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“I think I saw your charger.”
David blinks as he turns back in his chair. “I’m sorry?”
“Your charger? You said you forgot? Or…”
“I…yes. I did.” He can hear the sliding door shut softly again.
“Yes. In Shane’s room. Black cable.”
David gives a stiff nod. “That’s the one.”
“Ah. I borrowed it for my phone. I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s…that’s okay. Ilya.”
Ilya Rozanov smiles at him from across the table. He’s been sitting across from David for almost thirty minutes now, and David is still half-convinced he’s dreaming. He was sure he was hallucinating an hour ago when he saw Ilya Rozanov kissing his son. His shock hadn’t worn off when he told Yuna.
‘Rozanov is with Shane. They were…’
David then recalled the brief glimpse of Shane’s face before Rozanov—Ilya—pressed him up against the door. Shane was laughing. His son didn’t do that with many people.
‘I think they’re…together.’
Yuna, perceptive as she was, just nodded. David sat beside her in silence. After a few seconds, her hand found his, and they waited for Shane to come home.
Now David is alone at the kitchen table with Ilya Rozanov. Just this morning, he sat here and drank a cup of coffee. Now he’s pouring himself another glass of vodka. He tips the bottle towards Ilya.
“Please, yes.”
David glances at his watch. He’ll give Shane and Yuna another twenty minutes before he checks in. He takes a healthy gulp of his drink and looks at his watch again. Nineteen minutes and fifty-six seconds.
The table is vibrating.
David’s gaze travels from his watch to the boy across from him. More of a man than a boy, but anyone around Shane’s age will always be a boy in David’s eyes. Even his archrival. Especially when he’s bouncing his leg hard enough to make the table shake.
“Have you been in town long?” David asks.
Ilya’s eyes dart up from his glass. “A few days.”
“You’re staying with Shane?”
“Yes.” Ilya clears his throat. “Is nice place. Lots of bedrooms.”
David feels a genuine laugh bubble up. Ilya smiles again, and David can see his nerves thawing at the edges. David pushes his chair back.
“You like pasta, Ilya?”
Five minutes later and another splash of vodka finds the pair of them by the stove, David setting a pot of water to boil while Ilya washes his hands in the sink.
“I take it you don’t cook much?” David knows Shane likes to in the summer, but it’s hard during the season with how often he has to travel.
“Not much now,” Ilya replies. He turns off the tap and nods in thanks at the dishtowel David passes over. “I did, a little, for my father. Maybe a year since last time.”
David remembers that Ilya’s father died a few months ago. He remembers the commentators announcing that on TV, minutes before Shane’s injury. A few minutes before David’s heart stopped beating and didn’t start again until he saw Shane’s eyes open at the hospital. His heart stopped today, seeing Shane and Ilya. He can’t pinpoint the exact moment it started beating again.
‘I’ve only ever loved one person.’
Maybe around then.
“You know how to chop an onion? Or you want a refresher.”
Ilya blinks at him for a moment, like he’s unsure of what David said. David realizes he might really be. He can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a foreign country, speaking a second language. And doing it alone at that.
With that thought, Ilya Rozanov becomes two halves. Rozanov—Shane’s rival, number 81, the one Yuna swears at any time he scores—is someone David’s never met. That’s not who’s here in his kitchen. Ilya—Shane’s…something—is someone David’s meeting for the first time.
“I know how,” Ilya settles on.
David nods and turns his attention to his own tasks. Ilya takes up the knife David set over the cutting board. David maneuvers around him to duck into the pantry for a box of pasta and snags the saltshaker from a cupboard above the dishwasher. Ilya chops the onion with an intensity that reminds David of his own son. David retrieves their glasses from the table and sets Ilya’s by his elbow.
David hears Ilya inhale. “You…you like hockey?”
David hums as he opens the pasta box. “Not as much as they do.”
“They- oh. Shane and Yuna.”
David allows himself one extra second to be surprised that Ilya Rozanov knows his wife’s first name. “I think it’s pretty much impossible for anyone else to like hockey as much as they do. Well, except maybe you.”
“Mmm. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Not as much as Shane.”
“Right. Like I said, that’s impossible.”
The steady chop of Ilya’s knife against the cutting board pauses. “Ah, no, sorry. I mean- no, I don’t like hockey as much as I like Shane.”
“…oh.” David stares down into water that refuses to boil. “Oh.” A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “I feel the same.”
“Ah. Is good for me, then.”
“How’s that?”
“Maybe you don’t hate me as much. For being Raiders’ captain.”
“We don’t hate you.” David grins into his vodka before taking a sip. “Even if you won the scoring race this season.”
“This season and overall,” Ilya reminds him. From the sound of his voice, he’s smiling too.
“Maybe we keep that one to ourselves when my wife comes back in.”
“Yes, Shane does not like when I remind him. But he has two cups, so…”
David and Ilya spend the next ten minutes in easy silence. Ilya isn’t exactly a wizard in the kitchen, but he knows enough to help rather than hinder. David charges him with stirring the sauce while he sets the table.
“How’s it taste?” he calls. “More salt?”
Ilya runs a finger along his spoon and pops it into his mouth. “Maybe.”
“On your left, there.”
When David comes back, he tests it himself. “Mmm. Perfect.”
“Really?”
“Delicious. You’ve got the touch.” David turns the heat down on the stove. “Did your father like when you cooked for him?”
David remembers losing his own dad, ten years ago now. It’s not something he’d wish on his worst enemy. How ironic. Especially on someone so young.
“Sometimes, yes.”
“Did he…” David wonders at how to phrase it. At what exactly it is. Shane has definitively banned lovers. “Did he know about you? And Shane?”
“…no.” Ilya looks more uncomfortable now than he did half an hour ago. “No, he didn’t know many things. And very much not that.”
David is aware of Russia’s laws. He’s aware of what it means when Ilya says he loves Shane, beyond the scope of hockey and archrivalries. Yuna knows it too. He can only imagine the wheels turning in her head to sort this whole mess out. A plan that will give Shane and Ilya the future they seem to want, enough to risk their careers. For Ilya to risk his life as he knows it.
It’s a humbling thought. David only had to glimpse his son’s face, that split-second before Ilya kissed him, to know he’s stunned by it too.
David puts his hand on Ilya’s shoulder. “I want you to know that Yuna and I are in your corner. Whatever happens.”
Ilya’s throat bobs a few times. David doesn’t call attention to the slight shine in his eyes. “I see. You only say this after I proved I can cook.”
David grins. “I’ve been waiting years for you, Ilya. Someone to help me in the kitchen while they sit and yell at the hockey game.”
Ilya nods, eyes shinier. “If I’m not busy beating Hollander, yes.”
The sliding door opens then. Shane and Yuna appear in the kitchen a few seconds later. “What- Dad, why did you make him help?”
“He volunteered! My usual sous chef was busy.”
David’s eyes bounce between his wife and his son, both of them flushed from crying but lighter for it. Shane walks with an easy confidence David really only ever sees from him on the ice, straight up to Ilya. Ilya slips his arm around Shane’s waist.
“I’m replacing you,” Ilya tells Shane. “Your dad said I’m one million times better. And you are very horrible.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
Ilya leans over to kiss Shane. Yuna's hand finds David's, and they watch as Shane lets it happen.