Archive of Our Own

Ilya Rozanov considered himself a patient man. Well, not patient in the traditional sense, perhaps, but patient in so far as his beautiful boyfriend was concerned. Despite Shane’s many quirks (or perhaps because of them), Ilya found himself unnaturally besotted, which led him to agree to things he might not normally.

Like having dinner with his boyfriend’s ex.

It was an outrageous request, really. One that any reasonable man would have rejected immediately. Unfortunately, Ilya had never been particularly good at rejecting Shane Hollander anything, especially when Shane asked him for things with those enormous brown eyes of his, looking so earnest and hopeful that Ilya’s brain occasionally forgot how to perform its most basic functions. A serious medical concern, probably.

“I still do not understand why I need to be here,” he whined, throwing himself back onto the bed he and Shane had just finished making, after an enthusiastic round of afternoon delight got unexpectedly messy.

The mattress gave beneath his weight, and the freshly straightened comforter immediately bunched up beneath him. Somewhere near his shoulder, a decorative pillow that Shane had spent an unreasonable amount of time arranging toppled onto the floor. Ilya regarded its disappearance with complete indifference. It had been a stupid pillow anyway, one of several Shane had insisted the bed needed despite the fact that neither of them had ever used it for anything except throwing it out of the way.

“Because,” he heard Shane respond around a toothbrush from the ensuite bathroom, his voice echoing off the tile, “Rose is one of the only people who knows about us. She wants to be supportive.”

Supportive. Yes. How very generous of her. Perhaps she could support them from California, where she belonged, preferably without ever coming within five hundred kilometers of his boyfriend.

Ilya heard him spit and rinse (and then spit and rinse again), closing his eyes and taking in how domestic they’d become in such a short amount of time. It was one of a thousand small habits Ilya had begun to catalog over the past year they’d officially been together, though he suspected he’d been collecting them for considerably longer than that. The precise way Shane folded his shirts. His inexplicable need to straighten crooked picture frames. The way he checked that the front door was locked even when he’d watched Ilya lock it five minutes earlier. For all his teasing, Ilya found himself embarrassingly fond of every one of them.

There was something almost intoxicating about the domesticity of it all. Shane’s toothbrush standing beside his own. Two coffee mugs abandoned in the kitchen sink. The sight of Shane’s clothes hanging in a closet beside his own. They’d spent years squeezing themselves into stolen evenings and carefully chosen hotel rooms, and now Shane was walking around Ilya’s house as though he belonged there. Which, as far as Ilya was concerned, he did.

He felt Shane approaching the bed, placing himself between Ilya’s knees where his feet were still pressed to the plush carpet. He opened one eye, peeking up at his boyfriend.

“You’re not dressed,” Shane admonished with a smirk, taking in Ilya’s boxer-clad form appreciatively. Despite the fact that they’d done nothing but ravage one another since Shane had helped Ilya move into his new home in Ottawa two weeks ago, there always seemed to be heat in Shane’s gaze.

“You do not seem to mind, pervert,” Ilya responded with a wink, flexing his abdominal muscles for Shane’s benefit. Maybe, he thought, if I can distract him into another round, I won’t have to share him with…

“Rose probably wouldn’t either,” Shane said with a chuckle. Then, climbing into Ilya’s lap, he said, “but I don’t intend to share you with her.” He leaned down, pressing his lips to Ilya’s for a sweet kiss. Ilya attempted to deepen the kiss, but Shane pulled away, sitting astride his boyfriend and looking down on him.

Well that was considerably better. Ilya’s hands had found Shane’s waist almost immediately, tugging him down so their lips touched again. He made a valiant attempt to turn the kiss into something that might occupy them for the next several hours. Shane indulged him for a moment before pulling away with a quiet laugh, leaving Ilya thoroughly dissatisfied.

Ilya groaned, moving up to rest on his elbows. “I still do not understand why you cannot go out to dinner with your former lover,” he delighted in the horrified wrinkle of Shane’s nose, but continued, “and then come home to me. I do not need to eat dinner. Stop and bring me McDonalds on your way home.”

Shane shook his head. “Rose wants to meet you. That’s the whole point. She loves me.” Ilya snorted, earning an eye roll from Shane. “She’ll love you, too.” He swung his leg over Ilya’s hips and climbed off the bed, leaving behind a thoroughly unsatisfactory absence of warmth. “She’s coming here for dinner. I’m going downstairs to tidy up and start cooking… you need to put clothes on.” He bent to retrieve the fallen pillow, giving it a small, irritated shake before replacing it at the head of the bed. Ilya watched with open amusement. Of course he had to fix the pillow. It made Ilya instantly hard.

Ilya privately considered the distinct possibility that Rose would love him. Most people did, after all. He was extremely charming when he chose to be, and occasionally even when he didn’t. The problem wasn’t whether Rose Landry would like him. The problem was that Ilya wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to like her.

Ilya watched Shane walk out the bedroom door and into the hallway, running his hand through his still-damp hair. “Or what?” he called after Shane mischievously, definitely pushing his luck.

Shane popped his head back into the bedroom, narrowing his eyes at Ilya. “Or I take off all my clothes and greet Rose in my underwear, alone.”

Ilya saw his smug, little smile before he turned to head back down the hallway. As soon as he was sure Shane was out of earshot, Ilya launched himself out of bed, determined not to let Rose Landry see any more of his boyfriend than she already had. 

Sorting through the clothes in his closet, Ilya couldn’t make up his mind about what to wear. He wanted to look hot. He knew, logically, that Shane was gay and his… but that didn’t stop him from wanting to make sure Shane’s attention stayed firmly planted where it was supposed to be. On Ilya.

Ordinarily, this was not a question that required much consideration. Ilya owned nice clothes. He looked excellent in them. Unfortunately, merely looking good was no longer sufficient. He needed to look devastating. 

He stood before the rows of hanging shirts, contemplating his options with an intensity ordinarily reserved for reviewing game footage. He pulled a dark button-down from its hanger, held it against his chest, and considered his reflection. Too formal. He replaced it and selected a fitted black T-shirt. Too ordinary. A cream-colored sweater briefly presented itself as a possibility before he remembered that it was still August, and that sweating through dinner would considerably undermine the effect he was hoping to achieve. He tossed it aside.

It was ridiculous. He was Ilya fucking Rozanov. He had played professional hockey in front of thousands of screaming people, endured hostile reporters, and spent years making grown men look foolish on the ice. He should not be standing in his own closet agonizing over a shirt because his boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend was coming to dinner. And yet he couldn’t stop this irritable feeling clawing up his throat, threatening to escape. 

He’d never been the jealous type before Shane… Why, then, was he so unnerved by a blue eyed actress with a penchant for getting kidnapped? Yes, she had fucked Shane. His Shane. He hated this. It was stupid, and he knew it was stupid given the notches on his own bedpost that Shane never brought up… but still, he hated it. 

But there were other things. Things that sat beneath the jealousy, harder to name and considerably more difficult to dismiss. Things he couldn’t possibly explain to Shane without sounding like the sort of pathetic, lovesick idiot he’d spent most of his life making fun of.

Enough. He was not going to spend the entire evening brooding over Rose Landry. He was going to be charming, handsome, and gracious. He was going to make Shane happy. And then, once their guest had finally gone home, he was going to remind his boyfriend exactly why he was so lucky.

He sighed, pulling out a pair of white linen shorts that showed far more of his muscular thighs than he typically revealed. They clung to his ass in a way Hollander loved; the last time he’d worn them around the cottage, Shane hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself all night. Ilya smiled at the memory. Yes. Definitely these.

He paired them with a lightweight knit button down polo in a pale shade of green that Shane always said brought out the gold flecks in his hazel eyes. He undid the top button of the polo, and then after a moment’s consideration, undid three more until the shirt looked nearly halfway open.

He adjusted the collar, pulling the fabric slightly wider across his chest, and turned sideways to examine the result. The shorts were an excellent choice. The shirt was an even better one. Together, they created the sort of effect that had been known to make Shane forget what he was saying in the middle of a sentence. And really, what more could a man ask of an outfit?

He took a second to look himself over in the floor length mirror in the corner of their closet. Eat your heart out, Hollander, he thought to himself with a smug smile.

Making his way downstairs to find Shane, he coached himself into a better attitude. He would get through tonight. For Shane’s sake. He would be polite to the primadonna that Shane was frustratingly loyal to, and then Shane would reward him with all manner of sinful activities. He could do this.

He made his way to the living room, where Shane was folding a blanket that had previously been haphazardly discarded on the couch. The late afternoon sun spilled through the windows, stretching long, golden rectangles across the hardwood floors and catching in Shane's still-damp hair. He was standing with his back partially turned, concentrating on bringing the corners of the blanket together with the same exacting precision he applied to practically everything in his life. Ilya leaned against the doorframe for a moment, enjoying the sight.

He loved watching Shane when Shane didn't know he was being watched. There was something almost indecently appealing about seeing one of the greatest hockey players in the world standing barefoot in his living room, fussing over a blanket. Ilya could watch him do this sort of thing for hours. 

He knew the second Shane saw him. His eyes got starry and his mouth went slack as he dropped the blanket on the back of the sofa. Mission accomplished, he thought deviously, carefully schooling his features to nonchalance.

Shane's gaze traveled from Ilya's face to the open collar of his shirt, lingering there before dropping to the expanse of thigh left uncovered by his shorts. He blinked, looked back up, and then made the rather charming mistake of looking down again. Ilya nearly laughed. His poor, beautiful boyfriend. He was so terribly easy to manipulate, provided one had the proper equipment.

“What can I help you with, moy lyubimy?” Ilya asked casually, putting his hands on his hips and casually flexing his biceps.

“Not fucking fair, Rozanov,” Shane retorted, a blush creeping across his cheeks, painting those gorgeous freckles into greater prominence. Ilya wanted to bite him.

“What is not fair?” he questioned, the perfect picture of innocence.

Shane gestured wildly in Ilya’s general direction. “You’re being intentionally distracting!”

Ilya glanced down at himself as though noticing his outfit for the first time. The pale green fabric lay open across his chest, exposing a generous stretch of skin, and the white linen shorts were doing exactly what he'd hoped they would. 

Ilya crossed the room, taking Shane in his arms. “Ah,” he said knowingly, rubbing their noses together. “Is not my fault I am too handsome. You want me to make a bad impression on your friend? ‘Hello, Rose Landry. I am sloppy boyfriend Shane left you for. Sorry I do not look nice for this dinner, but Shane said I am just too pretty.’ You want that?”

Shane made a strangled noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan, pressing his forehead against Ilya's shoulder as though he couldn't bear to look at him. Ilya grinned into his hair, immensely pleased with himself.

“You’re such an asshole.” Shane rolled his eyes, attempting to pull himself out of Ilya’s arms, but with no real effort behind it. Ilya easily pulled him back in, wrapping his arms around Shane’s waist. Then, “you’ll be nice to Rose, right?”

Ilya took in his big, brown, puppy eyes and felt himself melt. How would Ilya ever win an argument against those beautiful eyes? He’d have to buy Shane sunglasses for fair fighting. “Of course I will, malysh.” He placed a gentle kiss under Shane’s ear, right by the hinge of his sharp jaw, and felt him sigh into the contact. “You have been nervous I would not be nice?” he cooed. At Shane’s nod he continued, “Me? Super Nice Guy, Ilya Rozanov? What would ever make you think I would not be friendly to your former girlfriend, last person to kiss you besides me, Rose Landry?”

Shane's sigh was considerably less contented this time. Ilya could practically feel him gathering the patience required to have this conversation again, which was unfortunate, because Ilya had absolutely no intention of making it easy for him.

“Ilya, for the last time, I’m--”

“Gay, yes, I know, solnyshko. Lucky for me.” He placed a smacking kiss on Shane’s cheek. “I will be very nice to Rose. She is important to you.” He pulled away. “Let’s go make dinner, yes?”

He meant it, too. Not necessarily the part about being very nice—although he intended to make an admirable effort—but the part about Rose being important to Shane. He understood that, even if he didn't particularly enjoy thinking about why. And Shane was looking at him now with such naked relief and affection that Ilya felt a brief, uncomfortable stab of guilt for having made him worry. Naturally, he dealt with this by reaching down and giving Shane's ass an appreciative squeeze before lacing their fingers together, leading Shane through the house to the kitchen. 

He was still getting used to the place. Shockingly, he kept thinking of it as theirs. He knew it would be a hard adjustment when the season started and Shane went back to Montreal. There were already traces of Shane everywhere: his shoes beside the front door, his preferred brand of tea tucked into a cabinet, the faint, clean smell of his shampoo lingering in the upstairs bathroom. It was remarkable how thoroughly one person could insinuate himself into a house in only two weeks, particularly when that person had an almost pathological commitment to putting things away.

Ilya had grown accustomed to sharing space with Shane over their second summer at the cottage, accustomed to the sound of his footsteps and the warmth of his body in bed, and the thought of returning to a house that contained only his own things was profoundly unappealing. He suspected the silence would be the worst part.

Banishing those unpleasant thoughts to the back of his mind, he set to pulling items out to prepare for dinner, while Shane got ingredients out of the fridge. The kitchen was bright and spacious, with more counter space than Ilya had any reasonable use for and appliances he'd purchased largely because they were expensive and looked impressive. He'd been assured by the real estate agent that it was an excellent kitchen for entertaining, which had seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to want in a house until he'd discovered that entertaining apparently involved doing work.

Shane, naturally, looked entirely at home. He'd already laid out the chicken on a parchment lined sheet pan and was measuring seasonings with the quiet concentration of someone performing a delicate scientific procedure.

“What are you looking for?” Shane asked, watching Ilya rummage through two cabinets in search of something that was clearly evading him.

“Cutting boards,” Ilya grunted.

Shane pointed to a cabinet beside the stove. “Down there.”

Ilya paused, his hand still resting on the open cabinet door, and turned to regard his boyfriend with an expression of profound offense. He grumbled under his breath. “Is my house, Hollander. Why do you know where my fucking cutting boards are?”

“Because I put all the kitchen stuff away,” he responded with a smirk, seasoning the chicken with the herb blend he’d just prepared in a tiny bowl.

Of course he had. Ilya remembered that afternoon now: Shane insisting on unpacking the kitchen first, because apparently having access to a functional vegetable peeler was more urgent than locating the television remote. Ilya had been assigned to flattening cardboard boxes, a task he'd performed heroically until Shane caught him sitting on one and scrolling through his phone.

Still, there was something satisfying about the fact that Shane knew where everything belonged. Ilya owned the house, but Shane had already made himself indispensable to its operation. It was an arrangement Ilya could live with.

The doorbell stopped the bickering. Ilya grabbed a bundle of asparagus, bringing it over to his cutting board (that was, of course, exactly where Hollander said it was), and preparing to chop off the woody ends, leaving Shane to answer the door. Ilya watched out of the corner of his eye as Shane put the chicken in the oven, wiped his hands on a towel, and made his way to the foyer.

For a moment, Ilya considered calling him back for one more kiss, but Shane was already disappearing around the corner, and the sound of the doorbell still seemed to be hanging accusingly in the air. He looked down at the asparagus, picked up the knife, and decided that if he was going to be abandoned in his own kitchen while his boyfriend entertained another person, he might as well make himself useful. 

He heard the door open, and Shane’s warm greeting that was abruptly cut off by a squeal of delight as Rose Landry launched herself at his boyfriend. He heard the muffled sound of her saying something—complimenting Shane’s arms?—and Shane’s bashful reply. More muffled conversation and then the unmistakable sound of Shane’s genuine laughter. The kind that made the adorable wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. The kind he usually reserved for Ilya.

Ilya frowned down at his cutting board. He had heard Shane laugh like that a thousand times, had spent years cultivating the particular brand of foolishness that could coax it out of him even before they were officially together. It was one of his favorite sounds in the world, which made it especially irritating to discover that Rose Landry apparently had access to it seemingly without having to work nearly as hard.

Not that Ilya was jealous.

He was simply making observations. Perfectly objective observations about the way his boyfriend was behaving with a woman who had once been permitted to touch him in places Ilya preferred not to think about. There was nothing jealous about that.

He looked down to see he’d lopped the asparagus into a haphazard mess of uneven chunks. Perfect.

As he moved to dump his asparagus chunks into the skillet on the stove he heard titters of mixed laughter and easy conversation moving closer. Shane and Rose entered the kitchen, and he did his best to school his expression into something charming, turning around gracefully to greet them.

Rose Landry was smaller in person, something that made him feel weirdly superior. Onscreen she always seemed to occupy an extraordinary amount of space, whether she was running from some deranged murderer or standing dramatically in the rain, but in person she was almost delicate. Pretty, too, in a way that was frankly inconvenient. Her hair fell in loose waves around her shoulders, and she wore the kind of easy, expensive-looking outfit that suggested she hadn't spent the better part of an hour trying to dress for this dinner. Ilya disliked her immediately for that last part.

“Ilya, I’d like you to meet Rose Landry,” Shane said, an uncharacteristically easy smile lighting up his face.

Ilya crossed his arms in front of him, leaning back against the counter, the picture of cool indifference. “Hollander, she is internationally known actress and I am best hockey player in the world. You do not think we know who the other is?”

Rose's eyebrows shot up, and then she laughed, a bright, delighted sound that made Ilya reluctantly concede she had an excellent sense of humor. Or at least an excellent appreciation for his. He supposed that was something.

Shane rolled his eyes playfully. “Rose, this asshole is Ilya Rozanov.” He smirked over at Ilya. “My boyfriend.”

Ilya’s stomach did a somersault. Shane had never introduced him as his boyfriend before. Sure, they both knew what they meant to each other… but they’d been together for over a year and hadn’t been around anyone who knew what they really were to each other. Except Yuna and David, of course, but that introduction didn’t exactly make Ilya feel warm and fuzzy.

Before Ilya knew what was happening, Rose was launching herself at him, too. He’d barely had time to uncross his arms before she was wrapping herself around him, an unfiltered stream of chatter spilling from her mouth.

She was enthusiastic, he would give her that. And surprisingly strong for someone so small. Ilya found himself standing awkwardly with his arms half-raised, unsure whether he was expected to return the embrace or simply endure it until she finished speaking. He glanced helplessly over her shoulder at Shane, who had the audacity to look amused.

“...Shane just talks about you all the time, and of course I follow hockey pretty closely, so I would have been excited to meet you even if you weren’t with Shane, but given that you’re so important to him--”

Shane talked about him all the time? Ilya filed that away for later examination. Preferably when he could interrogate Shane at length about precisely what he'd been saying, and the ways in which it was complimentary.

“Nice to meet you,” Ilya cut her off, smiling down at her in a way he hoped looked earnest. She released him and went back to Shane’s side. This is going to be a long night, Ilya thought, turning back to tend to his asparagus.

He reached for the skillet, grateful for something to occupy his hands. Unfortunately, the asparagus had not improved during his brief absence from it. The pieces were a spectacular assortment of lengths and angles. He was contemplating whether it might be possible to disguise the damage with enough olive oil when Shane appeared beside him. Initially Ilya thought that the crowding of his space was affectionate… until he saw the judgmental set of Shane’s jaw. “Why the fuck did you massacre the asparagus like that?”

Ilya looked down at the asparagus. It looked like they’d been cut by a blind raccoon. He bristled. “They are vegetables, Hollander. They do not care.”

“I care! They're all different sizes. They're going to cook unevenly.”

Ilya gave the pan a defiant shake, as though the vegetables might rearrange themselves into something more respectable out of loyalty to him. They did not. Shane made a small, disapproving noise, and Ilya felt his irritation rising again. He had just spent several minutes being extraordinarily gracious to Shane's former lover. Surely that entitled him to a little latitude where the fucking asparagus was concerned.

Ilya bumped his hip, scootching Shane away from the stove top. “They were perfectly good before you came in here and distracted me.”

Shane gave him a pointed look. “You butchered them before we even came into the kitchen.”

An inconveniently accurate observation. Ilya chose not to acknowledge it.

From the other side of the island, Rose snorted and said, “Oh, don't bother, Ilya. He’s the king of the kitchen. Once, on a trip to visit me in LA, he reorganized my pantry...”

Ilya stopped tending to his asparagus. He heard Shane exhale a slow breath through his nose before warning, “Rose...”

“By food group.”

Ilya slowly turned toward her.

Rose was leaning against the island with the unmistakable expression of someone who had been waiting a very long time for an appreciative audience. Ilya recognized it immediately. He wore it himself whenever he was about to tell a particularly humiliating story about Shane to Yuna and David, and the realization that they might have something in common was deeply unwelcome.

“And expiration date,” she added with a mischievous smirk.

A smile tugged unwillingly at the corner of his mouth. “No.”

“There were labels.”

“There were not labels,” Shane protested, his hands fussily on his hips, color rising on his cheeks.

Rose considered. “Okay, fine, there weren't labels. But you thought about labels.”

“...I did not.”

Ilya looked at Shane, whose face betrayed him. “Oh my God,” Ilya breathed delightedly. “You wanted labels.”

It was all there in Shane's expression: the indignant set of his mouth, the pink creeping up his neck, and, most damningly, the fact that he was refusing to make eye contact with either of them. Ilya knew that look. He'd seen it whenever Shane was caught doing something so magnificently Shane that even he couldn't quite defend himself.

“Fuck both of you,” Shane grumbled, grabbing plates from an upper cabinet and taking them to the dining room table. Rose let out a peal of laughter, and Ilya bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

“He absolutely wanted the labels,” she told Ilya with a conspiratorial wink and, against his will, he found himself genuinely smiling at her.

“Rose, you don’t need to carry that! You’re our guest!” Ilya heard Shane admonishing from the kitchen, where Rose had picked up a platter of chicken and was carrying it to the table in the adjoining dining room, where Ilya was waiting, having just set down a large salad and his asparagus.

The asparagus had survived, more or less. The smaller pieces were a little darker than he'd intended, but he'd managed to salvage the situation with olive oil, lemon, and a judicious amount of seasoning. It tasted perfectly good, which was all that mattered. He'd arranged it on a serving dish with considerably more care than he'd taken in cutting it, and if Shane had any further opinions about its appearance, he was welcome to keep them to himself.

He saw Rose roll her eyes. “It isn’t a big deal,” she replied, setting the chicken on the table, as Shane trailed behind her with a bottle of wine.

Ilya took in the table. It looked nice. Shane had insisted on using the proper dishes rather than the perfectly serviceable everyday plates Ilya had suggested, and there was a little arrangement of flowers in the center that Ilya had picked up earlier that afternoon. He'd initially considered something much larger, until he'd realized that forcing Shane and Rose to peer at each other through a forest of expensive flowers would probably not make the evening any more enjoyable. Now, with the late summer sunset spilling light through the dining room windows and catching on the glass vase, he had to admit he'd made the right choice. The room was warm and inviting, the table set for three, the smell of roasted chicken and garlic blanketing the space in cozy domesticity. It looked almost like the sort of dinner people had in houses like this all the time.

“We didn’t put out wine glasses, Hollander.” He heard Shane’s frustrated sigh and smiled at him. “I’ll grab them, do not huff.”

Ilya could hear Rose and Shane settling across from each other at the table as he made his way into the kitchen. He felt two sets of eyes on him as he reached into an upper cabinet for a wine glass. Then he heard Rose ask Shane, “Does he always dress like this at home?”

Finally, he thought, someone with the good sense to appreciate the effort he'd made. He watched Shane's mouth flatten as he made his way back to the table. “No,” Shane responded a bit fussily. Ilya smirked.

“Ah.” Rose nodded solemnly. “So this is for my benefit, then.”

“It is not for you,” Ilya quickly clarified, handing a wine glass to Shane and taking the seat beside him.

“Not for me, maybe, but I’m enjoying it all the same,” she winked at Ilya as he handed her a wine glass. He turned to see Shane narrowing his eyes at her. My possessive kitten, Ilya thought, smugly.

Rose caught the look, too, and appeared delighted by it. Ilya could practically see her considering how much further she might push before Shane lost his patience. It was a calculation Ilya made frequently himself, although he usually had the considerable advantage of being able to distract Shane with his mouth when things got out of hand. Rose would have to find her own methods.

“Rose, tell me about the project you’re working on,” Shane said, picking up the chicken and serving a piece to Rose.

It was such an obvious attempt to redirect the conversation that Ilya almost admired it. Shane had apparently decided that discussing Rose's professional accomplishments was safer than allowing her to continue appreciating his boyfriend's pecs. Ilya disagreed, but he was willing to be gracious. For now.

Ilya heard them going back and forth about Rose’s new project as he served himself a piece of chicken, only half listening. He knew enough about her career to follow the conversation (more than he would ever admit to knowing) but whatever she was filming seemed to involve neither hockey nor Shane, so he struggled to summon much interest.

He had watched several of her films, ostensibly because she was famous and he liked movies. Certainly not because he'd been curious about the woman who'd dated Shane Hollander. And if he'd occasionally found himself watching her interviews afterward, that was simply a natural consequence of the internet being full of things to click on.

“And they want me to do half the stunt work myself,” Rose was saying. “Which I normally love, but this one has me getting thrown out of a moving car.”

Ilya looked up. “Again?”

Rose stopped with her wine glass halfway to her mouth. “Again?”

“You are always being kidnapped. Thrown from things. Tied to things.” He gestured vaguely at her. “You should speak to your agent.”

A delighted smile spread across her face. “You watch my movies?”

Ilya felt Shane’s eyes on him and deliberately ignored them. “I have seen… some.”

Rose set her wine glass down with the deliberate care of someone who had just discovered something far more interesting than whatever she'd been talking about. “How many is some?”

“I do not know,” he said evasively, scratching the back of his neck.

She leaned forward, one perfectly manicured eyebrow climbing toward her hairline. “More than one?”

“Maybe.”

The grin spreading across her face was positively insufferable. “Ilya Rozanov watches my movies.”

“I did not say I enjoyed them.”

Shane snorted disapprovingly into his wine.

Ilya looked at him. “I enjoyed some of them,” he corrected, noticing Shane’s subtle approving nod.

“Thank you,” Rose said, laughing. “I'll take it.”

Ilya found himself smiling back at her. It was irritatingly easy to talk to her. She seemed entirely unimpressed by the fact that he was Ilya Rozanov, which was unusual enough to be refreshing, and she didn't appear inclined to treat him with the careful politeness people sometimes adopted around famous athletes. He suspected she knew exactly how absurd that would be, given her own career.

Rose reached for the asparagus, helping herself to another generous portion without so much as glancing at the uneven pieces. Ilya watched her take a bite and nod appreciatively before returning her attention to him. Vindication. He helped himself to some, too, enjoying the sharpness of the lemon against the richer flavor of the chicken. If Shane noticed his expression of quiet triumph, he was merciful enough not to comment.

“So how are you liking Ottawa?” she asked.

“It is good. Quieter than Boston.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I think so,” he told her, nodding. “I wanted quieter.”

Shane glanced at him, and Ilya caught the small smile that appeared at the corner of his mouth.

There was something knowing about it, an acknowledgment of everything that had gone into getting Ilya here. He held Shane's gaze for a moment, allowing himself a small smile in return before Rose's attention shifted to the room around them.

“And the house?” Rose asked, looking around. “Have you settled in?”

“Mostly. There are still boxes.”

Shane, who had been reaching for another helping of salad, gave a small, aggrieved sigh. “There would be fewer boxes if someone would let me unpack them.”

Ilya turned toward him. “You have already taken over my entire kitchen.”

“I unpacked your kitchen.”

“You reorganized it.”

Shane set down the serving spoon and turned to face him fully, apparently unwilling to let such a serious accusation go unanswered. “I organized it. You can't reorganize something that wasn't organized in the first place.”

Rose pointed her fork at Ilya, her expression triumphant. “See? This is how it starts.”

Ilya laughed. “Yes! First the kitchen. Soon there will be labels.”

“Oh my god, there were never labels!” Shane protested.

“Not yet,” Rose said.

Ilya caught her eye across the table, and this time he didn't bother hiding his smile.

Shane sighed. “I already regret this.”

Rose looked positively delighted with herself, which Ilya suspected was precisely the opposite of what Shane had hoped to accomplish. “You were the one who wanted us to meet.”

“I thought you'd get along. I didn't think you'd… unionize!”

Ilya barked out a laugh.

“Oh, we're absolutely unionizing,” Rose said.

Ilya straightened in his chair, adopting the grave expression he usually reserved for particularly ridiculous declarations. “We will have demands.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Rose agreed. “Better working conditions.”

“No more judgment about vegetables.”

“And reasonable pantry oversight.”

By now they were looking at each other rather than Shane, passing their demands back and forth with the effortless rhythm of people who had been doing this for years. Ilya was enjoying himself far too much to be troubled by the fact that less than an hour ago, he'd sworn to himself not to like her.

Shane stared between them, his expression caught somewhere between outrage and reluctant amusement. “You two are unbelievable.”

He shook his head and looked down at his lap, but Ilya could see the smile he was trying to suppress.

Rose took another bite of chicken. “So what else should I know about you?”

Ilya raised an eyebrow. “What do you want to know?”

“I don't know. I feel like I know Hockey Ilya from the media and watching your games.” She gestured toward Shane with her wine glass. “And I know a lot about you from this one, obviously.”

Ilya glanced at Shane. He talked about Ilya to Rose, apparently often. Something warm flickered in his chest. He wondered what that sounded like. Shane talking about him over dinner, perhaps, or on the phone while Rose was in Los Angeles. Did he complain about Ilya's terrible jokes? Did he tell her about the cottage, or their mornings together, or the way Ilya sometimes woke him up simply because he wanted to cover his face with tiny kisses? The possibilities were both mortifying and deeply appealing. He would have to ask Shane later, although he suspected Shane would be infuriatingly tightlipped about the whole thing.

“But I don't know you,” Rose continued. “What do you do when you're not playing hockey? Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do for fun?”

“Shane, mostly,” he responded with a practiced nonchalance that was entirely undermined by how pleased he looked with himself. Shane would have scolded him, were he not busy coughing up the wine he’d just attempted to swallow.

Rose stared at him for a moment, dumbstruck, before breaking out in uproarious laughter. “Ooh, I love him, Shane. Bring him around more often!” 

Shane stared at both of them. “Can we not?”

Rose turned to Ilya. “Have you noticed he gets really weird when you acknowledge he's had sex?”

“Yes, of course I have noticed this.”

“Great. We have so much to talk about.” She picked up her wine glass, tipping it towards Ilya’s in a request for cheers.

“I’m right here,” Shane reminded them.

“Yes, we know,” Rose said, waving him off as she clinked her glass on Ilya’s. “We’re talking about you.”

Ilya laughed, taking another sip of wine. He had to admit, this was not going how he’d expected.

Rose Landry was still too loud. She still talked with her hands so much that Ilya had spent the first ten minutes of dinner waiting for her to knock something over. And she had still fucked his boyfriend, an offense he wasn’t prepared to completely overlook. But she was funny. More importantly, she seemed to think he was funny. Ilya could work with that.

And there was something unexpectedly pleasant about sitting across from someone who knew about him and Shane. Someone who could tease Shane about his sex life without Ilya having to pretend he knew nothing about it, who could hear Ilya make a filthy joke about his boyfriend and laugh instead of looking confused. He wasn't accustomed to having an audience for this particular version of himself. He was beginning to think he might enjoy it.

“So,” Rose continued, turning back toward him, “Shane said you bought this place pretty quickly.”

“I did,” he affirmed, spearing some salad on his fork. “I was tired of looking at houses.”

“He looked at four,” Shane supplied with an eyeroll.

“Five.”

“Four. You refused to get out of the car at the fifth one.”

It was Ilya’s turn to roll his eyes. “The outside was ugly.”

Rose nodded seriously. “Valid.”

“Thank you,” Ilya said, gesturing to Rose with his palm up.

“You cannot tell whether a house is good from the driveway,” Shane argued.

Ilya shook his head. “I could tell that one was bad.”

“You just didn’t like the shutters.”

“They were terrible shutters!” he supplied, gesturing with a tomato at the end of his fork.

Rose looked toward the windows as if suddenly concerned. “Are these shutters okay?”

Ilya considered her for a moment. “You are making fun of me.”

“A little,” she said with a small smile.

He smiled back despite himself. “These are acceptable.”

Shane shook his head, but he was smiling, too.

Ilya ate the tomato, and watched Shane reach for the wine bottle to top off Rose's glass. She was still smiling at him over the rim, apparently quite pleased with herself. Shane caught Ilya watching and gave him a look that suggested he was holding him personally responsible for Rose's behavior. Ilya responded by raising his eyebrows innocently. It was hardly his fault that she had excellent taste in jokes.

The conversation moved easily after that. The last of the sunset had faded from the windows by then, leaving the dining room lit by the warm glow of the fixtures overhead. Their plates had become a cheerful mess of scattered greens and discarded chicken bones, and the flowers in the center of the table had begun to droop slightly in the warmth. Rose asked about Ottawa without asking him why he'd left Boston, a distinction Ilya appreciated. She asked more questions about the house and the neighborhood, his plans for the season, whether he missed Russia. She listened to his answers instead of waiting for her turn to speak, and when she asked about hockey, her questions were surprisingly good.

“You actually know hockey,” Ilya mused eventually, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

Rose stared at him, leaning back in her chair. “I dated a professional hockey player.”

“Yes, but he does not know hockey,” Ilya teased. No one had ever known more about hockey in the history of the world than his beautiful boyfriend.

“Fuck off,” Shane said.

Rose laughed openly at that. “Also, I was a fan before Shane. I do have interests that aren't Shane Hollander.”

Ilya glanced at Shane, clearly confused. “Why?”

“Why what?” she asked.

“Why would anyone have interests that are not Shane Hollander?” Ilya asked, instinctively reaching up to run a hand through Shane’s hair, then catching himself and stopping, before realizing they had nothing to hide in front of Rose Landry, and nestling his hand in Shane’s silky locks.

Shane groaned, batting his hand away, while Rose dissolved into laughter again. It was becoming dangerously satisfying to make her do that, Ilya noticed.

“No, seriously,” Rose said when she'd recovered. “I followed the league before I ever met Shane. I knew who you were.”

Ilya gave her his most charismatic smile. “Everyone knows who I am.”

“Oh my God,” he heard Shane protest.

“What? Is true,” he said, turning his smile to his boyfriend.

“I know.” She grinned. “I've watched interviews with you.”

Ilya sat up straighter. “My interviews?”

“Of course. You’re hilarious.”

“I am very charming,” he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

“You are a menace,” she corrected.

“Also true.”

“I saw the one after that Montreal game a few years ago where you kept pretending you couldn't understand the reporter's question.”

Ilya smiled slowly. He remembered that interview.

Beside him, Shane groaned. “Don't encourage him.”

“I do not need encouragement,” Ilya said, bringing his hand to rest on Shane’s knee, mindlessly tracing small circles there.

“That is unfortunately true,” Shane replied. He glanced briefly toward Rose before relaxing beneath Ilya's familiar touch.

Rose laughed. “God, I remember that game. That might've been one of the first times I saw you play in person, actually.”

Ilya's fingers stilled against Shane's knee.

“Really?” Shane asked.

“Yeah. I think so.” Rose took a sip of wine, thinking. “You got me those seats up in the box, remember? And your mom gave me one of your jerseys because I hadn't brought anything Montreal.”

“Oh, right.” Shane smiled. “You hated that jersey.”

“I did not hate it!” she defended, sitting up a bit straighter in her seat. “It was just enormous on me.”

Shane barked out a laugh. “You said you looked like a child wearing her dad's clothes.”

“I did.” Rose chuckled. “There are pictures somewhere. I think your mom took about fifty.”

Ilya remembered. He’d never forget, actually.

Rose Landry in the stands in Montreal, swallowed by a Hollander jersey. Rose Landry laughing beside Shane's parents. Rose Landry waiting for him after the game.

He'd seen the pictures. He'd hated them immediately. At the time, he'd told himself it was because she'd had Shane. Because she'd kissed him. Fucked him. Because she could put her hands on him and Ilya couldn't. But sitting here now, with his hand still resting on Shane's knee beneath the table and Rose Landry smiling at him from across it, that explanation suddenly felt embarrassingly incomplete. He didn't hate Rose. Unfortunately, he was starting to really like Rose. But she got something he had never had. 

She got dates. She got introductions. She got to stand beside Shane where people could see her. There were pictures of Shane and Rose in magazines and on social media. People asked Shane about Rose in post-game interviews. She attended his games with his last name plastered on her back. Nobody had to invent a reason for Rose Landry to be standing next to Shane Hollander.

Meanwhile, Ilya had had Shane in the most intimate ways imaginable for years. He knew him better than almost anyone. He loved him. And publicly, he wasn't even allowed to be his friend. Not yet anyway. Not until they announced the foundation, which, if everything went according to plan, wasn’t for three more months.

It wasn't that he wanted what Rose had with Shane. He had something infinitely more precious than that, something he wouldn't have traded for a thousand photographs or a lifetime of postgame introductions. But he wanted the photographs, too. He wanted to be able to walk into a room with Shane and not calculate how far apart they ought to stand. He wanted someone to ask him about Shane without the question being about hockey, without having to pretend his answer was no different from what he might say about any other player in the league.

And perhaps that was what made Rose's presence at his table so strange. She knew. She knew about the cottage, about the house, about the fact that Shane Hollander was sitting beside him with Ilya's hand resting comfortably on his knee. Shane could talk to her about Ilya without stopping to decide which details were safe to share. Ilya had spent so much time wishing they’d had someone like that, and now that they did, Ilya was sitting across from her, resenting things she hadn't done wrong.

He glanced at Rose. She was laughing at something Shane had said, her face open and unguarded. It would have been considerably easier if she were awful. 

Ilya blinked, pulling his attention back to the table. He’d missed enough of the conversation that he had no idea what she was talking about now, but Shane was arguing with her about something that had apparently happened a year ago.

“—which was your fault,” Rose insisted, gesturing emphatically at Shane with her fork.

“It absolutely was not.”

“You told me to go over there!”

“I told you to talk to him. I did not tell you to—” Shane stopped halfway through his defense, whatever argument he’d been making abruptly forgotten as his attention shifted to Ilya.

It was subtle, the kind of change Rose wouldn’t have noticed while she was still visibly preparing her rebuttal, but Ilya knew every minute shift in Shane’s expression by now. He’d spent years learning to read all the things they couldn’t say when there were other people in the room: the slight crease that appeared between Shane’s eyebrows, the way his mouth tightened at one corner, the searching warmth in his brown eyes. Ilya realized his hand was still resting on Shane’s knee beneath the table, but at some point while his thoughts had wandered, his fingers had gone still.

Shane covered them with his own, his palm warm against Ilya’s knuckles, and held his gaze. He didn’t ask the question aloud. He didn’t need to. You okay?

Something ached pleasantly in Ilya’s chest alongside all the uglier things still twisting around inside him. He turned his hand beneath Shane’s and laced their fingers together, fitting their palms against one another in the easy, practiced way they always seemed to. One firm squeeze was all the answer he was prepared to give him now. Later.

Shane watched him for another moment, clearly debating whether he wanted to accept that answer, before squeezing back. His thumb swept once over Ilya’s knuckles, so quickly and casually that anyone watching might have missed it, and then he turned back to Rose, who immediately resumed whatever passionate defense of herself she’d been mounting before Shane had stopped listening.

Dinner stretched on long after their plates were mostly empty, the conversation wandering with each dwindling bottle of wine, until Ilya couldn’t have said exactly when he stopped waiting for Rose to annoy him. He’d realized early on in the visit that she was funny. Not just actress funny, the practiced sort of charming that came from knowing precisely when to smile and how to deliver a story to an audience, but actually funny. She was quick enough to catch Ilya’s jokes and, more importantly, quick enough to throw them back at him, seemingly delighted rather than offended whenever he tried to provoke her. She was remarkably easy to tease, and even better, Shane absolutely hated when they teamed up against him. Ilya liked that most of all.

By the time the third wine bottle was nearly empty, Rose had abandoned any pretense of sitting properly in her chair, one leg tucked beneath her as she animatedly told them about an actor she was working with who had apparently decided learning his lines was an optional part of his job. Her hands moved nearly as much as her mouth while she talked, her wine sloshing precariously close to the rim of her glass every time she gestured with it, and Ilya found himself watching with amused anticipation to see whether she would manage to finish the story before spilling it all over his table.

His thumb moved idly over the back of Shane’s hand beneath the table. It took him an embarrassingly long time to realize they were still holding hands. Ilya glanced down at their tangled fingers, at the familiar shape of Shane’s hand nestled inside his larger one, and felt the old instinct stir before he’d consciously summoned it. His eyes flicked automatically across the table. Rose was still talking.

She either hadn’t noticed or she simply didn’t care, and Ilya found both possibilities strangely pleasant. Perhaps she felt him looking at her, because Rose abruptly broke off her story and narrowed her eyes at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Ilya said, lifting his wine to his lips to hide the smile threatening there.

“You’re staring at me.”

“I was thinking.”

“Dangerous,” she replied, and Ilya smiled properly then, taking another sip as she continued to regard him suspiciously.

Apparently deciding she wasn’t going to pry whatever he’d been thinking out of him, Rose’s attention began to wander. Her eyes slipped briefly from his face to the open collar of his shirt, then lower, tracing the broad expanse of chest he’d so carefully put on display earlier that evening.

Her gaze stayed there long enough for Ilya to catch her. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for the inevitable moment when she realized she’d been caught and politely looked away. Instead, Rose allowed her gaze to linger for another shameless second before slowly bringing her eyes back to his face. There was no embarrassment in her expression whatsoever, only frank appreciation.

“Jesus Christ, Rozanov,” she breathed, taking another sip of wine.

Shane’s head snapped toward her. “What?”

Rose gestured vaguely toward Ilya with her glass, as though the answer to Shane’s question was self-evident. “You let him walk around like this?”

The attention went to Ilya’s head like good, Russian vodka. He sat a little straighter without even meaning to, though the tiny sound of exasperation beside him suggested the movement hadn’t escaped Shane’s notice.

“I don’t let him do anything,” Shane replied, looking first at Rose and then suspiciously at Ilya, who arranged his face into a picture of perfect innocence.

“Four buttons, Shane,” Rose pointed out, her eyes dropping pointedly to count them again.

“I know how many buttons are undone.”

Rose’s mouth curved into something wicked. “Oh, I bet you do.”

Ilya bit the inside of his cheek, suppressing a laugh as Shane’s expression tightened. “Can you not objectify my boyfriend at the dinner table?”

Instead of answering him, Rose looked at Ilya again, slowly raking her eyes down his chest.

Ilya, never one to shrink from an appreciative audience, decided she deserved a better view. He rolled his shoulders back and shifted lazily in his chair, the movement entirely natural if one ignored the way it caused the already precarious collar of his shirt to fall another fraction wider across his chest. Shane did not ignore it.

“Oh my God,” he groaned, dropping his head back for a moment before glaring at Ilya. “Stop helping her.”

“I am sitting,” Ilya protested, spreading his free hand innocently.

“You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Do I?” Ilya asked, widening his eyes as Rose made a low, appreciative sound from across the table.

Shane turned toward her so quickly that Ilya nearly laughed. “And you!”

“What?” Rose interrupted, apparently delighted by his growing irritation. She gestured toward Ilya again. “Look at him.”

“I look at him all the time!”

“I can see why.”

Ilya’s smile became impossible to contain. This was fantastic.

He’d chosen the outfit with Shane in mind, of course. Every inch of exposed skin, every button he’d left undone, even the particular shade of green had been selected with the express purpose of making Shane Hollander look at him exactly the way Shane had looked at him when he came downstairs earlier. He’d accomplished that before Rose ever arrived and had considered his work complete. He hadn’t anticipated gaining a second appreciative audience, and he certainly hadn’t anticipated how delightful it would be to discover that Shane did not particularly enjoy sharing the view.

Rose tipped her head now, studying Ilya with the exaggerated concentration of someone contemplating a particularly interesting piece of art. “You know, I always assumed the whole,” she waved her wine glass vaguely in the direction of his body, “thing was exaggerated.”

Ilya drew himself up, genuinely affronted. “What thing?”

“The whole Russian sex-god thing,” Rose explained, so casually that Shane nearly choked on the sip of wine he’d just taken. She ignored his coughing entirely, ticking off her evidence on the fingers of her free hand. “The shirtless photos. The interviews. All the smoldering. I assumed there was some very talented publicist involved.”

“There is no exaggeration,” Ilya informed her with a satisfied shrug.

Rose let her eyes sweep over him once more before meeting his gaze. “I’m beginning to see that.”

“Rose,” Shane warned, and something about the particular strain in his voice finally pulled Ilya’s attention away from his own ego.

He turned to look at his boyfriend. The pink had spread all the way to the tips of Shane’s ears, bright against his skin and making his freckles stand out in a way Ilya had always found unbearably endearing. His jaw was tight, his expression caught somewhere between irritation and amusement, and his eyes kept flicking toward Rose as though she were committing some grave offense simply by noticing what Ilya had spent most of his adult life ensuring people noticed.

A warm rush of satisfaction bloomed low in Ilya’s stomach. He stretched one arm lazily across the back of Shane’s chair, letting his fingertips brush the fabric over his shoulder as he leaned closer. “You are jealous.”

“I am not jealous,” Shane insisted, though the color in his face did very little to support his case.

Rose laughed into her wine. “Oh, he’s jealous.”

“I am literally the only person at this table who has no reason to be jealous,” Shane argued, looking between the two of them like he couldn’t believe he was being forced to defend himself.

Ilya leaned closer still, until the space between them had narrowed enough that his voice could drop into something quieter, more intimate. “But you are.”

“Ilya.”

“I like it,” he purred.

That shut Shane up. Ilya watched the flush deepen across his cheeks, watched his mouth twitch as he fought the smile threatening to betray him, and felt so abruptly, overwhelmingly fond of him that the feeling demanded somewhere to go. 

So he kissed him.

Ilya caught Shane gently by the jaw and leaned into him, pressing their lips together in a kiss that was neither particularly deep nor particularly long, but was unmistakably full of affection. Shane relaxed into it with the easy familiarity Ilya adored, whatever irritation he’d been pretending to feel disappearing almost instantly beneath Ilya’s mouth.

When Ilya pulled away, Shane looked pleasantly dazed. Ilya smiled, proud of his handiwork… and then he remembered Rose. The realization came a fraction too late, instinct sending his eyes darting across the table before he could stop himself. Years of stolen hotel rooms and carefully measured distances had trained the reaction into him so thoroughly that it required no conscious thought: Who saw?

Rose was taking a drink of wine. That was it. No startled expression. No awkward smile. No sudden fascination with whatever remained on her plate. She hadn’t looked away to grant them privacy, nor was she watching with the fascinated curiosity of someone witnessing something forbidden. She hadn’t even stopped drinking.

Something warm and almost giddy unfurled in Ilya’s chest. Oh. He could do this. Here, with her, he could just be Shane’s boyfriend. His eyes returned to Shane. His boyfriend. The word felt strangely bright in his mind. Ilya grinned and kissed him again.

Shane laughed against his mouth, surprise warming the sound as Ilya stole another quick press of his lips. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Ilya murmured, still close enough that the word ghosted across Shane’s mouth.

Shane smiled, his eyes soft. “That’s clearly not nothing.”

Ilya sat back in his chair, ridiculously pleased with himself. Across the table, Rose finally lowered her wine glass and regarded the two of them with mild impatience rather than anything approaching shock. “Are you two done, or should I leave?”

“No,” Ilya said immediately, the answer escaping with enough speed that Rose’s eyebrows lifted. He reached for his own wine, attempting to recover some semblance of casual indifference. “You can stay.”

“How generous,” Rose replied dryly.

“I am excellent host,” he said with a lazy shrug.

“I don’t know about that,” she retorted with a smirk. “You destroyed the asparagus.”

Ilya pointed toward the door. “Get out of my house.”

Rose’s laughter rang brightly through the room, and Ilya found himself joining her without reservation.

A moment later, Shane’s hand found his again beneath the table, their fingers slotting together with the kind of thoughtless familiarity that had taken years to build, and Ilya didn’t think about it at all.

“I knew you’d like her.” Shane sounded unbearably pleased with himself.

They were upstairs, getting ready for bed, and Ilya had already completed the entirety of his own evening routine, which consisted of brushing his teeth, washing his face, and removing his clothes. He was sprawled diagonally across the mattress in nothing but his boxers, one arm tucked behind his head and the other resting on his stomach, watching Shane through the open bathroom door.

Shane, naturally, was still at the sink.

The bathroom was brightly lit, its warm glow spilling across the bedroom carpet and catching on the rumpled white sheets. From where Ilya lay, he could see Shane’s reflection in the mirror, his dark hair pushed back from his forehead, his expression one of deep concentration as he carefully patted something beneath his eyes with the tips of his ring fingers. An impressive assortment of little bottles and jars occupied the counter in front of him, arranged in a neat line according to some mysterious system that Ilya had never bothered to decipher.

He had once asked Shane what all of them did. Shane had given him a fifteen-minute explanation involving exfoliation, moisture barriers, and something called active ingredients, during which Ilya had learned absolutely nothing except that his boyfriend was willing to spend a truly astonishing amount of money on liquids that appeared, to the untrained eye, to be identical. At least half of them were mostly water. Very expensive water.

Still, Ilya supposed he couldn’t argue with the results. Shane was, without question, the most beautiful man he’d ever laid eyes on, and while Ilya suspected that had considerably more to do with genetics than whatever was currently being massaged into his boyfriend’s cheekbones, he was willing to entertain the possibility that the little bottles deserved some credit. If spending an obscene amount of money on fancy water helped keep Shane’s pretty face so pretty, then perhaps Ilya could find it in his heart to be a little more understanding.

“I do not like her,” Ilya informed him, gently scratching his stomach.

Shane’s eyes flicked toward him in the mirror. There was the faintest suggestion of a smile at the corner of his mouth, which Ilya found irritating, particularly because Shane hadn’t even had the decency to look surprised.

“You invited her to come back over while she’s filming in Ottawa.”

“She invited herself.”

“You told her she could come.”

“She is very pushy.”

“You gave her your phone number.”

Ilya shifted onto his elbows, the bedding bunching under his hips as he regarded Shane with what he hoped was an expression of profound seriousness. “For emergencies.”

That finally made Shane turn around. He still had one hand hovering near his face, two fingers extended as though he’d been interrupted in the middle of some delicate surgical procedure. “What kind of emergency could Rose possibly have that requires the personal phone number of Ilya Rozanov?”

Ilya considered this. There were, admittedly, very few emergencies in which Rose Landry would be better served by calling him than, say, the police.

“She might need to complain about you.”

Shane laughed, the sound bouncing pleasantly off the bathroom tile as he turned back to the mirror. “Right. Because apparently the two of you have formed some kind of support group.”

“Is very exclusive,” Ilya assured him, shifting on the bed to settle back against the pillows in his normal spot. “You would not be invited.”

Shane made an amused noise but didn’t rise to the bait, which was probably for the best. Ilya was still in an unusually good mood, and he was beginning to suspect that the evening had gone considerably better than he’d had any right to expect.

Rose had stayed much later than any of them had intended. Even after announcing that she absolutely, positively needed to leave, she’d managed to linger in the foyer for another twenty minutes, one hand on the doorknob while she remembered three additional stories she apparently couldn’t go another moment without telling them. Shane had stood beside her with the patient resignation of a man who had been subjected to this particular phenomenon before. Ilya, who had enjoyed her company considerably more than he'd intended to, had eventually informed her that he would physically remove her from his house if she didn't leave voluntarily. She’d laughed in his face. Then she’d hugged him goodbye. He hadn’t entirely hated that, either.

“I still can’t believe how weird you were being about this,” Shane said, dragging Ilya’s attention back to the bathroom. He screwed the cap onto one of his bottles, placed it carefully among the others, and reached for another. His earlier smugness had softened into something more affectionate, though the amusement was still very much present. “All that sulking because I dated her for a month.”

Ilya turned his head against the pillow. “I was not sulking.”

“You massacred an entire bunch of asparagus because she hugged me.”

“They were poorly designed vegetables.”

Shane laughed again, shaking his head as he dispensed a few drops of something into his palm. He rubbed his hands together, then pressed them against his cheeks with the solemn dedication of a man performing an important religious rite.

“You know you never had anything to be jealous about, right?”

The words were casual, tossed over Shane’s shoulder as he leaned toward the mirror to inspect his handiwork. Ilya doubted Shane had intended them to be anything more than a gentle reassurance, the sort of thing he might say while reaching for another bottle or climbing into bed. Nevertheless, the smile slipped from Ilya’s face.

He watched Shane smooth the last of the product over his forehead, his fingers moving in careful, practiced strokes. Shane’s reflection caught his eye again, and something in Ilya’s expression must have betrayed him, because Shane’s own smile faded. 

He set the bottle down. “Ilya...”

“Do not.”

“I’m serious.” Shane wiped his hands on the little towel hanging beside the sink, then leaned back against the counter. The bright bathroom light outlined his bare shoulders, and his expression had taken on that familiar earnestness Ilya knew so well. “Rose and I barely dated. And even when we did, it wasn’t—”

“I know.”

Shane hesitated, clearly unconvinced.

“I know, Hollander,” Ilya repeated, gentler this time. He attempted a smile, though it felt a little crooked on his face. “You did not like fucking her. You are very gay. Congratulations.”

A reluctant smile tugged at Shane’s mouth. “Okay.”

“I am aware.”

“Then what was all that?”

Ilya looked at him. For years, Shane had apparently believed that Ilya’s problem with Rose Landry began and ended in her bed. It made sense, he supposed. Sex was easier. Sex was something they could joke about, something Shane could reassure him about with rolled eyes and increasingly graphic descriptions of just how little he’d enjoyed it. The truth was considerably less funny.

“Everyone knew you were with her.”

Shane went still. The teasing disappeared from his face so completely that Ilya almost regretted saying it. For a long moment, Shane only looked at him. Then Ilya watched understanding arrive; not dramatically, but slowly, like something coming into focus. His brows drew together. His lips parted, whatever response he’d been preparing dying before it reached them.

“Oh.”

Ilya stared at the ceiling, following a faint shadow cast by the bedside lamp across the pale plaster. He could hear Shane moving in the bathroom, the soft shuffle of bare feet against tile, the faint rustle of the towel being returned to its hook. Ordinarily, there would have been a few more minutes of Shane carefully returning his bottles to their designated places, straightening whatever he’d disturbed and checking that everything was precisely as he’d found it. Instead, the bathroom light went out and the mattress dipped on Shane’s side of the bed a moment later.

Shane had left his bottles scattered across the counter, his routine apparently finished but the usual meticulous cleanup abandoned. He climbed onto the bed beside Ilya, bringing with him the clean, faintly medicinal scent of whatever he’d just applied to his face. For once, he didn’t immediately fill the silence. He simply sat there, close enough that their bare shoulders touched, his knee resting lightly against Ilya’s thigh.

“I didn't know that bothered you so much,” Shane said quietly.

Ilya shrugged, keeping his eyes on the ceiling. “Is not your fault.”

“I know. But I wish I'd known.”

Ilya turned his head then, looking at him. Shane wasn't watching him with pity, or guilt, or any of the other expressions Ilya had been dreading. He just looked a little sad, and Ilya found that considerably harder to bear.

“Now you do,” he said simply.

Ilya appreciated that. He didn’t need Shane to tell him again that Rose hadn’t meant anything romantically. He didn’t need an apology for something Shane hadn’t done wrong, and he certainly didn’t want the soft, wounded look Shane sometimes got when he started blaming himself for things neither of them could control.

After a moment, Shane reached for him and Ilya adjusted easily. He shifted enough to make room, lifting his arm as Shane settled against his side and tucked himself into the familiar space beneath Ilya’s shoulder. The movement was so practiced that neither of them had to think about it. Shane’s head came to rest against his chest, one arm draped across his stomach, and Ilya drew him closer until the warmth of their bodies met along their entire length.

His fingers found Shane’s hair almost of their own accord. It was always so soft, the dark strands slipping easily between Ilya’s fingers as he combed through them. Shane made a small, contented sound and relaxed more fully against him, the last of the tension leaving his shoulders. They stayed that way for a while.

Outside, the city had grown quiet. Somewhere beyond the bedroom windows, a car passed along the street, its tires whispering over the pavement before the sound faded into the distance. The house settled around them with its usual faint creaks, and the sheets were cool where Ilya’s legs had yet to warm them. Shane’s hand rested against his stomach, warm and reassuring, and Ilya let his cheek come to rest against the top of his head.

He liked this part of the evening. The quiet after everything else was finished, when there were no phones to answer, no schedules to accommodate, no obligations demanding that one of them be somewhere other than here. Shane had a tendency to fall asleep quickly once he finally stopped moving, and Ilya often found himself lying awake a little longer, enjoying the weight of him, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the peculiar and wonderful fact that Shane Hollander was in his bed. Eventually, Shane stirred.

“You liked having her here.”

Ilya glanced down. “Dinner was acceptable.”

“I don’t mean dinner.”

Of course he didn’t. Shane shifted, lifting his head from Ilya’s chest and propping himself on one elbow. His hair was mussed where Ilya had been touching it, and there was something tentative in his expression now, something Ilya couldn’t immediately place.

“You liked getting to be like that with me,” Shane said.

Ilya’s fingers stilled briefly against the back of his neck. He thought of kissing Shane at the table and glancing instinctively toward Rose, only to find her calmly drinking her wine. He remembered the strange little thrill of realizing she didn’t care, the almost dizzying freedom of leaning in and kissing him again simply because he could.

“Yes,” he admitted.

Shane nodded, his eyes dropping briefly to where one of his hands rested against Ilya’s bare chest. He traced the edge of a faint mark there with his thumb, apparently considering something. “I liked it too.”

Something about the quiet admission caught Ilya off guard. Shane continued tracing an absent pattern against his skin, his gaze still lowered. “I liked that we could kiss in front of her. I liked that I could call you my boyfriend.”

Ilya’s chest tightened. He’d been so consumed by his own jealousy, his own resentment of everything Rose had been allowed to have, that he hadn’t stopped to consider the other side of it. Shane had spent just as many years snatching his hands away. Shane had looked over his shoulder just as many times. Every lie Ilya told belonged to both of them.

And earlier, when Shane had introduced him to Rose, he’d smiled. My boyfriend. Ilya remembered the ridiculous little somersault his stomach had done when he’d heard it. He wondered, suddenly, how it had felt for Shane to say it. He slid his hand from the back of Shane’s neck to his shoulder, rubbing his thumb slowly over the warm skin there.

“You liked showing me off,” Ilya said.

The corner of Shane’s mouth lifted. “Maybe.”

Ilya smiled, pleased by this interpretation. It was, after all, a perfectly reasonable thing for Shane to enjoy. “Because I am very impressive boyfriend.”

“And there he is.”

“You are lucky man, Hollander.” Ilya gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze, then allowed his hand to drift down the length of Shane’s arm. “Rose thought so too. She could not stop looking at me.”

Shane groaned and dropped his forehead against Ilya’s chest. “Please don’t start.”

“She was very interested in my buttons.”

“I was there.”

“Maybe she was jealous of you.”

That made Shane lift his head. “Of me?”

“Yes.” Ilya looked at him as though this should have been obvious. “She gets to look at me for one night. You get this all the time.”

Shane stared at him. Ilya grinned, immensely pleased with himself. There were few things in the world more entertaining than watching Shane attempt to decide whether something deserved an argument, and Ilya had become quite skilled at presenting him with impossible choices. But as he looked at him, his amusement softened into something warmer.

Shane’s hair was sticking up slightly at the crown, and there was a faint crease between his eyebrows that appeared whenever he was particularly bewildered by something Ilya had said. His mouth was parted as though he still intended to respond, though he seemed to have misplaced whatever argument he’d been preparing. 

God, he was beautiful. Ilya let his gaze wander over the familiar landscape of his face. The clean, sharp line of his jaw. The dark sweep of his eyelashes. Those ridiculous brown eyes that somehow managed to look warm even when he was glaring at someone. The freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks that Ilya had mapped with his mouth more times than he could count.

“But is fair,” he added.

Shane blinked. “What is?”

Ilya lifted a hand and brushed his thumb over his favorite freckle, high on Shane’s right cheek. “She was looking because I am new.”

Shane’s eyebrows drew together, his confusion deepening.

“I have seen you thousands of times,” Ilya continued, quieter now. “Still I want to look at you all the time.”

The confusion disappeared. For a moment, Shane simply watched him, his expression opening into something so tender that Ilya felt an answering warmth settle somewhere behind his ribs. It was ridiculous, really, that Shane could still look at him like that and make him feel as though they’d only just discovered each other.

Ilya traced his thumb along Shane’s cheekbone. “You are the most beautiful man in the world, Hollander.”

Shane’s cheeks immediately began to turn pink. That lovely, helpless blush, rising beneath his freckles and spreading toward the tips of his ears. Ilya had seen Shane face down enormous men on the ice without so much as blinking, had watched him endure hostile crowds and impossible expectations with that stubborn, unflappable expression of his. Yet a compliment, offered in the privacy of their bedroom by the man who loved him more than any other, could still undo him completely.

Ilya smiled. “See? Very lucky man.”

“You just called yourself lucky.”

“I was talking about you.”

“No, you—” Shane stopped, apparently deciding there was no point. “Never mind.”

Ilya laughed and pulled him closer until Shane was sprawled half across his chest. Shane allowed himself to be moved with a put-upon sigh, though the hand that settled against Ilya’s ribs suggested he wasn’t particularly interested in going anywhere. For a moment, Ilya was content simply to look at him, unbearably fond of the man currently glaring at him as though being called the most beautiful man in the world were somehow an inconvenience.

“I was very nice tonight.”

Shane blinked. The change in subject was apparently abrupt enough to derail whatever thoughts he’d been having. He lifted his head slightly, studying Ilya with an expression of immediate suspicion.

“What?”

“To Rose.” Ilya slid one hand slowly down Shane’s back, enjoying the smooth warmth of his skin beneath his palm. “You were worried I would not be nice. I promised I would.”

Shane’s eyes narrowed. Ilya could practically see him searching his memory of the evening, assembling evidence for what would undoubtedly be an extremely unfair prosecution.

“You also told her to get out of your house.”

“She insulted my asparagus.”

“You told her she had terrible taste in movies.”

“She does.”

“You spent half of dinner deliberately making me jealous.”

Ilya smiled, remembering Shane’s expression when Rose had complimented his shirt for approximately the fourth time. “Yes.”

“And you threatened to physically remove her when she wouldn’t stop talking in the foyer.”

“But did I remove her?”

Shane stared at him. Ilya raised his eyebrows expectantly, waiting for an answer. When none appeared forthcoming, he supplied one himself.

“No. Because I am very nice.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“I kept my promise.”

Shane’s mouth twitched. “Barely.”

Ilya considered this an unfair assessment for approximately half a second before deciding it didn’t matter. Shane was still lying half on top of him, warm and beautifully disheveled, and his expression had softened into the particular combination of affection and exasperation that Ilya had come to regard as one of his greatest personal achievements. Besides, he had been extraordinarily accommodating.

He had allowed Shane to invite his ex-girlfriend into their evening. He had cooked vegetables, however poorly designed they might have been. He had listened politely to an astonishing number of stories about a man he was already intimately familiar with. He had even allowed Rose to hug him without complaint.

Well. Without much complaint. Surely that deserved some recognition.

His hand had made its way beneath the waistband at the back of Shane’s sleep shorts, and Shane, despite his criticism, had made absolutely no attempt to stop him.

“I believe,” Ilya said, rolling them until Shane was beneath him, “you promised reward.”

Shane let out a surprised laugh as his back met the mattress. His hands caught at Ilya’s shoulders, though whether to steady himself or keep Ilya close was difficult to determine.

“I absolutely did not.”

Ilya settled comfortably between his thighs, bracing himself on one forearm. Shane’s hair had spread across the pillow, his cheeks still faintly pink, and Ilya took a moment to admire the view before continuing.

“Was implied.”

“By who?”

“Me.”

“That isn’t how promises work.”

Ilya hummed thoughtfully, as though Shane had presented him with a particularly interesting philosophical problem. Then he lowered himself until their noses brushed, close enough to feel Shane’s breath against his mouth.

“You want to argue about this?”

Shane’s hands slid up Ilya’s bare back, his fingertips tracing the familiar lines of muscle before settling between his shoulder blades. His expression was still attempting something resembling stern disapproval, but the effect was rather undermined by the way his gaze kept dropping to Ilya’s mouth.

“No.”

“Good.”

Ilya kissed him. Shane’s arms tightened around him almost immediately, drawing him down until there was scarcely any space left between them. Ilya smiled against his mouth, pleased by the enthusiasm of the response, and felt Shane smile back before kissing him again.

He had survived dinner with Rose Landry, discovered she was considerably less terrible than he’d hoped, acquired her phone number, and somehow ended the evening with Shane looking up at him like that. All things considered, he had been right from the beginning.

He was a patient man.