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In retrospect, holding Shane in a position that required Ilya to do a hundred crunches in order to fuck him thoroughly might not have been the best idea for his healing ribs. Worth it, sure, but unwise.
Shane slapped a frozen ice pack wrapped in a thin cotton sleeve on his chest while Ilya tried to breathe through the pain. He was laid out on the couch, having gritted his teeth through his shower and maneuvering his head and arms through his shirt and pulling up an elastic-waisted pair of basketball shorts. His ribs weren’t even that bad, just aggravated a little bit, a tiny flare up in an otherwise fine and mostly healed injury.
“I don’t need this, I’m fine,” he grumbled, trying to sit up so he could throw the ice pack at Shane’s retreating back. Instead he hissed, considered passing out, about peed his pants, and laid back down. “Okay, maybe for a few minutes, but if you think this means I’m going to go easy on you later…”
Shane rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Just take a nap or something and give it a break. I’m going for a run.”
“I can go for a run, too!” he lied, fuming.
He pouted, struggling to see over the back of the couch as Shane grabbed his airpods off the counter in the kitchen. The midday sun glinted in sparks of gold off of his black hair and might dapple him in more freckles while he ran underneath it. Ilya wanted to be there to watch them appear. And maybe see if he could get around the lake trail that Shane liked running faster than he could–get a jump on that afternoon’s foreplay.
The front door opened and closed, leaving Ilya alone in the brightly lit cottage to…fuck…rest or something. Ilya could rest. He was good at a lot of things. Resting could be one of them. If he did it good enough, he would be in shape to fold Shane in half like a lawn chair when he got back from his run.
He failed pretty much immediately, stuffing in his own earbuds and pulling up Instagram only to close it immediately, switching over to music. He didn’t want to know about or think about the outside world. Right now, his world consisted of Shane’s cottage, the lake it sat on, and the way the water sparkled in Shane’s dark eyes when they sat near enough to it. The outside world could fuck itself.
Instead of taking a nap–because Ilya wasn’t a fucking toddler–he cautiously rolled to his feet, pinning the ice pack to his ribs with his elbow, he hissed and swore his way across the house, the wooden floors warm beneath his bare feet from the sun streaming in. He detoured through the bathroom off the master bedroom first, hunting through Shane’s medicine cabinet until he tracked down a bottle of ibuprofen. He took a handful with him as he hobbled to the kitchen for a glass.
Shane was right–the water straight from the sink was pretty fucking good and that damn well should be hailed. Boston's water tasted like piss in comparison and he usually kept bottles around. But hadn’t gotten around to telling Shane that, because he would gloat and probably go on an hour long tirade about mineral content and natural filtration or something, and Ilya wanted to keep it in his pocket for when he needed to get Shane especially worked up. It was going to be so fucking boring Ilya was half hard over it already.
He guzzled the water, the fistful of ibuprofen, adjusted the ice pack, and went exploring for something to eat. No way he wanted to start next season having to pop antacids for an ulcer. He wasn’t Scott fucking Hunter.
Ninety percent of the food in Shane Hollander’s house required some sort of fussy preparation, which was cute, because he really liked watching Shane try to figure out how to follow a recipe, but now he just wanted something to stick in himself to protect his stomach lining. He extracted a jar of all natural, organic peanut butter with a note of triumph, grabbed a spoon, and went to town on it directly from the jar. He rested his hips back against the granite counter and hummed tonelessly around a giant spoonful of peanut butter to the song pumping through his earbuds.
Between notes, he swore he heard the front door open and close again.
Pulling out one earbud, spoon still stuffed in his mouth and glued to his tongue, he turned just in time to see a stranger walk into Shane’s kitchen.
“Iisus Khristos!” he swore around the spoon at the same time as the man let out an undignified yelp.
They stood at opposite sides of the kitchen, staring at each other, simultaneously taking the slowest path to realization.
David Hollander.
“Ilya Rozanov?”
Fuck.
He had no idea what to do. Ilya stood in the kitchen deep throating a spoon full of peanut butter and Shane wasn’t even home. Panic turned ice cold in his veins. If David got mad, he would handle it. At worst, he would just leave and sit on the side of the road until Shane came home and invented a solution to fix everything. Ilya had no idea how fast David's temper triggered, so he needed to play it safe.
“Is Shane here?” David asked, frozen in place like a deer on the highway.
Why wouldn’t the peanut butter dissolve faster? Ilya thought he might die trying to choke it down. He prayed the news outlets didn’t report that.
“I accidentally left my phone charger here. It’s the only one that fits my phone. I should have upgraded ages ago, but I hate having to learn new phones, you know? I tried calling ahead but nobody answered. I figured I would be in-and-out in five seconds. I had no idea…” He interrupted his own babbling. “I’m David. Hollander. Shane’s dad.”
Ilya genuinely couldn’t figure out what the fuck to do. He needed to send out an SOS, but he had set his phone down somewhere and had no idea if it was in the sunroom, bedroom, or bathroom, and wasn’t about to go dash around to hunt it down. And as hard as he wracked his brain, he couldn’t come up with a single plausible explanation for his presence in Shane’s summer home other than, “I’m in love with your son. We have been fucking since we were teenagers. We have a ten year plan.”
Instead, what he choked out was, “Sorry. No English.”
“What? Oh. What?” That took a couple of rounds for David Hollander to process. “Huh. I swear I’ve heard you speak English in press conferences.”
Ilya raised his hand with a big thumb’s up. “Practice makes perfect.” He leaned into the accent as thick as he could, cartoon villain style.
“Is Shane around? Shane? Shane Hollander?”
“Ah, yes, Shane Hollander. Is very good house.”
Hopefully Shane ran away and never returned, because he was going to fucking kill him.
David frowned, fidgeting with his phone that needed its stupid ancient fucking charging cord. “Yes, I know it’s his house. Where is Shane?”
Ilya just looked at him blankly and blinked a couple of times. He should have shut up and refused to answer questions in the first place. Slavic indifference save him now.
“Wait!” David lit up the same way Shane did when he thought he could beat Ilya at something. They were so similar in that moment Ilya thought he might throw up. “I have an app on my phone.” He lofted the phone triumphantly, then frowned down at it. “But it’s dead. One second.” He held up his index finger, indicating for Ilya to hang tight.
The charging cord was tucked behind the couch in the sunroom, an innocuous sleeper agent put in place to ruin Ilya’s vacation. And possibly his whole entire life.
David brought the charger to the kitchen and plugged in an iPhone so ancient it might predate Scott Hunter. Ilya glared toward the front door, willing Shane to return from his run so he could put them all out of his misery. Except that Shane was going to walk into the lake and never return once he realized that his dad was there. And that Ilya was pretending not to speak English to get out of explaining anything to him.
What was he supposed to say? “Hello sir, it is me, Shane Hollander’s sworn enemy. I am here on a sexcation so athletic and debauched I just set my mostly healed hockey injury back at least several weeks because your son is the hottest person to ever fold laundry.”
He shifted the ice pack on his ribs.
David noticed, but politely did not say anything, just smiling in that weird way Canadians often did, as if the act was physically painful but they just couldn’t help themselves. They stared at each other like that for the world’s most excruciating two minutes before David also awkwardly raised his hand and gave him a thumb’s up.
Shane would have to follow Ilya into the lake, because he was going to drown himself there first.
After another minute, David turned on the phone, which Ilya swore wheezed a death rattle before deciding it was going to live another day and powered on.
“Motherfucker,” he swore under his breath.
“What?” David asked.
“Da?” he replied with an earnest attempt to sound clueless.
It seemed to work, as Shane’s dad kept any follow up questions to himself.
His stomach sank as the iPhone finished its startup routine and David Hollander opened it to his translation app. Thankfully, he was still a boomer and the phone was clearly choking on the stages of planned obsolescence, so another few agonizing minutes passed before David managed to get the translation app open and type something into it.
A cheerful, robotic voice said in halting Russian, “Hello, I am Shane’s father David. Where is Shane?”
Well, at least the first question was a lowball. He typed out his answer, going slow, revising a few times, “accidentally” closing the app once to make David show him how to start over. If Shane didn’t finish his fucking run soon and get home, Ilya was never going to have to worry about hockey again, because his blood pressure was on the verge of giving him a stroke.
The robot chirped his reply in English. “Shane is running.”
“Oh, good.” He then remembered to put the two words through the translator, which was thoughtful.
Ilya couldn’t think of anything else to do other than give him another thumb’s up.
After a bit more typing, the translation app asked, “Are you visiting Shane?”
“Da,” he deadpanned with exactly zero intention of providing further context.
David shuffled his hands awkwardly and smiled more. Ilya swore his hand twitched as if he wanted to raise his thumb, but managed to quash the impulse, instead going back to typing into the translation app.
“Are you doing the silent retreat, too?”
He found himself nodding before he could think better about it. That wasn’t a half bad explanation. It didn’t resolve the awkwardness of Shane and Ilya’s supposed rivalry, but it was good enough for now.
Their standoff in the kitchen lasted an eternity before the front door flew open and Shane rounded the corner, frantically kicking off his shoes as he went. His eyes were wide, hair flattened to his scalp with sweat, cheeks bright red under the constellation of freckles.
“Dad,” he gasped out, having clearly seen the car in the driveway and flown into pure panic. “Oh my god, what are you doing here?”
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I know you guys are doing your silent retreat and it’s important,” David babbled. “I forgot my charger from the last time I was here, so I just came to grab it, then I ran into Rozanov here. I had no idea you two…hung out?”
Shane looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. He swallowed heavily, eyes traveling between their faces in rapid-fire glances. “I…uh…what did he tell you?”
“Not much, but we overcame the language barrier with the help of technology! We got a few simple questions and answers back and forth,” he declared triumphantly.
Behind David’s back, Ilya tried to pantomime that he had chosen to pretend like he didn’t speak English. Shane furrowed his brow, visibly lost, before tearing his gaze back to his father. “Sorry, what? What language barrier?”
“The Russian one,” David drawled, as if it was hilarious Shane would forget about that little roadblock. “Do you guys use an app? Did you learn Russian and forget to mention it?”
Ilya usually loved how pedantic and dense Shane could be. It was one of his hottest and most endearing qualities.
“What are you talking about? Ilya speaks English.”
Except for times like these.
Ilya slumped forward and slapped his hand against his forehead. David whipped his head back to look at him, but seemed more surprised than angry.
“I’m sorry! I panicked. I didn’t know what to say. Shane should be the one to tell you…whatever he wants to tell you.”
“Oh. Wow.” David nodded, digesting that little tidbit. “I guess that’s on me. I have seen your interviews.”
“No. Dad. Ugh.” The vein in Shane’s temple throbbed, a clear early warning sign that he was about to lose his shit.
“I know, I know, I’m ruining the silent retreat. I’m really sorry.”
“No, that’s not…fuck.” He shoved his fingers into the corners of his eyes. “I don’t…I’m not…”
“Shane,” Ilya murmured, softening his voice as much as he dared in David’s presence, awkwardly shuffling around the center island to close the space between them, wishing he could reach out and sooth the stress line that appeared in the center of his forehead and knotted his shoulders up to his ears. He kept his hands down, but it was a close call. “Maybe you should go talk to your dad. I will go…outside.”
Because he was going to smoke the entire pack of emergency cigarettes he had stashed at the bottom of his backpack.
“Yeah. Yes. Right.”
Ilya cast a glance back at David where he still stood in the kitchen, accidentally meeting his eyes. At a complete and utter loss, Ilya flashed him one last thumb’s up before fleeing as fast as his fuckoff painful ribs would allow.
Did he need thumbs to play hockey? They could just tape the stick to his hands, because he was going to cut them both off.
***
The conversation ended much sooner than Ilya thought it would. He only got through half a cigarette, brooding in one of the porch chairs and trying not to panic. Plays often went wrong, but they knew how to adapt. He and Shane would get control of the ice again, one way or another.
Shane approached his chair from behind, sliding his arms around Ilya’s shoulders and dropping his chin to the top of his head.
He tried to remember how to breathe. “How did it go?”
“Fine. He was surprised, but I think he’s actually kind of glad? I don’t know. Mom’s on her way so I can tell her, too.”
“You told him about us, too?”
“What the fuck else was I supposed to tell him?”
“I don’t know, that you kidnapped me so I could not play for Boston next year and you could steal all my titles?”
Shane pressed his lips to the side of Ilya’s temple. “I don’t need to take you out to win all the titles.”
“Yes, but it would be easier with me out of the way.”
“I don’t want easier.”
His jagged heartbeat settled a fraction. “I should apologize to your father.”
“He gets it. It was a really fucking weird thing to do, but he gets it. A translation app? Really, Rozanov?”
“It was his idea!”
He smothered a laugh into the back of Shane's shoulder.
Stamping out the cigarette on the side of the wrought iron chair he sat in, he put the half-smoked cigarette on top of the carton and stood so he could turn and face Shane fully. His heart clenched taking in his face, the lines of stress still visible. It was going to be okay, though. One parent down, one to go. However they reacted, Ilya would be there to anchor Shane through it.
“I just wish I could have told them together so I didn't have to say it all twice.”
He could barely imagine what kinds of thoughts Shane's anxious little brain was hissing at him.
“Do you want me there? When you talk to your mom?”
“You don't have to do that.”
“I won't pretend not to speak English this time, I promise.” More tension bled from Shane’s expression as Ilya cupped the sides of his face, giving a little, firm nod. “It will be okay. And if it’s not, we will figure it out.”
Because Ilya believed in the plan. He’d move to Ottowa. They’d start the charity. They would be near each other until retirement, and then finally fully together. Shane was already making a spreadsheet for it and Ilya was mentally drafting emails to send to his agent. And now David and Yuna would know, and hopefully that would help Shane more than hurt him, because his parents weren’t Ilya’s, and Canadians were all super nice.
He leaned forward and kissed Shane finally, exhaling his own anxieties so they could just enjoy the space between difficult moments.
Still pressed against his lips, Shane said, “Your mouth is fucking disgusting.”
“You like it.” To prove his point, he added tongue.
Shane made a halfhearted effort to squirm away, but ultimately stayed in the circle of Ilya’s arms and submitted to the “disgusting” kiss.
Behind them in the house, a strangled noise interrupted their moment, both of them wrenching around to see Yuna Hollander standing in the open doorway leading to the deck, white as a sheet, jaw dangling inelegantly.
“Mom! How did you get here so quickly?”
She whipped her gaze between them both so hard he was afraid she would give herself whiplash. “I was out running an errand. I was two minutes away when I got your text. What is going on here?”
Shane and Ilya exchanged a quick grimace, but locked hands.
“I’m so sorry. I meant to ease you into this. Mom, this is Ilya. Rozanov. He’s visiting. I’m gay, and we’re…um…”
“Lovers.”
Over the back of Yuna’s shoulder, he spotted David Hollander, who nodded to him and flashed him a thumb’s up.