Chapter Text
Shane goes to bring Yuna her sweater, and both David and Ilya know they’ll be out in the yard awhile. It’s good, Ilya thinks. Shane was so worried about her, what she would think.
“I’m going to make pasta,” David announces, and Ilya wonders if this is the Hollander answer to stressful situations. He likes it, even if pasta wasn’t his first choice for dinner. “Want to help?”
“Um,” Ilya says, “yes. Okay.”
He follows David into the kitchen. There’s a picture on the fridge, under a magnet: Shane is maybe four, wobbly-ankled in his skates. He thinks it’s on the frozen lake behind this house. There are pictures of Shane all over the house, and another time Ilya wants to walk around and look at all of them, to track him from baby to toddler to little kid to awkward preteen to still-awkward adult, to fill in all the years before the ten he’s known Shane.
(Ilya doesn’t have any pictures of himself as a child. He’s not sure any exist, not since his mother died. His father had erased every trace of her from their lives. Ilya spent years hiding her crucifix from him, for fear it would disappear one day too.)
“I am sorry,” David says, filling the pot with water at the sink. “For surprising you both. Shane made it pretty clear he wanted some alone time.”
Ilya shrugs. “Is fine. He wanted to tell you. He was maybe too afraid to do it without…” Ilya frowns, the right English word escaping him. He settles for one that is close enough. “A push? And also…was complicated. Me and him.”
“Yes.” David nods. “I can see that.”
While they wait for the water to boil, David takes a can of tomatoes out of the pantry.
“Chop that in half, will you?” David says, tossing Ilya an onion, which he catches easily. Ilya takes a knife from the knife block next to the stove and a cutting board from the dish drainer by the sink.
“Just in half?” he asks.
“Yep.” David nods, dumping the tomatoes into a saucepan and adding butter. Ilya chops and peels the onion and adds it as well.
“Is it?”
“Easy recipe,” David confirms.
Ilya peeks out the window. Shane and his mom are hugging in the backyard, which seems like a good sign.
“I gotta say,” David says, setting a box of spaghetti on the counter, “waiting until you both retire could be a long time.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “But not waiting might be worse.”
Ilya has been trying not to think about it, how high the stakes feel now. They were always high, of course, but it was easier when this was just sex, back when it was something he told himself he could walk away from whenever he wanted to. Now, he’s holding all the pieces of the life he wants in his hands and all of them are so fragile and dropping even one could shatter all of them.
“I still have Russian passport,” he explains. “If the league found out and decided not to keep me…I would end up back in Russia.” David’s face goes soft with sympathy, and Ilya has to look away, tears burning his eyes. “Shane has a plan. Is good, I am not a planner.”
“Me either,” David says. “Yuna’s the planner. What’s his plan?”
Ilya explains, a little haltingly, about Ottawa and the charity and changing the narrative. He’d looked it up the next morning, when he was more awake, and understands what Shane is getting at. Neither of them asked for the rivalry the league built up around them when they were seventeen. Neither of them has really played into it much, beyond normal competition they would bring to the ice against anyone (although Ilya knows it’s better, more fun, because they are so good, the only ones who can really challenge each other. He’d known it the day they were drafted).
“We’ll see what Yuna thinks,” David says, “but it makes sense to me.”
Ilya nods. “How did you meet? You and Yuna?” He is not sure if it is a strange question to ask, but he’s curious and David’s face lights up when he does.
“I played hockey in college—”
“For McGill,” Ilya says. “Shane said.”
“For McGill,” David nods, smiling. “And Yuna is hockey obsessed. She came to all our games. The team went out after a win my second year, and she marched up to me in the bar and stuck her hand out and said ‘I’m Yuna, you need to work on your slapshot’. I bought her a drink and let her lecture me about my game for forty-five minutes.”
Ilya grins and thinks of Shane, outside the practice arena in Saskatchewan, reaching out. Introducing himself. Telling Ilya not to smoke.
“Was love at first sight?” Ilya asks and David laughs.
“Probably. I don’t think I would’ve listened to her otherwise. Nobody wants to hear a stranger tell them how they should be playing. But she was right about my slapshot. Not that I admitted that to her.”
The water on the stove starts to boil, and David empties the box of spaghetti into it. Ilya is not doing much helping here, but David doesn’t seem to mind. It also seems like helping with the pasta was maybe just an excuse to bring Ilya in the kitchen to keep talking to him.
“Romantic,” Ilya says, joking a little. It is a risk, David might be offended, but instead he laughs. Ilya feels some of the tension he’s been carrying since following Shane through the door ease out of his shoulders. If he is allowed to joke with Shane’s parents, it is probably going to be okay.
“Well, it’s no decade-long star-crossed lovers story,” David jokes back.
“What is wrong with this word? Lovers?” Ilya asks. “Why is it gross?”
“Oh,” David says, frowning a little, thinking. “It’s a bit old-fashioned, I guess. Maybe a little uncomfortable? It mostly implies…” David hesitates, and Ilya thinks he understands.
“Ah. Sex.”
“Yeah.” David nods. “Do you want another drink?”
Ilya shakes his head. “No. Thank you.” It is good vodka but he doesn't know what is more polite, to keep drinking or to stick to one, and he would rather be cautious here, now, when Shane is so nervous and worried. (He will ask David later where around here he bought it so that he can get some for the cottage, though.)
The kitchen smells like butter and onion and tomatoes, warm and homey. Ilya’s house in Boston gets professionally cleaned weekly so it mostly just smells like whatever they use to clean it. Even if he cooks, his house rarely smells like a home for very long. He didn’t know it was something he missed, something he wanted.
“You know,” David says, stirring the sauce, “I think we hoped Shane had someone, even if he wasn’t telling us about it. It wasn’t that strange for him not to say anything…he never really talked about the girlfriends he had in high school.”
“Girlfriends?” Ilya asks, with interest.
“Well. Girlfriend. They broke up around when he was drafted. Even when he was dating Rose Landry and it was all over the internet, he didn’t like talking about it.”
“You did not meet her?” Ilya asks.
“No,” David shakes his head. “But now I wonder if they weren’t actually dating, and that’s why he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“No, they were dating,” Ilya says. “I was very jealous.” David looks sympathetic again, and Ilya shrugs. “Like I said, complicated. It never seemed…possible. To be more.”
Over David’s shoulder, he can see Yuna and Shane walking towards the house. He lifts his chin, pointing, and David turns.
“Perfect timing. Pasta will be ready in like five. Best to eat when it’s hot, anyway.”
They’ve both been crying, Ilya can tell as soon as they come through the glass doors into the kitchen. His heart flops in his chest and he reaches for Shane without really thinking about it. Shane smiles at him, a little shaky, and lets Ilya pull him in for a hug, his face in Ilya’s neck.
“Good?” Ilya asks, and Shane nods.
“You?” he asks.
Ilya has so many feelings building up in his chest, and good is a paltry, inadequate word for them, but he nods too. “We’re making pasta and gossiping about you.” Shane huffs a little laugh, his breath ghosting across Ilya’s skin. “I am learning about all your high school girlfriends and how you stole your opening move from your mom.”
“Huh?” Shane asks, looking up at Ilya, an adorably confused frown on his face. Ilya wants to kiss all his freckles, one by one, like he wanted to that first day, but he saves the idea for later.
“Your dad told me the story of how they met.”
A smile spreads slowly across Shane’s face as he puts the pieces together. He’s clearly familiar with the story of Yuna’s lecture in the bar. “That’s not the same thing at all.”
“I don’t know,” Ilya says, grinning. “Seems same to me.”
“What is he talking about?” Yuna asks.
Shane turns to face his mom, but Ilya leaves an arm around his waist, keeping him close to his side. “At the World Juniors, after the first round, I went to introduce myself to Ilya. They were making such a big deal about the two of us playing against each other already, and I wanted to say hi, I guess. He was smoking, right in front of a no smoking sign and I told him he probably shouldn’t.”
“Don’t leave out the best part,” Ilya says. “You told me I was a great player to watch.”
“And you didn’t even return the compliment, jerk,” Shane says, pressing his foot up against Ilya’s.
“I hadn’t seen you play, yet,” Ilya insists. “And I was, you know…your freckles.”
Shane blushes, and hides his face in his hands for a second.
“Sounds to me like this goes back farther than your rookie year,” David says mildly. Shane looks at Ilya, a little helplessly, and Ilya grins.
“Would explain a lot,” he says. “You didn’t know it was love at first sight because you didn’t have your glasses then.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Is the pasta ready?”
“A couple minutes. Why don’t you boys set the table?”
Shane takes down plates from the cupboard and hands them to Ilya before getting forks from a drawer. Ilya follows him back into the dining room and sets the plates down at their places, Shane following behind and laying out the forks. Then, with a quick glance at the kitchen, he grabs Ilya by the front of his shirt and hauls him in for a kiss, sweet and soft.
“Thank you,” Shane says. “For coming with me.”
“Thank you for bringing me,” Ilya says, meaning it. Then he grins, slyly. “I asked your dad why lover is a gross word.”
“Oh god,” Shane says, letting his forehead thunk into Ilya’s chest. “I hate you.”
Ilya laughs. “No, you don’t.”
“No,” Shane agrees. “I don’t.”