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The first time it happened, Yuna hadn’t thought much of it. She had thought it was sweet, actually.
David had gone to grab his phone charger, and half an hour later Ilya Rozanov was in her living room, making himself as small as possible as Shane explained that he was gay. And in love with Ilya.
Yuna hadn’t initially taken it well. She'd mostly stayed silent as Shane and David had talked, trying to understand Ilya’s motives. She wasn’t sure if he was some sort of honeypot sent by the Raiders to undermine Shane, or if Ilya was taking it upon himself to trap Shane into something emotional before he broke his heart and ruined his game, but she figured there was something. There was something sharklike in the way Ilya stayed silent and watched the three of them, as if he was calculating something, sizing up her and David.
She didn’t appreciate it. She'd done her best to size him up right back, but if anything, Ilya seemed to relax when her attention was on him and not Shane. He seemed perfectly unbothered, practically comfortable, with her judgmental eyes on him in a way that rattled her. Yuna had tried to bait him, taking a couple of shots about him throwing away his career, and even David had cottoned on and joined her, making a comment about Shane being with other men, but Ilya had just smirked and raised an eyebrow to Shane every time, letting Shane snap at them on his behalf.
She kept waiting for the moment that Ilya would stand from the table and declare that this had gone far enough, that Shane wasn’t worth it, that he wasn’t going to leave Boston for fucking Ottawa of all places. That Shane was some sort of experiment or test or something that helped Ilya pass the time.
Yuna had to concede, only to herself, that she might have been wrong before lunch was even over. She had seen the way Ilya kept a hand on Shane’s thigh throughout the afternoon, too high to be appropriate in front of polite company, but she’d kept her mouth shut because it was clearly soothing Shane. Just as she and David had begun to relax and accept that this could be something real, Shane had spiralled so fast, head folded into his arms over the table, his fluffy hair brushing against his bowl as he tried to breathe through his panic.
Ilya had looked at her and David expectantly before he’d leaned over and effectively scruffed Shane, pulling him out of his own head as his fingers dug into his neck. Yuna had thought it was a nifty distraction technique as he reassured Shane that he was safe, and nothing bad was going to happen. Yuna had even thought it was sweet when he’d gripped the back of Shane’s neck to pull him up and kiss him chastely with a mouth still full of pasta.
Shane had melted completely under Ilya’s touch, and Yuna had thought that it was romantic and sweet and she was grateful that Shane was loved by someone who could care for him so easily and specifically.
Then Ilya had done it again, and suddenly, it hadn’t looked so sweet.
>>>
They had invited themselves over for dinner to keep talking, which in retrospect, Yuna shouldn’t have suggested. She had caught the way Ilya had looked at Shane with a slight frown, and the pained smile on Shane’s face as he’d told them that they’d love to have them over for dinner. David had commented after they left that they had probably planned to spend their time together alone and that Yuna was cramping their style, but she hadn’t thought it was a big deal. Shane had apparently spent nine years sleeping with a man they didn’t even know he spoke to outside of the ice. Yuna had a right to get to know him. They could spend one day with them. Ilya would be in Ottawa soon enough, and then he and Shane could be together all the time.
Yuna had even thought it would be good for Shane, to have the person he loved so close. She thought that now that she and David knew the truth about this, they could be closer as a family. She watched them steal kisses inside the kitchen while she and David sat outside, thinking nobody was watching them, their hands wandering just a little lower than Yuna would have ever dared to touch David in the same province as her parents lived.
Then Ilya had wrapped his hands around Shane’s neck and shoved him against the fridge, and Yuna wanted to kill him with her bare hands.
Yuna froze, her glass of wine in hand from the patio table, her blood running cold as she watched from through the window. David wasn't looking, too busy manning the barbeque while the boys were inside bickering over how much meat to bring outside, but Yuna had seen. Shane had been jokingly tried to get past as Ilya chopped vegetables, smacking his ass playfully to get him to move, and Ilya’s response had been to drop the knife and grab her son by the throat, shoving him against the fridge, laughing as he pulled him in for a quick kiss before manoeuvering around him back to the chopping board.
Shock ran through her whole body, leaving her feeling unsettled as she watched the exchange, the five seconds of it feeling like an hour.
He had dropped his hands just as quick as he had put them on Shane, but for the first time, Yuna realised how large Ilya Rozanov was.
Shane and Ilya were the same height; Shane was maybe even a little taller. She suspected Ilya’s curls made him look taller than he was, especially when paired with his boisterous personality. He was a little broader than Shane, but they were both big, huge athletes. They were scary players on the ice, too; she’d seen both of them drop gloves and start fights, and she’d seen Shane end even more.
They'd never fought each other on the on the ice; Yuna would have remembered that. It was the one grace that she gave Ilya throughout the years – that he had never hurt her son. They'd checked each other into the boards countless times, but Yuna had never worried about that. It was regular game play, and Shane had never so much as flinched, skating off after Ilya whenever he was tackled with a determined look on his face to get the puck away from him.
But Ilya Rozanov could wrap his hands around her son’s neck in a flash, and Shane wouldn’t so much as blink. He'd lean into his touch and move for a kiss like it was a reflex. He would grab Ilya back and pull him closer. She'd seen it with her own eyes, and she had no idea what it meant.
Yuna watched them like a hawk for the rest of the night. She caught every loving look, every soft touch, and every not so soft touch. Every whisper between them, a clear shorthand they seemed to have that she couldn’t even begin to understand, as she looked for something else. She wasn’t sure what yet, but – something. Instead, what she saw was a private language between the two of them, the kind of intuitive, wordless communication that had taken her and David years to create and perfect.
Shane had it. He had it with Ilya Rozanov. For nearly ten years, they had been developing their own secret language, their own private world, and she had had no idea. They looked at each other with a smirk when David brought up the All Stars game and looked uncomfortable when Yuna asked about Rose. Ilya blanched imperceptibly when David mentioned Russia, Shane's hand already moving to brush carefully through Ilya’s hair as he answered vaguely for Ilya. They brushed elbows and leaned into each other all dinner, and without looking, when Yuna asked about Ilya’s family, Shane seamlessly jumped in to deflect with something else when Ilya sniffed and stayed silent. Shane had fallen in love with someone without her even knowing about it, and he’d created a whole world for the two of them that she was never supposed to see.
There was a whole side to her son that she didn’t even know existed. There was a whole man that Yuna now had to try to learn, to get to know and understand.
A man that was in love with another man.
A man that was potentially sacrificing his legacy for his rival.
A man who smiled when that rival wrapped his hands around his neck.
She was going to do her best. She was going to know her son again, properly. She was going to understand why he felt so comfortable with the way Ilya touched him like that. Why Shane leaned in when a man wrapped their hands around him, and not push him away and banish him from his house the way any sane person would. She was going to understand what the hell was going on between the two of them that had Ilya throwing his career down the drain and Shane risking everything she had so meticulously built for him.
And she was going to try her very best not to hate Ilya Rozanov for taking Shane away from her.
Yuna turned back to look out of the rearview window as David drove away from the cottage, grinding her teeth when she saw Shane pull Ilya into the house by his shirt with a look on his face that she’d never seen before.
>>>
"It’s different watching them now, isn’t it?” David asked.
Yuna hummed as she watched Shane and Ilya face off at centre ice on the television, both of them chewing on their mouthguards. Shane almost looked like he was blushing, and Ilya was smirking. Yuna squinted, and realised that even Ilya was a little pink in the cheeks.
“Has Shane always looked like that around him?” Yuna asked before she could stop herself.
“Honey, he was looking at Ilya like that during that draft,” David said.
Yuna turned to look at him, expecting him to be joking, but he just looked thoughtful. “Really?”
David nodded, his eyes still fixed on the television. Yuna looked back at the boys just in time to see the puck drop. Shane snatched it quickly, but Ilya was right on his tail. She flinched when Ilya shoved Shane into the boards, laughing as he took off with the puck. Shane looked frustrated as he skated off after him.
“He’s so violent,” Yuna muttered.
"That’s hockey,” David said, something wary in his tone.
“He’s just,” Yuna took a sip of her wine, trying to measure her words. “Don’t you think he’s kind of aggressive?”
“I mean, on the ice, sure,” David shrugged. “That’s his job.”
“No, with Shane,” she said.
David finally turned to look at her, his brow a little furrowed. “I mean, yeah, they’re kind of physical. But they’re young. We were like that too, when it was new. Ilya seems like he’s going easy on Shane, if anything.”
“It’s not new,” she said bitterly. “They’ve been at this for nine years, David.”
“Yes, well,” he said, trailing off.
“I don’t like the way he touches Shane,” Yuna admitted.
“You just don’t like him,” David sighed.
“That’s not true,” Yuna immediately defended herself. “I just don’t know if I like him yet.”
“You know.”
“No I don’t,” she said. “It’s ambivalence.”
“It’s more than ambivalence,” David corrected.
"I want the best for our son,” Yuna said, hating how alone she seemed to be in this. “Don’t you want better for him?”
She waited for David to agree, to say something, to say that he noticed the strange ways Ilya treated Shane, but he was silent. Yuna watched the rest of the game without a word, her brow furrowing deeper with every aggressive hit Shane took from Ilya.
>>>
Yuna had had Google alerts set up for every possible variation of Shane’s name since 2004. The moment after Shane had left her cottage in Ottawa with Ilya, she had gone and added every thinkable variation of Ilya’s name to her alerts, too. Not because she was looking for anything in particular. She just needed to get a better sense of Ilya’s image, and how it could impact Shane down the line. If they were serious about being serious, if it ever eventuated that they came out about their relationship, as unlikely as that was, Yuna was going to be prepared.
Ilya’s name was thrown around online much more than Shane’s was.
Ilya had a myriad of his own sponsorship deals which set her alerts off every day. Everyone from Boston based businesses associated closely with the NHL to flashy European designers posted about him on a near daily basis, knowing his name garnered attention and traffic. He was photographed coming and going to practice exclusive Adidas outfits that hadn’t been launched yet, driving a different sports car every day. And if it wasn’t hockey related, then her alerts were going off because he was out on the town drinking with his teammates, posing for sultry photos with fans, or he was on the arm of a beautiful Russian socialite.
Yuna had a lot of questions. Namely, if he was Shane’s boyfriend, why was he going out so much? Why did he need to go out drinking so often? Why wasn’t he focused on hockey? What was Shane doing while his boyfriend was out drinking with beautiful women? Who was this woman he was seen with so often? Was his relationship with Shane real to him? Was Shane some sort of dirty little secret that Ilya had no intention of truly ending up with?
“Who is this girl Ilya is always photographed with?” Yuna asked, against David’s advice at the start of August.
Shane didn’t even flinch as he looked at her through their FaceTime call. “What girl?”
“Wait,” Yuna said, navigating to their messages and sending him one of the screenshots in her photo library. She waited anxiously for Shane to receive it.
“Oh,” Shane smiled at his phone. “That’s Svetlana.”
Yuna waited for more information, but Shane seemed totally unbothered. “Who is Svetlana?” she pressed.
“She’s his friend from Russia,” Shane said. “They grew up together. Their dads were really close.”
Yuna tried not to make a face at that. She had seen enough photos of Ilya with that woman to know that they were a little too familiar with one another. “How close?”
Shane rolled his eyes. She hadn’t seen him do that since he was a teenager. “Close, mom. She went back to Moscow with him for his father’s funeral. She knows his brother.”
“He has a brother?” Yuna asked. Ilya hadn’t mentioned that. But she also hadn’t asked him any questions about his family. She had just read the press release explaining that he was missing nearly two weeks worth of games because his father had died. The time off had essentially ensured the Raiders didn’t make it through to the next round of playoffs.
“Yes,” Shane said, his voice sounding less patient. “And a niece. Svetlana brings her presents from Ilya whenever she goes back.”
She hummed, considering. “That’s nice of her.”
“It is. She’s nice,” Shane said.
“Have you met her?”
“Not in person,” Shane shrugged. “We talked on FaceTime over summer, and I’ve texted her a few times about hockey.”
Yuna raised her eyebrow at that. “She’s into hockey?”
Shane nodded, perking up a little. “Her father’s Sergei Vetrov.”
“Who?”
“He played hockey for the Soviet Union, Ilya said he’s like the most famous goalie in Russia,” Shane said. “Svetlana knows hockey. She's smart. She studied like, statistics and something else in math.”
“She sounds like the perfect woman,” Yuna joked.
Shane shuttered a little at that, his smile dropping. “Sorry, I’ve gotta go, JJ’s calling. Bye.”
Yuna didn’t get a chance to say it back before Shane hung up.
>>>
Nothing could have prepared her for the Google alert she woke up to in the middle of September.
Yuna dialled the phone before she had even gotten out of bed.
“Mom?”
“Shane, why am I seeing photos of you covered in hickeys on the internet?” she asked through gritted teeth.
Shane sighed. “One of the rookies posted a photo in the locker room, I didn’t see it until this morning. And it’s one hickey.”
“You’re marked up like a lamb at an abattoir,” Yuna hissed. She flinched when Shane coughed out a shocked laugh.
“Please, stop,” he said. She hated that he sounded tired.
“Shane, are you okay?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“What?”
"Was it Ilya?” she asked. “I don't think it’s very appropriate –”
“Mom,” Shane interrupted her, his voice suddenly sounding distant. “I can’t talk right now, practice is in half an hour. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
Yuna opened her mouth to admonish him, but Shane cut her off and said goodbye, hanging up on her.
She thought about it for the rest of the day. Ilya leaving disgusting marks on her son’s perfect, unmarred skin sat terribly with her. Even teenagers had better sense than to do that to each other. And Shane – Shane should have known better. He should have told Ilya that it was inappropriate and to stop.
Ilya’s lack of boundaries and self control was not going to come back onto Shane, Yuna would make sure of it.
>>>
She didn’t mention her phone call with Shane to David, but he seemed to sense that she was bothered by something. He brought her wine and chips after dinner and sat with his arm wrapped around her as they watched the Raiders play the Admirals later that night, kicking off preseason.
Yuna watched in silence as Ilya knocked down player after player, at one point chirping Scott Hunter so aggressively Hunter threw his stick at him.
He was annoying. He was goading other players into fights, but he wasn’t starting them. He was calculated, which felt sinister. Yuna didn’t like how clever he was. She wondered what sort of things he said to Shane to get under his skin; she had seen the way Shane had frowned at him on the ice over the years.
She was silent throughout the game, almost eager to see the post game interview. Since she had learned about Shane and Ilya, Yuna had noticed how often the two of them were asked about the other. And she had noticed how often they had complimented each other, albeit backhandedly.
Ilya was arrogant, per usual. He chirped Scott Hunter over his loss, as if Hunter hadn’t won the most recent cup, totalling two to Ilya’s one. He chirped the Admirals, their coach, and even the Zamboni drivers of New York, blaming them for all setting up Hunter to fail this year.
Yuna frowned as Ilya laughed on her television screen, the sound cold and detached when someone asked about the Admirals’ chances of back to back cups.
“Did you watch the game?” Ilya asked. “I think maybe they are too comfortable. They win one cup and get comfortable.”
Yuna sipped her wine, wondering if Ilya had gotten too comfortable after his single win, too.
>>>
Yuna avoided Twitter, usually. But Ilya’s name was trending, and she wanted to know why.
It turned out that one of Ilya’s teammates had posted a selfie from the locker room and Ilya’s bare back was visible, covered in scratches.
It had kicked off some sort internet frenzy of women who had slept with Ilya in the past congregating to try to figure out who had done that to him. Yuna had wondered that herself, considering Shane wouldn’t have been so careless and risky as to do that himself. And Yuna didn’t know how they worked – in their private time – but Yuna had seen the way Ilya grabbed Shane and pushed him around. She knew that Shane didn’t leave those scratches.
Ilya was either still sleeping around, or they had something open and they weren’t as committed as they had lied about.
Yuna read through the tweets, her stomach churning.
Dozens, no hundreds of tweets had joined in on the online cacophony to contribute their own stories of sleeping with Ilya and leaving their own marks on him. The stories were almost all the same – they met Ilya at a club and went back to his hotel room or home with him. Sometimes alone, sometimes with one of their friends. Sometimes with other players on his team.
He had to know of Ilya’s reputation, surely. Shane was offline in a day to day sort of way, but Yuna knew for a fact that he knew about current events. She knew that hockey players gossiped worse than teenage girls. He had to have known what a downright slut Ilya Rozanov was.
Yuna didn’t understand why Shane was okay with this. Ilya had sat at her table, where she had fed Shane as a child, and admitted that he had been with many women. From his own mouth, Ilya had whored around. She would have liked to pretend that she was sexually liberated and that she didn’t think sex was a big deal, but she did. Yuna couldn’t help it. Whether it was her parents or her education or the time she grew up in, Yuna wasn’t certain, but the casual nature around sex these days made her squeamish.
She had only been with three men. Three serious relationships, and that was it. High school, college, and David. David had slept with a few women in college, Yuna knew that, but they had never discussed it. She hadn’t wanted to know, and David had never offered up that information. Because it was private, and they respected each other.
She knew that Shane had had sex. She had seen the occasional tweets about him going home with a girl at a bar over the years. She had found a condom wrapper in his room when he was seventeen once. He had dated Rose Landry, and she had heard Ilya make a joke about how sour that had gone. Shane had been sleeping with Ilya casually for a decade.
But Ilya had done it in excess. Simply because he could, because sex meant nothing to him. He still was doing it in excess, sleeping around with a boyfriend waiting for him at home, more loyal than Ilya deserved. And Shane deserved to know how little Ilya valued intimacy.
It made her even more uneasy around him. What was it about Shane of all people that Ilya kept coming back to? When he had his pick of any man or woman, why Shane? Why would Shane want to be with someone who didn’t respect women or himself? He clearly didn’t respect Shane, to be sleeping with him for years and still sleeping with other people.
Yuna loved her son, but she couldn’t understand his choice to be with Ilya. She understood that it had started as casual, but she didn’t understand why they were lying to themselves about being something they weren’t. What was it about the two of them that they couldn’t shake? Why did they lie about being something serious when Ilya clearly wasn’t serious about Shane? She just couldn’t understand Ilya’s intentions. She couldn’t understand why Shane didn’t just move on.
Her best guess was that Shane was excited by doing something wrong. He did everything perfect and right all the time; Ilya was the wrong thing. Of course Shane had snapped as a teenager and rebelled. But Ilya, she didn’t understand.
Maybe that was why Shane let Ilya do the things that he did to him, grabbing him by the neck and leaving his mark on him. Maybe Shane was the only person willing to let Ilya touch him the way that he did. She couldn’t imagine anyone else allowing that sort of treatment. But Shane had struggled with being gay for so long, maybe there was something psychological going on. Maybe he wanted to punish himself somehow, and Ilya was the person that would do it for him. Maybe Shane didn’t love himself the way that he should, if he was okay with Ilya sleeping around on him.
She just didn’t see what Shane saw in Ilya. What could Ilya possibly give Shane that he couldn’t find in someone kinder and sweeter and more polite? Somebody who respected him, and treated him right? Someone who put the effort in to being with him, like Shane deserved? It had to be the misguided throes of first love, delayed teenage feelings that Shane didn’t know how to distinguish from real feelings.
Yuna sent Shane the photo of Ilya in the locker room with a question mark.
Shane didn’t contact her for nearly three weeks.
>>>
Yuna devoted herself to listening instead of talking. She spent the remainder of the year overruling her instinct to call Shane every day and ask a million questions like what are you thinking or how could you do this to us or tell me how long this phase is going to last so I can start planning for when you come to your senses and are you sure Rose Landry wasn’t the right person for you, instead sending him a check in text every three days and waiting for him to call her once a week.
He seemed lighter, that much was obvious, which brought about its own type of hurt. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t noticed it over the years, how closed off he had become. How insular.
Shane was so much more of an open book now. He didn’t hesitate before answering basic questions the way he had over the years prior. Years, Yuna realised. Years of her son not trusting them enough to tell them that he was gay.
So, she learned to listen. She learned to pay attention to where Shane did pause when they talked and try to consider why he was choosing his words so carefully. She paid attention to the faces he made that she felt like she had never noticed before, the ones Ilya seemed to anticipate before Shane even made them.
She chose her hardest to hear him when he casually mentioned that they were monogamous.
She tried her hardest, but months down the line, and there was still so much that she felt she was missing. Yuna hadn’t said anything about it to David, but she could tell from the way he was watching Shane as intently as she was that he was doing the same thing.
They weren’t ready to talk about how they had failed Shane yet.
>>>
Christmas was a test, Yuna realised too late. Shane hadn’t brought it up, probably waiting for Yuna to do it first, which felt like her first misstep. They made it to the second week of December before David asked her what date Shane and Ilya would be over for the Christmas break when she realised Shane hadn’t confirmed plans with her, and she hadn’t asked, assuming he would be home by the twenty fourth like always.
She had called him the second David left the house and asked when she could expect him and Ilya. Shane had been silent for a long moment before saying they’d drive up in the evening of the twenty third, and was polite enough not to ask her if she had simply expected him to show up on his own and leave Ilya alone on their first Christmas as a couple. She didn’t like the feeling that she was on thin ice with her son; like he was the one expecting her to act like a child, as if his own behaviour over the last few months wasn’t a prolonged tantrum.
Yuna was mostly eager to have four days to simply watch Shane and Ilya together. She needed to know if what she had seen at the cottage in the summer was a fluke on an emotionally heightened day, or if it was something else.
>>>
Seeing Ilya politely tiptoe into her home was odd. For such a large man, he was so good at making himself small.
Yuna didn’t like it. It felt calculated, his carefulness. Like he was acting a certain way for her approval, or to let her guard down and relax around him before he shattered Shane and left her to pick up the pieces.
She had watched through the window as Shane had led Ilya into the house by their clasped hands, dragging him through the house he grew up with from room to room, letting Ilya pause at every photo and explain the story behind each. Yuna trailed behind them, ready to interject at any moment, her heart hurting as he triviliased every photo as if every moment wasn’t incredibly important. It was all I lost a bet and had to shave my head or that was my first full sized stick, do not say it Ilya and that one is so stupid, I hated the camp that year, yeah that stupid redheaded kid I told you about and not my mother dedicated her life to raising me, here is all the evidence of how much someone loves me the right way.
>>>
Yuna made her way to the end of the hall, ready to knock on the door to Shane’s bedroom to let them know that lunch was ready when she heard Ilya laugh.
“You have this one, too,” Ilya was saying. “And this one.”
“It’s a different edition,” Shane said.
“You have this one as well,” Ilya said.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to take copies of all my books with me when I moved,” Shane said.
“Why not?”
"Did you bring a lot of things with you when you moved to America?”
Yuna pressed closer to the door, listening for the answer, but Ilya didn’t say anything. She just heard Ilya make a soft noise of acknowledgement just before she knocked on the door, unsure of what she interrupted.
>>>
Watching Ilya stalk silently through her house was unnerving.
He was too good at being careful and quiet in a way that suggested practice. Yuna noticed the way he cleared a room in total silence, slinking through so silently the only way she knew he was there was because Shane would talk to him. How Shane always knew where he was, Yuna had no idea.
Ilya was everywhere. He was standing in the kitchen with Shane doing the dishes after she and David cooked Christmas lunch. He was out in the backyard on the patio set with Shane, their legs locked together while Shane talked to JJ on the phone. He was pressed close to Shane on the couch, watching the news with them, his head dropping onto Shane’s shoulder as he fell asleep, as if she wasn’t even in the room and his behaviour wasn’t too familiar.
Everywhere Shane was, so was Ilya. He was there every time Yuna looked over at her son. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to talk to Shane alone since he had arrived, because Ilya Rozanov was always by his side, acting like some sort of wall that she couldn’t get behind.
And the strangest part was that Shane seemed used to the way Ilya hung off of him. He expected it, even. If Ilya was gone for too long, Shane would pout. It was like Ilya could sense it and reappear by his side, smoothing out the lines in Shane’s face with a smile.
It was like the two of them were tracking one another. Yuna could see the way Ilya’s head would cock to the side slightly, as if he were tracking Shane, even when Shane was out of his eyesight in another room, always listening for him. And she could see the way Shane would already be turning to Ilya before he was there, already making space for him, opening his arm for Ilya to slot into his side.
It made her feel like she was watching a documentary of some sort. One of those crime or nature documentaries, something where they studied body language and what it could mean. Shane and Ilya were talking to each other without even opening their mouths, and she had no idea what they were saying.
Yuna watched them at the table during Christmas dinner, their elbows pressed together. Ilya was perfectly polite throughout, waiting for everyone to eat before he started, serving Shane before himself, noticing the face Shane made at the wakame salad that confirmed that Yuna had oversalted it, subtly picking it off his plate and eating it for him and letting Shane steal his preferred cuts of chicken from Ilya’s plate.
She realised there was a litany of thoughts that Shane was thinking that she wasn’t privy to anymore.
But Ilya clearly was.
>>>
Shane hadn’t really spoken to her, Yuna noticed.
He had talked to her when they were altogether, and she had seen him talk with David and Ilya, but he hadn’t really spoken to her. If Yuna really thought about it, the last time the two of them had talked properly, in person, was when she had apologised to him the day she found out he was gay.
Yuna had tried to get him alone. She had asked Shane to help her in the kitchen a few times, but Ilya always jumped up quicker, ready to help her, telling Shane to stay. She had tried to catch him alone, but Ilya always appeared out of nowhere, throwing himself over Shane’s shoulders. And every time, Shane obeyed.
It wasn’t like Shane seemed to be going out of his way to talk to her, at least. Yuna wasn’t sure that she could survive that.
At least she got to watch Shane and Ilya together. She caught every look, every dramatic pout, every time they smacked each other on the butt in what David would probably call a playful manner, but Yuna would call inappropriate.
Shane seemed to thrive beneath Ilya’s undivided attention, which was interesting. Yuna had given everything in her life to Shane, but he had never once seemed as happy or as bright with her as he did with Ilya.
Something ugly that she recognised was worming its way through her stomach. Jealousy.
Yuna wandered down the hallway, past her own bedroom to Shane’s, pausing when she heard scuffling outside the main bathroom. She peaked through the gap in the ajar door and tried not to laugh at Shane and Ilya in t shirts and boxer briefs, brushing their teeth too vigorously to be good for their gum health. Shane jostled Ilya out of the way and bent for the sink, but Ilya grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him out of the way, reaching for the tap first and grunting in celebration that he’d won whatever game they were playing.
She thought about their reaction in the summer when she had asked Shane if she had ever let Ilya win a game, and felt shame flush through her.
Her son, currently pressing his hand to Ilya’s forehead and shoving him away so he could spit out his toothpaste first, probably did not let Ilya Rozanov win at anything.
>>>
“I hope it was a good couple of days,” Yuna smiled at Shane, thrilled to finally catch him alone.
Ilya and David had both slept in, but Shane had gone on his regular 6am run, even though it was Boxing Day. Yuna had gotten up and waited in the kitchen to catch him, and Shane hadn’t seemed surprised to see her sitting there when he’d gotten home.
“Yeah, it was great,” he nodded at her, pouring himself a glass of water. “I hope we were good guests.”
Yuna felt her body react viscerally to that. “You’re not a guest, Shane. This is your home.”
Shane made a face that she’d never seen before. “I mean, yeah, I know. It’s just, I haven’t lived here for like, ten years. And Ilya’s never been here before, so.”
“Yes, well.” Yuna sipped on her coffee, unsure of what to say. “Did he have a good Christmas?”
Shane nodded. “Yeah. I mean, he’s Orthodox, and they don’t celebrate Christmas in Russia, but I think he liked our Christmas.”
“They don’t?”
“No,” Shane shook his head, moving to sit across from her at the table. “Their Christmas is in January, and it’s like, all about church he said. More god focused than dinner focused.”
“Like Catholics and Easter,” Yuna mused.
“Yeah, I think so,” Shane agreed.
“So, Ilya’s religious?” Yuna asked. That made sense – she hadn’t seen him without that garish cross around his neck in all the years she’d been aware of him.
“Um, no, I think religion is kind of complicated for him,” Shane said. Yuna waited for him to explain, but Shane didn’t keep talking.
It made sense, though. Religious people didn’t live the sort of life Ilya led in Yuna’s experience.
They were silent for a long moment as they drank. Yuna hated the feeling that Shane was avoiding talking to her, and she hated it even more that she had no idea how to bridge the gap that had widened between them in the last few months.
“I don't really know how to do this,” Shane said quietly, breaking the silence.
“What?”
“I’ve never, you know, brought someone home before,” Shane said as he looked down as his hands. “I don’t know if I'm doing it right.”
“Well, you brought Jessica home in high school,” Yuna corrected. “And you brought Ilya home already.”
“That wasn’t the same, that wasn’t my choice,” Shane waved off.
Yuna's heart ached at that. “Do you think you would have, though? If your dad hadn’t have caught you?”
Shane finally looked at her and nodded with clear, sure eyes. “Yes.”
“When?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Probably next year,” Shane said. “Once Ilya was in Ottawa. Maybe after.”
“So, you would have still kept him a secret for another two or three years?” Yuna asked in disbelief.
Shane nodded. “We had a plan.”
Yuna was flabbergasted. “Was I ever part of the plan?” she asked.
Shane looked confused, but Yuna couldn’t stop herself.
“Were you going to let me help you with this? All your brand deals, Shane, your legacy, your –”
“Sure. Yes, mom, of course. But we were thinking about citizenship and hockey first,” Shane cut her off. “We had just got to a place where we could admit that we wanted to be something. We hadn’t thought ahead like that.”
“But you already decided that Ilya was going to go to Ottawa,” Yuna corrected, hearing the bitterness in her own voice. Their timeline was ridiculous.
Shane sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. “We just wanted the summer to breathe,” he said, his voice a little too tense for how quiet the morning was. “Just the two of us. We didn’t even get that.”
She could understand that, she supposed.
“Mom,” Shane said softly. “Ilya’s it for me. I know you aren’t really connecting with him –”
“It’s not that –”
“No, wait,” Shane interrupted her, looking pained. “We’re setting up a charity together. We're gonna buy a house in Ottawa together. We want kids when we retire. I need you to get over it.”
Yuna blinked at him, unease settling in her stomach. She didn’t want to admit the antipathy she felt for Ilya, but she knew she couldn’t lie about it, either. “I just want you to be sure about this.”
“I’m sure,” Shane said. “It’s the most sure I’ve ever been about anything.”
She watched as he stood and walked away, unable to understand when she stopped being able to have a simple conversation with her own son.
>>>
Yuna had been surprised when Shane invited them to Montreal for Easter.
They usually used the opportunity to catch up over the long weekend, but it wasn’t necessarily a holiday that they celebrated. Then Yuna had checked the calendar and realised that Boston were playing Montreal the night before, and that Ilya would be there, too, and Shane’s invitation made sense.
David had seemed pleased, in the way he was always mildly pleased, that they would be seeing Ilya. Yuna had secretly thought when she married David thirty years ago that she would eventually see the end to his patience somewhere, at some point, but the man truly never seemed stressed out by anything. Even when Shane was a baby and they hadn’t slept for three weeks, he would just smile serenely at her and tell her that one day there’d be a time where they would miss when Shane needed them to rock him for hours on end.
Yuna hated that David always turned out to be right about these things.
They arrived at Shane’s condo just before lunch, unfortunately delayed due to traffic and icy roads. He greeted them both with a bright smile looking more relaxed than she’d seen him in months.
“Good game last night,” David said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“You should be congratulating Ilya,” Shane said at the same time Ilya called from the kitchen, “You should be congratulating me!”
Yuna smiled thinly as she handed Shane her coat and scarf, watching him hang it on the hook by the door. “What time did you two start cooking?”
“We prepped some stuff before the game yesterday,” Shane shrugged.
“Easter lunch is fun change,” Yuna said, following Shane to the kitchen as David took their bags upstairs to the guest room.
Ilya’s face was imperceptible as he looked between her and Shane. “Do you normally do dinner?”
Yuna nodded. Ilya looked at Shane in betrayal. “Why didn’t you say anything when I said lunch?”
Shane shrugged. “Lunch is fine. Why not do it your way.”
“Your way?” Yuna asked.
Ilya shrugged. “Americans and Canadians, you always do dinner. We do big lunches back home. Eat all day, nap, wake up for dinner and eat all the leftovers.”
“Russian tradition,” Shane said to her.
“Not just Russian,” Ilya said absentmindedly, his brow a little furrowed as he chopped tomatoes for a salad.
“Orthodox?” Yuna asked.
“Yes,” Ilya said. “But a lot of Europe does this. You come back from church early in the morning, so you start cooking. Then lunch.”
“Oh,” Yuna realised. “Your Easter is in a couple of weeks then, right? Do you go to church?”
Ilya looked up at her, his blue eyes clouded over with something. Yuna could see Shane’s hand on Ilya’s waist, his fingers dug into his hipbone. “No.”
Yuna excused herself to wash up before lunch, looking back at them when she was halfway up the stairs and catching the way Shane hugged Ilya from behind.
>>>
"Are you religious?”
Ilya looked confused before he realised he was playing with his cross, dropping it and tucking it back under the neckline of his t shirt. “No. Used to, as a child. My mother made me go.”
“That makes sense,” Yuna said. “I’ve seen too many photos of you at nightclubs with random girls to think that you were going to church every Sunday.” Yuna wasn’t sure why she was pushing this. She didn’t care for religion herself. But she wanted Ilya to say something about what he stood for.
Ilya turned to look at her, unblinking. Yuna tried not to squirm at the blank way he stared at her, as if he was daring her to keep going. Some distant part of her hoped that he wouldn’t repeat what she had said to Shane, worried that that would kick off another round of strange silence for weeks on end.
“Do you still go with her when you’re back home?” Yuna caught the way his eyes tightened at that, but he didn’t blink or look away from her.
“My mother is dead, so, no,” Ilya trailed off.
Yuna had no idea what she was supposed to say. She felt like he might be testing her, waiting to see what she would say, if anything; that whatever she said next would affect the way he saw her. It made her skin itch, the idea that Ilya was the one judging her.
“How old were you?” Yuna asked.
Ilya almost looked amused, and she couldn’t understand why. “Twelve. She killed herself.”
Yuna felt physically ill at the thought of a child losing their mother so young. Abstractly, she wondered if Ilya’s promiscuity had anything to do with losing his mother so early. “I’m so sorry.”
Ilya shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“And your father too, last year?” Yuna asked carefully.
He hummed, finally looking away from her. “Yes. That was not so sad. Much different to lose a young person with her whole life ahead of her than an old man that doesn’t know his own name.”
Yuna sat in stunned silence as Ilya picked up the remote and began flicking through channels as if he hadn’t just revealed a devastating truth about himself. She wondered what else was lurking beneath the surface of Ilya’s strange exterior, and if Shane knew all about it.
>>>
Easter lunch and the subsequent dinner had gone fairly well. Yuna had avoided heavy topics, joining in on hockey talk, but doing her best to keep the mood relaxed and light. She hadn’t said anything when Ilya had hip checked Shane out of the way to cut the dessert he had brought, and she definitely didn’t say anything when Ilya had slapped Shane on the thigh and grabbed his shoulder, digging in and making Shane squawk before Shane poked him in the ribs to make him let go.
Roughhousing, David had called it.
She hadn’t been able to sleep. Ilya had known where everything in the condo was, Yuna had realised when she’d gotten into bed that night.
Ilya knew where Shane kept the white sugar that he only kept in the condo for guests. He knew where Shane kept his colander. He knew where the extra blankets were, and how to jiggle the handle for the sink in the downstairs bathroom to kick the water over to hot. He had Russian vodka stored in the freezer and an entire shelf in the fridge dedicated to his own food.
He walked around like he owned the place. Like Shane’s condo was an extension of Shane, like Ilya knew every inch of it after years of being here and he belonged there.
It made Yuna feel itchy, Ilya’s entitlement to her son.
She waited until David was asleep before she climbed quietly out of bed, inching down the hallway slowly, eager for a cup of tea. Shane’s bedroom door was closed, mercifully silent as she slunk down to the stairs. She paused at the midway landing when she realised a light was on downstairs and someone was moving around. Yuna crouched down a little lower, checking to see who it was –
Shane was pressed to the counter as Ilya attacked him, mauling his mouth as his hands moved down to his waist. Yuna grimaced as Shane kissed Ilya back just as desperately, pushing Ilya’s shirt up to touch his stomach.
She could hear Shane mutter something as Ilya pulled back. Yuna didn’t dare move, not wanting to catch their attention, even in the mostly dark stairwell. She watched as Ilya grabbed Shane by the neck, pulling him closer before he kissed him again.
Yuna flinched at the sight; it just looked so aggressive. She didn’t understand why Ilya had to touch Shane like that. She didn’t understand why Shane made that noise when Ilya did that, or why he pulled him closer and whined for Ilya as if they could possibly get any closer.
She stood slowly as Ilya sank to his knees, making sure to climb the stairs quietly, moving as quickly as she could so she didn’t hear any more than she had to.
>>>
"Ilya isn’t going to Russia this summer,” Shane said.
Yuna met David’s eye across the table, knowing he heard the careful nonchalance in Shane’s tone that she did.
“How come?” David asked, looking down at his crossword.
“Nothing really to go back for,” Shane said. “So we’re gonna be at the cottage for a month.”
Yuna tried not to look surprised. “You said he had a niece though.”
Shane’s face dropped before he schooled himself. “Ilya pays for her school and stuff, and I know his sister in law texts him like, updates on how she’s doing once a week. But he doesn’t talk to his brother anymore, so.”
“I don’t understand, why doesn’t he talk to his brother?” Yuna frowned. “They’ve lost their parents, they should be close.”
"I don’t think it works that way,” Shane said quietly. “They’ve never gotten along.”
“Even before his mother died?” Yuna asked before she could stop himself.
Shane nodded. “Yeah. I think some of it is kind of cultural? Like, they’re not great at talking, I don’t think. But Ilya thinks his brother knows that he’s bisexual.”
“And that affects how he treats him?” Yuna asked in disbelief.
Shane looked at her like she was being ridiculous. “Obviously.”
Yuna didn’t say anything else as she thought about how awful Ilya’s family had to be to not love their son and brother unconditionally. It wasn’t as if Ilya had done anything wrong by falling in love with Shane. She wondered if Ilya’s brother met Shane if he would change his mind.
>>>
Watching Ilya play for Ottawa was horrific.
They were a horrible team. They had a lot of heart and some decent talent, but Yuna could see how clearly Ilya was playing leagues ahead of his teammates, his frustration growing as he they failed to keep up with him.
“Do you think he’s bored?” David asked as they watched Ottawa play Toronto.
Yuna tried to focus on the way Ilya skated lazily through the ice, much slower than usual to match the other boys on his line. He looked like he didn’t care, but Yuna thought that maybe she’s started to get to know him enough to recognise the vein in his forehead as a negative thing. “Probably.”
She flinched when Dallas Kent skated up to Ilya and tried to knock him to the ground. For the first time, she was glad he was so large and solid, refusing to let Kent take him down. The cameras couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Kent spat at Ilya, and Ilya laughed in his face.
Yuna still gasped when Kent dropped his gloves and punched Ilya in the face.
Ilya kept laughing as he finally dropped his own gloves and punched Kent back, knocking him into the boards and forcing him to cower, still punching him. He didn’t even seem to register the blood running down his face as he kept hitting Kent. The referees broke it up fast, but Yuna grimaced at Ilya, covered in blood, still laughing as he skated to the penalty box.
>>>
Yuna hadn’t gone to too many Ottawa games in the last few years. She always made them when Shane played them, but it was her first time seeing Shane and Ilya play against each other on her home ice.
It was nice that it was an afternoon game. It was even nicer that the two of them were coming over for dinner later that night.
It was less nice that a couple of the Metros called Ilya a cock sucker so loud that Yuna could hear it from her seat above the benches. It was less nice that Ilya skated past too close and asked Comeau and Drapeau if they were asking for advice on giving blow jobs as a back up career option since their contracts were up this year and he was sure they wouldn’t be resigned. It was less nice when Comeau whispered something to Drapeau when Shane told them to cut it out, glaring at Shane, who purposely avoided them.
“I can’t believe they don’t even get told off for speaking to each other like that,” Yuna admitted to David.
“I can,” David said quietly, frowning as he kept his eyes on Shane.
She nearly missed it when Comeau cornered Ilya in the third period and high sticked him. But she didn’t miss the way Ilya laughed, not even blinking at the pain. She watched Ilya say something, baiting Comeau into swinging at him again before Ilya punched him back and knocked him down to his knees.
>>>
Ilya’s face was already purple when he walked in for dinner. Yuna watched him closely, catching how unaffected he seemed by the swelling of his cheek or the way his lip split open every time he looked at Shane and smiled.
“Do you want ice?” Yuna offered. “Painkillers?”
Ilya looked at Shane before he looked at her, which felt odd. “Ice would be good. Thank you.”
She nodded and went to the kitchen, stuffing ice cubes into a ziplock bag and wrapping it in a tea towel in case it was too cold. Yuna jumped when she looked up and Ilya was on the other side of the counter, watching her.
“You’re like a cat,” she said.
“I am?” Ilya asked.
“You’re very quiet,” Yuna nodded. “I look up, and there you are.”
Ilya grimaced as he took the ice from her. “Had to be, growing up. My father didn’t like noise, and my mother was asleep a lot.”
Yuna tried to picture it, little Ilya tiptoeing through his house so his parents could pretend he was invisible. “What about your brother?”
He hummed, sitting at the stool as he held the ice to his face. “Alexei learned faster than I did,” Ilya said.
“How so?”
“Like, when I was little, he would tell me to stay out of my father’s way, or to bring my mother tea in the morning and again before we went to bed,” he explained. “But when we grew up more, our father had different rules for us. Made us compete to be the best son.”
Yuna frowned. “I thought you liked competition.”
“Mm, not always,” Ilya said softly. “With Shane, yes, it’s fun. He is almost as good as me, so.”
Yuna rolled her eyes and reached to take the ice away from him, but Ilya laughed and leaned back out of her reach.
“Shane wants me to win as much as he wants to beat me, and I want the same,” Ilya shrugged. “If he wins, I am proud, I still feel good. With Alexei, it was never like this.”
“I think I can understand that,” Yuna conceded.
“This is part of why you don’t like me, yes?” Ilya asked. “You think I want to beat Shane at any cost.”
Yuna blinked, hating the feeling of being caught. “I don’t hate you.”
Ilya lit up at that, looking amused. “I didn’t say hate. You said hate.”
She could have smacked herself. “I don’t dislike you.”
“Ah, yes, but you don’t like me either,” Ilya corrected.
“I don’t know how to read you,” Yuna admitted. “I don’t understand you and Shane.”
“I don’t think anybody understands me and Shane except me and Shane,” Ilya said, unbothered by her admission. “It’s a big part of why we could never stay away.”
Yuna frowned. “Is it that simple?”
Ilya shrugged. “Yes. Everything else is hard. Not Shane.”
"Even leaving Boston?”
He nodded, giving her a smile that would have been charming if his lip didn’t split again, a sliver of fresh blood sparkling at her. “I still get to play against Shane, so. It's not so bad.”
Yuna watched as he stood and winked at her, moving back to the living room.
>>>
Watching Ilya fall asleep sprawled out on top of Shane was sweeter than Yuna expected.
Ilya had climbed on top of Shane and Shane had just let him, smiling as Ilya leaned against him. Yuna found that she didn’t feel itchy watching them do this anymore.
She had asked Shane over the summer what it was about Ilya that he loved the most, and Shane’s eyes had practically melted and he said that he didn’t know anyone kinder or more loving than Ilya. Then he had looked at her and asked her why she didn’t ask him that two years ago.
Yuna had gotten better at asking Ilya questions, too. She knew now that the cross he wore was his mother’s. The guilt she had for thinking it was obnoxious hadn’t truly left her there. She knew that Ilya liked to cook, and that his niece was twelve and loved horses, and that he had in fact spent many years casually sleeping with Svetlana Vetrova, but that he found the idea of anything more than friendship with her laughable.
She learned that Ilya didn’t flinch when he got hit because he’s learned to anticipate and brace for it long before he joined the NHL, and that he was a little too good at disassociating, which he called meditating.
She learned that Ilya really wasn’t joking when he said he loved Shane.
She learned that she could learn to like Ilya. She learned that she had learned to love him a little when she hadn’t even realised it.
Yuna sipped her wine as Shane watched the game, Ilya asleep tucked into his shoulder, looking more relaxed than she had ever seen him before.
The rough touches were still there. Ilya still smacked Shane on the ass and pushed him out of the way. But Yuna noticed the way that Shane would shove him back, or pull his hair, like a child pulling on a little girl’s pigtails for attention. She noticed the way they were always touching, either their elbows or thighs pressed close at the dinner table. She noticed the way Ilya would fight with Shane when Shane grabbed his bag for him, or how he would pout if Shane wasn’t giving him enough attention.
Now, she noticed the way Shane would melt when Ilya so much as looked at him. The way Shane would smile when Ilya’s hands were on him, whether they were bickering about hockey or a card game or Shane using the wrong side of the grater to grate carrots.
Now, Yuna saw the way that Ilya loved her son the way that he deserved to be loved.