Chapter Text
It was more than a little overwhelming to learn that he and Ilya had their own conference room in the Jalali office, full of storyboards and notecards and ideations for their budding media strategy. Their careers had barely even begun and yet the engine driving them already seemed to be at full throttle.
A heavy arm dropped across his shoulders, knocking him out of his thoughts.
“Markery.”
“Markers?” he guessed.
“Belaya doska.”
“Belaya,” he echoed. “Is that from belyy?”
Ilya nodded with an approving smile. It helped that the other boy always quizzed him on the objects around them, and he could usually use context clues to help him figure the words out.
“Doska is board?”
Ilya nodded again.
“Belaya doska,” Shane repeated. “Whiteboard. Would ‘whiteboard markers’ be belaya doska markery?”
Ilya shook his head. “Markery dlya belaya doska.”
“For?” he squawked. “You don’t believe in articles but you need confirmation that the markers are for the whiteboard?”
“You never know where else you will need markers,” Ilya replied sagely, mirth glittering in his blue eyes.
Shane rolled his eyes, tapping the other’s ribs with his elbow. “You’re a horror,” he muttered.
“Ah, no,” the Russian corrected, “true horror is so much English on these walls.”
He grimaced, letting Ilya take more of his weight. “Yeah, it’s a lot. At least it’s for a good cause? Mostly.”
A light rap on the door preceded Mum marching in, flanked by Amira and Farah Jalali.
“Oh, good,” Mum said. “I was half-worried this would all make you panic and try to burn it down.”
“Is okay, Yuna,” Ilya reassured her, “lighter is with me, not Shane.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t remind me about your smoking.”
Shane huffed softly, pulling Ilya into the seat beside him.
“Yuna’s mentioned that CCM was interested in having you two film an ad for them?” Farah began, abandoning any pretence of small talk. “They were a little confused at how to get in touch with you, Ilya, so their people were quite relieved to learn you were still in North America. At first they thought of doing two separate ads but we had a counter-proposal, one that included the cities of Montreal and Boston.”
“Sounds like big deal,” Ilya commented.
“It’s ambitious,” Amira allowed, her voice pitched to sooth, “but we want to lead the conversation where your careers are concerned, not be swept along by the media slurry or the League’s agenda. Montreal and Boston have an old, ugly history after all.” Shane felt his jaw start to lock up at her words. “We’re not trying to rewrite it, just…reroute it, into something healthier.”
Under the table, Ilya tapped their shoes together. Shane drew a shaky breath.
“The competition will still be there,” Amira continued. “But we all feel it would be healthier for everyone involved for it to be left on the ice.”
“Yeah, um.” He glanced at Ilya. “Our friendship isn’t a dirty little secret, or whatever. It literally makes us both better players.”
“You’re never going to convince diehard fans but we aren’t trying to, anyway,” Amira coaxed. “While the Voyageurs weren’t the most receptive,” she added, making Shane’s anxiety spike, “unfortunately for them, we have louder, stronger, and better proponents.”
“Pro-?” Ilya asked softly.
“Uh- allies,” he supplied. “Voices. Friends.”
“All of those mean very different things, Shanushka, even I know that much.”
He flushed, embarrassment warring with pleasure at the dimunitive. Farah smirked across the table at them.
“We have Destination Canada on our side,” she announced.
Shane felt his jaw drop a little. “What?”
“And Air Canada,” Farah continued, ticking off tourist offices on her fingers like they’d become best friends overnight. “Tourisme Montreal, of course, and Visit Boston. And obviously Ottawa Tourism wants a piece of the pie, since you’re based here for the summer.”
Beside him, Ilya leant forward. “And Russia?”
“That’s a little trickier,” Farah said, sobering up. “The story there is still very much focused on how you tragically overcame parental neglect to become first pick at the draft. You might be pleased to know that your brother was not considered an appropriate guardian, not even for the remaining week before you turn 18.”
Ilya’s jaw flexed, but he stayed silent. Under the table, Shane reached for him, and was relieved to have the older boy clutching him back.
“The Hollanders have posited them as adequate interim guardians, but it wouldn’t hurt to let your Russian supporters know you haven’t forgotten them.”
“I have not,” Ilya said heavily. Shane’s grip tightened. “Adidas is- they sign contract, yes? Russia love Adidas.”
Farah brightened. “I’ll get in touch with them about what they think about a Russia-specific campaign for you- or maybe alongside other Russian athletes.”
“I can give money,” Ilya volunteered. “For after-school programmes, not state schools. Hockey is expensive.”
Mum was practically cooing over him. “Why not the schools though?” Shane had to ask.
Ilya’s expression flickered. “Not all school is bad, but very few is good.”
Amira nodded approvingly. “Yuna’s put us in touch with Minister Vetrov. I think between us we can come up with a solution.”
“Um.”
It was a little alarming to have everyone’s attention on him. Shane focused on the familiar callouses of Ilya’s hand.
“We already have a spreadsheet about places we want to visit, in Boston and Montreal. There are Russian restaurants in both. If we’re already doing the tourism bit, we could make it a point to go to each of these places? To show that Ilyusha still misses Russian foods.”
Ilya was beaming at him, although it was a bit of a toss-up if it was because of the dimunitive or the idea. The Russian, Shane had found, really liked it when he was called by a dimunitive. He had only dared to try some of the other longer ones when it was just the two of them in bed in the dead of night, Ilya weighing him down with his whole body to keep him from floating into the ether out of nerves.
“Ilyusha is for friends,” he’d promised with a kiss. “The others is just for us.”
“We can definitely work with that,” Farah declared in the present. “Could you send me those restaurant details? We can angle it as Ilya discovering reminders of his hometown in these new cities, bite by bite.”
“Only good memories,” Ilya assured him.
Mum chuckled. “The way to a teenaged boy’s heart is through his stomach,” she declared, like it was a given.
Unwittingly, Shane glanced down at his own stomach. Yeah, he could be a bit of a bottomless pit after practice, but the nutrients and the quality of the ingredients had always been more important to him than the taste. He’d thought more than once about how nice it would be to be able to photosynthesise instead of eating, to give him more time for hockey. The amount of time he would save!
Shane didn’t know how long he sat there, staring blankly at the tabletop while Mum, Farah, and Amira literally chatted over their heads. He only blinked back into his body when Ilya tapped their feet together, checking in. Shane smiled faintly, tapping back. While they might not have known each other long, they were a team now. Shane had been alone for so long, he hadn’t known what it would be like to have someone in his corner.
He couldn’t wait to go home and wrap himself around Ilya. It would be the perfect end to a long day.
In the back of her mind, Yuna wondered if the boys thought they were being subtle. Mostly because they really, really weren’t.
If their hands were under the table, they were usually touching in some way: holding hands, Shane fidgeting with Ilya’s fingers, Ilya drumming on the top of Shane’s thigh to contain his nervousness- the list of ways was extensive.
Honestly, the request to move the guest bed into Shane’s room had just been the tip of the iceberg.
She’d wondered aloud one night with David if they ought to sit the boys down for a conversation. The world of professional sports wasn’t a kind world, hockey in particular, and they would have far more scrutiny on them than other rookies.
David, however, had pointed out that the boys did appear to have some idea. They kept to a respectable distance in public, and seemed to find endless amusement in calling each other every other name under the sun, most of them far ruder than the cutesy Russian dimunitives Svetlana had introduced into their household. The boys reminded her a little of manzai, with Ilya leaning hard on their cultural differences as the boke while an exasperated Shane would correct him as the tsukkomi. There was no shortage of roughhousing, too, in a very ‘boys will be boys’ manner. It made her a little weepy, in all honesty, knowing that Shane had never been 'one of the boys' growing up. And now there was this Russian emotional orphan whose guts she’d hated a month ago, breaking down every wall Shane and she had ever built to make a home in their hearts.
(Yuna didn’t have a wedding spreadsheet. She didn’t.
(David did.))
And then there were days like these where the boys were shamelessly cuddled up on the living room sofa, Shane pillowed against Ilya’s chest and their combined 400 pounds making said sofa groan in the middle. The Russian was somehow juggling both of their phones and Shane’s tablet, while Shane was typing rapidly on his laptop.
“Hey,” she began slowly, “do you have enough devices?”
Ilya groaned, tipping his head back onto the armrest while Shane looked over, clearly considering. “Actually, Mum, could we borrow your phone?”
…well, she had asked.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she handed over her phone- to Ilya, who was now juggling four devices.
“We’re looking for rental flats,” Shane replied.
“Shanyechka is being boring,” Ilya moaned at the same time.
Yuna felt like she now had more questions than answers. “Try that again?”
Ilya let out a loud groan, now tipping his head in the other direction to rest on Shane’s shoulder. Her son just tilted his own head, treating the Russian like a glorified cushion.
“We’ve discussed neighbourhoods, Mum,” he began, sounding insultingly reasonable. “Mostly for Boston, but Ilyusha’s been helping me narrow down neighbourhoods in Montreal, too. Rental flats only,” Shane added sternly. “We don’t have unlimited funds on our ELC’s, and it makes more sense to make such a large purchase after we’re most established.”
“You poop in all of the parties, Shanya,” Ilya whined, not lifting his head.
“You’re looking at flats together?” Yuna asked, still feeling like she’d missed at least a dozen steps between.
“Well, we’re the ones who’re going to be staying over the most,” Shane pointed out, as if it were obvious. That could not be further from the truth. “They should be places we’re both comfortable with.”
“My marble jacuzzi,” Ilya whimpered, his head still buried in her son’s neck. Yuna couldn’t help but scoff.
“See? Even Mum thinks it’s ridiculous!”
Ilya just let out a long, pitiful whine.
“It doesn’t make sense to overextend ourselves while on our ELC’s,” Shane explained, reaching up to tangle his fingers in the Russian’s curls. “A 2-bedder gives us sufficient space and enough liquidity for flexibility. You know, in case we need cash for an emergency or something. And in three years, we’ll know the cities so much better.”
David would be so proud to hear their boy; they’d raised him right.
“A 2-bedder,” Yuna echoed. “One for each of you?”
“No,” Shane replied slowly, “the extra bedroom’s for guests like you and Dad, when you come to visit. Or Sveta, in Boston.”
“When Shanushka comes we will do sleepover,” Ilya informed her cheerfully, finally lifting his head. Not far, because Shane’s fingers had tightened in his curls.
Yuna stared into the Russian’s clear blue eyes and realised he honestly meant his words. When she recounted this to David he was going to pull something laughing.
It got worse when Shane tugged Ilya in, resting their heads together with a faint smile. “It’s what best friends do.”
Ilya grinned down at him, utterly besotted. She couldn’t help wondering how poorly socialised they both were to think that best friends acted like this. Or rather, just best friends. No, she recalled how playful Ilya had been with Svetlana, if not to this extent, and even Shane had warmed up to her by the end of the day. The boys were more codependent than her and David, and they weren’t even the ones who were married!
“I like flat near fire house for you,” Ilya remarked, delicately balancing two phones in one massive paw.
“Fuck off,” Shane pouted, shoving back against the Russian’s broad chest and making him grunt. “I’ll get plenty of practice in the kitchen, meal prepping for my diet.”
Ilya actually dropped both phones, freeing up that same paw to- rub over Shane’s stomach, what the hell.
“You are on diet?” he crooned, sounding genuinely upset.
Her son was blushing on top of his pout now. “You’ll need to be on one, too,” he pointed out. “We have to start bulking ahead of the preseason and you should know I’m going to want to track our macros.”
Ilya let out another long, pitiful whine, nuzzling close. Shane’s expression smoothed out, playfully tugging at his curls.
It would’ve been cute if they weren’t nearly 400 pounds of professional athlete that beat each other up for a living.
…no, who was she kidding, they were fucking adorable.
Thank god they were both boys; at least there wouldn’t be any pregnancy scares.
On June 15, 2009, Ilya celebrated his birthday with a family for the first time since Mamochka’s death. The Hollanders had bought him a cake from that same Japanese bakery Yuna liked, and dyadya and Sveta were still in town. Or had left and come back, Ilya was curiously uncurious for the first time in his life.
They even stayed over that night, he and Shane moving the extra bed back into the guestroom for dyadya while Yuna unearthed a small mountain of pillows and sheets for them to build a pillow fort. Shane was shyer with Sveta around, but he began to relax once Ilya made it clear he wouldn’t treat him any differently. Besides, if it was someone who understood, it was Sveta.
She and dyadya were going back to Boston after this, to help get her settled ahead of the start of term. Sveta made them swear to do dinner together after the first Boston-Montreal meet-up of the season. Hearing about her experiences was curious; neither he nor Shane had excelled academically, seeing school as a means to an end. Shane, in particular, had endless questions, given how both his parents had attended McGill.
He didn’t appreciate Ilya asking if it was related to McDonald’s, but Sveta had laughed. After calling him an idiot, yes, but she’d laughed. It made him smile.
Maybe Shane and Sveta had only met because of him. Still, they were making their own conversations, turning to each other first instead of talking through him. Shane would never know what it was like, growing up in Russia. Even Sveta didn’t fully know, having only moved at the age of eight and looking so obviously foreign. Sasha did, but Sasha didn’t know Ilya, not in the same way Sveta did. Not in the same way Shane was beginning to.
They had all fallen asleep together, jolting awake at Shane’s alarm because that boy did not have an off switch. Sveta had kicked them out of the fort for waking her, and Shane had prodded him into an early morning run.
His mind wandered as his legs worked.
With birthday celebrations had come presents.
The cake had been honey-flavoured, Yuna apologising for not being able to find traditional medovik for him; apparently the only Russian bakery in Ottawa had terrible reviews, and dyadya had refused to confirm if it was a front for money laundering. Then David had offered him a crystal bottle of good Russian vodka: a gift from both him and Yuna, he’d explained, to be kept in the Hollander house to make sure he’d come and visit.
That had been better than the alcohol itself.
Sveta had showered him with miniature American candy before presenting him a pelmeni recipe, her babushka’s, the only one Tetya Marianne had been given from dyadya’s side of the family before it all fell apart. They used to eat it after school, all three of them: Sveta, Sasha, and him.
In the present, Shane had looked at the recipe like it was poison. “You’re not planning to stab Ilyusha with a kitchen knife, are you?” he asked, a warble in his voice.
The adults had laughed, thinking he’d been kidding.
Sveta just smirked. “No, no, the recipe is for him to make. Dinner, remember? Our first night together in Boston.”
“So my present is really present for you.”
“No, it’s your present,” Sveta had retorted with laugh. “I’m clearly giving it to you.”
To everyone else, including his parents, Shane’s present had been the ridiculously named box of beavertails he’d bought on the way back from their morning run. What it had actually been was Shane turning off his alarm the day before to wake him up with the sloppiest, most unskilled blowjob he’d ever received in his life. Ilya holding him down to return the gesture was just him being fair, honest. Even if he had come again when Shane whimpered apart in his mouth, those thick, muscular thighs quivering on either side of his face.
Their schedule went back to normal on the 16th: Sveta and dyadya returned to Boston, Shane’s alarm went off at its usual godforsaken time, and the guest bed made its way back into Shane’s room for bedtime.
The other boy started off gentle.
“When is Sveta’s birthday?” he asked. “I want to add it to my calendar.”
Ilya smiled lazily, rewarding him with a kiss. “December 2nd.”
“What about…Tetya Irina?”
Ilya jolted, suddenly very awake. Shane had almost definitely learnt that name from Sveta. Perhaps he’d just found the downside to their budding friendship.
“Why?” he managed.
“I know you wrote down my parents’ birthdays,” Shane explained. “I want to write down your Mum’s, too.”
Ilya cleared his throat. The words still would not come. He tried again. “June 14th.”
Shane’s mouth fell open.
They used to have joint parties; Ilya never minded when it was her. With every passing year it felt like he was creeping closer and closer to the edge of the world; at 18, he had 16 years left.
And yet Yuna had called it young; at Mamochka’s age, she had not yet become a mother. Ilya gazed into Shane’s glossy doe eyes and his impossibly soft underbelly and knew he would never have survived Russia, not even with his scarred knuckles.
Then those doe eyes grew determined, and he rolled Ilya off him to sit upright.
“Shanushka?”
“We still have some of your cake leftover in the fridge,” Shane declared. “Next year, we’ll get her her own cake, but we can at least light a candle for her.”
He slowly propped himself up on one elbow. “You want to eat cake now?”
Shane nodded. “For Tetya Irina. We should celebrate her birthday.” He paused, visibly curling in on himself. “If you want.”
Ilya let out a long, shaky exhale. In Russia, he had never been able to get away with anything, not with Alyosha watching him like a hawk. Sveta had bought a cupcake one year but the loss had been too raw still. In the end, she would sneak him chocolates during this week, sometimes kissing him to push a half-melted truffle into his mouth from hers.
“I want,” he rasped, swinging his legs off the bed.
David woke up in the middle of the night to an insistent bladder, trying not to feel too resigned. His doctor had said it was part and parcel of growing older, and at least his health scans were coming up clean. Besides, if there was something wrong with him, odds were Yuna would know before anyone else.
His beautiful wife was fast asleep, making those adorable snuffly noises she always claimed he was imagining. He gazed at her for a moment longer, admiring. Then he carefully creaked out of bed, grimacing when his shoulders, hips, and knees popped.
He was just washing his hands when he heard the loud scrape of a chair, followed by a hissed hush. Back in bed, Yuna smacked her lips, but stayed asleep.
“Honestly, what are those boys up to,” David mumbled, opening the bedroom door.
They were hovering over the kitchen counter, a faint glow emanating between them. David blinked, rubbing at his eyes.
“What in the world…”
His words were drowned out when they began to whisper-sing in Russian, very slowly and haltingly, to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’. David was now very familiar with what the Russian language sounded like, even if he couldn’t understand much.
On the third line, Shane and Ilya sang, “S dnyom rozhdenya, milaya Mamochka/Tetya Irina..”
David blinked. Hadn’t Sergei mentioned that ‘Irina’ had been the name of Ilya’s mum? Had she and Ilya shared a birthday? As much as he was disappointed that not one Russian had chosen to mention this, he could be relieved that Shane had managed to weasel this information out of Ilya and support him in this way.
The boys concluded the song together.
“How do you wanna-?” Shane asked awkwardly.
Ilya was clutching the pendant he always wore as he leant down to blow out the candle anointing a small slice of the honey-flavoured sponge Yuna had ordered for his birthday. “Mamochka would never want cake to go to waste.”
“Sure,” Shane conceded, “but we gotta brush our teeth again. Not, like, immediately, because that’s not good for them, but in about a half-hour.”
Ilya rolled his eyes so hard his head rolled together with the action. “Da, da, Hollander.”
The clink of cutlery on porcelain told David the boys were eating. He was about to give them their privacy when Shane spoke up again.
“What about your dad and Alyosha? When are their birthdays?”
“...why do you want to know?”
“Not to celebrate!” Shane exclaimed, and then cringed at his own volume. “But you’re not going to forget, right? Even if you want to. Maybe we could schedule a call or do something off of our spreadsheet on those days, as a distraction.”
Ilya carefully chewed and swallowed his mouthful before answering. “Papa is 24 June,” he supplied. “Alyosha is 7 September.”
“I’ll remember,” Shane promised. To himself, David promised that he’d remember, too.
“What about Tetya Irina? When did she die?”
David squeezed his eyes shut. If Ilya punched his son, he couldn’t even blame him.
“December 24.”
“Shit,” Shane swore, “on Christmas Eve?”
Ilya shook his head. “Is not Christmas in Russia, is in January.”
“But it’s Christmas in North America,” Shane insisted, “and you’ll be living here now. That’s fucked if everyone’s celebrating and you’re- gmnnff!”
His words were muffled by the morsel of cake Ilya had shoved into his mouth.
“Enough, Shanushka,” the Russian rumbled. “You have too many words. Mouth is for eating, not talking.”
His son was glowering at the other boy, chewing mulishly.
“Next year, you will help me make birthday cake?” Ilya asked.
David could tell Shane was fighting the urge to continue sulking, eventually giving in with a sigh. “I said I would, didn’t I?”
One corner of Ilya’s mouth twitched. “Then you should get flat in Montreal near fire house. We will need all of the help-!”
Shane gave him a violent shove. “You’re such a fucking asshole!” he hissed. The Russian's flail for balance didn't hide the wide slash of a grin across his face, one that Shane was beginning to reluctantly mirror.
David smiled to himself, retreating back into his bedroom and shutting the door as quietly as he could. In his absence, Yuna had starfished across their bed, clearly searching for his warmth.
He slid into the remaining sliver and immediately had an armful of his wife.
“W’re w’re you,” she grumbled, face mashed against his shoulder.
“I needed the bathroom,” he replied, stroking her hair.
She grumbled a little more, more sound than word, and promptly fell back asleep. David kissed the top of her head, lingering.
(He might have to update the wedding timeline, but that could wait till morning.)