Chapter Text
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Ilya worries, sometimes, about forgetting.
Not constantly. Not even often.
But sometimes.
Sometimes it’s all he thinks about.
He remembers obsessing over it after winning the Cup in 2014, and through all the surreal, beer-soaked days that followed, when it felt like all of Boston loved him and he was so viscerally aware, every single second, that some of the best memories of his life were being formed right in front of him, right as he was living them. It seemed as though the ticker tape would never get cleaned up completely, like little pieces of his victory would be scattered around the city forever. He remembers picking it out of his hair when he got home from the parade, finding a piece stuck to the bottom of his shoe, to the wheel of his car, and he remembers thinking, over and over again, don’t ever let me forget this, please.
It’s a thought that belongs to quieter, private moments too, all the things that won’t live on in late-night documentaries and bad weather re-runs, ready to jog his memory if it does ever fail.
His mother, bright-eyed and waving at the side of the rink. Before she—just, before.
His niece as a baby, blinking up at him with those same bright eyes. Like Mama’s, Ilya told Alexei’s wife, because he doubted his brother ever would.
Svetlana sitting on his enormous couch the day it got delivered, her long legs stretched all the way out and not even reaching half way along it. More money than sense, he remembers she teased him. Your whole team could fit on this thing.
And then Shane, sitting beside him on that same ridiculous couch, wearing Ilya’s clothes and eating Ilya’s food.
Of course, Shane.
His freckles and his voice and the way he folds his clothes in the bedroom, takes off his shoes at every door. His furious face when he’s angry, and the way his whole body goes limp when Ilya makes him feel good. All of it. All of him.
Most of the time Ilya understands that his career and his family history are just a risky combination, not an omen. He can tell himself that he inherited nothing from his father in life—not his cruelty or his prejudice or the slope of his nose—and he can convince himself that this will protect him, somehow, from inheriting his death.
But.
Sometimes.
Sometimes he looks at Shane Hollander and he thinks, please. Please let me keep him.
The drive back to the cottage from Yuna and David Hollander’s home is one of those times. The whole trip has been, really, but especially now. Especially this. Late afternoon sun and a song he doesn’t know on the radio, and Shane’s boring car doing precisely the speed limit, nothing more.
“Do you remember how it felt,” Ilya asks after a few miles of quiet, “when you won the Cup?”
He’s stuck on that memory again, the surreal awareness of living through one of the best days of his life, right as it happened.
Shane smirks at the open road in front of them. “Which time?”
Ilya grumbles a quiet noise of disgust. “Both,” he begrudgingly clarifies. “Either.”
“I don’t know…” Shane says it in that way that says he does know, actually, he just needs a minute to collect his thoughts. “Relieved, I guess,” he settles on, turning the radio down slightly. “We were favourites to win, especially the first time. It was expected. But good too, y’know? And sort of … unreal, maybe. Like a dream.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “Is a good way to explain it.”
“It was like that for you too?”
It was the best day of my life, Ilya thinks. Until today. And yesterday. And every day since I got on a plane and came to this place.
What he says is, “I remember I was very glad to win it before you did.”
“Oh, fuck you. You’ve still only got one.”
“Eh.” Ilya waves away the reminder. “If I do not win another next season, I suppose it will stay that way for a while. Ottawa will not be contenders right away, I think.”
Maybe not for a long time, though Ilya doesn’t say that. Maybe not ever.
“I guess,” Shane agrees, something wounded lurking beneath the acknowledgement. “But you know it doesn’t … have to be Ottawa, right?”
The road curves slightly, hiding the sun behind the treeline for a moment. The sudden gloom casts Shane’s face in blues and greys, his expression unreadable. For one fleeting, horrible moment, Ilya thinks he’s about to take it all back, the plan and the charity and their future.
Even without looking away from the road, Shane seems to sense it. "I just meant we could find you somewhere better, if you wanted,” he goes on quickly. “I know Ottawa was my idea, but there are other teams—”
“None so close I think,” Ilya points out, his pulse slowly returning to normal as he realises that Shane isn’t abandoning the plan, just questioning it. Just worrying about it. Of course.
“Maybe not, but—”
“Shane.” Ilya reaches over and covers Shane’s hand where it hovers over the gearstick. “Look at me.”
“I’m driving.”
“Road is empty, Hollander. Fucking look at me. Just a second.”
Slowly, Shane does as he asks, and he looks so morose and anxious and utterly, fucking lovely that Ilya can barely stand it. “Is a good plan,” Ilya tells him. “Ottawa. The charity. All of it. It’s good.”
Shane lets out a quiet breath and says, softly, “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
Shane’s lips twitch towards a smile. “Can I look back at the road now?”
“Yes. Please. Don’t kill me right now, my life is too perfect.”
Shane hums out a laugh, gently maneuvering his hand out from under Ilya’s. He resets his grip into a perfect ten-and-two on the steering wheel as he looks back to the open road ahead of them, and Ilya’s not sure he’s ever been so fucking fond of another person in his whole life. He wants to lean over and kiss each and every one of Shane’s knuckles. He settles instead for resting a hand on Shane’s knee, his little finger edging beneath the hem of his shorts, teasing the skin on the inside of Shane’s thigh.
“Easy,” Shane mutters, shifting in his seat. “I thought you wanted me to drive us home safely.”
Home. The word burns like David Hollander’s vodka. An unexpected delight. “Yes,” Ilya murmurs quietly. He gently removes his hand, turning to look out of the window as he echoes, “Get us home safe.”
There’s a warmth to that word that lingers behind it, like the way the cottage seems to remember the sun every evening, like it’s been warmed to the bone. The feeling carries them almost all the way back before Shane finally breaks the silence. A confession into the brief static between two songs on the radio.
“I just … I don’t want you to regret it.”
Ilya lifts his head from where it was propped up on his fist at the window, watching the countryside fly by outside. He turns to look at Shane instead, following the quick, efficient movements of his hands as he downshifts to a lower gear to turn down the private road that will take them to the cottage.
The answer tumbles out so easily. “I won’t,” Ilya promises. “I couldn’t.”
Shane hums a quiet acknowledgement, not like he agrees exactly, but at least like he heard.
He glides the car to a stop at the property line, tapping something on his phone to open the gate. It sweeps open slowly and smoothly, and Ilya just waits, and waits—for the road to open up, for Shane to open up with it.
It doesn’t take long.
“You’re sure?” Shane says quietly, studying Ilya out of the corner of his eye as he pulls the car forward.
“I am.”
“Even if you never win another cup?”
The gravel rumbles under Shane’s sensible car as the cottage finally comes into view. The afternoon sun gilds every window, making the whole place shine like a coin tossed in the air. Ilya wants to say something sappy and ridiculous in reply, something like, this already feels better than that ever could. There’s ticker tape in my fucking heart, Hollander.
Instead he says, “I think that will not happen.” And then, softly, “But yes, Shane. Even then.”
---
It doesn’t actually occur to IIya at first, that he could stay.
He wants to, of course he does. That desire has been a near-permanent companion from the first day he arrived here. It’s been silently following him around the cottage for a week now, sitting down to every meal they’ve shared, climbing into bed beside them every night.
Ilya wants to unpack every single thing in his carry-on suitcase and just—stay.
But as much as he wants it, it really doesn’t occur to him that he could actually have it.
It still feels unreal that he’s even here at all, nevermind that he’s somehow gained a boyfriend and a plan and a whole fucking future, as well as a faint sunburn on his shoulders and a hickey on his inner thigh.
He has watched the sun go down from the same garden chair where Shane once sat as he looked into a camera and called this his favourite place in the whole world.
The idea of asking for more is unthinkable. Unimaginable.
Until, of course, it isn’t.
Ilya has Yuna Hollander to thank for the revelation.
It comes as they’re having dinner at the cottage, the second time in a week that Ilya has sat down at a table with Shane’s parents, a frequency that seems entirely normal for Shane and entirely alien to Ilya. But they’re so nice, Yuna and David, and they’re trying so, so hard. Asking Ilya questions and actually seeming to want to hear the answer. How does he like the cottage? Is this his first visit? Has he been out on the lake yet? Has he been putting after-sun on his shoulders? And then, so casually over dessert, “How long are you staying with Shane?”
Ilya doesn’t respond immediately, too distracted by the urge to say something sentimental and stupid. Forever if he’ll let me. The rest of my life and whatever comes next. By the time he comes back to himself, Shane has already replied.
But not with, ‘two weeks’.
What he says is: “It’s—uh—undecided.”
Ilya drops his spoon, suddenly unable to feel the tips of his fingers. He swivels his head to look at Shane, but the only hint that Shane knows he just said something important is the faint wash of pink slowly blooming across the apples of his cheeks. Ilya wants to bite him. He wants to usher Yuna and David right out of the door and back into their car. He wants to watch until their tail-lights disappear into the woods and then he wants to come back inside and put Shane on this table and lick that blush off his cheeks until he explains what the hell undecided means.
He’s vaguely aware that Yuna is talking again, something about some upcoming festival in town and the fireworks from it being visible over the lake, but he’s barely listening, just utterly stuck on the fact that Shane isn’t stopping her, or saying, that’s nice, Mom, but Ilya will be back in Boston by then.
The return plane ticket Ilya has booked says he will be.
But…
He doesn’t actually have to be on that flight.
He could stay.
And maybe he’s an idiot for not seeing it before now, but he doesn’t feel like one. He feels fucking miraculous, so unbelievably good that he almost laughs out loud, right in the middle of this nice, polite dinner with Shane’s nice, polite parents. Shane’s nice, polite parents who know that Ilya is here, and that he loves their son, and who seem not to mind at all. They might even like it.
Ilya picks his spoon back up, and asks Yuna to tell him more about the fireworks.
Maybe he’ll be here long enough to see them.
--
He assumes they’ll talk about it after Yuna and David leave.
Not because he wants to, necessarily, but because Shane will. He’ll want to delete Ilya’s return flight information from the notes app on his phone and replace it with something new. He’ll want to discuss pre-season timetables and nutrition plans and training regiments, and Ilya plans to indulge him, entirely.
It’s something of a surprise, then, when it turns out that Shane doesn’t want to talk after dinner at all.
He’s quiet while they clean up the kitchen from dinner. Not like he’s upset, exactly, just like he’s … thinking, maybe. Not bad thoughts. Just lots of them.
As Ilya wipes away the ice cream that splattered on the table when he dropped his spoon, it occurs to him that maybe Shane won’t want to settle the matter of him staying right now. Maybe it’s just one conversation too many right now, after the whirlwind of the last few days.
And so Ilya gives him his quiet, not saying a word while Shane stacks the dishwasher and then re-stacks it again, in almost precisely the same configuration.
Beneath their quiet, companionable silence there’s an unspoken understanding that they’re going to have sex soon, and there’s something so novel and lovely in the absolute lack of haste about that. There’s no curfew to get back for, no plane to catch. No sense of urgency at all in fact, except the one they’re steadily building up for themselves, just because they can. Ilya’s fairly certain he’s never been edged by a dishwasher before tonight. By the time Shane turns it on and the low rumbling white noise fills the quiet kitchen, Ilya’s more than halfway hard and breathing like a wounded animal.
“Done?” he checks.
“Done,” Shane agrees, wiping over the counter top one last time.
Ilya plasters himself to Shane’s back, trapping him against the rumbling machine and the edge of the counter. He noses under Shane’s ear, pressing a kiss to the thin skin beneath the lobe. “Bed now, yes?”
Shane hums a quiet note of agreement, tipping his head back to give Ilya more access. “Yes. Bed.”
“Finally.” Ilya buries his face in the crook of Shane’s neck, chasing the faint scent of the meal they just shared, where it lingers in the fabric of Shane’s sweater. “You smell like dinner,” he murmurs, pressing another kiss behind Shane’s ear, beneath his jaw.
Shane sucks in a breath like he’s readying an apology, but Ilya shushes him before the word can escape his lips. “No,” he says softly. “No, I like it.” He nuzzles further into his neck, inhaling garlic and sage and Shane’s soft, warm, familiar skin. “Makes me want to eat you.”
“Okay, weirdo,” Shane whispers. He spins in Ilya’s arms, his eyebrows lifting slowly. “You smell like cigarettes.”
“Was only one,” Ilya whines. “Hours ago.” He’d needed it to settle his nerves before seeing Shane’s parents again, but he’s not about to admit that. He glances towards the table, eyeballing the distance between the chairs. “You think your mother could smell it?”
“Oh, so this is how I finally convince you to quit.”
“I have quit!” Ilya protests, digging his fingertips into Shane’s hips. “Most of the time.”
“Tell that to my Mom…”
“Shut up, Hollander,” Ilya says, which is as good as admitting he’s lost the upper hand in this little back and forth.
He takes it back the only way he knows how, by kissing the smug smile right off Shane’s pretty face.
Shane, predictably, goes utterly lax in Ilya’s arms, sagging against the counter at his back. Ilya briefly considers the deliciously depraved idea of picking him up and putting him down on top of it, letting the vibrations of the dishwasher rumble through their bodies while they grind against each other. But then Shane’s hands land on his shoulders, pushing at Ilya until he reluctantly moves away from the counter.
“Bed,” Shane says again. “Please.”
There’s a whine beneath his request, like he’s not sure he’s going to get what he wants. Ilya almost laughs aloud, because yes, he might make him ask, might even make him beg sometimes, but he will never, ever deny Shane Hollander a fucking thing.
“So polite,” Ilya murmurs, letting Shane walk him backwards through the cottage. “Asking nicely for what you want.”
They stumble up the couple of steps towards the bedroom, pausing so Ilya can press Shane up against the window and kiss him again.
“You’re so heavy,” Shane bites out, his head thudding back against the glass.
When Ilya tries to ease back a little, Shane just whines out a quiet, “No”, his hands scrabbling over Ilya’s back. “S’not bad,” he explains, the confession slurring out of him. “I like your weight on me.”
Ilya hums a low, pleased sound in his throat. He loves Shane like this, too far gone to be embarrassed in his desires. Ilya has no defence for it, he never has. He gives Shane his whole weight back, effectively trapping him against the glass, and Shane just breathes out a sigh like it’s the absolute best thing in the world.
“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya whispers, wedging a thigh between Shane’s. “I will break glass.”
“It’s reinforced,” Shane says, pulling back just enough to look at him. He rolls his hips against Ilya’s thigh, creating a useless friction between them, rough and unsteady and not remotely enough. “Do your worst, Rozanov.”
Ilya lets out a darkly delighted laugh. “You will regret this, I think.” He shoves Shane harder into the glass, a body check that tests the truth of Shane’s boast.
“Make me,” Shane bites back at him, brattier than Ilya has ever heard him.
And Ilya—Ilya fucking loves it. He rolls his hips against Shane, setting a fractured, uncoordinated rhythm that isn’t quite enough to get them anywhere but feels too good to stop. Shane’s hands scrabble for purchase wherever they can reach, tugging at Ilya’s shirt, then slipping beneath to scratch at his skin. There’s no finesse to any of it, and seemingly no desire in either of them to find any.
“Can you come like this?” Ilya bites out, punctuating the question with a nip to Shane’s lower lip. “On my thigh like a girl?”
“Yes,” Shane says, breathlessly honest. “But I don’t want—”
“What do you want?” It’s a reflex, at this point, to make this demand. “Tell me.”
Whatever it is, Shane can have it. His hand. His mouth. His cock.
All of him—everything belongs to Shane.
“Bed,” is all Shane asks for, pushing at Ilya until he moves back, the loss of contact almost painful.
Ilya complies immediately, picking Shane up and carrying him the last few paces to the bedroom. He tosses him down onto the bed, enjoying the bounce of his body hitting the mattress, before crawling back over him, keeping a little of his weight on his elbows and smothering Shane with the rest.
“Yes,” Shane whispers, the word fracturing into multiple syllables as Ilya grinds their still-clothed erections together.
“Is what you want?” Ilya asks, repeating the movement. “Just this?”
Shane nods frantically, reaching between them to push down Ilya’s shorts just enough. “This,” he says, guiding Ilya’s hand to do the same with his sweatpants. “Please.”
Ilya complies at once, working Shane’s sweatpants and underwear down until they’re caught around his thighs, tangled with the fabric of his own shorts. He feels like a teenager again, entirely sure there’s more he could be doing but not entirely sure how it could actually be better than this.
“You don’t want me to fuck you?” he checks, rolling his hips with the suggestion.
“Later,” Shane bites out. He works his hand between them, dragging his fist over Ilya’s cock a couple of times, dry and careful and entirely too much to bear.
Ilya hisses, batting Shane’s hand away. “Cheating,” he murmurs, pinning Shane’s hands to the mattress.
Shane huffs out a laugh, the sound as bright and open as this cottage in the morning. Ilya loses his rhythm slightly, almost dropping his entire weight on Shane, too caught up with that lovely fucking sound to remember how to move his own body.
It’s not unusual to hear Shane laugh when they’re in bed together. They’ve always teased each other, always had fun. But Shane’s laughter was always a quiet, reluctant thing, before. Like Ilya was dragging it out of him despite himself. Now he’s quick to laugh, quick to smile, and Ilya isn’t sure he knows what to do with how much he loves that.
“I love you,” he says, for want of a better way to express himself. “Shane.”
Shane laughs again, and Ilya almost loses his goddamn mind.
He releases his hold on Shane’s wrists and Shane immediately reaches for him again, his hands landing on Ilya’s ass just beneath the lowered waist of his shorts. He presses him closer, urging him to keep moving.
It shouldn’t be as good as it is. Everything is not quite enough, the angle a little off, the friction just a shade too rough, but neither of them make a move for the lube in Shane’s dresser drawer.
Ilya licks his palm instead, working a hand between them to bring them off together.
“Cheating?” Shane huffs out, reminding him.
“You want me to stop?”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Shane mumbles, the words breathed into Ilya’s neck, his breath hot against the chain of his crucifix. “It’s so good. You’re so good.”
The praise is enough to set Ilya off. He stutters out Shane’s name, his releasing covering both of them and easing the way for him to work Shane through his own orgasm, a split second later.
“Jesus,” Shane says into their panting, blissful silence. “That was…”
“Yes.” Huffing out a laugh, Ilya collapses over him, smearing the mess between their bellies. “You should buy weighted blanket,” he says cheerfully. “For when I am not with you.”
“Fuck off,” Shane says without heat, shoving at him until he rolls away.
And it’s nothing, really, but Ilya still feels himself tense, muscle memory of all the times one of them had to get up and leave. But then Shane throws a leg over one of his, his head coming down to pillow on Ilya’s chest, and suddenly this isn’t like any of those times, at all.
Maybe Shane knows the echo of that feeling, because when Ilya eventually tries to leave the bed a few minutes later, he grabs at him like he’s afraid Ilya will disappear out of the door and not just into the bathroom for a washcloth.
“No,” he says, clutching Ilya’s arm with both hands, his fingers tight around his bicep, “wait, please. Wait, wait.”
It comes out in that breathless, fucked-out litle voice that Ilya loves, the one that makes him want to agree to anything at all.
“What is it, Hollander?”
“Stay, please,” Shane whispers. “ I just … I want you to stay here. A little longer?”
His voice tilts up at the end, turning his demand into a whine. A plea.
For a second, Ilya has the sudden, stupid urge to answer with the truth. To look into Shane’s eyes and say, I can stay with you in this cottage until training camp starts, Hollander. It doesn’t need to be undecided.
But that wouldn’t be fair. Not when Shane is sex-drunk and feeling clingy, just looking for Ilya to stay in bed and cuddle for a couple more minutes. He’s had a big week, he doesn’t need to be ambushed by his boyfriend right now, not when they’re both half-naked and vulnerable, and liable to say something foolish.
So Ilya swallows down what he really wants to say and gives Shane the answer he’s looking for instead.
He says, “Of course I’ll stay.” Then he lies back down in the mess of their bed and pulls Shane back into his arms. “Until you want me to go.”
Ilya expects that’ll be in roughly two more minutes, but he doesn’t mind. The mess always bothers Shane faster than it does Ilya, and Ilya has always liked to be the one to clean him up. So he’ll lie here until Shane asks him to move, and then he’ll let him push him towards the ensuite bathroom without complaint. Ilya will run the water in the sink until it’s nice and warm, but not too hot, and then he’ll come back and clean Shane up with one of his own nice, soft little washcloths, and crawl right back into this bed.
“Okay?” he checks, relaxing into the ergonomic pillow that he made fun of the first night he was here, and then went online and bought for himself the following morning.
“Okay.” Shane sighs out a breath, snuggling into the crook of Ilya’s neck like it was made for him. And then, quietly he says, “I won’t though.” He looks up at Ilya, his eyes soft and almost shining. “I never did.”
That’s when Ilya realises they’re not quite talking about clean up, not really. Not anymore. They’re talking about that same feeling that just shivered through Ilya, the ghost of all the times he had to slide out of Shane’s bed before either of them were ready for it. All those see you next seasons, left on read.
“I know, Hollander,” Ilya says softly. He presses a kiss to Shane’s forehead, pulling him a little closer. “I never did either.”
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