Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shane always had a very basic appreciation of food. It wasn’t anything particularly fancy or sophisticated, but he functioned under the belief that food was meant to nourish you—both your body and your mind. Every morning, he drank the same protein concoction out of his Vitamix, and during the season, he bulked with lean proteins—chicken, turkey, fish. He took vitamins on a regimented schedule, never ate fast food, or junk food, and kept sugar to the holidays and birthdays. But sometimes, he looked at the restaurants that he dreamed of going to as a child and could, ostensibly, afford to eat at every night. He read the reviews on Yelp and looked at the pictures and thought “I could go there.” And then, sometimes, he went. Usually with his parents, sometimes with JJ, since he appreciated food in a way that made sense to Shane, and wouldn’t embarrass him by complaining about things being fiddly.

“Hollander,” JJ said from across the locker room. Post-practice, men cleared out one by one, each patting Shane on the head or shoulder as they went. “I found a restaurant you would like.”

Loon Song. Shane had heard of it, in an offside way. When he was with Rose, years ago, a place she’d mentioned because a friend had gone, and he didn’t get the hint because of course he didn’t. It looked overwhelming. Reservation only. Limited seating. Set tasting menu. Classic French with a Russian twist—Shane didn’t know anything about either cuisine, and didn’t know how to appreciate it. Most of his knowledge, and by most he meant all, went to hockey.

But he liked food. In a way he couldn’t describe; he liked its purpose, what it provided to him, the way it existed as a communal endeavor. Somewhere, someone picked food and another person packaged it; that packaged food was processed and someone put it on a truck; from the truck it reached a store or a restaurant or a home, and from there it was made edible. Hands upon hands, people upon people, centuries upon centuries of human involvement in the most important part of life. It felt like hockey, in a way.

“Are you coming to Montreal for the first home game?” Shane asked his mom, later that night, staring at the reservation screen for Loon Song. The Thursday before their first game, there was space in the second seating. He refreshed the page—still ten seats left. He had some time.

“If you want us to. I think your father can take that weekend off.”

“Well, there’s this restaurant—”

So it was set. Shane knew the plan well in advance and could coordinate himself around it. The reservation—seven-thirty p.m. on Thursday of the following week. That gave him two days to organize his mind around the menu, which went up on a hyperlinked website every Tuesday. There were blog posts there, apparently from the chef. Shane read half of one, but it felt almost like reading the chef’s diary. Something uncomfortable tensed in his chest from the language, passionate and slightly formal. As Shane read, he grew disquieted by the verve, the melody, the words themselves. He set an alarm on his phone for Tuesday and diligently closed the window, pressing back from his desk with a huff.

Tuesday, menu. Thursday, dinner. Friday, game.

With his week set, he entered a sort of autopilot to get through it.

Tuesday came with a little shake. Shane was immediately thrown off by waking thirty minutes late, so he had to rush through his morning routine to get his smoothie made and get to the rink an hour before practice. Then, in that hour before practice, he lost count of his reps while doing presses and had to start over, so his left shoulder burned for the rest of the day. Practice went terribly, and he left feeling slightly nauseous and uneven.

At home, he sat at his dining table and stared out the window for a long while, mouth very dry. Shane hated having bad days. In a very literal way, he felt like he might die. Everything felt very big and very close, his skin crawled, his mind raced over each mistake on repeat. It was discomfort that was hard to swallow. One wrong move, the world might collapse.

So he sat very still and looked out the window, ignoring the two dishes in his sink from dinner and the laundry in his hamper and still on his body. The shower needed to be cleaned, too, before his parents got there tomorrow, and he knew he should probably consider reorganizing his medicine closet. He closed his eyes.

The stillness of the room pressed in on him, a claustrophobic blanket of neatly put together things.

Bad days always did the job of reminding him how alone he was. They happened, and he came home to an empty apartment furnished by a stylist, fake plants set near the window and on his mantle and in his entryway. Nothing for him to tend to but himself, which was the point at the time. Now, the chores stacked up to irritate him. His laundry was a nuisance, the dishes a hindrance, his own need to consume food a downfall of the human body.

Turning to his computer, he opened the menu site again.

Each food came with a line of description, inspiration, vision. A quick sketch of a plate, or else a slightly grainy picture. Blini et encore plus, which sounded good, but maybe complicated; Borscht-inspired Steak Tartar, which Shane already knew he would hate, but would consume most of, to be polite; a fish soup with shellfish, a duck breast with roasted beets and pickled slaw; medovik, which was the same dessert as every menu Shane had seen yet, and didn’t look updated or spun towards French at all. Shane wasn’t sure what that said about the chef—this insistence on repeating something week over week, despite changing the rest, but he sort of liked it. The consistency of it, the quippy ‘Sorry, not sorry. Medovik is the staple of my heart, and the staple of my menu,’ that came as an explanation.

The post below, from the night before, read much the same as the one he’d read previously. It felt like the chef, who signed off each post Executive Chef Ilya Rozanov, Loon Song, was pouring himself into this the same way he seemed to pour himself into food.

Shane read the menu again. He excited himself with the idea of seeing his mom’s reaction, of knowing his parents were just as lost in the technical details, but were being fed all the same. By company, by the time it took, by the pace and, of course, by the food itself.

In anticipation of his game Friday and not at all because he wanted the days to pass faster, Shane dedicated himself to getting at least nine hours of sleep every night from now to then—though Thursday was variable, and depended on the length of their dinner and post-dinner chat with his parents. Tuesday night saw him crawling into bed with a book and his glasses at eight p.m., lights out by eight-forty-five, asleep by what he felt like was probably nine. He woke with his alarm Wednesday morning, with plenty of time to stretch out his body and follow routine. Practice wasn’t until the afternoon; it left Shane in a listless sort of waiting mode.

He arrived at the rink two hours early and sat in his car in the garage for half an hour, staring at the upholstered ceiling around the sunroof. Anxiety pounded through him, unknown and atrocious. He wanted to crawl out of his skin, but the reason for it was beyond him. First practice of pre-season being shitty didn’t mean the whole season was going down the drain. It just meant he had to focus. Fight harder. It was fine.

After practice, Shane was assured that it was definitely not fine. Something in the team was off, a dynamic Shane couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was either the newest trade or the rookie they’d signed the year before. Someone was not meshing, and in his seven years of captaincy, he’d never been able to not make someone mesh. That was his job, and he was failing at it, and Shane Hollander didn’t fail.

“What the fuck am I doing wrong?” Shane asked, kicking the gear bin in frustration as he waited for Hayden to finish getting dressed. “I feel like I’m being punk’d. We’ve never started this bad.”

“Just wait until after the game on Friday before you go all Dr. Jekyll and Captain Hyde. Gotta give the training time to sink in for the new guys. We’re good bro. Cup is ours this year.”

Shane wasn’t sure about that, and thought about it as he drove to The Meq, their usual after-Wednesday-practice spot. The practice played back and back in Shane’s head. Pre-season didn’t determine anything, not by any stretch of the imagination, but Shane still liked to go into the rest of the season with clean wins and good edges, and right now he was getting a lot of mediocre performances, bad passes, and shitty, ripped up ice. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered pushing himself so hard, when the other people on his team were sometimes so lackadaisical, but it would feel wrong to move any other way in the rink.

The arrival of his food—salmon and brown rice and some sort of leaf that was mostly bitter and only a little tasty—interrupted his melancholy stirring, and when he looked up, he caught Hayden staring at him, fork raised, waiting.

“How are the girls?”

“They’re fine,” Hayden answered, cutting into his chicken. “Second grade is basically first grade again.”

“Sure,” Shane said. He was certain Hayden would regret thinking that later, but chose not to burst the bubble. “And Arthur and Amber?”

He listened to Hayden talk about his children as if Shane hadn’t seen them at the end of break for the barbecue three weeks ago, nodding and replying when he needed to, filling the silence with bites of his own food. They talked a little about the team, the strategy going into the season, what they each thought of LaForge coming up from Florida. In a little break, Shane almost thought about the words he’d been meaning to tell Hayden for four years, given to him by Rose in a quiet, Montreal bar. But he didn’t.

He stopped the thought before it even got on the tracks.

To cut the spiral away at the roots, Shane accepted Hayden’s invitation inside and helped the twins with their math homework. He accepted a ginger ale from Jackie and watched the live airing of New York’s first game while considering Scott Hunter’s epic run the last four years. Cup; coming out, MVP award; cup again; then his marriage, his league record for hat tricks, his league record for goals scored in a single game, over a season, over a career. His status had reached untouchable. When he retired, which Shane thought could be next year or in another decade, the way he skated, the number twenty-one would never be used again.

He could only hope the same could someday be said for him.

At eight, Shane left the Pike’s. The apartment was dark, empty, still when he returned to it, the way it always was. In that dark, he stowed his things, drank a glass of water by the sink, undressed into his hamper, and showered. Then, still in the dark, he climbed into bed, slightly damp and totally naked, and let himself drift into sleep. Nothing came for a long time. He missed the quiet noisiness of the Ottawa nights at his parents’ home. The cricket chirps and the muffled noises of familiar streets.

And in the back of his mind, he yearned for the warmth of another person’s body. In secret corners, in the dark.

Because that was how it had to be.

Shane’s dreams were uneasy. They had optional practice today, and while Shane wouldn’t usually skip any opportunity to be in the rink, he wanted to pick up his parents from the airport, get them settled in the guest room. It was nice to get time to himself anyway. The night had been filled with the feeling of loneliness, the memories, however vague and forgettable, of a warm body against his own, and he woke hard and uncomfortable.

After a quick, necessary jerk off in the shower, Shane inspected his face in the mirror. Tired circles bloomed into place under his eyes. In the time it took him to get dry, his shoulders climbed to the stiff position they typically sat in, undone from the work of the hot water. The replay of his last two practices started up again, an obsessive check for any spot he could grab onto. But he felt foggy. Everything was out of focus.

He drove blindly to the airport, greeted his parents robotically and slid into the backseat when his father offered to take over, staring out the window. They got settled in at home. His dad made salad for lunch, feeding the indication while leaving room for that evening. In his own darkness, Shane vaguely looked forward to dinner.

Around six, he FaceTimed Rose for her opinion.

“What kind of restaurant is it?”

“Fancy.”

“Name?”

“Loon Song.”

Rose paused, her screen blurring as she left the call.

“It has two Michelin Stars,” she commented idly.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“Means fancy is a gentle descriptor. No dress code, but I’d go”—she reappeared, grinning—“with those grey slacks I bought you in August. The boutique ones. And your cyan shirt.”

“My what shirt?”

“The bright blue one.”

Nodding, Shane left his phone on the bed, pointing to the ceiling, and dug around in his closet until he found the items she was talking about. The pants fit fine, a little short when he sat down, but close enough to not need tailoring. He set his phone up on the night stand and let Rose look at him appraisingly.

“Tuck in your shirt. Do the brown belt and the brown shoes. What are you doing with your hair?”

It was easy, talking to Rose. Shane really felt like he could talk to her about anything. The worries, the nerves, the hockey, the loneliness. Sometimes he did.

Sometimes he didn’t.

Now, he felt her pinch and prod him from across state lines, let her voice guide him through getting ready, and kept her on the phone when he went to greet his parents in the living room, just so she could say hello. They left at five after seven with Shane driving. He needed something to do with his hands.

The restaurant was tucked into downtown near the river, a close-packed dining room beneath a tenement structure with most of the lights out. Dim, bare Edison-style bulbs hung from the ceiling, giving the entire room an ethereal, yellow glow. It was furnished by warm-toned furniture, art of reds and yellows, old china on hangers. The entire room smelled vaguely of tobacco and wood smoke and leather. It was intimate in a way that usually left Shane feeling exposed, but instead relaxed his body into his slightly heady excitement.

Rose was the only one who really understood what Shane meant about food. That interconnectedness, which became tactile only when he ate something put together with thought, care, love. Food like this was giving, and that’s what Shane loved about it. Being allowed to take something without guilt.

They were given small slips of paper as menus, mostly a reminder of courses to come, and his parents drank a chenin blanc recommended by the Eastern European-accented sommelier. There was recognition on her face when she turned to Shane, but she said nothing and accepted his order of sparkling water with the same smile she’d offered his parents. He thanked his past self for remembering to get cash at the ATM for tonight.

When she returned, wine in one hand and a glass of water in the other, Shane felt her eyes semi-dissecting him as he stared at a painting to his left, trying to decode the abstract lines and spirals.

“The chef would like to meet you, Mr. Hollander, after the last ticket.” Her voice was very low when she said it, and he turned with a flat look on his face, already most of the way towards declining. “He is an insufferable hockey fan. You are allowed to say no.”

Blinking at her, Shane nodded. “That’s fine. But I’m not signing anything.”

“He will be disappointed, then,” the sommelier laughed, waving the bottle. “This is yours. Wave for me when you need more. I will tell Ilya the good news.”

His parents made eye contact with him across the table. “That was very kind of you.”

“I guess.”

The food was… Shane was out of his depth. Incredible seemed the least of the words, but divine felt too romantic and sublime too try-hard. He settled on unreal for a while, eating a soup that was like every single good thing he’d ever tasted in his life. When the cake emerged, Shane’s heart kicked up, but the chef didn’t come. He paid his tab and found the sommelier, pressing an extra hundred into her hand as a double thanks.

“You are very talented,” she said. “Svetlana Vetrova.”

“You’re—” Shane said, shaking her hand, a little dazzled. “Holy shit, is your dad Sergei Vetrov?”

Her laugh was bright, teeth flashing in the yellow light. “Yes. Is why I cannot root for you too hard. Ilya, he has no such connection.”

Shane glanced to his parents by the door.

“You must go, yes? Ilya always takes too long to wipe down.” She raised a single finger, first towards him, then towards his parents. “I will get him.”

Unfortunately, whatever control Shane had over his heart in the last twenty minutes was gone and dusted, replaced by stuttering, belly-aching anxiety. There were pictures of Ilya’s life on the menu blog, pictures Shane didn’t look at because they made him somehow nervous, so he already knew Ilya was beautiful. But it was different in person.

Svetlana came back tugging a visibly irritated man behind her, snapping at him in Russian before setting him firmly in front of Shane.

“Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov,” Svetlana said, as if introducing two old friends.

Ilya glanced behind Shane, then smiled and extended a hand. “It is very nice to meet you. Food was good?”

“Yeah— yes. It was, uh, really good. I’ve never eaten like that before.”

“Good,” Ilya said, looking proud. “Is an honor to have Shane Hollander in my restaurant.”

“Thanks.” Shane felt that creeping edge of discomfort that always came with being recognized. Celebrity was his least favorite experience. How cameras snapped and people came to ask for things he didn’t really want to give. Signatures, pictures, hugs, handshakes. Wasn’t it bad enough he played a violent sport? People wanted to touch him outside of the ice, too?

Shaking Ilya’s hand had felt like a task until it squeezed gently; then, Shane had the absurd impulse to never let go. It was like he’d never been touched in his life, that moment. Like everything in the world led up to that and there he was, struck still and stupid, by the handshake of a man that was six hundred leagues away from his own. Beautiful. Beautiful. Even slightly flushed, damp across the collar of his chef’s jacket and the edge of his bandana, with a few spots on the front of his jacket, obviously quickly wiped with a wet cloth, beautiful. Once Shane noticed, he couldn’t unnoticed.

This is a person I wouldn’t mind touching me.

Shane tucked his hands into his pockets and tried his best not to look uncomfortable. But the awkward beat of silence didn’t fly over his head this time. He felt it as a painful dig in his chest, and backed up half a step, nodding to escape the room.

“Anyway, thanks, and it was— nice to meet you. I’ll, uh, yeah. Bye.”

Shane thought he should start teaching lessons in eloquence as he turned, grimacing to himself the whole way out the front door. The drive home was lively, filled with his mom’s slightly inebriated chatter after two hours and a bottle of wine. It was a comforting sound, just the hum and tenor of her voice, something Shane was immensely fond of. It brought them almost all the way home without a reminder of the deeply uncomfortable interaction that ended an otherwise lovely meal.

“Ilya was nice looking,” his mom said as they pulled onto his street.

“Yes,” Shane replied simply. He knew where this was going, and wanted very badly to cut it off at the pass.

“And he knows how to cook,” his father chimed in.

“Oh good, you’re both in on this.”

“We’re your parents,” Yuna replied, “we’re in on everything together.”

“We just want you to be happy, Shane.”

Shane swallowed down whatever truth wanted to rise. That happiness felt out of reach, that he was so lonely he could feel it like a second skin, that he wanted to crawl out of his own skin most days, because he hasn’t been touched by someone else in years; none of that was useful tonight, or ever.

“I’m okay, guys,” Shane said, meeting his mother’s eyes in the rearview before glancing at his father. They pulled into the garage and sat quietly. “Really. I’m fine.”

“Okay, honey.” The grasp of his mother’s hand on his shoulder felt good and terrible at once. “We trust you.”

They parted at the door, going their separate ways to dress down for bed. It was good, having his parents here for one more day. They would be there for the celebration or the commiseration, and it was exactly what he needed. He fell asleep and dreamed of a noisy, warm room, food that cured, the hum of gentle, Russian folksongs.

The game on Friday went surprisingly well. They pulled out a two-zero lead by the end of the second period, and while Toronto fought hard, Montreal fought harder. Shane got two in one period. A hat trick to start the season.

Not so bad at all.

The not-so-bad bled into the following month, as Shane led the charge on a clean sweep of home games going into their first road trip. Good morale, he believed, led to good play. It was good the morale was up, anyway, since they lost every away game and returned tied wins to losses on the leaderboard. October ended in a cold snap, and halfway through November, it was already snowing. Shane sat by his window staring at the rising tide of white and felt that growing tightness in his throat that came with the holidays. It started after Scott.

That kiss on the ice. Him and his boyfriend, announcing to the world, unafraid and unashamed.

Shane was undone by it.

So the holidays were hard. He wasn’t ready to come out, but he’d be lying if he didn’t sometimes think what it might be like to be with someone. This year his parents were flying to the Florida Keys for Christmas, enjoying somewhere warm as an early gift from Shane. Montreal felt much lonelier than usual.

Shane opened the booking menu. Across the top, a banner read “WE ARE OPEN FOR WESTERN CHRISTMAS. WE WILL BE CLOSED JAN 7.” There were at least a dozen seats available for Christmas Eve, and more still for Christmas Day.

Shane started the booking process, but paused. He wanted to go again, before he took Rose. To see if the magic was there every time. To make sure he had a real, natural lay of the land.

And, maybe, to see if Ilya would emerge from the kitchen again.

But he wouldn’t admit that to Rose. He just booked a table for two at the end of November, and a second table for two on Christmas Eve.

Rolling his eyes, he stowed his phone and got ready to head back to the rink for the game that night.

The game they lost by a margin so skinny, it almost sent them into overtime. Two-one, and the buzzer going a second before Shane’s goal slid into the net. The slow-motion replay showed as much, and he accepted it. But it stung, terribly. For the first time in a few years, Shane climbed into bed and let himself sulk.

He invited JJ to Loon Song with him in November, grateful that he had at least one friend who wanted to pretend they had space in their heads for fancy food.

They were sat in a subdued corner, sort of near the kitchen door, one bulb swinging loose above the rounded booth. It was nice to talk with JJ. He was a slightly better strategist than Hayden off the ice, and better in silences than most of the guys on the team. They ate and enjoyed and commented on the more complicated things. At some point, Shane just watched JJ chew with his eyes closed and did the same, grinning to himself. It was a completely different menu, but ended with the same medovik as the last meal, which flared the same, subtle warmth through Shane as before.

It was only half a surprise to see Ilya Rozanov step out of the kitchen; most of the shock was in the fact that he looked tentative, almost nervous as he glanced around. The bandana over his head was sweaty again at the edge, but his chef’s jacket was brightly white. Shane nudged JJ under the table and indicated with his head.

“That’s the chef.”

“That?” JJ laughed as Svetlana approached Ilya. Her hand dropped to his wrist; their fingers tangled and untangled. Something like disappointment churned in Shane’s gut. He ignored it. “You’re sure he can cook? He looks more like a supermodel than a chef.”

“I think it’s mostly just like, supervising. And stepping in when he’s needed. I dunno, though.”

Like he hadn’t spent the last months reading about Michelin Star kitchen structures, binging cooking shows, and reading Ilya’s blog. He knew words like chiffonade and sautéuse and felt awe at the work that went into each plate.

Across the room, Svetlana caught him staring and smiled at him.

Ilya followed her smile. The color drained from his face before he blushed very lightly across his cheekbones.

Shane waved. Ilya waved back.

Glancing at JJ, he saw that slightly incredible look Shane sometimes got when he did things like make friends—considering the last friend he made outside the bubble of hockey was Rose Landry, he sort of understood. But he and Ilya were barely acquaintances. The last conversation they had was a nightmare. Shane had never felt so awkward in his entire life; he did not want to repeat that.

Which was probably going to be difficult considering Ilya was suddenly just there, at their table side, left behind by a laugh as Svetlana disappeared into another part of the restaurant.

“Hello,” Ilya said, first to Shane, then turning to JJ. “Two Voyageurs. You will bring the whole team next time, Shane?”

Shane startled at the use of his first name, locked in on watching JJ and Ilya shake hands. It was the long hours spent being referred to as nothing but Hollander, days and days of it, that settled him into the habit of his first name being unrecognizable.

“Um, definitely not.” Shane tried to imagine his team here and shuddered.

Ilya’s hand was in front of him, a slightly awkward shake with Shane still seated, but he felt that gentle squeeze again and the touch me forever feeling came back with force. All this tired tension confused him. He was made unsure by the smirk Ilya held back with shaking lips, still visible enough.

Pulling a chair from an empty table to theirs, Ilya sat with one leg crossed over the other.

“Hockey players are not known for complicated food,” Ilya said, grinning. It was the sort of smile that reminded Shane of the Cheshire Cat. Taunting and playful, but slightly dangerous. Shaped like a dare.

“No,” JJ said. “But I like good food.”

Shane stayed silent, nodding to agree.

“And you?” Ilya said. The stare was piercing, eyes slightly shadowed in the rounded light, dimmed down to make the color indecipherable, and therefore mysterious. “You are, eh?— discerning palate?”

“Not really.”

JJ excused himself to the bathroom, which Ilya directed as a kind, softened gesture.

Then, Shane found they were much closer. Ilya had the chair right to the edge of the table, elbows on the polished top and leaning towards him. While Shane’s hands were useless in his lap, his body filled in the gap between them to create mere inches of space; and he allowed it. The restaurant was clearing, he knew the people who frequented these eateries didn’t care about hockey in that rabid, unsympathetic way, he trusted the occlusion of the booth, maybe he was desperate and more than a little horny.

“I just… like when food is cared for. It makes me feel like, connected to the people who got it here.”

Ilya smiled, surprised and—dare Shane say it—fond. “Is very poetic for hockey. You have not had many concussions, then.”

“Just two.”

“Good. You have a good brain, Shane Hollander.”

“Thanks.”

Ilya leaned back, but touched Shane’s arm lightly as he went, casual against the back of his chair. “You like the food then.”

“Yes,” Shane said quickly, nodding. “Very much. It’s— I dunno. I don’t think I’m qualified to even describe it.”

The sound of Ilya’s laugh would haunt him. The sight of Ilya leaving was worse. He pushed up from his seat as JJ returned, stowing the chair back in its home, and gave a performative little bow.

“Sveta will come now. Thank you both.”

Then he swept back through the kitchen’s double doors with a hard shout in Russian.

They split the tab. Shane left Svetlana another large tip; she kissed him on the cheek.

“Good luck against Boston next week,” she called, as Shane was, once again, the last to leave the restaurant. “You will need it, I think.”

He just gave a single, banal wave and exited onto the cold, late November street with JJ, trailing on purpose to stay a little longer in the warmth of Loon Song.

The days pass more slowly. Shane didn’t go very long without thinking about Ilya sitting at his table, laughing at something Shane had made unintentionally funny, shaking his hand. He wondered what Ilya looked like outside of the kitchen in real life. A lot of time was lost reading about his career from older Art Culinaire articles he could scavenge with some money and some sleuthing. In terms of chefs, Ilya wasn’t anymore or less famous than most, though in the cooking world, he was no one to scoff at. Moscow to Berlin to Paris, a career under a chef Shane had seen judge cooking shows, and now the main name for a restaurant just about to hit its fifth birthday. The menus had bled into each other over time, but the diners who could afford to go religiously claimed a unique experience every meal.

Shane believed them. He believed that, despite only meeting him twice, Ilya was absolutely creative enough to pull something like that off. It fascinated him enough to open the booking and stare at “Chef’s Table. Friday. Two hour maximum.”

He checked his calendar. He had a midday game this Saturday. There was room. Two days from now he could be sitting in the kitchen, watching Ilya Rozanov cook.

That felt—

He clicked out of the page, locked his phone, and spent the rest of the week thinking about it, then the month leading up to the Christmas break.

The Monday before Christmas found him bleary in the grocery store, picking up some last minute requests—Coke, red wine, whole fat yogurt, “And protein powder that doesn’t taste like rabbit shit, Shane, please. For me. For Christmas.”—before he had to grab Rose from the airport the following day. Grocery shopping was easy. It would at least make the time pass. Monday was evening practice. Tuesday, Rose and then the last game before the break, which she was coming to. She’d sit in Shane’s box and the tabloids would speculate about them getting back together, and they’d put out another comments-off statement and the world would, blessedly, move on.

But he’d rather have her than no one, as an understatement.

Checking his phone, basket in his other hand and head down, he walked smack into someone rounding a corner into the chip aisle. They clattered against each other and both stumbled back.

“What the fuck, can’t you—“

A nightmare. I’m having a nightmare.

“Oh, hello.”

Shane was frozen, sort of, staring at Ilya; Ilya, who stood across from him next to a large rack of potato chips like it was the most normal thing in the world. Beautiful with a bandana on his head, all white jacket and black pants, rag and front stained and spotted—but tragic and ephemeral outside of it. His hair was honey colored and curly, shagging down around his face and neck. While washed out in the fluorescents of the supermarket, Shane could tell Ilya’s eyes were hazel—mostly green, some blue, some brown. He was taller than Shane remembered, taller than him by a few inches. JJ was right.

He looked like a fucking supermodel.

The smile on his face only grew the longer Shane stood unmoving.

“I have stunned you.”

“No— I mean. Sort of. You shop here?”

Ilya frowned at him, looking around the co-op. “I live above the restaurant. This is closest.”

“Oh.”

Ilya flashed his eyes down to Shane’s basket. “Having a guest?”

“Yes. What? How—“

“You do not drink. So unless you cook with fifty dollar wine, you’re having someone over, or going somewhere.”

“I drink.”

“Not with dinner.” Ilya smirked, like he knew something secret about Shane. “You’re, what, dry during the season?”

Shane glanced at Ilya’s basket. It was mostly vegetables, some paper wrapped meat products. This was personal food. It would go in Ilya’s house, his apartment, which Shane now knew was above the restaurant. It seemed— odd, definitely risky, that Ilya would tell him that. But Ilya edged closer.

“I played hockey once, Shane. I know the myths.”

He continued forward, past Shane, but paused at the end of the aisle, examining something in that idle way people did while they waited. Heart thumping, Shane scanned briefly for the chips Rose asked for and added them to his basket. It would be easy to turn and keep walking away down the aisle, but instead he joined Ilya in a slow meander through the store.

“Why do you come to Loon Song? Other than poetry.”

“I dunno. It’s nice in there. Warm, sort of. And I like that the food isn’t the same, and I don’t have to pick. Plus you cook a lot with fish. It’s a better protein for athletes, pretty lean—“

“You are all hockey up there, huh?” Ilya asked, flicking the air next to Shane’s temple.

“Mostly,” Shane chuckled.

The impatience only lasted a moment before Ilya rolled his eyes and laughed back.

If Shane didn’t know any better, he would say the next expression was extremely fond.

“But you like food.” The tone bordered on bored, but Shane could feel Ilya watching him as he slowly, dutifully picked out tomatoes.

“Yeah. I mean, sort of. It’s hard to explain.”

“I clearly do not have another place to be.”

Shane smiled as he weighed a grapefruit in his hand, then took the one Ilya held out confidently.

“I like that it’s something you can do for yourself and others. I like that eating makes you feel like you’re a part of something. Like,” Shane said, picking up a bok choy from the refrigerated bin. Other shoppers moved slowly around him in the early morning. “Someone picked this. Someone else cleaned it up, then someone else put it in a box. Another person drove it, and one of these employees unloaded it. Now I’m going to buy it”—Shane added a few more to a plastic bag, then put them in his basket—“and all that work will be for a purpose.”

“You are very pragmatic.”

“I’ve been called worse.” Shrugging, he followed Ilya to the checkout. They emptied their baskets, Shane first, Ilya second—when Ilya put down the barricade between their orders, Shane waited until he was totally unloaded to lift the bar and tuck it behind both.

“Shane.”

“For listening to me on my soap box.”

“No.” He put a new bar down, glaring at Shane. “I can buy my own food.”

It hit Shane sort of weakly, the mistake he’d made. Sometimes he forgot his yearly stipend was semi-public knowledge. And even if it wasn’t, the brand deals and appearances were all the same regardless. It was easy to assume Shane was swimming in money, which was why the gesture was meaningless. But he forgot, as he sometimes did, meaningless to him was often too much for others.

“I didn’t—“ Shane sighed. “Sorry. Just— wanted to thank you. For the good food.”

Ilya looked at him, eyes slightly narrowed as the conveyer belt stalled between the person paying and Shane’s order.

“Fine,” Ilya said, lifting the bar again to stow it. “But you will come to chef’s table next Friday.”

They got their individual bags of groceries—Ilya bagged neatly and quickly into his own reusable tote and a paper bag for Shane—and walked out to the sidewalk together.

“Do you want a lift home?”

Ilya stared around at the slush on the ground.

“Okay.”

The drive was quiet. Shane wanted to turn on music, but hated the idea of interrupting something so serene with noise. Every time he glanced at Ilya, Ilya was looking away, out the window, his grocery bag between his feet. They parked in an empty spot on the street outside Loon Song, traffic moving lightly past them. The street was empty of pedestrians, everyone inside to avoid the snow. The air in the car started turning cold the second Shane killed the engine.

“You are free next Friday?”

“I”—Shane dragged the sound out as he checked his calendar. Practice, 4-6. Tape review, 6:15-8—“am after eight. When's the third seating?”

“Nine.”

Shane felt hot all over. His skin could all melt off and he’d still be blazing warm. Maybe it was hypothermia, though there were some steps he’d definitely missed on the way to ‘so hot you want to peel your skin off’ cold. It was the way Ilya stared at him then, a smile growing then suppressed, growing then suppressed. Finally, he tore his eyes away, staring down the street.

“I will see you at nine, yes?”

“I’ll make the reservation now.”

“No, it will not work.”

Shane blinked at him. “What? Why?”

“I block the time out while you paid.” Ilya shrugged. “Sometimes it is very popular. Mostly with women. They think I will be sexy yelling chef.”

Shane’s cheeks flamed hotter.

“Is always so disappointing,” Ilya tutted, “because I do not yell very much.”

Grinning, Shane nodded. “You don’t seem like the yelling type.”

The smile Ilya wore faltered, then returned anew, but different. His eyes were tight.

“That is kind.” Ilya shifted to grip his bag and the door handle at the same time. “Friday, Shane Hollander.”

And then he was shutting the door and walking to the alley side of his building with practiced efficiency, long legs swallowing the pavement. Shane felt dazed. He wanted to memorize the feeling of Ilya in his car.

Instead, he drove home to ignore this building crush in private.

It was in bed that night that he first thought of Ilya Rozanov in a way he knew he shouldn't. The casual, but certain, grip of his hand, the smile, the way emotion flitted in and out of his face at will. Shane was hypnotized and mesmerized by Ilya's voice, which sounded different after service than it did in the morning at the grocery store. The closed off turn of his gaze at the end of their conversation, how his insistence had felt more like an offering than a command. Undone, thoroughly, by a man he'd only met three times and said less than a hundred words to. It was magnetism, maybe. The complex pulling of a man whose artistry was meant to become a part of you, however briefly.

And because Rose was Rose, she sniffed out his secret yearning like a well-paid private eye. Climbing into his car, she stared momentarily at his leg doing volleys in the foot well, then turned expectantly towards him. Her eyes were piecing.

Sometimes Shane still hoped he'd find it in him to fall in love with Rose, for simplicity's sake. He felt uncomplicated joy in her presence—he knew she would be perfect. Already she'd slotted into the gap in his life meant for something like that, but despite being aware of her factual beauty and magnanimity, it never turned into that. It only ever felt good, but not right.

“What?”

“You're bouncing like you did a line of coke,” Rose said blithely, buckling her belt as Shane steered away from the airport. “Which I doubt very much, so who is he?”

“Who is who?”

He felt Rose roll her eyes through the sigh she let out, and despite himself, grinned.

The smile earned him a sharp smack to the arm, but it was worth it for the breathless laughter that filled the front seat moments after.

“You like someone. Tell.”

Shaking his head, Shane glanced at Rose at the next nearest stoplight. She pinned him with her most urgent stare, the one that beat information out of him without a word or movement.

“I mean, I told you he was hot,” Shane muttered, turning away with a flush building.

“No! Oh my god, Shane, please—” Rose leaned into his space, smiling gleefully. “I’ll be the best wingman, I swear. I’ll talk you up so hard, you have no idea.”

“Rose—”

“Shane, this is serious.”

They drove the rest of the way to Shane’s apartment laughing and chatting, with Rose ribbing him more than a few times about the chef of Shane’s dreams, which was more than a little embarrassing. But he took it, because he loved Rose, and seeing her pad around his apartment in socked feet felt better than walking into the apartment alone. They ate lunch together, and loaded into the car after Rose changed into more stadium appropriate clothes.

“Is Jackie coming?”

“You can always text and ask.”

“I dunno. She’s your friend.”

“Rose.”

“Fine, fine…” Then a little cheer as Rose stepped out of the car. “I’m gonna bring her and the kiddos to the box. That’s okay, right?”

“It’s your box.”

When he glanced up from the ice, Ruby and Jade stood at the window waving so hard it looked like their tiny hands were going to fall off. He tapped Hayden with his stick and pointed; he dutifully ignored the redness in Hayden’s eyes when he grinned back at Shane.

The game went well. Shane got pummeled into the boards and earned a two minute penalty for roughing after, just trying to get the Tampa defense off himself. An argument broke out between Hayden and two refs, and soon Hayden was sitting next to him in the penalty box.

“Nice going,” Shane muttered.

“It was a bullshit call. Dimman should’ve gotten a major.”

“Didn’t mean you needed to get a minor.”

Just before Shane left the bench, he heard Hayden mutter “Unsportsmanlike conduct my ass,” and grinned.

Pushing harder after his bin time won them the game four-three, an impressive showing against a team that had, clearly, upped their game since the previous year. In the locker room, he checked his phone—Jackie wants to have dinner. Theirs or yours?—and figured it was easier to wrangle four kids at their own house than his small-ish, inner city apartment. Plus, he liked watching Rose move through his life like she belonged there.

Christmas Eve morning woke Shane with an anxiety attack. A hot shower calmed it enough to sit with Rose through breakfast and do some mid-day window shopping against mostly closed storefronts. They were stopped often enough for Shane to start feeling the creeping panic bubbling back up, and that was the other good thing about Rose, another small superpower. She read Shane like a book worth perusing. They made it back to the apartment before Shane had a chance to really melt down in public, and scrolled through Twitter while he laid face down on the couch for a while, mind whirling over the dinner. The menu was posted.

He could check. Read Ilya’s words—it had steadied him the two times before.

“Couple pictures of us. Some speculation. Nothing crazy yet, but you should get that post drafted.”

Shane groaned into the pillows.

An hour before they had to leave, Shane went through the menu with Rose, who was much more aware of what food meant than Shane thought he probably ever would be. It made the idea of going with her that much more exciting. She would know how to appreciate something that he only ever guessed at, and maybe he’d glean that knowledge by osmosis.

Loon Song was the least busy Shane had ever seen it on Christmas Eve, but everything else was the same. Svetlana approached Shane at the door, hand extended as usual.

“Shane Hollander. You are a regular now.” Winking at him, Shane watched her eyes move from Shane’s face to Rose’s, and the recognition, shock, surprise, and then a bright pink flush all spread across her face.

“Rose Landry,” Shane said, gesturing back to Rose, who grinned and extended her hand, because Rose wouldn’t be Rose if she didn’t act like her celebrity status was meaningless. “Svetlana Vetrova. Remember, I was telling you about that Boston goalie?”

“Oh,” Rose said, nodding as she shook Svetlana’s hand. “Yes! Your dad was awesome. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“It is— yes. You, too. Wow. Um—” It was an assumption, of course, since he’d only seen Svetlana in the context of Loon Song, but he was certain she was not someone who got flustered easily. Now, however, she looked wildly around, gesturing for them to follow her, and sat them with little preamble. “Will be back with wine list. Excuse me.”

After a beat of silence that featured Rose watching Svetlana walk away with her head cocked to one side, Shane cleared his throat.

“I think you broke the sommelier.”

“I think the sommelier broke me.”

By Shane’s count, Svetlana spent five minutes more with Rose than she’d spent with his parents or JJ, and Shane knew JJ wasn’t bad looking. Feeling somewhat like a third wheel as the two women chatted and exchanged little, lingering looks, he steered his eyes towards the kitchen, doors visible, inside hidden. In one week, he’d be led through those doors to watch Ilya Rozanov in his element. The shows he watched online were mostly staged, mostly scripted. This was a real kitchen, and Shane had nothing to compare it to but hockey.

“Ilya says hello,” Svetlana said as she left with Rose’s order, pausing long enough to touch Shane’s shoulder. “He looks forward to next week.”

Rose’s brows sprung up, and Shane kicked himself for not telling her ahead of time. Leaving a bomb in her wake, Shane waited for Rose to speak, fiddling with the edge of his menu.

“Next week, hmm?”

“Chef’s table.” Shane waved her momentary surprise away. “We ran into each other at the co-op. He let me buy his groceries on the condition that I come back next week. For the chef’s table.”

“New Year’s Day?” Rose scanned down the menu, but he knew she wasn’t reading it. Mostly looking away to give Shane a reprieve from eye contact. “He’s committed, I’ll give him that much.”

Dinner passed in slow, steady enjoyment, a prolonged satiation that left Shane warm through his spine and up out of his face. Between courses, he and Rose talked about everything and nothing: Her new series, and the costars who were annoying her most; the baby her previous costar just had, and that Rose secretly thought was ugly; how the season was shaping up; but all talk came back to the food, the restaurant, and the chef tucked neatly behind two swinging double doors. What he looked like, what he was like in person, how Shane felt drawn to him, quietly. What he didn’t say, because he didn’t know how to say it without feeling like a dork, was that in each meeting, Shane felt more and more like Ilya was someone his body was waiting for, and his mind had yet to catch up to it. For all the hesitation he presented, part of him wondered if he wouldn’t do anything Ilya asked. That alone frightened him, so he kept it locked up tight, because for all intents and purposes, Ilya was a stranger, and Shane was, well, Shane.

“You’re hot,” Rose said softly. “And people know it. The worst he can say is no. Not like you’d ever have to see him again.”

“Yeah, but…” Shane glanced again at the kitchen. “It seems rude while he’s at work.”

“Do you think he’s really a pleasantries for politeness kind of guy?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay. So,” Rose said, shrugging, “cut yourself some slack. And you have to taste this wine with the lamb. Svetlana was right. It’s divine.”

The cake left the kitchen and Rose fell silent, eating the skinny slice with slow, methodical precision, eyes closed. Her hand stayed held aloft, a silent signal for Shane to let the quiet stay. He watched her with a stone in his throat. Swallowing past it seemed impossible.

Everything was, sometimes, too stressful. Too big. Shane just wanted to be allowed to exist in the world as himself, and that was already hard enough as a non-white hockey player. For what it was worth, Shane wasn’t exactly not looking. He wasn’t celibate—the last couple years notwithstanding—and every day, it became clearer that Shane couldn’t do the alone-but-not-lonely lie anymore. But finding someone who was okay with being a secret? Impossible, really. Shane wasn’t sure how Scott managed to convince his husband to do it for any length of time. Most people balked at the idea. A one-night, no names exchanged deal was so much easier, even if it left Shane hungrier in the end. If he’d stopped looking recently, it was just the result of trying and failing too many times in the row, and not wanting to put himself through that anymore.

He didn’t think that was exactly a sin.

So he ate his cake in silence and watched the kitchen door and had to swallow hard against the impulse to grin and wave when Ilya finally pushed from between the doors, sweeping his bandana off to reveal flattened, sweaty curls plastered to his forehead and temple. Panning his eyes across the dining room, Ilya caught Shane staring and, of course, grinned, lofting a hand at him. Once his eyes shifted one seat over, however, the expression turned hard, almost steely, though his smile never dropped.

“Look,” Shane said, breaking their code of silence as Ilya made his way through diners departing after another night of satisfaction. Looking over her shoulder, she caught sight of Ilya and choked on her medovik, wide eyes turned to Shane.

“Okay,” she whispered hoarsely, sipping her water. “Hot was an understatement, I think.”

Dropping into a chair pulled, again, from another table, Ilya joined their table with his arms crossed comfortably over his chest. “You have hypnotized my sommelier, Rose Landry.”

“I’m good at that,” she chirped back, extending her hand towards Ilya. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re incredible, really. I can’t believe I’ve never been here before.”

Sitting back in his seat, Shane watched Ilya and Rose chat, keeping his eyes more on Ilya than his friend. Beneath the table, he felt a tap against the back, outside heel of the shoe nearest Ilya, once and then twice, before the pressure remained, and Shane didn’t move away—he pressed back. It was nice, sitting there with the two of them and being asked nothing. Rose lauded Ilya’s cooking, and Ilya, for his part, took it with a humility that felt out of place but purposeful. Their eyes met a few times, and Rose maybe took some sort of hint, excusing herself to the bathroom.

“She is nice,” Ilya said softly. “Svetlana would not shut up about her.”

The tap against his shoe returned; he tapped back, smiling. “Yeah, she’s sort of— just like that. A people person.”

“Nice for you.”

Examining Ilya was difficult, because all Shane wanted to do was gawk. But if he was honest, Ilya looked almost… angry? Certainly less smiling and cheerful than he’d been a month ago, or in the grocery store earlier in the week. Disappointed, maybe. Shane wasn’t sure, despite Ilya wearing his expressions like clothing. He’d never been very good at getting a tight read on people. Still, something was off.

“I mean, I guess,” Shane said, shrugging. “We’re both pretty busy, but it’s nice to see her when she can sneak away here and there.”

For a second, a long second that felt more like minutes or hours or maybe even long, sunless days, Ilya just stared at Shane. Repeatedly, he looked right on the edge of speech. But just as he opened his mouth again, Rose returned, smiling apologetically at Shane.

“I’d like to talk to Svetlana again before we go,” Rose said, glancing around.

With a little screech of wood on wood, Ilya stood and nodded. “I will get her for you. Enjoy your Christmas, Shane. And Miss Landry”—Ilya extended his hand again, suddenly the picture of hospitality—“safe travels.”

It wasn’t like Shane was waiting to shake Ilya’s hand. It wasn’t something he expected from their interactions.

But it still burned with shallow grief when Ilya walked back towards the kitchen without so much as a gesture towards him. Waiting for Ilya to reappear didn’t do any good for him either, and Shane waited near the door in a foul mood, and took that foul mood with him home. They sat on the couch, watched a Christmas movie, and fell asleep with legs tangled to wake a few hours later with cricks in both their necks and crawl to bed. Shane laid awake for a long while, watching his clock tick from three to four with a frustration in his bones that didn’t have anything to do with loneliness or the holidays or Rose, but instead himself. After all, Rose was right, wasn’t she? The worst that could happen, were he to ask Ilya to something as casual as drinks—easily transformed into friendship, at the very least, if Ilya turned out to be somehow unsafe—is that Ilya could say no. That he wasn’t interested, or whatever people said when they wanted to be polite but not so polite it gave a second opening.

He opened his phone, resolved to a long day with little sleep, and pulled up his email, looking for something Farah said she’d send him earlier in the week.

But at the top, sent at two-fifty-two a.m.: Regarding Your Reservation (01.01; 21,00)

Shane read it slowly twice.

What?

And then a third time. He’d agreed to come Friday, hadn’t he? And without mentioning others, Shane assumed that it was meant to be just him. After all, it would be sort of rude to pull up on a hand-written—or in this case, spoken aloud—invitation with a group of people. Secretly, Shane was looking forward to being alone at the restaurant for the first time. Doing it in the kitchen, where he didn’t have to wait until the end of the meal to stare at Ilya and inevitably make a fool of himself was all the more exciting.

He pushed down the tension in his chest and went through the motions of trying to fall asleep again. It worked about as well as he expected it to, several hours of tossing and turning and waking to check an email that stayed resolutely empty. When he rose in the morning to exchange small gifts with Rose, breakfast and a Christmas movie while they solved a puzzle from his dad, still nothing. He powered his phone off by midday and focused all his attention on Rose for the limited time she still had there.

Checking his email before bed was just good practice. His phone needed to be on for the next day regardless, to make sure he got up early enough to get Rose to her hotel before her call time and to the rink with enough time to set up before practice.

The phone number stared at Shane. Sveta, Shane assumed, was Svetlana—and that was easier to pay attention to than the Montreal area code giving Shane eyes from the email body.

He archived the email before he could make a dumb decision with it, rolled over, and squeezed his eyes shut until he fell asleep.

The week past noisily, games and phone calls with Rose, his parents, waiting for the next opportunity he’d have to see Ilya, not daring to text him since Shane was mostly a coward and always unsure. A game loss on Sunday led into a devastating defeat on Thursday, and by Friday morning, Shane had mostly lost his sense of taste and smell from the dark fog that followed him through this year’s piss-poor showing. They were going into the new year with more losses than wins. Shane felt distant from hockey in a way he hadn’t felt before, lagging behind every pass, his own movements sluggish and his teammates’ worse by far. They spent Friday practice running progressively harder and harder drills, until Shane was stumbling into the viewing room weak-kneed and a little dizzy. How he was meant to get through dinner in a few hours, exhausted as he was, he wasn’t sure.

But he’d promised, and it was too late to cancel without being rude—and paying the cover fee anyway—so he watched the tapes with Theriault and listened to the assistant coaches bitch about LaForge’s sloppy technique and offered his own insight where and when he could, but mostly, he was getting dressed in his head.

The perfunctory shower he’d done at the rink was enough to rinse the sweat and gear-stink off, but at home, he was more thorough, scrubbing his hair and brushing his teeth. He had a feel for the restaurant now, and opted for all black, loose fitting, slightly casual, but nice enough to not be turned away at the door. Rushing around for his keys, wallet, phone, anything else he might need—nothing—got him out the door in enough time to get there five minutes early, and he was able to slip through the door and ask for Svetlana before he was able to lose his nerve and just go home.

Ilya was leant back against a little table tucked into the back corner of the kitchen, watching his team work without comment. The doors, thankfully, opened to the service counter, so Shane barely had to make eye contact with anyone as Svetlana ushered him into the room, grinning widely.

“Best behavior, malyshi,” Svetlana called to the room at large.

It startled Shane a little, to hear the resounding, “Da, Sveta,” called back, but his eyes were locked on Ilya, who was, in turn, staring just as hard.

“Connors,” Ilya called, pushing off from the table. Then Shane was being seated while Ilya handled something unintelligible down the line, and Svetlana perched herself lightly on the chair next to him.

“That,” she whispered, pointing to a tall, dark haired man near the end of the line, “is Marly—Cliff. Very loud, from Boston, sous chef. Connors flops between cooking fish and appetizers every night, which works for him. Very flexible.”

As she moved down the line, Shane caught Ilya glancing at him whenever he rounded to the cold station and back. Sveta promised Shane a soda water and patted his shoulder as she left, and Shane settled in to watch.

It was, like Shane thought, sort of magical. Dishes flew out of the kitchen, each one perfect. Shane was served last before the tickets moved on, which he didn’t mind. It was almost like being fed already, the smells and sounds of the kitchen, how Ilya moved like he knew exactly where he needed to be in the seconds before he was there. Casual shouts, rowdy laughter, and Ilya’s voice, lower and more precise than ever, accent weighty between Russian words and English.

“Is good?” Ilya asked when he slid Shane his first main, a piece of rabbit over a bed of polenta, some sort of cream-colored sauce over the top.

“As always,” Shane replied, nodding.

Tipping his head to one side, Ilya smiled in that small, pleased way Shane had learned to look for, and glanced around. “Always worth checking. Be back.”

Kitchens, Shane thought, were more like a hockey rink than he’d originally let himself think. Ilya looked totally self-possessed, calling and checking, touching and fiddling. Every five minutes, Shane watched him cross to the sink and wash his hands briefly with soap and water, then come back to taste or touch or fuss again. Everyone moved with innate knowledge. Not one gap was left unfilled. If they ever had a bad service, Shane thought he’d never know. Ilya swept in so cleanly to pick up the pieces—and Marly, sometimes, now Shane knew that was his job, too—and Shane was right. Even when Ilya got frustrated at his greenest cook, a kid that looked at Ilya with as much awe as he did fear, all Ilya did was step a little closer and demonstrate, watch, and nod when Haas did it right.

“Good,” he heard Ilya say loudly, clapping his hands together. “Every time like that, yes?”

“Yes,” Haas replied. “Thank you.”

The kitchen quieted as cake was cut and served, and Ilya sent everyone out with a loud “Thank you,” that was clearly a dismissal.

It was his first time sitting with Ilya in his restaurant alone.

“You did not want preview?”

Shane smiled down at his cake. “I actually went into this one surprised. I usually read the menu ahead of time.”

“I figure,” Ilya replied, tapping his shoe against Shane’s again under the table. “You seemed nervous.”

Nodding, Shane glanced at his watch. It was late, closing in on eleven, and his long day was starting to drag on him. But he didn’t want to leave. Not with Ilya right there, within his reach.

What had happened to him over the months? Meeting Ilya triggered some hidden cascade of want in Shane that he wasn’t sure how to reconcile against the knowledge that, on the one hand, Ilya was kilometers out of his league and far too busy for him, anyway, and on the other, everything Shane really wanted was off to one end of a very, very long table. A table that held sharks and piranhas and all sorts of other obstacles Shane wasn’t entirely sure how to surmount. Ilya watched him, eating something that looked a lot like leftovers shoved onto a serving plate.

“You did not bring your girlfriend?” Ilya asked. The question came with hesitation, a palpable nervousness that twitched into the air.

“Who, Rose?” Shane asked, quickly swallowing a mouthful of cake. Really, he should’ve passed on the final course, since it’ll be three slices of cake in a little over a month, and he needed dense nutrients going into the last bit of the regular season, but… “We’re not— no.”

“Ah. Sveta will be happy to hear.”

“I’m pretty sure Rose is straight, but if anyone could win her over, I think it’s Svetlana.”

“God,” Ilya said on a groan. “Don’t let her hear you. I will never hear the end of her.”

Their laughter lit up the little alcove where Shane sat. Time passed with quiet conversation that was mostly Shane asking questions like “Why cooking?” and “Why Montreal?” that Ilya answered with long pauses and little hesitations and something that, to Shane, almost looked like true honesty. Ilya asked things in response, until twenty minutes passed and the kitchen crew came in to finish cleaning and Ilya, sighing, stood with his and Shane’s plates.

“I will walk you out,” Ilya said. “Wait, please.”

Shane ambled to the kitchen doors, blazer and jacket slung over one arm. He’d pushed his sleeves up during dinner, and slowly unrolled them so they wouldn’t bunch beneath his coat once he got it on again. Everything felt sliding and still, and Shane wanted more than ever to ask Ilya to do something; to open the door to where being touched would be allowed, and even encouraged. But they walked to the door together, restaurant empty and lights dimmed down.

“You will come back?” Ilya asked, a little too close to Shane for casual company—not that Shane was complaining.

“Yeah. I have a few weeks on the road, and we’re about to hit playoffs. Plus there’s the All Star Game in Chicago at the end of the month I have to go to, so it, y’know, might be a while.” Shane huffed, watching Ilya’s brow climb in amusement. “You asked.”

“I did. Well, you may always ask for hint. You have my number now.”

Shane extended his hand with a grin. “Ilya.”

“Shane.”

Shake. Squeeze. Release. Blush. Then Shane was out the door, halfway to his car, before he realized he didn’t pay. So distracted by Ilya, he didn’t pay or leave or tip, just let himself get shuttled out the door by a beautiful man with talented hands.

Shane did go back. He booked a reservation two days after they returned for their road trip, which was five days before he had to fly out to Chicago. The chef’s table was as surreal an experience as before; Ilya just as good company. He did it again, four weeks later; and again, two months after that, smack in the middle of playoffs, when he should’ve been focused on bulking through protein and instead couldn’t think of anything except watching Ilya fix plates sent by less talented, shakier hands.

They were knocked out of playoffs in a shoot-out with Columbus that took Shane by surprise, and he flew home feeling empty and aggrieved.

Since the season was over for the Voyageurs, Shane accepted Svetlana’s recommendation for a glass of wine and watched Ilya from his position at the tucked in table. The liminal quality of the kitchen hadn’t faded, and Ilya still seemed more god than man when he commanded it, but there was something a little sharper in the air between them now. When Ilya leaned back, Shane leaned forward, and vice versa. Magnets, attraction—whatever it was, Shane wanted to chase it down and hold it close.

“Are you free tonight?” Shane asked, scraping the tines of his fork lightly across the surface of the medovik on his plate.

For the first time in months, Shane watched Ilya’s face fall in something almost like disappointment. “Tonight, no. Sveta’s birthday is tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“Later this week?”

Shane shook his head. This was the problem with hockey. There was always somewhere to be.

“I’m flying to LA for an ad campaign and then straight to Ottawa.” Sighing, Shane kicked himself for filling his summer so tightly. “And it’s just sort of nonstop from there.”

“Ah.” Ilya stared at him. “Summer will be very boring without you.”

“You called me boring four times the other day.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, barking out his laughter like Shane was used to now, loud and sharp and very him, “I guess so.”

Swallowing hard, Shane sighed. “Some other time then.”

“You will be back in Montreal when?”

“August.”

June to August seemed and felt like a lifetime, but Shane knew what his life was and how it scattered around him. Everything was sharp edges, and left him with almost no room to breathe. He wanted to chop down the frames that kept his bank account full. It was the same substructure that kept his home empty. They sat in comfortable silence as Shane finished his cake and Ilya finished his dinner, and once the plates were empty and the kitchen staff came filing back in, Shane nodded and stood, waiting for Ilya by the door.

“Let me walk you out.” He shot something to a member of the kitchen in Russian, who shot back just as quickly, and laughter recommenced. It was incredibly light here, despite the fluorescents overhead and the juxtaposition of chromed metal against the warm teak and yellow dining room. Shane liked it more, felt the sanitary nature of it was somehow more forthright, and the immediacy of it all made the food taste, if possible, better. The walk to the door was quiet. The same Russian folksongs played softly in the background, adding to the dreamlike quality of the restaurants atmosphere.

Ilya took Shane’s hand when offered, shook it, then used that hand to pull him in and closer. Breath caught, well outside the margin of error for second-guessing, Shane waited with his head turned slightly up for Ilya to move or speak or do anything, anything at all.

Touch me! His mind screamed. Touch me! Touch me! Touch me!

Ilya released their clasped hands to cup both around Shane’s face, and slowly, carefully, kissed him. Feather light before Shane pressed back in response, kissing more with his body than with his mouth. His hands gripped Ilya’s jacket, his feet shuffled them even closer. It wasn’t a kiss like he’d ever been given before. Pressing Shane’s mouth open with the flat of his thumb, Ilya worked his tongue into Shane’s mouth and let out one sharp breath through his nose, kissing him harder. It was a test of Shane’s own self-control that he left his hands firmly on Ilya’s sides, fisted in the thick cotton of his coat; he tried to remember to breathe, how to kiss back properly, what he should do with his tongue, with his eyes, with his face. Everything moved so quickly, breath stuttering as Ilya’s fingers threaded through his hair, fisting whatever longer strands he could find. Their mouths moved, Ilya choked on his breath once Shane caught his bottom lip between his teeth, and Shane stuttered himself when Ilya pulled at the hair caught in his hands.

When Ilya pulled away, his eyes were wild and he was grinning so hard, Shane could see the little wrinkles around his eyes that usually weren’t visible. It was beautiful, an awe-striking look.

“I will text you,” Ilya said, backing away to break Shane’s hold on him. “August?”

“Sure, yeah,” Shane replied, touching his mouth before he had the sense not to do something so embarrassing in front of Ilya. It didn’t seem to matter—whatever feelings of congratulations Ilya was presenting himself with, he was right to. Shane was unanimously and unambiguously into Ilya Rozanov. “Yeah. August. And— yes. Text.”

“Goodbye, Shane,” Ilya said.

The door shut behind him. Shane floated home.

He flew to LA for Cartier, then to Ottawa for his parents. To New York for Reebok, to London for a trip he’d promised his parents five years ago, to LA again as Rose’s date to her series premiere, back to Ottawa for a blessed seven full days alone at the cottage, then finally, his parents drove him to Montreal at the end of August, just in time for pre-season training to start. It felt good, being back on the ice. Barely anyone was back from break this early, but Shane and Hayden hit the ice a few times the first week he was back, and Shane thought they’d probably have a real shot at it this year. Maybe.

The response was, thankfully, almost instantaneous. Good news for Shane's thumb nail, which he'd been chewing off. He knew he could've texted Ilya, that it would've been easier and even, likely, more appropriate now, all things considered; but he'd been so busy over the summer, and so anxious from kissing Ilya in the first place, he couldn't bring himself to open the thread. What if the link removal was Ilya's way of telling Shane to go fuck himself after a summer of what was, basically, radio silence? An email was easier. Better. Simpler to forget.