Archive of Our Own

The line at Canadian Tire had not moved in six minutes. One checkout was open out of a possible twelve, and Shane had begun to reconsider whether two toilet plungers represented household preparedness or a cry for help. The upstairs bathroom could wait. Hosting their first party without a backup plunger could not; that would be an unforced error, and Shane did not commit unforced errors. He committed to preparedness. Preparedness was one of his strengths. So was creative problem-solving, which was why he was studying the roof. A plunger on the roof was a problem no employee could walk past. They would gather. They would point. Management would be forced to staff a second checkout just to free up the personnel. As operational plans went it was weak, but it was the strongest plan currently available to anyone in this line.

His phone buzzed before he committed.

[1:56 PM, Saturday] | Ilya

Ilya:
our first mail has arrived!!!!!

Ilya:
[Image: A white window envelope on the kitchen counter. CITY OF OTTAWA — PROVINCIAL OFFENCES OFFICE printed in red above IMPORTANT NOTICE.]

Shane enlarged the image. Marriage had brought him several good things; however, joint correspondence from Provincial Offences Offices of Ottawa was not yet one of them.

Shane:
That looks like a fine.

Ilya:
yes!! real government mail. they know we live here shane. together. is like housewarming and wedding present from ontario

Ilya:
we can open together and you can read my offences in stern husband voice. very hot when you call me bad boy.

Shane rolled his eyes. The woman next to him took this as commentary on the line and nodded.

Ilya:
or naughty boy. 😈

Ilya:
[Image: The envelope propped upright against the fruit bowl, angled into the light like a graduation scroll.]

Shane:
Why have you given your fine a photoshoot?

Ilya:
hurry home ❤️

Shane:
I'm buying plungers.

Ilya:
i will pour drinks this calls for the good vodka

The good vodka meant Ilya had promoted the fine into a formal event. Shane looked at his two plungers and made the responsible call: better overprepared than underprepared for whatever shit Ilya was about to put him through. He shifted them into his reliable two-handed grip and held his position in line.

Ilya opened the front door before Shane's key reached the lock.

“Finally! We can open the mail now.”

He held the envelope above Anya’s head, moving it out of reach each time she rose to inspect it. She followed him into the kitchen anyway, convinced that government correspondence contained cheese too. Shane huffed when he rounded the corner. The kitchen table had been staged for a dinner date. The good vodka stood in the centre, sweating from the freezer, between two shot glasses and the letter opener from the desk drawer, a thing neither of them ever used or remembered acquiring. Shane’s chair had been pulled out and the envelope lay across his place setting where a romantic dinner should have been. His hand moved towards his phone before he remembered that no psychiatric service in Ottawa would accept staged a date night for a speeding ticket as grounds for admission.

“How long did you spend on this?” Shane asked.

“First mail is important.”

“It's a speeding ticket.”

“Could be award?”

“Provincial Offences doesn't send awards.”

“Then it is a speeding ticket. But is our speeding ticket,” Ilya said, his face softening.

“That’s not how speeding tickets work.”

“Shane. We agreed to share everything. For richer,” Ilya gestured at the envelope, “or for poorer.”

There was too much pleasure in the room for a municipal fine.

Ilya had spent nearly forty fucking minutes setting the table and waiting to be fined in company, and he considered that quality time. He hooked Shane’s chair out farther with his foot and took the seat beside it. Shane sat because marriage involved supporting his spouse’s interests, even when that interest was ceremonially opening evidence against himself. Ilya pulled his chair close enough that their knees touched, pressed the envelope flat and slid the opener beneath the flap. He never looked down. He watched Shane’s face instead.

“Ready?”

“No,” Shane deadpanned.

“Good.”

He drew out the pages with more ceremony than Shane had seen ever seen him commit to in his entire life.

“Seventy-eight in fifty,” Ilya said gravely.

Shane tutted in response.

“Road was empty.”

“It clearly wasn’t because the fucking camera was there,” Shane chuckled.

“Is very sneaky camera,” Ilya said, knocking his knee against Shane’s.

“You knew it was there. You complained about it last week.”

“I forgot because married life with you takes up all thought. I should fight this.”

“That defence should go well in court,” Shane scoffed.

Ilya read the amount and shrugged. Two hundred and twenty dollars did not trouble a man who had paid six hundred for a lamp the week before because Shane said it looked nice in the store. Shane filed the comparison under positive outcomes: the City of Ottawa charged less than the lamp, and unlike the lamp, the ticket performed a legal function. Ilya turned to the second page and stopped. His eyes moved over the photograph once. He brought it closer. One corner of his mouth lifted. The other followed. By the time he looked up, he had the grin Shane usually saw after chirping on the ice. 

“Oh,” he said.

Shane knew that oh. It was the sound Ilya made when the universe handed him material.

“What?”

Ilya looked at Shane, looked back at the photograph, and pressed his lips together. His shoulders jumped once. He flattened his palm over the bottom half of the page. Shane hated whatever this was turning into.

“No,” he said. “You need to see.”

“See what?”

“Come closer,” Ilya practically purred.

“I'm sitting beside you.”

“Closer, Shane.”

Ilya was nearly vibrating. He had won a playoff series with less visible satisfaction. Shane leaned in, and Ilya peeled his palm back a centimetre at a time, conducting an unveiling that nobody had requested. The grainy image showed the orange Lamborghini crossing an intersection. There were very few orange Lamborghinis in Ottawa, and exactly one registered to an Ilya Rozanov who believed speed limits lost authority when a road looked boring.

“Yes, that's your car,” Shane said, patting his now vibrating shoulder. “Congratulations.”

“Look lower.”

“The licence plate?”

“Inside car,” Ilya said, barely getting the words out.

Shane looked again. The timestamp. Ilya behind the wheel, one hand high on the steering wheel. His other hand was lower. At the bottom edge of the windshield, nearly lost in the dark interior, Ilya's fingers were closed around a handful of dark hair in his lap. Dark hair. In Ilya's lap. On a public road, at seventy-eight kilometres an hour, in front of a municipal camera.

Shane's hair.

He looked up. Ilya was already smiling at him instead of the photograph, crooked and lazy and far too happy. He had been waiting for Shane to arrive.

He remembered the flash. At the time he'd assumed it came from an oncoming car and elected not to investigate, being otherwise occupied with eight inches of Ilya down his throat. In hindsight the decision looked less careless than impressively focused. Hockey had rewarded him his entire career for ignoring distractions, and no coach had ever specified that automated traffic enforcement was an exception.

He had broken a law. Several, depending on how Ontario classified the events of that drive. He had, however, married the driver first, and spouses could not be compelled to testify against each other. Shane had never confirmed whether that protection extended to traffic cameras catching him mid-blowjob, but the principle of it felt important. However, it did not address the real issue, which was the bet. Ilya had wagered that he could make Shane produce the same noise he had made on their wedding night, and if he managed it, Shane would owe him anything he asked. No conditions. No exclusions. Shane had agreed on the spot, confident, and had not asked what the drive home involved.

He should have read the terms before signing.

Ilya slapped the table and laughed hard enough to send Anya out of the kitchen.

“Shane. Our first mail has captured exact moment I came in your mouth.”

Shane's face reached a temperature he otherwise associated with a bag skate.
He turned the photograph face-down. Ilya immediately turned it back up.

“Your back of head looks very sexy with my hand in it,” Ilya mused.

The thought had already occurred to Shane. Ilya had now ruined any comfort in it, because Shane knew exactly how automated enforcement worked. He had researched the full process the year before, after an unjust flash on the 417, on the principle that civic procedure mattered when defending yourself against petty government claims. Every photograph was reviewed by human eyes. A person had selected this image. The same person had enlarged it to confirm the plate, and in doing so had confirmed considerably more, and had then approved it, printed it, folded it and mailed it to the address of record. Possibly two people, if Ottawa maintained quality standards.

“Ilya, this is…”

“The best thing ever?”

“It’s literally porn. Of us. Porn that at least one person has seen.”

“Maybe they were impressed by skills?” Ilya suggested.

“They're traffic-enforcement officers, Ilya. Not porn directors.”

“You do not know their hobbies.”

He held the page to the window and squinted at the darker section inside the car, tilting it left and right while he assessed the City of Ottawa’s work. The photograph showed his hand, Shane’s hair and enough spatial information to make innocence unavailable. Shane’s face remained hidden. He logged that as excellent situational awareness under compromised conditions.

“I mean this could be anyone,” Shane said.

Ilya looked at him over the top of the paper. His eyebrows shifted into an expression that he usually reserved for the bedroom.

“I remember who. So do you, Shane. I remember the moans.” Ilya tapped his photographed hand once, fondly. “Is official marriage portrait from Ottawa,” he continued, reaching for his phone. “We should celebrate.”

“No.”

“What?”

“You're opening the camera. I can see it from here”

He had already opened it before Shane had finished his sentence. In response, Shane spread both hands over the ticket, which only improved the shot: Shane hunched over municipal evidence, defending what remained of his dignity, Ilya practically radiant beside him.

“Delete that. Now.”

“Is very romantic. You protecting our privacy.” Ilya said as he inspected the screen with approval.

“You have enough pictures of me.”

“I only have three hundred and twenty-one.”

The precision worried Shane more than the volume. Ilya had either checked recently or knew the number by heart, and either way the argument was over.

“Ilya.”

“Three hundred and twenty-two now,” he said as he filed it into the album labelled: "HUSBAND 🍆". “Is small album. Only three months old.”

“And it has plenty of time to grow without photographic evidence of me blowing you.”

Ilya retrieved the ticket and photograph, squared their edges like currency, and kissed Shane's temple. The tenderness was tactical. Ilya knew Shane couldn't destroy anything associated with a first. Not since the wedding. Years of hiding had left them almost nothing on paper that said both of them, and the box in the office was making up for lost time. First grocery receipt paid with the joint credit card. First receipt at their new local. First utility bill with both names, which Shane had mocked and then stored flat so it wouldn't crease.

“This is first mail at our married house,” Ilya said. “It deserves respect.”

“You're trying to manipulate me.”

“Yes.”

The honesty did not make it less effective. Shane's brain did the thing it defaulted to whenever Ilya out-flanked him: compromise.

“Okay. Fine. We can keep the envelope,” Shane said. “But the photograph goes.”

“No, they are married like us, Shane. They need to stay together,” Ilya reasoned.

“No.”

“Family cannot be separated.”

“You're assigning custody rights to paper?”

“Because you want to tear them apart.”

Ilya held the solemn expression for almost two seconds before his left canine showed and the crooked grin followed. Shane had married this man completely sober, in formalwear and before witnesses. He reassessed the decision regularly and always reached the same result: Ilya was worth the chaos, including the administrative consequences. Shane also had a "HUSBAND 💖" album of his own with two hundred and seven photographs in it, several featuring the exact grin Ilya was still directing at him as he carried the photograph towards the fridge. Shane considered the album responsible record-keeping. At present, the record showed a husband assigning custody rights to municipal paperwork and being extremely lovable about it. However, it certainly did not give him custody of the fridge.

“What are you doing?” Shane asked, determined to keep his voice as even as possible to not escalate things.

“Displaying your proof of husbandly love.”

“No.”

“But it is only us and Anya living here,” Ilya protested.

“People visit us, Ilya,” Shane said, standing

“We take down when your mother comes so she doesn’t know you tugged my balls when I came in your mouth.”

“Fucking hell, Ilya,” Shane managed. “Nobody is putting evidence of me fucking blowing you next to the grocery list.”

“I could crop it?” Ilya suggested.

Shane knew the cropped version would consist entirely of Ilya’s hand and Shane’s hair, which made it even less suitable for public display. He held the back of a chair until the suggestion had fully passed through him. Ilya mistook the silence for permission to workshop mounting options. He reached for the honeymoon magnet from Crete. Shane crossed the kitchen faster than he had ever crossed open ice for an empty-netter and took it from him. Ilya selected the Centaurs magnet. Shane took that too. He moved to the pizza number, apparently having concluded that Shane’s objection concerned sentimental value. Shane swept it off the door before Ilya’s fingers arrived. When Ilya changed course towards Anya’s vaccination reminder, Shane understood that they had entered a contest over available surface area. He cleared the fridge in one pass, taking the magnets and grocery list along with the photograph of Anya in the dress Ilya had spent thirty minutes choosing for her.

“You can't put it on the fridge if there's nothing left to stick to it,” Shane said. He held all the magnets now, which was as close to holding all the cards as this argument was ever going to get.

Ilya considered the bare refrigerator, the photograph, and Shane's coat pockets, which now held enough magnets to interfere with a compass.

“Okay,” he said, smiling. “You win.”

In the nearly twelve years that he had known him, Shane had never seen Ilya concede anything, including arguments that he had already lost. So, no. Shane did not believe him. He did, however, recognise the tactical value of retreat, and he took the stairs two at a time. The lock clicked on their bedroom door before Ilya had even left the kitchen, which should have worried him more than it did.

He emptied the magnets onto the dresser. Anya jumped onto the bed and watched him count them twice.

“If I said bury,” Shane said, turning to Anya, “what would you do?”

Anya put her nose under the duvet. She had buried half a sandwich in the garden last week and kept the location confidential ever since. The skill existed; however, her professional ethics and dedication to both of her father’s requests evidently needed a lot of work.

Five minutes later his phone buzzed.

[3:31 PM] | Ilya

Ilya:
[Image: Ilya in the kitchen, holding the traffic-camera photograph in a silver frame. OUR FIRST MAIL is written across the mat in thick black marker.]

Ilya:
magnets not needed ❤️

He knew that frame. It lived in the hallway.

Shane:
That's the frame with our wedding photograph in it!

Ilya:
was. wedding is behind traffic now. they keep each other company.

Ilya:
family cannot be separated ❤️

Shane showed Anya the screen.

“This is still a victory. A frame can be hidden on a bookshelf.”

In response to Shane’s genius, Anya's ears went up. Then Shane heard it.
An engine started in the driveway. Their driveway.
Fuck.

Shane reached the window in time to watch the orange Lamborghini reverse into the street, the silver frame belted upright into the passenger seat. At the stop sign the car came to a full, legal, camera-proof halt, both of Ilya's hands visible on the wheel, and signalled left. Left was Merivale. Shane ran the route the way he ran penalty kills. Seven minutes with Ilya driving, less if the road looked boring. His brain, which never stopped preparing, supplied the rest without being asked. The Staples on Merivale was open until nine. It had a self-serve photocopy and print centre. Ilya would have exact change, because Shane had organised the coin tray in the console himself.

His phone buzzed against the windowsill.

[3:36 PM] | Ilya

Ilya:
back soon ❤️

Ilya:
did you know staples does lamination too?

Shane went downstairs and grabbed his keys off the kitchen table.
If Ilya wanted a race to Merivale, he'd fucking have one.

Shane lost the race at 3:47pm in the Staples parking lot, when Ilya crossed the parking lot with the frame he had co-opted from their wedding photograph tucked under his arm. He raised it overhead in salute without breaking stride and held the door for an elderly woman who had thanked him while he was carrying framed evidence of a blowjob. Ilya did not look back once. He knew where Shane was the way he had always known on the ice, and Shane had never admitted how flattering that was. Shane stayed in the car and ran through the only possible outcome if he got out. The NHL’s only married queer players would end up wrestling over a silver frame at a self-serve print counter. It would trend nationally by dinner, complete with slow-motion replays, close-ups, and possibly a phonk edit. Walking away was media management, and media management was another one of his strengths. He was congratulating himself on the discipline involved when Ilya appeared at the counter behind the front window, pointed towards Shane’s car, and said something that made the employee wave too. Shane waved back because the employee was innocent. He drove home and began plotting his revenge.

That night he made Ilya pay for it, thoroughly, on his own schedule and his own terms. The sound he had made when Shane slipped a finger inside of him was the true victory of the day.

The frame came home with evidence of public indecency laminated inside it, and the war went domestic. On Monday, Shane moved it to the third shelf of the office bookcase and turned the photograph to face the wall. He went to bed satisfied with the position. By breakfast, it was back in the hallway and decorated with Staples UV-Corp CB Performance Advantage Solar LED Fairy String Lights, thirty-three feet, one hundred lights. Shane knew the exact product because Ilya had taped the receipt to the fridge while the magnets remained under Shane’s protection.

On Wednesday, Shane tried the bottom of the linen cabinet. By dinner, the frame hung at eye level again, another set of Staples UV-Corp CB Performance Advantage Solar LED Fairy String Lights, thirty-three feet, one hundred lights somehow wrapped around the frame, above a card printed in Ilya’s block capitals:

OUR FIRST MAIL 2026
WEDDING GIFT FROM THE CITY OF OTTAWA

Shane had called for a truce after that. Every counteraction from Ilya had come out of their joint account, which meant he was financing both sides of the war, and the opposition had begun producing mixed-media art installations. Ugly media art installations.

On Thursday, his phone buzzed while he was upstairs.

[11:02 AM, Thursday] | Ilya

Ilya:
our second mail has arrived!!!!!

Ilya:
come down ❤️

Ilya:
anya has sniffed it. she approves again.

Shane had been, at most, twenty metres away. Ilya texted him anyway; it was policy during ceasefire.

The kitchen had been staged again. The good vodka stood sweating in the centre of the table beside the crystal shot glasses Svetlana had given them. Shane stopped in the doorway. The glasses had not left the china cabinet since they returned from Crete. Ilya had taken them down for a cardboard box, which meant he had spent five days refreshing the tracking page and dressed the table to match the delivery window. The letter opener lay beside the box it could not possibly open, included on principle for a ritual Ilya had decided would now be a mainstay of their household. It made Shane smile as he sat opposite him. Ilya slid the box across the table and did not look at it again. He watched Shane’s face instead, as he had over the envelope, as he watched it over everything that entered their home.

“You open this one,” he said. “Is addressed to both.”

HOLLANDER-ROZANOV was printed on one shipping label, both names sharing the same line. Shane used the letter opener on the packing tape because Ilya had set it out for exactly that purpose, and Ilya’s chest visibly expanded when he did.

Shane folded back the cardboard flaps and braced for the fine to appear in some new format. A mug with the photograph wrapped around it. A mousepad for the office. A calendar containing twelve months of the same offence.

Tissue paper filled the top of the box, and beneath it were magnets. The first showed Crete: both of them sunburnt outside the taverna, with Ilya caught mid-laugh after Shane mispronounced something he had since chosen to forget. Then he saw the morning after the wedding in the next magnet. Anya was wedged between them on the bed, Ilya’s eyes full of love and happiness and contentment, all while Shane was half asleep and his hair was making a strong case against photography before coffee. By the third, Shane understood the selection. He was looking at his parents, standing in their backyard, his mother’s hand resting on Ilya’s arm with the ease of long practice. Shane knew all three photographs.

They were the ones Shane had lingered over when Ilya first showed him the HUSBAND album, back when it contained only one hundred and ninety-six entries and Shane still believed that moving his thumb every few seconds could pass for normal scrolling. It could not, and it had not. Ilya had watched him stall on the same three photographs, said nothing, and filed the information away with everything else he knew about Shane, most of which he was patient enough to sit on for years. Now Shane lined the three magnets up on the table and squared their edges. They were already straight. Correcting them bought him four seconds of not having to say anything with his voice in its current condition.

“These can go on the fridge,” he said.

“I know,” Ilya said, coming around the table. “I chose the ones you scrolled slow on.”

He kissed Shane's temple, one professional acknowledging another's tape study before he wrapped both arms around him from behind the chair, leaning in and kissing his neck.

“There is one more thing,” he said, close enough that Shane could feel his grin pressed against skin.

At the bottom of the box, wrapped in its own tissue, was a keychain. Clear acrylic.
The photograph inside it was doing seventy-eight in a fifty zone.

Fucker.
The ceasefire was over.

“Is travel size,” Ilya said. “For your keys. So that we are always together.”

The last time Ilya had tried to display something, Shane had seized the magnets, run upstairs, and locked the bedroom door, and the strategy had held for a full five minutes. A one hundred percent success rate. Shane closed his fist around the keychain and ran the play again. He took the stairs two at a time. Anya reached the landing before the door shut, so he admitted her as a neutral party with diplomatic potential and turned the lock behind them. The keychain was an improvement on the frame, tactically speaking. A frame needed a wall. A keychain could vanish into a coat pocket, a glovebox, a safety deposit box in another province. Shane sat on the bed and began ranking locations by distance from Ilya.

A key slid into the lock from the hallway side. Shane stared at the door. Their bedroom door had a key, but it was on Shane’s set of keys. The keys that were in his pocket. The facts filed themselves in order and produced a conclusion he did not enjoy; the frame had been the regular season. This room was where Ilya had always planned to win. The door swung open. Ilya stood in it holding the key between two fingers, and beneath it, swinging on the same ring, a second acrylic keychain. Shane did not need to see the photograph inside it. There was only one photograph now.

There would only ever be one photograph.

“Express order from Home Depot,” he said, waggling the key at him. “Next door to Staples, where they also do express order. Was very convenient.” The crooked grin appeared and immediately disarmed Shane’s remaining defences. “Two days. Very good service.”

While Shane had been relocating a frame to a bookshelf, Ilya had been getting keys cut. Shane conceded the week. Not the marriage, not the photograph, just the week. He was a professional; he knew what a lost period looked like, and he knew there were two more. Even if Ilya didn’t.

“You have a habit of running to same room,” Ilya said, stepping inside. “Is bad strategy to be predictable, Shane. You taught me this.”

Being quoted his own doctrine was worse than losing and Anya, seeing his defeat relocated to the hallway, recusing herself from official duties. Ilya crossed to the bed without hurrying, took the front of Shane's shirt in one hand, and eased him backwards onto the duvet. He came down over him on his forearms, unhurried about it, the grin dimming into the expression that never made it into photographs, the one Shane had never once managed to catch for his own album.

“Is our second mail,” he said. “Also deserves respect.”

“I'm confiscating this one.” Shane's fist was still closed around the keychain. It had been closed since the kitchen. At no point on the stairs, at the lock, or on the bed had he considered putting it down.

Ilya wrapped his hand around Shane's fist, keychain and all, and pressed it into the duvet beside Shane's head with the tenderness of a man securing an asset.

“You are keeping it very safe,” he said, and kissed him.

Shane kissed him back and began drafting terms. A rematch. The same bet but now reversed. If Shane could pull that noise out of Ilya first, Ilya would owe him anything he asked, and Shane would ask for the photograph, every copy, the frame, both keychains, and whatever else Staples had produced that he had not discovered yet. It was a strong plan with a clear objective and measurable success criteria. His record in bets against Ilya stood at zero and one, but any analyst would agree that was a small sample size.

This time, the terms were going in writing. Laminated.
He even knew a place.