Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shane has been sleeping badly for fourteen days.

Not not sleeping, exactly. He still goes to bed at the same time every night. He still puts his phone facedown on the nightstand at ten-thirty. He still keeps the room cool and his blackout curtains drawn. He still wakes at six. It is only the quality that has gone to shit, which feels less defensible somehow. Shane can fix a schedule, but he can't seem to fix this.

At 3:14 a.m., his mind wakes him with the same sharp, sick certainty every night, like he has forgotten something important. Then he lies there in the dark with his jaw locked and his heart beating too hard, staring at the faint line where the blackout curtain fails to meet the wall, while his thoughts move in circles he is too disciplined to call panic.

It's not panic, only a disruption to routine, that's all. And the problem with a disruption to routine is that it should, by definition, be temporary.

Shane gets through practice. He gets through workouts and video sessions and interviews and flights. He gets through carefully portioned meals and eight hours in the dark. He keeps waiting for the jagged feeling under his ribs to dull into something manageable. And yet, it doesn't.

He gets home after morning skate and finds the apartment quiet, which should be a relief, but instead the quiet has spent the last two weeks becoming a little accusatory.

He drops his keys into the bowl by the door and toes off his shoes in a straight line. His duffel goes into the laundry room. He showers. He changes. He stands in his kitchen in a long-sleeved gray shirt and sweats, opening and closing the refrigerator without taking anything out.

There is half a prepared dinner on the top shelf, measured into containers two days ago. There are berries in glass bowls. Yogurt. Cut vegetables. Grilled chicken. Everything is exactly where it is supposed to be.

He closes the fridge.

The game is on in the living room, Boston playing somebody forgettable. Shane watches maybe ninety seconds before he realizes he has no idea what happened in any of them. His attention keeps catching on stupid things. A commentator says Rozanov and Shane's whole body goes tense before his brain can catch up.

He mutes the television.

That, more than anything else, pisses him off.

It's one thing to be distracted. It's entirely another to have become the kind of person whose nervous system apparently responds to a last name like its been jolted.

He sits back on the couch and scrubs a hand over his mouth.

He has not let himself replay the whole thing. That seems both unwise and unproductive. What he gets instead are fragments, arriving whenever they please.

The couch under his knees, the smell of toasted bread and melted cheese, embarrassingly domestic. A voice, warm and wrecked and far too close.

Shane.

He shuts his eyes.

No. That is as far as he allows it.

He had left because he needed to leave. Because something had tipped, suddenly and irreversibly, from manageable to not. Because there are moments when a person understands, with perfect unwanted clarity, that if he stays where he is for one second longer, he will have to confront some larger, more dangerous truth.

So he had stood up.

He had said the first stupid thing that came to mind about a team thing, which had been idiotic enough on its own. Then Ilya—of course—had looked up at him from the couch, flushed and disbelieving and still trying to make a joke out of it.

"You? You forgot team meeting?"

Shane had not answered properly. He knows that. He had said he should go. He had thanked him for the tuna, which in retrospect is maybe one of the most humiliating sentences any human being has ever spoken aloud. He had pulled on his jeans with hands that did not feel fully attached to his body. And then, because apparently he had also temporarily lost all higher brain function, he had left wearing Ilya's shirt.

Shane opens his eyes and stares at the muted game.

He still has the shirt. It's folded in the back corner of his dresser under things he never wears, which is a choice so obviously insane that he refuses to examine it even a little.

His phone rings.

He actually startles, which makes him annoyed before he even sees the screen.

J.J.

Shane answers on the fourth ring.

"Hollander," J.J. says by way of greeting. "What the fuck are you doing right now?"

Shane looks at the silent television. "Nothing. Why?"

"Fuck that. Get your ass downtown."

Shane closes his eyes. "No."

"You know my buddy François? The chef?"

"From Djon-Djon?"

"Yes, from Djon-Djon," J.J. says impatiently. "He's having some little after-hours thing at the restaurant, and get this—the cast of fucking X Squad is gonna be there."

Shane opens one eye. "All of them?"

"I don't fucking know. Enough of them."

There is noise behind J.J., music, voices, what sounds like somebody yelling in French over a burst of laughter.

"There are some fucking hot chicks in that movie, man," J.J. continues. "Get in your car."

Shane leans his head back against the couch and says nothing.

"Hollander."

"No."

"Why not?"

Because he is two weeks out from a catastrophic hand job and one first-name slip away from a personality change, he thinks.

What he says is, "I'm tired."

"Oh my God," J.J. says. "You're always tired, Capitane. It will be fun. Come on."

Shane rubs at the bridge of his nose.

His first instinct is still to say thanks, but no thanks. But he knows J.J., and saying no just means J.J. will call every hour for the rest of the night to inform him exactly what he is missing, with photos. Also possibly voice notes. Also possibly a live video of some actor Shane has heard of but cannot identify trying to dance on a banquette.

Besides, he does not actually have anything to do tonight except watch the end of a Boston game and quietly panic about his freshly unearthed feelings about Ilya Rozanov.

He straightens.

His freshly what?

Shane goes very still.

The apartment, already quiet, seems to sharpen around him.

On the phone, J.J. is still talking. "—seriously, get over here, François asked about you, and there's this actress, hold on, what's her name—"

"No," Shane says.

J.J. pauses. "No, you're not coming?"

"No," Shane says again, too quickly this time. "I mean—that's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

Shane stands up. "Nothing."

"Capitaine."

He is already moving toward the bedroom, pulse suddenly uneven for reasons he resents on principle.

No. Absolutely not.

He yanks open his dresser drawer.

"Are you coming or not?" J.J. asks.

Shane looks down at the row of folded shirts, all of them organized by color because of course they are. His hand stops on black cotton before he can think better of it.

He stares.

For a moment he doesn't understand why his chest feels tight. Then he realizes exactly which shirt he is looking at.

Shane shuts the drawer hard enough to rattle the frame.

"Hollander?" J.J. says again.

"Yes," Shane says.

"What?"

"I said yes."

J.J. whoops directly into his ear. "My man. Twenty minutes."

Shane hangs up without saying goodbye.

For a second he just stands there in the middle of his room, breathing a little too shallowly, staring at the closed dresser like it has personally offended him.

This is ridiculous. He does not have feelings. He has, at most, an unresolved reaction to an awkward incident that got out of hand.

He drags a hand down his face.

Then, because apparently tonight is dedicated to bad decisions, he changes into dark jeans and a charcoal sweater, grabs his keys, and leaves before he can talk himself out of it.

Montreal in November looks slick and expensive at night, all cold light and wet pavement. The city is full in a way that no other is, somehow denser, looser around the edges, more comfortable with itself. Shane drives with one hand on the wheel and tries not to think in complete sentences.

(It does not really work.)

By the time he parks near the restaurant, his nerves feel sanded down to something bright and raw. He can already hear noise from inside before he gets to the door, the warm swell of voices, music, glassware, laughter. He stands on the sidewalk for one extra second in the cold, looking through the front window at movement and light and people who all appear to be having a significantly easier time being alive than he is.

Then he goes in.

Djon-Djon is darker than he expects, but packed with players, kitchen staff, people he vaguely recognizes from television, people in expensive coats with camera-ready smiles. The whole place smells rich and warm and alive: fried food, rum, spice, citrus, wine. Somebody claps him on the shoulder within ten seconds of arrival. J.J. appears from nowhere, looking inappropriately pleased with himself.

"You came."

"I'm aware."

"You look hot and miserable. Great work."

"Thank you."

J.J. laughs. "Come meet people."

For the next half hour, Shane is introduced to a rotating cast of names he will not remember. An actor with a jawline that deserves its own tax bracket. A producer from Vancouver. A woman from wardrobe who seems delighted by his existence for reasons entirely opaque to him. The chef, François, flourishing a dish towel and kissing both of J.J.'s cheeks before shaking Shane's hand and insisting he eat something.

He does not eat something, and the room keeps getting louder.

That happens, he supposes, when a party tips past whatever invisible threshold separates gathering from event. People are drunker now, or on their way. The music has gone up. Somebody is pressed too close to his side while trying to get past. Somebody else laughs right into his ear. The actor with the tax-bracket jaw is telling a story Shane cannot begin to follow.

His skin starts to feel too tight. He lasts another eight minutes.

Then he slips out of the conversation with what might have been a nod and might have been an apology, moves through the crush of bodies toward the back of the restaurant, and finds an empty table in the corner, half-shadowed and mercifully unoccupied.

He sits down.

The relief is immediate and undignified.

He puts his drink on the table and exhales slowly, once, trying to reset himself. The table is still sticky from whoever had it before. There is a candle burning in a low glass holder near the wall, the flame making a warm little pulse against the dark. From here, he can still hear the party, but at a distance. It's manageable—almost.

"Please tell me you're hungry."

Shane looks up.

A woman is standing at the edge of the table with a plate in her hands, hair loose around her shoulders, expression hopeful and amused.

"The chef handed me these fritters," she says, "and they look delicious, but I can't possibly eat them all."

She sets the plate down between them and slides into the seat across from him like this is the most natural thing in the world.

She is familiar in the way famous people are familiar now: half-assembled from trailers, interviews, ads before YouTube videos. He knows exactly enough about X Squad to recognize one of its leads and not enough to understand why she is offering him food like they are already in the middle of a conversation.

Then she smiles at him, quick and easy, and picks one of the fritters up between her fingers.

"They smell incredible," she says.

She bites into it. Her eyes widen instantly.

"Oh my god," she says around the mouthful, lifting a hand to cover it a second too late. "These are so good."

She swallows, laughs at herself, and points at the plate.

"You have to eat some."

Despite himself, Shane smiles.

It has been a while since anyone has spoken to him with that particular combination of confidence and total lack of agenda.

"Sorry," she says. "I'm a pig. I'm Rose, by the way."

She holds out a perfectly manicured hand across the table.

Shane shakes it. Her palm is warm. "Shane."

"I know," she says.

That startles a laugh out of him before he can stop it.

"Right," he says. "Sorry. Obviously."

"Shane Hollander," she says, like she's testing the full name for rhythm. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too." He nods at the plate. "And thank you, I guess."

"For rescuing me from the burden of too many fritters? You're welcome."

She takes another one, then tips the plate in his direction with a look that suggests she fully expects obedience. Shane, who has eaten with the kind of discipline that would probably horrify half this restaurant, picks one up.

It is still hot. He breaks it open and steam slips out, carrying salt and spice and something rich he can't place. He takes a bite.

Rose leans forward slightly. "Right?"

He chews, then nods once. "Those are really good."

"I know." She beams, absurdly pleased. "You looked like you needed to be ambushed with carbs."

"I did?"

"A little."

That should, under most circumstances, make him defensive. Instead he finds himself asking, "How can you tell?"

Rose gestures vaguely with the fritter in his direction. "You came in looking like someone had forced you here under duress."

"Close enough."

"Friend dragged you?"

"Teammate."

"Ah." She settles back against the booth. "That explains the expression. Teammates are always trying to enrich your life in ways that feel suspiciously like harassment."

Shane huffs out a quiet laugh. "Yes."

"There we go," she says, pointing at him like she's caught something. "That's the face of a man who knows exactly what I'm talking about."

He should probably say something about being a fan. That seems like the normal thing to do. But the truth is, with her sitting there in the flicker of candlelight, stealing food from a communal plate and talking to him like they are already in on the same joke, she is weirdly easy to forget as a person he's supposed to be impressed by.

Still, manners are manners.

"I'm a huge fan," he says.

Rose puts a hand dramatically to her chest. "Well. Would it surprise you to know I'm a fan of yours?"

"You like hockey?"

"I was born and raised in Michigan," she says. "Damn right I like hockey."

"Oh." He feels himself smile again. "Well. Thanks."

"You're welcome." She points at the fritters. "Eat another one, Shane Hollander."

That, somehow, is how it starts.

Later, if he were forced to explain what exactly makes the next forty minutes so easy, Shane would have trouble with it. Nothing dramatic happens. There is no lightning strike, no cinematic sense of destiny. Rose is simply easy to talk to in a way he has not expected from anyone in a long time, maybe ever. She asks questions without making them feel like traps. She listens to the answers. She tells stories that are actually funny. She laughs with her whole face.

At some point he takes off his jacket and drapes it over the back of the booth. At some point he stops tracking the room.

They discover, by accident, that they have both spent childhood summers at lakeside cottages.

"Wait," Rose says, narrowing her eyes at him over the candle. "Like actual Canada cottage-country summers? Canoes, bug spray, wet towels, somebody's uncle trying to start a barbecue with lighter fluid?"

Shane smiles. "Pretty much."

"Oh my God." She presses a hand to the table like this is genuinely moving news. "Mine's in Michigan, obviously, but still. Same exact energy. My brother used to spend half of August trying to break his neck jumping off the dock."

Shane thinks of long stretches of lake water gone silver in evening light, of his mother shouting at him not to run on the rocks while doing exactly that herself minutes later.

It should not feel notable, how quickly the conversation folds itself into something comfortable. But it does. Shane is used to spending a fair amount of energy in new company figuring out what version of himself will be easiest to maintain. The polite one? The guarded one? The hockey one? With Rose, none of those seem particularly necessary. He doesn't know what to do with that at first, so he keeps talking anyway.

She tells him about her brother, who played hockey in college before becoming an engineer.

"That's a brutal stereotype," Shane says.

"I know. We're all embarrassed."

"And your parents?"

"Government," she says. "Both of them. Very glamorous upbringing. We had spreadsheets."

Shane laughs. "Mine too."

"No way."

"Yes way."

She points at him again, pleased. "See? This is what I'm saying. We're practically the same person."

"I don't think that's true."

"No?" She studies him for a beat, faux-serious. "Okay, fair. You definitely color code your closet or something."

He opens his mouth, then stops.

Rose's grin goes delighted and wicked. "Oh my God. You do."

"It's practical," Shane says, because he has apparently decided humiliation is a useful conversational strategy tonight.

"I knew it!"

"That isn't weird."

"Maybe only a little weird."

"It's efficient."

"It's deeply charming, Shane."

He clears his throat and reaches for another fritter he is no longer remotely pretending he doesn't want.

"Have you been to Montreal before?" he asks.

"Once," Rose says. "I was shooting a role in some super terrible FBI-versus-terrorists thing. I can't even remember what it was called."

"Under Dark."

She stares at him. "Oh my God. Shut up. You saw it?"

Shane shrugs, smiling. "I fly a lot. I watch a lot of movies."

"It was terrible."

"It was not good."

"It was so bad."

"You were fine in it."

Rose groans and drops her forehead briefly into one hand. "This is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me about that movie."

He smiles into his drink.

"Thankfully it was a small role," she says. "And I was only here for a week that time. In summer."

"It's a little different in the winter."

She leans in, lowering her voice like she is about to tell him a secret. "Michigan, remember? Winter can't scare me."

Something light and fluttery shifts low in his stomach. It is not fireworks but a small, surprised movement, as if some part of him has sat up and taken notice.

He feels heat climb into his face and is abruptly grateful for the dimness of the booth.

"So," he says, aiming for smooth and probably landing somewhere just north of functional, "you going to be in town for a while this time?"

Rose smiles.

It is not a smug smile, exactly. More a knowing one. Like she understands perfectly well that he is no longer asking about snow.

"For a little while," she says. "Why?"

Shane has had reporters corner him after playoff losses with less alarming directness.

He could answer in any number of normal ways. Most of his teammates would. He, unfortunately, is himself.

"I was just wondering," he says.

"Mm-hm."

"Because you said—"

"I know what I said."

He gives her a look.

Rose laughs and relents. "Yes. I'll be around for a bit."

"Okay."

"Okay," she echoes, and there is something openly amused in it now.

By the time the party finally begins to thin around the edges, Shane has lost track of how long he has been sitting there and that's maybe the strangest part.

He had come to the restaurant prepared to endure an hour of noise and social obligation and leave with a headache. Instead he is tucked into a corner booth talking about childhood summers and terrible action movies with a woman who is funny and sharp and beautiful in a way that doesn't make him tense. It just makes him want to keep listening.

Rose checks her phone and makes a face. "Wow. Okay. I should probably go before somebody from my team starts thinking I died in Montreal."

Shane glances toward the windows. The dark outside has gone thicker, later. "Right."

The word comes out with more regret than he intends.

"Well," she says, reaching into her bag, "we should probably do the modern adult thing and exchange numbers before this becomes one of those tragically missed connections people sing about."

Shane laughs softly. "Probably."

They trade phones.

He watches her type her number into his contacts with quick, efficient taps. Her nails are pale pink, neat and glossy in the candlelight. When she hands the phone back, their fingers brush.

Ridiculous that he notices. He notices anyway.

"There," she says. "Now you can text me if you ever need movie recommendations, or someone to validate your closet organization."

"I don't need validation."

"No?" She rises from the booth, collecting her coat. "You looked pretty pleased when I called it charming."

Shane stands too. "I think you imagined that."

"I definitely didn't."

They are close now in the narrow space beside the table, enough that he catches the clean, expensive scent of her perfume under the restaurant's haze of spice and wine.

Rose smiles up at him.

For one brief, disorienting second, Shane has the feeling that this might be what people mean when they talk about things clicking. Not because he is overwhelmed. The opposite, actually. Because he isn't. Because standing here with her feels easy. Nice, even.

Really nice.

"I'm glad you came tonight," she says.

He surprises himself by answering honestly. "Yeah. Me too."

Her smile warms.

Then someone across the room calls her name and the spell—or whatever this is—loosens.

Rose steps back, slipping into her coat. "Text me, Shane Hollander."

"I will."

She gives him a tiny salute and turns away, weaving back into the thinning crowd with the kind of unstudied confidence some people seem to be born with.

Shane stands there for a second after she's gone, one hand still resting on the back of the booth.

Then he looks down at his phone.

Rose Landry.

He leaves the restaurant with a little spring in his step, which is embarrassing, but true.

Outside, the cold hits him cleanly enough to wake every inch of him. He turns his collar up, exhales into the night air, and starts toward his car with his hands in his pockets and a strange, light feeling moving through him.

It has easily been the best connection he has ever made with a woman.

Possibly with anyone.

He likes Rose. He wants to get to know her better. He is excited by the idea of spending more time with her.

And she is obviously very pretty, but mostly he just loves talking to her.

She is funny, and she asks a lot of questions, but none of them make him uncomfortable. None of them feel like pressure. None of them seem designed to pull him into some version of himself he can't quite inhabit.

In the car, waiting at a red light, he laughs once under his breath.

His standards, apparently, are insane.

Still.

Shane likes a girl.

The thought settles over him warm and neat and oddly satisfying, like the final piece of something clicking into place.

By the time he gets home, he is still smiling.

Ilya has, in the past two weeks, become a deeply embarrassing person.

Not publicly! Publicly he's fine.

Publicly he is still charming and a menace and very handsome, which is frankly all anyone can reasonably ask of him. He goes to practice. He does media. He scores once against New York and gets called electric. He goes out with teammates, flirts with a waitress because she flirts first and because muscle memory is a powerful thing. He lets two different people tell him he looks tired and lies to both of them.

He is, outwardly, a picture of health.

Privately, he has become the sort of man who stares at his own couch like it has personally betrayed him.

This is not ideal.

The couch is fine. Innocent, probably. It's just a couch. Expensive, low-backed, purchased because it looked modern and comfortable enough. It is not the couch's fault that Ilya now cannot look at one end of it without remembering exactly how Shane had braced a hand there, breath going rough, eyes half-shut and then suddenly very much open.

That part is unfortunate.

The more unfortunate part is that the memory does not even get to stay sexy.

No, because the second it gets anywhere near sexy, his brain helpfully supplies the rest: Shane jerking back like he has been burned. Shane getting to his feet too fast. Shane saying something idiotic about a team thing in the tone of someone escaping a fire. Shane pulling on his jeans with that awful, blank look on his face. Shane leaving.

Shane leaving in Ilya's shirt, for extra insult.

That detail, more than most of the others, keeps coming back to him with the kind of petty persistence usually reserved for some kind of dental pain. It's not even his favorite shirt. It's literally just a black T-shirt, soft from wear, maybe a little stretched at the collar. Completely ordinary. Which somehow makes it worse. Intimacy should at least have the decency to attach itself to objects with some glamour. Not a shirt that he likes to sleep in sometimes.

He had almost said something about it at the door.

Actually, that is a lie. He had almost said a lot of things.

You're wearing my shirt.

Stay.

I didn't mean anything by it.

Please don't go like this.

Instead he had said, "Hollander," like maybe the right tone could rewind thirty seconds and save his dignity.

(It had not worked.)

He says it again now, to the empty apartment, trying the memory on in a different voice.

"Hollander."

Nothing.

Yes. Excellent. Very healing.

He throws the dish towel in his hand onto the counter and opens the fridge.

There is no food in it that he actually wants. This is not unusual. He shops with the vague, aspirational optimism of a man who believes his future self may one day become interested in cooking and then punishes that man by refusing to make something b efore the hunger takes over. There is mustard. There are eggs. There is half a container of yogurt, a lemon with the texture of old skin, beer, pickles, and an entire shelf devoted to condiments he bought for one recipe and never used again.

He stares into the cold light for a long moment and then shuts the fridge without taking anything out.

The problem with humiliation is that it would be easier to live with if it would just stay humiliation.

If this were only embarrassing, if Shane had panicked because things got weird, because sex got a little too personal, because Ilya had made some tactical error in timing and accidentally turned a hand job into an emotional ambush, then fine. Mortifying, yes. But survivable. Ilya has survived worse things.

The trouble is that it does not feel like embarrassment.

It feels like grief, which seems excessive.

He resents it.

He goes back to the couch, as if repeated exposure might somehow strip it of meaning, and sits down hard enough to make the cushions complain. He should turn on music, or the TV, or call someone. He does none of those things. Instead he sits in the middle of his own expensive taste and stares at the dark windows.

Ilya can see his own reflection faintly in the glass, long and blurred. A gloomy Russian trapped in a luxury condo, dying of feelings. It is so pathetic it would be funny if it were happening to someone else.

He leans his head back and closes his eyes.

This, too, has become a problem.

Because in the dark, the whole thing gets less avoidable.

He had planned that night.

Actually, that is maybe the most humiliating part of all, even now.

Not in some grand romantic sense; Ilya is not insane. He had simply... optimized conditions. Which is not the same thing. It's just smart. Practical. Shane—Hollander should have been proud.

He'd known neither of them needed to be up early the next morning. He'd gone grocery shopping. He'd made the tuna melts because Shane likes them and because there is something soothing about feeding a man before you try to convince him to stay in your bed. He even put hockey on afterward, because Shane gets quiet and loose with a game on, and Ilya had thought maybe if he let him settle there first, all warm and pleased and a little loose-limbed, it would be easy.

Not easy, exactly. Nothing with Shane is ever easy. But possible.

He had planned the wording too.

Casual. Barely interested. A thing tossed off after sex like it means nothing either way.

You can stay, if you want.

Not: Please stay the night because I am getting dangerously attached to your stupid freckles and I think if you left right now I might feel weird about it.

And it had worked!

Shane had said yes.

Ilya feels his whole body go traitor-soft at the memory before the rest of it slams in behind. Because yes, Shane had said yes. And yes, for one shining stretch of time afterward, Ilya had been absurdly, quietly happy. He had hidden it, obviously. He is not a complete amateur. But inside he had felt something bright and ridiculous uncurl.

Then he had ruined everything with one word. Shane.

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes.

The mortification of that moment remains almost artistically pure. Because it's not only that the name slips out. It is that he hears himself say it and instantly knows exactly how it sounds—too naked, too soft, too honest by half—and has just enough time to watch Shane hear it too.

And then, worst of all, Shane says his name back.

Ilya.

For a split second, relief had flooded him so fast it was almost dizzying. A stupid, helpless surge of happiness, because somewhere in his ruined little lovesick brain he had thought—what? That they had crossed some invisible threshold together? That the air had changed? That this was the beginning of something instead of the immediate end of it?

Idiot. Complete fucking idiot.

He laughs once, sharply, into the empty room.

This is the sort of thing that happens in Russian novels, he thinks. Men suffer one emotionally significant glance and spend the next three hundred pages wandering around in snow, making it everyone's problem.

Unfortunately, he has always privately believed himself above that kind of behavior.

Unfortunately, he may have been wrong.

Because now, sitting alone in the apartment where he had so carefully arranged one nice evening, Ilya is forced to consider a possibility so grotesque he almost rejects it on aesthetic grounds.

He had not just wanted Shane to stay the night.

He had wanted it too much.

He frowns at nothing.

No. Obviously not.

He had wanted Shane to stay because it would have been pleasant. Convenient. Good sex, good company, no commute.

That's all. (Except that if it were all, Shane leaving would not still feel like this.)

If it were only sex, or ego, or routine, Ilya would have already folded the whole incident into one of the many private boxes labeled embarrassing but educational and moved on with his life.

He has not moved on with his life. He has, in fact, spent two weeks being haunted by a man who left in his shirt.

Slowly, with the nasty inevitability of a bruise surfacing, the truth rises.

"Oh, fuck," Ilya says to the apartment, and the apartment, predictably, offers no useful response.

He sits up straighter.

"No," he tells the room.

But it is already too late, because once the thought arrives, everything rearranges itself around it with sickening efficiency.

Why had the night mattered so much? Why had he planned it? Why had the yes felt so good? Why had the leaving felt like someone had reached into his chest and squeezed?

Because he is in love with Shane Hollander.

Ilya stares at the opposite wall.

Well.

That is bad.

That is, in several important respects, a disaster.

He tries very hard, for almost five full seconds, to come up with another explanation.

None present themselves.

Because really, what else could explain this level of sustained psychic damage? Certainly not sex. Not rivalry. Not habit. Not even the particular drug of wanting someone who rarely gives anything away and therefore makes every small tenderness feel stolen and precious.

No, this is worse than all that.

This is love.

With boring Hollander.

With his stupid freckles and his horrible self-control and his giant competent hands and that face he makes when someone says something unsound about defensive coverage. With his refrigerator full of gross smoothies, probably, and his expression of deep moral disappointment whenever Ilya eats anything with grease. With the quiet, impossible steadiness of him. With the fact of him.

"Blyat," Ilya mutters.

He drops his head back against the couch and laughs again, this time softer and much less convincingly amused.

Of course. Of course this happens to him.

He falls in love exactly once in his life and it is with the most emotionally constipated man, who reacts to hearing his own first name during a mutual hand job like he has just been called to deathrow.

Wonderful. Perfect. Very fair.

He should call someone. He absolutely cannot call anyone.

What would he even say? Hello, Sveta, terrible news, I have accidentally become a character in a drama miniseries. Hello, Marleau, I regret to inform you that I have developed a rich inner life and it is ruining everything.

No. Better to die quietly.

He gets up and paces once through the apartment, which solves nothing. The same facts remain waiting for him when he circles back.

He is in love with Shane.

Shane panicked and ran.

Shane has not texted.

That one hurts in a fresher way than the others.

Because even now, even after the walkout, even after the silence, even after two weeks of increasingly theatrical self-pity, some stupid part of him had apparently been waiting. For a text, a joke, an excuse, something, anything casual enough to preserve their pride and significant enough to reopen the door.

Nothing has come.

Which means one of two things: either Shane is too freaked out to deal with him, or Shane simply does not want to.

Both possibilities are terrible. One is just more flattering than the other.

Ilya goes back to the kitchen and finally opens a beer.

He drinks half of it standing at the counter. The cold bitter taste gives him something simple to focus on for a second. He exhales and lets the bottle thud down gently beside the sink.

Fine.

Fine.

So. He is in love with Shane Hollander. This is humiliating and inconvenient and cannot, under any circumstances, become public knowledge while he still values his own life. But knowledge, unfortunately, does not require action. Plenty of people go around quietly in love with impossible people and continue functioning. Russian literature would have far fewer pages if this were not true.

He can manage it.

He will manage it.

What happened in October happened. Shane panicked. Ilya survived. He will survive this too. He will see Shane again eventually, because hockey is a disease and the NHL is a small town dressed up as the world. When he does, he will act normal. He will be unbothered. He will maybe die a little, but privately, with dignity.

Yes.

Good.

Excellent plan.

He takes another drink.

Then, because the universe enjoys cheap symbolism, his phone lights up on the counter.

For one impossible second his whole body goes electric.

He snatches it up.

Not Shane.

Just a Carmichael asking whether he's going out.

Ilya stares at the message, then laughs at himself so hard it almost becomes something uglier.

"Look at you," he says softly to no one. "Pathetic."

He types back that maybe he'll come. What else is there to do?

He is in love with Shane Hollander now. Apparently this is his life.

He may as well put on a nice shirt.

The second time Shane sees Rose, he takes her to dinner.

By then they have been texting for a few weeks, which is not a fact he examines too closely because the obvious answer—that he likes hearing from her, that he has started looking for her name on his screen with a degree of anticipation that would probably interest Hayden deeply and unfortunately—is one he prefers not to hand to anyone else.

They text about stupid things, mostly. Bad airport coffee. Her filming schedule. His travel schedule. The fact that one of the assistant coaches in Montreal says power play like it's a magic spell. Rose sends him a photo of a truly deranged craft-services tray with the caption this is not food, this is a cry for help. Shane sends back a picture of the salad he is eating in his hotel room with speak for yourself and she replies you absolute hostage.

They FaceTime twice by accident and once on purpose.

The accidental ones happen because she calls instead of texting and he answers before thinking about it. The on-purpose one happens late, both of them in different hotel rooms, Rose with wet hair and no makeup, Shane in a gray T-shirt, pretending he's not surprised by how easy it feels to sit there looking at each other while talking about nothing important.

Afterward, Hayden texts him because he had been on his way out when Shane picked up.

Hayden: are you smiling at your phone rn 😈

Shane: No

Hayden: liar. also ask her out properly or i'll do it for you

So he does. Or close enough.

He asks if she wants dinner while they are both in Montreal again before her shoot moves back to Toronto.

Rose texts back in under a minute.

Rose: yes! but if this is a date you have to promise not to wear a quarter zip

Shane: That's very specific

Rose: iykyk

So yes. It's a date, or at least date-adjacent, and other people are going to think what they think. Hayden, when Shane mentions it, makes a sound like he has just won the lottery.

"Rose Landry?" he says. "You're taking Rose Landry to dinner?"

"I'm going to dinner with Rose."

Hayden stares at him. "That is the same sentence I just said."

Shane leaves before the conversation can deteriorate further.

Dinner itself is lovely.

That is the first problem.

Rose is wearing a cream-colored sweater that makes her eyes look darker and small gold hoops that flash when she turns her head. She smiles at him when he walks in, warm and unguarded, like she is actually happy to see him and not performing happiness as social labor, and something in his chest loosens on instinct.

They talk as easily in person as they do over text, maybe more easily. He forgoes his diet because it is a date. There is wine and bread and a board that Rose keeps calling "adult Lunchables" until Shane nearly chokes. She tells him a story about an actor who keeps improvising dramatic pauses into scenes where his character is supposed to be unconscious. Shane tells her about a guy in juniors who tried to play an entire road trip with two fractured fingers because he thought taping them together counted as medical care.

Rose laughs so hard she puts a hand over her mouth.

"You're cute," she says.

Shane blinks.

She smiles into her wineglass. "Have I told you how cute you are?"

"No," he says, and feels heat rise immediately into his face.

"Well, you are."

He looks down at the charcuterie board because suddenly the quality of the olives seems so very interesting.

Rose laughs softly. "See? That. Very cute."

He should probably flirt back. Most men would. Ilya would, with enough charm to start a small fire. Shane, unfortunately, is limited to looking at her over the rim of his glass and saying, "I don't think I'm supposed to respond to that."

"You could say thank you."

"Thank you."

"There you go." She pops a piece of cheese into her mouth. "Growth."

He laughs.

And that is the second problem.

Everything about this is good. Better than good. Rose is funny, smart, beautiful, kind. The conversation never sticks or strains. He likes her. He likes being here. He likes the warm line of candlelight on the side of her face and the way she leans in when she is listening and the fact that she keeps stealing from his plate without asking.

On paper, it should be perfect.

Instead there is a small, increasing sense that he is missing something obvious.

Rose reaches across the table at one point to take a piece of bread from his side of the board, her fingers brushing his knuckles.

It's… nice. That's all.

He notices because he has been half-waiting, all evening, for something sharper. Some rush. Some urgency. Some instinctive pull toward more.

Nothing comes, and the absence of it begins to feel very loud.

After dinner, Rose says, "Walk with me?"

So they do. Montreal is still cold enough to feel clean. Their breath ghosts in the air as they turn down a quieter street, restaurant windows glowing gold around them, wet pavement reflecting traffic lights in broken ribbons of color. Rose walks with her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat, shoulder just near enough to his that he is aware of it without thinking too hard about why.

For a while they talk about easy things.

Firm opinions on hotel thermostats and the best temperatures to set them at. Whether snow is better when it arrives all at once or in mean little installments. Rose says she misses Michigan winters in a way that sounds like she mostly misses being young in them. Shane says the cottage is nicer in summer anyway and then, because apparently his mouth is running without sufficient supervision tonight, adds, "Fall too, actually."

Rose glances sideways at him. "You talk about that cottage like it's sacred."

There's something in her tone that makes him feel like the natural progression would be inviting her, but instead he shrugs. "It's quiet there."

"Hm."

"What?"

"Nothing." She smiles.

They walk another half block before Rose says, lightly, "Can I ask you something?"

Shane immediately distrusts this. "Depends."

She huffs a laugh. "That's fair." Then, after a beat: "Do you actually like me, or do you just like how easy I am to talk to?"

He turns his head toward her. Not because it is an especially difficult question, but because it somehow feels like she's expecting it to be one.

"I like you," he says.

"I know." Rose's voice is gentle. "I like you too."

He waits.

She looks ahead, not at him. "I just don't think you like me in the way you're trying to."

Cold slides under his coat.

"That's not—" he starts, and stops.

Rose glances up. "It's okay."

He lets out a short breath. Rose slows a little, making him slow too. "Shane, you are having a very nice time with me. You text me. You call me. You make me laugh. You like talking to me."

He says nothing.

"But tonight feels a little like…" She tips her head, searching. "Like you're trying to see if you can make yourself want something."

He stops walking. Rose takes two more steps before stopping too.

The street around them stays quiet. A car moves slowly past. The headlights bounce off her hoops.

Shane says, "I do like you."

"I know." Rose smiles, a little apologetic. "But I also know what it feels like when a man is trying very hard not to kiss me."

Heat climbs hard into his face.

"Rose—"

"No, listen." She steps a fraction closer, not enough to crowd him. "I'm not offended. I promise. You haven't done anything wrong." Her mouth quirks. "Honestly, if anything, you've been almost aggressively respectful."

He looks away.

"I think," she says softly, "you met me and thought, finally. Here. A woman I really like. This should work."

His throat tightens.

Because yes, maybe not in those exact words, but it's near enough to make his pulse jump.

Rose watches his face and then winces a little.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm going about this the wrong way."

Shane frowns. "Going about what?"

"Shane. I really like you. But I'm getting the sense that maybe I'm not...doing it for you."

Heat climbs hard into his face. "You are."

Rose's expression goes impossibly gentle. "You like talking to me."

"Yes."

"But do you actually want to kiss me?"

He opens his mouth, but nothing useful comes out. He makes a sound halfway between a laugh and surrender.

Rose steps closer to the curb, keeping her hands in her pockets. "I know you enough by now to know you're kind. And careful. And trying. I also know you don't look at me like a man who wants me, not really."

He says nothing.

Because the worst part is that she isn't wrong.

He does want things from her. Time. Ease. Conversation. Her quick mind and her funny mouth and the relief of being around someone who doesn't ask anything jagged of him.

He just does not want—

Rose watches him go quiet and says, much more softly now, "Have you ever been with a man?"

Shane's head comes up.

This is the part where he should lie.

He has spent most of his life getting good at lying by omission. By framing. By tone. By deciding, very firmly, which truths get to count.

But Rose is looking at him with such straightforward kindness that the lie feels exhausting before he even builds it.

"Yes," he says.

The word hangs between them in the cold.

Rose nods once, like she has only confirmed what she already knew. "Okay."

He looks down at the pavement.

"Was it different?" she asks.

He laughs once under his breath, humorless and startled. "Yes."

"Better?"

The answer arrives before he can stop it, before he can discipline it into something vaguer and safer. It springs into his mind in the form of golden-brown curls damp with sweat, hazel eyes gone bright and sharp and then suddenly, disastrously soft. A laugh in the dark. Big hands on Shane's hips. A mouth at his throat.

The smell of toasted bread and melted cheese clinging stupidly to the room.
The sound of his own name in Ilya's voice.
Then the silence after.
Then Ilya saying Hollander like he could still pull it all back.

Shane's whole chest goes tight.

"Yeah," he says, and his voice is lower than he means it to be. "Yeah. It was better."

Rose doesn't say anything for a moment.

When he finally looks at her, her face is open and very, very gentle.

"Oh," she says.

It is somehow the kindest possible response, and also the most unbearable, because now that he said it there is no room left to misunderstand himself.

Rose tilts her head. "Was it just sex?"

He should say yes.

He does not.

He looks away.

That, apparently, is answer enough.

Rose exhales softly through her nose. "Okay. So maybe this isn't really about me at all."

A laugh nearly gets out of him, except there is nothing funny in the sudden sick clarity of it.

Because no, it isn't about Rose.

It has maybe never been about Rose.

It has been about finding someone lovely and easy and possible and still carrying, in the back of his mind, the shape of a person who is none of those things. It has been about trying to make himself fit somewhere cleaner, simpler, less dangerous.

And failing.

He puts a hand over his mouth.

Rose waits.

When he finally speaks, it is so quiet he almost doesn't recognize his own voice.

"I handled something badly."

Her expression changes, not in surprise, but in understanding.

"With him?"

Shane closes his eyes.

There is no point pretending she doesn't know now.

"Yes."

Rose is quiet for a beat. Then: "Do you care about him?"

The laugh that escapes him this time is brief and rough and not remotely amused.

That is answer enough too.

"Oh, honey," Rose says softly.

He actually flinches.

For a second neither of them says anything. The cold settles around them.

Rose says, "Okay. Here's my professional diagnosis."

Despite everything, he gives her a look.

She smiles, small and warm. "You are not secretly in love with me. Tragic, I know."

He huffs a breath.

"You do like me. Correctly." She nudges his sleeve lightly with the back of her fingers. "And I like you. Correctly too, I think."

He swallows. "Rose—"

"No, let me finish. I'm on a roll." Her smile fades into something steadier. "I think there's a m-someone you care about very much. I think whatever happened with them scared the shit out of you. And I think you came to dinner with me partly because I felt like an answer that wouldn't blow up your life."

Shane stares at the sidewalk. Every part of that sentence feels impossible. Every part of it feels, nauseatingly, accurate.

"And for the record," Rose adds, "none of that makes you a bad person."

He looks up.

She holds his gaze. "Confused, maybe. A little repressed? But not bad."

A startled laugh gets out of him then, broken around the edges.

"Thanks," he says.

"You're welcome."

They start walking again, slower this time.

After half a block, Rose says, "So. Are you going to tell me his name?"

Shane nearly trips.

She laughs. "That's a no?"

"That is absolutely a no."

"Fair enough." She tucks her hands deeper into her coat pockets. "Do I know him?"

Shane says nothing. Rose glances up at him then goes quiet for a second, watching his face with that awful focus of hers, like she can see the thought arrive before he can hide it.

"Oh," she says. "Another player?"

Shane almost chokes on his next breath, and Rose hastens to add: "You don't have to tell me who! I'm nosy, not insane. Wow. Okay. That's why this feels impossible to you."

A startled breath of laughter gets out of him. Because yes. Because impossible is one word for it. There are others, none of them better.

She grins. "There you are."

He shakes his head.

Rose studies him for a second longer, then says, "Okay. Then here's my advice."

Shane gives her a wary look. "Should I be worried?"

"Probably." Her mouth twitches. "First, stop taking women to dinner to prove a point to yourself. It's flattering in the short term, but the long game is terrible."

Despite himself, he smiles weakly at her.

"Second," she says, "whatever happened with him? You very clearly did not walk away from it feeling done."

His chest tightens.

Rose's voice softens. "And third, if you care about him this much, then maybe the problem isn't that your life would get messier. Maybe the problem is that you already know he matters."

Shane's throat works, and Rose tilts her head. "Can I ask one more rude question?"

"You were going to anyway."

"I was." She smiles. "Did you hurt him?"

He looks away again.

Rose exhales softly. "Okay."

That one word is somehow worse than judgment would have been.

"I'm not saying that to make you feel bad," she says. "I'm saying it because if you did, and you care about him, then that's your next move. Not me. Not another dinner. Not more overthinking. Him."

For a second Shane can't speak.

Rose studies him, then adds, with just enough lightness to keep him from bolting, "God, I love being right. This is terrible for you, but fantastic for my personal brand."

He laughs despite himself, rough and brief.

"You're awful."

"I know." She beams. "And extremely helpful."

They walk a few more steps in silence, the cold biting through his coat, the city all wet light and blurred headlights around them.

Then Rose says, much more casually, "So. What's the plan?"

Shane blinks at her. "The plan."

"Yes." She sounds faintly offended. "Don't tell me you don't have one. You are the most plan-shaped man I've ever met."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Rose gives him a long look. "Shane."

He exhales through his nose.

She points at him. "Exactly. So. What is the plan?"

He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. "There is no plan."

"Bad answer."

"There really isn't."

"Okay, then let me make one for you." Her tone stays light, but she bumps her shoulder against his arm. "Don't spiral. And maybe don't date some other woman to see if that helps. It won't. You figure out what you actually want from him. Not in some giant, terrifying, forever sense. But, you know, the next honest thing."

"The next honest thing," Shane repeats.

"Yes." She glances up at him. "An apology, maybe. A conversation. A text that isn't weirdly vague and emotionally evasive. Whatever fits the damage."

His pulse gives one hard, ugly kick.

Rose sees it happen and nods once, as if that confirms something for her.

"Right," she says. "So probably an apology."

He says nothing.

Rose is merciful enough not to look triumphant. "For what it's worth, I don't think you seem like someone who's scared of him."

Shane frowns. "No?"

"No." She smiles, small and knowing. "You seem like someone who's scared of how much he matters."

For a second the only sound between them is the wet hiss of tires on the street.

Then Rose says, "Which, inconveniently, usually means you're already in pretty deep."

Shane winces.

Rose softens again. "Hey."

He looks back.

"You don't have to tell me anything else tonight. But I am on your side now, so if you're going to have a crisis about this, at least do it with better support."

That gets a real laugh out of him.

"There," she says, pleased. "See? Already helping."

By the time they get back to where her driver is waiting, Shane feels wrung out in a way that is somehow cleaner than before, as if she has reached into the mess of him and at least sorted things into piles.

Rose turns to face him fully.

"Let's be friends," she says.

Shane blinks. "What?"

"I'm serious." She points at him. "Not fake polite friends. Real friends. Text me all the time. Send me pictures of depressing hotel salads. Let me bully you about your emotional life when necessary."

He stares at her.

Rose's expression softens. "I mean it, Shane. You seem like you could use someone in your corner."

For one awful second, he thinks he might embarrass himself.

Because she is right. He could. He really, really could.

He clears his throat. "I'd like that."

"Good." She smiles. "Then it's settled."

Her driver gets out to open the back door. Rose ignores him for one second longer and steps in to hug Shane quickly, tightly, like this is already decided and already safe.

He hugs her back.

"Text me when you get home," she says, pulling away.

"Okay."

She slides into the car still smiling. "And Shane?"

He braces automatically. "What?"

Rose smiles, all warmth and mischief and terrible certainty. "If this is as important as I think it is, apologize first and panic later."

The door shuts.

Shane stands on the sidewalk while the car pulls away, hands in his coat pockets, breath white in the cold.

He is not cold enough. He is, in fact, having several simultaneous bodily reactions he does not appreciate.

He starts walking without deciding where.

Because once Rose said it, his mind does something treacherous and immediate: it stops trying to protect him.

It takes all the things he has kept in separate locked compartments and lays them in one line.

Ilya's body under his hands.

Ilya's laugh.

Ilya's mouth.

The impossible relief and danger of being with him.

The way Shane had looked for him without meaning to. Thought about him without permission. Wanted him in ways that had never felt clean or temporary or controllable enough to survive scrutiny.

The reason leaving had felt less like discipline and more like panic.

He stops under a streetlamp and shuts his eyes.

"Oh, fuck," he says softly to no one.

The first game after the break is in Montreal, which feels rude.

Not because Ilya dislikes Montreal. Montreal is fine. Well, he hates Montreal, but that's not the problem. No, the problem is that Montreal is where Shane keeps things. His life. His routines. His little secret real-estate arrangement for the specific purpose of having sex in private like they're in a nineteenth-century novel.

It is also, apparently, where Shane decides to ruin Ilya's evening.

The game itself is unhelpful. Too close. Too fast. Too full of accidental body contact that feels suspiciously designed by God to make Ilya insane. Shane is all over the ice in that controlled, infuriating way of his, efficient and sharp and impossible to lure into anything stupid. He scores twice. Of course he does. Ilya spends the entire second period resisting the urge to cross-check him directly into a higher state of consciousness.

They lose in overtime.

This improves nothing.

Back at the hotel, Ilya showers, changes, and opens a miniature bottle of vodka from the minibar with the solemnity of someone preparing to make poor choices. He has almost talked himself into ordering fries and watching bad television when his phone lights up.

Jane.

Just that. His name on the screen.

For one disgraceful second, Ilya's entire body goes bright and stupid.

He stares.

The text is painfully simple.

Jane: Are you around tonight?

Ilya sits very still on the edge of the bed, phone in one hand, tiny bottle of vodka in the other.

Ah. So this is how it happens.

Not by gradual fading-out, not by silence, not even by cold professionalism and the long humiliating death of pretending not to care. No. Apparently Shane Hollander has decided on direct communication, which means one of two things: either he is finally so eaten alive by guilt that he wants to apologize, or he has reached some point in his increasingly plausible relationship with Rose Landry where tidying up loose ends has become morally urgent.

Neither option is good for Ilya's health.

He puts the vodka down.

The smart thing would be not to answer.

The smart thing would also have been, at several earlier points in his life, not to sleep with Shane Hollander repeatedly, not to let himself start looking forward to stupid hotel rendenvouz and secret arrangements, and not to fall in love with him.

Smart, sadly, has never been the governing principle here.

Ilya types back: maybe. why?

Three dots appear almost immediately.

Disappear.

Reappear.

Shane is, naturally, bad at texting. Even his indecision is tightly wound.

Jane: Can you come by?

Ilya laughs once, softly and without humor, to the empty room.

Can he come by? Of course. What a perfectly normal question asked by perfectly normal men who absolutely have not rearranged each other's internal organs over the last several years.

He should say no.

He types: busy

Then stares at it.

Deletes it.

Ilya: where?

The reply comes fast enough to feel almost eager, which is probably projection and certainly dangerous.

Jane: The building. I'll send you the front door code.

Ilya closes his eyes.

Well, that's new.

Not the building itself. The building has been theirs, in its way, for a while now—neutral ground, private, bought and maintained by Shane with the sort of logistical precision that would be unbearably romantic if it belonged to literally anyone else.

No. What is new is use the front.

No sneaking in through the back. No texting from downstairs like a teenager outside a parented house. No waiting to be admitted like contraband.

The front door code.

It is such a small thing, and it lands with terrifying force.

A second text appears.

Jane: 1842

Ilya stares at the code until the screen dims in his hand.

This is, he thinks, exactly how condemned men must have felt upon being informed that the governor had approved one final good meal.

He types almost back: you are weird tonight

Here's the thing: Ilya could still refuse. This remains technically true. In practice, Shane Hollander has only ever needed to ask once.

He stands up.

"Pathetic," he informs himself in the mirror while pulling on a clean black sweater. "No self-respect. Zero. None."

The man in the mirror looks handsome and unconvinced.

He takes a car.

The city is all wet pavement and reflected light, early January cold sharpening every edge of it. Montreal after a game night always feels a little overexcited, as if the whole place is still vibrating from the arena. Ilya sits in the back seat and tries not to think in complete sentences. It does not work. His thoughts keep circling the same handful of intolerable facts.

Shane texted first. Shane asked him over. Shane gave him the code. Shane is dating Rose Landry?

Maybe not officially. Maybe not in public, not cleanly, not by the standards of people who like labels and certainty. But enough. Enough that people talk. Enough that their names have appeared together in enough places that Ilya has had to perform not caring with the concentration of a surgeon.

Rose is beautiful, and smart, and easy to talk to even in the two interviews Ilya has seen her give. Which means, naturally, that she is exactly the sort of woman Shane should want. The sort of woman people like Shane eventually choose when they are done collecting mistakes in secret.

Maybe she knows about Ilya. Maybe she does not. Maybe Shane has done the decent thing and told her there had once been some complicated situation with a someone and that he needs to shut the door properly before moving on.

Maybe this is that.

The car stops at a light. Ilya looks out at a couple huddled under one umbrella, laughing at something private.

Disgusting.

When the driver pulls up outside the building, Ilya tips him and gets out into a rush of cold so sharp it feels medicinal. He stands on the sidewalk for one second longer than necessary, looking up at the familiar windows.

He has been here enough times that the building itself carries a charge now, but he's never been in the lobby.

Ilya lets himself in.

The code works on the first try, which is offensive. Of course it does. The lobby is warm and quiet and polished enough to suggest nobody in it has ever once made a messy decision. Ilya catches his own reflection in the elevator doors as he waits: dark clothes, hair still damp at the temples from the shower, expression hovering somewhere between murder and surrender.

He looks, unfortunately, like a man going willingly to his own destruction.

The elevator ride is too short.

By the time he reaches the door, his pulse has gone annoyingly uneven. He knocks once because he refuses to seem overeager, even in private, even now.

The door opens almost immediately.

And there is Shane.

For a second, Ilya registers him only in pieces.

Bare feet. Dark jeans. The line of his shoulders. Mouth set too seriously. Eyes fixed on Ilya with an intensity that is either desire or disaster. A black cotton t-shirt, soft with wear, collar slightly stretched.

Of course Shane Hollander opens the door to this strange, terrible evening wearing one of Ilya's own ghosts.

For one hideous second Ilya forgets how to speak.

Shane notices him noticing. His hand tightens once around the edge of the door.

"I still have it," he says, which is perhaps the least helpful possible explanation.

"Yes," Ilya says. "I see that."

Excellent. Good. Very smooth.

Something flickers across Shane's face—embarrassment, maybe, or just the knowledge that this is not exactly subtle behavior. He steps back to let Ilya in.

The apartment feels different.

It is still the same clean investment space, all sleek and expensive minimalism and windows showing off the city. But there are small changes. Lamps on instead of the overheads. Food on the table by the kitchen—actual food, plated, warm, clearly arranged to be eaten by two people who are not in a hurry.

Shane has set the table. Nothing crazy, Shane is too practical to become a candlelit man overnight. But there are plates. Napkins. Water glasses. Actual effort.

On one plate sits a piece of salmon with brown rice and something green and joyless beside it, which is so aggressively Shane Hollander that Ilya almost laughs.

The other plate is carbonara. Real carbonara too, glossy and rich and indecently beautiful under a drift of black pepper, the sort of dish no one orders accidentally for another person unless he has been paying attention.

Ilya takes off his coat slowly.

"You made me a separate meal," he says.

Shane closes the door and takes the coat from him before Ilya can decide whether to be offended by that. "I ordered dinner."

"Yes," Ilya says. "And apparently had mine selected by a man trying to seduce me or apologize to me or possibly both."

Shane hangs up the coat with maddening efficiency. "Do you want a Diet Coke?"

Ilya looks at him.

This, more than anything so far, makes the whole thing feel unreal.

"You invited me over after a game," he says carefully, "to this apartment, while wearing my shirt, and now you are offering me a Diet Coke and a custom pasta situation."

Shane's mouth presses thin. "Do you want one or not?"

Ilya has half a mind to say that what he needs is vodka, or perhaps immediate unconsciousness. Instead he hears himself say, "Obviously."

Shane sets the can in front of him on the counter, cold and silver and beaded with condensation. Such a tiny, stupidly thoughtful thing. Such a perfect little act of domestic violence. Shane doesn't sit immediately. He stands across from him with a glass of water in one hand, looking as if he has rehearsed calm and found it inadequate.

This should, probably, be more reassuring.

Instead it makes Ilya feel like prey.

"So," he says, because somebody has to do something. "Either you've developed a surprising interest in hospitality, or something is wrong."

Shane looks down at his water for one second, then back up.

"I owe you an apology."

There it is.

The room seems to go a little hollow around the sentence.

Ilya had expected this. Or some version of it. He had, in fact, been narrating the evening toward it since the first text. And yet hearing it out loud still lands with the clean, private force of injury.

He leans one hip against the counter and smiles because the alternatives are uglier.

"For October?"

Shane—no, Hollander nods.

Years, reduced to one month. One night. One stupid domestic disaster and all the silence after it.

Ilya takes a sip of Coke because his hand is not as steady as he would prefer.

"All right," he says. "Go ahead."

Hollander sets down his glass.

"I shouldn't have left like that."

The directness of it is disorienting. Hollander is honest by temperament, yes, but rarely in this particular way.

Ilya says nothing.

He keeps going. "It was unfair. You didn't do anything wrong, and I handled it badly."

Ilya studies Shane's face.

He looks serious. A little tense. More than a little, actually. There is a line between his brows that wasn't there when he opened the door. His free hand is braced against the back of a chair hard enough that the knuckles have gone pale.

This, at least, appears genuine.

"How badly?" Ilya asks, because if he does not joke he may do something much more humiliating.

Hollander blinks. "What?"

"On a scale," Ilya says,"from mildly rude to absolute emotional terrorism."

"Asshole." To his credit, Shane almost smiles. "Closer to the second one."

"Hm." Ilya taps one finger against the Diet Coke can. "Good. I appreciate self-awareness."

Some fraction of tension shifts in Hollander's shoulders.

"I'm serious, Rozanov."

The word lands flat between them.

Ilya feels it, that tiny old familiar distance, surname to surname, safe ground, hockey ground, the place where this can still be contained.

Then Hollander's expression changes.

Something in him tightens, then gives.

"Ilya," he corrects, quietly.

The sound of his first name in Hollander's mouth should not still do this much damage. It is, frankly, unsporting.

"I know," Ilya says lightly. "That's what's making this creepy."

Hollander looks at him for a long moment.

"I'm serious," he says again. "Ilya."

The second time is worse.

Ilya has called him Hollander so long it has become part of the architecture of them, a wall, a game, a shield. Even at his softest, his stupidest, his most accidentally honest, he still cannot quite drag Shane into the open air of a first name now. Not with this much blood in the water.

So of course Hollander chooses tonight to cross the line first.

"What happened?" Ilya asks.

It is not the question he meant to ask. The one he meant to ask was why now? Or maybe is this your idea of ending things with dignity? Or, if he were braver and much stupider, is this because you're trying to get rid of me before you become someone else's in public?

Hollander looks away.

For one brief hopeful second, Ilya thinks he will not answer.

Then Shane says, "I didn't know how to deal with it."

The hope dies immediately. Or rather, rearranges itself into something worse.

"With what?" Ilya asks.

Hollander's jaw tightens.

"With..." He stops.

Ilya waits. He has become very good at waiting for Hollander to force words through impossible terrain.

Hollander drags a hand over the back of his neck. "With what it meant."

Ah. There. Yes. Perfect. A knife, delicately inserted.

Because that could mean anything. The sex. The first-name slip. The intimacy. The risk. The possibility. It could mean you matter too much or this got too real or I was afraid.

Ilya, being an optimist in the Russian style, immediately assumes the version most likely to ruin him.

He looks down at the counter and laughs once under his breath.

Shane's eyes come back to him, sharp now. "I'm trying."

"I can see that."

And he can. That is the problem. Shane is trying. The whole room smells of effort and intent. The food, the table, the front door code, the apology itself. Everything arranged with the kind of care that feels less like lust and more like ceremony.

Hollander pushes off the chair and comes a step closer.

"I know I handled it badly," he says. "I know I made it worse by not saying anything." A beat. "I'm sorry."

There it is again. Clean. Undressed.

Ilya has wanted this apology for months.

That, too, is part of what makes it terrible.

Because now that it exists, now that Hollander has given it to him in a voice low and rough and unmistakably sincere, Ilya has no protection left but interpretation. And interpretation, unfortunately, is where he does his finest work.

This, he thinks, is how men apologize when they are trying to leave behind something beautiful instead of cruel.

He should leave now.

He knows this with the calm certainty of a man watching his own house burn down from the sidewalk. It's his and it's going to be gone forever. Accept the apology. Make a joke. Thank Hollander for the Diet Coke and the carbonara and the emotional terrorism. Preserve some dignity. Get out before whatever comes next can kill what remains.

Instead he says, "You set the table."

Hollander blinks. "Yes."

"You ordered carbonara."

"Yes."

"You are wearing my shirt."

A flush rises along Hollander's cheekbones, faint but visible. "Yes."

Ilya folds his arms. "You see why I find all this mildly alarming."

To Hollander's credit, he does not deny it.

"I wanted tonight to be good," he says.

Oh. Oh. Right. This is what this is.

One good night. One beautiful, careful offering in place of a future. A mercy. A concession. The sort of thing a kind man might do if he knew he was about to break your heart and wanted, at minimum, to be remembered as decent.

A hot, stupid wave of grief rises so suddenly Ilya almost laughs at it.

"Well," he says, because if he doesn't speak now he may say something honest, but his voice is rough, "that depends what happens next, doesn't it?"

Something flashes in Hollander's expression then—confusion, maybe, but also hunger. Relief. Something bright and immediate enough that Ilya almost misses it because he is busy dying.

"I wanted to see you," Hollander says.

That should not be as bad as it is.

Ilya stares at him.

Because yes, obviously. That is why he texted. That is why Ilya is here. And yet the way Hollander says it—plain, almost stubborn, as if it matters that Ilya hear the wanting in it—makes something low and dangerous uncurl in Ilya's chest.

He should ask what he means.

He should ask about Rose. About why now. About what happens after tonight.

Instead he thinks, with a kind of cold doomed clarity: If this is the last time, then fine. Let it be the kind of last time that haunts him.

He steps forward first.

Hollander's eyes widen just slightly.

Then Ilya kisses him.

It is not gentle. Ilya is not built for gentleness under these conditions. It is part surrender, part fury, part self-destruction. He gets a fist in the front of the black T-shirt and drags Hollander into him like he is starting a fight, or ending one.

For one sharp second, Hollander goes still with surprise.

Then he makes a low sound in the back of his throat and kisses Ilya back hard enough to blur the room.

This, then, is how it happens.

Not neatly. Not wisely. With both of them still half-standing in the glow of the kitchen lights, dinner cooling on the table behind them, apology still hanging in the air like something fragile and unfinished.

Hollander's hands land on his waist, then his back, then one rises into his hair as if he can't decide where to hold him and so must try everywhere at once.

Ilya kisses him harder out of pure injured greed.

He has no right to greed. He knows that. Hollander is probably with Rose, or nearly with Rose, or on his way toward some clean public life that has no room in it for this. Tonight is a kindness. An exception. A folded flag.

So Ilya takes it with both hands.

When they finally break apart, it is only far enough for breath.

"Hollander," he says, still unable to do it, still unable to drag Shane into the same raw open space Shane has already stepped into with him.

Hollander's forehead knocks once against his.

"Ilya," he says, like a correction and a plea all at once.

That, more than anything, is what nearly does it.

Ilya laughs softly, the sound wrecked around the edges. "You are making this very difficult."

"I know."

"No," Ilya says. "I don't think you do."

Hollander draws back just enough to look at him properly. "Then tell me."

Terrible idea.

Unacceptable.

So naturally Ilya kisses him again.

The second time starts slower, the kind of kiss that should perhaps belong to people with futures. Then Ilya feels Hollander soften under his hand for one stupid, deadly second, and whatever remains of his good judgment disappears entirely.

His mouth moves down to Hollander's jaw, his throat. Hollander's head tips back with the smallest catch of breath, and the sound goes straight through Ilya like a blade.

There it is.

That is what he wants.

Not just to have him. To undo him. To make him feel good enough that the body remembers even if the he refuses to. To leave some mark deeper than bruises, something that lingers under the skin. If Shane is going to leave, let him leave carrying this.

"Food'll get cold," Hollander says, voice rough now, and absurdly, unbelievably, still trying to behave like a person with an intact frontal lobe.

Ilya laughs against his throat.

"Later," he says.

And maybe that is the moment it changes, because there, with Hollander breathing hard under his mouth and his own hand spread wide over the black cotton of his shirt, the name in Ilya's head finally gives way.

Shane.

Of course it is Shane now.

Shane makes a broken sound when Ilya bites lightly at the place where neck becomes shoulder, and that is that. Whatever fragile pretense of restraint had still been standing folds in on itself at once.

Ilya walks him backward.

Shane goes.

That is almost as intoxicating as the rest of it. That Shane lets himself be moved, lets himself be directed, lets Ilya crowd him all the way back until the edge of the dining table presses into the backs of Shane's thighs and he stops there with both hands braced on Ilya like he is trying very hard not to look as wrecked as he already does.

"You planned all this," Ilya murmurs, mouth brushing the corner of Shane's jaw. "Very sinister."

Shane's hand tightens in his hair. "Ilya—"

"No, don't worry." He kisses him again, slower now just to feel the shiver it gets him. "I'm deeply charmed."

Shane actually laughs, once, helpless and low, and the sound of it nearly sends Ilya to his knees on the spot.

Instead he gets his hands under the hem of the t-shirt—his t-shirt, still—and drags it up and off in one impatient motion.

Shane lets him.

The sight of him half-undone in the warm apartment light, broad shoulders and flushed skin and that controlled face gone visibly strained around the edges, hits with enough force that Ilya has to stop for a second just to take him in.

Shane notices.

"What?" he asks, already defensive from sheer reflex.

Ilya slides his hands over his ribs, down his sides, savoring the heat of him. "Nothing."

"That doesn't sound like nothing."

"It is just," Ilya says, almost kindly, "very unfair that you look like this while apologizing."

Shane's mouth twitches despite himself. "You kissed me first."

"Yes." Ilya leans in and says it right into his mouth. "Excellent decision on my part."

Then he kisses him again because the alternative is thinking, and thinking is what ruined October.

After that, movement takes over.

Shirts on the floor. The edge of the table. Shane's hands everywhere now, less careful, more openly needy. Ilya taking what he wants because he can, because Shane is here and warm and answering him like he means it. Because this is, apparently, his last chance to make Shane come apart in his hands and he intends to do it thoroughly.

By the time they make it to the bedroom, Shane is breathing like someone who has lost the argument with himself and knows it.

Good.

Ilya wants that too.

The room is dimmer than the kitchen, softer at the edges. The bed is neatly made because of course it is. Shane stops only long enough to look at Ilya like he might say something, something real, something dangerous, and Ilya cannot allow that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

So he puts both hands on Shane's chest and pushes him back onto the bed.

Shane goes, eyes still on him.

There is something about that, about Shane letting him take the lead without resistance, without games, that goes straight to the worst, most hopeless part of Ilya. It feels like trust. It feels like mercy. It feels, disastrously, like being wanted in a way that extends beyond hunger.

He cannot afford to think that.

So he doesn't.

He climbs over Shane and kisses him until the room narrows to heat and breath and the increasingly ragged sounds Shane keeps failing to hold back. Every time Shane's control slips, even a little, Ilya feels the victory of it low in his bones.

Yes, he thinks wildly. This. Give me this.

He wants Shane flushed and shaking and open. Wants to be the one who puts that look on his face. Wants, with a kind of ugly, aching tenderness, to make him feel so good he cannot possibly reduce this later into a mistake he once made in Montreal.

Shane's hands slide over him, down his back, then settle hard at his waist as if he cannot stop himself from holding on.

"Ilya," he says, and now it sounds different. Not just his name. A request. A warning. A surrender.

Ilya kisses him slower for a minute after that, because he can. Because Shane lets him. Because every second they drag this out is another second Shane is still here, still under him, still choosing this.

Then he shifts lower.

Shane goes tense beneath him immediately, already understanding enough to make a low sound in the back of his throat.

"Ilya—"

"Yes," Ilya murmurs against the hot line of his stomach. "Be quiet."

Shane actually laughs once at that, breathless and disbelieving, but his hand is already in Ilya's hair, tight and wanting. Ilya mouths lower, taking his time with it, kissing and biting lightly at the inside of Shane's thigh just to feel him twitch.

He wants him impatient.

Wants him needy.

Wants him stripped down to want so completely that there will be no room left for doubt.

When he finally puts his mouth on him, Shane inhales so sharply it almost sounds pained.

There.

Ilya nearly closes his eyes at the force of it.

He goes slow on purpose. Slow enough to make Shane feel everything. The heat, the wet slide of his mouth, the deliberate drag of tongue and lips and suction, all of it measured to draw reaction instead of racing toward an end. His hand strokes where his mouth doesn't reach, keeping the pace steady, controlled, maddening.

Above him, Shane is trying to hold still and failing.

That is one of the things Ilya likes best about him in bed, actually—that all that careful competence, all that discipline, can only survive pleasure for so long before it starts to fracture. Shane's control never shatters all at once. It comes apart in visible lines: the way his breathing changes first, then the tension in his thighs, then the hand in Ilya's hair tightening by degrees until he is one minute away from losing the ability to pretend this is anything but overwhelming.

Ilya works him closer and then eases off.

Shane makes a sound of half frustration, half disbelief.

"Cruel," he says.

Ilya smiles without lifting his head. "Yes."

He uses his fingers then, careful and slow, his free hand guiding and opening, making Shane take it one inch at a time while his mouth keeps him hard and wanting and distracted. It is almost mean, how well it works. Shane's hips lift helplessly off the bed. His hand slides from Ilya's hair to his shoulder, then back again, as if he can't decide whether to drag him higher or hold him exactly where he is.

"Fuck," Shane says, low and wrecked.

Ilya hums around him just to make him feel it.

He wants this exact thing: Shane flushed and open and trying so hard not to beg. The sound of his breathing blown apart. The involuntary flex of his stomach every time Ilya goes a little deeper, strokes a little slower, presses in with another slick careful finger and feels Shane's whole body react.

This is not about getting it over with, or even really about sex anymore. It's about memeory. Leaving something behind.

About making Shane feel so good that whatever he does after tonight, whoever he goes home to, however he eventually explains this to himself, his body will still remember being taken apart by Ilya's hands and mouth and patience.

He works him steadily higher, then backs off again.

Shane swears and reaches for him blindly, fingers catching in his hair. "Ilya."

It's not a complaint. Not even really a protest.

Ilya lifts his head just enough to look at him.

Shane is beautiful like this, wrecked already, mouth parted, eyes dark and unfocused, every line of him strained toward more. There is frustration there, yes, but under it something hotter and much worse: trust. He is letting Ilya do this. Letting him set the pace, hold him under it, decide when enough will be enough.

That nearly undoes Ilya all by itself.

He slides his fingers deeper, finds his sweet, sweet spot, watches the way Shane's body opens for him, and sucks him down again at the same time.

Shane jolts.

"Jesus Christ," he says, voice gone completely.

Ilya almost laughs.

Instead he keeps going.

Every movement deliberate. Every reaction studied and stored away. He learns Shane again this way: what makes him gasp, what makes him tense, what makes his hand go hard and helpless in Ilya's hair. He edges him until Shane is shaking with it, until his thighs are tense and his breathing comes broken and thin, until even the smallest change in pressure tears helpless sounds from him.

And still Ilya doesn't let him go over. He wants more.

Wants Shane opened properly, wants him desperate enough that when Ilya finally gives him what he wants there will be no surviving it cleanly.

At one point Shane reaches down, gets a hand under Ilya's jaw, and tries to pull him up.

"Come here," he says.

Ilya lets himself be dragged up just long enough to kiss him.

Shane kisses him like a man starving now, all the restraint gone out of it. His hands are everywhere. They're at Ilya's neck, his back, his hips, hauling him closer as if he can't stand the distance even measured in inches. When Ilya settles between his legs again, Shane follows instinctively, body arching into his, mouth open against his throat.

God, he's beautiful, Ilya thinks, with vicious fondness.

Then he pushes him back down into the bed and goes to work in earnest.

By the time he finally lines himself up, Shane is flushed all the way down his chest, visibly shaking, every careful layer of composure worn thin. But he is still there in it with Ilya, still reaching, still kissing him whenever he can, still using those big capable hands to pull Ilya in harder, closer, deeper, like he can't bear even the smallest distance between them now.

Ilya loves him so much in that moment he could bite through his own tongue.

So he kisses Shane instead and pushes in slow.

The first sound Shane makes is enough to send a pulse of heat straight through Ilya's whole body. It's low and broken and helplessly honest, dragged out of him by stretch and relief and the simple fact of finally getting what he has been held just short of for too long.

Ilya stops for a second just to feel him.

To feel the way Shane opens for him and tenses around him and then, little by little, lets him in all the way. To watch the exact moment Shane's eyes fall shut, the moment his mouth goes soft with it.

"Shane," Ilya says before he can stop himself.

The effect is immediate.

Shane's whole body goes taut under him, eyes opening wide for one brief exposed second before closing again.

There.

That.

Ilya almost breaks from the force of it.

So it really is that simple, apparently. One first name, one crack in the old architecture, and suddenly the man under him is not Hollander anymore, not the careful defenseman, not the rival, not the problem to solve. Just Shane. Shane, who tastes like apology and is looking at Ilya now as if looking is dangerous and doing it anyway.

It should terrify him more than it does.

No—that is a lie. It terrifies him exactly enough. He just does not stop.

He starts moving slowly, because after all of that he can't do anything else at first. Slow enough to make them both feel every inch of it. Slow enough that Shane's hands tighten and his breath catches and his hips start trying, involuntarily, to meet him. Slow enough that the room narrows to heat and friction and the increasingly wrecked sounds Shane makes when Ilya brushes exactly where he wants him.

Shane kisses back like he means to devour. Pulls Ilya down over him whenever he can reach. Moves with him, chases the next thrust, the next one, already too far gone to hide how much he wants it. At one point he gets a hand between them just to touch Ilya, just to feel him, and the need in the gesture nearly strips Ilya down to bone.

"Ilya," Shane says again, lower now, rough and half-lost. "Don't—"

Which is funny, because what follows is not a request to stop but the opposite. Don't go slow, maybe. Don't tease. Don't make this unbearable.

Ilya kisses him through the rest of it. Gives him exactly enough mercy to keep him wrecked. He keeps one hand on Shane because he wants all of him lit up at once, wants there to be nowhere in this moment not marked by Ilya's touch.

And that is the real undoing, maybe. That Shane lets him have this. Lets him set the pace, drag the pleasure out, make him shake for it. Lets Ilya watch him come apart piece by piece. But also gives back, takes back, insists on touching him, kissing him, pulling him closer like this is happening to both of them, not just one.

Ilya has never been less protected in his life.

He edges Shane one last time by accident or cruelty or grief. He slows just enough at the brink to make him open his eyes and look at him with something so raw and dazed and pleading in it that Ilya's heart feels like it tears.

"Please," Shane says, and that is all.

Ilya takes him over hard after that, kissing the sound of it out of his mouth, and Shane comes apart beneath him with a low wrecked cry, one hand clamped bruising-hard on Ilya's hip, the other dragging him down as close as possible. The sight of it, Shane flushed and open and undone by Ilya's mouth and hands and body, by his own name in Ilya's voice, is almost enough to finish him on the spot.

But he holds on for another few thrusts because he wants Shane drowning in it, wants the aftermath to last, wants him oversensitive and still taking pleasure like a wound.

Then it takes Ilya too.

He goes with his face buried against Shane's throat, his own breath breaking apart around a sound that feels ripped out of somewhere much less survivable than sex.

Afterward Shane folds around the aftermath of it with a kind of stunned, breathless stillness that is almost harder to bear than the sounds he made getting there. Ilya stays over him for a second, braced on shaking arms, and watches the pulse beat wild at Shane's throat.

He should say something filthy and light and familiar and safe.

Instead he brushes the hair back from Shane's forehead with a hand that is much too gentle and immediately hates himself for it.

Shane catches his wrist before he can pull away.

For one suspended moment they just look at each other.

This is where the danger lives, Ilya thinks.

He kisses Shane again to break it.

Softer this time. Slower. Ruined around the edges.

When he finally rolls onto his back, the room feels both too warm and much too exposed. His own breathing sounds loud in his ears. Beside him, Shane turns toward him almost at once, like he has not yet remembered how to stop reaching.

One hand settles on Ilya's stomach, then drifts slowly higher and back down again, absent and warm and so thoughtlessly intimate that it makes something deep in Ilya flinch. It's too much.

Ilya has survived many things. Tender aftermath is not traditionally among them.

He shifts, meaning perhaps to sit up, or find his clothes, or run dramatically into the night before he says something unforgivable.

Shane's hand settles more firmly on his hip.

"Stay," he says.

Ilya closes his eyes.

Of course Shane wants him to stay. Of course he wants the whole evening completed properly, every soft edge attended to, every break in the night smoothed over until it can pass for something whole. Of course he is kind enough to make this hurt as much as possible.

He keeps his face turned into the pillow, breathing carefully through the sudden tightness in his chest.

Then Shane adds, after a beat, voice rough and lower than before, "Don't go yet. The food's still out there."

Ilya opens his eyes and turns his head.

Shane is looking at him with sleep-heavy eyes and flushed skin and hair gone messy against the pillow, one hand still warm on Ilya's hip. Then he smiles—small, soft, almost shy in the dim light.

It blinds Ilya, or maybe stabs straight through.

Because this, too, is different. This easy, unguarded little smile like there is nowhere else Shane would rather be. Like Ilya is not an aftermath to be managed but someone still wanted once the wanting has already been answered.

Before Ilya can think what to do with that, Shane leans in and kisses him, mouth warm and slow against his, as if this is the most natural thing in the world. As if they have all the time there is.

Ilya lets it happen because resisting would require a kind of strength he does not currently possess.

When Shane draws back, his thumb brushes once, absent and careful, over Ilya's side.

"You'll stay, yeah?"

"Okay," he says.

It comes out softer than he means it to.

Beside him, Shane's hand slides once over the back of his shoulder, then settles there again, steady and thoughtless as a promise.

And Ilya stays.

Because he is weak, weak, weak where Shane is concerned. Because the bed is warm and Shane's body is warmer and whatever sentence is coming will come whether he leaves now or an hour from now or after cold pasta at midnight. Because if this is the last good night before the execution, apparently he is enough of a cliche to take every minute of it he can get.

This kindness is worse.

If Shane were cruel, Ilya could survive it. Cruelty has edges. You can brace against it. Bleed neatly. Make a joke and move on.

This careful, impossible tenderness offers no such defense.

Shane is trying to make tonight good.

And Ilya, idiot, fool, tragic Russian peasant in a very expensive bed, knows exactly what kind of men do that.

The kind who are about to leave.