Chapter Text
They'd been expecting the call at some point. Just maybe not this soon.
Shane sat on the cottage dock, feet dangling in the cool water, watching Ilya wade out with Anya cradled against his chest before setting her down to paddle on her own. She looked, as always, deeply unqualified for the responsibility of swimming, paddling in a frantic little circle like she personally owed the lake money. The late afternoon sun caught the water in a way that made everything look gold, and for a second Shane just watched them, his husband and their extremely stupid, extremely beloved golden retriever, like it was the easiest thing in the world to be this happy.
He glanced at his watch, a Rolex, because of course it was, and winced.
"Ilya," he called across the water.
"Da?" Ilya didn't even turn around. He was fully committed to narrating Anya's swimming technique in Russian like a sports announcer.
"We need to leave for dinner at my parents' in like fifteen, twenty minutes. If you want to shower, you should go now."
Ilya gave a thumbs up without looking back and kept paddling alongside Anya, matching her pace like it was the most important job in the world, possibly more important than the Stanley Cup he had won ten days ago.
"Ilya." Nothing. "Ilya." Still nothing, though Shane could see the smirk creeping onto the side of his face even from here, the specific smirk that meant he was being ignored on purpose. "Get out. And shower. Please."
"Ugh." Ilya exhaled dramatically, as Shane had just asked him to skate suicides in full gear, but the smirk only grew wider. "You will join me?"
"No, I will not. I'm already dressed."
Ilya gasped, pressing a wet hand to his own chest like he'd been personally wounded. "My husband does not love me?"
"Shower. Now. You're already down to ten minutes, and my mother will start timing us from the driveway."
He sulked the entire way out of the lake, hauling himself and the dog up onto the dock with an enormous, put-upon groan, water sluicing off both of them in sheets. Anya took one look at Shane, dry, smug, comfortable in his clean clothes, and decided that simply would not do. She shook, violently, head to tail, ears flapping, and drenched him completely, right down to his socks.
"Don't you dare," Shane said, a full second too late, glaring down at her.
She, of course, had already dared, and looked extremely proud of herself about it.
Shane groaned and grabbed a towel off the railing, scrubbing at his own hair first and then, begrudgingly, at the dog, who was now attempting to lick his face in what he assumed was an apology and was actually a victory lap. He'd just pulled on a dry shirt when Ilya wandered out of the bathroom, hair still damp and curling at the ends, a towel slung low around his hips like he was auditioning for something.
"Why are you changing? You looked so hot in that outfit."
"What, and I don't look hot in this one?"
"No, no. You are always hot. My hot husband." He said it the way other people said obvious weather facts, completely matter-of-fact, like he was reporting the temperature.
Shane laughed, tugging the new shirt down. "Anya got me wet, which, by the way, is your fault for taking her in the water."
"Ohh, so me wanting our daughter to be happy is a crime now?"
"Yes. A federal one."
Ilya crossed the room slowly, unhurried, and reached out to catch a fistful of Shane's shirt, hauling him in close enough that their noses nearly brushed. He held there, eyes flicking down to Shane's mouth and back up, clearly enjoying himself, clearly about to say something insufferable.
"Well," he murmured, close enough that Shane could feel the words more than hear them, "if making my daughter happy is a crime, so must making my husband."
And then, instead of kissing him, the menace just let go and turned away, strolling toward the closet like he hadn't just done that on purpose, whistling something tuneless under his breath.
Shane stood there for a second, genuinely betrayed. "Asshole," he called after him, and reached out to grab his wrist, hauling him back around and pulling him in himself this time, kissing him properly, slow and thorough, until Ilya was laughing into it, delighted with himself for getting exactly the reaction he'd wanted.
"I love you," Shane whispered, once he finally let him go.
"Ya tebya lyublyu," Ilya said back, soft, as it cost him nothing at all to say.
They made it into the car with four minutes to spare, Ilya's hair still damp at the collar, Anya installed in the back seat with her head hanging happily out the window like a furry, drooling flag.
They pulled into the driveway of Shane's childhood home not long after that, the porch light already on, the smell of something delicious drifting out through the screen door before they'd even made it up the walk.
"Here are our Stanley Cup winners!" Shane's mom announced, throwing the door open before they'd knocked.
"Was all me, not Shane," Ilya said, pulling her into a hug.
"Oh, so my goal in Game Six doesn't count, then?" Shane shot back, already toeing off his shoes in the entryway like he was seventeen again.
"Hmm. No. I got the game-winning goal. That mean is not a team effort. Just me effort."
"Have you ever heard the saying 'there's no I in team,' son?" David asked, deadpan, appearing in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder.
"No, this is only a stupid English saying. There is an I in the word team in Russian."
"No, there's not." Shane rolled his eyes. He may not know much Russian, but he did, in fact no there is no я (I) in команда (team).
"Shh. Don't let the facts get in the way, yes?"
That set all four of them off, laughter carrying through the front hall and into the kitchen as they made their way to the table, Anya trotting along at Ilya's heel like she, too, had personally contributed to the championship and expected to be introduced as such.
By the time Ilya's phone started buzzing against the table, he was working through his third, maybe fourth, serving of chicken parm, and the conversation had drifted somewhere between playoff stats and the state of Shane's mom's tomato plants.
"Sweetie, are you going to get that?" she asked.
"No, is probably Svet. I told her I would call, then forgot. I talk to her later." The buzzing stopped. A few seconds later, it started again, more insistent this time.
This time Ilya pulled the phone from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and his eyebrows shot up before he even said anything. He turned the phone so Shane could see it. The contact name read Miranda Stork (ironic). Miranda was their social worker. He and Shane had spent the better part of the last year taking foster parent classes, not because they thought they'd need them anytime soon, but because they'd heard that even after getting certified, it could take years for an actual placement to come through. Better to start the process now, they'd figured, for someday. Five, six years down the line. Once they'd both retired and had nothing better to do than get thrown up on.
They had not expected a call less than two months after finishing the course.
Ilya put the phone on speaker and set it in the middle of the table, next to the bread basket, like it was a fifth guest.
"Hi, Mr. Rozanov, this is Miranda Stork."
"Hi, Miranda. Nice to talk to you again."
"I'm so, so sorry to intrude, but we have a placement need for a child near you, and I was wondering if you'd be open to it. Wait, sorry, is your husband there too?"
"Yes, I am. Hello, Miranda." Shane leaned in toward the phone, abandoning his fork entirely.
"Oh, okay, great." Miranda was young, and impossibly energetic for what was clearly the tail end of a long workday.
"How old is the kid?" Ilya asked.
"Three."
"Three years?" Shane confirmed, already doing rapid, panicked math about school schedules and car seats and whether their guest room even had a door that closed.
"No. Three weeks."
Ilya choked on his water. Actually choked, coughing hard enough that Shane's dad had to reach over and thump him on the back while Shane's mom's hand flew to her mouth and Anya, sensing chaos, army crawled under the table to hide. Why would she say three like it was a toddler and not a baby, almost directly out of the womb?
"Can we have some time to think about this?" Shane asked, once he'd found his own voice again.
"Yes, of course. I completely understand this is a huge responsibility, and you'd have time before the baby comes. We wouldn't just drop him at your door."
"When would he come?"
"Oh. Like two to three days. Depends."
Shane looked at Ilya with wide, slightly unhinged eyes and mouthed the word days. Miranda clearly had no concept of time.
"So if you two could let me know in the next hour or two, that would be great," Miranda continued, breezy, like she hadn't just casually upended their entire evening, their entire year, possibly their entire lives.
"Okay. We'll call you soon. Bye-bye," Ilya said, and hung up before anyone could ask him a follow-up question he wasn't ready for.
The four of them sat there staring at each other for a long moment, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator and Anya's tail thumping hopefully against the floor from her spot under the table, sensing something enormous was happening without having any idea what it was.
It was Shane's mom, ever the responsible adult in the room, who finally broke the silence. "So. Yes or no?"
Shane had been bracing for an actual conversation. A pros and cons list. A sleep on it. But the second he turned to look at Ilya, he already knew, because no version of Ilya Rozanov could hide that particular smile, the one that had never once, in the entire history of them, failed to make Shane want to do something completely reckless on his behalf.
"Fuck," Shane muttered.
"What do we do during hockey season?" he asked anyway, because somebody had to ask the practical questions, even knowing full well it was already a lost cause.
Shane's mom answered before Ilya could. "We could watch him." She paused, thinking it over. "I'm assuming it's a boy, since she said 'he.'"
Shane wasn't entirely sure that was how pronouns worked over the phone with a newborn nobody had met yet, but he'd thought he heard it too, so he nodded like it was settled science.
"How do we get baby stuff in two days?" Question number two, and arguably the more urgent one.
"Obviously," Ilya said, like it was the easiest problem in the world, like he'd already solved it in his head while Shane was still catching up, "we go shopping. And steal things from the Pikes."
"We are not stealing from the Pikes."
"Borrow. Aggressively."
Shane exhaled slowly and looked at Ilya again, who was watching him, waiting, that smile still not wavering an inch. "Okay. Fuck. Let's do it."
"Are you sure?" Ilya asked, quieter now, dropping the bit for just a second, like he needed to hear Shane say it plainly, without the jokes underneath it.
"Yes."
"Holy shit."
Shane's dad, still holding his fork, looked between them, then down at Anya, who had reemerged from under the table, looking deeply unbothered by the fact that her entire household was about to change forever.
"Well," he said, "somebody's going to need a crib by Thursday."