room before waving over Marleau and St-Simon.

“Emergency.”

“Dude, what?”

Marleau looked up from where he was unlacing a skate. “Did someone die?”

“What?” Connors asked, apparently shocked out of his own chaos by the question. “No. What the hell?”

“Then it’s not an emergency,” Marleau shrugged, dropping the skates into his stall.

“It absolutely is,” Connors said, coming closer. “Guys, get over here. It’s about Cap.”

Marleau sighed, and St-Simon and Carmichael huddled in close. “What happened?”

Connors opened his mouth, then closed it again, clearly not sure where to start.

“Okay, so I heard Cap talking to ticketing.”

That got a little more attention from them.

“So?”

“So.”

Marleau waved his hand, as if encouraging him to get on with it.

“Tickets!”

“Yes bud,” Carmichael sighed. “We know what ticketing does.”

“Cap asked them to hold tickets for Games Three and Four. For Shane Hollander. And—and—he told them not to tell him if they get claimed or not.”

That did it. Those were the magic words that got them to listen and pay attention, apparently realizing that there was something actually to what he was saying.

“…What.” Marleau said, not even bothering to make it sound like a question.

“He doesn’t want to know,” Connors continued. “He specifically said he wanted to be surprised.”

For the first time, Marleau looked genuinely interested in what he had to say. 

“Like… surprised surprised?”

“Surprised surprised, yeah. He said he wants it to be a surprise if Shane is able to make it.”

The four of them stood there in their tight huddle, all of them thinking of the implications of that. It’s not that tickets would be particularly difficult for Ilya Rozanov of all people to get. It wasn’t unusual at all for players to leave tickets for family or friends or even for complete strangers who had the good fortune to be kind to a player on a game day.

But this implied hope or an expectation. The possibility that Ilya genuinely believed Shane might actually show up, tonight, or in two days.

“Ah, shit,” Carmichael muttered, slamming his open palm against Marleau’s stall.

“Exactly,” Connors said, pointing at him. “That’s the sort of reaction I’m looking for here.”

They were still talking, but Marleau ignored them. He suddenly felt sick. He wasn’t sure anymore whether Shane was fake or not—that actually wasn’t the biggest issue anymore. A month ago, when this had first started, it had been easy. He was some random guy from Grindr, and they hadn’t met, and it didn’t actually matter that Ilya was a professional hockey player with the self-preservation instincts of a lemming.

Easy.

But things weren’t quite that easy anymore. The phone calls, the photos, the hockey card of it all. Something about leaving tickets for him felt a little too much like Cap was making actual plans—even if he was going to claim that he ‘didn’t want to know’ if they were called for or not.

“Okay,” he said finally. “But we’re not doing this here.”

“What?” Connors said, blinking at him in confusion.

“This conversation,” Marleau continued. “We can’t do this here. Cap will come in off the ice any second, and if he walks back in and hears us talking about Shane again, he’s going to kill us.”

He watched the rest of them nod at him. “After this. My house. I’ll meet you all there.”

***

Three hours later, there were seven grown men crowded into Marleau’s living room. Someone had stopped at The Juicery for smoothies, someone else had somehow procured a plate of smoked salmon but no crackers.

One of the rookies had appeared despite not being invited, but no one had the energy to tell him to beat it.

Marleau sat on the arm of his own couch and surveyed the room. Finally, he cleared his throat and took no small amount of pleasure in watching a hush fall over the rest of them.

“Okay.”

Connors sat forward and opened his mouth before Marleau cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“No. You’re talked enough.”

Connors rolled his eyes before sitting back. “Fine, Alternate Captain Cliff Marleau. Then what’s the agenda?”

“The agenda,” Marleau said, “is figuring out whether we should be worried.”

“About Shane?” Carmichael asked around a mouthful of fish.

“About Cap. I don’t know Shane and I don’t really give a fuck about him. The only person we know who is involved in this is Cap, so that’s who we care about.”

“Okay,” St-Simon said, pulling obnoxiously on the straw of a smoothie that he knew good and well was already empty. “Scale of one to ten?”

“Ten.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I don’t know if he’s fake anymore,” Marleau said, their eyes all flashing back to him.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that Cap believes he’s real. The problem isn’t that there might be a scam, it’s that he’s invested. A few months ago, he was physically incapable of caring about someone long enough for any of this to even matter. Now he’s reserving tickets and smiling and his phone like an idiot.”

The silent part of that, the ‘if this all goes to hell’ part, went unspoken—but from the looks on everyone’s faces, they heard it anyway.

“Let’s work backwards,” Carmichael said eventually. “If Shane is fake… what’s the play?”

The rookie spoke up first. “Finals tickets. It’s gotta be, right? We had a good season—I know we were early shoo-ins even back in March. It wouldn’t be crazy to have started planting seeds for playoff tickets that far back.”

“That’s… not terrible,” St-Simon said, looking at the rookie consideringly.

“Okay,” Connors said, apparently incapable of staying quiet. “But Cap offered those.”

“Just like he offered the phone and the laptop?”

No one had anything to say about that.

The theory died almost immediately because it didn’t actually make much sense. Neither did any of the others. Every single explanation for Shane started to fall apart the moment someone poked it, like the laziest house of cards possible.

Money? He had argued against taking it and sounded genuinely upset about the big purchases based on Cap’s retelling of it.

Puck Bunny Chaser? He seemed to know more about hockey than some of the rookies, if his critiques and comments that Cap passed along had actually come from his own mouth instead of Cap using him as a convenient excuse to criticize the team while blaming someone else.

“Here’s the thing,” Hammersmith said, speaking for the first time since they’d assembled. “If this is a scam, this is the least profitable scam in human history. We are looking at months of investment—texting, phone calls, watching our games, weaving the most boring backstory and sending articles about recovery routines… and for what? One laptop? A couple of playoff tickets? It doesn’t make any sense.”

They all sat there, taking it in. No one had anything to use to knock over that theory, and they all recognized it.

Finally, Connors broke the silence.

“So, what’s the plan?”

Marleau laughed tiredly. “There is no plan.”

“What?”

“There is literally nothing we can do,” he said, looking around the room. “We either trust Cap, or we don’t.”

Nobody had a particularly good answer to that, and that was worse than every theory they’d come up with all night. Marleau was starting to suspect that the mystery wasn’t actually whether Shane existed. The real mystery was whether any of them were ready for what happened if he did and it didn’t work out for their captain.

+1.

He should have been more focused on the game.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t focused on it—there was a reason he was considered a generational talent, even when his brain was bouncing rapidly between the possibilities that Shane was either still in Montreal or somewhere in his barn. He played well. The team played well. He blocked shots, spent nearly thirty minutes on the ice, and helped drag the game into overtime before Boston finally found a way to put Vancouver away.

But there was still an irritatingly persistent part of his brain that kept circling back to the same thought.

He might be here.

It wasn’t constant and certainly wasn’t enough to actually throw him off, but it was just enough to be annoying. Every time he skated past the benches and caught sight of the crowd clamoring behind the class, every time play stopped and the camera lights swept the lower bowl.

Maybe he was there. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he couldn’t make it. Maybe his flight got delayed. Maybe his mother and Rose talked him into staying home instead of crossing international borders for someone he’d never met.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

It was nearly enough to drive him insane. And the worst part of it all was that he couldn’t even ask. He’d been telling Shane the truth when he said that knowing for sure would be worse. Knowing that Shane was there and he wouldn’t be able to just stare at him and would instead have to do his actual fucking job? Nope. Knowing that Shane had chosen to stay home, and he had to carry on as normal despite his disappointment? No, thank you.

Shane had spent the last few days being maddeningly careful anytime he mentioned the game, not once mentioning the tickets or saying the word Boston out loud. That was probably enough to tell Ilya everything he needed to know, but he didn’t want to think about it. So he tried not to.

He failed.

But then Boston won. Three for three, no competition yet from Vancouver. He wasn’t stupid—he was well aware that a team hadn’t swept the finals since Detroit in ’98. He was no Yzerman, but it wasn’t 1998 anymore, and he was Ilya Rozanov, and the Raiders sure as hell weren’t something to be written off.

He tried not to think about it too much when Shane didn’t magically appear at his house after the game. Tried not to feel disappointed by it even though he knew Shane didn’t have his address and couldn’t have easily found it online even if he’d tried to.

They’d talked that night, on the phone instead of Facetime, and he had tried not to sound too disappointed by it because despite how he felt about not having Shane in his arms in his house he knew that this was exactly what he’d said he wanted.

Like a fucking idiot.

Game four was only marginally better. They were more focused on the potential to have the first finals clean sweep of the twenty-first century, and Vancouver had apparently had a fire lit under their asses by the close call in Game Three. Of course, the thoughts about Shane were still there, but he didn’t have as much time to hold on to them.

Until the moment the goal horn sounded for the last time that season, at least.

The goal horn sounded, the building erupted, and the crowd became a sheer wall of noise. For a moment, none of the rest of it mattered because this was exactly why they played—this feeling, this moment, this fucking team.

The other players around him were colliding into each other, gloves flying as that incredible and impossible rush of relief slammed into all of them at once.

They’d done it.

Four games.

Stanley Cup Champions.

For several moments, he didn’t think about Shane at all. But then the families started their climb down onto the ice—partners, parents, children, and friends. People were leaning over railings, gathering near the glass, waiting to celebrate with their loved ones.

That’s when he started to think about Shane again.

But he wasn’t going to do that to himself—he wasn’t seventeen again, spending every moment of celebration scanning seventeen thousand seats for a single person. He posed for the photos, talked to the reporters, and accepted the congratulations.

And all the while, a tiny, stupid part of him waited for a tap on the shoulder that never came.

He caught his teammates shooting him worried looks, and he made sure that he kept the manic grin plastered to his face. This was exactly why he hadn’t told them about the agreement he’d made with Shane.

Eventually, the crowd started thinning, and he was forced somewhere along the way to accept what was probably true. Shane hadn’t come.

It was more disappointing than he wanted to admit—even to himself—but it wasn’t catastrophic. There were dozens of reasons he might not have been able to make it. Summer school, work-study, money, timing, life… They’d talk tonight.

The realization settled into him slowly enough that by the time he’d reached the locker room, he was mostly at peace with it.

Mostly.

The celebrations were already well underway by the time he made it through the doors.

Music was thumping, men were yelling, and someone was spraying something expensive onto someone else.

Connors was entirely naked for reasons he didn’t want to ask about.

Ilya smiled when appropriate and accepted several damp hugs that he absolutely did not want before he eventually escaped toward his stall. The second he sat down, he reached for his phone, hand hovering over the screen to protect it from the champagne that someone sprayed in his general direction.

He was surprised that there were no new messages from Shane, but he knew that his mom had been planning a watch party and sometimes had strict rules about phone use.

He stared at the cursor blinking in the empty text box. He had a thousand things to say, but none of them felt right. No matter how many messages he drafted and deleted, not one of them actually summed up any of the things that he wanted to say to Shane—none of the things that he would say to Shane if he could. Because Shane knew all the things he wanted to could have said right then, anyway. He’d probably either watched the game or listened to it, or followed it online. Although maybe he’d been busy. Maybe something had come up, and that’s why he hadn’t heard from him yet. Maybe—

we swept.

Simple, safe. The noise kept swelling around him as someone shouted, someone laughed, and a bottle popped somewhere. He stared down at the message, about to hit send when something happened in the room that sent literal chills down his spine.

Unless someone was giving a speech, locker rooms were never quiet. There was always some low-level noise. Chattering teammates, roaring showers, the sound of zippers and metal and fabric.

When a room this size, full of this many people, falls silent, completely and totally and immediately, it is so far out of the ordinary that it is immediately noticed. He almost tried to ignore it—he had a message to send—but then he heard the sound of glass shattering. Connors had probably dropped it doing something incredibly stupid.

But even in the wake of the sound of breaking glass, no one spoke. Hell, no one even moved. If not for the quiet chatter on the TV mounted high on the wall, still recounting the final period, he might have even thought he’d gone deaf.

When he looked up, the first thing he noticed was that no one was looking in his direction. Every last one of them was staring past him, toward the doorway. All of them were completely silent. Just staring.

Confusion prickled up the back of his neck, and slowly he turned around—and forgot every single thing he’d been thinking about. Because Shane was standing in the doorway. For one impossible second, nothing connected properly. Because his brain knew Shane. His brain knew his face. Knew the shape of his smile, the way his glasses slid down his nose when he was tired, knew the sound of his laugh.

But only through a screen. Only through FaceTime windows and pictures and phone calls. His brain knew Shane. His body had never seen him before. That created a very bizarre and disorienting sensation where he felt simultaneously very familiar and like something brand new.

Shane shifted slightly beneath the weight of the eyes of twenty hockey players staring directly at him. In one hand was a bottle of vodka. In the other, several shot glasses were held tight in a white-knuckled grip.

His cheeks—those perfect freckled fucking cheeks—were flushed pink, although whether from embarrassment or excitement, Ilya couldn’t tell.

“Hi.”

The one word landed heavily in Ilya’s chest, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

“I figured if I was going to crash a locker room celebration, I should probably bring something.”

“You are here,” he breathed, unwilling to take his eyes away from Shane for even a moment, as if he might disappear if he blinked too slowly.

“Yeah,” he said, a soft smile on his face.

“You are actually really here?”

Shane laughed, leaning against the doorframe and watching Ilya just stare at him. “Last time I checked. You could’ve warned me about the tunnel closure. Leaving Logan was a nightmare.”

“You are here,” he repeated, knowing that he sounded stupid but almost unable to actually wrap his head around the whole thing.

“Ilya!” Shane said, shaking his head. “Yes. I’m here.”

He didn’t know when he’d stood, but he was definitely no longer sitting. He couldn’t remember making an active decision to stand up, but one second he was still in his stall staring dumbly and the next he was crossing the room on tired legs.

“Hello, pretty boy,” he said once he was close enough to reach out and cup Shane’s face in his palms.

“Hi,” Shane said again, his smile widening.

“You were at game?”

“Both of them, yeah.”

Ilya blinked back at him, trying to make the words compute. “Both?”

“Games three and four, yeah. I sat in your seats. Just like we talked about.”

“You watched me play?” Ilya asked, feeling his eyes mist up just enough that he was glad his back was to the team.

“Yeah, I did. I thought that was sort of the point.”

 Someone behind them made a strangled noise, but Ilya didn’t bother turning to see who. For months, Shane had only existed in pieces. Text messages sent from libraries and lecture halls and blurry FaceTime calls at two in the morning when both of them should have been asleep.

And now he was here, and his face was in Ilya’s hands. Standing close enough that Ilya could see the faint shadows under his eyes, could notice the way that he shifted his weight from side to side in nervousness. Close enough that he could see the freckles that the camera had never been able to capture in full.

“I think,” Shane said carefully, glancing around the room, “that your team might be having a collective medical emergency.”

That finally broke the intensity of Ilya’s stare, and a laugh escaped him. Suddenly, half the room started moving around again. Connors sat down heavily on the nearest bench, Carmichael covered his face with his hands.

Marleau looked as if he’d just discovered the existence of God, and he wasn’t particularly happy about it.

“You are all very rude,” Ilya informed them without looking away from Shane. “Not one of you is saying hello.”

“Hello,” Connors said automatically before immediately pointing at Shane. “What the fuck.”

Shane laughed, shrugging one shoulder. “I get that a lot, actually.”

“You’re real?”

“Last I checked, yes.”

“You’re here?”

“Ilya literally just asked that. He asked, and I answered.”

“Yeah,” the rookie said, taking a step towards them. “But like… I’ve been calling you Craig for months.”

Shane tilted his head, looking at him closely. “That’s actually kind of funny.”

“No, it’s really not,” Marleau bit out, shaking his head as he joined Connors on the bench.

Ilya was smiling so hard that his face was starting to hurt.  Months. It had been months of not having Shane in the same country, and now here he was. Months of wondering and imagining and wanting and defending, and now Shane had walked directly into the center of the circus without missing a beat.

“You brought me vodka?”

Ilya shook the bottle slightly, pointing it at him. “I did.”

“How?”

Shane looked astonishingly pleased with himself. “Well. Rose knows a guy. And that guy knew another guy. And then I made friends with a security guard.”

Ilya stared at him, and Shane stared back.

“I don’t think any of that makes me feel very good about the security of this arena.”

“Look, it worked out for you. According to the guy at the liquor store, this one’s hard to find stateside.”

Shane grinned up at him, and Ilya immediately crumbled. There was absolutely no defense against that smile in person. Absolutely none.

“You brought shot glasses, too?”

“Christ, Ilya. I’m not an animal.”

“Shane, you smuggled vodka into NHL arena. I am pretty sure you broke several league rules.”

“That doesn’t mean we need to be drinking vodka out of a paper cup.”

A helpless, almost wild laugh escaped him, and Shane’s smile softened immediately at the sound. The noise in the room slowly returned around them as conversations restarted, music resumed, and men started shedding gear again. But it all felt strangely distant to his ears. Muted.

“I changed my mind. You should have told me,” he said, the words slipping out of him before he could stop them.

“I know,” Shane said, his expression softening.

“Shane, I spent three hours convincing myself you weren’t here.”

A flicker of guilt crossed Shane’s face, and Ilya brushed his thumbs over Shane’s cheekbones to smooth away the expression.

“I am so, so happy you are here.”

“Me too,” Shane said, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against Ilya’s. “I am so fucking proud of you. Clean fucking sweep, Ilya. I am so proud of you.”

Suddenly, Ilya couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t tolerate another second or inch of distance. He shifted closer, closing the small gap between them.

“I would like to kiss you now,” he said quietly into the space between them, startling a laugh out of Shane.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Neither of them moved, which was ridiculous.

“You know,” Shane said around another laugh, “for two people who have spent months flirting—”

“I know,” Ilya said, interrupting him.

“Great.”

They continued just staring at each other. Not moving, but just smiling at each other like idiots.

Eventually, Shane shook his head.

“Come here, then.”

Relief hit him so hard it was almost embarrassing, and Ilya closed the distance between them immediately. Shane, sweet Shane, met him halfway. Somewhere in between Shane’s hand fisting into the front of his jersey and Ilya’s hand landing on Shane’s jaw, the surrounding room erupted.

But Ilya didn’t care about that at all, because Shane was real and he was here and he was really here and he was smiling against his mouth.

When they pulled away, breathless and a little overwhelmed, Ilya realized that this was quite possibly the best day of his entire life.

“You know,” Shane said quietly. “I practiced something.”

“Oh?”

Shane straightened slightly, taking a breath before saying something that wasn’t English but certainly wasn’t any Russian that he knew.

Ilya burst into laughter at the sound—atrocious and catastrophe and probably a war crime against the Russian language and her people. He’d heard once that the Canadians were the reason the Geneva Convention even needed to exist, and whatever had just come out of Shane’s mouth seemed like evidence that was probably warranted.

“What did you just say?”

“Come on,” Shane said, cheeks flaring red. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“No, no. It was. Say it again. Please.”

“Not if you’re just going to laugh at me,” he said, burying his farm face into Ilya’s neck.

“No, say again. Please.”

Shane repeated the word again, slower enough that Ilya could tell that it was meant to be pozdravlyayu.

Congratulations.

“I am sorry, sweetheart. Thank you.”

“I practiced that for an entire week,” Shane mumbled into the skin of his throat.

“You wasted entire week, then.”

Shane stepped back a half-step, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Ilya tried not to notice what that did for his pecs and biceps. “I take it back, then.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Shane’s smile returned—soft and warm and worth every second of the wait.

“No,” he said. “I don’t. Congratulations, Ilya.”

“Thank you, pretty boy,” he said, sweeping Shane back into his arms. “I can’t wait to open my prize.”

***