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Ilya is sipping a cappuccino and watching Shane do very perverted yoga when he realizes that he doesn’t want to die.
It’s a dumb series of thoughts. He sees Shane bend over, neatly folding himself into a hunchback as his hands flatten by his feet, and Ilya thinks, I bet he’s going to love it when we’re old and grey and he can outrace me and my stupid hip replacement. And then he realizes that not only does he anticipate being old and grey enough to need a hip replacement, but that he actually wants to get there. That he looks forward to seeing Shane with lines all over his lovely face, balding, with an old-man stomach paunch, laughing at Ilya as he hobbles around.
It shouldn’t be such a shock. It’s been a long time since Ilya has actively wanted to die, a long time since he was a seventeen year old with no idea how he’d make it through the next month, let alone the next decade. Sure, at one point, Ilya didn’t imagine he’d ever make it to twenty. But then he did, and then he made it to twenty-five, and then he made it to thirty. And now here he was, thinking about ninety.
Something strangely like panic twists through Ilya’s chest.
He shoots to his feet so hastily he knocks over his mug, spilling the last of his coffee on the deck and drawing the attention of Shane. Shane, who, still bent over at the waist, looks at Ilya through his legs and raises an eyebrow. Except he’s really lowering the eyebrow, because his head is upside down.
“I am good,” Ilya says. “I am—I realized I need to go—do something.”
“Uh,” Shane says, but by then Ilya is already gone, back into the safety of the cottage and his own panic.
Because he wants to live. What the fuck?
—
Look. Ilya had known he wanted to live. Of course he did. He wasn’t marrying Shane with the goal of dying on him and leaving him a thirty-five-year-old widower. Of course he wanted to live.
But he didn’t think about it. It was just sort of there, in the back of his mind, simmering deep enough down in his consciousness that he never really had to acknowledge it. Now, all the sudden, it was here at the front of his mind. Like a really big Russian bear, yelling at him in some language that definitely wasn’t Russian, because if it was Russian, Ilya could understand it, and maybe tell it to shut the fuck up. He does not know how to shut this bear up.
He almost sneaks a cigarette, and then he realizes, even as he’s pulling out his hidden stash of smokes, that smoking can kill him. If he hasn’t already doomed himself with lung cancer, he doesn’t want to do it now.
So instead he sits on the front porch and kicks the stones out of their neat little flowerbeds. Then he feels bad about the mess he made of their garden, and spends fifteen minutes collecting the stray stones and putting them back.
All in all, it is not a productive morning.
—
Ilya decides, laying in bed awake that night—Shane with his arm stuffed in Ilya’s armpit, snoring even though he’d never admit to it—that he’s being stupid about this. Maybe he’s never particularly cared about longevity before, but he lives with a neurotic Galapagos tortoise of a man who is probably going to die at age one hundred in a bicycling accident. All he has to do is do what Shane does.
So when he wakes up in the morning—well before Shane, because he has to piss and then his mind won’t shut up—he goes for a run.
It’s a long run. A nice one. Ten miles around the lake, the last few with Anya panting happily beside him, and when he gets home he actually takes the time, for once, to do a full stretching routine on the back deck, in the little shaded spot beneath the big maple tree that Shane insists is at least two hundred years old. Shane has always said how cool it is that the tree is so old, and internally, Ilya has always laughed at him, but now he looks up at the leaves fluttering in the breeze and considers it. Two hundred years. Isn’t that something?
Inside, Ilya pulls out the blender. He’s working on cramming as much spinach into the thing as he can when Shane slips a hand around Ilya’s waist, plastering himself to Ilya’s back. “Good morning,” he says, hooking his chin over Ilya’s shoulder.
“Good morning,” Ilya says, twisting his head for a sideways kiss. “You slept in.”
“It’s my rest day,” Shane says. “I don’t think I need that much spinach, baby.”
Baby. Shane’s only recently started using pet names for Ilya. They never fail to induce a cardiac arrhythmia. Maybe he needs to talk to Shane about that? He wouldn’t want to actually die of love for Shane. It’s romantic in theory, but in practice probably depressing.
“Is a double batch,” Ilya says, tearing open a fresh bag of frozen blueberries. “I have one too.”
There’s a pause, and when Ilya glances back at Shane again, Shane’s looking at him like he’s grown a second head. “You’re having a green smoothie?”
Ilya huffs. “Why not? You say they are good for you.”
“Well, yeah,” Shane says. “Since when do you care about that, though?”
Since I realized death could strike at any moment, Ilya thinks as he dumps spirulina in the blender. “Since now,” he says.
He doesn’t look at Shane, expecting some biting retort, and so he’s surprised when, a moment later, Shane’s lips attach themselves to Ilya’s neck in a wet kiss. Ilya’s head falls back against his will; Shane’s hand slips low on Ilya’s belly.
“I was going to make fun of you,” Shane says, “but maybe positive behavior deserves positive reinforcement.”
His thumb rubs slow, maddening circles just below Ilya’s belly button. Ilya can feel himself thickening in his running shorts. “I’m not a dog,” he says, but his voice comes out hoarse.
Shane hums. “No? So you don’t want your treat?”
Ilya twists in Shane’s arms so they’re face to face. Shane bends his head, sucking kisses along Ilya’s jawline. “Now, I did not say that.”
—
Even Shane doesn’t know everything, of course, so Ilya takes to researching health on his own time.
“Did you know that processed meats cause cancer?” he demands, one afternoon in the locker room.
Wyatt, buttoning his flannel, pauses. “Uh, what?”
Ilya waggles his phone in the air, open to a WHO report on known carcinogens.
“Processed meats. Hot dogs, deli meats, smoked things. Scientists have proved it. They cause cancer.”
“Yeah?” Wyatt says, browed furrowed as he shoves his feet into his sneakers. “I think I’ve read that before. So?”
“So none of us should ever eat hot dogs anymore,” Ilya says. “We have to replan our next barbecue. Bood! Boodram! Where is Bood, I need to talk to him.”
The more Ilya looks into it, the more he realizes there’s a lot that has to be cut out from his diet, now. Added sugars—those are a beast. Red meat, he’s supposed to trim down on that, but at least Shane already has that mostly covered. Cheese and mayonnaise, that’s going to suck.
The biggest blow, of course, is vodka.
Ilya had always heard it was only heavy drinkers who were in danger of killing their livers. The truth, it turns out, is that all levels of alcohol consumption increase risk of cancer, at least according to some stupid nerdy scientist at Harvard who did some fancy mega-review of all the available data. The dork was probably jealous of people with cooler social lives, which is why he decided to research the topic in the first place, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong. Unfortunately.
Ilya starts limiting himself to one glass of vodka a week, on weekends. When the boys go out to a bar to celebrate a win, he makes an exception and lets himself have two, but only two; then it’s soda water for the rest of the evening. The added sugar in Coke is bad for your metabolism, he’s read, and diet sodas may be linked to cognitive decline.
Ilya knows Shane notices the change. He asks him about it once, when they’re at the Kingfisher after a win against the Admirals, and Ilya declines his offers for a refill.
“Just trying something new,” Ilya says, and tries not to stare too mournfully at Hazy’s Moscow Mule. The things he does for love.
—
“Ilya, you’ve got to be kidding.”
Ilya pouts at him. “They are sexy, Shane.”
“They are definitely not sexy,” Shane says. The new CCM-branded neck guard dangles from his finger like a pair of dirty women’s panties. “It looks like my jock strap.”
“Well, I, for one, find your jock strap very sexy,” Ilya says. Shane frowns at him, and Ilya changes tack: “Also, I find you being alive very sexy. So thing that keeps you alive—it is very sexy to me.”
Ilya can see that one gets him; Shane’s expression falters as he looks down at the neck guard. “It’s not fair that I have to wear one and you don’t.”
“Shane, please,” Ilya says. “Of course I will wear one. I do not want to bleed to death during hockey game. Probably would be a stupid rookie that would kill me, and I would never get over the shame.”
Shane bites his lip, and Ilya knows he’s got him. Still, Shane says, “You know, this’ll make a lot of guys call us pussies.”
“Since when do we care about that?” Ilya asks. He steps forward, slipping his arms around Shane’s waist. Shane lets him, easily, doesn’t even resist the kiss Ilya presses to his neck, right over his jugular. “It makes us good role models. For the rest of the Centaurs, for younger guys, for the kids at camp. Safety is sexy. Is my new slogan.”
Shane sighs and braces himself with one hand on Ilya’s shoulder. “If you stop wearing it, I’m going to stop wearing it,” he warns, and Ilya beams, kissing Shane across his perfect face.
“Of course,” he agrees, like it’s something he’d ever consider. Like he hasn’t seen video of the accidents on Youtube: the blood spraying so hard from a goalie’s neck that it reaches center ice, the weeping, terrified family members on the sidelines. Shane will never be one of those family members, Ilya has decided. It’d be such a waste of their perfect lives.
—
Ilya has always known he might end up like his father. Alzheimer’s is genetic, and Ilya plays a high-contact sport. For most of his life, if he ever deigned to imagine living to be old and grey, he pictured himself a depressed octogenarian with a memory disorder, living in some sterile elder care facility on Mars.
Now, he adds a Sudoku app to his phone and sets a goal to play it for at least ten minutes a day. He downloads Words with Friends, too, and adds Yuna, even though he knows she’ll destroy him at it.
He finds an Alzheimer’s Foundation website that suggests learning new skills reduces risk of developing dementia, so he decides to learn how to bake bread. He gets sourdough starter from a Montreal WAG who’s friends with Jackie. He bakes seven increasingly flat loaves before he finally manages to make one that tastes edible.
“I am a baking genius,” Ilya declares, slathering no-sugar-added jam on his slice. The bread is dense, but it’s whole wheat; it’s supposed to be that way.
Shane grimaces his way around his slice. “Totally genius,” he says, then coughs. “Oh, I just got a salt clump. Fuck.”
Ilya schedules a monthly donation to The Alzheimer’s Foundation, too, just for good measure.
—
One afternoon, Ilya is soaping himself down in the team showers when he feels a bump on his side. He thumbs at it, but he can’t tell what it is. It’s about the size of a quarter, round around the edges, and only slightly raised under his skin.
The next night, it’s still there. Ilya peers at himself in the mirror, trying to evaluate if it’s gotten bigger.
“I think it’s worse,” he decides, leaning so far over the vanity so his armpit hair almost brushes the mirror. “I think it’s growing.”
Shane, toothbrush sticking out of his foamy mouth, raises an eyebrow at him. “What’s growing?” he manages around the bubbles.
“This bump.” Ilya thrusts his armpit at Shane until he runs his finger over it. “Feel it?”
Shane nods.
“Hmm,” Ilya frets, turning back towards the mirror. “You don’t think it’s cancer, right?”
Shane spits. “I think that’s a big leap,” he says.
“But it’s a lump,” Ilya argues. “What else gives you lump?”
“Uh, a bruise, a swollen lymph node, a cyst, a pimple, a—“
“Okay, I get it, Hollander, lots of reasons for lumps.” Ilya frowns at himself in the mirror and prods at the bump one more time. “I just think maybe I get it checked out. To be safe.”
Shane’s brows are furrowed, but when Ilya looks at him expectantly, he nods. “I mean, sure, if that’s what you want to do. Good to be safe.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees, turning back to the mirror. “Also, maybe I go to dermatologist. Get skin check.”
Shane’s eyebrows shoot up. “You want to get a skin check?”
“I have lots of moles,” Ilya points out. “And did not use sunscreen for very long time.”
“You still don’t,” Shane mutters, as he pops the lid off one of his nine million nightly skincare items.
“Well, I will now,” Ilya says. “I should check, make sure there is nothing wrong with my skin.” His eyes land on the bottle in Shane’s hand. “Actually, give me that.”
“What?” Shane jerks away before Ilya can get the bottle out of his hand. “Ilya, this is my nice retinol.”
“What, and I don’t deserve nice retinol?”
“You don’t care about nice retinol! You literally don’t wash your face.”
Ilya sniffs. “Well, that changes today. I cannot look seventy when I am only sixty, Hollander. It would be embarrassing. People will think I’m your sugar daddy.”
“It might be too late to save you,” Shane says, but this time when Ilya reaches for the retinol, he lets him take it. “Don’t use too much of it,” he says. “No, that’s too much—Jesus, Ilya, stop, let me show you—“
Shane ends up giving Ilya a facial with all his expensive skincare products, and in return Ilya gives him a blowjob with his ass pressed against the bathroom counter. Then Ilya drags Shane into bed and lets Shane ride him until his legs are trembling and his breath is puffing in little gasps out of his throat. It feels fucking spectacular, and the cardio is good for both of them. Win-win.
But though Ilya should be out like a light afterwards, he finds himself lying awake for hours, thinking, staring at the ceiling as he strokes his hand through Shane’s hair.
—
“I can’t sleep,” Ilya announces, slumping on Galina’s couch.
Balling up a sandwich wrapper and tossing it into the trash, Galina says, “Come in, how are you, it is good to see you, too.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “Let’s not be sentimental,” he says. “I need you to help me.”
Galina crosses her legs, leaning forward in her chair. “Why do you think this is something I can help you with?”
“Aren’t you the one who told me sleep is a part of mental health?”
“Sure,” Galina agrees. “But it could also be something physical. Changes in your exercise routine, increased caffeine consumption—“
“It’s not,” Ilya says. Galina waits for him to elaborate. She’s good at it, the fucker. “It’s—I’ve been thinking too much,” Ilya says. “When I should be falling asleep. And it all sort of spirals.”
Galina hums. “Well, you’re hardly the first person to have this problem,” she says. “What sort of things do you find yourself thinking about?”
Ilya thumbs at nose. “I don’t know, like, normal stuff. How an injury is healing up, or what we’re going to do this summer, or whether a trade is going to come through.”
“The future,” Galina supplies.
“Sure,” Ilya says. “Yeah. I guess.”
Galina nods and writes something down in her notebook. Ilya would kill to see what’s in that goddamn notebook. “And have you ever experienced anything like this before?”
“I mean, sure,” Ilya says. During playoffs, when his dad was dying, or that horrible period when he thought Shane would never come out of the closet and Ilya would die sad and alone in Ottawa, of all places. “Of course.”
“And what did you do then?”
What did Ilya do then? He thought about killing himself. It sounded very morose, but it wasn’t that weird, really: it was soothing. When he couldn’t go to sleep, he would think it through carefully, exactly what he’d do and what would happen afterwards. What building he’d jump off of, or how he’d get a gun. Who would find his body, and what the news articles would say, and what the reaction would be from the people in his life.
They would never be too depressed about it. They would all get over it quickly enough. The Raiders, they’d shed a few manly tears at his funeral and they’d give a few speeches in his honor, and then they’d probably go on to win the Stanley Cup with the support of the fans behind them, and they’d feel good again. Sveta, she’d be upset, of course, but she had a good life, a good job, good friends and a family that wasn’t perfect, but was at least better than Ilya’s; she’d get over it.
Who else did that leave? Fans who didn’t really know him. Distant family who would laugh when they saw the news. And Shane… Well, usually Ilya didn’t get that far in the fantasy. He usually drifted off sometime between imagining the soaring freedom of the fall and the speech Marly would make in the locker room, after the media announced his death.
“In the past when I couldn’t sleep, I’d just think about killing myself,” Ilya tells Galina now. “It calmed me down. It, I don’t know, it was another way out.”
“It helped you remember you didn’t have to live this way forever,” Galina supplies, and Ilya snaps his fingers, nods.
“Exactly,” he says. “But now—now! I can’t sleep, and I try thinking about dying, and it is so fucking depressing!”
“Why?” Galina presses.
“Because…” Ilya waves a hand in the air. “I am just thinking of my friends, sad! And my family, sad! And my husband, sad! And I am thinking about all of the things I won’t get to do because I am dead! And it sucks!”
Galina nods. She’s very good at keeping her face blank but sometimes Ilya catches her mouth twitching and knows she’s trying very hard not to laugh at him. “You do realize,” she says, “That most people feel this way?”
Ilya gapes at her. “How can most people possibly feel this way?”
Galina smiles. “Well, because most people want to live.”
—
“I have to talk to you about something,” Ilya declares, kicking his shoes off by the front door.
A moment later he bends and straightens them, neatly, on the shoe mat, because he knows Shane hates it when they’re haphazard. When he rises, Shane has appeared in the doorway and is walking towards him, a frown on his face.
Ilya steps forward and kisses it away. When he pulls back, Shane looks less worried, but there’s still that little dent between eyebrows that Ilya loves so much. Shane rubs his thumb over Ilya’s lip. “Something bad?”
“No,” Ilya says. “I want to live forever.”
It seems to take Shane a moment to realize that this is not a non sequitur. “What?”
“I want to live forever,” Ilya repeats. “I want to live to be a hundred years old, even though it means I’ll have terrible joints and barely be able to walk anywhere and will probably need some hot young thing at a nursing home to wipe my ass. I want to use a walker and cash in my pension and take Viagra because my dick is way too old to work on its own but I still need to fuck you.”
Shane blinks at him. “Are you telling me you have some kind of—geriatric kink?”
“Geriatric?” Ilya asks, then shakes his head. “Does not matter, this is not kink thing. I am telling you—I love you. I love our life. I love my life. And I want to keep living it. Forever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Shane looks at him for another long moment before something seems to click. Suddenly, his eyes are wet. “Oh,” he says quietly.
Ilya cups Shane’s face in his hands, and Shane tilts his cheek into Ilya’s palm like a child. “I am very scared,” he tells Shane. “You are going to have to be very patient with me. I spent ten minutes in Galina’s waiting room Googling the safest brands of winter tires.”
Shane laughs wetly.
“But I love you very much,” Ilya says. “And I want you to help me how to figure out how to plan for the future. A good future. A long future. With you.”